38

Ianto was still chewing over the weird dreams he was having, putting them down to being overtired and not relaxing enough before bedtime. He had to cut it the hell out. He had to let shit go.

Today they were working on the stone walls again, Ianto distracted by the laughter of the women as Jack played silly buggers out in the field with them, stone collecting second to having fun. God, gotta stop saying it like that right? No silly Buggers now. Ianto laughed humorlessly at himself for his weird moroseness lately. When he had so much to be grateful for.

"IANTO"

He sighed as he turned towards the compound and Toshiko who was at the wire waving, the field of deer between them seemed like a mile way. He raised his arms to show he had heard her, then headed inside to see what was worth her yelling like that when she hated to raise her voice.

There was another meeting on the screen and he listened as they talked about the Bugs and as he had suspected, the way those scratched in some way got sick and died. Only, they had placed those bodies in the deep freeze, Ianto was not happy with that and before Toshiko could react, he hit a button to join the meeting.

"Excuse me but you need to have one of those bodies in a sterile environment at room temperature to see the progression of the viral intrusion from the claw scratches"

Everyone stopped talking as Ianto flashed onto the screen and then someone said "Doctor Jones? Is that you?"

"Hi. Yeah, look, I think the venom from their claws also makes some sort of infection that takes over the host like… a fungal infection. If you place one in a room, closed and sealed, and watch it you will see it degrade, then as it breaks down it will become fodder. Then a fungus will grow, the spores released creating something. I am not sure if it's something to kill us or if it's to make the atmosphere better for them." Ianto said as he felt relief in the fact someone knew him.

"Who is this?"

"I am the one who said this was going to happen. I am the one ridiculed for my theories on DNA splicing with an Alien race. Hi."

"I remember you, you said…. God. Right." One of them snorted.

"well, they ARE spliced with Human DNA like I thought, they ARE trying to eradicate us like I thought and I know for fact they excrete some sort of nasty form of venom laced with … I don't know what… and it is lethal. We need to…."

"Doctor Jones, you were laughed out of the room for your wacky theories" another voice cut in "It's only your DNA replication that has saved your name in any way, you are not part of this discussion and I will have you know that we already have several bodies out in the elements that we could not retrieve. The Bugs ate most of them. Please… don't go above your pay grade. We know what we are doing."

Ianto closed his mouth and stared at the fucker who had been two tiers below him at the university and snorted, then said "Carver. You are in charge of this?"

"Yes I am and it's Doctor Carver to you!"

"OK. Well… you are all doomed then. If you are unwilling to speak to someone who was top of the class, and choose someone who was middle of the class, not even near my grade and correct theories… as I have been proven correct so far… go ahead." Ianto folded his arms as he glowered at hem.

"We will, mute yourself or piss off" Carver snarled.

Ianto reached out and hit mute, then rose from the chair "that's it for me. You watch if you want to but they will not last more than another week or so if they are letting him run the asylum."

"That theory of the spores… you think that's right?" she asked with confusion.

"Yeah, look at my scar tissue" Ianto lifted his shirt to show her "I was scratched, this is what happened in the few moments it took me to get to the place where I could burn the area, quarterizing and eradicating whatever that was. See those lines? Tendrils? They stopped. I don't know what they are or were but I feel like they died. The heat killed them. I believe the aim of these things was to cover me and assimilate my flesh."

Toshiko reached out to hesitantly touch the tissue and then drawback her hand "and.. once assimilated…"

"Think of mold spores, taking hold, covering and then consuming. They can give off a toxicity that is harmful to humans right? Think about it Tosh. What would this be doing? Why do it? Is it just to get rid of us? Why do they eat us. Why not just let us rot. Why do this? I think it is to somehow make things easier for them by killing those left alive around the dead person, or my greatest fear is that these are going to be spores that grow a new type of plant or something, setting off a chain reaction that changes our atmosphere."

"My god, does your brain ever take a break?" she asked shakily, rising to step back from him with alarm.

"No. That's my cure as much as my gift. I see things, I think too hard and run down those dark passageways to see if there is a monster in the shadows. That's my job. Only now… the monsters are here in the daylight without a care in the world and I am the only one who knows that we are still not seeing the one in the darkness."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing. Protect us. Here, what I can protect, I will do so with my life. Them? Likely already dead but just don't know it. I don't know. I can't save the world, but I can save this little bit here. So... I will."

"Like Batman."

"Bugman." Ianto leered and then laughed as the tension dissipated in the room "Nah, a Lone Wolf like me? No. Geek Man more like it."

"And this theory of yours, about the spores…."

"Maybe I am talking out of my arse but I've not been wrong yet and this was all in my dissertation." Ianto sighed.

Tosh sat back to consider things as Ianto left her to it and then started to search the cloud storage for anything with Ianto's name on it. She wanted to read that paper now.

She wanted to know what he thought was going to happen to them all in the end.

And she knew it was not going to be light reading.