A/N: Hello everyone! I owe you all a big apology! When I went back and reformatted all of my existing chapters I seemed to have uploaded the same one twice under chs 27 and 28! Here is what ch. 27 SHOULD have been. Hope you enjoy reading it. Hannah xxx

Our little Weevil project is moving along nicely. Tosh has found that the patterns in 'grunts' displayed by our advanced Weevil do suggest that stronger communication skills have been developed. From the analysis of their DNA, Owen has found that our advanced Weevil contains has a variation of the DTNBP1 gene, that isn't present in our other Weevils. This gene is responsible for intelligence in humans and Owen reckons that the Weevils are evolving to become more humanlike. Gwen and I have been able to confirm this through the behavioural tests that we have run. We used a variety of techniques: providing the Weevils with simple objects like balls and broomsticks, showing them different images on flashcards, and pretending to attack. I was the unlucky one who got stuck with testing the primitive creatures… the balls were ripped to shreds and the broomsticks splintered, they showed no reaction to any of the flashcards and after faking an attack I have received a several bruises… Gwen however gained positive responses with Mable, she managed to kick the ball and demonstrated sweeping actions with the broom, we didn't get many responses with the flashcards here either but the way she responded to an attack was enough to further prove our theories alone. She didn't charge at us, bearing her teeth like the others, but shielded herself.

It's all so fascinating; I wonder if we'll see even further advanced creatures coming out from the rift? We are presenting our findings to UNIT tomorrow afternoon, it's the first liaison we have had with them since Jack vanished and we haven't told them that he's gone AWOL yet. I am not expecting them to be best pleased.

Last night, Toshiko managed to drag us all along to that pub quiz she had mentioned a few days back, and let's just say it was a disaster from start to finish. None of us really wanted to go, we've all been working so hard trying to prove our hypothesis about Mable the Weevil (that sounds quite good, like Dolly the Sheep!), and didn't want to interrupt the flow. But Tosh kept insisting that we needed a break from everything, and besides that, we were bound to stand a good chance of winning with us four on a team.

Yes, us four… That was a major spanner in the works as Tosh hadn't read the rule of entry properly and didn't realise you needed five people to make up a team. That set everyone off thinking about Jack, how much we needed him above and beyond work related reasons. So everyone was a bit down in the dumps even by the very beginning of our outing.

It got worse after Owen called up his friend Craig to come and make up the numbers, he was an absolute berk and that's putting it nicely. All he did all evening was consume a large amount of beer, hit on Gwen every five minutes and tell offensive jokes. He dragged Owen's behaviour down with him as well which didn't help matters, especially when he was getting very flirty with the barmaid right in front of Tosh; I thought he'd learnt a bit about the delicate affairs of the heart with Diane… evidently not. To further add to the disastrous nature of this evening, I couldn't stop thinking about the Captain; it's strange how something so small and everyday like needing five to make a team in a pub quiz puts things in perspective. He completed us, completed me. When he was around, although he was causing me pain through the way he treated me, I could bear it because I was when I was alone with him I could pretend that he cared as much as I wanted him to, believe in his affection. Now he's gone the pain seems pointless to endure, as I'll never again feel the warmth of his body against mine when he held me close, I would remain a broken man. I've thought about all of this before, too much in fact, but tonight jolted my subconscious in to remembering these feelings that I have been trying to shut out.

Of course it didn't help that I managed to connect every song played in the pub that evening to him: 'so many ways to die' 'how long I've been waiting' 'you really got a hold on me'… the list goes on. The only silver lining to the evening is that, even with two highly intoxicated yobbish males for teammates, we won. Tosh tried to prove that this was reason enough for it being a brilliant idea of hers, but you could tell even she wasn't buying it. I think we'll stick to a nice chinese around the conference table in future.

As predicted, the meeting with UNIT did not go brilliantly. They said that we should have informed them of Jack's disappearance immediately, I suppose that none of us wanted to report it as it made everything seem too real, announcing it would mean facing up to our abandonment. After Brigadier Marsterson got over his angry spell he was most interested in our findings with the Weevils and will be passing on our research to the intelligence department at UNIT, so that's a nice bonus. I just hope that they don't take in our Weevils for further testing; I have a feeling that they may not be as well treated at UNIT as they are with us. He concluded the meeting by saying that we 'seem to be coping' for the moment without a fifth member but if the situation changes we can always ask for help, I could see an argument brewing in Gwen's expressions but she left it until we were back in the SUV. "Coping indeed, we're bloody well doing a better job than they are and they have hundreds of staff! The cheek of it!" She isn't half amusing when she's angry, as long as her anger isn't directed towards you.

Rift activity is scheduled for tonight according to Tosh's programme, since our Weevil research project has been completed and we are left without much work to do, we are all on rift watch for a change. Providing there's no friction between Owen and Gwen, this evening should be considerably more entertaining than last night.

Well, I suppose you could call this evening entertaining, but it would depend on you interpretation of the word. In this case, entertaining would have to mean action packed and thrilling, borderline terrifying. Not however, the nice and quick Ood recovery in which we could have had a nice bit of banter in the journey there and back, as one had hoped for.

It was about half past 7 when the rift alarm sounded, Tosh traced the signal to be coming from the shopping centre which could provide difficulties as it was late night shopping and would still be packed with customers. The last thing we wanted was to have to wipe the memories of 300+ citizens of Cardiff; however we packed a large amount of retcon in the SUV along with various items of weaponry, just to be on the safe side. In all fairness we did have quite a bit of fun on the journey there at least, Proud Mary came on the radio and we were all having a mini 'rave' and a good sing-a-long (or scream along in Owen's case- he should not be allowed to sing in public.). All of us apart from Gwen that is, she was driving and her old police habits die hard, she refused to join in as it would mean taking her eyes off the road but I did see the corners of her mouth twitch up at the sight of us all in the mirror though. We arrived before the chaos had begun, thank goodness, and with the flashing of the correct (fake) identity badges we were able to get all shops to close early and all personnel to leave the centre. It was quite eerie being alone in such a large space at night.

Then all hell broke loose, a flash of blue light from inside Debenhams indicated that the rift was opening so we ran inside, armaments at the ready. I was shocked when I noticed what exactly it was that had emerged and even more stunned at the quantity of the monsters. It was Autons, about half a dozen of them. The other three were surprised to see shop manikins walking out from the breech in the rift and lowered their weapons slightly, but not me, I'd seen them before a couple of Christmases back, whilst I was still living in London.

They were living plastic beings with guns hidden in their limbs, they sounded ridiculous, when describe like this they sound almost comical, but no one was laughing when they attacked.

"Keep back, keep back" I shouted, pulling Gwen with me behind the perfume counter.

I was relieved to see that Tosh and Owen had followed my lead as I was holding my gun in the other hand and couldn't help them. The Autons had stopped moving now, and there were no visible signs of danger yet.

"Ianto, what the bloody hell is going on? Do you know what they are?" Owen whispered.

"Unfortunately, they attacked London at Christmas two years ago, believe me they are more harmful than they look" I replied.

And just as I said that three of them drew out their hidden weapons and fired at the counter, smashing bottles of fragrance, we all jumped together.

"So what do we do to fight them?" Owen asked, I assumed the question was directed at Gwen but then I noticed they were all looking expectantly at me.

"Well last time around I was only a researcher for Torchwood; I'd never been in the centre of the action at that point so I can't be entirely sure of how they tackled them, but I did have to write up the incident afterwards. The Doctor – I hated how I still had so much respect for that man despite him being the reason my Captain had abandoned ship – killed off the Nestene consciousness that was controlling them with some sort of anti-plastic solution."

I was cut off by Owen then: "anti-plastic, that's got to be a made up term?"

"Shssh" Gwen said, his voice was a little too loud for comfort.

"As I was saying" I continued "He destroyed them by killing off the source, but in our case the source could well be in another dimension on the other side of the rift. Our best bet is to fight them off directly using the anti-plastic solution."

"Where can we find the solution, do we have any at the hub?" Gwen questioned

"No. However, I can access the formula from the network but I'll need Tosh's help to prepare it" I answered.

"Right well Owen and I can handle them for now, our main priority is to stop them leaving the centre and getting in to contact with any citizens. I'm not sure how well the bullets will work but it should be enough for us to be able to contain them in here at least. You two will need make a run for it back to the SUV, and then get back to the hub to make up the solution, contact us via the comms if you get into any difficulties on the way out." She commanded.

I much preferred it when someone else was calling the shots. We didn't need telling twice so Tosh and I quickly got up and ran for our lives to the door, leaving Owen and Gwen shooting at the Autons to distract them.

We made it back to the hub in only 10 minutes, speeding all the way; thankfully I know my way around the system well enough to track down the formula quickly. And Toshiko, being brilliant as she is, prepared the cocktail within a similarly short space of time, meaning that we only actually left Gwen and Owen by themselves for about half an hour.

In this time they had managed to contain the plastic demons to the one department store. The bullets weren't killing them, but they were slowing them down at least. According to Owen we missed out on 'a well awesome escalator chase' in which he was firing at two of them at once and had to 'jump from the up to the down over the barrier'. Gwen told me later that it was one Auton and he tripped over the barrier as he was attempting to go up the down escalator – that would explain his bruise. I didn't mention anything to him though; it would be harsh to dent his pride especially when the two of them had done such a good job of controlling the situation.

Administering the anti-plastic was surprisingly easy and relatively pain free for 5/6 of them. I wasn't too sure of how to use it, did we inject it, spray them with it? We went with Owen's preferred technique of 'just chuck it on them' which seemed to work well even if the effects were a bit gruesome, it sort of caused them to bubble and melt.

It was Auton number 6 that was the hard one to pin down; it had seen what we had done to the others and didn't want to be next, so it was playing a very intricate and dangerous game of hide and seek with us. After twenty minutes of manic running around we tracked it down to the male fitting rooms on floor 2. Seeing use approach it quickly drew out the hidden gun in its hand, but we pulled out the anti-plastic faster and within seconds the last of the blue liquid was gone along with the last of the Autons.

And so the night's adventures come to a close, we are back at the hub now finishing off the minimal admin incurred with the recent events. We're lucky, if they had escaped into the public, there would have been considerably more paperwork and potentially many deaths. The only tragedy that occurred today was the mess that was made on the Debenhams's carpet; I don't know if molten plastic is possible to remove… I offered to clean it up but Gwen told me just to leave it, that we'd all had a long day and she wanted us to finish up the paperwork and get home to bed as soon as possible. I couldn't help feeling bad for the poor cleaner who would be turning up at work to face that first thing tomorrow morning. Still, nothing can be as bad to clear up as Owen's 'rat jam'… now that was vile.

I am actually heading off for a relatively early night this evening, whether I'll be able to sleep much however another issue is entirely. I think Tosh is worried about me; she keeps telling me I look worn out and tired and thinner. That I should go to bed earlier and stop using up the contents of my kitchen to make cake for everyone else when I'm not even feeding myself properly. It's sweet that she worries, but how can I explain that I whenever I try and sleep, I just close my eyes and think of him? Or how I can never remember to eat because I'm too busy creating distractions for myself so that I don't think of him?