‘You were dead?’ Cutler feigned surprise, but his heart warmed. She was telling him the truth and he couldn’t help but feel happy about that, even though he was aware of their minutes ticking away and the need to get to the point.
‘Twice.’ She laughed again. ‘God, it sounds so ridiculous.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I wish I’d stayed dead.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
She nestled in to him, the two of them like ghosts in the gloom, as he smoked. ‘The device brought me back to life I think. When it activated. It healed me.’
‘We need to destroy it,’ Cutler said, pulling away so he could look at her. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘It scares me,’ she said. ‘It’s so much stronger than me and I can’t control it any more. I’m leaving bits of it behind.’
‘I know. But we can turn it off. Why haven’t you destroyed it already? Are you scared of what that will do to you? Don’t be, you look pretty healed to me.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Is it like some kind of drug? Has it got you hooked?’ He frowned. She wasn’t carrying a bag. ‘Where is it anyway?’
‘It’s inside me,’ she said, simply, her eyes full of dread. She lifted her shirt, exposing her smooth, flat stomach. ‘I had it sewn into the other side of my skin before all this started. Before my first death. I thought it might make the glove stronger. When the Hub collapsed, the energy must have activated it and it brought me back to life. I could see it under there – a flashing red light – just like when Tosh made it work after we found it on the beach.’ She looked up at him. ‘But now it’s gone. It’s still working, but I think it’s right inside me somewhere. Somewhere I won’t be able to get at it.’ Her dark eyes had filled with tears again. ‘I don’t know what to do. I thought I had everything under control. I thought I’d been so clever.’ She wiped her nose. ‘I just want it to stop. I can hear them screaming.’
The screaming of millions. Cutler’s mind raced as a chill settled through him. What did they have? Ten minutes at the most to get out and leave the device behind.
‘It’s all right. We’ll get it out of you.’ He barely heard his own words. What would happen if he called Jackson? Would they get a medical team in and take the time to try and save Suzie before destroying the device? No. They’d just blow the place up anyway. The butt of the cigarette burned his fingers and he dropped it. They’d be right as well. The fate of the entire world depended on destroying the device.
‘It’s so far inside me,’ she said again. ‘I think it’s in my heart or my lungs. It’s bedded into me. As if it’s part of me.’
‘I’ll call a medical team.’ He was glad of the gloom. He’d never been a good actor and he didn’t want her to see the pain on his face. He’d found her and now he was going to lose her again. There was no way he could save her. Not now. There just wasn’t enough time. He pulled out his phone and dialled his own home number knowing she’d hear the ringing tone, and then got up and moved towards the entrance to the vault, speaking into his answerphone, demanding someone send an ambulance immediately. He clicked off the call and turned back to face her. ‘They’ll be here in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll go up and keep an eye out for them. You stay here. My men think you’re down here helping me with the Jackson investigation anyway. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’
‘Don’t leave me down here, Tom,’ she said. ‘Please.’
He stared at her. Five more minutes until the bombs would go off. Commander Jackson would be staring at the entrance to the Hub and willing him to come out. Either him or both of them. He fought the temptation to take her upstairs with him and make a run for it. He wanted her to live, he wanted them both to live, but at what cost? The entire planet? All those people he’d vowed to protect? He couldn’t do it. And could he live with himself if he left her down here, alone? There was no more memory drug to take to wipe her out, and he didn’t think he would even if he could. She fascinated him. Good, bad or otherwise, there was something in her that called out to him.
‘OK,’ he said and then smiled softly. ‘Kiss me.’
‘Even after all this trouble?’ she said. ‘You still want me?’
‘Now more than ever.’ There was no lie in that, even if she wouldn’t understand why until it was too late.
Somewhere in the corner of his eye he saw a small red light appear. The explosives were arming. They were out of time.
‘Come here, gorgeous,’ he said.
He held her face in his hands and had his lips on hers as the first surge of energy blasted through the small space. Light filled the vault as balls of white flame raced to meet each other as each explosion went off.
Tom Cutler was amazed at how much could happen in such a small nanosecond of time. This is it, he thought. My death coming for me. As the breath was knocked from their lungs, Suzie pulled away from their kiss, her dark eyes wide and her mouth in an O.
He held her arms tightly. ‘I love you,’ he thought he said.
‘No,’ she whispered.
In that briefest of moments, he thought perhaps she didn’t love him at all, and he was dying for nothing, and then he wondered if perhaps she was railing against a third death, and then, in the last fraction of the second when her eyes changed colour and the terrible darkness was so clear in them, he knew that her ‘no’ was for him. The darkness was taking her with it, and she didn’t want it to take him too.
He heard the screams. He saw her terror. And he refused to look away.
Their bodies burned.
Epilogue
On top of the Millennium Centre, a dark figure stood staring down at the lights and activity taking place in what was left of the Hub. He was a mere strip of shadow against the starry night, and he remained motionless as he waited for the confirmation he needed from below. He’d stood here night after night since the second round of explosions, ignored by those who were so focused on finding what was lost beneath the ground that they had forgotten to look up occasionally. He frowned a little as, below, the old and weary Commander followed a soldier back to the enclosed area. Perhaps this was it.
‘We’ve found them, sir.’
It was 3 a.m., and Commander Elwood Jackson – retired Commander as soon as this job was brought to its grim conclusion – was exhausted. They’d been working for over a week now, digging to find the bodies. It was at least quicker than the first excavation at the site had been. Whereas then the hunt had been a delicate process, wanting to preserve as much as possible of the equipment and technology, this time round it was simply to dig down to the vault and find some evidence of Tom Cutler and Suzie Costello’s deaths.
He’d told the Department men that they needed to be absolutely sure that she and the technology that had brought the darkness were both destroyed and they had gone along with that. He knew they were just humouring him slightly, but given that Cardiff had returned to normal – there were no more black patches, nor any suicides – they would give him two weeks to find what he was looking for and then, after that, the site would be filled in, and the whole mess forgotten. They’d got all the technology they needed anyway. For Jackson’s part, he preferred not to dwell on the alien devices. He’d had enough of those.
‘There’s not much to see,’ the soldier said as Jackson followed him to the covered tarpaulin area. ‘They were at the heart of the explosion. Their bodies were pulverised together. It’s hard to tell which bit comes from one and which from the other.’
Jackson wondered if the man had ever lost a friend. DI Tom Cutler had sacrificed himself to save them all, and this youngster was talking about him as if he were nothing. He found that he was glad that he’d be leaving the Army. He’d seen enough callousness to last several lifetimes.
‘I just want to see his face,’ he muttered.
‘We have the upper portions of both their heads. Obviously messy, but they must have been standing facing each other.’
Jackso
n pushed past him while he was still speaking and headed to the tables that were covered with parts of bodies mixed with bits of concrete. Here and there he saw a flash of fabric that at one time had been clothing.
‘They’re under that cloth,’ the soldier said softly. He didn’t follow Jackson over. Maybe he had some compassion after all.
Elwood Jackson pulled the sheet back. For a long while he stared. First at the wrecked face and missing eyes of the woman he’d known as Sue Costa, and then over at DI Tom Cutler. Even in the unrecognisable mess of his face, it was clear that the policeman’s eyes were gone.
‘You couldn’t let her go alone, could you?’ he said. ‘You stupid, brave bastard. You couldn’t let her go alone.’
For the first time in a very long time, Elwood Jackson wondered if he might cry. He didn’t. Instead he swallowed his tears and drew himself up tall carefully covering over the pitiful remains.
‘That’s all I wanted to see,’ he barked at the soldier as he passed. ‘The site can be filled.’
From the top of the building, the dark-haired man watched the Commander as he left the site, his shoulders slumped. The old man paused for a second, out of view of his command, and then leaned his head back to suck in a deep breath of the night air. He rubbed his hands over his face. He walked away from the site and didn’t look back. The Commander didn’t notice either the man at the top of the building, or the pale- haired police sergeant who stood watching the demolished site, his shoulders hunched with the burden of knowledge. Eventually, Andy Davidson also turned and walked away from the wreck of the Hub.
Watching him, Captain Jack Harkness smiled softly. It was a sad smile, but a satisfied one. He turned away. His part here was over.
The darkness that settled over Cardiff held no shadows and unnatural places, and this time the city slept. For most, the hours passed peacefully, as if on some unconscious level the population were aware of the escape they’d had and were lost in relief.
It wasn’t like that for the Commander. That night, and for so many nights afterwards, when Elwood Jackson dreamed, it wasn’t the screaming of millions that haunted him, but the screaming of one man, forever lost in Hell. When he woke, sweating into his sheets, he realised how very relieved he would be when there was only a quiet nothing waiting for him after death.
Acknowledgements
As usual, a big thank you to my editor, Steve Tribe, for giving me this gig, and for always being there with his encyclopaedic and awe-inspiring knowledge of all things Torchwood when I needed a quick answer to a question.
A second thanks to him and to Russell T Davies and the powers that be in Cardiff for letting me give Suzie Costello one last adventure. I loved her in the show, and totally loved bringing her back from the dead. Bad girls rock.
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