David Llewellyn - Trace Memory

'This is our gathering,' said Hugo.

'These?' Jack said, laughing. '

These are your friends?'

'They are,' said Hugo, flaring his nostrils. 'And what of it, Jack?'

'How old are you all?' asked Jack. 'Twenty? Twenty-one?

I was expecting… Well, I don't know what I was expecting, but this? Beatniks? You've brought me here to meet a group of beatniks?'

'We're not beatniks, actually,' said a young man in a black polo-neck sweater with a peace sign pendant around his neck. 'We're revolutionaries.'

'Oh,' said Jack, 'you're revolutionaries.

Well, excuse me, but this is one revolution that most definitely won't be televised.'

Hugo and the people around the table frowned.

'We know things,' said the man with the peace sign pendant. 'There are eye-witness testimonies. Albion Hospital, London, in 1941. Maidens Point in 1943. The Torchwood Estate in 1879.'

'Torchwood…' said Michael.

Jack turned to face him. 'You know that name?'

Michael nodded.

'We could continue,' said the woman in the beads. 'St Teilo's Hospital, 1918; Cardiff, 1869; the so-called "fairies" of Roundstone Woods… All evidence of paranormal activities and extraterrestrial visitors to this planet. All officially denied or debunked by Her Majesty's Government.'

'Well there's your answer, then,' said Jack. 'Denied and debunked. Did it ever occur to you that none of those things mean anything? That people might just be making stuff up?'

The people around the table laughed.

'Oh, come, come, Jack,' said Hugo. 'What use is there in denying it any further when you know that my friends here are telling the truth? There have been many unexplained goings-on this last century. Strange things that defy all logic, unless one applies an open and analytical mind to them. You, for example, Jack.'

'You're wearing very well for a man who must be, what, a hundred and twenty?' said the man with the pendant.

'OK,' said Jack, 'so just assuming you guys are onto something, what purpose does any of this serve?'

'We're here for the truth, Jack,' said Hugo. 'The British Government has made a number of important scientific — not to mention philosophical and political — discoveries this last hundred years. Discoveries it has kept a secret from the public, and from our neighbouring nations.'

'With good reason,' said Jack, coldly.

'Oh really?' said Hugo. 'And so it is down to the upper echelons to decide what is and isn't in the best interests of the country? Of the world? Come on, Jack, do you really believe that? I always thought you were a little more rebellious than that. You never seemed the Queen and Country sort. Well, certainly not the Country sort, anyway.'

'It's not about Queen and Country,' said Jack. 'Nobody benefits from knowing every secret there is. There would be mass panic. Confusion. Some things are best unknown.'

'Like weapons, Jack?' said Hugo.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'These visitors haven't always come unarmed. They don't always "come in peace", as it were. And who gets to keep all those wonderful new gadgets and gizmos that they bring here? Are they disposed of, perhaps? Or are they stored, examined, and put towards the efforts of a belligerent few in the name of preserving their interests? Hardly seems like protecting lives then, does it, Jack? How many devices capable of killing hundreds, maybe thousands of people have been dismantled and redesigned by our clandestine organisations? How many new bombs that could put Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the shade have benefited from a little extraterrestrial help? One shudders to think.'

'So what are you going to do?' asked Jack. 'Talk to the newspapers? You know they won't listen.'

Hugo laughed. It was genuine and confident enough to make Jack feel uneasy.

'The press?' said Hugo. 'The venerable fourth estate?

Oh please, Jack, don't make me laugh. The papers have little time for real news any more. They're too busy telling us about George Best and Brigitte Bardot to ever give us the cold, hard truth. No… There really is no point in us contacting the press with the information that we have. Better, I think, to level the playing field. When the Americans first developed the atom bomb, there were, thankfully, brave souls willing to transfer the information to their counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain. It is that information, Jack, which has prevented a holocaust that would make every massacre and genocide of the twentieth century so far look like a teddy bear's picnic. If both sides are so devastatingly armed, who dares fire the first shot? We intend to do likewise with any other-worldly information and technology that our authorities have.'

Now Jack laughed.

'And how are you going to do that?' he asked. 'What information do you have? What technology? You and your beatnik… I'm sorry… revolutionary friends are going to write to Kosygin and tell him you've heard some stories about flying saucers and little green men? That's great, Hugo. Really… That's hilarious.'

'We don't need to give them information or technology,' said Hugo, his smile fading to a cold sneer. 'We can give them you.'

Jack stopped laughing. From either side of the stage at the far end of the ballroom, men in heavy coats appeared, each carrying a gun. Jack turned to what he thought might be their only exit and saw more men entering the ballroom.

Leading the men was an incredibly tall woman with jet black hair and intensely green lupine eyes, dressed in a long black leather coat and knee-high boots; a sense of innate style marred only by the Kalashnikov strapped to her side. She walked across the ballroom, smiling malevolently at Jack and, when she was merely inches away, and towering over him, Hugo introduced them.

'Tatiana, this is Captain Jack Harkness. Jack, this is Tatiana Rogozhin. She's with the Committee for Extraterrestrial Research, or the KVI, as it's known in Moscow. They are very interested in you, Jack. Very interested indeed.'

'You come with us,' said Tatiana.

Jack looked back at Michael, who was now surrounded by men with guns. He'd asked him to run, but it was too late now. He could run alone, of course. They could shoot him, and those bullets would have little or no effect, but that would still leave Michael. They were trapped.

'Now, Tatiana,' said Hugo. 'I know it might be rather vulgar of me to bring this up right now, but there is the matter of our payment. An organisation like ours doesn't run itself, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, and-'

Hugo didn't have the chance to finish the sentence. Tatiana turned on her heels, placing the barrel of the Kalashnikov under his chin, and fired a single shot up through his head in the blinking of an eye. Hugo's skull burst open with a sickening wet crunch, and his body slumped to the ground.

Around the table the self-proclaimed revolutionaries started screaming, getting to their feet and running for the exits. It was over in seconds, as each one was cut down in a streaming hail of gunfire from the foot soldiers. Tatiana turned to Jack once more.

'You come with us.'

The black Ford Transit sped through Tiger Bay in the pale blue light of the waning moon. Jack and Michael sat in the back, flanked on each side by Tatiana and her men, while in front and behind motorcycle outriders formed a convoy that snaked its way around the twisted narrow roads between the warehouses.

'You know something,' said Michael, smiling weakly, 'I'm starting to think monsters aren't that scary.'

Jack smiled back. 'You've got a point,' he said.

'Quiet,' said Tatiana. 'You'll talk later. When we tell you to.'

The van juddered to a halt, wheels crunching against gravel, and the back doors swung open.