Torchwood: Exodus Code

side of the wall collapsed, bricks crashing down on her, leaving the bell swinging precariously on the edge of the tower wall.
    Jack helped her free herself from the rubble, seconds before the bell crashed down into the rubble where she’d just been buried.
    Her radio crackled in her ear. ‘What the hell is going on? Do you have the girl or not?’
    ‘Not yet, sir,’ answered the soldier. ‘We’ve just had a minor earthquake here. The piazza is destroyed. It’s still happening. This needs to be a search and rescue, sir. Our unit’s getting the civilians out to the airfield. We’ll need a couple of copters, sir.’
    ‘They’re on route with units trained in S&R,’ said the voice in her ear. ‘Your mission has not changed. Get the girl and make the rendezvous. That’s an order.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ She cut off her comms unit, and returned her attention to Jack. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’
    He brushed grit from his face and stared up at the tower, which looked as if someone had taken a bite out of it. The fissure had stopped when it had collapsed the side of the tower.
    It had nowhere else to go, thought Jack.
    Thunder rumbled off the distant mountains, the ground beneath them trembling every few seconds, sounding like a series of tiny explosions under their feet. Jack’s vision was clouding with dots once again and he had a powerful desire to jump from the wall and follow the tree into the ocean.
    ‘Hey!’ The soldier grabbed his arm. ‘Where are you going? That ’s not safe.’
    Jack ignored her, climbing up onto the rubble as high as he could, but it wasn’t enough to see into the belfry and expose Isela’s hiding place.
    The soldier regained her composure and her weapon, which she shoved into the small of Jack’s back. ‘Down. Now.’
    ‘Do we have the girl in custody, yet?’ hissed her earpiece.
    Jack turned and hooked his hands above his head, looking into the soldier’s eyes. They were smouldering with anger, but it was the only emotion he could read clearly from her expression. ‘I’d be more than happy to cooperate with you, soldier—’
    ‘Captain Anderson.’
    ‘Ah, Captain Anderson.’ Jack cocked his head. ‘A pleasure to meet you, but right now my priority – yours too – is to get that young girl out of that tower before the next tremor comes. If I’m right about what’s happening here, the next one will be worse than the one we just experienced. It makes no difference to me,’ he grinned at Captain Anderson, ‘but you and the girl may not survive being buried alive.’
    Captain Anderson stared at Jack, noting the cocky, self-assured grin, the piercing blue eyes that seemed to suggest that no matter what he decided somehow he was going to get his way.
    ‘What do you want me to do?’
    ‘I want you to put your gun away and let me bring her down.’
    She looked over at the other soldiers from her unit who were helping free the injured from the rubble, setting up a triage out in the airstrip. ‘OK. You get her down.’
    Captain Anderson holstered her weapon, stepped aside, and waved Jack towards the tower.
    ‘Thank you, Captain.’
    It would take too long to disengage the pulley and the anchor from the rubble so Jack hung a rope over his shoulder, cuffed his trousers, dug a toehold with his boots, then another with his fingers and began to climb up into the tower. At the halfway mark, he stopped, aware of Isela watching him from above. He didn’t think she’d try to stop him until he got closer, but she was trapped and she had to know that she was in serious trouble.
    ‘Isela,’ he yelled. ‘You need to get out of this tower, and your best chance to get out of this mess is to come with me.’
    He continued his ascent, hearing Isela load her gun and scramble to the other corner of the belfry.
    After two more steps, he was about to pull himself up and over the crumbling edge and into the belfry when he heard Isela cocking her rifle. He looked up. She was pointing it at his head.
    Jack sighed, but kept climbing.
    ‘I’ll shoot you!’
    ‘I’ve no doubt that you could and that you would, Isela, but killing me will only make your situation worse,’ Jack said, digging his feet deeper into the crumbling rock, creating a ledge from which to balance for a few seconds. ‘That soldier below is from the American government. They have orders to arrest you and hold you while they figure out your role in this mess here this