‘Why did he stop?’
‘Not enough power.’
Gwen studied Jack’s face in the flicker of the store’s emergency lighting. ‘Because we cut the electricity?’
‘No. Because the store evacuated,’ said Jack. ‘Not enough terrified witnesses to give it the emotional oomph it needs.’
‘Better track him down, then. He’s still got that Visualiser thing. And he can find more people just by leaving the store.’
‘Couple of other things too,’ said Jack. ‘Tosh, how many of the creatures got away through mobile phone calls?’
‘There were seventy-nine calls from those coordinates,’ Toshiko’s voice replied. ‘Only… let’s see… one of them was synchronised with a spike in Rift energy, and I got GPS coordinates for the destination phone.’
Gwen nodded. ‘The gorilla thing we saw.’
‘OK, Tosh,’ said Jack briskly. ‘Send the coordinates through to Owen. Gwen, you guys know what you’re looking for. Capture or kill. You can phone it through to the Hub, if you need to.’ He turned to the others. ‘Ianto, you and the Portlands need to do some clean-up here.’
‘Clean-up?’ snapped Brigstocke. His composure seemed to be returning. ‘So this is how it works, is it Jack?’
Jack ignored him, and spoke instead to Ianto. ‘Make sure the Portlands are OK,’ he murmured.
Gwen saw that Jack passed a blister pack of Retcon pills to Ianto before he left the toy department.
Toshiko was ready and waiting for Jack in the SUV. The window wound down, and she leaned out to talk to him as he approached.
‘Any easy way of tracking Gareth through town?’ Jack asked.
She looked apologetic. ‘We took out the power for the whole block. CCTV is completely down.’
‘Rift traces?’
She shook her head. ‘Place is awash with what you were dealing with on the fourth floor.’ She held up a metallic square. ‘Could try this?’
Jack wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Toshiko using the other Vandrogonite Visualiser. ‘How difficult can it be to find a guy wandering round Cardiff in an orange T-shirt?’ He clicked his tongue as he became aware that Brigstocke had caught up with him.
‘You’re really not much of a football fan, are you?’ said the journalist. He beckoned for Jack to walk a short distance down the access road to the main shopping street.
There was a guy in an orange T-shirt.
Oh.
There were seven more. And another group of five. And two of those were women.
‘Cardiff United shirts,’ Brigstocke grinned.
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath.
‘But I know where he’ll be,’ said Brigstocke. When Jack opened his eyes again, the journalist was standing very close to him. ‘Take me with you, and I’ll show you.’
He refused to say more until he was sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV. Toshiko sat in the rear, fiddling with her Visualiser.
‘OK, where?’ asked Jack.
‘You’re
Jack wasn’t convinced. ‘I think Gareth has other things on his mind right now. All he has to do is use that Visualiser in the middle of some crowd of terrified late-night shoppers.’
‘How about a capacity crowd at the Millennium Stadium?’ asked Brigstocke. ‘That’s over 70,000 highly emotional spectators. And did you say these things can be transmitted through visuals?’
Jack nodded.
‘Better get a move on, then.’ Brigstocke started to buckle his seat belt. ‘They have a live international television feed.’
TWENTY-TWO
Getting out of the loading area and past the crashed bus proved to be the easiest part of their journey.
The closer they got to their destination, the slower their progress became. The Stadium loomed in the distance, the support towers around it looking like the crooked legs of an enormous grasshopper. Jack tried not to think what sort of monstrous insect life Gareth Portland might conjure up inside it.
Spectators flooded the streets on their way to the match. They were indifferent to the SUV’s display of blue lights, and slapped the side of the vehicle as it attempted to pass through them.
In the passenger seat, Brigstocke flicked through a MonstaQuest pack that Jack had snatched from the stand at Wendleby’s. He spread them out over his knees, and considered their contents. ‘Some gruesome sorts here, Jack. Are they all real?’
Toshiko peered through from the rear of the SUV. ‘Many of them are. But a handful of them were just made up by Gareth when he created the game. The weather cards, for instance.’ She held up a MonstaQuest Whirlwind card. ‘They’re all based on Earth meteorology. And those guerrilla gorillas? They’re more of a pun. Something Gareth added in as a joke.’
‘The people they killed in Wendleby’s weren’t laughing,’ Jack observed.
‘No, that’s my point, really,’ Toshiko continued. ‘I don’t think that the Visualiser is bringing them through the Rift. I think it’s creating them from scratch. Basing them on its own catalogue and Gareth’s powerful imagination.’
In the rear-view mirror, Jack saw her flourish her version of the Visualiser.
‘This must be the pair of Gareth’s device. If I concentrate while I’m holding it, I can sense the other one. Similar to magnets, you know? The way like poles repel and opposite poles attract.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I can sense that he’s close by.’
Jack flicked his eyes back to the road, saw that the car they were following had stopped. He had to brake sharply. Brigstocke spilled MonstaQuest cards into the footwell, and Toshiko jerked awake from her reverie.
The snaking trail of vehicles in front of them had completely halted. A chanting crowd of orange shirts milled along the street, completely blocking further progress. Three cars ahead, the driver was getting out and abandoning his vehicle.
‘We’re gonna have to walk,’ Jack decided. ‘Though we’re never gonna beat these crowds.’
‘Kick-off’s not for another two hours,’ Brigstocke said. ‘If we cut down that alleyway over there, on foot, we can get in through the Press entrance.’
Jack unbuckled his seat belt. ‘Let’s do it. And Tosh, can you delay the entry of the crowds into the Stadium? A bomb threat with a known code word?’
Brigstocke stared, appalled. ‘Another pack of lies, Jack?’
Jack snorted. ‘You think the truth is gonna help them?’
‘If you keep this lot outside for too long, there’ll be a riot!’ snapped Brigstocke. ‘And a bomb threat means the Press won’t get in either.’
‘We need the delay.’
Toshiko called from the back: ‘I’ve put a spanner in the ticketing system. It’ll read all valid tickets as forgeries, and jam the turnstiles. That should stall them. And it’s early enough that they’ll try and fix it before letting people in.’ She started to switch off the computer. ‘Oh, and I’ve put a judder in the Stadium’s retractable roof, so now it can’t decide whether it wants to open or close.’
