Torchwood: Exodus Code

saying.
    ‘All I’m sayin’ is that if these rings had been visible for a while, I’d’ve noticed them sooner because I’ve been flying this route at least once a month since winter.’
    The stabbing pain behind Jack’s eyes was worsening as the voices were getting louder, and then they stopped, at least until Renso banked the plane into another turn and came over the basin and the rings from the south. When the Hornet swooped over the mountain once again, Jack could swear he was hearing music deep inside his head. A thin violin melody. Jack leaned back in his seat, and squeezed his eyes closed. The music was a lament of some kind. It sounded familiar, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. And then the deep chords of the strings dropped behind a voice, a woman’s, melodic and rich, cut into the strings, harmonising with the music. The sultry crooning was enthralling.
    When Jack glanced at Renso, the man was concentrating, silently, on the Hornet’s controls. The music and the woman’s voice ascending together in Jack’s head, beautiful, heartbreakingly so. Jack’s mother’s image danced in front of him. Squeezing his eyes closed against her memory, he could feel her pain and her suffering in every bone of his body. When the Hornet swooped across the plateau once again Jack felt enveloped in anguish for everything he’d ever done. Hopelessness squeezed his throat closed. He was choking, his breath labouring again. Then the music in his head swelled to its crescendo, its beauty washing over Jack in ribbons of blue directly above Renso’s head.
    With all his energy, Jack forced the music and the voices to the back of his consciousness. Sweat dripped down his spine. He put his hand on Renso’s shoulder, squeezing, feeling some relief from the contact, the warmth of his friend’s body.
    ‘One more turn, Jack?’ Renso hoped he’d say no. His friend did not look at all well back there.
    ‘Fine, Renso. Then I think I’ve seen enough for now.’
    Renso took the Hornet up again, the wind whistled through the open cockpit. With his binoculars, Jack scanned the horizon and thought he could see more glyphs, drawings the size of football pitches etched out across the dusty plateaus. One looked like a bird, the other a monkey, a candelabra. Renso turned and the plane came back over the basin and the rings from the north east.
    Jack leaned over the side of the plane, staring into a clearing on the plateau below, an oasis on the mountain, a pueblo village circled by huarango tress, their roots like veins pulsing beneath the surface of the soil.
    Jack watched as one by one the trees pulled their roots from the ground and began dragging themselves towards the mountain.

3
    THE HORNET DIPPED, jolting Jack from his seat. When the plane evened out, Jack looked down at the mountain’s meseta. The oasis beneath him was lush and edenic, the trees unmoving.
    That was weird.
    ‘Renso, when did you discover this was here?’
    ‘Has to be right after the eruption in January. Right before Lent began,’ replied Renso. ‘I do an occasional, um, favour, transport work, for the locals,’ he grinned back at Jack again. ‘Keeps me in pisco and out of trouble. I think I’d’ve noticed if these rings were inside the mountain before that.’
    Jack forced himself to focus on Renso’s words – the voices and the music fading, but the pain in his head, the tightening in his chest, they were getting worse. ‘The volcanic eruption must have cracked the top off the mountain – I’ve seen that happen before.’
    Leaning back in his seat, Jack squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to push the pain away while Renso forced the Hornet higher, banking into its final turn.
    The beauty of the Andes, the southern tip of the Gran Tablazo de Icas, spread beneath them like a canvas, the lush green lowlands, the highland peaks drizzled with snow, the canyons like ribbons winding between them, the plateaus dotted with sagebrush and the pyramids of sand lining the coastline. The landscape reminded Jack of Boeshane, with its giant pyramids of rock and mountainous sand dunes erupting from the ground like golden obelisks.
    ‘Do you feel that?’ asked Jack.
    ‘Feel what?’
    ‘The air? Suddenly it feels heavy. Oppressive. Shouldn’t be so dense this high… and it tastes like—’
    ‘Tastes?’ Renso laughed and wagged his finger. He was really worried now, but replied lightly. ‘I suggest no more tequila for