Trevor Baxendale - Something in the Water

Jack yanked open the door of the SUV. He looked over the top of the car at Owen. ‘Initial assessment?’

‘I’ll know more when I’ve had a chance to look at Big Guy properly.’

Jack started the SUV up and reversed it across the warehouse, close to the tanks. Together they dragged Big Guy into the back of the car and closed the hatch.

When they finally climbed back into the front seats, both men were breathing hard and bone weary. Owen was soaking wet, and he could still smell the stagnant water. Mixed with the ripe odour of dead Weevil, it was enough to make him nauseous.

Jack drove out into the night and the start of a heavy downpour. The windscreen wipers started to dig holes in the rain automatically.

‘At least we know what it isn’t,’ Owen said after a while. ‘It isn’t a Weevil — or a velociraptor.’

‘Great, that narrows it right down: there’s only a hundred billion other kinds of alien it could be. Tell you what, make out a list when we get back to the Hub and we’ll work it out by a process of elimination.’

Owen sulked, too cold, hungry and tired to think of a good enough retort. Worse still, his head felt muzzy and there was a sneeze brewing. He let it out with an explosive yell, earning him another disgusted look from Jack.

‘Great,’ Owen muttered. ‘Now I’ve caught a cold.’

‘Well, hey, at least you caught something.’

Gwen Cooper put the back of her hand across her mouth in an attempt to hide the oncoming yawn. It was a hopeless task: the yawn was too big and too wide. Nothing could have disguised it.

‘Got you,’ said Toshiko Sato with satisfaction. ‘You lose.’

‘Sod it.’ Gwen rubbed her face with her hands and then threw her thick black hair back from her face in an effort to sharpen up. ‘It’s not fair, anyway. You never yawn. I’ve never seen you yawn, not once, ever.’

They were sitting at a table in a motorway service station. It was almost deserted, but they had agreed to pull in and grab some caffeine before one or both of them nodded off in the car. They’d sat down with two large Americanos, and the yawning competition had started.

‘What are we doing here, anyway?’ Gwen asked, blowing into the foam on her coffee.

‘Well,’ said Toshiko with some enthusiasm, ‘the way I like to see it, we’re investigating specific chronon discharge in the area. The Rift’s been fluctuating so much recently, and this seems to be a focal point for some of the more obvious temporal spasms. Jack’s doing the same thing near the city centre.’

Gwen blinked at her. ‘I was speaking philosophically.’

‘Ah.’ Toshiko had already taken out one of her scanning instruments, ready to demonstrate. She smiled quickly and returned it to her bag. ‘Philosophy. Not my strong point. Quantum physics and Stephen Hawking, yes. Metaphysics and Plato, not so much.’

Gwen rested her chin in one hand. ‘Rhys once told me that, from the moment we’re born, we’re all on a collision course with death.’

‘If that’s philosophy then I’ll stick with Hawking.’

‘I think he read it somewhere in a novel. That’s why he’s in haulage, not philosophy. But it’s true, though, when you think about it. We’re all going to die some day.’

‘Well, all of us except Captain Jack Harkness, it seems.’

Gwen nodded slowly. ‘The exception that proves the rule.’

Toshiko thought about it for a while. ‘I suppose it does mean that one day, for the rest of us, we really will breathe our last breath. Say our last word. Think our last thought …’

‘The final act.’

‘You sort of stop thinking about it in our line of work,’ Toshiko said. ‘We’ve each faced “the final act” so many times, it just becomes-’

‘Part of the routine?’

‘-an occupational hazard.’

‘I had that already in the police,’ Gwen mused. ‘Rhys used to worry about it a lot. God knows what he would think if he knew what I did now.’ She stared into space for a long moment. ‘Poor Rhys …’

‘This is getting too maudlin,’ Toshiko warned. ‘A motorway services at midnight is no place to think these thoughts. You and Rhys are fine, you’re strong, you’re getting married. It’s good that you have a life outside Torchwood. None of the rest of us have that, not really.’

‘I suppose.’ Gwen sat up straight, brushed her thick black hair away from her face. ‘OK, non-philosophical question: what are we doing here, exactly? Something about chronic somethings, wasn’t it?’

Toshiko smiled patiently. ‘Chronons are discrete particles of time. The Rift has been throwing them out like little sparks for some time. I don’t know if it’s anything to do with the recent time shift with 1918 but …’ Her smiled faded, just a little, as she remembered what it had taken to put things right then. The final act, once again. She looked down at her coffee and said nothing.

‘Hey,’ Gwen reached out, squeezed her hand. ‘Chronon particles. Tell me more.’

Toshiko blinked, shook her head and considered the subject. ‘It’s not easy to explain. I’ve been monitoring the fluctuations in the Rift. I don’t know if it’s some sort of natural adjustment, like an aftershock or a hiccup, or whether something else is directly affecting it. But the results are plain to see: tiny threads of temporal activity all over the region, spreading out much further than usual.’ She sipped her coffee, licked the tiny line of froth from her lip. ‘Which is why we’ve ended up here, I suppose …’

‘Chasing ghosts,’ Gwen smiled. ‘Strange sightings in the mists near Newport … Spookiness in Splott …’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Who ya gonna call?’

‘Torchwood!’

They laughed and then quickly stopped, embarrassed at their loudness. It was gone midnight and there were only three other customers here. One of those looked like a vagrant; baggy black cords, trainers, old parka with the hood up. As Gwen looked the old guy over, he suddenly turned his head towards her and she visibly flinched. He had dark eyes but she could see them clearly in the shadows of his hood, almost burning like coals.

‘What’s up?’ asked Toshiko.

Gwen shrugged. ‘I dunno; just getting jumpy I suppose. I was checking out that old guy and he caught me eyeballing him.’

Toshiko sneaked a look, took in the scruffy coat, scratchy grey beard and dark, dangerous eyes. The fingers which poked out of the sleeves of the parka were grubby, and there were big smudgy thumbprints on his tea mug, visible even from here. As Toshiko watched, the man dredged up some phlegm from the back of his throat and spat it out into the cup.

Toshiko turned back to Gwen and leaned in, talking quietly. ‘Well,’ she said slowly and carefully, ‘maybe he fancies you.’

Gwen barked out a loud, unladylike laugh, and the four other people in the cafe all looked up. ‘Tosh, that is just — eww, no!’ Gwen screwed up her face and tried not to laugh again.

‘Don’t look now,’ smiled Toshiko, ‘but he’s still watching you …’

‘No, you’re wrong,’ Gwen argued, grinning. ‘He’s watching you. Hey, I think you’re in there, Tosh!’

The man was going through another series of coughs. Too many fags. Gwen drained her coffee, stood up and collected her bag, slinging it over a shoulder. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’

Toshiko nodded in the old man’s direction. ‘What about …?’

‘You can have him if you like. He’s not my type.’

‘Too dirty?’

‘Not dirty enough.’

Laughing raucously again, the two women headed for the exit. Toshiko held out her hand and asked Gwen for the car keys. ‘You’re too tired to drive. I’ll take us back.’