by James Goss
Jack laughed.
Eric looked at him sharply. Jack stopped laughing.
‘How long was I laughing this time?’
‘Eighty-seven seconds.’
‘Close to mania. Curious.’
‘And irritating.’
‘Says crying man.’
‘Hey, I’m in a lot of pain.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Can you? It’s just that I can’t move.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I can’t feel my legs.’
‘That’s cos you’ve not got any.’
Pause. That was tactless.
More mewling. Some screaming.
‘I mean, not that I can see. Stop crying. It’s the wall – they’re embedded in the wall behind you. Who knows. Probably all there. All fine. Looks worse than it is – seems to be concrete, but it’s alive and breathing and… smells quite meaty. God knows, I mean, I’m sure it’s all fine. I’m probably in a worse state.’
Now Eric laughed. ‘Can’t you see?’
‘Not really, no. Can’t move my neck.’
‘Captain Jack Harkness, you’re just a head. Well, a bit of torso.’
Back-up personality. Say something.
‘Breasts? I never was much of a breast man, but if it’s all I’ve got left… Even a nipple?’
Sudden thought. Is the need to pee real or illusory? Perhaps I should just let it go and see what happens. But then, what if the resulting sensation is both imaginary and gross?
I am in a wall.
GWEN WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS
Gwen was starting to freeze. The rain was soaking through her coat, her trousers were sopping wet, and her hair was plastered to her head. ‘What kept you?’ she barked at Ianto as the SUV drove up. ‘You said you’d be ten minutes.’
Ianto apologised hastily, but also shot her a look as she climbed in. ‘Careful with that car seat, please, Gwen. I’ve just had the upholstery steam-cleaned.’
‘Fine, Ianto, thank you, Ianto, I shall try and drip elsewhere. Where the bloody hell were you?’
Ianto looked slightly sheepish as he drove the SUV up from the Bay into town. ‘Well, when you called, I suddenly realised it might be a long night, and I didn’t want that on an empty stomach, what with my blood sugar being all over the place these days, so I zapped a Lean Cuisine and counted my points while I waited. Honestly, I got here as quickly as I could. Oh, plus I had to find the keys to the SUV.’
Gwen sat there quietly. In less than a week, not only had Ianto become a woman, but he’d become the kind of woman Gwen always dreaded being behind at a cashpoint.
‘You count your points? Don’t tell me you’re doing Weight Watchers?’ Gwen was slightly aghast. Ianto’s figure was perfect. Unquestionably so.
They pulled up at the lights, and Ianto turned to Gwen, smiling gently. ‘Not religiously, no, but it’s a good idea to eat sensibly, Gwen. I mean, I know you’re married and it’s easy to get…’
The smallest pause.
‘… comfortable. But if it turns out I’m stuck in this body, I’ve got to look my best. I’m a single woman, remember.’
Gwen blinked. She could have sworn the car smelt of chips. Meanwhile, Ianto checked his hair in the rear-view mirror and completely missed the lights changing until the bus behind them sounded its horn.
Ianto then stalled the SUV, swore mildly, and roared off in the wrong gear. ‘Honestly! The clutch keeps getting away from me. These shoes are bloody murder to drive in,’ he cursed. ‘I just can’t get shoes right. Either that or someone keeps moving the seat. Now, are you sure this device will work?’
Gwen pulled it from her coat pocket. It was sleek, blue and bleepy. ‘Tosh designed it for hunting Weevils, based on the scents they emit during the mating cycle. According to her notes, she had a few false starts with tom cats, but it’s now pretty good at hunting them down when they’re randy.’
‘Aw, Tosh had the sweetest hobbies.’ Ianto smiled fondly. ‘Did it make sense of the stuff I gave you?’
Gwen checked the readings. ‘Pretty much. You were right – Jack’s fifty-first-century pheromone pattern is fairly distinctive. It’s just not very strong. Even around the Hub. So our best hope of finding him is to stick this out the window and drive round Cardiff city centre very slowly.’
Ianto fumbled a crunching gear change and brought them to a juddering halt.
‘Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,’ Gwen muttered, winding down the window.
CARDIFF IS A ONE-WAY CITY
Town was even worse than earlier. Someone was slumped across every bench, or, in some cases, just stretched out across the pavement. Exhausted pensioners sat slumbering at bus stops. Rain beat down mercilessly on cars, buildings and people. Traffic crawled sluggishly, causing Gwen to scream with frustration.
‘It’s this new one-way system,’ she howled.
‘Or the end of the world,’ said Ianto.
‘Whatever.’ Angrily, she shook the tracking device which refused even to bleep.
The lights changed and the SUV slid glacially forward in the traffic.
‘Look at the sky, Gwen,’ said Ianto, sadly.
Gwen looked, and didn’t like it. Cardiff had its fair share of menacing clouds, but these were biblical in their darkness. Pushing down on the buildings, boiling angrily away, pouring rain down on the city.
‘That doesn’t look good,’ Gwen sighed.
The car crawled along a few hundred metres, and suddenly the tracking device screamed like a toddler.
‘Bloody hell!’ Gwen yelped, waving it around. She frantically adjusted the settings and the screaming subsided. ‘It’s over there,’ she pointed. ‘Jack’s over there.’
Ianto took the tracker and stared at the screen. ‘What can have produced that many pheromones? That’s off the scale, even by Jack’s standards.’
‘I know,’ said Gwen, grimly. ‘We’ve got to get to him.’
‘Charles Street,’ said Ianto. ‘It’ll be a few minutes before we can get back round the one-way system.’
‘Sod that,’ snapped Gwen. ‘Just park on the pavement.’
BOUNCER BEN IS WONDERING WHY HIS NOSE GOT BROKEN
It had been a long night. Actually, it seemed to have gone on for… well, Ben wasn’t quite sure, but he was quite snug, really. Even in the pouring rain, he was wrapped up warm, and the heat fairly blasted out of the club’s doors along with the music, which, although it wasn’t normally his kind of thing, he had to admit, was pretty spectacular. He’d work at the Temple for free, if it meant listening to the music. Of course, he was too wise to say that kind of thing. Professional pride. But he liked to think they knew.
And since he’d turned his phone off, his wife had stopped ringing him to demand he come home.
Something was wrong with that sentence. Hmm.
He snapped awake as he heard steps on the metal stairs above him. He watched as two women walked down them. One was startlingly beautiful and having trouble with her shoes. The other was holding out a small blue phone thing. He decided it was best to look business.
The beautiful one stepped up. ‘Hello, mate,’ she said, surprisingly. ‘Two, please. We’d like to disco very much.’
Her companion glanced at her in something like shock and then turned to Ben. ‘How much, please?’
Ben looked at them both. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a private party.’
The stunning one leaned closer and smiled. Ben noticed her friend was rolling her eyes. ‘Oh come on now, surely you can make an exception for us? We’re always where the party’s at.’
The other one stepped forward. ‘Thing is, see, we’ve got a friend in there, we said we’d join him and…’ She made to step through, but Ben moved easily out to block her.
He looked at them both, patiently. Lasses like this, it was worth telling it to them frankly. He put on his firmest voice. He knew what it was like – a night out on the lash, few too many bottles of blue alco-piddle, kebab, loud vows t
o party on past dawn. He’d had nearly eight years of it, and was an expert in turning people gently but firmly away.
‘Now listen, ladies, why don’t you go home and have a cup of tea?’ he began, talking first to the tall, stunning one. ‘Now, you – pretty girl like you, this isn’t really your place to find a fella. Waste of effort, if you know what I mean. And you,’ he said, turning to the second woman, not unkindly. ‘Well, I’m afraid we’ve got our quota of fag hags.’
Gwen broke his nose.
IANTO IS JUST MURDER ON THE DANCE FLOOR
They stood on the threshold of the club for a few moments, unable to believe what they were seeing.
Torchwood had shown Gwen a lot of things. She’d seen a fair bit of carnage inside, outside and underneath nightclubs. This was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Even when she was young and going to festivals in Fungus’s camper van. This was…
She remembered being a bit stoned and leaving the folk tent, getting a falafel and then accidentally wandering into the techno tent. This was the nearest thing – suddenly plunged into a dark place filled with endless noise and bodies and lights and screaming and a vague feeling of panic and revulsion mixed with a wonder about how she could ever fit in and be cool here.
The club, with its blood-red walls and mirrors and lights seemed to stretch into infinity. The dance floor was packed, packed with topless men all dancing, dancing the same little dance moves, all at the same time, all of them staring ahead, their muscles twitching, their eyes white, looking like racks and racks of meat in a disco abattoir. Just moving to the beat, swinging like they were on rows of meat hooks. Just empty meat dancing and dancing and dancing.
Sweat dribbled down the mirrors and columns and pooled on the ceiling and the floor. She could see the odd figure, passed out but propped up by those dancing around it. Slack jaw staring at the ceiling, collecting drops of sweat.
She thought briefly of that YouTube clip of hundreds of prisoners all doing synchronised dancing to Michael Jackson. It was kind of like that. Only crammed in all together, and the guys were semi-naked and really, really hot.
The smell was incredible. It was an actual proper stench – of hundreds of different types of sweat, of stale dry ice, of spilt beer, of decay and death and blood.
And then she noticed the pulsing music, the way the walls, the lights, the twitching bodies were all pulsing like a heartbeat. Regular, somehow sickening.
Ianto turned to her. ‘This could be heaven, this could be hell,’ he breathed. All he could see was row after row of beautiful people, somewhere near a state of rapture. And the music and the music and the beat and the lights and the music and-
Gwen slapped him. Pretty hard, he thought.
‘Sorry,’ said Gwen flatly.
‘Thank you,’ he replied rather crisply. ‘It’s strangely… compelling.’
Gwen shrugged. ‘Oh, I dunno. Dancing, I can take it or leave it, me. But look at all this. What the hell do we do?’
Ianto paused. ‘They’re behaving like a mass. They’re just standing there – not even lifting a foot off the floor. We should find what’s causing that. Perhaps we could stop that.’
‘Yep,’ agreed Gwen.
‘We could find Jack. See if he can help.’
‘Also good,’ said Gwen.
‘We could also find out why the walls are breathing.’
‘Um. Yeah.’
Actually, they made their way awkwardly to the bar. No one seemed to notice them. Everyone was dancing, dancing, dancing, their eyes rolled up, enraptured.
Gwen giggled. ‘It’s like the nineties, but no one’s tried to hug me or backwashed in my water bottle.’
Ianto nodded. ‘I’ve been to parties like this too. But normally in abandoned warehouses. Not, you know, on Charles Street.’
The pounding was starting to really beat down on Gwen. She looked at the DJ, who was mixing away at his desk, but without even looking at it. It was really, really creepy. As she leaned on the bar she sensed the beat travelling through her. She tried to move and found it harder than she thought, as though the surface of the bar was really, really sticky. She finally got the attention of a barman, who beamed at her glassily. ‘What’ll it be?’ he asked.
‘Are you the manager?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘He’s on holiday, really. Upstairs.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
He shook his head again. ‘The music’s in charge.’
Gwen rolled her eyes. She could see Ianto leaning forward, trying to flirt with the other barman who, frankly, had too many muscles and too small a T-shirt to be really interested. Bless, she thought. She turned back to the barman. ‘Look – who is in charge? Who pays you?’
The man looked puzzled. ‘We haven’t been paid. We’re here for the love. The power.’ He grinned suddenly, raffishly, and then started to bang his head to the music, drifting gently away.
Ianto joined her. ‘Nothing. It’s like I’m invisible.’ Finally!
Gwen nudged towards the fire escape. ‘Let’s go out to the smoking garden,’ she said, and strode off, edging around the side of the club, past untouched drinks and a group of men who were leaning back against the wall, dancing as though stuck to it. All of them wore the same lopsided grin.
The smoking garden was creepy. It was packed, but no one was smoking.
At each table in the freezing night sat boys in T-shirts, their hands clasped around long-dead cigarettes. All of them were just staring ahead, nodding in time to the beat.
‘Seriously, seriously wrong,’ said Gwen, watching as the rain plopped into unguarded drinks.
‘Wrong and creepy,’ agreed Ianto. He reached into his enormous handbag and pulled out a tiny pop-up Snoopy umbrella. They huddled under it and watched the sodden crowd.
Gwen peeped out from under the umbrella. A fire escape led up to a second floor. She pointed it out. ‘I was told the manager had gone on holiday upstairs,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Ianto. ‘They said something about a Brendan and a flat.’ He checked his PDA. ‘There’s nothing about a Brendan here on the records. We should be looking for a manager called Rudyard.’
‘Rudyard?’ laughed Gwen. ‘No one is called Rudyard.’
Ianto held up the PDA. ‘Here he is. He’s got a beard and everything.’
‘Right,’ admitted Gwen. ‘Well done, Miss Jones. Ten Points to Hufflepuff. Now come on – let’s climb up the fire escape. If Jack’s here, I bet that’s where he’ll be.’
Ianto pointed in alarm at his shoes and Gwen smiled.
‘Honestly, Ianto, nearly a week and you still haven’t learned – it’s practical pumps for missions.’
Ianto winced. ‘I know, Gwen, but these look so good.’
Gwen patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s a sacrifice worth making. I’ll give you a bunk up.’ And so, in the rain and the music, Gwen found herself hoisting Ianto’s ankles onto a rusty ladder.
CAPTAIN JACK IS BARGAINING
‘What is this?’ Jack asked Brendan.
Brendan, pottering past with a piece of toast, paused and ruffled his hair. ‘It’s got many names. Call it our Belief System. It’s a way of bonding all our true believers together, giving us the power we need to do all our good deeds.’
‘It’s obscene,’ growled Jack.
Brendan offered him a bite of toast. Jack shook his head. ‘You’re only saying that cos you’re on the inside looking out. I think it’s all rather beautiful. It’s kind of like the tar baby. And it’s only a temporary solution until we can find that machine.’
‘It’s not working. Let me out of this – I can help you,’ said Jack.
‘Pleading?’ Brendan squatted down, meeting Jack’s eyes. ‘It’s rather beneath you, Captain.’
‘Not if it saves lives,’ said Jack.
Brendan rolled his eyes. ‘You are so noble, I could eat you up. Sure you don’t want some toast?’
‘What would be the point?’ sighed Jack. ‘How long
are you going to keep me here?’
Brendan shrugged. ‘Dunno. In a few hours we might let you all out for a bit and play with you. Depends how up for it Jon is. Then we’ll pop you all back in. Cos I’ve got yoga, and I can’t leave you all alone with Jon. He might go mad.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant.’
‘Truthfully, until we get the device back. The problem is, our need for power’s growing at a rate… oh, I dunno. It’s a bit worrying. Frankly, I think we’ll be running out of boys soon. Which isn’t a great state of affairs really, is it? We might have to reach out wider and wider. You know, Aberdare.’
‘Can’t you see how stupid this is?’ gasped Jack.
‘Totally,’ admitted Brendan. ‘But it’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive, to carry on searching, to find that bloody thing. Trust me, Jack, I’m a god. It’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive. When we get our power back, we’ll make everything right again.’
Jon walked into the room, towelling himself after a shower. ‘You all right babe?’ he asked Brendan.
‘Yeah,’ said Brendan.
Jon flicked Jack playfully with the towel. ‘Are you talking to the furniture again?’
‘Stop this!’ said Jack.
Jon arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look happy Jacky,’ he said, squeezing Jack’s cheek. Jack growled at him. Jon laughed and dropped the towel over Jack’s head, leaving him fuming.
‘Come on Bren, let’s get some clothes on and go and see how things are downstairs.’ They walked away, laughing, and all Jack could see was cotton.
RUDYARD IS SADLY ALL MOUTH
Gwen slid the window up, and the two of them slipped into a dark, quiet corridor.
‘It’s bloody great to be out of that rain,’ shivered Ianto. ‘I really miss jeans.’
‘Well,’ hissed Gwen, ‘why don’t you wear some?’
‘Oh, it just hasn’t felt right, really,’ said Ianto. ‘You know, I just don’t think I’ve got the figure for them. I worry they’ll make my bum look fat and squidgy.’