Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from Torchwood, no matter how much I wish that I did. None of them are mine but I love them all.

Author's Notes: Came up with this chapter over the course of a day. Decided to add it in last minute as I was thinking of scrapping it. Kept it in though and I'm glad. Hope you enjoy it. Short chapter I know but I felt it was very important to include this because I spent the time on it. Please read and review (more so than usual please). Enjoy.

Chapter Fourteen: Special Visitor

Earlier that day

Mel entered into the 'flat' and threw her keys on the low table by the door. Shutting it behind her she took the chips into the 'living room'.

It had been a living room to begin with but over the past six months she'd scavenged parts from scattered parts of alien debris; trailing the Torchwood if it was necessary and taking anything from the scene that would be of use.

Along every wall she'd set up monitors, scanners, tracers, shield generators all sorts of stuff and to make sure no one would see it she'd bought these old blackout curtains and, using a nail gun, secured them across the windows.

In the middle of it all she kept a spinny chair. It was most useful for it meant she could turn to look at any of the monitors without having to stand up all the time. Entering into the room though, she noticed there was somebody else already there, sat in the spinny chair looking around at everything.

"What the hell?" she said to the person. It wasn't loud. She only wanted to let them know she was there. Giving away the fact that she could beat them off might have prepared them for fighting back.

They turned round on the chair and she saw he was a man. Well to be more precise she saw he was the man. Someone who had turned up several times since she had teleported away six months ago. He was infuriatingly enthusiastic about practically everything and had a habit of turning up when she didn't want to see him and when no one else was around. The fact that no one else saw him convinced her, if only for a short while, that this man was a hallucination which her brain had cooked up because she felt bad for running away. This had been disproved though when he'd actually affected other objects.

Each time she'd attempted to learn something about him, the conversation would flip round and he'd be checking up on her, seeing how she felt, what was she up to, did she want to talk. But in all the times she'd seen him it had never been in her own flat.

"Oh," he said running his hand through his spiky brown hair, "sorry, it's just wow!" he turned back to the main monitor. "This is amazing." He gasped and he put on a pair of glasses.

"What?" He turned to look at her before leaping out the seat and pointing at a sizable gyro on the right side of the room.

"Where did you get this?" he asked.

"A Prokkan spaceship." Mel said nonplussed. "It fell out the sky two months ago."

The man then ran to the other side of the room and pointed at a small black box she'd fixed to the wall.

"And this?"

"What?"

"This is a black box. Sends out a signal if a ship is in distress. Unless you reverse the wavelengths, stretch the frequency and invert the signal. Then it can hide, well," he said, pausing to run his hand through his hair again, "practically anything I suppose."

"And your point is?" The man paused and looked over at her in confusion.

"It's brilliant!" He was grinning. "All of it. I haven't seen anything with such precision and attention to detail before in my life. And from me that is saying something." He turned his attention to another monitor and seemed to study it in earnest. "I'm just trying to figure out what it's all for. Don't tell me." he pointed at her. "Never could stand teachers who gave out the answer before the students had figured it out." He lowered the finger and returned his concentration to the machines. "It's like when someone tells you the ending of the story. There's no point even trying if you know what's coming."

Mel looked at the man, the machines and sighed.

"I give up." She said. The man turned to her and frowned.

"Excuse me?"

"I give up." She repeated. "I don't know what you are. Or why you're here. I mean, you're humanoid but you're sure as hell not human."

The man's brow furrowed. He sat there looking at her for a while before he pointed at the chips in her hands.

"Are you going to eat those?" he asked taking off his glasses. "Never could resist a good chip or two."

"What are you?" Mel said again, getting frustrated. "Most of the time you're speaking nonsense but, for some unknown reason, I understand every single word of it." She threw the chips at him. "Tell me mystery man, are you going to tell me who you are today or are we gonna piss about a couple more times before I receive that obvious privilege?"

The man had deftly caught the chips but instead of eating them, he placed them on a small table which was scattered with old newspapers and a few pieces of paper which she'd made notes on. He looked at her silently before he replied.

"I'm here to help you." he moved over to the right hand side of the room and sat down before pointing at one of the monitors. "Now this one was pretty easy to figure out." he put his glasses on again. "You're tracking someone. I'm guessing using a DNA signature." He grinned. "Which is brilliant because it's undetectable. You can know everything about where they go and who they meet without even giving them a clue. And here," he clicked on a file and several images came up on the screen, "you're keeping an eye on their vitals." He removed his glasses and stared knowingly at her. "Now I wonder why you'd be doing that."

Mel wasn't surprised. In their previous meetings the man had shown an amazing array of knowledge and ability to notice things that other people don't. She was beginning to wonder if there was anything this man didn't know.

The man turned on the chair so that he was looking at the monitor on the left side of the room.

"This one is a bit trickier." His voice was calmer than before. "It's connected to the black box, that's easy enough but its purpose…" he tilted his head, "…that's a bit trickier."

Mel stood there, unmoving, silent, waiting for her 'visitor' to say something else because she really was too bored for talking or arguing or interrupting.

There was silence between them for at least five minutes; the only sound the hum of the machines as they worked away at their specific jobs.

"You've got this shield covering the whole of Cardiff." He sounded intrigued but there was an unmissable air of concern to his voice. He turned to her and she just nodded. "Why?"

"I have my reasons."

"Care to share them?"

"With a man who won't tell me who he is or why the hell he's following me everywhere?"

Suddenly a siren-like noise started and the monitor began to flash. Almost instantly it was gone. The man jumped back from the monitor in shock and stood up.

"Did I do that?" he said.

"It's the tracer." Mel ran over to the screen, knocked him out of the way and looked at the statistics flashing up before her. "Shit!"

"Language!" the man shouted at her.

"Oh shut up!" she pushed past him, shoving him just a bit harder than she needed to.

"Wait, what's going on?" the man obviously didn't like not knowing what was going on.

"Nothing. That's the problem."

"What d'you mean? Who's the tracer on?"

"My brother."

"You have a brother?" Mel glared at him. "And the sirens aren't good?"

"When are sirens ever good?" She rushed for the door. "I don't care who you are anymore but believe me this thing that's coming is way bigger than anything you could ever have come across before. When I get back I hope to find you gone." And she slammed the door behind her running off to the bay.

She'd hidden for long enough.

The man stood there for a while after she was gone; bewildered. That had been shorter than he'd anticipated. He'd hoped to talk longer about things but no one had told him that she had a brother.

'She's a curious one that Mel.' He thought. 'I guess she was right.'

From the few meetings they'd had, she'd seemed a bit rough around the edges but on the whole a very intriguing person; very knowledgeable and adventurous yet wary of the unknown. His mouth widened into a grin. He'd met too few people like that. It would be interesting to-

His train of thought was interrupted by the shrieking of more sirens and the monitor beneath the black box flashed. Looking at it, his mood soured.

'Then again I might be a little too late.'

Next: Arrival