Another Life (11 page)

Owen abandoned ‘Penny’ back at the Lunatic Fringe, making good use of an unfortunate accident when she had fallen into a huge pile of rotting fruit that had mysteriously appeared in the street outside the barber-shop. Within seconds, Owen had vanished around the corner and lost himself amid the glittering skyscrapers of the uptown Millennium Capitol, heedless to the wails from Penny and the screeches of the pteranodons that had swooped down from nowhere to peck at her where she lay in the street like a tempting hors d’oeuvre.

More promising was Egg Magnet. In his guise as Glendower Broadsword, Owen picked him up outside the Surer Square, a tapas bar near the centre of Millennium Capitol. He decided that Egg was the most stylish person in the place, because he was dancing on the table-top, and eating fire rather than the
queso con anchoas
. This endeared him to Owen, if not to the waiters, so he intercepted Egg as he was being thrown out into the street.

They danced diagonally across the cobbled streets of the food district. Owen considered the newcomer’s brilliant white trouser suit and startlingly bright silver hair.

‘What kind of name is “Egg Magnet”?’ he asked.

‘Name of a band,’ Egg replied. ‘How about you? Did your parents read a lot of Tolkien?’

Owen considered his Glendower Broadsword outfit. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit New Zealand. But I never got further than dressing like this. It’s a hobbit I find hard to break.’

Egg Magnet pulled a face. Literally. He seized hold of his cheeks and stretched them like putty into an exaggerated expression of dismay.

‘Sorry,’ grinned Owen. He reached over and smoothed out Egg’s distorted features with soft pressure on the skin. Left his hands in position, gently holding the other man’s cheeks and considering the possibilities. He’d experimented with
Second Reality
sex sessions in the past, though that was just getting other characters on the screen to snog and shag. He wondered what the possibilities were with his sight and hearing totally immersed in the game like this. Or with the tangible feedback from the sensors in the data-gloves. A recent copy of
The Lancet
had included a joke article about cybersex, and involved some equipment described as ‘technodildonics’. He doubted Toshiko would think that was research worth pursuing for Torchwood. Though he imagined he’d have enjoyed describing the hardware interface to her.

‘Do you want to get a drink somewhere?’ he asked Egg. ‘Or do you prefer to curl up with a nice cup of tea?’

Egg gently pulled his face away from Owen, chuckling. The movement scattered his silver hair around his shoulders. ‘I had a boyfriend who always said that. I’d tell him, “No, I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a really
average
cup of tea, thanks. Unless you can do me a crappy cup of tea.” I do love a crappy cup of tea, don’t you?’

Owen laughed too. It was something he’d said himself in the past.

Egg danced off across the street and up a connecting flight of steps to a raised area of shops and restaurants. He peered over his shoulder, checking that Owen wasn’t left behind. Owen chased up the steps after Egg, taking two or three at a time to catch up.

‘You have a lovely laugh,’ Owen told him. ‘What else did your boyfriend say that made you laugh like that?’

Egg sat on a low wall outside a restaurant, and patted it to indicate Owen should join him. ‘Like you, he said he wanted to travel. But he’d never go to the North Pacific, because he didn’t trust Hawaiians…’

Owen broke in, laughing again: ‘…because the “i”s are too close together!’ He looked at Egg thoughtfully for a moment. There was something very familiar about him. Owen closed his eyes and listened to Egg talk, trying to concentrate on the words and not his appearance.

‘When we met outside the Surer Square, I thought that you’d be S.I.T.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Owen, knowing already.

‘Safe in taxis,’ Egg said. He indicated Owen’s clothing. ‘The whole medieval thing going on here, I didn’t think you were looking to pick anyone up. And then I started to think you might be a gay man. Dressed up like that, with the false-looking boobs and everything. Not that that’s a problem,’ Egg added hurriedly. There was a pause which felt like he was pondering this. ‘Though I did meet one strange woman earlier who kept asking me to open hailing frequencies. Do you think that’s some sort of code?’

‘Don’t even go there,’ said Owen. He had taken the Mage’s sunglasses out of his pocket, and put them on to look at Egg.

Egg chose exactly the same moment to leap abruptly to his feet. He stared at his watch. ‘Oh God, no! My shift’s due to start. Sorry, gotta go.’ He offered Owen a theatrical shrug. ‘Laters, mate.’ And with this, he twisted on the spot and spiralled out of existence.

Owen stared at the empty space where Egg had been. Only it wasn’t Egg, he now knew. The sunglasses had confirmed his growing suspicion. The text floating in the air around the avatar’s head had revealed him to be
[email protected]
, connected to
Second Reality
with an IP address in Cardiff.

The name should have given it away earlier, even before the coincidences of what had been said. Egg Magnet. Megan Tegg.

She was the girlfriend he’d walked out on in London six years ago. What was Dr Megan Tegg doing in Cardiff?

ELEVEN

Someone was shaking him, pushing on his shoulder. The instinct was to lash out with his elbow. He resisted that temptation while he tried to orient himself.

Owen was still wearing the helmet-mounted display, and his head rested on the keyboard of his work station. When he lifted his head, the image displayed by the helmet didn’t change: it was the two-dimensional screensaver, which told him in stark digital numbers that the time was 05.58.

Oh shit. He’d dozed off while playing
Second Reality
. After a period of inaction, the game had obviously disconnected him and then his computer screensaver had kicked in on timer.

He struggled out of the helmet. The same screensaver on his desktop computer screen clicked over to 05.59. The rest of the room was in shadows, the main lights not lit and most of the other terminal screens still switched off.

When Owen’s eyes adjusted to the contrast, he realised it was Ianto who’d woken him by pushing his shoulder. It wasn’t like him to touch Owen, to touch any of them really. The lad could throw the Torchwood SUV into a hairpin turn, knock a Weevil down with a well-placed blow, and run a hundred metres like Christian Malcolm. But he wasn’t the sort to put a comforting arm around someone or punch them playfully on the arm, and he’d die rather than hug you. Ianto never gave a second look to Gwen or Toshiko. And Jack was always hitting on him, so he was probably gay, hiding in the closet with the lights off and hoping no one could hear him breathing.

Ianto looked at Owen sheepishly. ‘I didn’t think anyone was in this early. I thought I’d better wake you before…’ He trailed off and looked over his shoulder. From elsewhere, in the R&R area, came the distinctive sound of Jack whooping with delight to the sound-effect noises of a handgun.

‘Yeah, right. Sorry,’ Owen muttered.

Ianto gave him his serious look. ‘You don’t want to get addicted to this, do you?’

‘Don’t you start,’ mumbled Owen. ‘You’re as bad as Tosh. No, I was… um… testing some new software for her.’

‘I understand,’ Ianto nodded solemnly. ‘Are those breasts part of the test, then?’

Owen looked down at his hands. Instead of seeing the blue data-gloves, he could see Glendower Broadsword’s deerskin gloves.
Second Reality
had logged him out, but Toshiko’s 3-D rendering software and projectors were still active. And so Owen still sported a magnificent pair of tits. Ianto’s smile looked like it might split his face in half.

‘All right, yeah,’ Owen warned. Ianto had obviously rumbled that he’d not been working hard all night. Perhaps he could brazen his way out of this. ‘So what? I met someone online who was interested in cybersex.’

Ianto’s smile evaporated in an instant, and a fleeting look of panic flashed over his features. This was a more extreme reaction than Owen had anticipated, but it was pleasing nonetheless to wipe that smirk off his face. Perhaps Ianto was more prudish than he thought. One of those valley boy Welsh Presbyterians, no doubt. Chapel every Sunday. They wouldn’t like him being gay, would they? Churchgoer… yeah, that would explain why he was wearing his smart suit at this time on a Sunday, at the crack of dawn. ‘What are you doing here so early, Ianto?’

Ianto looked shifty. ‘I might ask you the same thing, Dr Harper.’ There was another big whoop from the R&R area that suggested Jack had reached another level. ‘But perhaps I won’t.’

With a swipe of his hand, Owen disconnected Toshiko’s equipment. Glendower’s costume dissolved into the ether around him. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.’ He gestured towards Jack. ‘Has he been here all night?’

‘No,’ replied Ianto. ‘He got back about thirty minutes ago.’

Owen nodded and moved off.

In the R&R area, he found Jack was enthusiastically engaged in a shooting game. It had amused him some months previously to install
Zombie Death
alongside the other twenty-year-old arcade titles like
Asteroids
and a pinball machine themed around
Bat Out Of Hell
.

‘Jack!’ Owen adopted a tone of breezy familiarity. Better to try and blag it at this stage. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘I’m wiping you off the scoreboard buddy,’ Jack replied. ‘All those high scores you had? Not any more!’ He hefted a plastic gun, designed like an old-style revolver and attached by a stout cable to the base of the arcade game. On the display screen, a phalanx of the slavering undead menaced a cowering crowd of hospital patients and nurses. ‘Tosh told me about her 3D game technology. But you know, I’m kinda traditional about these things. Prefer the classic look. Retro.’

You’re telling me, thought Owen as he studied Jack’s collarless shirt and braces.

‘I thought I’d try it left-handed today,’ continued Jack nonchalantly, ‘to give you a chance.’ He loosed off a brisk string of shots. The machine pinged in approval as the zombies exploded into dusty pixels on the screen. Jack gave another great whoop of celebration. ‘Oh yeah! See that?’ He pulled Owen closer to the machine and tapped the screen with his finger. ‘That means I get an extra life. But…’ He affected to look forlorn. ‘… I can’t stay here all day. OK, you take it from here.’ He tossed the gun in a short arc through the air so that Owen could catch it. Owen decided he wasn’t going to be fazed by this challenge, and took up position in front of
Zombie Death
.

Jack stopped at the door on his way out, and considered Owen’s posture. ‘Have you done something to your tits?’

Owen couldn’t stop himself touching his chest self-consciously. ‘No. I switched the game off.’

‘Well, you gotta start working harder on those pecs, buddy. I can recommend a good gym. Is the Wildman autopsy done?’

Owen tried not to let his ‘Oh, shit!’ feeling show on his face. He still had to complete that, because he’d got sidetracked by
Second Reality
. ‘Sure, I’ll finish up shortly,’ he lied. While Owen was looking at Jack, in the
Zombie Death
game his character was dragged to the ground by the attacking monsters and devoured.

Jack laughed. ‘Bring the results to the Boardroom in an hour.’ He turned his back on Owen as he left the area. ‘Or sooner if you run out of lives.’

The walk in from Riverside normally took less than half an hour. But today, there were repeated delays. The night-time thunderstorm had not eased off so, after kissing Rhys goodbye over his cornflakes, Gwen grabbed a taxi outside their flat in the hope of staying dry. A two-mile walk turned into a five-mile drive, but she was held up as even the normally light Sunday morning traffic ground to a halt along the drenched Penarth Road. Finally, she stood for a few moments on the paving stone by the stainless-steel water tower, waiting to descend into the Hub. Through the rain, she studied the armadillo shape of the Millennium Centre. ‘
Creu Gwir fel gwydr offwrnais awen
,’ the text read. ‘Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration.’ It always amused her to read these words while she was concealed in the deceptive invisibility of the paving stone that led into the even more secret underground facility of the Torchwood Hub.

Jack waved away her apologies for lateness as she entered the Boardroom, and then indicated her seat. Toshiko returned to studying her laptop, where she was making notes in one window, studying some calculations in another, and displaying live video feeds in two more.

Owen stared at Gwen from where he stood at the plasma screen, bristling with ill-concealed irritation at having his presentation interrupted.

‘Death rejoices,’ Jack said. ‘Why was he so happy about it?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Gwen said.

‘It’s what you see in some mortuaries,’ Owen told her. ‘
Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae
.’ The Latin words sounded strange in his London accent. ‘It means “This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live.” You know, to cheer them up that they’re cutting into dead people.’