7.

Jack bounded back into the Hub, hoping Ianto was awake. He didn't like leaving him, even if Ianto had been asleep most of the morning, and even if Jack had retreated to his office and avoided him. He'd been furiously screening the CCTV footage of the past few days, determined to find something to explain what was happening to the Welshman. Because he hated the thought that Ianto was dreaming about him in such a terrible way, and feared what it might mean.

It wasn't hard to see a dozen different meanings behind Ianto's dreams, trained psychiatrist or not. Ianto had dreamed four times now that Jack had killed him. Stabbed him, strangled him, shot him, poisoned him. Though Jack had done nothing, he nevertheless felt a strong sense of guilt. Ianto had tried to pass it off as something he needed to work through, but Jack knew well enough that Ianto wouldn't have to work through anything if Jack were a better partner to him. A better boss, friend, lover, everything. It was his fault that Ianto had such doubts and fears about their relationship, his fault that they were manifesting in Ianto's dreams as nightmares of blood and death.

Or maybe there really was something else going on, which was why he had ordered Tosh and Owen to run their tests, why he had locked himself in the office to find something, anything, on the CCTV that might help mitigate his terrible guilt over putting Ianto through this. Jack wasn't worth it, and if he needed to, he would convince Ianto of that very fact and let him move on to find the type of relationship he deserved. One that didn't give him nightmares.

Then again, Jack didn't want to lose Ianto, and he wasn't sure if he could simply let him go. He needed to find another reason for what was happening. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn't the one trapped in another version of Hell, one where he watched Ianto tortured by thoughts of Jack, where he would have to leave Ianto to save him from a lifetime of nightmares. But he'd checked the matchbox, and Tosh had run her scans, and he was pretty sure it wasn't involved. Which meant something else was going on. Hopefully.

Unfortunately, the Riftquake that morning had been big enough to stir up a number of nearby Weevils. He, Gwen, and Owen had spent the morning chasing them down and tossing them back into the sewers. Then another call had come up after lunch. Jack hoped the rest of the afternoon was quiet, so he could check on Ianto and continue his search of the CCTV footage.

The sofa was empty, which was hopefully a good sign that Ianto was feeling better. Jack hurried over to Tosh's station to ask about him.

"Weevil's back where it belongs," he told her. He inclined his head toward the empty sofa. "Where's Ianto? Is he doing any better? Have you found anything?"

Tosh turned toward him and took off her glasses. "One, he's taking a shower. Two, he had something to eat and seems much better, and three—"

She was interrupted by the Rift alert going off at the same moment Jack felt a rumbling beneath his feet. "Riftquake, another big one," she said, even though it was obvious. Jack held back a groan, wondering when it would end. Moments later the intruder alert went off, stunning them both. Spinning toward another monitor, Tosh frantically tried figure out what was going on.

"We've got a security breach of some sort downstairs," she said, typing furiously. "Near the showers. Jack! Ianto is down there!"

"Code zero," Jack snapped, already running toward the stairs. "Lockdown the Hub. You and Gwen up here, send Owen down with me."

Jack moved as fast as he could toward the showers, his heart racing. He was reminded of the night they'd found Ianto's cybernized girlfriend in the Hub, and hated the fear it brought back, this time compounded by a much deeper relationship with Ianto. Hearing a noise and moving cautiously now with his gun held before him, he stepped into the shower area, searching for any sign of an intruder. Nothing.

"Tosh?" he said quietly into his comm. "There's nothing here."

"I'm not picking it up anymore," she replied, sounding frustrated.

"Stay on alert," Jack replied. "If something came through the Rift, we could be dealing with anything here."

He moved further into the shower area, which was when he noticed the blood. A lot of blood.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, ignoring Tosh's panicked exclamations in his ear, followed quickly by Gwen. "Where's Owen? Ianto's been attacked!"

Jack knelt down next to the Welshman, who had been stabbed once in the side. He had somehow pressed a towel against the wound to try and stop the bleeding, but was barely conscious as Jack lifted him as carefully as he could. He wasn't going to wait for Owen, Ianto clearly needed the medical bay, and fast.

"Jack," Ianto breathed, his eyes slipping closed. Jack had never been so scared in his life. The thought of Ianto dying right there, right then, in his arms almost made his knees buckle, and he stumbled into the corridor to find Owen there, reaching out to support them.

"What the hell happened?" the doctor demanded, lifting the towel to see the wound. "Fuck. Get him upstairs, I need to stabilize him immediately."

Jack swore again and tried to blink back tears as he hurried upstairs. He rushed past Gwen and down into the medical bay, Owen on his heels. Setting Ianto on the cold, hard bed, he ran a hand through the Welshman's hair as Owen dashed around them, covering Ianto's lower body and hooking him up to the machines. Ianto's eyes blinked open as the doctor inserted an IV into his left arm.

"Hey," said Jack, leaning close.

"It wasn't you," Ianto whispered, reaching out with his right hand to take Jack's hand. "I know it wasn't you."

Jack ducked his head and choked back a sob, torn between relief, guilt, and fear. He ignored the puzzled look that Owen gave him and nodded at Ianto.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner, that I didn't—"

"Jack," Ianto said. "You have to stop it."

"What was it?" Jack asked. "What did this?"

Ianto gasped and started coughing. Owen glanced at Jack. "I need to put a mask on him."

Jack nodded and stepped away, but Ianto reached for him again. "Check the cube," he gasped. "It was—"

He lost consciousness, and the monitors above him beeped furiously. Owen swore and shouted. "Gwen! Get your arse down here, you're my new assistant!"

She was there within seconds, her face pale. Jack stepped back, his heart literally in his throat. He stared at Ianto, trying to imagine what his life would be like if Ianto didn't make it, if Owen couldn't save him, if—

"Jack!" Owen snapped. "Get out of here. I'll deal with this, you deal with the bastard that did it. Do you hear me?"

Jack stared at him. It was Gwen who brought him out of it by touching his arm and turning him around, gentle but firm. "Go on, Jack. I'll stay with Ianto and make sure he's all right."

He nodded blankly at her and went up the stairs, still watching Ianto. Owen was scrubbing himself clean for surgery. He grabbed a gown and gloves, dragged over a table of instruments, and began working. Gwen cleaned up, pulled on scrubs and gloves as well, took Ianto's hand, then glanced up at Jack and nodded at him to go. He blew out a breath and turned away; it was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.

He hurried over to Tosh, placing a shaking hand on her shoulder.

"What've you got?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she said, clearly frustrated and upset. "One minute the sensors were picking up an intruder, the next it was gone."

Jack studied the monitors, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. "Can we get any CCTV from the showers?"

She pulled it up with a few quick keystrokes. Of course the cameras didn't cover the showers themselves, but there was coverage in the rest of the area. Tosh rewound back several minutes and they watched the empty dressing room in silence. Then a strange cloud appeared, materializing into a blurry humanoid form.

"That's not a Rift event," Jack murmured, leaning closer. He swore as he recognized the alien.

Ianto walked into the scene from off screen, and they watched as he was attacked, as the alien wrenched the knife out for another stab, but was stopped by Ianto. Jack couldn't help but feel a rush of pride as Ianto grabbed the alien's hand and plunged the knife into its own leg before collapsing. The alien then disappeared, the knife clattering to the ground.

"What happened?" Jack demanded, reaching over and rewinding the footage.

Tosh was typing furiously, eyeing her other monitors. "I don't know. Teleport of some sort?"

"None I've seen," Jack murmured, watching it again.

"Do you recognize what it is? The alien?"

Jack nodded. "Yes, I do. And Ianto confirmed it."

She turned to him in surprise. "What do you mean Ianto confirmed it? When?"

"In the medical bay," Jack said grimly. "He said to check the cube." He went over to where the cube was sitting on a table, glowing an ominous purple. He reached out to grab it and thought better of it. Tosh appeared beside him.

"You think that alien was a Xrillian?" she asked.

"I know it was," Jack replied. "I killed one right here in the Hub. And just like now, we couldn't figure out how it got in back then either."

"What happened?" asked Tosh. "Maybe it will help."

Jack stared at the cube, trying to remember the details, jogged only by reading the file Ianto had pulled the day before. "Daniel, our tech guy, had been studying an artifact they'd found in the field, this one. I was freelance at that point, in and out, but it was a busy time…" He paused, tilting his head as more memories surfaced.

"Tosh! Can you look and see if there were any Riftquakes in October, 1963?"

She dashed back to her computer and within moments was calling back to him. "According to records we have on file, there were several that month."

"Yes, I remember now," he said quietly, nodding to himself. "That's why I was working so much, the team was run off their feet with stuff coming through, Weevils everywhere, all the usual, just more of it."

"Like now," Tosh said. "We've had Riftquakes every day and the Weevils are starting to come out more and more."

"Now the same alien is running around the Hub," Jack said. He pointed at the cube. "And that must be the connection, but how?"

"What did it look like when you found it in 1963?" asked Tosh. "Was it lit up?"

"I don't know, I didn't find it," said Jack. "One of the retrieval teams brought it in. They said there had been a second one, but it was in pieces. I vaguely remember Daniel working on it, but we were all so busy I don't know how much he really did with it. We had just returned from another retrieval when the alien attacked."

"What happened?"

"It just appeared, kind of like on the CCTV, and snapped Daniel's neck," said Jack. "It went after Alexis next. Sinead grabbed the cube and hit it in the head, and I shot it when it got up to attack again. There wasn't much else to it."

Tosh frowned. "Don't tell me that's why it was labeled a weapon."

Jack shrugged. "I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that report. She hit him good with it, though. And everyone thought there was a connection."

"What happened to the body?" Tosh asked. "Ianto couldn't find anything on Xrillians in the database."

Jack frowned. "It disintegrated, now that I think about it, so there was no autopsy. It just disappeared. Alexis was sure it had something to do with the cube, so the team ran some tests, found absolutely nothing, and classified it as broken. They were too devastated by Daniel's death to do much more, and anything he might have learned died with him."

"How did they know the alien was Xrillian?" asked Tosh.

"That was me," said Jack. "Never met one, but recognized it from school. Extinct by my time, lots of legends about them, though. Fascinating, really."

"Relevant?" asked Tosh. Jack shrugged.

"Possibly. We can go over it as a team when the others are ready. Right now I want to focus on finding this intruder."

"So the cube was found, there was a Riftquake, the Xrillian appeared," Tosh murmured, gazing off.

"You think the quake has something to do with it?" Jack asked.

"It can't be a coincidence," she replied. "I think Ianto was onto something, that the Rift somehow triggered the cube to activate, and now the cube has something to do with the Xrillian appearing."

"But how?" asked Jack, frustrated. "It's nothing like transporters I've seen.

"And I saw nothing similar to other transport devices we've found," said Tosh. "It's too shielded. Ianto said if it was a weapon it would make sense to be shielded, but maybe it's more than a weapon."

"Like what?" asked Jack.

"Maybe it's a receptacle of some kind," said Tosh, turning toward it with wide eyes. "Maybe the Xrillian is inside."


Author's Note:

Yes, the last chapter was real. Which means we'll stay with Jack's point of view for a bit. Thank you for all the great comments, I really appreciate it! And kudos to those of you figuring things out!