Gwen put a hand on Rhys’s. ‘It’s not like that, love. I didn’t plan this.You didn’t plan to run the Council, we never planned for Torchwood to create an empire, but history tells us that to create a Utopia, a bit of darkness has to be present, to make the light glow stronger.’
Rhys said nothing and they drove in silence, until the sat-nav spoke, telling them they were thirteen minutes away from St Helen’s Hospital.
‘When Tosh and Owen finish the project, Rhys, I promise you, the world that baby Gareth inherits will be one that has made all this worthwhile.’
Rhys put his foot down and, before long, they were approaching the hospital, a group of Torchwood guards and nursing staff greeting them.
As they pulled up, Rhys looked at his wife, and then nodded to the group outside. ‘When I married you, I imagined an NHS hospital, me pacing the corridors for eight hours drinking weak-as-piss tea, and Jack stood there, winding me up saying it was an alien. Or his. Or both. But I love you so much, and I trust that you know what you’re doing. Even without Jack Bloody Harkness to guide us all.’
Gwen kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ll text you when he’s been born.’
‘One last thing, love,’ Rhys said as the car door opened. ‘I never agreed to Gareth. I reckon Geraint. After your dad. Good name, good thing for our boy to live up to.’
And Gwen grabbed him and kissed him savagely and powerfully.
Rhys eased her away, embarrassed. The assembled staff outside were applauding them in that way that Torchwood staff always applauded.
Nauseatingly, and slightly insincerely.
Jack Harkness would have hated this new Torchwood.
And then Gwen was out of sight, inside the building.
Rhys eased the car out of the car park then drove towards the city. He needed to get to work for a late-night session about what to do with the irradiated Bay. Ever since the Hub had exploded, the whole area had been in desperate need of reclamation.
As he drove, Rhys pulled a Bluetooth earpiece from his pocket, slipped it on and spoke to the sat-nav.
‘Override Torchwood comms. Clearance five stroke nine.’
‘Confirmed. Signal scrambled.’
‘Connect me with Friend 16.’
‘Confirmed.’
There was a buzz and then a click.
A Welsh voice spoke, curtly, passionless. ‘What do you want, Williams?’
‘Gwen is safe. If you’re going to do it, please do it now.’
The line went dead.
SEVENTEEN
Jack was at a loss – not a feeling he was particularly familiar with. With no way to access the Hub, unless he could get an acetylene torch at nearly midnight, and with no team to support him, he really didn’t have a clue what to do next. Or where to go.
Ianto’s? Nope, key in the drawer in his office. Gwen’s? Yeah, Rhys would love that – he’d probably been phoning and texting Gwen all evening and be worried enough as it was that he’d had no response.
Both Toshiko and Owen had moved recently to new apartments, and neither of them had offered him a key, so that was out.
Idris? Nope, he’d probably worn out what passed for a welcome there.
He was standing by the water tower, looking across at the parade of restaurants and bars in Mermaid Quay and Bute Street. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but perhaps there was a late-night bar.
The Sidings, of course. Bit of a trek, but there’d be a welcome there. Of sorts. Mind you, the last time he’d gone there, he’d been stalked by a Hoix. It had got through the Sidings’ defences and… Well, perhaps the welcome wouldn’t be that welcoming after all.
Bottom line was, Jack was furious with himself. He’d been hoodwinked by someone – someone really quite disarming and elegant, yet powerful. His team had been trapped (he was assuming Owen wasn’t locked inside the Hub; somehow that didn’t seem Bilis’s style), and he had no idea why or how to find and free them.
Suddenly, Jack was angry. And that usually meant that the last thing he needed right now was people, bars, noise or sexy people.
Jack needed to find what Jack always needed to find in moments of crisis. He began marching towards the city.
As he made his way towards the heart of Cardiff, he was passed by a number of locals. They laughed, they argued, they kissed or they listened to mp3 players. Some drove cars, others were on bicycles. Once in a blue moon, a motorcyclist roared past (Cardiff seemed to have fewer motorbikes per capita than anywhere else he’d visited). Normal people doing normal things with their normal lives.
These were the people that Jack and Torchwood protected, the vast majority of them never even realising they were being protected, let alone that there were Weevils, Rifts, giant space whales, alien guns, pendants, bombs or anything. It was a mark of how well Torchwood did their job that so few people died in inexplicable circumstances and asked questions. Even if they did, there was Toshiko, ready to create falsehoods and lies – not to mislead them, but again to protect them. Sometimes the truth was simply too awful and the concept of ‘need to know’ took on a whole new meaning.
Jack never stopped feeling responsible for his team – every one of them was there because he had found them, or they’d needed to find him. Now they were lost somewhere because of a battle that wasn’t theirs.
Revenge for the future.
This was his little war, his and Bilis’s, and whatever else was involved behind the scenes. Ianto, Gwen, Toshiko and Owen were, to Bilis, collateral damage, incidentals. To Jack they were his reason for being.
He would get them back. He would get them back safe and sound.
Because that was what good leaders did.
Because that was what Jack Harkness did.
He was walking along St Mary Street, Cardiff’s old main street, before its famous shops had been usurped by the paved Queen Street during the 1970s. St Mary Street was now more famous for its clubs and bars and the network of alleys and arcades that branched off it.
To avoid a group of drunken youngsters, Jack took a sharp left into the tawdriness that was Wood Street. However beautiful Cardiff was – and he really did love his adopted city – this was the one blot on the landscape, a horrible, foreboding area of cheap shops, the grotty bus station and the main entrance to the Victorian façade of Cardiff’s central railway station. For visitors to Cardiff, it wasn’t an attractive greeting, and Jack had often wondered if he could fabricate some reason for Torchwood to blow it up so the council would have to rebuild it.
One to ask Idris Hopper one day, perhaps?
He was in Park Street now, adjoining the new Millennium Stadium that had swallowed up the old Cardiff Arms Park pitch, creating one huge super-venue, with its riverside views, cinema and sports shops.
One of his favourite parts of Cardiff, the street played host to the massive Ty Stadiwm tower, with its horizontal BT dish and mast on the very top.
As modern buildings went, in a city that juxtaposed the old and the new with pleasurable ease, Stadium House was one of Jack’s favourites, mainly because – although it was a ‘classic’ 1970s structure – it had been beautifully refurbished (including the addition of the forty-two-foot mast) in the early part of the twenty-first century.
He entered the lobby, winking at Gerry, the security guard, and throwing some Swiss chocolate over to him. Each guard at each building had a weakness for something and Jack was friendly with them all. Chocolate was always the most popular bribe.
He took the service elevator and, moments later, he was nearly 255 feet above sea level, standing beside the ‘dish’ and looking down into the Millennium Stadium below. Thousands of empty seats surrounding a lush green pitch. If he closed his eyes, Jack could imagine the roar of the Saturday afternoon crowd, smell the people, breathe in the beer, sweat and passion of the fans and players alike.