A/N: Oh man, ten chapters already? Gosh. My continual thanks to everyone who's adding me to their alerts, favorites, reviewed, or even just reading this. You guys are cool (like bowties and fezzes). Extra special thanks to Veritas 6.5 for proof reading.

"Why were you hiding this from me? I thought you trusted me."

Gwen sticks her hands in her pockets and juts out her chin slightly, unwilling to be cowed by the confrontation. "I do trust you. Completely. No one was hiding anything from you. It didn't seem like a project you'd have time or interest in, so I asked Mickey to do it. That's all."

Some small part of her is glad that Gwen isn't rising to the row; the rest of her is still angry and aching to fight. "You didn't think I deserved to know that my husband is down in the basement risking his life over a bunch of scrap metal?"

Gwen meets Martha's livid gaze levelly, trying to see past the raging exterior to the kind, loving, scared young woman underneath. "If it's all scrap then there's no danger and we're all better off for knowing that, wouldn't you agree? Besides, Mickey knows the risks he takes, same as the rest of us."

"No one can guess what risks he's taking!"

"I know that." She takes a moment to control the tone of her voice. No point in both of them shouting like lunatics. "But they're his risks to take, Martha. And we need to know what we have down there."

"He is my husband! I have the right…"

"Then go discuss the risks with him." Anything else she might have said is cut off by the keening of the rift tracker's alarm. Gwen dashes out of her office, Martha close at her heels, and marches into the open office. "What've we got?"

Mickey doesn't look up from where he and Lois are hunching over their workstations, working madly. "Don't know yet. Spike was centered on the commercial district, but it looks quiet there. Just full of people doing their thing."

"Keep looking, and let us know where the trail leads when you find it. Lois, keep up a scan of the surrounding channels, and an ear on the phones. Martha, let's get ready." Gwen silently blesses the foresight of whoever had suggested storing the field kits in the extra conference room on the main level; maybe it would be worth fully converting it to a supply room later. She files the thought away for later consideration as she gears up. Body armor, sidearm, Weevil spray, taser, flashlight, and spare magazine in place, she sticks in her earpiece and hefts a field kit over her shoulder as Martha finishes lacing up a sensible pair of boots and zipping up her vest.

"There's an alert from the police," Lois' voice is a little fuzzy through the communicator. "Just got a notification that a woman shopping in the area was bitten by an unidentified human."

"Any confirmation on the CCTVs?"

A pause, then Mickey's voice. "Yeah, I think so."

"Any identity markers?"

"It has the appropriate position on the radiation trail to suggest it's our bloke, but I'm not picking up any visual matches right now."

Gwen gestures fluidly at Martha to hurry as she tosses the field kit into the back seat of the SUV and climbs into the passenger side. "Lois, direct the police to contain the victim or victims on site. Maybe we can figure out what we're dealing with based on the injuries. Let me know if anything new comes in." She leans back against the headrest and closes her eyes. Whatever it is, they'll handle it. They always do.

The shopping center isn't nearly as panicked as she had expected. A police barrier seals off a white Red Cross tent and Martha swings her kit over her shoulder before slipping over the barrier and into the tent through a flap.

"Where's the trail lead?"

Lois' voice picks up, "Twenty meters to your right, heading north." A pause. "Now turn right down this street. It's only 500 meters in front of you."

She increases her pace to a jog; fast enough to gain on an unsuspecting alien, but not fast enough to bump into pedestrians or cause disturbance. "What am I looking for?"

"Wish I could say for sure. A woman or a man. Medium height. Two arms, two legs. You know, the usual."

"Wonderful." She slows to a more normal walk and sighs. "How far now?"

"Should be right in front of you. Trail doesn't go any further across the road."

Gwen leans against a street sign, hands tucked into pockets. Don't pay any attention to me; just some nobody hanging out here. Certainly not a special agent for a secret organization, no sir. A careful scan of shadowy corners and alley entrances comes up clear; no lurkers. Maybe something blending in with the locals, then? She takes some time to study the faces passing before her; first on her side of the street, then at a small cluster waiting for the signal to cross the road. A pair of achingly familiar blue eyes catch her attention for a moment; a coincidence. A projection. Surely not Jack Harkness. She coughs discreetly, blinking and shaking her head slightly to clear her vision, but the smiling eyes are still there when she looks again, and as one eyelid drops into a wink she notices the face. His face. No coincidence. impossible.

Jack Harkness is back. Here. Just… waiting to cross the street, like he was off running errands this morning and on his way back. Her heart leaps into her mouth; it feels like choking. As the light turns, she's frozen in place watching him saunter across the crosswalk with all the other people. Same gray coat billowing with each step, same blue shirt, same brown hair sticking up a bit in the back. What to do? She isn't ready for this; can't run up and throw her arms around him, can't shoot him. Well, technically she could shoot him, but that seems inappropriate right now. She's out of time to decide; he's standing in front of her, in the flesh.

He folds his arms across his chest and gives her a wide white smile. "Miss me?"

All she can do is stare up at him, eyes wide, trembling slightly. If anyone is trying to speak through her communicator she misses it. If the sky had fallen or the Queen danced naked through the street she might not have noticed. His hand moves and without thinking she lashes out, catching his wrist in her small hand.

"Whoa there. Take it easy." His smile doesn't waver and after a moment she relaxes her grip and he brushes the back of his hand against her cheek. "You look well."

She wants to be overjoyed at his return; wants to lean into this caress and forget the last year in his presence. But he abandoned her: ran off with no thought for her or Cardiff's wellbeing and she can't just turn a blind eye to that. "Why'd you run away, Jack?"

A cloud of regret dims the joy of his features. "I… made a terrible mistake, when I left like that. I was so tired of being in pain… always surrounded by death. I was overwhelmed by desire to escape this planet. To escape my actions on it." He sighs and meets her gaze squarely, "I'm so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?"

It feels like he's staring right through her: looking through clothes and skin and bone to the maelstrom of pain and joy and misery inside. She doesn't know what to say. There's nothing she can say as he closes the respectful distance between their bodies, his hand tangling in her hair as he bends closer. If she had closed her eyes for the kiss she can almost feel pressing against her mouth, she would have missed the distortion of his appearance: smooth tanned skin around his mouth turning mottled and grey, eyes burning red, thin grey lips pulling back to reveal a mouthful of curved needle-y teeth. Faster than she can think, Gwen shoves her arm between her exposed neck and the monstrosity masquerading as her friend, pain flaring hot and white against her eyelids as the alien bites deep into her arm, its claws raking her shoulder and scalp.

In the space of a heartbeat, it releases her arm and is running off. She sprints off in pursuit, shaking blood off her hand. "Martha! I found it. Shape changer. Come find me." The words force themselves out between burning breaths. "Lois. It changes shape. Track it." She can hear someone in her ear cursing vividly, but directs her attention back on the distant fugitive. The idea of losing it terrifies her in a way that defies rational explanation. Surely Lois and Mickey will be able to keep its trail even if it does change forms, but she forces some more speed out of her flagging legs anyway. Is she gaining on it? It's difficult to tell.

Dodging around a corner she finds Martha bent over an elderly woman surrounded by upset bags of groceries. She crouches beside the pair, breathing heavily. "Where'd it go?"

"It knocked this poor woman over; went that way." She points further down the peaceful road.

That same voice in her ear, heavy with labored breathing. "Almost there."

A quick movement and the taser is heavy in her hand, two prongs shooting into Martha's chest and unloading its full capacity of lightning. The alien drops the form of her friend and lies there in the road smoking slightly, details of its current form distorting to a more honest form. "Are you hurt?" The old lady won't meet her gaze; eyes locked on the red streaks running down her arm and dribbling off her fingers onto the pavement, but eventually shakes her head. "Then I think you should go home." She turns her attention to the Nostrovite and checks for a heartbeat or breath. Do these things even have human vital signs to go with their shape?

Martha rounds the corner, stopping short before the body. Her eyes widen at the resemblance the alien still shares with her, and shakes her head, crouching next to Gwen. "See you managed all right without me."

"Luck." She replies soberly, "It's stunned, but alive, I think. Would you sedate it, please? A large human dose should do." She rummages in the kit, pulling out heavy manacles and locking them around the alien's arms and legs.

The doctor complies, fishing out the proper syringe and injecting the needle into the alien's thigh. "Do you know what it is, then?" She pulls out a small bottle of disinfectant and a roll of bandage, cleaning the gashes on Gwen left by the thing's teeth and claws.

"I think so." She pauses, staring at the body, pursing her lips against the sting of the disinfectant. "We encountered shape changers like this before: Jack called them Nostrovites. They use a third party host to carry embryos to term. The males impregnate hosts through biting. The female then eviscerates the victim, 12 to 48 hours after the host brings the embryo to term, which the pair then raises." She flinches as Martha sets to work examining the scratches hidden in her hair. "But they were supposed to only take the form of things they had observed. I suppose it's possible that it saw you in the crowd but…" She pulls herself up, "I don't want to think about that just now. Let's get him into the SUV and check on the other victims."

Martha returns shortly with the SUV, and working together, the two women manage to load the alien into the cage in the trunk. She watches the Director, milk white under her freckles, rest against the bumper a moment. "So now what?"

Gwen rubs her face briskly with her hands. This is no time to be tired and weak. "We need to find out if those people have been impregnated and get those eggs out if they have been. How many victims are we dealing with now?"

"Two. Three counting you."

That's encouraging. Now if only she could think of a reasonable plan.

"We can take them to the hospital, use the machines there to test for any internal invaders." Martha offers: "tell them we're checking for shock or rabies or HIV; take some blood run them through the MRI, maybe a CAT scan or X-Ray to give them the impression that we're working on a cure. One of those scans should be able to pick up whatever the Nostrovite, or whatever, put inside them; it will give us a better idea of where to operate and what that might entail. Then we can either get that psychic scalpel or just put them in ordinary surgery. Give them some Retcon and it will never have happened."

That's a better idea than she could have come up with as quickly. "That sounds good. Lois, tell the police to transfer the victims to the hospital. I'll call ahead and let them know the plan." She climbs into the passenger seat and sighs before pulling out her cell. "Hello? Transfer me to your director of emergency. Right now. Torchwood. Yes, that Torchwood. Gwen Cooper. You're quite welcome. The director of emergency procedure, please."

By the time they arrive, find, and confer with the relevant staff members, Gwen is pleasantly surprised to find the patients moving through the tests Martha had prescribed. It's nice to sit and rest with a cup of tea from the nurses' station, going over the results of the tests as they come in. Mickey joins them after a time, psychic scalpel, tucked in its wrapping, under his arm. She eyes it suspiciously, remembering the difficulty they had experienced previously trying to use it.

He catches her glance at the artifact. "I've been working with it, don't worry."

She shakes her head and watches Martha across the room, deep in an enthusiastic conversation with one of the senior surgeons. She's stabbing fiercely at one of the images mounted on a light board, a fierce expression on her face. The older man has his hands jammed into the pockets of his scrubs, watching her with narrowed eyes. When she pauses for breath he gesticulates at a different part of the image, no less intense than the special agent in front of him. After a few more minutes of this back and forth, they appear to reach some sort of agreement, and Martha returns to where her coworkers wait.

"We've been able to locate the location of the egg in the other two victims. They've gone deep into the abdominal cavity; manual surgery carries great risk of bringing contamination to the area, and low chance of survivability even if the surgeon manages the extrication without damaging any other organs."

Gwen nods, "But our way might prove just as dangerous." Infection or explosion: what a horrible choice for a patient to make. She sighs; for better or worse, this is a call only she can make, and regardless of who performs which surgery, she alone will answer to the results. "But we can't just let them get ripped to bits by mummy. Please sedate the patients. We'll handle the extraction."

The first procedure goes more smoothly than she could have hoped. Under Mickey's direction, the small machine whirs, adjusts its coordinates and target obediently, and with a muted zap disintegrates the invader. The sleeping woman is wheeled away to be reexamined, in case there are more zygotes hiding somewhere else, and then dosed with Retcon.

Martha gestures for her husband to wait as he's zeroing in the sensor in preparation for the second operation. She approaches the bedside, watching the male victim's EKG zigzag wildly as the display monitoring the patient's blood pressure surges and then falls rapidly. By the time the nurses arrive, it's too late. "His heart was too old for the sudden stress of being a host."

A quiet irrational rage grips Gwen's heart; it's not fair. We should have done something. Performed his extraction first. If she hadn't been so taken with the image the Nostrovite had shown her, hadn't taken so much time to capture and contain it, this life could have been saved. She shakes her head, "Get it out of him. Then let's go home."

Back at the Base, she enlists Mickey to help transport their placid captive to the holding cells, before sending him to wait outside. Once she removes the bag from its head and undoes the restraints binding its limbs, she dodges a clumsy lunge and slips out the door, the cell sealing itself behind her. Outside the containment area, an idea hits her. "Mickey, would you go back inside and look at the Nostrovite? Don't do anything; just give it a look over." She ignores the odd look he gives her, and settles against the wall to the count of two minutes before following him in.

He's backed up against the glass of the door, eyes wide; face a nasty shade of grey. He whirls as Gwen approaches, flushing a vivid red and she finds herself shoved up against the rough concrete of the holding block, his hands trembling at her collar. "Tell me right now, Gwen. What the fuck is going on?"

She probably should have expected this, and meets his livid expression calmly. "Mickey. Let me go, Mickey. I just wanted to know what it looks like to you."

Her cool collectedness cuts through whatever rush grips him, and he lets her go, jamming his hands into his pockets, staying a wary distance from the cell.

A small blond woman with wide brown eyes presses up against the glass; uncertain and concerned, but in control of her fear. "Please, there's been some misunderstanding. My name is Rose Tyler. I'm with the Doctor. I mean you no harm."

Gwen eyes the new appearance critically, "Does this person mean anything to you, Mickey?"

"My ex-girlfriend." He spits the phrase around gritted teeth, trying to not stare at the girl in the cage.

She folds her arms, leaning against the doorframe to the cell, still observing. "Bad memories?"

He shifts around uncomfortably before answering. "It was complicated. We parted on good terms. But… this can't be her. She was trapped in an alternate universe, forever."

That does sound complicated. "Thanks for doing this." She turns on her heel, rubbing the bandages on her neck slowly. "Let's go find Martha and Lois." As they leave the cell she can hear the girl begin shouting and hammering her fists against the door.

Martha preempts any introduction she might have had to start the meeting off properly. "You're still carrying that parasite. We need to get it out, now that we know how."

Gwen takes a moment to consider this, resisting the urge to scratch the lacerations on her head. A shower would be just the thing right now. "I was going to get to that, Martha. Since you're bringing it up now though: I'm proposing we leave it in. We can use it to bait the mother. The civilian population will be safer without her prowling amongst them."

Martha looks at her incredulously. "I think that's a rotten idea if I've ever heard one. I'm not going to let you bet your life that she'll come after you first, and not stop to rip up some poor sod we missed earlier. Besides, we have her mate, and the entries in the archives make it quite clear that they mate for life. She'll find us one way or another. There's no reason to give her extra incentive to disembowel you in the meantime."

There's a certain sense to that, as galling as it is to admit to herself. "All right, all right. After we finish up here, one of you can zap it out of me. But first I've got some questions about our guest downstairs. When I first saw it today, it looked like Jack; it all but smelled like him. Then it turned into Martha. In the past, Nostrovites were only able to copy people they had seen, as far as I know. We were never able to determine if the observation had to be of someone in the flesh, or if a photo would work; but in light of new information that's not terribly important. However, I did a quick test with Mickey's help this afternoon and it took on the appearance of someone it couldn't have possibly met. But for me, and I'd like you to tell me if you agree, Mickey, it wasn't just some random person I knew. It was the person I'd do anything for, in the presented situation." She stares straight ahead at Mickey, willing herself not to blush.

He nods slowly, "Yeah…"

"At this point I'm assuming that in addition to its shape-changing abilities, it has some psychic powers enabling it to find the shape that will help it best achieve its goals. That's just a hypothesis, but I want it tested further. I want to know how this mind reading works; if it's something we can defend against or learn to observe as it's happening. Right now, we're lucky that all it wants is to use us for procreation. Suppose it decided it wanted to infiltrate our government or organization. Suppose, even, that someone with ill intentions found a way to coerce it into doing something like that. We need more information." Her tone changes to less mad conspirator, a little more pragmatist. "Though we should probably start with finding out what it eats and how to take care of it. I'd hate to have to go find another one if this one dies."

Martha smiles dryly, "I suppose you want me to head the experimentation? I'm a medic, not a biologist, you know."

Gwen waves away the excuse dismissively. "You keep saying that, and then out-performing my wildest expectations. Until you fail to perform you can call yourself whatever you like. Anyone else got something to add?"

Lois has her bit to say about working with the police, and her success and failures at using the CCTV monitors in conjunction with the radiation sensor, and Mickey shares some ideas for improvements, as well as a method by which they all could get constantly successful results with the psychic scalpel, which he hands to Martha before trailing after Lois to go work on her program's bugs.

Gwen follows Martha to their new medical bay, and hauls herself to sit on the very official looking examination bench. There's a whirr and a zap of the scalpel going off, and a tingling feeling around her middle that fades away.

"What's eating you, Gwen?"

She looks up, startled, at the ever vigilant doctor. "What do you mean?"

"Is it seeing Jack again?" She drags a chair over, spins it around and straddles it backward, resting her arms against the high back. "You have this… look about you. Same look you had the day after we talked to that engineer about this place. You were a bit off after that; I'd rather you get it all out in the open now before you drive yourself mad."

She can remember that day all too clearly, when she had taken the ghost machine down into the ruins of the Hub. "I took an artifact out of the Base that afternoon." The confession is a little more than a whisper. "We found it my first year here; it can show you ghosts from the past. I wanted… to see those times, just once more. I… wanted to see Jack again." She will not look away from the doctor. She will not bury her face in her hands, or curl up in a ball. She can face her actions. She can't not cry though. "It was… the best thing in the world. For just a moment. And then it ended." Her face splits into a jagged scar of a smile. "And then I saw him today and it was just like being happy again. And all I can think about is why don't I feel like that about Rhys!" Her hoarse whisper escalates to a cracking shriek. "Jack betrayed me and lied to me and ran from me and I'm still hung up over him like some infatuated little girl. And if I think there's even a chance I'll ever see him again… it's like Rhys never existed." She reaches over and drags a paper towel off the roll to blow her nose. "And I hate it that I feel that way, but all the self-loathing in the world can't stop what I dream." Or the hours spent staring into the night sky, straining her eyes looking for a tiny speck of light that could be a space ship bringing him home.

Martha gently removes the sodden scrap of paper from Gwen's fist, replacing it with a wad of tissues. "It's ok to feel that way. You're allowed to hate Jack even while you love him. It's ok to dwell less on what you've lost, than what you might have." Her expression is painfully empathetic. It seems sometimes that all great men are alike in the worst ways. "Perhaps part of it stems from your knowledge that your Rhys is gone forever, but that you could wait your whole life for Jack, and still be disappointed at the end?"

There's very little she can say to that. For now it's enough to sit with Martha and cry away the regret and the hope and the nightmares and the dreams.