The Undertakers Gift (12 page)

And so sometimes she really had to concentrate, just to get the normal things done: shopping, meals, laundry, birthdays. Rhys was good but he had a job of his own and, at the end of a day, he was just a man. And men were useless at the routine, day-to-day domestic stuff. Unless they were Ianto.

Inevitably, her thoughts would always turn back to Torchwood matters. She was worried about Jack. Jack was taking too much on his shoulders. He wanted to protect everybody and the responsibility was overwhelming him.

She was worried about Ianto as well. He looked drawn and ill. Usually he was the very picture of health, but ever since the Hokrala situation had blown up he seemed drained and pale. But the workload
had
been intense in the last few months – there was too much for just the three of them to do, and Ianto worked so hard ‘behind the scenes’, as Jack liked to put it, to keep the Hub and Torchwood running as smoothly as possible.

Gwen pulled the Peugeot over to the kerb and parked near some railings. She was in the vicinity of the Black House. She zipped her jacket up as she got out of the car. The sky was cold and grey and it looked like more rain was on its way. The clouds hung over the city like a threat.

It was a strangely quiet and deserted area. There was an atmosphere: oppressive, dismal, unsettling. Gwen shivered. It was lonely here. There was an absence in the air that was almost tangible, as if Gwen could reach out and grab a handful of nothing, and feel its cold, unforgiving emptiness.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she headed towards the Black House.

TWENTY-THREE

Ianto pointed the handheld PDA scanner at Zero and checked the reading.

‘Still nothing.’

Jack bared his teeth in frustration. He was leaning against the cell door, arms folded. ‘I just don’t get it.’

‘The signal’s definitely coming from here,’ Ianto insisted. ‘From him.’

The amorphous orange creature sat impassively on the bench, where it had remained ever since its arrival. It seemed to glow with a faint, inner luminescence, casting a strange marmalade light around the interior of the cell. Bubbles oozed lazily through the jelly as Ianto tried another scan and Jack glared at it.

Ianto shook his head in confusion, his face bathed in the vibrant blue light of the scanner. ‘I’m relaying the readings from the Rift monitors through the PDA. They definitely register activity in the chronon range. There’s some kind of time displacement – or at least distortion – around the creature. It’s tiny, minute even, but it’s absolutely there. And it’s regular, sequential. . . definitely a signal. It’s got a rhythm.’

‘The blues,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘That’s what it’s got.’

Ianto looked at him. ‘As in Rhythm and Blues? As in R ’n’ B?’

‘It’s more than a signal, Ianto. It’s a cry for help.’

Ianto looked back at Zero, who simply sat there, unmoving.

‘Help from us?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jack moved to the window, squatting down so that his eyes were roughly level with the creature’s head. ‘That’s no bomb. It’s alien, it’s lost, it’s a long, long way from home. It’s come through the Rift and it can’t even communicate with us. It can’t even touch us.’

‘It packs a 50,000-volt charge. It’s probably scared to touch
itself
.’

‘No, no, listen.’ Jack stood up, his eyes and intense blue. ‘What if it’s keeping still as some kind of defence? Like a lizard when it thinks it’s been seen – it freezes, still as a statue. Hopes the prey doesn’t notice it and walks on by.’

Ianto looked sceptical. ‘It’s sitting there in Cell One thinking, “If I keep still and don’t move a muscle, they’ll never know I’m here”?’ Meaning that it’s not a bomb, just alien, lost and incredibly stupid?’

‘I don’t know. We may never know. Some things in the universe are just unknowable, Ianto. But ten gets you one that poor creature is scared half to death and just hoping to God that it can somehow get back home.’

Ianto looked sadly at Zero. ‘It’s going to be disappointed.’

‘It’s crying out for help – in a way we can’t even understand, let alone hear. It’s not ultrasonic, or telepathic, or anything we can register. But it’s screaming, Ianto, and the Rift sensors are picking it up.’ Jack gently spread his fingertips on the glass partition. ‘And check it out now. Does it look different to you, since we brought it in?’

‘Not really – it hasn’t budged an inch. Well. . .’ Ianto squinted at it, scratched his head, puffed out his cheeks. ‘All right, maybe, just maybe, it’s a bit thinner. Like it’s lost weight.’

‘Like it’s looking more human,’ Jack nodded. ‘When we found it, Zero was just a big blob of orange jello. By the time we got it back to the Hub, it looked like a rough approximation of a human – blobby, but bipedal. And look at it now – just a bit more human, wouldn’t you say? The limbs are more defined, the head smaller.’

‘It’s trying to make itself look like us,’ Ianto realised in a whisper. ‘Gradually changing shape and structure to resemble a human being.’

‘Camouflage. Trying to blend in. Another defensive measure? OK, it’s not very convincing – it still looks like it’s made from half a tonne of marmalade, but it’s
trying
. It can’t hope to copy us exactly because it’s never encountered human beings before. . . But it can’t help trying.’

And now when Ianto looked at Zero he saw something incredibly sad and pathetic – unknowable, but more lost and more forlorn than anything he had ever known before. And the little, oscillating zigzag on his PDA screen was a silent, sub-etheric wail of despair.

‘What can we do?’ he asked quietly, stepping closer to Jack.

Jack put his arm around Ianto’s shoulders, pulling him closer. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

And then the intruder alarms started clanging.

TWENTY-FOUR

The klaxons were still howling and warning lights strobed wildly as Jack and Ianto sprinted into the Hub.

‘What the hell—’ began Jack.

The alarm continued to whoop as Ianto shouted, ‘The defence systems have detected an incoming matter transmission!’

In the centre of the Hub, something was materialising.

‘Assassin!’ realised Jack, already pulling his gun from its holster.

The fizz of energy coalesced into a man standing by the base of the water tower. He was tall and thin and dark and already turning to face them as Jack pulled the trigger on the Webley. The noise of the gunshot crashed around the Hub, and for a second everything seemed to freeze.

Ianto crouched, fumbling for his gun, a look of horror and fear on his ashen face.

Jack stood tall, erect, arm extended like a signpost to death. The revolver was held firmly in one hand, level with his eyes, which shone with a steely purpose through the smoke that swirled around his fist.

The man by the water tower threw his head back and his arms out wide. The .38 had entered his chest, upper left, a heart shot. The bullet, travelling at over 225 metres per second and spinning like a drill bit, splintered a rib and punched a large hole right through the right ventricle. The metal tore open arteries, shredded veins and ripped a chunk out of the lung, before exiting between the man’s shoulders in a dark splatter. He teetered for a moment and then fell backwards with a startled choke as the blood surged up his windpipe and out of his mouth.

He hit the metal floor with a heavy clatter and time began to flow once more.

Ianto ran over, automatic now drawn and aimed at the intruder in a two-handed grip, ready to deliver a kill shot to the head if necessary.

But Jack had skidded to a halt by the fallen man and now he fell to his knees with a gasp of despair. The man’s features were alien – white-faced, narrow-eyed, with a dark mouth. Green, inky blood dripped onto the floor and a top hat lay discarded nearby, dropped the moment he had been shot.

‘I don’t believe it,’ groaned Jack, looking up at Ianto. ‘I’ve just shot Harold!’

TWENTY-FIVE

‘She’s still not answering her phone,’ said Ray. ‘It’s not like her. I’m starting to get worried.’

‘Chill,’ said Wynnie. ‘She’s probably just dropped it somewhere. You know what she’s like.’

His words hung in the air for a moment, and Ray tried to think it through. Nothing about this made sense. But nothing about anything in her life seemed to make sense now.

‘Hey,’ she heard Wynnie say. And then his hand was on her shoulder, warm even through her jacket. ‘You OK?’

Ray wiped furiously at her eyes and sniffed. ‘You must think I’m such a fool.’

‘No, I don’t. If you like we could go back, take another look.’

She blinked at him. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Truthfully? No.’ Wynnie heaved a sigh. ‘I haven’t been so scared since Mr Daniels caught me hanging around the girls’ hockey changing rooms in Year 9. But. . . if it’ll make you feel better, we’ll go back.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on, let’s go. We know what to expect this time.’

Ray stood up and looked closely at him. His eyes were so pale and so honest. She couldn’t imagine him ever lying to anyone. ‘Wynnie. . .’

He raised his eyebrows in that funny way of his.

‘I just want you to know. . .’

They rose a little more.

‘I. . . I’m. . . I’m
really
glad you’re here with me.’

‘That’s good. Cos I’m really glad I’m here with you too.’

There was a pause and neither of them seemed to know what to say next.

‘Come on,’ said Wynnie eventually. Still holding her hand, he led her back towards the Black House.

TWENTY-SIX

‘Harold?’ said Ianto.

Jack helped the fallen man into a sitting position, but it was obvious that he was beyond help. Fresh green blood was running out of his mouth. Jack had produced a clean white handkerchief and jammed it against the bubbling wound in his chest, but the material was quickly soaked through.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack whispered. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know—’

Harold licked his lips but only managed the faintest of croaks.

‘I thought you were an assassin,’ Jack insisted. ‘We were expecting a gunman.’

Harold swallowed the blood in his throat and tried to speak again. ‘Came. . . here. . . to help. . .’

Jack held him close. ‘You said someone would come – a killer.’

‘Not me, you fool.’ Harold’s eyes flickered and the vertical pupils narrowed to tiny slits in the amber irises.

‘Check the Hub security sensors,’ Jack instructed Ianto. ‘We’re still on red alert. If Harold teleported in then someone else could too. They might have already snuck in on his transmat signal.’

Ianto nodded and withdrew. Jack turned back to Harold, who was fading fast. His eyes fluttered closed and his breathing had become irregular and extremely shallow. Jack could feel the alien’s cold green blood seeping through his own shirt.

‘No chance. . . of survival. . .’ Harold whispered.

‘You’ll be OK,’ Jack insisted. ‘We’ll fix you up. . .’

‘Under. . .taker’s. . .Gift. . .’ Harold’s voice had dropped to nothing more than a breath – perhaps his last.

Startled, Jack pulled him closer, dipped his ear towards the blood-smeared lips. ‘What? What do you know about the Undertaker’s Gift?’

Long seconds passed while Harold summoned his last moments of life. ‘Hokrala. . . don’t understand. . . what they’ve set in motion. . .’

‘What?’ Jack demanded. ‘What have they set in motion?’

‘The end of everything. . . a world of suffering.’ Harold coughed weakly, wetly, and a violent convulsion ran through his body. Jack tightened his grip as the alien’s legs began to flail. His last seconds would see his nervous system overwhelmed with the pain of death.

But then the alien’s hand suddenly grasped Jack’s sleeve and pulled him closer, allowing him to breathe his final words:

‘Already dead. . .’

‘No you’re not, Harold. Stay with me. We can get help. . .’

‘Already dead. . . are here. . .’

All movement left Harold’s body then, and he became nothing more than meat and bone. Jack lowered him gently to the floor and then sat back thoughtfully. He felt as if a vast, crushing weight had sudden come to rest on his shoulders.

‘We’re secure,’ Ianto said, returning. ‘I’ve reset the alarms.’ He paused, seeing Jack bent over the body. ‘Jack? Are you all right?’

‘He’s gone.’ Jack climbed to his feet and took a deep breath.

Ianto pulled his gaze away from the corpse and looked at Jack. ‘Were you close?’

‘Not really. But I never wanted to
shoot
the guy.’

‘That’s really. . .’ Ianto struggled for something to say and finished with ‘. . .  bad luck.’

‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Jack frowned then, noticing something on the floor. It was a small plastic box about the size of a paperback book, lying near to Harold’s outstretched hand.

Ianto picked it up, puzzled. ‘It’s a video cassette.’