Another Life Read online

  Owen watched her leave the R&R area.

  Chess, he thought. Right. Ideal for Toshiko. The only pairing where she was ever likely to make the first move.

  He listened to her footsteps disappearing into the distance. Then he just sat for several minutes and let the night-time sounds of the Hub echo around him. The 50 hertz hum of the machinery. The tick-splash sound of a drip. The occasional creak of a board somewhere in the older fittings.

  There was no sign of Toshiko returning. He went out to the main area, and satisfied himself that Ianto had also left for the evening. The helmet-mounted display and data-gloves were at his desk where he’d left them.

  Owen powered up the computer again, and began to type. His logon screen appeared, and he tapped in his user id: [email protected], followed by his password.

  ‘This is Second Reality,’ the screen told him. ‘Connect to the Internet? Y/N’

  He slipped on the data-gloves, flexing his fingers and feeling the touch-sensitive pads against his skin. He carefully strapped on the helmet. The screen image was already displayed on the stereoscopic screens, and the text seemed to leap out at him in three dimensions.

  He reached out his right hand and pushed against the Y.

  ‘Second Reality,’ said the mellow voice of the game, all around him. ‘Welcome back, Glendower Broadsword.’

  NINE

  The chlorine stink caught in her nose and throat. A child screamed from the far end of the swimming pool in alarm or delight; it wasn’t clear to Gwen. She swung around, lurching, swaying, unsure of her footing on the bleached blue tiling.

  Swimmers thronged the pool. A flotilla of inflatables carried a procession of whooping children and indulgent parents diagonally across the main race lanes and towards the lazy river, where water jets urged the tide of people onwards, onwards.

  That man on the balcony was still watching her. He peered nonchalantly over the top of his newspaper. She knew him from somewhere, didn’t she?

  Gwen grabbed the stainless-steel rail at the edge of the deep end. Held on to it fiercely as the room snapped back into focus. In the dead centre of the pool, ignored by the endless stream of swimmers, one man churned the green-blue water. Floundering. Gasping. Going under for the third time.

  It was Jack. Gwen recognised the black Speedos. (How did she recognise the black Speedos? She couldn’t say. It didn’t matter.)

  Jack’s face broke the surface again. Another huge gasp for air. His hair was slicked close to his head by the water. His eyes made contact with hers, past the kids on floats, past their attentive fathers, past the boisterous teenage lads who ducked their girlfriends or did handstands underwater. Unseen by them, Jack’s mouth opened in a wide ‘o’ of surprise and horror before his mouth, his nose, his terrified blue eyes submerged beneath the churning water.

  ‘Someone help him!’ screamed Gwen. She looked wildly around. From the other side of the pool, a lifeguard sauntered slowly towards her. The lad was about twenty, absurdly good-looking, with short-cropped brown hair and startling green eyes. He peeled off his yellow T-shirt languorously, to reveal a smooth, muscular chest and a fuse of hair that circled his navel and ran down into his baggy red shorts. ‘Leave him,’ he told her, his voice warm and dark and calm. ‘He’s mine.’

  The lifeguard slipped into the water, and the kids and parents and teens parted before him. He pulled himself towards the floundering Jack with slow, powerful strokes. Gwen felt the frustration build in her, a tensing of the muscles in her upper arms and shoulders. ‘Hurry hurry hurry,’ she chanted, like a mantra.

  Just as the lad was about to reach Jack, a long-legged girl collided with him. Her blonde hair coiled like snakes around her in the water. Her tight red one-piece swimsuit was the same colour as the boy’s shorts, and Gwen knew suddenly that she was another lifeguard.

  ‘Leave him,’ said the girl in red. Her tone was deliberate and her voice was breathy, yet clearly audible above the sound of the pool. She lifted one hand out of the water and pushed down on the other lifeguard’s head. ‘Leave him. He’s mine.’

  The young male lifeguard shook her off and pushed his head back to the surface, blowing air through his pursed lips and scattering water with a rapid shake of his head. He pressed up against the woman, forcing her away so that she slowly fell backwards, the swimsuit material stretched tight over her breasts.

  The two guards continued to jostle together in the pool, a leisurely exchange of shoves and nudges that was more like a ballet than a fight. Beside them, Jack’s face floated just below the surface, his eyes and mouth wide.

  Gwen choked. She couldn’t draw breath. It was as though she was underwater, unable or afraid to breathe in. She wanted to plunge into the pool, drag herself across to the middle and bring Jack to the surface. But her legs were leaden; she could not even slide her bare feet over the cracked blue tiles. Her hands spasmed, and her fingers locked, immovable around the barrier rail.

  The thin-faced man stared down from the balcony. He had stood to watch the commotion in the pool. No, Gwen realised, his eyes were fixed on her. ‘Owen Harper,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Doctor Owen Harper, the thin-faced man called to her. ‘Actually.’

  Gwen cursed her paralysed legs, and tried to lunge over the barrier into the water. Her arms had no strength. The crowds continued their unheeding passage around the drowning man. Gwen screamed wildly at the lifeguards. They paused to study her incuriously.

  ‘Save him!’ Her shrill cry echoed around the swimming pool.

  She woke up abruptly, surfacing from beneath her sheets with a wail of misery and fear.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Rhys fumbled around on the bedside cabinet, and scattered books and pens on the floor before he managed to locate the light switch. He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘What’s the matter, love?’

  Gwen found that her arms weren’t paralysed any more, so she threw them around her boyfriend and started to sob.

  She let him clasp her tightly, quietly, until she slowly calmed down. He was good like that, Rhys. He knew when to talk and when to shut up and just say nothing.

  She knew she couldn’t explain it, so she lied to him that she’d already forgotten what the nightmare was.

  Rhys squeezed her again. ‘It must have been the rain rattling the window. Sorry, love, I know I should’ve fixed it, and now with the storm and everything…’

  ‘No, no,’ she mumbled. ‘S’all right.’

  Rhys held her at arm’s length to look at her. Jerked his head towards the window. ‘And it’s boiling in here, isn’t it? Maybe that rain’s not so bad, I can open the thing a bit and let some air in?’ He slipped out of bed and ambled over to the window. When he cracked open the top pane, Gwen could hear the steady susurration of rain on the pavement below.

  Rhys padded through to the bathroom. He left the door ajar, and raised his voice so that she could hear him over the sound of the running tap. He spoke in short bursts as he brushed his teeth. ‘Every time my gran knew a storm was coming in. She’d cover up all the mirrors in the house with bed-sheets. White bedsheets. It was like her terrace house was going into storage. Wouldn’t get unwrapped until the lightning had gone away.’

  Gwen smiled to herself, not quite sure if she was amused or sad. She knew Rhys was just talking cheerful nonsense to cajole her out of the fearful mood, to help her completely forget whatever it was that had upset her. But his anecdote reminded her of that alien radiance sprite Torchwood had trapped a few weeks ago in a mirrored box. Toshiko had folded up the reflective surfaces and thrown a dark cloth over it. Would nothing be simple any more, Gwen thought to herself. Maybe she’d never again have normal points of reference for the stories that Rhys told about his family, or about what had happened to him at the office, or something that he and Banana Boat had laughed at in the pub. She could never talk about her own work, and lovely Rhys just didn’t question it because he accepted ‘Special Ops’ was something she could never discuss. He could tell her about
Barry’s latest computer cock-up, or the naivety of the young secretary he’d just hired, or the latest crazy diet theory expounded by Lucy in his office. But Gwen never made up any of her own stories to exchange about Special Ops colleagues. She knew from her own police work that it was too easy to get lost in those kinds of fabrications, once you got started.

  ‘Look at you!’ Rhys was standing in the doorway. ‘You’re on the wrong side of the bed. I got up a bit earlier for a wee and a glass of water – all that Tiger we had with dinner, it just went right through me. When I got back, you’d rolled over onto my side. That’s why I had a bit of trouble with your lamp there. Sorry, couldn’t quite see what was what.’ He stooped down by her side of the bed and started to pick up the books and pens and papers he’d accidentally scattered on the floor. ‘You’ve had quite a few restless nights, haven’t you? Since starting this new job. What’s all that about?’ He laughed. ‘Guilty conscience?’

  ‘Oh, hark at you,’ Gwen retorted. ‘Guilty conscience about my new job? That’s your mate Gaz talking, that is. Like you never have nightmares?’

  ‘I always sleep well. The sleep of the just.’

  ‘The sleep of the shagged, more like,’ she told him. ‘Your post-coital coma is what you mean, Rhys.’

  He dumped some of the papers on the bedside cabinet, leaned over, and attempted to snog her.

  ‘Not fair!’ she protested, laughing, as she smelled the Colgate. ‘You’ve brushed your teeth, and I bet I’ve got bog breath.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Well I do,’ she told him. ‘And besides, I need the loo now.’

  Rhys stood up to let her out of the bed. ‘I’ll tidy up the rest of this mess I’ve made while you have your wee, then.’

  Gwen tiptoed over the cold bathroom lino and left him to sort out the strewn papers. Since joining Torchwood, she’d had restless nights because she woke up with thoughts and ideas and then stayed awake fretting that she wouldn’t remember them the next day. She’d taken to scribbling them on shop receipts and envelopes, and eventually in a small notebook. She trusted Rhys not to nosey around in her stuff, but didn’t trust herself not to lose it, so it was written in abbreviations and codes. Inevitably, that meant her night-time jottings were either in indecipherable handwriting or, when examined in the cold light of morning, just tired rambling nonsense.

  ‘Is this a new mobile number?’ Rhys called through to her.

  She emerged back into their room, still clutching her toothbrush. She wiped one wet hand on her nightie, and took the Post-it note from him.

  ‘Scribbled out in a bit of a hurry,’ he observed, ‘and not your handwriting. That says “Gwen”, and a number… is that a zero or a six?’

  Gwen knew that the scrawled word was “Owen”. He’d shoved his mobile number at her, while giving her some half-hearted cheesy chat-up line. She’d told him to piss off. It was a joke anyway, a gesture, because all the Torchwood phones had everyone’s number programmed in on speed dial. Even so, when she’d emptied the pockets that evening before hanging her jacket in the wardrobe, she’d found the Post-it note still there.

  ‘Message from the office,’ she told Rhys. Gwen took it with her back to the bathroom, sticking it on the mirror while she had a pee. As she sat, she thought about the dream. Jack in the pool. Owen watching from the balcony.

  She got back to the bed, and stooped close to Rhys to get a proper snog. He was sprawled comfortably across his own side, mouth wide open, taking regular breaths.

  Gwen listened to Rhys breathing. She went back and retrieved the Post-it from the bathroom mirror. Tucked it into her notebook. Put the notebook on the bedside cabinet. Slipped back into bed with Rhys, and switched off the lamp. Lay in the dark, listening to the ceaseless rain.

  TEN

  Russian roulette was definitely more interesting with real people, decided Owen. And playing it in the Torchwood Hub gave it an added frisson of excitement. There was the danger of being caught by Jack or Gwen or Toshiko, which was just as exhilarating as knowing that he risked getting his brains splattered across his own desk. Though that would be harder to explain than it would be to clear up afterwards.

  He sniffed the air in the room, expecting his nostrils to fill with the scent of cordite and freshly sprayed blood. Beside him, slumped against the base of the Asteroids arcade game, the latest gun victim stared sightlessly at the Hub’s high ceiling. It was Kvasir the Viking. One way or another, at someone else’s hand or his own, that dumb Scandinavian was always going to wind up dead.

  Owen kicked the dead man’s fur-clad leg. ‘Get up, Kvasir,’ he told him. ‘You’re not as smart as they told me you were. Try again with your next life. I bet you can’t lose four times in a row.’

  The corpse blinked twice, rolled over and returned to the table.

  After another couple of games, the novelty of combining elements of the Second Reality game with the physical contents of the Hub started to pall for Owen. For the first hour, it had amused him to run the 3-D projectors in the Hub’s games area, but he soon found it distracting to navigate around the solid real-life objects, and a lot duller than exploring the unlimited, uninhibited worlds created by other people inside Second Reality. At one stage, he checked his watch to see that it was already approaching 1 a.m. on Sunday morning. After that, he put the helmet-mounted display back on his head and immersed himself once more in the startling clarity of the images on the stereoscopic screens.

  He was keen to meet new characters, in the hope that they were also new people in the real world. You could never tell, because one person might have several avatars in the game. Penny Pasteur had already proved a disappointment. Remembering Toshiko’s words earlier, he’d gone to the Wumpaam district where a Mage called Candlesmith had sold him a pair of sunglasses that showed you what the person’s fleshspace name was. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they didn’t work on Candlesmith, but when Owen used them on Penny Pasteur it revealed her in real life to be Donald McGurk Jr., logged in to the game from Minneapolis. And while Donald wasn’t the hairy-arsed fifty-year-old that Toshiko had speculated about, when confronted with his true identity he confessed that he was a thirty-two-year-old Star Trek fan who secretly wanted to be Lieutenant Uhura.

  Owen abandoned ‘Penny’ back at the Lunatic Fringe, making good use of an unfortunate accident when she had fallen into a huge pile of rotting fruit that had mysteriously appeared in the street outside the barber-shop. Within seconds, Owen had vanished around the corner and lost himself amid the glittering skyscrapers of the uptown Millennium Capitol, heedless to the wails from Penny and the screeches of the pteranodons that had swooped down from nowhere to peck at her where she lay in the street like a tempting hors d’oeuvre.

  More promising was Egg Magnet. In his guise as Glendower Broadsword, Owen picked him up outside the Surer Square, a tapas bar near the centre of Millennium Capitol. He decided that Egg was the most stylish person in the place, because he was dancing on the table-top, and eating fire rather than the queso con anchoas. This endeared him to Owen, if not to the waiters, so he intercepted Egg as he was being thrown out into the street.

  They danced diagonally across the cobbled streets of the food district. Owen considered the newcomer’s brilliant white trouser suit and startlingly bright silver hair.

  ‘What kind of name is “Egg Magnet”?’ he asked.

  ‘Name of a band,’ Egg replied. ‘How about you? Did your parents read a lot of Tolkien?’

  Owen considered his Glendower Broadsword outfit. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit New Zealand. But I never got further than dressing like this. It’s a hobbit I find hard to break.’

  Egg Magnet pulled a face. Literally. He seized hold of his cheeks and stretched them like putty into an exaggerated expression of dismay.

  ‘Sorry,’ grinned Owen. He reached over and smoothed out Egg’s distorted features with soft pressure on the skin. Left his hands in position, gently holding the other man’s cheeks and considering the possibil
ities. He’d experimented with Second Reality sex sessions in the past, though that was just getting other characters on the screen to snog and shag. He wondered what the possibilities were with his sight and hearing totally immersed in the game like this. Or with the tangible feedback from the sensors in the data-gloves. A recent copy of The Lancet had included a joke article about cybersex, and involved some equipment described as ‘technodildonics’. He doubted Toshiko would think that was research worth pursuing for Torchwood. Though he imagined he’d have enjoyed describing the hardware interface to her.

  ‘Do you want to get a drink somewhere?’ he asked Egg. ‘Or do you prefer to curl up with a nice cup of tea?’

  Egg gently pulled his face away from Owen, chuckling. The movement scattered his silver hair around his shoulders. ‘I had a boyfriend who always said that. I’d tell him, “No, I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a really average cup of tea, thanks. Unless you can do me a crappy cup of tea.” I do love a crappy cup of tea, don’t you?’

  Owen laughed too. It was something he’d said himself in the past.

  Egg danced off across the street and up a connecting flight of steps to a raised area of shops and restaurants. He peered over his shoulder, checking that Owen wasn’t left behind. Owen chased up the steps after Egg, taking two or three at a time to catch up.

  ‘You have a lovely laugh,’ Owen told him. ‘What else did your boyfriend say that made you laugh like that?’

  Egg sat on a low wall outside a restaurant, and patted it to indicate Owen should join him. ‘Like you, he said he wanted to travel. But he’d never go to the North Pacific, because he didn’t trust Hawaiians…’

  Owen broke in, laughing again: ‘…because the “i”s are too close together!’ He looked at Egg thoughtfully for a moment. There was something very familiar about him. Owen closed his eyes and listened to Egg talk, trying to concentrate on the words and not his appearance.