Exodus Code (20 page)

‘Andy wil have some of his boys watching the house, too, then,’ said Rhys.

‘He’s turning into a smart lad.’

Jack nodded. ‘I spotted one on the street, doing a pretty good job of standing casual y outside the bookie’s having a smoke. If you see him, congratulate him on his choice of tracksuit. Showed off his bottom magnificently.’

For a while the two men sat in silence, listening to Anwen chatter to herself, tel ing stories about angry giants as she built a tower for her dol s and then crashed her truck into it.

‘What about al the other women?’ asked Rhys. ‘Did they hurt themselves too?’

Jack opened the files that Andy had left that afternoon. ‘The most violent clusters in the UK so far are women in the Scottish highlands, one cluster on the west coast and one near John O’Groats. Each of the women severely mutilated themselves, then attacked a close family member. In two cases, the woman murdered a loved one. Andy says the total as of this afternoon is 264

women across the UK. More international y.’

‘Bloody hel ,’ said Rhys, his wrist throbbing, his dinner congealing on the plate in front of him. He looked about as pathetic and troubled as Jack had ever seen him look. ‘What the hel ’s going on, Jack?’

‘Wish I knew, Rhys.’ Rol ing up his shirt sleeves, Jack lifted Anwen up and set her in her high chair, tucked a bib under her chin, and sliced bananas and toast onto her tray, most of which she tossed back at him, giggling.

‘You’re good with her, you know,’ said Rhys, popping open another beer, quickly heading from numb to useless in any research tasks Jack had in mind for him that night.

‘She’s a good baby,’ said Jack, handing her a triangle of toast slathered in Marmite.

‘It’s bloody Torchwood again, isn’t it?’ said Rhys, who had spent most of the past few nights at the hospital, returning in the morning only to check on Anwen, shower and change his clothes and pick up some clean ones for Gwen. Jack was afraid that he might lose himself in his drinking if they didn’t figure something out soon.

‘Wel , I’m fine,’ said Jack, wiping Anwen’s face which was smeared in Marmite. At least she was eating, thought Jack, forcing down a corner of her toast, the taste repulsing him.

‘You don’t count,’ snapped Rhys. ‘And if you did you’re not exactly proof that Torchwood isn’t at fault considering that you’re the only one stil standing.’

‘Hey, you’re stil standing,’ said Jack. ‘And you’re doing fine, too.’

He walked over to his laptop and pul ed up the TV news. Water traffic in the channel had been restricted. A parade of international scientists and geologists were trying to get close enough to the geyser to examine it. The geyser was slowly turning silver.

‘Look at that,’ whistled Jack. ‘It’s actual y quite a magnificent sight.’

The geyser looked like an explosion of silver fireworks against the setting sun. Jack stared at the jet’s pulsing spray, letting the images and the noises in his head rise to a deafening roar, knowing that the answer to what was causing this madness and this geological anomaly were locked inside his mind.

FLIPPING OPEN THE notes he had made earlier in the day and the file that Andy had given him, Jack went back to the original three police reports and spread them out across the table. The three woman whose files Andy had homed in on were of different ages and ethnicities – the university librarian was white and middle-aged; the second woman was black and in her thirties; the third, Lizzie, was the madwoman from the supermarket. Jack lined up their photographs next to each other.

‘Al of these women are, according to their families and their friends, peaceful and law abiding,’ said Jack, ‘and yet in al three cases, like Gwen, they behaved in a bizarre manner and in the process of their… their madness, they physical y harmed themselves.’

Jack picked up the photograph of the librarian, handing it to Rhys. ‘Ginny Davies plucked out her eyebal with no mind to how painful it must have been.

She told the student who sat on her until the medics arrived that,’ Jack picked up the notes in the file and read, ‘that she “couldn’t look at the world that way any more.”’

‘That’s horrible,’ said Rhys, looking sadly at the attractive woman who had partial y blinded and seriously disfigured herself. ‘Do the police have any idea what she meant?’

‘The police have no clue, but I think she may’ve been seeing things, hal ucinating perhaps, and whatever she was seeing broke her mind.’ Jack stopped and stared at Rhys.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing… nothing,’ said Jack, going to the sink and pouring himself some water. When he’d thought of the second woman’s mind breaking, he felt as if the memory he’d been trying to snag last night in the SUV had for a fleeting second flashed ful y formed across his mind. Then it was gone, leaving a thin trail behind, a lingering bad taste in his mouth.

Jack gulped the water before returning to the table.

‘This is Moira Firth, 24, a waitress. She’d just served dessert to her family of four when she headed into the kitchen and confronted her husband, the chef, with a long rant about his adultery and then she picked up a butcher’s knife and tried to cut out his heart.’

‘Jesus,’ said Rhys, taking the photo of Moira from Jack.

‘Think yourself lucky that I showed up when I did,’ said Jack, ‘and that it was only your face Gwen was sick of.’

‘I’ve never seen these women in my life before, and I’m pretty sure Gwen hadn’t either. But here’s the thing, Jack. Gwen was raging at me, but she was real y angry at herself too, at not being able to be the action woman she used to be, at how she was a terrible mother. It was like she’d let out al the frustrations she’d always kept inside about being a mum and a wife and the sacrifices she made for Anwen and me.’ Rhys wiped his sleeve across his eyes. ‘But I made sacrifices too, you know, Jack. I’ve always supported what she wanted to do, and I’ve protected her the best way I know how.’

Jack turned quickly. ‘What did you just say?’

Rhys cowed a bit under Jack’s stare. ‘Wel , maybe my job wasn’t always al about saving the world from aliens or anything but it was stil important to me.’

‘Rhys, don’t be such a— Not that part. The Gwen part. Say again what she was yel ing at you about.’

‘Mostly about how she was a bad mum, and a bad wife and how she didn’t want to be one any more,’ Rhys choked back a sob. ‘I can’t believe that was my Gwen saying al those awful things.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t think it was the Gwen who loves you and Anwen. I think it might’ve been the part of Gwen that’s always been locked in her subconscious that somehow took over and wanted to hurt you.’ Rhys looked appal ed at Jack’s train of thought. ‘Perhaps that part of her doesn’t want to be a wife any more.’

‘I don’t believe that’s how Gwen feels. Not deep down,’ said Rhys. As he spoke, he slumped further over his beer and the photographs lined up in front of him.

‘This is going to get much worse before any of these women get better,’

said Jack, ‘but it wil get better. And you wil get Gwen back.’

‘Do you reckon there’s something in the drinking water?’

Jack shook his head. ‘There’s definitely something connecting what’s happening to al these women here and abroad, but it has nothing to do with the water. I think something alien is attacking these women.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Rhys, slurring his words, exhaustion and lager final y breaking him.

Jack turned back to his laptop, staring at the image of the geyser, believing that he final y did. The lip of the sun was kissing the horizon. Jack’s fingers tingled at the sight, the geyser like a stiletto stabbing the centre of the sun.

AFTER DINNER, JACK drove to the university library. The hunch that had gripped him when he was looking at the sunset stil held him in its sway.

A librarian accosted him as he stood staring at the shelf on the History of Religions in the Reference room. The woman was in her mid-sixties, short white hair, dressed in grey slacks, a crisp white blouse with a string of pearls at her neck. A pair of pink plastic reading glasses were perched on the end of her thin nose.

‘Sir, may I help you? You look lost.’

‘More than you’l ever know.’

She smiled at him as if she knew exactly what he meant, even though Jack was no longer sure that even he did.

‘You do know we’re closing in thirty minutes.’

‘I know,’ said Jack, fol owing the woman over to her desk. ‘I’d like some information.’

‘I can sign you on to one of our computers, but you’l have to finish your search in fifteen minutes, I’m afraid.’

‘Actual y, I’d like the help from you, if that’s possible.’

‘From me?’ she said, putting her hand on her chest and exclaiming as if he’d offered her a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates.

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling, offering her his hand. ‘Captain Jack Harkness.’

‘Bernie Sanger.’ She shook Jack’s hand.

‘Honestly,’ said Jack. ‘I’d rather have you help me instead.’

‘Are you serious?’ she said, offering him a seat in front of her desk. ‘Is this one of those reality shows, and I’m going to be viral on YouTube tomorrow?’

‘Of course not,’ laughed Jack. ‘That would be a mean thing to do.’

She rol ed her eyes. ‘Of course it would, but that hardly seems to matter much nowadays. We like watching bad things happen to people. We’ve become a mean-spirited society. Look at the way everyone’s treating the families of those poor women, as if they’re lepers. You’d think we’d travel ed back in time and hadn’t learned a thing about psychology.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Jack, taking out a sheet of paper with a picture of the design Gwen had carved on her arm.

Jack believed that, in a fleeting moment of lucidity before she had attacked Rhys, for some reason Gwen had wanted to remember the image. Jack knew Gwen wel enough to believe that the image was a message of some kind for him. This image was somehow vital to saving Gwen and the other women.

‘It’s just that I never get asked for help much here any more,’ continued the librarian. ‘I’ve become nothing more than a glorified room monitor or a polite guide to the nearest toilet. I don’t even have to re-shelf books much, so few are checked out.’

‘Sad, isn’t it,’ said Jack. He looked round the impressive room, its wood-panel ed wal s, wide windows, and rows of books looking the same as it had in the nineteenth century, when he had first been there. There was something comforting in being surrounded by books al day every day, thought Jack, even for someone like him who was finding comfort in so few things now.

One or two tired-looking scholars and a handful of eager students were hunched over the long rectangular tables. Al of the patrons had laptops open next to them; only one had a stack of books. The room was quiet except for the occasional cough or throat-clearing, the low burring of an incoming text message, and the tap-tapping of fingers on keyboards. But in Jack’s head the noises were ever present, the flashes of faces and fragments of memory bordering his vision every minute.

Since that afternoon, the image of the beautiful woman from the mirror had haunted Jack’s peripheral vision, reinforcing for him that his visions, especial y the woman’s face, and the sighting of the puma, were related to whatever was happening to female synaesthetes around the world, and he had a strong feeling that al of these things were preludes to something much worse, something he needed to get ahead of before it was too late.

‘They mostly come in here for the free Wi-Fi,’ said the librarian.

‘Or a nap,’ said Jack, nodding towards one of the scholars, whose chin was resting comfortably on his chest.

The strange woman’s face lingered faintly in Jack’s peripheral vision.

‘Bernie, I need some research done on a few items, including some information on an Inca tribe cal ed the Cuari,’ said Jack, slipping two sheets of paper across her desk. ‘I’d be happy to compensate you for the work if it cuts into your day.’

She scanned the two pages. ‘That won’t be necessary. For a few days, let them find the toilet on their own.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, standing to leave, ‘and I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us.’

‘Captain, I may not be as fast as the internet, but I can keep a secret.’ She folded the paper and slipped it into her desk. ‘How may I reach you with the results?’

‘I’m leaving the country soon,’ said Jack. ‘If you could email the information to me, that would be great.’

DR OLIVIA STEELE lived in a whitewashed Georgian mansion off the St Andrew’s Road, west of Dinas Powys Common. The house was tucked in the woods, its closest neighbour barely visible in the deepening dusk, except as jags of orange light bursting through the trees.

Jack stopped in front of the iron gates at the entrance to the driveway. The only evidence that he had found the right place was a smal brass plaque beneath an intercom on the gates that read, ‘Steele Manor’, which Jack thought appropriate for a doctor who healed people’s heads or a confused superhero. Jack had cal ed ahead to make an appointment. When he pressed the bel to announce his arrival, the gates swung open immediately.

The winding canopied approach was long and narrow. The road eventual y opened onto a large circular driveway fronting the house. Dr Steele was waiting for Jack at the front door. She led him into a marbled foyer where another woman, dressed in a black jersey dress, revealing ample hips and a perfect décol etage, took Jack’s coat while Jack tried his best not to stare.