Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

Closing her eyes, she pulled her diaphragm tight in a move that was as natural to her as breathing and, tilting her head back, none of the control for performing on stage required, she let her knees bend before the first delicate strains of 'Ave Maria' slipped from her mouth. Even though she was limiting her volume, the long notes soared out through the patio doors and into the night, carrying their beauty up to the freedom of the skies. For a moment, Maria herself was lost in the creation of the song, pouring her heart into it. When she performed this piece it was truly hers, her own 'Ave Maria': Ave Mary Brown, the poor girl made good.

The initial low notes fading away, she pulled herself up to the next octave, adding strength without damaging the emotional power or relaxing quality of the song. She needed no accompaniment other than the patter of rain on the balcony and, as the music filled the empty space between the earth and the heavens, the haunting Latin words defied any who called the language dead.

'Et in hora mortis nostrae.' And in our hour of death . She repeated the line three times, each time with more intensity than the one that went before. It was the song she wanted for her own cremation, preferably one of her own versions of it. Somewhere behind the music that filled her, soothing her as no other lover ever had, she wondered bitterly if Martin would manage to get that right.

A gust of sharp wind tugged her hair, and the temperature dropped suddenly. Stepping back slightly into the warm brightness of the room, Maria shivered, pulling her robe a little tighter across her body. Lowering her song to barely more than a whisper, she drew the sliding door shut. Maybe there was something to be said for the Mediterranean after all. Turning away, she reached for the champagne to refill her glass. Her hand stopped halfway. There was something outside. On the balcony. But it was impossible . Her singing stopped completely. Toes gripping the soft carpet beneath them, Maria Bruno's legs trembled as fear clambered up them, its invisible limbs clutching at her heart.

She turned back to face the doors. Outside, the night had sunk to some colour beyond black. Even the light from her room seemed to be sucked into the darkness beyond the glass, her reflection wavering, as if something on the other side was pulling it away.

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, her breath cold in her lungs as if that darkness — whatever was in that darkness — was filling her up, oozing into her through the air. One hand fluttered instinctively to her throat, but her terror was wrapped in her head, not her voice. Her brain was emptying. Her soul was emptying, filling instead with nothing. She tried to gasp but no sound came out. Not nothing. Worse than nothing. She was being left with only her ; only the very core of herself as if no one else had ever existed. It was desolation. Isolation. Her heartbeat faded until it was only a whisper and then the echo of that whisper.

Across the room, the phone by the bed taunted her from a distant universe away. Unreachable. Untouchable. And what would she say if she could… Her internal thoughts drained away, leaving her fumbling for lost words, language fleeing from within her back to the outside where it belonged.

The unnatural blackness on the other side of the patio doors slowly pulled into itself, the antimatter creating a dense form. Flecks of metallic gunmetal grey shone as a solid, almost human shape appeared pressed against the glass. Its hairless skull and face were slick with a sheen like a crackled glaze on dark ceramic; the surface of its naked body covered in a network of sharp interlocking lines that made it appear fractured, as if the casing could never hold the bleakness inside. Two points of laser light beamed crimson from small dark spaces in the centre of its oval head, just above the shapeless hole that had to be its mouth.

For a moment they stared at each other, Maria lost in the rage of the red streaks that pierced through the glass as if it wasn't there, preferring even that to the terrible loneliness that filled her. She gasped again, aware of the pitiful sound escaping her, feeling the vibration in her perfect throat, but unable to hear it.

The thing outside tore its head from side to side, the strange mouth stretching wider and wider until the gaping hole almost filled its head, and all Maria could see was the endless void of darkness within. The creature's scream echoed in the desolate cavern of Maria's soul and, after hearing it pour through her insides, Maria knew, as a sense without words, that she would never sing again. The awful isolation carried in that empty sound owned her now. Everything else was lost.

As it was, the thought was irrelevant. A moment later, the glass smashed and, as the creature came for her, it seemed to Maria that her own scream was endless in her head.

'Are you sure you don't want me to stick around a while longer?'

Jack looked up from his desk to see Gwen, her leather jacket already zipped up to the neck and her keys in her hands.

'Wouldn't it just break your heart if I said yes?' He grinned at her, despite the cramp in his neck from poring through the results of the database search that she had given him.

'Don't know about break my heart, but Rhys might come and break your face.' She tossed her long hair over one shoulder. 'He's cooking coq au vin tonight.'

Jack raised an eyebrow.

'Don't even think it, Jack.' Gwen warned him. Leaning on the doorframe, she looked reluctant to go but, as much as Jack felt like he could use the company on what was shaping up to be a long and frustrating night of staring at information and still finding no answers, he knew Gwen had the one thing that should be protected at Torchwood. A real life.

He'd seen what they did for a living destroy too many people who'd not let themselves focus on the real world, the one that had given them life and that had existed for them long before they'd ever heard of the Rift or Weevils or Captain Jack Harkness. Sometimes it was too easy to allow the strangeness of the things they dealt with daily to outshine the bland beauty of normality. But it would be normality that kept them sane, and what they would have to go back to if they lived long enough. He glanced at his watch, almost surprised by the time.

'It's ten o'clock. He's cooking dinner now?'

'It may have taken him a while, but Rhys has finally worked out that we don't work normal hours. When I say I might be working a bit late, he knows not to expect me till about now.'

'You'd better not disappoint him then.'

Gwen lingered, a small line of concern furrowing her pale brow. 'You sure you'll be OK?'

Jack smiled. Gwen was more than a little bit addicted to Torchwood herself. Her wanting to stay was part concern and part that need to be at the centre of the excitement, even if there was nothing happening. He'd seen it in her face the first time she'd ever come into Torchwood's range, peering over the edge of that multi-storey car park at them, still just a uniformed police officer. She'd come a long way since then. But that curiosity had only intensified with all she'd been through. She was tough, and Jack liked her. He liked her a lot.

'I'll be fine. Look, Ianto got me pizza! I won't starve while you're nibbling on Rhys's coq au vin.' He winked as she rolled her eyes. 'And anyway,' he continued, shrugging as his eyes dropped to the pieces of paper spread across his desk, some with scribbled notes on, others printed from the computer, 'I need some quiet thinking time to try and get to the bottom of all this.'

Gwen's face darkened. 'Let's hope whatever it is takes the night off. We need to catch this one, Jack. And quickly.'