Gary Russell - The Twilight Streets

Jack crawled over to the water tower. He realised that Toshiko was there with him, tears flowing down her cheeks. As they hit the base of the tower together, Jack shoved his hand into the burning Manipulator, ignoring the pain as his finger burned and blistered, melted flesh and bone.

He screamed as Toshiko grabbed him, held him, sobbing her apologies.

‘Not your fault,’ he gasped, every breath pure agony.

‘Theirs.’

And they both watched as the Dark sped towards them.

And Jack wrenched everything out of the Manipulator.

The staff at St Helen’s Hospital were in panic. All the power in the hospital had cut out and no one knew why. Then they felt the ground shake, as windows exploded and a hundred car alarms in the car park roared into life.

Gwen Williams convulsed as the Torchwood equipment designed to extract the baby from within her failed.

Unseen by the doctors and nurses, a tiny cloud of Dark light emerged from Gwen’s mouth as she screamed. It vanished immediately in a silent explosion, dying before it could find a new host.

A couple of nurses went into professional overdrive, immediately preparing Gwen for a caesarean.

Rhys was beside her.

An hour later, Rhys Williams held Geraint Williams Junior in his arms, singing Welsh rugby songs to him.

Gwen, smiling and exhausted, had just come round.

‘What happened, Rhys?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember much of anything. Like a fog has been lifted.’

Rhys took her hand. ‘There was an explosion, love, at the heart of Cardiff.Terrible – a whole section of the city has gone, there’s just a crater.’

And Gwen looked at him as memories flooded back.

She cried for half an hour. The nurses took the baby to the nursery while Rhys looked after his wife.

every so often, she’d say, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing or thinking,’ and ‘I let them control me,’ and ‘I’m so sorry,’ but Rhys didn’t care. He had his wife back and safe and alive and well and a perfectly healthy baby.

He did though have things to say to her when she was calmer. Two things in fact.

First that, lovely as Geraint was as a first name, he thought Jack Ianto Geraint Williams was a better choice. Then he said something she’d never forget.

‘Torchwood, as we knew it, has gone, love. Jack, Ianto, Owen and Toshiko, gone. But there still needs to be a Torchwood of sorts. Someone’s got to carry on doing what you lot did.

‘So you and me, yeah? Together. And we’ll find more people: new Tosh, new Owen. And we’ll make this place safe again. Somewhere safe for the baby to grow up.’

And Gwen hugged him harder than ever before.

The bucket hit the ground with a loud crash, and coins spilled everywhere over the road.

Gwen Cooper awoke from whatever dream she’d had with a gasp.

She could see people around her, clown faces on all of them. Not just the street performers but what appeared to be normal members of the public. Bits of the last few hours juddered into her mind, and she remembered that the plan was to lure people here, to get the Light inside them… for safekeeping. Just a race of alien life forms that needed temporary hosting, until their own habitat became available again.

Something about a diary. And Bilis Manger. He was their… friend?

And that awful future world where she’d been infected by Dark light… and Torchwood had tried to dominate Earth and been destroyed.

‘Jack!’ Gwen yelled at the top of her voice.

Everyone else in the street turned and looked at her.

As one, they marched towards her, card players throwing cards at cars and doors where they stuck, a mime imitating her every move as she made it.

And the people, the average normal people, their movements jerky as if they were trying not to let themselves be moved along by whatever it was that made their eyes shine.

That was all scary enough. But it was nothing to the dozen or so standing to one side, watching her like the others but through eyes that were pitch black, dead almost.

And Gwen knew that Dark light, knew it from the vision of the future. It had been inside her, made her turn away from Jack, from Torchwood and very nearly from Rhys and her baby.

Baby. My God, would she and Rhys have kids one day?

Yes. Yes they would. Yes, she was going to get married, and Torchwood would survive, and there was no way she’d let Owen and Toshiko fall to this Dark light, whatever it was. Because the future was not cast in stone, it was malleable, fluid.

Somehow, they’d been given a chance to make sure this didn’t happen. That’s why Bilis had put the Light inside her. A forewarning.

She had to find Owen and Toshiko, warn them and…

Oh.

She looked again at the Dark light people. The clown to the left. The golden statue woman in the kimono.

Shit.

The clown was Owen.

The statue was Toshiko.

Was it too late?

She tried to sidestep the crowd, but they seemed to anticipate her every move… But they weren’t attacking her, they were actually making her walk back down the street, towards the place where she and Ianto had met Bilis.

Where he had put the Light inside her.

Oh my God, they weren’t threatening her, they were keeping her apart from the Dark light group. From Owen and Toshiko.

She didn’t need to go forward, she needed to go where they were herding her.

And again, as she turned and ran, not entirely sure where she was going, she yelled out, really, really loudly, ‘Jack!’

In 6 Coburg Street, Jack was sitting in the armchair, and Ianto was crouching down beside him.

Bilis Manger stood by the window, arms behind his back, a gun pressed against his head by Idris Hopper. Well, not so much pressed as jabbing him like an insect, thanks to Idris’s shaking hands. Holding a gun wasn’t something the average Secretary to the Mayor’s Office did on a daily basis.

‘Jack!’

They all heard Gwen’s voice from outside.

Jack looked up at Ianto. ‘Let her in.’ He then nodded to Idris, who gratefully lowered the gun and handed it over to Jack.

A second later, Ianto came back into the room, with Gwen close behind him.

She looked about her. ‘Nice place you have here, Bilis. Decorate it yourself?’

Jack and Idris exchanged confused looks.

‘Ah,’ Bilis said. ‘Perception filters. Useful things, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

He clicked his fingers and they were inside a shop. Bilis’s clock shop. A Stitch in Time. Outside, people were walking down a Cardiff arcade, staring at other shops.

He clicked his fingers a second time, and the room became Coburg Street again, although clearly this was a surprise to Gwen.

‘The place takes on an appearance that seems familiar. It shows you an environment where you might expect to find me. Gwen, here, associates me with clocks, as did Ms Sato. Hence the shop we met in once before. The rest of you expected to see the insides of an old Victorian two-up two-down, and that’s what you got.’ He smiled at Jack. ‘Or did you see something else?’

Jack smiled back. ‘That’d be telling.’

Bilis nodded. ‘We have so much in common, you and I. A shame we find ourselves on opposing sides. Nine times out of ten.’

‘Jack,’ Gwen cut across them. ‘The people outside, they’re inhabited by Rift aliens, the-’

‘Light, yeah we know,’ Ianto finished. ‘Providing hosts until we can get them home.’

‘Then we got it all wrong,’ Gwen said. She turned and pointed at Bilis. ‘He’s not the enemy.’

‘This time.’ Bilis bowed. ‘Well, I’m just saying what you’re all thinking.’

‘We have to get Tosh and Owen back,’ said Jack. ‘I have a plan, but I need them at the Hub.’