This idea came to me while watching the season one finale. It'll be in six parts. I haven't completely hashed out the last two and half of the third to last but I'm getting there. I need a beta… anyone interested? Someone who stays up till about three or four each morning and can deal with a lethargic writer. :)

Disclaimer: Anything that looks familiar isn't mine.

4:12 am

Cardiff was sleeping soundly under a velvet night sky. It was silent all over, the streetlamps dropping cones of dirty light onto its streets, which were all vacant except for the large and gleaming black jeep that zipped along the avenues. It ripped through the silence and serenity, looking terribly out of place. The large tires squealed and left trails of dust as it rounded tight corners. Curious bright blue and white lights could be seen from within: Toshiko's computer screens in the backseat.

"I've got a lock on it," she was saying. Her eyes were wide as she observed her readings. Her slim fingers tapped and prodded the keyboard. A large map glowed on the screen in front of her with a large red dot right in the middle, as well as the small white marker that was them - Torchwood. Gwen was at her shoulder, her large eyes narrowed as she observed the dot. "The object itself is small," Tosh continued as her eyes swept the screen, her expression that of bewilderment. "But it's one of the largest amounts of alien energy I've ever seen."

Jack, seated in the front passenger seat, pursed his lips at this and glanced in the rearview mirror at the two women. "How much energy?" he asked, suddenly clutching the dashboard with both hands as Owen haphazardly soared over a speed bump and sent everyone about an inch in the air.

Tosh pressed a few more buttons and a small graph appeared to the left of the map, the wavy red lines upon it ripping and spiking violently. "A lot. The readings are similar to those I get when there's rift activity, but it's smaller, more controlled. And more powerful. Make a right here and stop at number seven, Owen."

"You got it," Owen replied as he ripped the wheel to the right. It was a small residential street. He skidded to a halt outside the fourth house on the right. Everyone quickly evacuated the truck, guns in hand. The house looked normal; like all the others on the street. The windows were dark, curtains were drawn, and there was even a small garden out front.

"Don't look like the home of an alien," Owen murmured as the team approached the house. "But then again, they never do."

Jack kicked the front door inward with a swift movement of his leg. "We could have knocked first!" Gwen whispered sharply as she followed him inside. Jack ignored her. Something as powerful as Tosh described needed to be taken on suddenly. Warning it wouldn't be clever.

Within, the team observed the small front hall by the light of their torches. It was a normal home, conservatively decorated and tidy. "It was coming from the second-" Tosh began, a small palm-pilot type computer beneath her nose, but was cut off.

"Who in the bloody hell are you!?" came the loud, panicked voice of a woman as the hall light switched on. At the top of the stairs stood a woman in a tatty bathrobe, holding a broom aloft like a baseball bat. She was plump, with ginger hair that was going steadily gray from her temples.

The team lowered their guns at once. "Torchwood," Jack said immediately as he began up the stairs. "We received signal of something-"

"I don't care what you got, you didn't have to kick the damn door in like a bunch of animals!" the woman yelled and Jack stopped as she lowered the broom.

"Please, ma'am, we believe there's something wrong upstairs, we need to take a look!" Jack demanded.

Tosh stepped forward, holding her handheld computer aloft. "Jack, the energy's disappeared!"

"What d'you mean, something's wrong? It's just me and me daughter here. You mean gas or summat?"

At her words, a teenage girl of about eighteen appeared at the top of the stairs, a hand in her disheveled red hair. "Wuzgoinon?" she muttered thickly.

Jack was staring at Tosh. "What do you mean, disappeared? Where'd it go?" Owen whispered harshly.

"Nowhere… it's just gone!"

There was a pause, during which the team stared at each other.

"Well?" the woman asked, staring daggers at them. "What'd you wake us up for? Torchwood… aren't you like the police?"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. …?"

"Ms. Sanderson."

"Ms. Sanderson," Jack said, grinning sheepishly. "We are, basically, the police." He flashed his badge. "We need to take a look up there."

Despite her less than warm welcome, Ms. Sanderson moved aside after only a moments' hesitation. "Abigail, go back to bed," she snapped at the girl as the team ascended the stairs.

"Torchwood, did you say?" Abigail asked softly as Gwen passed her, ignoring her mother.

Gwen nodded, but barely looked at the girl as she entered each room, gun held at the ready. Owen and Jack were doing the same, Tosh scanning each room with her palm pilot. Nothing.

"Well?" Ms. Sanderson asked again tartly. She was following right behind Jack as he moved through the house.

"Quite the assertive one, you are, aren't you! " he said jovially, lowering his gun. "I like that in a woman, you know." She didn't take it as a compliment. His smile faltered a bit. "We, um, we've seem to made a mistake. Readings must have been wrong. No disturbance here."

"'Cept for you lot!"

"And we're very sorry to have woken you." He tried to usher everyone down the stairs before they looked any stupider.

"Should report you, I should!" Ms. Sanderson yelled after them as they shut the door quickly after themselves.

5:23 am

"Bloody horrible, that was," Owen mumbled, striding to his desk back at the Torchwood hub. "Embarrassing." The Torchwood Pterodactyl, almost in response to his words, screeched as it soared above them.

"Like you were so much help," Jack said hotly, glaring at him and throwing his jacket onto the couch.

"And like you just had to kick the door in like the ruddy police – No offense, Gwen," Owen added.

But Gwen was staring at Tosh's computer screen over her shoulder again and Tosh's words cut off Jack's defense. "It's back! There it is; same place as before!" Both men rushed over. "It was like it disappeared when it noticed we were there, but then just now… it's back!"

"We should have gone upstairs," Jack said darkly. "Whatever it is knows how to hide or mask its energy. And that just makes it all the more dangerous."

"Do the creatures that come through usually give off energy like that?" Ianto asked. The rest of the team started as they butler entered silently with a tray of coffee, to which everyone absently helped themselves to as he joined the cluster around Tosh's computer.

"If anything comes through the rift, it gives off a sort of residue from the rift itself which we can 

track," Tosh replied, cupping her mug in both hands. "But there's been no rift activity for days now. It got here all on its own."

Owen shrugged and returned to his chair with his drink. "Maybe it got through on the last one and you just didn't see it."

"I would have noticed this much energy." Tosh couldn't seem to take her eyes off the radar.

"Maybe it was hiding," Gwen suggested.

"Gwen could be right," Jack muttered. "Tosh, could you track that thing? Make sure it doesn't move. If it does, we're going back to find it."

Tosh nodded. "It could just be a temporary fracture - a mini-rift as an extension of ours. I've heard they exist but I've never seen one. If it is, it should be gone in a few days."

"I suppose it's a possibility," Jack muttered.

Gwen glanced at her watch. "Shit, I've got to get home. Rhys is expecting me."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, it's late. Everyone, go home and get some rest," he said. Usually, he sounded rather despondent when he said this; the loneliness they all knew thrived within him hiding behind his words. But tonight, he was staring at the ominous red blotch and seemed completely unlike himself.

"I'll keep an eye on that. Mini-rift or not, I don't like it."

5:35 am

The team had evacuated the hub one by one, except for Jack and Ianto. Jack stood in sock feet with his suspenders hanging loosely down at his sides a few feet away from Tosh's computer. He was staring hard at the screen, arms crossed over his broad chest. Ianto was leaning against the doorframe leading into Owen's medical area, looking more at Jack than at the monitor.

"What do you think it is, sir?" he queried softly.

Jack breathed deeply before answering. "I don't know. Tosh's explanation about the mini-rift was plausible. Number seven wasn't on the rift, but quite close to it. But the way it disappeared when it knew it was being hunted, and then reappeared once we left… it's something conscious. Or else it was being controlled by something conscious." He sighed. "I don't trust it, I know that much. It's far too powerful and far too clever to be taken lightly."

"So you're just going to stay here alone all night, staring at it till something happens?" Ianto asked as Jack turned and sat on the sofa against the wall.

"Who says I'll be alone?" Jack smiled. He held out a hand towards the younger man, beckoning him closer. Shyly, Ianto suppressed a grin as he joined his employer on the couch. Jacks arm slipped about Ianto's waist as he sat, and Ianto boldly nestled himself against Jack's side. Ianto laid his head against Jacks' shoulder and Jack kissed his lovers' temple.

However, within a moment his eyes went back to the small red dot that seemed to stare right back at him from across the room.

"Are you sure this is… professional, sir?" Ianto muttered, a bit of sarcasm lacing his words.

Briefly distracted, Jack glanced down at him. "You're helping me monitor alien activity. How much more work-related could you get?" Ianto smiled as he felt Jack's throat vibrate against his forehead with each word. The warm hum of his voice was something he adored; the gorgeous charismatic secrecy that was Jack Harkness.

"From where your hand is, it seems there's something else you want to monitor," Ianto replied cheekily. "Sir."

The corners of his mouth turning upwards, Jack squeezed Ianto's thigh and lowered his head to kiss him.

7:13 am

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Jack's eyes burst open. Above him, the ceiling of the hub was tinged pink with the early morning light. Down: Ianto's head on his chest, stirring but still not fully awake. Right: Tosh's computer. The map was still there. But the red marker had gone.

"Get up," he said quietly, giving Ianto's bum a tap and easing himself out from under him. Groggily, Ianto clambered off of Jack, rubbing his eyes. "Has it moved?" he asked. Stumbling (he had a bit of trouble getting to his feet as his pants were still around his ankles) Jack rushed to the monitor just to make sure it really wasn't there. It wasn't. Ianto smiled as Jack bent down to pull his trousers up.

"C'mon. We're going down there," Jack said, grabbing his jacket off a chair and shrugging into it as they headed for the large circular entranceway.

"Oh, and about that stopwatch of yours…" Jack said they stepped into the lift. "Next time, I press the button. I think you cheated." Ianto blushed as the doors closed them in.