Torchwood: Exodus Code Read online

  ‘I can protect them. I’m beginning to make progress in figuring out what’s happening to you. I think something’s been triggered in your DNA,’ he said, doing his best to keep her talking. ‘Remember Torchwood. We’ve solved worse. We can figure out what’s happening to you.’

  ‘There is no Torchwood!’ screamed Gwen, ‘Don’t you get it? It’s gone. Over. They’re all gone. Tosh and Owen and Ianto and poor, poor Esther. You couldn’t save them, and you can’t save me. There’s only you, Jack. It’s always been only you.’

  Jack froze, stung by her words. Gwen’s anger wasn’t the fury of a madwoman, but cold, rational rage. He felt like he’d lost his last friend in the world. ‘No, Gwen. That’s not true. It’s going to be you and me. Both of us. For a long time.’ He risked a pleading smile.

  Gwen turned away from Jack and took a step towards the edge. Jack charged at her, badly misjudging how frail she had become in the past week. He grabbed her waist and twisted backwards. Her fists smashed into his face as they rolled onto the creaking planks, tumbling over and over…

  And over.

  It took Jack a few seconds to realise he and Gwen were falling.

  44

  JACK AND GWEN hit the water still fighting. The force of the water ripped through Jack’s nostrils, bursting inside his head. Gwen’s legs tightened around Jack’s waist, and they plunged into the black sea.

  Christ. It was cold. Jack knew that if they didn’t start kicking up, they’d both drown. He’d surface eventually, gasping, gagging, but breathing again.

  Gwen would not.

  Gwen’s grip loosened. She knew she had to free herself from Jack’s embrace or he would save her, pull her back to the surface to the madness her life had become, to locked doors, straps on her bed, Rhys in a constant state of fear, and Anwen terrified of her own mum. It wasn’t right. She would not live that way. She would not let Jack save her. Not this time. Not ever again.

  As they continued to sink, Gwen pummelled Jack with her feet, kicking to free herself from his grip. Jack could feel that Gwen was in a rage again, battering his head, gulping water. Jack knew what she was thinking, and he knew his only chance to save Gwen was to save himself, to get them both to the surface. Now.

  Forcing air out through his nose, releasing some of the pressure in his lungs, Jack dolphin-kicked. Hard. Gwen’s movements were working against him, keeping him under the crashing waves, trying to climb onto his back and hold him down.

  Where was this strength coming from? Jack wrapped an arm under Gwen’s shoulder and for a fleeting moment, his Gwen stared back, the Gwen he loved, her eyes horrified, wide and panicked staring directly into Jack’s face.

  He would not let this woman go. This wasn’t about keeping Torchwood alive. It never was. This was about keeping alive the woman he loved more than a sister, a lover, a friend, more than his life now and for ever.

  They finally broke through the surface. Jack struggled to breathe. Gwen was coughing and gagging and trying to force herself back under. The waves were pulling them towards the jagged rocks of the beach, then dropping them back under, the current too strong for Jack to swim against and fight Gwen at the same time.

  Jack lost his grip on Gwen. Immediately, she kicked away from him. Jack yanked her hair and pulled her back, but Gwen’s rage was so powerful that Jack couldn’t tell now if she was trying to kill him, kill herself or trying to fight for her own life, all at the same time.

  She went under a third time, lunging away from Jack’s grip.

  Jack swam after her, locking his arms around her neck. Both of them treading hard beneath the surface, waves smacking hard against their heads. Gwen was coughing and sobbing, her fingernails scratching at Jack’s neck.

  Jack inhaled deeply, smelling Gwen’s terror – iron and lilac.

  They went under again. This time Jack swallowed too much water and he had to fight the urge to gag until they broke for air again. When they did, Gwen’s grip was even tighter on Jack’s throat. Her struggles were wearing them both down. Jack knew he couldn’t waste any more energy this way or they were both going to drown.

  Jack let Gwen hold him under for the last time. Then with all his strength, he forced her head and shoulders above the surface.

  ‘Sorry, Gwen.’

  He drew back his fist and punched her. Dazed, her legs loosened their grip and she slipped under the water. Jack grabbed her before the current could pull her away from him. She moaned. He flipped her into a lifesaving hold, keeping her head above the water, treading water until he was able to get their bearings and strike out towards the distant lights of the shore.

  *

  A frantic Rhys was waiting for them in the kitchen, running into the street when Jack, drenched and freezing, every muscle screaming, stumbled towards the house with Gwen cradled in his arms.

  Later, the two men sat on either side of the bed, watching Gwen sleep, an ice-pack pressed across the bridge of her nose, the swelling puffing out her cheeks.

  ‘How many families do you reckon are having a night like this one?’

  ‘Too many,’ said Jack, leaning forward in the chair, taking Gwen’s hand. ‘Christ, if all these women are going to start taking their own lives whenever they have a brief moment of sanity then the clock is ticking down faster than I thought.’

  Rhys stared sadly at Jack, realising that in all the years he’d known him he’d aged only a little. Still handsome, still larger than life, still with that same killer smile and dimpled chin, but changed somehow nonetheless. Jack glanced over at Rhys. For a fleeting moment, Rhys saw such pain in Jack’s blue eyes that his breath caught in his throat. One thing Rhys was suddenly certain of, more than ever: whatever Jack wanted to do, his actions would be to protect Gwen and Anwen and, yes, him.

  ‘This situation can’t be left to right itself,’ said Jack, turning Gwen’s wrist over so he could look for the millionth time at the shape she had carved into her arm. ‘All these women can’t just be left to heal themselves.’

  ‘Too bloody right,’ said Rhys. ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Jack smiled, tracing his finger above the pink wound on Gwen’s arm. ‘This has to mean something. It seems so familiar to me, but I can’t get the memory of it to settle, to fully form in my mind. And that is driving me nuts.’

  ‘Is it alien?’ Rhys asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. But I know I’ve seen it here… on Earth. Somewhere. I know this is going to sound weird, but every time I look at it I get this odd taste in my mouth.’

  ‘Have to say, Jack,’ smiled Rhys, ‘not the weirdest thing I’ve heard you say.’

  Jack drew the shape in the air above Gwen’s arm, not wanting to touch the pink raw wound again. Closing his eyes, he traced and retraced the image, letting it seer itself into his brain. He kept drawing, over and over again. He did this for so long that Rhys thought he’d put himself into some kind of a trance.

  Gwen stirred, the ice-pack tipped onto the pillow. Rhys reached across for it. Gwen’s hand shot out and she grabbed Rhys’s arm.

  ‘Kill me. Please.’

  Part Three

  ‘The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.’

  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

  45

  Whitehall, London, next day

  AT 9 A.M. sharp, a severely coiffured woman in her twenties ushered Dr Trimba Ormond into Alan Pride’s suite of offices in Whitehall, directly between Horse Guards and 10 Downing Street. The London Eye was visible through the window, a perfect metaphor, Ormond thought, for the man’s position in government – there he was at the heart of everything, yet somehow maintaining enough distance to avoid having to tilt too far one way or the other.

  The madness that was afflicting women worldwide had been bumped down the news agenda. The sporadic tremors and subsequent appearance of the strange geysers rising up from beneath the world’s oceans had captured
the attention of the press, in Britain and abroad. Dr Ormond, however, was not about to let the issue slip from Pride’s radar. Over breakfast with her husband and daughter, she’d practised exactly what she was going to say to Mr Alan Pride.

  ‘I respect the position you’re in, Mr Pride, especially in light of this recent oceanic event, but as far as we can tell these formations are benign. That is not, however, the case with this mental illness that’s affecting so many women here and around the world. The public should be kept informed, and these women deserve to be treated with the full resources that we can bring to bear. To simply continue to say that these women just need to be sedated is neither a solution nor a palatable stopgap any more. The public has a right to know what we’re doing to find a cure, especially given the increase in suicides among these woman and the rise in violent crimes towards their families. Are we simply going to wait until they all kill themselves and then hope that the problem will disappear?’

  Her daughter had found her argument convincing, but Ormond wasn’t sure a 10-year-old really counted, or even much cared. Problem was, Ormond was becoming convinced that far too few people in positions of power did either. A few mad women was nothing compared to massive rock chimneys popping up across the world’s oceans. If even the worst of the papers had bumped the story to an occasional feature, what chance was there of engaging public interest in a few emotionally unbalanced women?

  Ormond had wiped jam from her daughter’s chin, kissed her husband and let her driver carry her briefcase and her coat to the car.

  ‘Try to stay sane today,’ her husband had called as she left. Funny man.

  And now she was sitting waiting for a man who could decide on a whim whether those women sank or swam.

  ‘Mr Pride will be with you shortly,’ said the assistant. ‘He’s on an overseas call at the moment. Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Thank you. Black. Two sugars.’

  Dr Ormond was sipping her second cup when the heavy office doors swung open and Alan Pride stepped out to greet her.

  ‘My apologies for keeping you waiting, Trimba.’

  He proffered his hand, his shake strong and purposeful, placing the other on the small of her back to usher her into his office. His hand on her back felt warm, his fingers strong. Dr Ormond felt a kick of desire low in her abdomen that took her quite by surprise. She let herself be guided to a round table, where she was surprised to see another woman, about her own age, already seated at the table. Ormond felt a flash of anger that she hadn’t been the first one to the table and she wasn’t going to have Alan Pride to herself.

  Gracious, she thought, where on earth were these thoughts coming from? She was happily married…

  ‘Dr Ormond,’ said Pride, pulling out a chair for her, ‘this is Dr Olivia Steele, Director of Neuroscience at the Cardiff and Vale Health Board. She’s also an expert on issues of women’s mental health.’

  Dr Ormond shook Dr Steele’s hand, feeling another jolt of desire shoot from her fingers to her toes.

  This morning, she thought, is turning out… interesting.

  ‘I’ve asked you both to join me,’ said Pride, ‘because I’ve received some good news and some disturbing news about the recent wave of mental illness among women in various parts of the world. As you know, Trimba, many of the international health agencies are at a loss for treatment and, honestly, so are we. Olivia, however, has brought me some new information and I thought in light of your position that you should be one of the first to hear it. I must, though, ask for a caveat: I need your signature on an Official Secrets document.’

  As if she’d been waiting for her cue, the minister’s assistant marched through the double doors and set a sheet of paper in front of Ormond.

  ‘It’s standard procedure in such matters,’ Pride went on. ‘Olivia has also signed one. It simply states that anything you are about to hear about this “Masochistic madness”, as the press have labelled it, you may not reveal under any circumstances.’

  ‘And if I did?’ asked Ormond, guiltily realising as she spoke that she was only asking the question because she was annoyed that Dr Steele had signed the papers before her. Ormond’s desire had quickly turned to jealousy and she hated herself – and Dr Steele – for the shift.

  ‘If you did,’ smiled Pride, ‘then I’d have to kill you.’

  He tapped the bottom clause of the document where it explained she would forfeit all rights as a British citizen, and she would be considered an enemy of the state. Ormond scanned the paragraph, and then signed the document, but she couldn’t quite shake the notion that Alan Pride might actually have meant what he had said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Accepting the document, he co-signed beneath it and slid it into a folder sitting in front of him.

  He tapped his iPad, the office lights dimmed and a photograph of a man came up on the white wall in front of them.

  ‘This is Captain Jack Harkness. The Captain and I have worked together in the past a number of times. He has a theory about what is happening to these clusters of women. If he’s correct in his assessment, then we may have a cataclysmic problem on our hands. I know this man’s history, and because of that I’m inclined to grant him his request.’

  ‘And what is he requesting?’ asked Dr Steele.

  ‘He’s asking for our silence and a boat load of sedatives.’

  The Ice Maiden

  46

  Off the coast of Wales, a week or so before Isela’s shot

  EVA STOOD ON the port side of the Ice Maiden, binoculars in her hands. Next to her, Hollis was leaning against the rails of the ship, his face tilted towards the heat of the late-afternoon sun, smoking a cigarette. Eva lifted her binoculars, scanning the distant Welsh coast, the ship anchored miles out to avoid detection from the British coast guard and the naval ships now surrounding the geyser.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ said Eva, ‘reminds me of home. This coastline is a bit like the Pacific Northwest.’

  ‘About the only thing in Wales that reminds me of home is the smell of fresh fish.’ Hollis flicked his burning cigarette over the side of the ship.

  ‘Hollis!’

  He shrugged. ‘My bad.’

  Turning from the sun, Hollis looked across the channel to the docks of Bridgend. ‘They better bring somethin’ tasty back with them. I’m getting tired of finding exciting things to make with frozen tuna and packets of scalloped potatoes.’

  ‘And I’m getting tired of eating them. Any idea who this person is?’ asked Eva.

  ‘He’s a friend of Cash’s from way back. I think they were on a mission together in the 80s. All very secret and scandalous, if I know Cash.’

  Eva caught sight of a fishing boat pulling away from a distant dock and heading towards the Ice Maiden. ‘Is he a spy?’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, darlin’,’ said Hollis, pushing away from the side and heading to the steps down to the kitchen. ‘Whoever he is, they’ll expect some dinner before we set off.’

  Eva watched him climb below deck, and then she shifted back to watch a fishing skiff cutting through the waves towards them. Below her, Dana was preparing the landing deck and the ladder. Looking up, she waved at Eva directly above her.

  Eva and Hollis had drawn the short straws and had been left on the ship with Finn. The rest of the crew had gone with Cash to get supplies and to pick up their passengers. Dana had drawn a new assignment that she had refused to share, even with Eva.

  Cash’s reaction to reading the message in Welsh that had come across the teletype had been strange and completely in character. He laughed, swore profusely and said, ‘Nothing like making an entrance.’

  He’d turned to Vlad and told him not to worry about who had infiltrated the computers, it was not an enemy and the power would return in a few minutes. It had, and they’d stormed from the North Atlantic south to a port north-west of Cardiff.

  ‘So who exactly is crawling inside my hardware?’ asked Vlad, when the storm had abated and thing
s below deck had returned to normal.

  ‘Torchwood,’ said Cash.

  ‘Never heard of them,’ said Eva.

  ‘I have,’ said Vlad. ‘Secret agency. Did some important stuff to get us all dying again. Ties to the CIA, right?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Cash had Finn alter their course and brought them directly to the south coast of Wales. Where they were heading from here was anyone’s guess.

  *

  ‘Permission to come aboard,’ said Jack, saluting Dana, who stood on the platform next to the ladder, the wind buffeting her against the ship’s iron red hull.

  ‘Permission to do whatever the fuck you want to me,’ she grinned, throwing herself into Jack’s arms, her head barely reaching his chest.

  ‘Such a lovely way with words,’ said Jack, swinging her off her feet.

  Rhys was standing on the bow of the fishing boat, his face blanched with worry, watching Cash, Byron and Vlad manoeuvre a stretcher with Gwen strapped to it onto the platform, where Dana attached a winch to the stretcher, then tilted Gwen to a standing position, her head flopping onto her chest. From the controls in the wheelhouse, Finn then hauled Gwen up onto the deck. Eva was waiting at the top, and made sure she landed softly, realising immediately it didn’t much matter. Whoever this woman was, she was completely out of it, comatose even.

  On the platform, Dana turned to Cash and from her tiptoes, she grabbed his head and planted a long deep kiss on his lips. ‘Behave yourself. Or when I see you, I’ll take even more of your money.’

  ‘Rhys has everything you’ll need, Dana, and you can trust him completely,’ said Jack, lifting his bags from the fishing boat.

  Rhys held out his hand and helped Dana on board the fishing boat. She lifted her bags and carried them down below.

  Vlad picked up Jack’s bags and Cash took the heavier cases – weapons, assault rifles, he’d guess, if weight was anything to go by. But, who knows? Jack’s diverse and unusual weaponry always amazed Cash and he knew better than to question its provenance.