As the basketball was tossed around the hub, the shouts and laughter from the Torchwood team brought a thrilled grin to Rose's features. She tracked the path of the ball and quickly moved to intercept it.

Myfanwy cut in front of her, the pterodactyl letting loose a shriek as Rose was forced to skid to a stop, groaning in frustration as the prehistoric dinosaur allowed Owen to pass to Gwen with ease.

The games had started as a way to stimulate Rose's senses. Sight used to track the ball's movements, hearing the shouts and laughter, smelling the sweat their activities generated.

Slowly, as the weeks had turned into months, her heightened awareness had faded. Not entirely back to simply human level, but enough that if she wanted to make use of her enhanced abilities she had to concentrate to utilise them.

They were an odd number as no matter what Rose bribed him with, she could never convince Ianto to join in, but since the games had started for her benefit, Rose simply switched teams each game to keep things fair.

Tonight she was playing alongside Jack and Tosh and smothered a relieved grin when Jack intercepted the basketball Owen had thrown, only to turn and come face to face with Gwen.

She was surprised when the ex-time agent hesitated, and a moment later Gwen had stolen the ball, tossing it back up to Owen on the catwalk and Rose watched in disbelief as the doctor sunk the easiest win of the evening.

"Jack!" Rose whined good-naturedly as Gwen and Owen celebrated.

"First round's on you, boss!" Rose heard and shook her head as she approached the Captain.

"You're useless, you're totally useless!" She told him, smacking a light punch to the man's arm but he just grinned at her as she sighed, ignoring the crowing cries of victory from Owen and Gwen.

"That was an illegal move," Jack defended himself, shooting a playful glare at the doctor as Tosh chimed in, agreeing while they all grabbed coats and bags.

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," Owen taunted. "Losers" he added as they began to file out of the hub together for what had become the obligatory after-match drink.

Jack tossed the basketball at Ianto, who had entered the hub silently and without comment. The Welshman caught it, but Jack had already turned to Owen again using his now free hands to form a 'W' accompanied by a mouthed 'Whatever' behind the doctor's back that had Rose stifling a giggle.

"Hey, Ianto, you wanna come grab a drink with us?" Rose asked as he stood silently in the entranceway, still holding the ball Jack had tossed him, while the other four strolled past without comment. Just because he didn't play didn't mean he couldn't join them, but no one else seemed to realise that he'd been practically ignored.

Rose was glad she'd taken a moment to ask when surprise flickered across his face before he seemed to catch himself and offer a dry smile instead.

"No, thank you. Looks like there's a fair bit of cleaning up to do here," he said softly and Rose glanced around them at the chaos their game had created.

"Oh leave it," she said, casting a hand across the room, "we made it, we can clean it up, yeah?"

"Have you ever known Jack clean up his own mess?" Ianto asked softly, and Rose frowned at the odd note of bitterness she could hear in his voice, but a shout interrupted her before she could say anything.

"Rosie! You coming or not?" Jack called from the doorway, his hand the only thing keeping it from closing on her, and her eyes snapped to his familiar features. Blue eyes radiated impatience but also held a puzzled question at her delay.

"Go on then, they'll be getting antsy," Ianto encouraged, but Rose frowned.

"You sure you don't want to come?" She asked and he shook his head, pulling a sigh from Rose. "Alright, but if you change your mind, we're heading for that pub across the plaza. The Blue Boar, 'kay?"

She waited for the nod of agreement before she slung her bag over her shoulder and dashed across the hub for the door Jack was still holding for her.

"Well 's about bloody time, what took you?" Owen demanded as she joined them and they began heading out towards the tourist information centre.

"I was seeing if Ianto wanted to come with us," Rose explained, and Tosh sighed.

"He never does. We used to invite him all the time, but when he'd always say no we just... kind of... stopped," she explained and Rose nodded.

"Did he ever say why?"

The team fell silent for a moment, the only sound their footsteps against the tunnel floor that led to the public entrance of Torchwood, but it was Tosh who eventually answered her question, voice quiet, "We— We never asked."

At the front of the group, Owen slid open the hidden wall that concealed Torchwood and stepped out into the sunlight tourist office with a deep breath.

"At last," he muttered, stepping out quickly and leading the way out and directly towards his pub of choice as the conversation gradually moved on to Rugby, of all things, and Gwen had tried to talk Jack into going to see a live match. The group ordered drinks and traded stories about aliens they'd seen, and fought, and befriended.

They were only on their first drink of the night when Tosh's pager beeped and Rose sighed as she pushed her half-finished glass of wine away and stood to leave, ignoring Owen's request to stay and Jack's unsympathetic refusal.

On the way back to the hub an old argument started up over who got to drive the SUV. Tosh and Owen bickered back and forth as Gwen tried to mediate, and Rose let the sound wash over her, linking an arm through Jack's, a feeling of comfort settling into her chest at her mismatched adopted family.

She felt more at home with Jack's small team than she had in all the years she'd lived in the parallel world, and while lacking the Doctor meant it wasn't perfect, it was the closest thing to truly happy she'd been in a very long time.

She dropped her head to Jack's shoulders as they walked, and felt the ex-time agent drop a kiss to the top of her head.

"You holding up Rosie?" he asked softly, clearly trying to make sure that the bickering of his team drowned out his voice, and Rose shot him a grin.

"Dunno," she answered honestly, "I'm happy. That never seems to last for long without disaster striking."

Jack was silent for a few steps before he untangled his arm from hers and slung it around her shoulders instead, pulling her against his side without comment.

It was only when they all slipped back inside the hub, that Jack finally released her and began to issue orders. Tosh to radar checks, Owen to checking official airspace, and asking Gwen to phone a local contact of hers at the police.

Rose saw him turn towards her, mouth open, but she was already standing at a desk scanning for visuals across the CCTV network and social media, and he just grinned.

It wasn't the first time she'd pre-empted his requests. She'd run her own Torchwood team, and Rose knew what needed to be done for an unidentified object in the airspace as well as Jack did, and although the first few times he'd stumbled and spluttered, he seemed to be slowly getting used to it.

And the blinding grin he shot her every time he turned around to find her already working on something made it more than worth her while.

"Ianto, can you work some coffee magic?" Rose heard Jack ask, and frowned at her screen as she continued pulling up any footage she could find, making a mental note to speak to Jack. She was sure Torchwood hadn't hired Ianto to make coffee, and relying on him for that alone was a waste of his talents. Whatever they were.

The thought was pushed to the back of her mind a moment later when the lights dimmed and the computer screens flickered dangerously before lighting back up.

"What happened?" Gwen asked with a note of caution in her voice.

"It's an internal power drain," Tosh answered quickly, her fingers flying across her keyboard at a speed that Rose was envious of.

"What's causing it?" Gwen continued, frowning as she moved to lean over the back of Tosh's chair to peer at the other woman's screen.

"Something big to be draining that amount of power," Jack said and Rose felt herself swallow, nerves rising. The drain reminded her of something but she couldn't put her fingers on what.

"Tosh, run a systems diagnostic," Jack ordered, but it was Ianto's soft Welsh tones that answered him.

"Actually, we've been having generator problems all evening," Rose's eyes snapped over to stare at Ianto. She could feel the tension in her shoulders and didn't know why, but whatever memory it was bringing to the surface, it wasn't a good one.

"I was down there checking, earlier. Couple of bits of cabling have come loose. I thought I'd fixed it. Let me have another look?"

"Loose cabling?" Rose muttered to herself even as Jack agreed and Ianto left the main floor. She let one hand rub at her forehead as she struggled to figure out why she was so anxious.

None of the others had noticed her distraction, and they began crowding around Toshisko's computer station as the techie finally located the footage they'd all been scouring for.

"That's a UFO?" she heard Gwen ask, followed by Owen's supercilious response of, "Only just," and she let them distract her, huffing a laugh.

"Do you have a better spaceship lying around, that I don't know about, Owen?" Rose taunted, ignoring the eye-roll her question drew from the doctor, and she moved over to stand with them, letting her eyes scan across Tosh's screens quickly.

"That is an Arkan leisure crawler, first generation. A genuine collector's item. Don't see many of those around these days. Worth a nice pile of credits to the right person."

"Careful, Jack, your con-man is showing," she teased, grinning when Jack just sniffed and ignored her.

"Tosh, send a polite message saying great to see them, but could they please get the hell out of our atmosphere. They're spooking the locals."

"Done," Tosh said.

Gwen took a deep breath, and glanced around, seeming almost nervous, and Rose bit back a grin. She looked like someone about to ask a question in an exam that she should already know the answer to.

"Shouldn't we be apprehending it? Investigating it?"

Jack turned to look at her, but Rose's groan beat him to a response.

"Oh, bloody hell, no! You try speaking to an Arkan and you'll be here 'til next month. That'll just be the first question. It takes 'em over an hour to introduce themselves," she explained, rubbing her temples to ease the headache that Gwen's suggestion had brought about.

"Plus, they're boring as hell and they're mostly made of liquid. The cells would be a mess," Jack added with a decisive nod.

Just then the lights dimmed again, and the computer screens flickered violently. Rose's hands fell to her sides, and the anxiety that had been slowly leaching away flared back to life, chewing away at her stomach and she bent over Tosh's computer while she spoke, one hand braced on the back of the techie's chair.

"If there were loose cabes, then we'd be losing power, sure... but draining power suggests it's being used by something. Tosh, tell me I'm wrong?" she asked, voice tight and she could feel Jack tense behind her.

As Tosh began trying to do just that, Jack did something with his half functional vortex manipulator that Rose assumed would somehow connect him to the internal communications system.

"Ianto, we've got another dose of darkness. You found anything?"

"Tosh shook her head as Jack waited for an answer, and her voice conveyed her fear, "You're right, Rose. This isn't just a power loss, it's being drained somewhere specific. Something is switched on or plugged in and it's sucking the juice out of our system—"

"I was afraid of that," Rose muttered, turning to face Jack, her face set in a grimace, as Tosh tried to track the drain.

"Ianto, I need to hear those beautiful Welsh vowels!" Jack almost snapped, and Rose put a hand against his arm.

"Jack—"

"Power's draining to the storeroom at the bottom of the building," Tosh cut Rose off, updating them in real-time as she searched the hub's systems. "Looking for human heat signals. We've got—"

"Two?!" It was Owens turn to cut in now, his voice startle and Rose turned back to stare at the screen, her skin crawling with wrongness.

"So assuming one's Ianto, who's the other?"

"This is an attack," Rose said, her voice quiet. "Security's breached, Jack, what are your combat procedures?" she all but demanded and when she spun back to him the Captain was already moving towards the nearest weapon locker.

"That's impossible," Tosh argued, "nobody can get in without triggering seven separate alarms!" Despite her words, she was still standing and following the Captain, responding to the battle protocols that Jack had trained them for.

"'How' doesn't matter, only that it's happening. 'How' is for later," Rose answered, accepting the gun and ammunition that was handed to her without hesitating.

"I'll head down and look for Ianto," the doctor offered, and Gwen nodded.

"I'll come with you."

Jack stared at both of them before nodding his agreement, "Keep your comms open at all times. Any doubt, shoot first. Priority is to find Ianto."

Rose watched them go and resisted the urge to tell them to be careful. Turning, she led the way up onto the catwalks, Tosh and Jack following her silently as they relocated to higher ground.

Choosing a spot with an unimpeded view across the main floor of the hub, Rose turned to face Jack and Tosh.

"You said seven separate alarms, are any of those internal?" she asked and Tosh shook her head, snapping open one of her portable electronics and continuing to run scans of the hub.

"The only internal alarms monitor Rift activity. It's not looking for internal intruders of the non-rift kind," she explained, fingers flying over her keyboard.

"Progress report?" Jack demanded, but Rose was only half-listening, eyes constantly scanning and the gun in her hand held steady, despite her thundering heart.

Owen's response was only half transmitted and the fear travelling the length of Rose's spine grew as Jack began shouting down the comm for Owen to repeat himself.

"Whatever that power source is, it's interfering with the comms," Tosh said, drawing an irritated sigh from Jack.

"Can we get them back? Anything you can do to boost the signal?"

"I'm trying other channels, but nothing yet. There's something else you need to see though," she warned, rising to her feet and balancing her laptop against the catwalk railing so that both Rose and Jack could see the screen.

"I've gone back through our internal CCTV footage for the last couple of hours and... Jack.. someone's tried to remove the images from our system."

Just like that, the threads that were beginning to tie together in Roses' mind, weaving a tapestry that had just started to make sense, unravelled again.

"Damn it," she hissed, "just when I think I know what's going on, we find out something else and it doesn't make any sense again!" She growled, and Jack's hand landed on her shoulder, a comforting weight.

"What do you mean?" he asked and Rose shook her head.

"It's familiar. All of it. The power drain, the interrupted comms, I recognise it but not... not someone covering their tracks like this, not avoiding seven layers of alarms. It's like I'm missing the last piece of the puzzle," she tried to explain, her shoulders still tense beneath Jack's hand.

"I've recovered the files," Tosh said, a soft note of triumph in her voice, "I dug into the system memory, and..."

Tosh's voice trailed off, and Rose's jaw fell open as all three of them watched the recovered footage. It showed Ianto greeting an elderly man of Asian appearance, in a well-tailored suit, as the stranger calmly stepped inside Torchwood.

Carrying nothing more than a large briefcase, Ianto had led him through the hub circumventing any alarms that might have signalled an intrusion. The stranger had been invited in, and Rose felt her breath catch in her throat and horror steal her voice as everything fell into place.

"What the hell's going on here?" Jack demanded, eyes scanning the images on the screen as though they held all the answers, but for Rose they did.

"Oh god," she breathed, and Jack tried the comms again, urgently trying to get either Gwen or Owen to respond. "Jack, do we have any EMP weapons in here?" Rose asked, not quite recovered enough to inject the urgency into her voice that she knew she needed to convey, and he simply shook his head.

"Not up here. There might be some down in the archives, but we'd need more power to open the sealed doors."

"Shit," Rose swore, a hand running through her hair as she turned and paced away, only to spin back to stare at Tosh. "Can you build—?"

"I'd have no idea where to start," she answered quickly. "Why? What's... Do you know what's going on?"

The question drew Jack's attention again, and Rose hesitated, "I hope not," she said after a moment, and Jack was quickly by her side once more, a hand on her elbow. Comforting, steadying, and Rose swallowed before meeting his blue gaze.

"I've seen it all before, but it didn't make sense because it would have needed help to get inside. Past the alarms. I couldn't be right, it wasn't possible... only, now..." her eyes flicked to the screen, the CCTV of Ianto that Tosh still had open, and she swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

"Rose, what's going on?" Jack asked, voice quiet but demanding. He needed answers and she braced herself before nodding.

"I think— Jack, I really hope I'm wrong, but I think this might be a Cyberman."

"That's impossible," Tosh said, "we'd all be dead by now if—"

"Not if it's a damaged unit," Rose corrected gently. "There were some left in the other universe. People campaigned that we should help them, try to restore them to the people they were before—"

Jack stopped listening to her, hands flying back to the vortex manipulator and the comms it was linked into. "Owen! Gwen! One of you answer me! If I don't hear something within thirty seconds..."

"How damaged?" Tosh asked, her voice trembling, but Rose could only shake her head.

"It's drawing power, so it's either repairing or... or converting."

"And either option is bad or worse," Jack finished, his voice hard before he returned to the comms again, "I'm coming down there!"

"Jack, it's Gwen. The comms dropped out, we're back online now."

Rose, Tosh and Jack all let out sighs of relief, and the Captain met Rose's eyes, "I really hope you're wrong, Rosie."

"Yeah. Me too," she offered, and Jack clicked back onto the comms.

"Any sign of Ianto?"

"No. But we have found parts of a cyber conversion unit. Fully powered up and working." Owen's voice was stone cold, with just a hint of terror that told Rose he knew exactly what a conversion unit did, and Rose shivered. Mere parts wouldn't be draining power, and the conversion units weren't sentient.

"Tell me you're joking," Jack demanded, eyes closed as Owens' words confirmed Rose's theory.

"I'm deadly serious. I don't know why it's here, or how it got here, but that's what's drainin' our power."

Jack seemed frozen, unmoving, and Rose could almost taste Owen's panic rising.

"Jack?" the doctor called through the comms, and Rose plucked the hands-free from Jack's ear and put it on.

"Owen, it's Rose. Both of you get back up here right now. Conversion units don't turn themselves on."

"We still haven't found—"

Rose heard the crash and grit her teeth together as Gwen called out an incursion code over the line, and Jack snapped out of his daze instantly.

"If you don't hear from me within fifteen minutes, activate total shutdown procedures and get yourselves to safety," he ordered as he checked his weapon, before turning and moving towards the lower levels.

"Understood," Rose called back, but Tosh stared between them in shock.

"But I can't just leave you all here!"

Jack halted, hesitated, looked back but Rose waved him off quickly, "Jack, go! Tosh, if there is a Cyberman inside this building and it gets past Jack, we're the last line of defence. We have to make sure it never gets outside. All Cybermen do is convert. They truly believe that they are better, improved, that they are helping us, and no logic will convince them otherwise," she explained quickly.

Rose could hear Gwen shouting down the comms, and although the power drain had reactivated, this time the comms stayed open. Rose could only assume that it was the proximity of Jack's vortex manipulator boosting the signal, or the Cyberman wanting to scare them into submission, but as Gwen cried out Rose had to force herself not to follow after the Captain, trusting that he would rescue their friend.

"Gwen, Jack's already on his way. Just hold on!" she called down the line, trying to offer the Welsh woman some measure of reassurance that help was on the way.

She heard gunfire and shouting, and Gwen was still screaming, but Rose could make no sense of the noise until Jack shouted for them to cut the power.

If Gwen or Owen were already in the conversion unit, it could be the only way to get them out before it was too late, so by the time Tosh had finished shouting her arguments back at Jack, Rose was already running.