Slow Decay

for everything, you know, and a lot of them are falling into disuse. I’m thinking of making it a Torchwood rule that every conversation has to include at least one word that nobody else knows. Thanks for turning up, by the way. How was dinner?’

Gwen walked into the club. ‘What little I had of it was great. Hi Owen. Hi Tosh.’

Owen nodded once, then glanced away. Toshiko gave her a friendly smile.

‘What have we got?’ Gwen asked.

Jack walked over to the bar and pulled himself smoothly up until he was standing on it, looking down on the team. ‘A quick recap. Tosh has been tracking an intermittent energy surge of a frequency and modulation that doesn’t match anything in use on Earth at this point in time. She triangulated it to this area of Cardiff where some suspicious deaths had just occurred. The two seem linked, so I’ve thrown the local coppers out, allowing us to take a look around. I can’t imagine that aliens living in Cardiff would choose to come here for a night out — there are clubs nearby that cater far better to the discriminating traveller — so I suspect that someone here was human and was dabbling with something they shouldn’t have been in possession of. Swag, in fact, which is a word also used to mean “stolen goods”.’

‘Where are the bodies?’ Owen asked.

Jack looked around. ‘There’s a couple of overturned tables over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The smart money says that’s where the bodies will be. Remember, we suspect that the deaths are due to some kind of alien tech, so keep an eye out for it. Someone may have taken it away, of course, so we also need to check the bodies for identities and any clues.’

‘And also remember that the whole thing might be a coincidence,’ Gwen added, ‘and the person who had the alien tech, if there was alien tech, left when the fight started rather than get involved.’

‘Let’s get started,’ said Jack. He jumped down from the bar and led the way across to a low plateau some ten feet above the dance floor, accessible via a set of stairs.

Jack was right. Sprawled across a clutch of tables and chairs that had been pushed apart and overturned were five bodies. Young men, all of them. There was a lot of blood, stark on white T-shirts, and a lot of broken glass. Looking at them, it struck Toshiko that sleeping bodies still had a certain amount of muscle tension pulling the limbs into distinct shapes. Dead bodies lost that tension. They just lay there, like carelessly thrown rugs.

‘Owen?’ Jack prompted.

‘Don’t touch anything if you can help it,’ Gwen said quickly. At Owen’s questioning glance, she added: ‘There’s still a police investigation that needs to occur. We only take stuff that’s not from this Earth, and we leave without disturbing anything. Like the Country Code, only a lot weirder.’

Bending down between the bodies, Owen quickly checked them over. Toshiko admired the rapidity with which his hands and eyes operated: so similar to the way that she checked over technological devices she had never seen before. A combination of knowledge, skill and instinct. Owen was an exceptionally good doctor.

‘The wounds are nothing out of the ordinary,’ Owen said. ‘Standard contusions and stab wounds mainly, with the occasional knuckle-shaped bruise and one punctured eye caused, I suspect, by a broken bottle. Just your usual Wednesday night in Cardiff. No laser burns, no strange bite-marks made by non-human teeth, no sign that the life force has been sucked out of them.’ He grinned. ‘I suspect the only sucking they were in for tonight was the home- grown variety.’

‘I’ve got a couple of knives,’ Gwen added. ‘Two are still being held in the corpses’ hands, one is half-under one of the bodies. They’re nothing special: basic folding knives, available at any camping shop or school playground.’ She systematically checked through pockets for ID cards, credit cards, anything that might tell the group who the kids were. ‘I have a Craig Sutherland,’ she said, ‘a Rick Dennis, a Geraint Morris, a Dai Morris, presumably related, and an Idris ab Hugh. I’m working on the theory that we have three local Welsh lads and two students at the Uni, probably fighting over some girls. How often have we heard that story before?’

She straightened up, still holding the various cards she had taken from their pockets. Cards, Toshiko realised, they would never be needing again.

‘Over to you, Tosh,’ Jack said. As she knelt down next to Owen and prepared to search amongst the bodies for anything else, anything that shouldn’t have been there, she noticed Jack walk over to join Gwen. His hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his greatcoat and there was a strange look on his face.

‘They could have grown up to be anything,’ he said. ‘Scientists who might have invented the first practicable star drive, allowing humanity to escape an increasingly overcrowded and polluted Earth. Artists who could have encapsulated the human spirit in sculptures and paintings and forms yet to be invented, but which would have lasted for millennia. Politicians who might have brought peace to the Middle East. Or, if nothing else, they might have been happy, with partners and kids and barbecues on a Sunday afternoon. And none of that will happen now. They’ve been erased from the world for the sake of a few harsh words and the chance of a snog with the wrong girl.’

‘Some lads would risk anything for a snog with the wrong girl,’ Owen said, straightening up and wiping the blood off his hands with a Kleenex. ‘Not me, of course,’ he added, catching the way that Jack, Gwen and Toshiko were looking at him. ‘But some lads I met. Once. Er… anything else, boss?’

Toshiko removed a small scanner from her pocket, about the size and shape of her thumb but matt-black and with an antenna on top. Switching it on, she swept it back and forth across the bodies, waiting for it to beep. If it did, then something in the area was transmitting somewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Nothing.

Replacing the scanner, she took out another little device. This one was no larger than a lipstick, but a lot heavier. Again, Toshiko scanned it back and forth over the bodies. If there was an active power source of any kind there, it would vibrate.

Still nothing.

Something was nagging at Toshiko. Something wasn’t quite right with the bodies. One of them was hunched over, protecting something. Gently, she eased a hand underneath his chest and tried to take the boy’s weight so she could turn him over, but her angle was wrong and she couldn’t get any purchase.

Seeing what she was doing, Owen bent to help. He took the body by the shoulders and tipped it backwards, allowing Toshiko to reach beneath it and retrieve the object that the boy had in his hand.

She brought it out slowly, reverentially, and as Owen eased the body back to the ground Jack and Gwen gathered around Toshiko, eager to see what she had found.

It was a metallic object, the size of a paperback book, but ovoid in shape and heavier than its size indicated. The colour was the first thing that struck Toshiko: a deep lavender which looked like it was the colour of the metal itself, rather than an enamel or a paint. The object was criss-crossed with raised ribbons of metal, and the ribbons broadened out at random intervals to encircle what looked to Toshiko like buttons. At the broad end of the object there were three irregular holes, perhaps cable sockets, and the other end, the narrower end, was different in texture, like ceramic rather than metal, but still the same shade of lavender.

‘Is it an iPod?’ Owen asked. ‘It is, isn’t it? It’s the latest one.’

‘It’s not an iPod,’ Toshiko said quietly. ‘Look at the size of the buttons. They’re designed for smaller fingers than any teenager has. And the layout is ergonomically wrong for an entertainment device. And, of course, there’s nowhere to plug your headphones in.’

‘Ever seen anything like it before?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘I have a feeling it’s similar to some of the items we have in the Archive, but let me take it back to the Hub and I can tell you everything there is to know about it.’

Jack nodded. ‘I know you can.’ Looking at the other members of the team, he said, ‘Anything else before we leave? Remember, this is the last chance we get. After this, the police get to walk all over everything.’

They all shook their heads.

‘Then let’s go.’

The fresh air outside hit Toshiko as they left the club. The police were still holding back from entering, although there were some dark glances cast their way as they walked toward the Torchwood SUV.

The four of them climbed in and, within moments, it was as if they had never been there.

From the wall-wide window of the Boardroom, Captain Jack Harkness looked down at the central atrium of the Hub, and at his team.

His team. His team. He still felt a burning pride whenever thought of them in those