Trace Memory

FIFTEEN

The black Ford Transit sped through Tiger Bay in the pale blue light of the waning moon. Jack and Michael sat in the back, flanked on each side by Tatiana and her men, while in front and behind motorcycle outriders formed a convoy that snaked its way around the twisted narrow roads between the warehouses.

'You know something,' said Michael, smiling weakly, 'I'm starting to think monsters aren't that scary.'

Jack smiled back. 'You've got a point,' he said.

'Quiet,' said Tatiana. 'You'll talk later. When we tell you to.'

The van juddered to a halt, wheels crunching against gravel, and the back doors swung open.

'Out,' said Tatiana, tapping Jack's shoulder with her rifle.

Jack and Michael were pushed out into the waste ground between two large warehouses.

As they were marched towards the entrance to one of the weathered grey structures, Michael looked up, above the gigantic doors, and gasped. Jack followed his gaze and saw the sign:

HAMILTON'S SUGAR

'What is it?' Jack asked.

'That name,' said Michael. 'I've heard it before.'

The doors to the warehouse opened with a metallic groan, spilling a sliver of yellow light out into their path, and Tatiana and the foot soldiers took them in.

Jack had seen the warehouse many times, but nothing had prepared him for what lay inside. It might once have been the warehouse for a sugar company, but it hadn't been used as such in a long time. There were crates and containers, sure, but all around the vast space were desks, telephones and, in one distant corner, an oversized Strela computer with whirring loops of tape and blinking lights.

'I guess the sugar trade must be having a bad year,' said Jack. 'Looks like they've had to branch out.'

'Quiet,' ordered Tatiana. 'This way.'

They crossed the hub of what Jack now realised was some kind of KVI substation, and were taken down a flight of steps into a subterranean network of corridors. Jack had heard of the KVI, of course. He made it his business to keep up to date on anything of interest, but even so the facts were hard to come by. He'd heard that the organisation was essentially a 1920s Soviet rebranding of a department set up under the Tsar some time after the Tunguska explosion in 1908, but very little more. What did the KVI want with him?

Or with Michael for that matter?

They eventually came to two doors. One of Tatiana's men opened the first door and, clipping Jack in the small of his back with the butt of a rifle, pushed him inside before slamming the door shut. The second door was opened and, gripping him by the shoulders, Tatiana pushed Michael into the room.

'You wait here,' she said, grinning. 'We have a friend who'd like to see you.'

In the neighbouring room, Jack got to his feet and dusted himself off. He'd been in rooms like this before, but why did they always have to be so grubby? Why were they almost invariably underground? Why did they always smell of damp?

In the centre of the room there was a desk, to either side of which there was a single chair. An interrogation room, then, Jack surmised. Other than the furniture, and the bare bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling, the room was featureless, devoid of any other purpose.

Jack crossed the room and placed one ear against the wall that connected to the next room. He hoped to hear something, anything, even if it was the sound of Michael crying. Michael had come to him for help, had come from nowhere, and now they were here, deep underground, and nobody except the KVI knew where they were.

He wasn't scared of death, of course, but that brought no comfort. There were, Jack had discovered, far worse things that death, and far worse things that could be done to Jack than killing him. It always plagued him that his enemies might use this to their advantage and, sometimes, when he found himself in idle thought, he'd think about how awful it might be to find himself with his feet encased in cement at the bottom of an ocean, or trapped inside a block of ice in the wastelands of the Arctic. He'd die, of course, over and over again, but his punishment would be like that of Prometheus, chained to a rock, forever being eviscerated by an eagle, only to wake up the next day and suffer all over again. He'd seen death up close, and he doubted there was much beyond it; any punishment for Jack had the potential to be infinite, unending. He'd never tell anyone this, of course, but Jack was scared.

Michael's room was similarly sparse and he spent his first few moments alone sat on the floor, where he had fallen, with his head in his hands. It was hard for him to feel despair; much of that had been used up these last few days. Now all that was left was pain and sadness. When he closed his eyes all he could see was the ballroom, its floor awash with blood and bullet-riddled corpses. He'd never seen death up close before, not even when his father had died. His memories of the explosion at the dock were cloudy; he'd seen little except that flare of light; but this time, in the ballroom, there had been blood. So much blood.

The door to his cell opened, and Tatiana entered with two of the guards.

'Get up,' she said, her husky voice echoing around the room. 'I said get up, and sit at the table.'

Michael stood and followed the order, unable to look at Tatiana. She was a terrifying combination of beauty and malevolence with an air of sardonic amusement; both seductive and deadly.

'We have a friend,' said Tatiana, 'who would like to speak to you.'

Michael looked out through the open door into the corridor, and saw a tall, angular figure emerge from the shadows.

It was Valentine.

'What to do with you, ay?' said one of the Russians, circling Jack like a vulture, his rifle constantly aimed for Jack's head.

'They say you can live for ever. Is this true, American? Is it true that you cannot die?'

Jack said nothing.

'I'd like to test that,' said the Russian. 'I could fire a bullet into your head right now and test that. Of course, Tatiana would never allow that. We need you.'

'Why?' asked Jack.

'They say you are special,' said the Russian. 'They say you are different. They say you have been many, many places and have lived a very long time. There are things you must know that would be very useful for our country. No?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

The Russian laughed. 'Oh, but we haven't even asked you what you know yet. Are you saying you know nothing? About anything?

I doubt that very much. But who knows? Maybe we are wasting our time here. Maybe everything they say about you is a lie, no? Maybe I should shoot you in that pretty little head of yours.'

'Are you flirting with me?' said Jack. 'Because, when I think about it, I don't think I've ever been with a Russian before. You might call that a glaring omission-'

The Russian struck him across the head with the butt of his rifle.

'Silence!' he yelled, grabbing Jack by the hair and slamming his face against the desk. Somewhere in the fog of pain, Jack wondered why his condition hadn't freed him of physical discomfort along with mortality. He put the back of his hand against his nose and taking it away saw blood.

The door of the cell opened, and Tatiana walked in.

'Ah,' she said, smiling. 'I see you are becoming better acquainted with Yevgeny.'

'I had no idea this was going to be a threesome,' said Jack, and Yevgeny slammed his head into the desk once more.

'Yevgeny is a good man,' said Tatiana. A good man, but… What is the word I'm looking for? Yevgeny, kak pa-Angleeski "izmenchiviy"?'

'Volatile,' said Yevgeny, leering at Jack.

'Volatile,' said Tatiana. 'He's a good man, but volatile.'

'Michael,' said Valentine, smiling warmly as he sat down at the desk. 'Fourteen years for us, but I'd say no time at all for you. You've changed out of those clothes but you're still a little boy lost in a big bad world.'

'Why are you here?' asked Michael. 'Where's the other one? Where's Cromwell?'

Valentine winced.

'Yes,' he said, 'I'm afraid we had our disagreements about the direction things should be going in. Then I had a better offer. Who would have thought it? Redistribution of wealth and all the rest of it, and yet our friends in Moscow are able to pay me more. But that's the problem when you switch sides, see? Your knowledge of the inside dries up, things move on. Times change, as I'm sure you know. Jack Harkness has seen and done things way beyond what many of us could imagine, and that's saying something. He's useful to us. His knowledge and experience are useful to us. But imagine my surprise when they said you'd tagged along for the ride.'

'But I don't know anything,' said Michael. 'I don't even know what's happening to me.'

'It's not what you know,' said Valentine. 'It's what you are.'

The butt of the rifle struck the side of his head once more, and this time Jack could feel blood, trickling down his cheek and along the contours of his chin. Yevgeny had tied him to the chair and was still circling him.

'Torchwood,' said Yevgeny. 'What do you know about Torchwood?'

'I've told you,' said Jack. 'I don't know anything about Torchwood. What's Torchwood?'

'On lozhnee,' said Tatiana: He's lying.

Yevgeny leaned close to Jack, so that his mouth was only inches from his ear and Jack could feel his breath.

'Tell us what you know about Torchwood. We want names. Locations.'

'How many times?' said Jack. 'I don't know what you're talking about. And if this is your way of trying to woo a guy, believe me, buddy, you're going about it the wrong way.'

Yevgeny laughed, and placed one hand around Jack's throat.

'You like that?' he said. 'You like it when I play rough, hm?'

His grip tightened, and Jack felt the swell of blood in his face. He looked Yevgeny in the eye.

'Oh yeah,' he croaked. 'That's it… Harder, baby, harder…'

Yevgeny glanced across at Tatiana, who was standing in a darkened corner of the room, watching with a cool impassivity. She nodded, and Yevgeny squeezed Jack's throat even tighter. Jack was feeling dizzy now, coloured spots dancing before his eyes.

'Is that enough for you?' said Yevgeny. 'I wouldn't want to crush your throat so bad you couldn't speak, now, would I? So is that enough?'

Jack shook his head as much as he could manage and forced a grin, though the pain was almost unbearable and he could feel himself slipping out of consciousness.

'I think you can go further,' he said. 'Go on… You know you want to…'

Yevgeny's eyes filled with rage, and he put both hands around Jack's throat, crushing them together with every drop of strength he had until the tips of his thumbs drew blood.

As his world became entombed in darkness, Jack thought of Michael, of what they might be doing to him in the neighbouring room, and then he felt it again — that all familiar surge and the cold embrace of the void.

He was still smiling at Yevgeny when he died.

'Massacres,' said Valentine, pointing at the array of black and white photographs and images of paintings and etchings from a bygone era that he had spread out on the desk. 'Sao Paulo in 1922. Canada in 1878. Japan in 1691. Siberia, 1927. Syria in the second century AD. Egypt in 1352 BC. All places where they were found… The spheres. Found, and then taken.'

'What are you talking about?' Michael asked. The photographs showed images of dead bodies, some barely recognisable as human.

'The crate that you helped us with in 1953 contained a metal sphere that was discovered in the Arctic about a hundred miles south of the Pole, buried beneath the ice, but it wasn't the only one. There have been others. The funny thing is, they never seem to last very long. They are discovered, transported, and that's when they arrive.'

'Who?'

Valentine smiled, the same lopsided smile Michael had first seen in the hospital, his mouth half-paralysed by the scar traversing the left side of his face.

'I think you know,' said Valentine. 'At least I should think you do by now. What do they look like to you, Michael? In Japan, they were said to resemble samurai. In Egypt they came "like gods". What do the creatures look like to you?'

Yevgeny checked Jack's wrist for a pulse one more time, waited, and then turned to Tatiana, shaking his head.

'Nothing.'

'Ha…' said Tatiana, staring into Jack's lifeless eyes. 'Maybe we were wrong. He's like the rest of us. Or rather, he was like the rest of us. Sweet dreams, Captain Jack Harkness. Take his body upstairs and have the men dispose of him properly. I want nothing left but ashes.'

'But what about the information?' said Yevgeny. 'If he's dead, he can't tell us anything.'

'There was no information,' said Tatiana. 'He was, how do they say, "taking us for a ride"? He was a con man, nothing more. Besides, if Comrade Valentine is to be believed, we've found something much better.'

Tatiana laughed, and walked out of the cell, the clacking of her heels echoing into the distance.

Yevgeny looked down at Jack's corpse and shook his head. Grumbling and swearing under his breath, he lifted the body onto his shoulder and carried him out of the interrogation room.

'So what are you going to do with me?' Michael asked.

'First,' said Valentine, 'Tatiana and her friends are going to put you on a boat. It arrives in a little under an hour. Then they are going to take you to East Germany before transporting you to Moscow. It'll be a long journey, and not all that comfortable, but then again, you're no longer my concern.'

'And what's going to happen in Moscow?'

Valentine laughed coldly.

'They'll assemble a team of scientists,' he said, 'who will do their best to… extract whatever it is those creatures are looking for, whatever energy it is you soaked up in that explosion. Sounds like priceless stuff.

Powerful stuff. The thing is, they need you alive. This has happened before, what's happened to you. Siberia. Exposure to one of the spheres left somebody in a very similar predicament. The patient died, and with it the energy just flickered out. Like that.'

He clicked his fingers. 'So you don't need to worry about dying. Not yet, anyway.'

'Jack won't let you,' said Michael. 'He won't let you take me to Moscow.'

As he spoke, the door of the cell opened and Tatiana entered.

'Jack?' she said. 'You think your friend Harkness is going to save you? Oh, I'm very sorry to inform you that Jack Harkness is dead.'