‘Where? Where is it?’ he demanded out loud. Faces in the crowd looked at him, confused, amused, alarmed, but they were just faces and he didn’t care what they thought. Some of them spoke to him, but he didn’t care what they said either.
Where was he needed? Where was the Principal? How could he have lost the fix on the Principal? Why couldn’t he focus? Why was the upload so disjointed? Was it being jammed?
‘Principal,’ Mr Dine muttered. ‘Majesty. Where are you?’
He felt his metabolism start to hike as the alert protocols took full control. His composition altered. He felt a surge as the investment began and power was relayed into him, unsleeving the deep-seated caches in his genes and bone marrow, and lighting up his higher senses. Still no fix. The pull was still wrong. Indecisive.
Turning wildly, he bumped against a news-stand, and a row of magazines slithered off onto the pavement. The vendor started to remonstrate with him.
‘I’m talking to you, twat! Oi!’
No time for an altercation. Mr Dine raised his hand. The vendor jerked backwards into his stand and ended up sitting on a heap of scattered tabloids.
Some of the faces were shouting at him suddenly. What did he think he was doing? Who did he think he was? Jackie flaming Chan?
Mr Dine ignored them. He turned left, then checked himself and turned right instead, stepping off the kerb.
There was a squeal and a crunch. A woman screamed.
The Autospares van, an older, commercial-bodied Escort, had come to a stop so suddenly, its rear end had swung out. The driver’s side door opened, and a chubby man with sweat patches on his beige, short-sleeved shirt got out and stared at Mr Dine, his mouth a goldfish ‘O’.
‘I didn’t…’ the driver began. ‘I didn’t see you. Are you…?’
People were gathering. Mr Dine was still on his feet, still glancing to and fro in a twitchy, panicky way. He realised he was the focus of particular attention suddenly. He looked down.
His legs had stopped the van dead. Ramming him had been like ramming a deep-seated bollard or a gate post. The bumper, number plate and grille had folded in around his thighs. The leading edge of the bonnet was crumpled like a bed-sheet. Dirty fluid gurgled out of the split radiator and pooled under the front wheels.
‘Jesus flippin’ Christ!’ the driver stammered. ‘How the-’
Mr Dine stepped away from the arrested vehicle. Bent bodywork groaned as his legs came out of the form-fitting impression. The bumper fell off.
No fix. Still no fix. The pull was wrong. Still no definitive focus from the upload, despite the fact that his body was now accelerating to full combat investment, hyping to maximum.
In another ten seconds it would automatically switch over to battledress. That was something that could not be allowed to happen in plain sight.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to the chubby driver.
‘But you can’t… you should go to hospital and-’
‘I have no further time for this digression.’
Mr Dine started to move. By the time the gathered crowd had realised the man in the black suit was shoving his way through them, he had somehow — inexplicably, in the opinion of many — already vanished.
The recorded voice said, ‘The phone you are calling is out of range or has been switched off. Please try again later.’
Gwen cancelled the call. Her head was throbbing so much, she was having difficulty accomplishing even simple tasks. It felt like a six-inch nail had been driven in through the top of her skull. She wanted to cry. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to cry and lie down.
Fiddling with the master control box, James let out a dull moan. His hands were visibly shaking.
‘Gwen, I can’t do it. I can’t work it. I can’t think straight.’
‘I know.’
‘Gwen, can you see the blue lights?’
‘No,’ she lied. ‘Try again.’
He looked up at her. His eyes were horribly bloodshot. Dots of sweat clung to his forehead and made his hair lank. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I can’t get the foetus to align.’
‘The foetus?’
‘The focus, focus.’
‘It’s OK. Just try one more time.’
‘One more climb? Climb what?’
‘I said time.’
‘No, you said-’
‘James! Please!’
He bent back over the control box.
Gwen held up her mobile, blinking away tears. She willed it to ring.
It rang. She answered. ‘Tosh?’
‘Gwen Cooper. Good to hear your voice.’
It was just a whisper, desperately far away, deep in a well.
‘Jack!’
‘My phone died. I’m using Tosh’s, but her battery is fading fast too. Something here is sucking energy up. Something hungry.’
‘Jack-’
‘Listen to me, Gwen. I don’t have long. It’s gone dark here. Pitch black. Scary dark. We’re both feeling pretty wretched, headache and nausea. I guess if this place leeches power out of cellphone batteries, it leaches power out of organics too. Anyway, we’re not doing too good, all told. And there are footsteps out there. I can hear them too now. Circling the chapel in the dark. Creepy. This is not-’
‘What? Jack?’
‘This is not how I pictured my demise.’
‘It’s not going to be your demise, Harkness. We’ll get you out of there! We’ll-’
‘Gwen. You’re a good girl, but I know when I’m beat. I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and seen a lot of strange stuff-’
‘Don’t you go all Han Solo on me now, you bugger! I get enough of that from Rhys! We’re getting you out of there!’
‘How?’
Gwen looked at James.
‘How?’ Jack repeated down the line. ‘Gwen, you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are you going to get us out of here? I don’t even know where here is. All I know is there are footsteps coming closer and they ain’t friendly.’
‘We’ll find a way.’ She had a lump in her throat. ‘We’ll find something.’
A moment passed before he said anything. ‘Gwen, I made a bad call today. Learn from that. I rushed in here with Tosh, and it was a bad call. Dumb. I don’t know what I was thinking. Major error of judgement. Something was affecting me, something… putting me off my game. I don’t mind paying for that, but I hate the fact that Tosh is paying for it too. Error of judgement. Not like me at all. Never rush into a situation unsecured. These are the things you have to remember. The things you have to learn.’
‘Why?’
‘When you take over. Recruit and rebuild. It’ll be down to you. You’ll need to learn from my mistakes.’
‘Take over? Torchwood?’
‘No, the Cyncoed Choral Society. Yes, Torchwood.’
‘Jack, there won’t be any Torchwood without you.’
‘There damn well better be, girl. The Rift won’t police itself. I’m counting on you-’
Static wilted his voice. A dry buzz. A flicker of rasping voices lacking any real words.
‘Jack?’
Buzzing, buzzing.
‘… come back and haunt you forever, you hear me?’
‘Jack?’
‘Did you lose me there?’ Jack’s tiny voice asked. ‘I lost you. God, it’s dark, Gwen. You wouldn’t believe. Footsteps. I didn’t think I could get scared like this any more. Battery’s so low. I think it’s about to fake out.’
‘Say again? Did you say “fake”?’
‘No, I said fade.’
‘You said fake. I heard you. Jack, you said you had a headache. Headache and nausea. Is it like last Thursday at the riverside? Jack, is it like that?’