For once, Owen was in the right place at the right time. With one ankle resting on the knee of his other leg, the findings Toshiko had printed out balancing on his lap and the cup of coffee Ianto had placed in front of him in his hands, he was the first member of the team to make it up into the boardroom this morning. Toshiko was still monitoring the activity she'd recorded over night, the reason this meeting had been called, and Ianto was fetching another cup of coffee for her. Owen suspected that Toshiko had been there all night, though he wasn't certain; she could just have easily have taken her laptop home with her and sat up all night in her flat. In fact, that was more likely. For all his faults, if there was nothing serious going on, Jack usually made sure the whole team went home at a fairly reasonable hour.

Jack himself was in his office on the phone, though from the snarled threats he'd left on Gwen's voice mail for the last fifteen minutes, they could all guess that he wasn't getting much joy. It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning and there'd been no sign of Gwen, and not even so much as a text telling any of them she'd been late. Even Owen felt a bit uneasy; it was so unlike her to be late.

Toshiko entered the room, carrying yet more print outs and her laptop. She set it down on the desk and began organizing the presentation she'd prepared. She glanced at Owen.

"Hard at work," she remarked sarcastically.

Owen grinned. "Of course." He looked down at the sheets she'd already handed him this morning. "Have you been working on this all night? He only told you to keep an eye on it."

Toshiko shrugged. "Things changed quickly. I thought we should investigate it further."

Owen accepted what she was saying. She was partly right; it was even hotter today and he'd heard on the radio this morning that the road surfaces across the city were beginning to become unsafe in the abnormal temperatures. Bristol Airport had grounded its planes as the runway turned to jelly and they were warning people to avoid the midday sun after a sudden increase in the number of sunstroke cases seen at local hospitals. If his medical training had taught him anything, Owen knew that those warnings would mean exactly zilch to the population at large; warnings like that never registered with the majority of people, who would happily bask for several hours in the sun and then wonder why their skin was peeling off. It was petty stupid things like this that made him count his blessings that Jack had (though he hated using the word) rescued him from the NHS and installed him as resident doctor in Torchwood Three. At least aliens tended to slap the sunscreen on.

"Do you think Gwen's okay?" Toshiko asked now, a thoughtful look on her face. "It's not like her to be so late. Do you think anything's happened to her?"

"Like what? She's decided to give Torchwood the old heave-ho and head back to her old life as PC Cooper?" Owen suggested. God, how he'd day-dreamed that would happen when she first joined and began undermining his ideas. Now, he knew that, however much she wound him up, if she were to leave, though everything would still ostensibly be the same, nothing and no one would ever fill the Gwen-shaped hole in the team. They were such an unlikely bunch of people, but they all belonged there.

Toshiko frowned. "Do you think she would?"

Owen groaned. "No, I don't think she would, Tosh. She's probably just, I don't know, washing her hair or something."

"She better not be." Jack stalked into the room, dressed as usual in a crisp white shirt and black trousers. He looked ready to murder, and Owen knew that look well; he'd been on the receiving end more than once. So far though, it was the first time that Gwen had provoked that particular response in their leader. Owen was getting a perverse joy out of this situation.

"Coffee, sir?" Ianto entered the room, carrying a tray.

Jack shot a glare at him, much to Ianto's dismay and surprise. "No, I don't want coffee. Or tea or anything else." He looked around at team's response to his growl. "What?"

They all avoided eye-contact. Owen looked over at Ianto, venturing to say, "I'll have a cup if he doesn't want it."

Jack shot him a glare before, slumping down in his chair and shutting his eyes. "Okay, sorry. Sorry, guys, I didn't mean to take it out on you. Thanks for the offer, Ianto, but I'm fine." He turned to Toshiko. "So, what's the news?"

"Well-" Toshiko began, but just then there was a crash down in the Hub and they all jumped. They heard footsteps running up the stairs to the boardroom and seconds later, Gwen burst in, looking hot and bothered in a black vest top and jeans, her dark hair sticking to her forehead in messy clumps. Tala was holding firmly on to her hand, looking equally as sweaty.

"Sorry I'm late!" Gwen apologized, in between breaths. She clutched her side. "I should really get in training, I'm knackered!" She looked round. "So, what have I missed?" The question was directed at Jack, but he didn't reply. She cast her eyes around the group, asking for a reply.

"Nothing, I was just getting started," Toshiko said eventually, smiling nervously in her direction, whilst her eyes flew back to see what Jack was doing. "I've been running a few checks on things overnight and I just thought everyone should see what I'd found."

"Oh great!" Gwen grinned, though Owen couldn't help thinking it looked a bit of an effort for her. She looked tired and more than a little spaced out this morning. Combined with her tardiness, she was behaving in a very un-Gwen Cooper-like way. To his surprise, Owen found himself being genuinely concerned for her, a reaction only outstripped by his knee-jerk urge to tease her about it.

Gwen turned to Ianto suddenly. "Don't suppose you could make me a cup of coffee could you, Ianto? I'm dying for one."

Ianto looked across at Jack. Owen rolled his eyes, hoping no one would notice, and for once getting away with it. He wished Ianto would get a backbone sometimes and stop deferring to Jack for every last mortal thing. Someone seriously needed to tell the guy that the puppy-dog thing was not a good look.

Jack kept his eyes fixed on Gwen, a steady unnerving gaze, his blue eyes steely cold. Owen wasn't even on the receiving end of it yet it made him shiver, but Gwen barely seemed to notice it. She was really acting out of character.

"Ianto, take Tala with you," Jack said at length. "Can I get a glass of water?"

"Of course, sir." Ianto held out a hand for Tala, who cautiously transferred her own hand from Gwen's to the new one offered. They left the room in silence.

Gwen sat down, sighing heavily for a moment, before sitting up straight. "Okay, I'm ready."

There was a moment of silence, as Toshiko looked at Jack before clearing her throat and beginning again. "Anyway. Last night I started looking into the hot temperatures we've been having lately, and found that it wasn't just limited to this area." She tapped a key on her laptop and the map she'd shown Jack and Owen yesterday popped onto the big screen at the end of the table. "This is a map of the world."

"Never!" Owen remarked sarcastically, and was delighted to observe that Jack didn't even flicker an eyebrow in his direction. With glee, he realised that he'd been usurped today, that Gwen was in a lot more trouble than he could ever be. God, this could be fun.

Toshiko tried to pick up where she'd left off. "The red areas are the hottest points, which would normally be clustered across the equator. But as you can see…"

"They're not," Jack finished for her. "Okay, we get that."

Toshiko nodded and zoomed in. "This is the highest temperature anomaly on the map."

"But that's…" Gwen tailed off, pointed with the end of her pen. She frowned. "No, don't be stupid, that's Cardiff. That's here!"

"Right, and Cardiff couldn't possibly have anything unusual happening in it could it?" Owen's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Get with the programme, Gwen!"

Gwen looked between them all, still seemingly oblivious to the glare Jack had been treating her to ever since she sat down. "So, what? This heat-wave is… something alien?"

"Are you going to let her finish?" Jack snapped suddenly, making them all jump.

Gwen blinked several times after he'd spoken, as the room suddenly seemed more silent than before. "Sorry, I..." she stumbled over the words in a state of bewilderment. Owen regretted his earlier feeling of elation at seeing her in trouble for once; she didn't deserve this. "Sorry, Tosh, go on."

Toshiko gave her a small smile before continuing. "I'm not sure entirely what it is. I'm sure there are all sorts of explanations, like the ones they've given on the news, but the patterning of temperatures just doesn't seem right. There are definite hotspots in identifiable locations specific places which are hotter than any other points. The biggest one is just outside of Cardiff. Now, I've tried narrowing down the exact location of it, and the closest I've come is within this grid square." She brought up another picture, this time a close-up of a single Ordnance Survey grid square. "There's not a lot out here, just a few villages and things. And this." She pointed to a tourist attraction. "The Blaidd Drwg Holiday Park."

At those words, both Gwen and Owen felt something prick the back of their necks and couldn't work out exactly what it was. Those words sounded so familiar, like a refrain from a song or a name they'd once heard in a dream or something.

"Blaidd Drwg…" Gwen said softly. "But that means…"

"Bad Wolf." They all looked at Jack in surprise as he finished Gwen's sentence. "Blaidd Drwg means Bad Wolf."

"How did you know that?" Owen asked. "Has Ianto been giving you private Welsh lessons or something?"

Jack threw him a withering expression, but didn't elaborate on his sudden knowledge of Welsh.

"Bad Wolf…" Gwen said thoughtfully. Where had she seen that recently, why did it seem such a familiar phrase?

"Blaidd Drwg…" Owen frowned. "Tosh, lend me your laptop a minute." He took the computer without waiting for a reply from her and quickly logged into his network, searching through the history. "Here we go." He found the news station he was watching yesterday and scanned through, looking for the bulletin he'd seen. "Blaidd Drwg!" He flashed the picture up on the big screen. Alongside the download button for the catch-up news service was a brief description: David Jones meets the manager of Blaidd Drwg Holiday Camp to hear how the recent good weather has impacted upon his business. "I knew I'd heard it recently."

Toshiko reclaimed her laptop and hit a few more keys. Whilst she was busying herself searching for the other documents she'd had lined up to show them, Gwen cast aside her wondering over Bad Wolf and spoke up.

"Okay, so maybe this heat-wave isn't exactly natural," she admitted. "It does seem a bit weird. But even so… what's the big deal? It's gorgeous weather, there's no harm done." She ventured a small smile. "Maybe just this once, the aliens are on our side, giving us something useful without any side-effects."

Toshiko brought a list of figures up. "I've intercepted the Cardiff Royal Infirmary casualty database. They've had record numbers of people coming in with heat-related illnesses. Five deaths from dehydration yesterday alone." She brought another screen up. "And the pattern's repeated all over the world. Plus, the sea-levels are rising, they've already had wide-spread flooding in Holland and Egypt."

"Bad enough side-effects for you?" Jack shot at Gwen.

Gwen looked at him, her face still registering confusion at exactly why Jack Harkness was being so vile towards this morning. "I was only saying," she replied.

"And now you don't need to." Jack turned to Toshiko. "Good work, Tosh, this is obviously something we need to look into further. I think it would be a good idea if someone were to swing by the hospital, see if we can learn anything more about any of the cases brought in. Owen, you fancy that?"

"A hot day in a badly air-conditioned, over-crowded hospital? Can't imagine anything better." Owen rolled his eyes.

"Tosh, if you can keep an eye on things from here, see if you can find any links between any of the hotspots, anything that could suggest what's behind all of this."

Toshiko nodded. "Sure."

There was a pause, as they all waited for Jack to tell Gwen what her part in all this would be. Then he stood up and walked out of the room without saying another word.

Gwen stared after him in disbelief. "Did he just… blank me?" she asked, unsure if she'd imagined it or not.

"That would certainly be one way of putting it," Owen agreed, stretching widely. "He's not too chuffed with you actually."

"Why? What have I done?" Gwen asked, looking between Toshiko and Owen, and then at Ianto as he came back in with a cup of coffee. "Thanks." She looked at the coffee, and felt her stomach flip slightly. "Actually, you know what, I'll have this in a minute," she decided, pushing it away from her. She turned back to them, forgetting about her sudden strange reaction to the drink. "Seriously, why has he been such a twat this morning?"

"You were a bit late." Owen shrugged.

"And you never are?" Gwen raised her eyebrows. She looked out at where Jack was heading to his office. "He's got a bloody nerve, he…" She stood up and marched out of the room, intending to have it out with Captain Jack Harkness.

Owen pulled a face and stood up. "I think I'll head out while the going's still good. Have a nice time with the two of them." He waved cheerily to Toshiko and Ianto as he left.

"Thanks a lot!" Toshiko stuck her tongue out at him as he walked away, instantly feeling childish. She sighed heavily and closed her laptop up. She looked up to see Ianto still looking at the discarded cup of coffee. "You alright, Ianto?"

Ianto jerked himself back into the room. "Oh, yes. That's the first time Gwen's ever left her coffee." He shrugged and picked the cup back up and took it down to the kitchen. Someone needed to keep the Hub looking at least half-respectable.

"Jack, what is your problem?" Gwen demanded, crashing into his office. "What's with the act this morning?"

"Who said it was an act?" Jack replied sharply, his back to her as he rifled through a pile of papers on his desk. "Who said it wasn't real?"

Gwen was briefly stumped by that and then regained some of her fire. "Owen says you're pissed because I was late."

"Did he?"

"I wasn't that late." Gwen felt herself faltering again. Jack was being so eerily calm and quiet about this. He wasn't losing his temper or throwing his weight around or even looking at her. It was so much harder to get mad with someone when they wouldn't respond equally as angrily. She wondered if she was possibly overreacting to the way he'd been behaving; maybe it was all just a joke. "I mean, Owen's often a lot later than I was, you don't go all huffy with him."

"Owen didn't have Tala with him, you did!" Jack suddenly turned on her, his blue eyes vibrant with anger and annoyance seeping from every pore.

Gwen felt partly pleased at his reaction. At least she could let rip now, like she'd wanted to ever since she'd followed him up to his office. Reacting with harsh words and shouting was her way out of difficult situations. It wasn't all Jack's fault, the way she was feeling this way; Rhys's suggestion just before he left this morning had started her off on an odd-foot and she'd been scrambling for a stable foothold ever since. Jack had just made things worse.

"Oh, I might have known it would have something to do with Tala!" she snapped. "What did you think would have happened to her? Thought I'd have, I don't know, got her abducted or something, or maybe poisoned her?"

"No! I just…" Jack glowered at her. "You turned your phone off, what's the first rule of Torchwood?"

"Don't talk about Torchwood?" Gwen muttered before answering properly. "I didn't turn my phone off though!"

"Really?" Jack challenged her. He hit the speakerphone button on the telephone on his desk as he dialed her number. He stared her down as her voicemail cut in.

Gwen frowned and reached into her jeans pocket, pulling out her phone. "But…the battery must have died or something, I didn't turn it off." That was even stranger; she'd charged it up only yesterday afternoon while she sat doing her paperwork. The battery should have lasted a few days, not just a few hours.

"Right, that makes it so much better!" Jack spat. "Jesus, Gwen! What if I really needed to get hold of you?"

"You know where I live, would it have been so hard to come and knock on the door?" Gwen demanded, even as she knew that wasn't the point. There weren't many rules to being a part of Torchwood, even fewer rules than there were in Fight Club. It was the first time she'd ever forgotten to keep her phone charged up since taking the job; inside, she was kicking herself, though she'd never let Jack see that.

She tossed her hair. "Anyway, we're both fine. Yeah, me too, thanks for asking."

Jack glowered at her again. "I didn't."

"No shit." Gwen tried to calm herself down. "So. What do you want me to do this morning?"

Jack looked at her, a question in his eyes.

"You didn't say what you wanted me to do," Gwen reminded him. "So?"

Jack didn't reply straight away. When he did, it wasn't what Gwen wanted to hear.

"I'm going to head out to Blaidd Drwg holiday camp, I thought I'd take Ianto with me. For Welsh speaking reasons."

"I can speak Welsh."

"Your exam results beg to differ."

Gwen twisted her right foot on the floor awkwardly as she stood in the silence after Jack's remark. She felt like a little girl again, in the headteacher's office at school, being told she couldn't go on a school trip or something. "So… what am I doing today?" she asked in a small voice.

"I thought you could stay here, take any phone calls, keep Tosh company, keep an eye on Tala."

"Child-mind?" The words escaped Gwen's lips before she could stop them.

Jack's eyes flickered over to her again. "No. Just keep a general eye on the Hub."

"Stay here? While you and Ianto go off on a jolly jaunt to a holiday camp?" Gwen wished she could keep her mouth shut sometimes.

"Yes."

Gwen didn't know why she could feel her cheeks going red and feel the blood suddenly rushing through her veins. She squeezed her hands tight into fists, determined not to let Jack see how much this rejection was affecting her. She couldn't even explain why it was affecting her in this way.

"Right. Well, fine." She nodded, determinedly keeping her chin up. "Have a nice time." She turned on her heel and walked out of his office.

Ianto didn't really mind being the only member of Torchwood without a real job title. Sure, Owen got to deal with any medical problems, and Toshiko was a whiz with the computer, Jack could organize the troops with military precision and Gwen was wonderful with dealing with people. Ianto knew though that, without him, the general day-to-day running of Torchwood would fall apart. He was the one who supplied Owen with endless coffees after a late night out, meaning the doctor was able to concentrate on the autopsy he was performing and not his thudding headache and heavy eyelids. He was the one who made sure all the invoices for internet access and telephone bills were sent to head office in London so that Toshiko could work on whatever complicated piece of research she had that week. He often picked up the half-finished packet of biscuits Gwen abandoned on her desk at the end of the day and put them into an airtight container so they'd still be edible the following day; she seemed incapable of sitting at her desk for any length of time without nibbling on something. And as for Jack… well, without Ianto, he'd soon have run out of clean shirts as his idea of doing the laundry was discarding his clothes where they dropped. Whether he realised there was more to it than that, Ianto wasn't sure, but he wasn't ever going to let their leader find out; it was a small job and one Ianto quite enjoyed.

Even though he didn't mind being the general Torchwood dogsbody, Ianto couldn't help thinking that days like today were his payment for the generally unacknowledged tasks he carried out. The weather was beautiful as the SUV cruised gently through the suburbs of Cardiff, under the careful management of Jack Harkness. It wasn't every day Ianto was given the opportunity to work out in the field on something, and he meant to enjoy every second of one of his rare Torchwood trips away from the Hub.

Jack, though, wasn't in the best mood. With the top few buttons of his shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up, he hadn't made much of a change from his usual clothes to accommodate the hot weather. The muscles in his forearms flexed gently as he moved the steering wheel with the minimum of effort, usually resting one arm on the door. They'd been in silence almost since Jack had informed Ianto that he was coming out to the Blaidd Drwg holiday camp with him. And Ianto didn't mind that either, but he couldn't help feeling that if he'd wanted to spend the day in silence, he'd have been down in the vaults of the Hub, cataloguing more items.

"Aren't you hot?"

Ianto glanced across as Jack asked the question. He hesitated before answering. "One doesn't like to boast, sir."

A smile creased Jack's features. "Very good. For once though, I was being serious."

Ianto looked down at his less-crisp-than-usual black suit. It wasn't exactly ideal attire for the more than favourable weather they were experiencing at the moment. Still, it wasn't as though Jack was wandering around in Hawaiian print shirts and flip-flops. "No more than you, I bet, sir."

"Oh Ianto, you'll make me blush!" Jack replied.

They fell silent again. Ianto picked up the print-out of the holiday camp's website Toshiko had run off for them before they left. He flicked through it, more for something to do than for any other reason. It was the standard fare, a typical British holiday camp, with activities and chalets and karaoke in the evening. It reminded him of the holidays he used to go on as a child. The only thing which really marked the holiday camp out as anything unusual at all was its name.

"Blaidd Drwg…" he said thoughtfully, running his fingers over the name.

"It's a weird one isn't it?" Jack agreed. "Bad Wolf. Funny name for a holiday camp."

Ianto looked over at him, frowning. "I thought you were bringing me because I could speak Welsh?" he questioned him.

Jack didn't reply immediately as he pretended to negotiate a tricky bend, which in actual fact was no more troublesome than the dozens he had already driven through. Ianto recognized this diversion technique; Jack used it far too often for it to be effective anymore.

"I don't really know Welsh, just the odd few words," Jack said eventually, shrugging. "Blaidd Drwg. Plaid Cymru."

Ianto smiled. "That's not really words, sir."

"There you go then. Anyway, why do I need to learn Welsh when I've got you, Ianto?"

Another thing to put into his job untitle: Welsh Interpreter. Even so, he ventured to say, "Gwen can speak Welsh too."

The muscle in Jack's jaw tightened. "Not as well as you, Ianto."

"Enough though, sir."

Jack shrugged again. "Wishing I'd brought her instead of you?"

"No, sir, not really," Ianto replied quickly.

Jack smiled. "Then stop trying to do yourself out of a job. Now. Which turning is it?"

Looking around the humid and overcrowded casualty department of the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, Owen was only able to make himself feel better by remembering that he was here on Torchwood business, he wasn't about to start another long boring shift as an A and E doctor. The register Toshiko had taken from the hospital network hadn't even half-explained the problems here. It was only eleven in the morning and already there were at least six people that he could see with angry sun-burnt skin all over them. A bald man's head was glowing like a traffic light in the middle of the waiting room, whilst a young blonde girl was standing in cut-off shorts and a bikini top, her skin clearly too painful to allow even cotton fabrics to touch it. On the way in, Owen had had to dodge two ambulance crews, wheeling in patients both with acute sunstroke. The whole place was buzzing like it would after a major incident, like a fire or a twenty car pile-up. The patients in the waiting room would be waiting a long time, Owen thought, as the revised waiting time flashed up on the screen above the reception desk. Five hours was a hell of a long time to be sitting in an oven-like atmosphere like this.

He sauntered up to the front desk, checking to see if it was the cute brunette who worked there. On the occasions Torchwood came to the hospital to look at a victim with suspicious injuries, he rarely had a chance to have a proper chat with her, which was a shame; she looked like just the sort of person he'd like to talk to. Today though, he didn't really have a specific job to carry out. Jack had just said to take a look at the problem. If he was being particularly literal, Owen supposed he could claim that he'd done exactly that; he'd looked and seen and, yes, the problem was as bad as Tosh had suggested it was and worse. While he was here though, he might as well see if he could find out anything else, and if he knew hospitals, the receptionist was exactly the right place to head.

He pushed to the front, much to the chagrin of more than one patient, particularly a mother with three grizzly children.

"Oi, you!" She hollered at him, an entirely unnecessary exercise seeing as he was less than three feet away from her. "We was here first!"

Owen ignored her and turned his attention to the desk. And wouldn't you know it, it was the cute brunette's day off, and in her place was a large middle-aged woman with glasses thick enough to double as lenses for the Hubble telescope. Owen couldn't help wondering why the woman bothered with them anyway; she spent the entire time peering at everyone over them.

"Can I help you?" She looked him up and down.

"Dr. Owen Harper, Torchwood." Owen produced his ID card, whipping it in front of her eyes quickly. "I was wondering if I could have a few minutes with you."

The woman stared him down. "Now?"

"If you're not busy."

She looked from him to the jostling queue of people waiting to register at the desk. "No, I'm not. As you can see." She turned away from him. "Next!"

Owen pushed in front of the next patient.

"Oi, mate, fuck off!" the man protested.

"How about no," Owen retorted. "Seriously, I need to speak to someone about the…" he lowered his voice, "situation."

The receptionist was not in the least impressed with him. "You mean the heat-wave."

"Well, if that's what you want to call it."

"No one's available to talk to you right now." She turned to the man behind him. "Can I help?"

Owen decided to try one last time; he'd never known when to stop pushing his luck, it was one of his worst traits – and, according to an ex-girlfriend, one of his most endearing qualities. Mind you, Sophie had always been a bit odd, into all sorts of kinky stuff which even Owen, who liked to think of himself as a particularly free spirit, wasn't able to keep up with. She'd been fun, but far too exhausting and downright weird to last long.

"Look, I'd make it worth your while if you could just find out some information for me-"

"You could offer to be my sex-slave here and now and it would make no difference," the receptionist replied tartly. Despite the glasses, Owen was warming to her. She was a feisty old bag. "Now, if you really are a doctor, maybe you could help out. If not… well, what he said," she pointed to the man behind Owen.

Owen accepted he was beaten and backed out of the ward before he could be attacked by anybody who'd caught the word "doctor". There was no way in the world he wanted to treat an overweight teenager with sunburn in obscene places. He bid a fast escape to the relative sanity of the front of the hospital.

Right, so it was eleven-fifteen and he had nothing to show for his trip out to the hospital. It wasn't strictly his fault, and he had a very good excuse for not having found anything out (though he intended to embellish the truth a little when he retold the story), he was still loathe to go back to the Hub completely empty-handed. For once, Gwen was in the dog-house, not him, and, to his surprise, he was enjoying the sensation of not being Jack's arch-nemesis on the team. Not that he was ever going to become quite such a faithful follower of him as Ianto, but even so… the feeling wasn't entirely unpleasant.

Outside, the air wasn't much cooler or fresher than in the hospital, as engine fumes mingled with the tobacco smoke wafting over from several huddles of smokers. It was something that had always amused him when he worked in hospitals, and even more so now he didn't. Relatives standing outside having a cigarette were one thing, but more often than not, the majority of the smokers were doctors and nurses. It had been a running joke at his last job before Torchwood happened that the quickest way to see a doctor was to nip outside and have a swift fag; more than one diagnosis had taken place outside over a friendly cigarette break. It seemed things hadn't changed at all.

While he deliberated his next move, Owen leaned against the wall, accidentally eavesdropping on a conversation between two nurses, a pretty Welsh redhead and a peroxide blonde Scouser.

"I mean, I only became a nurse because my mum watched Casualty, and I quite fancied George Clooney!" the blonde exclaimed, knocking the ash off the end of her cigarette. "If I'd known it was going to be all sun-burnt arses and old pervs, I wouldn't have bothered, I've have become a hairdresser instead."

"I know." The Welsh girl nodded in agreement. "It all looks so much more glamorous on TV." She ran a hand through her red hair. "I was watching that modeling show last night, I reckon I could do that, you know."

"Oh, I love that!" the other nurse squealed. "You'd be so good at it, babes."

The Welsh girl grinned, and Owen had to admit she did look pretty hot. "It would be better than this anyway. Imagine having your photo taken for a living!"

"And wearing nice clothes." The Scouser sighed. "Can't remember the last time I bought any new clothes."

Something clicked into place in Owen's mind. And he stepped forward.

"Hey, I couldn't help overhearing your conversation," he said smoothly, moving between the two young women. "You know, I've got a friend who's a photographer, he's always looking for new talent. You two have really got interesting faces."

The Welsh girl smiled again, looking more than interested, but the Scouse girl looked dubious.

"Really? You know, if I had a quid for every time a bloke had mentioned his 'photographer friend', I wouldn't be a nurse anymore." She looked Owen up and down. "And you should mind your own."

Owen gave her a smile. God, he loved feisty women! "You're right. I don't have any photographer friends."

The blonde rolled her eyes. "Knew it."

"Sorry."

The Welsh girl looked disappointed beyond belief. "Oh." She sighed. "I better be getting back inside then."

"Sorry…" Owen strained to look at her name badge. "Kirsty. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Kirsty."

"That's alright." Kirsty shrugged, and smiled again. "Most exciting thing that'll happen to me today."

"You could be a model," Owen insisted. "You're wasted on the old pervs."

Kirsty gave him her widest smile yet. "Thanks. Blimey, wish we had more people like you around." She glanced at her friend. "You coming in, Vi?"

"I'll just finish this," Vi waved her cigarette at the other nurse. "I'll be in in five."

Kirsty went in, her smile fading as she entered the claustrophobic atmosphere of the hospital again.

Owen turned back to Vi. "You were quick off the mark there. How did you know I didn't have a friend who was a photographer?"

"Guys like you never do," Vi replied. "Or if you do, he keeps all his photos for his private collection." She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked him up and down curiously. "Have to admit, you had me going for a second. Guys like you don't usually try and pick up women outside hospitals."

"I'm a special kind." Owen grinned widely.

"That's one way of putting it," Vi agreed. "So, who are you?"

"Owen Harper. Doctor."

Vi rolled her eyes. "Great, another one. Like we need another one around here. A word of advice, Doctor Harper; if you intend to hit on nurses, that doesn't usually impress us."

Owen frowned; things had changed since his day.

"Are you one of the locums they've called in?" Vi asked.

"No. They've called in locums?" Owen picked his ears up.

"Yeah. To deal with the heat-wave."

"Right." Owen nodded. "Is it causing a lot of trouble, the weather?"

Vi looked at him disbelievingly. "For a doctor, you're not too bright."

"Thanks!"

"Well, come on!" Vi gestured to the ambulances pulling up as regular as clockwork and the never-ending stream of patients in and out (though mostly in) of the door. "Look around. It's chaos."

"Right, yeah." Owen nodded. "What I meant to say is, is there any pattern to what's going on? Anything suspicious going on?"

Vi suddenly backed away from him by one step, a frown coming over her face. For a moment Owen thought he'd blown in, gone in too heavy. She blinked, her heavily-mascaraed eyelashes batting furiously as she thought. "What are you?" she asked eventually. "Why are you asking these questions?"

She was on the ball. Owen liked that. He wondered which story to tell; he had a fine number of cover-ups he'd trotted out to various women since he'd joined Torchwood. His personal favourite (though least effective) one was that he was a professional footballer player. For some reason, very few ever seemed to believe that one. He looked at Vi now, wondering which one she'd believe. Then he realised that the only one that would sound in any way convincing, the only way he could possibly convince this woman, was to tell the truth.

"I'm… I'm sort of an investigator," he said, lowering his voice slightly. "In… suspicious activity."

Vi raised her eyebrows. "Like the police?"

"No, we're separate from the police."

"We?"

Owen hoped he wasn't making a huge mistake by telling her this. "Torchwood."

Vi wrinkled her nose up. "Never heard of them."

"Exactly." Owen leaned even closer to her. "Vi, this heat-wave, we think there's something going on."

"Like what?" Vi's face showed incredulity, but her voice betrayed her curiosity. "Who could possibly be controlling the weather?"

"Not who. What." Owen saw her eyebrows fly into her heavy blonde fringe. "I need to know what sort of symptoms people in there are coming in with. And where they're coming from."

"And you're telling me this why?"

"Because I think you can help."

Vi was unable to stop a smug smile spreading across her face. "You're probably right," she agreed. "But why would I want to?"

Owen was happy to return her smile then. "Because if you do, I'll show you a really good time."

Vi looked him up and down again. "I bet you will," she said in a low voice. She nodded slowly. "I finish my shift at seven tonight. Pick me up then and I'll show you what I've got."

"There's an offer I can't refuse," Owen joked as Vi stubbed her cigarette out and turned to head back into the hospital.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Believe me, Dr. Harper, you really won't be able to," she said, her tongue poking out mischievously, before pushing through the double doors into the building.

Next time: A Bit Slow

"Five more steps and then-"

The Doctor never finished his sentence as suddenly, without warning, the lights went out, briefly, just for one second. It was almost like blinking, only when they were able to see again…

"It's…. gone." Rose stared in disbelief at the wall which had formed in front of them, where seconds before there had been a pass to freedom. "But… it was there, the exit, I saw it, we were out!"