Torchwood: Exodus Code

us who are synaesthetes are more evolved than humans who aren’t?’
    Which, Jack thought, made sense, given that he was from the 51st century. As this thought flashed across his consciousness, it brought with it the face of the beautiful young woman from the mirror, floating in front of his eyes. Jack tried to keep her there for as long as he could, but Olivia was continuing and he couldn’t hold the image.
    She was laughing at his assertion. ‘That’s one way to describe it.’ Without warning, she clapped her hands excitedly, jumping up from the couch. ‘That’s it!’
    ‘That’s what?’
    ‘No two people experience synaesthesia in the same way,’ said Olivia, excitement charging her pitch, ‘but some studies have shown that it is experienced more by women than men, present company excepted.’
    The clock on the sideboard chimed. A dog barked somewhere deep in the house.
    ‘I’m sorry… Could you say that again?’
    ‘Are you OK, Captain… Jack? You’ve gone a bit pale.’
    ‘Sorry. I’m fine. Just trying to put some of this together.’
    ‘I was saying that the studies have shown that more women than men experience synaesthesia.’ Olivia walked smartly across the room. ‘I realise that their gender alone doesn’t explain why these particular women are suffering.’ The excitement had drained from her voice. ‘Especially given that not all women everywhere who are synaesthetes are experiencing a heightening of their senses. And this knowledge certainly doesn’t help us explain any possible triggers.’
    ‘Ah, but it’s a start,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a start.’
    Olivia opened the sitting room door and called for Win to get Jack’s coat. While they waited in the foyer, Olivia added, ‘At its most extreme, synaesthesia can mean having shapes in your field of vision at all times. It can scramble the senses in terribly debilitating and, as we’ve witnessed, dangerous ways. Think about how you’d feel if you had an extreme form of auditory synaesthesia which resulted in your ability to taste every single sound that you hear. Loud thunder is rotten chicken, a baby crying is curdled milk. Imagine what Piccadilly Circus would be like for you on a Saturday night, never mind a simple dinner at home with the children.’
    ‘Vomit-inducing,’ said Jack. ‘Worse.’
    ‘Indeed.’

43
    JACK STOOD WITH his back to the television, looking out of the living room windows, staring at his own reflection in the darkness, his blue shirt cuffed at his elbows, braces loose at his hips. Hair needs a cut, he thought, running his fingers through it. Maybe a closer shave too.
    It was after 10 p.m., and he knew he was leaving Wales the next day. Once he’d returned to the Coopers’ house, he’d spent a couple of hours thinking about the narrative he’d created that day from all the data he’d absorbed from his and Andy’s research. Add that to the information Olivia had given him, and the hypothesis that had been forming in his mind since he’d seen the image tattooed on Gwen’s forearm was all but confirmed.
    He knew he needed more information and a different approach from the one he’d been taking, one that needed more than someone, him, who was emotionally connected to the key victim and being influenced just as strongly as she was by some psychic force. Jack wasn’t thinking about passing the buck, but spreading the responsibility would help.
    Jack was a loner, but he was not anti-social.
    With the Hub destroyed, Jack had only one place where he could go to find some of the answers, to have the equipment and the intellectual power he needed if the worst of what he was thinking was true. So he sent a message.
    Jack could feel in his bones that time was running out. He just didn’t know whose.
    Behind him, the television newscasters were babbling about the cancelled WHO press conference and how the lack of information coming from the government about this strange mental illness was becoming as startling as the disease itself. Every news and social media outlet was circulating Dr Ormond’s press release.
    Jack turned, aimed the remote at the television as if it were his Webley and silenced the news.
    ‘Hey! I was listening to that,’ said Rhys, sitting with his computer at the dining room table, lager in hand.
    ‘It’s not helpful,’ said Jack, slouching onto the couch, landing on a squeaky toy caught in the cushions. ‘Now every Tom and Dick is going to sedate their wives with whatever