‘I don’t know,’ Ray said. She looked back at the little white pills. ‘I don’t do drugs. Not ever.’
‘Me neither,’ said Wynnie. He looked at Jack, then shrugged. ‘Well, not much. I mean, nothing serious. But these. . .’
‘Let me just recap,’ Jack said patiently. ‘You have both been through a terrible ordeal. Seeing the funeral cortège, tracking down the pallbearers to the Black House. Meeting Gwen and going down into the cellars. . . all of that happened. There was more—’
‘I know,’ Ray said quietly, flinching. ‘I thought things were bad before – but that. . . those creatures, the gunfire. . .’ She looked at Wynnie and squeezed his hand in both of hers, leaving the sentence unfinished.
‘It got worse than that, believe me,’ Jack said. ‘Unimaginably worse.’
‘How?’
‘I can’t explain that now, and I won’t even try. Because it doesn’t matter. But things were put right again – changed, completely and in ways you can’t imagine or understand. But it will have affected you in ways you may not like, and if you tell anyone about it they won’t ever believe you. That goes for me, Gwen, Torchwood – the whole lot. You can’t write about it, you can’t blog it, you can’t go to the newspapers. That can be a hard thing to bear.’
‘We have each other,’ Wynnie pointed out.
‘That’s why I’m giving you the option.’
‘And what about Gillian?’ Ray asked. ‘She saw it all too.’
‘She’s probably already sold her story to Hello,’ said Wynnie.
‘My colleagues are meeting with Gillian,’ Jack said.
Jack’s tone, coupled with a twitch of a smile, suggested that there was more to it than just a meeting, and Wynnie raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re gonna make Gillian forget everything, aren’t you? You’re not giving her the choice.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Ray whispered.
‘It’s sensible,’ argued Wynnie. ‘You know Gillian can’t hold her own water at the best of times. And with all this in her head. . . She’d blab to anyone who’d listen.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And she’d be made into a laughing stock,’ Wynnie continued thoughtfully, as the implications mounted up. ‘Everyone would think she was mad. I mean, we know she is, but not like that.’
Ray just stared at the tablets on the table and said nothing.
‘That would be horrible,’ Wynnie told her softly. ‘She doesn’t deserve that, does she? Better she comes back as the old Gillian, with nothing in her head at all.’
Even Ray had to smile at that, just a little. ‘Maybe. But why are we being treated differently?’
‘I wanted to see you two together,’ said Jack simply. They both frowned back at him, puzzled, not quite understanding. But they would. They still hadn’t stopped holding hands. Jack smiled at them and then finished the last of his water. He stood up. ‘It’s your choice,’ he said. ‘You call it.’
Later, by the waterfront at Mermaid Quay, he caught up with Gwen and Ianto.
They were battered and bruised – Gwen’s ankle was strapped up and she was using a walking stick, temporarily, and there were some minor cuts and contusions on her face that Jack had assured her would be healed by the time Rhys returned home.
Ianto was in a worse state, of course, although it hardly showed. He was wearing a rather smart Burberry overcoat over a new suit, which hid the heavy bandages Jack knew were wrapped around his chest. A lot of the damage had been undone, but there were still sores. There would probably be scars.
But he did look good in that coat.
Jack, of course, looked as fresh as ever – there would never be any physical scars for him. What hurt him remained inside.
Gwen smiled at him as he walked up, pulling a strand of hair from her face that was being blown by the wind as it came in across the bay in cold, damp gusts. ‘How did it go?’
‘Pretty good,’ Jack said. He thrust his hands into his greatcoat pockets and looked out across the shimmering water. The sky was overcast and there was the promise of rain. There always was. And there always would be.
‘Did they take the Retcon?’ Ianto asked.
‘I left it to them.’
‘What?’
Jack smiled knowingly. ‘It’s their call. Ray and Wynnie found something awful, it’s true – something that some might consider best forgotten. But they found something else, too – something in each other that’s too good and rare to lose. It’s their decision.’
Ianto looked at Gwen and pulled a face.
Jack laughed. ‘You know I’m just a big softie really.’
‘So,’ Gwen said, ‘let’s see if I’ve got this straight: the Vortex Dweller put everything right in gratitude for us returning its baby. It rewound time or something to a point before the temporal fusion device went off?’
‘You were closer with your first guess,’ Jack said. ‘It didn’t actually alter time – no big button to reset everything. It just. . . put everything back in its right place. Think of it like a great big jigsaw puzzle. It was all broken up, but now every piece is back in its proper place. The picture is complete. And it’s a good one – with no pallbearers, no fusion device, none of the extra stuff that was coming through the Rift because of the Hokrala Corp. No Kerko – and I sure won’t miss him. There are cracks, of course – and people have a hazy memory of something happening. A minor earthquake during the night. It can happen, even in Cardiff.’
‘But the Vortex Dweller brought Ray and Wynnie and Gillian back to life.’
‘You can think of it like that, yeah.’
‘But what about Frank Morgan?’
‘He stays dead. There’s nothing for him here now. And he was dead by 1915.’
‘It’s incredible,’ Gwen said, ‘that all those things and events could be just. . . edited out. . . and yet everything else remains untouched. It doesn’t seem possible.’
‘Gives me a headache just thinking about it,’ said Ianto.
Jack smiled. ‘The Vortex Dwellers are pan-dimensional beings, way above us in any terms you care to think of. Repairing everything and everybody that had been damaged by the Undertaker’s Gift was easy – like us mopping up milk spilled by a child. We can’t even conceive of the complexities involved – but the Vortex Dwellers can. They can do stuff like that to our universe in the blink of an eye.’
Ianto blew out his cheeks, impressed. ‘Good job they stay where they are, then.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Jack agreed.
‘But in order for them to do that, to understand what was needed, you had to communicate with them,’ Gwen said. She linked Jack’s arm and pulled him close. ‘And they use lightning for words, you said. You were electrocuted over and over again.’
‘I had a lot to ask,’ Jack admitted.
‘It must have hurt.’
‘Not as much as seeing this place destroyed,’ Jack replied. His face grew serious at the memory. ‘I never wanna see that again. Ever.’
He let his gaze wander back to the Bay area, the shops and the city beyond. There was no sign of the destruction that had been wreaked now. All was calm. Every building and road was intact, no smoke, no storm clouds. The three of them stood in silence for a short while, in memory of a hellish vision of the world that had come so close to being real. And they would remember it for the rest of their lives – for them, Retcon was never an option.
‘There is one other thing,’ Jack said eventually. ‘The Vortex Dweller knew all about the Rift. It could see it running right through Cardiff, right through Earth, clear as day. It asked if I wanted it repaired – closed up for ever.’
Gwen and Ianto looked at him, shocked. ‘What, honestly?’ Gwen asked. ‘It actually offered to seal the Rift?’
‘It could do that?’ wondered Ianto.
‘Oh yeah,’ Jack nodded. ‘Easy as pie. A stitch in time – done in a second. Those Vortex Dwellers, I’m telling ya, they don’t mess around. And with the Rift gone, there would be no more t
ime distortion in Cardiff, no more flotsam and jetsam coming through from all points in time and space for us to clear up. Job done, over, finito.’
Gwen and Ianto could hardly take it in. ‘But that would mean—’ Gwen began.
‘No more Torchwood,’ said Ianto. ‘Our job here would be over.’
‘Guess so,’ Jack nodded.
There was a short silence.
‘So. . . what did you say?’ Gwen asked.
‘I said no,’ Jack replied easily.
‘No?’
‘That’s right.’ Jack heaved a sigh. ‘Well, I thought it was asking a bit much after all the repair work, and anyway, you two would be out of a job and I’d just end up bored out of my mind. . . it seemed simpler in the end to leave it as it was.’
He put his arms around them and hugged them close. Ianto winced a little.
‘I did ask for a tiny little tweak to be made, though,’ Jack continued. ‘The Rift runs through time as well as space, obviously, so I got the Vortex Dweller to just pinch it shut at a particular point in the future. The forty-ninth century to be exact.’
‘Isn’t that when the Hokrala Corp come from?’ asked Ianto.
‘Let’s just say we won’t be getting any more visits from them.’
‘That is good news.’
‘Hey,’ Jack was smiling again, lifting his face towards the sky. ‘With us here, it’s always good news.’
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Recent titles in the Torchwood series from BBC Books:
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Torchwood the Undertaker’s Gift
Last Week
Chapter One
Last Night
Chapter Two
Last Chance
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Last Rites
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Last Orders
Chapter Fifty-Six
The Undertakers Gift Page 19
