Exodus Code (27 page)

‘Which would explain why some women are responding with orgasms and others with violence,’ said Vlad.

‘According to my analysis of the patient data, Vlad,’ added Shel ey, ‘currently the other point that explains why some women are responding with violence and some with lust is tied to their synaesthesia. Most of the initial clusters of women, the synaesthetes, tended to respond with violence, but I believe that had more to do with the intensity of their heightened synaesthesia coupled with their emotional stability and how both outweighed their sexual desire.’

Jack thought about Gwen’s response – how her frustrations over the sudden changes in her professional and personal lives after the suspension of Torchwood, how this emotional instability combined with the pheromones had shaped a violent response in her. Yet, Jack thought, there was an aspect of Gwen’s madness that continued to niggle at him. Why had she carved the glyph on her arm when so far Jack and Shel ey’s research had not uncovered anyone else who had seen or carved the same mark, other than Jack himself, that is.

Why was Gwen’s response so different?

Vlad and Eva began checking the overnight data from the hydrothermal vents, monitoring al seven that had erupted, two of which were smal er in diameter and had already sealed like the one in New Zealand. Shel ey shifted next to Vlad’s computer, wiping data to the air between them when Eva asked.

If not for a slight shimmer around the folds of Shel ey’s dress that was most obvious when standing close to her, she could easily be taken for another member of the crew.

Jack watched the avatar interact with Vlad and Eva, impressed with how wel Vlad’s original program had married the Torchwood software with only minor glitches.

‘How bad are the numbers?’ he asked Vlad.

‘Bad,’ said Vlad. ‘The PH is off in almost every sample. Schools of fish are beginning to wash onto beaches al over the Eastern seaboard and the west coast of Africa.’

‘What’s happening doesn’t make any scientific sense,’ said Eva, chewing the arm of her glasses distractedly. She stood and walked over to the screen that Jack had switched from the news feed to the map. Once again, Eva stood and stared at the pulsing lights.

‘What are you seeing?’ asked Jack, standing next to her.

‘Before you came on board I thought I could detect a pattern in the vents,’

said Eva, watching the lights. ‘But I couldn’t figure it out.’

‘Shel ey,’ said Jack, ‘can you download the file I gave you from Gwen’s phone?’

Shel ey appeared next to Eva and she threw the file from Gwen’s phone up between them.

‘It’s the image on Gwen’s arm,’ said Eva.

‘Where’s the file from?’ asked Vlad.

‘Gwen downloaded it to her phone from a computer the night before she tried to kil her husband. At first I thought the message was for me, but given everything that’s happening to female synaesthetes, I’m beginning to think that it was intended for Gwen al along.’ Jack paused for a beat, then asked Shel ey to superimpose the glyph image onto the map and drop out the background details.

Shel ey did, leaving only the flashing lights and the outline of the continents.

Jack cleared his throat, and looked at each of them directly, aware that what he was about to say would change everything, would make this less a scientific mission and more a suicide one.

‘Every single one of these flashing lights is a hydrothermal chimney that’s already forming above the surface of the ocean, and we can assume when they seal over they’re going to force al that pressure, al that heat, al those combustible chemicals back to the centre of the planet.’

‘Which,’ added Cash, ‘wil essential y turn the Earth into a bloody big hydrogen bomb.’

‘Holy shit,’ said Vlad. ‘Game over.’

EVA WAS SPEECHLESS. She slumped across her desk. Her emotions were already in such a jumbled mess that she was having a difficult time separating and categorising exactly what she was feeling. From the moment yesterday when they had discovered how quickly the vent chimneys were evolving, Eva had felt as if she was caught in a bizarre training simulation and at any moment someone would step onto the ship and tel them al they’d performed wel on this mission and now they could go home.

If what Jack, Cash and Shel ey were suggesting was true, in a couple of days she might not have a home to return to. No one would.

‘Shel ey,’ said Jack, ‘let’s see this model of the Earth from above.’

Shel ey flipped the animation and zoomed out, the glyph linking al the chimneys with the top one, the geyser in Wales.

‘Fuck me,’ said Vlad.

‘That program is not yet operational,’ said Shel ey.

‘When al the chimneys are linked together like this, it’s Gwen’s design,’ said Cash. ‘And the map to a bloody big bang.’

‘If that is what’s occurring,’ said Shel ey, ‘then we must assume that these hydrothermal vents are connected deep inside the Earth. Like this.’

Shel ey reconfigured the image, stripping the top layers from the earth, slicing the earth in two, and showing what the linking of the hydrothermal vents might look like from beneath the Earth’s crust: three overlapping, smouldering tunnels of fire stretching across the world.

‘What does this al mean?’ asked Eva, her voice high pitched with fear, the colour draining from her face the longer she looked at Shel ey’s model of the core of the Earth.

‘I think it means,’ said Jack, ‘that the Earth is self-destructing.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Eva. She looked from Jack to Vlad to Cash to Shel ey and back to Jack.

‘Is it so hard to imagine, lass?’ asked Cash. ‘Think about it. We’ve worn this planet out. It’s over-populated, terribly pol uted and the oceans’ temperatures are rising fast. The old girl might just have decided she’s had enough.’

‘Look,’ said Eva, standing and pacing across the tiny space, her fear tightening in her chest. ‘I can believe that the Earth is a series of complex organic systems. I can even believe the Gaia theory that the planet’s constantly changing and evolving on a massive scale to stay in balance, to sustain life, but the Earth is not a sentient being.’

‘But what if she is?’ interrupted Jack.

‘O puhleeze,’ said Eva. ‘The Earth’s not thinking, she’s not processing al that’s happening to her and keeping score. Oh, too many people now. Check.

Too much global warming. Check.’ Eva was ticking off on her fingers as she spoke. ‘Oceans are losing salinity. Check. Until one day the sun rises in a smoggy haze and the Earth says to herself, screw it, had enough, time to blow myself up and start life somewhere else in the universe.’

‘Snark al you want, Eva, but I think Jack’s right and that’s essential y what’s happening,’ said Cash.

‘And we need to stop it,’ said Jack.

‘Eva,’ cut in Vlad, ‘in that entire rant why did you keep cal ing the Earth a she?’

‘Because everyone does… you know… Mother Earth,’ Eva spluttered, throwing herself onto her chair with such force she almost tipped it over.

‘Eva,’ said Jack. ‘Do you have any other explanation for what’s happening?’

‘If I may interject,’ said Shel ey, who appeared behind Eva’s desk. ‘Every culture from the ancient Greeks to the Egyptians, the Native Americans, African tribes, the Chinese, the Norse, and the Celts have a creation story and many of those creation stories have humanity being birthed from the Earth in some manner. The Earth is the mother to humanity. One sustains the life of the other. Even Judeo-Christianity gave us the garden of Eden, a paradise on Earth and—’

‘Shel ey, stop! I get it,’ Eva yel ed. Cash scowled at her. Vlad put his hand on her arm to try to calm her. She pushed him away. Everyone was looking at her, except Jack who was using the pad to zoom in on the map of South America.

She stared at him for a beat, an awful realisation dawning. ‘You bastard!

You knew this was happening,’ hissed Eva. ‘You knew before you even boarded our ship.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Vlad, sensing he had missed something important.

Eva pointed at Jack, who stood and faced her. ‘He was the one who sent us to monitor those hot spots in the ocean. He knew the Earth’s crust was cracking, that these fissures were forming. He’s the one who’s paying for the
Ice Maiden
’s mission. He’s the one responsible for al this incredible equipment.’ She looked for confirmation to Cash. ‘Isn’t he?’

‘Aye,’ said Cash.

‘How could you possibly know this was going to happen?’ Eva shouted at Jack, her yel ing drawing Hol is out of the mess to the passageway where he hovered, listening.

Eva stood up, her fear and anger morphing to a dangerous mix. ‘Tel us how you knew this was going to happen! Tel us! Because if we’re sailing to the end of the world we deserve to know everything.’

Jack glanced over at Cash, who nodded. Jack moved away from the flat screen. Cash shot him.

JACK GASPED, ONCE, twice then sat bolt upright, a bleeding hole in his forehead slowly healing.

‘Fuck me,’ said Vlad.

‘Stil not operational,’ said Shel ey.

‘I need a shot,’ said Hol is.

‘Bring the bottle,’ said Jack.

‘I thought your head would be less of a mess than your chest,’ said Cash, helping Jack to his feet and returning his Webley to him.

‘I appreciate that. My head’s taken more bul ets than I care to think about.

Takes me out instantly and the pain on the recovery is more tolerable. A bul et to the chest hurts like hel before it kil s me.’

Hol is set the tequila bottle and glasses on Vlad’s desk, poured each of them a shot, refil ed his glass twice, made sure Eva, whose face was frozen in horror, drank hers before he grabbed a chair from the mess and dragged it into the comms room.

‘I knew you had better recovery abilities than most,’ he said, grinning and handing Jack a glass, ‘but that’s friggin’ ridiculous.’

Despite the pounding headache, Jack laughed, knocking back the tequila.

Then everyone began talking at once, the craziness, the ridiculousness, the amazement over what they’d witnessed fil ing the room. Final y, Jack whistled and brought some semblance of order to their curiosity.

‘So you’re like immortal, darlin’?’ asked Hol is.

‘Not real y. I can die, and, believe me, it hurts to die, but I heal, so technical y I’m able to resurrect, which, I guess, if you stretch the definition a little, does make me immortal.’

‘But how is that possible?’ said Eva. ‘Is it because of what happened with the Miracle? Did you not get cured after that happened?’

‘No, Eva, I’ve been unable to stay dead for a very, very long time. My cel structure was altered, oh, a couple of thousand years ago in my timeline.’

‘And Cash knew?’

‘Cash’s grandfather was a col eague with Torchwood in Scotland.’

Cash nodded. ‘The auld bugger was ful of secrets, but a few of the important ones he left with me.’

‘So I’m guessing,’ said Hol is, ‘with that kind of power you’ve seen some things we haven’t. Am I right?’

‘Oh, you’re right.’

Jack pushed his hair from his eyes, rubbing the closing wound as he did.

‘And it’s from my longevity, my experiences, that I think I can explain what’s triggering these changes in the Earth.’

Eva took another shot of tequila.

‘A long time ago,’ said Jack, ‘a dear friend and a brave woman told me a story about energy forces cal ed the Helix Intel igences.’ Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Sarah Jane said it was possible that when our solar system was forming one of the helixes was trapped in the centre of the Earth.’

Eva held her glass out to Hol is who refil ed it. Again.

‘My first inkling,’ continued Jack, ‘of what might be happening under the sea and to me, and to al these women, including Gwen, was a hunch, a response to the fragment of a memory, and the urgency of a thin voice in my head reminding me of Sarah Jane’s story.’

‘Great!’ snorted Eva, recovering from the shock of what she’d witnessed, the tequila helping too. ‘We’re supposed to trust you because of a voice in your head.’

Jack shrugged. ‘Listen. I know this is difficult to get your head around—’

‘You think?’ said Eva.

‘But I think given how quickly these chimneys are forming we don’t have much time to act.’

Eva exhaled a long exasperated sigh. She sat at her desk, close to tears.

Vlad put his hand on her arm. This time she let it stay.

Hol is passed her another drink. ‘It’l cure what’s ailing you, darlin’.’

She shot back two.

Jack refused another, but Cash joined Eva and shot back two. ‘Can’t have the lass drinking alone.’

‘I know about the Helix Intel igences,’ said Vlad. ‘There was a cadre of physicists in the 1960s – some said they were a cult and spent too much time experimenting with LSD. Anyway, they posited a theory that a powerful sentient astral force was caught in the Big Bang and part of the astral force broke off and was later fused into the centre of the planet. The energy force gives the Earth its organic nature and it’s from this sentient force that life evolved and is protected.’

Eva looked at Vlad. ‘Do you real y believe that? It sounds like another creation myth, only one that involves aliens of a sort.’