• Released: September 2008
  ISBN: 978 1 84576 936 9

The Hub's sensors detect over 111,000 tons of crude oil outside the Bay, and as the team investigates, the Dread -- an oil tanker that burned to nothing over a century ago -- silently drifts into port. Jack, Gwen, and Owen board the ship to investigate; it is deserted and eerily silent, and as they slowly come to realise that it's composed entirely out of oil, humanoid figures bubble out of the walls and take the faces of the Torchwood team. Outside, Ianto sees one of the oily figures take on his own face and advance towards the waiting fire engines. Back in the Hub, Tosh analyses a sample of oil from the waters of the Bay and discovers that it contains a non-terrestrial compound that devours hydrocarbons and uses them to reproduce; if it spreads any further, it could destroy all petroleum-based products on the planet, crippling and destroying Western civilisation. Fortunately, the compound proves vulnerable to a bio-remedial product used to clean up oil spills, and Tosh arranges for it to be sprayed over the Bay. The fake oil tanker disintegrates, and Jack, Gwen and Owen surface in the Bay, covered in oil but alive.

14 cats and 8 dogs have gone missing in Splott. Torchwood goes door to door asking for information, and Gwen ends up at the home of Mrs Acres, an elderly lady whose house smells of cats. Mrs Acres was widowed in the Korean War and lives with her son Colin, a shambling lunk in his mid-40s. Mrs Acres seems to want someone to talk to, and Gwen realises that the old woman is making a confession: Colin is too young to be her husband's son. Mrs Acres used to work as a nurse at St Helen's Hospital, and one day, someone brought in a box with a litter of kittens -- including a hairless runt that seemed to develop humanoid features as she tended to it. Mrs Acres took the creature home and told the nursing staff that it had died, and once it had become recognisably human, she told her neighbours that she'd adopted her late sister's son. But the thing that became Colin is still changing; now it's begun to kill and eat the local pets, and Mrs Acres doesn't know what to do. Colin returns to the living room and realises that his mum has told Gwen his secret, and his face seems to change, becoming more feral and cat-like. Mrs Acres orders him to stop, and instead of attacking Gwen, he runs upstairs, smashes the bathroom mirror and cuts his own throat. Gwen's teammates take away Colin's body, but Gwen chooses not to give Mrs Acres any retcon; she's convinced that Colin knew he couldn't control himself and acted to save his mother's life.

On a routine audit of the Vaults, Ianto discovers that a piece of alien artwork is missing, possibly sold on the black market by a corrupt agent in the 1950s. Tosh traces it to the collection of the late philanthropist Ashley ab Hugh, who died of septicemia after he was found stripping his own skin off in front of the artefact. Bill Williams, the collection's security guard, gives Tosh and Gwen a lead that sends them to a warehouse full of mummified bodies in the docks. Piecing together the evidence, the team determines that the artefact was purchased in the 1970s by members of a cargo cult who worshipped alien technology. Dimitri Arkanovitch, a billionaire with ties to the Russian Mafia, learned of its existence and hired a private investigator to track it down; he then stole the artefact from the cultists, who killed themselves out of shame, and murdered the investigator so nothing would connect him to the theft. The artefact is now on display in the central atrium of the Arkanovitch Hotel in the city centre. Tosh studies it and discovers that it's an anti-matter explosion suspended in the first femtosecond after detonation, leaking just enough radiation to drive Ashley ab Hugh mad when he spent enough time in front of it. Its creators made a weapon into a work of art so beautiful that any alien species who conquered their planet would be sure to seize it as spoils of war, at which point its creators would detonate it, destroying the invaders' homeworld. Here and now, it's just a dangerous piece of flotsam that's fallen through the Rift. Tosh can easily defuse it, but first the team will have to get it away from Arkanovitch. Jack assures his team that the heist will be a work of art.

Ianto spends a quiet day at the Hub watering the plants in the Hot House, and tells Gwen that his favourite plant has recently started to grow and develop buds. He claims that it just needs tender love and care -- but over the next few days, he begins to neglect his other duties while caring for the plant. Tosh becomes concerned when Ianto moves the other alien plants out of the Hot House to give his pet room to grow, and when she tries to take a sample for analysis, he stops her politely but with an intense look in his eyes. Ianto stops bathing and sleeping, and Jack discovers broken glass on the floor of the Hot House and sees that Ianto is wearing sticking plasters on his arm. As Gwen and Jack discuss Ianto's strange behaviour, they notice him creeping into the Hot House, and find the plant feeding off Ianto's blood. Jack catches Ianto off guard and pulls him away from the plant, which turns towards Jack and hisses. Jack knocks it to the ground and steps on it, crushing it and breaking its hold over Ianto. However, Jack realises that the plant could have germinated and spread its seeds out of the Hub if they hadn't acted, and angrily warns the others that in Torchwood, they can never afford to let their guard down for a moment.

Something strange happens to 27-year-old Paul Talbot as he walks home from a night out at the pub. The next morning, his flatmate, 25-year-old Chris Manning, walks into the living room -- and Paul leaps on him, tears him apart and eats him. Horrified, Paul runs away from the carnage, but he's still hungry, and when he tries to duck into an alley, a woman walks out of a club's service entrance at the wrong moment. Still hungry after killing and eating her, Paul runs to his parents' home, praying that they'll save him but already thinking about how he'll overpower them. However, Torchwood arrives first, and Paul is captured and taken back to the Hub. Tosh determines that Paul was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; some Rift energy discharged into him as he walked home and mutated his DNA, turning him into a monster. Owen empathises with Paul, whose life was ripped away from him in a single moment. Since Owen doesn't smell like food to Paul, he's the only one who can talk to Paul and give him a choice: either let Torchwood shoot him, or let himself starve, which shouldn't take long with his accelerated metabolism. Paul waits out the hunger pangs, and when he feels himself going numb, Owen releases him from the restraints so he can die with dignity.

• Released: September 2009
  ISBN: 978 1 84856 239 4