The Twilight Streets

TWO

The room was incredibly dark – not just the dark of a late night, but the dark of somewhere that light just seemed to evaporate from, as if something was actually sucking it out, like air from a leaky tyre.

It may have had something to do with the wooden box at the centre of the room, on the floor next to a table. About the size of a shoebox, but crafted elegantly from redwood, with intricate designs across the surface. Not that they could be seen right now. But they were there all the same.

If you listened closely enough, you might be forgiven for thinking the box was sighing. Or breathing deeply. Or perhaps, something inside it was.

The box wasn’t alone in the room. Beside the table was a leather armchair, a Queen Anne, in tan. A bit worn, showing its age, creases and even a minute tear on one wing. On the table, a small glass of dark sherry stood on a white doily.

On the wooden floor in front of a cold fire hearth was a tan rug, which matched the armchair. The fire looked as though it hadn’t been lit in many years – spotlessly clean, the Victorian tiling painted black, the wrought-iron implements in a dark coal bucket next to a grate.

Facing all of this was the door to the room, wooden, stained dark, an iron key in the lock. To the right of the door and the chair was a window. Long, heavily covered with a dark olive velvet curtain.

That was it. Just a dark room filled with dark furnishings.

And the odd sigh from within the box. Probably.

After a couple more sighs, a tiny pinprick of light seemed to seep out from the box, not enough to illuminate the room, but enough to break the dark mood.

Seconds later, the leather chair rustled, almost as if someone was moving in it and sure enough a figure gradually materialised out of nothing. Almost as if it were crossing from one plane of reality to another, in which identical rooms existed, with identical chairs.

After a few more seconds, the figure solidified into a small, thin-featured old man, wearing an evening suit, bow-tie, cummerbund, a small red rose in his buttonhole, as if he’d been attending a night at the opera.

Ignoring the darkness, almost as though he could see as clearly as if it were broad daylight, the man reached out for the sherry glass. He flicked through the pages of a broadsheet newspaper which had been lying on the floor. Each page was blank, yet he seemed to be reading something on it.

He grimaced at the sherry and muttered, ‘I prefer Amontillado.’

The sherry seemed to glow briefly at this. When the glow faded, the sherry was marginally paler than before.

The man glanced at the newspaper. ‘Where am I?’

An empty page was suddenly illuminated. A word appeared on it, scored in a white light that then turned ink-black.

CARDIFF

‘When?’

18 AUGUST 1941

‘What a popular year. And where in this dreary place might one find the divine Captain Jack Harkness today?’

TRETARRI

The old man clapped his hands with a giggle. The newspaper folded itself up and came to rest on an arm of the chair. ‘Delightful. Queen’s Rook takes Queen’s Knight, I think.’ He looked about the room. ‘Light.’

The transformation was instantaneous – the fire was lit, electric lights on the walls were a low-voltage, incandescent yellow, the rug and curtain become cream-coloured, and some framed pictures blurred into existence along the walls.

Photographs, mostly monochrome, showing Cardiff over the previous fifty years.

‘That’s better. If I’m going to be in this dimension for a while, I might as well be comfortable.’ He bent over and scooped up the box – his body as supple as that of a man a third his apparent age.

He crossed to one of the photos.

‘That is 1923, if I recall,’ he said to the box. ‘And there, in that ridiculous coat, with that smug expression – there is our target.’ He patted the lid of the box. ‘Jack Harkness he calls himself. Not his real name, of course, but a guise he once adopted and has continued to use. To all intents and purposes, it is whom he believes himself to be. And you and I shall have some fun with him.’

He crossed to another picture. Again Jack, this time dated 1909; he was inside a railway carriage in Pakistan, with a troop of soldiers, laughing. ‘Take a good look at our enemy,’ the old man purred. ‘This is going to be a long game with a very unpleasant outcome.’

From within the box, a louder sigh than before emerged, and another flicker of harsh white light seeped from the crack between its lid and base.

The old man nodded slowly. ‘Yes, the God-slayer. And we really don’t like him much, do we?’

The box sighed again.

The man clicked his fingers, and the newspaper flipped open to a blank page.

‘Send a message: My dearest Doctor Brennan. Matilda. My respects to you and Torchwood. The time has come to rid ourselves of the vermin that calls itself Harkness. File TW3/87/BM. Read it and follow the instructions. Your servant, as always, Bilis Manger, Esquire.’

The newspaper closed, and the old man smiled.

‘It won’t work, of course. But it will be an amusing diversion, a chance to see how alert the good Captain is.’

He sat back in the chair, sipped more sherry and suddenly yanked open the lid of the box. A massive flurry of bright, fierce halogen white light almost roared out of the box, straight up, through the ceiling and was gone.

And Bilis Manger laughed as he imagined the trauma he was about to inflict, indirectly and untraceably of course, on his… nemesis.

‘Nemesis? Oh I like that,’ he said to the newspaper. ‘I would have settled for “enemy”. “Mortal foe”, even. But “nemesis” – oh, but that’s delicious.’

Jack Harkness stood at the end of a long road. At the far end was a huge brick wall, creating a cul-de-sac of Wharf Street. Off Wharf Street, four other roads to the left. The right of Wharf Street was just a solid row of Victorian terraces.

The four roads were also lined with identical two-up, two-down terraces. All workers’ cottages, built for the dockworkers in 1872. Back then, the land had been owned by one of the local businessmen, Gideon ap Tarri, who wanted his men well housed with their wives and kids.

At the other end of the four side roads, a street identical to Wharf Street called Bute Terrace.

Six streets of houses, creating a neat square of land.

And all the houses empty. Just as they had been in 1902 when he’d first been drawn here. And all the other times. 1922 – that’d been a good year. And in 1934, that old woman who threw things at him…

Unchanging. No sign of wear and tear. Just… there.

Jack was about to step forward when something that hadn’t happened on his previous incursions suddenly occurred.

A dog, a small brown cocker spaniel, lolloped towards Wharf Street from behind him, panting slightly. It brushed past his leg and into Wharf Street. Momentarily it stopped and cocked its head, as if listening, Jack thought. Hearing something on a frequency that dogs can but humans can’t. Then it carried on moving, and then turned left into the second linking road. Jack had no idea what the street was called; if it had a sign, it was on the facia he couldn’t see from where he stood.

The dog was gone, completely out of his field of vision, so he moved left to look down Bute Terrace. The dog didn’t re-emerge, so he assumed it had found something to amuse itself with in the side road.

Anywhere else, of course, he might just have wandered in to see what the dog was doing.

But this tiny block of streets known as Tretarri was off-limits to Jack. It always had been. Ever since 1902, when he’d first stumbled on it, drunkenly one night. (Oh, that was a good night. That showgirl. And the sailor. Together…) He’d tried going in but had woken up flat on his back, exactly where he stood now. And, for the next two days, he’d played host to King Hangover of the Hangover People.

Same on his other visits – he physically could not get into Tretarri. If he tried, he felt sick.

He stepped forward. Nope, tonight was no different, the nausea was wrenched up from the pits of his gut in a split second – maybe a bit stronger, a bit more nauseous, but always the same sensations. He tried to ignore it, to force himself forward. If he was going to throw up, so what? He was still going to try.

He put an arm out but, just as he’d found the last time, something stopped him. Like a barrier – an invisible barrier.

He tried to fight the wave of hot and cold washing over him, tried to ignore the churning in his stomach. He was Jack Harkness, fifty-first-century Time Agent. He’d fought monsters for God’s sake. How could a crappy little block of streets in one city on Earth give him this much grief?

Then he staggered back.

‘I give up,’ he muttered to no one in particular.

One day, he’d break through this. It was a mystery, and Jack didn’t much like mysteries. Well, not insoluble ones. Not insoluble ones that made him want to bring his lunch up. And yesterday’s lunch. And probably the last week’s worth of lunches.

He turned away from Bute Terrace and tried to focus on that party going on down by the docks.

But no, even thinking about drinking, gambling, girls and boys couldn’t convince him to head there.

He needed rest. Sleep.

And annoyingly, like last time, he knew it’d be three days before he’d be fit and ready again.

He wandered into the darkness, trying not to stagger and lean against the lamp-posts as he headed back to his den.

If he’d taken one last look back, he would have seen the spaniel standing at the edge of the street, its eyes glowing bright with an unearthly white halogen light. He might have seen what could also only be described as a smile on its face.

But normal, Earth-based dogs can’t smile, so he’d have dismissed that as a by-product of his nausea.

Four days later, he was back at Torchwood Three.

His defences were up immediately. Rhydian wasn’t on reception duty, but unconscious on the floor, his breathing shallow but regular. Jack sniffed his breath – Rhydian had been drugged then.

He went down into the Hub.

Turing’s Rift predictor was wrecked, bits of it strewn about the floor, and a dark, charred hole at its heart.

Of Tilda Brennan, Llinos King or Greg Bishop, no sign.

Tilda’s office, far side, to the right of the Torchwood train station sign, was empty. Drawing his Webley, gripping it in both hands, Jack expertly explored the Hub, checking the walkway that ringed the walls, the Committee Room at 9 o’clock to Tilda’s office, on that walkway, and then looked down into the sterile Autopsy Room.

Nothing.

He crossed under the Committee Room to the steps at the back of the Hub, glancing into the Interrogation Room. Llinos was lying across the table.

He was in there in seconds, checking Llinos’ neck for a pulse. Faint, but there.

Both Rhydian and Llinos, alive but unconscious. Why?

He took the steps down into the bowels of the Torchwood base, leading to a series of interlinked tunnels and passageways. To one side, he passed the Vaults where alien prisoners were kept. Nothing.

He went further, down a few steps to the basement area, a vast room of nothing but filing cabinets – details of Torchwood incidents, staff and records going back to its inception in 1879.

Around the corner, the huge Victorian morgue, rows of wooden doors hiding… whatever. He was never comfortable down there. As a man who couldn’t die, being in close proximity to those that had, made him… uncomfortable.

There was a noise, a whisper.

‘Jack.’

It had come from the direction of the Vaults, and Jack eased himself along the tunnels back there.

‘Greg?’

Revolver ready, he went into the Vaults, aiming rapidly into each cell. Empty until he reached the last one. The alien he’d got from the railway station, dissected, its face contorted in agony, spread-eagled on the floor, entrails everywhere.

‘Jack…’

He swung around.

Greg was in the doorway, his face swollen and bloodied, his right arm (his gun arm, Jack knew) twisted at an angle, clearly broken painfully in at least two places. His beautiful blue eyes were staring at Jack in silent apology.

But the most surprising thing wasn’t Greg. It was Tilda Brennan, holding Greg in front of her as a shield, a pistol jammed against his forehead.

She was holding Greg in an arm-lock around the throat, and clutching a diary of some sort.

‘You couldn’t just sod off and leave us alone, could you Jack?’ she spat. ‘This is your fault.’

Jack shrugged and threw a look at ‘Neil’ the alien. ‘What did you learn from that?’

Tilda snorted. ‘That whatever race that piece of crap is from, they’re easily stopped.’

‘Is that what Torchwood One wanted?’

‘I’m not working for Torchwood any more,’ she said quietly.

‘Kinda guessed that,’ Jack replied, keeping the Webley aimed straight at her, but with an eye on her twitchy trigger finger.

He knew that, if he fired, there’d still be that split second, that moment when the noise of the Webley could startle her enough that she’d fire too, spreading Greg’s brain across the room just as his bullet did the same to hers.

He wasn’t going to take that risk – he didn’t owe Torchwood enough for that.

But he owed Greg.

‘So, who?’

By way of an answer, she gasped – and her eyes suddenly flared with a bright white light, burning harshly.

He could almost hear the roar.

Or was it a… sigh of some sort. A sigh of contentment, as if something had been released.

But her gun was still pressed into Greg’s temple.

Damn.

‘One day, Jack,’ she said, but the voice wasn’t hers, it was… distorted, hollow. ‘One day, you’ll understand all this. I’m the messenger, Jack. Just the messenger.’

And the lights in her eyes went as suddenly as they’d arrived – and Tilda’s concentration faltered for a second.

As her arm relaxed a fraction, she clearly realised her mistake.

Her finger began to pull the trigger and Jack had no choice.

The Webley retorted, twice, and Tilda’s head exploded.

Her dead finger continued on its trajectory and her pistol fired – uselessly into the wall as Greg fell backwards with Tilda’s body as she dropped.

Jack was at his side in a second, and the young man wrenched himself free of the woman and fell into Jack’s waiting arms, huge sobs racking his body.

Jack held him tight, rocking back and forth slightly, both of them in shock. He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, but they only parted when the flame-haired Llinos put her head around the corner of the Vaults, pistol drawn.

She looked at Jack and Greg, and then took in Tilda Brennan’s body.

‘Check on Rhydian,’ Jack commanded, and Llinos ran away to find her comrade.

‘This,’ Jack whispered quietly into Greg’s ear, trying to lighten the mood, ‘is why I will never work full-time for Torchwood.’

Greg just looked up into Jack’s eyes and kissed him hard, their tongues finding each other’s mouths in passion, relief and savage gratitude.

They parted after a few moments, and Jack checked Greg’s arm.

‘She tricked me,’ Greg said quietly. ‘I found the alien like that, objected, and she said someone must be in the Hub. As I went to get a weapon, she jumped me. I was surprised, she’d done my arm in before I could react. I’m sorry.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Sorry, my ass. You’ve got nothing to apologise for – but you need to let Torchwood London know something took her over, possessed her.’

‘From the alien?’ asked Greg, pointing with his good arm at the dissected ‘Neil’.

Jack considered this, but something about that explanation didn’t ring true.

Greg reached out for the diary Tilda had dropped and drew it towards him, as Jack propped him up against the wall of the nearest cell door.

Llinos and Rhydian came in, both alert, ready for anything, despite their recent unconsciousness.

This was a good team, Jack thought. They deserved better than Tilda Brennan’s betrayal, possessed or not.

He’d always had doubts about her.

Rhydian grabbed a blanket from one of the cells, draping it over Tilda’s body as Llinos and Greg flicked through the diary.

‘Rhydian, painkillers for Greg’s arm, now.’

‘Yes sir,’ the young officer replied and headed back out.

Greg was frowning, and not with the pain or shock.

‘What’s up?’ Jack asked.

Greg held the diary up. The double-page spread was blank.

‘They’re all like that,’ Llinos said. ‘It’s an empty book.’ She stood up and looked at Jack. ‘What do you think?’

‘Hey, don’t ask me,’ he said.

And they both turned as Greg swore.

A white light, roughly Greg-shaped, surrounded him.

Jack reached forward, but suddenly his guts seemed to be on fire – the same feeling he’d felt at Tretarri.

He hit the floor in a second, hearing his own voice yelling in fury, as Greg vanished with one final scream of pain, and the bright light flared and winked out.

‘Greg!’ Llinos shouted pointlessly.

Jack was staring, not where Greg had been, but at the diary.

In flame-orange letters, scored across the previously blank pages were words:

REVENGE, JACK. REVENGE FOR THE FUTURE.

And then the diary erupted into flame and would have been ash in seconds if Llinos hadn’t stamped on it and put the fire out.

‘Did… did you see that?’ Llinos asked, reaching down for the charred book.

Jack nodded dumbly. Greg had been taken. In revenge. For something Jack hadn’t done. Yet.