Exodus Code (7 page)

The Priestess crouched behind Jack’s head and painted the Cuari symbol on each of his temples using inks from the row of clay pots, while Gaia washed the man’s feet.

Soon the air in the hut was thick and pungent, the aromas from the oils and the steam from the water basin clouding the space. The man moaned and stirred under the blanket.

The Priestess looked at Gaia. ‘The time has come.’

JACK HARKNESS OPENED his eyes. He sat bolt upright and inhaled. He was not breathing.

Dead. Again.

He had experienced this awakening too many times before. He knew what to expect.

He inhaled. He exhaled.

Nothing.

No gasping. Nothing.

Cupping his palm at his mouth, he exhaled again. Nothing. He wasn’t breathing. What the hel ?

Renso. The Hornet. The mountain. Jack’s chest felt light. He pressed his hand on his heart. Stil beating. So maybe not dead.

In limbo? Stil healing?

Strange.

Jack took deep breaths in and out, but nothing went in or wheezed out from his lungs.

So did that make him dead?

Confusion rushed over Jack in a cold wave. Never experienced this before.

And then the wisp of an image – a girl, the sun, a kiss, darkness.

And so much pain. Jack gasped, the memory flitting away.

Sitting up, Jack could feel he was lying on a platform of rock. He squinted, running his hands over the surface, eventual y seeing he was on a lip of rock that ran the circumference of a massive stone chamber. The wal s were black granite marbled with veins of silver that were pulsing in the darkness. Above him the chamber formed a square opening, a faint glimmer of moonlight filtering down. Far below him the ground rippled like a satin robe in a soft breeze.

Could rock do that?

Jack was acutely aware of his body, of the fact that he was wearing nothing except a long, intricately embroidered tunic, that the soft wool was caressing his skin, that he was enjoying the sensation immensely, that he was hearing water flowing somewhere in the distance, that despite the darkness he was now seeing clearly, and that in the face of an overwhelming thirst he was tasting lemon and ginger and a hint of chocolate.

Had he fal en from the plane to this place? Into the mountain itself? The plane exploding on the ground flashed in front of Jack, Renso’s last moment like a black and white newsreel running above Jack’s head. He reached out a hand to touch him. The image dissolved. Renso. Poor Renso.

Jack heard himself think the words, but he felt no sadness, no ache in his loins or his heart. He adored Renso, had adored Renso, and yet Jack couldn’t make himself feel even a fleeting moment of grief.

Staring down at his hands, Jack turned them over and over. Long fingers, no cal uses, flat round nails. Definitely his hands. Then he pushed up the wide sleeves of the tunic and stared at his arms. He parted the tunic, running his hands across his skin. No puncture wounds, no damage anywhere on his body.

So he had healed from the fal .

But did he fal ? When did he fal ? Minutes or months ago? The memory of it felt smal and thin and kept darting from him.

‘I’m Jack Harkness,’ he said aloud, his voice carried no echo. In a stone chamber of this size, it should have. Strange.

‘I’m a Time Agent, a time travel er.’ Jack smiled. His voice felt soft and sensuous in his throat. ‘I know a Time Lord, the time of the day, the time of the night, tea time, two times two is not too many times,’ he said, laughing, the words bouncing playful y in his brain.

His laughter echoed, but his voice had not. He laughed again. The silver veins in the wal s pulsed brighter each time he did. Jack had never seen anything like this place, and he had been strapped into and locked down in a lot of strange places. This had to be one of the most fantastic.

Leaning back against the rock wal , Jack felt a warm rush of desire flood his being. He felt himself grow hard beneath the tunic. Wow. His body felt ethereal, weightless, but grounded, experiencing this moment, substantial. The silver veins from the rock, reached out like long probing fingers and they danced across his body.

Jack closed his eyes, but instead of darkness he saw himself languishing on the platform of rock experiencing a powerful rush of pleasure.

For a beat Jack realised the chamber was inside his head and outside it.

Behind him and in front of him. He laughed at the absurdity and let himself sink back into the rock. The silver veins threaded themselves across every muscle, every limb, every part of him. Closing his eyes again, he could see himself being folded into the rock.

The sensation was wonderful, yet Jack heard himself thinking that this was not a good wonderful. It was a bad wonderful. It was the wonderful at the end of a thril ing journey. It was the wonderful after intimacy. It was the last hurrah, the final chapter, the kiss goodbye, the beginning of the end.

Jack lifted his arm and tore it away from the wal , snapping the threads.

He heard a sob. It tasted like ginger.

Maybe this was a good thing after al . He let his arm fal to his side again.

The threads slithered over his hand instantly. Jack’s body had never felt so warm, so whol y satisfied, so welcomed, so at peace.

‘Jack, move!’

Closing his eyes again, he saw himself closing his eyes again, and closing his eyes again, and closing his eyes, his mind in a fun-house mirror of its own making. He spoke out loud, he yel ed, he howled, the sound of his own voice keeping him aware, forcing him to be aware that he was not ready for the end.

He was inexplicably conscious and unconscious at the same time. Self-aware, trapped in a chamber, somewhere underground, and more than a little freaked out.

‘The time of the prophesies is at hand.’

Jack glanced up. Not his voice. The opening in the top of the chamber was widening. Jack could see the ful moon. Jack liked the moon. He smiled at the thought, the veins pulsing as they tightened their grip on his legs, his thighs, his cock, thousands of them now like thin threads of electricity pushing and probing through his hair, pouring out of the black rock, engulfing Jack, absorbing him. Suddenly the veins were wrapping his body, mummifying him, swarming and slithering, engulfing Jack’s shoulders, his neck, his head.

A low growl, seductive, echoed in the chamber. Jack licked his lips. He tasted mint. His hands tingled. Jack’s head was almost ful y covered in silver threads, and he could see in front of himself, behind himself. The universe floating around him. He was in the stars. He was home.

‘Hey! Hey! Are you OK?’

‘Wait,’ shouted Jack. He felt hands pul ing his head and shoulders from the soft rock. ‘I’m not ready.’ They were his hands.

Jack watched the silver veins retreating, screaming, into the granite.

Looking down, Jack could see a school of blue fish with bulging marble eyes and spiny scales gliding in and out of his line of sight.

The growls were louder, less seductive, angry and feral.

Jack stared at the fish, mesmerised, a memory from his childhood playing out before him like a hologram inches from his eyes. Jack was a teenager, running into the Boeshane Sea with his brother, Gray, trying to catch blue anchoa. An almost impossible feat, but if you caught one when its eyes were open then you could see your future.

Had we caught one that day? Am I stil a boy and this is my future?

Jack looked down. The fish were gone, and Gray, and their past too.

The growling became a word, ‘
Fall!
’

The word pulsed from the veins shooting like electricity from the granite again, attaching to Jack’s head. A thunderous roar erupted from beneath him.

‘
Come on, Jack. We’ve got no time left.
’

The roaring was getting louder and as it did the taste in Jack’s mouth was intensifying, ginger and lemon and eucalyptus.

‘
Fall!
’

Jack stood and took a step towards the precipice, staring down at the three rings of fire, al circling in unison, chasing each other, the end of one the beginning of the other.

‘
You must fall together
,’ howled the voice, animalistic, deep, and not human. Like Jack was hearing an electrical charge, a sound wave, a force of nature.

The veins throbbed brighter and pul ed tighter around Jack, even as he stood on the edge.

‘No!’

Jack tore himself from his cocoon and when he did the entire chamber began to crumble around him. Jack threw himself across the ledge as a massive rock crashed down from the wal behind him. Jack rol ed from its path, but as soon as he did, the rock raised itself up on the ledge. Shifting its shape into a petrified version of Jack, it lunged at him.

Jack locked his fingers together into a double fist and swung at the monster’s head. The rock crumbled in front of him, sending pieces of smouldering rock and ash into the abyss below.

Jack felt as if his skul was cracking. He stared at his hands, wil ing them to move again. He ripped the rest of the silver vines from his head, his chest, his arms, and his legs. The mountain screamed, the rock rumbled, a thunderous roar burst from the rings of fire, sending a flaming serpentine fissure up from below. The fissure shot along the lip, chasing Jack across the ledge. The chamber shook. Jack skidded, scrambling for a foothold. Hot bubbling lava began rising from the rings beneath him.

‘
Fall!
’

‘No!’

The keening shriek whistled angrily from every crevice. ‘
This is how it must
be
.’

JACK’S EYES FLEW open.

‘Jesus, amigo,’ said Renso, tossing a bloodied rock down into the dark abyss of the mountain. ‘How the hel did you get al the way down here?’

Jack stared blankly at Renso. He felt as if he’d been in a bar brawl and he had not won. Every muscle ached, his head hurt and he smel ed of sex. A heavy gold blanket was draped across his waist. He kicked it away and stared, stunned, at a beautiful dark-skinned young woman curled next to him.

Jack shook her. She was unconscious, a cut on her forehead bleeding onto Jack’s tunic.

Confused, Jack looked up at Renso. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re on some kind of altar,’ said Renso, helping Jack sit up. ‘Like a grotto that’s been carved into the inside of the mountain. There are three of them al round the perimeter down here. I think that’s what we were seeing from the Hornet jutting out from the inside the mountain’s basin.’

‘The what?’

‘My plane, which, by the way, is nothing but melted rubber and tinder now.

You owe me so badly, amigo.’

Jack wobbled to his knees. He felt Renso shaking him. Panic and bewilderment crashed Jack’s psyche. Renso wasn’t touching him.

The ground was shaking.

He was shaking.

‘Easy does it, my friend.’ With two good hands, Renso grabbed Jack’s arm.

‘It’s a long way down.’

‘When am I?’

‘What?’ asked Renso, not understanding Jack’s question.

‘Time?’ stuttered Jack. ‘When is this?’

‘Wel after midnight of the day we went flying, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been searching for you for hours.’ Renso handed Jack a canteen. Jack gulped and gulped until water was dripping down his chin.

‘My chute caught in the trees so I was out for a while too. But, Jesus, how on earth did you get down here?’

Renso peered inside the grotto. The wal s were covered in rows of colourful glyphs and drawings. Renso waved his flashlight over one of them. It was a detailed drawing of a man riding across the stars on the back of what Renso thought looked like a mountain lion, a puma to be precise. Renso tilted the light up to a series of interlocking pointed circles carved across the grotto’s arch.

‘What is this place?’

‘Renso? Is that you?’ Jack grinned, as he final y grasped who was with him.

‘Renso, I’m so glad to see you. I thought you went down with your plane.’ Jack lifted his hand, caressing his friend’s rough beard.

‘I’m happy to see you too, Jack, and I did go down with my plane, only not al the way to the ground, thank God.’ Jack handed him back the canteen. ‘But we need to move, Jack. We’ve not got much time.’

‘Time for what?’ Jack stood up, instantly feeling dazed, confused and nauseated again. What the hel was he wearing? He held up the sleeves of an embroidered tunic, the wool itching his skin. His legs were covered in scratches, long sharp claw-like scratches, blood was dripping from a cut on his arm, and al the way from his ankles to his groin his skin was covered in thin red lines, like rope burns.

Renso helped Jack to his feet, guiding him along a ledge towards the shortest section of the rock that he had climbed down.

Jack looked up. They were about ten metres inside the mountain.

Without warning, a thunderous rumbling shook the entire basin. Jack pitched forward. Renso grabbed him and pinned him against the wal until the tremor settled.

‘This volcano is about to blow again, Jack. I don’t know how you got down here or what you were doing with that… that animal over there, that’s none of my business,’ Renso pointed back to the grotto at what was curled beneath the blanket with Jack.

‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now!’

Suddenly a geyser of black steam exploded up through the mountain, firing chunks of flaming rock out through the top, pelting Jack and Renso as they shuffled towards their way up. Renso half-carried, half-dragged Jack to where he’d left his rope. The air was thick with tar and sulphur.