Nina shook her head. ‘But it’s me, isn’t it? It’s me who keeps turning up and seeing things I shouldn’t see. You weren’t there, Jess! Look! Look in the book and read it. Read about what I’ve seen. Read about what I saw in the toy shop!’
She stopped, feeling the hysteria subside as Ianto took her hand.
‘Whatever it is,’ he said. ‘It stops now.’
Nina wanted to cry. And she wanted to run. But she looked up at him. ‘Why me?’
‘You wanted us to come here,’ said Jess, quietly. ‘You brought me here so it could take my memories.’
Nina just shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Is it why I keep seeing the aliens? Is it why I keep meeting Torchwood? Is it. . . controlling me?’
Ianto was about to reply when suddenly the book started to glow. The three of them jumped back and looked down at it.
‘What’s it doing?’ whispered Jess.
‘What it always does,’ replied Nina, suddenly remembering so many nights alone in the library. ‘Run!’
But before they could move, the book seemed to explode with light. Particles of dust glowed and danced as a shard of light shot across towards them and lit up Jess’s face. It pinned her to the wall. Nina tried to pull her free as Ianto ran over to the book. He was pressing a finger against his ear.
‘Jack, come in. I need back-up. We need to get this back to the—’
He cut off as, suddenly, Jess started to scream. Nina grabbed her arm and pulled, desperate to free her from the book’s beam of light. Jess didn’t move. She just screamed and screamed and then she stopped. The beam of light faded away and the book stopped glowing.
There was silence.
‘Jess?’ whispered Nina.
And Jess turned to face her. For a second, she looked confused. Then she laughed.
‘What are we doing here? I thought we were meeting down at the Bay. You know, coffee? It was your idea! God, I even brought my whisky to liven things up a bit and. . . Oh, hello!’ She’d seen Ianto. ‘Now don’t tell me you’re a student here. I think I’d have noticed you before.’
Nina put her hands on Jess’s shoulders. She looked into her friend’s eyes. ‘Don’t you remember? Please, Jess. This is Ianto.’
Jess shook her head and reached for her hip flask. She held it up then stopped. ‘Have you been at this? I only filled it up this morning. It’s all right, I don’t mind or anything but—’
‘What the hell are you lot doing in here? Didn’t you hear the alarm?’
They turned around. Standing behind Ianto were three firemen. Nina was about to speak when—
‘Oh, hello Mister Firemen,’ purred Jess. ‘Are you here to rescue us?’
Nina Rogers was standing in Roald Dahl Plass, looking up at the water tower. Despite the breeze coming across the Bay, she still felt stifled. She didn’t think she’d ever forget how suffocated she’d felt inside the library. She tried to block out the memory of Jess screaming, and she looked up at Ianto Jones standing next to her.
‘You sure she’ll be OK?’ asked Nina.
Ianto nodded. ‘I think it’s that fireman we should be worried about.’
Nina smiled. ‘Yeah. You should have seen her at Fresher’s Week. . .’ Then she looked down at the book in Ianto’s hands. ‘What is it?’
‘Let’s find out.’ Ianto walked right up to the water tower and turned back to face her. ‘Welcome to Torchwood, Nina Rogers.’
Nina Rogers was standing on an invisible lift as it descended into a secret underground base. She wasn’t as surprised as she thought she should be, but she was taking the opportunity to hold on to Ianto’s arm. Jess had taught her well.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he commented. ‘Normally people gasp at this point.’
She smiled weakly at him. ‘After everything I’ve seen. . . It’s just. . .’
‘You’re doing fine, you know.’
She shook her head. ‘Am I? I mean, how many memories has it taken from me? What have I forgotten? Who have I forgotten?’
There was a pause, but Ianto didn’t have an answer.
‘Am I even real?’
He turned to face her. ‘Of course you are.’
‘How do I know? How do I know that book didn’t just. . . make me? Don’t you see?’
The lift reached the floor and he led her off it.
Nina stood there, looking around at the madness. ‘I don’t know who I am any more.’
‘That’s life, though,’ said Ianto. ‘I mean, I used to have a girlfriend.’
Before Nina could reply, an arm appeared between them. She looked up as Captain Cheese grinned down at her. Then the Captain pulled Ianto into a hug and gave him a tender kiss.
Nina felt like crying. But she didn’t. ‘Oh, bloody typical. You’re gay. Great. No, that’s just brilliant, that is. There was me thinking that the one thing, the one good thing that might come out of all of this was a few drinks, a night out, maybe even a quick. . .’
She trailed off as the two men grinned at her.
‘Yeah,’ said Ianto. ‘I think you’re still human.’
Nina Rogers was sitting in a boardroom. A boardroom in a secret underground base. And she was listening as Captain Jack Harkness told her who she was.
‘Nina Melanie Rogers. Born on the 13th of July 1988. Lived in Chester with mum and dad until three years ago. Now in your final year of a History degree at Cardiff University. You like Franz Ferdinand, clubbing and the works of Jane Austen. Now, there was a woman. . .’
Nina tried to hide how unnerved she felt. She looked over at Ianto, who gave her a reassuring smile. ‘It’s OK,’ he mouthed.
‘You’ve had four boyfriends, two one-night stands and what you sweetly call an “experience” with a girl last year when you drank absinthe. You’re basically Little Miss Normal except—’
‘Except,’ interrupted Nina. ‘Some old book has taken me over and it’s somehow making me follow you.’
‘Yeah,’ grinned Jack. ‘People don’t normally need “a book” as an excuse to follow me.’
‘Well, not everyone can have good taste.’
For a second Nina wondered if she’d gone too far, but then Jack laughed.
‘Oh, I like you. It’s a shame you’re studying History. I’m thinking about recruiting, but when you’ve lived as long as I have, the last thing we need is a historian.’
‘What?’ Nina’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘What makes you think I’d want to join your little gang? I don’t want this. I don’t want to be part of it.’
Jack sat down and looked at her. ‘Really? You know about all that’s out there, and you don’t want to see more? You don’t want to know about what we do?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve seen people die. I’m 21. I shouldn’t have to see that. I just want my life to be normal.’ Her head started to ache as she felt like crying. Again. ‘Please, just stop this. Do whatever you have to do and let me be normal again.’
‘What’s “normal”?’ he asked, smirking.
‘Normal is not wanting to cry every ten minutes because you don’t understand anything any more. You’ve read all about me, yeah? I used to be a laugh. I used to be strong. I used to enjoy life. That book has taken all that away from me!’
Jack nodded. ‘Life has a way of throwing curveballs at you. Trust me, I know what it’s like when events. . . change you.’
Ianto nodded. ‘We all do.’
‘Well, kids,’ announced Jack. ‘Let’s make Nina normal again.’
‘So you wanted it all to be over?’ asked the woman.
Nina nodded.
‘So why are you here? Why have you written this?’
Nina looked around the office. It suddenly seemed cold. Unfinished. Unreal. The woman wasn’t smiling any more.
Nina Rogers was looking at the book. She was in the main area of the secret underground base and she was looking at the book that was slowly destroying her life.
‘I want to burn it,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’ asked Ianto. ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to you?’
Nina shook her head. A voice in her head was screaming ‘no’. She kept on shaking her head. No, no, no.
‘Yes,’ she said, forcing the word out. Then she gasped. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Looks like the real Nina Rogers is still in there,’ said Jack with a smile. Then he pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and opened the book. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’
‘Nina Rogers is in the library and she’s terrified. There are bombs exploding across the city and—’
He stopped reading, glancing over at Ianto. ‘Well, I think we know what night that was.’
Ianto nodded, and Nina followed his gaze over to a photo stuck to a work console. A man and a woman grinned back at them. Nina wanted to ask who they were. But then she realised that it was the voice in her head that wanted to know. She knew that sometimes you shouldn’t ask questions. She forced herself to look back at Jack, who carried on reading.
‘There are bombs exploding across the city, and one of them is so close. The floor’s shaking and books are flying off the shelves. One has landed in front of her as she crouches under a table.
It’s me.
I’m the book.
And my pages are blank.
I need stories.
I need stories.
I need stories.
She’s reaching down and she’s picking me up. She’s opening me, staring at my blank pages. A tear, caused by her terror at the bombing outside, is falling/has fallen/will fall onto me and I can taste her. I can feel her. I am her.
I want stories.’
He stopped reading. ‘There you go. It’s a book. And what do books want?’
‘But why me?’
Jack opened the book at a random page.
‘Terry Collins is in Tesco. He’s wondering whether he left the oven on. He doesn’t think he did. After all, he never used it this morning but he did use it last night and perhaps he left it on then. Perhaps it would take all night for the gas to build up. He doesn’t know but he’s trying not to think about it.’
He tried another page.
‘Jane Ramsey is humming a tune, and it’s really bugging her because she can’t remember where it came from. Was it an advert? If so, what was it advertising? It could be sofas or cheese. Something like that.’
And another. . .
‘Moira Raynor is in the library and she’s looking over at Doctor Manning. He comes in here every day but he never notices her. She can’t blame him. She’s old. She knows that. She just wishes he knew what effect he had on her. Just seeing him makes her smile. . .’
And another. . .
‘Nina Rogers is back in the library. And she’s back near me. But she’s not thinking about the book or the bombs. She’s thinking about last night. She’s in the club and she can see two men and a woman chasing a man in a monster costume. At least she thinks it’s a costume. People are panicking around them but she wants to know who they are. And one of them is shouting. A barman is asking who he is and he says that he’s part of. . .
‘Torchwood.’
Jack looked over at Nina. ‘So the book was activated and it wanted stories. And the stories it got were the dull obsessions of ordinary people. And then you came back. And you’d seen us.’
‘Nina Rogers is part of me now. She will be my author. I will be her author. She will find Torchwood and she will tell me their stories. She doesn’t understand this, but then there’s so much she doesn’t understand.
‘Nina Rogers is climbing out from under the table, and she’s about to put me back on the shelf when she notices the piece of paper stuck inside the back cover. She takes it out and reads it before returning it to its rightful place.’
Jack closed the book and shook it. A piece of paper fell out, and Nina bent down and picked it up. ‘Hi Emily,’ she read. ‘Emily?’
Ianto shrugged, but Jack’s eyes widened. ‘It couldn’t be. . .’
‘I’m guessing the year is 1899,’ Nina continued reading. ‘And you’re wondering what this is? Well, don’t worry about it. Just take it to University College library and put it on a shelf. Don’t tell anyone about it. Not Charles or Alice and most definitely not me. That would really screw up the timelines. See you when you get back, love Jack. PS: You would love what the women are wearing in 2009.’
Nina was staring at Jack and so, she realised, was Ianto.
‘It was you?’
Jack took the piece of paper from Nina. ‘It’s my handwriting.’
Nina sat down, exhausted. ‘Why?’
‘I remember Emily acting funny back then. When we were dealing with Finch’s experiments on. . .’ He trailed off, clearly remembering times past.
‘But why would you send it back in time?’ asked Ianto.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack shrugged. ‘But we’ll have to do it again. We’ve got no choice. If we don’t, then we change history.’
Nina and Ianto just looked at him. There was a pause. Then he grinned.
‘Oh, screw history. Let’s burn it.’
‘So that’s what we tried to do.’
‘You tried to burn it?’
‘At first, yeah,’ Nina smiled as she remembered. ‘We made a bonfire and threw it on, but that didn’t work. It just didn’t burn. So we took it up to this greenhouse thing they had and tried to feed it to a man-eating plant. It wasn’t interested. So we went right down into the depths of their base and tried to feed it to this man-eating alien fish thing they had in a giant aquarium. It wasn’t interested. So we took it into this shooting range they had. You know, like the police have in movies. We tried shooting it. Well, they did. I don’t like guns. Bullets just bounced off it. They tried to—’
‘Sorry,’ the woman interrupted her. ‘So you’re basically saying it was indestructible.
Nina nodded.
Nina Rogers was sitting in Captain Jack’s office with two sweaty men. For some reason, they were both grinning. She was glad they were finding it so funny, and she told them so.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack replied. ‘But we’ve had all sorts down here, and now we’re being beaten by a book.’
‘I was always good with books,’ said Ianto. ‘I was on the Gold colour reading scheme long before the other kids.’
‘Oh, I bet you were popular,’ replied Jack, grinning. ‘You. . . nerd.’
‘Are you two getting off on this?’ asked Nina, smiling despite herself.
‘Jack gets off on anything.’
The three of them stared at the book that was now wrapped safely in a Quality Mart carrier bag. Despite their smiles, Nina knew, deep down, what was going to happen.
‘You’re going to send it back to the past, aren’t you?’
Jack nodded. ‘I’m not sure what else we can do. If we keep it, we can’t stop it controlling you. We can’t destroy it. All we can do is trap it in a time loop.’
Nina nodded, surprised at how easily she was getting all this. ‘So it goes back in time. Your mate Emily puts it in the library. Then over a hundred years later, I find it and it all starts again.’
‘But it stops. For you, it stops now.’ Ianto stood up. ‘That’s the main thing.’
He opened the office door that led out to the main area. ‘I’ll start monitoring for Rift activity.’
He left the office, and Nina looked over at the book then across at Jack.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a book.’
Nina didn’t scream with frustration. She kept her voice calm. ‘Yeah, but where’s it from?’
Jack stood up and looked out at Ianto. ‘Who knows. There are things out there you can’t imagine. Stars and planets and creatures that you couldn’t even comprehend.’
Nina stood up and joined him. ‘But it must have come from somewhere.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Or perhaps it’s
just one of those mysteries that the universe likes to throw at us from time to time.’ He smiled, watching Ianto through the glass. ‘Like love. And death. And Nando’s.’
‘And what’s going to happen to me? When it’s gone?’
Jack turned to face her. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. You’ll either get all your memories back or. . .’
‘Or I’ll still be like this. Confused.’
‘You know, I don’t think you’ve changed as much as you think. The book’s mostly taken your memories of meeting us. You’re still Nina Rogers. You still talk too much. There’s just a few things that’ll seem more like dreams than reality.’
‘Like Torchwood?’
Jack laughed. ‘Oh, we’re real.’
Nina grinned. ‘Yeah, I guess you are. And very. . . gay. It’s just the two of you, yeah? Rattling around in this big underground base?’
Jack opened the office door. ‘Oh no, we’ve got Gwen as well. But she mostly just comes in to do the washing up. Like the good little lady she is.’
Nina kicked him.
Suddenly, Ianto called through to them. ‘Rift activity!’
Jack ran through the open door, Nina following. Ianto turned to them with a frown.
‘You won’t believe where. . .’ he said, pointing at the screen.
Nina tried to look but Jack pushed in front of her. She watched as his face fell.
‘Oh, not there. Not again.’
Nina Rogers was standing and looking up at the ruined apartment complex.
‘SkyPoint,’ muttered Jack, standing next to her.
‘The most cursed building in Cardiff,’ muttered Ianto.
The three of them looked up at what remained of the block. Originally built and promoted as Cardiff’s most luxurious living space it was now, after a series of unfortunate events, little more than a shell.
‘You bring me to all the nice places,’ said Nina quietly as they watched seagulls soar through the upper levels. ‘Guess we should go in?’
So the three of them entered what remained of the reception area, Ianto waving his scanner about.
‘This way,’ he said, leading them up a set of stairs that were covered in. . . well, even the voice inside Nina’s head didn’t want to know what they were covered in. The three of them climbed the stairs to the first floor.
Consequences Page 18