explain to the others.’
Gwen reached out to him. Placed her palm softly against his cheek.
He twisted his head as though her hand had burned him. ‘Knock it off,’ he snarled. ‘Stay focused. Do not — I repeat do not — change the plan. You do exactly as we agreed. Understand?’
She nodded mutely.
‘Say it!’ he snapped. ‘Understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘You must not let me change this plan,’ he urged. ‘No matter how much I may threaten you. No matter how much I plead with you or beg you.’ Gwen could hardly bear to meet the blue intensity of his gaze. ‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘Hit the button.’
Gwen reached behind the cage and activated the control Jack had shown her.
The cage quivered into life around him. With a brief cough, the mechanism punched a Bruydac device through the skin of his back and into his spine.
Jack bellowed in surprise, a roar that seemed to fill the whole cavernous room and that Gwen thought would never end. Eventually, Jack reverted to a series of anguished gasps.
‘Not what I expected,’ he told her, and slipped into unconsciousness.
THIRTY-ONE
Toshiko sat alone at her computer terminal in the main Hub area. Her desk was stacked high with half- repaired components, scribbled notes and an assortment of pens, half of which didn’t work. Flat-panel screens flickered in front of her eyes, displaying the latest results of her search around the Hub for Owen’s life signs.
At first, she’d worried about being too obviously exposed in the centre of the area. She reassured herself that Owen was not armed when he fled from the medical suite, and that she had now securely locked the armoury. He might be able to spot her by looking down from the gantry by the Boardroom, or from beside the cog-shaped entrance where the lift delivered people from the upper floors. But he would not be able to pick her off from either place. The idea was that it appeared she would have enough time to make a run for it if and when she heard his footsteps on the metal gantry, or detected the noise of the door opening behind her.
She was still in a state of some anxiety, though. That much was evident when the Tannoy system sounded, and she simply leaped out of her seat and practically whirled on the spot in panic as she realised that she had no idea where she was going to run. Her breathing was shallow, ragged, panicked. It felt like her heart was battering her ribcage.
‘You’re very difficult to reach,’ said Gwen’s voice over the Tannoy.
‘That’s the idea,’ said Toshiko. ‘Oh God, Gwen, you scared me to death.’
‘Sorry,’ Gwen said. ‘I’m using some comms device that Jack brought along. He connected it to the Torchwood PA system. Just as well, because your mobile’s still switched off.’
There was a clattering noise from the gallery. Toshiko looked up, momentarily distracted. Nothing to see.
‘No sign of Owen yet,’ she told Gwen. ‘I think he may have gone to ground.’
‘Thank God,’ replied Gwen. ‘Things seem to have gone completely tits-up here. We’ve managed to stop the ship coming through the Rift-’
‘Well, that’s great news!’
‘-but Jack’s got himself trapped in that place we found Owen. The place where he got that thing stuck in him. Oh, Tosh…’
Toshiko was torn between comforting Gwen and warning her. ‘You have to be careful, Gwen. You’re broadcasting on an open channel. Whatever I can hear, Owen can hear too.’
‘I don’t care!’ There was a sob in Gwen’s voice. She was starting to lose it, thought Toshiko. Her hand hovered over the disconnect button. ‘Tosh, he’s trapped in the machinery. It’s all gone so horribly wrong. He’s had one of those control devices injected into him. What am I gonna do?’
Toshiko didn’t have time to answer. There was a clattering, clanking sound from the gallery beside the coffee machine. There was a blur of motion. The looped chain by the railing rattled and swayed. Owen had slid down it, and was plunging through the raised level of water in the basin, unstoppable, desperate to reach her. In his hand was an evil-looking surgical instrument. He made the near side of the basin before she had time to turn and flee.
He was right beside her.
She knew that surgical instrument from seeing Owen conduct autopsies. It was the hook-ended hammer that he used to prise the cap from the top of a severed skull. He’d joked about it being the inspiration for the Beatles’ song ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ that came down upon your head and made sure that you were dead. That gave her some clue about his immediate intentions.
She spun on her heel, ready to run.
Owen plunged forward, the hammer raised. He was on her. She could not escape.
The hammer came down onto her head.
Through her head.
Onto Toshiko’s desk.
Two of the flat-panel screens burst into a bright shower of sparks and glass and shards of plastic. Owen recoiled from the explosion, and fell onto his back on the metal grating beside his own desk.
Within seconds, Ianto was on him, water spraying all around the area. Owen’s eyes stretched wide, unbelieving, furious. Ianto took full advantage of his disorientation, and smashed him hard across the face with the back of his hand. Owen was no match for the bigger man, and Ianto was able to twist the hammer from his grasp and cast it aside. It bounced off under the nearby desk with the chime of metal on metal.
Ianto sat on Owen’s chest, pinning him to the floor. He plucked a syringe from his pocket and, one-handed, popped the protective cap off the needle before plunging it into Owen.
Over by her desk, Toshiko flickered and faded and vanished. Owen saw this, and his head slumped against the floor in frustration. ‘
It was weird, decided Toshiko, to see yourself interacting with other people. The whole thing was quite different to seeing yourself on video, because you got the complete picture of the surroundings as it happened. Seeing the back of her own head made her want to get her hair cut as soon as possible. And did she really have that little bounce in her gait? Why had no one mentioned it before?
She had watched the whole sequence from her vantage point in the Boardroom on the first floor. She’d crouched there in the dark, waiting for Owen to locate the image of herself that she’d projected at her desk. There had been one nervous moment when Owen had made his way through the Boardroom and onto the balcony by the coffee machine, but he had been too fixated on the fake Toshiko at her desk below to notice the real thing lurking under the conference table, petrified and holding her breath.
Once Owen had committed himself to the attack, and fallen through the insubstantial image of Toshiko, Ianto had leaped up from his hiding place and injected the powerful sedative into him.
‘Bit of an awkward moment there,’ Ianto called across to Toshiko as she came down the gantry steps to join him. ‘He almost trod on me in the basin as he charged through. Splashed water down my snorkel. Thought I was going to choke to death for a moment.’
Toshiko was beside him now. ‘Nice work, Ianto.’
‘You clever girl,’ Owen slurred at her from beneath Ianto. ‘Using the
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she told him.
Owen grinned a wide, lazy grin. ‘Don’t be too pleased with yourself, Tosh. I heard that call from Gwen.’
‘What do you mean?’
His eyes flickered on the edge of unconsciousness. ‘I have another life left. Back in… back in my ship. Your
