Another Life (29 page)

Once clear of the bund, it was a straight run out across the Bay. There was no shipping to worry about, only the occasional surging cross-current to negotiate.

Eventually, Sandra heaved a huge sigh. For one dreadful moment, Owen feared that it was a death rattle, that distressing sound made by dying people as their level of consciousness decreased and they lost their ability to swallow properly. When he checked, he saw to his surprise that her eyes were more alive than ever. She was peering intently through the observation window, and delighted with what she saw. Owen followed her gaze, and had to gasp himself.

This wasn’t what Sandra had described to them in the hospital. This was more than just a simple hatch poking out of the sea bed. It was a curving expanse of dull metal, glinting with a soft inner glow even at this depth in the cloudy water. The silt at the base of it, where the vessel emerged from the sediment, was vibrating as though the whole edifice was juddering its way into reality.

Slowly forcing its way through the Rift.

The escape pod jolted, and Owen felt the controls resist his hands. He relinquished his grip, and watched the controls continue to move without his assistance. The autopilot was in operation, and the escape pod was still in motion.

They were going in.

‘I won’t be best pleased if my car gets washed away,’ Gwen told Toshiko. ‘I’ve only had it three weeks. And imagine what the insurance claim would read like.’

‘Relax. It’s well up the causeway. And how else were we going to get the trailer out here?’

‘Yeah, well you’ve seen how far up the water level is now.’ Gwen indicated the view from the starboard porthole of the submersible. A hundred metres away, the lights of Mermaid Quay sparkled in the rain. The murky late afternoon was so dark that the light detectors on the streetlamps had already activated.

Toshiko peered out too, and together they watched the waves from the Bay surge up over the wooden walkway around the Quay. The boards in front of Torchwood’s Tourist Information entrance were submerged by as much as a metre of water, completely covering Ianto’s overly optimistic pile of sandbags.

‘Look at that,’ pointed Gwen. ‘There’s so much water running off the Oval Basin that I bet you could go whitewater-rafting down it. When we get back, what d’you reckon we’ll only be to see the Pierhead clock tower poking out of the sea?’

‘The tidal barrage has already been breached,’ explained Toshiko. She was checking the computer display that fed her information from the local-authority computers she had hacked. ‘The sluice gates failed about an hour ago. The Bay area’s usually a couple of metres below spring tide. But even that can’t account for this much flooding.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, it’s not like the Bristol Channel has suddenly got a lot deeper. So how has the water level in the Bay risen by three metres? Or four metres in some places. It’s like a localised bubble of water, angled out of the sea.’

‘I didn’t think water behaved like that,’ said Gwen. ‘I don’t understand it, I’m…’

‘All at sea?’ suggested Toshiko. ‘You’re right, water isn’t supposed to behave that way. So let’s go and find out what’s causing this, and put a stop to it.’

She settled herself in front of the controls and prepared to dive. The large hemispherical window in front of her afforded them a view of the Bay’s heaving water. The whole vessel lurched as another large wave surged beneath them.

Gwen watched nervously as the nose of their vessel started to sink down. Dirty green seawater began to lap higher and higher against the large front window. She didn’t much enjoy confined spaces, and she wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer, so this combination was making her particularly nervous. Was it her imagination, or was the air getting thicker in here? She closed her eyes, and took slow, deep breaths. ‘What’s this thing called, then?’ she asked, hoping that conversation might divert her for a while. ‘A diving ship, probably. Or a bathyscaphe?’

‘What do you imagine?’ Toshiko smiled as the water covered them completely. ‘We call it the Torchwood sub, of course.’

It helped that he knew what to expect when the airlock opened. Owen remembered what Sandra had told them back in the A&E department. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen an alien spaceship before now, so he wasn’t completely nonplussed by it.

For Megan, it would be a different matter. He’d expected to offer her a slow build-up, a gradual introduction to the wonders and astonishments and, yes, the horrors of the extraterrestrial. That’s how Jack had made sure that Owen did not go bonkers. That he was open to the experience of things hitherto not imagined, not possible. That he wasn’t totally overwhelmed with the utter
alien-ness
of the world he was entering in Torchwood. Jack had described it as ‘inoculation’.

Owen had planned to do the same for Megan, his own protégée. Showing her the Bekaran device, to seed that thought in her mind. Introducing her to the grandeur of the Hub and its contents, a safe environment where she could face a Weevil safely from behind safety glass in the dungeon. And then a first simple foray in the field, for that adrenalin buzz you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Sandra’s unexpected arrival had put the mockers on that, hadn’t it? So here was Megan, learning it the hard way, seeing first-hand an alien spaceship that had crashed on her very doorstep. Owen took her by the hand to help her out of the escape pod, and continued to hold it tightly as they ventured deeper into the unknown corridors.

In stark contrast to the ship’s exterior, the inside was softly illuminated in a wide variety of green hues. It was as though the murky water of the Bay had been transformed into aquamarines and apple-green and viridian. Soft sage-coloured fronds dangled from a high, arched ceiling. Dark green walls pulsed with the arcane bright outlines of unknown symbols or images. A fizzing row of brilliance speared through the corridors at floor level, apparently steering them onwards. To either side, the corridor walls were punctuated by dark shafts leading downwards to who knew where, each hissing with the faintest wisp of steam.

Sandra shuffled ahead of them, as though drawn inexorably forward. When Owen asked her where the control room was, she merely beckoned him on with her hand without turning around.

After only a few minutes, they turned into large room. There was none of the brilliance of the corridors, only a subdued background illumination. Six scooped frames, each like an elongated letter J, were suspended by thick, olive-green tendrils from a darkened ceiling. They faced towards the centre of a circle. At its centre was a pale cylinder that might have been a table, and at the head of the circle was a closed cabinet fashioned from what looked like jade. Sandra staggered into the room, and slumped against the cylinder.

Owen took a quick look at Megan, who was still wide-eyed and speechless with amazement. He let go of her hand, and hurried across to Sandra. She shrugged him off, a feeble effort that seemed to wrack her with pain.

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You must take up positions in the control frames.’

He looked at her, uncertain.

‘Hurry!’ she hissed. ‘Can’t you tell that the ship’s about to break through? It will…’ Her body was wracked with a huge cough. ‘It will destroy the Bay.’

She stepped awkwardly away from the cylinder, and indicated to Megan that she should use one of the scooped frames. Megan looked to Owen for confirmation. When he nodded to her, she leaned back and sat in the middle frame.

Owen took the one next to her. Sandra was already helping Megan to fasten the tendrils around her in the frame, like a seat belt. Next she did the same for Owen. The tendrils went taut, and he could feel them forcing him back against the hard frame.

‘Ow!’ shouted Megan. ‘Oww!’

Owen laughed, and settled into his frame. ‘Is it a bit tight again? Get Sandra to loosen it a bit.’

Then Megan began to scream.

Owen wasn’t sure whether to call out something calming and reassuring, or to tell Sandra that she should release Megan for a few minutes. He craned his head forward to see what Sandra was doing.

Sandra was standing by the pale cylinder in the centre. Her whole posture made her look exhausted, like she was ready to drop down in front of him. But her eyes were different. They were alive, glittering with satisfaction, and in the soft green light of the room her grin was a startling rictus.

He didn’t have time to say anything. The tendrils around him snapped tight, and pulled his head back hard against the frame. Megan’s screaming abruptly stopped. By squinting sideways, Owen could see Megan’s head slump forward like an abandoned rag doll.

‘Let her go!’ he yelled at Sandra. His voice seemed lost in the room.

Sandra limped over to him, still showing that terrible smile. ‘We only just made it in time, Owen.’ The effort of speaking racked her. ‘This particular body’s reached the end of its use. But I couldn’t relinquish it until we got here.’ She indicated the whole room. ‘I’m not sure it will survive very much longer. But that’s of no consequence now. See you again! Soon.’

The light in her eyes seemed to vanish, like an extinguished candle. Where previously there had been a kind of triumph in her expression, now there was only incomprehension, confusion, and pain. Sandra glanced around the room in bewilderment. She said one word: ‘Oh.’ And then her eyes rolled back into her head, and she dropped to the floor like she’d been poleaxed.

Owen struggled against his restraints, yelling and cursing and utterly failing to get free. His futile efforts were cut short by the buzzing noise and brightening light that engulfed the frame beside him. With a whipping sound, the tendrils around Megan withdrew and vanished.

Megan stepped out of her frame.

‘Get me out of this thing, Megan!’ called Owen. ‘It hasn’t released me.’

‘It’s not supposed to,’ said Megan. Her voice was calm and secure. She walked slowly around the cylinder, with the confident gait of someone who knew she was safe.

Megan held her hands in front of her, turning them over, examining them as though they were a thing of wonder and novelty. When she looked at him, Owen could see there was no more terror in her eyes.

‘Hello again,’ she said to him.

He struggled vainly against his restraints once more. ‘Not funny, Megan. C’mon, Sandra needs help. Get me out of this thing.’

Megan considered Sandra where she had fallen heavily against the pale cylinder. The blonde woman’s eyes were closed, and she was taking frequent, shallow breaths.

‘I think Sandra’s beyond help now. And I certainly have no further use for her.’

Owen studied the woman he thought he knew, standing right in front of him. ‘Who are you?’

Megan smiled brightly. ‘Let me show you.’

She placed her palms on the top of the pale cylinder. Lights within it responded to her touch as she stroked the surface.

The jade cabinet at the front of the circle cracked from top to bottom as a pair of irregular, hinged doors opened up. Suspended inside, seated in a larger version of the scooped J-shaped frames, was a tall, ugly alien. Bipedal, broad-shouldered, with binocular vision. Its head lolled in the seat, and its skull was a carapace of etched bone. Its thin arms ended in long, thick, dirty claws. The whole of the creature’s torso heaved as it took shallow breaths through the slit of its mouth.

Megan walked over to the cabinet, checking what must have been medical readings that played continuously on the inner edge of the jade cabinet. Satisfied with the results, she looked over her shoulder at Owen.

‘
This
is the real me,’ she said.

TWENTY-FIVE

You’re tingling. It’s a fantastic feeling, isn’t it? You’re not sure whether it’s relief or worry or excitement or anticipation. Or is it that your lover’s here with you, and he’s hanging on your every word?

You met him at the university disco, what sort of a cliché is that? Or a ‘cleesh’, as he’d say. Owen was the thin-faced, nervous lad with the good cheekbones you’d seen in Anatomy, and joked with Amanda Trainor that you’d like to examine his Anatomy more closely, and did she know his name. Amanda had identified him as local boy Owen Harper, and declared him to be a rat-faced loser with a cruel mouth. You’d seen something else in him. And then, there he was, nursing his pint at the back of the disco, while his better-looking mate was hitting on your better-looking mate and eating her face off during some slow Alanis Morissette record (bloody hell! what were they
thinking
?). He was never going to make the first move, was he? Though you could see his hungry eyes following you around the dance floor, peering into the bright maelstrom of red and blue and green and white, surveying your every move. So you’d banged into his table and spilled his drink, and thus it began. The following morning was the first of many when you would wake first and see him sleeping beside you, admiring his long dark lashes above his freckled white cheeks.

Can you ever see yourself as others see you? Most recently, as Sandra Applegate, you caught sight of your face in the mirror at Wildman’s apartment. Pale and tired, the blood smeared over your mouth and chin and staining your favourite coat. Before that, you watched your reflection in the shop windows as you ran for safety down the high street and into the building site. And, earlier still, you studied your nakedness in the mirror that hung over the corner sink in your room at the barracks. Amazed and amused that your pale pink body, with its curious musculature protected by a thin epidermis, was considered by humans as a peak of fitness.

Confusingly, you thought you were in peak condition, too. It’s a curious double life to live.

And now here you are, facing yourself as you cling on in the life-support unit. This is a new perspective, indeed. Look at you there – the proud warrior, laid low by the accident. And yet also the inventive explorer who possesses the means of your own salvation.

You close the doors to the life-support unit, and seal your true self into the protective cocoon. When you turn around, you can see Owen in the restraint chair. He’s not looking at you with hungry eyes now. His look is full of fear and fury. ‘What are you talking about, Megan? What the hell is that thing in there?’