Peter Anghelides - Pack Animals

‘We’re out of invisible ink,’ said Toshiko immediately.

‘How can you tell?’ Owen responded. Toshiko and Owen giggled like kids. Ianto said, ‘I am still here, you know.’

Owen smirked. ‘If you’re blushing, mate, no one can tell.’ He pondered the empty space where he thought Ianto was.

‘I’ll see you in the Boardroom,’ snapped Ianto. ‘Even if you won’t see me.’

He jumped down onto the freezing cold mortuary floor and stalked away to the sound of Owen and Toshiko’s laughter.

Gwen sat at the Boardroom table while she waited for everyone to gather. She turned over the few MonstaQuest cards from Rhys’s pack that hadn’t floated off downriver. They had dried out, but were crinkled and discoloured, and they smelled a bit, too. She sniffed her own fingers surreptitiously. Even after a thorough shower, she wasn’t convinced she’d entirely washed away the dank stench of the River Taff. Toshiko would be the first person to notice that, but Toshiko would also be the last person who’d ever want to tell her.

When Toshiko came in, she was fiddling with some bit of alien tech she’d retrieved from the Vaults. As soon as she was seated, she began to tap notes into the table-top computer in preparation for the meeting. The tech was like a squarish PDA with undulating edges, and it sat on the velvet bag from which she’d taken it.

‘You OK?’ Gwen asked her. ‘Owen check you over after your concussion?’

‘Yeah. Yes.’ Fussing made Toshiko embarrassed. ‘How’s Rhys?’

Gwen laughed. ‘Gone home for a hot bath.’ She smiled at the thought of him dripping his way through the November streets, drawing curious looks from passers-by. Just as she had, until she’d found the blessed anonymity of Torchwood’s invisible elevator in Millennium Square. ‘Under the circumstances, I decided it was only fair to let him go to the match later.’ She sniffed her fingers again. ‘What’s keeping the others?’

Toshiko grimaced. ‘They were a bit upset about the mess around their desks.’

‘Not your fault.’

‘You know how house-proud Ianto is. I hardly dare drop biscuit crumbs.’

‘Still, you’ve got a new friend,’ added Gwen.

‘Yes,’ agreed Toshiko. ‘I think I could grow to like that pteranodon after all.’

‘I hate the damn thing,’ said Ianto’s voice from nowhere, yet nearby.

Toshiko startled, and put her hand to her mouth. The chair next to her at the table shifted sideways a little.

‘Well, you’re not the one who has to clear up all the pteranodon crap,’ said Ianto. ‘And what do you mean, “house-proud”?’

Toshiko’s face flushed. She put her hand down again, and tried to sit a little straighter in her chair as she recomposed herself. ‘I’m sorry, Ianto. I forgot you were here.’

Ianto sighed noisily. ‘Time was that I didn’t need to be invisible for that to happen.’

The Boardroom door slid aside. Jack breezed in, propelling his wheelchair with powerful movements. His lap was full of equipment, papers, and assorted objects rescued from the Hub’s main chamber. When he bumped into the edge of the desk, items clattered down onto its polished surface.

‘Quite a mess,’ he grinned. ‘We rescued some bits for the meeting. Couple of unbroken PDAs. Notepads that didn’t get covered in dino-blood.’

‘I’d just cleaned that floor,’ Ianto said. ‘You could have eaten off it.’ There was a distinctive sound that Gwen eventually worked out was Ianto’s stomach rumbling. ‘I could murder a meat feast.’

‘It will not look pretty when you chew it,’ Owen said. ‘And it will look disgusting when you’re digesting it.’

‘So I’m going to starve to death, am I?’ Ianto asked defiantly.

Owen tutted. ‘You’re not going to look pretty if your new cells do become visible.

Jack patted thin air. Gwen wasn’t even sure if Ianto’s head was under the hand, or whether he was kidding around. ‘OK, I’ve changed my mind,’ announced Jack. ‘Ianto, go get some clothes on. Don’t wanna see your organs walking around the Hub like a bag of giblets.’

The empty chair pushed back. ‘So I should go and get dressed now?’

Owen had a wide, pleased grin on his face. ‘Who said you couldn’t in the first place?’

‘OK, let’s review what we’ve got so far.’ Jack picked up a pack of MonstaQuest cards. ‘Multiple alien incursions, all described on these illustrated cards.’ He placed the pack on the desk like he was playing a strange game of solitaire. ‘Weevil in the church of Holy Innocents. Another Weevil attacking a bus full of people.’

Toshiko indicated another card in Jack’s collection. ‘That one there, the bat-creature. That was at the shopping centre.’

‘Ooh, nasty,’ said Jack. ‘That’s a Kiroptan. An omnivore. Lots of teeth, little discrimination.’

Gwen pushed forward the tattered cards she had retrieved from the river. ‘Mahalta. Attacked Rhys’s car. No, no,’ she waved away Jack’s concern. ‘He’s OK.’

‘These names are wrong,’ Owen observed. ‘That one says “Antebellum”, not Mahalta. That Weevil claims to be a “Toothsome”.’

‘Someone’s created these without knowing what they are,’ said Jack.

‘Gareth Portland. Printed them up from his home workshop in Rhiwbina.’

‘Classy,’ smiled Jack.

‘Now out of action,’ continued Gwen, ‘after that convenient fire. Killed his girlfriend and his business at the same time.’

Jack shifted some of the cards around the desk before him. ‘But do these things reflect reality, or do they cause it?’

‘There’s something else,’ Gwen said. She presented several more MonstaQuest illustrations. ‘Element cards. Rain, Snow, Fog, Lightning… Inexplicable real events that we’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours.’

Toshiko punched up a new display on the flat-screen. ‘Spikes of Rift activity correspond to all these locations in that time period. It’s rare to have so many localised peaks of such intensity. One big burst you could understand, plus the usual background leakages. But these are extraordinary. And they map to the freak meteorological manifestations Gwen mentioned.’

Owen frowned. ‘What about the Brakkanee at the zoo? No freak weather. No card. Just coincidence?’

‘I saw one of those cards in the tiger enclosure,’ said Ianto’s voice in the doorway.

They all turned to look.

‘And the whole place was sodden,’ continued Ianto. ‘I heard the keepers talking about a crazy downpour that happened when one of their keepers was killed…’ His voice dropped as he must have seen they were all gaping.

Gwen coughed and apologised. ‘Sorry, Ianto, it’s just…’

‘It’s just you don’t expect to see a suit walking around on its own.’ Ianto’s voice came from just above the neatly knotted tie that encircled the neckline of an empty, maroon-coloured shirt. Give him credit, thought Gwen, he’d made an effort.

The suit pulled out a chair, sat on it, shot the cuffs of its shirt, and placed its sleeves on the desk. ‘So, these cards. Too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’ The sleeves seemed to draw Jack’s pack of MonstaQuest cards across the desk and started to riffle through them in mid air.

Toshiko was displaying more screens of analysis. Gwen’s heart sank a little. Toshiko loved her histograms and her pie charts, but sometimes it was like she was lost in the detail and missing the obvious. After listening to her explain the statistics, Gwen interrupted: ‘So, what you’re saying is that there’s been an increase in alien incursions around Cardiff, but that the Weevil attacks have increased most of all. Even in places where we didn’t get them before?’