Risk Assessment (3 page)

Agnes nodded, politely, as though listening to the pretty song of a delicate bird. ‘I’m sure it must be, dear Mrs Cooper.’ And with that, she appeared to have settled the matter. ‘There are so many things I really must learn about this future. All of them indubitably as novel as your domestic arrangements. Yes, how exciting it all is.’ And again, that strangely childlike, mirthless smile. She smoothed out the front of her dress and reached into her handbag, Gwen apparently dismissed.

‘Er,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m sure we can make it more cheerful in here. Really. Ianto’s got a decorator’s eye.’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure of that, Mrs Cooper.’ Agnes didn’t look up from her handbag. ‘Please, rest assured – this room will suffice for the moment.’ She placed a book down on a narrow shelf, fitting it neatly between some old bloodstains.

‘At the very least, we can get you some magazines,’ offered Gwen.

Agnes darted a crow-like glare at her. ‘I have enough ammunition. And I am unlikely to discharge a firearm in here for my own amusement.’

Gwen shook her head. ‘I meant . . . ah, periodicals. Topical publications. They’re a great way of finding out about our culture.’ I can’t back that up, Gwen admitted to herself. She imagined Agnes confronted by the latest copy of
Heat
and shuddered. It had Kerry Katona on the cover, which was never a good sign, even at the best of times.

Agnes smiled her little smile and patted the book. ‘No thank you, my dear. I have
Little Dorrit
, which will be quite sufficient. It’s seen me through two invasions, one apocalypse and a Visitation by the Ambassadors of the Roaring Bang. I’m sure it’ll get me through this latest jaunt.’

The explosion tore through the orchestra pit, scattering instruments and players in a tangle of wood, catgut and body parts. As the screams ripped through the stalls and the stampede began, Agnes Havisham strode through the smoke. She was looking for someone.

She found him, cowering behind a shattered drum. She reached down and plucked him up. ‘Professor Hess,’ she snapped at the shaking, coughing figure. ‘This is your doing.’

The terrified man shook his bald head, his glasses sliding down his long nose.

‘Please,’ she said, her voice surprisingly gentle, ‘don’t try to deny it. They are here, and they are looking for you. It is simple mischance that you are still alive. I do not think that they will fail on a second attempt.’

A second explosion turned a balcony into matchwood and fluttering velvet.

The man shook his head, and stammered, ‘Ich kanst nicht . . .’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ sighed Agnes. ‘Kommen Sie mit! Wenn diese Kreaturen Sie nicht umbringen, dann wird es die Wehrmacht tun!’

Behind them, in the smoke, vast horned figures began to take shape . . .

‘This is the maddest thing!’ exclaimed Gwen, rushing up to the Hub. ‘After the last few days, it’s cheered me up no end, I can tell you. That woman is . . .’

Ianto gave her a brief smile, but Jack just looked blank.

‘Aw, come on, Jack!’ tried Gwen. ‘She’s clearly got no idea that her authority’s gone. There is no Torchwood, other than you. And I’m sure her bark is worse than her bite.’

‘Not quite,’ sighed Jack. ‘Agnes may seem like a crazy anachronism, but we have to take her seriously. Or at least humour her.’

‘You’ve met her before, then,’ said Ianto. There was the tiniest hint of teasing in his voice. ‘Did it not go well?’

Jack puffed himself up slightly. ‘No, it did not go well, Ianto Jones. And no, I am not going to tell you what happened.’

‘Ooh, a mystery,’ giggled Gwen. ‘Don’t worry, Ianto, I’ll get it out of her.’

‘We’ve got more important things,’ said Jack. ‘We have to convince Agnes that everything is going fine – it’s a false alarm, and she’s best off back in her deep freeze. We don’t want her to realise what’s really going on, or that the rest of Torchwood was destroyed or anything like that. Think of it as giving her a nice little day trip round Cardiff.’

‘But why?’ asked Gwen. ‘She’s a bit severe, but I’m sure if you sat her down and reasoned with—’

‘Reasoned?’ laughed Jack bitterly. ‘You haven’t seen that woman in action. She’s like the Terminator in a bonnet. We need her out of the way. Quickly.’

‘But all she can do is write her report,’ put in Ianto. ‘I mean, I’ll read it,’ he added. ‘I like reports.’

Jack smiled at him fondly. ‘She can shut us down with a word. Literally. It’s called the Cowper Key. If she utters it, there’ll be a total systems shutdown. The idea is that it seals all the evidence until Torchwood One can come and conduct a proper inquiry. But, with no Torchwood One. . .’

‘What exactly happens?’ asked Ianto, looking protectively at the Hub.

Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t know exactly. It’s really bad. I mean, if we had Tosh, we’d probably be looking at days before we could bypass it and reactivate the computer core. If we had Tosh.’

‘Rhys upgraded the RAM on his laptop last week,’ put in Gwen. ‘All by himself.’

‘We’ll bear that in mind,’ said Ianto.

‘Something else is worrying me,’ said Jack. He was quietly tidying all the naval charts off his desk. Gwen also noticed the coffin had gone, leaving only the velvet drape behind. Jack had probably moved it down to the mortuary. ‘Agnes has only woken up when the Torchwood systems think we’re at a time of deadly peril.’

‘Yeah,’ said Gwen. ‘She mentioned some of them – they sounded fairly impressive.’

‘But,’ he said, ‘she didn’t wake up when Torchwood One fell. A giant rift hoovering aliens from the skies of Canary Wharf? You’d think that would warrant a visit from our Agnes.’

‘Perhaps the trains were bad,’ suggested Ianto.

‘Maybe,’ said Jack. ‘Or maybe that wasn’t peril enough. I dunno.’ He glanced down at the naval chart in his hand. ‘I’m worried. I’m worried that we might be in over our heads.’

‘So,’ said Gwen, trying to lighten the mood, ‘we humour her and get her out of the way?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Jack. ‘Everything is by the book.’

‘The 1901 Edition,’ said Ianto.

III

MOVING IN

SOCIETY

Containing the Children of Emo, an adventure in a horseless carriage, and Miss Havisham’s brief career as an exotic dancer

Agnes strode back out into the Hub a few minutes later. She’d tied on a bonnet (where had she got that from? Gwen wondered), and was looking about her brightly.

‘Goodness me,’ she said. ‘A Weevil hunt. How marvellous. I haven’t done this for. . . well, depending on how you look at it, either a hundred years or a little over a month. How time flies when you’re cryogenically frozen in a storage unit in Swindon.’

Jack, Ianto and Gwen exchanged guilty glances. They had been talking about her, plainly. No matter.

‘Now then, weapons!’ she exclaimed. ‘Laser cannons always seem so unsporting. I think I’ll settle for a decent revolver.’ A pause. ‘If you have one.’

‘Erm,’ said Jack. ‘These days we tend to stun the Weevils and bring them in for observation.’

‘Of course you do,’ said Agnes. ‘Well, I should still like a gun. Would you be so kind as to fetch me one, Captain?’

They stared at each other. Then Jack turned on his heel. ‘Certainly, I’ll fetch us all some weapons from the armoury,’ he said stiffly.

‘Splendid.’ Agnes clapped her gloved hands together, and then spared Ianto a glance. ‘And have your catamite bring round the carriage.’

‘What?’ hissed Ianto to Jack.

‘Don’t look it up,’ pleaded Jack quietly.

The thing that kept the invisible lift invisible was what Jack called a perception filter. It popped you up in the middle of Cardiff Bay and made people look the other way. Oddly enough, it didn’t extend to an immaculately dressed Victorian woman. Agnes strode through the crowds, nodding curt greetings to all.

In the distance, the Torchwood SUV sat parked. Ianto was stood by an open door, sheltering under his Snoopy umbrella. Agnes paused at the door and waited for Gwen and Jack to catch up with her. ‘Harkness, you may drive,’ she commanded, and then settled into the back seat. She patted the seat beside her. ‘Join me, Mrs Cooper,’ she commanded.

Ianto slipped into the front seat next to Jack and they drove off.

Agnes smiled, ‘How thrilling the motor car is,’ she said. ‘Why, last time I remember being hurtled round Manchester at ungodly speeds in something called a Mini Cooper. Goodness, the 1970s were such fun. Pity about the dragons, but one can’t have everything, can one?’ She smiled at Gwen again. ‘Of course, that was last week. Hardly seems a moment and, goodness me, they have neatened things up!’ She wound down the window, sticking her head out like an excited dog. The rain belted into her face and poured down her ringlets, but she didn’t seem to care. ‘Last time I was here, the Docks were positively crammed with rough-hewn sailors, weren’t they, Harkness?’

Jack ignored Agnes, driving carefully into town and steadily into the one-way system. Agnes looked around her with delight. ‘My word!’ she would occasionally gasp, darting Gwen a delighted grin that made her look ten years younger.

They pulled up outside a shopping centre. From sheer force of habit, Jack strode on ahead heroically, only to find Agnes standing in front of the doors, waiting for him. He smiled awkwardly, and held them open for her. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ she said and stepped neatly through.

Gwen, grinning broadly, ducked under his arm as well. Jack met her gaze and rolled his eyes.

Ianto waved the Weevil tracker around the shopping centre. ‘They’re supposed to be here, you know,’ he sighed, shaking it until it bleeped reproachfully.

‘Oh, there’s no hurry, no hurry at all,’ said Agnes’s voice, faintly. She was standing outside a clothes shop, peering in through the window. ‘So exciting,’ she whispered. ‘So revealing. Quite shocking!’

Gwen stood next to her, watching with quiet amusement as she gawped at the shoppers inside. Agnes turned to her. ‘Are these clothes really being worn by those strange children?’ she asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ replied Gwen, watching as a tight fluorescent T-shirt was pulled over a teenager’s chest, exposing a tattooed and pierced muffin-top.

‘Are they some form of slave race?’ asked Agnes. ‘It just seems so. . .’

‘What? Emo kids?’ Gwen shook her head, smiling broadly. ‘Nope, it’s just the fashion. Honestly. Don’t worry – in a couple of years’ time they’ll be dressing better, leading normal lives and working for the gas board.’
God knows,
she thought,
some of the things I wore when I was that age. I wonder if some of them still fit?

‘I see,’ said Agnes. ‘Clearly you must find me very out of step. And what must they think of what I’m wearing?’ She giggled, briefly, before picking up her crinolines and striding forward, suddenly businesslike. ‘Harkness!’ she barked. ‘Tell your protégé to put his little instrument away. I have scented our quarry.’

With that, she stepped quickly towards a door marked
Car Park
.

Agnes made her way swiftly and stealthily through the car park, heading across oily ramps down to the lower level. Pausing to sniff the air, she grimaced and indicated a rusted service door. ‘Weevils are as rank as navvies,’ she sighed. ‘And they’re not far from here.’

They stepped through, Jack carefully drawing his stun gun. Agnes cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘A careful aim is required, Harkness. I don’t wish danger to fall upon the Children of Emo.’ And she made her way cautiously along the corridor.

All Gwen could smell was rust and piss and damp. It really was horrible. There’d probably have been rats if it hadn’t been for the Weevils. Lower forms of vermin just made themselves elsewhere whenever Weevils were around. Which was about the only positive thing she’d ever managed to discover about them.

Up ahead was shouting and roaring, and a smell of rotten meat. Lurching out of the darkness were two Weevils. Claws raked at the air as Jack threw himself to one side, firing off his stun gun. A bolt embedded itself uselessly, the cable snicked apart by a slashing forearm. Jack, forced against the brickwork, tried to aim again as the other Weevil closed in, but the snapped cable had tangled the stun gun’s mechanism.

Somehow, against the roaring and name-calling and screaming, Gwen heard Agnes give an audible tut. And then she calmly aimed her service revolver and fired twice.

Both Weevils dropped to the ground, dead.

‘Weevils bore me,’ Agnes explained.

The horses thundered through the empty streets, the flickering blue gaslights on the side of the carriage casting fleeting shadows across shuttered warehouses. The carriage was very fast, the horses almost exhausted, but pushed on by a driver completely wrapped up in mufflers. On the side of the carriage, inlaid intricately in expensive walnut marquetry, and, lit dramatically by blue flames, was an elaborate ‘T’.

Inside sat a man, who looked vaguely travelsick, and a woman, who seemed untroubled by their enormous speed. She sat, intently reading a book by the dancing blue light.