Trace Memory

SIXTEEN

Yevgeny had climbed three flights of stairs with a corpse on his shoulder and was now out of breath. He called two of the men, Pavlov and Mikhail, and ordered them to help him carry Jack to the furnace room at the back of the warehouse. They both nodded and, taking a leg each, dragged the body across the substation and down a dark and dismal corridor to the furnace room. There, they dropped it onto a metal workbench on the far side of the room, and all three began shovelling coal into the belly of the furnace.

'Make sure it's hot,' said Yevgeny. 'Tatiana said she wants nothing left.'

Inside the furnace, the flames roared into life, and Yevgeny began firing air into it with a small hand bellows.

'I hate this,' said Pavlov.

'Hate what?' asked Mikhail.

'Burning bodies,' replied Pavlov. 'The smell… It gets in your clothes, in your hair, in your nose. You can smell it for days. Weeks, even.'

'You should try working in the fish market,' said Mikhail.

'When I was a boy, I worked six days a week in the fish market in Berdjansk. You smell of fish all day, every day. Even Sundays.'

'Why can't we bury him?' Pavlov asked Yevgeny.

'Boss's orders,' he replied. 'She wants him burned. Only ashes left, she said.'

'Boss's orders…' said Mikhail, sarcastically. 'Always with the boss's orders.

I'll be glad when I can leave this place and go home. There's no weather here. It never snows, it's never hot. Just rains all the time.'

'Hey!' cried a voice, in English.

The three men stopped what they were doing and turned to see the man who had been lying dead on the workbench now standing in the centre of the room.

Jack Harkness.

'Bozhye moy…' said Mikhail, crossing himself only a split second before Jack struck him across the head with a wrench.

Yevgeny dropped the bellows and reached inside his coat for his gun, but it was too late — the wrench hit him fully in the face, flinging him back against the side of the furnace. As Yevgeny fell to the floor, Pavlov too went for his gun and drew it, only to have it knocked from his hands with a single blow that broke several fingers. He fell to the ground, clutching his hand in agony. A final whack of the wrench left him sprawling unconscious beside his comrades.

'Terribly rude to start a party without me,' said Jack. 'Where are your manners?'

Valentine and Tatiana were now arguing in Russian, both shouting. It was Valentine who had started the argument, the moment Tatiana had entered the room and told them Jack was dead. Michael had stopped listening.

This was it, then. The only person who stood any chance of getting him out of here was gone. Everyone was gone. For a fleeting moment, he'd felt less alone and less scared. He'd felt safer, even in this terrible place, knowing Jack was nearby.

The boat was less than an hour from arrival, the boat that would take him to Germany before they moved him on to Moscow. He'd dreamed of leaving Cardiff, of course, of sailing to faraway countries, but not like this.

He was staring down at the ominous dark stains on the bare floor when he heard the door open with a loud bang, and then a single gunshot. When he looked up, Valentine was on the floor in a growing pool of his own blood, and standing in the doorway with a rifle was Jack.

'Harkness!' said Tatiana. 'You were dead… I saw you die…'

'Don't believe everything you see,' snarled Jack.

Tatiana raised her rifle and fired, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. She cursed, throwing the rifle to the floor, and began backing away from Jack, her tone changing very suddenly.

'Listen, Jack, it doesn't have to be this way. I'm sure we could come to an… arrangement?'

Jack swung his rifle, hitting her in the face, and she dropped to the ground.

He turned to Michael. 'What's the matter? You look as if you've seen a ghost.'

Michael leapt up from the table and ran across the room, flinging his arms around him.

'Whoa, there,' said Jack. 'Anyone would think you were pleased to see me.'

Michael looked at Jack, his heart racing, tears burning in his eyes. 'I thought you were dead,' he said. 'They told me you were dead.'

'Ah,' said Jack, 'what do they know?'

They kissed, and Michael held him as if he needed him to breathe. This time it was different. This time he didn't care about anything outside the room. All that mattered was that Jack was alive. He wouldn't have minded if that moment had lasted hours or even days, but it was cut short by the sound of an alarm.

'Do they know you've escaped?' asked Michael.

Jack shrugged, and then the two of them heard gunfire, from an upstairs room in the substation.

'That isn't for us,' said Jack. 'If it was, we'd be getting shot at right now.'

They ran from the cell and into the corridor to see two of the Russians standing at the far end, both of them with rifles.

'Ustanovka!' shouted one of the men:

Halt!

As the Russians lifted their rifles to their shoulders and took aim, the fluorescent strip lights in the corridor began to flicker.

Behind them, an iron door first buckled with a loud groan and then came crashing forward, blasted out by some unseen force.

'What is it?' asked Michael. 'What's happening?'

But Jack didn't answer. He was staring back down the corridor at whatever had been on the other side of that door. Michael followed his gaze and saw them, the men in bowler hats, exactly as they had appeared to him in so many other places, in so many other times. There were two of them, and they walked towards the two armed Russians, both grinning insanely. The Russians aimed at the creatures and fired, but it was as if the shots simply passed straight through them.

'Nam nada bezhat!' shouted the second Russian, and now both men ran towards Jack and Michael. Neither got very far. The Vondrax entered the corridor, and there was a noise like the hum of an amplifier, increasing in volume until one of the fluorescent strips shattered, and both Russians collapsed to the floor, their hands over their ears, howling in pain.

'What's happening to them?' asked Michael.

'I don't know,' said Jack, 'but we've got to get out of here.'

They were about to flee when the Russians' heads exploded in a cascading shower of gore, splattering both sides of the corridor. Their lifeless, decapitated corpses slumped to the ground.

'The Traveller…' hissed the Vondrax, in unison, stepping over the bodies.

'Go!' said Jack, taking Michael by the arm. 'Run!'

'Not without you,' said Michael. 'I can't go without you.'

Jack looked at him soulfully. 'You'll have to,' he said.

Michael turned and ran along the corridor until he came to another door, which led out onto a metal spiral staircase. He looked back at Jack just once before running up the stairs.

In the corridor, Jack faced the Vondrax. They were stalking closer and closer, the sound of their breathing like a death rattle. They looked human enough, from a distance, but up close they were quite clearly something else entirely. Everything about them looked diseased, from their sallow, desiccated skin to their hideous, carnivorous teeth. Why, Jack wondered, had they chosen to look this way?

As they drew closer still, their mouths fixed in rictus grins, black eyes behind black lenses, boring into him, he understood. It was fear. They liked to be feared.

'This one is different,' said one of the Vondrax, though there was no telling them apart. 'This one fears but does not die.'

'Kill it,' said the other Vondrax.

The first creature took off its round black sunglasses. It was now only two feet away from Jack, and he could see straight into its eyes, like polished ebony orbs in sunken sockets. A strange sensation gripped him, as if every nerve ending in his body were being shredded. It felt like dying, or rather, paradoxically, it felt like reliving every death he'd ever had.

'It feels pain,' said the first Vondrax, 'but it does not die.'

And then a strange thing happened. The first Vondrax made a noise in its throat as if it were choking. It stepped away from Jack, hunching over, its clawed hands bunched into white-knuckled fists. Black liquid began to pour from its open mouth and nose, hissing like acid as it hit the hard concrete floor.

The second Vondrax rushed forward, hurling its sunglasses to the ground, and picked Jack up by his throat. Again, like the first, it stared into his eyes.

'Cannot die?' it said, and then, as if it were analysing him: 'Curious composition. Why can it not die?'

An expression very suddenly appeared on its face that Jack hadn't expected. The Vondrax looked scared.

'The darkness…' it hissed. 'It sees the darkness…'

The Vondrax dropped him to the floor and it too began to choke, and then vomit out the same black ooze as the first. They were both now doubled over, their bodies shrinking away inside their suits, becoming ever more skeletal, their bones cracking and their skin flaking away as dust.

Jack ran from the corridor and up the metal staircase. Michael was waiting for him at a door two storeys up, holding it only slightly ajar.

'What is it?' Jack asked. 'What's happening?'

'They're everywhere,' said Michael, inviting him to look through the narrow gap between the door and the frame. 'They're everywhere.'

Peering through the gap, Jack saw the substation reduced to a scene of carnage. The foot soldiers were running, confused, in all directions, firing shots at the dozens of Vondrax, who were impervious to their bullets. One by one, the guards fell; some spontaneously igniting, some ripped apart as if by invisible machinery. The stench of blood and burning flesh was overwhelming.

'We'll never get out that way,' said Jack. 'We need to get to the roof.'

They raced up the clanking metal stairs, higher up into the almost cathedral-like heights of the warehouse's upper levels. Below them the sounds of explosions and screaming continued, and the building shook with each blast, powdered concrete raining down around them in grey blizzards.

'It was like this once,' said Michael, 'in the future. I knew they'd come for me again, I knew it.'

Eventually they reached the top of the building, and a locked doorway that led out onto the roof.

'Stand back,' said Jack, and as Michael turned away and shielded his eyes Jack riddled the lock and the door with a dozen bullets. The lock exploded and the door was kicked open by the impact.

'Come on!' said Jack, running through the door and out onto the rooftop of the warehouse. Michael followed.

'What now?' Michael asked. 'Where can we go?'

'I hadn't actually thought that far ahead,' said Jack.

He ran to the edge of the building, looking down at the wasteland and the road between the warehouses. The Russians were swarming out of the building, yelling and screaming at one another. The Vondrax were following, picking them off one by one. Flames licked out of the shattered windows on lower floors, and somewhere in the depths of the building there was the menacing rumble of another explosion.

'Are we trapped?' asked Michael.

Jack ran to the other side of the roof and, looking down, saw a cliff-like sheer drop into the sea. They were too high up to jump and survive, and the water would be cold.

Michael followed him to the edge and looked down. 'We are trapped,' he said.

'Yes,' said a voice from the other side of the roof, and both Jack and Michael turned to see Tatiana, standing at the doorway, holding up her rifle. 'You are both quite trapped.'

'It's over Tatiana,' said Jack. 'Your men are dying. Those creatures are destroying everything.'

'But not you…' said Tatiana. 'They can't destroy you. I saw what you did to the others. You're different, Jack. And all I have to do is kill the boy and those creatures will go away…'

Jack stood in front of Michael.

'I won't let you do that,' he said. 'Tatiana… Face it. It's over.'

Tatiana lifted the rifle, gazing down its sights, and smiled but, before she could so much as pull the trigger, there was a terrible wet, ripping sound, and she was torn violently in half at the waist. As the two halves of her body were thrown in different directions, Jack saw three Vondrax, their lips curled back in sneers, needle teeth chattering frantically.

Michael turned away, and looking down over the edge of the building he saw the moon reflected on the surface of the sea.

'They don't like mirrors,' he said. 'It's something Cromwell said… in the future. He said they don't like mirrors.'

'What do you mean?' said Jack.

'The water…' said Michael, pointing at the sea.

'No…' said Jack, shaking his head. 'If you jump from here you'll die.'

Michael nodded. 'I know.'

Jack shook his head again. 'No… no… You can't do that.'

'It's only over when I die,' said Michael. 'Cromwell told me that. And Valentine. If I die, this… this thing that they want… it goes. It'll be over.'

Across the rooftop the Vondrax were drawing closer with spider-like movements, their shapes transforming from suited humanoid figures into something bizarre and grotesque; reptilian scales appearing on their skin and writhing tendrils bursting from their torsos.

'I have to,' said Michael. 'I'm tired of this, now. I want this to be over.'

Jack pulled him close, holding him as tight as he could. In that moment, it was as if a part of him had always known Michael, as if their lives were in some way entwined for ever. He wanted the words of Cromwell and Valentine to be lies, just something they'd said, but he knew deep down that they weren't.

Michael pulled away from Jack and nodded. It was the only way. He climbed up onto the wall, and looked down at the vertiginous drop, and then out toward the sea and the lights of distant ships.

'The Land of Horaizan,' he said, smiling softly.

'What's that?' asked Jack.

'It's something this little girl asked me,' said Michael. 'She asked me if I was from the Land of Horaizan. I thought she meant "horizon", but now I'm not so sure. Jack… What's dying like?'

Jack climbed up onto the wall beside him, and held Michael's hand.

'I wish I knew,' he said.

Together they fell nine storeys, a moment that to Michael seemed stretched out into infinity, a moment when he was always falling, when his whole life had been little more than a descent. They crashed through the surface of the water in an embrace and plunged deep down into the black sea, deeper and deeper until the light from the surface was barely strong enough for them to look into each other's eyes. Michael smiled, briefly, and then breathed out, his last breath rising to the surface in a volcanic storm of bubbles. Jack did likewise, and moments later they died in each other's arms.

The black Land-Rover ground to a halt before the burning ruins of the Hamilton's Sugar warehouse, the magnetic blue beacon light still flashing on its roof. As Cromwell stepped out of the vehicle, he saw that the place had already been swept by the army, something he was far from happy about, but then there was no plan in place for this. Tonight had taken them all by surprise.

It was embarrassing, truth be told, that a KVI substation could be in operation only a mile and a half from Torchwood and them not know about it. How long had this place been operational?

The few surviving Russians had already been cleared from the site, taken away in armoured cars by the ground crew, while a fire team now worked at putting out the flaming ruins. Cromwell guessed that the whole site would be one big waste ground within a few hours, all evidence of the events that had taken place that night taken away for analysis or bulldozed into the sea. The incident at Hamilton's Sugar would never have happened. At least not officially.

Pausing to light a cigarette as he surveyed the destruction, Cromwell turned to the woman who had driven the Land-Rover; a tall brunette in a black miniskirt and leather jacket. She was already taking readings, walking around the rubble and the patches of blood where bodies had been, pretending not to notice the lustful looks from some of the soldiers.

'Lucy?' said Cromwell. 'Anything?'

'Nothing,' Lucy replied. 'They're gone.'

'All of them?'

She nodded.

Cromwell took a long drag on his cigarette and shook his head.

'So much death,' he said.

He was walking towards the edge of the quayside when two soldiers approached him, carrying a covered body on a stretcher.

'Sir, Captain Turner said you might want to see this,' said the first, indicating the body.

Cromwell nodded, took another drag on his cigarette, and lifted the sheet. Though covered in blood and ash, one side of the face partly staved in by falling masonry, it was the scar that identified the corpse. Valentine was dead.

'So it goes,' said Cromwell. 'Goodbye, Mr Valentine. Take him away, boys. Do with him what you will.'

Cromwell sat, a little awkwardly, on one of the mooring posts on the edge of the dock. Age, he felt, was starting to creep up on him. There had been a time, which didn't feel so long ago, when he would have been the one running around the ruins, noting every last detail, taking readings. He'd have shrugged off, or at least blocked out, the more gruesome details, like the pools of blood or the recognisable fragments of tissue and bone. Those days were leaving him now. How much more of this did he have left in him? Five years? Ten?

His moment's contemplation was interrupted by the sound of splashing water. He turned around suddenly, and looking down at the sea saw a figure emerging from the surface. It was a man, a man who gripped a rusting ladder with both hands and pulled himself, gasping as if in pain, up onto the edge of the dock. For a moment he lay there, on his side, coughing up water and simply staring into space, as if his mind were a million miles away.

'Harkness…' said Cromwell, but the man did not acknowledge him. Instead, he got to his feet and walked away, past the ruins of the warehouse, past Lucy, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him.

'Jack?' called Cromwell, but it was too late.

Jack Harkness was gone.