She shuddered.
There was the distant sound of sirens as the black smoke poured up into the sky.
Virus
JAMES MORAN
‘I can see the headlines now,’ said Ianto. ‘They’ll have a field day. “Torchwood kills babies”.’
‘Hey – we didn’t kill a baby,’ said Jack. ‘It wasn’t a baby, it was an alien.’
‘Yes,’ said Ianto. ‘An alien baby.’
The team walked into the Hub, covered in dust and dirt.
‘Fine, an alien baby. But we didn’t kill it. She activated the self-destruct, there was nothing we could do.’
‘Just as well we left before the TV cameras arrived,’ said Ianto. ‘But someone’s bound to have noticed us.’
‘They won’t even know we were there,’ said Gwen. ‘It was all fairly low-key. More or less. Apart from the supermarket blowing up. How are we going to explain that one, by the way?’
‘Gas leak,’ said Jack. ‘I mentioned it to a deliciously firm-looking firefighter. Told him somebody complained about smelling gas a few hours before it happened. We can seed the story in the usual places, it won’t be a problem.’
‘Was that the one I saw you chatting to by the phone box?’ asked Gwen. ‘Ooh, he was bloody lovely, he was. When he started unravelling that hose, I thought I was going to faint.’
‘Some firefighting skills transfer very nicely to other areas,’ said Jack, grinning.
‘Hey,’ said Gwen. ‘I saw him first.’
‘And you’re taken,’ said Ianto. ‘Both of you are. Nothing wrong with window shopping, just try not to lick the glass so much.’
They walked down to the Boardroom and sat down. Ianto opened up three pizza boxes, and passed round bottles of beer. He presented the pizzas with a flourish.
‘Fine dining, Torchwood style,’ he said. ‘There’s no dessert, so make the most of it.’
Gwen smiled at him. ‘It’s perfect, thank you.’
She and Jack lifted their beer bottles as a salute to Ianto, who bowed appreciatively. ‘I do my best,’ he said. ‘Which is usually pretty damn good, if I say so myself. Which I do.’
They ate the pizzas in silence, too tired to talk. Gwen would have preferred to be having dinner with Rhys, but he was out tonight with Banana Boat and Daf. She didn’t want to be at home, eating by herself. She was glad of the company. Just another evening at Torchwood, sitting around together, with a takeaway.
Jack noticed a blinking light on the telephone screen. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Twenty-seven messages. All from the same number. Detective Kathy Swanson. That can’t be good.’
‘Don’t listen to them,’ said Gwen. ‘We already know what she’s going to say.’
‘True,’ said Ianto. ‘Blah blah blah, Torchwood are rubbish, you think you own the place, blah blah blah.’
‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘But she might need help with something. And let’s face it, we probably deserve a verbal kicking.’
The other two looked at him. He shrugged, and hit the redial button.
The police station looked like a paper bomb had hit it, and officers were frantically scrambling around trying to deal with the constant phone calls and reports. In the midst of it all, Detective Swanson was swearing spectacularly, employing some new and unusual combinations of words. A uniformed officer approached, and waited for a break in the swearing.
‘What is it, Amy?’
The officer coughed. ‘Phone call for you, ma’am.’
‘Tell them I’m busy. We’ve got so many officers out on this bloody supermarket thing, we’re having to prioritise and let some things go. Petty thieves are having a field day. Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait.’
‘Er, it’s Torchwood.’
Swanson’s head whipped around, and her eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, really? Put them through to my desk.’
The officer nodded, and hurried off, glad that she wasn’t involved in whatever was about to happen.
Jack waited on the line, holding the handset to his ear. He looked at the others, starting to have second thoughts.
‘She’s going to be really angry, isn’t she?’
Gwen tried to shrug it off. ‘You never know. Maybe you were right, maybe she wants help with something.’
‘Maybe,’ said Ianto. ‘Maybe she’s starting a bowling league, and wants us to form a team.’
Jack looked even more worried now. ‘I don’t think she’s starting a bowling league. Doesn’t seem the type. Hold on, here she comes. . . Ah, Detective Swanson! Always a pleasure to hear your voi—’
He yanked the phone away from his ear, wincing at the volume and intensity of Swanson’s response. Gwen and Ianto couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it didn’t sound good, and any time they could make out a word, it wasn’t a good one.
Almost a full minute later, the shouting stopped.
Jack grinned, trying on the charm. He couldn’t help himself. ‘You kiss your mother with that mouth?’
Ianto and Gwen glanced at each other, and shook their heads. Wrong move. Detective Swanson was not, in their experience, someone who responded to charm. This wasn’t going to end well.
Jack yanked the phone away from his ear again, as Swanson started shouting at him again. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, he managed to get a word in.
‘Are you going to tell me what we’ve done to deserve these sweet nothings?’
He listened again.
‘The rest of the team?’
Gwen and Ianto frantically mimed at him to say that they weren’t there, shaking their heads and waving their arms around. Jack grinned. Why let them miss out on all the fun?
‘Yes. We’re all here, hang on.’
He pressed the speaker button, and replaced the handset.
‘OK, go ahead, you’re on speaker with all three of us.’
Swanson’s voice came out of the speaker. ‘Oh good. The Three Stooges. What an absolute delight.’
‘And what can we do for you this evening, Kathy?’
‘Don’t presume to be on first-name terms with me, for a start.’
‘Sorry. Detective Swanson.’
‘Oh, you’re going to be sorry. But before that, perhaps you could explain a few things to me, just to satisfy my curiosity. First, what the hell were you playing at on that council estate over the past couple of days? Second, why did you go in and break up a drugs gang without clearing it with me first? And third – and I can’t WAIT to hear the explanation for this one – why the hell is there a large, smoking crater where the Happy Price supermarket used to be?’
Jack looked at Ianto and Gwen. They shrugged and waved their arms around, as if to say ‘don’t look at us, mate’. He tried to think quickly.
‘I can’t really discuss an ongoing case. It’s confidential.’
‘Ongoing! Oh, good! So there’ll be more death and destruction, will there?’
‘No, the matter is. . . taken care of. It’s over. We’re just tying up loose ends and writing up our reports. That’s all.’
‘Really. You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you, based on past experiences.’
‘Trust me. There was a situation involving a hostile aggressor, but the threat has been neutralised. And that’s all I can really tell you about it. But it’s done.’
Swanson sighed. ‘Oh, I really hope that’s true. Does that mean there’s not going to be any more fun and games involving you lot? In the near future, anyway?’
‘You have my word. We don’t have any other investigations at the moment.’
‘Good. I don’t want to hear a single, solitary word about any of you for a week. Two weeks. Minimum. It’s hard enough doing my job without having to worry about bloody Torchwood creating news stories.’
‘News stories?’
‘Turn your TV on. And stay out of trouble. Or I’ll come down there, and smack you around. And not in a good way.’
Click! She slammed the phone down, making them all wince.
&nbs
p; Ianto coughed, and reached for the TV remote. The news story was already under way, with helicopter footage of the ruins of the supermarket.
‘. . . and still, the full scale of the blast is unknown, with police and firefighters unwilling or unable to say who or what is responsible. Early reports that it was caused by a gas leak are still unconfirmed. The only silver lining to this bizarre tale is that nobody appears to be seriously injured.’
Jack, Gwen and Ianto looked at each other, sheepishly. Behind them, on the screen, the scene changed to a reporter interviewing a pair of shocked survivors, covered in dust and silver emergency blankets.
‘I’m talking now,’ said the reporter, as if he was in a warzone, ‘to Nina Rogers and Jessica Montague, who were shopping at the time of the explosion. When did you first become aware that something strange was happening?’
‘It was crazy,’ said Nina, blinking at the camera light. ‘There was this mad woman with this big gun – I think it was a gun, it was definitely some sort of weapon, I don’t know – and she was waving it around, screaming at everyone. We didn’t see much after that, we just got out of there. I mean, if we had been even a tiny bit slower, we’d have been caught in the explosion. It—’
Ianto turned over to another news channel. Then another. Then another. All featured footage of the aftermath of the explosion, with headlines like ‘Gas leak?’ and ‘Possible gas explosion’, but none of them seemed to have anything concrete to say regarding the actual cause, the people involved, or anything at all. There were no developments, but for the rolling news channels it was business as usual – there was very little to say, but they had twenty-four hours of screentime to fill.
Ianto turned the TV off. He looked at the other two. ‘Well, at least there’s no mention of us.’
‘Yes, but it’s all over the news!’ said Gwen.
Jack shrugged. ‘They all seem to think it was a gas leak. The heat-cannon won’t leave them any obvious clues, so they’ll have to go with that. We got off lucky. Fairly lucky.’
Ianto raised his beer bottle. ‘Here’s to a better kind of luck next time.’ He swigged it, and reached for another.
The next morning, Gwen walked into the Hub, yawning. She strolled over to Ianto’s area, but was horrified to find that the coffee machine was switched off, and there was no sign of Ianto. Trying to stay calm, she opened her desk drawer, looking for her guilty secret – an emergency stash of instant coffee, hidden under several folders so that Ianto wouldn’t find it. Tragically, the jar was empty. She ran into Jack’s office.
‘Coffee,’ she said. It was all she could manage. Jack raised his eyebrows, so she repeated it, but made it into a question. ‘Coffee?’
‘Oh, Ianto’s off getting his supplies. Last Thursday of the month, remember?’
‘Is it? Already? Bugger. Just have to wait, then.’
‘You could always go and buy a cup from the café around the corner.’
Gwen looked at Jack, dismayed, as if he had suggested she shoot a small kitten in the head. ‘Jack, Jack, Jack. He’d go bananas. He’d kill us. And he’d be able to smell it, too, he knows what the coffee from all the local places smells like. He hasn’t let us set foot in a Starbucks since. . .’
Jack winced. ‘Yeah, that was. . . well, kind of funny, really.’
‘Not for me, it wasn’t. Where does he get it from, anyway? His special stuff?’
Jack shrugged. ‘No idea. He won’t even tell me. Probably climbs up a mountain, or something. Picking it, bean by bean, just to make sure.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘He should be back in an hour or so, if you can handle waiting that long.’
‘I’ll give it a go. Any more fallout from last night?’
‘Seems to have calmed down. The gas leak story is sticking, so I think it’s a done deal.’
Gwen nodded at him, and went to her desk. Just as she sat down, an alarm went off.
‘Oh, what now?’
She looked at the screen. And then grabbed her gun. Jack came running out of his office, gun drawn. ‘What is it?’
‘Motion sensors,’ Gwen shouted. ‘There’s someone else in here with us, and it’s not Ianto.’
‘Where?’
Gwen checked the screen, unsure where to aim her gun.
‘It’s not clear, can’t get a fix on it. There!’
She aimed her gun, but there was nothing there. Just a slight shimmering of the air.
‘Something’s here, but I can’t—’
Swish! A tiny dart embedded itself into Gwen’s neck. She flinched, and pulled it out quickly. She looked at it, frightened.
‘Jack! I’ve just been shot with a dart, get into cover!’
Jack ran for his office. Swish! Another tiny dart got him on the arm. ‘Dammit!’ He knocked it off quickly, and came storming back down towards the centre of the Hub. ‘Gwen, are you OK?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t feel any different. Where the hell is it. . .?’
She checked the screen again, but the scanners were still having trouble pinpointing the location.
And that’s when they heard the voice.
‘Don’t bother looking. I’m using a camouflage suit, top-of-the-range Yu-Ca grade from J’rizon 12. Harkness, I know you’ll have heard of that.’
Gwen and Jack looked at each other. Jack nodded. ‘Yeah, I have. Who are you? What do you want?’
‘I’m the father of the child you murdered yesterday. What I want, is for you to die.’
‘We didn’t murder anyone,’ said Jack. ‘It was the woman that your parasitic kid latched on to. She’d had enough, didn’t want to be its puppet any more. We tried to stop it.’
‘Your involvement resulted in the death of my son.’
‘There was nothing we could do. If you hadn’t abandoned your kid, none of this would have happened.’
‘Abandoned? I didn’t abandon him, he was taken from me. He was caught in the Rift, along with my mating partner. She was killed, and my son did what he needed to do, to survive. He found a new host. I’ve been tracking them for a while. And if I had found them, I could have taken my son home, leaving the human female unharmed. Now, thanks to you, I have nothing, apart from a lifetime of pain. And that is what I am giving you, in return.’
Gwen put her hand up to the pinprick in her neck, rubbing it. ‘What did you do to us?’
The alien moved around silently, never giving them a chance to focus on its voice for too long.
‘I’ve infected you with the Kagawa Virus. Again, I presume you know what that is.’
Jack looked sick with worry. He tried to hide it from Gwen, but failed. Gwen knew it must be pretty bad if even Jack was scared – what could possibly frighten a man who couldn’t die?
‘Jack? What does that mean? What has he done to us?’
Jack looked away, unable to answer.
‘Jack? Tell me!’
‘He won’t tell you, so I will,’ said the alien. ‘It’s an alien synthetic developed from the venom sacs of a Kagawan lizard, which renders its prey unable to fight back. It sends a feedback loop into your mind, which occupies it completely, making you unable to do anything or even move. Slowly, it will render you completely motionless, but aware of what’s happening to you, trapped inside yourselves. It’s a form of living death. And the only sort of death that will work on someone who can’t die.’
‘Give us the antidote,’ shouted Jack. ‘Or I’ll find you, and hurt you, I guarantee it.’
‘You can’t hurt me. You’ve already taken away everything I had. I never even bought the antidote, I had no intention of letting you use it. Very shortly, you will both go into a sort of waking coma. You, Cooper, you’ll eventually die of old age, still in that condition. But you, Harkness – you will just go on, for ever, gradually going insane, unable to die. You can’t heal yourself, there isn’t actually any physical damage to heal, just the feedback loop going around and around in your mind. You will spend an eternity, suffering, in
side the now-useless meat of your body. Already it’s starting to take effect, and you’re losing your concentration, having trouble thinking clearly. In a few minutes, you’ll be unable to stand up or feed yourselves, and will enter a permanent vegetative state. It’s what you deserve.’
Jack and Gwen moved towards the sofa, unable to keep themselves steady. Gwen looked at him, scared. ‘Jack? I can feel myself going, I can’t – I can’t focus. Can you stop this?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘But we’re one person short,’ said the alien. ‘Where is Jones? Where is the tea boy?’
‘I’m here,’ said Ianto suddenly.
BANG! The alien’s head exploded in a fountain of blood, and his camouflage suit shorted out, revealing his body, which stayed standing for a moment before crumpling to the floor. Ianto blew the smoke from the end of the shotgun, and removed his night-vision goggles. He glared at the alien. ‘And I’m not the tea boy. I’m the coffee boy.’
Ianto raced over to Jack and Gwen, who were already sitting still on the sofa.
‘Ianto,’ said Jack. ‘He said there was no antidote, what are we going to do, I don’t have an antidote, I can’t fix this, I don’t know what to do, I—’ He was babbling, partly because of the confusion sown in his mind by the virus, partly out of sheer panic.
Ianto shushed him, and checked his pulse before checking Gwen’s. ‘He didn’t say there was no antidote, he said he didn’t buy it. Which means he bought this virus from somewhere. Which means I can find out where, and get the antidote. I’ll fix this. I promise. I’m going to take care of things. I always do.’
‘Ianto,’ said Gwen, trying to concentrate, trying desperately to form the words which might be her last. ‘If you can’t get it, if you can’t cure me – don’t let Rhys see me like this. Don’t make him spend the rest of his life looking after me. I can’t let him go through the pain of watching me slowly die for the next however many years. Don’t let that happen, OK? Finish it. You take my gun, and you finish it.’
Consequences Page 13