No spoilers
Beta-ed: GlassSplinter
Ianto felt his heart pounding. He was so careless. He could've just filmed them with a camera and left it on Owen's desk. Jack and Gwen were preoccupied by Owen. Tosh was leaning into the computer. This was a chance, but if Gwen went to search for cookies he'd be toast. He took the blanket from the cupboard swiftly and without noise. He was moving without hesitation as if he was just cleaning up. He hung the radio on its hook by the office door, and went upstairs to Jack's office. There he folded up the blanket and put it on the couch.
He looked around. It was such a mess, and in his playing with Jack's nerves he hadn't tidied it up. He started with a desk, moving quickly and efficiently, but after a while at it he couldn't help but smile. It was a good day after all. When he was done, that damn blanket just beamed up shouting look at me. So he grabbed it and descended down Jack's manhole. It wasn't like he went down there the first time, but he hadn't shagged him before. It felt different, like he was intruding. He put down the blanket beside the bed and hurried up. There was too much of Jack in there, as if he'd pop up any second. He strode down the stairs and started cleaning the desks about which they were all complaining. When he did his job nobody noticed, but he slacked only for a day and everybody thought that aliens attacked the Hub. He smiled at the notion; although the grey alien in the Hub did sounded familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Gwen sure looked upset at the notion.
They all gathered up in the boardroom to hear Owen's presentation. Ianto stood by the door.
"Now, about Sticky Balls," Owen started with a big display.
"Sticky balls? Really?" Tosh laughed.
"It's catchy and accurate," he said, irritated. "So, Sticky Balls have transluminante skin and it secretes hallucinogen, a kind I didn't encounter yet. But preliminary experiments indicate that it's not really harmful, and it wears off in a few hours. In some ways it has a similarity to retcon, wipes your memory clean. Besides that, the mouse seemed to be immune to pain, or else they do not pay any attention to it."
"Ok, that's all very interesting," Jack softly leaned forward on the desk. "But we kinda knew that already. What do they eat?"
"Of course, Tea Boy needs to get his new petting zoo in motion." Owen murmured skipping through the pictures. "They didn't react on any eatable substances I put them in, not in significant matter, like gaining weight, only thing they reacted on is touch. Touch with a living, moving organism. They liked my mouse; in fact they doubled their numbers. They do not gain weight, they just multiple in two organisms same weight and size. It's quite fascinating really." He smiled.
"So I would need to get them some lost pet, but wouldn't that cause us space problem?" Ianto looked at numbers he was writing on his notepad. "If they double like that they will very soon fill the whole vault, or two. I mean, it's not the best choice for a pet."
"Not only that, but you would have to rotate the animals that they touch. The hallucinogen is low level and is not harmful, but if you enlarge the dosage it becomes life threatening. I don't think they can coincide with life on earth. In their own world they probably have a controlling factor, and resisting agent, but here we would soon all be mindless creatures that just stand around and die of starvation, while purple sticky balls pulse with joy and multiply on our hands." He rolled in his chair to face Jack. "And once again you were right, purple sticky balls are an alien threat to whole planet."
"So mercy killing." Jack sighed. "Nothing fun about that. How do we kill them?"
"Well that is the fun part." Owen smiled widely and pressed button. "They are practically invincible. Besides the fact that Ianto discovered, that you can squash them with bare hands, buggers are though. No chemical substance works on them. Needles, even squeezing with steel surfaces don't do the trick; they just flatten and inflate again. Guess they aren't used to creatures with hands."
"So what you are saying is that we have to squash them one by one to get rid of them?" Jack face was squeezed in disgust. The others weren't keen about that idea either. There were more than a hundred of those creatures in the Hub.
"There is one more thing." Toshiko leaned forward. "I was running some test of my own. Since they came into the Hub something was muffling my equipment. So I examined the surroundings to find the source of the interference, and I found out that they are transmitting some sort of a pulse, a rhythmic repeating pulse that penetrates walls and wires. When you put it on the speakers it almost sounds like a song." She pushed the button and sound filled the air. It did sound like something, but strange and unfamiliar.
Jack was listening very carefully.
"How far can this wave of information stretch?" He asked with a rush in his voice.
"There's no limit." Tosh shrugged. "Inert obstacles barely influence the wave. It's slow but ongoing, maybe forever."
"Gwen when was the first child reported missing?" He got up.
"A month ago, why?" She followed him confused by his sudden running. The others were a few paces behind. Ianto was slowly walking. He took the Captain's coat from the office then got to the cleaning closet and took few pair of glows and few more containers. If Owen was right, and he usually was, there would be more Sticky balls then before. After all there were rats in the vaults. Weavils were quite fond of them.