Infirmary. And a quick cross-reference shows she and Owen were at university together in London.’
‘Good work, Tosh. I can look into that once I’ve tracked down Applegate. Thanks. Catch you later.’
Why was a doctor at the hospital contacting Owen on his Torchwood mobile? How could she know his number?
Jack sat for a while, surveying the wreckage of Wildman’s apartment.
Applegate was wounded and alone.
Wounded and alone.
Of course. Where would a woman with a gunshot wound go for emergency treatment?
He barrelled down the stairs three at a time, out of the building through the torrent of rain. The SUV’s engine revved and roared as Jack steered the car into the street and onwards towards Cardiff Royal Infirmary.
The Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve was well-named today, decided Owen. The wild storm seemed to rattle the whole frame of Megan’s rusty old Skoda, and the windscreen wipers struggled to clear the water to let them see out. It was no time to go sightseeing, thought Owen sourly. Though he doubted that Sandra was going to be showing them much in the way of wildlife, because the animals had more sense than humans and would either have fled or be cowering in shelter somewhere.
He and an ex had been out here to the Reserve one weekend, and she’d been very excited at the prospect of seeing teal ducks and tufted lapwings and long-beaked snipe. At the time, Owen had been thinking more about the chicken he’d put in the oven for them to eat when they got back home.
Megan drove them out to the north-western shore of Cardiff Bay, between the stylish frame of St David’s Hotel and the outlet of the River Taff. She was following directions from Sandra, who was hunched in the back. Owen tried to engage her in conversation, asking her how she’d been getting on since discovering that Wildman and Bee had died, and the circumstances in which she’d heard the news. But Sandra was too busy giving directions from the back seat, staring out of the car window and trying to make out landmarks made strange by the rain and the gloomy afternoon light.
Owen soon found himself distracted by Megan’s hesitant driving. He hated being a passenger, and fidgeted in the front seat throughout the journey. His feet gave away his impatience as he involuntarily pressed a non-existent accelerator in the passenger footwell, or used an imaginary brake when Megan seemed not to notice some obstruction in the road. He had already regretted letting her drive him to the hospital earlier, eventually accepting with bad grace that her staff pass for the car park was for her Skoda and not his car. He imagined that his Boxter would now be up on bricks outside Megan’s place. He tried to reassure himself that maybe it would be stolen outright, and he could use the insurance money towards that Honda S2000 GT he’d been eyeing up. Monocoque X- bone frame just like a Formula One car, two-litre VTEC engine…
Megan interrupted his thoughts as she slewed the Skoda to a halt and pulled the handbrake into position with a ratcheting noise that made his teeth grind.
‘We need to walk from here,’ Sandra told them. She popped open the rear passenger door and stepped out into the storm before they could protest.
‘I must be insane,’ Megan told Owen. ‘What am I doing driving her out here on a night like this?’
He was going to show her the Bekaran device again as an encouragement, but found that it was no longer in his pocket. He felt his face and neck flush in a momentary panic at the thought of the alien tech turning up at the hospital, until he resigned himself to the impossibility of doing anything about it. So instead he said to Megan: ‘Come on. You’re not going to believe your eyes.’
‘Assuming we can see anything in this howling gale,’ she said.
They abandoned the Skoda in the St David’s Hotel car park, and followed Sandra as she set off at a determined pace down a gravel walkway that led into the Reserve. In the open here, the storm seemed worse than ever. Owen started to worry that they would be blown clean off their feet. Last time he’d been here, on a date, his companion had pointed out the magnificent view across the Bay. Today, the towering clouds overhead let little sunlight through, and the wash of rain made it impossible to see across to the Penarth Headland. He could barely make out the barrage across the Bay.
What Owen remembered as a large reed-fringed reservoir was now a choppy lake edged with flattened grasses and snapped willows. Sandra led them along a network of flooded paths. Routes through the Reserve that had once been flat, hard-surfaced paths running around the wetland were now rapidly submerging below cold dark water. In places, it was deep enough that Owen could see fish shoaling beside the walkway as they broke the surface briefly and then vanished back into the dark.
Sandra was surging ahead of them. The howl of the wind made it impossible to speak, and even when he shouted Owen could barely make himself heard. He took hold of Megan’s hand, to encourage her as much as to support her physically. She tagged along with him, her head bent against the oncoming storm. Owen muttered and cursed to himself as his shoes filled with water and his trousers got soaked up to the knees.
Eventually, Sandra navigated them over a precarious, wobbling boardwalk that stretched across the water. If the wooden structure had been secured, it would long ago have sunk beneath the swirling surface. Instead, they were able to make slow progress until Sandra gestured at something that was poking up through the nearby reeds.
It looked like a lump of burnished metal. The dark water lapped over it as the wind whipped up the waves. Sandra stooped down and lifted a concealed flap to reveal a curiously shaped panel of sparkling light. She activated one of the controls, and motioned for them to stand well back.
The water around the burnished metal surged and frothed. Within a minute, a tall wide cylinder had risen from the murky water.
The boardwalk bucked and twisted as the cylinder displaced a surge of water. Owen squatted, pulling Megan down gently as he did so, to lower their centre of gravity and avoid toppling off the wooden walkway. He glanced across at her. ‘An escape pod!’ he yelled. He could tell from her frown that she hadn’t heard so he mouthed the words to her with exaggerated enunciation.
Megan leaned in close to him, hugging his shoulder, placing her lips near his ear. ‘What happened to her boat? She said she’d used a boat.’
Owen pointed at the cylinder, which bobbed more calmly on the water now. His implication was: this must be what Sandra described.
Megan pushed against him again to speak again. Even in the biting cold rain, he could feel her hot breath against his skin. ‘And where’s her sub-aqua gear?’
He reluctantly allowed her to move her head away from his, so that she could see his reply. He pointed into the water, and nodded: down there somewhere.
Sandra opened a small doorway in the cylinder, and beckoned for them to follow her in. It was a cramped space, no wider than three telephone boxes stacked side by side. There were four moulded alcoves in the wall, oriented vertically. Owen noted that they appeared to be designed for a humanoid figure somewhat larger than the average man, and he remembered how Sandra had described the aliens earlier. At the far end of the craft he could see another softly flickering set of controls.
Once they were all in the cylinder, Sandra activated one of the controls and the entrance door slid shut. Owen felt his ears go pop as the air pressure inside changed. The raging noise of the storm outside was suddenly reduced to a dull murmur. The rocking motion of the craft started to disorient him.
‘I think I might throw up,’ said Megan.
‘It’ll be better once we are under the water.’ Sandra slumped into the nearest of the alcoves, and struggled to strap herself in. It was as though she was afraid that she might fall down if she didn’t somehow secure herself. Now that she was out of the rain, the blood from the wound in her shoulder was starting to seep down her sleeve and out over her hand. The frantic energy that had sustained her through the car journey and down the pathways into the Reserve had dissipated.
‘I said you weren’t well enough to travel,’ insisted Megan. She checked Sandra’s eyes, and took a pulse from her neck. Clearly not entirely happy with what she saw found, Megan slipped a boxed syringe from her jacket pocket and administered a painkiller. Then she checked the pulse in her neck again.
Sandra wriggled her head away from Megan, as far as the moulded restraint would let her. ‘We have no time. We have to get to the ship and stop it. You must secure yourself in a harness for the journey.’
Owen helped Megan to slot her small frame into one of the alcoves. She gave a little squeal as he fixed one of the straps. ‘Steady! That pinches. Ow! It’s too tight.’
