Jack kicks the door in anyway.

The no9's body is disappearing in a blaze of light, head back, mouth open in ecstasy or terror, I can't tell. What was Gwawr is the light, half-humanoid, pressed against him, with tendrils of light everywhere. One of them snakes towards me, passes me in a flash and a sensation of extreme heat and then is gone. I back up. Jack backs up too. The others are backed up so far they're outside the door.

Then there's the growl of a thousand voices, the light shrinks in an instant to the size of a marble and zips past us. The no9's body, still twitching, hits the floor.

'He's alive,' says Owen.

'Take him back to the Hub,' says Jack and orders me to sort the retconning before they leave.

I lever up the beer hatch and drop into the dusty cellar. I detach the lines, open the barrels and drop in the pills. Retconning is like making tea - you need one less teabag, or pill, than there are people. They'll think they just had a heavy night. They troop in – match abandoned – and while they drink I tell them tales of rugby derring-do, mostly whatever I can remember from Wales matches. Then I have a round of cheery handshakes, leave them with the impression I was a linesman, and drive back to the Hub.

'Fucking hell!' I shout. 'I've told you not to touch my fucking archives!' Papers are scattered all over the floor, artefacts abandoned on any convenient shelves, the K'rillizian morphic n'ntng on the floor.

'Do you have any idea what would've happened if you'd broken this?!' I demand, holding up the n'ntng at Owen, who is, of course, mostly responsible.

'Do you know what's going to happen with Gwawr now?' says Owen.

'No,' I say, picking up the papers and beginning to flick them back into alphabetical order.

'Then don't you think we should find out quickly?'

'Look under 347.14,' I say. 'Also try 545.29 and there might be something useful in the 1924 archives under E.' They all look at me, then file out of the archives. 'I'll do it, then.' I mutter to myself.

I nearly shout out and then I think I'll just read it first. It's the 1924 archives, and I feel a little fillip when I see the angular initials in the top right hand corner ABE. Aled Bryn Evans.

I met him once, at the very end of his life, his mind still sharp, his humour just below the surface and his voice telling on and on of all the things he had seen. But in 1924 he was young and the sense of wonder drifts off the page.

He begins dry, the listing of the phenomena, the things they saw. But towards the end he begins to speculate: 'Humanoid, even caring, but with no colour. It's as if they model themselves on us, but they never quite get it right. It's as if they just pour wax into a mould.'

I pull the cross references, and begin to sort them into the most logical order: medical notes for Owen, algorithms that need running down for Tosh. Then I find something that might mean something to Jack, mark it with a little tag and leave it on his desk.

He notices me as I cross the Hub and brings the team up to his office.

'Ianto?'

'We have some time,' I say.

'How much?' asks Jack.

I look at my watch. 'Twelve hours.'

'Dawn?' asks Tosh.

'How convenient,' says Owen.

'That's the good news, isn't it?' says Gwen.

'Don't start with the good news, Ianto, start with the bad news,' says Jack.

'She's gestating.'

'Oh fucking great,' says Owen.

I press on. 'She will have babies. It's hard to know how many, but we're not talking five or six. Each of these babies will have the same powers, for want of a better word, as Gwawr. Each of them will be seeking a world in which to reproduce.'

'How are they going to do that?' asks Tosh.

'Er, it looks like they're going to hurtle themselves at the Rift until it gives and then take potluck.'

'Can we leave them to it?' asks Gwen.

'It won't be that simple,' says Owen.

Jack says slowly, 'There's no way that the Rift can take that much disturbance at once. They could just blow the whole thing wide open.'

'Essentially, sir, yes.' I say.

'How did they stop them the first time?' asks Gwen.

'They shot them.' I say.

'Well, that's easy enough,' says Owen.

I add, 'One of the operatives had to climb into the Rift and hold it shut,'

'You can do that?' asks Gwen.

'In very, very special circumstances,' says Jack.

'Such as?'

'Being prepared to die.'

'I think we're ahead of the game there,' says Owen.

'Where dying means your atoms being pulverised and reforming in a different dimension. Where it means you can't come back.' I say.

I can feel that everyone is avoiding looking at Jack. I'm certainly not doing it.

'Let's come up with a better plan, then,' he says. 'Ianto, you have the medical notes? Owen, you take those, Gwen you look into the 'mate', uh –'

'Harri Griffiths.'

'Tosh, you examine the Rift patterns for anything that might help us.'

'Says here,' says Owen, having grabbed his notes and sashayed over to Jack's desk. 'Can cause loss of sexual appetite in people other than the designated partner.' I don't look at Jack. 'That's what I call a side effect,' says Gwen.

'It's not quite morning glory, is it?' says Owen.

Then I look at Jack. He has a huge grin on his face and runs his fingers across my shoulders on the way out.