specific.
Or someone.
‘You!’
He was looking for Toshiko and Owen.
Twenty large, armed guards surrounded the CEO and her escorts instantly.
Owen eased himself through the crowd. ‘Ianto, mate,’ he started to say, but the ranting Ianto cut across him.
‘I want him back! Now!’
‘Not possible, mate,’ smiled Owen. And he pointed at the glass slab beneath his feet.
Toshiko waved the guards back as Ianto stepped forward and saw Jack’s contorted, agonised body.
Then, faster than should have been possible, Ianto raised his gun and fired twice, the first bullet straight through Owen’s forehead. As the corpse fell, the second bullet hit Toshiko’s shoulder.
Thirty guards opened fire, and what remained of Ianto Jones would have needed tweezers to collect together.
Toshiko had a hand pressed against her bleeding shoulder as she knelt next to Owen.
She looked up at the guards. ‘Get him to my suite – now.’ Then she turned to the bloody mess that was spread around where Ianto had stood.
‘Welcome to Torchwood, Ianto,’ she muttered. ‘Jack would’ve been proud.’
And the real Toshiko, the one watching this awful, terrifying vision of her future, shivered as her vision swam, bright lights popping in her vision until everything was blotted out by a white haze.
Then she was back to herself, standing in Bilis Manger’s strange shop, holding his hands, and staring into his face, his eyes still gone, still replaced by that same blazing white light. The lights bled from his eyes and roared into hers. Toshiko ceased struggling after three seconds as her body filled with the white light.
And Bilis’s own eyes returned to normal.
‘And now you have a share of a stronger, younger host,’ he murmured.
Toshiko stood there. Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she see properly? Why was everything so bright…
And then she realised, as consciousness began to fade again, that the light was inside her. Not in Bilis.
The last thing she was aware of was the touch of his hands on hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to your body. Well, nothing too bad. That’s the best we can hope for. When we make deals with the Light and the Dark.’
THIRTEEN
‘Jack,’ Gwen called as he emerged from the basement, ‘there’s nothing after 1941.’ She waved towards her monitor. ‘Same newspaper reports as last time about the dance hall, then nothing. Bilis Manger simply vanishes.’
‘What about that wretched shop he had?’
‘Gone,’ called Ianto, from Toshiko’s station. ‘No records with the Council, it was never there. It’s been a clothes shop since 1998. Paid up, account in the name of Julia Martin, who seems to be a model citizen of Wales, bar a few speeding fines and a hefty overdraft.’
Jack frowned and passed a sheet of clear plastic sheeting to Gwen. ‘Scan it, it has Bilis’s handprint on it. Silly idiot put his hand on a cell door. I want every system in the world checked, Scotland Yard, Interpol, the FBI, CIA, Mossad, the works. Someone must have encountered him, someone else must have some info.’
‘UNIT?’
‘Been there, tried that, called in a favour from a friend. Nothing.’
Gwen placed the sheet into a scanner and it transferred an image of a handprint to her monitor. Tiny lines blinked to the fingertips and palm, mapping the unique signatures and a series of images of other hand and fingerprints flashed up in a pop-up box as the Hub systems accessed similar records around the world.
Jack’s impatience was palpable, and Gwen said after a minute, ‘It takes time. Go have coffee. Ianto, make the man coffee.’
Ianto nodded and stood to go, but Jack waved him back to his seat. ‘No coffee. No tea, no OJ, no vodka till we have answers.’
‘I have a hit,’ said Ianto shortly.
‘Where?’
‘Hang on…’
‘Where!’
‘Here. Sort of.’ Ianto frowned. ‘This doesn’t make sense.’
‘Let me judge that,’ Jack said. ‘Come on, what’s up?’
Ianto looked back at the expectant Jack and Gwen. ‘He’s on the Torchwood database.’
‘But that would mean…’
Ianto nodded at Gwen. ‘Yeah, he’s staff. But,’ he added quickly, to stifle their questions, ‘that’s impossible. He’s not on any records, no photos, no paper trail. Even Jack has a paper trail. The name doesn’t show up anywhere, but that handprint is given top access here in Cardiff, at Canary Wharf, in Glasgow and at Torchwood Four. But no names, no pictures, no records whatsoever.’
Jack headed to his office. ‘I’m going to talk to Archie in Glasgow. As a strange little old man himself, maybe he’s an expert on even stranger little old men.’ He slammed the office door behind him.
‘You ever meet Archie?’ Gwen asked Ianto.
Ianto shook his head.
‘Owen?’ she called down to the Autopsy Room.
‘What now?’
‘Ever met Archie?’
‘Who?’
‘Glasgow Archie,’ Ianto added.
‘Oh. Old Tartan Archie.’ He appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Nah. Exchanged a few bizarre emails once.’
‘Bizarre?’
‘Yeah. Not sure he quite got the hang of computers really. Some of the words he used were… interesting and not always used in the right context. And he frequently referred to himself in the third person, so I thought he was a bit eccentric. Either that or the whisky was really good that morning.’
‘I think we need a Torchwood day out to Glasgow. Take Archie out for a drink.’
‘I’ll hire a minibus,’ Ianto said. ‘Probably get it painted matt black quite easily.’
‘Can we go without the blue lights this time. Sometimes, in the SUV, I feel like I’m in Santa’s Grotto.’ Owen headed back to work.
‘I like the blue lights, me,’ Gwen said. ‘What’s wrong with blue lights?’
Ianto shrugged. ‘I think they look sophisticated. Perhaps Owen’s only happy if they’re red lights.’
Gwen laughed.
Jack came out of the office.
‘Blue lights, Jack?’ Gwen asked. ‘Or red?’
Jack stared at the two of them. ‘Sometimes, I’m not sure that office doesn’t lead to a parallel dimension and each Hub I go into is slightly different from the one I left.’
‘I think Jack’s a blue light guy,’ said Ianto. ‘Look at the coat. And those matching shirts.’
‘Oh, the shirts, yeah, dead giveaway,’ Gwen agreed.
‘Owen?’ bellowed Jack. ‘Have you been experimenting with strange gasses again?’
‘Nope,’ Owen yelled back. ‘They’re just weird, those two. I got used to it, why haven’t you? Oh and Ianto, I prefer green lights, not red.’
Gwen gave Ianto an ‘ooh, caught out’ look and laughed.
