Toshiko was torn between comforting Gwen and warning her. ‘You have to be careful, Gwen. You’re broadcasting on an open channel. Whatever I can hear, Owen can hear too.’
‘I don’t care!’ There was a sob in Gwen’s voice. She was starting to lose it, thought Toshiko. Her hand hovered over the disconnect button. ‘Tosh, he’s trapped in the machinery. It’s all gone so horribly wrong. He’s had one of those control devices injected into him. What am I gonna do?’
Toshiko didn’t have time to answer. There was a clattering, clanking sound from the gallery beside the coffee machine. There was a blur of motion. The looped chain by the railing rattled and swayed. Owen had slid down it, and was plunging through the raised level of water in the basin, unstoppable, desperate to reach her. In his hand was an evil-looking surgical instrument. He made the near side of the basin before she had time to turn and flee.
He was right beside her.
She knew that surgical instrument from seeing Owen conduct autopsies. It was the hook-ended hammer that he used to prise the cap from the top of a severed skull. He’d joked about it being the inspiration for the Beatles’ song ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ that came down upon your head and made sure that you were dead. That gave her some clue about his immediate intentions.
She spun on her heel, ready to run.
Owen plunged forward, the hammer raised. He was on her. She could not escape.
The hammer came down onto her head.
Through her head.
Onto Toshiko’s desk.
Two of the flat-panel screens burst into a bright shower of sparks and glass and shards of plastic. Owen recoiled from the explosion, and fell onto his back on the metal grating beside his own desk.
Within seconds, Ianto was on him, water spraying all around the area. Owen’s eyes stretched wide, unbelieving, furious. Ianto took full advantage of his disorientation, and smashed him hard across the face with the back of his hand. Owen was no match for the bigger man, and Ianto was able to twist the hammer from his grasp and cast it aside. It bounced off under the nearby desk with the chime of metal on metal.
Ianto sat on Owen’s chest, pinning him to the floor. He plucked a syringe from his pocket and, one-handed, popped the protective cap off the needle before plunging it into Owen.
Over by her desk, Toshiko flickered and faded and vanished. Owen saw this, and his head slumped against the floor in frustration. ‘Second Reality,’ he spat in disgust. ‘Oh, very good, Tosh.’ His tired eyes looked at Ianto, who was still pressing down on his chest. ‘D’you mind getting off, mate. You’re getting me all wet here.’
It was weird, decided Toshiko, to see yourself interacting with other people. The whole thing was quite different to seeing yourself on video, because you got the complete picture of the surroundings as it happened. Seeing the back of her own head made her want to get her hair cut as soon as possible. And did she really have that little bounce in her gait? Why had no one mentioned it before?
She had watched the whole sequence from her vantage point in the Boardroom on the first floor. She’d crouched there in the dark, waiting for Owen to locate the image of herself that she’d projected at her desk. There had been one nervous moment when Owen had made his way through the Boardroom and onto the balcony by the coffee machine, but he had been too fixated on the fake Toshiko at her desk below to notice the real thing lurking under the conference table, petrified and holding her breath.
Once Owen had committed himself to the attack, and fallen through the insubstantial image of Toshiko, Ianto had leaped up from his hiding place and injected the powerful sedative into him.
‘Bit of an awkward moment there,’ Ianto called across to Toshiko as she came down the gantry steps to join him. ‘He almost trod on me in the basin as he charged through. Splashed water down my snorkel. Thought I was going to choke to death for a moment.’
Toshiko was beside him now. ‘Nice work, Ianto.’
‘You clever girl,’ Owen slurred at her from beneath Ianto. ‘Using the Second Reality software to make me think that was you.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she told him.
Owen grinned a wide, lazy grin. ‘Don’t be too pleased with yourself, Tosh. I heard that call from Gwen.’
‘What do you mean?’
His eyes flickered on the edge of unconsciousness. ‘I have another life left. Back in… back in my ship. Your friend Jack…’ Owen swallowed hard, took a deep breath, exhaled it. ‘Got a feeling he’s going to be… the most useful of all.’ He summoned up the strength to wink at Ianto. One last smile for Toshiko. ‘See you again. Soon.’
After she’d contacted Toshiko, Gwen sat quietly in the cavernous room with her back to the central cylinder. The churning, lurching movements of the alien vessel had begun to subside now, and the flicker of green lights in the unseen ceiling was settling into a regular, uninterrupted illumination of the area around her.
She studied Jack from a distance. His breathing was regular, but he remained deeply unconscious. Gwen mentally rehearsed the sequence of events that Jack had explained earlier. But now he was trapped in the cage, nothing seemed clear any more. Everything seemed wrong, impossible.
Jack took a sudden, shuddering breath, like a man surfacing from water and gratefully gulping at the air. His eyes widened, accustomed themselves to the light. Focused on Gwen. ‘Hey,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I was beginning to think things weren’t working out.’
Gwen forced herself up from the floor. Turned her back on him. Began to operate the panels that sprouted from the top of the control cylinder, just the way Jack had shown her. The urge was to rely on what she knew from Earth technology — to feel the reassuring click of a light switch or hear the firm clunk that a car door makes that tells you it’s closed. Her short training session at these controls with Jack earlier had made her nervous and frustrated. It was more a mental contact than a physical one. She began to doubt that she’d manipulated them correctly, until she heard the sound of running water in the distance.
She panicked for a moment, realising that her scuba gear was a long way from her down the corridors. Until she saw Jack’s mask and diving cylinder on the floor. She snatched it up, and tried to remain calm as she slipped the harness on her back, strapped it across her midriff, fitted the mask over her eyes and nose.
The water began to gush into the chamber. It swilled across the floor, and swirled against the central cylinder and around her feet. In his cage, still clear of the incoming water, Jack’s eyes registered his alarm.
‘OK.’ He had raised his voice to make himself heard over the sound of the water. ‘You can let me outta here now, Gwen.’
She continued to check that her scuba set was working.
‘Gwen? Gwen!’
The cylinder was half-full, and open. The air-hoses were securely attached and not kinked.
‘C’mon Gwen. You can let me out now.’
She adjusted her mask, getting it comfortable. Not time yet to put the mouthpiece in.
The cramped cage couldn’t be comfortable for Jack, but he was showing her his biggest, cheesiest, most reassuring grin. ‘Tosh did it, y’know. She trapped Owen. He’s locked in the cells. Right next to the Weevil, imagine that! So it’s OK to undo these straps now, Gwen. We did it! We can get outta here!’
‘You mean, I can get out of here,’ she told him.
No, that was a mistake. Jack had told her not to talk to him. Not to get drawn into a conversation. She bit her bottom lip in frustration and annoyance. Jack saw it. Knew he was getting through. The incoming water was splashing up against the bottom of the cages now. Gwen leaned back against the cylinder and looked at Jack. She thought she saw a calculating glance, a transitory look that was gone almost as soon as she spotted it.