Torchwood: Exodus Code

would ever see Jack Harkness.
    Jack watched until Renso was out of his sight, then he took one, two, three steps towards the oncoming rift. With only inches before the gaping chasm touched Jack’s boots, the ground stopped shaking, the cleft in the jungle began to close, the ground healing itself, leaving a path of destruction that looked like nothing more than a heavy wind had been trailing behind them.
    Puzzled, Jack followed the line of destruction back to the village. He looked up at the top of the mountain, calm now, no longer erupting, a thin sliver of the sun rising behind it, capping its peak, washing it in the pale light of dawn.
    Jack’s headache was no longer raging. He sat down on a pile of loose mud bricks that had once been someone’s hut. He stared at his tunic, at his scuffed boots, at his legs that were already healing. He glanced at the shell of a pueblo village, at the terraced fields behind it that had been churned into mulch, and he started to laugh. He ran his fingers through his hair and he howled.
    ‘Where the hell am I?’

17
    Langley, Virginia, present day
    ‘HOLD MY CALLS ,’ Rex Matheson yelled into his intercom. ‘And get rid of my next interviews.’
    He glared at Darren. ‘How did this mission become such a goddamn cluster fuck?’
    The computer screen in front of them was displaying a satellite image of the piazza at Hacienda del Castenado an hour earlier.
    ‘Everything was going according to plan until—’
    Darren used the track pad and zoomed the video image in on the belfry and Isela taking her shot. Darren forwarded the image and they watched the minibus careening off the canyon wall, flipping over, a body flying through its windshield, then the van skidding to a halt at the mouth of the canyon.
    ‘As far as I can figure, the girl must have been in on it with Castenado, but I think Carlisle dismissed her as a threat because of her age. We had eyes on everyone else in the piazza. Just not her in the belfry.’
    ‘What happened to Agent Carlisle? He was driving the minibus, right?’
    ‘He was, but he never gets out. I think we have to assume the worst, sir.’
    ‘Shit,’ Rex rubbed his hand over his shaved head. ‘So what happened to our mark, to Donoso?’
    Darren used the remote to forward the satellite. ‘We don’t know yet, but it gets worse, sir.’
    ‘How could it get any damn worse?’ yelled Rex, pacing in front of the screen.
    ‘Watch.’

Part Two
    ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell,
a hell of heav’n.’
    John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Gwen

18
    Swansea, Wales, two weeks before Isela’s shot
    GWEN COOPER SPOTTED the madwoman waving her hands in the air shouting, ‘Distaw! Distaw!’ in the tea and coffee aisle. Glancing at the woman, Gwen immediately dismissed her as a ‘nutter’ and returned to her struggles, getting Anwen to sit in the front of the shopping trolley. The madwoman eventually wandered over to the breads and cakes, her shouts of ‘Quiet! Quiet!’ echoing in the warehouse-sized supermarket.
    ‘No! No! Uppie,’ Anwen demanded, grabbing a handful of Gwen’s hair when she leaned forward to hook the safety strap round her daughter’s tiny waist.
    ‘Not this time,’ said Gwen, untangling her contrary toddler’s sticky hands from her hair. ‘We’ve got a lot of shopping to do.’ Gwen manoeuvred her trolley towards the fruit and vegetables.
    Anwen was not giving up this battle quite so easily. She began to scream, arching her back, stiffening her body and at the same time slamming her arms and feet against the side of the trolley.
    Gwen pressed her hands on her daughter’s scissoring legs in a pathetic attempt to squelch the tide of the coming tantrum. It never ceased to amaze Gwen how quickly this beautiful baby girl could morph into a monster child.
    ‘Please, not now, Anwen,’ Gwen pleaded. ‘We’ve got to get back home before Daddy does or I’ll be in big trouble. Again.’
    Anwen continued to thrash and scream, calling attention to the two of them from the queue at the meat counter. In the middle of the afternoon, Swansea’s shoppers were not sympathetic to the squalls of a spoiled toddler. They snarled and tutted. Gwen swore under her breath.
    ‘Bugger off,’ parroted Anwen.
    Gwen gawked at her daughter. ‘No. Bad word, Anwen.’
    Great, now she’s learning to swear, thought Gwen. One more thing to add to her list of bad mummy traits. When did she start such a list? Gwen