Peter Anghelides - Another Life

‘You sound impressed.’

‘Wouldn’t you be? For fun, she works with a charity for blind ex-Service personnel on hundred-metre dives at Dahab in the Red Sea.’

‘I bet she’s kind to animals, too,’ said Megan. ‘And you got all this by researching her Army records?’

‘She has no significant financial commitments, sometimes rents a small place in Porthcawl because it’s handy for scuba diving. Her credit record is OK. No overdraft. She pays off her Visa on time, in full, every month-’

‘Hang on, Owen! You don’t get that sort of information from a quick search on the Internet!’

‘That’s every month, without notable exceptions,’ continued Owen relentlessly. ‘And the Visa bill’s rarely more than three hundred quid, except when she bought herself some specialist diving equipment. So it’s got to have been something really unusual, something outside the control of this brave and resourceful and organised woman, to cause her to go AWOL twenty-three days ago, wouldn’t you think?’

Megan had her head in her hands now. ‘How can you know all this?’ She considered Owen, perhaps seeing him differently yet again this evening. ‘I don’t even have to ask really, do I? And all that stuff about the sniper incident and her injuries… maybe that’s why she’s coped so well with her wounds tonight. But hang on, you’re not shooting at her, Torchwood doesn’t want to kill her. So who does?’

Owen pondered the question. In the ensuing silence, he could hear that Applegate’s breathing had changed. She was snuffling, short staccato snorts that soon turned into coughing.

Megan moved swiftly to the bedside and calmed Applegate, who was struggling with the oxygen mask.

‘Have you been awake for long?’ Owen asked her from the foot of the bed.

Applegate peered at him, waiting for the cough to subside. ‘For a few minutes. Just long enough to hear your very kind biography of me. Not to mention your routine as my new independent financial advisor.’ She raised a wavering hand to dismiss Owen’s attempt to explain. ‘I don’t need you to say where you got that information. Unlike your colleague here…?’

‘Dr Tegg. I’m supervising your treatment. Please call me Megan.’

‘Owen Harper. Dr Owen Harper, actually.’

Applegate had composed herself a little more now. ‘Unlike Megan here, I do know about Torchwood. Because it was Torchwood who tried to kill me.’ Her brown eyes glittered at him. ‘So one way or another, Dr Harper, you’ve located me just in time.’

Now that Sandra Applegate was fully conscious, Owen and Megan raised the back of her hospital bed so that she could sit up more comfortably. Owen checked the monitors again, satisfying himself that their patient was stable. She was still very pale, though not the deathly grey colour he’d seen earlier. Her gestures were getting stronger, and her voice no longer wavered when she spoke.

‘Your colleagues made a mistake, Dr Harper. They didn’t know I needed Torchwood’s help.’

‘Guess how often we hear that, Sandra.’ Owen scraped his chair nearer to the bed. ‘So, what’s your story?’

His tone was light, unthreatening. He watched the tension drain away from Sandra, and her face seemed to brighten. ‘They made a mistake. Oh, I mean, I can understand it, don’t get me wrong. I’d gone back to the flat for one last attempt to talk Guy out of his stupid plans… But he wasn’t there, and they thought I was working with Tony and Guy.’

‘The hairdressers?’ frowned Owen.

Sandra rolled her eyes at him. ‘Tony Bee and Guy Wildman. My diving buddies. So I don’t blame your colleagues, it wasn’t their fault, really.’

‘You’re very forgiving, for someone who we shot.’

‘When I tell you what I’ve been through, you won’t think that.’

Owen smiled reassuringly. ‘I’m hard to surprise.’

Sandra’s eyes flickered between Owen and Megan, as though quickly assessing their mood. Then she closed them, and drew in a deep and shuddering breath, before releasing it like a slowly deflating tyre.

‘It started,’ she began, ‘when we took our scuba-diving trip out in the Bay. If we’re diving locally, we usually take a boat out of Porthcawl, maybe get out as far as Lundy Island to see the puffins and grey seals. But Guy could only take a short weekend, so we decided to explore out into Cardiff Bay.

‘Easy enough to charter a boat locally. Nice clear day, not far, nothing too adventurous we thought. Until we saw the hatch poking out of the sediment. First thought, of course, was that it must be discarded debris. When it wouldn’t budge, then you start to think it’s a wreck — but this clearly wasn’t anything like the wreck of the Louisa out there. This had a dull shine, even that far down. Modern, not nineteenth-century. Not even twentieth-century. When we opened it up, it was an airlock. But what kind of modern submarine would be buried down there?

‘One of us should have stayed outside. I’m the most experienced diver, I should have known that. But we all went in — it was an unbelievable space, more like a hallway than an airlock. And once we were in, the door shut behind us and the place started to fill with gas.

‘Do you know what I mean when I say that the military instinct kicked in, Dr Harper? For me and Tony, I mean. Checking for exit options, areas of danger, ensuring our backs were covered. Even unarmed, we were ready. Guy was starting to panic, though — scraping at the exit door with his bare hands, tearing off his own mask. That’s when we knew it was oxygen, and we could breathe. Our relief didn’t last long, because when the inner door opened what we saw made us abandon all that hard-learned military training.

‘It wasn’t human, that much was obvious. I mean, like with the hatch, your first thought is to make it normal: it’s a bloke in a mask; we’ve stumbled into a film set; it’s a weird kind of scuba gear; it’s a trick of the light.

‘It wasn’t. It was alien. Tony’s a big guy, you know, six-three. But this thing dwarfed him. Easily strong enough to force me and Tony further through that inner door. Guy was curled up in a corner, whimpering, terrified. It picked him up with one of its claws and threw him after us into the ship. The alien ship.’

Sandra swallowed hard at this point.

‘The next bit is all a bit hazy now. I prided myself before all this that nothing could faze me. But it’s not like the uncertainties of a combat zone. My first commander told me that the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. Let me tell you, no amount of readiness training could have prepared us. Maybe I was starting to react like Guy had, I don’t know. All I remember now is being surrounded by alien machinery, and an agonizing pain in my back, and then I must have passed out.’

Owen pointed up at the wall, where the light-box still displayed her X-ray images. ‘That thing was inserted into you. I think it’s a tracking device.’

Megan stared at them, incredulous. ‘What is this, The X Files ?’

Owen touched her lips gently with his finger, and encouraged Sandra to continue. ‘What do you remember next?’

‘When I came round, Tony was pulling me towards the exit. Guy was helping him. The pain was still intense, as though I’d been knifed in the middle of my back. Yet there was no blood. I was able to stumble out with them. Tony got us back through the airlock. Don’t ask me how. There was a lot more of the ship visible around the airlock when we got out, as though the sediment had started to fall away around the prow of some dull grey rocket.

‘I don’t remember much of the journey home, Tony seemed to handle that. Maybe my mind blotted it out, maybe it was like post-traumatic stress