Torchwood: Exodus Code

next to his body and then carefully rolled him onto the sturdy skin. Gaia noticed that his arms were no longer dislocated. The revelation that this man was able to heal his own body did not shock her. He was after all from the heavens.
    Lifting the poles onto their shoulders and with Gaia leading their descent, the women raced the setting sun down the steep canyon pass to the village.

10
    Langley, Virginia, present day
    DARREN CROWDER HAD been a journalist before the Miracle, a good one. He’d been working on the health desk of the
Washington Register
, an online weekly read mostly by policy wonks and government agency bureaucrats. As tragic as it had been, the Miracle had given Darren and his colleagues lots of ‘I told you so’ opportunities as the events of those terrible months had exposed flaws inherent in America and the world’s healthcare policies. When people finally began to die again, two significant global changes occurred as a result: governments increased the personnel in their clandestine agencies in the hopes of avoiding another such event; and, within these agencies, they covertly invested resources to track the three families who were behind the near apocalypse.
    Many months and far too many international tribunals and governmental hearings later, the anger and horrors surrounding the Miracle had dissipated, and blame had been spread evenly among governments, corporations, health organisations and NGOs for the catastrophic administrative and leadership failures that had led to such terrible lapses in global morality. Ordinary men and women just wanted their lives to return to some kind of normal. Their deaths, too.
    Darren Crowder had been recruited for the Special Activities Division of the CIA. The Deputy Director had read and appreciated Darren’s work post-Miracle Day, and had personally hired Darren as an analyst. The new agency was known publicly (and any time the Deputy Director was within earshot) as the Office of Geo-Global Affairs; the rest of the time, it was known as ‘the Morgue’, because their mandate was the result of death’s comeback.
    Looking across the crowded room, Darren decided that, although this was a branch of the CIA, the space had all the characteristics of a newsroom. Its mandate was unique but its approach was no different – smart men and women gathering information, raking through reports and records to uncover patterns and relationships. In the case of the men and women in this particular room, sifting to discover how deep the power of the three families ran, whether or not they continued to pose a threat, and perhaps the most important question of all, as far as Darren was concerned, who the hell were they?
    Darren’s computer beeped an alert. He typed in his access code and a satellite map popped up on his screen. At first he distrusted his own eyes. He couldn’t possibly be seeing what he was seeing. Zooming in on the image, he stared at the screen for a good ten minutes before saving the file to the department’s server, logging off and dashing into the narrow hall. Skipping the elevators, he took the stairs instead, leaping down three at a time.
    Breathless, he rushed into the Deputy Director’s outer office. The Deputy Director’s assistant jumped up from his seat, attempting to block Darren’s entry into the inner sanctum.
    ‘I need to see the Deputy Director immediately.’
    ‘Let me see if he’s available.’
    The assistant sat back down, waving Darren to a leather couch where he realised a young woman was sitting, flipping through a magazine, obviously waiting to see the Deputy Director. She looked familiar, but he dismissed the feeling, realising that everyone applying for a position with this unit had the same look about them: grey suit, grey expression. No one had a sense of humour any more. It was as if society had lost its ability to mock, to poke fun at life, because death had left for a while.
    The assistant hung up the phone. ‘He’s in the middle of important interviews, Agent Crowder. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait like everyone else.’
    ‘This really can’t wait,’ said Darren, pushing past the assistant, who couldn’t get to the emergency lock on the Deputy Director’s door in time. Darren charged into the office, but not before he noticed the woman on the couch was still flipping through her magazine, unfazed by his brash actions.
    Inside the expansive office with its view of the capitol building, the Deputy