Mr Dine rolled over and got up. Black fluid spattered the quarry tile-effect vinyl flooring. He made a tactical assessment, scanning.
James got up and started to run again. There was an archway between houses, a walk-through, to his left. He darted down it, heading for the street.
The Serial G followed him.
Mr Dine read, quite clearly, that the construct was moving laterally to his left flank, ten yards away.
He turned, raised his arms in a protective cross in front of his face, and started to run. He exploded through the glass-panelled kitchen door, sprinted along the beige carpet of the hall and punched the front door clean out of its frame as he powered through it. He cleared the front garden wall, and landed on all fours like a cat on the roof of a parked car. The car’s alarm began to peal as his impact dented the roof.
The local police had emptied the street about fifteen minutes earlier. At the far end, locals residents and policemen turned at the tape line when they heard the impacts and the alarm. They stared, mystified, down the street, through the rain.
James ran out of the walk-through into the road, soaked. He fell down and rolled in the puddles. The cloud cover was low and dark. Some of the street-lamps had come on.
Rainwater dripping off it, the Serial G strode out into the street behind him. It had retracted its legs considerably to duck under the walk-through. Now its legs extended again. It rose up, fourteen feet tall, its arms stretching out in proportion to its lower limbs.
Crouched and tensed on the roof of the car, Mr Dine waited for a second. Rainwater streaked down his grey, thorny body, diluting the inky black streaming from his side.
He took a breath.
He jumped.
The car he’d been crouching on bounced up and down on its shocks as he left it. He slammed into the construct and brought it over.
The huge metal figure toppled sideways under the force of the intercept, and demolished the ground-floor wall of a neighbouring house.
The impact threw Mr Dine clear. He rolled, and landed on his feet on a leatherette sofa. Unseated by the collapsing wall, a large television toppled off its stand in a flurry of sparks. A cracked aquarium began to gush its contents out onto the carpet. Dying, fragile, multicoloured fish flopped and wriggled as they were evacuated out onto the sopping pile.
In the street, James got up, leaning for support against a parked car, hearing the parping alarm of another car nearby.
The Serial G struggled and attempted to right itself.
‘No. Not this time,’ said Mr Dine. He leapt off the sofa and came down on top of it, a blade fist extended.
The tips of his reinforced fingers punched into the construct’s chest and the alloy shattered like pie-crust. Mr Dine reached into the glowing interior, grabbed the construct’s pumping, sentient CPU, and ripped it out.
The Serial G went into flatline arrest. The tiny reactor that powered it began to spin out wildly and overheat as system death overtook it.
Realising what was about to occur, Mr Dine turned to run.
The reactor superheated and winked out of existence. The Serial G exploded with it. So did the house, and the houses either side. Mr Dine was hurled like a limp rag across the street by the bow-wave of the detonation. At the end of the street, residents and police officers alike were knocked flat.
Jack and Gwen ran out into the street.
Pieces of up-flung debris were still coming down to rest. A gap where three houses had once stood blazed in the middle of the terrace row, churning thick, soot-black smoke into the sky. At the end of the street, people were shouting and screaming. Burning wreckage littered the road, sizzling in the rain. Everything was lit by the combusting ruins of the houses.
Jack lowered his revolver.
‘Shit,’ he said.
Gwen saw James, curled up in the middle of the road. She ran to him.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she sobbed, cradling him. Blood ran out of his slack mouth.
Jack walked across the street. Something with a vaguely human shape had landed on the roof of a parked Vauxhall Astra. The roof was crumpled and the windows burst out.
‘I want to help you,’ said Jack. ‘Can I help you?’
Mr Dine slowly raised his head. He heard the voice.
‘Please,’ said Jack.
Mr Dine sat up. His investment was ebbing away. He was starting to crash, and the crash would be a bad one. He had been seriously damaged.
He rose and slid down off the buckled car roof. On his feet, he rose and looked at Jack Harkness.
‘Please,’ Jack said. ‘I can help you.’
He held out his hand in the rain.
Mr Dine ignored it.
‘Please,’ Jack repeated.
Mr Dine turned and began to walk away. The damage overwhelmed him for a second, and he staggered, falling against the car. Jack shot out his hands to support him.
Mr Dine looked at Jack.
‘Contact is not permitted,’ he said. ‘Contact is not… advisable.’
‘I’m a broad-minded soul,’ replied Jack.
‘Contact is not permitted,’ Mr Dine repeated. Then he was gone.
Jack Harkness was left looking at the inky black stains on his hands that the steady rain was already washing away.
In the allotments, Toshiko was slowly leading Davey Morgan back down towards the path. A cat mewed quietly and Davey scooped it up.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You must be starving.’
Then, a moment before the blast lit up the row of houses behind them, Davey shuddered.
‘Oh,’ he said to her sadly, ‘it’s gone.’
TWENTY-THREE
Jack sat in the Boardroom. He idly checked the cleanly dressed injury to his arm, and then buttoned on a fresh shirt and waited.
One by one, Owen, Gwen and Toshiko wandered in and sat down. Toshiko simply sat and closed her eyes. Owen rolled back in his chair and put his feet up, as if he intended to snooze. Gwen flopped down, and sank her head over in her hands.
No one said anything for quite a while.
‘Go on, somebody,’ said Jack at length. ‘I got nothing.’
There was no immediate response.
‘Catalogue item nine-eight-one is pretty fancy,’ said Owen eventually, making an effort to say something.
‘What?’
‘Nine-eight-one,’ said Owen. ‘Bit sexy, that. I didn’t know we had anything like that in the Armoury.’
‘If you’d known it was there, I’d have worried,’ said Jack.
‘I’m just a bit disappointed I didn’t get to play with it. By the time Ianto arrived with it, it was all over.’
Jack muttered something.
‘Sorry?’ asked Owen.
Jack shrugged. ‘I said… everyone’s probably quite pleased you didn’t get to play with it.’
