Torchwood: Exodus Code

by Barrowman, Carole E. , Barrowman, John

  ‘Shelley did.’

  Eva set the Torchwood disc on the cabin’s small desk and tapped it. Shelley appeared in front of Jack.

  ‘Good morning, Captain. You slept well, I hope?’

  ‘I did.’

  For a fleeting moment Jack wondered if Shelley had been in his cabin during the night. He’d left his laptop on in case Rhys or Andy had tried to get in touch and some of Shelley’s intelligence was from an alien program, after all.

  Nah, he thought. She’d not been sentient long enough to think fully for herself. Had she?

  Jack decided he’d need to monitor her evolution. He knew that when you lived in a world with so many powerful machines wired together eventually a consciousness develops. He’d have to keep an eye on Shelley.

  ‘Captain, I wanted to inform you of the results of my analysis from the water that has been surging from the hydrothermal vents.’

  ‘Which,’ added Eva, leaning on the door jamb, ‘have increased significantly in number.’

  ‘How many more?’ asked Jack.

  ‘At least seven additional ones in the clusters we’re monitoring, and they’re growing as quickly as the others.’

  ‘That’s not good news,’ said Jack, sitting back on the bed. ‘Is my friend still monitoring them, too?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘We may have to do something about that, Shelley.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Tell him what you’ve learned, Shelley,’ said Eva, wary of hearing too many covert details from this man; after a thorough web search, she’d found only two significant things about him: he’d disappeared after the funeral of a CIA agent and he liked to read.

  ‘Three critical points, Captain,’ said Shelley. ‘First, I’ve pinpointed the elements that were proving difficult to detect last night. The first is an ecto-hormone with a high density of androstenal, and the second element is carnosine.’

  ‘Carnosine is a toxic hormone that affects the nervous system,’ said Eva. ‘It can create birth defects if you’re not born with the genetic inhibiter, which has to come from both parents. Geologists will have a field day with this. Who knew it was percolating beneath the ocean? We’ve never found anything like carnosine in the Earth’s crust before.’

  ‘Not so fast, Eva. You can’t share any of this until we can stop what’s happening. If the world learns the oceans are filling with a toxic hormone we’ll have global panic, and we don’t behave so well towards each other when that happens.’

  ‘But you can’t ignore it, Jack! People are dying. More will. At the rate those chimneys are forming, they’ll be spewing toxins into the air in…?’ Eva turned and looked at Shelley.

  ‘In exactly four days and forty-seven minutes,’ said Shelley.

  Jack flipped his braces over his shirt and ran his hands through his bed hair. ‘It’s enough time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My plan.’

  ‘Oh good. You have a plan.’

  Jack put his hands on Eva’s shoulders. ‘You really need to get laid. You’re very tense.’

  She shrugged Jack away. ‘I’m not sure it matters, but what exactly is androstenal?’

  ‘It explains a lot,’ Jack grabbed a towel. ‘The heightened synaesthesia among women, the extreme physical responses to their loved ones and the increase in desire to those,’ he looked at Eva, ‘who are in need of sexual release.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Shelley, throwing a graph up displaying the amounts per unit of both elements in the water. ‘The quantities are significant and they are building.’

  ‘Would one of you please tell me what androstenal is?’

  ‘Androstenal,’ said Jack, ‘is not just an ecto-hormone, Eva, it’s a female pheromone.’

  53

  WHEN HE’D FINISHED eating breakfast, Cash set the ship’s course for the day with Sam, then came back below deck, joining Jack, Vlad and Eva in the communication room. Cash was glad he’d eaten a hearty breakfast to shore up against what was coming because he knew that the information Jack planned to share with the crew wasn’t going to be easy to hear.

  In the comms room, Jack was watching a CNN feed of the black geyser off the coast of Wales whose chimney was now visible above the surface of the water. Since it was the first geyser to appear and had remained the one closest to a populated area, it had garnered the most attention from the media, the scientific community and the public.

  The geyser was almost fifty metres in diameter, and was spewing black steam 15 metres into the air, its rock chimney already constructing itself at sea level. From above, the chimney looked like a clay pot spinning on a potter’s wheel, a tower of water surging from its centre.

  Although the Royal Navy and the coastguard had set a five-mile no-sail no-fly zone around the Welsh geyser, the sea traffic on the Bristol channel had never been heavier and so many helicopters were now swarming in the sky, it looked like an invasion force of massive buzzing insects was hovering above Wales and the south-west of England.

  Cash joined Jack. ‘The media are reporting almost all of the country’s psychiatric hospitals are full,’ he told him. ‘Most women are being sent home with prescriptions for sedatives. The numbers in the other parts of the world where the geysers have erupted and chimneys are forming are stabilising. I think the Welsh chimney is worse because of the geyser’s proximity to a population mass.’

  ‘And then there’s that reaction,’ said Jack, watching as the news camera zoomed in on a coastguard cruiser off the coast of Weston-super-Mare, escorting a yacht out of the no-sail zone, its naked female passengers romping to loud music, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

  Cash stepped closer to the screen, grinning broadly. ‘I’m liking that reaction to the geyser much more than what happened off the coast of New Zealand.’

  ‘So are they,’ smiled Jack.

  ‘Any idea what makes the difference in the way a woman responds to the pheromones the geysers are releasing?’ asked Vlad.

  ‘If I may,’ replied Shelley, looking at Eva for permission. Despite being a creation of hers and Vlad’s, Jack noticed that Shelley deferred to Eva more than Vlad.

  ‘Of course,’ said Eva, whose sexual desire had diminished the further south in the Atlantic the Ice Maiden sailed, a fact that she had to admit annoyed her a little, even though she knew she was reacting to the pheromones as much as she was reacting to Vlad.

  ‘Scientists generally type pheromones in multiple categories,’ said Shelley, ‘the most common are obviously sex pheromones, then receptor, trail and signal pheromones, each one triggering a response through a behaviour change or a mood change in one or both members of the species affected. The pheromone that I detected in the hydrothermal vents is an ecto-hormone, a combination of two or three categories which is why it’s triggering changes in mood and behaviour in women, particularly fertile women, and the changes seem tied to internal hormonal conflicts the women are already experiencing.’

  ‘Which would explain why some women are responding with orgasms and others with violence,’ said Vlad.

  ‘According to my analysis of the patient data, Vlad,’ added Shelley, ‘currently the other point that explains why some women are responding with violence and some with lust is tied to their synaesthesia. Most of the initial clusters of women, the synaesthetes, tended to respond with violence, but I believe that had more to do with the intensity of their heightened synaesthesia coupled with their emotional stability and how both outweighed their sexual desire.’

  Jack thought about Gwen’s response – how her frustrations over the sudden changes in her professional and personal lives after the suspension of Torchwood, how this emotional instability combined with the pheromones had shaped a violent response in her. Yet, Jack thought, there was an aspect of Gwen’s madness that continued to niggle at him. Why had she carved the glyph on her arm when so far Jack and Shelley’s research had not uncovered anyone else who had seen or carved the same mark, other than Jack himself
, that is.

  Why was Gwen’s response so different?

  Vlad and Eva began checking the overnight data from the hydrothermal vents, monitoring all seven that had erupted, two of which were smaller in diameter and had already sealed like the one in New Zealand. Shelley shifted next to Vlad’s computer, wiping data to the air between them when Eva asked. If not for a slight shimmer around the folds of Shelley’s dress that was most obvious when standing close to her, she could easily be taken for another member of the crew.

  Jack watched the avatar interact with Vlad and Eva, impressed with how well Vlad’s original program had married the Torchwood software with only minor glitches.

  ‘How bad are the numbers?’ he asked Vlad.

  ‘Bad,’ said Vlad. ‘The PH is off in almost every sample. Schools of fish are beginning to wash onto beaches all over the Eastern seaboard and the west coast of Africa.’

  ‘What’s happening doesn’t make any scientific sense,’ said Eva, chewing the arm of her glasses distractedly. She stood and walked over to the screen that Jack had switched from the news feed to the map. Once again, Eva stood and stared at the pulsing lights.

  ‘What are you seeing?’ asked Jack, standing next to her.

  ‘Before you came on board I thought I could detect a pattern in the vents,’ said Eva, watching the lights. ‘But I couldn’t figure it out.’

  ‘Shelley,’ said Jack, ‘can you download the file I gave you from Gwen’s phone?’

  Shelley appeared next to Eva and she threw the file from Gwen’s phone up between them.

  ‘It’s the image on Gwen’s arm,’ said Eva.

  ‘Where’s the file from?’ asked Vlad.

  ‘Gwen downloaded it to her phone from a computer the night before she tried to kill her husband. At first I thought the message was for me, but given everything that’s happening to female synaesthetes, I’m beginning to think that it was intended for Gwen all along.’ Jack paused for a beat, then asked Shelley to superimpose the glyph image onto the map and drop out the background details.

  Shelley did, leaving only the flashing lights and the outline of the continents.

  Jack cleared his throat, and looked at each of them directly, aware that what he was about to say would change everything, would make this less a scientific mission and more a suicide one.

  ‘Every single one of these flashing lights is a hydrothermal chimney that’s already forming above the surface of the ocean, and we can assume when they seal over they’re going to force all that pressure, all that heat, all those combustible chemicals back to the centre of the planet.’

  ‘Which,’ added Cash, ‘will essentially turn the Earth into a bloody big hydrogen bomb.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Vlad. ‘Game over.’

  54

  EVA WAS SPEECHLESS. She slumped across her desk. Her emotions were already in such a jumbled mess that she was having a difficult time separating and categorising exactly what she was feeling. From the moment yesterday when they had discovered how quickly the vent chimneys were evolving, Eva had felt as if she was caught in a bizarre training simulation and at any moment someone would step onto the ship and tell them all they’d performed well on this mission and now they could go home.

  If what Jack, Cash and Shelley were suggesting was true, in a couple of days she might not have a home to return to. No one would.

  ‘Shelley,’ said Jack, ‘let’s see this model of the Earth from above.’

  Shelley flipped the animation and zoomed out, the glyph linking all the chimneys with the top one, the geyser in Wales.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Vlad.

  ‘That program is not yet operational,’ said Shelley.

  ‘When all the chimneys are linked together like this, it’s Gwen’s design,’ said Cash. ‘And the map to a bloody big bang.’

  ‘If that is what’s occurring,’ said Shelley, ‘then we must assume that these hydrothermal vents are connected deep inside the Earth. Like this.’

  Shelley reconfigured the image, stripping the top layers from the earth, slicing the earth in two, and showing what the linking of the hydrothermal vents might look like from beneath the Earth’s crust: three overlapping, smouldering tunnels of fire stretching across the world.

  ‘What does this all mean?’ asked Eva, her voice high pitched with fear, the colour draining from her face the longer she looked at Shelley’s model of the core of the Earth.

  ‘I think it means,’ said Jack, ‘that the Earth is self-destructing.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Eva. She looked from Jack to Vlad to Cash to Shelley and back to Jack.

  ‘Is it so hard to imagine, lass?’ asked Cash. ‘Think about it. We’ve worn this planet out. It’s over-populated, terribly polluted and the oceans’ temperatures are rising fast. The old girl might just have decided she’s had enough.’

  ‘Look,’ said Eva, standing and pacing across the tiny space, her fear tightening in her chest. ‘I can believe that the Earth is a series of complex organic systems. I can even believe the Gaia theory that the planet’s constantly changing and evolving on a massive scale to stay in balance, to sustain life, but the Earth is not a sentient being.’

  ‘But what if she is?’ interrupted Jack.

  ‘O puhleeze,’ said Eva. ‘The Earth’s not thinking, she’s not processing all that’s happening to her and keeping score. Oh, too many people now. Check. Too much global warming. Check.’ Eva was ticking off on her fingers as she spoke. ‘Oceans are losing salinity. Check. Until one day the sun rises in a smoggy haze and the Earth says to herself, screw it, had enough, time to blow myself up and start life somewhere else in the universe.’

  ‘Snark all you want, Eva, but I think Jack’s right and that’s essentially what’s happening,’ said Cash.

  ‘And we need to stop it,’ said Jack.

  ‘Eva,’ cut in Vlad, ‘in that entire rant why did you keep calling the Earth a she?’

  ‘Because everyone does… you know… Mother Earth,’ Eva spluttered, throwing herself onto her chair with such force she almost tipped it over.

  ‘Eva,’ said Jack. ‘Do you have any other explanation for what’s happening?’

  ‘If I may interject,’ said Shelley, who appeared behind Eva’s desk. ‘Every culture from the ancient Greeks to the Egyptians, the Native Americans, African tribes, the Chinese, the Norse, and the Celts have a creation story and many of those creation stories have humanity being birthed from the Earth in some manner. The Earth is the mother to humanity. One sustains the life of the other. Even Judeo-Christianity gave us the garden of Eden, a paradise on Earth and—’

  ‘Shelley, stop! I get it,’ Eva yelled. Cash scowled at her. Vlad put his hand on her arm to try to calm her. She pushed him away. Everyone was looking at her, except Jack who was using the pad to zoom in on the map of South America.

  She stared at him for a beat, an awful realisation dawning. ‘You bastard! You knew this was happening,’ hissed Eva. ‘You knew before you even boarded our ship.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Vlad, sensing he had missed something important.

  Eva pointed at Jack, who stood and faced her. ‘He was the one who sent us to monitor those hot spots in the ocean. He knew the Earth’s crust was cracking, that these fissures were forming. He’s the one who’s paying for the Ice Maiden’s mission. He’s the one responsible for all this incredible equipment.’ She looked for confirmation to Cash. ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Cash.

  ‘How could you possibly know this was going to happen?’ Eva shouted at Jack, her yelling drawing Hollis out of the mess to the passageway where he hovered, listening.

  Eva stood up, her fear and anger morphing to a dangerous mix. ‘Tell us how you knew this was going to happen! Tell us! Because if we’re sailing to the end of the world we deserve to know everything.’

  Jack glanced over at Cash, who nodded. Jack moved away from the flat screen. Cash shot him.

  55

  JACK GASP
ED, ONCE, twice then sat bolt upright, a bleeding hole in his forehead slowly healing.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Vlad.

  ‘Still not operational,’ said Shelley.

  ‘I need a shot,’ said Hollis.

  ‘Bring the bottle,’ said Jack.

  ‘I thought your head would be less of a mess than your chest,’ said Cash, helping Jack to his feet and returning his Webley to him.

  ‘I appreciate that. My head’s taken more bullets than I care to think about. Takes me out instantly and the pain on the recovery is more tolerable. A bullet to the chest hurts like hell before it kills me.’

  Hollis set the tequila bottle and glasses on Vlad’s desk, poured each of them a shot, refilled his glass twice, made sure Eva, whose face was frozen in horror, drank hers before he grabbed a chair from the mess and dragged it into the comms room.

  ‘I knew you had better recovery abilities than most,’ he said, grinning and handing Jack a glass, ‘but that’s friggin’ ridiculous.’

  Despite the pounding headache, Jack laughed, knocking back the tequila.

  Then everyone began talking at once, the craziness, the ridiculousness, the amazement over what they’d witnessed filling the room. Finally, Jack whistled and brought some semblance of order to their curiosity.

  ‘So you’re like immortal, darlin’?’ asked Hollis.

  ‘Not really. I can die, and, believe me, it hurts to die, but I heal, so technically I’m able to resurrect, which, I guess, if you stretch the definition a little, does make me immortal.’

  ‘But how is that possible?’ said Eva. ‘Is it because of what happened with the Miracle? Did you not get cured after that happened?’

  ‘No, Eva, I’ve been unable to stay dead for a very, very long time. My cell structure was altered, oh, a couple of thousand years ago in my timeline.’

  ‘And Cash knew?’

  ‘Cash’s grandfather was a colleague with Torchwood in Scotland.’

  Cash nodded. ‘The auld bugger was full of secrets, but a few of the important ones he left with me.’