m_findlow

Title: Keeping going
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Torchwood team
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 37 - Continuously at anythingdrabble
Summary: Owen employs unusual methods to prevent Jack from being overcome by infection.

'I hate to say it, Jack,' Owen began, 'but you're infected.'

'What? How?'

'You must have interfered with the corpse,' Owen said matter of factly. 'It was stiff as a board and now it's not.'

'So, that's why I can't move my finger?'

'Uh huh. I took a sample from the body and compared it to your blood work. You've got thousands of nanogenes inside you.'

'But that's good, right? They can fix my finger.'

'Okay, but I haven't gotten to the bad news yet.'

'What's that?' Ianto said, leaning over the railing and looking worried.

'The nanogenes are corrupted. They weren't trying to fix the thing that came through the rift. They were what killed it.'

'So, what do we do?' Ianto asked, feeling a rising sense of panic.

'I've got Tosh working on a way to deactivate them, but until then you've got to keep moving, Jack. These things are trying to petrify you from the inside out. Moving around will confuse them and prevent them from creating atrophy in your muscles.'

'So, I just keep walking around, is that the solution?'

'More than that,' Owen replied. 'You need to continuously use as many muscle groups as possible, exerting as much energy as you can.'

Jack didn't like the sound of that. It didn't sound like Owen was giving him free reign to take Ianto to bed for some strenuous lovemaking, not that he wanted to risk cross infection. 'Wouldn't it just be easier to die?'

'No. Absolutely not,' Owen said. 'You're the carrier. Once you die, they'll be looking for another host. One of us.'

'Okay, so you've got Tosh on it. What do you want me to do?'

Owen quickly had Jack on a strict cycle of exercises that would keep him moving: star jumps, squats, running laps of the hub, and then repeating it over and over again. Just watching him was making the rest of them exhausted as Tosh worked at her own frenetic pace to come up with a way to crack the corrupted code.

'Keep going,' Gwen and Ianto urged him as he passed them on another lap of the hub, forcing himself up the spiral staircase despite his protesting legs. He wanted to stop and take a break, but he could already feeling his nose going rock hard, and he didn't even want to think about other parts of his body that weren't getting used.

As he passed by the water tower, stopping to do the requisite twenty star jumps, Tosh yelled out. 'I think I've got it!'

She ran across and zapped him with her PDA, running it along every limb and up and down his torso, scanning for any further signs of active nanogenes.

'Did it work?' Gwen asked.

'We got them,' Tosh confirmed.

'Good,' Jack said, collapsing onto his back, chest heaving. 'Now, if it's all the same to you, I think the only thing I'm going to do continously for the rest of today is lie here.'