Torchwood: Exodus Code

paid a healthy amount of money to make sure that doesn’t happen and I don’t think it did. My traps would have snared it right away. And if it was a Trojan, it wouldn’t be trawling live. It would wait until we were wired up before activating and sending its data.’
    As if on cue, the alarm on his computer began beeping again. Then a beat later, across the passageway, the television clicked on, the crowd at the football game cheering ‘goal’, the commentators screaming. The echogram Eva had been monitoring whirred back and forth angrily and the lights on the ship began to flash.
    Before anyone could react to the crazy electrical surge, another wave smashed against the ship, flipping it almost 180 degrees. Eva screamed and was thrown into Hollis who crashed against the portal. Cash and Vlad tried to brace themselves against each other and the heavy metal desk. Then one of the equipment storage containers popped its moorings and slammed against the opposite wall, knocking a steel shelf loose above Dana’s head. Cash charged her, knocking both of them clear seconds before the shelf stabbed into the chair on which Dana had been kneeling. Cash pulled Dana off the floor, holding her close for a second longer than was necessary.
    Hollis helped Eva back to her seat. Each of them with the exception of Eva had survived more than their share of rough seas, but this was getting pretty bad.
    At that moment, gripping the sides of the door jamb, Finn stuck his head into the room. ‘Cash, everything’s secure on deck. We should be able to ride this out. Byron’s at the wheel.’ He looked at the rest of his shipmates who were pale, shaken and staring back at him. ‘What?’
    ‘Is the satellite still down?’ asked Vlad, ignoring the storm’s violence. Without looking up from his keyboard, despite the broken pieces of equipment that had landed on his desk, he was still chasing their intruder.
    Finn looked from Vlad to Cash. ‘Yes, sir. First thing we did, and we’ve not touched it since. If we need to send a… a signal…’ Finn was far too superstitious to even think about the possibility of distress never mind saying the word aloud, ‘the radios will work from the emergency gen—’
    The lights went out.
    Everything had shut down – the alarms, the lights, the television , and, worst of all, the engines.
    The
Ice Maiden
was dead in the water.
    ‘What the hell’s going on?’ demanded Cash, careening off the walls as he and Sam struggled out of the research lab to the passage, which was not wide enough for two men to pass. ‘Finn, with Sam and me.’
    They stood behind him while he unlocked a storage locker under the ladder with keys hooked on his belt. He lifted out two torches and a gun.
    ‘We may have been hit by a rogue wave,’ he said, handing the torches to Finn and Sam. Steadying himself against the sides of the passageway, he snapped a full clip into the gun, adding, ‘But we may have been hit by something else.’
    ‘Doesn’t really matter what hit us,’ said Sam, leading the way to the engine room. ‘If we can’t get the engines back on… in this storm… we’ll all be swimming soon.’
    Sam, Finn and Cash cautiously made their way along the tight passage to the engine room, leaving the rest in the dark lab.
    Eva was shifting containers to get at a box with emergency lights, which she handed to Hollis who took the lights and strung them across the ceiling. While she was attaching the battery pack, a whirring mechanical noise cut into the screaming wind and the thundering waves pounding into the paralysed trawler.
    Eva shifted a steel drawer out of her way. ‘It’s the teletype. How is that working without electricity?’
    The message printed in lower case was an unusual combination of letters and phrases. Eva tore the sheet from the machine when it stopped.
    Bracing himself against the door, Hollis looked over Eva’s shoulder at the sheet. ‘Is that some kind of code?’ he asked.
    ‘No, darlin’,’ Eva said, mimicking Hollis’s Cajun accent. ‘It’s Welsh.’

Gwen

33
    TWO DAYS AFTER the supermarket incident, most local media outlets were reporting a wave of violent outbursts by women in cinemas, libraries and shops, particularly in rural and secluded parts of the UK. But as the madness appeared to be spreading among small random clusters of woman and no one else – no men and no children – parts of the national press began speculating that these women might be experiencing