Torchwood: Exodus Code

in his mouth sickening.
    The Hornet lurched against Jack’s shifting weight, his clumsy movements wedging Renso tighter in the tiny cockpit. Renso’s head knocked the throttle forward as he fell into unconsciousness. The Hornet pitched into a spiralling dive , once again plunging towards the mountain.
    The Hornet tossed Jack into the air like a rag doll. Windmilling frantically, Jack lunged for the first thing he could, his fingers reaching, slipping then grasping the edge of the wheelbase, his legs flying out behind him. The plane shrieked towards the ground, the wind tearing into Jack’s flesh as he hung by his fingertips from the Hornet’s side.
    Jack hooked his arm over the wheelbase and swung his legs, hoping to reach the cockpit. The Hornet flipped, trying to shake him off. Jack’s body slammed hard into the side of the plane, knocking the wind from him. Jack gasped and lost his grip.
    The screeching violins, the strident voices, the tragic laments of hopelessness fell silent inside Jack’s head.
    With his coat billowing out behind him like enormous wings, Jack plummeted towards the face of la Madre Montâna, the plane spiralling next to him.
    ‘This,’ thought Jack before losing consciousness, ‘is really gonna hurt.’

Isela

4
    Southern Coast of Peru, Hacienda del Castenado, present day
    ISELA WAS PREPARING to shoot someone. From her position on the north side of the Hacienda del Castenado’s chapel belfry, the 14-year-old had a clear view of the Pacific to her left, the high desert tables of the Andes to her right, and the narrow canyon through la Madre Montâna in front of her. She was hot and bored and tired of always being the sniper in the tower.
    In the 1640s, a Spanish Viceroy had erected Hacienda del Castenado to enclose (and strangle) the ancient Inca village of Isela’s ancestors, the Cuari. The terraces of the hacienda were now a tourist gem carved into the west face of the mountain. To solidify his power, the Spanish Viceroy, Alphonsa Castenado the Great (or the Despised depending on the colour of your skin) had constructed the chapel as the hacienda’s focal point. It stood on the ruins of a native temple that had lasted for thousands of years until it was torn down by the Conquistadors.
    Centuries later, Isela, a direct descendant of Alphonsa and his Cuari concubine, lurked here, an automatic rifle resting at her side.
    Isela’s mother like most of the population of the surrounding villages was a devoted follower of the region’s religious cocktail of Catholic rituals and native rites. She believed that the chapel’s position on top of the ancient temple meant the hacienda and all who lived within its pink-washed adobe walls were doubly blessed. As far as Isela was concerned, the place was continually serving a crushing blow to her dreams to say nothing of her spirit, which Isela’s mother and her
abuela
, her grandmother, insisted was the reincarnation of a Cuari goddess.
    Despite the strange dreams she’d been having all her life, and her uncanny ability to see clearly in the dark, Isela wasn’t sure she bought their explanation, but tourists did and so she was forced to dress and act the part during the Cuari Festival of the Goddess every Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the piazza. Not this week. This week the festival would have to find another deity. Isela planned to be long gone by Sunday.
    Isela swatted a fly from her face and spat grime onto the cobbled stone of the belfry. She cursed her mother for the hundredth time that morning. If not for her mother, Isela might have had a chance to escape this oppressive existence before today. If not for her mother, Isela might have had a chance to put her talents, and she had plenty beyond her skills with a rifle, to more legitimate uses. If not for her mother, Isela might have killed her stepbrother, Antonio Castenado, years ago.
    In the cobbled piazza in front of the chapel, Isela watched the local artisans setting up their stalls round the shaded arched perimeter. Every morning these men and women readied their wares for the influx of tourists arriving from Ica and Lima and regions further north. A river of buses would stream one by one through the narrow canyon, until the hacienda and the outlying area were swarming with people.
    Isela watched the men and women uncover their carts filled with shiny glazed pots, wooden crosses with brown Jesuses etched on them, and bright tapestries stitched with Inca designs, likely made in