36
Ianto stood with his arm raised, his face twisted with horror as Jack walked to him with a feeling of dread.
"Number four" Ianto said as he looked down at his feet and the body of a young person twisted and barely recognisable as more than carrion. The clothing the only thing to show it had been a human once.
"Fuck" Jack agreed.
"It's not something I have seen before" Ianto looked around at the other three flags fluttering in the breeze "We need a grid by grid search for more. I feel there are a few more in here yet."
"Fuck" Jack repeated, turning to look around at the waist high foliage "Needles in a haystack."
"The real thing though Cariad… if this is a killing field to a huge killing insect thing… where the fuck is it? How does it hide? It is able to hide as a human? A filter system? Shape shifter? Or does it hide in the light, only come out at night. Unfortunately we might not catch it until it brings the next one to dump" Ianto shrugged "Where is its lair? Also does it kill them here… I don't think so, wants to drink them at its leisure. How long does he keep one? What are the timelines here? We need more."
"Gwen is working on that, we have another ID so that is two of the victims named now. If we can find something to link them, something similar to go on" Jack looked around "I am cold. Come on, we can't help these poor girls now, let's go help the next ones."
.
.
"The Eye in the Sky is fixed" Toshiko said as she stood at the front of the meeting room, UNIT as well as Heddlu big wigs there, watching the screen as she showed an aerial shot of the Killing Field. They had removed all eight body flags and other markers, reluctantly leaving the bodies as well.
"If we get any movement it will be picked up" Toshiko continued "tonight we will have our people in the area but no one close, nothing to let the thing know we are there. The rain this afternoon hopefully washed away anything that we left behind and if it comes to dump another body… we will see it, if only the moment of the body's fall."
"You can be that sure?" a UNIT official asked.
"We saw a footprint flag inadvertently left." She replied with pride.
"The real problem is if we will recognise it" Jack cut in and she looked at him gratefully as she shot to her seat, he continued "We have no idea what it looks like apart from the suction tube that we surmise if retractable. So… is it a giant insect swanking about or are we passing it on the street in a 'human suit' so we don't know it is getting through cordons?"
"Shit" someone said softly "It might be in the room."
"No, I do not smell it" Ianto said as he slowly tined his head to look at the man who had spoken "It has a unique smell. I do not like it… I recognise it on the bodies… at the site. I know I would recognise it on another person."
"So you have an advanced sense of smell?" another UNIT man asked with a smirk.
"You drink Earl Grey, your wife prefers Rose Water Soap in the hand basins and cold washes your clothes with Harpic. You ate garlic last night and drank red wine, I surmise a steak meal? You also have a son who is school age, a dog and two cats." Ianto said in a bored tone "You drank coffee this morning but you prefer tea."
The man stard at him "You… you smell that?"
"Also… you are fucking another woman, I assume one your wife knows nothing about as she is blonde and the woman you are seeing on the side has short dark hair, older and she wears a faint lavender perfume."
Silence.
"Well… serves you right for asking" Owen sniffed, leaning back in his chair "Ianto had a nose that knows."
"Well done Owen that sounded rather clever" Ianto assured him, Moses entering to leap into owners lap and look around.
Tossers?
"Yeah" Owen said softly as he stroked the cat "Tossers."
"We know they are all female, twenty to twenty-five-ish and all pretty. Not skinny, not fat… I would say … voluptuous" Owen said as everyone stared at him "Juicy. Plump. He chooses one and then sucks her dry. I think … I think it's not done all at once. He keeps her, lets her recover a bit, then drains her again… until she can no longer recover. Then he drinks her dry, dumps her and starts again."
"So… likely he has the next one chosen ahead" Ianto surmised.
"Yeah."
"Well… we can only warn people that there is a man out there taking young women from the nightclubs, start the seed in the hope of warning without him knowing that we are onto him. We will admit to a couple of them missing, not the correct amount, and we do not let on that we know where they are now. Make it sound like he still must have them or something, let him feel like he has one over us." Jack said from his seat "he might get cocky."
Ianto hoped he was right but had reservations… his own eyes on the matter agreeing as they sought as well.