Chapter Text
Gray rubbed his shoulders as a chill swept over him, and wondered if it was time to go in for the night. Even though it was rainy and just after dark, he was sitting under the porch outside their safehouse, as he often did. The others called it brooding, but that wasn’t really fair. He just didn’t like being cooped up indoors. So on evenings like this, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d go out back and keep watch. Sometimes he tinkered or read or did those little sudoku puzzles, when he could get them — tonight, he was patching a hole in his trousers. But he’d been out for a while. The cold and wet must’ve been getting to him.
Even in the middle of August, Wales got cold and wet. It had taken some getting used to. Sure, Gray had visited planets with temperate climates, but he’d never stayed long, and back home—
There was a noise. Gray grabbed the shotgun leaning against his chair and stood, scanning the horizon for threats. But there was nothing. No movement in the shadows, no lights glinting over the hills, no more sound but the pattering of rain on the safehouse roof. Just empty Welsh countryside.
There was another noise, and Gray realized that it was the beeping of his scanner, sitting on the side table by his chair. Oh. He lowered the shotgun. Look at him, jumping at nothing. With things the way they were, though, you couldn’t blame him for being on edge.
Gray idly checked the scanner — and when he saw the readout he almost dropped the thing. He rebooted the scanner. The readout didn’t change. He rubbed his eyes. It stayed the same. Finally, he raced into the safehouse to alert the three other members of his ragtag team that he’d detected a time machine in Cardiff.
“A time machine,” Martha repeated, stunned, after Gray gathered everyone and explained what he’d found. “In Cardiff.”
Gray gestured helplessly at the scanner, which he’d placed in the center of the table, overtop of the prison blueprints they’d spent the past week memorizing. “See for yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” John said as he slid the scanner over to his side of the table to poke at it. As the team’s other 51st century marooner, he had the expertise to verify Gray’s findings.
Suzie — who would’ve taken the scanner had John not beaten her to the punch — circled the table and peered over John’s shoulder. “Are you sure it’s not a time shift? Cardiff gets so many—”
“I’m sure,” Gray said. He’d programmed the time machine alert a few months back. It had been tricky work, but he was confident in its accuracy. Suzie just felt better about these things when she’d puzzled them out herself.
“Have you tried rebooting the scanner?” Suzie asked.
“What do you think?” Gray asked.
“You weren’t kidding, beautiful,” John finally said. “That’s a time machine all right.”
“What kind?” Martha asked.
“Not a clue. Readings are a bit weird.”
Finally, Martha, shrewd as ever, raised the question of the hour: “Is it him?”
“He never leaves the Valiant,” Suzie protested.
Gray poked at the scanner and gestured at the screen. “He’s there right now.” About fifty kilometers west of Blackpool, there was a concentration of Artron Energy holding steady.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” John said. “He crosses his own timeline like Sontarans start fights — far too often and with reckless abandon. Watch. He’s gonna crack open that Rift of yours and unleash some kind of extra-dimensional demon—”
“That’s not going to happen,” Gray said, concealing a flinch. “We don’t know that it’s him. And if it’s not, that means there’s a time machine, what, an hour’s drive south of us? We know it’s there. Does he?”
Realization dawned on the others. This was the kind of opportunity they’d been searching for for months, since everything had fallen apart and they’d banded together to set things right: a time machine, within their grasp.
“No way,” John said. “It’s a trap. Must be.”
“But if it’s not, it would change everything.” Gray said.
“It might be him.”
“So?” Suzie cut in. “We go, we kill him, we get a time machine.”
“You’d have to get into Cardiff first, and that’s no small feat. And the timing—” John laughed. “Look at me, playing the bloody voice of reason. You people—”
Martha shushed them. They fell silent as their fearless leader put her hands on the table and leaned forward, assessing them. Her eyes took on a determined glint. Martha Jones had come to a decision. “God knows we don’t need a distraction from our rescue mission, but if there’s a time machine in Cardiff, we have got to check it out. I know it’s risky. I know it’s dangerous. But we’re never going to get an opportunity like this again.”
Suzie nudged Gray and muttered, “Bet you a tenner it’s something in the Hub.”
Gray rolled his eyes fondly and wrote off the ten quid.
Within half an hour, Suzie and Gray were headed south in the beat-up SUV they’d hot-wired somewhere in the Midlands. The two of them and a time-space phenomenon in the middle of Cardiff: just like old times. UNIT was monitoring the old motorways these days, so they stuck to country roads. They were wanted men. The last thing they needed was for their resistance movement to be quashed because they’d been caught breaking curfew.
Sheets of rain poured down from the sky. The windshield wipers struggled to keep up.
“Do spaceships have windshield wipers, I wonder?” Suzie asked as Gray drove.
“Sure they do.”
“You’d never think they’ll need windshield wipers in the future.”
“Speak for yourself,” Gray said. “There are storms in space, you know.”
“What are they like?”
Gray tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and considered how to describe it — it had been years since Gray had been inside a spaceship, or flown one, or flown one through a cosmic storm. “From a distance it’s a swirl of color, millions of miles wide. Then you get up close: there’s dust and hail battering your ship, and lightning’s flashing, and your instruments go haywire and you can’t see a thing in front of you, and you think you’re going to die, but you’ve never felt so alive. Pods of star whales gather in them to filter nutrients from the dust. I almost crashed into one once — popped right out of nowhere and scared the hell out of me.”
“I’d take that over country roads and bloody Welsh rain any day. This planet’s so dirty.”
“I find it rustic.”
Suzie scoffed. “There’s supposed to be all this brilliant stuff out there. Star whales. What I wouldn’t give to see a star whale. All we ever get is Weevils and invaders and filth.”
“Hey, now,” Gray said. “I hope that doesn’t include me.”
Suzie’s mouth twitched.
The area they were driving through was quiet, quieter than it should have been. As many of the buildings were abandoned as inhabited. Everywhere were visible the marks of poverty, of famine, of human misery and despair. Everywhere, they had to take care to avoid soldiers in red berets, agents of the fascist police state that did nothing but hurt people. Suzie had a point. Things were bad, and every day Gray woke up with the weight of it on his shoulders. But then again, that wasn’t a uniquely 21st century problem. And nothing that had come through the Rift, no matter how terrible, had ever compared to Them — the creatures that had invaded his childhood home, and the monsters they created.
“You should have left when you had the chance,” Suzie said.
The steering wheel creaked under Gray’s hands. “You know why I stayed.”
“Because you’re an idiot?”
Gray did not dignify that with a response.
“If he’d asked me—”
“But he didn’t.” It had been two years. There was no use dwelling on it. “He asked me. And I said no.”
“You gave up the Doctor for Torchwood,” Suzie scolded him.
“At least I didn’t give up Torchwood to go on a killing spree,” Gray retorted, and a tense silence fell.
The thing about Suzie’s de facto resignation from Torchwood Three was that the murders didn’t bother Gray as much as they should have. That wasn’t to say they didn’t bother him at all. Suzie had killed four civilians, a police constable, and her father, and that was a terrible thing. But Gray saw terrible things every day. The thing that really got him wasn’t the lives Suzie had ruined, but the fact that she’d ruined those lives with total disregard for what it meant for her place in Torchwood. For what it meant to Gray. He’d thought he’d known her, and then she disappeared and left a trail of bodies in her wake, and he realized he’d been wrong. After that, he would be a fool to trust her ever again.
Gray thought about saying as much, right then and there. He thought about telling Suzie that she’d abandoned Torchwood, abandoned him, and for what? But she knew all that already. She regretted what she’d done — selfishly, perhaps, but honestly, too. And Gray forgave her. Of course he forgave her. Maybe he did it too easily. Maybe that was his problem. But the Hub was an open wound in the ground; Cardiff was rubble and ash; the UK had been ravaged by a mad time-traveler living in a fortress in the sky. Suzie and Gray were all that was left of Torchwood. If they didn’t have each other, they didn’t have anyone.
“Hey,” Gray murmured. He reached across the console and took Suzie’s hand. After a moment, she squeezed back. “We’ve both made mistakes. All we can do now is live with them.”
—
The roads and the bridges into Cardiff, what few hadn’t been destroyed in the blast, were so well-monitored that they were night-impassable, so under cover of darkness and rain Gray and Suzie ditched the car and waded across the Rhymney River. Then, they skirted south through the trees along the old A48 until they hit the fence. UNIT had erected a ring of steel around the worst-hit parts of Cardiff, but all it took was a crowbar and some elbow grease to breach it. They could expect UNIT to overlook the breach until morning at the earliest. Patrols weren’t as regular these days as they once had been. UNIT wasn’t there to keep people out — it was there to keep everything else in.
Even with most of the radioactive fallout dispersed, the ruins of Cardiff were a dangerous place to be. The streets were overrun with Weevils, their sewers disturbed in the blasts, and avoiding their attention required stealth and silence. Gray suspected they were the source of the rumors about radioactive mutants roaming Cardiff and killing anyone they found. Furthermore, the Rift was as active as ever, and over the past few months, time shifts had become a regular occurrence in the Cardiff area; Gray and Suzie had near misses with a Hoix and a squad of very confused, very loud soldiers from the First World War.
It was two hours on foot, silently weaving between ruined buildings, avoiding unwanted attention as they shivered in their rain gear, before the scanner pinpointed the Artron energy signal. The closer you got to the city center, the fewer buildings were standing, until there was nothing left but rubble and death. Privately, Gray had hoped that they’d find the energy signal at the edges of Cardiff, so that he wouldn’t have to journey through the wreckage of his home. Returning here, seeing what had become of the city that Gray should have protected, made him sick with guilt. But the scanner pointed them closer and closer to Cardiff Bay until finally, they were standing over the crater where Roald Dahl Plass had once been, and it told them they’d arrived.
Gray looked at scanner, wiped rain out of his eyes, looked at the scanner, looked at the crater, looked at the scanner, looked at Suzie. She looked back, unimpressed, and raised an eyebrow. Gray passed Suzie ten quid.
The shockwave from the blast had caved in the Hub, and the only reason the crater wasn’t impassable was because UNIT had swept in to excavate the ruins and salvage whatever was left behind. Massive tarps had been thrown over the mouth of the pit to prevent more water getting in, and their reports said that UNIT had removed enough rubble to access most of the Hub. Their reports did not say whether UNIT still had an active presence there. Luckily, they didn’t. Had Suzie and Gray arrived to find the place crawling with soldiers in red berets, that would have been as good as death.
Gray and Suzie descended the rickety metal staircase into the pit, every creak of the scaffolding threatening collapse. When they reached the bottom, they found the pit flooded with knee-deep, brackish water. The only sound was the rain, far above, pattering against the tarps. The only light came from their torches. The upper catwalks had buckled in the collapse; the boardroom was a pile of shattered grass and concrete; the main entrance of the office off where the workstations had been was caved in. Gray wouldn’t have recognized it as the Hub if it weren’t for the twisted remains of the water tower jutting up into the air like a tombstone. His stomach clenched. You spend five years living somewhere, you begin to think of it as home.
Gray visually examined the space while Suzie squeezed water out of her hair. “Getting anything?” she asked.
Gray checked the scanner. “Whatever it is, it’s somewhere down here.”
“Life signs?”
Gray tapped at the screen. “Just us.”
“Good,” Suzie said, and Gray agreed wholeheartedly. He hadn’t been looking forward to dealing with a time traveler, especially not him. “It’s so bloody tedious, creeping around every corner gun-first.”
Gray chuckled. “You know, sometimes the alien around the corner is friendly.”
“In your dreams,” Suzie said. “I’ll start in the Archives, see if something turned itself on. You search here.” Suzie always gave herself the fun jobs. She went off to the Archives — or what was left of them — and Gray was left to his own devices in the center of the Hub.
Gray searched the remains of the main chamber for their phantom time machine without success. All that was left was what UNIT hadn’t bothered to take for themselves. 21st century tech. Furniture. Desk trinkets. Water-logged photographs. Takeaway boxes. A basketball hoop. A crumpled coffee machine. Gray found himself sorting through the remains of his own workstation, elevated with the others above the water line; UNIT had taken the bits of future tech he’d liked to tinker with when he was bored, but had left behind the sci-fi novels he’d collected out of morbid curiosity, the plastic alien they’d taken turns putting on each other’s workstations, and the tattered remains of his favorite coat. He touched it gently, and the fabric dissolved beneath his fingers. The last time he’d left the Hub, he’d forgotten it in his rush. Now it was just another thing he’d lost forever.
Gray was packing up his feelings and deciding where to search next when a gasp echoed through the Hub. Gray froze. He’d almost convinced himself he was imagining things — but then there was the sound of shifting rubble, and something, something alive, groaning. It was coming from the office. Gray checked his scanner: A strange fluctuation of Artron energy. Three life signs. Gray, Suzie, and something else.
Shit. Shit!
Heart in his throat, Gray put away his scanner and drew his pistol. With the main entrance to the office impassable, Gray waded through the brown, knee-deep water slowly, to avoid making too much noise, towards the office’s back door. There was the crrrrrrr-unch of sliding rubble and more gasping.
Gray’s foot caught on something in the water. Metal wrenched with an ear-splitting shriek, and Gray sloshed water everywhere as he stopped himself from splashing into the pool face-first. As soon as he’d caught himself, he stood still, holding his breath. Distantly, rain fell on the tarps far overhead. The Hub was silent. Too silent. Whatever else was down here had realized it wasn’t alone.
Gray adjusted his grip on his pistol and his torch. He crept forward, first through the water, before pulling himself up the stairs to dry land and pressing himself against the wall. Whatever it was, it was around the corner. He took a deep, stabilizing breath, and readjusted his grip. Three. Two—
Gray threw himself around the corner and found himself in a standoff with his brother.
His hair was plastered to his forehead, his chest was soaked in blood, he was covered in dust and dressed in an inexplicable 20th century military greatcoat — but Gray would know him anywhere. Javic Piotr Thane, the older brother Gray had loved and lost and searched for and never really found. He had followed Gray three thousand years into the past and now here he was, in the Hub, pointing, of all things, a vintage Webley at Gray’s head.
As soon as Javic saw that it was Gray, his face went slack and he lowered his anachronistic pistol. “Gray?” Javic asked, voice strangled, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Like Gray was a miracle. Like the time that had passed since their parting didn’t matter, because now they were reunited, and everything would be okay. It was a compelling performance — but Gray had been fooled for the last time. And he wouldn’t miss his opening again.
Gray fired.
There was a crack and a spray of blood. Javic’s head snapped backwards. His body listed, as if suspended upright, before his knees buckled and he toppled forward, crashing to the ground with a heavy thud.
Gray kept his gun fixed on Javic, half expecting him to lift his head, sneer at Gray, and spring whatever trap Gray surely must have walked into. The pool of blood around his head — bright red human blood — spread out with every second. If this was a trick, it was a very convincing one. Cautiously, gun still raised, Gray crept towards the body and turned it over with his foot. And then it was Javic, unmistakably and undeniably Javic, dark hair and chiseled features and crystal blue eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Javic?” Gray asked. Javic didn’t reply, too busy being dead. Because he was dead. There was a great big hole straight through his fucking skull. Gray’s first coherent thought was this is too easy. Javic was as monstrous as he was inescapable. He had killed thousands, transformed the UK into a police state from his fortress in the sky, ruined Gray’s life and laughed at the look on his face when he did it. Nothing would stop him from tearing Gray’s world apart. Killing him was supposed to be harder than this. Yet here he was. Dead.
Gray sank to his knees, gun clattering to the floor. He should have hated Javic. It would have been easier if he did. But Gray couldn’t forget that once, Javic had loved him. Once, Javic had been the older brother who always knew how to make Gray smile, who always let him win at cricket, who always protected him. Once, the most horrible creatures Gray had ever known had come, and Javic had sacrificed himself so Gray could live. Years of torture had taken Gray’s Javic and twisted him into a monster, a genocidal maniac obsessed with revenge — but now, all Gray saw was the brother he’d lost.
“Gray?” Suzie called. She barreled into the room behind him and stopped. “Gray?”
“I’m okay,” Gray said, though it wasn’t entirely true. He felt as if he should have been crying. A surreal numbness was settling over him. Javic’s blood seeped into his trousers.
Susie crept towards the body. When her torchlight landed on the face of Gray’s mad, time-traveling despot brother, she gasped. “It’s him.”
“Yeah.” He had left the safety of the Valiant, after all.
“He’s…”
Gray swallowed. “Yeah.”
Suzie squeezed Gray’s shoulder. “Good riddance,” she said gently.
Gray reached out and closed Javic’s eyes for the final time. It was over. Javic was dead. Later, there would be time to consider the ramifications of the death of someone so powerful and so terrible: Gray still had work to do.
Gray and Suzie had worked together long enough that searching a body was a simple matter of routine. Even when it was Javic. Gray tamped down on his feelings as they determined that Javic was free of tracking devices, bugs, or other communication devices, save for the vortex manipulator — the one that rightfully belonged to John, which must have been the time machine Gray’s scanner had picked up. Gray strapped it to his wrist. Neither he nor Suzie knew how to use it; John did, though he’d have trouble working it on his own.
Aside from his Webley, Javic had been armed with a strange blade, likely alien in nature. It was about the length of Gray’s forearm and resembled a tuning fork, but its two tines ended in sharp points, and it was covered in blood. When Gray held the fork it hummed, resonating in his chest, and he could have sworn there was music in his head. The fork went, along with the rest of Javic’s possessions — the gun, the torch, a penknife, a silver key on a string, two condoms — into Gray’s rucksack. When Suzie found a wallet, she rifled through it, expression sharpening as she went. She stood. “Does the name ‘Jack Harkness’ mean anything to you?”
“Who’s that?”
“Him, apparently. Look at this.” Gray took the wallet. All the cards in it — credit cards; ID cards; a rewards card for a Cardiff cafe; a business card which claimed to provide, among other things “Temporary Security,” “Fashion Advice,” and “Adult Services” — were under the name Jack Harkness. The ID cards had pictures of Javic, staring into the camera, chin raised, corners of his mouth pulled up into a languid smile. Gray perused the contents of the wallet until he came across something unbelievable: a Torchwood identification card. CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS. HEAD OF OPERATIONS; TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE, CARDIFF.
Gray passed the card to Suzie. Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “I think I’d remember working for your brother,” she said as she held the card up under her torchlight. Her frown deepened. “There’s no scar.” Sure enough, in the ID photo, where there should have been an ugly red brand — the one They had put there — on the side of Javic’s neck, there was nothing but smooth skin.
Gray gazed at the picture. Javic, with a relaxed expression and unblemished skin (but remarkably sad eyes), gazed back. He turned back to Javic’s body, to remind himself how things really were — and was astonished to discover that there, too, the scar was gone, like it had never been. Gray was, in fact, so astonished by this discovery that he did not immediately notice the bullet hole in Javic’s forehead pulling itself closed.
“Gray,” Suzie said urgently. “Gray, his head—”
Javic’s back arched as his eyes flew open and he heaved a desperate gasp of air. Gray leapt back. Suzie swore. Javic flailed, arms scrabbling for nothing, blue eyes rolling madly in his head before they landed on Gray and stayed there—
Gray fired before he even knew he’d drawn his gun. Suzie did the same. The volley of shots struck Javic’s chest and he fell still. His dead eyes were fixed on Gray.
Gray looked at Suzie. Suzie looked at Gray. Gray thought he should say something, but he had no idea what. His hands shook.
“He was dead,” Suzie said.
He had been; he was now. But Javic’s eyes were open again, and the hole that Gray had shot through his head, the one that had killed him the first time, was gone.
—
Suzie ran scan after incredulous scan, all of which insisted, despite very compelling evidence to the contrary, that Javic was a perfectly normal human corpse. Meanwhile, Gray tied him up, wrists and ankles. Then, in uneasy silence, they waited. Gray half-expected to spend an hour standing over the corpse as rigor mortis set in — right until it spasmed and violently inhaled.
Gray flinched. Suzie managed not to, staring at Javic with dark, envious eyes.
Eventually, Javic stopped thrashing. He took in great, heavy breaths, like a drowning man. On the Boeshane Peninsula, when a person died you weighed them down, wrapped them in white linen, and sank them to the bottom of the sea. That was where Gray’s father was, and he imagined his mother, too; maybe that was where Javic went when he died. As Javic caught his breath, Gray braced himself. Any moment now, Javic’s face would break out into a cruel grin, all white teeth, and he’d laugh at Gray and make a vulgar remark about Suzie, and then the game would begin.
Instead, Javic’s gaze fell to a point on the side of Gray’s neck and he smiled — a real smile.
“It worked,” Javic breathed.
“What worked?” Suzie demanded while Gray stood there, stunned, searching Javic’s face for hatred, finding none. “What the hell did you do?”
Javic’s face twisted. “Suzie?”
Now it was Suzie’s turn to be stunned. Because Javic had no reason to address her so familiarly, like she was anything but one of his many enemies.
“What are you doing here?” Javic continued. He glanced between her and Gray, puzzled. “What am I doing here?”
“I killed you,” Gray said, crossing his arms. “And then you came back to life. How is that possible?”
Javic gazed up at Gray. Gray had to school himself not to fidget. “Gray,” Javic rasped, “it’s me. Ja… Javic. Your brother. I—”
“I can see that. Answer the question.”
Javic’s expression shuttered. “You— you already know me.” And then he said, as if realizing it for the first time, “I’ve hurt you.”
“Whatever you’re playing at,” Gray said evenly, “it’s not going to work.”
Javic swallowed. “Something’s gone wrong. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Can’t handle being tied up?” Suzie said.
“I prefer my bondage with a safe word,” Javic replied.
“Oh, don’t even start.”
Javic’s lip curled. He opened his mouth, presumably to make an even cruder remark, and Suzie kicked him in the stomach. Gray winced. As Javic let out a groan and a pained chuckle, Suzie looked down at him disdainfully and sneered, “You don’t talk to me like that. Doing one good thing in your entire life does not give you the right to be a cruel, selfish—”
“Hey,” Javic wheezed. “Time out.”
Time out?
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Javic grinned weakly. “I— I’m pretty sure I’m from an alternate timeline.”
“Very funny,” Suzie drawled.
“I’m not kidding,” Javic insisted.
Suzie glanced at Gray, at a loss.
“I don’t get it,” Gray admitted. Of all the lies Javic could have told, this one was… an odd choice.
Javic’s face slowly fell. “Come on. This is not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you.” Suddenly, he was uncertain. “Surely this isn’t the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you.”
If Javic had been anyone else, he would’ve had a point. But he was Javic Piotr Thane, known lying cheating monster, so Suzie said, “If you think we’re going to let you off the hook just because you say you’re from an alternate timeline—“
“Off the hook for what?”
“Christ, where do I even start?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m telling you, I’m not who you think I am!”
“Suppose that's true,” Gray said. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. It shouldn’t be possible, is the thing. The device that I —”
“So there’s a device now,” Suzie said.
“Of course there’s a device,” Javic said. “Did you think I magically appeared in the wrong timeline all on my own?”
“I mean,” Gray pointed out, “you did magically come back to life all on your own.”
“That’s different.”
“Oh yeah?” Suzie asked. “How’s that?”
“It’s not important,” Javic said with a straight face.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Suzie said. “We decide that. And right now, it’s very, very important that you tell me how you regrew your skull.” There was something covetous in Suzie’s tone Gray didn’t like. “Tell me. What did you do?”
“It’s not the Glove, Suzie,” Javic said. Gray’s stomach lurched. “And it’s not something you could do to yourself. Not on purpose, anyway—”
“How the hell do you know about the Glove?” Suzie demanded, face ashen.
“Why shouldn’t I—“ Javic shut his eyes, frustrated. “I take it I’m not Torchwood here.”
“You—”
Before Javic could provoke Suzie further, Gray touched her arm. “This isn’t going to work.” She fell quiet, visibly pushing down her emotions. “If we get him back to the safehouse…”
“Yeah.” Suzie looked askance at Javic. “I don’t fancy him trying to escape.”
“You mean—” Gray began, and Suzie met his eyes meaningfully. It made sense. It wasn’t as if it would stick.
“I’ll do it,” Suzie offered, unholstering her pistol.
“No,” Gray said. Javic was his brother, his responsibility. He unholstered his pistol.
“Gray?” Javic asked. Gray cocked the gun. “Put the gun down. Put it down, Gray. I’m telling the truth. You’ve gotta believe me!”
Gray aimed the gun at Javic’s head, not letting show just how much his brother was getting to him, and fired.
—
They weren’t sure how, exactly, to keep Javic dead long enough to get him out of Cardiff. It made an intuitive kind of sense that more damage to the body might keep him down longer, if there was anything intuitive about immortality. (“D’you think he’d come back if we cut off his head, or is this Highlander rules?” Suzie asked. Gray, who had no clue what ‘Highlander rules’ were, shook his head, unwilling to risk it.) Eventually they settled on slitting his jugular and bleeding him dry; exsanguination was one of the more sanitary options, and they reckoned it might take a while to regenerate all that blood.
They slung Javic’s body over Gray’s shoulder, hauled him up the rickety stairs to the surface, and began the perilous journey out of Cardiff. It was still dark, and the rain had settled to a light drizzle. Without the noise to cover their tracks they had to be even more careful to avoid drawing attention. The Hoix had wandered off, and in the distance, Weevils scavenged the remains of the WWI soldiers, a distraction for which Gray was grateful. That was the kind of luck they would need if they were going to get out of Cardiff alive.
They were marching through what was left of Splott when, without warning, Javic took a sharp breath and screamed at the top of his goddamn lungs. He flailed so hard that he knocked Gray off balance and sent them both crashing to the ground. Quickly, Gray got himself onto his hands and knees, checked for his pistol and scanned for Javic, prepared for an attack —
Javic was lying on his back, ineffectually squirming away from Gray. When Gray pointed the gun at him (though firing would draw the attention of the Weevil population), Javic stopped and held his bound hands up in a gesture of surrender. It looked like there was honest-to-god fear in his eyes. “I won’t fight.”
“We can’t let you,” Suzie said.
Lacking better alternatives, Gray drew the knife from his belt. He’d try to make it quick.
“No,” Javic said. “Wait, don’t—”
Nearby, something moaned. Gray’s blood ran cold.
“Shit,” Suzie hissed.
In response to the first cry more rang out, from all around. Javic’s scream must have alerted them. Their footsteps echoed across the ruins, coming closer: Weevils. The Weevils had found them. They needed to run.
Carrying Javic would be too slow, and leaving behind would give him a chance to escape. Gray made a lightning-fast decision: he knelt down in front of Javic and cut his binds.
“Gray—“ Suzie began.
“We have to move,” Gray said to Javic. “If you run or scream or try anything, you die.”
Javic stared at Gray blankly. “I’m immortal,” he pointed out.
“A Weevil to the throat’ll still hurt, won’t it?”
“Weevils?” Javic asked as Gray hauled him to his feet. More growls, closer than before and from all directions, rang through the air.
“Weevils,” Gray said. “Come on!” Then they were running. Gray kept a vice grip on Javic’s arm to drag him along; Javic didn’t need to be told twice to sprint. The growls were right behind them now. Gray glanced over his shoulder: twenty Weevils, at least, loping after them. More emerged from the ruined buildings. Up ahead, low to the ground silhouettes shuffled forward. The air was filled with snarls. There were too many of them. There was no way in hell they’d get through unscathed.
“There!” Suzie cried, pointing at an old stone church. The walls were intact, which could not be said for most of the buildings in the area, and even the heavy wooden doors at the entrance had survived. Perfect.
They fled inside. The roof had partially collapsed, rain coming in through the hole, and the ground was covered in colorful, glittering shards of glass from when the blast had blown in the windows. Gray all but threw Javic to the ground inside and helped Suzie slide a heavy wooden pew in front of the entrance. Just as they’d barred the door there was a thud as a Weevil tried to bash it in, and then, when that didn’t work, there was a frustrated snarl, and claws scrabbling against wood.
“D’you think it’ll hold?” Suzie asked breathlessly.
There was another thud, this one strong enough to disturb the pew and crack open the doors. Weevil claws reached through the gap. Suzie swore. She and Gray pushed another pew onto the barricade.
They were working on a third pew when Javic, still lying on the ground, said, “This is Cardiff.”
“Where did you think we were?” Suzie grunted as they pushed the pew into place. They stepped back and assessed their handiwork. For the time being, it would hold.
“What the hell happened here?” Javic demanded, pulling himself to his feet.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Suzie said.
“Cardiff is in ruins,” Javic snarled. “Abandoned. Overrun. Why?”
All the breath went out of Gray’s lungs. Of course. Of course, that was what Javic wanted to hear.
Suzie’s eyes flashed with ice-cold loathing. “This is sick.”
“Just tell me what did this—”
“You did, Javic,” Gray said, aiming for a neutral tone, falling entirely short. “You’re the one who ordered the nuclear strike on Cardiff.”
Javic’s face was chalk white. “No. I wouldn’t—”
“But you did,” Gray snapped. “Two hundred thousand dead, just to make me watch.” Gray clenched his jaw. This was exactly the reaction Javic wanted, but Gray couldn’t help it, even eight months later. It had been the worst day of his life. He would never forget Javic’s gleeful laughter, or the glow of the blast, or the sickening twist of his own guilt.
Javic looked between Gray and Suzie, and Gray thought, this is it, this is the turn, this is when he sneers and says “don’t you act so high and mighty when the only reason I had to was because you—”
Javic sagged against one of the pews. Something broke in his face. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Gray replied, even as he tried not to flinch.
Just then, a new round of Weevil cries rose up from all around the church, and the banging on the door intensified. Suddenly, a Weevil pulled itself up and through one of the high windows. Suzie let out a shout before firing her gun, sending it crashing to the floor below.
“They’re scaling the walls,” Javic said, horrified.
“They’re hungry,” Suzie said.
Another Weevil vaulted through a window, and Gray shot it. Suzie and Gray (and Javic) went back-to-back in the center of the church, guns drawn, scanning for interlopers.
“Since when do Weevils climb walls?” Javic asked.
Gray shot a Weevil as soon as its head appeared in the window. “Since now.”
“If you know so much about Weevils, tell us how to get rid of them,” Suzie said.
Gray and Suzie focused on taking Weevil potshots until Javic said, “Give me my wrist strap.”
“No way,” Gray said.
“I know a signal that would disperse the Weevils.”
“Is that possible?” Suzie asked Gray.
Yes, it was theoretically possible, but Gray didn’t believe Javic for one second. “He’ll just use it to escape.“
“The teleporter’s broken,” Javic said.
“Sure it is.”
“ I’m trying to save your life!”
“What else is new?” Gray muttered, before he shot another Weevil with immense satisfaction — then another, and another, and another.
“We’ve got to fall back,” Suzie said, frantically reloading her pistol. “There’s too many—”
“Fine,” Javic said with a desperate edge to his voice. “You keep the wrist strap, I’ll tell you what buttons to push.”
“Oh, give up,” Gray said.
“I am not your enemy!” Javic cried. “If you’d just let me—” He put his hand on the wrist strap. Gray yanked it out of Javic’s grip, turned, and clocked him across the jaw.
Javic went crashing into the pews.
“Do you expect me to believe you?” Gray demanded as his brother groaned. “Do you think you can walk back into my life, say you’re someone else, and suddenly I trust you again? After everything you’ve done—”
“Gray!” Suzie snapped.
Gray found Suzie pointing a gun at his head, gaze directed at something behind him. He threw himself to the side as Suzie emptied her gun into the Weevil that had been about to maul him. It tumbled to the floor at his feet.
“Send the signal,” Suzie demanded.
“But—”
“I don’t care. I am not going to be eaten by a bloody Weevil,” Suzie said indignantly, voice trembling.
Gray wanted to tell Suzie that she didn’t get it. If Javic captured them, he would force Gray into the twilight space between life and death, where all that existed was agony; if Suzie lived, she would live as an instrument of torture against Gray. Then again, maybe Suzie did understand. Nothing scared her more than death. Death was the end. It took life’s infinite reaching fingers of possibility and amputated them. If Javic won, Gray would live, and there was a chance Suzie would too. The Weevils afforded no such hope. Gray didn’t have the right to refuse Suzie her own future, even though he would prefer to refuse his own.
“Ten quid he’s lying,” Gray said.
“I’ll take that chance,” Suzie replied.
Gray numbly flipped open the vortex manipulator and looked down at Javic. “Tell me how to work this thing.”
Javic’s face flickered with surprise, before he nodded, hauled himself to his feet, and began running through inputs quick enough that Gray barely kept up. For seconds that seemed like hours, Gray’s fingers prodded the wrist strap, as more and more Weevils breached the church walls, Suzie firing at them. At the front of the church there was a piercing shriek. The Weevils split apart the wooden doors and climbed over the barricade, too many for one person to hold back. As the wave of Weevils surged forward, Gray pressed the last button, and the vortex manipulator emitted an ear-splitting screech. All three of them covered their ears against the wailing. Gray closed his eyes and waited to be mauled. But the claws at his throat never came. The Weevils — the Weevils were running away. The signal had worked.
Finally, the screech cut out. Gray’s ears rang. A few remaining stragglers were retreating through the front doors of the church, their howls fading into the distance. Javic had a cocky grin on his face, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. His lip was split. He laughed. “How’s that for pest control?”
But Gray wasn’t really listening. He was thinking about just how loud the signal had been, paired with the fact that Gray and Suzie were on a stealth mission in enemy territory.
“If UNIT heard that…” Gray said.
“Oh, God,” Suzie said.
“The signal only has a two kilometer radius,” Javic said dismissively.
“UNIT’s within a two kilometer radius!” Gray said. After eight months fighting to avoid being captured by UNIT above all else, the thought of being so easily tricked into giving away his position was too horrible for words.
“Oh.” Javic faltered. “I mean, UNIT’s not so bad.”
Gray and Suzie stared, speechless, at Javic Piotr Thane, the Director of UNIT.
“What did I say this time?” he asked.
—
Gray, Javic, and Suzie burst out of the church and sprinted full tilt through Cardiff, putting as much distance as possible between them and the source of Javic’s signal. As they barreled north Splott, a UNIT helicopter swooped low overhead, making a beeline for the church, its searchlight narrowly missing them as they ducked under the ruins of an old house. As they sacrificed stealth for speed, the only reason they didn’t get mauled by Weevils was because of Javic’s signal, which had worked as effectively as promised. They ran until they hit the old train tracks, and then kept running, lungs burning, legs aching.
Briefly, they took refuge beneath a bridge crossing the tracks, to catch their breath. Gray cracked open a bottle of water, and he and Suzie took turns drinking. Meanwhile they watched, mildly horrified, as a swarm of UNIT helicopters converged on the church like flies to a corpse. It was a matter of time before UNIT realized whoever they were looking for had fled and expanded their search. For now, though, Gray was just relieved that they hadn’t been found already.
Gray held out his open palm to Suzie. Suzie looked at it like it was a dead animal. Gray shook it for emphasis.
“I’m not giving you ten quid,” Suzie said. When Gray raised his eyebrows, she inclined her head at Javic — sat a few meters away, alone, catching his breath — and continued, “He wasn’t lying.” And although Gray found it difficult to stomach, it was the truth. Javic had kept his word. He’d driven off the Weevils. And even though he’d sicced UNIT on them, in the end, he hadn’t given them away.
All Javic wanted was to have Gray in his possession, and he had passed up the perfect opportunity to get just that. For that fact alone, Gray wondered…
“What if he’s telling the truth about the rest of it?” Gray asked.
“He’s not,” Suzie said. Gray trusted her judgment. Javic had never quite tricked her, the way he’d tricked Gray. “Sooner or later, he’ll realize that the ‘loving older brother’ act only works the first time around and show his hand.”
“But if it’s an act, why hasn’t he dropped it already? What’s he trying to achieve?”
As they gazed at Javic — this new, strange, remorseful, unscarred Javic — Suzie replied, “I wish I knew.”