Gary Russell - The Twilight Streets

Ianto joined her.

‘I really, really hate heights, me,’ Gwen said.

‘You should go on a date with him,’ Ianto said, jerking a thumb in Jack’s direction. ‘To him, up on a place like this, that’s a great night out. But when I suggested a rollercoaster once, oh no, that was a death-trap apparently.’

Gwen laughed.

Then she stopped and looked Ianto in the eye. ‘What happens now, Ianto? We saw the future.’

‘We saw a future. A future corrupted by this Dark light stuff. In a few minutes, it’ll be gone and that future won’t happen.’

‘How will Owen and Tosh get over this?’

‘They will. Tosh will feel guilty and get introspective. Owen will never mention it again. That’s their way of dealing. You?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘You’re right. I’ll ignore it. And I’ll tell Rhys that if I ever get pregnant, we’ll have a home birth. Or go to Spain.’

‘Guys? Please!’ That was Jack.

‘Jack?’ And that was Tosh. ‘I’m ready wheneveryou are.’

Jack pointed at the box of electronics at the foot of the mast and the thin wires attaching it to the aerial. ‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’

‘Residual energy from last night’s activity… connected. It works, Jack, it works!’ Toshiko coughed slightly. ‘Sorry. Rift… activating… now!’

And, sure enough, above their heads, Jack, Gwen and Ianto watched the crimson ribbon of the Rift flare into existence, now bereft of extraneous light creatures.

‘Hooray for us,’ muttered Ianto.

Jack was at the electrics, twisting the dial Tosh had set up.

Gradually, above their heads, the Rift began to fluctuate. The ribbon of energy moved, until it was in a direct line from the top of Stadium House to the area of Tretarri.

‘Now Bilis, now!’ snapped Jack.

‘He’s gone,’ Owen confirmed from the Hub.

Wharf Street, Tretarri.

A spike of Rift energy stabbed into the new concrete, and all the lights exploded. Bilis ignored the flying glass. Another ribbon of energy connected with the ground, earthing itself. The windows in every house exploded outwards, but still Bilis refused to let it affect him.

Ianto pointed west. They watched a streak of Dark light rising upwards.

‘Well, that’ll be Idris I guess,’ Gwen said.

Jack tweaked the dials on the box. ‘Let’s hope we’re in time,’ he muttered.

And another thin black spike of raw Dark energy speared up, this one from below, shooting past them and into the Rift energy ribbon.

Ianto watched and saw the assembled citizens drop to the ground one by one, as the Dark light fled their host bodies, hungry for Rift energy.

After a minute, once the last person had dropped, the Dark light stopped pouring up.

‘We’re done, Tosh.’

Bilis raised the diary and began flicking through the pages faster and faster. The light creatures were escaping from the ink and being drawn into the safety of the Rift energy and back under the ground, to keep whatever existed beneath the surface caged. Their eternal task.

He noticed the face of Greg Bishop, momentarily etched amongst the lights in the Rift ribbon. It seemed… serene.

One day he might tell Jack Harkness about that.

Then again…

‘Oi, Bilis,’ someone shouted.

He looked up. Idris Hopper was rushing out of 6 Coburg Street, no sign of the Dark in him now. ‘What’s going on?’

Then Idris hit the ground. The street was shaking and, one after another, the houses of Tretarri began to crumble. The roads were splitting asunder; building after building collapsed in upon itself.

After a few moments, it was all over. The whole site was nothing more than rubble and dust.

Bilis knelt down to the ground, quite effortlessly for a man of his apparent age. He gently pushed his hand into the cracked roadway and retrieved some grey ashes.

He sniffed them, then smiled. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wooden box, identical to the one back at the Hub, currently filling up with the imprisoned Dark. He opened the box and deposited the grey ash inside it.

Snapping the box shut, Bilis Manger smiled and stood up again. He straightened his cravat and brushed the glass and detritus from his jacket.

‘Goodbye Jack,’ he said quietly. ‘Until the next battle, of course.’

And he vanished into space or time or wherever it was he came from.

The diary flopped to the broken-up ground, just an old empty book.

A few flames licked up from the torn roadway, where electrical cables had been damaged. Thirty seconds later, Tretarri and the diary had combined into one massive funeral pyre to the past.

At the Hub, Toshiko was monitoring the Rift, noting the new energy racing through it, energy she’d never seen before. And hoped she never would again.

Energy that, she knew all too well, could destroy the future.

She glanced up at Bilis’s wooden box in the base of the Rift Manipulator embedded in the water tower. The box seemed to be growing darker by the second.

And then the last blink of Dark energy was gone from the Rift. She closed the connection, ignoring the shower of sparks as her computer fried.

‘Now!’ she barked at Owen.

‘Always me has to do the dangerous stuff,’ he muttered as he ran across the Hub to the tower.

‘We make a good team,’ Toshiko murmured, more to herself than to Owen.

If he heard, he said nothing. He just slammed the lid down, turned the key and yanked the box out. ‘What now?’

‘Jack?’

Jack’s voice came out of the ether. ‘Now we get some sleep.’

‘What about this box?’ asked Owen, but there was no reply.

‘Perhaps you should sit on it till they get back here?’ laughed Toshiko.

Owen gave her a look that suggested that he didn’t find the idea that funny.

Gwen knelt in front of the rubble of Tretarri and let some of it sift through her hands. She spotted a half-melted collection bucket a few paces away.

‘I remember that,’ she said. ‘But the rest of it’s fading. I can’t remember the future scenario much at all now.’

Ianto opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it. ‘No,’ he said, surprised. ‘Me neither.’

‘Jack?’

Their leader just gave his whitest smile. ‘I don’t dream, remember?’ he said.

‘I wonder where Bilis Manger is now,’ Ianto looked around.

‘Who cares,’ Jack said. ‘We could still write what we know about him and his motives on the back of a postage stamp. Not sure I like that.’

‘Well, some poor bastard at City Hall is going to have fun explaining this,’ said a voice behind them.

Jack didn’t turn around, just smiled. ‘Idris Hopper. Saviour of the City of Cardiff.’

‘And it won’t be me.’

Gwen smiled at him. ‘Oh go on, they might make you Mayor!’

Idris shook his head. ‘Tell me, Gwen. Jack told me that his amnesia pills didn’t work on you. Is it true?’

Gwen was slightly stumped at this. ‘Um, well, not exactly. I mean, they would have I think, but something in my head snapped and I broke through them.’

‘One in 800,000, Idris.’ Jack took a bottle of pills out of his pocket. ‘I just happen to be standing here with the only two I know of. Why?’

‘Give me one Jack. Please. A really, really strong dosage. I want to wake up tomorrow not remembering any of this. Or you lot. No disrespect, Gwen, Ianto, but me and Torchwood. Don’t really want to know.’

‘Might not work,’ Gwen said. ‘No matter what strength.’

Idris shrugged. ‘Another risk worth taking. Let’s face it, if I’m knocking on your door in twenty-four hours, asking for a slice of pizza and a look at a Weevil, then you need to go back to your chemistry labs, Jack.’