Slow Decay

terms. The three of them had confronted one of the most terrifying things any human being could confront — the knowledge that not only were they not alone in the universe, but they weren’t even terribly important — and they had dealt with it, quietly and with grace. And now they worked together, each bringing their own particular skills to the party, to keep the world safe.

To prepare for the moment that Jack was privately dreading — the moment when it all started…

Over to one side of the Hub, Toshiko was using a hyperspectral scanner to investigate the interior of the device they had found at the nightclub. Jack already knew roughly where in the galaxy it had come from — he had quite a lot of background knowledge that the others lacked — but he wasn’t going to give them any clues. Partly that was because it would mean giving something away about himself, and he was wary of doing that. Partly it was because he didn’t know what the device was for. His knowledge was fragmentary, superficial. But metaphorically filleting alien technology and picking the bones out — that was what Toshiko did best.

Toshiko worried him. Although she was at the heart of the team, she didn’t realise it. She felt that she was remote from the rest, off to one side. Perhaps it was her Japanese heritage showing through, perhaps it was just natural diffidence, but Jack viewed it with some concern. Beneath that reserved exterior, he suspected there was a supernova of emotion, and he didn’t want the resulting explosion to damage the team.

Near Toshiko, Owen was at a lab bench, testing samples scraped from the device for traces of DNA, or any of the myriad other complex biochemical substances with which alien life forms transferred their genetic information. Owen’s skills were literal versions of Toshiko’s metaphorical ones; he filleted alien bodies and picked the bones out of them — when he could. And he patched the team up when things went wrong — which they did. Often.

Owen worried Jack too, but for different reasons. Where Toshiko was locked down, Owen was wide open. Things affected him too much, and he let everyone know about it. Jack had no idea what Toshiko got up to in her spare time — if she got up to anything — but Owen was an open book. The first fifteen minutes of any day consisted of him reciting everything he’d got up to the night before: every drink, every sexual encounter, even — until Jack had put his foot down — every bowel motion.

And then there was-

Hang on. Jack quickly scanned the Hub. No sign of Gwen. She should have been applying her analytical police brain to the fight in the nightclub, trying to work out what evidence they had, and where they could go next to work out where the device had come from. He knew she was annoyed about being pulled out of her dinner with the boyfriend, but he hoped she hadn’t left to go back…

‘Missing someone?’

Jack abruptly stopped looking down into the Hub and refocused his eyes on the reflections in the glass in front of him. And there she was, Gwen, standing in the darkness at the back of the room.

‘Been there long?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I know I seem omniscient — actually, I try hard to cultivate the image — but I don’t know everything. How’s the investigation going?’

She moved further into the room. ‘I’m going to have to make some enquiries tomorrow — friends, relatives, workmates. Someone might have seen one of those lads with a new toy, something high-tech that they didn’t recognise. I can’t do it from here, that’s the problem. As my old tutor at Hendon used to say: “There’s no substitute for bodies on the ground.”’ She winced. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t the most tasteful thing to say, given the circumstances.’

He smiled. ‘You’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again. Any other discoveries down there?’

‘Tosh believes that the device is part of a whole batch that arrived on Earth some time back in the 1950s. We’ve got twelve or thirteen items already in storage, confiscated from various places around South Wales. One even made it as far away as London. Apparently, the Torchwood team there had it in their archives, until…’ Her voice trailed away. She hadn’t been in the team when Torchwood London had been laid waste, but Jack knew that she was sensitive to the fact that the others didn’t like to talk about it. ‘Anyway, it was destroyed. Tosh is trying to find out if there are any design elements that the items have in common, something that might shed light on what this thing does.’

‘What do the other items do?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘That’s apparently the problem. They’ve been archived without anyone doing any serious analysis on what they are or what they do. Owen thinks that they’re the interstellar equivalent of Apostle Spoons- all part of a set: a collection of stuff. Decorative, rather than practical.’

‘He may have a point.’

Gwen looked around the Boardroom. ‘You know, you could do with some stuff to brighten this place up. You should start a collection of your own.’

Jack indicated the Hub, behind and below him. ‘I have you lot,’ he said. ‘That’s enough to be getting on with.’

‘Look, it’s quiet now, and there’s nothing I can do until tomorrow. Can I get back to my meal, please? Even if it’s just for the mints?’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Jack said and, as Gwen left the Boardroom, he turned and gazed out of the window again, back down into the depths of the Hub.

The meal was long finished and, by the time Rhys had drunk two cups of coffee, he had worked out that he wouldn’t be seeing Gwen again that night.

Which, he thought, as he gazed across the table at Lucy’s bright, open face, wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world.

The restaurant had filled up to overflowing and then gradually emptied again whilst he and Lucy ate. And while they talked. In fact, it seemed like they’d never stopped talking, even though Rhys seemed to have eaten all of his own food and what was left of Gwen’s as well. Now the white tablecloth was spattered with various sauces, the metal platters were piled up to one side, and the hot towels had cooled down some time before.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but I can’t believe you stay as thin as you do and eat so much. I’m going to have to live off watercress for a week to make up for this.’

‘I never used to be able to,’ she replied. ‘It’s these tablets. They’ve really changed my metabolism.’ She smiled. ‘I can’t believe how much fun this has been,’ she said, gazing into Rhys’s eyes. ‘I really needed this, especially tonight. Thanks.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I enjoyed myself too. I’m only sorry…’

He trailed off, and Lucy made a sympathetic face. ‘I guess it must be hard on you, with Gwen suddenly going off on urgent business all the time. I wouldn’t have thought there was that much serious crime in Cardiff. I mean, you never really get to hear about it, do you?’

‘Not often,’ Rhys admitted. ‘I used to listen to the local radio stations every night when Gwen was called out, just in case there was a report of a bank robbery, or a raid on some crack den, or something. Just in case she’d been hurt, you know? But there never was. Closest I ever got was a nutter on a phone-in show talking about UFO sightings. He had a thing about them. It worried me for a while, the fact that every time Gwen was out working, I’d listen to the radio and he’d be on, at two in the morning, talking about UFOs. Then it occurred to me that he was probably doing the same thing on the evenings when Gwen wasn’t out working, but I was fast asleep and couldn’t hear him.’

‘You don’t sleep when Gwen’s out working?’

He looked down at the tablecloth. ‘I get lonely when she’s not there,’ he said. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’

‘I think it’s rather sweet.’

He looked up at Lucy, not really thinking about what he was doing, but when his eyes met hers a sudden shiver ran through him. Part of him wanted to look away, but part of him wanted to keep holding on to her gaze for ever. He ended up looking away, then looking back to check what she was doing, and when he found that she’d done the same he blushed. And so did she.

Her eyes were brown, flecked with green, and her lashes were startlingly thick. Freckles were sprinkled across her cheeks and the top of her nose. Her mouth looked soft. He could see the tip of her tongue touching her teeth.

‘She never talks about what she’s been doing,’ he said suddenly, surprising himself with the words. ‘Which kind of worries me. I know it’s all meant to be a big secret, and I guess there’s some security reason why she can’t tell me the details of what she does, but I wouldn’t mind if she just gave me the highlights. “Hey, I abseiled down