Trace Memory

It was mere moments before Cromwell and Valentine arrived on the scene. Cromwell was out of breath from running, but Valentine had barely broken a sweat. All about them were the bodies and the burning remains of the crate. On the deck of the ship, the Swedish crew were swearing and cursing, but neither man could understand them.

'A bomb?' suggested Valentine. 'The Russians?'

'I don't know,' said Cromwell, 'but we need to clear this up, and we need to speak to the crew of that ship.'

He stalked across the dock, toward the dull metal sphere that lay among the debris.

'They're dead,' he said, looking down at two of the bloodied corpses. 'Fewer witnesses.'

'Not all of them,' said Valentine.

Cromwell turned and saw Valentine lifting a heavy panel from on top of one of the bodies.

'This one's alive.'

Valentine hauled the panel clear of the unconscious young man and dropped it clattering to the ground. There was one word stencilled on its charred surface.

Torchwood.

ONE

Sundays were never Sundays at Torchwood, or at least not most of the time. Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd had a Sunday which felt how Sundays were supposed to feel. Wasn't Sunday the day when normal people ate slapup breakfasts, took the dog for a walk and then spent the rest of the afternoon reading the papers?

But then, Captain Jack Harkness wasn't 'normal people' and, at Torchwood, Sundays were more likely to be spent doing work which the people of Cardiff, and indeed most of the six billion people on the planet, knew nothing about.

This Sunday was different. On this particular Sunday, Jack had even had a chance to clean the SUV. This was normally a task he'd delegate to Ianto, or anyone except himself but, if today was going to be one of the few boring Sundays he'd ever get to experience, he was going to spend it doing all the things normal people did.

The Rift was quiet. He'd had Toshiko spend much of the morning and afternoon checking all the equipment, making sure there wasn't a fault. As it turned out, there wasn't. Everything was working, the readings were accurate. The Rift, it seemed, was taking a day off. Having checked and double-checked everything, and satisfied herself that Rift activity was at a minimum, Toshiko was now looking into what she described as a 'low-resonance electromagnetic pulse' coming from the basement.

'Anything for me to worry about?' Jack asked, as he walked aimlessly past her workstation in the centre of the Hub.

'No, Jack. Probably nothing. I've picked it up once or twice before. I'm just trying to work out which one of our extraterrestrial toys it's coming from.'

Though her endless fascination with the occasionally dull minutiae of her job was sometimes baffling to Jack, he found it curiously reassuring, and so he left her to her work.

What he couldn't understand was why Gwen was still here. It was now a little after eight on a Sunday evening, nothing was happening, and yet she was still here, searching through files on her computer with the listless look of a teenager browsing through YouTube in the early hours of the morning.

'Now come on, Gwen,' said Jack, placing one hand on her shoulder, and putting on his best 'concerned parent' voice. 'The rest of us have excuses. We don't have lives. You do. What are you doing here?'

Gwen looked up at him with a scowl and a sigh that he wasn't quite expecting.

'Rhys,' she said. 'I. . I just. .'

'Arguing?'

'Yes.'

'Let me guess. . About work?'

'No, actually.'

She huffed again and returned her gaze to the dull glow of her monitor.

'So what was it about?'

'Sofas.'

Jack took his hand off her shoulder and laughed through his nose, before realising that Gwen didn't find it funny.

'Sofas?' he said, trying hard to sound serious.

'Yes. Sofas. We went shopping yesterday afternoon to look for a sofa. I wanted this red one, he wanted this cream white leather thing that. . God, it was just so tacky… Anyway…' She sighed. 'Sofas.'

'So there's a part of the world that still argues about sofas?' said Jack, still maintaining a veneer of sincerity. 'In a city which is home to one of the most active rifts in time and space this side of the Milky Way, you still argue about sofas?'

'What's that supposed to mean, Jack?'

'I mean… It's a sofa. Why don't you go home to Rhys, and… I don't know… get a takeaway and. . do couply stuff. Aren't you meant to be enjoying love's young dream, what with that ring on your finger and all?'

'Jack, I'm working…'

'Gwen, there's no work to do. I've just cleaned the SUV, I've tidied most of our hard drives, I even changed a bulb in my office earlier.'

'You cleaned the SUV?'

'Yes.'

Gwen laughed, putting one hand over her mouth.

'You. . cleaned the SUV?'

'Yes. Is that so hard to believe?'

'I'm just imagining you like Jessica Simpson in that video…'

'Well, why don't you take your mental image, and go. Go on. That's an order. And where's Owen?'

'Down in the Vaults.'

'Tell him he can go too. It's the quietest night we've had in a year and you're all still here. You're insane. All of you.'

Gwen sighed and quickly shut down each application on her computer. She picked up her coat and, waving goodbye to Toshiko from across the Hub, made her way down to the Vaults.

Of all the parts of Torchwood, it was the Vaults that Gwen liked the least. She knew from past experience that it was possible for a place to physically soak up strong emotions. Somewhere in his safe, Jack had a machine capable of reading these things, but even without that device Gwen believed it was possible to sense the bad feelings left behind. When she was fifteen, she had gone on a history trip with her school to Germany where they had visited one of the old concentration camps. The atmosphere had been chilling; no sound of birdsong, no sound of anything, in fact, except their footsteps. It had seemed colder, too, the minute they had passed through the gates.

Though the scale and context were quite different the Vaults in Torchwood reminded her of that feeling; the sudden plunge of temperature, and a strange melancholy which she couldn't quite place. It was as if she felt sad for all the people and creatures who had ended up in those cells; scared, and angry, lost and alone.

It made it all the more mysterious that Owen should want to spend the whole afternoon and evening down there, sat on a stool, peering through the glass of one of the cells at Janet.

Janet was a Weevil; that is, an occasionally carnivorous life form that had slipped through the Rift and into Cardiff's sewers. Occasionally, one or more of the Weevils would come up to the surface, and sometimes they developed a taste for something other than the effluent diet on which they usually survived.

'Hey, Owen,' said Gwen as she stepped down into the dark and narrow corridor that ran alongside the cells. 'What you up to?'

'I'm writing a musical about my experiences with Torchwood,' said Owen. 'I'm gonna call it "Weevil Rock You".'

'Oh, Owen, that's not funny,' said Gwen, laughing. 'What are you really up to?'

'I'm keeping an eye on Janet,' he said. 'Something's wrong with her.'

'Her?'

'Her. It. Whatever.'

'So what's wrong?'

Gwen looked into the cell. Janet was stood in the corner, shoulders hunched, facing the wall. Every so often, it would make a low, gurgling sound, and paw at the damp brick wall with one hand.

'That,' said Owen. 'She keeps doing that. Every twenty-six minutes. Then she'll sit down, and maybe try and sleep or something, and then bam — twenty-six minutes later, she's back up.'

'Exactly twenty-six minutes?'

'Yeah. For the last four hours.'

Gwen shook her head and sighed.