Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Authors
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part Three
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Part Four
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
From Torchwood star John Barrowman, and Carole Barrowman, an epic thriller that finds Captain Jack and Gwen in a race to save humanity itself.
It starts with a series of unexplained events. Earth tremors across the globe. Women being driven insane by their heightened and scrambled senses. And the world is starting to notice – the number one Twitter trend is #realfemmefatales.
Governments and scientists are bewildered and silent. The world needs Torchwood, but there’s not much of Torchwood left.
Captain Jack has tracked the problem to its source: a village in Peru, where he’s uncovered evidence of alien involvement. In Cardiff, Gwen Cooper has discovered something alien and somehow connected to Jack. If the world is to be restored, she has to warn him – but she’s quickly becoming a victim of the madness too...
About the Authors
John and Carole Barrowman have been science fiction fans since the third Doctor. They’ve collaborated on two volumes of John’s autobiography, a comic strip adventure with Captain Jack in the official Torchwood magazine, and a fantasy children’s novel, Hollow Earth.
John became Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who in May 2006 and appeared in eleven episodes of the hit show before taking the lead role in Torchwood. John has had starring roles on the stage and on television, including his popular BBC entertainment show Tonight’s The Night.
Carole is Professor of English and Director of Creative Studies in Writing at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She writes a monthly crime fiction column and regular reviews and features for newspapers. She contributed a chapter to the Hugo-award winning non-fiction anthology Chicks Dig Time Lords.
For all the Woodies in the world and beyond.
‘He may be above;
He may be below;
or, perchance, abroad in space.’
Inca prayer
‘Time moves in one direction, memory in another.’
William Gibson
Part One
1
Southern Coast of Peru, 1930
A HAWKER HORNET banked out over the Pacific, cut a tight circle, and swooped inland over the red cliffs of the southern Peruvian coastline.
‘It’s about to get rough, my friend,’ said the pilot.
His passenger secured his goggles over his eyes then adjusted the straps of his shoulder harness. A dense morning mist wrapped around the top of la Madre Montâna, reducing the pilot’s visibility to inches and the temperature in the open cockpit to bloody freezing. The wind gnawed at the passenger’s face and neck. Shivering, he slid down in the seat, turning up the collar on his coat, but it wasn’t enough to warm him or shrug off the uneasiness that had been swelling in his gut since they’d taken off minutes ago from the airstrip at Castenado. The feeling wasn’t dread so much as discomfort, a sharp piercing pain in Captain Jack Harkness’s gut.
The Hornet’s wooden frame bucked in the air currents of the southern Pacific. Jack’s stomach flipped. A sudden drop lifted him off his seat, thumping his head on the cross bar of the wings.
‘What is it you want to show me that’s worth this?’ Jack yelled over the noise of the propellers.
‘I promised you amazing, didn’t I?’
Jack grinned at the handsome pilot. ‘Renso, we already were.’
Shifting forward, Renso guided the Hornet towards the jagged cliffs that to Jack looked like the gaping maw of a brooding monster. He’d seen far too many of those in his time. Jack sighed, slouching down in the rickety bucket seat.
‘Ready?’ Renso asked.
‘Does it matter if I’m not?’
Renso laughed, flying the Hornet straight into the cloud of mist. Almost immediately the small bi-plane was shrouded in a damp cloak of grey. Jack shivered again and the sensation that earlier he couldn’t name uncoiled itself from his stomach, crawled into his chest, up into his throat, settling painfully behind his eyes. Jack put his head down and moaned.
Food poisoning, he thought. Had to be.
‘All right back there, amigo?’
Cold sweat was beading on Jack’s forehead, and a burning sensation was knotting the muscles at the base of his neck. His eyes were stinging.
‘Fine. I’m fine.’ But Jack was far from it. In fact, he hadn’t been feeling anywhere close to fine since he arrived on the South American coast at Renso’s request two days ago.
Seconds later, the plane shot out the other side of the fog into a shocking blue sky. The scene displayed beneath Jack jolted him from his reverie, and he stared down into the basin of the mountain.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ said Renso. ‘I thought if anyone would, it’d be you.’
2
JACK GAZED IN astonishment at three vast glowing rings of igneous rock pulsing deep inside the bowels of the mountain. He knew there’d been an eruption back in January and, at first, he thought the rings were smouldering magma from that. But the closer the Hornet dipped, the more clearly he could see that each ring was seething, spinning, shifting in and out of the other. He could hear their syncopated rhythm in his head. It sounded as if the mountain had a heartbeat. The effect was mesmerising.
‘Can you get me down there?’ he asked, forcing his attention from the rings.
‘No place to land,’ said Renso. ‘It’d be a long hike to get up here from the nearest canyon. But I can manage c
loser.’
Renso pulled back on the stick, the propellers whined, the engines coughed and the Hornet lurched violently. For a beat, Jack thought the plane had died, but then Renso corrected his manoeuvre, punching the Hornet into a vertical climb.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Trust me, Jack. This will get you closer.’
‘Not now, Renso. I don’t think I can take any more of your tricks.’
‘You love my tricks,’ grinned Renso. ‘Brace yourself!’
With all the skills of the best WWI dogfighter Renso had once been and the crop-dusting pilot he now was, he flipped the Hornet, cut its engines, and sent them into free fall. The plane spiralled dangerously towards the face of the plateau and the spinning rock.
‘Stop showing off. Bring her up, now!’
‘Don’t be such a backseat flyer, Jack,’ laughed Renso, pulling back on the stick. The Hornet nosed up, inches before its wings strafed the pitted plateau.
‘Better?’
‘Not much,’ whispered Jack, his breathing laboured. Every exhalation was squeezing his chest. It was the air, he realised; it was even thinner up this high than he’d reckoned. Dropping his goggles around his neck, Jack wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. Leaning out of his seat, he peered down inside the basin of the mountain. He pulled a notebook from his coat’s inside pocket and began to sketch the rings. As he sketched, each stroke of his pencil set off a chime in his head, like the distant notes of a half-remembered tune. Jack frowned, the drawing dancing before his eyes. The closer he looked, the faster the rings appeared to spin through each other. Cautiously, Jack touched the paper with the point of his pencil, feeling it contort like India rubber, sending the rings dancing from the page into the air before settling down. Jack’s vision cleared as he stared at the pattern.
‘They look like hieroglyphs,’ said Jack, scribbling intently. ‘Kind of familiar. My ancient Egyptian isn’t so hot these days.’
Renso raised an eyebrow. Like a lot of things Jack said, he didn’t know if it was an outrageous lie, or an even more outrageous truth. He glanced down at the pattern smouldering in the landscape beneath them. ‘Egyptian? Given the land we’re flying over, it’s more likely to be Incan.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Jack. ‘Could be.’ As he talked, his hand sketched on, every movement of the pencil playing out more of that tune in his head. Despite the buffeting wind and the jostling of the plane, Jack drew on.
Renso glanced back. Jack’s notebook pages were filling with words, geometric shapes, drawings of what looked to Renso like a series of odd lines and circles and lines of musical notes. It looked as if someone else was controlling his hands; they were moving furiously across the pages. Renso knew Jack well enough not to question his capabilities, but still something was not quite right about Jack’s demeanour.
When Renso looked into the maw all he could see was an odd smouldering rock formation. No movement. No pulsing and certainly not forming any of the shapes that Jack was sketching. Keeping the Hornet as tight to the basin as he could, he asked, ‘Jack, are you sure of what you’re seeing?’
‘If you’re asking do I know what this is and what it means, then no,’ said Jack. ‘Not yet. I’ve seen all sorts of things, met all kinds of life. Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that could carve something like that out of the inside of a mountain, though.’
As he spoke, Jack realised that that was exactly what he was looking at.
‘One thing I do know, though – whatever it is, whatever it means, it’s been in that mountain for a very a long time.’
‘How do you reckon that?’ Renso’s voice sounded odd to Jack, distant and confused. Jack swallowed, tasting vanilla and cinnamon when he did.
Renso pulled the plane above the basin, trying to present Jack with as many angles as possible.
‘The Spanish Conquistadors destroyed most of the temples and the holy sites that were part of this landscape when they came to the Americas. They stripped the surface of these mountains searching for gold and silver centuries ago. See that dark line running through the centre of the plateau?’ Jack nudged Renso’s shoulder and pointed up ahead. Renso nodded, pulling the Hornet higher, the line Jack was pointing to stretching out more clearly in front of them. ‘That’s a vein of ore and that’s not something you’d normally find at the surface of a mountain. You’d find it under its surface.’
‘So these rings have been hidden until now,’ said Renso. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I really need to get into that basin, to get a closer—’ Jack’s throat tightened. He choked out ‘look.’
‘Jack? Are you sure you’re all right?’ asked Renso, turning the Hornet to approach the basin from yet another angle.
‘Fine,’ croaked Jack, ignoring the lone voice in his head, his voice he was sure, that kept saying, ‘No you’re not, Jack. Something really bad is happening to you.’
Jack shook his head to clear the solo voice that in a heartbeat became two voices and then three and before Jack could shut them out, a chorus of voices all sounding like his were taunting him about how bad he was feeling, how awful flying was, how loud his heart was beating, how breathless he felt, and how things were only going to get worse.
Worse, Jack – much, much worse.
Renso seemed to be oblivious to his passenger’s growing anguish and panic. Jack forced himself to concentrate on what the pilot was saying.
‘All I’m sayin’ is that if these rings had been visible for a while, I’d’ve noticed them sooner because I’ve been flying this route at least once a month since winter.’
The stabbing pain behind Jack’s eyes was worsening as the voices were getting louder, and then they stopped, at least until Renso banked the plane into another turn and came over the basin and the rings from the south. When the Hornet swooped over the mountain once again, Jack could swear he was hearing music deep inside his head. A thin violin melody. Jack leaned back in his seat, and squeezed his eyes closed. The music was a lament of some kind. It sounded familiar, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. And then the deep chords of the strings dropped behind a voice, a woman’s, melodic and rich, cut into the strings, harmonising with the music. The sultry crooning was enthralling.
When Jack glanced at Renso, the man was concentrating, silently, on the Hornet’s controls. The music and the woman’s voice ascending together in Jack’s head, beautiful, heartbreakingly so. Jack’s mother’s image danced in front of him. Squeezing his eyes closed against her memory, he could feel her pain and her suffering in every bone of his body. When the Hornet swooped across the plateau once again Jack felt enveloped in anguish for everything he’d ever done. Hopelessness squeezed his throat closed. He was choking, his breath labouring again. Then the music in his head swelled to its crescendo, its beauty washing over Jack in ribbons of blue directly above Renso’s head.
With all his energy, Jack forced the music and the voices to the back of his consciousness. Sweat dripped down his spine. He put his hand on Renso’s shoulder, squeezing, feeling some relief from the contact, the warmth of his friend’s body.
‘One more turn, Jack?’ Renso hoped he’d say no. His friend did not look at all well back there.
‘Fine, Renso. Then I think I’ve seen enough for now.’
Renso took the Hornet up again, the wind whistled through the open cockpit. With his binoculars, Jack scanned the horizon and thought he could see more glyphs, drawings the size of football pitches etched out across the dusty plateaus. One looked like a bird, the other a monkey, a candelabra. Renso turned and the plane came back over the basin and the rings from the north east.
Jack leaned over the side of the plane, staring into a clearing on the plateau below, an oasis on the mountain, a pueblo village circled by huarango tress, their roots like veins pulsing beneath the surface of the soil.
Jack watched as one by one the trees pulled their roots from the ground and began dragging themselves towards the mountain
.
3
THE HORNET DIPPED, jolting Jack from his seat. When the plane evened out, Jack looked down at the mountain’s meseta. The oasis beneath him was lush and edenic, the trees unmoving.
That was weird.
‘Renso, when did you discover this was here?’
‘Has to be right after the eruption in January. Right before Lent began,’ replied Renso. ‘I do an occasional, um, favour, transport work, for the locals,’ he grinned back at Jack again. ‘Keeps me in pisco and out of trouble. I think I’d’ve noticed if these rings were inside the mountain before that.’
Jack forced himself to focus on Renso’s words – the voices and the music fading, but the pain in his head, the tightening in his chest, they were getting worse. ‘The volcanic eruption must have cracked the top off the mountain – I’ve seen that happen before.’
Leaning back in his seat, Jack squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to push the pain away while Renso forced the Hornet higher, banking into its final turn.
The beauty of the Andes, the southern tip of the Gran Tablazo de Icas, spread beneath them like a canvas, the lush green lowlands, the highland peaks drizzled with snow, the canyons like ribbons winding between them, the plateaus dotted with sagebrush and the pyramids of sand lining the coastline. The landscape reminded Jack of Boeshane, with its giant pyramids of rock and mountainous sand dunes erupting from the ground like golden obelisks.
‘Do you feel that?’ asked Jack.
‘Feel what?’
‘The air? Suddenly it feels heavy. Oppressive. Shouldn’t be so dense this high… and it tastes like—’
‘Tastes?’ Renso laughed and wagged his finger. He was really worried now, but replied lightly. ‘I suggest no more tequila for you tonight, amigo.’
Jack’s heart was racing, a bitter taste filling his mouth. And that smell? Like oil of vitriol… and fear.
His.
‘You realise this isn’t something we’re going to be able to keep to ourselves for much longer,’ said Renso, flying the Hornet low enough for Jack to get one more look. ‘Soon I’m not going to be the only one who owns a plane in this part of the world.’
Torchwood: Exodus Code Page 1