‘Go away!’ Davey cried. ‘Go away!’
The thing’s gaze located him. A little hum, a slight change in pitch.
A pulse of dull yellow where the eyes should have been-
Davey Morgan woke up. It was pitch black. The luminous green hands of his alarm clock told him it was four o’clock gone.
He lay there, shivering in his own sweat, listening to the rainstorm throwing itself against the bedroom windows.
Just a dream. Just a bloody dream. Just a stupid-
The noise that had woken him came again. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.
Cold to the bone, Davey got up. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.
The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. He’d had this already. He’d been around this dream once already, and he didn’t want another bloody turn.
He limped down the narrow stairs. Bang! Bang-bang! Bang! He gently touched the picture on the hall table as he went by. He tasted mint.
He entered the kitchen. So much rain against the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!
‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’
Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!
Davey took a step towards the backdoor.
The fan light of the kitchen window was ajar. He must have left it open. The gale had pulled it off its brace, and now it was banging and jumping in its frame.
Bang! Bang-bang! Bang!
Davey fastened it. He checked the bolt on the backdoor.
He went into the bathroom and turned the light on, squinting in the hard electric glare. The thing lay in the tub where he had left it. A heavy, rounded tube of paint-chipped metal about three feet long, topped by a featureless ovoid the size of a rugby ball. Tube and ovoid were made of the same metal, and had been joined with such engineering skill, Davey could locate no seam or weld.
Davey lowered the toilet lid and made a chair out of it. He sat himself down carefully, holding onto the sink. The close air smelled of soap and mildewed bathmats.
He faced the thing in the tub.
‘Right then,’ he said.
A low hum.
A slight change in pitch.
TEN
Owen woke up with a murmur, rolled over, and fell off the armchair.
‘Bollocks,’ he groaned. He blinked. Some awfully cheerful pop music was blaring from the bedroom. He was in the lounge, on the floor. Things did not add up.
Nor could he make them add up for a moment. He had a vice squad raid of a headache kicking from room to room in his skull, and a mouth like the Lambies at low tide. His lip throbbed and every other ache and pain he’d taken the previous Thursday night seemed more acute than when they’d been inflicted.
‘Bollocks,’ he said again, and coughed. What day was it?
He took stock. The drapes were open, and pale daylight flooded in. He was still dressed. One shirt sleeve was torn, and there was mud on one leg of his trousers. He had no memory of a heavy night. In fact he had no memory at all.
He got up. That hurt. He swayed, dizzy. Swaying hurt too. He hobbled into the bedroom. Music was blaring from his clock radio. The clock radio on the bedside cabinet beside his unslept-in bed.
A nauseatingly upbeat DJ segued in. ‘… and that’s the fabulous Four Play. Coming up on half nine now this Tuesday morning, and it’s the news with Gayle…’
Tuesday. Right, Tuesday. That fits.
Half nine? His alarm had been playing for two hours without waking him. Even given that he was in the other room, that was good going.
‘Christ,’ he said. He started dragging off his clothes.
As he hopped through the lounge, unlacing one boot, he saw the plate on the table. The takeaway, untouched. A two-thirds-full bottle of beer beside it, standing in a small ring of water.
He stopped hopping, because that really hurt.
‘What the bloody hell did you do last night, Harper?’ he asked himself.
He went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, threw all his clothes and his boots into the laundry basket, cursed, fished his boots back out, and turned to look at himself in the mirror.
The hot rush of the shower was already beginning to steam the edges of the mirror over the sink. Owen saw his pale face looking back through large letters that had been scrawled, wildly, on the mirror in lipstick.
One word.
BIG.
‘So where is everybody?’ asked Jack.
‘Well,’ replied Ianto and made an open-handed shrug.
Jack looked around the Hub. ‘And I thought I’d slept in,’ he yawned.
‘Coffee’s on,’ said Ianto.
Jack breathed in the aroma. ‘I know. At least something’s right with the world.’
‘Other aspects are marginally more wonky,’ said Ianto, handing Jack a piece of paper. ‘This flagged up first thing this morning. I thought you’d want to see it as soon as.’
Jack read the page, nodding. ‘You know what this is?’
‘I seldom like to hazard a guess.’
Jack shook the piece of paper. ‘This is a busy day ahead of us.’
‘One other thing,’ said Ianto.
‘Shoot.’
The cog-door rolled open, and Toshiko hurried in, stifling a yawn. ‘Sorry,’ she called. ‘Sorry, I slept right through the alarm.’
She started taking off her coat. Jack came over to her.
‘You wanna talk about it?’ Jack asked her quietly.
‘About what?’
‘Oversleeping?’
‘Nothing to talk about, I’m just tired. Ever since last week. I can’t shake it. Every morning I think I’m going to be back on form and-’ Another yawn overtook her. ‘Sorry. It seems to be getting worse. And the headache. I feel like I’ve been put through the pinger.’
‘The what?’
‘The ringer.’
‘You said “pinger”.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did, actually,’ Ianto called over.
‘Well, that’s how tired I am.’
Jack looked quizzically at Toshiko. ‘That thing had real nasty after-effects, didn’t it?’
‘About that,’ said Ianto, joining them. ‘The thing I wanted to mention.’
‘Oh, yeah. Go on.’
Ianto pointed over at Toshiko’s work station. ‘Should it be doing that?’
They crossed to the desk. The day before, Toshiko had locked the Amok away in its containment box. They could hear it. It was tapping against the metal insides of the container.
‘Wow,’ said Jack.
‘I heard it when I came in. At first, I thought Owen had got himself locked in the cells again.’
Toshiko peered at the box. ‘It was dormant when we first got it contained.’
‘It’s not dormant now,’ returned Jack. ‘It’s sounding quite feisty.’
‘We should check it,’ Toshiko said, shooting a sidelong look at Jack. He nodded.
She popped on her eye-guards and slid the containment box back into the field zone of the containment console. Stainless-steel clamps automatically gripped the base of the box and rotated it into alignment with a whine. Toshiko closed the Lexan cover. The touch of a switch brought suspension fields up, bathing the box in a pulsing blue glow. Graphic analysis display projected across the dome of the Lexan hemisphere.
‘I’m setting level ten safeguards. Maximum focus blockers, everything we have, and additional inhibitors. Grade K firewalls, Ianto. We know how aggressive this thing can be.’
Ianto nodded. At a neighbouring sub-console, he ran his fingers over the keyboard. Graphics scrolled on his relay screen.
‘OK,’ said Toshiko. She depressed a switch. The interlock collar of the containment box unbolted magnetically, and slid back. The suspension field flickered.