was full of a yellowish liquid. ‘Ketamine?’ he asked.
‘Don’t mind if I do.’
Owen reached down, grabbed an arm, and pressed the trigger on the syringe. There was a sudden hiss, and the yellow fluid vanished from the tube. A few seconds later the girl’s struggles subsided. ‘That’s my evening ruined,’ Owen muttered.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Jack said, standing up. ‘You’ve got a girl paralytic and you didn’t even have to spend any money.’
The four of them gathered around the girl’s body and gazed down at her. She was moving her head slowly from side to side, and her eyelids were flickering. There were stains on both the blouse and the jacket. Toshiko thought at first they were blood, but there were fragments of herb and crumbs mixed in. Tomato sauce? It looked like she’d been in a car accident with a pizza delivery boy.
Jack knelt down again, this time beside her. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked gently.
‘Marianne.’ Her voice was coated with a patina of pain and worry. ‘Marianne Till.’
‘OK, Marianne, how are you feeling?’
‘Hungry.’
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I’m always eating. I can’t get enough food to stop the hunger.’
‘What have you eaten this evening?’
‘Chinese takeaway. Pizza. Some sandwiches I found in a bin.’ She hesitated. ‘A pigeon. Someone’s dog. I tried to eat this guy who bought me a drink in a bar, but he ran away. There was blood on his face, and he was screaming. And… and I ate a kebab.’
‘A kebab,’ Owen muttered. ‘That’s just sick.’
‘Don’t worry, Marianne. My name is Jack, this is Gwen, and that’s Toshiko and Owen. We’re going to be your friends, and we’re going to try and help you get over this.’ Without turning his head, or taking his gaze away from the girl, he said to Gwen, ‘Call Ianto. He’s parked just around the corner. Get him to drive over here as quickly as he can. We have to get Marianne back to the Hub.’
Gwen stepped to one side and brought her mobile up to her mouth. While she was talking, Toshiko just stared at the creature. At the girl. At Marianne.
‘She’s so young,’ Toshiko said. ‘And so thin! How can she be that thin when she eats that much?’
Owen shrugged. ‘Fast metabolism?’ he said. He reached out towards her face.
For a moment Toshiko thought he was going to stroke her hair, but instead he reached around and felt the back of her head. ‘Bleeding’s stopped. You need to get that washed when you get back. I’ll give you some cream.’
‘Thanks.’
With a quiet rumble of tyres, the SUV pulled up beside them. Its black surface reflected the warehouses, the cranes, the wharf, defining the car’s presence only by the way it distorted its surroundings. The driver’s door opened and Ianto stepped out, leaving the engine purring. As usual, he was dressed in a three-piece suit and tie. His shirt was double-cuffed, secured by cufflinks. He even wore a tie pin. Sometimes Toshiko thought that he wasn’t quite real.
‘I hope I’m not too late,’ he said calmly.
‘Ianto, you’re never too late and you’re never too early.’ Jack stood up and looked around. ‘That’s why we love you. Now, everyone, we need to get this young lady back to the Hub and find out what’s wrong with her. And just in case the various anaesthetics that Owen’s injected her with start wearing off, I recommend that we immobilise her. Ianto, did you bring the cuffs?’
‘I assumed you might be needing them.’ He brought his hand up to show that he was already carrying the thin metal tapes that could be wound around a captive’s wrists or ankles and, when pressed together, would meld into an unbreakable loop — unbreakable, that was, until they were irradiated with low-level microwaves, in which case they would revert back to their ribbon-like state. Toshiko had spent many months trying to determine how they functioned, without success.
Ianto passed the tapes to Gwen, who bent down and pinioned Marianne’s ankles, and then her wrists. Ianto and Owen then picked Marianne up and placed her carefully into the back of the SUV.
‘I hope we’re not stopped by the police on the way back to the Hub,’ Ianto said. ‘Explaining why we’ve got a young girl tied up in the back could be tricky.’
Jack smiled. ‘We’ll let Owen talk us out of it. I’m sure he’s had lots of practice.’
They all climbed into the SUV and drove back through darkened city streets to the Hub. Ianto used a device fixed to the dashboard that automatically set the traffic lights to green as they approached.
The trip was quick, but Toshiko found herself drifting into a reverie as they drove. The lights of the city elongated into ribbons of light that wound around each other in a psychedelic skein. She felt hypnotised. Anaesthetised, like Marianne. Part of her knew it was the shock of the attack and the after-effects, as her body reacted and then recovered, but the rest of her just wanted to curl up and let unconsciousness take her away. Let the darkness win, just for a while.
She woke as they were arriving in the Hub via the hidden vehicular entrance in the basement of the Bute Place car park. As she climbed from the car, Ianto went to fetch a trolley. Together they all manhandled Marianne onto the trolley and rolled her through the Torchwood tunnels towards the area of sealed cells where occasional guests were kept.
Still rubbing her eyes, Toshiko watched as Ianto and Jack carried Marianne into the cell, and Jack removed the metal tapes from her arms and legs while Gwen covered him with her automatic. Together they all backed out of the cell, shutting and sealing the entrance behind them.
At which point, Owen asked the question that had apparently been in everyone’s minds. ‘So — what do we do with her now?’
Jack grimaced. ‘We need to work out what’s happened to her. I don’t know whether it’s physical or psychological, but she’s somehow developed this ravenous hunger that nothing can satisfy. Owen — we need to find some way of getting some blood from her that you can run tests on. Might be best to do it quickly, before the horse tranquillisers wear off. Make sure Ianto covers you. Check for anything that might explain her actions. Gwen — I need you to work on her identity. She said her name was Marianne Till. See if she’s local, and if anyone’s reported her missing. She also mentioned biting a man in a bar; see if that’s been reported as a crime. I want to track her progress across the city. I want to track it
Owen, Ianto, Gwen and Toshiko turned to leave. Jack remained, staring at the girl. As Toshiko walked away, she heard him say: ‘Stay with us, Marianne. We’ll get you through this.’
The last cell in the row was the one that contained their long-term Weevil guest. As Toshiko’s gaze scanned across it her heart missed a beat. For a moment the cell looked empty, and she panicked, thinking the Weevil had escaped. Then she looked closer, and relaxed. The Weevil was still there, slumped against the wall.
The momentary relaxation was replaced by a deeper concern.
The Weevil was right up against the wall furthest from Marianne’s cell, and its head was turned away. It seemed to be pressing itself into the brickwork. Toshiko had never seen it react like that before. It was scared. It was terrified.
What exactly had they brought into the Hub?
TEN
Morning arrived slowly, a tide of amber light washing up a beach. Rhys awoke in gradual stages, moving from
