Jack cleared his throat. ‘No. I’m afraid Bob’s not available. Who’s calling?’
‘Well — it’s his mother,’ said the voice cautiously. ‘I was just calling to see how he is …’
Jack looked down at the dead man on the floor.
‘Mrs Strong?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Captain Jack Harkness. We need to talk, but I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you.’
Ten minutes later, Gwen was staring out of the window. Jack had finished speaking to Mrs Strong. Gwen had hardly dared to listen; she had been the bearer of bad news to unsuspecting relatives too many times already. It was never a good experience.
She stood in a kind of trance, hearing Jack’s words but not listening to them. People were walking past, going about their everyday business, oblivious to the abject horror being played out in this ordinary suburban living room. Cars swished by, drivers intent on the road.
On the pavement opposite, a severe-looking blonde woman stared back at Gwen. She was wearing a raincoat and cradling a baby in her arms. At least, Gwen thought it was a baby at first, but actually it was more like a toddler, a child perhaps only three or four years old. The child turned to look at Gwen as well, and an abrupt coldness filled her like ice water.
It was the homunculus. The face, a parody of a human’s features, was still covered in blood and mucus. The sharp little eyes, yellow and calculating, watched Gwen from either side of a sharp, blade-like nose and a vicious little slit of a mouth. The slit opened in a smile, showing black, needle-like teeth.
‘Owen,’ Gwen croaked.
He joined her at the window and saw the woman carrying the homunculus.
‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘Saskia Harden. And that’s her new baby.’
TWENTY-ONE
They ran outside, but the woman and the homunculus had already gone.
‘That can’t have been it,’ Owen said, shaking his head. ‘It was way too big. Two or three times the size of what we saw. That wasn’t what Bob Strong just coughed up.’
‘I tell you it was,’ Gwen insisted. ‘I know it was. It’s grown, even in that short a time. I could tell by the way it looked at me. By the way she looked at me.’
‘Saskia Harden,’ Owen spat the name out like a lump of phlegm. ‘I’ve never even met her and I’m getting to really hate that bitch.’ He coughed heavily, turning his head politely away from Gwen as he did so. When he looked back at her his face was grey and his eyes were red and watering. ‘Come on,’ he said huskily. ‘Let’s move. We need to get this place sealed off first, though.’
Owen collected some hazard tape from the SUV and stretched it across the front door of Strong’s house as a makeshift barrier, while Gwen called in a police SOC team to cordon the area off. She wasn’t in any mood for the questions they asked and cut them off abruptly by pulling rank. The power Torchwood gave her was usually a secret thrill, but right now it just made her feel nauseous.
What made it worse was when the young policewoman on the other end of the phone line started to cough, apologising immediately afterwards. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Must be that flu thing. I think we’re all coming down with it … They say it’s nothing to be alarmed about, but they don’t tell us anything really. I’ve seen the TV pictures, just like everyone. Of course we’re alarmed, what do they expect?’
‘Yeah,’ said Gwen dully, as the WPC started coughing again. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
Jack drove them back to the Hub. He had been very quiet following his conversation with Mrs Strong, listening silently to a report from Ianto.
‘Tosh has made some progress. She’s isolated the alien cells from her own body and matched them with those she found in the Greendown Moss corpse.’
‘Quelle surprise,’ muttered Owen. His head was resting against the passenger window and he had his eyes shut. His face was grey and shiny with sweat, reflecting the flashing blue lights which ran up the sides of the SUV windscreen.
Toshiko was struggling to focus. Not the ideal thing for carrying out delicate experiments in a controlled environment. Not that any of this was very controlled. Her vision kept blurring and her hands were shaking as she adjusted the controls on the microscope. It took every ounce of her self-control to keep her mind on the job, to ignore the sound of her heart thudding in her chest, the pounding of the blood in her head. She knew she was close to finding what she was looking for, she just had to keep concentrating.
She had to keep stopping to cough as well. She had hoped that the warm, humid atmosphere of the Hothouse would help — in theory, it should have kept the respiratory passages clear and open. It was a common and simple remedy for croup, after all. But now it felt like there was something at the back of her throat, swelling all the time, threatening to choke her, and she just couldn’t dislodge it. On a number of occasions she found herself on her knees, or lying on the floor, utterly spent with the effort of coughing.
Then, when she finally found the strength to pick herself up and carry on, she would grab a tissue, wipe her chin, lean against the workbench and tell herself not to give up. Just carry on. Don’t think of anything else but the work.
There was a knock on the glass door behind her. She turned around and saw Ianto; a large pot plant partially obscured his face, but she could see that he wasn’t well either. His face was pale and drawn and there was a thin rime of blood on his lips.
‘Why don’t you come out?’ he said through the intercom. His voice sound hoarse. ‘You need a break.’
‘No. Got to keep working.’
‘There’s no point remaining in quarantine,’ Ianto pointed out. ‘We’re all infected.’
‘It’s OK.’ She managed a faint smile. ‘I work better alone like this. The isolation helps concentrate the mind.’
‘The others are on their way back to base,’ Ianto told her. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘That’s good. Any news from the outside world?’
‘Nothing good. The flu story isn’t being accepted. Perhaps people aren’t as gullible as the Government hoped. They’ve changed their minds now and they’re saying it’s an isolated outbreak of a tropical disease. Nothing to worry about, no serious risk to the public, no need to panic, but they’re sending in specialist army medical teams to various locations across South Wales and England to help relieve the pressure on local doctors and hospitals.’
‘They’ve no idea what they’re dealing with,’ said Toshiko.
‘Do we?’
In the SUV, Ianto’s voice came through, husky and pained: ‘Jack, I have a call for you. It’s the PM.’
‘Now?’ Jack snapped. ‘All right, put him through.’ Jack took a hand off the wheel and tried to clear his throat, which turned into a full-on coughing session before he could resume speaking. ‘Hello, Prime Minister,’ he croaked. He listened for a moment and then said, ‘No, sir, the situation is not under control. Yes, I know it’s fast becoming an emergency. And yes, Torchwood is doing everything it can to resolve the situation.’
He listened for a minute longer, his face grim in the light of the dashboard. ‘With respect, sir, we don’t operate on those lines. If you want to flood the area with troops in NBC gear then that’s your call. It won’t affect what we’re doing. But no, I don’t think it’s a good idea. For one thing it won’t do a damn bit of good and it’ll probably start a panic … No, I should think the Home Secretary is probably safe. There is no need for him and the rest of the Cabinet to go into the secure facility … Oh, you already are. OK, well you sit tight, sir, and don’t worry. And tell the Home Secretary it’s probably just a cold. We’ll handle things from here.’
Jack broke the connection and bared his teeth in feral anger. ‘Dumbass. He thinks we’re responsible.’
‘Us?’ queried Gwen incredulously.
‘The disease is concentrated around the Cardiff area and South Wales. Of course, it’s started to affect some areas in England, so now Westminster’s worried. The finger is being pointed at Torchwood.’
‘It must be something to do with the Rift,’ Owen pointed out. ‘It’s connected somehow.’
They had to cross through the Trynsel area, and Owen realised that they were passing near the medical centre. But the first thing they saw was a lot of police cars, blue lights flashing, then a fleet of ambulances.
