red glare from the monster's eyes and she felt the hum in the air as it prepared to come at her. She didn't need words to know these things. It was a mother's intuition. The thing that faced her let out a silent roar that ripped at the very existence of her consciousness and, flinching against its power, the remnants of her individuality clung to the inside of her skull.
She stared through the glass.
For a moment there was stillness and, locked in that moment staring at each other, Adrienne thought that even the rain slowed, the drops hanging in the air, waiting and watching, sucked into the frozen conflict between monster and mother.
And then the creature tilted back its head and let the dark cavern of its mouth stretch horribly wide, exposing the empty nothing within; a darkness that would suck you in and lose you there, and Adrienne felt hot tears on her cheek.
The creature moved. And moved again, too quickly for her to see.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
And then the glass smashed.
TWENTY-SIX
Gwen's arms pumped, sweat and rain mixing on her face as she sprinted down the corridor of the autism centre. Somewhere up ahead, glass smashed. Nurses peered out from their rooms, the adult faces alive with curiosity and worry and the need to get involved.
'Get back inside and shut the doors!' Gwen yelled at them, dimly aware of figures starting back as she shouted. 'Stay back!'
Following the narrow corridor, Gwen turned the corner, peering quickly into each room. Where the hell was it? Three doors down, right towards the back of the centre, she finally stopped.
Staring into the small room, she very slowly raised her hand to her ear. 'Jack?' she whispered. 'Hurry up. We've got a situation.'
'Oh my God.'
The voice made her jump and, turning, Gwen grabbed the woman's arm and pushed her gently but firmly away from the door. 'I told everyone to stay back. I need you to go and wait in the reception area.' Gwen hoped her own hand wasn't trembling too much. Blood rushed through her veins, its content almost pure adrenalin.
'I'm his nurse.' The woman's round face wobbled as she swallowed back shocked tears. 'I'm Ceri Davies, Ryan's nurse. He's severely autistic. I've cared for him ever since he came in. That… that woman's his mother, Adrienne. She was visiting.' She paused. 'Oh my God.' A hand went to her mouth and she stifled a sob. 'What is that thing? Is it going to hurt him? I can't leave him. I can't.'
Gwen rubbed the woman's arm. 'Stay here. We might need you.' She didn't answer any of her questions. She didn't have the answers. Leaving the woman leaning against the wall, Gwen peered slowly round the door and into the little boy's room. Nothing had changed.
The window was smashed, blown inwards with such force that some parts of it had sliced all the way through the smart-looking brunette who lay twisted and wrecked on the carpet. Her pale and manicured hand was separated from her wrist and a large fragment of thick glass was embedded just below her cheekbone, standing upwards and reflecting the vacant stare from her glassy eyes. Gwen didn't even think about trying to get closer and checking for a pulse. She didn't need anything but her eyes to tell her the boy's mother was very dead. Her blood was everywhere, a large, growing pool under her body, and huge splatters across the walls of the small room where her arteries must have severed as her heart was still beating, pumping the crimson fluid out to stick to every surface it touched.
Gwen looked at the small boy sitting cross-legged on the floor. His mother's blood had tarnished his straw- blond hair and a thin, shiny streak trickled down his cheek, but his smooth face remained impassive. He was singing, softly but perfectly, despite his dead mother lying so close by, and despite the awful creature that crouched in front of him, one hand extended, one thick finger touching his slim, small throat.
'He sings all the time.' The nurse had crept up alongside her. She stared at the devastation, the horror of it echoing in her soft whisper. 'He sings to keep the world out.' Gwen felt the woman's warmth close to her own and couldn't bear to move her back.
Heavy boots thumped out an urgent rhythm on the clinically hard-wearing carpet, and Gwen looked up to see Jack and Cutler running towards her. She raised a hand, turning her gaze back to the boy and the alien in the room. Instinctively, Jack slowed his pace and Cutler did the same, quietening their approach.
Silently stepping aside, Gwen let Jack see the situation for himself. His eyes would read it faster than she could explain it. Jack edged into the room, staying close to the wall, and Gwen followed him, her movements tiny, creeping an inch at a time closer to the scene.
'He's severely autistic,' she whispered to him. 'Sings all the time.'
Jack nodded. Slowly he pulled the portable prison device from his pocket. 'We need to get the kid away from him. I can't trap him when he's touching the boy. And aside from that he might slash his throat open.'
'I'm not feeling that emptiness Ianto talked about.' Gwen let Jack pull away from her. If they were going to distract the alien to get little Ryan they needed to be on different sides of the room.
'Neither am I.' Jack's voice was low. 'But then we're not used to this thing keeping people alive either.'
Gwen looked over at the woman's body on the floor. 'It didn't keep her alive.'
In the centre of the room, the alien tilted its head, the red beams of light pouring from the dark spaces in its head caressing the boy's still face. The uneven hole below opened and shut a few times and then eventually it spat out some sounds.
'The others stopped.'
The words sounded like they were being forced through water, garbled and bubbled with phlegm, and although the creature struggled to produce them their meaning was clear.
Gwen looked over at Jack. In the doorway, the nurse and Cutler appeared, blocking the exit. Jack didn't signal them back, nor did he signal to Gwen that he wanted to start any distraction manoeuvre in order to grab the boy. He frowned. Gwen knew that look. He was curious.
He stepped forward two paces and then tilted his own head.
'What do you mean the others stopped?'
The alien didn't look up from the boy, but rolled its head this way and that as if bathing in the sound.
'It called me.' The words were rough, no tone or resonance, barked out as if the sound was a crime against the creature's nature. 'So far away. The nothing brought me to the sound. It was beautiful.'
Jack moved slowly to the far side of the room, crouching down where he could see both the boy and the alien. The singing child had lifted his head, his eyes on the grotesque fractured and grey visage in front of him.
'Are you from the Silent Planet?'
The beams of red sharpened and lessened, the edges softening. 'My world has no name. There are no names. No sound. No sight. There is only yourself. For ever.'
Jack frowned. 'So why come here?' He edged an inch closer to the boy and Gwen could see the portable device in his hand. 'We must be your worst nightmare.'
The creature sighed, its mouth losing shape. 'I am…' It paused. 'I am wrong.'
'Why did you kill those people?'
There was a long moment where all Gwen could hear was the boy's singing. It was 'Pie Jesu'. It was a song she must have heard a hundred times before, but it had never moved her until now. If her heart hadn't been about to explode from tension, she thought, it might have broken with the sheer emotional quality of his voice.
'The sound. I want the sound.' The creature shook its head, and Gwen felt the air tremble with the weight of the movement. 'But the parts didn't work.' For the first time, the alien turned its attention away from the boy and towards Jack. 'When I took them and made them part of me, they wouldn't work. I couldn't make the sound. Only the words.'
