Torchwood: Exodus Code

thinner up this high than he’d reckoned. Dropping his goggles around his neck, Jack wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. Leaning out of his seat, he peered down inside the basin of the mountain. He pulled a notebook from his coat’s inside pocket and began to sketch the rings. As he sketched, each stroke of his pencil set off a chime in his head, like the distant notes of a half-remembered tune. Jack frowned, the drawing dancing before his eyes. The closer he looked, the faster the rings appeared to spin through each other. Cautiously, Jack touched the paper with the point of his pencil, feeling it contort like India rubber, sending the rings dancing from the page into the air before settling down. Jack’s vision cleared as he stared at the pattern.
    ‘They look like hieroglyphs,’ said Jack, scribbling intently. ‘Kind of familiar. My ancient Egyptian isn’t so hot these days.’
    Renso raised an eyebrow. Like a lot of things Jack said, he didn’t know if it was an outrageous lie, or an even more outrageous truth. He glanced down at the pattern smouldering in the landscape beneath them. ‘Egyptian? Given the land we’re flying over, it’s more likely to be Incan.’
    ‘Yeah,’ agreed Jack. ‘Could be.’ As he talked, his hand sketched on, every movement of the pencil playing out more of that tune in his head. Despite the buffeting wind and the jostling of the plane, Jack drew on.
    Renso glanced back. Jack’s notebook pages were filling with words, geometric shapes, drawings of what looked to Renso like a series of odd lines and circles and lines of musical notes. It looked as if someone else was controlling his hands; they were moving furiously across the pages. Renso knew Jack well enough not to question his capabilities, but still something was not quite right about Jack’s demeanour.
    When Renso looked into the maw all he could see was an odd smouldering rock formation. No movement. No pulsing and certainly not forming any of the shapes that Jack was sketching. Keeping the Hornet as tight to the basin as he could, he asked, ‘Jack, are you sure of what you’re seeing?’
    ‘If you’re asking do I know what this is and what it means, then no,’ said Jack. ‘Not yet. I’ve seen all sorts of things, met all kinds of life. Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that could carve something like that out of the inside of a mountain, though.’
    As he spoke, Jack realised that that was exactly what he was looking at.
    ‘One thing I do know, though – whatever it is, whatever it means, it’s been in that mountain for a very a long time.’
    ‘How do you reckon that?’ Renso’s voice sounded odd to Jack, distant and confused. Jack swallowed, tasting vanilla and cinnamon when he did.
    Renso pulled the plane above the basin, trying to present Jack with as many angles as possible.
    ‘The Spanish Conquistadors destroyed most of the temples and the holy sites that were part of this landscape when they came to the Americas. They stripped the surface of these mountains searching for gold and silver centuries ago. See that dark line running through the centre of the plateau?’ Jack nudged Renso’s shoulder and pointed up ahead. Renso nodded, pulling the Hornet higher, the line Jack was pointing to stretching out more clearly in front of them. ‘That’s a vein of ore and that’s not something you’d normally find at the surface of a mountain. You’d find it under its surface.’
    ‘So these rings have been hidden until now,’ said Renso. ‘That’s what I thought.’
    ‘I really need to get into that basin, to get a closer—’ Jack’s throat tightened. He choked out ‘look.’
    ‘Jack? Are you sure you’re all right?’ asked Renso, turning the Hornet to approach the basin from yet another angle.
    ‘Fine,’ croaked Jack, ignoring the lone voice in his head, his voice he was sure, that kept saying, ‘No you’re not, Jack. Something really bad is happening to you.’
    Jack shook his head to clear the solo voice that in a heartbeat became two voices and then three and before Jack could shut them out, a chorus of voices all sounding like his were taunting him about how bad he was feeling, how awful flying was, how loud his heart was beating, how breathless he felt, and how things were only going to get worse.
    Worse, Jack – much, much worse.
    Renso seemed to be oblivious to his passenger’s growing anguish and panic. Jack forced himself to concentrate on what the pilot was