Cash was convinced that, although the world had shifted out of crisis mode, countries and their governments had slid back into neutral, cruising along as before, trusting that everything and everyone had returned to normal, turning a blind eye to anything that might suggest trouble was once again looming.
He hoped that all the data they were gathering was suggesting nothing too far out of the ordinary, but he doubted that.
He was right, and he was terribly wrong.
Gwen
30
GWEN’S SHOULDER HAD been cleaned and dressed. Seeing her flailing like a maniac on a hospital bed, her wrists strapped to the bed’s safety bars, her hair matted and oily and her arms bruised and bandaged – it was all more than Rhys could stand. He went into the corridor to wait for Jack.
Thankfully, the detectives from CID investigating the other incidents of violence and disorderly conduct had gone. They had decided that Gwen, like the other affected women, should be restrained and sedated until the doctors could figure out what had caused their mental breakdowns and their severe self-mutilations.
Stepping out of the lift onto the psychiatric care floor, Jack was immediately assaulted by Gwen’s anger. He felt it in his knees, a shooting pain, and he tasted it in his mouth – like onions. Gwen’s shouts of profanity and her screaming insults were being directed at someone named ‘Suzie’.
Rhys was crouched against the wall opposite the Plexiglas screens of the secure ward, the guard at the enclosed desk near the lift watching his every move. Rhys’s head was buried in his hands, but when he saw Jack he slowly stood up.
‘How is she?’ asked Jack looking into the ward, a headache beginning behind his eyes. Gwen was in the first of four beds, writhing against the ministrations of two nurses and a burly male orderly while the doctor, a petite woman in a white lab coat, keyed notes into a tablet. Jack noticed that the other three beds were each occupied with seriously injured women, all sedated, their IV drips standing at attention next to their beds like thin alien sentinels.
‘She’s bad, Jack,’ said Rhys, his voice catching in his throat. ‘Because of her concussion, the doctor didn’t want to put her completely under, but they may have no choice. Her anger is out of control. She’s a danger to herself. To everyone.’
The doctor swiped her ID card at the panel inside the room. She came out and stepped over to them. Jack figured her to be in her early forties, her caramel-coloured skin flawless. She was short, attractive and professional in a pale green blouse and a navy pencil skirt that showed enough of her legs to make Jack and Rhys notice. The badge on her white lab coat identified her as Dr Olivia Steele.
‘Mr Williams, I’m Dr Steele. May I have a word?’ She proffered her arm, guiding Rhys down the hall for privacy.
Rhys nodded his head towards Jack. ‘He’s family… brother-in-law. He can hear whatever you have to say.’
Jack smiled warmly at Rhys, despite the worsening headache, and the intensity of the sour taste in his mouth.
Dr Steele nodded. ‘Very well, but to be honest, I don’t have much to tell you, Mr Williams. Your wife is experiencing a kind of hysterical neurosis and it may be a while before we understand what triggered it.’ She looked from Rhys to Jack. ‘Is there any history of mental illness in your family?’
‘Not that I know of,’ answered Jack before Rhys could process the question. ‘And if there is or was, I’d know…’
‘There’s none,’ said Rhys, emphatically, glaring at Jack who rolled his eyes and shrugged. ‘But what did you mean, it may take a while? How long is a while exactly?’
Dr Steele gently touched Rhys’s forearm. ‘With the right combination of drugs, a few days if we’re lucky, and that will allow us to talk with Gwen and examine her without such acute physical symptoms. Her real treatment will depend on how severe the roots of her neurosis are.’ The doctor continued talking to Rhys, but her eyes were following Jack as he shifted to stand at the security glass, staring into the busy ward, his jaw clenched, his hands deep in his pockets.
‘If your wife has experienced some kind of trauma that has led to this breakdown,’ she went on, turning back to Rhys, ‘then that will have to be addressed, too, and that may take years.’
‘What about these other women?’ interrupted Jack. ‘Are they also suffering from some kind of hysterical neurosis?’
The doctor walked over next to Jack and followed his gaze into the room. ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss my other patients with you.’
‘Even if they may all be suffering from a similar hysteria? Could this be related to… you know, them all being female?’ asked Jack, looking directly at Dr Steele.
The doctor looked at Jack, anger flashed in her eyes. ‘This is not the nineteenth century, Mr…?’
‘Harkness. Captain Jack Harkness.’
‘Captain Harkness, your sister isn’t a character in a Brontë novel. She’s suffering from a very real mental illness that has affected an organ in her body and not, quite frankly, her uterus. The kind of female hysteria you’re implying was nothing more than the patriarchal repressive sexual fantasies of the Victorian medical establishment. Your sister’s brain, like these other women, is suffering from something quite real. The fact that it’s her mind we’re dealing with makes it more complicated and more frightening, but I’m more than equipped to help her.’
‘So you’re convinced there’s no pattern to be determined,’ continued Jack, folding his arms, noting the doctor’s mouth twitch slightly. ‘That there’s no related causes in the fact that four females from the same immediate area have experienced a similar hysteria?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ continued the doctor, her rant picking up steam. ‘Freud might have believed that Gwen was suffering from some uncontrollable emotional tantrum and just because of timing and one or two similarities among these women,’ she swept her hand along the window, ‘that they’re somehow sharing in that suffering. But, Captain Harkness, let me tell you that, despite what you may have read in the media about what happened to these women and to Gwen, mental illness is not contagious and your sister and these other women are not simply hysterical women.’
Jack nodded and tried to look appropriately contrite.
‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She turned back to Rhys. ‘Mr Williams, I’ll keep you posted on your wife’s condition. For now, I’d suggest you get some rest, the days and months ahead could be long ones for you and your family.’
The door opened again, this time to let one of the nurses out. Gwen’s screams were muted, but Jack could still hear her calling for what now sounded like ‘Schoozie’.
‘May I speak to my sister?’
‘If you must,’ said the doctor, as she headed towards the elevator, ‘but make it brief. I need her to rest. The medication will help her sleep, but I also need to see her blood pressure and her adrenalin levels come down to much safer levels.’
When the elevator closed on the doctor, Jack pulled his mobile from the inside of his coat pocket.
The guard at the desk glared at him. ‘Hey, you can’t use a mobile in here. Give that over.’
Jack ignored him.
Rhys was staring sadly through the security glass at Gwen, who was slowly becoming less agitated. ‘Who’re you calling?’ he asked.
‘Dr Steele is wrong, Rhys. There’s a pattern to all this. These woman are not just some kind of statistical anomaly. The doctor confirmed that all these woman are suffering from similar delusions, from similar mental breakdowns, to say nothing of the fact that all of them mutilated themselves in some way.’
Both men looked more closely at each of the women in the ward, this time paying more attention to their other injuries. The woman in the bed closest to Gwen had her head bandaged, the dressing covering the entire left side of her face. Opposite her, a woman in her late twenties had her arm in a cast, only three fingers visible. The third, a heavy middle-aged woman with untidy curls of hair had a thick white patch dressed on her left eye, raw pink welts an
d lines of scratches covering her cheeks.
Gwen’s right shoulder was bound in bandages, soft leather straps fastened across her chest and restraints on her legs to keep her frenetic movements restricted. She looked small and frail, and as he looked at her Jack’s heart cracked a little more.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Rhys. ‘I need to get home to Anwen so Mary can come see Gwen. I can’t be taking care of you too, mate.’
‘Go,’ said Jack, his knees aching terribly. ‘I’ll sit with Gwen until Mary gets here.’
‘Sure?’
‘More than.’
When Rhys had gone, Jack tapped a number into his mobile. The guard banged on his window.
‘Is this line secure?’ asked Jack. ‘Good. I need you to do something for me.’ Jack laughed at something the caller said after Jack explained his request.
‘Of course, you should do it Torchwood style.’
The Ice Maiden
31
IN THE COMMUNICATIONS room opposite the newly refurbished mess, the Ice Maiden’s two analysts sat in front of a bank of computers. Like Sam and Hollis, they were also ignoring the increasingly violent rise and fall of the ship as she sailed into the storm. Vlad Lidenbrok had his feet up on the desk, reading a Steampunk novel balanced on his lap while his computer was plotting a geologic map, its waves of reds, blues and yellows washing across his screen.
Eva Giles was perched on the edge of her chair, leaning over what looked like an old-fashioned printer. It was, in fact, a sophisticated piece of sonar-recording equipment, its shuttle flying across the scrolling paper, while also sending its results to Vlad’s hard drive.
‘How many is that we’ve discovered now?’ asked Vlad, shouting to be heard over the thunderous waves battering the side of the ship.
‘Counting this one forming off the coast of Wales?’ asked Eva. She wore over-sized black-framed glasses and kept her long brown hair pulled off her face. Eva was the crew’s science officer who Cash had recruited, at Dana’s request, from the doctoral program in Earth Sciences at the University of Vancouver. As the crew’s youngest and newest recruit, she desperately wanted to be taken seriously.
‘Four significant disturbances,’ she finally replied. ‘That’s a lot in such a short time. Should we be worried?’
‘You’re not?’ replied Vlad, pulling up two other sonar maps to his screen. One was from a hundred miles off the coast of Vietnam, the other from the ocean south of New Zealand. Vlad quickly scrolled through a series of windows until he settled on an oceanic map of the world. Tapping the screen on the key places where they’d recorded the other deep-water disturbances, he then dragged the key bits of data and embedded them in each flagged point.
Grabbing the arm of her chair before it rolled against the door, Eva watched Vlad work, knowing some morsel of data, a detail of code, had snagged his mind as he’d been scrolling and he was puzzling over what he was seeing. She watched quietly as he began rubbing his fingers across his short beard, his green eyes narrowed as he stared intently at the screen. Every few seconds, he scribbled a note on a sheet of paper, adding to the scraps and piles that already carpeted his desk. Then he’d twirl his pencil, once, twice, come to a conclusion and then, using the eraser, double-tap each flag on the screen. In one swift gesture across his screen, he made the images and the data fly to a massive electronic map that covered the room’s only open wall, each spot on the map pinging bright within seconds of Vlad’s touch on his screen.
‘Eva,’ said Vlad, nudging her. ‘Did you hear anything I just said?’
‘No, sorry. What?’ Eva could feel herself blush. She’d been thinking about Vlad’s touch. She couldn’t help it. He had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen in a man. His fingers were long, his nails short, the skin not soft but not rough either.
‘Eva!’ Vlad shook his head, using two fingers to wipe data over to the wall map.
‘It’s the storm,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’m a bit… nervous. I’ve never been in a bad one before.’
Vlad softened his tone. ‘Well, don’t be. It’s not going to be that bad. Cash has a tendency towards the drama of a storm, usually so he can comfort whatever grad students we have on board.’ Vlad smiled, squeezing Eva’s shoulder. Heat shot up from her toes to her tummy. Vlad leaned back on his chair, rubbing his fingers over his lips, concentrating on the data streaming across his screen.
Then he turned, gripped the arms of Eva’s chair and dragged her to face him. Leaning into her, Vlad kissed her, his lips soft on her mouth, his tongue parting them gently. She returned the kiss, her own mouth hungry for his. She tilted her head back, exposing the pale skin of her neck, letting Vlad’s mouth trace a line of soft kisses from her lips to her neck, his warm lips, his long fingers, moving across her bare shoulders, under her sweater to her hardening nipples. Without shifting him, Eva reached up and loosened her hair, then grabbing a handful of his, she guided him to her lap.
‘Jesus, look out!’ said Vlad, lunging over Eva to catch a heavy nautical compass tipping from the shelf before the storm crashed it on top of her.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, still leaning over her.
Eva was most definitely not OK. Vlad’s scent was intoxicating. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
She wanted to grab his shoulders and jump his bones, no, not jump him, nail him, screw him, fuck him right here on the cold, hard floor. Eva squeezed her nails into her palms, shocked at her thoughts. She shoved Vlad out of her way and stood up. Forgetting to brace herself against the ship’s angry rolls, her chair slammed against the back of her legs and she toppled into Vlad’s arms.
‘Do you need me to strap you down?’ he laughed.
Oh, God, yes, she thought.
‘I’m sorry. Sorry,’ she said, stepping out of his way. ‘Still developing my sea legs.’
‘Well, make it fast,’ he said, sliding her chair back to her desk and setting the compass inside one of the metal storage lockers in the room. ‘Because I need you—’
A soft moan burst from Eva’s lips. Vlad looked at her, quizzically. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You look flushed.’
‘I do feel hot,’ she said, then quickly added, ‘I mean warm… warm.’
‘OK,’ said Vlad, thinking that this was why he preferred working alone. Vlad had raised a force field around his heart years ago. He was personable, polite and participated in the crew’s card games and movie watching, but he perceived his fellow shipmates as nothing more than sophisticated computers, hard-wired to behave in certain ways. They were necessary to the job at hand but immaterial to his personal development.
Vlad had accepted the position as analyst on the Ice Maiden after much of the funding for his research on deep-water morphic fields had dried up when his mentor at the University of Prague had disappeared with most of the funding. Vlad’s passion for the oceans and his insane knowledge of computers were currently running in second and third place to the growing resentment towards the man who’d stripped him of his future.
‘If you think you can stay focused long enough,’ said Vlad, standing in front of the wall map and reading some of the information he’d just posted, ‘can you run a cross-check of the data from the Paracel Islands with this recent deep-water event off the coast of Wales?’
‘Why?’ said Eva, trying not to stare at his ass or at the way his faded jeans sat on the muscular curve of his hips, a thin scar set in the hollow above his pelvic bone. Or how his hair curled over the frayed top of his Ziggy Stardust T-shirt.
‘Have you got something?’ she asked. Oh, you do, she thought, you really do and I want it. Good grief, what was happening to her? Horny didn’t begin to describe these feelings.
She turned back to her computer, the pulsing plot points on the map mimicking her racing heartbeat. Eva knew when she had signed up for this job that spending months at sea would mean giving up certain things she enjoyed – a lot. Shopping for cheap couture, eating fresh fruit, running outside on solid ground with unsalted air in her ha
ir, and regular pleasurable sex with one or two of her on-again off-again boyfriends. But until this moment in the middle of the coldest waters she’d travelled, she’d never felt such desire, such intense sexual hunger coursing through her veins, racing to every organ at warp speed.
‘Eva, really,’ interrupted Vlad, his patience wearing thin. ‘Focus. I think we have a serious problem.’
‘What?’ said Eva, using all her willpower to not look at Vlad below the neck.
‘How quickly is the disturbance in Wales growing?’ Vlad asked, standing over her to get a closer look at the echogram.
Vlad smelled of Ivory soap and the scent set off a peculiar but not unpleasant ringing in her ears. When he reached across to highlight a point on the graph, her body tingled all over, every muscle vibrating like a million hands on her at once. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, her pulse quickening again, the ringing clanging in her head. Suddenly she could taste a burst of peppermint on her tongue.
She sighed. Christ, she felt really good.
‘That was weird,’ said Eva, grinning up at Vlad. ‘I mean it’s weird… the events… they’re weird…’ His eyes narrowed. She charged on. ‘I mean they both displayed signs of a tremor, but neither area is close to any traditional plate boundaries or fault lines. And now there’s a deep water geyser forming in each site.’
She pushed away from the desk and Vlad, stepping over to the world map secured on the wall. She needed to see the entire scope of their travels plotted on the map, and she was also afraid of what might happen again if she didn’t get some distance between her body and Vlad’s.
The peppermint lingered on her lips, tasting pretty sweet.
‘OK,’ she said, gathering some professional composure, but keeping her back to Vlad to be safe. ‘Let’s look at what we have. All the waters we’ve trawled have experienced some kind of seismic disturbance since Tuesday, none of them are on traditional fault lines, and so far, thankfully, none of them have created any major tsunamis or any obvious disturbances on land for that matter. Yet. But who knows what can happen if they continue to strengthen.’
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