Slow Decay

SIXTEEN

‘This is like performing brain surgery on a fucking Smartie,’ Owen muttered as he bent over his autopsy table. He rested a scalpel on top of the yellow pill in the table’s centre and pressed down gently. The pill slipped away and skittered to one side, bouncing off the table’s metal lip.

Reaching out to a table on one side, where he kept his surgical tools on a metal tray, he retrieved a pair of forceps. With these in his left hand he could hold the pill steady while he gently drew the scalpel across the top of the pill. It left a fine incision behind. Something oily welled up through the incision.

‘Interesting,’ he murmured. ‘I thought this was a dissolvable sugar coating, like you get on some headache pills, but it’s more like a harder version of gelatin. It’s flexible. With a bit of luck, I might just…’ His voice tailed off as he moved the forceps around, getting a better grip on the tablet. Manipulating the scalpel carefully, he extended the incision to the sides of the pill, then slipped the blade beneath the coating and prised it away from the interior. Oil spilled slowly out. In less than a minute, he had removed the coating entirely, stripping it away from the thing that had been hidden inside.

‘I hate soft centres,’ he said.

‘What have you got?’ Jack asked from the balcony.

‘Well, it’s not Turkish Delight, that’s for sure.’ Reaching out to the tray again, he picked up a pen-like device with a lens and a light at one end. He pointed it at the thing on the autopsy table and pressed a button on the side of the device. The plasma screen above his head faded within a few seconds into a high-definition close-up of the thing. The tip of Owen’s scalpel was just visible at the edge of the screen, the size and shape of a garden trowel.

‘Oh hell,’ said Gwen. She put a hand to her mouth. ‘You know what we’re looking at, don’t you?’

The thing was no more than a centimetre long, and curled into a comma. It was charcoal in colour, with irregular blue stripes, and looked like three very small worms, all joined together at one end. A tiny fuzzy cloud that might have been thousands of minute, translucent, fibres surrounded the free ends. The small teardrop of oily liquid that had surrounded and protected it was spreading out across the metal topography of the table.

Jack nodded. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do.’

‘It’s an egg,’ Owen said. He used the scalpel to unfold the foetal creature. ‘It’s not a pill at all; it’s an egg. A fucking egg. And this is the embryo inside.’

‘But…’ Gwen seemed to run out of words. ‘But why?’ she finished eventually. ‘Why would anyone knowingly swallow an egg, especially if it turns into something like that?’

‘They don’t do it knowingly.’ Jack clenched his hands on the rail of the balcony, hard enough that Owen heard the metal creak. ‘And I think they do it so they can lose weight. Tell her, Owen.’

‘I’m guessing that the life cycle of this thing, whatever it is, is similar to that of our own, our very own, tapeworm,’ Owen said. He leaned closer, fascinated by the thing on the table in front of him. ‘It’s probably activated by the acidic contents of the stomach, hatches, then makes its way to the intestine and latches on. It sucks up nutrients, drawn from whatever the host has been eating. There’s so sign of a mouth, so I’m guessing it absorbs the partially digested food through its skin.’

‘Chyme,’ Jack suddenly said.

Gwen looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Chyme — semi-liquid, partly digested food leaving the stomach and entering the duodenum. Another candidate for my list of words that need to be saved from extinction and used in conversation as often as possible.’

‘All eyes on me, please,’ Owen said firmly. ‘Unless you want to be sent to the naughty corner. Now, unlike a tapeworm, I suspect this thing is voracious. That’s why the hosts are hungry all the time, and why they lose weight so fast. They’re almost starving, because the thing in their gut is taking all the food away from them before they get a chance to absorb it themselves. It’s like a cuckoo: relying on the host to do the hard work then taking advantage of the results.’

‘I hope for your sake it’s dead,’ Jack said.

‘Not dead as such, but it’s certainly inert. It will only come to life if I swallow it. Which I have no intention of doing. Not even on a bet.’

‘What about the other pill?’ Jack asked. ‘The one labelled “Stop”?’

Owen glanced over at the instrument tray, where three blister packs sat: the one Gwen had found in her own medicine cupboard, the one she had found at Lucy’s flat and the one Gwen and Jack had found at the Scotus Clinic. All three packs were now missing their ‘Start’ pills. Two of them still had the ‘Stop’ pills remaining. The third was empty. ‘I tested one earlier,’ he said. ‘Basic plant sterol — more or less harmless to humans, but I’m guessing it’s deadly to the worm-things. It probably allows the host to digest the remains, so there’s nothing left to give the game away.’

‘Perfect.’ There was something dark in Jack’s voice. ‘One pill to start the weight loss and another to stop it. Absolutely perfect. Symmetrical, in fact.’

Owen reached out and took a pair of tweezers from the tray. ‘Perfect apart from all the side effects,’ he said, picking the creature gently up from the autopsy table and holding it close to his face, turning it around so he could examine it from all aspects. ‘That raging hunger isn’t everything — there’s psychotic behaviour as well. We don’t know what causes that yet. And from what you said, the mature form of this thing leaped out of the receptionist’s throat, rupturing a major blood vessel in the process before it attacked you. That’s not the kind of behaviour that I’ve ever seen a tapeworm exhibit. It almost indicates awareness, perhaps even consciousness.’

‘Is it intelligent?’ Gwen asked. ‘Could we communicate with it?’

‘I don’t think the brain’s big enough to hold much intelligence. I think it’s going on instinct, and some basic processing of sensory inputs. What surprises me is the way you say it attacked you. Tapeworms are just inert assemblages of self-replicating segments. This thing — whatever it is — has the ability to sense where things are, decide they are threats and move to do something about that threat. Wherever their natural habitat is, they probably stalk their prey in some way before either laying eggs inside it or colonising it in the adult form.’

The colour had drained away from Gwen’s face. Her throat was working as if she was trying to stop herself throwing up.

‘We’ll call it George,’ Jack said suddenly.

‘Call what George?’

‘The parasite that’s inside your boyfriend. Makes it easier if we label them differently. Stops us getting confused. The one that attacked us in the Scotus Clinic was Ringo, the one inside Rhys is George, the one inside Marianne Till is Paul and that leaves the one inside Lucy Sobel as John.’

‘You forgot this one,’ Owen said, waggling the tiny alien creature back and forth in the air.

‘This one can be Stuart. As in Sutcliffe.’

‘Who was Stuart Sutcliffe?’ Gwen’s hand, still raised to her mouth, muffled her words, and Owen had to think for a moment before he could figure them out.

‘He was the one who left the Beatles in Hamburg, before they made it big. Nice guy. Invented the mop-top haircut, believe it or not. Dab hand at the old collage technique. Girlfriend’s name was Astrid, I think. Or Ingrid. One of the two.’

‘Jack.’ Gwen’s voice was tremulous. ‘We have to get rid of them. All of them. We’ve got the “Stop” pills. We can get Rhys and Marianne and Lucy to take the pills before anything worse happens to them.’

Jack looked down at Owen. Tell her, Jack’s eyes were saying.

‘We don’t know anything about the life cycle of these creatures,’ Owen said slowly. It was the same tone of voice he used to use when he was telling people that they had some inoperable cancer, or they were going to be paralysed for life. Slow, firm and reassuring. ‘And we don’t know how many other people are infected. I need one of the “Stop” pills so I can analyse it to see whether it can be synthesized, and we need to keep at least one of these creatures alive so we can study it and determine what it wants, what it needs, how it grows, how fast it grows and what its weaknesses are.’

Gwen turned towards Jack. ‘We only need one of them. Owen just said so — you heard him. We can give two of them the pills.’

‘And who gets to choose?’ Jack asked. He looked from Owen to Gwen and back again. ‘Which one of us gets to play God? Or would you rather we drew straws?’

‘Rhys is my boyfriend!’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘And Marianne’s a nice girl with a family,’ Owen snapped. Something in him felt close to breaking point. He’d failed Marianne so far: he wasn’t going to fail her any more.

‘And no boyfriend,’ Jack reminded him.

‘That’s not the point,’ Owen shouted, rounding on him.

‘But what about Lucy?’ Jack asked them both. ‘I’m sure she’s got a family as well. Doesn’t she deserve the best chance we can give her?’

‘She’s a murderer,’ Owen reminded them both. Turning to Gwen, he said, ‘Do you want her to get away with killing her boyfriend? Isn’t it right that we keep the creature in her alive and save Marianne and Rhys?’

‘Punishment isn’t the same as justice,’ Gwen said slowly, shaking her head. ‘Jack’s right — we don’t have the right to choose.’

Owen’s fists clenched in frustration. ‘I do. I’m going to give Marianne the “Stop” pill,’ he said. ‘She’s suffered enough.’ Before Jack or Gwen could stop him he grabbed one of the blister packs off the instrument tray and dashed for the door.

He could hear the sound of their pounding footsteps echoing off the Victorian brickwork as he sprinted through the tunnels of Torchwood. Gwen was shouting his name; Jack was silent but Owen could sense his steely determination.

His own breath rasped in his ears and burned in his chest. He could feel his blood pulsing through the arteries in his throat and in his temples. He couldn’t tell how close they were; any second he expected a hand to close on his shoulder, pulling him back, but it never did.

Skidding round a corner, he reached the cells. The Weevil in the closest one was pressed up against the glass, sniffing at the air and exposing its teeth, but he paid no attention to it. He kept going, past the cell where Lucy was incarcerated and on to the end cell, where Marianne waited for him.

‘I’ve got it!’ he called. ‘The cure. Just one tablet and you’ll be fine! I promise!’

Marianne didn’t answer. She was slumped in her cell, her bandaged hands with their damaged fingers still chained to the wall so she couldn’t chew on them again.

Instead, she had found a different way to feed on herself. She had twisted her body around so that she could reach her upper right arm with her teeth. She must have dislocated her shoulder to manage it. Owen knew that she had dislocated her shoulder because she had chewed all the way through her arm, regardless of the pain, until there wasn’t enough flesh left to keep it attached. With no joint there to hold the arm in, the weight of her body had pulled her shoulder and her arm apart, tearing through what few muscles and tendons remained. Her body had flopped forward onto the stone flooring, while her arm dangled separately from the restraint above.

The stone floor of the cell was a lake of glutinous blood.

Marianne’s head had dropped forward on her chest, and her hair, her gorgeous blonde hair, hung over her eyes.

Owen slumped to his knees. The blister pack dropped from his fingers. He felt as if a yawning chasm had opened up within him, an abyss into which his heart was dropping.

‘Owen,’ came Jack’s voice from beside him. Strong fingers took his head and turned it until he was looking straight into Jack’s eyes. Jack was kneeling beside him, and Gwen was kneeling beside them both. ‘Owen, I will ask many hard things of you. This is not the hardest, not even close, but it will seem that way. It will seem like the hardest thing in the world. Owen, I need you to cut Marianne’s body open as quickly as you can and get that thing out of her. It might be still alive, and we need to find out all we can about it. I won’t ask you if you can do that for me, because you will do it for me. Do you understand? You will do it.’

Owen nodded bleakly. Of course he would do it. What else was left? He used to be a doctor. He used to cure people. Now… now he couldn’t even cure himself, let alone anyone else.

While Gwen went back for a trolley, Jack opened up the door to the cell. He had his Webley ready, just in case the creature — what had Jack christened it? Paul? — made some attempt to escape the cage of dead flesh that was holding it.

Owen just watched, still kneeling on the ground, as the two of them released Marianne’s left arm from the restraints, placed her body on the trolley, then released her right arm from the restraints and placed that beside her. His heart had dropped away into that unfathomable abyss within him. He couldn’t feel anything. There was nothing left to feel.

With Marianne on the metal surface of the autopsy table, and with Gwen and Jack watching silently from the gallery, Owen carefully cut the clothes off her body. Part of him remembered how desperately he had wanted to see her naked, but the sight of her body did nothing for him now. Marianne wasn’t there any more. What was her was the way she had held herself, the way she had tilted her head, the way her eyes had seemed to come alive when she got talking about her favourite things — that had been Marianne. And that had gone.

Mechanically, Owen made a deep lateral incision from shoulder to ruined shoulder, dipping down to touch Marianne’s xiphoid process as he crossed the sternum, then a second incision from the xiphoid process down to the groin, cutting through muscle and yellow body fat. Blood welled thickly from the incisions. Using his hands, he pulled the incisions apart, revealing the internal organs. Normally he would cut through the ribs and cartilage next, exposing the heart, lungs and trachea, but he wasn’t conducting an autopsy — he was looking for one very particular thing.

Looking up at the gallery, where a grim-faced Toshiko and Ianto had now joined Jack and Gwen, he nodded at Toshiko. She pressed a button on a remote control she was holding, and the image of Marianne’s torso, taken by Toshiko’s ultrasound scanner, flashed up on the high-definition screen that hung above the table. The colour-coding showed where the creature was — or where it had been. Palpating Marianne’s duodenum, Owen quickly located the right stretch of intestine. He could feel something in there more solid than pre-digested food. It seemed to shift slightly under his questing fingers. Reaching out to the instrument tray, he retrieved a couple of clamps and used them to secure either end of the organ, above and below the creature. A few strokes with a scalpel and he had isolated that entire section — about a metre’s worth of wet, pink flesh. He lifted it clear and placed it in a metal bowl, then placed the bowl on the table beside Marianne’s abused body.

Ianto, unbidden, had retrieved a large glass jar from storage. It had a lid that could be fastened securely on top, and nozzles top and bottom so that liquid or gas could be introduced or extracted. It was about the size of Marianne’s head. Owen had sometimes used it for chemical experiments, but it suited his purpose now. From his chemical store, he obtained some hydrochloric acid and poured it into the jar, along with some distilled water and various other chemicals. By this time, guessing what he was doing, Gwen had scoured the Hub for whatever scraps of food she could find — old pizza crusts, sandwiches, bags of sweets, stuff from the refrigerator, anything that could be used to replicate the internal environment of a digestive system. Owen tipped them into the jar. Within moments the mixture had turned cloudy and curdled, and the sharp smell of the acid had been replaced by something nastier and more faecal.

Owen retrieved the section of Marianne’s intestine from the metal bowl and held it up above the jar. This was going to be the tricky bit. Somewhere in the background, he could sense Jack bringing his revolver out of his coat, holding it ready in case the creature tried to escape, as it had from the receptionist at the Scotus Clinic.

Owen held the scalpel in steady hands, preparing to make the final cut. He held the length of intestine by one end, just above the clamp, and sliced vertically downwards. The cut gaped open, pressed by something heavy within. For a moment, Owen was worried that the creature wouldn’t relinquish its grip, but it must have sensed a change in the health of its host. Whatever means it used to maintain hold on the inside of the gut, whatever hooks or suckers it was using, had been released. As Owen watched, a slimy black and blue mass slid out of Marianne’s intestine and fell into the jar, splashing the liquid up the sides where it stuck in globs, which then slid down again to rejoin the mass.

Ripples spread across the surface of the liquid, but Owen thought he could see the creature moving, digging itself deeper into the biological muck.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Paul,’ he said, the first words he had spoken since he had found Marianne’s body. ‘Paul is formerly the occupant of Miss Marianne Till. Paul will be staying with us for a while. Please make him feel welcome.’ He gazed up at Toshiko. ‘Tosh, you’re the most technical one here, so I’m going to tell you what to do next. The hydrochloric acid and the scraps of food will resemble the contents of a gut, which will make Paul here feel at home. I don’t fancy keeping it like this, however — too messy and it’s going to stink to high heaven. What I want you to do is drain the jar in about four hours, and while you’re draining it, flush it through with nutrient solution. You’ll find bags of it labelled up in the fridge. Set up a drip so the nutrient solution gets introduced into the jar at the same rate as it’s removed. Set it up so that a bag lasts about two hours. That may be overdoing it, but I don’t think these things can be overfed, somehow. All clear?’

Toshiko nodded.

Gwen tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. ‘Owen,’ she said: ‘what happens now? You’re talking like you’re not going to be around.’

‘I’m not, for a while,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go and find a dark corner somewhere, and I’m going to get as drunk as I can, as fast as I can. And then I’m going to have sex with as many people as I can in as short a space of time as I can. I don’t know how many records I’m going to break, but alert the media anyway. Someone named Owen will come back later on, when he’s ready, but it won’t be me. I’ll be gone.’

He placed his mobile phone on the instrument tray and walked out without looking back.

Owen left the Hub via the lift that led up to the water tower in front of the Millennium Centre. He stood there, on the slab of stone that had been touched by something special in the past and from where nobody could see him, no matter how close they were, and he watched people walk by, individually, in couples and in groups.

The world went on. Life went on. Just because Marianne had died, it didn’t mean that anything else had changed.

After a while he stepped forward, off the slab and onto the wooden slats that paved the entire area in front of the Centre. Still, nobody noticed him. They walked around him, barely avoiding touching his arms, but nobody would look him in the eye. It was as if he had ceased to exist.

He headed for a bar on Bute Street where he could get absolutely wrecked in the sure knowledge that they would keep on serving him drinks. He started on beer with a whisky chaser, on the basis that it was fast and effective. While he was drinking, he tried to let all conscious thought drain away. Sensation washed over him and receded. The only things that mattered were the warm, smoky taste of the whisky and the coldness of the beer, sluicing his throat.

When he realised that he had lost count of how much he had drunk, he moved on to another bar, and then another. All around him people were picking each other up or picking fights with each other, but nobody tried to talk to him. There was a deadness in his eyes, or in his soul, that discouraged them. Life just washed around him.

Eventually, of course, he went back. Where else was there to go?

The Hub, unusually, was empty. Owen kept walking, towards the Autopsy Room.

Ianto was standing outside. He was peering nervously around the edge of the doorway.

‘Where is everyone?’ Owen asked.

‘Gwen has gone to be with her boyfriend,’ Ianto replied. ‘Jack has said that if she can persuade him to take the “Stop” pill then he’s happy to let it go. Jack and Tosh are out looking for Doctor Scotus, and I’ve been spending my time either here or the cells.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Watching the creature Jack calls Paul develop and looking after Lucy Sobel. The things you should have been doing.’

Owen felt like hitting Ianto square in the face. ‘What’s up?’ he asked instead. ‘Why are you skulking out here?’

‘Ah — we had a slight problem with Paul,’ Ianto said, edgily. ‘I think I may have had the nutrient solution pumping in too fast. It seems to have absorbed too much too fast.’

Owen pushed him out of the way and glanced into the room.

The Autopsy Room was much as he had left it, except that the glass jar that he had put Paul in was lying on its side, smashed into large fragments.

Paul was on the autopsy table. It wasn’t a worm any more. It was about the size of a rat, but consisted of a long black body, sharpening to a vicious point at both ends, striped with electric blue. Two gauzy, gossamer fans which had emerged from the central body were thrumming the air.

‘Fuck me,’ Owen said. ‘It’s Paul McCartney, with wings!’