32
Ianto was standing in the middle of the compound. It was about six in the morning and the first tendrils of light were creeping across the sky. Pink. Cloudy and pink. A good day for rain.
Ianto bent down to touch his toes and felt the slight pull of the burn scar that was almost finished healing. It felt good. Pain and itching is good, it means healthily re-growth. Ianto then slowly reached up. His arms swinging over his head as he reached for the coming sun. What little there would be.
He took a deep breath and then let himself slowly sink to his knees, now starting his yoga routine for real. He did not look to his left as Martha and Tish joined him, their glee clear as they fell into synchronicity with him. For the last few days they had done this.
He found peace here, peace he had not known since the death of his wife and he knew Jack had a lot to do with it. End of the world and I seen fine. Go figure. Ianto's musings were interrupted by the shadow that fell over him while in downward dog and he looked up to find Owen blocking the morning light. Ianto rose to greet him "hey."
"Hey" Owen replied, his face unreadable.
Ianto got a feeling it was a problem so he reached for his towel and said to the women "I am out. You women are too limber for me, could probably take me out no trouble when the chocolate comes out."
They laughed as Owen led him away towards the barn and Ianto suddenly got an inclination of the reason for the serious look "The rabbit?"
"Is fine" Owen replied, pushing the door open and waving him in, then he closed it again. Ianto noted the lock and key, the furtive looks and then the look of concern as Owen moved further into the barn. "Over here."
Ianto entered an area that had dim lights. Solar lights like you might have in a garden, peppered about the space and in the middle of the table sat the Tupperware container with the rabbit's ear inside. Well.. it had been an ear. Now it was a nasty dark greenish sort of…. Goop.
"It happened overnight. I think when the solar lights died. I brought fresh lights in this morning to find that" Owen waved a hand at the container "It still has the ear in there… what's s left, and if ya lift it up and peer underneath but this mossy stuff is covering it completely."
"Moss. Good description. It's like… a mold or maybe… mushroom or… whatever it is, it's biological." Ianto reached out and lifted the container "You have it wells sealed. The tape around the sealed lid was a good idea."
"I thought so. At first I thought it was overkill but… you saying it might spread made me grossed out" Owen replied, then added "how did you know?"
"I didn't. Maybe it's all the sci-fi I read or maybe somewhere I remember a case of an unknown fungal infestation in an abandoned house where the unknown homeless person died and sort of… grew into a plant thing in basement of the house. It was… Boston I think. Five years ago. It came across my desk, as it did many virologists as they sought any and all suggestions. They had been freaked out by it. It covered the body like it was fertilizer. Grew to about half a meter in height and when the men found it, it … moved. Like sunflowers move with the sun, these fronds or whatever seemed to move with the heat in the room. They freaked the fuck out, decontaminated the humans with vigor and quarantined them, then set the house on fire."
"Bullshit."
"The two police officers that found it? Disappeared, believed to be locked away somewhere. They took samples of course before setting the fire, in full hazmat gear. I saw some… I did NOT like it and noped right out of that conversation. One of my colleagues got involved and when things went Dark he did too. They say he faked his own death but I feel like he was killed off and the body never found. Either that or he is in the same bunker as those poor cops" Ianto whispered softly "I remember the photos he sent of the monkey covered… just like this. I tried to find him or traces of his work but it was like he was wiped from existence. I was relieved that we used the Dark Web for our conversations, the powers that be had no idea I even knew of his research. When my wife died in the fire… I felt like it might have been an attempt on me too, bit then saw that I was over thinking things."
"What… they knew. They knew this… thing was out there… alien spores or whatever, they knew and did nothing?" Owen gaped.
"Oh no, they didn't do nothing. They did all they could to silence the matter and anyone involved was slapped down or… accidents happened. A lot of my fellow scientists were culled. A car crash, a heart attack, drowned in the bath tub, oh no Owen. They knew full well what was coming and they thought they could control it. If ya ask me, I think they encouraged these things to come thinking it would be amazing to have real contact. This is not first contact, not at all. Roswell New Mexico? Area 51 is real. All if it is real." Ianto sat back on a bale of hay and sighed deeply "Think about it Owen. How did these things manage to create these hybrids with humanoid features capable of living in our atmo? Hmmm? The experimentation on us has been going on for years… decades."
"Why you were happy to live in the basement of your sister's house. Fuck. You were hiding. Cows. People. Fuck. They've been playing with us all this time and the governments knew… thought they were still in charge?" Owen sat next to him with the sickening knowledge that Ianto was dead on the money.
"The real thing I have to take from this is that these… Buggers… are part human. At least 50% human DNA spliced in there judging from the samples I have been able to procure" Ianto pointed out "so, they have vulnerabilities they don't' know about either. Do they get the flu, do they suffer form a viral infection too?"
"Plague? They came to be a plague that wipes us out… you think it can be a reverse Uno?"
Ianto shrugged "I know that it is a possibility. There are things that hurt us, it hurts them too. To what degree though, I don't know. The alien side it the unknown factor here."
"So we focus on the nastiest things that hurt us, if 50% of them is damaged, then it's a kill" Owen said firmly.
Ianto nodded and rose to his feet "Yeah. What hurts us, hurts them."
"We need to prepare."
"We need to go back to the firehouse."
"Huh?"