‘We can tell that you’re literally invisible in the optical spectrum,’ noted Toshiko. She walked down the short flight of steps, and pointed at the display. ‘Actually, as far down as ultraviolet at one end and up through thermal infrared at the other. Wavelengths in air between about two hundred and eleven hundred nanometers.’
‘Mind you…’ Owen tapped another control, and the image changed. ‘I was able to take X-rays. You’ve got no broken bones. And the best I can tell from the ultrasound scan is that you have no serious disruption to your internal organs. So while this is an unusually severe and persistent injury, it doesn’t look like it’ll be fatal. In A&E, I’d probably send you back to your GP…’ He stifled a laugh. ‘Except he probably wouldn’t be able to see you for ages.’
Ianto’s exasperated groan filled the room. He knew this was Owen’s revenge for all the ‘dead’ jokes Ianto had been using on him.
‘I’m so hungry,’ Ianto’s voice shivered. ‘But maybe I’ll freeze to death first.’
‘Oh yeah. Tosh wants to analyse your invisible clothes,’ agreed Owen. He indicated the empty slab to Jack. ‘He had to take them off anyway, ’cause they were covered in tiger shit.’
‘Wait a minute…’ Jack cocked a saucy eyebrow. ‘Am I hearing this correctly? Ianto is sitting there… naked?’
‘Like, but unlike, one of my recurring nightmares,’ said Ianto’s voice in a plaintive tone.
Jack stared at the ceiling and laughed aloud. ‘Oh, that is such an unfair advantage in naked hide-and-seek…’ He trailed off as he realised Owen and Toshiko were both looking at him. ‘What?’
Owen shook his head sorrowfully. ‘So don’t want to know,’ he told Jack.
‘It’s a bit… creepy having you walk around the place like that,’ Toshiko said.
‘I kinda like it,’ said Jack.
‘He’s naked.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘Here’s an idea,’ suggested Owen. ‘I could bandage your head. Like the invisible man. I’m good with bandages. Medical doctor, trained and everything.’
Ianto was unimpressed. ‘I’d prefer a cure.’
‘Not sure there is one,’ Owen confessed. ‘We haven’t even got the device that did this. Your Achenbrite mates must have taken it with them.’
This piqued Jack’s interest, and he leaned on the rail to call down to Toshiko. ‘Any information on Achenbrite yet?’
‘It’s collating now.’
‘OK, patch it through to the Boardroom. We’re about to start.’
Toshiko pointed at his wheelchair. ‘Do you want a push?’ Jack seized the chair’s wide wheels in his strong hands. ‘Give me a head start. See you in five minutes.’
‘See ya,’ grinned Owen.
Ianto sighed so heavily that papers moved on the work surface beside him. ‘Am I going to stay like this?’
Owen cocked his head as though contemplating this calamity. ‘May depend on new cell growth. Difficult to test anything on that dead guy.’
‘I thought that nails and hair grew after death?’
Owen stroked his own clean-shaven chin. ‘Take it from an expert, that’s a myth. Best you can hope for is that your cells renew visibly as they get replaced. We’ll only know that by waiting.’ He was fighting not to smile again. ‘You should keep a record of what you notice. Maybe some regular entries in your diary, Ianto.’ The smile couldn’t be suppressed any longer. ‘You could write it in invisible ink.’
‘We’re out of invisible ink,’ said Toshiko immediately.
‘How can you tell?’ Owen responded. Toshiko and Owen giggled like kids. Ianto said, ‘I am still here, you know.’
Owen smirked. ‘If you’re blushing, mate, no one can tell.’ He pondered the empty space where he thought Ianto was.
‘I’ll see you in the Boardroom,’ snapped Ianto. ‘Even if you won’t see me.’
He jumped down onto the freezing cold mortuary floor and stalked away to the sound of Owen and Toshiko’s laughter.
Gwen sat at the Boardroom table while she waited for everyone to gather. She turned over the few MonstaQuest cards from Rhys’s pack that hadn’t floated off downriver. They had dried out, but were crinkled and discoloured, and they smelled a bit, too. She sniffed her own fingers surreptitiously. Even after a thorough shower, she wasn’t convinced she’d entirely washed away the dank stench of the River Taff. Toshiko would be the first person to notice that, but Toshiko would also be the last person who’d ever want to tell her.
When Toshiko came in, she was fiddling with some bit of alien tech she’d retrieved from the Vaults. As soon as she was seated, she began to tap notes into the table-top computer in preparation for the meeting. The tech was like a squarish PDA with undulating edges, and it sat on the velvet bag from which she’d taken it.
‘You OK?’ Gwen asked her. ‘Owen check you over after your concussion?’
‘Yeah. Yes.’ Fussing made Toshiko embarrassed. ‘How’s Rhys?’
Gwen laughed. ‘Gone home for a hot bath.’ She smiled at the thought of him dripping his way through the November streets, drawing curious looks from passers-by. Just as she had, until she’d found the blessed anonymity of Torchwood’s invisible elevator in Millennium Square. ‘Under the circumstances, I decided it was only fair to let him go to the match later.’ She sniffed her fingers again. ‘What’s keeping the others?’
Toshiko grimaced. ‘They were a bit upset about the mess around their desks.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘You know how house-proud Ianto is. I hardly dare drop biscuit crumbs.’
‘Still, you’ve got a new friend,’ added Gwen.
‘Yes,’ agreed Toshiko. ‘I think I could grow to like that pteranodon after all.’
‘I hate the damn thing,’ said Ianto’s voice from nowhere, yet nearby.
Toshiko startled, and put her hand to her mouth. The chair next to her at the table shifted sideways a little.
‘Well, you’re not the one who has to clear up all the pteranodon crap,’ said Ianto. ‘And what do you mean, “house-proud”?’
Toshiko’s face flushed. She put her hand down again, and tried to sit a little straighter in her chair as she recomposed herself. ‘I’m sorry, Ianto. I forgot you were here.’
Ianto sighed noisily. ‘Time was that I didn’t need to be invisible for that to happen.’
The Boardroom door slid aside. Jack breezed in, propelling his wheelchair with powerful movements. His lap was full of equipment, papers, and assorted objects rescued from the Hub’s main chamber. When he bumped into the edge of the desk, items clattered down onto its polished surface.
‘Quite a mess,’ he grinned. ‘We rescued some bits for the meeting. Couple of unbroken PDAs. Notepads that didn’t get covered in dino-blood.’
‘I’d just cleaned that floor,’ Ianto said. ‘You could have eaten off it.’ There was a distinctive sound that Gwen eventually worked out was Ianto’s stomach rumbling. ‘I could murder a meat feast.’
‘It will not look pretty when you chew it,’ Owen said. ‘And it will look disgusting when you’re digesting it.’
‘So I’m going to starve to death, am I?’ Ianto asked defiantly.
Owen tutted. ‘You’re not going to look pretty if your new cells do become visible.
Jack patted thin air. Gwen wasn’t even sure if Ianto’s head was under the hand, or whether he was kidding around. ‘OK, I’ve changed my mind,’ announced Jack. ‘Ianto, go get some clothes on. Don’t wanna see your organs walking around the Hub like a bag of giblets.’
The empty chair pushed back. ‘So I should go and get dressed now?’
Owen had a wide, pleased grin on his face. ‘Who said you couldn’t in the first place?’
‘OK, let’s review what we’ve got so far.’ Jack picked up a pack of MonstaQuest cards. ‘Multiple alien incursions, all described on these illustrated cards.’ He placed the pack on the desk like he was playing a strange game of solitaire. ‘
Weevil in the church of Holy Innocents. Another Weevil attacking a bus full of people.’
Toshiko indicated another card in Jack’s collection. ‘That one there, the bat-creature. That was at the shopping centre.’
‘Ooh, nasty,’ said Jack. ‘That’s a Kiroptan. An omnivore. Lots of teeth, little discrimination.’
Gwen pushed forward the tattered cards she had retrieved from the river. ‘Mahalta. Attacked Rhys’s car. No, no,’ she waved away Jack’s concern. ‘He’s OK.’
‘These names are wrong,’ Owen observed. ‘That one says “Antebellum”, not Mahalta. That Weevil claims to be a “Toothsome”.’
‘Someone’s created these without knowing what they are,’ said Jack.
‘Gareth Portland. Printed them up from his home workshop in Rhiwbina.’
‘Classy,’ smiled Jack.
‘Now out of action,’ continued Gwen, ‘after that convenient fire. Killed his girlfriend and his business at the same time.’
Jack shifted some of the cards around the desk before him. ‘But do these things reflect reality, or do they cause it?’
‘There’s something else,’ Gwen said. She presented several more MonstaQuest illustrations. ‘Element cards. Rain, Snow, Fog, Lightning… Inexplicable real events that we’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours.’
Toshiko punched up a new display on the flat-screen. ‘Spikes of Rift activity correspond to all these locations in that time period. It’s rare to have so many localised peaks of such intensity. One big burst you could understand, plus the usual background leakages. But these are extraordinary. And they map to the freak meteorological manifestations Gwen mentioned.’
Owen frowned. ‘What about the Brakkanee at the zoo? No freak weather. No card. Just coincidence?’
‘I saw one of those cards in the tiger enclosure,’ said Ianto’s voice in the doorway.
They all turned to look.
‘And the whole place was sodden,’ continued Ianto. ‘I heard the keepers talking about a crazy downpour that happened when one of their keepers was killed…’ His voice dropped as he must have seen they were all gaping.
Gwen coughed and apologised. ‘Sorry, Ianto, it’s just…’
‘It’s just you don’t expect to see a suit walking around on its own.’ Ianto’s voice came from just above the neatly knotted tie that encircled the neckline of an empty, maroon-coloured shirt. Give him credit, thought Gwen, he’d made an effort.
The suit pulled out a chair, sat on it, shot the cuffs of its shirt, and placed its sleeves on the desk. ‘So, these cards. Too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’ The sleeves seemed to draw Jack’s pack of MonstaQuest cards across the desk and started to riffle through them in mid air.
Toshiko was displaying more screens of analysis. Gwen’s heart sank a little. Toshiko loved her histograms and her pie charts, but sometimes it was like she was lost in the detail and missing the obvious. After listening to her explain the statistics, Gwen interrupted: ‘So, what you’re saying is that there’s been an increase in alien incursions around Cardiff, but that the Weevil attacks have increased most of all. Even in places where we didn’t get them before?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Toshiko, sounding a bit disappointed to have her analysis so comprehensively summarised. ‘I’ve done a deep-dive analysis of the available data. Looked for a possible further link. And I think I found one. Remember this?’ She indicated the alien tech on the table. ‘It was unearthed in the archaeological dig around the motte at Twmpath.’
The device lay on its soft velvet cover. The closer Gwen looked at it, the more the velvet appeared iridescent under the Boardroom lights. Like the lining of a coat her mum used to have. Toshiko cupped the device in her hands and closed her eyes.
‘The usual question, then,’ Owen said. ‘What is that?’
Toshiko raised her hands, like a votive offering. ‘It’s a kind of catalogue.’ The image on the wall-hanging flat-screen smoothly transitioned into a matrix of alien glyphs and images.
‘Monster hotline?’ sniggered Owen.
‘Two large Weevils, please. Make one of them extra spiky,’ Ianto suggested.
The image flickered. ‘Be nice to me,’ said Toshiko quietly. ‘It’s controlled by strong emotions.’
‘Er… find your happy place, Tosh,’ suggested Jack quietly. ‘Put them on the screen, and not on the table.’
Toshiko concentrated. The illustrations on the flat-screen whirled and rearranged themselves. ‘Recognise these?’
‘Hey, the gang’s all here,’ said Jack. ‘Kiroptan, Mahalta, Weevil… ooh, Hoix and Vondrax too, I see. All our boys, and some others to make up numbers.’
The image flickered back to the original display when Toshiko opened her eyes. She lowered the device to the desk. ‘Twmpath Castle is on the northern edge of Rhiwbina. Isn’t that where you said Gareth Portland lived?’
Gwen nodded. ‘Maybe Gareth has a device just like that. Used it as the basis for these cards he’s been creating?’
‘Interesting,’ said Ianto. He’d been shuffling the scattered MonstaQuest pack around on the table. Now the cards were sorted into neat piles. Typical Ianto, thought Gwen. ‘There are more Weevils in this pack than all the other creatures put together.’
Gwen had a thought: ‘Like pawns in chess?’
‘There are thousands of other creatures listed in this catalogue.’ Toshiko held up the squarish device, and its curved edges caught the light in the Boardroom. ‘A whole menagerie. We could barely cope if just one of each kind came through.’
‘An alien zoo,’ said Ianto.
‘With the gates wide open,’ snapped Jack. ‘The predators are escaping. And in Gareth’s hands, they’ve got a season ticket to Cardiff.’
Owen sounded less convinced. ‘C’mon! This is just one guy toying with us, isn’t it? We find him, give him a smack, and confiscate it. He’s stumbled on this bit of tech, found he got more than he bargained for.’
‘Could that explain all these?’ Toshiko had stood up to point at the flat-screen. It showed her original analysis of unexplained deaths across South Wales. ‘The device may bring the creatures through the Rift. But each set of MonstaQuest cards is like a tarot pack. They focus the mind of anyone near a Rift fault line who is enthusiastic, creative, or highly emotional.’
Gwen recalled the games shop owner, and how he’d unwittingly conjured up a fire creature. ‘And when it appears?’
‘The victims reinforce it,’ said Toshiko. ‘Their surprise or horror makes the manifestation corporeal. And deadly.’
‘Like those people on the bus,’ recalled Owen. He looked more worried now.
‘It can’t be just one guy.’ Jack stared at each of them in turn.
Gwen recognised it as the way he commanded their attention, got their respect. Through the urgency of his words and the fierce passion in his eyes when he looked at you, looked into you. Or, in Ianto’s case at the moment, through you. Gwen saw Jack’s gaze falter as it reached the empty suit. Was that confusion or tenderness? Maybe a bit of both.
‘Achenbrite are involved in this, too. They must be. Their operatives disrupted our comms at the mall and during the bus attack. They were on the scene at both the mall and the zoo. And it was their device that injured Ianto.’ He pushed his wheelchair back from the desk. ‘We reconvene here in half an hour. Gimme information, and gimme options.’
Jack was on crutches when they got back to the Boardroom. The metal sticks were propped against his chair. He had his damaged foot up on the desk, and was perusing it with the curiosity of a kid examining a scabby knee. Gwen winced when she saw the savage scoring in the skin of his lower leg. His foot still seemed to be attached only by chunks of raw flesh, like hammered steak.
He lifted the leg back below the desk. ‘Sorry.’
‘You must get used to it.’
‘Never do,’ he said. He tested his forehead with an exploratory finger, and checked his reflection in the shiny surface of the desk.
Across the table, Jack was ready for the meeting to start. ‘All right. Tell me about Achenbrite.’
Toshiko sat up a little straighter in her chair, if that were possible. ‘Achenbrite is a shell company that sprang into new life over the past year. Someone’s done a good job erasing records and back-ups from Companies House. I did manage to pull a few details through a back door in the Compliance Unit in Natgarw, because one of the investing companies received a late-filing penalty. Parker Plastics, registered in Plas Hendre, and owned by the late Henry John Parker. Better known to us when he was alive as an enthusiastic collector of alien ephemera.’
‘That’s telling,’ mused Jack. ‘And now?’
‘No evidence of it manufacturing anything, nor providing services. Not enough history for tracing payroll through HMRC – no VAT, nor NI, no Income or Corporation Tax. They don’t even appear in Yellow Pages.’
Jack clutched his face in mock horror.
Toshiko tapped up the details on the flat-screen. A warehouse complex rotated on the display, a three-dimensional rendering in blue wireframe. Key areas were labelled or highlighted with brighter spots in the image. A translation key filled the lower left of the screen.
‘The Achenbrite facility is a single-storey unit,’ Toshiko explained. ‘Built on a place where there was significant Rift activity in previous years.’
Ianto snorted. ‘Where isn’t, these days?’ The suit of his sleeve was reaching out to the plate of sandwiches, but Toshiko slapped his hand away.
‘Difference is, now there is nothing.’
‘That’s not very likely.’ Jack frowned at the display as though this would disprove it. ‘There’s always some Rift trace around anything in Cardiff.’
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