DAY 151

Armitage Shanks

Martha

"Well, congratulations!" Jack hugged her tightly and lifted her up for a second. Why was it that every time someone went to hug her they tried to pick her up? It was like they couldn't stand her being five-three, or like they were patronising her. But it had been that way for her whole life and she was now beyond arguing with the people who did it. And there was never much point arguing with Jack, anyway. "Isn't that quaint. Who's the father?"

"Who's the-? What do you all take me for? Why does everyone keep asking me who the father is?" she was growing increasingly outraged with these suggestions against her fidelity. All this because one time when she was on alien drugs which she couldn't even remember Clara Oswald had… well it wasn't really worth thinking about what Clara Oswald had done. But she had got the blisters she deserved.

"You can never be sure there hasn't been some extra-terrestrial insemination going on," Jack said, "You've scanned it, right?" Mickey and Martha looked at each other and didn't say anything. "Wait, you guys haven't scanned it? So you don't even know what it is?"

"It's not an alien monster," Martha said firmly.

"It could be. It happened to Gwen, it could happen to anyone. You three stay here, and I'll go see what Helix has to say about it," Jack said, then he left the room, Ianto staying behind. Martha sat back down on the edge of the bed.

"Congratulations from me, too," Ianto said, "Always thought you two would make good parents. Seems there's all manner of revelations this week, eh?"

"It's always like that here," Mickey said.

"You should have seen it when the cat got pregnant," Martha said, "Everyone convinced themselves it was Jack and Jenny's. Can you imagine anything worse than those two having a kid together? Picturing the custody battles alone is giving me an aneurysm."

"Have you met the others yet?" Mickey asked Ianto.

"Not really. I think Jack's quite keen for me to avoid them. He's had me tied up in his room since I arrived." Martha raised her eyebrows at Ianto. "Sorry. Why do you ask?"

"Have you met Jenny yet?"

"Yes. Definitely met her."

"And what about the Eleventh Doctor? He's the shortest of the three of them and really likes bowties and custard," Martha said, "Just because, if you haven't met him yet, you should probably try to avoid him."

"The Doctor won't do anything to Ianto," Mickey said, "Now, Jack is a whole other story. He's going to throw Jack into a black hole. But Ianto'll be alright."

"Don't know that I would be if Jack got thrown into a black hole."

"He'd find his way out eventually."

"Reckon he might deserve it, too," Mickey said.

"Really?" Martha asked him, surprised.

"It is a bit out of order making her go on a quest to find his ex-boyfriend. I don't know why he didn't just ask Rose about it."

Jack reappeared just when they were justifying what the Doctor was almost certainly going to do to him the next time they bumped into each other, having retrieved the Helix handset from whoever it was who kept it. Martha suspected he may have just had to pry it out of Oswin's possessive hands, unless he'd gotten lucky and she had left it lying around. She didn't bother asking, because finding out the truth about the baby growing inside her was now the utmost priority.

Five Years Ago

"We really have to find out what's doing this," Gwen said. She looked green in the bright lights of the latest victim's bathroom. "I don't think I'm ever going to eat again if I have to see one more of these things." Martha thought to herself that she didn't think Gwen should be calling the deceased 'these things', given the enormity of the tragedies they had come across, but perhaps Gwen was desensitised. In fact, working for Torchwood for three years now, she almost certainly was desensitised. At least this time as she examined the body she knew what she was trying to find, that being any trace of a liver, since the other two victims had lost theirs. "So, what's going on?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't be kneeling here looking through all these bits of flesh, would I?" Martha said.

"I don't mean with this, I mean that Jack said you and Mickey were together when you answered the phone, and then you showed up together." Martha met Gwen's eyes but couldn't find anything today. "There's no reason to be embarrassed! He's cute."

"You've got the wrong idea," Martha said.

"Have I?" Gwen asked wryly.

"I'm busy," Martha muttered, going back to the body. She did not want to talk about this.

"Alright, alright. I suppose I'd better go speak to the son and try and work out if he saw anything."

"Be careful," Martha advised, "He's only ten, you don't want to upset him even more."

"He walked in and saw his mother dead and ripped to pieces, I don't know if he can get upset even more," said Gwen.

"Aren't you supposed to be the sensitive one?" Martha quipped, which insulted Gwen enough that she finally left Martha alone to study the body. Gwen went out into the hallway to find the boy, while Jack drifted in a moment later to replace her, hopefully coming to talk about work and not speculate about Martha's private affairs. Mickey was not in her immediate vicinity due to him being squeamish.

"What's your theory?" Jack asked.

"Whatever's doing this is eating the livers," Martha said.

"Oh yeah? Just livers? Rips a person apart so much for a liver?"

"Well, I don't know that it's eating it, but they've all got missing livers, no trace of a liver at all, but no visible symptoms of ongoing liver disease. And humans can't survive without livers anyway," Martha said, "I don't think whatever's doing this is very intelligent, either, which rules out the possibility that it's anything black market."

"You sure? You get a lot of demand for human liver in the right kinds of places in this galaxy," Jack said, "Maybe less in this century, though. It's a delicacy to the right sort of psychopath. God, I once broke a bunch of people out this human foie gras farm. Took me eating the stuff in the first place to realise it tasted a little off, and was the wrong colour to be from poultry. And then I went vegetarian for the next couple of years. I couldn't even give anyone a blowjob for two weeks."

"Mickey had a theory, did he tell you?" Martha said.

"Is that what you two were doing together at two in the morning? Talking about work?"

"There isn't anything going on," she said.

"Uh-huh. Sure there's not. So if you're not laying your claim on Mickey, does that mean anyone can have a go? Because I kinda think he's adorable. And I'd love to tell Rose I nailed her ex-boyfriend. If I ever see her again. Might be hard given the parallel universe thing."

"You're very welcome to try and sleep with Mickey," Martha said, because there was no chance of anything ever happening unless Jack went to one of his underground sources and procured quite a large amount of Rohypnol.

"So, what was his theory?"

A wailing sound erupted from elsewhere in the house, which Martha recognised distinctly as a child crying. She stood up, finding no outstanding evidence anywhere on the most recent body to keep her there, and followed Jack to find out what was going on.

"I'm sorry – no – don't think about your mummy, just, um," Gwen did not know what to say. She was talking to the ten-year-old son in his bedroom he shared with his younger brother, the younger brother being watched downstairs by a police officer and DI Swanson, who had called them in to that murder as well, just like the previous two. Gwen was floundering in her attempt to get through to the child, and had made him cry. Behind Jack and Martha, Mickey came up the stairs from where he had been talking to Swanson to get information about the victim. He immediately went to Gwen's aid.

"Hey, little man," he crouched down to be eye level and spoke, nudging Gwen out of the way. She shifted and looked rather ashamed of herself for upsetting the boy. "We're special monster hunters, okay? No, shh, listen to me. We're monster hunters, we catch the things that do this. But we haven't been very good at it recently because we haven't had any brave people to help us. But you seem brave, because you're dealing with all this really well, and you can help us to stop this happening to anybody else's mummy. We're all very sorry that this happened to yours, but I'm sure you don't want it to happen to any other mummies. That's why it's very important that you tell us if you saw any monsters when you found mum like that." The boy still had tears streaking his cheeks, but had calmed down significantly when Mickey had taken over from Gwen.

Martha realised that she was staring at Mickey and smiling – she had no idea he was good with kids – and quickly tried to disguise her facial expression as one of worry and general contemplation. But she did not fool Jack, who gave her a telling look before returning his own attention to the boy, who was whispering something to Mickey. When he did, Mickey's kind smile vanished almost completely.

"What?" he asked. The child seemed to repeat himself and Mickey's eyes widened, and he bolted out of the room without explaining himself at all. Jack, Gwen and Martha hastened to follow, but he had run off quite quickly back to the bathroom, so focused on whatever the child had told him that it was like he didn't even notice the smell or the vileness of the crime scene.

"What are you looking for?" Martha asked him.

"What did he tell you?" Gwen persisted.

"Shampoo bottle," said Mickey, "Do you see a shampoo bottle around here?"

"I don't think this is the time to be washing your hair," Gwen said, "You've barely even got any."

"There, in the bath," Jack pointed, ignoring Gwen's comment. And there was a bottle of shampoo, and Martha hadn't a clue why Mickey was so intent on getting his hands on one, because Gwen hadn't exactly been incorrect with her comment about Mickey's hair. Mickey lunged and grabbed the shampoo bottle, and that was when it exploded in his hands.

For a second Martha thought it must be a shapeshifter that had transformed into a shampoo bottle they were after, but she was wrong, it was just very good at fitting into tight spaces. The shampoo bottle, though split down the side, clattered back down into the bath and rolled away towards the plughole. The contents of it were most certainly not shampoo though, and they launched themselves at Mickey, large, pink and slimy. It was a very good thing he had been expecting it, because he managed to dodge out of the way, and Martha finally got a good glimpse of it when it landed in the sink behind him and started writhing around.

It looked like a worm, very fat and just over a foot in length, segmented and bulbous and milky white and moist in the light, with a circular mouth and half a dozen rows of shark-like, needle-shaped teeth. It twisted and turned upon itself in the sink basin, having hidden itself away in the shampoo bottle, perhaps because it was clever enough to not want any witnesses. That must have been what the boy had told Mickey - that the culprit hadn't even left yet, and Martha could hardly believe that she had been in there examining the body with that thing lurking just behind her. What if it had tried to strike her next?

"What is it!?" Mickey exclaimed.

"You're the one who found it!" Martha shouted at him, when Gwen drew her handgun and cocked it. Just as the worm looked about to make its escape down the plughole of the sink, she emptied her cartridge into its body and left it in splattered pieces, strewn about the now-destroyed sink. There it lay, and the noise was enough to draw out the police officers who had gone to hide downstairs. They were still in the room with the corpse and everything.

"Looks like we've caught our murderer. Nice work, Gwen," Jack said.

"I wouldn't speak so soon, have a look at that," Mickey pointed it out.

"Oh my god," Martha said, grabbing Mickey's arm while she stared at the sink, because the pieces of the worm were slipping and sliding back together again, with the flesh melding with itself and forming the monster again. Gwen couldn't reload her gun in time to shoot it some more before it slipped away down the plug hole in its smaller segments, probably reforming completely while it was in the drain. "You were right," Martha said to Mickey, still holding his arm, "It is living in the sewers."

"Alright then," Jack said, "Gwen, call Ianto and tell him to ready the jumpsuits and the gas masks. Torchwood is taking a trip down into the sewers of Cardiff."

Mickey said to Martha, "And you were right too. He is gonna send us into the sewers."