Chapter 4 Things that go bump in the day

"Aaaaaaahh!" The loud bloodcurdling wail sounded somewhere from the bowels of the Hub. The operatives in the central part all froze in the middle of their work. It had only been a few days since the ordeal with Orion and the healing circle, so they were still a bit on edge.

"What the hell was that?" Owen barked from the autopsy bay. They all listened for further signs of the cause of the sound. Toshiko started tapping keys on her keyboard, bringing up a flurry of images on the screen. Nothing. There had been no alarms going off which meant that there was no intruder, no fire, no water leaking in from the bay, no breach of security what so ever. So what could it have been? She looked around. They were all accounted for. Owen was in the autopsy bay, she and Gwen at their workstations, Jack in his office and Ianto was up in the tourist office with Rhiannon and Orion. She checked the dedicated screen. Myfanwy was in her nest, blinking blurry eyed as she had just been woken by the scream.

Jack came out of his office and looked down at them from the stair.

"What's going on? What was that?" he asked.

"We don't know, Jack. There was a scream from down below, but we're all here." Gwen answered. Jack scanned the room as he walked down to join them.

"Ianto and Orion are upstairs." Toshiko forestalled the obvious question. "The CCTV isn't showing anything."

"Keep looking. The sound had to come from somewhere. Gwen, with me." He said and headed toward the stairs to the lower floors, pulling his gun out as he went. Gwen rushed after him.

"Maybe Gwen finally get's to shoot something. She has been getting trigger-anxious lately." Owen remarked when they were out of earshot.

xxXxx

Jack moved swiftly through the hallways, holding his gun at the ready. Gwen moved silently beside him. They made a good team. That is when she could remember who was boss. He swept past a door checking to see if it was still locked. It was. One by one they checked every door, every room and every hallway of the massive place and found absolutely nothing. Exhausted they finally joined the others upstairs.

"Nothing." He said as he collapsed on the sofa. "Not a bloody thing." Gwen flopped down beside him.

"Nothing but a couple of mice and spiders." She added.

"Mice!" Ianto exclaimed and paled. Owen snickered.

"What's the matter? Afraid of a little mouse, Tea-boy?" Ianto glared at him in annoyance.

"No, I'm not. But mice can do a great deal of damage to the archive, both the papers and some of the artefacts." He looked at Jack. "We have to get rid of them." Jack nodded.

"We'll set up some traps for them." He took a sip of the very hot coffee Ianto had brought him. "Meanwhile we still have to figure out where that scream came from and who made it."

"What scream?" Orion said as he approached. His chore in the tourist office was finished for the day and it wasn't yet time for his lesson with Xarion. They filled him in on the mysterious events of the day.

"Why didn't you just call me?" he couldn't help but ask. The adults looked at him and at each other in confusion. Owen smirked.

"That's a good idea! Go change into a pussycat and go catch the mice." Owen's grin was however quickly wiped from his face, when Orion smiled innocently at him and said:

"Like this?" and then he changed into a tiger, gave a low growl deep in his throat and pounced on him. Owen was knocked clean off his feat and onto his back by the great cat. Orion had both front paws on Owens chest and his face close to Owens. There were various startled exclamations in the background, but Orion ignored them. He purred in amusement at Owen's shocked expression. Owen still had his coffee mug in his hand, but the coffee had spilled out on the floor. With his big sandpaper-like tongue Orion licked Owen's face from chin to temple and moved off, letting the man go.

"Orion!" his Tad yelled. Orion flinched and turned to look at him, ducking his head a little. He could tell just by the tone of voice that he was in trouble. "What in the world possessed you to do such a thing?" There was a pause. Then: "You spilled perfectly good coffee all over my clean floor!"

"Hey!" Owen yelled, outraged, as both Gwen, Tosh and Jack burst out laughing. Ianto tried to keep his stern face but had to break down when he saw Owen's expression. In an offer of peace he helped the man to his feet and moments later Owen was laughing as well. He could be a good sport when it suited him. Orion purred loudly with humour and proceeded to lick the coffee up from the floor, earning him another "Orion!" from his Tad.

When the merriment had died down again, Toshiko asked Orion:

"What did you mean with what you said before, that we should just have asked you?" He changed back into his Human form again and shrugged.

"I might have been able to sense what it was."

"Do you think you still could?" Jack asked and Ianto frowned at him. Ianto still didn't want their son to become too involved with Torchwood. He was just a child and even if he had been an adult he wouldn't want him to join. People die young in Torchwood and he wanted his son to have a long, happy – safe - life. Orion looked at them and considered it.

"Maybe." He looked a little doubtful. "I can try."

xxXxx

Orion was walking along the hallways deep in the bowels of the secret underground base. His senses were alert and focused on detecting any signs of life. So far he had encountered 1436 insects of various kinds, 593 spiders of various sizes, 22 mice and rats, 2 weevils (thankfully still locked in their cells), 103 people of various kinds kept in suspended animation down in storage, as well as an uncountable number of dust mites and similar small critters. He stretched out his awareness. The sound had to have come from somewhere. 'Oh spider number 594 and its packed lunch.'

He was on one of the cell block floors, the one that held the two captive weevils. One weevil, Janet, was a permanent resident. He was actually on rather good terms with the creature. He had come in to do some cleaning – a punishment from Xarion – and found the weevil crying from loneliness in its cell. He had found that singing to it helped to calm it down and that it enjoyed his company. Of course, he harboured no misconceptions that the creature wouldn't kill him if it got the chance, but he still came down almost every day to see how it was doing.

He decided to go see it now he was there anyway. Walking down the hall toward the cells, he suddenly became aware of something moving up ahead. His heat sense showed him a small life form about the size of a large rat. But it didn't feel like a rat. He stretched out his mind to it in order to determine if it was a threat or not. He touched upon a tranquil mind and a low intelligence. It reminded him of the grazing animals from the petting zoo Rhiannon had taken him and his cousins to a few months ago. Then suddenly he felt the creature panic and run away. He just managed to catch a glimpse of a turquoise furry something darting into the cell block where Janet and the other weevil were kept.

A moment later two loud screams reverberated among the bare concrete walls. He ran into the room. Both weevils were standing up on the bed platforms and both were still screaming. He could feel the fear emanating from them as if it was an almost physical thing. They were terrified. He quickly scanned the room for the little furry creature. It didn't take him long to spot it. It was cowering in the far corner of the room and it too was radiating fear. It looked like a turquoise ball of fur. He walked over to it, sure now that it wouldn't hurt him. He squatted down and carefully reached out to the little thing.

It was warm to the touch and shivering with fear. He sent a feeling of calm assurance to it as he picked it up. It was curled up so tight he couldn't tell where its head or legs were. Carefully holding it in both hands he got up and walked toward the door. The weevils screamed with renewed vigour when they saw the tiny furball.

"Oh shut up!" he yelled at them, to no effect. He hurried out of the room and down the hall and the weevils stopped their screaming. He could hear the pounding of running feet coming closer. Suddenly his Daddy came tearing around the corner, gun pointed straight at him and the others were right behind him. Orion didn't flinch, but just focused on projecting calm to the little creature in his hands. Jack came to an abrupt halt, causing Gwen to bump into him.

"Wha…" Jack managed. Orion smiled at them.

"It's okay. It was the weevils that were screaming - every time this little fellow came into their line of sight."

"Oh, a tribble!" Toshiko burst out. The others looked at her. She blushed. "You know… Star Trek? The trouble with tribbles? … you know, the trouble with tribbles is they don't come in dribbles… Oh never mind." She sighed with embarrassment.

"Actually, the tribbles were brown and white. This looks more like a pygmy puff." Ianto stated. All eyes fell on him. "You know, Harry Potter?" Jack shook his head as if to clear it.

"Literary references aside," Jack said, but was interrupted by Toshiko's:

"Star Trek wasn't lit…" He glared at her, making her blush again "Sorry." She whispered.

"Cultural references aside, how did that thing get here?" By now the little creature had calmed down and begun to unfurl itself. Orion looked down at it, smiling. It looked like a cute little hedgehog with fur instead of spines. It blinked up at him with its blue eyes and wiggled its nose, sniffing his scent. He could hear a little rumbling sound from its stomach. His smile widened.

"Are you hungry?" Orion asked it. The rumbling sounded again. "I think that's a yes. I wonder what you eat?" he pushed past the adults, cradling the little animal close to him, and headed up to kitchen. The adults gawked and rushed after him.

"Orion, we can't feed that thing. We don't know what it eats. It might get sick from the wrong kind of food." Owen said.

"So we should just let it starve?" Orion asked angrily.

"No of course not, but…" they continued to argue all the way to the kitchen. The others followed behind.

"Gwen, Ianto, see if you can determine how that thing got here. Toshiko, is there anything in the computer logs that show any unusual events, any spikes in rift activity here at the Hub, any unusual radiation, temporal fluxes, any thing at all that might explain where this thing came from?" Jack was in full command mode again and the others were springing into action.

"I'm on it." She answered. Jack nodded and went into the kitchen to check on their progress – well officially, that is. In reality he just wanted to look at the adorable little creature. He always had had a soft spot for small furry animals. Not that he would ever admit it. When he entered the kitchen he could see that the animal itself had solved the problem of its feeding. It was currently sitting on the kitchen counter munching on a spider. A few spiders' legs had dropped to the counter and there was an awful crunching squishy sound whenever it took a bite. Owen was looking sick and left rapidly, to go down to his nice spider-free autopsy bay. At least he hoped it was spider free… he looked around in paranoia.

There was a sound from above and Xarion stepped into the Hub. He had been conversing with Rhiannon up in the tourist office. The young man had a slightly anxious look about him.

"Hello, have any of you seen Wilfred?" he asked as he came down.

"Wilfred? Who's Wilfred?" they asked. Jack left the kitchen to join them.

"It's a Norton Poxa and my pet. I brought it with me to for a lesson with Orion and now it's vanished." He sounded rather distraught.

"It wouldn't happen to be turquoise, would it?" Jack asked knowing full well that it probably was.

"Yes." the young man looked at him hopefully. Jack smiled.

"Orion," he yelled toward the kitchen. "Get in here and bring the pygmy puff-tribble." Orion came into the room with the little animal sitting on his arm, still munching on its spider.

"Wilfred!" Xarion rushed over to Orion and grabbed the animal and cuddled it close. "Don't you ever scare me like that again!" Owen rolled his eyes in contempt. He would never understand how anyone could get excited about a pet. Orion smiled and picked up the spider from his sleeve. Once Xarion had released the animal, Wilfred, and put it on his shoulder Orion gave it the spider and it began chewing on it again.

"You do know that Wilfred is a girl?" he commented. Xarion gave him a strange look.

"Yes, so?"

"Wilfred is a boy's name." He shrugged. Xarion chuckled in understanding.

"Here on Earth Wilfred is a boy's name. On Cararunal it means the one who digs for hidden treasures and doesn't have any gender connotations to it. Wilfred here likes to dig and rummage in the garden and brings back all sorts of treasures. Once it brought back a gold ring. That's when I decided on the name."

"And Cararunal?"

"Mmm one of the colony worlds. It's located in the outer cluster of Cora here in the Milkyway Galaxy." They headed of to Orion's room, deeply engrossed in their conversation and didn't notice the rest of the occupants of the Hub looking after them, before going back to work them selves.

Thanks to Badly-knitted for the single review I got.

So are you guys getting tired of this story or what? Is it not living up to your expectations? What do you like or dislike in this story so far? Give me some input, eh?