Title: Overwhelmed
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,160 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 446 - Full
Summary: The rift is splintering and Torchwood is quickly filling up with dangerous creatures.


Chief weevil wrangler. Now that was a title Ianto never thought he’d christen himself with. Until recently he’d barely left the hub for anything that wasn’t taking the SUV to the carwash or stocking up on fresh milk and packets of jammie dodgers. Now he was a man with a mission, to clear the streets of every last weevil, and by god, were there a lot of them all of a sudden. Far too many to be a sign of anything good.

He’d been tag teaming with Gwen and Jack to round up the troublesome creatures. Two people could handle most weevils, but three made far easier work of the task, not least in being able to help carry the weevils so that they could be taken back to the hub and locked up until they figured out what to do with them next. They’d made quick work of two dozen weevils in the space of just over an hour, but then Gwen had gotten a call from one of Gwen’s old friends down at the police station – something about Roman soldiers – which had brought the first smile to Jack’s face since they’d discovered that the rift was splintering, which was something no one had ever contemplated being possible, let alone the kind of havoc it could wreak.

Jack and Gwen were now busy tracking down Bilis Manger – the man Jack and Tosh had supposedly met in 1941. How he could be here now in 2007 was anybody's guess. Maybe he was a time traveller like Jack's doctor, or maybe he was something else far more dangerous. Nobody knew, but Jack and Gwen were determined to find out one way or another. Between that and dealing with crazy sword-wielding Roman soldiers on the loose in the city. He was going to have to brush up on his ancient Latin just in case he needed to translate the words “stop or I'll shoot.”

Then there was Tosh and Owen, at the hospital, dealing with what Owen seemed to think was bubonic plague, come through from someone from the Dark Ages. Owen was worried, which meant everyone else was worried along with him. Bubonic plague. Not good, but then, hadn't Ianto learned in school that plague was transmitted by ticks and fleas? That sort of thing just didn't happen in modern Cardiff. And there was a cure for it these days. Surely they could prevent it from spreading if they just kept those people who'd travelled through the rift from making contact with others. Then again, Owen had mentioned the risk of other people coming through with things far worse than plague. Contagious things, things with no known cure, possibly highly infectious and deadly.

He pulled open the sliding door on the van, revealing the four semi-conscious weevils lying inside. Four all at once had been almost unheard of before today. Now he was making regular trips to the hub with the weevils piled up inside the van like stoned teenagers from a Green Man Festival. Just enough sedation to keep himself safe but not so much that they couldn't move under their own steam, and give him a good bit of lip service along the way. Everyone else was busy dealing with their own crises, so it was left to Ianto to deal with the weevils.

He had to pick up two more on his way back to the hub. One he caught loping its way into a residential street and hurried after it like a madman, trying to take it down before it took anyone else down. The second had nearly ended up attached to the front grill of the van as it hurtled across the road. If he wasn’t mistaken, the last few he’d picked up almost seemed glad of it. Perhaps they could sense that something bad was happening and were hoping to find a safer place to hide until the danger passed. A few weeks ago he would have approached a weevil with a good deal of caution and a whole lot of backup weaponry, but now he was forced to show no fear and move in with nothing more than a can of spray. The prospect might once have terrified him, but there was no time to be frightened now. There were bigger problems to deal with and weevils were just symptomatic and getting in the way of trying to solve a much more troubling scenario.

He managed to get the first five locked up and was dragging the noisy sixth weevil down into the cells when he ran into Jack and Gwen, standing in the path of a weevil they really didn’t want to get in the way of. This one was far less sedated than the rest and making its opinions known. ‘Coming through!’ he called out, giving them as much warning as he could. They moved to the side and he kept going until the weevil was finally locked in the last cell, only pausing once the door was securely locked. He did a quick count in his head. Six cells to a level, and nine levels all now completely occupied with weevils, in he excluded the other three aliens already incarcerated before things had gone mad. Fifty one weevils in a single day. He checked the latest computer updates on his phone. Thirteen more reports of weevils on the loose, he reported to Jack. Bloody hell. They were full up on all the cells across nine levels. They'd never had more than a dozen of anything locked up and now they were ready to hang out the “no vacancy” sign.

Except there were more cells. Another half dozen levels, though no one ever ventured that far down into the depths of the hub; not even Ianto. No one had used anything down there the entire time he’d worked here. He couldn't even be sure that everything was fully functional down there. Were the locks all operational? Did the ventilation systems need activating? Would the lights even turn on?

He confessed to Jack that there was no way they’d be able to keep up at this rate. Torchwood, and the size of their team, simply wasn’t designed for an influx of aliens of this magnitude, and that didn’t even account for everything else that was coming through the rift. And then there was the noise. That god awful noise that all the weevils had started making – mournful, depressing, desperate, afraid. It made the teeth in the back of his jaw tingle. Even Gwen felt unsettled by it, asking if he could make them stop, as if it was within his power to make weevils be quiet.

Jesus, what were they supposed to do? They had more cells but they’d be full in a heartbeat and then what? Jack looked worried and Jack was never worried. Whatever this was, Ianto suspected an overrun of weevils was going to be the least of their troubles.