Torchwood: Exodus Code

even the students who pulled them apart didn’t see the actual assault. Just the aftermath.’
    Andy stared more closely at the paused tape, at the young woman’s back as she sat astride the librarian, her arms frozen in the air above her head, her knees pressed against the librarian’s shoulders. Andy was thinking about the similarities that had caught his attention in the first place about this case. He could hear Bonnie nudging him to think.
    The woman in the shop had ripped off the lobe of her own ear while Gwen and the manager were having their wrestling match, and here was this librarian with serious facial wounds, the result of an equally bizarre attack.
    ‘Can you rewind to right before the librarian comes into the frame?’
    ‘I can,’ said Tommy. On the screen, the entwined couple shift in and out of the frame, their energetic coupling no longer Andy’s focus.
    ‘Stop,’ said Andy, pointing to the corner of the screen as the librarian came into view. ‘Can you get any closer?’
    Tommy zoomed in on the librarian’s shoulder’s and the side of her face.
    ‘Jesus! What the hell?’ said Tommy.
    ‘That girl didn’t hurt the librarian,’ said Andy, staring at the blurry angle of the side of the librarian’s face, and what looked like the librarian’s eyeball resting on her cheek. ‘I think the girl was trying to restrain the librarian. Stop her from mutilating any more of her own face.’
    ‘Now that’s seriously messed up.’
    ‘Seriously,’ said Andy.

27
    GWEN BLINKED FAST, shaking her head, but she kept her gun pointed at Rhys, ignoring her daughter teetering against the door jamb.
    ‘I think I need to go,’ Gwen said, the words coming out in a strange squeaky pitch. But instead of taking a step back, Gwen took two steps towards Rhys, making any shot she took at him sure to hit Anwen too.
    Keeping his eye on Gwen, Rhys shifted over to the centre of the hallway, his arm a dead weight against his side, his fingers throbbing. If he could keep Gwen talking, maybe she’d come to her senses, but he still had to get Anwen out of the line of fire.
    ‘What’re you thinking you want to do here, Gwen, love?’ he asked taking two steps back towards the living room door where Anwen was playing with the fringes on the end of the carpet runner.
    ‘You need to give me time to think. I need time to think!’ Gwen said, her voice heavy with rage. ‘Let. Me. Think!’ She banged the side of the gun off the side of her head. One, two, three times, as if she was trying to pound sense into it. Rhys gasped, horrified the gun might go off, but before he could move, Gwen turned it back on him.
    Holding the gun steady, she aimed at his chest, but her gaze was locked on a point directly over his shoulder. Gwen’s concentration was so fierce that Rhys was sure someone was standing behind him.
    Gwen was now muttering under her breath as if she was talking to someone, having an angry conversation that wasn’t going her way. Gesticulating wildly, she began to toss the gun back and forth from her left to her right hand as if someone was trying to grab it from her.
    With his wife’s focus distracted, Rhys decided this might be his only chance to move. But which way? Forward to try to disarm Gwen, risk her firing the gun and Anwen becoming collateral damage? Or backwards, remove Anwen from the situation, and take his chances with Gwen and the gun?
    Gwen steadied the gun at Rhys’s head. She released the safety. Rhys made his decision. He pivoted, reached down and shoved Anwen onto the living room floor, then reached back, slamming the door quickly, praying she’d be safer loose in the living room than in the hallway with her deranged mother.
    Gwen screamed, ‘No! No!’
    The gun edged up a little and she fired, shattering the mirror behind Rhys. He threw himself to the floor. Gwen fired again. Rhys rolled against the door to the basement, cracking his shoulder against the hard wood. Still screaming, Gwen fired wide and missed again.
    Stunned, Rhys understood what she was doing. Gwen was fighting with herself, her face twitching madly, her eyes narrowed one second and then wide and panicked the next, trying desperately to stop whatever was in her head telling her to shoot her husband.
    Cowering in the corner, Rhys watched helplessly as the angry Gwen took aim at his head. The Gwen who loved him, who adored their daughter, was not winning this fight.
    A horrified expression crossed Gwen’s face. Her