THIRTY-TWO
The mesh grating tilted up and over and toppled with a clanging echo. Gwen emerged from beneath it, surging out of the water in the basin and sending waves slopping over the edges across the Hub floor. Through the mask, she could see that she had broken the surface. She tore it off and eagerly gasped down clean, fresh air. Or as fresh as it got in the Hub. Even the slightly damp atmosphere of the main level made her feel home and safe.
Behind her, Jack’s body floated face down in the water of the Hub basin. She had released it from the bonds of the cage in the ship and desperately dragged it behind her through flooded corridors, along an open stretch of the Bay, and finally through the interlocking junctions of the Hub’s underwater entrance.
She’d found Jack’s body a dead weight while it was in the water. Now she tried to drag it from the basin. It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. Her body was telling her to stop, to rest. Gwen’s legs and arms throbbed with dull pain, and she had to fight for her breath.
Eventually, she got her hands under his armpits and half-dragged him, half-fell with him onto the Hub floor.
Jack’s body was supine on the chill metal of the walkway by the basin. His staring eyes were glassy, empty. His skin showed as a ghastly pale blue, his full lips were dark, and there were rings of black beneath his eyes.
She slumped down on the grating beside him, and removed her diving cylinder. Sat watching him. Urging him.
Why wasn’t he reviving? She’d seen him take a bullet in the forehead and return to life. But she didn’t know for certain if anything could kill him. An illness, a devastating injury… or maybe the inability to recover immediately? He’d been dead for at least half an hour this time.
She rolled him over so that he was prone on the floor, and began to push beneath his shoulder blades. Water spurted from his mouth and through the grating into the basin.
Gwen pulled him onto his back again. Her mind raced, and she couldn’t focus on what to do next. She’d so believed that Jack would spontaneously recover once he surfaced that she was now panicking about the right course of action. What had they taught her in that Basics of First Aid course? Was it safe to give him oxygen from her diving cylinder? Or was that too much pressure? Did she need to empty the lungs of water? Or was it CPR first? Oh God, she hadn’t even checked for a pulse! There was something about having to give CPR within a quarter of an hour of someone collapsing. And how fast did brain death occur after they’ve stopped breathing?
Jack eyes stared up at her, glazed, sightless. They were unfocused, peaceful, unaccusing.
She pinched his nose, tilted his head back. You were supposed to do that, weren’t you? To extend the airway, or something. She parted his lips, sealed hers around them, and exhaled.
There was no response.
Time to start chest compressions? No, she thought. One more breath. She positioned her mouth over his again.
‘Gwen?’ There was a clattering sound from the spiral staircase across from her. Toshiko was hurrying down it, two steps at a time. ‘What’s going on?’
Toshiko hurried across the basin to join her. Gwen hardly registered that the walkway had now re-emerged as the water subsided. She was too preoccupied in devising some excuse about what had happened to Jack, why she was pressing her face to his. But if he was dead, then what was the whole bloody point?
‘Jack had to abandon his scuba gear halfway back from the ship,’ she lied. ‘Ran out of oxygen. Only for a short time.’ She could barely speak now. ‘Oh God, Toshiko, I think he’s dead. But he can’t be…’
Toshiko’s look was grave. ‘Gwen,’ she began gently. ‘How long has he been without air?’
Gwen didn’t know what to say any more. Didn’t know how to explain.
She gave a little shriek of surprise. Jack had abruptly rolled over towards her, and barfed sea water over her legs. Her shriek turned into a shout of elation and then to laughter. She threw herself on him and hugged him tight. Let him go almost immediately, as he began to choke in her embrace. Apologised when he slipped back and smacked his head on the floor. Laughed again. Laughed, and thought she’d never stop.
With Toshiko’s help, Gwen got Jack into the medical suite and onto a bed.
Jack was making a remarkable recovery. He’d spent some time explaining to Gwen and Toshiko and Ianto about the Bruydac Warrior – too much time to be plausible for someone purportedly recovering from a near-drowning. ‘Don’t make a fuss, Jack,’ Gwen hissed close to his ear while Toshiko was busily wrestling a couple of monitors into position on the other side of his room. ‘You’ll just draw attention to yourself. Lie down and try to look like you’re at death’s door, for God’s sake.’ She sat down on the bed beside him, and tried to look concerned.
Toshiko smoothed the electrodes onto Jack’s chest, and adjusted the sensitivity of the monitor by his bedside. The machine began to make an encouraging ping sound. ‘You’re a better patient than Owen. You won’t be surprised to hear that.’
‘How’s he doing?’ Jack’s voice was a rasp.
‘How do you think?’ smiled Toshiko. ‘Doctors make the worst patients. At least we don’t have to strap him down any more.’
‘I bet he was glad when you released him,’ said Gwen.
‘I said we don’t need to strap him down any more,’ replied Toshiko. ‘I didn’t say we’d actually undone his restraints yet.’
A roar from the next bedroom confirmed that Owen was awake and probably listening. Toshiko grinned at them, and slipped out of the room.
Jack sat up in his own bed. He placed his hand over Gwen’s on the cover, and squeezed it reassuringly. Ianto was sitting in a chair against the wall, pretending not to notice.
‘Owen’s gonna be fine,’ said Jack. ‘The Bruydac Warrior must have relinquished control a moment before the sedatives rendered him unconscious. Because it didn’t want to be captured alive by Tosh and Ianto.’
‘And it knew it had somewhere else to jump. It knew you were waiting.’
‘Right.’
‘And it tried to jump again when it thought you were dying.’ Ianto was unusually animated, excited at his own cleverness in working out what had happened. ‘You had it fooled there, eh?’
Jack exchanged a look with Gwen. ‘Yeah.’
She squeezed his hand in acknowledgement.
‘But it really had nowhere to go, because there were no more hosts. And its true form was dead.’ Ianto scraped his chair nearer to the bed. ‘It abandoned the victims when it had to escape. Which explains why that implant in Owen’s spine has burnt out. Like the ones in the other… er… victims?’
‘Yeah.’ Jack leaned forward on the bed, and ran an exploratory hand up his own back. ‘Y’know, I gotta have this thing removed. Otherwise I’m gonna set off the alarms every time I check in at the airport.’
He had leaned too far forward and dislodged one of the electrodes. The monitor beside him flatlined, and an alarm went off. Toshiko hurried in from the other room, her face full of worry until she saw Jack sitting on the bed and laughing at her.
Jack allowed Toshiko to fuss about him and reattach the electrodes.
Gwen’s mobile began to buzz in her pocket. After such a long silence, it was a surprise to hear it again. She flipped it open and saw that it was Rhys calling.
Where the hell was she, he wanted to know. The cinema thing had been rained off, and Josie and Brendan had bunked off without him because they were like that, weren’t they, it was all about them since the office party. And he’d been worrying all night about her in this storm, and couldn’t get a signal. But now the storm seemed to be abating, and he’d finally got through.
Gwen huddled in the corner of the bedroom, smiling a wan apology at the others in the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told Rhys quietly. ‘I’ll not be long, I promise. Just finishing up here.’ She looked down at herself, and saw that she was still wearing the wetsuit that was a size too small. ‘I’ve got to change first. Be home soon.’
She returned to the bed and had a good look at Jack. Despite his recent ordeal, he appeared to be in implausibly good health. ‘I should probably get home,’ she told him.
‘Life goes on,’ smiled Jack. ‘It must be getting late.’ He checked his wrist, but Toshiko had removed his watch earlier.
Gwen pointed out where she had placed it on his bedside cabinet. ‘It got smashed,’ she told him in an apologetic tone. ‘You must have bashed it against the side of that metal cage thing. When you were… well, you know.’
Jack inspected the broken watch. The cover glass over the twenty-four-hour dial had crazed.
Gwen indicated the hands on the watch, buckled and unmoving. She leaned close, so that only Jack would hear her speak. ‘Time of death: 21.46.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Jack replied. ‘Now that was a great year for me.’