MARY:
- 1 -
Leaving Toshiko to show Jack around the apartment I followed Adam outside.
"Long time no see, eh Lady Mary?" he chuckled. "Or no see all the time for you now that your little girlfriend's pendant is gone."
"How are you here?" I demanded. "I banished you to the void over a century ago."
"And you somehow haven't aged a day since then. I'm here because the Rift was fully opened recently allowing me to slip through. Only for brief periods at the moment, little snatches of time where I can see people, interact with them and - as you've seen - even remove memories. Soon, very soon, I'll come back to the world permanently and be able to not only remove memories but to implant false ones. And every time I do, every time I become part of someone else's memories, I'll become more and more substantial until I'm fully flesh and blood once more, while you'll remain a phantom. And oh how much fun I'll have when I'm restored. But until then it looks like this is au revoir. I can feel myself being drawn back...but not for long, not for long."
And then he was gone, fading away like a dream, or in his case a nightmare. I was distraught at this turn of events, and helpless to do anything about it.
The next morning, Toshiko rushed around the apartment getting ready for work, and taking great care about her appearance. This wasn't for me but for him, for Tommy. She no longer remembered I even still existed. Giving her make-up a final check in the mirror of her powder compact, she smiled approvingly, then left for work. Taking the lift to the lobby she headed out, walking the short distance across Roald Dahl Plas to the waterfront tourist office concealing one of the entrances to the Hub. I floated along after her, none of its many monitoring devices detecting my presence as usual.
In the cryochamber the casket containing Tommy Brockless was pulled out onto a gurney.
"We have to wake him up every twelve months or so," Jack explained to Gwen," one day only, then back in the freezer."
"Why?"
"Check he still works," said Ianto.
"One day, we're gonna need him," added Jack.
Waking Tommy was not a smooth procedure, but eventually he revived and, after thrashing about at first, calmed down.
"Do you know where you are?" Toshiko asked him.
"Torchwood."
"That's right."
"Is it time again? Blimey."
"How are you feeling?"
"I could murder a cup of tea."
After that Toshiko took him out for the day, with me tagging along behind like the ghost at the party. They mostly just wandered about, seeing and doing whatever Tommy wanted to, eventually ending up on Penarth Pier where Toshiko filled him in on some local history.
"When the city built the barrage across the tidal basin into which the River Taff and River Ely flowed, creating the modern Cardiff Bay with its marinas and sky high property values, they permanently submerged the stinking mudflats that would appear at low tide," she said. "In doing so they also created a route that made the two and a half miles or so from Cardiff Bay to the pier the easy walk we've just made. There's a supposedly long-abandoned pedestrian foot tunnel under those mudflats. During the war it was used as an air-raid shelter and for dock operations when Penarth Docks were taken over by the US Navy in the run-up to D-Day."
I remembered it well.
"Officially the tunnel was abandoned and both ends bricked up in 1963," Toshiko continued, "but in actuality Torchwood took it over and fitted it out with equipment. Its proximity to the Hub made it valuable as a nearby fallback site only we know about, one accessed via a building on Ferry Road."
This was news to me, but it made sense.
On the pier things took an inevitable - and from my point of view unwelcome - turn when Tommy kissed Toshiko.
"I'm a bit older than you," she said.
"I was born in 1894."
"You know what I mean."
"So I'm old enough to die for my country but I'm too young to give you a kiss? You daft lass. What goes on in that head of yours?"
Toshiko responded by shyly kissing Tommy.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"I might be young, but I've seen a fair bit in my time."
"So what do you want to do now?"
"Well, we could go back to mine but there's only room for one and it's bloody freezing," joked Tommy.
"You want to come back to my place?"
"I'm hardly rushing you. You've known me four years."
"Four days."
Since their first meeting was a few weeks after Toshiko moved to Cardiff, they'd actually known each other a little over three years. They kissed again, more slowly this time.
"Okay. Let's go."
Oh no, Toshiko, please no.
"I'll race you. Come on!" said Tommy, then Toshiko's phone rang. It was Jack, telling them to get back to the Hub.
"We're on our way," replied Toshiko.
Not long afterwards, with everyone assembled in the conference room Jack laid out the situation.
"Demolishing the hospital is what triggers the time shift."
"So don't demolish it," said Owen.
"Too late, it's already started."
"What happens next?" asked Gwen.
"Two different times should never exist simultaneously. You want to be in 1918 or now. Not both."
"So when 1918 becomes fully manifest..." said Toshiko.
"It's really going to screw us up," said Owen.
Jack crumpled a piece of paper.
"Okay. Linear time. Screwed up time. Imagine your life as a straight line, from birth to death. Now try drawing that line on the paper without straightening it out."
"It's impossible," said Gwen.
"That's why we've got to stop it. Ianto, is that box doing anything yet?" said Jack, referring to the time-locked box the Torchwood of 1918 had left with instructions on what to do with Tommy.
"Still locked."
"Okay, we need to find out how fast the time shift is happening, get some idea when it's going to complete. Tosh, Owen, go to the hospital. We need readings. Cover the place with rift monitors. Gwen, go through the files, see if there's anything we missed."
Since I can't travel in vehicles in my current state I couldn't accompany Toshiko to the hospital, but then I didn't need to. Because in 1918 I was a volunteer nurse at St Teilo's Military Hospital.
- 2 -
I was on a cigarette break when the Bentley motor car pulled up outside the hospital and an elegantly dressed man and woman got out.
"Come on Harriet, old girl," said the man. "No time to waste!"
She frowned at me as she passed, the sight of a woman smoking in public being something most disapproved of, then entered the building. Why they had come in via the staff entrance rather than through the front I didn't know but I was intrigued, particularly since Harriet was carrying a box I recognized from my days running Torchwood Cardiff. Taking a final drag on my cigarette, I dropped it to the ground, extinguished it under the toe of my shoe, and followed them inside. I had yet to see any of the ghosts that had so spooked everyone recently but Torchwood evidently suspected extra-dimensional or temporal apparitions, hence the detector. On the landing outside the main ward they startled the ward sister.
"Don't panic," said the man.
"I thought you were a ghost. Scared the wits out of me."
"Sorry. Thought you'd be used to us creeping around by now."
So not their first visit, though the first on one of my work shifts.
"Have you seen any recently? Ghosts?" asked Harriet.
"I've seen three today. It's getting worse."
They checked the ward first, then moved out onto the stairs. When all the lights flicked the woman reacted, her detector clearly registering something.
"Gerald!" she called out. So that was his name.
"Come on," he said, leading the way downstairs to a store room. "We're right on top of it!" she said, excitedly.
By now everything was shaking, there was a sudden very bright light, and then two people appeared crouching by the far wall. One of them was a very pretty, strangely-attired Japanese girl. The other was Tommy Brockless. The problem with this was that I'd seen Tommy in his bed in the ward upstairs barely twenty seconds ago.
"Hello?" said Gerald.
"Tell them," said the Japanese girl.
"Tell us what?"
"Tell them what to do. You're the only one who can stop this. If you don't, it's the end of everything! Tommy!"
Tommy looked at her, nodded, then stood up.
"Take me," he told Gerald. "I'm in there in the ward, in 1918. You have to take me so I can be here now. Just take me!"
Gerald nodded, he and Harriet heading upstairs, while I continued to watch here from behind a pillar out in the corridor.
"I'll be gone soon," said Tommy.
"Remember, the Rift key," said the girl, indicating the device he was holding. "Use it. You've got to get back into bed like you've never been away. Then use the key. Tommy? Remember. It's nearly time."
Once more there was a bright light and when it faded the girl was gone. Tommy stumbled out of the room, only to be discovered by the ward sister.
"What are you doing? You shouldn't be in here."
She led him back to the ward, where I caught a glimpse of the Torchwood duo taking away the original Tommy just before she got this one to the bed.
"It's still warm, at least," she said. "Not been gone long."
Once in bed Tommy hugged the device he'd been given to his chest, looking around him fearfully. Then it started again, the lights flickering and everything shaking, only much more powerfully this time. It felt like the end of the world was upon us, with patients screaming, nurses running around, and general chaos. Yet in the middle of it all Tommy appeared to be talking with someone only he could see. On a hunch, I took the pendant from my pocket and donned it - I never wore it in the hospital because the levels of trauma here were such that I would have been overwhelmed. As I dropped the chain over my head so I got to see what Tommy was seeing. It was the Japanese girl again, and she appeared to be urging him to use the device. I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying, and anyway I was transfixed by the girl. Seeing her in profile like this, she took my breath away.
Then Tommy activated the device, it gave off a burst of Rift energy, the girl vanished, and everything returned to normal. Tommy had saved two different time periods from bleeding into each other with catastrophic consequences. I went over to him.
"Hello, Tommy."
"Oh, hello Nurse Kaminski," he said, his face brightening.
"What's that you're holding?"
He stared at the device as if seeing it for the first time. "I..I don't know," he said.
"Well, if you give it me I'll put it away for safe keeping," I said.
"OK," he smiled, handing it over.
When it came to leaving advanced technology where the unwary could stumble across it my Torchwood-trained instincts had kicked in. I would see to it that this was kept somewhere safe.
Tommy met his fate three weeks later when, after being returned to the front, his shell-shock returned and he was executed by firing squad for 'cowardice in the face of the enemy'.
Stories like his are the reason why I always confront those stupid women who hand out white feathers when I encounter them. My sharp tongue usually sends them away crying. They deserve it, but the generals deserve much worse.