Something in the Water

TWENTY-THREE

Toshiko’s eyes were blinking open. They looked raw, but she was fully conscious. Jack and Owen simply looked at her, open-mouthed. She raised a hand weakly, and Owen instantly reached out and grabbed it, holding it tight in both hands. Toshiko opened her mouth and said, ‘I … feel … all right.’

‘Well you look bloody awful,’ said Owen.

‘I mean … I’m alive.’ Toshiko took a breath and then coughed, painfully, and Jack, moving suddenly, helped her into a sitting position.

‘Boy are we glad to see you!’ Jack gasped.

Owen was frowning. ‘Here, what did you mean, “because I’m a man”?’

‘Wrong sex,’ Toshiko smiled weakly, pulling herself into a sitting position with some help from Jack. ‘I worked it out in the lab, but I … I just couldn’t go on … I was so tired.’ Her voice disappeared into a faint croak. ‘Mouth’s so dry.’

Owen gave her a glass of water from the sink. ‘Drink this.’

She gulped at the water greedily, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, trying not to gag or cough again. Then she put an air of professionalism on like a coat and said, ‘Check yourselves using the ultrasound.’

Owen switched the scanner on, and, not bothering with any gel, pulled open the neck of his shirt and placed it on the flesh of his throat. He coughed, and the image on the monitor spasmed in time.

Jack peered closely. ‘Still looks like a blur to me.’

Toshiko pointed. ‘No, look. There.’ She traced a fuzzy shape on the screen with her finger. ‘See that lighter patch? Hold the scanner still. Stop coughing. There! That’s it …’

The shape on the monitor suddenly came into a kind of focus. A grey, foetal shape. Like a tiny doll that had been pushed into a ball. As they watched, it moved slightly, changing position like someone asleep. Owen coughed again.

‘Homunculus,’ said Jack quietly.

Abruptly Owen yanked the scanner away from his throat and began to gag, turning to throw up into the sink. He coughed and spat out blood and a heavy amount of slime. ‘I can feel it moving,’ he gasped. ‘Inside.’

Jack grabbed the scanner and put it against his own neck. After a moment’s examination, the same picture appeared out of the grainy blur on the screen. ‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Because you’re male,’ Toshiko told them. She sank back onto the autopsy table. ‘I managed to isolate the alien cells. They’re formed by minute spores which lodge in the mucus membrane of the throat. They’re a kind of bacteria, but one that it is infinitely more complex and adaptable than any kind of bacteria on Earth …’

‘Take it easy, Tosh,’ warned Jack. He put an arm around her and helped her back into a sitting position.

She leaned heavily on him but shook her head. ‘There’s no time for that. I have to tell you all this. The alien bacterium infects the throat, causing the swelling and sores which it feeds on as it grows. But the spores require a certain chemical to begin the transmutation process — testosterone, and lots of it.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Jack asked. ‘It only affects guys?’

‘Yes, in a word. Both men and women get the symptoms — but only the male of the species goes on to fertilise the spores and grow a new homunculus.’

Owen boggled. ‘You mean I’m pregnant?’

‘Well …’

‘But I’m always so careful.’

Toshiko smiled despite herself. ‘It’s not technically a pregnancy, any more than it would be a pregnancy if a tropical fly laid its eggs under your skin and allowed you to incubate them until they hatched. The homunculus is more of a parasite in that respect. It uses you, feeds off you, and then, when it reaches maturity, it emerges.’

‘Killing the host,’ Owen realised.

‘Wait a sec,’ Jack interrupted. ‘Maturity?’

Toshiko nodded weakly. She was still far from well, but she was pushing herself to make the report, her voice hoarse and cracking as she spoke. ‘The alien mucus cells multiply at an incredible rate … completely unlike anything found on Earth … The creature that grows is alien, but it takes on many of the aspects of its host’s DNA — not incorporating it but copying it. Using it like blueprints or plans, if you like. So at a very basic level it has two arms, two legs and a head simply because its host does. But what finally emerges is not an infant. It’s mature, but just not fully grown. A true homunculus.’

‘But it carries on growing,’ Jack said. ‘We saw it happen — that thing Bob Strong threw up, it was really small, but when Gwen saw it outside it had grown two or three times as big in minutes.’

‘That’s about it, yes.’

‘So there’s another fully grown one of these things out there,’ Owen said.

Jack was already running up the steps out of the Autopsy Room. ‘Ianto! What’s going on with Gwen?’

Ianto turned to look at Jack as he bounded up to Toshiko’s workstation. ‘It’s not good. Gwen’s found Saskia Harden …’

‘What?’ Jack bent over the desk and peered at the monitor screen, which showed a view outside the Hub — directly above them, in fact, right in front of the water tower. Gwen was standing talking to a blonde woman in a raincoat.

‘She’s … unusual,’ Ianto conceded.

Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘I like unusual.’

‘Well, I know that, but …’

‘She is kind of cute, though, isn’t she?’ Jack grinned wolfishly at him. ‘In a bite-your-head-off way.’ Then the smile died in an instant, his jaw hardening. ‘And I mean that literally. She’s a stone-cold killer, Ianto, a vicious predator from another world. She’s made from bile and snot and blood and stagnant water, but she can make it look any way she wants.’

‘Like sugar and spice and all things nice,’ Ianto murmured, fascinated.

‘Yeah.’ Jack was suddenly overtaken by severe chest cramps and a harsh, tearing cough. He collapsed onto the desk, slid to one side, doubled up in pain. The blood bubbled on his lips. ‘Ah, hell …’ he groaned, spitting it away. ‘It’s getting bad …’

Ianto was coughing too. ‘I … I can feel it in my throat … moving, squirming around … I want to cough it up but I can’t.’

‘Don’t worry, you will,’ Owen said as he joined them. ‘When it’s good and ready it’ll come all right.’

Toshiko arrived, shooing Ianto out of her seat and taking her place at the keyboards. She scanned the screens with an expert eye.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jack. He was leaning against the rail like a boxer on the ropes. ‘Tosh, you have to rest …’

‘She can’t rest,’ Owen said. He was sinking to his knees by the workstation. ‘We need her.’

‘I have to find out how to stop the homunculus growth in the three of you,’ Toshiko said weakly. ‘If we leave it too long you’ll die. Or at least Ianto and Owen will. Who knows how it will affect you?’

Jack shrugged, and Owen said, ‘So leave her to get on with it, if you don’t mind …’

Jack nodded at the monitor showing Gwen and Saskia. ‘What’s going on with those two? Can we get sound?’

Ianto reached over and pressed a switch, and Gwen’s voice was channelled through the speaker system.

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Gwen said.

Saskia smiled. ‘Yes you are. I can see you trembling.’

‘I’m ill.’

‘I know. But don’t worry. It’ll soon be all over.’

There was a tiny crackle in Gwen’s ear. She tried not to flinch as she heard Ianto’s voice. ‘Gwen. We can hear every word. But listen — Tosh is all right. I repeat, she’s all right.’

Then, before she could take the news in, she heard Jack’s voice. He sounded tired and weak, almost unrecognisable as his words slurred into her ear: ‘Tosh isn’t infected, Gwen, and neither are you. It doesn’t affect women. Only us guys.’ There was a long, scraping cough. ‘Man flu, eh?’

Gwen smiled, and stood a little straighter. Her hand moved behind her back and gripped the butt of her gun.

‘Naughty,’ said Saskia warningly.

‘I said I’m not scared of you,’ Gwen said, lifting the automatic out and levelling it at the woman. It took all of Gwen’s nerve to keep the heavy pistol from wavering. She felt like she was shaking inside but she had to keep the gun still. She sighted carefully along the barrel, training the little metal V at the front of the gun on Saskia’s pale forehead. ‘I’m not scared,’ she repeated.

Saskia simply smiled, and Gwen felt a cold touch on her neck as long, clawed fingers slowly wrapped themselves around her throat.

She’d been grabbed from behind. The long, twig-like fingers encircled her neck and squeezed. It felt like a cold, wet rope being pulled taut and she simply stopped breathing.

Another hand reached around from behind her and deftly removed the gun from her weakened hands. Gwen felt utterly unable to resist as all the strength seemed to drain out of her feet. All she could do was watch, dumbly, unable to even draw breath, as the green hand with its long, ragged claws removed the automatic from sight.

Whatever had hold of her from behind now stepped closer, moving its body against hers, bringing its mouth right next to her ear so that she could feel its cold, stinking breath on her face.

‘Surprise,’ it said.