Torchwood: Exodus Code

friendly non-combative symbols and nations’ flags under which you could fly.
    With the exception of Cash, and, so everyone in the crew assumed, Dana too, the rest of the group did not know what (or who) was funding this latest enterprise. Since the mission began, the crew’s wages had been deposited into their accounts from an organisation called the International Institute of Geological Defense with an IP address and a PO Box that suggested headquarters in the Faroe Islands and Puerto Rico. The benefits were generous, and although the ship’s shell and hull had seen better days, the deposit from this current mission had meant Cash could afford a long overdue upgrade to his crew’s quarters, the facilities in the kitchen , and one or two pieces of sophisticated (and once again illegal) trawling equipment he’d been eyeing for a long time.
    For this mission, the crew of the
Ice Maiden
had been tasked to monitor the earth’s oceans like a newborn, checking her temperatures from every possible geological angle, observing the slightest changes in wind currents, charting weather patterns and tidal changes, migration shifts and marine population fluctuations. In the past months the crew had sunk so many devices deep into the oceans and recorded so many sonograms from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific from the Antarctic to the North Atlantic that the
Ice Maiden
had gathered an overwhelming mass of data. Cash had been transmitting their findings to the Institute for Geological Defense, but he doubted that anyone, even there, could possibly be making any sense of it.
    Cash was convinced that, although the world had shifted out of crisis mode, countries and their governments had slid back into neutral, cruising along as before, trusting that everything and everyone had returned to normal, turning a blind eye to anything that might suggest trouble was once again looming.
    He hoped that all the data they were gathering was suggesting nothing too far out of the ordinary, but he doubted that.
    He was right, and he was terribly wrong.

Gwen

30
    GWEN’S SHOULDER HAD been cleaned and dressed. Seeing her flailing like a maniac on a hospital bed, her wrists strapped to the bed’s safety bars, her hair matted and oily and her arms bruised and bandaged – it was all more than Rhys could stand. He went into the corridor to wait for Jack.
    Thankfully, the detectives from CID investigating the other incidents of violence and disorderly conduct had gone. They had decided that Gwen, like the other affected women, should be restrained and sedated until the doctors could figure out what had caused their mental breakdowns and their severe self-mutilations.
    Stepping out of the lift onto the psychiatric care floor, Jack was immediately assaulted by Gwen’s anger. He felt it in his knees, a shooting pain, and he tasted it in his mouth – like onions. Gwen’s shouts of profanity and her screaming insults were being directed at someone named ‘Suzie’.
    Rhys was crouched against the wall opposite the Plexiglas screens of the secure ward, the guard at the enclosed desk near the lift watching his every move. Rhys’s head was buried in his hands, but when he saw Jack he slowly stood up.
    ‘How is she?’ asked Jack looking into the ward, a headache beginning behind his eyes. Gwen was in the first of four beds , writhing against the ministrations of two nurses and a burly male orderly while the doctor, a petite woman in a white lab coat, keyed notes into a tablet. Jack noticed that the other three beds were each occupied with seriously injured women, all sedated, their IV drips standing at attention next to their beds like thin alien sentinels.
    ‘She’s bad, Jack,’ said Rhys, his voice catching in his throat. ‘Because of her concussion, the doctor didn’t want to put her completely under, but they may have no choice. Her anger is out of control. She’s a danger to herself. To everyone.’
    The doctor swiped her ID card at the panel inside the room. She came out and stepped over to them. Jack figured her to be in her early forties, her caramel-coloured skin flawless. She was short, attractive and professional in a pale green blouse and a navy pencil skirt that showed enough of her legs to make Jack and Rhys notice. The badge on her white lab coat identified her as Dr Olivia Steele.
    ‘Mr Williams, I’m Dr Steele. May I have a word?’ She proffered her arm, guiding Rhys down the hall for privacy.
    Rhys nodded his head