Torchwood: Exodus Code

a little help.’
    ‘No time, Jack. We need to get off this mountain before she erupts.’
    Jack kept pushing, the stone moving a few inches then sliding back.
    Renso kept going until he realised Jack wasn’t behind him. Renso was starting to get angry. He loved Jack. They’d known each other since the Great War. Jack had saved his life. Twice. And he was certainly the best shag he’d ever had, but right now, stoned or not, he was a real pain in the ass.
    Renso got behind Jack and pushed. The block of stone shifted enough for their passage. On shaky legs, Jack stepped through the antechamber and into the main temple.
    ‘I’ve definitely been here.’ Jack could feel it, but he couldn’t get the memory of it to form.
    Following Jack inside, Renso was astonished to see that the chamber was furnished as if a queen had lived here not centuries ago, but today. The fire was still smouldering.
    Another deep throaty rumble from inside the mountain shook the chamber, knocking both men off their feet. Jack fell into a stack of pillows in the corner. He didn’t try to get up.
    ‘I remember an old woman with white hair, and…’ Jack’s voice drifted off as he tried to find words to get back what he couldn’t remember.
    The ground rumbled again, this time freeing two large triangular stones loose from the roof, crashing them onto a wooden trunk, cracking its lid open, exposing an array of ceremonial knives. Renso picked one up, admiring the jade inlaid along its hilt. No point in leaving all of this to be raided by poachers before the villagers return, he thought. Plus some evidence might encourage investors to sponsor a return trip. He slipped two of the gem-encrusted knives under his belt.
    Jack rubbed the heel of his hands against his bloodshot eyes. ‘Man, I’m fried. I can’t get my brain to focus on anything for more than a second.’
    Renso stepped to the fire pit, kicking over some clay pots as he did. He lifted one, and shoved that into his pocket.
    The mountain roared. The ground trembled. A fissure shot across the stone walls.
    ‘Why are we here, Jack? This morning I survived a plane crash. I really would rather not be buried alive in the middle of the night. I need a shot of tequila and sleep. Make that a lot of tequila.’
    ‘And I,’ said Jack, getting up off the pillows with some difficulty, bowing slightly, holding the edges of his tunic, laughing. ‘I want some trousers.’
    After a few minutes of digging in the baskets and wooden trunks around the chamber, Jack found his coat in shreds under a mat next to the fire. He held up one of its sleeves.
    ‘Looks like someone took a sword to your coat.’
    ‘Thank God I’ve got more than one,’ said Jack.
    A deep rumble knocked both men to the ground, the smell of sulphur getting worse, smoke and ash drifting in through the opening in the roof.
    Jack scavenged around his shredded clothes, finding none of them in one piece. His boots, on the other hand, were wearable. He sat down next to the hissing fire and pulled them on.
    When he stood, even Renso couldn’t contain his laughter. ‘You look like you’ve escaped from a sanatorium.’
    Jack looked down at his boots, at the deep scratches, like claw marks on his legs from the Indian woman and a strange feeling of déjà vu came over him, snagging part of his mind and focusing it. With an urgency that he couldn’t explain to Renso, he knew he had to remember the feeling, remember what had happened today, if it had happened today. The mountain, the woman, the old woman, the sun in his eyes, the cave… Already the memory was peeling off, drifting away like ash.
    He had to write down what he could remember. It was important. He didn’t know why, but he could feel in his bones that it was.
    As the mountain shook, Jack rifled through remains of his coat, feeling some sadness at its destruction.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I need to find something to write on before I lose what happened completely. This mountain is doing weird things to my brain.’
    ‘Maybe not just the mountain,’ said Renso, lifting a bowl layered with cacao leaves.
    ‘I know that’s part of it, but I feel different, like I’m watching myself think.’
    ‘Here,’ said Renso, pulling Jack’s notebook from his breast pocket, handing it to Jack. ‘Use this.’
    ‘How did you get my notebook?’
    ‘I found it when I was looking for you – after the Hornet crashed.’
    Jack opened to a blank page, scribbled across the