Title: In full bloom

Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Torchwood team

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 4,275 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 301 - Bloom

Summary: The rift pool is harboring a growing problem.


Ianto very nearly stacked into the back of Jack as he came to a sudden and unexpected halt on the gangway across the middle of the hub. Had it not been for grabbing Jack's hips, he might have gone sideways into the rift pool, which was an altogether undesirable outcome. Perhaps he should have been payingumore attention, but still...

'What did you stop for?'

Jack moved half a step aside and pointed down. 'That,' he replied, pointing at the murky mustard yellow film covering the surface if the rift pool. 'That was not there yesterday.' He knelt down and went to touch it, only to have Ianto stay his hand and reluctantly hand over a silver pen that had been in his breast pocket.

'If you're not going to use gloves,' he chided, watching Jack poke and prod at the yellow mass. It congregated around the water tower and was creeping up the sides of it as much as it was spreading out across the surface of the water. 'What is it?' Ianto asked.

Jack held up a chunk of it on the end of the pen and squinted at it, sniffed it and then touched it with his fingers heedless of Ianto's earlier warning. 'Looks like some kind of algal bloom.' There were long tendril roots hanging in the water, fine as hairs, but the top layer was spongy and slimy.

'But it wasn't there yesterday,' he said, repeating Jack's earlier words.

'Miles of ocean can be covered in a matter of hours under the right conditions,' Jack replied. 'Something must have changed to make it suddenly grow like this.'

Ianto shook his head. 'Unbelievable. A few months ago it was so clean we had fish living in there.' It was no Japanese koi pond but it had certainly provided some entertainment for the team.

'Don't forget the baby shark,' Jack reminded him.

Ianto rolled his eyes. How could he possibly forget that? How it found its way up through the outflow pipes was anybody's guess. They were hardly big enough, even if Jack had once proven he could fit through one kitted out in basic scuba gear. Ianto scrunched up his face at it. 'It's disgusting.'

'Never said it was pretty.' He flicked the chunk off the end of Ianto's pen letting it plop back into the water before handing it back. 'You know what to do. Drain the whole thing and clear it out. Whatever it is, we don't want a repeat.'

'Bloody hell! What is that muck?' Owen called out, making his grand entrance and coming over to get a closer look.

'I could think of a few choice words,' their general support officer replied, unenthused by his commanding officer's instruction.

'Cardiff Bay decided to regurgitate a little surprise for us up through the rift pool by the looks of it,' Jack announced, rising back to his feet. 'Much as I enjoy nature and the great outdoors, I'd prefer if it didn't try to sneak its way indoors on us.'

Owen threw his hands up. 'No argument from me. But before Teaboy here nukes it, can I get a sample?'

Jack quirked an eyebrow at him. 'Adding it to your collection of mad scientist experiments?'

'Well, you have to be mad to work around here,' Owen replied. 'Could be alien or even sentient.'

Ianto set his hands on his hips and cast a weary gaze around the hub. 'Or it could just be plain old disgusting hub in need of a cleaning the like of which it has never seen in the last hundred and forty years.'

Owen snorted. 'Your department, not mine. I'll just help myself to a few samples and leave the rest to you.'

There was a pained sigh. 'Yay for teamwork.'

'Oh, and Ianto?' Jack called back, having already left them to it. 'Make sure you boil that water twice before you whip us up some coffee. God knows if it's in the pipes but I don't want that growing inside my small intestines.'

There was another aggrieved sigh. 'Says the man with the cast iron stomach.'




Owen grinned as he came up from his medical bay, seeing Ianto hard at work cleaning the algae off the water tower. He was up to his thighs in water, dressed in heavy fisherman's waders and scrubbing the side of the water tower with a large thick bristled broom. The rhythmic brushing sound had been going for the better part of an hour and even Owen had to admit that its constant sound had an oddly soothing quality to it. Proof that cleaning could be therapeutic, just so long as it wasn't him doing the cleaning.

'Isn't it nice seeing someone take pride in their work?' Owen asked, dropping the manila file containing the results of his latest autopsy on his desk.

Gwen gave him a half-hearted scowl. 'Now you're just being mean,' she said, sympathising with Ianto's industrious efforts. She didn't have to hear the little vexatious grunts to know that despite the protective clothing, more filthy water was snaking down his arms and along the handle of his brush, finding its way inside the rubber waders. There was a choc au pain from the café up the street with his name all over it. It was Gwen's go to cheering up Ianto treat.

'Yo! Teaboy!' Owen yelled out. 'It's been at least three hours since any of us had coffee.'

'You're such a prat, Owen!' Tosh scolded him, peering judiciously at him over the top of her glasses.

'Did someone say coffee?' Jack called out.

'You all know where the jar of instant decaf lives,' came the terse reply.

'Ianto, take a break,' Jack ordered. 'And a shower. Turns out that stuff is a bit on the nose,' he added, waving a hand in front of his face.

'Oh, you've just noticed, have you? Some of us have been up to our armpits in it.'

'Don't exaggerate. It's only up to that cute little butt of yours and those waders are not flattering it.'

Ianto growled but he looked happy to be dropping the heavy broom back on the gangway, along with the butterfly net he'd been using to scoop the worst of it out of the water as he went, dumping it into plastic buckets. 'Might've been nice if I'd had some help down here,' he grumbled to anyone who would listen.

'You'd only complain we weren't doing it properly,' Owen said.

'And practice makes perfect.'

'Ianto. Shower. Now,' Jack said, before tempers could flare. 'We can come up with some suitably gross things for Owen to do later.'

He snapped off the long rubber gloves, looking very much like he'd include some on that list for Jack. 'I'll make sure it's my very next job.'

Gwen hid a smile behind her hand as she locked onto Owen. 'You're so in for it now.'

Owen waved away the paltry threat. 'Yeah, yeah. I'm safe just as long as Jack keeps putting his big fat boot in his even bigger mouth.'




Owen had to wait a full half hour before Ianto came good on his promise to deliver coffee. 'Took your sweet time,' he complained, leaning over his autopsy table to complete his weekly inventory.

There was a unsubtle setting of the mug loudly on the metal table. 'Good to see you really wanted that sample,' Ianto remarked, noticing the petri dish containing a small blob of spongy yellow algae.

'I've had other things to do,' Owen grumbled. 'Unless you'd like to take over cutting up corpses.'

If there was a clever remark coming it was cut off by Jack's booming voice. 'Owen! We're needed down at the hospital. Two more people have been admitted with that giant club foot syndrome.'

Owen groaned. He picked up the coffee and threw it back before wincing and setting the mug straight back down. 'Bloody hell, that's still scalding hot!'

Ianto looked at him in askance. 'That's generally the idea.'

'Yeah, and now thanks to his lordship it's going to go to waste,' Owen sulked, stripping off his lab coat and swapping it for the black denim jacket he'd left hanging over the stair rail.

Ianto beamed, looking pleased. 'You win some, you lose some.'

'You owe me another one when I get back,' Owen warned him, stomping up the steps even as Jack was yelling at him to get a move on.




Owen couldn't complain by the time they'd finally gotten back to the hub. Sometimes the job sucked, but just occasionally when it came down to his medial skills being the difference between innocent people suffering needlessly and being the hero of the hour, he could take some pride in his work. Jack had even shouted them burgers on the way back, leaving a telltale glob of special sauce on his collar that was bound to give them away. The others could keep their salad sandwiches and quinoa, hellbent on this new healthy eating regime. Gwen had instigated it and Tosh and Ianto had thrown their support behind her. Owen and Jack were less than impressed by the overhaul to the hub's fridge and kitchen cabinets. There wasn't a packet of crisps or a jar of hazelnut spread to be found. He may have been a medical man but even he drew a line. He wasn't even meant to be eating, but the taste of the greasy beef patty and melted cheese was worth the twenty minutes he'd spend hanging upside down in order to bring it back up. The same went for Ianto's coffee. Some things just weren't worth giving up, even when you were dead.

'Looks like Ianto worked his magic whilst we were gone,' Jack remarked. The base of the water tower was gleaming, which only seemed to emphasise the section eight feet from the bottom, where the dull green tinge continued upwards all the way to the roof. It would be a game man that mentioned to him that it'd be nice if he cleaned the rest of it now. Even the rift pool looked better than it ever had. It was usually murky, and smelled slightly stale. Now it ran almost clear and the lemony scent of cleaning products lingered in the air.

'Pool party time,' Owen joked.

'And me without my inflatable lounge,' Jack replied, sounding genuinely disappointed. 'At least all the algae is gone now.'

'All except one square inch,' Owen replied, remembering the sample he'd abandoned.

'Go,' Jack said, waving him away. 'Enjoy your little side project. Can't wait for the report. I'm sure it'll make for riveting reading.'

Owen didn't even bother to pull a face at Jack. Everyone thought Owen was weird for taking an interest in plants. He often joked and told them he liked plants because they didn't have attitudes and didn't talk back. And they had loads of undiscovered medical properties, alien and earth based plants alike. Who knew what cures were hiding out there. And algae was something he didn't get to work with, but which had loads of potential. Perhaps he should have asked Ianto for a bigger sample, but he assumed he could also propagate more if need be.

He jogged down the steps to retrieve the sample and take it back up to the lab for further analysis. When he got there he noticed that the lid had been forced off the dish and that the yellow algae had increased in size, but that it had only growth in one direction, creating a fat line towards one edge of the dish.

'Has anyone been down here and knocked the lid off my sample?' he called out.

'No one's touched anything, Owen!' Gwen yelled back. 'As if we'd want to.'

He looked at the dish with curiosity. Not only had it seemingly forced the lid off, it was spilling over the edge. He rubbed his neck as he studied it. Why was it growing only in one direction? Plants usually developed uniformly unless there was something they were trying to reach, such as heat or light or... He let his eyes drift in the direction of the algae's growth. The only other thing left on the metal table was his long abandoned mug of coffee.

Nah, that's was just coincidence. Just imagine how over inflated Ianto's who would be if Owen said that this thing had been headed for his coffee. Still, there had to be a reason for it. He took it and the cold mug of coffee back up to the lab. He grabbed a second petri dish from the refrigerated cabinet and opened the lid. With a sterile scalpel he cut away a small section of the algae and placed it on one side of the dish. With a dropper he added two drops of coffee on the other side. It was ridiculous, but he wanted to disprove the theory anyway. He placed the pod back on the dish and taped it shut, doing the same to the original specimen, just in case, and left them there. He'd come back in a hour or two to check but he was certain that it was just coincidence. In the meantime he'd do some more research on algae in general.




Owen was almost asleep at his desk. Whilst he'd started researching in earnest, the last article he'd come upon was written by the most boring individual that ever lived. This guy - Owen couldn't even remember his name, professor something or other - could have made Nascar racing sound boring. Only the clattering of something in the lab startled him back awake.

'What was that?' Tosh asked frowning across the hub in Owen's direction. 'Sounds like something fell off the counter.'

Owen shook his head, about to contradict her. The only thing there were his two samples and they were well away from the edge. When he entered the narrow space how we he was surprised to find that not just one, but both of this samples had grown so much that they'd not only burst open the lids that had been carefully taped, but bloomed and crept all the way to the edge of the counter top and then with their collective new weight, pulled the dish off the counter with them.

'Bloody hell,' he murmured, shocked at how much the plant had grown in such a short space of time.

He snapped on a latex glove and picked up the dish, turning it over. Oddly, it was the control sample, and on the half of the dish where he'd dropped the coffee, it was completely untouched. 'Okay, so that rules out the coffee theory,' he said to himself. But there was nothing else in here to attract it, except... There was a heat lamp on the opposite bench where it had been moving towards. And down in his medical bay it has been moving in the direction of his coffee mug, which at the time would have been hot. Only the heat lamp was putting off a lot more heat than a cup of coffee. So...

Jack snuck up behind him. 'Owen, I've got the Chief Medical Officer for Wales on the phone wanting to know if we've resolved the club foot thing at the hospital this morning. He's throwing a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo at me, so can you talk to him and- Woah...' Jack brought the phone back up to his ear. 'Listen, can I call you back once if got my medical officer available to speak?' He didn't wait for a reply, hanging up on the man. 'What the hell? I thought we got rid of it all?' he exclaimed, seeing the three feet of yellow mass now in a pile on the floor as it attempted to reach its prize on the opposite side of the room, expanding and growing all the time.

'That was my sample from this morning. Apparently it likes a warm climate.'

'So I see. It's grown that much since this morning?'

'Just in the last two hours, actually,' Owen replied.

'Huh.' He cast a quick gaze around the hub. 'Ianto!'

Just like a magic, Ianto appeared out of nowhere at the summons. 'Oh, good work, Owen,' he said with a air of disdain. 'More mess you'd like me to clean up?'

'Never mind that,' Jack said. 'What did you end up doing with the rest you cleaned up?'

'In the bins ready to be incinerated,' Ianto replied.

'You haven't destroyed it yet?'

'There wasn't room. I had no idea how much stuff you lot had dumped down there for destruction. If you'd told me I could have done it days ago. There must be three loads at least. Thanks, by the way.'

Jack's brow furrowed at the response. 'So, that's a no?'

'All still sitting down there waiting for the first lot to get done.'

Owen looked worryingly at Jack. 'You don't think...'

Jack grabbed him by the shoulders. 'Come on.'




Jack ran all the way down the five floors to the subterranean level that housed their massive incinerator. Before he even reached the door or the enormous room, m there was already the sludge of spongy yellow mass seeping out through the doorway and filling the hall. He trampled through it without caring, determined to see inside.

'Oh my God,' Jack breathed, taking in the sight of the room. There was bright yellow algae everywhere, covering every space inch of the room and gathering in an ever expanding mass on the middle of the room.

'What the hell?' Owen swore.

Ianto shook his head in disbelief, turning to Jack. 'I thought you said it was safe?'

'It's drawn to sources of heat,' Owen explained. 'It must use heat to initiate some kind of mitosis. The more heat, the quicker the cells can multiply.'

'So, the rift pool had nothing to do with it? It was interested in the heat coming off the rift machine?'

Jack nodded. 'Reckon so.'

'The sample I took didn't do anything for ages,' Owen said. 'Nothing but stone cold dead bodies down there and one brilliant medic who can't get it up anymore. It made a beeline for the coffee I left behind and lost interest once it had gone cold.'

Jack ignored Owen's pointed comment about his own state of existence. He'd been coping with it pretty well of late, all things considered. 'Okay so we're pretty clear that it likes things warm and wet-'

'Insert signature Jack Harkness joke here,' Ianto quipped.

Jack gritted his teeth, biting down any comment. Ianto took all the fun out of making dirty jokes sometimes and now wasn't the time for a cheap laugh. 'Anyway, seems to me that the solution is to give it the exact opposite.'

'Cold and dry?' Owen asked.

'I was thinking liquid nitrogen. Any idea how much we have?'

Owen gave Ianto a pointed stare. 'Depends how quick someone can order more from Newport.' Ianto disappeared without a word, stepping gingerly over the swelling mass and making a hasty exit. He could be in and out of Newport in the Torchwood utility van in under two hours, but God only knew how much further this thing could grow before he did.

'We'll start with what we've got,' Jack announced, not wanting to waste a single minute. 'Freeze the outermost parts first to discourage it from spreading out further.'

'It's gonna be all over that incinerator for ages,' Owen replied. 'We've got to get in there and shut it down as a soon as possible. Even then it takes a full day to cool all the way back down and it's been already been burning most of the morning.'

'You go get what we need and get Gwen and Tosh to help you. Meet back here as soon as you can.'

'What about you?'

'I'm going in. Someone has to shut it down.'

Owen grimaced at the sight of the room. He could barely make out where the large machine was. 'If we never see you again, it's been nice knowing you.'

Jack snorted. 'This? Piece of cake. But if I do get stuck, just don't spray me and freeze me. There's bits of me I'm rather attached to.'

Owen ran off without biting at Jack's carefully dangled bait. He turned back to his mission, trying to map out the easiest route through the slimy gunge. This was so payback for teasing Ianto about cleaning it up this morning, he decided, before plunging headlong into the fray.




By the time Owen returned with the girls and all their gear, the algae had marched several metres further along the hallway.

'Where's Jack?' Gwen asked, her voice full of concern.

'Probably naked and communing with it by now,' Owen replied, using a gloved hand to crank open the nozzle of on the top of the tank behind him. 'No chance of getting to him til we can get the hallway clear.' He pointed the long metal nozzle attached to the tank down at the patch closest to him on the floor, giving it a quick spray. It crackled as it was frozen solidly in place and then Owen kicked at it with the tip of his boot, watching it shatter. 'Yep, that'll work,' he said.

Dressed in their hazmat suits, they began work on clearing the hallway, simultaneously freezing it and breaking g it up with heavy mallets so that the dry and frozen remains should be easily swept up into a pile along one side of the hall. By the time the reached to door, Jack was there, trying to wriggle his way out of the waist high sludge. They cleared a path for him as best they could but he was still dripping in the stuff.

'Did you switch off the incinerator?' Owen asked.

'I think so. Couldn't see any of the controls so I had to guess by feel alone. It's either off or I just cranked it as high as it'll go.'

'Let's hope it's the former,' Owen said, 'because we've already used up two full tanks and we've only got four left.'

'Correction. You have twenty four,' Ianto said, shuffling up behind them in his own protective suit, pushing a large trolley. 'You won't believe how many speed restrictions I broke.'




Armed with only a spare pair of gloves to protect his hands from the ice cold spray nozzle, Jack lead the charge, spraying the room without mercy. Owen followed suit, whilst Gwen and Tosh followed behind them with their mallets, breaking up large pieces of the frozen plant and shattering it from where it clung to the walls and floors. Ianto trailed behind them last of all, sweeping up the broken remains and icy yellow dust into buckets before transferring it all into a large bin on wheels. The contents would be incinerated just as soon as they could clear the entire room. One long hot blast should be enough to kill it off once and for all. It might have liked a warm climate, but nothing was going to survive the fifteen hundred degrees inside the machine it had been so keen on settling up against.

'Is that all of it?' Jack asked, surveying the room with a keen eye.

'All except the gunk all over your clothes,' Owen replied, frowning at the state Jack was in.

'Don't even think about tracking that all the way through the hub and to the showers, 'Ianto warned him. 'I do not want that gumming up the pipes.'

'Does that mean I get to strip and have you hose me down?' Jack asked with more than a hint of hopefulness in his voice. He winked at Gwen and Tosh for good measure, inviting them to stick around for the show.

'Perhaps I should give Owen the honour of handling the high pressure hose.' Jack's smile fell away very quickly at the suggestion. 'Or we could just bring down the portable tub and give you a bath. Might be a little on the cold side however. Don't want to risk a repeat by giving you a nice hot one.'

'You can owe me one later,' Jack told him. 'With bubbles. And some extra company.'

'It must be time to go home,' Tosh said, making a show of studying her watch.

'Yeah, Rhys will be getting tea ready by now,' Gwen added.

'And there's a beer at the pub with my name on it,' Owen added.

Jack's smile returned as the three of them made hasty retreat, their work done for the day. 'Looks like you're the only one left to scrub my back, Ianto.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Nothing new then.' He sighed and took in the view of the room. They still didn't even know if it had been alien or not. Nobody seemed to care, just so long as it was now gone. 'You know,' he began, 'I have a mind to call, the council and tell them we're shutting off the water tower plumbing permanently, so that we can drain the rift pool and put an end to these sorts of things.'

'Ianto, the water tower is one of this city's most prominent landmarks and tourist attractions. A lot of people would be very upset. Not the least you, Mister Three Times Welsh Tourism Board Customer Service Award winner.'

He relented at Jack's words. 'I know. It just doesn't make our lives any easier.'

Jack grinned and wrapped a gloopy arm around him, watching him cringe despite the protective suit he wore. 'If it was easy it wouldn't be any fun.'