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Title: Something in the water
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 5,043 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 190 - Pool
Summary: Owen is on the trail of some mystery disappearances

Owen decided he found the community swimming pool a decidedly creepy place to be at night. Gone were the screaming kids, running and dive bombing into the water, their frantic parents watching on for the first sign that something was wrong, old ladies doing water aerobic classes, and even older men doing slow laps of the pool, showing off far more of their physique than anyone ever wanted to see. The stench of chlorine filled the air, making it feel thick and cloying as he breathed it in. Funny how even dead, the heavy smell of it still rankled him. It was humid as well, the pool's internal systems struggling to keep the water at an acceptable temperature when outside it was plummeting into single digits. It  might have been alright in summer, but people using the facilities in the midst of winter had to be barking mad.

He shone his torch around, walking through the main entrance, past the gift shop and the cafe, heading for the change rooms. He crept around the corner slowly, as if expecting someone to be in there. No one was going to be there at midnight, but that didn't stop him being prepared for anything. Maybe the answers he was searching for might be in there.

He was probably half barking mad himself for being here but this was the only lead he had so far. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

He couldn't quite explain what it was that had sent him on this wild goose chase, but he hoped it would be something, and that he hadn't just spent the last two weeks spinning his wheels for nothing. In truth, he wanted to show the others that he was still a functioning member of the team. They'd accepted him back into the fold, but it didn't feel the same as how it used to be, like everyone was still walking on eggshells around him. He was dead, but his brain was still working, he could still fire a gun, run like mad, drive a car, and a hundred other things. He could still be useful, in other words. But since he'd died, his days had hardly been filled with excitement and adventure. He'd cat burgled a house, confronted a ghost from a piece of film, and done more paperwork than he'd done in the last fours years. He didn't get to go on weevil chases or thrash the SUV in hot pursuit of something that had eight legs, ran like a cheetah and spat deadly venom. No, those things were left to the others. Owen was left to stay behind, wrapped up in cotton wool.

That's what he'd been doing when he started pouring over old police reports. Not usually his thing, more of Gwen's job, or Ianto's, but he was bored, and maybe he could find something the others had overlooked. In any case it would kill the hours until the rest of them came back, laughing and regaling one another in the blow by blow account of their night.

There was nothing in the A and E admissions that caught his eye, no sudden deaths, no weird rashes or fevers, spontaneous loss of limbs or anything else that count be accounted for as rift related. Just the usual string of injuries sustained by drunken meatheads who tangled with weevils on a Saturday night.

He flipped across to another program, scrolling through a long list of missing persons reports. People went missing all the time in this city. They got sick of their nagging wives or their abusive boyfriends, or the families that sighed and bemoaned the fact that they'd never amounted to everything they'd hoped for, having finally had enough and just upping and leaving.  It happened all the time and no one ever thought anything of it. It was reported to police, but no one there had the resources or the desire to follow up people who'd simply made a life choice.

There were plenty of such cases, and he skimmed them disinterestedly, until he spotted a few of the more recent reports. A man who'd gone outside to put the bins out and never come back in, a girl whose car was found abandoned in a supermarket parking lot with a boot full of groceries, a four year old that disappeared in seconds playing in the park with a group of other mothers and children, a woman in her forties that was reported in by neighbours when her dog was found howling and near starvation in the yard, yet strangely inside the bath was full, as if she'd not been planning on leaving. More and more strange cases kept cropping up, and in each instance, none of the missing people had seemed to have taken their belongings with them. No phones, no wallets, no cars. Nothing they might need even if they weren't planning on coming back. Ten cases in all that had no connection except for being strange. He'd spent the past week, knocking on doors, interviewing family and friends of the missing people, passing himself off as a detective from the metropolitan police. He didn't have anything else to do. He didn't sleep anymore, and he needed something to fill in the hours between seven pm and seven am. He couldn't very well hang around the hub all night. It wasn't his home, but it was Jack's, and to a lesser extent, Ianto's he supposed. Even Jack slept more than Owen did these days. Maybe this is what he'd become. Owen Harper, by day, paper pushing Torchwood agent, by night, private detective.

He'd been beginning to think that all of this was leading nowhere, until earlier tonight. He'd been parked on the couch in the house of a woman whose husband had disappeared over a three weeks ago. He'd taken his small dinghy out on the bay for a few hours fishing and not  returned as scheduled. His boat has washed up down in Tiger Bay three days later, with no sign of its captain. The police put it down to an accidental drowning, but his wife was less than convinced.  

'He was always so careful, I can't understand it. He had his life jacket. How can you drown wearing a life jacket? He was a good swimmer. We both swim down at the local pool every week.'

Owen didn't have an answer for her, but he gracefully accepted her offer to make tea. He intended only taking a sip or two, saving him the need to puke it all back up later. Couldn't even enjoy a sodding cup of tea anymore, which was to say nothing of having to put up with the aroma of Ianto's coffee floating around the hub all day, every day.

He waited in the living room, staring at the photographs on the mantle, and the oil painting of a sunset over the bay, mounted on the wall, when he heard the crash of teacups in the kitchen.

He proceeded down the hall and into the kitchen, calling out to ask if everything was alright and getting no response. He stood in the doorway, expecting to see her collapsed on the floor, but all that was there was a pool of water, smashed crockery, and no sign of the woman.

What the hell? She'd been right here, he was sure of it. He looked around, getting the faint whiff of chlorine. He looked down and realised there was too much water on the floor to account for the broken teacups; far too much. His stomach dropped as he came to the only logical conclusion. She'd disintegrated into the pool of water on the floor. Suddenly all the other missing persons cases made more sense, how they'd all just seemingly disappeared into thin air. They hadn't gone missing at all. Something was turning them to water. But what?

The smell of chlorine hit him again, and he remembered what she'd said to him about them going swimming every week. Could that be the link?

He stepped out into the hallway and made a few calls. Did he have an update on their missing loved ones? No, but he did have a few more pointed questions for them. After half an hour, he had enough to know that there was one thing all the missing people had in common: they had all frequented the same community leisure centre.

He proceeded through the change room, past the row of metal lockers and through to the showers. He was working on a hunch only at this stage, but it was a lead at least, more than he'd had so far, and enough to know that he hadn't been jumping at shadows, trying to see something that wasn't there. Perhaps this should have been the point where he called in the rest of the team to help investigate, but he didn't. He'd started this on his own and that was how he intended to finish it, to show them that he was still just as useful to the team as the rest of them. This was his case now.

There was a faint dripping sound from a handful of leaky shower heads which added to the eery feeling of being here alone in the dark. He set down his backpack on a low wooden bench, slipping his gun into his belt, and opening the backpack to take out a handful of small glass vials. Shining his torch around, he spotted one of the leaking faucets, holding up the glass vial and letting it dribble into the container, before capping the lid on it, and packing it away. He moved from one change room to the next, and then down the corridor and to the sauna. This one was trickier, having to break into the maintenance room next door, finding the generator that powered the sauna room, and following it back to the feed pipe. He loosened the coupling and drew some more water samples. As he knelt there, he could hear something outside, banging and moving around. He froze for a moment, wondering if his hunch had been all wrong, and whatever it was out there was the source of the problem. He switched his torchlight off, plunging himself back into darkness before getting back to his feet to investigate the noise, leaving his gear behind, but pulling out his weapon.

He poked his head through a  small gap in the maintenance room door, checking the corridor left and right, but seeing nothing. He slowly stepped out, inching down its length, past the frosted glass windows of the gym, narrowly avoiding a pile of rolled up pilates mats leaning near the door. There was a thud and the sound of footsteps down below him on the next level. He crept along the ramp that zig-zagged down to the main level, opening out onto the main pool area. He caught a glimpse of shadows dancing across the far wall, and he ducked behind the diving tower, trying to get a better look. As he peered into the darkness, the shadows stopped, and the sound that had been in front of him now seemed to be several feet behind him. He tensed, taking  a few steps to get a clear shot, ready to pounce on whatever it was, when suddenly the noise was right on top of him.

'Owen?'

He spun quickly, but his foot slipped in a small puddle of water at the edge of the pool, sending him careening backwards before everything went black.

When he opened his eyes, it was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't make out the face hovering over the top of him, and then recalling the distinctive timbre of the voice that had called his name just seconds before oblivion had taken him.

'What the fuck?'

'I'm glad to see you, too,' Jack replied.

Jack helped him to sit up. 'How's the head?'

'Fine,' Owen replied, remembering that he didn't feel pain anymore, but clearly that his new undead skills didn't extend to being whacked out cold. He looked across at where he was seated just inches from the pool's edge and crawled away from it quickly.

'What's the rush?' Jack asked.

'I wouldn't get too close to the water if I were you,' he replied.

Jack helped him back to his feet and they made their way over to the bleachers that lined the side of the pool, before taking a seat.

'You wanna tell me what you're doing here?' Jack asked.

'Following up on a case.' He paused for a moment, feeling annoyed. 'Why? Have you been following me?'

'Nope. I was following up on a case myself. Kinda curious though how you ended up here.'

'I was following a bunch of missing persons cases. The last one lead me here. I was visiting the guy's wife, asking questions, and then-'

'Then she exploded into a puddle of water,' Jack finished.

Owen looked at him, flabbergasted. 'How could you know that?'

'Because I saw the same thing happen.'

'How? When?'

'I was at the hospital, hanging around A and E. There was a woman in chairs with a large laceration on her leg. She must've been waiting there hours, and then whoosh, she was gone. Just a puddle of water on the ground and a whole bunch of terrified people.'

'What were you doing at the hospital?'

Jack looked off into the middle distance. 'Doesn't matter. What matters is that something alien is causing people to explode.'

'So how'd you end up here? I know what lead me here, but you?'

'Checked her belongings. She worked as a lifeguard here. According to the check in nurse, her injury was sustained when she slipped helping a little old lady out of the pool, cutting it on the edge. A lifeguard at a local pool ends up a pool of water herself, so it doesn't take a genius to know that something is going on here.'

'Not just her,' Owen replied. 'At least ten other cases that all have the hallmarks of being the same, and all who came here.'

'You think it's in the water?' Jack asked.

'Makes sense.'

Jack frowned. 'So why haven't we seen hundreds of cases? Must be thousands of people using this pool. What makes them unique?'

'I dunno. I was thinking maybe it had something to do with ingesting the water, and how concentrated it was.'

'They drank the pool water?'

'Accidentally, or they breathed it in and it got into their bloodstream that way.' Owen pulled out his PDA and flipped through some of his file notes so that Jack could see. 'Two of the victims were gym junkies. Never used the pool but they did use the sauna. I checked the centre's systems. Turns out that they filter the pool water and use it for the pumps to the sauna. I was grabbing samples from the pipes in the showers and the sauna to test them when I heard noises in the hall. You.'

'Sorry,' Jack apologised. 'Wasn't like I was expecting company. Be grateful I didn't shoot first and ask questions later.'

'Yeah, because another bullet hole in my chest was going to make all the difference,' Owen snarked.

Jack leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and staring out over the long rows of pool lanes which glinted aqua in the pale moonlight streaming in through the large glass windows on the opposite side. 'Okay, so we think it's something in the water, but what is it doing? How do you just turn a person to water? I mean she literally just disintegrated. One second she was there and the next...'

'We're two thirds water, Jack. It's not exactly a stretch. I haven't had a chance to analyze any of it, but from what I saw there wasn't any biological material left of the woman in the kitchen. Every cell in the body had been destroyed, broken apart until all that was left was the base molecules. Whatever it is, it's causing a complete cellar degeneration. I need to get more samples and run some tests back at the hub.'

'Okay,' Jack agreed. 'Get whatever you need. Who knows how many more people might be affected. we need to know what it is and how it works.'

Owen stood up to go and retrieve his gear from where he'd left it when a hum started to vibrate around the large room.

'What's that?'

'Probably just the filtration system kicking in,' Jack said. 'It'll refill the pool with water lost during the day.'

He was right as the engines of the pumps began to hum and rattle, underwater outlets spilling fresh water into the main pool. Then something else unexpected happened. The pool began to glow with a million tiny green lights, bathing everything in an eery green light.

'What the hell?' Owen muttered, stepping back from the edge of the pool.

'Well, I think we just confirmed that there's definitely something in the water.'

The whole body of water was abuzz with tiny green lights zipping about, causing it to bubble and undulate, and then as the pumps engines finally switched off, the glow slowly faded until they were in darkness once more.

'That was bizarre,' Jack said. 'It was like a frenzy in there.' He leaned over the surface of the pool as it settled once more into a flat calm. 'There must have been millions of whatever that was in there.'

'Yeah,' Owen agreed. 'Let's just get these samples back to the hub so I can get a better look at them before anyone else goes kaboom.'

Jack added another metal crate full of samples to the ones already in Owen's backpack, as they carried them into the hub and across to the lab, beginning to unpack them.

'What's going on?' came the voice behind them. Ianto was stood them in pajamas and slippers, looking half asleep, hair sticking out.

'Exploding swimmers,' Jack replied, admiring the cute, disheveled look. 'I'm gonna need you to shut down the Roath Park community leisure centre before they plan on opening at five am.'

Ianto looked at both of them, blinking. 'I'm going to need coffee,' he muttered, turning away.

'Make it three,' Jack yelled after him. Owen threw a pointed stare at Jack. 'Sorry, I meant two. Force of habit.'

Whilst they were waiting for coffee to arrive Jack helped Owen get his samples organised, running them through basic scans on their mass spectrometer.

'Why didn't you tell us about this?' Jack asked, watching as Owen continued to bustle around the lab. 'I generally prefer my team to let me know if there's something we should be looking into.' He paused for a second. 'But you already know that,' he added.

'Wasn't a thing,' Owen replied, continuing to use pipettes to extract samples and ejecting them into various tubes.

'Exploding people wasn't a thing?' Jack said, raising his eyebrows.

'They were just missing people up until tonight. Besides, you lot were off busy saving the world. What else was I suppose to do? Teaboy already banned me from making the coffee.'

Jack stopped and studied him for a moment. 'You know you don't have to prove yourself to us,  don't you?'

Owen stopped what he was doing and looked up at Jack. 'Is that so? That why you keep me here whilst the rest of you go off, now?'

'That's not fair, Owen and you know it. We're only holding you back from certain things to keep you safe.'

'Oh, that's real big of you, Jack. For the record I don't need protecting. I'm dead. What's the worst that could happen?'

Jack leaned back and folded his arms. 'Says the guy with two permanently broken fingers.'

Ianto arrived with the tray of coffees, having exchanged his pajamas for his trademark suit, and sensing the tension in the air.

'Should I come back after you two have finished?'

'We're good,' Jack replied, his gaze never leaving Owen's. 'Owen here was going to explode a few lab rats and explain to us what a genius he is.'

'Right. I'll go get the tarpaulin, then,' Ianto replied, already envisaging the mess.

Ianto had hoped Jack was joking when he said Owen was going to blow up lab rats, however, Owen did indeed send a couple of small white rodents to God, although he at least had the decency to keep them in their containers, restricting the mess as they imploded into a puddle. It was cruel but he supposed if there was a better way if doing it, Owen would have done so. What he didn't know was that Owen had a newfound respect for death. He wouldn't be killing anything that didn't absolutely deserve it from now on. Death sucked, and being undead sucked even more.

'Any update, Owen?' Jack asked.

'Well, I think I know how they end up like that, I just don't know why. Take a look at this,' Owen said, indicating the microscope next to him. Jack leaned over and peered into it as Owen placed a slide on the plate.

'This is a sample of the organisms. Now watch what happens when I introduce fresh water.'

Jack almost jumped back as the view through the  lenses lit up like a Christmas tree, bright green and sparkling, before finally petering out, the light fading to nothing.

'They're multiplying every time they come in contact with fresh water,' Owen explained, 'then they seem to reach a maximum concentration level once they've created as much water as they can.'

'So you're saying that they're looking for new sources of water to multiply in?'

'Exactly. The people at the pool became unwilling new hosts. They use up all the free water inside the body and then start converting what's left until the body is nothing more than a bunch of the most basic elements. They're breaking down the DNA in the cells themselves, reconstituting the molecules until they form H2O.'

'Is that why the pool was glowing when the pumps activated? Because there was a bunch of fresh water for them to multiply in?'

'Yup. Brand new source of fresh water for them to do their thing.'

'So how do we stop it? More people could die if they've got these things inside them,' Jack said.

'They'd literally be ticking time bombs and not even know it,' Ianto added.

'I don't think so,' Owen replied.

Both Ianto and Jack turned to look at Owen. 'What do you mean?' Ianto asked.

'Well, from all the samples I've reviewed, it's multiplying at a steady rate based on the amount of available water. The human body has a fairly standard volume of water, so for the organisms to reach capacity takes about four  hours, and another two to break down the cellular structures. Anyone who was there today and who hasn't gone boom should be safe, even if they've only ingested a little bit of water. It seems like there's a minimum quantity you'd have to ingest before there'd be enough to start multiplying.'

'Okay,' Jack said, folding his arms. 'So if we think we don't have any more cases, how do we get rid of the organisms at the pool so that they don't infect anyone else?'

'We can't risk them getting into any other water supply. For the moment, all the piping at the centre is connected, bringing fresh water in to maintain the pools and the shower facilities, but there's an outflow pipe for when they need to drain the pool completely which runs into the main sewerage system.'

'Okay, well we can't let that happen,' Ianto said, frowning at the idea. 'I wouldn't call the sewerage system fresh, but it could infect any number of things.'

'It would certainly shrink our weevil population though,' Jack mused. 'A few less weevils in the city wouldn't be a bad thing.'

'Yes, but whatever would we do for fun?' Ianto joked.

'I could think of a few things,' Jack grinned. 'So,' he said, turning his attention back to Owen, 'do we have any way of getting them out of the water?'

'Not in their current state,' Owen replied. 'They're microscopic. There's no filter powerful enough or fine enough to extract them.'

'So what are you saying?'

'I'm saying we neutralise them so that we can release the water.'

'And how do we do that?' Jack asked.

'Well, they go crazy in fresh water, but it turns out they're not so keen on salt water. They seem to go dormant when exposed to salt, so I suggest we salt the water, release it into the sewers, it'll flow out to the bay and problem solved.'

Ianto raised a hand. 'Hang on, what happens when they salt water evaporates into the atmosphere and comes back down as fresh water? Won't they just wake back up again?'

Jack frowned. 'Ianto's right. We could be sending them right back down in to fresh water drinking supplies. I hate to say it, but we're going to have to nuke them.'

'Okay, Owen said thinking for a moment. Upping the concentration of salt would probably kill them, just like putting a fresh water fish in a salt water tank.'

'How much salt are we talking?' Jack asked.

Owen pondered on it, doing the math in his head. Olympic size swimming pool, average seven hundred parts per million... Thirty metric tonnes?

They both looked at Ianto. He gave them a subtle sigh, and a far less subtle roll of his eyes, turning to leave, and wondering at what point he'd become the magical conjuror of all things obscure and ridiculous. Where either of them thought he was going to get thirty tonnes of salt from was anybody's guess, let alone how he was supposed to get it inside and in the water.

Two days later though, Ianto somehow came up with the goods, procuring three large trucks each loaded with tonnes of low grade salt. It took several hours and a small bobcat to slowly transfer the salt from the large pile on the ground, through a service entrance around the back of the facility, and into the swimming centre, before it could be dumped into the water at random intervals around the edges. Jack was so excited by the bobcat that he insisted on driving, but it only lasted a few trips before he got bored with the tedious nature of the task, preferring to stand and point.

'Now all we need is a really big swizzle stick to mix it around,' Jack said, admiring their handiwork.

'Please don't make me find someone who sells those,' Ianto moaned.

This time it was Jack who decided to impress, bringing out a tiny one man submersible. It was also capable of being activated remotely so he had fun sending it around the pool in circles, kicking up just enough of a bow wave to moved the salt and the water around, mixing it together, and leaving the rest of them jealous that he got to do all the fun parts of the job.

Owen took several more samples of the water, testing it and confirming that the organisms seemed to be dead.

'You could probably float in that, it's so salty,' he said, 'like the Dead Sea,' he added, before activating the emergency outflow systems, flushing the whole salty mess out through the pipes, slowly draining the pool until there wasn't a drop of water left in it. One is was down to the last dregs, they all climbing down into the vast empty space, making sure they swept up the lasts remnants with brooms and cloths, before trying to refill the pool with fresh water.

Their cover story was simple enough. The Department of Health and Human Services had been conducting a random spot check and noted dangerously high levels of e-coli, forcing the closure of the facility until they could pinpoint the source of the bacteria and replace the defective pipes and filters. Less pleasant however were the trips through some of Cardiff's sewers, taking more samples and double checking that there were no signs of any further organisms having survived. By the time they'd spent three days traipsing through murky water and filthy stench, dodging known weevil lairs and more rats than anyone every wanted to see in their lifetime, they were all relieved to be able to know that the salt had done its job.

Owen was just finishing up toweling his hair from his third shower of the day. He might not be alive, but the stink of sewer water clung to his skin just as much as everyone else, and his sense of smell hadn't abandoned him, which right now, was a real shame. He was looking forward to going home and doing absolutely nothing for a few hours.

'Owen,' Jack called out, appearing from behind a series of lockers.

'What? Can't a bloke just go home?'

'I just wanted to say good work, but next time you decide to go chasing a hunch, run it by me first, okay?'

He glared at Jack, always hating how he had to have the last "I told you so" on everything. 'Is this your subtle way of telling me off?'

'All I'm saying is that next time you decide to go rogue, the thing that goes bump in the night might not be me. We're a team. That means we have each other's backs, even when we don't want them.'

'You saying you're not going to leave me stuck here doing the filing, anymore?'

'Owen, if you want to throw yourself in front of a weevil and get mauled, that's your choice. Just remember that you have to live with the consequences of your choices.'

Owen scoffed at him. 'Living is a poor choice of words, don't you think?'

Jack shrugged. 'Well, it's either that or I tell you that if you mess up Ianto's filing system anymore, he says he's going to kill you.'

'Bring on the weevils, then,' Owen replied. 'I'd rather take my chances with them. At least I'm allowed to shoot them.'