Torchwood: Exodus Code

something else. I’ll need more time for analysis.’
    ‘The ocean floor always has measurable carbonic acid,’ said Eva. ‘It’s part of the carbon cycle and part of the Earth’s natural waste disposal system.’ She was graphing the data onto another screen as Shelley presented it.
    Vlad was watching Shelley, who said, ‘I beg your pardon, Eva, but although you’re accurate in your assessment that the ocean is part of the carbon cycle, the amounts of carbonic acid I’m detecting surrounding each of the hydrothermal vents is much higher than what is considered normal, and, along with the water temperature, the levels are rising significantly on a daily basis.’
    Shelley drew her pen across her leather journal and projected her numbers onto Eva’s graph, showing that the carbon levels in the areas around each of the underwater geysers were more than a thousand times greater than other parts of the ocean. ‘I’m also detecting many of the vents are forming vent chimneys.’
    ‘We must have a malfunction in our probes,’ said Eva, shocked by the data. ‘That’s not possible in such a short period of time. Vent chimneys take thousands and thousands of years to form.’ She looked at Vlad. ‘We dropped the probes at all the places where there had been tremors initially, but something must be wrong. That data doesn’t make sense. Shelley, can we activate the cameras on the probes that have them?’
    ‘Activating cameras to the screen.’
    Vlad stood and walked across the passageway to the mess, returning with four beers, passing one each to Jack, Eva and Cash. Looking across the room at Shelley, he held up his bottle.
    ‘That function is sadly not yet operational either.’
    Vlad took a long pull of his beer, as the live feed from three probes miles beneath the ocean appeared on the large screen. ‘All of our probes can’t be malfunctioning, Eva. I’ll run a diagnostic on the others, but for all of them to fail, at the same time? Not gonna happen.’
    Eva peered at the video images on the screen. ‘I don’t believe it. It’s like I’m watching a million years of the Earth’s evolution in seconds. What’s going on?’
    ‘What exactly are we looking at?’ asked Jack, standing behind the two analysts.
    Eva pointed to one of the vents where a beehive like structure was forming around the underwater geyser. ‘These craters or cracks in the ocean’s floor vent a complex combination of superheated chemicals and gases. The only thing that keeps them from actually boiling the water is the pressure from the ocean. In all of these cases, what’s known as a vent chimney can be seen rising up out of the ocean, surrounding each of the geysers. Shelley, can you bring up a clearer picture of a vent chimney?’
    In the space next to Shelley, an image appeared that took Jack’s breath away. He leant against Eva’s chair, a wave of images crashing through his mind, one after another – a man, a kiss, a plane, a mountain, a fight, then falling, falling, the ground opening up and swallowing him. A beautiful woman kissing him deeply, passionately, longingly, a sleek, lithe, midnight black-eyed puma. The fierce familiarity of the images shook Jack to his core.
    He stared again at the picture that Shelley had thrown up, aware that something had shifted in his mind.
    ‘This,’ said Eva, ‘is a vent chimney, a massive tower of oxidized iron, zinc and rock rising out of the ocean floor.’
    The chimney was spewing black smoke.
    And suddenly Jack knew where he’d seen the chimney before. Inside a mountain many years ago.
    ‘Jack, are you OK?’ asked Vlad, offering Jack his chair. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
    ‘Not a ghost… a sliver from my past,’ said Jack, sitting down, calming his racing heart. Jack finally understood that, for whatever reason, his brain was rebuilding a gap in his memory, a void that had been there for a long time, putting pieces together that long ago something or someone had split apart, sending its shards boomeranging across his consciousness. And now they were finally returning.
    Jack’s brain needed more time to process what he was no longer forgetting, time to let his memory fill the blank spaces as if it were rebuilding a damaged track on a hard drive.

50
    ‘SHELLEY,’ SAID JACK, gulping most of his beer. ‘How many hydrothermal chimneys have the
Ice Maiden
’s deep-water probes detected in the past, say, two weeks?’
    ‘Including the one now forming