Torchwood Long Time Dead (3 page)

No one who ever questioned too much would go
and die for someone else's policies. Commander
Elwood Jackson had always been a good soldier.

He didn't ask questions. He blinked and behind
his own eyes he saw Blackman's wrecked ones. A
radio buzzed on his desk.

'Yes?'

'No sign of his suit, sir. We'll keep looking.'

'Any personnel unaccounted for?'

'No, all present and correct, sir.'

He turned the radio off and leaned back in
his chair. Unease settled like grease in the pit
of his gut. He'd learned long ago to trust that
feeling. Something wasn't right here. He thought
of Blackman's dead body. The missing suit. But
most of all he thought about that tiny moment of
hesitation before David Elliott had spoken.

Suzie Costello had dumped the helmet in a
passing bin and then stripped the suit off as soon
as she found a suitable empty side street. She
shoved it behind some overfilled bins and then
headed towards the burger bar on the main road.

The man's clothes were slightly baggy, but he'd
been a skinny little thing and had at least been
wearing a belt, which now held his trousers on her
hips. The tang of sweat coming from the shirt was
unpleasant, but she had no choice but to put up
with it - at least for now.

Some people had stared at her as she'd strode
away from the Torchwood Hub's wrecked site, but
she didn't need to worry about them ever giving
a description of her. It was the suit they'd been
looking at, not the person inside it.

Inside the fast-food restaurant she took the
stairs two at a time and went into the toilets. It
was only just gone 10 a.m., and the place was
empty. She filled the sink with warm water and
began splashing her face with it, washing away
the dust and grime that coated her skin. When
she was done, she straightened up. The water felt
good. Refreshing. It made her feel alive. She
was

alive. She giggled aloud at that, the sound echoing
eerily in the small confines.

When she'd first woken up on the floor, she'd
simply wanted to get away. She hadn't even known
who or
what
she was until she'd been striding
away. She had been operating on instinct. Hers
and something else's. The more she'd recovered
her own memories, the more she'd realised that
perhaps she wasn't quite alone in her body. She'd
killed the man in the vault - and yes, that had
been fun as well as necessary - but it hadn't been
entirely her.

Still, she thought, smiling at herself in the
mirror. Figuring that out could wait. Torchwood
was gone, and she was alive. Now
there
was a
turn-up for the books. They could shove that in
their smug pipes and smoke it. Their faces rose up
behind her eyes, memories she couldn't suppress:
Ianto the puppy, Toshiko the repressed, Owen the
playboy, Gwen who was everyone's favourite new
girl, and then of course, Jack. Her smile twisted
into an ugly grimace. They hadn't done so well
without her, had they? Maybe if they hadn't been
so high and mighty, they'd still be eating pizza
and drinking coffee in the Hub. As it was, she
wondered if they were even alive?

Anger surged inside her, rage and hurt at those
she'd once worked with, and she swallowed it
down. She was back. She didn't need them. They
could go to hell as far as she was concerned, if they
weren't already there. She thought of the nothing
she'd been lost in and shivered slightly, despite the
warmth. In the mirror, her reflection stared back
and her confidence wavered slightly as she raised
one hand to touch the back of her head. There was
no blood. No exploded skull. She checked once
again under the shirt for reassurance. No bullet
wounds there either. Not even a single scar to
show where Jack Harkness had emptied his gun
into her. Why the hell wasn't she in pain? Still
damaged? She had been brought back from the
dead once before, but it hadn't been like this. This
time she was healed, as well as breathing. She
looked back into the mirror. This time she really
had been
reborn
, not just brought back to life. This
was a whole new Suzie.

She needed to do something about her hair.

Lighten it, perhaps. Cut it, definitely. It wouldn't
take much to change her appearance enough to
put anyone off her trail should they come for her.

Not that she thought they would. After all, she
was dead, right? Twice over? The only people who
might think to look for her were Torchwood and,
judging by the state of the Hub, if they weren't
dead themselves they had to be in too much trouble
to be thinking of her. She was a ghost. She giggled
again and had to put her hand over her mouth to
stop it developing into a full-blown laugh. She had
things to do. This was no time for fun. The smile
fell away.

Only when she pulled the door open did she
see the small sign on the back.
This toilet was

cleaned at 8.30 a.m.
The time had been filled
in with a wipe-clean marker pen, and next to it
were initials and then a date. It was the last two
digits that stopped her for a moment. That long?

She'd been dead for
three years
? Her teeth gritted
and her anger cooled into something else as the
memory gripped her. Emptiness filled her vision.

The final instant of terrible fear that came with a
last breath.
Death.
She hated it. She wouldn't go
back to it. She drew in a long, defiant breath. She
would
become
it.

'Box 321, please.'

'Certainly, madam.' The prim, middle-aged
woman behind the counter smiled up at her. 'If
you could just sign in.'

The formalities done, the assistant retrieved
the keys and unlocked the gate to the racks of
safety deposit boxes in the narrow room beyond.

She moved with precise efficiency to the right one,
unlocked the housing and took out the metal box
from within. She smiled again, and led Suzie to
one of the small rooms at the side.

'You'll have privacy there, Mrs Bunting. Let
me know when you're done.'

Her key for the box had been taped under a
pew in an old church not far from the centre of
town. If it had been missing, she wouldn't have
panicked - there was always a way into something
if you really wanted it - but it turned out that
whichever old ladies were responsible for keeping
the wooden benches of St Mark's clean, didn't
stretch to cleaning underneath them, just as she'd
suspected. She smiled, pleased with herself. There
was nothing like forward planning.

She emptied the box, shoving its contents into
her pockets. A passport in the name of Sue Costa;
bank and credit cards in the same name; flat and
car keys. A whole new life was waiting for her. The
last item in the box made her smile. A knife. Just
in case she got here and needed a weapon. Perhaps
she should have left a gun in there instead, but a
knife was quieter when you needed to get away
fast. She turned it this way and that, letting the
steel shine. There was something about a knife
that she found reassuring. You had to get in close
to use a knife. You had to look right into their eyes
as that moment of terror struck. You delivered
death personally with a knife.

She held the weapon up, like a band across
her eyes and staring into their own brown pools
of anger, distorted slightly by the metal, she felt
the first wave of something strange inside her.

She gasped slightly as something looked out
through her eyes and she, in turn, looked back
into something. Something terrible. It was beyond
the black nothing of death. It was something
totally
other.
Something cold and awful - a space
between dimensions. And it wasn't empty. Her
ears throbbed with the echo of distant sobbing
and she knew - although she didn't know how
she could possibly know - that it was the man
she'd killed in the vault that she could hear. The
darkness - this
living
darkness - tugged at her
and she gasped again, lowering the knife. Where
the hell had that come from? What was it? And
how was it connected to her?

She took a moment to regain her breath,

letting heat and life flood back to her cheeks. The
answers could come later, when she had time
to think. There would be an explanation. There
always was.

Slowly, she cooled down.
Its hungry. It wants

me to feed it.
The thoughts came from nowhere,
but slowly Suzie smiled again. For now, it was all
she needed to know. It was hungry, and she was
angry. She'd felt the terror of the moment of death
twice too many times. It was time she shared it.

Maybe if she shared it enough, it would leave her
alone. One thing the reborn Suzie Costello was
sure of - she had no intention of dying again. She
tucked the knife into the back of her trousers.

'All done?' the assistant was sitting back behind
her desk when Suzie emerged, but was straight
up on her feet. She was in good shape for her age,
Suzie thought, as she approached. She looked like
a runner. Sleek limbs. Toned skin. Put her in some
different clothes and she'd probably pass for 40.

Not that that would be happening any time soon.

Any time at all, in fact.

'Yes, thanks.' Suzie smiled as she handed over
the box. When the woman had taken it, and her
hands were full, Suzie gripped her arm. Something
shifted inside her. The empty universe so far
removed from this one yawned greedily behind her
eyes. Her smile widened as the assistant's fell.

'I have something to show you,' she whispered.

The woman's alarmed gaze met her own unnatural
one, and she slumped in her grip. The moment
was nearly here. Suzie smiled and pulled the knife
from the back of her trousers.

She was still smiling as she lay in the bath two
hours later. She'd forgotten how good killing felt.

Perhaps she'd just never admitted it to herself
before. But that had all been before the darkness.

Before she had become
Death
itself. Now she was
just doing what was in her nature. The water was
hot, and it was good to be warm. She pushed the
bubbles around and then sat suddenly upright as
something beneath the surface caught her eye.

The red light flashed under the skin of her
stomach. Her mouth fell open. So that was it.

Suddenly it all made sense.

Where did you say you found it V

'It was on the beach. My trousers are ruined.'

'You wanted to try some fieldwork, Ianto,' Suzie

smiled. 'Maybe buy some cheaper trousers if you

want me to send you out again.'

It was hardly fieldwork. Picking up a piece of

recovered tech.' Ianto sipped his coffee.

'True. But you re not the only one in expensive

trousers, and the signal was coming from the

beach, and I'm the boss.' She smiled again, and

then focused on the item on the table.

'Any clues yet, Tosh?'

The item was the size of a credit card but made

of some kind of metal with three clear stones of

some variety embedded in it.

'No. I cant see how to activate it, at all.' The

Japanese woman peered through her thick glasses

and then lifted the item again. 'It's heavier than it

looks.'

Yes, I don't need you to state the obvious. Maybe

when Jack and Owen get back, they'll have an idea

what it does.'

'I couldn't find any match on the database,'

Ianto said. 'Nothing even close.'

Toshiko pulled her glasses off and turned them

around thoughtfully. She held up the strange little

device. 'These could be magnifying glasses of some

kind.' She looked through one. 'That's strange. I

can't see anything but darkness.' She put it down

again. 'Look. The glass appears clear here. Pale

yellow just like the light around it. But if you

look through it -' she handed it to Ianto - 'there's