Jack watched them through the glass wall of his office. Gwen and Ianto; his team. What was left of his team anyway. Jack found it strangely ironic that the two who had found their own way into Torchwood Three should survive an event that the pair he had personally recruited had not. Ianto had been working for him for two years now and Gwen about eighteen months. So much had happened, so much had changed.

Today was the five year anniversary of Tosh joining Jack's Torchwood team. Jack fondly remembered her wide eyes and joyous near-disbelief in what she discovered upon entering the Hub for the first time. Five years, Jack had promised the young computer genius, five years and her record would be wiped clean of the crime she had committed out of love for her mother. A clean record would mean nothing to Toshiko now, from where she was buried in a Cardiff cemetery. At least Jack had ensured that her mother knew where to visit, knew that she had died saving the people and city she loved.

He idly wondered whether Toshiko would have stayed on after her initial five years. Of course she would have, he decided, there was no quitting this job and despite everything- Mary and Tommy, cannibals and Captain John, Tosh had loved the job. That Jack knew for certain, as he also knew that Owen would never have been happy working anywhere else.

He folded his arms across his chest pensively, the periwinkle sleeves pulling tighter against his biceps, fitting to their shape. He watched as Ianto wound his way through the Hub, dodging the familiar pitfalls, tutting to himself as he picked up discarded litter. His job extended far beyond the realms of maintenance and general support now, but he continued to tidy as a second nature. Sure, he would complain about it, moan that the other two should help more, but his own innate need to keep the place tidy suppressed him from making any form of rebellion in keeping the base a mess.

Jack saw as Ianto walked past Gwen and they exchanged a few words, a smile and Ianto deposited a multi-coloured striped coffee mug in front of Gwen on her desk. He straightened a pile of paperwork and was off again, over to work on some computer mainframe updates. Jack's eyes focused on Gwen as she worked tirelessly, scanning computer databases and typing up reports. She was so focused that she would repeatedly attempt to blow a curtain of her dark hair out of her eyes, rather than lift a finger from the clattering keyboard to brush it away. Her vain struggle to see out of her left eye again brought a small smile to Jack's face.

Casting an eye back over to his desk, Jack headed for the door of his office, wanting to join the other two. He was expecting a phone call from a UNIT high-up within a number of minutes as the UNIT officer wished to discuss a recent finding with Jack. Keeping an eye on the phone, Jack hovered in his doorway, before relaxing against the doorframe, one knee bent so that the tip of his booted toe rested against the cool floor. Gwen noticed Jack shuffling about out of the corner of her eye and her typing sped up for a few seconds, before she stopped at the end of a sentence, hitting the full stop button with a flourish.

'Aren't you expecting a phone call?' she asked turning to Jack.

'Any second now,' he replied. 'I hate having to work to UNITs' time frame.'

'I guess you can't be the boss of everyone, Jack,' Gwen smiled, spinning side-to-side in her chair.

Jack pondered the idea for a moment.

'I don't think I'd like that so much, too stressful… Bad enough trying to get just you and Ianto to listen to me.'

Almost at the mention of his name, Ianto appeared up the stairs, hands slid into his black trouser pockets. He was wearing a deep blue shirt today, a colour that complimented his eyes.

'How're those computer updates going, Ianto?' Jack inquired of the younger man.

'Time of my life,' Ianto answered drolly. 'Just looking for that stack of old paperwork that needs sorting and filing, there's some information in there I need for the updates… Have you seen it?'

'No, sorry.'

'Maybe I filed it away somewhere already- unless one of you two has been using it as a coaster.'

'That was one time, Ianto!'

'Yes, well we now have a set of very important, official, top secret documents with a rather impressive coffee stain on them. I say rather impressive, because if you squint when you look at it, it looks a bit like Elvis.'

The shrill sound of the Rift alert suddenly tore through the relative quite of the Hub, causing Gwen to jump up to face her computer again and take the latest reading. Myfanwy screeched indignantly overhead- the sound had woken her up from a pleasant sleep.

'Rift spike in Queen Street, looks like something came through,' Gwen read off the screen.

'Any signs of life?' Jack asked, leaning over her shoulder closer to the screen.

'Nothing we recognize as a life sign. Probably just a bit of space junk, but we should probably go collect it as soon as we can, it seems to have materialised in the car park in the Capitol centre. Don't want anybody else finding it, could be dangerous.'

'Brilliant. Start of Thursday night shopping and the Rift spits out space junk in the middle of a shopping centre,' Ianto said, slipping his hands out of his pockets.

'Look on the bright side, Ianto- window shopping on the job!' Gwen told him with some cheer, thinking of the expensive dress she'd seen in the window of Karen Millen last time she had walked past. 'I guess you'll be staying behind, Jack?'

Jack glanced briefly at his watch, the polished face catching the light off Gwen's computer screen and reflecting it back and nodded in answer to her to question.

'That phone call should be coming through any second now…' he muttered, straightening up. 'But I can trust you two to take care of the situation.'

'You know you can, Jack,' Gwen said, already on her feet. Ianto nodded his agreement with her as they both headed to the cog door on their way to the SUV.

'I'll keep the comms open if you need me,' he told them.

'Right,' Gwen called back as the door rolled open. 'We'll see you in a bit then.'

As the cog door grumbled shut behind them, leaving Jack alone in the humming Hub, the phone in his office rang out. Once again irritated by a repetitive ringing, Myfanwy shrieked impatiently.

'I feel your pain,' Jack shouted up at her, strolling back into his office. 'I hate it when UNIT ring me, too.'

…*…

Gwen dodged throngs of people laden with a multitude of shopping and carrier bags as she entered the shopping centre, pausing to let a harassed looking woman with a screaming toddler in a pushchair past. The woman didn't even meet her eye in thanks.

'Why is it,' she started to ask Ianto, 'that every time you go somewhere busy, everybody else seems to be going the other way?'

'I think they call it sods law,' Ianto replied, discreetly tapping away at the PDA in his palm. He stepped to the side to avoid a gaggle of over-excited (and, by the looks of them, drunk) teenagers without even looking up, shifting his shoulders and jostling the small equipment backpack that was hanging off one of them.

Following just behind her younger colleague, Gwen passed Karen Millen, she stared longingly back over her shoulder at the deep purple dress with the loaded price tag. A girl could dream…

'Based on the readings, I've narrowed it down to either the second or third floor of the car park,' Ianto told her, finally looking up where he was going, lowering the hand bearing the PDA to his side. 'Hopefully no ones found it or messed around with it.'

'Yeah,' Gwen agreed as Ianto led them into a cold, concrete corridor, headed towards a set of winding stairs. 'Couldn't we have just parked the SUV in here somewhere, save us the trouble of walking up all these stairs?'

'Gwen, the SUV is parked down that side street for a reason.'

'You want someone to attempt to break the bullet-proof glass and nick all the shiny gadgets off the dash?'

Ianto smiled slightly. 'No. It's parked there because, unlike Jack, I'm not a show-off. I don't want people gathering around here because they found a massive black Range Rover with the words Torchwood written all over it.'

'It's in yellow on the roof,' Gwen added unnecessarily.

'I have noticed.'

'Who's bright idea was that anyway? Getting Torchwood written all over the place.'

'Jack's, I should imagine.'

Gwen made a noise in agreement, her footsteps echoing up against the thick brick walls, her Converse slapping against the grey steps. She swung out on the blue-painted banister at the corner, propelling herself up the next flight of stairs. A balding man in an untidy suit dashed past, taking the stairs two at a time. Gwen could hear two female voices floating up above them as they also made their way down towards the sodium lights of the wet tiled streets of Cardiff city centre. It was lucky that whatever had come through the Rift did not seem to be living; otherwise the busy, central location would have given them quite a situation to deal with.

A few seconds later they hit a landing with a large plastic two stuck against the drab walls. The overhead light flickered inconsistently, casting juddering shadows of Gwen and Ianto against the floor.

'Somewhere in the centre here,' Ianto said, holding the door open for Gwen to pass through first. They walked across a white-tiled balcony area, looking down and out over a few clothes shops and customers, past the yellow ticket machines and out again into the semi-dark and damp where hundreds of cars were parked. A red Volvo rolled by, the male driver twisting side-to-side looking for an empty space, the reverberating sound of his engine magnified by the close walls and low ceilings.

Weaving amongst the glittering wet bonnets of the silent cars, Gwen headed to the centre of the car park structure, cutting out diagonally to avoid getting clipped by a reversing car.

'We might have to break through one of these doors,' Gwen noted, gesturing to the chipped red door set in the wall. Thick wires ran overhead. 'What do you reckon they're for?'

'Storage maybe, there's a valet service on the floor below,' Ianto suggested. 'Or maybe it houses some electronics for the building, judging by those wires.'

Gwen wrapped a hand around the cold bronze door knob and gave it a tug. The door rattled in its frame, but didn't open. She tried a different approach, resting her right shoulder against the door and leaning into it with all her weight, her right hand still twisting the handle. Again, nothing happened.

'It was worth a shot,' Gwen said briefly as she fished her lock-picking device out of her jacket pocket. A few quick flicks of the wrist later and the door was open, revealing a darkened corridor. Noticing a panel of rusty light switches, Gwen reached out and flipped them all, the artificial lights blinking brightly into existence, displaying walls lined with fat wires, some housed in mesh, all of varying colours.

'Electrics it is then,' Ianto said as he stepped in after Gwen, closing the door behind them. He didn't want any unsuspecting civilians wandering in, or any angry staff for that matter.

His PDA let out a small blip, alerting them that they were getting closer to the object as the Rift readings had increased. Gwen wound her way down the corridor, absent-mindedly trailing her fingers along the lengths of wire as if they were what was leading her to what she wanted to find- a yellow brick road for the digital age.

Ianto had the PDA out again. 'Nearly there, nearly there… Must be on this floor after all.'

'Good, I might have time to head down to Karen Millen before it shuts then.'

'Gwen you talked about that dress for a good part of the journey here and it sounds like, as much as you would love it, you're not willing to part with the money to actually buy it.'

'I can look, can't I?'

'I'd say no, but I know you still would.'

'Honestly, Ianto, you're worse than Rhys.'

'He's probably learnt to suffer in silence.'

'Hey! Compromise is a very important part of a healthy marriage.'

'And what do you compromise for Rhys?'

'I let him drag me down to play on that Xbox-thing in Game.'

'That does sound like a healthy marriage.'

Gwen grinned at Ianto, enjoying their banter. Keeping a sense of humour was vital in their line of work, if they tried to take everything too seriously, even the little scavenging jobs like this, then their heads might explode with the pressure. Gwen entertained this mental image for a moment, indulging her subconscious slightly as the mental picture of herself wore the Karen Millen dress. Understandably, it got a bit messy and Gwen shook her head of the gruesome thought; Torchwood had made her a bit more impervious to graphic violence.

They rounded a curve in the narrow corridor and were faced with another door. Ianto opened it with a click and it swung open on its creaking hinges.

'Through here and-,' he started, but was interrupted by the sudden echoing sounds of slightly off-key singing. It was Gwen's phone and it was playing the Harwood's radio jingle. Gwen had warned Rhys against messing with her phone settings, but clearly, her husband had ignored her.

Ianto raised his eyebrows at the song as Gwen fished in her pocket to find the vibrating phone and get it to shut up. Rhys' name flashed up on the screen. With an aggravated sigh, she flung it up to her ear and answered.

'I told you not to mess with my phone, Rhys!' she said through gritted teeth, skipping the usual greetings.

'You don't like my little joke then?' Rhys' laughing tones came through the tinny speaker. 'Sorry, love, just messing about- and it's good advertising, I reckon.'

Gwen rolled her eyes. 'Doesn't matter. Look, did you actually want something? I'm a bit busy right now.'

'Ah right, where are you?'

'Capitol centre, Queen Street. Why does it matter?'

'What's an alien doing in town?!' Rhys exclaimed.

'Keep your voice down Rhys!' Gwen hissed, acutely aware that Ianto could hear every word being exchanged in the otherwise silence. 'There's no alien, just- Never mind, I'll tell you later.'

'S'alright, I'm only in the car, no one'll hear me talking about your top secret business. Anyway, I was just ringing to ask if there was anything you wanted from the supermarket, I'm on my way to get the ingredients for tea. Spag bol a la Rhys!' he announced the last statement proudly and Gwen caught Ianto smirking. She turned her back to him.

'No, no, I don't need anything. I'll try and be back by seven okay? I've got to go, Rhys, see you later.'

'Aye then. Bye love!'

Gwen hung up before Rhys could add any second thoughts to his farewell. She loved Rhys, she really did, but he had some very inconvenient timing. She switched her phone on to silent and turned to face Ianto, who stared back at her with a perfectly straight face.

'Through here then is it?' she asked, walking briskly past Ianto through the open door.

'Is that ringtone another of your compromises?' he said as he followed after her, closing the door behind them as the space they had entered was tight.

But Gwen didn't answer his sarcasm. She was staring transfixed at a small metal cube that sat on the ground mere inches from her feet.

Ianto recognised it instantly. The relatively inconspicuous silver cube with the inlaid LED screen, glowing red digits maliciously ticking down each passing second.

It was, quite clearly, a bomb. A very familiar bomb.

One of Captain John Hart's bombs.