‘Owen.’
‘Get lost!’
Owen’s fingers were racing across the keyboard. Inhibitor codes were flashing up, and were being cancelled, one by one.
‘Listen,’ Ianto said. ‘Jack told me this thing had to be locked away. Vaulted. In an isoclave.’
Owen kept typing code. ‘Jack doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘Owen-’ Ianto warned. He looked at the screen beside him. He saw the firewalls closing down, one after another.
‘Coffee please,’ Owen said, working furiously. ‘Coffee. Please. Now coffee. Make it a big one. Big big one.’
Owen reached over to press a key. His hand stopped dead. Ianto had grabbed it, holding it back.
‘Coffee!’ Owen cried, and slapped Ianto in the face with his other hand.
Ianto reeled, but recovered. He looked mortified. Without further words, he slugged Owen. Owen fell backwards off his seat onto the deck, dragging Ianto down with him.
Owen shook and went still. Ianto scrambled up. He saw the screens. He saw the last of the firewalls collapse.
Suspended in a cold blue glow, the Amok trembled and rotated.
Ianto punched blindly at various keys. It was too late.
He sank back, gazing at the wobbling light.
‘You’re big,’ he said. ‘Big
THIRTEEN
James had used his spare key to open the SUV. He lugged a portable scanner system and some other bits of kit into the empty warehouse space that was not as empty as it looked. He started to unpack the anonymous, brushed-steel flight cases.
Gwen completed a third circuit of the shed. She tried her phone again. Jack had been cut off mid conversation by a squall of interference, and there had been nothing from him since.
She dialled a different number instead. ‘Ianto? It’s Gwen. Why aren’t you picking up? Ianto, it’s urgent. Call me or James as soon as you get this.’
She walked back over to James.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she said.
‘I thought we’d pretty well established that.’
‘No, more wrong than just this. Something’s going on at the Hub.’
‘Ianto still not answering?’
She shook her head.
‘We’re not having much in the way of telephonic success today, are we?’ he observed.
She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed. ‘Can’t believe I’ve got that headache again, on top of everything else.’
‘You too?’ James stood up. ‘I’ve had a killer head for about the last five minutes. Came on like a switch.’
‘Just like Thursday’s?’
‘Just like Thursday’s. You don’t suppose there’s another one of those things around, do you?’
Gwen didn’t answer. A breeze hustled litter across the ground. The muted sensation of haunting that had clung around the site earlier had been replaced by a palpable feeling of malice.
‘Can you even begin to explain what’s going on here?’ she asked James.
He was still setting up the system, snap-extending the aluminium legs of the folding stands that the sensors clipped to. There were six altogether, and he was arranging them in a wide ring around the centre of the warehouse. ‘Some kind of Rift phenomenon?’ he suggested. ‘A crack, a fold, an overlap? A spatio-temporal slip? A cleft? Dimensional transcendence? A chronal bifurcation with-’
‘Whoa. You’re just saying long words now, aren’t you?’
‘Yes I am. Actually, I’m trying to reassure you. I thought if one of us sounded like they were in charge…’
‘Oh, I’m in charge,’ said Gwen fiercely. ‘I’m in charge, me, so very in charge. Look at me, being in charge. Come on, boy! Get those scanners set up! Pronto!’
He grinned. ‘Yes, boss. You could help.’
‘I’m in charge,’ she replied. She stared at their surroundings. The sky visible through the incomplete roof was an ugly shade of white, bruised with grey clouds. ‘This place has got a really nasty feeling about it, hasn’t it?’
‘Yup. Getting nastier by the minute. Oppressive. Very much like my headache.’
‘What do you really think is going on? And skip all that bifurcatory hooey this time.’
James fitted the last sensor in place on top of its tripod. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have a hunch Jack and Tosh have stepped on an insanely malignant cold-spot and been drawn away from us against their will by the unliving appetite of some spectral entity.’
Gwen thought about that. ‘Pooh,’ she decided. ‘That’s cobblers.’
‘Of course,’ said James. ‘Being positive didn’t work, so I was shooting for negative reinforcement.’
‘You’re a nutjob, is what you are.’
James knelt down by the scanner system’s master unit and pressed some switches. A vague filigree of green light spread out from the tripod-mounted sensors: thin rays they could barely see in the daylight criss-crossed and overlapped like a spirograph pattern.
‘Actually,’ James said, ‘I was only half-kidding. I don’t believe in ghosts. “Ghost” is a word people use to explain things that Torchwood can provide much better, scientific explanations for. But in this instance…’
Gwen narrowed her eyes. ‘Stop it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Saw a ghost once…’
He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
Gwen got back to business. ‘Getting anything?’
James fiddled with the master control, adjusting wavelengths. ‘Umm… no.’
Gwen’s phone rang. She snatched it out.
‘Hello?’
She heard silence at the other end. Then, the very faintest murmur of something.
‘Hello? Jack?’
The call ended. The phone immediately rang again.
‘Hello?’
‘Gwen?’ It was Jack. His voice sounded thin and very, very far away. Thin, rushing sounds came and went, like gusts of wind. ‘I’ve been trying to get through for ages. Gwen?’
‘I’m here. Are you all right?’
‘I can barely hear you, Gwen. My phone’s on low battery. Can you hear me?’
‘Just.’
‘It’s getting dark, Gwen. Really dark. Nightfall. We’ve gone inside the chapel. Tosh says she can hear noises outside, but I don’t hear anything. She’s telling me she can. Something walking around. Footsteps.’
Static.
‘Jack?’
‘Gwen? Gwen, how are things your end?’
‘We’re… we’re trying to find you, Jack. Hold on.’
‘Battery’s low, Gwen. I-’
Dead.
Gwen looked anxiously at James. He returned her look with one of slight exasperation. ‘I can’t get the system to align properly,’ he said, getting up and walking around the ring of tripods, adjusting each unit in turn. ‘I’m just getting feedback. Interference patterns.’
‘Listen,’ he added, ‘I’m sorry about the roast thing. I didn’t mean to Wooof you out.’
‘What roast thing?’
