5.

It was one of those late night phone calls that Jack needed to make him feel better sometimes. Ianto was enough, his team was enough – most of the time. Sometimes, though, he just needed someone who'd been through one hellish year, just like him. Someone who remembered what it was like. That kind of trust didn't come easily and Martha Jones, the woman who walked the Earth, would forever have it. "Whatever you do, Jack, be careful," Martha said and Jack could hear her concern coming down the phone line stretching from Cardiff, Torchwood Three, to London, UNIT UK Headquarters. "I heard General Leslie was having an office party after Peralta left. Nobody here likes him and that has its reasons."

"Enlighten me," Jack asked.

Martha sighed. "What did he tell you about his male pregnancy experiments?"

"That he tried and failed. Not much more."

"Well, let's say the tests weren't entirely sanctioned by the superiors."

Jack frowned. He grabbed his pen and started to tap the desktop nervously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He impregnated a few laboratory assistants and soldiers without their consent. Of course, nobody dared to fire him. He's very good at what he does and UNIT needs him. So all he got was a suspension."

Jack dropped the pen, put his head in one hand and rubbed his face tiredly. "I can't believe Leslie didn't tell me."

"Maybe he knew that you would never let Peralta into your Hub if he did."

He sighed deeply. "This is getting better and better."

"Jack, just … be careful. Tell your team to be careful and you should be fine. It's only a few days."

"Yeah," Jack muttered. "Only a few days."

xxx

The Rift alarm came in in the early morning hours. The spike was massive, nothing Jack would be comfortable with handling alone, so he called his team to let them know he would pick them up to take them to the site. All of them except Ianto who volunteered to come and coordinate from the Hub. Normally, they left one of them there just in case something showed up on the computers or they needed something brought to them. Most of the time, it was either Ianto or Tosh taking on that duty.

Jack collected Gwen and Tosh from in front of their flats and a short, high speed drive later, the tyres of the SUV squealed to a stop beside Owen who was waiting on the side walk. "So what have we got?" he asked while he climbed into the passenger seat. Gwen and Tosh were sitting in the back. While Tosh was working on the built-in computers, Gwen was busy readying her gun.

Jack accelerated, hearing Owen give a moan as if he was barely stopping himself from telling Jack to slow down. He ignored it, the team had always been sceptical about his driving. He just wanted to get them there on time. "Rift activity in Grangetown. A serious spike."

"Define serious," Owen said.

Tosh called out from the back seat, "Off the scale."

Owen grimaced. "Just what I need on a rainy night."

Jack cut around a corner, bumping over the side walk. Gwen cursed softly and Tosh gave a small sound of protest when the seatbelt cut into her shoulder. Owen glared at Jack. "Hello? Fragile person sitting right next to you!"

"I never have accidents," Jack replied.

"Say all the guys who then die in a car accident!" Owen snapped. Jack braked viciously, throwing them all into their seatbelts. Owen glared at him. "No need to stop. I was just saying."

"I didn't stop because of you." Jack released his seatbelt. "We're here." Tense silence filled the car while they all stared through the windscreen. It was the IKEA parking lot at Heol Ferry, abandoned at this hour. Rain was pounding on the roof of the SUV and the only other sound was the swishing of water when cars passed by on the roundabout next to the parking lot. A blue plastic bag was blown across the empty space.

Owen quipped, "Doesn't look like they're having a sale, does it?"

Gwen smiled wryly. "Could we check out the green couch Rhys is raving about while we're here?"

Jack just gave them a grim look and got out of the car. Rain had his hair plastered to his head in seconds. He turned up the lapels of his coat and buttoned it up. "Tosh?"

She stepped next to him, looking at her PDA. "No activity. No life signs."

Owen stood next to her, shouldering his backpack with medical equipment, unimpressed by the rain beating down on him. One of the advantages of being dead, Jack thought, Owen couldn't feel cold.

Gwen on the other hand shivered while she zipped up her leather jacket. "Well …," she said. "This is certainly a lively neighbourhood." Rain had stuck her dark hair to her head. All of them were holding their guns. You could never be too careful. Jack's fingers were gripping his old-fashioned Webley. It felt like an extension of his arm since he'd gotten it as a service weapon during world war one. After all these years, his fingers had left little indentations on the grip, making holding it even more comfortable. He tightened his grip nervously, taking security from the revolver, and tapped his headset. "Ianto, what have you got for us?"

The answer filtered through all their comm links. "Not a thing. Everything's peaceful."

Owen groaned. "Please don't tell me you dragged me away from Six Feet Under for nothing. It was just getting interesting."

Gwen thought back to her warm bed and her fiancé curled up in it, snoring and hogging the blankets, and she sighed wistfully.

Defending Jack, Tosh replied, "We had a pretty strong spike here." She was checking her PDA. "But I've got nothing now." She pulled a scanner from her coat and waved it around. "Traces of Rift energy and some chronon particles, though. So there definitely was something here."

And then, Jack felt it – something changed, shifted. Time and space itself.

"Whoa!" Tosh said when her device beeped.

Ianto's voice rang out, tense, "You've got incoming."

And then the world opened on the other side of an IKEA parking lot and through the golden shimmering gate stepped … something. They all raised their weapons. The Rift closed.

Jack ran towards the being that had come into their world, their time, calling out, "Hold it right there!" The being was tall and slim. Jack realized that it was the same thing that they had seen on the CCTV footage. This being had killed two people. It turned its head in their direction and now, Jack finally realized what had sent shivers down his spine since the very first moment he'd seen this thing on the video. He knew this being ... from a long time ago. Where there should be a face, there was just an empty space. No eyes, no ears, nothing … just a flat, light-brown surface. Jack froze and held out an arm to halt his team. The being was looking at them and seemed to consider something for a split-second, then it raised his hand calmly. Jack's eyes widened. "Down! Down!" But it was already too late. They were lifted off their feet and thrown backwards to land in a tangled heap on the hard asphalt. Gwen cried out when Jack's elbow dug into her stomach when he jumped to his feet. "Stop!" He ran after the being … Golem. Jack didn't need to look back, he could hear his team following him.

Gwen panted into her headset, "Ianto, we're chasing it. Add another thing to that list of what to cross-reference for in the archives: it didn't have a face."

"Ianto," Jack said before he could answer Gwen, "forget that. Just get me everything we've got about Golems."

"Golems? You mean-"

"Yes," Jack interrupted him, "we're in really big trouble."

The Golem chose this moment to burst through the metal gate protecting the entrance to IKEA and then the window. Jack called over his shoulder, "Looks like we can check out that couch after all."

The burglar alarms activated.

Ianto said, "I'm liaising with the police."

"Pull rank," Jack answered and stepped into the darkened store. The displayed furniture was nothing more than shadows. He lowered his voice. "They should cordon off the area."

"Yes, sir. Cover story?"

"Leave that for now," Jack said. "Maybe we'll catch that thing before anyone sees it and then we can note it down as a prank gone wrong." He looked at the team. "It's not one for hiding or subtlety. You won't have any trouble finding it. It'll be getting its bearings right about now and look for an escape route. We'll split up." Jack pointed Gwen and Tosh in one direction and took off with Owen into the other.

xxx

The battle of Canary Wharf and the fall of Torchwood One had destroyed a lot of knowledge. Not all the files that had been kept in Torchwood Tower had been sent to Torchwood Two or Three or copied for UNIT. Yvonne Hartmann had worked under the impression that not everything going on in London should concern the other Torchwood branches. The Golems were one of those things. Ianto had only heard about them through the grapevine. He didn't know what exactly they were or what Torchwood One had wanted with them but he'd known that they had been deemed very dangerous. Enough so that their name has still been part of the Torchwood legends even though there had been no active projects involving them for decades. At least that was what the official story had been. Ianto wasn't surprised to find that they had no files about the Golems in their database, but there was a note suggesting asking UNIT for copies. Ianto sent an official request, knowing it would get turned down, but that's what they had Tosh for. She would be able to hack into UNIT's data base and get the files without UNIT being any the wiser. Ianto was just finishing sending the request when someone behind him asked, "Are you making any progress?"

Ianto turned away from the computer on his desk to look at Peralta. "They're chasing it," he said and gave an apologetic smile. "You can have the desk back in a minute. I'm just finishing something up."

"No worries," Peralta said and pulled closer the second chair that Jack sometimes used when he visited Ianto down here. He settled into it with a sigh and sipped on a cup of tea. "But you have no idea what it is yet?"

Ianto was reluctant to give away any information about the case without having Jack's permission to do so. "Not really." He got up and turned away from the desk to close one of the filing cabinets he'd left open. "I'm just on my way upstairs so you have the space back to yourself." He gave a polite smile and took his coffee from the desk, sipping carefully. It was still hot.

"I'll accompany you," Peralta said and followed him into the corridor. "I've been down here long enough for today. It can get a bit much. I couldn't sleep, though."

"I understand that," Ianto answered, only half-listening. He started climbing the stairs to the main Hub, mulling over what they knew about the killings. He couldn't come up with any connection or reason for a Golem to act that way. But then again, it wasn't alone. Somebody was behind all this, apparently using the Golem to do the dirty work. But how? He stumbled and caught himself on the handrail.

"Careful," Peralta said behind him. "These steps are slippery."

"They ..." Ianto took a breath. "They are." He took another breath, feeling slightly nauseous. "I try to take care, though that nobody ..." Something shattered and he stared numbly at the shards of the mug he'd dropped. "I ..." He didn't feel so good.

Peralta stepped into his line of vision, a worried frown on his face. "Mr. Jones, what's wrong?"

Everything went black.

xxx

The Golem – as Jack had called it – had left IKEA with the grace of an elephant through a window and the team had run after it, just in time to see it climb into the sewers through a gully. They gathered around the entrance and waited. Impatiently, Gwen turned to Jack. "We're going to lose it if we wait any longer."

"Well, it will kill us if it realizes that it's being followed," Jack replied. "We want to find out who is behind this. For that to happen, we have to find the van. It's obviously nowhere around here – too many CCTV cameras maybe –, so I assume it's waiting for the Golem somewhere else and the Golem will lead us straight to it." Jack's wrist strap beeped and he shut it up with an impatient push of a button, not even looking at it.

Owen frowned. "Could be important."

"Not as important as this. Let's go." Jack climbed down into the sewers and his team followed him.

xxx

At the same time, on the other side of the building, Captain John Hart got his bearings. He checked his vortex manipulator, spared a glance at the destroyed entrance gate to IKEA and frowned. Rick Carson stepped up next to him, looking down at his own wrist strap. "The signal's gone," he said.

John nodded. "It just vanished completely." They turned around to their companions Kenya Stevenson and Lance Hensley. The four of them was all that was left of the Time Agency and they didn't even deserve the name anymore, if John was honest. They hadn't done any work in the interests of the Shadow Proclamation in a long time.

John checked his vortex manipulator again. All of them had received a signal of a Time Agent's wrist strap opening the Rift right here not too long ago and they'd followed it back. And here was where the trail just went cold. John noticed Kenya eyeing Rick carefully, gauging his reaction. John was worried about him as well. They had waited a long time for this particular signal and now they had nothing. Just like all those years ago.

John felt rain drip down his face and soak through his red uniform jacket and he rested one hand on his sword, the other on his gun. "Sorry, Rick."

They all knew how much this meant to him. How much finding Sophia meant to him. Rick took a deep breath and shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn leather jacket. "Yeah, thanks."

Kenya raised one eyebrow at John, her fine features accentuated by the rain plastering her short, dark hair to her head.

Lance cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable saying anything at all, but he did it nevertheless, "Let's get back to that con job then?" They all looked at Rick questioningly. This was his decision. Rick took a deep breath. Lance's hand gripped the butt of his gun as if he was unsure if Rick would attack him for even suggesting they just give up.

"Yeah," Rick said finally. "Let's go." They activated their vortex manipulators, opening the Rift to the 49th century and the theft of the Silzanian crown jewels.

John was the last to go. He spared a glance at the black Torchwood SUV parked a few feet away. "I'll be back." As soon as this job was finished and he could come back to Cardiff, 21st century, without arousing suspicion, John would find out just why Torchwood seemed to be involved in all this. He didn't think Jack would be responsible for Sophia going missing. He'd genuinely liked her when he'd still been a Time Agent … but then again, Jack had changed.

John smiled. "So we'll meet again," he muttered and left through the Rift.