"Owen!"

The scream was so strangled and raw that it took the doctor a moment to recognize it as having come from Jack. He abandoned the cryo chemicals he was preparing and bolted up the stairs, stripping his gloves as he ran. "What? What's happened?"

In the doorway of his office, Jack was kneeling over Ianto's crumpled body. A dark stain was seeping ominously across the fallen man's chest. His pupils were dilated, and he wasn't breathing—but then, that was to be expected.

Owen swore and dropped to the ground beside him, automatically feeling for a pulse. "What happened?" he demanded again.

"I don't know," Jack choked. "He just collapsed."

Whatever else Owen was about to say died on his lips, and he stared down at Ianto's slack face in shock. He ground his fingers deeper into the pulse point beneath Ianto's jaw. There it was again—a faint flutter—then nothing. He swore again. "Help me get him to the lab," he ordered, already jabbing his hands beneath Ianto's shoulders. "Now!"

Ianto was a tall man, but his body had lost so much moisture since his death that it weighed far less than it should have. Owen and Jack hauled him across the Hub and hefted him onto the autopsy table with ease, and Owen tore the shirt away from his chest. The bandage was stained a moist, ugly brown-black. He turned and began seizing equipment from various storage cubbies.

Jack hovered near the edge of the table, torn between staying close to Ianto and staying out of Owen's way. "What can I do?"

"I need help," Owen called over his shoulder. "Proper medical help. And fast. Get Martha in here."

Jack jogged up the stairs to make the call. "She'll be here in five minutes," he called down a moment later. "And Gwen and Tosh are on their way back, too."

"We don't have five minutes," Owen hissed, taping off the cannula he'd jabbed into Ianto's hand. "Jack, you'll have to do for now. Get down here. He's in cardiac arrest, so seconds count."

Jack had leaped back down the stairs before he absorbed the words. "Cardiac arrest? But his heart wasn't beating to begin with. How could it have stopped?"

"It shouldn't be, but it is. Or it was trying to. And it's killing him all over again." Owen held out a fistful of syringes. "We need to flush all that stuff I used to keep him from rotting. His circulatory system starts up again, those chemicals will pickle his brain if we don't neutralize them."

Jack shoved aside his confusion and reached for the syringes. "Okay. In the arm?"

"One in each arm, one in the neck." He swabbed a place along Ianto's throat, then handed the antiseptic over to Jack. "You know the difference between arteries and veins?"

"Yeah. I won't ever make that mistake again. Hurt like hell before it killed me."

Owen spared Jack a curious look, then turned to a refrigeration unit and retrieved several packs of blood, talking almost to himself as he worked. "If I can get his heart going again, he might even have a chance. But I can't try until we flood his system and get some healthy blood in him. Damn!"

Jack withdrew the needle from Ianto's arm and pressed an antiseptic pad over the puncture before glancing up from the injection site. "What now?"

"Not sure if I have the right kind of anticoagulants," Owen muttered, rummaging through a supply cabinet. "He's been dead long enough, the blood in his veins is bound to have hardened. Even if I get his heart pumping, one of those clots could break loose and cause an infarction. And the best case scenario still involves massive capillary damage and necrosis." He mounted a fluid-filled bag on the IV stand beside the table. "This is uncharted territory, Jack. I mean, that's what we deal with all the time, with aliens. Human medicine should be easy. Except nobody's done research on treating a patient that has been dead for close to a week." He scrubbed the back of his wrist across his forehead, where sweat was beginning to bead. "I honestly don't know if this is going to help him or just kill him faster."

"Owen." Jack caught his gaze. "Ianto is not going to make it on his own. You are the only one who has even a prayer of saving him." Jack's eyes turned back to the syringes, but his voice remained steady. "Do whatever you think has the best chance of helping him. I trust your instincts."

They worked in silence for a minute or two more, Owen feeding lines of blood and medication into the cannula while Jack hooked up sensors and monitors. Just as Jack was asking what else he could do, Martha burst through the cog door, heralded by the alarms. "What's happened?" she asked as she jogged down the steps to the medical bay, already rolling up her sleeves to scrub in.

Owen answered without looking up from his work. "Near as I can tell, Ianto tried coming back to life, only his body wasn't ready for it. He collapsed."

"Wow." She paused for only a second to process this, then swept forward, professional as ever. "Do you have a specific diagnosis?"

"A laundry list. Cardiac arrest, acute toxicity, hypovolemic shock, tissue necrosis, dehydration, and don't let's forget the sodding bullet hole in his chest." Owen glanced over at Jack, who was hovering uncertainly beside Ianto's still form. "Jack, you've done all you can for now. Martha can take over."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jack sat on the stairs, eyes following Martha as she began chest compressions, then trailing Owen as he mixed another chemical cocktail and added it to the drip. Between them, Ianto's pale form lay motionless amid the flurry of activity, wires connected to a dozen parts of his body, transparent tubing trailing from his arms and mouth. It's worth it to save him, Jack repeated to himself. He has so much life left to live. It's worth putting him through all this.

He only distantly registered the shriek of the alarm as the cog door rolled open again, until Gwen and Toshiko bracketed his shoulders with hugs. "What's happened?" asked Toshiko, taking in the scene below them.

Jack started to parrot Owen's medical explanations, but suddenly everything was too much. "He's dying again," he choked.

Gwen sank down beside him on the steps and linked her arm with his. He leaned gratefully into her silent support, but could not take his eyes from the still form on the table.

"Got something!" Owen cried suddenly, whirling toward a beeping monitor. "His heart is…" The beep sank into a steady drone, and he slapped the top of the display with a curse. "Martha, keep trying."

Martha nodded, her lips already counting silently as she began another set of compressions. She kept her rhythm as a rib gave way with a sickening crack. A moment later there was another beep, then back to drone. Ianto's limbs spasmed. A stuttering pair of heartbeats, then nothing. Owen wheeled the defibrillator cart over beside the table and began peeling the backing from a set of adhesive pads.

Toshiko knelt down and placed a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Are you sure you want to watch this?"

"I've fought in six wars," Jack said, his voice flat. "It's not the first time." A moment later he seemed to return to himself, and he patted her hand. "But you don't have to. Neither of you have to."

Gwen shook her head, and Toshiko took a seat on the step beside him. "He's our friend too, Jack. We'll stay with you."

Jack managed a wan smile. "Thanks."

While they had been talking, Martha and Owen had fallen to arguing. "His heart's not in the right rhythm for it," Martha was saying. "Shock won't do any good."

Owen positioned another pad on Ianto's torso. "He's not asystole."

"He's not in VF, either. Shock could do more damage than good."

"Look, we're not dealing with a standard case here—any heartbeat is more than he's had in days. It could be very fine fibrillation."

"Isn't your equipment advanced enough to detect that?"

"If you have something else to suggest, I'm willing to try it," Owen growled.

Martha counted through another set of compressions. "Higher dose of epinephrine? Atropine?"

"Already raised the last two epi doses to three milligrams. Atropine had no effect."

Martha finished her compression cycle and stepped back, breathing hard. "Then no, I don't. I'm fresh out of miracles."

Jack hugged Gwen and Toshiko close as the electric whine of the defibrillator built, and felt them flinch as the shock jerked Ianto's limbs.

Owen evaluated, recharged, and tried again. At last he sighed and peeled the pads from Ianto's pale skin. "No, you're right. No good."

Martha checked Ianto's pupils with a penlight and shook her head. "Still nothing. How do we tell if he's… well, actually dead? Or just… like he was before?"

Owen dragged a sleeve over his face. "I guess we wait to see if he wakes up. He didn't register on any scans before; he just stayed conscious."

"And if he doesn't wake up now?"

"Then… I guess we assume the resurrection glove's effect has worn off."

Martha was pacing in the small space. "Not good enough," she said. "I need something more conclusive. Look, we need some time to think, to figure this out. Can we keep his body in stasis somehow?"

Owen pointed. "There's the mor—" His eyes flicked to Jack. "Er, the refrigeration units. The cooldown should slow any residual chemical interaction."

Jack pushed himself to his feet. "I've got something better," he called. "Silurian stasis chamber. It will keep him just as he is. I may need some help getting it out of storage, though."

Gwen rose to her feet. "We'll help."

"Okay," Martha said. "Let's hit pause on Ianto, and then… let's take a break."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Once the stasis chamber had pulsed and hummed through its initialization cycle, it rested quietly against one wall of the medical bay, emitting a faint light. The silhouette of Ianto's body could just be seen through the translucent places in the cover. Jack glanced at it now and again, obsessively checking the light panel on the side to make sure it was functioning properly.

There had been a collective breath of relief from the entire team once the stasis pod had been activated. None of them relished seeing Ianto sealed away, but the gently pulsing light meant he was in no immediate danger. It was an intermission in the crisis, a moment for them to collect their thoughts and replenish their strength.

Gwen acquired a stack of pizzas and a case of bottled water, which were consumed in mechanical silence around the conference table as each of them attempted to process everything that had happened. When they had fallen to shoving crusts and crumpled serviettes around their plates, Jack pushed himself to his feet. "Everyone take a break," he ordered. "Take a nap, go for a walk, do whatever you need to do. Reconvene on the main level in thirty minutes."

He waited until the others had exited the cog door in search of fresh air, then retreated into the tiny bunker beneath his office. Jack had always found comfort in small spaces, and the refuge offered by his private quarters allowed him to hide the strain he was experiencing from the rest of his team.

Well, most of them. Gwen could usually tell when he was stressed, even if she didn't always understand the cause. And there had never been any point in trying to hide anything from Ianto, who in many ways understood Jack's emotional state better than he did himself. But it made Jack feel like a better leader when he could avoid having attacks of nerves in front of his subordinates.

Sealed in his concrete den, Jack leaned into the corner beside his bed and let the panic run its course. His mind replayed Ianto's collapse, the nightmare images from the medical bay, the temperature and pallor of Ianto's fragile skin as Jack had transferred his body into the stasis chamber. His imagination tormented him with potential outcomes. Alone and unwitnessed, Jack relinquished his brave facade and let the cocktail of fear and anxiety burn through him until he trembled.

When the horrors had abated a little, he staggered to the tiny en suite and splashed cold water over his face and neck. He breathed deeply and tried to remind himself that his team was the best, that they had resources beyond human technology. That it wasn't over yet. That there was still hope.

Jack lifted his head, water dripping in icy rivulets from his chin, and froze.

Ianto's toothbrush mocked him from the little shelf above the sink.

By sheer force of will, Jack yanked a towel from the rack and scrubbed his face dry. He had already indulged his fear; he didn't have time for a complete breakdown now. Too much work to do. He could mourn later, if there were still a reason to.

Precisely twenty-eight minutes after he had dismissed the others, Jack was dragging chairs from around the Hub into a semicircle surrounding Toshiko's workstation. The team reassembled on schedule, marginally refreshed from their break, and Jack called their strategy meeting to order.

Martha, armed with a stack of notes she'd made about the resuscitation attempt, was the first of the group to speak. "Okay, there's one big thing that's bothering me about all this."

"Only one?" Owen muttered into the mouth of a beverage can. He was nursing some kind of energy drink. They all needed a boost, but by unspoken consent no one had touched Ianto's coffee machine.

Martha ignored him. "Look, we know Ianto's body was physically dead before, yeah? Both Owen and I confirmed that he had no pulse, no measurable brain activity, and no apparent metabolic function. And then days after he supposedly died, something triggered Ianto's heart to start beating again. What could have caused that?"

Jack drew a long breath. "I think it was me."

"You? How?"

"I kissed him."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "Jack, while you really can be quite charming, I'm not sure I'm ready to believe you're Prince Charming." Jack didn't return her smile, and her second eyebrow arched to join the first. "No, but really. What do you mean, kissed him? How would that jump-start his heart?"

"I don't really know how. But I've done it before."

"If anyone lived a fairy tale, it would be our Jack." Gwen said. "When did you do it before?"

Jack took a long pull at his bottle of water. "During the incident with Lisa."

Martha frowned. "Who's Lisa?"

"Ianto's girlfriend," Owen put in. "Tried to kill us all. Long story. Go on, Jack."

"Wait, hold on. I thought Ianto was g…" Martha looked at Jack, then glanced uncertainly at the others. "Er, you say he had a girlfriend?"

Jack nodded. "Ianto and his girlfriend, Lisa, were both at Canary Wharf."

Martha's lips thinned. "Oh."

"Yeah." Jack didn't need to explain further; he knew Martha had lost a cousin to the Cybermen. "Lisa was partly converted. Ianto brought her here to try to revert her back to human. It didn't work."

"I see."

"During the fighting, Ianto was hurt pretty badly. I don't know if he was dead or just unconscious, but I needed him on his feet, so I… shared some of my life force with him. It revived him."

"By snogging him?" Owen shook his head. "Blimey, Jack, you always find a way."

"I was trying to save him," Jack snapped, folding his arms across his chest. "I don't know why it works that way and not by skin contact. Maybe it's easier to transfer the energy through body fluids."

"Please don't go there," moaned Owen.

"Ianto told me something about that," Martha cut in, then hastily added, "About being brought back, not about…" She shook her head. "Anyway, Jack, that doesn't make sense. The Doctor said you're a fixed point in time, yeah? That means you don't change, you stay the same through time—but it doesn't mean you have…" She gestured in frustration. "You know, how the Doctor grew a new hand."

Owen's eyes were flicking between them in fascination. "Okay, this is getting weird."

"Regeneration energy?" Jack shook his head. "No, not like that. But I do heal."

"I know, I've seen it." Martha met his eyes, and Jack pressed back the dark memory of a year's torture in captivity. "But the laws of conservation say that's impossible without some outside force. So where is the energy coming from to rebuild your body? Are you somehow being brought back by the time vortex itself?"

Jack thought for a moment. "Maybe. The Doctor said that's how Rose brought me back the first time."

Toshiko and Gwen were exchanging wide-eyed looks. "Hold on a moment," Gwen said. "I need to catch up. Martha, you know Jack's doctor?"

Martha grinned. "Oh, so it's 'Jack's' Doctor now, is it? And what are the rest of us?" She nudged Jack playfully, finally drawing a faint smile from him. "Yeah, of course I know him. That's how I first met Jack, in fact. I used to travel with the Doctor, same as he did." She glanced around at the team's stunned expressions, then looked over at Jack. "Unless… that's something I shouldn't have mentioned?"

Jack shook his head. "Doesn't matter now. Torchwood's not hunting him any more."

Toshiko's mouth fell open. "You mean… that Doctor? THE Doctor? The one I met in London?"

A wry smile curved Jack's mouth. "Yep. Same one."

All eyes turned to Toshiko now. "Tosh, when did you meet the Doctor?" Martha asked.

"A couple of years ago. I went to London to investigate an alien crash. You remember when that spaceship hit Big Ben? The Doctor is the one who exposed it as a hoax. It took me a while to realize it was the same Doctor that Torchwood was looking for. But I didn't know Torchwood's Doctor was the same as Jack's Doctor."

Martha turned back to Jack. "Hold on. When I met you, you said you'd been waiting for him for over a hundred years. If you knew he was in London, why not meet up with him then?"

Jack shook his head. "It was still too early. He didn't know me yet. I couldn't risk causing a paradox by contacting him before he'd met me in his own timeline."

"How did you know he hadn't met you then?"

"Because Rose told me all about the space pig." He nodded toward Toshiko. "Which is how I knew it was going to turn out to be a fake, and why I let you cover for Owen because I knew it wasn't going to matter anyway."

"You might have told me," Tosh muttered.

"Couldn't. Causality. Besides, it was valuable field experience for you."

Gwen cut off Toshiko's growl. "So Torchwood was trying to capture this Doctor, yeah? And all those decades you were working for Torchwood, you knew how to find him, and yet you never told them?"

"My relationship with Torchwood has historically been… complicated." Jack flicked a droplet of condensation from the side of his water bottle. "Besides, it's not my fault if they were really bad at that part of their job."

"You mean the Doctor was here even before that?"

Jack chuckled humorlessly. "Oh, the Doctor has been all over the place. He even worked for UNIT for a while, back in the seventies. But during the cold war Torchwood was too focused on stockpiling alien weaponry to bother looking for the Doctor, so he flew right under their radar." He ran a hand through his hair. "But I didn't know anything about his timeline at that point, so I couldn't risk contacting him. I only had a few hints from the things Rose told me."

Martha squinted at him thoughtfully. "But I didn't start traveling with the Doctor until after you'd… parted ways. You wouldn't have known any details about our travels. So how did you know my version of the Doctor was safe to contact?"

A grin slowly warmed Jack's face. "You really wanna know?"

Martha poked him in the shoulder. "Spill."

"I recognized the TARDIS."

Toshiko perked up. "Isn't that the Doctor's spaceship?"

"Yep. It's always disguised as a police box, but there have been subtle changes over the years. Sometimes she gets a new paint job. Sometimes the signs get replaced. New door hardware, occasionally. I've had more than a century to log sightings." Jack smiled wistfully. "But I knew every inch of my TARDIS. I could tell when she aged. And the one you showed up in…" He pointed to Martha, who grinned.

"The one you hung on to, screaming your head off, for a few trillion years through the vortex?"

Jack ignored the astonished looks of his team. "That one was just a little bit more scuffed than the one I'd traveled in. So I knew it must be from not long after he'd left me, relatively speaking."

Owen raised his hand. "Hold on. Can we go back to the part about a few trillion years?"

"One hundred trillion," Martha confirmed, then adopted a dramatic air and an exaggerated accent. "Well. Give or take. You get that far into the future, you might be off a century here or there, but who's really counting by the end of the universe?"

Jack laughed, knowing no one else would appreciate her spot-on imitation of the Doctor. "Yeah, that was a nasty jump. Even buffered by the TARDIS's shields, the temporal shock was enough to kill me."

Martha blinked as though an idea were dawning. "So it wasn't the time vortex itself that killed you. Of course… if that's what's keeping you alive, traveling through time unprotected wouldn't really hurt you, would it?"

"I doubt it would do me any good." Jack shivered. "And we don't know for certain that it's vortex energy reviving me. Even the TARDIS didn't like me getting too close."

"She didn't at first," Martha murmured, cupping her chin in one hand. "But later, she didn't try to shake you off. That has to be significant."

Jack shrugged. "She's fickle? Even the Doctor changed his mind about me eventually."

"Yes, but the TARDIS is a complex machine. She obeys certain principles." Martha squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. "What would make her try to resist you at first, but then welcome you on board later?"

"What kind of resistance?" Toshiko asked, fascinated. "Shielding? Armaments?"

"She sort of… pushed off him, right to the end of the universe. Like pushing matching poles of a magnet together." Martha's eyes snapped open. "Wait. Like charges repel. Like charges… Charges of what?" Suddenly she slapped her hands together, making the rest of the team jump. "Jack, when you ran after us in the TARDIS, how long had it been since you died?"

He sat back and gave a low whistle. "I'd been dead for days. Drained completely. In fact, I'd only just come back to life."

"Meaning, you would have been saturated with loads of energy fresh from the vortex, right?"

"Assuming your theory about my resurrections is correct, yes. But the temporal fields were a mess that day. The timeline had just been reset, after the rift had been forced open. The whole city was flooded with rift energy." Jack's eyes widened. "Of course—no wonder the Doctor picked that day to refuel. The TARDIS could soak up all that surplus energy in seconds. No waiting."

"The Doctor's ship absorbs rift energy?" Toshiko had begun making notes.

Jack nodded. "Kinda like space-time petrol. When I was with him, he used to drop by Cardiff every once in a while to top off the tanks."

"If the Doctor's ship absorbed the energy, that also explains why the rift was so quiet," Gwen added. "After you left, I mean. We kind of expected the city to go to hell after everything that happened, but it all went back to normal."

"So let's just assume Jack was brimming with some kind of energy that day, yeah?" Martha sat forward eagerly. "So if the TARDIS were using the same kind of energy, she might have repelled you, just like identical magnetic charges. She was bounced all the way to the end of the universe. But then, after some of the energy had worn off, she was able to fly with you again." Martha whirled to the others. "Toshiko, can that rift machine of yours detect the energy of the time vortex?"

"I'm not sure." Toshiko spun in her chair to call up a program at her workstation. "In theory, it could, if I know what parameters to set. The rift itself is a distortion in time and space, so rift energy shouldn't be too dissimilar to your pure time vortex energy, right?"

"It's not quite that simple," Jack interrupted. "There are multiple kinds of temporal radiation. Chronon, tachyon, icaron…"

Gwen tapped her lips thoughtfully. "Well, from the events at the Pharm, we know that Martha is saturated with… what was it?"

"Artron energy," Jack answered. "So am I, for that matter. Anyone who travels through the vortex picks some up…" Suddenly his eyes stretched wide, and his head swiveled slowly toward the medical bay.

Gwen was leaning over Toshiko's shoulder as she typed. "And this artron energy, it makes you heal faster, yeah?"

"According to Dr. Copley, it does," Martha said. "And if it's part of what's fueling Jack's resurrections, that could explain why he heals more quickly than other people, even when he hasn't died and come back to life."

"I told you we should bottle that stuff," Owen murmured. He glanced over at Jack and frowned. "Jack? What is it?"

"Artron energy," Jack repeated. He was staring at the stasis pod. "Anyone who travels through the vortex absorbs artron energy."

"Right. And?"

Jack turned to face the rest of the group. "Ianto went through the vortex."

"What?" Gwen cocked her head. "When?"

"Last year. It was…" Jack shook his head, banishing memories of the things Ianto had said to him that night, of where that adventure had ultimately led them. "The rest of you weren't there. Ianto and I went after an alien who was selling humans into slavery on another planet. I got sent through the portal, and Ianto came after me, to save me." He glanced back toward the medical bay. "I thought it was just a simple teleport, but something about the timeline was wrong—by this century, the Shadow Proclamation should have…" He shook his head again. "Anyway, if that portal jumped back in time as well as space, Ianto could have absorbed artron energy from that trip. Maybe that's why this happened."

Owen frowned. "But if the energy makes you heal faster, shouldn't it have healed his body? He's still physically dead; it's just his mind is hanging on."

"And we don't know for certain that he traveled through time," Martha added.

"One way to find out," Toshiko said, finishing a line of text commands with a flourish. "There. I've set up the program to use the radiation from Martha and Jack as a control, since we know they've both been exposed to artron energy. Now I just need to calibrate the scanner…" She hefted the scanning device she had been using on the glove and began adjusting the controls. "This should piggyback on the Hub's security scanners. Let's see if this can isolate an artron energy signature anywhere else." She swung back around as the machine beeped. "Ooh! There's something."

They clustered around Toshiko's monitor as nebulous images appeared, gradually refining into shapes as the scans continued. "Definite traces of energy detected," Toshiko announced. "Here's Martha, and Jack… and there!" She tapped the screen, then touched a sequence of keys to map the results over the Hub's standard energy scans. "It's faint, but it looks like the other artron signature is coming from the medical bay." She swiveled her chair back around and aimed the handheld scanner at the stasis pod. "I'd say Jack's right; Ianto was exposed to artron energy at some point."

Gwen cleared her throat. "Without meaning to be indelicate, could Ianto have been exposed through, um, contact with Jack?"

"I don't think it works quite like an STI," Jack said without a trace of embarrassment. "And anyway, it's beside the point. If Ianto reads positive for artron energy, it doesn't much matter how or where he picked it up. It could still be affecting him."

Owen was spinning his swivel chair back and forth as he thought. "So you think this artron energy is what healed him enough to start his heart beating again?"

"Or maybe Jack did that, with his kiss of life," Gwen mused, "and the artron energy he'd picked up is what kept Ianto's soul here after the glove brought him back."

"Or maybe Jack's kiss of life is artron energy, and it's not related to his immortality at all," Martha put in. "Maybe some artron energy transfered to Ianto the very first time Jack revived him, and that was what brought him back."

"Can we call it something other than 'kiss of life'?" Jack muttered.

"It certainly bears further testing," Toshiko said. "This could explain that mysterious energy signature I detected when Jack first used the glove. I'll see if I can refine the scanner and find a way to isolate that radiation. We can work with the blood and tissue samples Owen took, so we don't have to take Ianto out of stasis until we have some idea what the results will be."

"That still leaves the big question." Martha turned to Jack. "Even if we can clear his system and repair the physical damage, we don't have a hope of saving him unless his heart starts beating again. You brought him back to life once. Do you think you can do it again?"

Jack swallowed against the fear that tightened his throat. "I'll give him everything I can. Should we get started?"

"What, now?" Owen blinked at the energy drink in his hand and sighed. "Jack, if you really want us to go on tonight, I'll do it. But frankly, I'm knackered."

Martha looked around at the group and nodded. "It has been a long day, and repairing Ianto's body is going to take surgical focus. I think we'll be better suited for that kind of work after a night's rest. Plus, we'll need to pick up more equipment and supplies. As long as Ianto's in stasis, there's no harm in waiting until morning, is there?"

"I suppose not." Jack blew out a breath. "All right. I'll take night shift on the rift. Everyone go home, get some sleep. And plan for a long day tomorrow; we've still got that anomaly to deal with. Cardiff isn't in the clear yet."

For an instant Jack thought there was a flicker of shadow at the edge of his vision, but he refused to look. He'd already seen enough terrors for one day.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Owen?" Toshiko hurried down the steps that curved down into the medical bay. "Good, you haven't left yet."

The doctor was clearing away the last of the mess from their frantic resuscitation efforts. "Yeah, I'm still here," he yawned. "Figured I'd get the worst of this out of the way so I don't have to deal with it first thing. What is it?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing." She gave him a significant look. "I didn't want to bring it up in front of the others until I spoke with you, but I haven't forgotten about your condition. Or our agreement."

Owen groaned and chucked a ball of crumpled sterile packaging into a bin. "Tosh, I'm beat. Can we discuss this in the morning?"

"I don't even know if you're safe to drive home. Have you had any more attacks? Have you figured out what's causing it?"

Owen gave her a long look before surrendering. "One this morning. Another just after lunch, for a few seconds. Nothing since. Haven't had time to run any more tests on myself because if you hadn't noticed, one or two things came up. But with everything else going on, I really don't think—" He broke off as he spotted Jack descending the stairs behind Toshiko. "Need something, Jack?"

Jack shook his head and crossed to the far side of the room, where the stasis pod pulsed with a low hum. "Just checking on things here. Don't let me interrupt you."

Owen continued cleaning, glancing surreptitiously between Jack and Toshiko. "Anyway, Tosh, we can sort it tomorrow. I don't think it's urgent enough to add to our immediate list of crises. There's enough going on already."

Toshiko frowned and opened her mouth to argue, but Owen pointed significantly across the room. She turned to see Jack gazing at the pod, a deep crease between his brows. As she watched, he traced a hand over the translucent panel that screened Ianto's face from view.

She sighed. Owen was right; Jack already had enough to worry about tonight, and it wasn't as though they would be able to diagnose Owen's condition any better tonight than they would tomorrow. "All right, we'll talk about it in the morning. Be careful driving home."

"I will." Owen caught her eye. "Thanks, Tosh."

The sincerity in his gaze summoned a warm blush about her ears, and to hide it she ducked her head and busied herself with her purse strap. "Right. See you tomorrow, then. Good night, Jack."