Torchwood: Exodus Code

1
    Southern Coast of Peru, 1930
    A HAWKER HORNET banked out over the Pacific, cut a tight circle, and swooped inland over the red cliffs of the southern Peruvian coastline.
    ‘It’s about to get rough, my friend,’ said the pilot.
    His passenger secured his goggles over his eyes then adjusted the straps of his shoulder harness. A dense morning mist wrapped around the top of la Madre Montâna, reducing the pilot’s visibility to inches and the temperature in the open cockpit to bloody freezing. The wind gnawed at the passenger’s face and neck. Shivering, he slid down in the seat, turning up the collar on his coat, but it wasn’t enough to warm him or shrug off the uneasiness that had been swelling in his gut since they’d taken off minutes ago from the airstrip at Castenado. The feeling wasn’t dread so much as discomfort, a sharp piercing pain in Captain Jack Harkness’s gut.
    The Hornet’s wooden frame bucked in the air currents of the southern Pacific. Jack’s stomach flipped. A sudden drop lifted him off his seat, thumping his head on the cross bar of the wings.
    ‘What is it you want to show me that’s worth this?’ Jack yelled over the noise of the propellers.
    ‘I promised you amazing, didn’t I?’
    Jack grinned at the handsome pilot. ‘Renso, we already were.’
    Shifting forward, Renso guided the Hornet towards the jagged cliffs that to Jack looked like the gaping maw of a brooding monster. He’d seen far too many of those in his time. Jack sighed, slouching down in the rickety bucket seat.
    ‘Ready?’ Renso asked.
    ‘Does it matter if I’m not?’
    Renso laughed, flying the Hornet straight into the cloud of mist. Almost immediately the small bi-plane was shrouded in a damp cloak of grey. Jack shivered again and the sensation that earlier he couldn’t name uncoiled itself from his stomach, crawled into his chest, up into his throat, settling painfully behind his eyes. Jack put his head down and moaned.
    Food poisoning, he thought. Had to be.
    ‘All right back there, amigo?’
    Cold sweat was beading on Jack’s forehead, and a burning sensation was knotting the muscles at the base of his neck. His eyes were stinging.
    ‘Fine. I’m fine.’ But Jack was far from it. In fact, he hadn’t been feeling anywhere close to fine since he arrived on the South American coast at Renso’s request two days ago.
    Seconds later, the plane shot out the other side of the fog into a shocking blue sky. The scene displayed beneath Jack jolted him from his reverie, and he stared down into the basin of the mountain.
    ‘What the hell is that?’
    ‘You mean you don’t know?’ said Renso. ‘I thought if anyone would, it’d be you.’

2
    JACK GAZED IN astonishment at three vast glowing rings of igneous rock pulsing deep inside the bowels of the mountain. He knew there’d been an eruption back in January and, at first, he thought the rings were smouldering magma from that. But the closer the Hornet dipped, the more clearly he could see that each ring was seething, spinning, shifting in and out of the other. He could hear their syncopated rhythm in his head. It sounded as if the mountain had a heartbeat. The effect was mesmerising.
    ‘Can you get me down there?’ he asked, forcing his attention from the rings.
    ‘No place to land,’ said Renso. ‘It’d be a long hike to get up here from the nearest canyon. But I can manage closer.’
    Renso pulled back on the stick, the propellers whined, the engines coughed and the Hornet lurched violently. For a beat, Jack thought the plane had died, but then Renso corrected his manoeuvre, punching the Hornet into a vertical climb.
    ‘What’re you doing?’
    ‘Trust me, Jack. This will get you closer.’
    ‘Not now, Renso. I don’t think I can take any more of your tricks.’
    ‘You love my tricks,’ grinned Renso. ‘Brace yourself!’
    With all the skills of the best WWI dogfighter Renso had once been and the crop-dusting pilot he now was, he flipped the Hornet, cut its engines, and sent them into free fall. The plane spiralled dangerously towards the face of the plateau and the spinning rock.
    ‘Stop showing off. Bring her up, now!’
    ‘Don’t be such a backseat flyer, Jack,’ laughed Renso, pulling back on the stick. The Hornet nosed up, inches before its wings strafed the pitted plateau.
    ‘Better?’
    ‘Not much,’ whispered Jack, his breathing laboured. Every exhalation was squeezing his chest. It was the air, he realised; it was even