A/N: The next chapter's up now! Thanks for all the positive feedback! x

CHAPTER 6

"Aha!" cried Jack triumphantly, scrolling down the page and jabbing his finger on the printed date. "The last recorded sighting of the Agniton was… in 1983. And yes, kids," he added, "I was sporting a mullet…"

Gwen let out a snorted snigger, a little louder than anticipated, whilst Ianto sat back in stunned silence, a genuine look of horror on his face.

Jack, oblivious to the reaction, continued: "Well, seems like they wanted to make themselves known… a supermarket sweep resulting in twelve deaths, and a further five victims left in a permanent catatonic state."

Ianto let out a whistle, "Dale Winton wouldn't have liked that!"

Gwen raised a questioning eyebrow. "I won't ask…"

"Have you never watched daytime TV?"

"Well, it's all antiques and housing nowadays…"

"Yeah, but everyone's seen Supermarket Sweep…"

"People! Let's get back to the task in hand!"

"Sorry…" they both mumbled. Jack took another swig of coffee, and was about to replace the mug when he saw a rather large coffee-ring strain on the corner of the archive document. The liquid had started to seep through the thin paper, spreading across the printed information and causing the ink to run.

"Shoot!"

"I'll go and make another copy before we lose all the information," hastened Ianto, seeing Jack's face redden. "I'm not sure we'll be able to read it otherwise," he added, quickly taking the sodden sheet and disappearing from the room.

With a sigh, Jack slumped forward until his forehead lay against the cool surface of the boardroom table. His temper that morning had been as unpredictable as the English weather: perfectly fine and dandy one minute, and raging and thunderous the next. Gwen and Ianto both had experience of being on the receiving end of one of Jack's mood swings, but today was something else all together. Whatever was going on inside his head, Gwen didn't like it. She had had a serious headache since the events last night – perhaps Jack had one too?

There was silence until Ianto returned five minutes later, clutching a freshly printed sheet of paper and, laying it down on the pile to Jack's left, quickly returned to his seat. The Captain sat up again, "Thanks."

"The Agniton, Jack," enquired Gwen. "What are they?"

"Originally, they came through a temporal shift in the Rift. Nothing major. Just a little blip and – whoosh! Here they were. As I've told you all before, Earth humans are a unique species, you'll find no other across the galaxy. Well, all five galaxies in fact; but that's another story…"

"So, what do they want, exactly?" asked Ianto. "They won't have come all the way from… from… where are they from?"

"Agniton."

"Oh, how original. Well, they won't have come all the way from Agniton to admire the sheep in the Beacons!"

Jack sighed, "The Agniton scour the galaxies and ransack planets for their information: resources, history, life-forms etcetera, etcetera. They use their tentacley fingers –" here, he demonstrated with actions "– to extract this information from their unlucky victims; whilst feeding off the nerve impulses of the brain."

"Eugh!" exclaimed Gwen and Ianto in unison.

"That's not the half of it," he continued. "Once this information's gone, that's it: it's gone. Forever. Just an empty jar on the memory shelf, and no way of re-stocking. The catatonic shoppers I mentioned before? Well, they had everything taken: every thought, memory and scrap of imagination. The Agniton just left them there. Empty shells."

"So that's," Gwen swallowed, "that's what happened to Maurice?" A silent nod from Jack told her all she needed to know. "Bastards…" she whispered.

There was a long awkward silence, except for the soft, persistent humming of the air conditioning set above the table.

"Do you think this will happen again?" asked Ianto, breaking the silence. "I thought Tosh set up the sensors to detect any sign of movement in the Rift; theoretically, their blip should have been picked up ages ago."

"Ah, theoretically is a good word, theoretically. But, Ianto, you should know by now. With Torchwood, life goes beyond theories and into the realm of the darn right weird and distorted!"

"You can say that again," murmured Gwen.

"Basically, the signals radiating from earth's satellites have drawn the Agniton in, literally handing them a menu on a plate. For a new generation of the species, a unique race such as Earth-humans would be significantly – and temptingly – different to their usual palate. We only detected them when they started to feed."

"So, it's like they'd only ever eaten chicken, but now they have the chance to try something exotic – like, I don't know, a crocodile or a kangaroo…"

"Erm, yyyes, something like that." Jack's right eyebrow was raised high. "I do worry about you sometimes, Ianto, I really do…"

Ianto shuffled in his seat as the colour gradually rose to his cheeks. Gwen smiled faintly, the cruel fate of her former college still at the front of her mind.

"But how do we stop them?" she asked.

"Ah, well, that I don't know. There are no records in the archive that mention anything specific, although I do know that a Torchwood operative was killed."

"Oh my god!"

"They must have an Achilles' heel, surely?"

"I wish I knew, but I wasn't here last time they decided to put in a visit. I was on a mission to Scotland to visit Archie – business about the Loch Ness Monster, if my memory serves correctly."

"So that's it then?" said Gwen. "We have a number of hungry brain-sucking aliens loose in Wales, with no way of stopping them?"

"In a word: yes. Although technically they don't actually suck the brains …"

"Not helping, Ianto!" intercepted Jack angrily. "It's more than likely that the Agniton who attacked Maurice was a Scout, sent here to sample what's on offer before reporting back to higher command. That means there may only be two or three of them – we need to stop them now before they reach desserts and their reviews are published for the rest of their planet to see. Right then, team!" he said, rubbing his hands together. "Gwen, get your police hat on. Give Andy a ring, and see what information you can get from their records: similar cases, suspicious sightings, yada yada. You know the drill."

"I'm on it."

"Ianto!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get me another coffee." He paused. "I've got a bugger of a headache…"

"Oh," he hesitated, not expecting the given reply. "Right you are, sir," and with that, he rose from his seat and left the boardroom, glancing back to see Jack with his head in his hands. He continued through the tunnel.

"Oh, and Ianto," Jack raised his head as he called after him, "could you drop Archie a line? We haven't heard from him in a while, and with that man, no news isn't necessarily good news."

"Will do," he replied with a nod.

"And Ianto?" The young man rolled his eyes as he turned around. "What have I told you about calling me 'sir'…?"