"But the sons of rebellion shall all be as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with the hands."
Samuel 23:6

Chapter One

The Tourist Office phone was ringing.

Ianto swept the bead curtain back and stared at the white plastic device on the curved desk.

That was new.

He stepped up to it, cleared his throat, and had the wholly unfamiliar experience of lifting it from the cradle and pressing it against his ear. "Cardiff Tourist Office, how may I help you?"

"Watson – come here – I need you."

"Pardon?" Ianto put his free hand over his other ear, straining to hear.

"Watson – come here – I need you."

"I believe you have the wrong number."

"Watson – come here – I need you."

Then the line went dead.

Ianto held the phone away from him for a moment, looking at it as though it might bite him. Then he set it carefully back into the cradle and thumbed the intercom to Jack's office.

"Jack?"

"Ianto! I was just thinking about you."

"I'm sure it was something pleasant."

"You have no idea."

Ianto smirked at the growl in Jack's voice and leaned against the desk. "I've just received a call on the Tourist Office phone."

"Oh? That's new. Who from?"

"No idea. It sounded like a recording. Someone asking for a 'Watson'."

"As in 'elementary, my dear'?"

"There are real people with the name Watson, Jack."

"None as interesting as the fake one."

Ianto sighed. "I take it that the phone call doesn't concern you?"

"Don't worry about it. Probably just a prank call. Although – it is a little familiar, isn't it?"

Ianto thought for a moment. "No, not particularly."

"Well, whatever. Coffee?"

"I'll be down in a minute."

Ianto took one final look at the phone, then pressed the button to open the concealed door and went off down the hall to the lift.

- - -

"Jack," Gwen called, leaning away from her workstation monitor, "come take a look at this."

Jack set down the mug that Ianto had just handed him and jerked his head for Ianto to follow him, leaving his office and walking up behind Gwen. He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned toward the monitor.

"I've just picked up some strange rift activity-" She cut off, tapping a few buttons. A replay of what she had just seen appeared on the screen. Jack's eyebrows shot up.

"Weird." He took her shoulders and gently stood her up out of the chair, then took her place, typing rapidly without looking at the keys. Ianto and Gwen exchanged a glance.

Jack spoke with his eyebrows furrowed, leaning in close to the monitor. "It looks like a negative rift spike followed by a positive rift spike in the same location."

A beeping began from another workstation. Ianto stepped over to it. "We're tracking residual rift energy through the center of Cardiff."

Gwen peered over his shoulder. "So something's come through?"

"Looks like." Ianto looked to Jack. "And it's moving rather quickly."

Jack grinned. "Grab your coats, kids. We're going hunting."

- - -

"Left here." Gwen was in the backseat of the SUV, looking down at the tracking device in her hand. Ianto's face floated vaguely troubled over the steering wheel.

Jack looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "What?"

He glanced around, making the turn. "This is my old neighborhood. Where I grew up."

"Stop!"

Ianto hit the brakes quickly, turning back to look at Gwen. She grinned sheepishly. "Uh – that house. It went into that house."

Ianto started to park along the street. "Can we make an attempt not to crash the SUV by yelling 'stop', please?"

"Will do." Gwen smirked as she unbuckled herself and climbed out of the seat. She slammed the door and looked up at the house. "Bit of a dump here, isn't it?"

"That isn't insulting in the least, Gwen, thanks." Ianto straightened his tie in the driverside mirror.

"Oh, come off it, Ianto," she laughed, looking over at him. "You don't live here anymore, do you?"

"My family does."

Jack came around the side of the car. "Does that mean we get to meet the Joneses?"

"Thus ends this conversation." Ianto walked up the driveway toward the front door. Gwen and Jack followed, sharing identical amused looks.

He knocked on the door. From inside, there was the sound of dogs barking, high pitched and baritone, and a woman shouting for them to quiet down. Then the door flew open, and exactly the type of woman that Ianto expected to appear appeared. Housedress, robe, hair in curlers, cigarette in her right hand. She looked out at them with half-lidded eyes, a scowl stretched across her pale lips.

"What do you want, then?"

Ianto balked. "We've, uh-"

Jack stepped up and put a hand on his shoulder – charming smile, as if greeting the Queen. "Hello there! Has anyone or anything come into your house in the last fifteen minutes?"

She eyed Jack up and down, her distaste stretching her scowl further. "The police, are ya? Jussa mo'." She turned full around in the doorway and screamed up the stairs by the door, "David!"

An answering scream, "Wha?"

"Police're here ta see ya! Whadja do this time?"

"Nothin'!"

She looked back over her shoulder at them. "E's upstairs. And if yer takin' 'im , keep 'im overnight. I've a friend coming over." The way that she said 'friend' insinuated that this person was not of the female persuasion.

Jack again flashed that charming smile and started up the stairs. Gwen followed, trying to contain her laughter, and Ianto fell in behind them. Quietly, he asked, "Why does this kid have a trail of residual rift energy?"

Gwen looked back at him. "Dunno."

Jack paused. "He might have picked something up that fell through the rift. Wouldn't be the first time."

David's room was fairly obviously the first room at the top of the stairs – the door was covered in photographs and magazine clippings. Gwen naturally took the lead, tapping on the open door and stepping inside. Ianto and Jack stood in the doorway, taking in the wreck of a room.

The kid didn't even look up at the knock. Dark haired, wiry, sitting cross-legged on his bed with a game controller in his hands, staring at his television, where the barrel of a gun floated bottom-center of the screen. Gwen cleared her throat. "David?"

"I didn't do nothing." He didn't look at her.

She glanced back at Jack and Ianto. They were no help – twin raised eyebrows, 'what-do-you-expect-us-to-do?'

"David," she said, stepping toward him. "Would you mind turning off the game and talking to us for a few minutes?"

"I told you I didn't do nothing, didn't I?" He still didn't look at her, but there was the slightest hint of panic in his voice. A wideness to his eyes as he stared intently at the screen.

Gwen sighed and dug around in her jacket pocket, then pulled out something that looked a bit like a metal pen. She held it up in front of her and thumbed a button at the side. The low hum of the game console quit and the screen went dark.

"Hey!" David leapt off the bed and knelt in front of the console, trying and failing to turn it back on.

"Oh, that's a shame, isn't it?" Gwen slipped the gizmo back in her pocket. "I've heard that those systems are a bit touchy."

He looked at her, then sat back on his bed, slouched and silent. Gwen rolled a chair away from the cluttered desk by the door and sat across from him, putting on her best PC Cooper smile. "Now, no distractions, yes? My name is Gwen Cooper – this is Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones. What's your full name?"

"David Arthur Menai." This he mumbled, looking down at his ripped-jeans knees.

"And how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Can you tell me what you were doing around the center of Cardiff about twenty minutes ago?"

He glanced at Jack and Ianto in the doorway, then looked back at her. "I was waiting for some mates. They didn't show, so I left."

"How long were you waiting?"

"Half-hour abou'."

The lie was easy to spot; the slight pause, the uncertainty in his voice. Gwen shifted to cross her legs and lean an elbow on her knee. "David, while you were there, did you see anything strange? A flash of light, maybe? Or did you pick anything up?"

He shook his head, his eyes still just slightly too wide. "I didn't see nothing."

Gwen sighed. "Right." She stood. "Would you mind standing up for me?"

"What for?"

"Just stand, please."

He did so, slowly, looking more and more as though he didn't know what was going on. This increased tenfold when Gwen brought out something that looked like a large PDA. "Arms up," she said, and he did so, watching as she traced the object over his body. It beeped and flashed until finally she finished and put it away. She looked back at Jack and Ianto. "It's definitely him. Not something he picked up. Him."

David looked between Gwen and the men in the doorway, his eyes huge, the panic finally gripping him fully. "What? Is it radiation poisoning or something? Was that a Geiger counter?"

Jack ignored him, coming into the room and looking closely at him, confusion written all over his face. "We know that you saw something. We're going to find out one way or the-"

There was a shriek from downstairs. "David! David! Turn on your telly! There's monsters attacking people on the news!"

Jack, Gwen and Ianto looked at each other, wide-eyed, then ran for the stairs.

Author's Note: I promise that the next two chapters will be much longer and much more serious than this chapter. And I do mean serious. This looks to be a three-chapter deal, but you know me. Might be four. We'll see! A note about the opening quote - I'm not religious, but I do love a good title pulled from the bible. That particular quote is from the last words of David, as in 'David and Goliath'. Took a lot of reading to finally find a suitably flowery analogy.

Look for an update at some point this week - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Wednesday. I'm sorry if this chapter is a little bit different from the way I normally write them - today was a strange writing day. The next chapter should be better.