A/N:

Thank you so much for the reviews this has recieved, especially as we move off into CoE territory... it looks like it's going to get written and posted a wee bit slower than planned. Everybody decided that it was "drop in on Helen" day today, so I wasn't able to get any furhter than this.


Chapter Nine:

Day One, Part Two

"Children are one-third of our population and all of our future"

Author unknown


The Hub was dark when Gwen walked through the rolling cog door. "Hello!" she hollered anyway. "Anybody in? Mickey?" He was supposed to be pulling an overnighter. "Oi! Mickey!" She called louder; that man could sleep through World War Three.

But still no one answered, not even Myfanwy.

With a sigh, Gwen made her way to her station and activated the main lights from her computer console. That was when she noticed the post-it note near her monitor, next to the worn picture of Tosh and Owen. She smiled at the pair of them… no matter what, they would always be a part of Torchwood, a part of her heart. She plucked the note off the Plexiglas and did her best to decipher Mickey's horrible scrawl.

Gwen –

The new program found an alien life form. Me and Sara are on it so you can tell Captain Poncy Pants not to get his knickers in a bunch.

Mickey

PS—he just called in to say he'd be late. Something to do with Ianto's fam.

Discarding the note, Gwen set down the cup of tea she'd picked up on her way in and settled into her desk. She logged into the server. "Right then… c-h-i-l-d-r-e-n…" she typed…


Jack's mobile rang just as he was sliding in behind the wheel of the SUV. "Yeah—?"

"Jack," it was Nerys.

"We're just getting in the car," he told her. Ianto flashed over a concerned look.

"You don't have to come out, everything's all right now," she said. She sounded shaken…relieved.

"What do you mean, 'everything's all right now'?" he wanted to know. Nothing was making sense this morning. A few minutes ago, she'd been in hysterics.

In the passenger seat, his husband frowned; all he could do was shrug. He had no idea what was going on.

"Remy's fine," said Nerys. "She just…she started moving again, she got up from the table, she's fine, Jack. Everything's going to be all right."

Ok, so maybe she still sounded a little hysterical. "We're coming out anyway," he decided.

"You don't need to bother, really—"

"We'll be there in twenty minutes."

"But she has school—"

"Twenty minutes," he repeated then hung up before she could argue further. Apparently stubbornness ran in the family.


Gwen grimaced when Mickey, looking entirely too pleased with himself, showed her the alien 'hitchhiker' he and Sara had pulled out of some poor old codger at St Helen's. It wasn't so much that it looked vile (although it did), it was that it reeked, smelling of rotten eggs and sour milk. The man it was using as a host had died of what appeared to be completely natural causes. When he died, so did the parasite—or at least that was the most logical conclusion, seeing as it was already dead when Sara removed it from the man's abdomen with a laser scalpel.

Mickey spent the next few minutes filling Gwen in on the details, particularly how him and Sara had played the concerned neighbours for the hospital staff to get in to see the body for 'one last good-bye' rather than causing a raucous. He sniffled and blinked away non-existent tears while Sara, perched on the edge of Gwen's desk, rolled her eyes and drank her peppermint tea. Gwen was very clearly trying not to laugh at Mickey's encore performance.

"I'll just put this bad boy into cold storage for Bobby, then," the Londoner finished his story with a Cheshire grin.

"You do that," Sara retorted; she was just as happy as the other woman to have the alien out of her sight and locked away where she couldn't smell it any more, either. She turned to her female colleague, "What are you working on?" Gwen had been in the middle of a telephone conversation with some police Sergeant when they came in. All she'd been able to glean from Gwen's side was that the Welshwoman wasn't pleased with whatever the Sergeant had to say.

Gwen drained the last of the tea from her takeaway cup. "Dunno for sure," she said. "Something odd happened this morning. I was on my way in and it was like all the children just…stopped."

"Stopped?" Sara queried.

"Yeah, and it wasn't just here. I've been doing some checking," she pulled the news reports up on her monitor. "Same thing happened in France, Spain… all over the Europe. Then they started up again a minute later, like nothing had happened. It was really weird. What about you two? Did you see anything while you were out? Well, you know, apart from…" she nodded in the direction of the autopsy bay, Mickey and the deceased alien.

Sara shook her head. "But we were pretty focused on that thing." She folded her arms across her chest and peered over the other's shoulder. "That and some doctor at St Helens who was going on about missing bodies. Asian, African, Middle Eastern, all males, all minorities, at least according to his 'observations'." She sounded dubious. "He asked us if we were with Torchwood."

"What did you say?" Gwen wondered.

Sara grinned. "I let Mickey do the talking."

The other smirked, she couldn't help it. Mickey, for all his genuine brilliance, had a real knack for coming off as an idiot when he wanted to—sometimes even when he didn't want to. "How'd that go?" she asked.

"I'm pretty sure he lost interest in us. I'm still going to check on the missing bodies though, just in case there's something to it," she said, even though she was clearly doubtful of the validity of the doctor's story.

"No harm in checking it out, I suppose," Gwen agreed. "I'll keep working on this, then."

Mickey rejoined them just as Sara was settling in at her station, getting ready to start searching death records from St Helen's Hospital. He'd heard about half of their conversation on his way from the medical by to the kitchenette. "Hang on," he said through a mouthful of cold pizza from last night's supper; he stuffed more of it into his mouth and started typing something in on his computer. "What?" He asked in an indignant tone to the askance looks being shot his way. "I haven't eaten yet, I'm starving—woke to an alien alert, remember?" He turned to Gwen. "What time did you say?" he asked her. "About the kids?"

"Between eight forty and eight forty one. Exactly one minute. There were a series of traffic accidents all at the same time all over Europe. Everybody's saying the same thing, that the children just stopped, right in the middle of the road. Even Rhys saw it," she added, "Called to ask me about it."

Mickey tapped at his keyboard, chewing and swallowing his breakfast without tasting the day old pizza as he waited impatiently for the server to spit forth the requested information. "Here we go… bloody Hell. Gwen, it wasn't just Europe. Egypt, Bosnia, Norway, Sweden… India… China… the United States… most kids in the Western Hemisphere were still asleep, but…Jesus, there are reports from all over the world of children just… just stopping," he turned to stare at her over his shoulder. What was going on out there…?

"All at the same time?" asked Sara, even as both she and Gwen were pulling the same information up at their terminals. Suddenly reports of missing bodies didn't seem half so important.

The two women stared at one another over the tops of their desks, gobsmacked. All around the world, the reports were the same, children stopping in their tracks, catatonic. "We'd better call Jack—" Gwen began.

"Oi!" Mickey called out suddenly, cutting her off. "I knew it—Sara! Look! He followed us home!"

"What?" said Gwen. "Who followed you?" she moved over to Mickey's station, Sara on her heels. The image on one of his secondary monitors was of the CCTV feed from the Plass. There was a man was wandering around aimlessly, seeming as if he was lost—or looking for something, but not knowing where he should look to find it. "Who is that?" she wanted to know.

"Dr Rupesh Patanjali," Mickey told her in a glib tone.

"The missing bodies guy," Sara clarified. "He saw the hitchhiker."

"He what?"

"He didn't freak out," said Mickey, shoving the last of the cold pizza into his mouth. "Well, you know, not much, anyway," he shrugged. "Who wouldn't be a little bit freaked out by that thing?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. She watched Dr Patanjali for several more moments as he ambled haplessly around the Plass. "Reminds me and of how I stumbled onto this place," she muttered… she turned her attention back to her teammates. "How the Hell did he find us?"

"He didn't follow us," the other woman insisted. "I would have noticed—"

Mickey cut her off. "If you ask around about Torchwood long enough, somebody's bound point towards the bay."

The brunette stifled a groan; he had a point. For a 'super secret' organization, they weren't terribly secretive. As a rookie copper she'd managed to track down Torchwood simply by asking at the local take aways. She had the sudden image in her mind of Jack and Ianto… no, more likely Jack and Owen… watching her the same way they were watching Patanjali, probably wondering if she was ever going to figure it out or if she was going to get cold, get bored… give up. Go home. Maybe even taking bets as to how long it would take her. "Right," she said. "Someone should go and talk to him."

"Are you serious?" Mickey asked, clearly not believing that she could be.

"Well we can't just have him wandering around out there asking questions, can we?" and with that, she was off towards the cog door before either of them could stop her.

"We'd better call Jack," Mickey echoed Gwen's earlier sentiment.

Sara was already dialling the number for his mobile.


"I'm telling you, she's fine!" Nerys insisted; she'd greeted them at the front door and seemed to be almost refusing to let them in, stepping out onto the front porch to talk instead, as if that by denying them access, she could deny that anything bad had happened.

"Nerys—" Jack struggled to keep his composure. He hadn't driven all the way there to be turned back at the door. Besides, he could see what she was doing and denying that something had happened didn't change the fact that… his mobile rang. "I'm starting to really hate this thing," he muttered as he flipped it open. "Yeah?"

"Jack, it's Sara," she said. "Something weird is happening."

"Tell me about it," he grumbled.

There was a long pause on the other end. "Jack… Jason… is he… was he affected by whatever affected all the other children this morning? Is he all right?"

That got his attention in a hurry. "What? What other children?"

Ianto shot him a questioning look, but all the Captain could do was hold up his hand, he would explain what was going on as soon as he knew himself.

"All the other children," Sara told him over the phone. "Everywhere," she relayed the story in as few words as possible—which given the lack of facts, wasn't terribly difficult.

He hung up with her; instead of turning to Ianto, Jack looked at Nerys. "We need to talk to Remy. Now." But first he was going to call his mother to make sure Jason was all right…


Wendy had no idea how long she'd been standing there. The sky was still dark. The moon seemed to have moved closer to the horizon. Behind her, in the Wilson's house, she heard somebody's pager start to beep. She stood, watching the sky, waiting, tension mounting… something was happening. Something was coming. Something terrible. Something that had happened before.

Upstairs in the guest bedroom, Bobby woke… found her side bed empty. He squinted at the clock; it read 5:22 am.

He slid on his bathrobe and crept down the hall…Wen wasn't in the bathroom. He spied a light on in Amber and James' bedroom, heard someone speaking in hushed tones… he couldn't make out whether it was James or Amber. Before he had the chance to tap on the door and ask if everything was all right, his mobile rang. He padded quickly back down the hall and picked it up off the nightstand.

"Hello?"

"Bobby, it's Ianto," the Welshman's voice sounded strained.

"What's going on…it's…" he did the math. It was ten thirty in the morning on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Have you been anywhere near a radio or the tele?" the other cut him off.

"What? No. It's the middle of the night over here."

"I know, sorry. Something's happening."

Bobby frowned, glanced at the empty pillow where Wendy had gone to sleep next to him. "What's do you mean, what's going on?"

"I don't know exactly. But it's happening all over the world. It has something to do with the children. It started this morning, around eight forty, they all just… every child in the world just stopped. And just now it happened again. Only this time… every child in the world spoke in unison, Bobby," he told the Australian over the phone, only barely able to believe what he was saying himself. "They said 'we are coming.' Jack says he's never heard anything like it before."

"My God. Jason—?"

There was only a very brief pause on the other end, just long enough for the younger man to swallow back the cold hard lump in his throat. "He's fine, just a bit of a tummy ache this morning. Not sure if it's connected or not. Jack figures he's not being affected by…by whatever it is because of the erm… special circumstances." Being born in the fifty first century… but Remy… Gavin's children… Cade's… "As far as we know, he's the only one who hasn't been affected it."

"What about RJ?" he wanted to know.

"He's too young we think. It only seems to be affecting children about five years and older. Just the children, not teens." He'd already been on the line to Sarah Jane. Luke was fine, so were his friends, but Sarah Jane didn't have any more idea what was going on than they did.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Bobby.

"Just keep your eyes and ears open. We're doing what we can to figure it out, but honestly…honestly I don't know what to say. Jack and I are on our way into the Hub. Hopefully we'll have some answers soon."

"All right. Keep in touch," he said and hung up. James was coming down the hall, dressed, looking harried. "What's going on?" Bobby asked him.

"Something happened at the hospital, some kind of… emergency," he shrugged, clearly uncertain what the real story was. "Cuddy called everybody in."

"I'm coming in with you. I just have to find Wendy first."

"Do you know something the rest of us don't?" he tucked in his shirt.

"I," he hesitated, "I can't say for sure. But I just got a call from work. Something's happened. I'm guessing it's the reason you were called in."

The Amreican paled. The last few years… the Atmos thing… the ghosts before that… last year, Daleks… "Would you really tell us what was going on if you knew what was going on?"

"Yes. If I could—if I can, when we figure it out. You have my word."

Wilson regarded him a moment, then nodded. "I'll see if Wendy's downstairs with Amber," he offered.

"Thanks. I won't be long," he said and started getting himself dressed. At the very least, if something had really spooked Wen, the whole house would have heard it by now.

And wouldn't that be interesting to explain…