Another Life Page 29

  Close your eyes now. How long can you hold your breath?

  Your lungs burn. They ache for air. Every fibre of your being is telling you to open your mouth and your eyes.

  You so want somewhere to go from here, but you don’t remotely believe there is anywhere left. You are not Bee or Wildman or Tegg. You are not like them. You know there is nothing more.

  You are—

  Jack’s face was underwater now, angled up to the last pocket of air in the cage. With her head underwater too, everything seemed closer to Gwen. Images were magnified, even in the greyish sea water. The sound of her own breathing, the noise of exhaled air, was loud and close.

  She wasn’t sure she could bear to watch this, but knew somehow she wouldn’t look away. Think of how he had killed the Bruydac Warrior. He had told her that she should imagine him as that man, who showed no mercy to a defeated enemy. He was someone who should suffer the same fate, if it came down to it. He should be allowed to die, helpless and alone.

  That wasn’t Jack in the cage any more, cajoling and begging and threatening. Thrashing at the restraints in fury and desperation. It was the Bruydac Warrior. So wasn’t she just doing the same thing that Jack did earlier?

  Didn’t that make her the same? Or, knowing that about herself, didn’t it make her worse?

  The bubbles from Jack’s upturned face slowed to a trickle and stopped. His eyelids opened. His mouth gaped abruptly as the breathing reflex overcame him. His chest convulsed as he sucked cold grey water into his lungs in a final, choking rush.

  Cold, grey seawater surrounded Gwen, so she couldn’t feel the hot salt tears on her face. She forced herself to watch Jack until his seizures subsided.

  Once he hadn’t moved for ten minutes, she knew for certain that Jack was dead.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The mesh grating tilted up and over and toppled with a clanging echo. Gwen emerged from beneath it, surging out of the water in the basin and sending waves slopping over the edges across the Hub floor. Through the mask, she could see that she had broken the surface. She tore it off and eagerly gasped down clean, fresh air. Or as fresh as it got in the Hub. Even the slightly damp atmosphere of the main level made her feel home and safe.

  Behind her, Jack’s body floated face down in the water of the Hub basin. She had released it from the bonds of the cage in the ship and desperately dragged it behind her through flooded corridors, along an open stretch of the Bay, and finally through the interlocking junctions of the Hub’s underwater entrance.

  She’d found Jack’s body a dead weight while it was in the water. Now she tried to drag it from the basin. It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. Her body was telling her to stop, to rest. Gwen’s legs and arms throbbed with dull pain, and she had to fight for her breath.

  Eventually, she got her hands under his armpits and half-dragged him, half-fell with him onto the Hub floor.

  Jack’s body was supine on the chill metal of the walkway by the basin. His staring eyes were glassy, empty. His skin showed as a ghastly pale blue, his full lips were dark, and there were rings of black beneath his eyes.

  She slumped down on the grating beside him, and removed her diving cylinder. Sat watching him. Urging him.

  Why wasn’t he reviving? She’d seen him take a bullet in the forehead and return to life. But she didn’t know for certain if anything could kill him. An illness, a devastating injury… or maybe the inability to recover immediately? He’d been dead for at least half an hour this time.

  She rolled him over so that he was prone on the floor, and began to push beneath his shoulder blades. Water spurted from his mouth and through the grating into the basin.

  Gwen pulled him onto his back again. Her mind raced, and she couldn’t focus on what to do next. She’d so believed that Jack would spontaneously recover once he surfaced that she was now panicking about the right course of action. What had they taught her in that Basics of First Aid course? Was it safe to give him oxygen from her diving cylinder? Or was that too much pressure? Did she need to empty the lungs of water? Or was it CPR first? Oh God, she hadn’t even checked for a pulse! There was something about having to give CPR within a quarter of an hour of someone collapsing. And how fast did brain death occur after they’ve stopped breathing?

  Jack eyes stared up at her, glazed, sightless. They were unfocused, peaceful, unaccusing.

  She pinched his nose, tilted his head back. You were supposed to do that, weren’t you? To extend the airway, or something. She parted his lips, sealed hers around them, and exhaled.

  There was no response.

  Time to start chest compressions? No, she thought. One more breath. She positioned her mouth over his again.

  ‘Gwen?’ There was a clattering sound from the spiral staircase across from her. Toshiko was hurrying down it, two steps at a time. ‘What’s going on?’

  Toshiko hurried across the basin to join her. Gwen hardly registered that the walkway had now re-emerged as the water subsided. She was too preoccupied in devising some excuse about what had happened to Jack, why she was pressing her face to his. But if he was dead, then what was the whole bloody point?

  ‘Jack had to abandon his scuba gear halfway back from the ship,’ she lied. ‘Ran out of oxygen. Only for a short time.’ She could barely speak now. ‘Oh God, Toshiko, I think he’s dead. But he can’t be…’

  Toshiko’s look was grave. ‘Gwen,’ she began gently. ‘How long has he been without air?’

  Gwen didn’t know what to say any more. Didn’t know how to explain.

  She gave a little shriek of surprise. Jack had abruptly rolled over towards her, and barfed sea water over her legs. Her shriek turned into a shout of elation and then to laughter. She threw herself on him and hugged him tight. Let him go almost immediately, as he began to choke in her embrace. Apologised when he slipped back and smacked his head on the floor. Laughed again. Laughed, and thought she’d never stop.

  With Toshiko’s help, Gwen got Jack into the medical suite and onto a bed.

  Jack was making a remarkable recovery. He’d spent some time explaining to Gwen and Toshiko and Ianto about the Bruydac Warrior – too much time to be plausible for someone purportedly recovering from a near-drowning. ‘Don’t make a fuss, Jack,’ Gwen hissed close to his ear while Toshiko was busily wrestling a couple of monitors into position on the other side of his room. ‘You’ll just draw attention to yourself. Lie down and try to look like you’re at death’s door, for God’s sake.’ She sat down on the bed beside him, and tried to look concerned.

  Toshiko smoothed the electrodes onto Jack’s chest, and adjusted the sensitivity of the monitor by his bedside. The machine began to make an encouraging ping sound. ‘You’re a better patient than Owen. You won’t be surprised to hear that.’

  ‘How’s he doing?’ Jack’s voice was a rasp.

  ‘How do you think?’ smiled Toshiko. ‘Doctors make the worst patients. At least we don’t have to strap him down any more.’

  ‘I bet he was glad when you released him,’ said Gwen.

  ‘I said we don’t need to strap him down any more,’ replied Toshiko. ‘I didn’t say we’d actually undone his restraints yet.’

  A roar from the next bedroom confirmed that Owen was awake and probably listening. Toshiko grinned at them, and slipped out of the room.

  Jack sat up in his own bed. He placed his hand over Gwen’s on the cover, and squeezed it reassuringly. Ianto was sitting in a chair against the wall, pretending not to notice.

  ‘Owen’s gonna be fine,’ said Jack. ‘The Bruydac Warrior must have relinquished control a moment before the sedatives rendered him unconscious. Because it didn’t want to be captured alive by Tosh and Ianto.’

  ‘And it knew it had somewhere else to jump. It knew you were waiting.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And it tried to jump again when it thought you were dying.’ Ianto was unusually animated, excited at his own cleverness in working out what had happened. ‘You had
it fooled there, eh?’

  Jack exchanged a look with Gwen. ‘Yeah.’

  She squeezed his hand in acknowledgement.

  ‘But it really had nowhere to go, because there were no more hosts. And its true form was dead.’ Ianto scraped his chair nearer to the bed. ‘It abandoned the victims when it had to escape. Which explains why that implant in Owen’s spine has burnt out. Like the ones in the other… er… victims?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jack leaned forward on the bed, and ran an exploratory hand up his own back. ‘Y’know, I gotta have this thing removed. Otherwise I’m gonna set off the alarms every time I check in at the airport.’

  He had leaned too far forward and dislodged one of the electrodes. The monitor beside him flatlined, and an alarm went off. Toshiko hurried in from the other room, her face full of worry until she saw Jack sitting on the bed and laughing at her.

  Jack allowed Toshiko to fuss about him and reattach the electrodes.

  Gwen’s mobile began to buzz in her pocket. After such a long silence, it was a surprise to hear it again. She flipped it open and saw that it was Rhys calling.

  Where the hell was she, he wanted to know. The cinema thing had been rained off, and Josie and Brendan had bunked off without him because they were like that, weren’t they, it was all about them since the office party. And he’d been worrying all night about her in this storm, and couldn’t get a signal. But now the storm seemed to be abating, and he’d finally got through.

  Gwen huddled in the corner of the bedroom, smiling a wan apology at the others in the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told Rhys quietly. ‘I’ll not be long, I promise. Just finishing up here.’ She looked down at herself, and saw that she was still wearing the wetsuit that was a size too small. ‘I’ve got to change first. Be home soon.’

  She returned to the bed and had a good look at Jack. Despite his recent ordeal, he appeared to be in implausibly good health. ‘I should probably get home,’ she told him.

  ‘Life goes on,’ smiled Jack. ‘It must be getting late.’ He checked his wrist, but Toshiko had removed his watch earlier.

  Gwen pointed out where she had placed it on his bedside cabinet. ‘It got smashed,’ she told him in an apologetic tone. ‘You must have bashed it against the side of that metal cage thing. When you were… well, you know.’

  Jack inspected the broken watch. The cover glass over the twenty-four-hour dial had crazed.

  Gwen indicated the hands on the watch, buckled and unmoving. She leaned close, so that only Jack would hear her speak. ‘Time of death: 21.46.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Jack replied. ‘Now that was a great year for me.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Casa Celi was almost deserted. No rowdy bankers or ladies-who-lunched had braved the bright afternoon sun. Rico Celi polished the table next to them for the tenth time since they’d arrived, as though that might encourage some passer-by to come in and order something.

  There wasn’t much likelihood of that, Gwen thought. The high street was largely empty of people, too. There was so much mud silt washed up along its length that it wasn’t always clear where the pavement ended and the carriageway began. When the Torchwood team had walked down it earlier, she’d wished that she’d worn Wellington boots instead of her sensible shoes. The water from the Bay may have subsided as suddenly as it had risen over central Cardiff, but many of the shops and businesses remained closed. Through most streets, the residual sludge wasn’t the only thing left behind by the retreating water. There was the human detritus of food scraps and fast-food cartons. Shredded paper and cans. A solitary, soggy, striped pillow. Postboxes had a ring around them, dirty tide marks that showed how far the water had reached. Against one bent lamp-post was a twisted bicycle, awkwardly cast up from who knew where and still with its chain attached to one buckled wheel.

  The café doors were firmly closed, despite the warm afternoon sun. It kept the foul smell of the mud out in the street. Gwen and Toshiko sat at one small table by the window. Jack and Owen sat at the next one alone. They were positioned by the front window so that they could look out into the street, alert for any sign of Weevils. In the ashtray in front of Jack was the exact change for his and Owen’s drinks. Jack had also placed the anti-Weevil spray on his table, in plain view next to his tall glass of water. Gwen thought it more prudent to conceal the hand-clamps beneath her table.

  ‘Rico,’ called Jack. ‘You’re gonna wear a hole in that thing.’

  The café owner stopped scrubbing at the adjacent table. ‘For a while this morning, I thought that I’d never get this place clean again. I was stuck in here during the flood, did I mention that?’

  ‘Only a dozen times. How were you?’

  ‘Cachu planciau.’

  Gwen coughed in an attempt to stifle her laughter.

  ‘Very demotic,’ said Jack. His eyes never left the street. But Gwen could tell his attention was on Owen, beside him. Owen had barely spoken to any of them since Jack had discharged them both from the medical suite in the Hub. Jack had made some excuse about an increase in the number of free-roaming Weevils in the last forty-eight hours, and that many more of the creatures seemed to have been flushed out from the sewers by the recent flooding. When they’d arrived at Casa Celi half an hour ago, he’d made Gwen and Toshiko sit at a separate table. Gwen sipped her lemonade, listening in to Jack’s sporadic, almost one-sided conversation with Owen.

  When he eventually spoke, Owen’s voice was barely a mumble. Didn’t want her and Toshiko to overhear him, Gwen decided. Deep down, he probably didn’t want Jack to hear it either. ‘I feel that this has been a test,’ Owen muttered.

  ‘A test,’ Jack repeated in a level tone.

  ‘Like a test of me. One I botched. But the person who suffered for my failure was Megan.’

  Jack took his eyes from the window for the first time since he’d sat down. He looked closely at Owen. ‘You know that I recruited you all because you are the best. Don’t you?’

  Owen nodded dumbly.

  ‘It’s a gut thing,’ Jack explained. ‘An instinct. Not something you can pass or fail a test on. And it’s not something I’m gonna judge you on, Owen. You each earn my respect every day.’

  Owen couldn’t hold Jack’s gaze. He distracted himself by swirling his slice of lemon round in the bottom of his Coke glass.

  ‘Hard as it may seem now,’ Jack continued, ‘Megan was a part of your life before Torchwood. You are doing more to save others now than you ever were back in A&E. That’s the old world, that’s gone now. She’s gone.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ snapped Owen. His angular face was pink now, suffused with barely contained fury.

  ‘Not what I mean, Owen.’ Jack kept his steady gaze on the angry man. He would not back down, would not apologise. ‘Your whole existence in A&E, you can’t return there. You’re so way beyond that now. You can’t go back to that time, that place, those people. You’re living another life. It’s the twenty-first century, we have to help them be ready for it.’ He took Owen’s hand, and placed something in his palm. It was the Bekaran deep-tissue scanner that he’d retrieved from the hospital room. ‘And giving them alien technology helps no one in the long run.’

  Owen looked like he was about to say something, but abruptly there was there was no time for more chat. They were all startled by a face at the window. Fuzzy pale hair, grizzled weather-beaten skin, and a permanent scowl of anger and bemusement. If they’d been shocked by the Weevil, Gwen thought, well that was nothing to what it must have felt when it saw four humans on the other side of the glass leap to their feet.

  Jack grabbed for the spray in front of him, scattering half-finished drinks and loose change all over the table in the process. Gwen and Toshiko scrambled awkwardly beneath their table for the hand-clamps.

  Owen, meanwhile, was already in hot pursuit of the Weevil. First through the café door and into the mud-caked street. Ahead of them all.

  Acknowledgements

 
Stuart Cooper, for the initial opportunity.

  Brian Minchin and Gary Russell, for production insights.

  Mathew Clayton and Steve Tribe, for editorial expertise.

  Dan Abnett and Andy Lane, for camaraderie.

  Peter Ware and Matt Nichols, for logistics.

  Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, for bringing Captain Jack back to life in the first place.

  Adam and Samuel Anghelides, for background noises.

  Also available from BBC Books:

  TORCHWOOD

  BORDER PRINCES

  Dan Abnett

  ISBN 978 0 563 48654 1

  UK £6.99 US$11.99/$14.99 CDN

  The End of the World began on a Thursday night in October, just after eight in the evening…

  The Amok is driving people out of their minds, turning them into zombies and causing riots in the streets. A solitary diner leaves a Cardiff restaurant, his mission to protect the Principal leading him to a secret base beneath a water tower. Everyone has a headache, there’s something in Davey Morgan’s shed, and the church of St Mary-in-the-Dust, demolished in 1840, has reappeared – though it’s not due until 2011. Torchwood seem to be out of their depth. What will all this mean for the romance between Torchwood’s newest members?

  Captain Jack Harkness has something more to worry about: an alarm, an early warning, given to mankind and held – inert – by Torchwood for 108 years. And now it’s flashing. Something is coming. Or something is already here.

  Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoki Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

  TORCHWOOD

  SLOW DECAY

  Andy Lane

  ISBN 978 0 563 48655 8

  UK £6.99 US$11.99/$14.99 CDN