m-findlow.livejournal.com

Title: Thief in the night (Part one)
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 12,200 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 196 - Thief
Summary: Jack is concerned about things being stolen

'Why does nothing ever decide to come through the rift at a normal hour?' Owen complained. 'Eleven am would be perfect. Get there, sort it out, and be back in time for lunch. But no, instead it's four in the sodding morning.'

'Feel free to forward your complaints to the rift department. I'm sure they'll give yours as much consideration as they give mine,' Jack replied, thinking back on how warm and snug he'd been in his own bed, his handsome Welshman tucked up against him.

The drive took them across town, heading for the suburban outskirts, where countryside began to encroach on houses, or perhaps it was the other way around.

'Pull up just over here,' Tosh said, reviewing the scans. 'This is as close as we can get in the car.' Jack brought the SUV to a stop in the gravel by the side of the road.

'It landed in a paddock?' Gwen asked, making out the rickety stump and wire fencing running along the road, and the lazy green that spread out in all directions. 'That was lucky.'

'Or not,' Owen added, 'depending on how small this thing is.'

'It's not that small,' Tosh confirmed, adjusting her readings. 'Probably looking for something just smaller than a hatchback.'

Jack was up and over the fence before the first of them could argue, slowly clambering over it themselves and following in his wake.

Jack had his torch in hand, cutting through what was still mostly night, roving it left and right as he made long strides across the paddock, headed towards a noise. Halfway across he spotted the source, a lone horse whinnying and snorting, clearly upset by something. Jack slowed his pace, stepping forward tentatively against its frightened protests, trying to break free from its post where it had been housed for the night. He reached up for the makeshift rope bridle, gripping it firm.

'Shh, shh, shh. Easy girl,' he intoned, pocketing his torch and reaching up his spare hand to stroke the mare's neck, soothing its panicked bucking until it finally settled. He gave one last pat of its nose before continuing past it.

'What's he a sodding horse whisperer now? Never mind the aliens, so long as the local livestock are happy,' Owen muttered, receiving a giggle from Gwen.

The item ahead of them glinted from their torchlight long before it finally came into view, gleaming like a big silver ladybug.

'Spaceship?' Gwen asked.

'Two man cruiser,' Jack confirmed.

'Two man?' Owen said. 'Doesn't look big enough for one.'

'Not everything in this universe has your imposing stature, Owen,' Jack replied, grinning in a mocking way.

'Nor an ego the size of yours,' he snarked back.

'Check for survivors,' he said, ignoring the jibe.

Owen stepped closer to the hulk that had smoke rising in thin tendrils from various panels, dented from the impact. On the whole, it looked to be in good condition though, considering it had crashed into a paddock in Wales from God only knew where.

'Nothing, boss,' Owen declared, checking his PDA for life signs.

'Ianto, help me with this panel,' Jack said, indicating for him to grab the other side, pulling hard until it finally hissed open.

'Age before beauty,' he said gesturing.

'Only because you know you won't fit,' Ianto grinned.

'Did you just call me fat?'

'Broad chested,' he replied, before shoving his upper body through the narrow hatch, shining his own torch around.

'See anything?'

'Empty. No bodies. Looks abandoned.' He reached over the tiny seat and the console sparked, hitting his hand with a minor electrical jolt. 'Ow,' he cried, pulling away  sharply.

'What's wrong? You okay?'

'Fine. I think the ship took more of a battering than we thought.' He pulled himself back out before it decided to electrocute him properly.

'Okay, see if you can bring up a ship's log to find out what happened. Gwen, Owen and I will search the area in case the passengers survived and went for aid or shelter nearby.'

'Shall I call for a lorry?'

'No need,' Jack replied. He grabbed the back end of the ship with both hands and lifted, before setting it back down, demonstrating its weight. 'Anti-gravity alloy. We'll be able to carry it back to the car and load it on the roof.'

They trekked around the surrounding paddocks and hillside for over an hour, watching as dawn rose overhead, but there were no signs of any ship's survivors having left to find help. Tosh didn't have any luck either, trying to get access to the ships logs. The whole internal console was flicking and sparking wildly, and it was Ianto who'd pulled her out, declaring it too dangerous.

'Okay, let's pack it up then,' Jack said, once they'd returned. 'We've already got plenty on for the next few days, assuming the rift doesn't add to it, so the mystery of an empty ship will have to wait. Tosh? Think you can quell your curiosity?'

'I'm sure I can manage,' she replied.

Ianto felt a guilt settling in the pit of his stomach as he knocked on the door to Jack's office.

'Ianto! What took you so long?'

Right. Time to fess up. He sucked in a deep breath.

'I couldn't find it, sir.'

Jack paused and looked at him. 'What do you mean you couldn't find it? You had it yesterday.'

'I know.' And that was the most baffling thing. He knew exactly where he'd left the transmodulator, on his desk, deciding that there was little point in filing it way until Jack had declared than he was finished with it and that it was safe. He should have finished checking it over yesterday, but the last few days had been just as busy as Jack had promised.

'Okay,' Jack said slowly, trying to wheedle more information out of Ianto. 'So did you maybe put it somewhere else and forget?'

Ianto gave him a withering look and Jack held his hands up in surrender.' Just saying. You know, it does happen occasionally when you're not on your A game.' It was rare, but it did happen. It just wasn't like Ianto to lose things. Most of the time.

Ianto stepped closer to the desk and sat down in the chair opposite. 'I know,' he repeated, 'which is why I checked all the usual places as well, and retraced my steps in case I got distracted somewhere along the way and put it down.'

The look of guilt and embarrassment on Ianto's face seemed punishment enough. 'Okay, well it's bound to turn up sometime today or tomorrow. I just would have preferred that we get Tosh to have a look at it now and figure out why it went haywire in the first place, so that we can prevent it happening again.'

'I'm sorry,' Ianto apologised. 'I'll keep looking. I don't know what to say.'

'So say "would you like another coffee, sir?" and we'll leave it at that.'

Ianto gave him a wan smile. 'Would you like another coffee, sir?'

'Love one.'

Ianto left with his orders. He would find it if he had to turn the whole hub upside down.

Gwen stormed into Jack's office later that afternoon, her face like thunder. 'You care to explain yourself?' she asked, hands on hips.

'Explain what?'

'I know it was you, Jack. God, you even had the cheek to leave the empty wrappers in my bin!'

'Gwen, slow down,' Jack pleaded. 'I have no idea what you're talking about. Sit down and start from the beginning.'

She flashed him an angry look but did as he asked.

'Yesterday I had five chocolate bars in my drawer, and today I come in to find five chocolate bar wrappers in the bin. No apology, no IOU note, nothing.'

'It wasn't me.'

'Come on, Jack. We all know what you're like with chocolate.'

'Hand on heart I promise you. Besides,' he said, feeling a little bit of defensive feeling rising up inside him, 'I'm not the only one around here with a sweet tooth. Myf probably pinched them in the night.'

'Last I checked, she didn't have opposable thumbs for peeling off the wrappers.'

'Good point,' Jack conceded. 'Well ,that only leaves Owen, Tosh and Ianto, and I think we can discount the last two.'

'So we think Owen took it?'

'Wouldn't be the first time.'

'Yeah, but he's not stupid enough to leave the evidence behind.'

'Oh, but you thought I was?' Jack said, smiling at the accusation. He leaned forward on the desk. 'Even assuming it was Owen, I don't think you're going to get a confession out of him, let alone an apology.'

'True,' she sullenly agreed.

Jack reached over and pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk, bringing out five chocolate bars, then adding a sixth as a goodwill gesture.

'Secret stash?' Gwen asked.

'Something like that. I like happy employees, and Ianto never notices it if I only steal one at a time from his drawer.'

Gwen rolled her eyes in a very Ianto like way, knowing full well that Ianto knew, but that he let Jack get away with it.

'This was fun,' Jack said standing up as Gwen made to leave. 'We should have chats like this more often.'

'You're hilarious, you know that?' she said, giving him a toothy grin and leaving.

'Alright,' Owen's voice rang up from his autopsy bay, his feet pounding up the steps, 'who's gone and fucked with my full body scanner?'

Three faces all looked at him vaguely, but it didn't stop him from pointing accusations at them.

'Who was the last person to use it?' he demanded. 'Come on, don't think I don't know you people use it when I'm not here to check yourselves over and save having to have me check you out.'

'Even if we did,' Tosh said, not denying it outright, 'why make a fuss about it now?'

Because it's not bloody working now, that's why. You,' Owen said, pointing at Ianto, 'you're always down there cleaning up.'

'Which I wouldn't have to if you did it yourself,' Ianto muttered.

'You must've knocked it with your mop or something.'

'I haven't touched your bloody alien x-ray machine,' Ianto growled, indignant at the charge.

Jack wandered out just in time to see the two of them in a Mexican standoff.

'What have I told you two about playing nice? Owen, what have you done this time?'

'Why's it always my fault? Someone's futzed with the body scanner. It was working fine last week.'

'If your polite bone was missing from the scan, that's because you don't have one,' Ianto quipped.

'Not helping, Ianto,' Jack warned him.

'It missed the stick up your arse, too,' Owen retorted. 'How does Jack find room?'

Oi...  Jack thought. He really wanted to bang their heads together some days.' Tosh, can you please take a look at it and see if you can't get it working for Lord Grumpy Pants here?'

'Wha?' Owen exclaimed at the thinly veiled insult.

'And you,' he said, turning on his lover, 'don't you have some work that needs doing in the archives?'

'Yes, sir,' he replied plainly, taking his leave.

'Anything yet, Tosh' Owen huffed impatiently, standing over the railing.

'Yeah, actually. The zero point laser from inside it is missing. That's why it's not working.'

'What? Well, how could that happen?'

'I don't know,' she said, sitting back on her calves, 'the machine now in several pieces on the floor. Someone would have to have physically removed it. Might be a spare one in the archives somewhere. I'll get Ianto to look into it. If we do, I can have back up and working in no time.'

'Who would do that? Take it apart for that, I mean?'

'No one here. There's something else I want to check. Can you pass me my PDA?'

'Yeah,' Owen replied. 'On your desk?'

'Yep.'

Owen stepped over to her desk, rifling in amongst the other bits of tech randomly scattered on it. 'Sure it's here?' he called out.

'Yep.'

He pushed a few more things around, but couldn't see it anywhere. He tried the top drawer as well, just in case.

'It's not here, Tosh.'

She trotted up the stairs and joined him, reviewing the contents, pawing through them.

'I swear I left it here last night.' She double checked her handbag and her drawers, scratching her head. 'You don't suppose...' she let the rest of the sentence hang.

'Nah,' Owen said. 'Two things go missing that's just coincidence.'

'What's gone missing?' Jack said, walking up to them.

Tosh was annoyed about the missing PDA, but more confused as to how's Owen's body scanner could be missing a vital component. She wasn't given time to dwell on it further though, because Jack had already give her another assignment to occupy her time.

'I need you to check something with the rift machine.'

'The rift machine?'

'Getting weird readings from it. Need you to take a look. Get Ianto to pull the plans from secure archives.'

'Really?' She searched his gaze for any signs that he was having her on. It wasn't beneath him to play pranks at his team's expense.

'Really. I don't wanna risk it. I'd rather you check it out properly and be certain. Just don't get too excited, you hear me? We're not fixing it all the way. Just wanna be sure it's not about to blow up on us. Not that I think it is, just like to be sure.'

Tosh nodded obediently.

'Ianto!' Jack yelled out, and from nowhere the unassuming young man appeared.

'Tosh needs the plans for the rift machine.'

'Sir?'

'It's okay,' he said, leaning back in his chair and resting a heavy boot on the desk. 'I've authorised it.' He nodded towards the safe at the far end of his office.

Ianto rolled his eyes, biting down on any comments about Jack having a bone in his arm, perfectly capable of having retrieved them himself. He had no doubts Jack would be enjoying the view of his rear end opening the safe.

He deftly twirled the combination lock left, then right, then left again, pulling open the heavy door, revealing the high tech safe hidden behind the Victorian facade. He keyed in the code and pulled the lever down, hearing it hiss. He dragged out the metal box, frowning. That wasn't the plans. He set the box on the desk and flipped the lever again, pulling out the next metal crate. The plans weren't in there either. Odd. He was sure he'd input the right code, appending the specific crate code.

He looked back at Jack who had his arms folded and his eyebrows raised.

'Problem?'

He turned back to the safe without a word, still flustered by his earlier misplaced transmodulator. He input the code again, concentrating, and tugged the lever. This time when he opened it, there was a crate with nothing in it. He checked the padlock code. Yes, this was the one.

'What's wrong?' Jack asked, sensing Ianto's shoulders tense, pulling his feet back off the desk, and sitting up straight

Ianto turned to face him. 'It's gone.'

Jack leaned his elbows on the boardroom table, looking stern as the others sat there and sipped their coffee.

'We have a thief in our midst,' he began. 'A transmodulator core, chocolate bars, a zero point laser, a PDA, plans for the rift machine... all seemingly unrelated.'

'You think it's one of us?' Owen said.

'But it can't be,' Gwen replied. 'We've all had stuff go missing.'

'Could be a ruse,' Jack said,

'Hang on a bit,' Owen said. 'I haven't heard of anything of yours going missing.' The four of them looked at Jack perplexed. He couldn't be the one. Why would he call a meeting if it was him?

'Yet,' Jack qualified.

'I still don't know,' Owen mused. 'Teaboy seems to have been at the centre of a lot of these things, and none of us has the code to the secure archive.'

Jack stood up. He wanted to defend his lover with every breath in his body, but right now, he couldn't be certain it wasn't any one of them. All he knew was that it wasn't him, but that he couldn't have his team divided from the inside. He had to be their captain first and foremost.

'Nobody is pointing the finger at anybody,' Jack said, making his feelings clear. 'Someone or something is at work here. Chunks of CCTV footage have been wiped from our systems, our secure codes breached and all of this seems to have happened during the night.'

'Well, that settles it doesn't it?' Owen said. 'The three of us aren't here at night, so that just leaves you two.'

'Surely you're not suggesting it's Jack or Ianto?' Gwen cried.

'They would have heard someone up in Jack's office, accessing the secure archive, surely,' Tosh protested.

'Not if it was one of them,' Owen replied.

'Of all the ridiculous...' Ianto spat back.

'Everybody calm down!' Jack roared. The silence that fell around that room was deafening.

'Now, I've already had Tosh run a life signs scan, but apart from us, and the residents, there's no one else here who shouldn't be.'

'Maybe Janet's nicking out for a late night pilfering spree,' Owen muttered.

'Which means,' Jack continued, ignoring Owen's snark, 'that we're most likely dealing with something that doesn't register as a life sign.'

'Great,' Owen said, 'that leaves us with ghosts, robots, alien gas beings, Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.'

'You forgot the Tooth Fairy,' Ianto quipped, unable to help himself in trying to bring levity to the moment, before making a startling realisation. He twirled in his seat to stare at Jack, face ashen.

'You don't thinks it's...'

'No,' Jack said, reading his mind. 'We destroyed it completely. Besides, cybermen don't pickpocket. We'd have been dead in our sleep or converted by now if there was a cyberman here in the hub. He paused. Cyber mats however...'

'What's that?' Gwen asked.

'Mechanical rodents, more or less. Cut from the same cloth, but limited in their abilities, though just as dangerous if we don't find them and neutralise them.' He paused again, thinking it over. 'Still doesn't account for the chocolate, though.'

'Maybe it's not connected,' Tosh said.

'It has to be. It went missing overnight and there was no CCTV footage showing anyone taking it from Gwen's drawer. It had to have gone missing in the same time that the CCTV was scrubbed. It's still a possibility, but I'm not prepared to discount anything right now.'

'I've reset all our security codes,' Tosh announced. 'If anyone had sourced the old ones somehow, that should prevent them from gaining access to our systems, weapons store and all other restricted areas.' She tapped the keys and brought up an image on the screen. 'I've also introduced some tracker bots into our systems to trawl for unusual activity. If someone does something out of the ordinary, the bots should alert us.'

'Good. In the meantime, we sweep this base, top to bottom. I want to be sure we find anything that might be hiding away.'

They split up in teams of two and three, slowly working their way from one end of the enormous labyrinth to the other, sealing off passages and rooms as they went, entering new lock down codes for each sector, ensuring anything missed by their search wouldn't be able to escape from one section to the next. It took them three full days to sweep the entire hub, but their search had so far turned up nothing, and the further they traveled from the main hub, the less likely it became that anything would turn up.

Gwen and Ianto wandered a lonely corridor, checking each room in turn. Down here it was nothing more than disused storage areas, untouched for years, or decades maybe, Gwen thought. It was dreary and depressing.

'Huh,' Ianto said, shining his torch down at ther floor.

'What is it?' Gwen asked, flicking her own torch from corner to corner. 'I don't see anything.'

'Exactly. The floor should be covered in dust, like everything else down here, but it's spotless.'

'Maybe you've cleaned it already.'

'Not that I recall. Don't think I've made it this far down.'

She sighed. 'So many rooms. You've probably just forgotten. There's no other signs that anyone's been down here apart from it being clean,' she said, poking around the shelves of long forgotten detritus.

'I suppose. I'll mention it to Jack anyway and make sure Tosh fixes an un-networked camera in here, just in case.'

'Good idea.'

The search turned up nothing untoward; no robots, no ghosts and nothing else that could be ascribed as anything other than dust, mildew and decay.

They monitored the feed from the overly clean room all night, taking it in turns to grab an hour or two of sleep, but there was no movement, and no interruptions to the feed at all. The second night they left it go on its own, reviewing it in the morning, but still nothing. There was however another chunk missing from their main CCTV systems, and Jack was livid. What on earth was going on around here?

'I'm sorry, Jack,' Tosh said, running every program she could think of. 'I can't explain it.'

'Does anything appear to be missing?' he asked Gwen and Ianto.

'We inventoried the secure archives, weapons store and half a dozen other key areas. Everything is in order,' Gwen reported.

Jack let out a vexed breath. 'Are we jumping shadows, Tosh? Could the CCTV system itself be glitchy?'

'I'll check it again,' she said, but already knowing the answer was no.

'This all started the day after we found that crashed spaceship,' Ianto said, thinking aloud. 'Could something have been hiding inside?'

'It's been offline this whole time,' Tosh replied. 'For all intents and purposes it's dead. I haven't even had a chance to look at it to see if we can get it working again. We all saw it was empty inside.'

'And we haven't found anything anywhere in the hub,' Owen added.

Jack put his hands on his hips. 'And we're sure nothing else is missing since last night?'

Gwen frowned. 'Well, we can't be one hundred percent, but it doesn't look like it.'

'Okay,' Jack said. 'Tosh, keep seeing what you can find out about the CCTV. I can live with a few things going missing, but the rift plans being gone worries me. For now I want the rest of you to get on with your normal duties. I don't have to tell you to stay vigilant for anything strange.'

And stay vigilant they did, for all the good it did. The strange occurrences of the past four days seemed to end as abruptly as they'd begun. There were no more gaps in their CCTV, and no more possessions that went astray. In short, everything went back to normal, or as normal as Torchwood ever got.

Jack awoke and shuffled in bed, reaching over to wrap himself tighter around his lover, only to find he wasn't there. He gave it five minutes, sure that he'd just nipped out to the bathroom. After ten, he still hadn't returned, and Jack realised that the side of the narrow bed was cold. He'd been gone a while. Huh. He cracked open an eye and spied the glowing green numbers on the beside clock. 3.13am. Way too early for Ianto to be up and about.

Ianto wasn't one to get up in the middle of the night, even if he'd had a sudden thought about something. It was the reason for the notepad and pen on the side table, so that if he did have a sudden burst of inspiration, something for his to do list, he could jot it down and fall straight back asleep. Only Jack made four am starts, unable to sleep, though they were more infrequent these days. Ianto was the lighter sleeper of the two of them. Once Jack fell asleep, he stayed that way. Ianto often joked that the rift could implode and Jack would sleep right through it.

Not tonight though. Something had clearly woken him, and finding Ianto gone was the most likely explanation for it.

He pulled back the covers, shivering involuntarily, despite the long pajama bottoms and bedsocks. He'd laughed when Ianto had bought them for him, telling him they were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever seen, but now he was glad of them on those chilly winter nights. With only a t-shirt covering his upper torso, his arms became instantly freckled with goosebumps.

He climbed up ladder and looked around for his companion, sure he wouldn't be far away. He wasn't in Jack's office, nor could he see him through the glass window in the main section of the hub working at his own desk, or tucked away in the kitchenette. Did Ianto even do late night snacking? Shivering again, he grabbed his coat from the hook near the door and wrapped it around his body, before sitting down at his desk.

'Now where did you get to, Mr Jones?' he asked himself, opening up the live CCTV feeds and flicking through the most likely cameras.

Ah ha. Archives. Just as he'd thought.

He made the journey downstairs quickly, finding Ianto not as his desk in front of the computer, where he'd been when he'd picked up the camera feed, but wandering amongst the shelves in the next room.

'I admire your work ethic, but even I have my limits,' he joked.

At first Ianto didn't respond, continuing his search.

'Come on,' Jack beseeched him. 'Can't this, whatever this is, wait til morning? My snoring wasn't that bad, was it?'

Still, Ianto chose to ignore him, as if he wasn't there. It wasn't until Jack closed the gap between them and grabbed him by the arms that he stopped.

'Ianto, you must be freezing,' Jack said, gripping him as he stood there in his own t-shirt and pajamas. Ianto just blanked him, only it wasn't quite blank, more like deer caught in the headlights.

'Ianto? What's wrong? Talk to me.'

He expected a little frown to cross his features, as it had done a million times before, confused or surprised, or even upset, waiting for Ianto to shrug him off, annoyed at something he didn't yet know he'd done wrong. Instead, Ianto went completely still in his arms, like his very essence had left the room.

'Ianto,' Jack repeated, giving him a little shake. Was he sleep walking? He shook a bit harder, prepared to live with the consequences of suddenly waking him out of some dream state. He should have been floppy and relaxed, even if he was sleepwalking, but instead he went stiff as a board when Jack gripped him, though his expression was still vague. Something was very wrong. Jack looked down and found something small gripped in Ianto's hand. He reached down and wrapped his own hand around Ianto's.

'Let me have it,' he said, keeping his tone firm. Ianto's face didn't register the question, but his hand let go regardless. Jack held up the small metal ball, examining it. It was a power cell. What would Ianto want with a power cell?

A power cell, a transmodulator core, a zero point laser, a PDA, chocolate, no forget the chocolate, plans for the rift machine...

It suddenly all made perfect sense. They couldn't find their thief because he'd been amongst them the whole time. The items weren't random at all. It wasn't absent minded Torchwood staff. It was deliberate.

'Ianto,' he asked again, praying for some sign of recognition. Something had taken him. Taken control of him, somehow.

He gripped Ianto's hand harder, slipping the power cell in his coat pocket, and pulling on Ianto's hand. Surprisingly, when Jack pulled, Ianto complied, and let himself be lead.

As much as it broke his heart to do so, he locked Ianto in one of the cells. He sat on the stone ledge and stared blankly at Jack through the perspex, as Jack studied him. Then he simply lay down along its length and closed his eyes, drifting off into sleep.

'Jack! Jack!' The sound of Tosh's footsteps dashing down the narrow stairway, echoing around the stony walls, grabbed his attention.

'Tosh it's three in the morning. What they hell are you doing here?'

She came to a dead stop in front of the cell, seeing Ianto lying inside.

'It's him.' The way she said it as a statement rather than a question caught him by surprise.

'I know. How did you know, though?'

'The trawler bots. The flagged Ianto accessing several sections of the lower hub. Sections he had no reason to be in. I tried calling you but you didn't answer.'

Jack growled. He'd left his phone by his bedside when he'd gone to look for Ianto.

'Show me where,' Jack ordered her.

She looked at Ianto lying prone in the cell. 'Shouldn't we-'

'I need more information first, Tosh. Then maybe I can figure out what we're dealing with.'

Tosh lead him through a dark and narrow passageway, following her map of the various sectors.

'When I reset all our security codes I made each one unique to a specific member of the team. That way, if anything unusual cropped up, we'd know who had been compromised.'

Compromised. Jack turned the word over in his head. Was that what had happened?

'You anticipated this?' he asked.

She frowned, looking guilty that she'd mistrusted her coworkers and friends. 'I didn't want to take any chances.'

'I'm glad you didn't,' he replied, trying to reassure her that she'd done the right thing.

She nodded at him, her face still grim. 'Through here,' she said, indicating the security panel, keying in her own code.

When Jack pushed open the door, they were both surprised to find the crashed spaceship in the middle of the room.

'I swept this area myself,' Jack said. 'That wasn't in here.'

'He must've moved it after the search. Several times I'm guessing. Each time we cleared an area, it would have been safe to come back and move it somewhere we'd already checked.'

'A power cell, a transmodulator core, a zero point laser, a PDA, plans for the rift machine... Things you might need to repair a broken spaceship.'

'A power cell?'

Jack pulled it from his pocket and showed Tosh. She considered the ship. 'It would probably work, but not on its own.'

He had this when I found him. I think he was searching for a second one.

'Yes, you'd need at least two,' she agreed. 'So what are we saying? Something from the ship has taken over his body and is trying go fix the ship?'

'It's built for only two passengers,' Jack replied, 'so I think we're dealing with one of them.'

Tosh looked at Jack with a worried expression. 'So where's the other one?'

'Jack?' There was a persistent banging that woke him from where he'd become slumped on a hard backed metal chair down in the cells.

'This had better not be one of your funny, "let's have sex in a cell before breakfast" pranks,' Ianto said. 'I don't even want to know how you drugged me and got me down here. You'll be on decaf for a week!'

Jack bolted up from the chair and came to stand face to face with Ianto on the opposite side of that cell door.

'Ianto?'

'Who else? Now stop playing funny buggers and let me out. I'm not in the mood for games this morning, however many happy endings you promise.'

'I can't.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can.'

'I can't,' Jack repeated.

Ianto leaned forward, pressing both hands up against the glass, his nose almost touching it, and his face contorted in displeasure.

'Jack. Let. Me. Out. Now.'

'Protocol 17,' Jack said.

Protocol... Alien influence. No. It wasn't possible.

'No,' he said, shaking his head. 'You're wrong.'

'Ianto, what's the last thing you remember?'

'I... I was going to bed. With you.'

'And then?'

'Then?' he exclaimed. 'Then, then nothing. I fell asleep. I woke up here.' He saw the stony look in Jack's eyes and knew there was more to it than that. Was he the one who had been stealing stuff?

'Jack. Please tell me this isn't happening.'

Jack pressed a hand against the glass, mirroring Ianto's own. 'I'm sorry.'

'But I feel fine! I feel completely fine. I've felt completely fine this whole time.'

'And yet during the night you've been taking apart body scanners and raiding the archives for spare parts, wiping out the evidence as you went. You waited until I was asleep and then snuck out, knowing there was small chance of me waking up, and then you'd crawl back into bed once you were all done, and me none the wiser.'

No. No, he hadn't done that, had he? 'Wouldn't I remember if I had?'

'Are there any other gaps in your memory? Think hard. During the day, did you at any time find yourself somewhere you don't remember going, or have chunks of time that seem to disappear quickly?'

Ianto scrunched up his face, trying to recall every last minute of the past few days. 'No,' he replied.

Jack nodded patiently. 'Okay. So perhaps this isolated to when you're asleep, when your mental barriers are at their weakest.'

'What does that mean?'

'I don't know yet. But I promise you, we're going to do everything we can to help you.'

'Told you it was him, didn't I?' Owen said, when he arrived, having received the six am call from Jack, requesting him to come in immediately.

'Maybe now's not the time for I told you so?' Gwen suggested. The lack of coffee and Ianto's reassuring presence had them all feeling edgy.

'Run every test you can,' Jack asked. 'I want to know what it is. Microbial, nanotechnology, viral, empathic, whatever. We don't stop until we know and figure out a way to get it out.'

Owen's tests were time consuming but thorough. When he had to go in to run physical tests, Jack accompanied him, stun gun at the ready in case Ianto should try to make a break for it, or harm Owen. It was a futile exercise as Ianto simply sat there and let Owen go through the motions, poking and prodding, taking samples of everything, without a word of complaint. All he requested were some warmer clothes and something to eat, both of which Jack readily supplied, bringing down jeans, a warm, hooded jumper and thick socks, as well as tea and toast.

'I swear I feel fine,' Ianto persisted, changing clothes in front of Jack without a second thought.

'Please just let us do our job,' Jack begged him. 'I can't treat you any different than if it was one of the others.'

'I know,' Ianto said, slumping back down on the ledge gripping the hot mug and wishing it was coffee instead of tea. He knew better than to let Jack attempt coffee. He could jiggle a teabag without too much trouble, but operating Ianto's precious machine was a leap too far.

'It's like a tiny light blinking in the background,' Owen announced, as he twisted the screen around to show Jack. 'Hardly noticeable, but it's there. A completely separate brainwave.'

'A brainwave? But that's like, another consciousness.'

'Exactly. Something else is using his brain, but it's not strong enough to take total control. It explains why he seems normal now, but also explains what you described to me, like a sleepwalker's trance state. It could only take over when Ianto's own consciousness was subdued.'

'So how do we get it out?'

'I don't know. But, I do think we might be able to communicate with it.'

Continues in part two...