Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

'Yes.' She smiled. 'Yes.'

'What are we doing, Jack?' Gwen's eyes darted between the humans and the alien.

For the first time, Jack looked up at her and smiled gently. 'Don't you get it, Gwen? Here, this boy is different because he doesn't want the world. He

wants

the isolation; to be completely alone. He doesn't understand the concept of society, of company, of communication…' Jack didn't bother keeping his voice low, instead becoming more animated as he explained. 'Everything that is part of our world he hides from behind his singing.' He turned to Ceri. 'Have I got that about right?'

The nurse nodded, tears still making tracks and carrying her mascara down her cheeks.

'And I should imagine that on the Silent Planet our visitor here is their equivalent of autistic. He wants to connect with someone or something. That's why he followed the music.' He looked up at Cutler. 'And that's why he killed the best singers. For the power of emotion in their performance. To be able to share emotion.' He shook his head slightly.

'The terrible isolated loneliness Ianto felt…' Gwen felt understanding prickle on her skin. 'That was the alien's emotion. How it's lived all its life.'

Jack nodded. 'Awful, isn't it? Imagine no light, no sound, nothing but the essence of your being. No memories to cherish. No sense of love. To be reviled by any of your kind you tried to connect with. Totally alone.'

Gwen tilted her head. 'So what are you saying we do? Let him go? Send him back?'

'No. We need to make existence easier for both of them.'

'How?' Gwen frowned. She wasn't getting it.

'The boy needs isolation, and the alien needs something to make the isolation easier.'

'Just speak bloody English, Jack.'

'Instead of absorbing the vocal cords, it needs to absorb the whole child.'

Gwen felt stunned. 'You can't be serious. How can we let it do that?'

The dark and frustrating eyebrow rose. 'How can we not?'

'Because…' Gwen stepped forward. 'Because he's just a little boy. We need to get him away from that thing and send it back.'

Jack shook his head. 'Don't think of his life in your terms. This is hell for him. And if we send this creature back, then we're condemning it. Can you really live with that?'

'He's right.' Ceri whispered softly. 'It's what Ryan needs. His mother's dead. We haven't seen his father since he came in here. He has no one.' She paused. 'And he hates the world.'

'This is crazy.' Cutler shook his head. 'But it makes a crazy kind of sense.'

Gwen looked at the perfect child, his blond hair stained with his mother's blood, his tiny hands paying the fractured creature more attention than he'd ever given the woman that bore him. She saw the want in those hands, greedily drinking in the creature's dark years of emptiness as his young voice continued to steadily create the aching music so out of place next to the cooling, damaged body.

'It's pulling me back.' The creature gargled the words. 'You have nothing more to fear from me.'

'Tell me.' Jack crouched between them. 'Can you absorb the whole? Can you make the boy part of you? Without killing him?'

The creature nodded.

Jack looked over to Gwen. 'Agreed?'

'Agreed.' And she was. Cutler mumbled his yes, and Gwen didn't have to look at the nurse to know what she thought.

Jack smiled. 'Then do it.' Standing up, he joined Gwen against the wall.

The alien opened the cavern of its mouth and tilted its head backwards, stretching out its thick neck. The fractures in the smooth skull grew wider and Gwen stared, both fascinated and horrified, as its solid form began to disintegrate. Where Ryan's fingers touched its cheek, the chubby childish digits dissolved as they became one with the dark cloud that had only seconds before been a solid form, his particles lighter than the mass of the alien until the two sets danced into one thick cloud. Gwen was sure she saw a light smile tickle his face just before it unravelled.

The dark shadow hovered above them for a perfectly still moment, and then it slid out of the window and was gone, disappearing into the sky, and the Rift, and the universe beyond.

The last strains of 'Pie Jesu' hung in the air like the memory of a taste just out of reach; the ghost of all the music that Ryan had used to hide from the world behind. And then eventually they were left in silence.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly, insisting that the world move relentlessly onward, and finally Jack smiled. 'Now there goes a big step forward in interplanetary relationships.' He winked at Gwen. 'I mean, let's face it. You can't get closer than those two are now.'

'Harkness?' Cutler leaned against the doorframe. Folding his arms across his chest, he nodded towards the nurse. Ceri wandered into the small room, looking out of the smashed window, her face a mask of awe despite the rain falling into her open eyes. 'I think she could use a stiff drink.'

'Oh, trust me, we can do better than that.'

'In the meantime,' said Cutler, pulling his mobile out of his pocket, 'I'll call my team to clean this up. Unless you have any objections?'

'Go ahead. We don't need her for anything.'

Gwen looked down at the glazed, resigned expression on the dead woman's face and wondered what she'd make of this outcome. She hoped she'd be happy for her child. She sighed. Not that it mattered. When you were dead, you were dead. This woman's worries were over.

Turning away, Gwen left the room and its horrific contents behind. It seemed there had been so much death lately. Suddenly she felt the urge to run back to the flat and curl up with Rhys and eat a Chinese takeaway on the sofa and pretend that everything in the world was all right. And, just for a few hours, it would be. Rhys had that effect on her. He might not be the most exciting man on the planet — which Gwen knew for a fact, since she worked for the man that must surely claim that title — but Rhys was the most dependable and he loved her, and at the end of the day what more could she want than that?

Jack squeezed her arm. 'You OK?'

'Yeah.' Clearing the dark cloud from her face, she smiled. 'Yeah. Just glad it's over.'

Leaving Havannah Court Autism Centre behind, for the first time in days Gwen was happy to feel the heavy drops of rain running through her hair.

Jack took a long swallow of his bottled water as the man scraped the bar stool next to his out and sat down.

'I thought you'd stood me up.'

Cutler grinned. He was still in his suit this time; the hour earlier and the mood lighter. 'Are you crazy? Wherever I go, there are phones ringing for me.'

Jack laughed. 'But this time I'm thinking they're all being a little nicer when you answer.'

'Maybe.' Cutler nodded at the barman. 'JD and coke and whatever that piss-water is he's drinking.'

Pushing a ten pound note across the bar, Jack forced Cutler's own cash out of the way. 'I'm getting these.' He looked over at the detective. 'Let's call it a farewell drink.' He paused. 'I take it you are leaving Cardiff? And not to go to the Orkney Islands?'

'You guess right.' Stuffing his money back in his pocket, Cutler leaned forward on the bar. 'I've been called back to London. Seems the stink around me is fading.'

'Congratulations.'

They clinked bottle to glass and the note rang clear around the half-empty bar. 'Thanks. Although congratulations aren't necessary, are they? None of this has anything to do with me.'

Jack watched him thoughtfully. 'But you solved the case and brought an end to the terror of the Cardiff Slasher.'

Cutler laughed. 'Oh yeah. Of course I did.'

'It's in the papers. It must be true. Maria Bruno's husband cracked under the pressure of their debts and her constant put-downs and threats of divorce and murdered his wife, cutting out the organs that were most important to her. But not before he'd practised on a few others first, scouring the streets of Cardiff dressed in a thick black cape, seeking out his victims and monstrously killing them. But his taste for blood had grown too great and, even after the ruthless execution of his own wife, Martin Meloy just couldn't stop.'