Gwen and Fish both returned to the Hub in the mid-afternoon. It had taken Jack nearly an hour to revive from the procedure. The two of them immediately set to work on the CCTV footage. Tonight their work was hampered by several Weevil calls as the rain drove the restless up onto the city streets. It was late at night when they all finally gathered in the boardroom, weary and exhausted. After the last of the pizza was cleared away by Ianto, Jack stood up, leaning heavily on the table. There were dark circles under the immortal's eyes and he was still pale.

"Will? You want to go over your interrogation of our prisoner?" he said.

None of the team looked at Miranda, seated at the foot of the table. They were all still angry with her. She tapped the tablet in front of her, bringing up the internal CCTV footage of her interrogation.

"The parasite is sentient and intelligent. Our bribe was successful," she said, tapping the play button. After the video was done playing, she said, "As you can see the alien's concept of personal identity is vastly different from our own. Their species is likely highly interdependent with little or no concept of the individual self. The semantic and conceptual differences made the interrogation difficult."

"And before you all go thinking this was a failure, we did get valuable information here," Jack said. His comment was mostly directed at his lover, who was seated in his usual place at Jack's right. It had been a long time since Gwen had seen Ianto Jones this angry. The anger wasn't directed at Jack. The Welshman was still angled towards his lover and Gwen knew if she peeked under the boardroom table that she'd see the tip of Ianto's dress shoe in contact with Jack's boot. Like the rest of them, Ianto wouldn't even look in Miranda's direction.

Without turning to the rest of the team, Miranda continued to stare at the surface of the table. Her voice was measured, as if she knew the Welsh powder keg at the end of the table would like nothing more than to blow up in her direction. "The alien has no desire to return to its home planet. I believe that whatever species they are using on their own world as hosts is inferior to us. It is likely the other parasite or parasites still at large have the same view."

"They've found the perfect colony," Gwen whispered.

Miranda nodded. "Species with similar personal identity concepts that we've encountered in the past are generally telepathically linked to each other. My original concern was that this parasite, in telepathic communication with the rest of its species, could bring an invasion down upon the human race."

"Christ," Fish muttered, hanging his head.

"My impression from the interrogation is that this parasite is not telepathically linked to the other and Jack agrees," Miranda said.

"Assuming there is only one parasite out there," Fish said.

"There's got to be only one," Gwen said. "I think we'd have more bodies if there was more of them. And I think Miranda's right about the parasite staying in one host. I only did a quick check from what I'm seeing, there aren't bodies or missing persons turning up with the changes we've seen the parasite's making."

"Agreed," Jack said. "We can't say for sure but Will has some theories about the wound size."

"The characteristic hole in the back of the skull has been steadily growing since the turn of the last century, possibly because the parasite itself has been growing. There isn't a lot of data there but I'm willing to make a bit of a leap here. The body that we found outside of the normal pattern, Andrew Boyle, had a wound significantly smaller than the others," she said, steepling her fingers in front of her.

"Two wound sizes, two parasites," Fish said. "We have one, the other one is still out there."

"What did you and Gwen find on the CCTV?" Jack asked.

"Fish and I have been looking and there is a lot of footage to go through. We didn't find anything when we followed Boyle, there was no evidence of his attacker. If you and Miranda are right and he's been here over a hundred years, then he'll know how to avoid detection. We hit a dead end there. The missing girl was where we got lucky," Gwen said, tapping the tablet.

Several images of the girl came up and Gwen said sadly, "Her name is Jessica Rees. She's nineteen, well thirty two now. Reported missing 27 December, 1999 by her Mum. She went to a friend's on Boxing day and never came home."

"She hasn't aged a day," Ianto said, squinting at the pictures.

"Any theories there, Will?" Jack asked.

"It's like I said before, the parasite is likely changing her physiologically in some way. I can't make any determination without tests and right now I doubt she'd consent to anything. I consider the alien too dangerous to attempt to do anything to her forcibly," Miranda said with a shrug.

"Once we had her picture, I ran facial recognition and found this," Fish said, leaning over and tapping the tablet. "These are a few good images we have of her from the past twelve years. As you can see, there have been clear changes to her body."

Miranda leaned forward in her chair. "The arms and legs are longer. The neck is elongated. Her face is nearly the same though. She's more gracile, slimmer…"

"It was easy to follow her along the cameras. Gwen was right, she's been working as a prostitute and living on the streets," Fish said, sadly. "A few days before I tripped over that first body, we found this. It's from a camera in Grangetown where we've found pretty much all the bodies so far."

Fish tapped the tablet and a video feed came up. It was a night time view, a nearly deserted street. The girl was dressed in the same exact clothing she was in now. She was just walking down the street and a man was coming in the opposite direction. He looked young, about in his early twenties. Ianto, Miranda and Jack all sat up straighter when they noticed that the man's arms and legs were clearly elongated, far more so than the girl's. The two figured stopped and stared at each other and then walked off together out of view of the camera. Fish switched to another feed, playing the footage.

"They went down this alley," Fish said. "There was only half a view but you can see-"

"They're shagging," Ianto said.

"There was no exchange of money we could see," Gwen said.

"We tried to get a better angle, but couldn't find anything," Fish said with a sigh. "We did get this angle afterwards."

The video played and they all watched as the alien girl was leaving the alley, backing up onto the street. She opened her mouth and the tentacle snaked out of her mouth slowly, twisted, and then slid back into place.

"When I enhanced the footage, I got this," Fish said. He brought up the enlarged and enhanced image. "You can see that tentacle thing is wrapped around something else and it looks like another tentacle."

"Goddess below," Miranda breathed. "We could be in serious trouble here, Jack."

"What do you mean, Will?" he asked, alarmed.

"If she's mated, the other parasite could be pregnant as well," she said.

"That's a bloke there, Miranda," Gwen said, "and you said the girl's cervix was closed."

"The host is a bloke. The parasite may not have a gender. Many complex parasites on Earth are hermaphroditic, capable of producing both sperm and egg," Miranda explained.

"But you said it's using the girl's uterus," Ianto said. "He's a bloke, he won't have one."

Jack let out a small cough and shifted in his seat a bit.

"When I scanned the girl and found the embryos, I didn't find any changes to the uterus itself aside from the change in size. It's using it for convenience. It's a large, hollow organ that's capable of expansion. There's no indication that the uterus is performing its normal biological function. It's just housing," she said. "The hosts' gender may be irrelevant. They could have made some sort of exchange with the tentacle appendages."

"Why engage in intercourse then?" Fish asked, jerking his head at the paused video.

"No idea," Miranda said. "There are a number of chemicals secreted during sexual arousal and release, that may be the reasoning there. She did say that we were definitive."

"What difference does that make?" Ianto asked, impatient.

"The definitive host of a parasite is where the parasite completes its life cycle… the host that it reproduces in," Miranda said.

"As informative as this biology lesson is, I'd like to focus on finding this guy," Jack said.

"Sorry, Jack," Fish said. "The angles of his face aren't great but we've got the facial recognition program looking for him now. We're hoping that we can find a match and get a better image."

"Jack? Does he look familiar to you?" Miranda asked, pointing up at the screen. "Fish can you enlarge that a bit?"

"Will, why would he look familiar to me?" Jack asked, turning his head to look at the enlarged picture. "Hey… he does!"

"Where have we seen him?" she asked. "Fish can you clean that picture up any?"

"That's as good as it's going to get, Evie," Fish said, startled the two immortals recognised the man at all. The picture was grainy and slightly out of focus. Fish had no way of knowing that that was precisely why they both recognised the man.

Miranda's eyes widened. "Fish, desaturate the image, make it black and white."

Puzzled, Fish did as he was told, removing the colour from the picture.

"No! It can't be!" Jack gasped, getting up out of his chair.

"The face is a little different, thinner," Jack said, tilting his head.

"When was that, Jack? Twenty one? Maybe twenty two?" she asked, standing up and crossing over to the screen to get a better look at the image.

"Something like that," he said.

"Oi!" Fish, Gwen and Ianto all said simultaneously, the mortal members of the team losing their patience.

"Sorry," Jack said as Miranda went back to her seat at the foot of the table.

"It's Gareth Harding," Miranda said.

"Who?" Fish and Gwen asked simultaneously.

"He was a film actor back in the tens," Ianto said, his eyebrows raised. "He started in silent films and later spoken ones. I thought he died."

"No. It was big local news - Welsh film star vanishes from Cardiff set…" Jack said shaking his head. "Do you remember what happened, Will?"

"No, just that he'd gone off somewhere and was never seen again," she said. "Check Wikipedia or Google image, Fish. You may be able to get something there."

Skeptical, Fish tapped on his tablet and googled the appropriate name. The face popped up and Fish had to admit that it was almost a dead match.

"I can't believe you two remember a random film star you saw almost a hundred years ago," Gwen laughed.

"There are lots of film stars now, Gwen but back then, when the pictures had just started, it was a very small group of people," Miranda said, giving a one shouldered shrug. "A film would only have a handful of people in it."

Jack rubbed at one of his eyes with the back of his hand. "Gwen, Fish? It's late. Fish, tomorrow I want you to keep at the CCTV. This is a great lead. Gwen? I know it's another long shot but look into the police files around Harding's disappearance if there are any. Don't spend too much time on it though."

"Do you want me to give Harding's picture to the police?" Gwen asked.

Jack shook his head. "This thing is going to be dangerous. I don't want to have to retcon half the of the South Wales Police force. And I don't want to see either of you before lunch. Good night everyone."

After Jack left the room, the rest of them dispersed slowly. Ianto wandered out, following Jack into his office and shutting the door behind them.

"Is that all Mandy found out? Some useful facts about culture?" Ianto snapped, rounding on Jack the minute the door had latched.

Jack rubbed at his forehead. His head was absolutely pounding. He was still exhausted from reviving and chasing Weevils across Cardiff and he was not in the mood for more of his lover's ire. "Yan, please… It's already done."

"What useful strategic information did we get out of that, Jack?" Ianto spat at him. "Why you and Mandy are always so eager to throw your lives away is beyond me!"

"We come back, Yan," Jack repeated.

"Fish is right, Jack. There's a world of difference between 'can't die' and 'eternally resurrecting'. The two of you play cannon fodder too often-"

Jack had had enough. He snapped out, "Ianto. Enough. You don't understand."

"I understand what it does to you and Mandy, dying and coming back!" Ianto shouted. "Two weeks ago Weevils got both of you! The week before it was that faulty weapon pack exploding! And before that it was that poisonous worm! And only the next day-"

"Ianto, STOP!" Jack snapped. The pain in his head and his frustration finally winning over. "Those Weevils were heading for Gwen and you. That weapon pack could have killed Fish. And that poisonous worm was headed for Gwen when Will grabbed it. That's four times we've kept you all from dying by dying ourselves. Do you think Will wants to load any of you into a drawer downstairs? Do you think I want to tell Rhys that Gwen's never coming home? Or call up Anna and feed her some cover story about why her brother is dead?"

"The cost to us is always worth it, Ifan," Miranda said from the door. It was the first time she'd ever entered Jack's closed office without knocking.

He rounded on her. "I don't remember inviting you into this conversation. Get the fuck out of here, Mandy. This is between me and Jack."

"No," she said, standing her ground. She lifted her head defiantly and said, "No one knows more about Torchwood than you do. Since its inception, on average, how many Torchwood Three employees die per year?"

"I don't see-" he started to say but Miranda interrupted him.

"Answer the fucking question, Ifan," she snapped.

"One point five," he blurted, easily remembering the figure. This was ridiculous. What was the point of this?

"When was the longest span Torchwood went without losing an agent?" she asked.

"1962 until 1968."

"Who was Torchwood during those years?"

"Tabitha Rutherford. Charles Cromwell. Gabriel Morris. You and Jack…" Ianto trailed off, finally seeing the point. He ran through the dates and figures in his head. With only two exceptions, every time Jack and Miranda were in the employ of Torchwood, no agents were lost. Those two exceptions, Gabriel Morris and Sarah Trowbridge, were also deaths that Jack and Miranda could have prevented. Ianto knew the deceitful circumstances behind Trowbridge's death but the death of Gabriel Morris was just as tragic. Gabriel had been with Torchwood less than a year before he stepped between Miranda and a bullet. The twenty one year old had bled to death in her arms while she'd waited for an ambulance. He was the reason Miranda refused to hide her immortality from the team and the reason she had gone medical school.

"Me and Jack," she said simply as she gave him a pointed look. Miranda softened her voice. "You will listen to me, Ianto Jones, because this is the last time I want to have this conversation. Being able to give our lives over and over to save others? It's the only gift in our curse. It is a sacrifice that Jack and I gladly make. You think we make the choice lightly as if on a whim? We don't. And if you think that Jack and I will stand idly by while our immortality can prevent that of others, you have clearly misjudged the quality of our character. You stay here with Jack and at Torchwood because your life is yours to do with as you will. Well so is ours."

Miranda spun on her heel and left the room. Ianto would understand one day.