A/N: There's some Japanese in this chapter, translated by a friend of mine since I don't speak the language (yeah, I know, unnecessary but I thought it was cool, so there). You don't need to know what it means to understand what's going on -it's explained in story.

Owen checked the petri dishes again. His break was over and Tosh had gone home, but if things stayed quiet for another hour or so he'd be able to get a sample onto a slide under the microscope and confirm his suspicions. True to Murphy's Law, an alert sounded in the hub, and he cursed under his breath. He shrugged off his lab coat and hung it over a chair.

"Owen!"

He pushed open the lab door and strode onto the balcony. "I heard it, Jack, I'm coming."

"Another daylight one," said Ianto. "I'll come with you."

"Thanks Teaboy. What about you, Gwen? Fancy a walk in the park?"

"I'd rather not. I'm tired enough as it is. Besides, it's not in a park," said Gwen, checking the details on Tosh's screen. "It's behind the old church on Glamorgan Road."

"That's one of the regular spots. What's to bet there'll be more dead?"

Owen was right, there were two weevils waiting when they arrived, one of which had already died. The other was moaning quietly as it gasped and struggled to breathe. Owen gave it a sedative, and a few minutes later it passed away in it's sleep.

"We're getting quite a collection of them now," said Ianto. "Do you still need to keep the bodies for tests?"

"I'd like to take samples from them all, just to be sure there's only one flu strain going around. But we don't need to keep them after that," Owen replied. He bent to lift the first weevil under the arms.

"I'll check with Jack when we get back, but we can probably start incinerating them." Ianto picked up the feet and together they lifted it into the boot of the SUV. "How's work on an antidote going?"

"Slowly. I've never had to make an antidote from scratch before. And I'm also running tests to see whether it's contagious to humans and how bad it might be. And of course," he huffed as they bent to lift the second body, "I keep getting these interruptions."

They lifted the second body into the boot and Owen climbed back into the drivers seat. Ianto hopped in beside him, looking thoughtful.

"Owen, have you considered using human flu drugs? Even if you need to modify it a bit, surely that would be easier than creating something from scratch. Unless it would harm them, or wouldn't work for some reason?"

Owen looked at him in surprise, and opened and closed his mouth a few times. Eventually he looked back to the front and turned the key in the ignition. Ianto grinned when heard the doctor mutter "Why the hell didn't I think of that?"

When they got back, Owen ducked out of the hub and returned with a paper bag from the nearest chemist. He disappeared into the lab. Some hours later he emerged again. He clattered down the metal staircase to where Ianto sat at his workstation.

"Ianto, did you find anything on the NHS system?"

Ianto shuffled a large stack of papers. "Lots."

Owen gaped at the size of the pile. "Please tell me those aren't all recent influenza cases."

Ianto glanced down. "These? No, these are letters from UNIT demanding access to various equipment and tech we have in the archives. We get several a week; I just haven't filed them for a while." He put them aside and turned to his monitor. "I've tracked the trends of flu cases in Cardiff in the last few months, and there's hasn't been any sudden increase in the last few weeks. Probably because it's not common for humans and weevils to interact."

Owen glared at him. "Yes, thank you, I think I am well educated in the social habits of weevils. Well, I'm glad to hear the numbers are steady, because I'm certain now that humans can catch it."

Ianto groaned. "If anyone's going to catch it, it'll be me. I've had the most contact with sick weevils out of anyone -out of anyone who can get sick, at least."

"Well, the good news is that you were right -normal flu drugs are effective against it. So if you start to feel sick at all, let me know, I'll get you on the good stuff straight away."

Jack joined them with an empty coffee mug in hand. "Did I hear correctly? This thing is contagious to humans?" He looked worried.

"Yes, but it's no worse than the normal flu. And existing flu drugs are effective against it," Owen assured him. "New strains of flu emerge all the time. If this one gets into the human population, it'll be just one more."

Jack nodded. "OK. So, does that mean you can cure the weevils too?"

"Sure. If I had each of them in a medical bay with a drip and kept them on bed rest for a week." Owen's natural sarcasm reasserted itself. "As it is, no. Not yet. I'll have to develop something stronger and we'll probably have to deliver it in a similar manner to how the virus was distributed in the first place."

Jack nodded. "Speaking of which, we still have to find the rest of them. Whoever did this must have set up several contamination points."

Ianto took Jack's mug from him and set a fresh round of coffee brewing. "If four of us go we can split up and cover more ground. Or pipe."

Jack shook his head. "Not after what happened last time. Any of us can hold our own against one or two weevils in the open, but down there you're dealing with ten or more in an enclosed space. It would be a stupid risk to take."

"So it's up to me then, I suppose," said Owen. "I wouldn't mind that much really, but it'll take a long time by myself, and that's time that could be spent working on a remedy."

"No, we'll both go," said Jack. Ianto was about to protest, but Jack didn't let him. "Because Owen's right, Ianto. It will take too long for him to do it alone, and we need him here, in the lab." After a moment Ianto gave in, and turned back to the coffee machine.

"But I suggest we leave it until tomorrow," said Owen. "The sun will be gone soon, which means they'll be getting more active, and even I don't want to meet a healthy weevil in it's own home when it's properly awake. Plus I'll be busy sending the sick ones home."

"Alright," said Jack. "We'll head out tomorrow morning, rift permitting."

Owen headed back to the lab to work on a weevil medicine concoction while he could; soon after dark, the weevils would start emerging again and that would be most of his night gone. Ianto searched the archives and eventually pulled out a map of Cardiff's sewer system. He began marking out all the locations of the recurring weevil alerts on the map. Having some idea where the illness was most prevalent would help Jack & Owen narrow down possible areas for searching. There was a lot of data to work with, so it was going to take a while. He interspersed the map-plotting with the occasional round of coffee.

At sunset the first weevil alert came up, so Owen finished what he was doing and headed out for the night.

At 9pm Toshiko arrived and Gwen headed home for some well earned rest. Tosh tapped away at her keyboard, looking intently at the screens in front of her. Ianto sometimes thought she was chained to her workstation by some invisible line, but she seemed happiest there, so who was he to object? She smiled as he placed the new mug of coffee beside her and reached over to remove the previous one. "Thanks Ianto."

"My pleasure." And it was, with Toshiko. She always made an effort to acknowledge him and make him feel appreciated. "Any luck with finding out what's disturbing the rift monitor?"

"Don't really have any way to search yet. Gwen has looked through all the rift objects we picked up in the month before the problems started, but everything seems fine. She's had a look outside too but there's nothing obvious out of place around the water tower. And I've been playing with the portable monitor, see if I can modify it to track down an object interfering with the rift energy particles, but I haven't quite got it working yet. Still need to figure out some of the equations that will enable-"

Tosh's mobile phone rang, taking her by surprise. She reached down and rummaged in her handbag to find it. She peered at the screen.

"Giving out your number to strangers in bars again?" Ianto teased.

"No," smiled Toshiko. She answered it. "Moshi moshi."

Ah, Ianto thought. Family. He moved away to tidy the coffee table behind her.

"Genki dayo, okaasan wa? otousan? ...Mou... Boifurendo inai yo. ...Hontou dayo! Nankai mo itta. ...Amerika-jin?" Tosh threw a confused glance in the direction of Jack's office. "Ima, koibito inai yo, okaasan. ...Nani?" She was shocked, and struggled to find the right words. "Dare ni mo okaasan no juusho wo oshienakatta wa. ...Kare no namae wa nan datta? Okaasan, kore wa taisetsu dayo! ...Jya, kono hito wa okaasan ni mata denwa kakereba, sugu atashi ni denwa shite kure. Wakatteru okaasan? ...Iya, daijoubu dayo. Ki wo tsukete ne." She put the phone down, looking troubled.

"That didn't sound good," said Ianto. "Some American introduced himself to your parents as your boyfriend?"

Toshiko looked round at Ianto in surprise. "You speak Japanese?"

"I speak four languages. Though my French isn't very good. But I spent a whole semester in Nagoya on exchange, and loved it." Ianto smiled at the memory.

"You never cease to surprise me, Ianto. You do realise we could have been having secret conversations in front of the others all this time, and driving them insane?"

"That wouldn't be polite." The sparkle in Ianto's eyes belied his words.

"Precisely!" Toshiko turned back to look at the phone on her desk, and her smile faded. "This bothers me though. Some stranger turns up at my parent's apartment on the other side of the world, claiming that he and I are close and that I'd given him the address." She twisted her hands together in worry.

"Did she get a name?"

"'Adam', she thinks. And with only that and an American accent to go off, it could be anyone." She sighed. "Suddenly I feel so far from home."

Ianto walked over and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Technology makes the world a smaller place, Tosh, you know that. I'm sure there's something you can do."

Toshiko straightened. "Of course there is. I'm sure my parents' building has CCTV -if I can get access to it, maybe we can get a look at this guy. It'll be a starting point, at least." She started typing at a furious pace. Ianto chuckled and left her to it.

By the time Gwen returned and Ianto could head off to bed, he had points drawn all across the sewer plans. There were five sewer entrances across the city where there were now six or seven weevils appearing each night. Around those were another eleven locations where two or three weevils would emerge. No wonder Owen was being kept out most of the night now, Ianto thought. That was a lot of weevil alerts to deal with. The good thing was, the smaller ones were all downstream from the major locations, meaning that they could limit their searches to areas upstream of those big ones. It also meant there was only four locations they needed to search, since the Bute Park infection source had already been found.

"Nice work Teaboy," said Owen, appearing at Ianto's shoulder. "That should make it quicker."

"Ready to go?" asked Jack.

"Of course, been looking forward to this for days," Owen snarked.

Jack leaned over to kiss Ianto while Owen rolled his eyes and mimed being sick. "Go to bed. And don't mind Owen, he's just jealous," Jack grinned. Owen snorted and stalked off. Jack folded the sewer plans and followed.

Ianto headed over to Tosh's desk. "Did you find anything on that guy?"

"What guy?" asked Gwen, munching on a bagel.

"Some guy told my parents he was my boyfriend," said Toshiko. "And yes, I got a CCTV image but I don't know him, and he didn't didn't match anyone on our CCTV database."

"What about the source of the rift energy interference?"

"I think I'm just about done with the equations, which means we can head out and start tracking it down soon," Tosh said to Gwen.

"You might want to wait until Jack and Owen get back," said Ianto. "I plan to be asleep very soon and won't be passing on any alerts that come in." Tosh nodded, and Gwen patted Ianto on the back.

"Well go on, off to bed with you then. Rhys is dropping in at lunchtime with some casseroles for us so there'll be something delicious for you to look forward to."

Both Tosh and Ianto's faces lit up. Gwen often went on about how good Rhys' cooking was, and since they'd started the sleep roster he'd been dropping in home-cooked meals for them, that they could reheat and eat whenever they had a few minutes to spare. Takeaway wasn't always an option with the rift predictor being, well, unpredictable. And so Rhys had become a bit of a hero in his own right.

"What about lasagne? Is he bringing any more? We ran out last night," said Ianto.

Gwen laughed. "I'm not sure, but I'll send him a message and let him know. Now, bed!"

A/N: For those who absolutely must have a translation for the Japanese, it's roughly:

I'm well thanks Mother, and you? How's father? ...I don't have a boyfriend (In a "God's mum, do I have to say it again?" kinda way) ...Seriously! How often do I need to say this? ...An American? I'm not dating now, mother. ...What? I didn't give your address to anyone! What was his name? Mother, this is important! ...Well, If he calls you again, call me straight away. You understand Mother? ...No, its fine, I'm ok. Look after yourself though.