Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

A smile twitched at the corner of Jack's mouth. ' You've been working on a computer all night? Is this the same Gwen Cooper who runs at the sight of a USB cable?'

'It's the same Gwen Cooper who'll forget what she's trying to say if you're not careful.'

'Keep going.' Jack's eyes twinkled. 'I'm impressed.'

'OK, these outbreaks of tiny spikes were there just a minute or two before each attack, as if maybe the alien comes through in particles or something and then pulls itself together. But whatever the reason, what we found was that the tiny spikes aren't random. It's like a reverse explosion. The centre point between them is where the alien appears.'

'Good work,' Jack said, but Gwen shook her head.

'I haven't finished. That's not the good bit.' She leaned forwards slightly, her elbows digging into the table. 'Ianto and me have refined the system so that it picks up those early spikes more quickly and gives us the appearance location before the creature comes through. Should buy you about eight minutes, we reckon.'

Ianto nodded. 'Judging from our test runs.'

Jack stared at Ianto and then back at Gwen. 'You two figured this out yourselves?'

Gwen shrugged. 'With quite a lot of help from Tosh's notes and bloody pop-ups.'

'She'd be proud of you.'

Gwen couldn't fight the smile threatening to stretch across her face. 'Or horrified. She was probably watching over our shoulders making sure we didn't break her precious computer. It was her favourite member of the team.'

Jack grinned. 'She definitely thought it was more logical than the rest of us. And I think I'd agree with her on that.'

Even Ianto gave a half-smile. Cutler stayed out of it, against the wall. This was their business, the sharing of a memory of a lost colleague. Gwen felt warm in her stomach, even if she knew the image was a childish fantasy. When you were dead, you were dead; there were no ghosts of Tosh or Owen watching over them. And if one day there was, it would just turn out to be some bloody alien or entity using their memories as a weapon against them.

Still, she thought. It was what they had signed up for. It was the risk they took for the rewards of all this knowledge and excitement. She glanced at Cutler. She couldn't go back to the police now. She could never turn her back on all this, not willingly, however much of her soul it took.

'So what now?' Ianto asked.

'There's nothing we can do until morning.' Jack looked at Gwen. 'That enhanced program up and running now?'

She nodded, and he looked over to Cutler.

'Your men still out in their patrol cars?'

'Oh yeah. I think I just drained the overtime budget for the next ten years on this one.'

Nodding, Jack sighed. 'That's about all we can do for now then. You two go home and get some rest.' Both Gwen and Ianto moved to speak, but Jack cut them off. 'No arguments. I'll keep an eye on things here. If our visitor decides to make an appearance I'll at least have a few minutes to get the sirens to its location.' He looked at his watch. 'Although anyone singing at this time of night must be crazy.'

'There's one more thing.' Ianto frowned a little. 'It's just something I felt when the alien came for Drew Powell.' He looked up. 'I had this awful sense of emptiness. Loneliness, but human loneliness taken and multiplied a thousand times. It was so strong I can't explain it. I felt like I was being emptied of everything that I'd learned from outside of myself. Anything I'd been taught by anyone else, or shared with anyone else or felt for anyone else.'

He kept his head down while he spoke, never comfortable with talking about his inner emotions. 'But I didn't feel any aggression. Maybe frustration, but no aggression.'

'So what are you saying?' Jack frowned. 'You got to see inside the alien's mind?'

'Something like that. Or its mind invaded mine. That feels closer to it.' He looked up. 'All I'm saying is that I don't think it's killing these people on purpose. I don't think it really understands about killing. I'm not sure what it's doing, but the deaths aren't intentional.'

There was a moment's silence, then Cutler sniffed derisively from his position against the wall. 'I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the victims and their families.'

Gwen glared at him. He was a policeman right to the core. She remembered that kind of black and white thinking. There was no place for it here, even though she sometimes wished it were that easy.

'Maybe not.' Jack had the final word. 'But it might just help us when we catch it.'

Even at the edge of the void, the night was coated in quiet. Disembodied, it could feel the echo of pain where the metal had pierced its flesh. The pain and the metal and the addictive sensation of the physical were gone now, but the taste remained.

At least here, hidden in the breathless strangeness that had brought it so far from the silence of home, it could make out the gentle hum of the noisy world so close by. It sucked the sounds in, even though they weren't what it wanted or what had called to its despair.

The parts it had absorbed refused to function as they had in their original locations, and the rage of frustration bubbled out from the shapeless form and, somewhere outside the rim of nothing, a random bolt of lightning struck the surface of the peaceful sea. Fear rippled through its consciousness. Something was trying to pull it back across the universe, to correct the error that had brought it here. There wasn't much time left to take what it needed. Alert and ready, it waited.

In the Havannah Court Autism Centre, sleep had claimed Ryan Scott several hours earlier, his throat resting as his body shut down. He didn't move throughout the night, his small muscles relaxed and face peaceful; finally at rest in a black oblivion where he didn't have to be anything at all. Where he simply existed, self-contained and completely detached from those who disturbed him with their touches and their noises and their refusal to let him be alone. His chest moved up and down, air silently passing through the mechanics of his small form as he dreamed of blissful nothing. If he was capable of loving anything at all, Ryan Scott loved the night.

Sitting on the side of his oversized double bed in his suite in the St David's Hotel, Martin Meloy's nose ran in a constant stream. His eyes blurred with tears and he hiccupped out a sob before tilting his head back and trying to get control of his emotions. He needed to write this. His hand shook and he stared at the half-empty bottle of pills and the vodka bottle littering his bedside table. He didn't have a lot of time. 'I'm sorry,' he scribbled on the fine textured paper with the hotel's name and address embossed on the top.

He squeezed out a few more words before lying back on the bed, the paper balanced on his chest. His eyes drifted shut and he thought of his Mary Brown, who'd transformed herself into the great Maria Bruno, and hoped she would approve. He may never have been dramatic enough for her in life, but he hoped his death would be Hollywood enough for his gorgeous, glamorous, talented wife. His breathing slowed.

Adrienne Scott had drunk too much, and her head pounded as she crawled out of bed and headed to the kitchen. Not waiting for the tap to run deliciously cold, she filled the glass and drained its lukewarm contents greedily before letting it overflow again. She drank the second more slowly, a shaking hand finding the paracetamol easily in the dark. She'd had plenty of practice. Swallowing the pills, she stared blearily out of the kitchen window and into the night sky. Life couldn't go on like this. And it was visiting day tomorrow. Crawling back into her bed, relieved that there were at least three or four more hours of darkness before she had to move, she wished the idea of seeing her son didn't fill her with so much dread.