Torchwood_Long Time Dead

by Sarah Pinborough

  But there were no bricks. His arm slipped into the black.

  ‘Sean?’ he said. It was so cold and so terrible and there were things in there, things that weren’t things but they wanted to play with him anyway, all the things that he’d ever suspected had lived in the night, just out of sight, and there were screams and sobs of eternal torment and he could feel them running up his skin and soon his skin would be gone…

  ‘Sean?’ he said again. His voice was soft and childlike and full of dread. Something tugged at one of his fingers and he let out a short yelp. There would be no essay. There would be no party. ‘Sean, help me. Help me.’ Something yanked him from the other side and half his body disappeared. He started to cry. He had a feeling he was going to be crying for a long, long time.

  ‘What the…’ Sean was standing in front of him, his eyes wide, and Jason stretched out his arm.

  ‘Please! Please! It’s got me! I don’t want to go there! I don’t want…’

  And then the blackness sucked him in whether he wanted it or not.

  ‘Jason?’ Sean whispered into the quiet night. ‘Jason?’

  Neither the breeze, nor the blackness, gave him any reply.

  ‘I knew a man that couldn’t die once,’ Suzie said quietly. ‘I shot him right through the head. Just before I killed myself, actually.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose from your position that would sound like neither of us was too skilled at dying, but for me it was different. I was dead. Properly dead. Until they brought me back.’

  The man tied to the bed whimpered and she saw his breath blow his cheeks out as he gasped and panicked behind the masking tape. His grey eyes weren’t so flirtatious now. She let her own gaze drift away to a blank spot on the wall beyond.

  ‘It wasn’t so bad the first time. It was bad, don’t get me wrong, but I’d only been gone three months. I’d only cracked the surface of nothingness. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have left Dad till later and just got that silly cow somewhere quiet until the whole business was finished.’ She gently stroked the man’s sweating hairline, and ignored his flinch away from her. ‘Hindsight, eh?’

  ‘The second time was different. It was years. Years in the nothing, of being nothing. You know, when I woke up down in the vault, I didn’t know who I was. That’s how long I’d been gone. I didn’t know who I was, what life was, anything. Can you imagine? To have been that long dead that you forget the brilliance of all this? Didn’t remember a thing. Until I killed that man and stole his suit. Then it all came back to me.’

  The man on the bed froze for a second, and then his struggles became more vigorous. Suzie didn’t pay any attention. He wasn’t going anywhere. She wrapped her dressing gown around her. The sex had been good. She’d enjoyed it, even if Owen’s face had risen unbidden behind her eyes every time she closed them. The ghosts would fade. Once she’d got into the Commander’s computer and found out exactly what had happened to them all, then she could perhaps start to sleep easily. Or in fact, sleep at all.

  ‘The problem with remembering life,’ she spoke quietly, leaning forward and resting her chin on his chest, ‘is that it makes you unable to forget death. I won’t be nothing again. I can’t be. To be nothing is terrible.’ She let out a long, deep sigh. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. It’s just nice having someone to talk to. Haven’t had that for a while.’ She laughed slightly. ‘And it’s not as if you’ll be gossiping about me.’

  She picked up the kitchen knife from the table beside the bed, and tears rolled down the cheeks of the panicking man. ‘It’s not the same as the one I used to use, of course,’ she said, holding it up and turning it this way and that so the soft lighting made the steel glint. ‘That one was very special. But then I’m not killing people to bring them back this time. And I suppose once a knife girl, always a knife girl.’ She stroked his head again. ‘This could be worse, you know. I could be letting the thing inside me have you. I have a feeling that going there would be like having this,’ she carved a soft shallow line down his naked chest and watched the crimson ink spill out as his back arched and he screamed behind his gag, ‘going on for ever and ever.’ She paused in her work and looked into his eyes. ‘As it is, this is just for me. I want to see someone else panicking as they have to say goodbye to all this and become nothing. It makes me feel better. Who says killers don’t know their own motivations?’

  She raised the knife again. ‘Yes, I did know a man that couldn’t die. Sadly for you, although you do look a little like him, you’re not that man. This is your death. I am your death.’

  She went to work.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cutler had woken up just before dawn, and although he felt as if he’d slept fine, it took a couple of minutes before he figured out that maybe he’d had at least a short burst of sleepwalking activity in the night. It was more subtle than the taping up of his drawers and cupboards had been, but it appeared that at some point in the night he’d got up and closed every door in the flat; the bathroom, kitchen, lounge and his bedroom door. All shut. He never shut them, not even the bathroom door – who did that who lived alone? What the hell was he trying to tell himself?

  The air was crisp outside, and once he’d showered and dressed – fighting the urge to close all the doors again before he left – he headed for the Bay, enjoying the clear streets as he drove in the almost light of the breaking day. He parked and stopped for a takeaway coffee before leaning against a wall and watching the excavation site. He didn’t get as close as normal – his face was a known quantity there now, and the last thing he needed was Commander Jackson asking questions about why he was stalking the site – but he was close enough to see that there were more soldiers guarding the barriers than previously, and they all looked alert. No one in there was taking any chances.

  Lighting a cigarette and inhaling hard, he wondered about the building the Department and Army backup were so carefully going through the wreckage of. Nothing was that hush-hush and smiley without there being something dangerous at the heart of it. And the site was connected to the murders. No one was denying that. The question was, did something at the site cause someone to go mad and go out killing? And how did you get someone’s brain to turn to mush from the inside anyway?

  He let his thoughts drift away from case practicalities as he smoked and drank his coffee. Slowly, light claimed the sky in orange and red streaks that faded to blue. His hands were cold and he found that, once the cigarette was gone, he’d been taking the lid from the coffee cup and then replacing it, over and over. He checked his watch, and with a sinking feeling realised it was time to get to work. It felt like he’d been standing there for five minutes, but nearer to an hour had passed. The water tower flashed behind his eyes again. The water tower and the greatcoat and a terrible sense of sadness and self-loathing. He stood up tall and shook it away. What the hell was wrong with him?

  He smoked another cigarette in the car on the way to the station. For a non-smoker, two cigarettes before 8 a.m. was pretty good going, he had to admit that, even if he refused to acknowledge that the old habit was back. He wasn’t even aware of making any kind of decision to smoke again. It had just seemed to happen.

  He strode into the station as if a purposeful step could make the weirdness that had taken hold of both him and the city vanish, taking the steps two at a time.

  ‘You don’t understand…’ A young man was talking loudly to the desk sergeant. ‘He just bloody disappeared. Into the wall. His name is Jason. Jason Wentworth. You need to come and—’

  ‘Sir?’ The sergeant held his hand up to pause the young man in his flow and grab Cutler’s attention.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Can you call the lab? Forensics just rang through for you.’

  ‘You need to come and look at the wall! He just disappeared into it! Aren’t you listening to me?’

  Cutler looked at the evidently distressed young student and then at the sergeant. Great
. More craziness in the streets of Cardiff. ‘Is there a problem here?’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  ‘No,’ the desk sergeant cut the man off, ‘no, there isn’t.’ He leaned on the counter, looking very much like a kindly uncle or grandfather. ‘Look here, son. You go home and sleep off whatever it is you’ve taken last night, and if your friend is still missing tomorrow, then come back here and we’ll try again. Are you sure he didn’t just go off with a nice young girl?’

  ‘No, I told you…’

  Cutler gave the sergeant a conciliatory smile and then left them to it. He had his own strange fish to fry.

  Andy Davidson was right behind him and, as the sergeant got the coffee on and checked his emails to see if they’d got anything on the CCTV checks for Devlin and Murray’s surrounding areas, Cutler took a call from the lab. He wondered if now that the Department were involved they’d worked through the night. Maybe some good could come from having a case steamrollered after all.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ he asked.

  ‘As you can imagine, there’s a lot of trace to go through.’ It was Abbie Trent on the line and that filled him with some confidence. In her mid-fifties, a hardened drinker – but never a drunk – and a survivor of three failed marriages, Dr Trent had moved down to Wales from Liverpool a couple of years before. She was good – probably one of the best – at her job, but her lifestyle and clear disregard for authority had never let that be acknowledged. If she was running tests on the crime scene evidence, then Cutler doubted anything would be missed. Trent might be belligerent, but she was thorough.

  ‘Spanton has sent over what they got from the bodies, so we’ve been going through that first, along with the clothes. I wish at least one of these people had invested in a clothes brush. They’re all covered in fluff and fur and all kinds of stuff.’

  ‘I know it’s going to take a while,’ Cutler said. His heart sank slightly. If Trent had called just to let him know they were in for a long haul, then he could have done without it. He knew that. ‘Just do what you can.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Trent said, surprised. ‘We’ve got something. I wouldn’t be bloody calling before eight in the morning if I hadn’t. I’d be at home, in bed. Or at least having whatever slop they’re serving for breakfast in the canteen here.’

  ‘What have you got?’ Cutler said.

  ‘Hair. There were hairs from the same person on two of the victims. One was dark and the other was a slightly lighter colour but they’re both from the same person.’

  ‘Did you get a DNA match from it? Have we got anything on the system?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dr Trent. ‘This is where it gets interesting.’

  And she was right. It did.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Suzie had been up early and got showered and dressed, making sure to step around the mess in her flat. She’d clean it – him – up later, but there wasn’t any hurry. It wasn’t as if he was going anywhere. And she had the spare room to sleep in, if the urge to rest took hold.

  Commander Jackson had a meeting at eight off-site and she took the chance to dig around his computer. She ran an attack on his password and was in within minutes. It was time to find out exactly what had been going on during her recent trip into the nothingness of death. She didn’t bother looking at the files regarding the excavation. She knew what was going in there – retrieval of alien artefacts and devices. That much was clear. Where they were all headed, she wasn’t sure, and she found that she didn’t much care. Not this morning, anyway. She didn’t have long, and her primary objective was to satisfy her curiosity about the rest of the Torchwood team. She needed to know if there was anyone out on the streets of Cardiff that was going to recognise her face.

  Within twenty minutes she was absorbed. Toshiko and Owen were both dead, within minutes of each other from what she could see. Her mouth twisted into a sour smile. Poor little Toshiko Sato, got to die with the man she wanted, even if she was the only woman he’d never shown any interest in getting into bed. She dug deeper, lost in the files on the 456. How the mighty fell, she mused, as she browsed the documents. So the government had ordered the destruction of Torchwood and the assassination of the team in order to cover up its own deal with the aliens. Torchwood, like anyone else, was expendable. A small twinge of anger surprised her. So Toshiko and Owen and all those who had gone before them had died for nothing. She had died for nothing. You gave your soul when you joined Torchwood, and this was how they’d been repaid. Jack had been blown up and buried in a concrete grave, rescued by his ever faithful – and soon to be dead himself she noted from his file – Ianto and her own replacement, Gwen Cooper. It irked her that Gwen was still alive out there somewhere. She would have to be the one that had bloody survived, wouldn’t she? Perfect Gwen Cooper, everyone’s favourite.

  Her eyes fell on the conclusion of the 456 saga and her smile spread. Well, well, well, the great Captain Jack Harkness had sacrificed his own grandchild to save the world. She bet that hurt. His pride as much as his heart. Being a child-killer wouldn’t sit well with his reputation or his own inflated opinion of himself. Bitterness rose like bile in her chest. She’d shot him. She’d killed him. It was just sod’s law that Jack couldn’t die. He probably saw it as some kind of noble burden he had to bear instead of a gift.

  ‘Do you want kids one day, Suzie?’ Jack leans back in his chair and studies her, thoughtfully. He’s very handsome, she’ll give him that. Her skin tingles when he looks at her. She’ll never sleep with him though. She knows that, on some level. Captain Jack Harkness likes Suzie, but he’ll never love her. She’s not special enough.

  ‘Doesn’t really fit with our line of work,’ she smiles, deflecting him. ‘Long hours chasing aliens followed by,’ she lifted her beer, ‘a couple of hours winding down. Not really designed for being home in time for bath and bedtime stories.’

  ‘You’d make a great mum,’ he says. He’s sipping water. She wonders if he’d find her more attractive if he had a beer or two. She’d like to sleep with him. She’s thought about it. It would be different to being in bed with Owen, that much was certain.

  ‘I don’t come from good parenting stock.’ The sentence is out before she realises that it’s more than a thought, and her shoulders tense. Her life is her private business. One day she’ll make sure she gets even with her dad, but for now there is no need to share. She doesn’t need anyone’s sympathy. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘Torchwood is my family now.’ She smiles, but he remains thoughtful.

  ‘You’re good at this job, you know,’ he says. ‘Better than most I’ve seen, and trust me, I’ve seen a few. But,’ he leans forward, resting his arms on his knees, ‘you need to have more than just the job. You need a life. Something to keep you grounded.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks. ‘So when I die some poor sod will be left wondering what’s happened to me as all my possessions get carted off and stored in boxes in one of those lock-ups? Like we did for Ben Brown?’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s not for me. Anyway, you’re not so different. What do you have outside of the job? You don’t have a family. You spend all night in the Hub, or standing on top of it staring at the stars and thinking about God knows what.’

  His face darkens slightly and she wonders if she’s touched a nerve. She knows so little – they all know so little – about the handsome American that they follow into danger at the drop of a hat. Torchwood. She loves it. She really does. It’s given her life purpose. Until that incident with the alien computer virus that downloaded into her work mainframe, she’d simply drifted. She could have drifted into the Rift itself for all she cared. She’d felt like nothing. She’d believed she was nothing. Technical genius she might have been – able to get into any system presented to her, but she was as dead as the machines she managed.

  ‘Torchwood saved me,’ she says softly. She doesn’t look at him as she speaks, but down at her beer bottle where her fingers are pulling the label free. ‘It brought me back to life. This is the best job I’
ve ever had.’

  She remembers the sheer thrill of that first alien encounter. Feeling that something was wrong in the system even though no one would believe her, seeing Jack and sweet Ben Brown, now in cold storage, investigate it and knowing, just knowing, that there was something special about them. That they were people she belonged with. People that didn’t fit inside the world just like she didn’t. She was the one who realised when the virus downloaded into her boss. It was she that had captured it. If it wasn’t for her, her old boss would have been dead, and not pleasantly too. At least he couldn’t remember his agony. Sometimes, when she remembers what a smug, smarmy bastard he was, she wishes he could have just a little part of his memory back. But hey, you couldn’t win them all, and her clear thinking had got her a better job.

  ‘I don’t need any more than this, Jack,’ she squeezes his knee. ‘I really don’t.’ He leans forward and kisses her gently on the cheek. ‘One day you will, Suzie Costello. One day we all need something more than this.’

  He sounds so sad and she wonders if he’s as damaged as she is underneath all that easy charm and the bright smile. She almost asks, and then decides against it.

  ‘Shall we go back to work?’ she says. ‘I’m sure I can smell Weevil.’

  He laughs suddenly and she can’t help but join in. She loves this. She really does.

  Logged out of Commander Jackson’s computer, Suzie sat back in her chair, surprised to find how much she was trembling. They hadn’t cared about her. They’d bloody killed her. How could reading about them have affected her so much? It was a good thing that they were all gone. Torchwood on her tail was something she really didn’t need; she had a history of coming off badly against her erstwhile colleagues. Still, she thought, taking a deep breath and steadying her nerves, sometimes you couldn’t fight the memories – the good as well as the bad. Gunshots echoed in her memory. Her shooting Jack. Jack shooting her. Her shooting herself. She could safely say that things hadn’t ended well for her and Torchwood – they’d turned out to be a family that hated her as much as her own one had.