'Give me a few moments and it certainly will,' his past self replied.
'Really…' Alison said. 'Perhaps you've got ghosts…'
He certainly did. Moving past the translucent figures, Jack ran down the stairs, knowing that by the time he reached the bottom they would have vanished for ever.
The fluctuation was near breaking point by the time he got to the front door, the roar of the hundreds of residents who had lived — or might have lived — between these walls becoming deafening in his ears. He grabbed the door handle, wrenched it open and stepped out into…
… daylight and shouting.
The SUV was still parked at the front of the house (though it was now pointing out towards the road), and Alexander was lying on the pavement cradling his broken wrist.
'How dare you!' he roared at Ianto, who was standing over him. 'Do you know who I am, boy? I will not be treated like that by anybody, let alone a jumped-up little shit like you.'
'Shut up,' Gwen muttered, wheeling the old man's wheelchair over from where she had found it further up the road. 'You should be glad you're alive. Not everyone is, thanks to you.'
'Problem?' asked Jack as he joined them on the pavement.
Ianto grabbed him and gave him a stifling hug. 'Not that I was worried or anything,' he muttered self-consciously as he let him go. 'Plan worked, then?'
'Guess so.'
Jack turned and stared up at Jackson Leaves. It looked the same and yet… not. It was tidier, more looked after, no longer the abandoned relic it had once been. 'What happened?'
'We made it out,' Alexander hissed, pulling himself into his chair and gritting his teeth against the pain in his wrist. 'No thanks to your lot, I might add.'
'He killed the girl,' said Gwen, suddenly feeling even worse as she realised she didn't even know her name.
'I dealt with that lunatic you saddled us with,' Alexander replied. 'The girl was caught in the crossfire. If I hadn't acted, I doubt any of us would still be here. If you got down from your high horse for a moment, you would do well to realise you should be thanking me rather than wailing about a little collateral damage.'
' Thanking you?' Gwen said. 'If I had my way, we'd be locking you up.'
Alexander smiled, and it was one of the most unpleasant things Gwen had seen all night. 'You just try it, girl. I've dealt with worse than you've got to offer.'
'Shut up, Alexander,' said Jack, 'before I do what Gwen suggests. Let's just look after these two.' He pointed at the still unconscious Julia and Joe, whose exuberant mood had well and truly faded, leaving him confused and hung over, leaning against one of the lamp posts.
'By all means,' Alexander replied, unable not to have the last word in the matter. 'Just so long as you remember you would do well to keep me sweet. I could be a considerable irritant to you otherwise.'
'You mean you're not already?' Ianto lifted Julia into the back seat of the SUV as Gwen took Joe's arm and led him over.
Jack looked down at Alexander. 'Don't do it,' he whispered.
'What, my dear boy?' Alexander replied, that oh-so-false smile still in place.
'Bite off more than you can chew.'
Alexander shrugged. 'I don't want to make enemies.' He gave Jack a look that was altogether more powerful than one would expect from such a frail-looking man. 'So don't force me to.'
Jack shook his head dismissively, and they headed over to the vehicle.
They dropped Alexander back at the rest home.
'What about my wrist?' the old man whined as Jack pushed him towards the building.
'Physician, heal thyself,' Jack replied, leaving him at the front door and dashing back to the car.
'You're just going to leave him?' Gwen asked as he got back in. 'Knowing what he does?'
'His biology is so far removed from ours, I wouldn't have the first idea what to do about it,' Jack admitted as he turned on the ignition and drove away.
'Well, I don't trust him,' Gwen said.
'Me neither, but he'll have to be a problem for another day. We've enough to deal with for now.'
'At least the house is safe,' Ianto piped up from the back.
'No more ghosts,' Gwen added with a half-smile.
'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Jack and drove back to the Hub.
TWENTY-FOUR
TORCHWOOD CARDIFF: INCIDENT REPORT
Unexplained Conflagration
Penylan, 17th March 1906
Visited the site of last night's explosion, found residue of non-contemporaneous explosive material and signs of temporal flux. (Gaskell's Chronometer Device threw a fit, solely, it seems, by virtue of being in the same street as the bomb damage!) Bizarrely, the target seemed to be nothing more than a building site, nothing of imaginable value. Harkness proved little help — one had hoped his knowledge of futuristic methods might have helped to shine the light of clarity on some of the more outré elements of the incident, but he pleaded ignorance so well that one might be inclined to believe him, were it not for the fact that he lies with such ease. No matter; no civilians were hurt and, while the evident intrusion of foreign agents in our jurisdiction is alarming, there is some consolation to be found in that. Our investigation will, of course, continue.
AG
Ianto smiled and dropped the sheet back into its folder. Alice Guppy's writing about Jack always reminded him of a strict teacher's report on an errant student.
He glanced over at his workstation, where his screen was a blizzard of files and news reports, history rewriting itself both physically and digitally as things settled into their own neat time line. He would be a few hours yet, trying to cover Torchwood's traces in the matter of Penylan.
Still, his efforts were nothing compared to those of time itself, the ultimate cover-up as people vanished or reappeared, new histories establishing themselves seamlessly over the hundred years or so of Jackson Leaves's influence. Those of them that had been at 'point zero' still had a perfect memory of the night's events — though he, Gwen and Jack had been working hard since then to alter that fact.
Some things had still played out the same. Joan Bosher had still lived — and died — at Jackson Leaves before bequeathing it to her niece. Rupert Locke's face still stared from the grainy print of old newspapers on his desk as the police took him into custody for his crimes (though there was no mention of where he'd lived), and his statement had become a more honest — if sordid — admission of guilt due to 'his needs'. There were others, though, who had avoided their fates, Kerry Robinson for one. No longer a suicide victim, she had moved to America, and Ianto had tracked her a little as she had worked as a singer for a few years, before family and middle age had tamed her ambition.
At least a few had got away…
Alexander looked up at the cloudy sky and, for the first time since his arrival on the planet, found himself wishing for home. Not that he would be welcome there, of course, but then, the last twenty-four hours had seen him become distinctly unwelcome here, too.
'Mr Martin.' Nurse Sellers was walking across the lawn towards him. 'Perhaps you'd be good enough to tell me why you're getting all this extra attention?'
'What are you talking about, you silly woman?' He wasn't in the mood for her insinuations today.
She bristled at his tone. 'That doctor's here again,' she explained. 'You know, the one from the Council. Says he's got to follow up on a few things. I do hope you haven't got anything terminal.'
'Ha!' Alexander laughed to see her drop all pretence of kindness. 'Don't you wish, my dear?' He watched Jack Harkness walking towards him. 'Now bugger off inside while we grown-ups talk business.'