Another Life

by Peter Anghelides

  ‘I’m quoting something I heard on Trisha, actually,’ admitted Owen. ‘But my point stands.’ He stood and watched her intently, his eyes urging her to decide.

  Sandra made a decision first. ‘If you won’t help me, then I’ll have to do it for myself.’ She started to pluck the sensors from her body. As each sharp tug removed another one, the ECG machine flatlined and began to ping a warning. ‘I won’t stay here,’ insisted Sandra. ‘And you can’t make me. I’ll take my chances on my own.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Megan hurried to Sandra’s side, trying to calm her at the same time as helping her with the sensors and wiping away the remaining conductive gel beneath them.

  The examination-room door burst open as a nurse barged her way in. It was the short, thin girl, Roberta Nottingham. She was looking less eager now and more panicked. When she saw two doctors in the room, she slumped back against the wall in relief. ‘Sorry, Dr Tegg,’ she said to Megan. ‘I heard the ECG alarm went off.’

  ‘That’s OK, Bobbie.’ Megan switched off the ECG monitor and the alarm stopped at once. ‘Here, sort out her drips.’

  ‘So,’ said Sandra brightly, ‘how long will it take to get discharged from here?’

  ‘How long is a piece of red tape?’ smiled the young nurse.

  Now that Sandra had stood up, she was pressing her forehead gently with one hand. Megan moved to the door. ‘I’ll sort out some portable analgesia.’

  Sandra flexed her arm where the nurse had removed the saline drip and attached a plaster in the crook of her elbow. ‘It may just be that I need a drink, and I haven’t eaten for a while. Owen, can you get my discharge papers sorted out while I get dressed here? I’ll come and meet you out at reception.’

  A soldier who protected her modesty, thought Owen. But he just said: ‘Sure.’

  ‘And I am absolutely famished,’ Sandra told him as he was leaving the room. ‘But don’t worry. While you’re gone, I’m sure Nurse Nottingham here can help me get a bite to eat.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There was no sign of the dead policeman outside Wildman’s apartment building in Splott. The battering rain had scoured the pavement clean. Even the shrubs where the body had sprawled were flattened by the torrent from the broken gutter.

  A half-hearted effort had been made by one of the residents to prop the front doors shut. It wasn’t as if they’d be able to get a carpenter out to effect an urgent repair; there were quite enough other emergencies to attend to as the typhoon blew through the city. Only the two hallway tables and a couple of plastic brooms were holding the doors in place, and Jack was able to force them aside with no difficulty. The crash and clatter of falling furniture was masked by the howl of the wind.

  Jack had brought a laser cutter and an axe. Up in Wildman’s apartment, he pulled all of the furniture towards the centre of the room, and tossed pictures and wall hangings on top of them, so that he could methodically test the cavity walls. Where he found that the plasterboard sounded hollow, he applied the laser cutter to slice a hole through it.

  Within half an hour, there were scorched gaps in every wall and in the backs of all the fitted cupboards. There was no sign of any lead boxes. A similar search of the small gap under the floorboards yielded nothing either.

  By the time he had ransacked the small attic space, he was covered in cobwebs and plaster dust. He’d found boxes of musty novels in damp cardboard boxes, battered wicker baskets and Christmas decorations in supermarket shopping bags. But there was nothing that could contain the missing nuclear materials.

  The last thing he did was examine the bathroom. The starfish creature had broken up into decomposed chunks of lumpy grey flesh, so that the bath was like a huge bowl of putrid mushroom soup. By poking at the plughole with the toilet brush he was able to drain most of the malodorous liquid, and satisfy himself that there was nothing concealed below the water line. The pungent stink of dead fish made him retch, even when he tried to breathe only through his mouth. He felt like the stench was overwhelming him, drowning him, and he was hugely relieved to finally abandon the search and close the bathroom door on the whole nauseating spectacle.

  Jack sat amid the piled furniture in the middle of the living area. No nuclear materials here. Could Applegate have smuggled them out already, when they were last here? The Geiger counters hadn’t recorded anything, but she’d been wearing a long coat and perhaps that had concealed a smaller lead-lined carrier. So, where could Applegate be now? Alone and wounded. Alone and wounded. He pondered this like a mantra, before deciding to call Toshiko at the Hub.

  The call connected on the second attempt. Toshiko told him that she and Gwen were already mobile, and were en route for the Bay in Gwen’s car.

  ‘Any news from Owen?’ Jack asked her. The signal was poor, and the line intermittent, so they both found they were shouting to make themselves understood. ‘Has he called in?’

  ‘He may have tried,’ crackled Toshiko’s voice from the mobile. ‘But in these conditions, who can tell?’ There was buzzing interruption and Jack had to get her to repeat what she’d said. ‘I had an idea about checking his mobile phone records. Obviously we’re piggybacking our own system securely on the service providers, and none of them log our calls. But I was able to…’

  ‘Yeah, OK Tosh,’ said Jack. ‘Half of that’s getting lost in the background noise, and the other half is leaking out of my brain. What have you found?’

  There was a pause. Jack wondered whether the line had dropped or Toshiko was in a huff. Eventually she said, ‘Owen received a call last night from a Megan Tegg. She’s a Senior House Officer at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary. And a quick cross-reference shows she and Owen were at university together in London.’

  ‘Good work, Tosh. I can look into that once I’ve tracked down Applegate. Thanks. Catch you later.’

  Why was a doctor at the hospital contacting Owen on his Torchwood mobile? How could she know his number?

  Jack sat for a while, surveying the wreckage of Wildman’s apartment.

  Applegate was wounded and alone.

  Wounded and alone.

  Of course. Where would a woman with a gunshot wound go for emergency treatment?

  He barrelled down the stairs three at a time, out of the building through the torrent of rain. The SUV’s engine revved and roared as Jack steered the car into the street and onwards towards Cardiff Royal Infirmary.

  The Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve was well-named today, decided Owen. The wild storm seemed to rattle the whole frame of Megan’s rusty old Skoda, and the windscreen wipers struggled to clear the water to let them see out. It was no time to go sightseeing, thought Owen sourly. Though he doubted that Sandra was going to be showing them much in the way of wildlife, because the animals had more sense than humans and would either have fled or be cowering in shelter somewhere.

  He and an ex had been out here to the Reserve one weekend, and she’d been very excited at the prospect of seeing teal ducks and tufted lapwings and long-beaked snipe. At the time, Owen had been thinking more about the chicken he’d put in the oven for them to eat when they got back home.

  Megan drove them out to the north-western shore of Cardiff Bay, between the stylish frame of St David’s Hotel and the outlet of the River Taff. She was following directions from Sandra, who was hunched in the back. Owen tried to engage her in conversation, asking her how she’d been getting on since discovering that Wildman and Bee had died, and the circumstances in which she’d heard the news. But Sandra was too busy giving directions from the back seat, staring out of the car window and trying to make out landmarks made strange by the rain and the gloomy afternoon light.

  Owen soon found himself distracted by Megan’s hesitant driving. He hated being a passenger, and fidgeted in the front seat throughout the journey. His feet gave away his impatience as he involuntarily pressed a non-existent accelerator in the passenger footwell, or used an imaginary brake when Megan seemed not to notice some obstruction in the road. He had alrea
dy regretted letting her drive him to the hospital earlier, eventually accepting with bad grace that her staff pass for the car park was for her Skoda and not his car. He imagined that his Boxter would now be up on bricks outside Megan’s place. He tried to reassure himself that maybe it would be stolen outright, and he could use the insurance money towards that Honda S2000 GT he’d been eyeing up. Monocoque X-bone frame just like a Formula One car, two-litre VTEC engine…

  Megan interrupted his thoughts as she slewed the Skoda to a halt and pulled the handbrake into position with a ratcheting noise that made his teeth grind.

  ‘We need to walk from here,’ Sandra told them. She popped open the rear passenger door and stepped out into the storm before they could protest.

  ‘I must be insane,’ Megan told Owen. ‘What am I doing driving her out here on a night like this?’

  He was going to show her the Bekaran device again as an encouragement, but found that it was no longer in his pocket. He felt his face and neck flush in a momentary panic at the thought of the alien tech turning up at the hospital, until he resigned himself to the impossibility of doing anything about it. So instead he said to Megan: ‘Come on. You’re not going to believe your eyes.’

  ‘Assuming we can see anything in this howling gale,’ she said.

  They abandoned the Skoda in the St David’s Hotel car park, and followed Sandra as she set off at a determined pace down a gravel walkway that led into the Reserve. In the open here, the storm seemed worse than ever. Owen started to worry that they would be blown clean off their feet. Last time he’d been here, on a date, his companion had pointed out the magnificent view across the Bay. Today, the towering clouds overhead let little sunlight through, and the wash of rain made it impossible to see across to the Penarth Headland. He could barely make out the barrage across the Bay.

  What Owen remembered as a large reed-fringed reservoir was now a choppy lake edged with flattened grasses and snapped willows. Sandra led them along a network of flooded paths. Routes through the Reserve that had once been flat, hard-surfaced paths running around the wetland were now rapidly submerging below cold dark water. In places, it was deep enough that Owen could see fish shoaling beside the walkway as they broke the surface briefly and then vanished back into the dark.

  Sandra was surging ahead of them. The howl of the wind made it impossible to speak, and even when he shouted Owen could barely make himself heard. He took hold of Megan’s hand, to encourage her as much as to support her physically. She tagged along with him, her head bent against the oncoming storm. Owen muttered and cursed to himself as his shoes filled with water and his trousers got soaked up to the knees.

  Eventually, Sandra navigated them over a precarious, wobbling boardwalk that stretched across the water. If the wooden structure had been secured, it would long ago have sunk beneath the swirling surface. Instead, they were able to make slow progress until Sandra gestured at something that was poking up through the nearby reeds.

  It looked like a lump of burnished metal. The dark water lapped over it as the wind whipped up the waves. Sandra stooped down and lifted a concealed flap to reveal a curiously shaped panel of sparkling light. She activated one of the controls, and motioned for them to stand well back.

  The water around the burnished metal surged and frothed. Within a minute, a tall wide cylinder had risen from the murky water.

  The boardwalk bucked and twisted as the cylinder displaced a surge of water. Owen squatted, pulling Megan down gently as he did so, to lower their centre of gravity and avoid toppling off the wooden walkway. He glanced across at her. ‘An escape pod!’ he yelled. He could tell from her frown that she hadn’t heard so he mouthed the words to her with exaggerated enunciation.

  Megan leaned in close to him, hugging his shoulder, placing her lips near his ear. ‘What happened to her boat? She said she’d used a boat.’

  Owen pointed at the cylinder, which bobbed more calmly on the water now. His implication was: this must be what Sandra described.

  Megan pushed against him again to speak again. Even in the biting cold rain, he could feel her hot breath against his skin. ‘And where’s her sub-aqua gear?’

  He reluctantly allowed her to move her head away from his, so that she could see his reply. He pointed into the water, and nodded: down there somewhere.

  Sandra opened a small doorway in the cylinder, and beckoned for them to follow her in. It was a cramped space, no wider than three telephone boxes stacked side by side. There were four moulded alcoves in the wall, oriented vertically. Owen noted that they appeared to be designed for a humanoid figure somewhat larger than the average man, and he remembered how Sandra had described the aliens earlier. At the far end of the craft he could see another softly flickering set of controls.

  Once they were all in the cylinder, Sandra activated one of the controls and the entrance door slid shut. Owen felt his ears go pop as the air pressure inside changed. The raging noise of the storm outside was suddenly reduced to a dull murmur. The rocking motion of the craft started to disorient him.

  ‘I think I might throw up,’ said Megan.

  ‘It’ll be better once we are under the water.’ Sandra slumped into the nearest of the alcoves, and struggled to strap herself in. It was as though she was afraid that she might fall down if she didn’t somehow secure herself. Now that she was out of the rain, the blood from the wound in her shoulder was starting to seep down her sleeve and out over her hand. The frantic energy that had sustained her through the car journey and down the pathways into the Reserve had dissipated.

  ‘I said you weren’t well enough to travel,’ insisted Megan. She checked Sandra’s eyes, and took a pulse from her neck. Clearly not entirely happy with what she saw found, Megan slipped a boxed syringe from her jacket pocket and administered a painkiller. Then she checked the pulse in her neck again.

  Sandra wriggled her head away from Megan, as far as the moulded restraint would let her. ‘We have no time. We have to get to the ship and stop it. You must secure yourself in a harness for the journey.’

  Owen helped Megan to slot her small frame into one of the alcoves. She gave a little squeal as he fixed one of the straps. ‘Steady! That pinches. Ow! It’s too tight.’

  ‘Sorry. How’s that now?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Now, hold on to these grips.’ He moved her hands into position.

  ‘Now what?

  ‘This,’ he said. He leaned his face in at an angle, and kissed her. She made a little noise of surprise. But then the tip of her tongue was pressing back against his. Her hands slid off the grips and around him until he could feel them squeezing his bum.

  He heard a short groan from behind him, and broke the kiss. Megan pouted at him.

  Owen shuffled around on the spot, and saw that Sandra’s head was pressed back into her alcove. The rain had plastered her short blonde hair flat, and her skin was ashen. ‘OK, we’d better get going,’ he told her. ‘I presume you know how this thing works?’

  She nodded feebly. ‘Terrific,’ he said. ‘Then you can explain it to me as we go. It is so my turn to drive.’

  It was easy enough to operate the escape pod. It didn’t have much speed, and the direction controls were simple. Owen was soon able to dispense with Sandra’s explanations about the function of the pod’s controls, and concentrate on her instructions about where to move the craft rather than how. The woman was a back-seat driver, no question about it.

  Sandra directed Owen to manoeuvre the pod along the reen, a moat that ran the entire length of the reserve. The extensive flooding of the whole area had widened this out, and what had once been a series of lagoons separated by islands was now an expanse of water with shallows. He had to navigate carefully to avoid grounding the vessel or colliding with one of the floating bird refuges that, now untethered, drifted dangerously on or just below the surface.

  To the south, still within the waters of the Bay, Owen steered a course past a large stone bund for several hundred metr
es. It was defunct, no longer able to protect the wetlands, as water-borne debris inundated the area with each fresh surge of water. But it was still high enough above the bed of the Bay to remain a danger to the escape pod.

  Once clear of the bund, it was a straight run out across the Bay. There was no shipping to worry about, only the occasional surging cross-current to negotiate.

  Eventually, Sandra heaved a huge sigh. For one dreadful moment, Owen feared that it was a death rattle, that distressing sound made by dying people as their level of consciousness decreased and they lost their ability to swallow properly. When he checked, he saw to his surprise that her eyes were more alive than ever. She was peering intently through the observation window, and delighted with what she saw. Owen followed her gaze, and had to gasp himself.

  This wasn’t what Sandra had described to them in the hospital. This was more than just a simple hatch poking out of the sea bed. It was a curving expanse of dull metal, glinting with a soft inner glow even at this depth in the cloudy water. The silt at the base of it, where the vessel emerged from the sediment, was vibrating as though the whole edifice was juddering its way into reality.

  Slowly forcing its way through the Rift.

  The escape pod jolted, and Owen felt the controls resist his hands. He relinquished his grip, and watched the controls continue to move without his assistance. The autopilot was in operation, and the escape pod was still in motion.

  They were going in.

  ‘I won’t be best pleased if my car gets washed away,’ Gwen told Toshiko. ‘I’ve only had it three weeks. And imagine what the insurance claim would read like.’

  ‘Relax. It’s well up the causeway. And how else were we going to get the trailer out here?’

  ‘Yeah, well you’ve seen how far up the water level is now.’ Gwen indicated the view from the starboard porthole of the submersible. A hundred metres away, the lights of Mermaid Quay sparkled in the rain. The murky late afternoon was so dark that the light detectors on the streetlamps had already activated.