Slow Decay

SEVENTEEN

The SUV drifted like a polished black ghost through the streets of Cardiff, reflecting the cars and buildings that it passed. Every now and then, Jack would take it past the half-silvered glass of an office block, and Toshiko would look out of the window to see a corridor of multiplied images extending to infinity, mirrors reflecting mirrors.

What with that, Jack’s driving and the device she was holding, Toshiko was beginning to wish she hadn’t come up with her Big Idea.

‘How are you feeling?’ Jack yelled back.

‘Irritated,’ she called over the engine hum. ‘And tired. And exhilarated. And bored.’

‘But not hungry?’

‘No more than usual.’

She shifted the map from her lap and raised the alien device slightly to aim it more squarely out of the window. It was the one they had found in the nightclub. It seemed like weeks ago that she had turned over Craig Sutherland’s body to see it lying there, but it was actually only four or five days. Things had moved so fast.

A pang of suppressed sexual longing ran through her, making her feel as if her heart was about to burst, then it was gone, leaving her shuddering and empty. She moaned.

‘OK?’

‘It’s… difficult. So many emotions.’

‘I know. We have to keep going, Tosh.’

‘Yes. We do.’

Toshiko had set the device up as best she could to amplify distant traces of emotion and reflect them back to her. The problem was, driving round the city left her at the mercy of a thousand different feelings. Emotions were what differentiated humans from animals, that’s what they said, but Toshiko was finding herself swamped by an animalistic mass of basic drives and fears. For a person who valued logic and order above all things, it was terrifying. Or was she just picking up on someone else’s terror, somewhere close by?

The car drove past another anonymous office block, and she felt a wave of crashing tedium sweep over her. Why was she even doing this? It was as boring as chewing sand.

She was just about to throw the device out of the window and curl into a ball on her seat when Jack took a corner, and the boredom was replaced with edginess. She glanced at the back of Jack’s head, sure that he had turned to check her out while she wasn’t looking. He hated the fact that she was technologically cleverer than he was. He only kept his position as leader by destroying those who could replace him. He’d done it to Suzie, and he was going to do it to her if she didn’t kill him first.

Her hand curled around the butt of the automatic pistol that she kept beside her. One quick shot to the back of the neck and she could take control of Torchwood.

She raised the pistol and took aim at Jack.

Gwen looked across at Rhys. They were standing on the edge of Cardiff Bay, on a small beach of grey and black pebbles, looking out across the water. Gulls bobbed nearby, hoping for a crust of bread or a fragment from a burger bun. She knew she should be at Torchwood, helping to track Doctor Scotus down, but she needed to make sure that Rhys was safe.

What was the point in saving the world if you weren’t allowed to save the ones you loved?

There was almost no sign that Rhys’s cheek had been almost torn off, just days before. The skin was pinker, less weathered than the rest of his face, but it wasn’t like he was the kind of guy who spent his life halfway up the Amazon or halfway across the Gobi, and consequently had a face weathered to buggery. A couple of days of sun and wind and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one side and the other.

‘Look, I’m having trouble grasping this,’ he said. ‘That tablet — you’re saying it was contaminated?’

‘I checked with the Department of Health,’ she said smoothly. ‘They’re worried that the tablets might be adulterated with something. It’s a bit like that scare a few years back about the Chinese herbal remedies, when they discovered that in high doses they could cause liver failure, but because they are classified as a herbal supplement rather than a drug people are still allowed to sell them. Same story here.’

‘Why is it,’ Rhys asked, ‘that we have a Department of Health but a Department for Transport, a Ministry of Defence and a Home Office. There’s no consistency there at all.’

‘Rhys — focus!’

‘Yeah, sorry.’ He thought for a moment, and his face crumpled into a worried grimace. ‘The thing is, they worked! I’ve lost a good stone and a half since I took the first tablet.’

‘And you look great,’ she said, reassuringly. And it was true. Rhys hadn’t looked as slim for as long as she had known him. His stomach was flat, his arms and thighs were taut and his arse… that was just fantastic. Part of Gwen wished she could get that effect as quickly, but she wouldn’t pay the price that Lucy or Marianne had. No, it was back to running through darkened hospital corridors and alleyways for her.

‘And you reckon this is why Lucy had such a bad reaction?’

‘Psychotic episode brought on by whatever complex biochemical stuff was in the pill. Apparently they’ve had complaints from all over South Wales.’

‘Hasn’t hit the news,’ he said, puzzled.

‘BBC Wales have been doing an undercover investigation. Apparently they’re going to blow the lid off it in a new documentary in a month or so.’

‘Oh.’ He seemed strangely impressed at the mention of BBC Wales, as though it lent the story some extra credibility. ‘OK, I understand about the pills, and I understand about Lucy. What I don’t understand is, if the pills are potentially so dangerous, why do you want me to take the second one?’

Owen stared at the squat, black shape and goggled.

The tentacular arms seemed to have melded together, forming a long, thin body, and then the whole thing had grown two pairs of diaphanous wings, each one a third of the way along the body, that looked like they were beating at several hundred beats per second. The thing was both radially and bilaterally symmetrical, with the body knobbly in the middle but coming to a sharp point front and back. From what he could see, there were clusters of deep-set eyes, like jewels, at both ends. With those wings it was likely to be fast, and if it could go in both directions then it was likely to be highly manoeuvrable.

It was like a flying knife.

Ianto looked over his shoulder. ‘What happened to it?’ he asked.

‘I think we’re dealing with a multi-stage life cycle,’ Owen replied. ‘There’s the egg, of course, and there’s the creature that sits in the gut, absorbing nutrients. And then there’s this. Probably the egg-laying stage.’

‘What does it do — cut its way out of the host and fly off?’

‘Don’t be melodramatic. That’s more like Alien than it is real life.’ He thought fast, trying to connect what he knew of biology with what he’d observed of this thing in its various stages. ‘I’m working on the assumption that something this evolved isn’t a parasite at all. It’s not in its best interests to kill the host, cos it wouldn’t last long without a source of food. And I don’t think the worm form is built for hiking long distances in search of one. No, it wants to keep the host alive so it keeps getting fed, but what if the host dies? Then it’s faced with a mass of flesh which it can metabolise quickly, triggering a new stage of development.’ His voice was getting faster as he worked through the implications of what he was saying and saw the conclusion that he was coming to. ‘So when the host dies, it grows wings and turns itself into a flying dart.’

‘But why?’ Ianto pressed.

‘So it can aim itself at some animal moving along the ground, fly at it really fast and embed itself in the animal’s body, either killing it or causing severe wounds. It lays its eggs and it dies. Then scavengers come along and eat the remains of the dead animal, unwittingly snaffling up a whole load of eggs at the same time. And the cycle starts again.’

‘That is like Alien,’ Ianto pointed out, ‘with some modifications so it makes more sense.’

‘Shut up,’ Owen said, absently. He tried to imagine what life was like on this creature’s world. Nasty, brutish and short, he thought, which for some reason also reminded him of a girl he’d shagged a few months back.

‘OK,’ Ianto said. ‘Now that you’ve cleverly worked out that it’s a flying, egg-laying dealer of death, I have another question.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Which one of us is going to go in there and get it?’

The corrosive paranoia dripped away from her, and Toshiko was suddenly confronted with the fact that she had badly underestimated this device. The emotions she was receiving were too strong. She wasn’t able to cope. She threw the automatic away from her, onto the seat that Owen usually occupied, horrified at the terrible mistake she had almost made.

Toshiko’s position as technical expert to Torchwood was based on a couple of lucky guesses she’d made early on, but ever since then she had failed at whatever task she had been set. Jack only kept her on out of pity. The best thing she could do was to pack her bags and return to London. A despairing wail escaped her lips. There was no escape!

‘Tosh, stay focused.’

‘I’m trying. I’m really trying,’ she wept.

The device’s field of view passed across a man dressed in a tattered and stained overcoat and ragged trousers. His shoes were tied to his feet with string, and he was pushing a shopping trolley ahead of him. It appeared to be filled with old magazines. Toshiko cringed, expecting madness to wrap itself around her mind, infiltrating black tendrils into every aspect of her thoughts, but instead all the colours in the sky and the road and the cars seemed to intensify, as if a rainbow had descended from the sky and coated everything with light. She wanted to lean out of the window and let the wind ruffle her hair while she called out to passers-by, telling them how wonderful the world could be if only you opened your heart to it.

The car drove on leaving the vagrant behind, trailing his cloud of joy, and Toshiko felt like crying at what she had lost. For a moment there she’d had the secret of existence in her hand, and it had been snatched away.

Hunger squirmed inside her, and her mouth suddenly filled with saliva. She could smell meat on the breeze, and it was almost driving her mad. She was just about to tell Jack that she thought she had something when she noticed that the device was pointing across a dual carriageway at a Mexican restaurant. She must have been picking up on the hunger of the diners inside. She adjusted her aim away from the restaurant to take in another section of the city.

It was as if she had driven off the edge of a cliff and was falling into a chasm of starvation. Her stomach knotted tight and her hands began to shake. She couldn’t think straight: every sight, every sound, every smell reminded her that she desperately needed to eat.

She nudged the device sideways, perspiration beading her forehead, and the feeling was gone, melting away to leave nothing behind. If what she had felt before, passing the restaurant, was hunger, then this had been famine, multiplied many times over.

Quickly she worked out the bearing that the feeling had come from and drew a line across the map, starting at the rough position of the car and extending across the city. She turned to Jack and said: ‘I think I have something. It’s coming from the east.’

‘Strong?’

‘Almost overpowering.’

‘OK.’ He swung the SUV into a tight turn. ‘Sorry to do this to you, Tosh, but we need to triangulate that signal. Keep scanning until you get it again. Let’s hope it’s what we’re looking for.’

Oh bollocks, Gwen thought. ‘The second pill isn’t made from the same plant extracts,’ she said carefully. ‘It’s more of a standard drug, like paracetamol, but it flushes the body of… of impurities. It sensitises the liver to the stuff that was in the first pill and helps your body eliminate it. The Department of Health have given it a clean bill of health. As it were.’

‘Right. OK.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll take the second pill when I get home, then, if that’s what you want.’

Gwen fished in her pocket and brought out the blister pack that she’d removed from their bathroom cabinet. ‘Here — take it now.’

‘God, you’re keen.’

‘I worry about you.’

He smiled. ‘Really? Cos I like it when you worry.’

‘Take the pill, Rhys.’

He slipped it into his mouth and swallowed it straight away. Gwen didn’t know how he could do that without a glass of water. Was it a bloke thing? Did they practise with aspirin, just so they could impress girls with their manly pill-swallowing abilities?

‘Done,’ he said. ‘So what’s going to happen to Lucy?’

‘She’s under medical supervision. The pill affected her quite badly.’

‘Yeah.’ He shook his head. ‘Now she’s lost some weight, she should really dump that boyfriend. He’s nothing but trouble. I keep telling her that.’

‘I think she’s digested the message,’ Gwen said, looking away to suppress her shudder at what she’d found in Lucy’s flat. She still had to talk to Jack about what they could do with Lucy, who was still back in Torchwood, imprisoned.

‘So…’ Rhys said, reaching out to stroke her cheek, ‘you got to get off back to Torchwood, or have we got time for a quick shag?’

She looked around at the pebbles and the seaweed. ‘What — here?’

‘Not here, stupid. Back home.’

She considered. On the one hand, Jack and Toshiko were out tracking Doctor Scotus while Owen was missing, presumed drunk, and they probably needed her help. On the other hand, she really should stay with Rhys until she knew the pill had taken effect, otherwise they might have another of those creatures on their hands.

‘You’ve talked me into it, you smooth-tongued bastard,’ she said, but Rhys had stopped listening. He was clutching his stomach in alarm.

‘Oh hell,’ he said. ‘I need a bog, and I need it fast!’

As Owen edged into the Autopsy Room, the creature stirred, flexing its body and raising both ends up from the table. Owen could hear a sound coming from it, a rustling sound, like someone wading through dry grass.

‘Nice Paul,’ he said. ‘I really liked “Magneto and Titanium Man”. Classic track, in my opinion.’

He eased himself into the room. The creature moved to track him with its tiny eyes. Owen assumed it was tracking his body heat, seeing him in the infra-red.

Owen moved to the right, leaving enough space for Ianto to slip into the room and move to the left. They separated, each one moving in a different direction around the gallery that encircled the walls. The creature wasn’t sure which one of them to go for, moving its ‘head’ uncertainly from one to the other and back again.

‘“Band on the Run” was great as well,’ Owen went on, trying to distract the creature with sound as well as movement. He didn’t know whether it could hear him or not — maybe it could track vibrations as well as heat. Worth a go, at any rate. ‘Although I never understood that line about the rain exploding with a mighty crash as they fell into the sun. What’s that all about then?’

He and Ianto were about ninety degrees apart now, and the creature was still uncertain which of them to concentrate on. Perfect. From behind his back Owen pulled out the alien device that Toshiko had found in the Archive, the one that looked like a pumped-up clover leaf with a stalk hanging down, the one she said projected small electrical shocks along an ionised path, like a low-power ray gun. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘get ready to-’

With a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach, Owen suddenly realised that he and Ianto had kept on moving past the ninety-degree point and were now almost in a straight line with the autopsy table in the middle. That would have been fine if the creature had had just the one head and had to still keep looking at both of them, but Paul effectively had two heads, one at each end. And with both Owen and Ianto now safely under observation, it attacked, flinging itself off the table and propelling itself through the air at fantastic speed using its insectile wings.

At Ianto.

‘Get down!’ Owen yelled. Ianto dropped out of sight behind the railing on the gallery. The creature hit the brick wall, embedding itself an inch into the mortar, then flexing its body back and forth and using its wings to pull itself out. It hovered in mid-air for a moment, looking around for sources of heat. And it found Owen. One moment it was there, the next it was a blur, heading for his chest.

Owen brought the alien device up and pulled what Toshiko had confidently told him was the trigger. It shuddered in his grip, and the air between him and the living missile was filled with light. The creature bucked, losing its aerodynamic form and suddenly becoming something more like a boomerang. It spun crazily through the air before bouncing off the wall next to Owen’s head and falling to the gallery, stunned. Or dead. Owen didn’t much care which.

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to just gas it?’ Ianto asked.

Owen gestured towards the doorway. ‘No door,’ he said, breathless. ‘Whoever designed this place didn’t count on anything in the Autopsy Room wanting to get out again, which just goes to show how little they knew about Torchwood.’

Jack and Toshiko came breezing into the Hub at the same time as Gwen. Well, actually, as far as Gwen could see, Jack was breezing and Toshiko was more like a slight waft of air.

‘Tosh — are you OK?’ she asked.

Toshiko offered up a wan smile. ‘I’ve been better,’ she said.

Jack took the spiral metal stairs up to the Boardroom three at a time. ‘Everyone get together,’ he said. ‘We’re going to go for the big finale.’

Gwen and Toshiko exchanged glances before following him up the stairs and past the large portholes — former pipes that had been sealed off — that looked out into the murky waters of the bay. Small fish were playing around in the crevices in the brickwork.

Owen and Ianto arrived from the medical area, having presumably heard the commotion. Owen was carrying something under a blanket.

‘Coffee?’ Ianto asked as they all congregated in the Boardroom and sat down around the conference table.

‘You’re going to need it,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve got a packed programme ahead of us.’ As Ianto fiddled with the machine outside the door, Jack took up a position in front of the wide window that looked down into the Hub, legs apart and hands on hips. ‘Right, let’s clear up some loose ends. Gwen — what’s the story with Rhys and George Harrison?’

‘Rhys has taken the second pill, and he’s flushed the disintegrating remnants of George down the toilet in the noisiest and most unpleasant way possible. But he’s clear. Thanks.’

‘No problem. Ianto, where are we with young Lucy and John Lennon?’

Ianto glanced in from the platform outside. ‘Miss Sobel is still confined in the cells. Having learned our lesson from the unfortunate Miss Till, we’ve made sure her arms and legs are firmly pinioned and she has a metal gag in her mouth — a scold’s bridle, I think it’s called. And we’re pumping a vaporised form of anaesthetic into the cell to keep her sedated.’

‘Yeah, and who’s idea was that?’ Owen snapped. ‘I thought I was the doctor around here?’

‘You went AWOL,’ Jack said calmly, ‘so we had to improvise.’ He turned back to Ianto. ‘I think we’re safe to feed her the second pill now. Put it in her food or something. Owen can clear the cell out when she’s finished clearing John Lennon out of her system.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Owen muttered.

‘Hey, don’t complain. You left us in a mess, so I’m leaving you with a mess. What goes around, comes around.’ Jack glanced around the faces at the table. ‘OK. George and Ringo are dead, John is on the way out and Stuart never got a look in. So where’s Paul?’

Owen pulled the blanket from the object that he’d brought up with him. It was an old-fashioned bird-cage made of metal rods, flat on the bottom and curved on the top, but the thing inside wasn’t a canary. In fact, Gwen wasn’t sure what it was. It’s body was long and thin and winged, but it looked cowed.

‘This,’ Owen announced, ‘is Paul. He’s gone solo and reinvented himself.’

‘Seriously,’ Jack said. ‘What is that thing?’

‘Seriously, it’s the next stage in the life cycle of the worms.’

‘It’s a flying egg-layer with extreme prejudice,’ Ianto added helpfully, bringing in a tray full of coffees.

‘The worm lurks in the gut, absorbing nutrients, until the host dies,’ Owen explained. ‘The worm then turns into this thing, which flies around until it can bury itself in something living — probably some kind of grazing animal, but I’m sure anything would do. We’ll call that the secondary host. This thing lays eggs, and dies. The eggs are then eaten by whatever eats the secondary host, and the cycle starts all over again.’

‘And I’m sure that on its home planet it works out perfectly,’ Jack said, ‘but here on Earth it’s trying to impose itself on a different set of hosts, and I’m not going to let that happen. And I also want to know where Doctor Scotus fits into all this, which brings us on to what Toshiko and I did this afternoon. Using that alien tech which amplifies distant emotions, we triangulated on a place on the outskirts of Cardiff where there’s a large concentration of very hungry people. Either there’s a Weight Watchers convention going on, or Doctor Scotus’s clinic is up and running somewhere else.’

‘Why would he get all the people who have taken the pill already to congregate together?’ Gwen asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Remember the attempt to kidnap Lucy Sobel?’ Jack asked. ‘I think Doctor Scotus has realised his little pills are having side effects, and he’s trying to get the evidence off the streets. I think when we get there we’ll find that he’s managed to scoop up most, if not all, of the kids who bought into his little weight-loss scheme, and he’s probably wondering right now what he’s going to do with them. So get ready, boys and girls, because we’re not going to let this go on any longer. I can accept a lot in life, but preying on the helpless and the gullible is out of line. I want you armed and ready to go in ten minutes.’ He glanced over at the cage on the table, and the creature that sulked within it. ‘And bring Paul. I think I may have a use for him.’