Winnie Is Not Okay

2.5

"After all I said, a severed hand is more important to you than Carys' life", Gwen immediately stomped up to Jack when they reentered the hub.

Jack had put the hand into a new jar and turned so it was hidden from her view, arms crossed, "You want to prove yourself? Find her. Get your old pals in the police to do something useful for once."

Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, "All right, I'll give them a call. Put out an APB. Woman possessed by gas knobbing fellas to death."

Before their argument could go on a freshly dressed Owen called from the lab, "Oi. You'd better get in here."

Winnie took a moment to look at the hand after Jack had left it to go to the lab. She had never seen it before and she was confused as to why. Normally Jack trusted her most so for him not to tell her anything was strange. And now that she thought about it, they were Torchwood Three. So how had she never heard about anything about what One and Two did? At least not since the nineties.

"So I'm trying to interpret the results of the bio-scan", Owen opened as everyone gathered in the lab and Winnie stayed atop the stairs, "Yeah, but it's just a mess. Like, there's no definitive readings. Because everything in her body keeps changing, nothing stays constant. So as soon as you think you've got something clear, the metabolic rate, the blood pressure, whatever, it all goes wild again."

"Because she's fighting the alien for control of her own body", Jack concluded.

"Yeah. So, anyway, I decided to do a comparative diagnostic. Recreate the circumstances, accelerate the process a little, see what's gonna happen to Carys", he pulled up a diagnostic of the rat on the lab table.

"Yeah, thanks", Gwen rubbed the back of her head.

"I infected the rat with a combination of the Vorax and the Suranium gas traces we found at the crash site and the nightclub."

"I am not staying to clean up rat goulash, Owen", Winnie warned him, "Not again."

"Looks fine so far", Tosh commented but Owen frowned at Winnie.

He went over to the diagnostic and pulled up what he was sharing now, "Once the gases start to flow around the body, the party really starts. The heart rate triples. The brain swells, pressing against the skull. As that keeps going, the lungs began to shrink, making it impossible to breathe. The pressure increases on all the internal organs until-"

Rat goulash, Winnie just thought as the rat exploded in its case.

"Rat jam."

"Changing the wording of your description doesn't change what you're describing, Owen", Winnie told him off.

"That's what's gonna happen to Carys?", Jack redirected their focus.

"I'm losing", Gwen muttered, "That's what she said to me."

"Right now, it's a struggle between where Carys ends and the alien begins."

"We have to think like her. Put ourselves in her place", Gwen got on task, "It's the only way to find her."

"Except we don't know what her controlling impulse is by now", Jack argued, "Carys or the alien inside. The last thing I saw was a fight for control."

"The alien might try to cooperate with her to achieve its goal", Winnie shrugged and went over to Gwen's board, "So the idea's not bad. It only has Carys."

"The overriding factor for the parasite is to have sex", Tosh noted, "It's a survival instinct. That's bound to be the strongest drive."

"All right, so you're Carys. You're desperate for sex cos that's what the thing inside you needs, but you know it will kill", Gwen stood next to Winnie with her arms crossed, "Where would you go?"