4

The glass wall reprises the predawn light. The plaza is empty at this hour. But the service counters are staffed as breakfast is being prepared. The clerk looks surprised to see Jack arriving so early. He seems grim, latent, stiffly swiping his hub-cuff over the scanner.

She eyes the readout on her screen.

NUTRITION CLERK Jack Six-Echo... Options are dried fruit, oatmeal or anything in bran.

"I want some bacon." Jack asks.

"You heard the options." She said sadly and he sighs as he accepts a foil covered bowl and a juice can.

She pushes the pills over as he sighs.

After breakfast, without Ianto turning up, Jack turns toward the platform. Hearing a sound, he crosses to the safety fence.

"Hello? "His voice echoes to nothing. He leans over the fence and peers up the tunnel. There. In the fog of darkness, a figure. A figure paused, half-standing, like an animal on the brink of flight. The figure seems to stare at him. Then pulls upright. Now moving forward and into the light.

His face is dirty, eyes wild and bloodshot. A stranger to Jack, "Please..."

Jack stands, frozen by the sight of this dark, dishevelled resident. As he climbs up onto the platform, Jack sees his hands, the fingertips grated and bloody. He lumbers towards Jack.

"Please, you have to help me..." He rushes forward, grabbing Jack, pulling him close. "YOU CAN'T LET THEM TAKE ME!"

The stranger's eyes grow darkly, his pupils dreadful, black with enlargement. Jack fiercely shrugs off his grip, backing away... "Who are you? What's wrong with you?"

"Don't take the pills" he whispers and Jack steps back.

The stranger's eyes bore into him, obsidian. Face contorting, baring his teeth like a rabid dog. Suddenly he lunges at Jack-BOOM- ramming him back into the vending machine - Jack is stunned - suddenly a vice-like grip on his wrist swings him round-CRACK- into the Vidcom banner, webbing at the impact. For a moment, all is a blur. Teetering, Jack props himself against the wall. Then his focus resolves on the Vidcom and his fractured reflection. He releases a deep, bewildered breath. Then he notices his wrist.

His hub-cuff is missing, his skin grazed red from an abrasion. Confusion yielding to uncommon anger, he looks for his assailant. But the platform is empty. His jaw clenches.

The mad man rushes up to the Hub-gate. Hand shaking, he swipes Jack's hub-cuff over the scanner. The gate hisses open and he barrels through, suddenly seeing Jack pounding up from the well of walkways, charging forward like a bull. The gate now closing, Jack races for the gap, barging his way through. And the gate snaps shut with a bang.

Alarms sound and a red bulb flashes.

The man runs through the mess hall glancing off tables, sending chairs flying. Some residents, arriving for breakfast, scatter at his onset. Shocked faces, looking back and forth as Jack follows, in hot pursuit, vaulting the toppled furniture.

Security arrives "we block him and force him to ground. If you have a shot, hook him but keep it above the belt. Management doesn't want us to "damage the product"."

The Censors roll their eyes knowingly.

Their leader taps his headset. "hub-con? Zone Four North; code an exclusion for tri-key access. Then give me a full quadrant lockdown."

The lights shift spectrum from white to ultraviolet, bathing the quadrant in a lambent purple haze, his eyes bulging with panic as he races up the walkway, straining for a hub-gate at the far end of the floor the mad man runs as Jack closes in. A ripple spearing ahead of him to the end of the floor; now banking across the hub-gate and sealing the exit.

Sonic shots ring out and Jack crumples to the floor as the mad man slides around the guards and run again.

"You asshole! You hooked the wrong one!" the leader yells as he crouches to examine Jack. Blood is blossoming from a wound on his shoulder, jutting from which is a projectile. The censor presses its base and it snaps loose of its unintended target.

"He looked out of control" the man defends himself.

He produces a hyperaemic and jams it into Jack's leg, depressing it and waiting until Jack rears up, gasping for air as though resurrecting.

"Think you can walk, buddy?"

Jack nods slightly. The Leader unloops a keycard from his neck "You see this? It'll get you past the lockdown. You're to report to The Medical Centre. You understand?"

Jack stays where he sits, still dazed from the concussion. Absently he watches them race after the mad man.

.

.

.

"Good morning - this is a community bulletin... Following an incident in Zone Four earlier this morning, The Department of Sanitation is issuing an all-zone contamination warning..."

The residents gasp as they watch the Vidcom message flashing on every screen, Ianto among them.

"The incident involved a resident found to be infected with a pathogen. While the risk is assessed, residents are advised to be aware of the symptoms. Should you experience aberrant levels of anxiety or witness it in others, immediately contact The Medical Centre."

.

.

.The deep steady thrum of the extractor fans. An airlock. Hissing, it indents and opens. Jack steps through, eyes black and uncanny. The keycard glinting, dangling from his fingers. Scanning around, he fixes on a section of wall. He wipes off some soot. Legible beneath is a number. Twenty. He assimilates this. Then turns his gaze up the extractor shaft.

50INT. ELEVATOR SHAFT

Looking up an elevator shaft. The red pulse of the lode-poles, rippling downward as an elevator descends from the surface.

The elevator heads up.

A courier departs the car and his footsteps fade.

A metal squeal. A ventilation grid levers down from the ceiling. A pause. Then a pair of feet drop through, legs, torso. Dropping to the floor, Jack stands revealed. Sweaty, smeared black with dust. For a moment he looks around to get his bearings.

The footsteps are now coming back. Jack spins round. He finds a door. A lock panel. A moment of panic. Then he fumbles the key from his pocket, hurriedly slotting it into the lock panel.

Jack waits, ear to the door, listening as the footsteps pass and fade out of earshot. Jack releases his breath in relief, calming a little, then frowning as he registers another sound. Very faint, rhythmic. He turns and looks around.

The room is in partial shadow. To one side is a row of seats, to the other, a row of windows, covered by blinds, light creasing through. The sound repeats. Muffled. But now unmistakably a crying baby. A grid of bio-readouts, each square alive with graphs and digits. The familiar baseline of a cardiograph.

A doctor and nurse tend to a young man as Jack watches, unseen though the double glass of the observation room he wound up in.

Marked by his polo top as an agnate, the man has just given birth "May I hold her?"

"We have to run a few tests on her first. In the meantime, I'm going to give you something to help you relax, okay?" the doctor smiles, the agnate nods, anxiously watching the midwife wrap his baby in blanket. The doctor taps a button and watches the IV swirling with a pale coloured fluid.

The cardiograph marks the drop as the fast-acting sedative takes effect. The agnate watches drowsily as the midwife takes his baby from the room. Then the cry of the newborn is shut out. Just the cardiograph now, the beeps evening out, the pips shallowing as the agnate falls asleep. The doctor taps a button.

The grid square goes blank.

A pause.

Then the doctor taps another button. Text appears. Reading it, he cites "Let the record show the sponsor has signed Clause 22 of The Basic Sponsorship Agreement. Initiate compliance."

A light starts blinking. The doctor walks stiffly out of the room. The door hisses closed. The agnate is left alone. Sleeping peacefully, blind to the fluid now seeping into his IV. Deaf to the slowing beep of the cardiograph. The peaks of the baseline falling. Spacing, fading, slowing, slowing, until... The cardiograph flat lines.

Silence.

The lifelessness seeps through the glass.

Jack looks down from above, eyes frozen in the slatted light. His fingers are trembling, rattling the blinds against the glass.