She watched him see the Serial G. It took a stride towards him. Pieces of burning mulch were still fluttering down to the ground in the rain.
James turned to run.
The Serial G snapped out its left arm in another lashing, hyper-extension. It failed to grab James cleanly, but the steel hooks crashed into his shoulder and the side of his head like a punch, and spun him wildly around, his skull smacked around to the left. He fell hard and crooked.
The limb retracted as rapidly as it had extended.
The Serial G took two more long steps forward through the rain and tilted its head down-
— and rocked backwards suddenly. It rocked again, arms swinging, its legs forced back several steps, as if it was suddenly trying to walk head-on into a force seventeen wind.
It shuddered as though it had been struck. It recoiled another step.
There was a dull yellow pulse where its eyes should have been.
A flash and a thunderclap of splitting air followed as the blast cone detonated less than two metres in front of it. The beam of energy simply splashed apart as if encountering some barrier in mid air directly ahead. The backwash of the blast caused the Serial G to sway on its heels yet again.
From her vantage point behind the eggshell-blue potting shed, Toshiko stared in wonder and fear, not really understanding what she was seeing. She wiped rain out of her eyes.
‘It doesn’t like that,’ said Davey quietly. ‘Oh, it doesn’t like that at all.’
‘What?’ she asked distractedly, unable to tear her gaze away.
The space where the Serial G’s eyes should have been glowed dull yellow again, and again, and then again. Three blasts in quick succession. Each one detonated in turn right in front of it. The pressure crack of tortured air was so fierce, Toshiko had to clap her hands over her ears. She felt each quake of discharge in her diaphragm.
For a nanosecond, as the third pulse went off, she thought she glimpsed something haloed in the glare, a moving shape much smaller than the Serial G, illuminated for a moment in the light storm breaking around it.
‘What the hell is that?’ she whispered.
‘Tough little devil, isn’t he?’ asked Davey.
‘Who? Davey, what are you talking about?’
Davey got up and pointed. He pointed very specifically at nothing at all in front of the Serial G.
Jack rose to his feet, clutching his injured arm. It throbbed wickedly, but he barely noticed. His entire attention was on the Serial G and what the Serial G was doing.
Out there in the rain, it appeared to have gone mad, or at least a good deal madder than the Melkene had made it. It was thrashing its arms, stumbling back pace after pace, as if it was experiencing a fit or-
A dent, a clear, solid dent, suddenly appeared in its chest plating. The Serial G shuddered and swung its right arm like a wrecking ball. The arm came to a violent dead stop in mid air, as if blocked, as if held in place. Indentations began to appear in the smooth, oiled alloy of its broom-stick forearm. The steel hooks of its hand opened and closed spasmodically, chewing the air.
The arm was suddenly free again. It sailed back, straightening and righting.
‘Oh my God…’ Jack gasped as he began to realise what he had to be witnessing.
‘Jack?’
He turned. Gwen had crept up behind him, hunched low. Her eyes were wide.
‘Not a good place to be,’ Jack said.
‘I did all I could in the street. I could hear these noises. I couldn’t just stay put-’
She paused. ‘What the bloody hell is that?’
There was another thunderclap burst of phasic discharge. Gwen jumped.
‘Get down,’ Jack said, pulling her towards an old tin bath serving as a water butt. Rainfall speckled the surface of the bath’s contents. ‘The technical name for it is very bad news. It’s real nasty. A twenty-seven. Scratch that, it’s a one hundred and twenty-seven. It’s way out of Torchwood’s class. We’re just bystanders.’
‘Christ…’
‘But look at it, Gwen. Look at it and tell me what you think it’s doing.’
‘Scaring the crap out of me is what.’
‘No, look at it! What does it look like it’s doing?’
‘It’s fighting,’ whispered Toshiko. ‘It’s fighting something we can’t see.’
‘Speak for yourself, Miss,’ said Davey. ‘Oh, it doesn’t like it. Not at all.’
‘Mr Morgan? Davey? Please tell me right now what you think you can see.’
‘That bloke, of course. That bloke there in grey, giving it what for.’
James woke up. Pain flared through his shoulder and neck and jaw. His mouth was full of blood. He stirred. He was vaguely aware of a huge din close by, metal on metal, whoops of superheated air. The ground shook. Rain soaked him.
‘What?’ he murmured. He raised his head slightly and blood ran down his chin from his mouth, and down his upper lip from his nose. He couldn’t focus properly.
The voice was gentle, and oddly unaccented. It lacked even the slightest trace of region or background.
James blinked and shook his head. He felt the downpour on his scalp. He knew he was hurt, quite badly hurt. His vision cleared slightly.
He saw the Serial G.
It was facing him, less than twenty yards away. It was behaving oddly, swinging its arms, its legs braced. It was the most active and mobile James had seen it, almost urgent.
He got up very shakily, soaked to the skin. He’d lost a shoe somewhere, and his shirt was ripped. There was blood down the front of it. His own blood.
He started to move. He broke into a limping run, hobbling up towards the northern limits of the allotments, away from the Serial G. The allotments ended in a bank of thick bushes, then a wall, behind which were the backs of houses. If he could get as far as the wall…
He fell twice. He felt stricken and woozy. He spat out more blood and part of a tooth and ran on.
‘James!’ Gwen cried. ‘It’s James!’
‘Get down!’ Jack bellowed, and jerked her back into cover.
‘He’s hurt!’
‘Yeah, I think he is. But he’s running clear, look. He’ll be OK.’
Gwen fought at Jack to get up.
‘Stop it!’ he snapped. ‘James will not thank me if I let you get smoked by that thing.’
Gwen gave in and slumped down beside Jack. She watched James’s distant, staggering form until it disappeared behind a thicket of untended elder.
‘You really think that robot thing is fighting something?’ she asked, wiping rain off the end of her nose.
‘You got a better explanation for its behaviour?’ Jack asked.
The Serial G swung its right manipulator limb at him. It was impressively fast, and agile for a construct. By comparison, the raindrops in the air were frozen and static.
Mr Dine was impressed. It had hurt him already. Tech level forty-one-plus. Cold-cast vitalium/terybdonum composite alloy chassis. Hazard (type 1) grade physical assault, hazard (type 1) phasic weapon array. Hyper- aggressive intercourse.
His shield barriers, both standard and custom, were taking a pounding. The phasic weapon had a bite to it, although it seemed to need a ten-second lag to cycle up and recharge for shooting during sustained discharge. Mr Dine had speed on his side.
He ducked the sweeping limb, and hit the Serial G with another kinetic ram, his palm extended. The construct staggered backwards, and blitzed Mr Dine’s shield barriers with a phasic burn at ninety per cent of power capacity.
Mr Dine leapt backwards, lifted slightly by the resounding impact. Coiling, he threw himself forward again under the grasping, groping claws of the manipulator limbs, and closed for contact.
