Into the Silence

blood. She tried not to really see the piece of sheet music that had turned crimson, dropped during the attack and soaked in warm red, the notes all blurring into each other; the music gone for ever from the paper. She tried not to look into the open eyes, whose expression was a photograph of the dead man's last feelings: empty horror, fear and that awful disbelief that something so terrible didn't always happen to other people.

Looking at those things would make her throw up. Those things would muddy her thinking with her feelings, and there wasn't any time for that now. Jack needed more from her. Especially now the team was so much smaller than it had been and had too many of its own empty spaces. She bit the inside of her cheek, enjoying the sharp moment of pain that forced her to focus on the necessity of her job. Taking care to avoid the blood, she moved around the body, assessing it.

The man was in his mid-forties, balding and, judging from the chubbiness in his pale cheeks, probably a little on the overweight side of healthy, but it was hard to truly gauge his mid-section. Something had sliced him open from his chin to his pelvis in what looked like one neat incision. His clothes, skin and the membrane casing beneath were peeled back and lay under his prostrate arms as if he'd unbuttoned a shirt and spread it wide on the floor around him. His freed guts spilled slightly over the edge of his pelvis, a slick grey trail of rotten sausage, but, from what she could make out, the rest of his organs seemed in place. Not that she was an expert on the inner workings of the human body.

'It doesn't look much like a Weevil attack to me,' she said finally.

Jack nodded. 'You're right. A Weevil didn't do this. Weevils are aggressive. Everything about their attacks is uncontrolled and violent. This…' He crouched by the dead man's head. 'This is precise. I want to examine the cut when we get back to the Hub. I'm betting he was opened up with one movement. Amazing.' He looked up at Gwen. 'Notice anything missing?'

'What, apart from his skin and any sign of life?' She snorted.

Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Serious moment, Gwen. Look at the body.'

She stared into the red mess. 'I'm not a bloody doctor, Jack. How am I supposed to know?' I'm not Owen, that's what she'd really wanted to say, but that would do no one any good. And it was there, unspoken, anyway. She could see it in a moment's clouding in Captain Jack's dark eyes.

'Well, you'd better spend some time studying that wall chart of the human body that's hanging in the Autopsy Room.' His voice was soft, and his own hurt vibrated loudly in it. Her grief was his grief too. Sometimes, she hated herself for getting far too caught up in the ups and downs of being Gwen Cooper to remember that.

She smiled gently, crouching beside him. 'I'll take that as an order.' She peered into the mutilated body. 'So what's missing then?'

Jack pointed at the man's throat just under where it had been cut. 'The voice box and vocal cords.'

Gwen stared. On reflection, the man's neck area did look empty around the spinal column, but she couldn't see any real indication of trauma. 'Were they ripped out?'

Jack shook his head. 'His Adam's apple is fine and the larynx and folds should be under it. But it looks more like they were never there. Which would make singing pretty impossible.' He frowned. 'I can't think of any human instrument that could remove something so precisely.'

He touched the almost invisible Bluetooth device in his ear. 'Ianto. You there?'

He paused, and Gwen thought of Ianto Jones sitting in the warmth of the Hub, probably drinking coffee. What he was going to make of this body, she'd be curious to find out. Pizza probably wouldn't be on the menu for dinner.

'Has there been any Rift activity in the area of Gadalfa Street tonight? We're at the Church of St Emmanuel.' Still focused on the call, Jack stood up and Gwen followed. Jack nodded, the reaction to whatever was said in his ear automatic. 'OK. We'll be back at the Hub in about thirty minutes. We're bringing the body with us, so get the Autopsy Room set up.'

The conversation with Ianto over, Jack turned back to Gwen. 'Whatever did this definitely came through the Rift. There was a spike about an hour ago. Ianto said it started rising a couple of streets away and then peaked here. Here and gone within minutes.'

Smiling, Gwen rested a hand playfully on one tilted hip of her jeans. 'I could have told you that when we first got here. Without any of your missing vocal cords and Rift spikes.'

'Oh really?' Jack's eyes danced. 'Then share, PC Cooper.'

Looking upwards, Gwen pointed at the once-impressive stained-glass window high against the wall. It had shattered inwards, coloured shards decorating the area hidden in shadows along a far wall.

'No human criminal would come through a window that high when they could just use the bloody door.' Grinning slightly, she raised an eyebrow and swung her hips as she strode past Jack up the aisle and towards the exit. 'I'll tell the uniforms they can come and clean up now, shall I?'

Jack was staring up at the window, smiling. 'I guess the pizza's on me for that then, huh?'

Gwen laughed, and headed out into the rain.

TWO

The lift purred quietly as it lowered Ianto Jones down into the hidden heart of the Hub.

His suit jacket was damp from the rain that had been falling all evening, but he didn't mind. He'd needed a quick natural freshen up to help give himself some extra energy and, although the doughnuts that were still warm in the bag he was carrying probably weren't the best brain food, they'd certainly go well with the fresh pot of coffee he'd left brewing.

His shoulders ached slightly from sitting peering at the various computer screens for far too long and, for a few moments after he'd stood up, his tired eyes had had difficulty focusing. No wonder Tosh had worn glasses. Ianto was finding that as the days wore on without her, his admiration for his dead colleague's abilities was growing. And it wasn't as if he'd lacked respect for her while she was alive.

His face tingled pleasantly from the rain, but it was going to take more than a five-minute walk outdoors to relax him. It seemed like he'd been trying to figure out the intricacies of Tosh's various computer programs for ever and, while he was no IT dunce, Toshiko had been in a different league. Even with her little pop-up help icons, a lot of what she'd set up was way beyond him.

The heavy metal door slid open and he stepped into the warm light of the Hub, ignoring the computer stations and heading towards the Autopsy Room. The pop-ups had made him smile though, even if each one had sent a needle of grief into his heart. Typical of Toshiko to have planned for every eventuality.

'And once again Cardiff is alive with the sound of music as the city prepares for the fifth annual Welsh Amateur Operatic Contest…' The TV screen quietly delivered the news and, putting the doughnuts down, Ianto looked for the remote. He sometimes liked background noise while he was working, tonight being one of those nights, but Jack definitely didn't. 'The best singers from across the nation have arrived in preparation for the finals which will be held in front of a star-studded judging panel eleven days from now, in a live television broadcast from the Millennium Centre…'

Ianto clicked her off and followed the crisp scent of fresh coffee to the bubbling machine. Coffees in hand, he took the steps down into the Autopsy Room. He froze as he saw the body.

'Jesus.'

Jack looked up. 'Not even close. This is Richard Greenwood, 45, from Newport.'

'What happened to him?' Ianto had completely forgotten about the coffees, but dimly noticed Gwen taking them from him. 'Don't tell me a Weevil.'

'Then I won't.' Jack moved round to the other side of the exposed corpse and carefully lifted one flap of peeled-back skin. 'And it wasn't. Whatever did this was something else.' He frowned. 'He was opened up in one movement from his throat all the way down, but look, this is fascinating…'

'I think I can see well enough from here.' Staying where he was and watching his two colleagues peering intently at the mutilated man, Ianto wasn't sure whether he should be envious or slightly nervous of Jack and Gwen's ability to cope with gore on this level. He knew his own limitations.

'I see it!' Gwen exclaimed. 'The skin and his clothes.' She looked up. 'It's like they've been melted together.'