Another Life

by Peter Anghelides

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Where’s Owen?’ asked Toshiko Sato’s voice

  Gwen turned from her desk to see Toshiko standing by the entrance to the Hub’s main area, bedraggled and dripping rainwater on to the floor. ‘Couldn’t he drag himself in here like the rest of us?’ She brandished something in Jack’s direction. Her apparent intention to look intimidating was spoiled by the bedraggled newspaper that she’d been using as an improvised umbrella.

  Ianto managed to sound as though Owen’s absence was his fault. ‘We couldn’t reach him this morning. I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. He wasn’t irradiated any more, and said he was going out to celebrate. Didn’t say where. He was a bit grumpy.’

  ‘What are you, his mother?’ asked Jack.

  Toshiko peeled off her wet coat to reveal wet jacket and trousers. They looked almost as wet as the coat. ‘The radiation has changed him.’ She affected an American accent, ignoring Jack’s mocking look. ‘“Doctor Owen Harper, physician, scientist. An accidental dose of radiation alters his body chemistry. And now, a startling metamorphosis occurs. Owen Harper is… the Incredible Sulk.”’

  Gwen laughed along with her. ‘“Captain Harkness, don’t make me grumpy! You wouldn’t like me when I’m grumpy!”’

  ‘Thank you, ladies,’ said Jack firmly. ‘Owen going AWOL is not our only problem right now. Doesn’t help, but let’s save the ass-kicking for when he’s in range.’ Gwen watched his reaction. Behind his cheerful sarcasm, he was keeping something from them. Not information, she was sure. He’d not keep that from them. More likely to be his own worries about Owen, things that she knew he felt but that wouldn’t help them at the moment, stuff that would only get in the way. That would be typical of Jack – reassuring, supporting, keeping them focused. In the police, she’d seen several teams deteriorate into helplessness when the head of the investigation had lost it in front of them. Their guv’nor, raging at a briefing meeting. Or cursing over a pint at the local pub. Revealing his own frustration, his own powerlessness

  – and, by implication, theirs. Not Jack. This guv’nor wasn’t like that. He gestured towards the Boardroom: ‘Shall we?’

  Within minutes, they had been succinctly briefed by Jack. ‘So, it turns out that we still have two more fuel rods to locate. And our missing soldier, Sandra Applegate, is probably hunting them down as we sit here.’

  ‘You think she could have survived that fall?’

  ‘Gwen, she did survive that fall. Unless someone was waiting for her to drop from the window.’ Jack paused, as though he was considering the likelihood of this. ‘So how can she be so resilient? Did she know she could make it? No, that shot merely carried her forward and she couldn’t stop herself.’ Another pause for contemplation. ‘The other soldier, Bee, faced his death like there was nothing to fear. And Wildman… could he really have thought he might survive that drop from the eighth floor? Maybe there’s something else that could survive a drop like that, but the autopsies showed that Bee and Wildman were human… What are we missing?’

  His statement was punctuated by a roll of thunder from outside.

  ‘Whoa,’ Jack laughed. ‘Timing, huh? And that must be some kinda storm, if we can hear it all the way down here. Ianto, run upstairs and close the bathroom window.’

  Ianto looked for a moment as though he might take this request seriously.

  ‘The weather has deteriorated dramatically,’ Toshiko told them.

  ‘Oh, you think?’ smiled Jack helpfully. ‘Are you dried out yet?’

  Toshiko ignored him, and punched up some images on the meeting room main display. ‘Here are some views from around the Bay area… the city centre…’ More images. ‘The wetlands… out into the Bristol Channel…’

  The views came from traffic cameras, security cameras, CCTV. The images varied between grainy monochrome in half-lit areas through to higher quality colour shots of well-illuminated buildings. What they all had in common was that they showed chaos and devastation. In the shopping areas of the city, the pedestrianised streets were awash with streams of water carrying scraps of newspaper and discarded fast food containers. Shop awnings were ripped from their metal structures, and flapped madly in rage. In one road, cars crawled through a torrent of water that reached their sills. In another, a white van had slewed off the carriageway and into a post box. A park bandstand was whipped by the trees and bushes that bordered it. The foliage was thrashing about as though it was alive.

  It was Monday morning, the start of the rush hour, but nowhere were there crowds of people. The few individuals Gwen could make out were struggling along, leaning into the rain and the wind like adventurers struggling against a foreign climate. The selection of images continued with a security camera on a boat in the Bay. She watched with growing incredulity as the camera surreally kept the seats and railings of the boat steady in the frame. Behind the boat, Bay water churned. Passengers were flung around like discarded dolls in a toy-box.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ Toshiko observed.

  They were looking at an apparently endless queue of traffic on the motorway. Gwen thought it looked like a shivering snake made up of flickering headlights. Windscreen wipers madly, fruitlessly swiped away at the water. In the grey daylight and the endless deluge of rain, it was impossible to tell the colours of cars, and only the sodium orange of the motorway lights gave any indication that this was a colour image. ‘Could it be worse?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ replied Toshiko in a tone that suggested the exact opposite. Her fingers danced over the keyboard again, and a different picture emerged on the main screen. A long queue of traffic still, but this time bright sunshine sparkled off the metal trims of the motionless cars, and their vibrant colours were clearly visible.

  Gwen wondered if Toshiko had switched to the same stretch of motorway at an earlier point, but the timecode on the image showed it was a live feed. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Eight miles further up the M4,’ Toshiko explained. ‘The end of the same queue. But look at the weather.’

  Jack looked as amazed as Gwen felt. ‘How?’

  ‘The effect is localised.’ More keystrokes. ‘Here’s the most recent satellite pass, about twenty-three minutes ago. It’s like a typhoon, but restricted within an eight-kilometre radius.’

  ‘Radius means a circle,’ said Jack. ‘So where’s the centre?’

  Toshiko overlaid a pattern of lines on the satellite image. ‘From an analysis of the variables, it’s out in the Bay. And you can see from the Bay cameras that there’s nothing out there except for plenty of churning water and a crowd of seasick sailors.’

  Gwen studied the composite image. ‘It’s underwater.’

  ‘It’s underwater,’ confirmed Toshiko. ‘Something must be coming through the Rift, below the surface. My projections show that if it continues then it will create tidal waves across the Bay. Maybe out into the Bristol Channel, too. The Wetlands Nature Reserve is flooding already—’

  Jack laughed humourlessly. ‘Aptly named.’

  ‘And you saw what’s happening out there above the water. A couple of water taxis were sunk by freak waves. They’re struggling to prevent damage in the Roath Basin – the lightship berthed there has already smashed into the quayside.’

  ‘Yeah, great place for a lightship.’

  Gwen laughed at Jack’s sarcasm. ‘You’ll never become a Blue Badge Guide with that attitude.’

  ‘The tourists wouldn’t like the stories I could tell them about Cardiff.’

  ‘Hello?’ interrupted Toshiko. ‘Do you want to see these data and schematics?’

  ‘Data,’ Jack said. ‘That’s like information, right?’

  Toshiko gave him a freezing look. ‘Or I could just stop now. Go and do some more correlations of the variables on my own.’ She paused, as though to let this sink in. Jack affected to look contrite, and Gwen stifled further laughter. Toshiko continued: ‘The telemetry from the boreholes is so confusing, it’s as though water is fl
owing uphill. Thing is, even though there have been unexpected tidal surges way up the Rivers Taff and Ely, it’s all caused by this localised weather system.’

  Gwen tried to put the information together in her head, and could see a flaw. ‘If it’s localised, then where is all this rain coming from?’

  ‘Think of it like a localised typhoon. It’s sucking water from the Bay. Dropping it back over the local area in this huge thunderstorm.’

  ‘So why’s the Bay not emptying?’

  Toshiko looked at her, surprised. Gwen was started to feel like a slow pupil in the GCSE Geography class. ‘Where do you suppose the water there came from in the first place? Out in the Bristol Channel. And beyond that, the Celtic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Imagine that lot dumped all over the vale of Glamorgan.’

  Gwen’s head was starting to spin. ‘But a typhoon? A tropical storm, in Cardiff?’

  ‘And I estimate that it’s only Category 2 at the moment. The only good thing I can see is that the eye isn’t moving. It’s still out in the Bay. Or at least…’ Toshiko checked some more figures. ‘It’s encroaching very slowly. But whatever is coming through, it’s still coming.’

  ‘And there’s nothing to say that it won’t suddenly get a shift on,’ said Gwen. She thought about what Toshiko had explained to them the previous evening. The slow tsunami. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so slow after all.

  Jack slapped his hands on the table, an unexpected sound that startled Gwen. He was no longer pensive, he’d reached his decision.

  ‘So, no Owen. We’ll have to work without him. Ianto, keep trying his number and locator. Gwen and Tosh, you’re gonna have to get out there into the Bay, find out what this thing is. Take the mini-sub, that needs two. And I’m going back to Wildman’s apartment. I’m gonna find those missing power packs if I have to tear the place apart. Hey, I may tear it apart anyway, it already needs a makeover. Apart from that, who can tell? There are too many variables at the moment.’ He thought about this briefly. ‘D’you see what you’ve done to me, Tosh? You’ve got me using the word “variables”. Now I know I’ve been sitting here too long.’ He picked up his greatcoat from a nearby chair where he’d draped it earlier, and prepared to leave.

  Gwen watched Toshiko for a reaction. She was shutting down the various programs on her computer, getting ready to follow her latest instructions from Jack. But Gwen hesitated. Despite her police training. Despite that instinct to obey orders without questioning every detail. Despite the copper’s belief that the guv’nor assigns the jobs, picks the people, and doesn’t have to say why. Somehow, in Torchwood, that was different now. After handling the stuff that she had – that they all had – in the past couple of months, she’d begun to believe that asking the obvious questions was what kept you alive.

  ‘What about Sandra Applegate?’

  Jack was shrugging his greatcoat over his shoulders. ‘What about her?’

  ‘D’you think she’s human?’

  Jack gave them a wave as he left. ‘Enjoy your dive, ladies.’

  Gwen wasn’t any more reassured as the door closed behind him.

  Owen knew it wasn’t like brushing aside the local pointy-heads when he and the Torchwood team cruised into a scene of crime. When they knew that their reputation, their previous contacts, the whole look of them as they swept through the existing security cordon, was all the authority that they needed to operate unchallenged. The staff here would know nothing of Torchwood. There would be no scare stories, whispered among the staff as cautionary tales, of petty bureaucrats peremptorily brushed aside, or their careers stalled because they stepped in Torchwood’s way and got trampled.

  ‘I don’t understand, Dr Harper,’ said Majunath. ‘I thought you said you were the relief SHO for this evening’s shift?’ Was Majunath going to question his police credentials, now? Owen knew from his own former career in A&E that doctors relished the opportunity to put the police in their place when it came to clinical priorities. Majunath had his personal authority at stake from the moment that ID card appeared under his nose. And Owen needed Megan to see him in control, to show her how Torchwood was an organisation that could get things done, take control. An organisation that she would want to join.

  It was the storm that saved him from Majunath’s suspicion. A fresh gurney stretcher crashed through the doors at the far end of the ED, with paramedics clinging to it as though they were launching a bobsled. It finally careered to a slippery stop beside Majunath. Both paramedics were drenched, water still cascading off their fluorescent jackets. The taller one exhaled upwards to blow the rain off his face and out of his floppy ginger hair. ‘Four more on the way,’ he explained to Majunath breathlessly. More water flicked onto the floor as he nodded at the unfortunate victim on the gurney. Owen noted quickly that the boy was probably early teens, unconscious, intubated, very cyanosed.

  ‘Water taxi capsized in the Bay,’ the paramedic was saying. He twisted the gurney through ninety degrees, and pushed it on through the doors of resus, all the while rattling off his diagnosis and the treatment he’d already given.

  ‘I thought we were trying to divert patients to Royal Gwent?’ Majunath snapped at the new arrivals.

  ‘Storm’s heading that way, too’ explained Megan.

  Majunath groaned. ‘Swansea, then? St David’s?’

  ‘Well, this little lad is here now,’ muttered the red-haired paramedic.

  Majunath reacted immediately, professional once more. ‘I’ll take this one,’ he told Megan. ‘You and Doctor Harper take the next as they arrive.’ He snapped a swift glanced at his wristwatch. ‘You may need to extend your shift, I’m afraid.’ He bellowed into the air: ‘Auxiliary? There’s more water to mop up here.’ And then he was gone, the doors into resus flapping behind him.

  Owen seized Megan’s hand. ‘Come on. We need to check out Sergeant Applegate first.’

  ‘Sergeant Applegate? You mean you know this woman?’ Megan allowed him to lead her further down from the curtained cubicles, to the first of several small examination rooms. Just before they stepped in, Owen felt Megan hold back. She didn’t let go of his hand, but she stared at him warily. ‘She has a gunshot wound, Owen. And you had a gun…’

  He squeezed her hand in reassurance. ‘I don’t know how she got shot. I do know that it wasn’t me.’ He pulled her into the cubicle and closed the door.

  Sandra Applegate lay on the trolley, pale and still, her breath shallow but regular. Owen could see from the monitors that she was stable. He briefly examined the saline drip that was attached to Applegate by a long, clear tube, and then checked the other attachment, a bag of group O blood.

  Megan was considering the patient notes, and looking surprised. ‘She’s not bad for someone who’s lost a lot of blood. She has a gunshot wound to the lateral portion of her upper arm. Proximal humerus fracture, with the bullet retained beneath the scapula. They anticipated removing the bullet arthroscopically.’

  Owen came around the bed and read the notes over her shoulder. ‘That’ll avoid a traditional exposure. Good thing too, it means not complicating her fracture care.’ He was close behind Megan, so near that he could breathe in deeply and smell her short, dark hair. The antiseptic tang of the Emergency Room faded away around him. He closed his eyes, inhaled again, and the scents of her room came back to him. The sweet, chocolate fragrance of Angel Innocent, an indulgence almost as surprising as finding himself in bed with Megan. The lingering notes of the Château La Fleur on her hot breath. The musky warmth of post-coital cotton sheets. The fusty familiarity of an old-fashioned woollen blanket, pulled up over his face.

  ‘They anticipated the arthroscopy?’ he asked, suddenly back in the room. ‘Why did they change their minds?’

  Megan indicated the small table beside the patient’s bed. In a kidney-shaped metal bowl they could both see a bloodied bullet. ‘The bullet was subsequently found on the bed-sheet. The examining doctor suggests it must have worked its way out.’

  Owen was about to co
mment on how unlikely that was when the cubicle door opened behind them. He stepped back from Megan, his movement betraying his guilt, and almost collided with a rangy, long-haired man in a scruffy white coat. From his stooped posture, his five-o’clock shadow and the rings below his eyes, this was a junior doctor coming to the end both of his shift and of his patience. The new arrival surveyed Owen with barely concealed hostility. ‘This isn’t your patient.’ A statement made as an accusation.

  ‘She is now.’ Owen bridled. He fumbled in his jacket for the ID, and waggled it dismissively under the guy’s nose. He was unsure whether he was offended by this young doctor’s manner or being interrupted with Megan or being found close to her.

  Megan swivelled around to face this other doctor. ‘Jonny,’ she smiled smoothly. ‘I was really curious about this bullet. How did you manage to extract it? The notes say you were all set for arthroscopic intervention.’

  ‘Oh, Megan, hi…’ Jonny considered this for a moment. ‘Beats me. I was sure it was lodged in the subacromial space. Bugger of a job to extract, but it looked right up Freeman’s street.’

  ‘That’s out in Newport, right?’ observed Owen.

  Megan elbowed him. ‘Not helping,’ she hissed. ‘Mr Freeman’s very keen on promoting the Trust’s minimal invasive procedures.’

  ‘I must have been mistaken,’ admitted Jonny glumly. He thumbed both his eyes in a reflex gesture, tiredness seeming to overwhelm his anger. ‘Unless the bullet worked its way out on its own. Or the pressure dressing I applied is like a really powerful magnesium sulphate. Ha, ha!’ His mirthless laughter at his own medical joke was cut short by the start of a huge, unstifled yawn.

  Owen saw his opportunity. ‘They’re bringing more in from that capsized water taxi. Mr Majunath said we should remind you that he’s asking everyone to extend their shifts—’

  Jonny let out a groan to rival the noisy thunderstorm outside.

  ‘—and we’ve already extended. So if you crack on with the new arrivals, we can finish off with this patient.’ He studied Jonny’s wary reaction, and added slyly: ‘No need to make a big fuss about the thing with the bullet.’