Torchwood: Exodus Code

crackling through the intercom.
    Jack turned and waved at the guard. The rings disappeared.
    Jack raked his hands through his hair, knowing that he had been lying to himself and he had been for weeks. Exhaustion, loneliness, blood-letting, the effects of nearly dying, all those were the lies he’d been using as excuses for this deepening emotional fragility he was experiencing, for it was a wave of fear, a tug of intensity and a strange email that had brought him back to Wales in time to stop Gwen hurting her family.
    Jack couldn’t explain how his need to help her had been triggered by a scent on a distant world, the smell lingering from a dream he’d had or a memory that was seeping back into his consciousness from an age ago. Jack knew he could no longer ignore the rock-hard bad feeling lodged in his gut that something troubling was happening on Earth, and that Gwen and all these mad women were somehow part of it.
    The only other visitor in the psychiatric ward was a stocky man in his thirties, leaning over the woman with one side of her face bandaged. He was gently brushing a section of his wife’s hair, an act so intimate and tender that Jack averted his eyes for a beat, but the man caught Jack’s stare.
    ‘At night when we watch the telly,’ he said, his voice heavy with sadness, ‘I always give ’er hair a brush, like. She says it makes her ’ave good dreams. Don’t know what else to do to make her be still.’ Every few beats his wife would jump, her arms and legs spasming against the blankets.
    ‘Name’s Phil Newman,’ he said when the spasm subsided. ‘This is my wife, Lizzie… Elizabeth.’
    ‘My sister,’ Jack said, nodding towards Gwen, who was mumbling in her partially conscious state, and still fighting against her restraints. ‘I’m hoping the sedative settles her soon. I’m afraid I don’t have her hairbrush with me.’
    ‘Well,’ the other man said, ‘she’s quietened down from when she first came in a few days ago.’ He set the brush on the bedside table. ‘Did your sister hurt herself too? My Lizzie tore off her own ear. Can you believe that?’
    He slumped into the chair next to his wife’s bed, looking up at Jack with his eyes swollen and sad. ‘How does someone do that to themselves? What must be goin’ on in her head?’
    Jack came over and stood at the bottom of Lizzie’s bed. ‘I’m sure the doctors here will figure out what happened to your wife and to these other women. This hospital has one of the best neurological and psychiatric teams in the British Isles.’
    ‘That’s grand,’ said the husband mournfully, ‘but they can’t heal her ear, can they?’
    ‘Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’ asked Jack. ‘I’m trying to figure out what happened to my sister and I think it may be the same thing that happened to your wife.’
    ‘Really?’ said Phil, sceptically. ‘The doctor told me that whatever had happened to make her hurt herself had come from inside Lizzie’s head and the doctor said it weren’t contagious.’
    ‘I know, and she is the doctor, but I’m curious anyway.’
    Across the room one of the other women began spasming. No sooner had she started than Gwen’s body began to jerk and then Lizzie’s, their legs and arms twitching beneath the blankets. As if their movements had been choreographed, each of the women were spasming in unison.
    Lizzie’s husband jumped up and began to brush her hair again, believing his touch was making all the difference when his wife settled after a few strokes.
    Jack held his hands on Gwen’s feet, keeping her movements limited. He was not so sure his touch or Phil’s had anything to do with what he was suddenly witnessing, as each of the women came out of the spasms at the same.
    The rock-hard bad feeling yawned in Jack’s gut.
    ‘Did your wife have a history of taking drugs, Phil?’ asked Jack, coming back to Lizzie’s bedside while keeping his eye on Gwen. ‘Even if it was only at college or in her younger days?’
    Phil stopped brushing for a second. ‘Nah. Lizzie was always the straight one, hardly even took a drink, did she. She was always the one who took the car keys when we were out with our friends. Always the mum of the group, making sure the rest of us were right as rain.’
    ‘What about an emotional trauma in childhood?’
    Phil shook his head.
    ‘An accident of some kind?’
    ‘The doctor wondered ’bout that too. But my wife’s as healthy as an ox. Only time