Slow Decay

With a sickening lurch, Gwen realised that if things had gone slightly differently, if Rhys’s reactions hadn’t been quite so fast or if Lucy had come at him while he wasn’t looking, Gwen might have come home to find him like that Weevil they’d discovered in the alleyway, his face all raw tissue and bloody bone.

What the hell was going on? What with that girl — Marianne — in the Hub, and now Lucy, it was beginning to look like some kind of bizarre epidemic was affecting Cardiff.

And affecting Gwen’s personal life, as well. No matter how much she tried to keep the two of them apart, Torchwood and home were blurring together.

‘We need to get you seen to,’ she said.

‘You make it sound like you’re taking me to the vet’s.’

‘I wish! I was thinking more in the realm of tetanus shots. Antibiotics. Maybe stitches.’

‘What about Lucy?’ Rhys’s eyes flickered open. ‘We can’t leave her here. She might be injured.’

‘More to the point, she might wake up and start on the main course. Don’t worry about her.’ She reached for her mobile.

‘Who are you calling? The police?’

She gazed at him, at his bloody face, at the sweat on his forehead. Her Rhys. The man she loved. The man she had almost lost because of her job. Because of the Rift, and the things that came through it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m calling Torchwood.’

‘Bloody brilliant,’ he sighed.

As the phone rang at the other end, Gwen walked into their bedroom. Rhys would be OK for a few moments, and she might need to say something she didn’t want him to hear.

It was Jack who answered. ‘Gwen? What’s up?’

‘Rhys has been attacked.’

‘Transportation can be a cut-throat business, I hear.’

‘This is serious. The girl who attacked him tried to eat his face off.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Gwen didn’t know where Jack was, but she imagined him standing on a rooftop somewhere — perhaps on top of the Millennium Centre itself — gazing down at Cardiff Bay, watching the reds and blues and yellows of the city’s lights reflected from the waves. Of course, he might just have been in his office in Torchwood, sitting with his feet up on the desk.

‘I get you,’ he said finally. ‘The key words there being “face”, “eat” and “girl”. What do you want us to do?’

‘The girl’s name is Lucy. She’s a friend of Rhys’s. I’ve got to get Rhys to hospital. I need someone to come and take her away.’

‘What kind of state is she in?’

‘Unconscious.’

‘Great — I’ll send Owen. Stay where you are until he arrives.’

Jack cut the connection.

Gwen stared at the phone for a few moments, as if the mere sound of Jack’s voice had charged it with some strange energy, then she put it away and went back into the living room.

Rhys was still sat in the armchair, clutching the freezing tea towel to his cheek.

Lucy wasn’t there.

‘Where the hell did she go?’ Gwen exclaimed.

Rhys opened his eyes, puzzled, and looked at the patch of carpet by the sofa where Lucy had been crumpled. ‘I dunno,’ he said muzzily. ‘I heard someone moving around. I thought it was you.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Sorry — I kind of zoned out there for a bit. I’m not used to this kind of thing.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to be,’ Gwen said, heading into the hall. She’d left the door wide open when she came in and smelled the blood, but now it was pulled to. Lucy must have come to and made her escape. Gwen cursed herself. She should never have left Rhys in the room with Lucy, even if she thought the girl was unconscious! Either Lucy had been faking, or she’d come to while Gwen was on the phone to Jack, but either way she might have just leaped on Rhys and picked up where she’d left off, sucking his eyes from their sockets, or tearing his ears off. What the hell had she been thinking?

What she’d been thinking about, of course, was Rhys, and how hurt he was. Her normal police instincts had deserted her, faced with injury to a loved one.

‘You were right,’ Rhys murmured, breaking the self-destructive spiral her thoughts were descending into.

‘Right about what?’

‘Right about Lucy. About letting her stay here. Definitely a bad idea.’

Gwen laughed — more a hiccup than a proper laugh, but she felt the darkness recede from her mind. ‘I wasn’t anticipating anything like this, I must say.’

‘What were you expecting, then?’

‘I was-’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘Look, I’d better sort that door out. We don’t want her coming back.’ She walked down the hall and pushed the door closed until it clicked.

‘Come on — what were you expecting?’

‘If you really want to know, I thought she was trying to get you into bed!’

‘She was.’ Rhys’s voice was calm, flat, although it was the calmness of encroaching shock. ‘I guess I was flattered. I guess I was even interested. But nothing happened, and nothing was ever going to happen.’

Gwen felt as if someone had poured cold water down her back. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I love you, and because I want to stay with you.’

‘Despite… despite the fact that things aren’t the way they were when we started seeing each other?’

‘Or maybe because of that.’ He shifted position slightly and winced. ‘It can’t always be like the first few days. Relationships change. People change. And so long as they change together, it’s OK. I’ll be honest, there’s a part of me that wants things to be as exciting as they used to be. But there’s another part of me that likes the snuggling up and watching telly together.’

‘She’s prettier than me. And she’s a bloody sight slimmer than me too.’

She wanted Rhys to say that she was prettier than Lucy, that she was slimmer than Lucy, but she knew that he would have been lying, and if there was one thing she wanted at that moment it was the truth about what was happening to them.

‘I have a feeling you’re working with guys who are handsomer and slimmer than I am,’ he said eventually. ‘But nobody can keep trading up for better and better partners. Not if they want anyone to ever trust them.’

‘Oh Rhys…’

‘Oh bugger.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m just wondering how the hell I’m going to shave around this for the next few weeks.’

‘Where’s Owen?’

Toshiko looked up from the screens that were currently displaying the output from the three work stations that she was running in parallel. ‘I believe he is feeding the prisoner,’ she said.

Jack was sitting in his office, separated from the rest of the Hub by a dusty glass screen. ‘Is it my imagination, or is he spending a lot of time with that girl? It can’t be healthy.’

Toshiko had been wondering the same thing, but she wasn’t going to betray Owen. Assuming there was anything to betray. ‘She is very hungry,’ Toshiko responded. ‘Owen has been diligent in supplying her with food. I think he’s even been getting different takeaways so Jubilee don’t get suspicious about the amount of food we’re ordering.’

Jack was just a shadow through the glass. ‘Tell him to come in here when he’s back. I need him to go to Gwen’s place.’

Toshiko got up and walked over to the doorway, concerned. ‘Is everything all right with Gwen?’

Jack looked up from where he sat. His feet were up on the desk. A row of apples sat before him, lined up along the far edge. Some were green, some red, some a dusty grey. Some were large and some were small. They were all, however, recognisably apples.

‘Her boyfriend’s apparently been attacked by one of these women on the verge of a bulimic episode,’ he said. ‘They’ve got the girl there, unconscious. I want Owen to go across and bring her back. While he’s at it, I want him