David Llewellyn - Trace Memory

'It was like this once,' said Michael, 'in the future. I knew they'd come for me again, I knew it.'

Eventually they reached the top of the building, and a locked doorway that led out onto the roof.

'Stand back,' said Jack, and as Michael turned away and shielded his eyes Jack riddled the lock and the door with a dozen bullets. The lock exploded and the door was kicked open by the impact.

'Come on!' said Jack, running through the door and out onto the rooftop of the warehouse. Michael followed.

'What now?' Michael asked. 'Where can we go?'

'I hadn't actually thought that far ahead,' said Jack.

He ran to the edge of the building, looking down at the wasteland and the road between the warehouses. The Russians were swarming out of the building, yelling and screaming at one another. The Vondrax were following, picking them off one by one. Flames licked out of the shattered windows on lower floors, and somewhere in the depths of the building there was the menacing rumble of another explosion.

'Are we trapped?' asked Michael.

Jack ran to the other side of the roof and, looking down, saw a cliff-like sheer drop into the sea. They were too high up to jump and survive, and the water would be cold.

Michael followed him to the edge and looked down. 'We are trapped,' he said.

'Yes,' said a voice from the other side of the roof, and both Jack and Michael turned to see Tatiana, standing at the doorway, holding up her rifle. 'You are both quite trapped.'

'It's over Tatiana,' said Jack. 'Your men are dying. Those creatures are destroying everything.'

'But not you…' said Tatiana. 'They can't destroy you. I saw what you did to the others. You're different, Jack. And all I have to do is kill the boy and those creatures will go away…'

Jack stood in front of Michael.

'I won't let you do that,' he said. 'Tatiana… Face it. It's over.'

Tatiana lifted the rifle, gazing down its sights, and smiled but, before she could so much as pull the trigger, there was a terrible wet, ripping sound, and she was torn violently in half at the waist. As the two halves of her body were thrown in different directions, Jack saw three Vondrax, their lips curled back in sneers, needle teeth chattering frantically.

Michael turned away, and looking down over the edge of the building he saw the moon reflected on the surface of the sea.

'They don't like mirrors,' he said. 'It's something Cromwell said… in the future. He said they don't like mirrors.'

'What do you mean?' said Jack.

'The water…' said Michael, pointing at the sea.

'No…' said Jack, shaking his head. 'If you jump from here you'll die.'

Michael nodded. 'I know.'

Jack shook his head again. 'No… no… You can't do that.'

'It's only over when I die,' said Michael. 'Cromwell told me that. And Valentine. If I die, this… this thing that they want… it goes. It'll be over.'

Across the rooftop the Vondrax were drawing closer with spider-like movements, their shapes transforming from suited humanoid figures into something bizarre and grotesque; reptilian scales appearing on their skin and writhing tendrils bursting from their torsos.

'I have to,' said Michael. 'I'm tired of this, now. I want this to be over.'

Jack pulled him close, holding him as tight as he could. In that moment, it was as if a part of him had always known Michael, as if their lives were in some way entwined for ever. He wanted the words of Cromwell and Valentine to be lies, just something they'd said, but he knew deep down that they weren't.

Michael pulled away from Jack and nodded. It was the only way. He climbed up onto the wall, and looked down at the vertiginous drop, and then out toward the sea and the lights of distant ships.

'The Land of Horaizan,' he said, smiling softly.

'What's that?' asked Jack.

'It's something this little girl asked me,' said Michael. 'She asked me if I was from the Land of Horaizan. I thought she meant "horizon", but now I'm not so sure. Jack… What's dying like?'

Jack climbed up onto the wall beside him, and held Michael's hand.

'I wish I knew,' he said.

Together they fell nine storeys, a moment that to Michael seemed stretched out into infinity, a moment when he was always falling, when his whole life had been little more than a descent. They crashed through the surface of the water in an embrace and plunged deep down into the black sea, deeper and deeper until the light from the surface was barely strong enough for them to look into each other's eyes. Michael smiled, briefly, and then breathed out, his last breath rising to the surface in a volcanic storm of bubbles. Jack did likewise, and moments later they died in each other's arms.

The black Land-Rover ground to a halt before the burning ruins of the Hamilton's Sugar warehouse, the magnetic blue beacon light still flashing on its roof. As Cromwell stepped out of the vehicle, he saw that the place had already been swept by the army, something he was far from happy about, but then there was no plan in place for this. Tonight had taken them all by surprise.

It was embarrassing, truth be told, that a KVI substation could be in operation only a mile and a half from Torchwood and them not know about it. How long had this place been operational?

The few surviving Russians had already been cleared from the site, taken away in armoured cars by the ground crew, while a fire team now worked at putting out the flaming ruins. Cromwell guessed that the whole site would be one big waste ground within a few hours, all evidence of the events that had taken place that night taken away for analysis or bulldozed into the sea. The incident at Hamilton's Sugar would never have happened. At least not officially.

Pausing to light a cigarette as he surveyed the destruction, Cromwell turned to the woman who had driven the Land-Rover; a tall brunette in a black miniskirt and leather jacket. She was already taking readings, walking around the rubble and the patches of blood where bodies had been, pretending not to notice the lustful looks from some of the soldiers.

'Lucy?' said Cromwell. 'Anything?'

'Nothing,' Lucy replied. 'They're gone.'

'All of them?'

She nodded.

Cromwell took a long drag on his cigarette and shook his head.

'So much death,' he said.

He was walking towards the edge of the quayside when two soldiers approached him, carrying a covered body on a stretcher.

'Sir, Captain Turner said you might want to see this,' said the first, indicating the body.

Cromwell nodded, took another drag on his cigarette, and lifted the sheet. Though covered in blood and ash, one side of the face partly staved in by falling masonry, it was the scar that identified the corpse. Valentine was dead.

'So it goes,' said Cromwell. 'Goodbye, Mr Valentine. Take him away, boys. Do with him what you will.'

Cromwell sat, a little awkwardly, on one of the mooring posts on the edge of the dock. Age, he felt, was starting to creep up on him. There had been a time, which didn't feel so long ago, when he would have been the one running around the ruins, noting every last detail, taking readings. He'd have shrugged off, or at least blocked out, the more gruesome details, like the pools of blood or the recognisable fragments of tissue and bone. Those days were leaving him now. How much more of this did he have left in him? Five years? Ten?

His moment's contemplation was interrupted by the sound of splashing water. He turned around suddenly, and looking down at the sea saw a figure emerging from the surface. It was a man, a man who gripped a rusting ladder with both hands and pulled himself, gasping as if in pain, up onto the edge of the dock. For a moment he lay there, on his side, coughing up water and simply staring into space, as if his mind were a million miles away.