Torchwood: Exodus Code

another program on the computer and sent the same message she’d been sending for the past three days, since she’d felt her life caving in on her.
    Gwen heard Anwen cough, paused, listened for a beat, then she opened a number of windows and scrolled through screens, until she had access to the local CCTV cameras outside the hospital in Swansea. When she recognised the medics unloading the gurney with the madwoman strapped to it, Gwen zoomed in on the image. They must have sedated her, Gwen thought. The woman was unnaturally still, her eyes wide open, and a bandaged taped to the right side of her face.
    Gwen noted the time stamp on the recording, closed out all but one of her screens and in a few minutes had hacked into the patient admission records.
    Before she could investigate further, she heard a car door slam through the monitor. Shit. Rhys was home. He’d kill her if he discovered she had hidden all of this equipment, never mind that she’d left Anwen.
    ‘Come on, come on,’ she said, scrolling through screens until she found the admission files for the day’s patients.
    From the baby monitor, she could hear Rhys’s footsteps on the stairs, and, of course, Anwen decided at that moment to stir. Gwen listened as her whimpers began.
    She found the database. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, her adrenalin spiking. God, she missed this rush.
    Anwen burst into full-scale crying.
    From the monitor, Gwen heard the bedroom door creak open. Anwen’s crib rattled, her screams increasing. Gwen heard the footsteps on the floor. She heard Anwen’s blankets rustle.
    Gwen stopped typing, her hands frozen in mid-air. What if it wasn’t Rhys?

22
    ‘WHERE’S YOUR MUM then, luv?’
    Gwen exhaled, not knowing what she would have done if the voice in the monitor hadn’t belonged to Rhys.
    Three patients’ records popped on the screen one after another, two women and one man. She clicked on the man and scanned the A & E admission notes. Drunk and disorderly, he’d cracked his head open outside a pub.
    Anwen’s cries settled back to whimpers. Gwen could hear Rhys picking her up from her crib. ‘Is your mum asleep, pet?’
    She heard the nursery door open and footsteps going down the hall.
    Gwen clicked on the other two admission charts, scanned their notes too. ‘What are the chances of that?’ said Gwen. Frantically, she emailed the charts to her phone.
    ‘Gwen Cooper!’
    Gwen jumped. ‘Shit.’ The static on the baby monitor crackled loudly, the anger in Rhys’s voice palpable. ‘Get back here. How could you leave Anwen by her bloody self?’
    Gwen grabbed the monitor and was about to answer that she was in contact every second, but then remembered it wasn’t a radio, a realisation that reinforced how much she missed her old life. How much she missed Torchwood.
    She listened to Rhys’s footsteps as he bounded down the stairs. She could not have him come outside and find her here. He’d take away the only things she had left that made her feel needed. Although, really, what could he do? He could lock her up in the attic like some wayward wife. He could take away her daughter. He wouldn’t dare. Gwen’s anger knotted in her gut.
    ‘Gwen! Where are you?’
    She was about to shut off the computer, when the screen filled with static. What the hell? Staring at the static, she ran her fingertips across the tracking pad, but the static remained. She tried to shut down the computer. The static remained. And then as if she’d stepped inside the noise, Gwen could see nothing but grey noise and static around her.
    Yet a part of her knew she was staring at a computer screen inside a shell of an SUV in Wales. It was as if she was watching herself watching herself.
    She shivered.
    Somewhere ahead of her, Gwen could hear a low hum. Wait. Not a hum, a growl.
    Gwen tore her eyes away from the static on the screen. She felt sick. She could hear the growling getting louder. What was it? Leaving the static screaming on the screen, Gwen crawled to the side of the SUV and stared out at the darkness. The windows in the SUV had been broken out ages ago.
    This time she heard the low growl behind her.
    Inside the SUV.
    She whipped round, ready to attack, and found herself facing the most beautiful animal she’d ever seen. Its skin was crushed velvet, its eyes like polished stones – so black they shimmered blue. The puma went down on its front paws, holding Gwen’s gaze.
    Gwen could see herself in the puma’s eyes,