Project: Torchwood: 2017-04-30

It’s funny isn’t it, when you take time out to catch up on other stuff, that you still manage to achieve a lot of book reviews regardless. And still to cap it all, bring you an interview with Peter Stray of Canaries movie – which as you’ll read, has a few familiar faces from Torchwood and Doctor Who. Be sure to check this out.

We’ve a Torchwood review of the latest audio from Big Finish, let us know what you thought to this too. I’m a bit behind on the audios these past few months, (since Outbreak), so am yet to listen to the latest.

We always welcome your feedback on any of the reviews we post up. Some of you do add your voice, and we thank you greatly for them.

We’ve part 3 of our Torchwood: Mitchell story for you. I’m glad to be able to give this a second airing, and this time it will be staying on the site.

So with book, episode and audio reviews, interview and story, you have plenty to keep you entertained before we’re back with our final instalment of Torchwood’s Miracle Day episode.

Welcome to Issue 47

Who & I

~Jack~

Interviews Peter Stray of Canaries movie by DJ Forrest

Hi Peter, Canaries movie – are we talking little yellow song birds used for mining, or are we looking at a threat of attacking Birds akin to Hitchcock film?

What is so sinister about Canaries in your movie and can you tell us more about your film?

Peter: The title in some ways is open to interpretation, a la “Reservoir Dogs” but also if you look at a Department of Defence Folder in the film you’ll spot its headed ‘Project Canary’ – as a UFO geek I was thinking of a logical next step to Project Blue Book, which was a real US Government investigation into flying saucers. So, delving into the plot without too many spoilers, we meet American characters who operate in very much an X-Files / Bourne style world, and a bunch of drunken Welsh people on New Year’s Eve, more in the world you or I might have experienced in any number of pubs! How those worlds collide is another story…

How are you distributing the film, will it be through festivals, streaming or cinema?

Peter: We’ll be submitting to festivals and meeting with sales agents. In fact, some people who saw the IMDB page, and were intrigued by the plot and the cast have already approached us.

Is it crowdfunded, as many seem to be these days?

Peter: Not in a public sense – we crowd funded it through word of mouth without having to do a public internet campaign. Dominique Dauwe is our Exec Producer and he sourced most of the funding. Others contributed by providing key elements for free or not much at all – UK producer Craig Russell and US producer Steve Dunayer have places near our locations, so they were able to house cast and crew.

You have three familiar faces from Torchwood in your film, Kai Owen, Steven Meo and Robert Pugh – are these actors the main cast, and is the film mostly set around Wales?

Peter: Yes, it is – although key scenes were also shot on Martha’s Vineyard, location for Jaws, (If you watch the trailer, you might spot a familiar ferry) Washington DC and Vietnam. Kai, Steven and Bob were all brilliant. Top actors and top people –they loved the script and were keen to help out.

What part of Wales is the story based? Is it a fictitious place?

Peter: We’re very proud that Wales is not only in the film, but it plays itself. I believe we’re also the first to shoot in Lower Cwmtwrch, a beautiful - and real - place, which is the ‘star’ of the film.

How different is your film to what is currently in the cinema or coming to it this year?

Peter: It is certainly by far the best and only film to be shot in the USA, Vietnam and Lower Cwmtwrch! Also, it’s a sci-fi-horror-comedy, or sciforroromedy if you will, and there aren’t as many of those about. Some films in that vein want to be heavily comic and almost make fun of the horror or sci fi genre - but I think we’ve blended the genres in such a way you’ll feel the creepiness, tension and humour without it being jarring. Some good tone-setters when writing and shooting were Attack the Block and Cabin in the Woods. You laugh with - and get to know and like - the characters. Then feel genuinely sad when they die horribly.

How do your aliens differ from what we’ve come to expect from sci fi?

Peter: Well, anyone expecting large CGI creatures with ten eyes will be disappointed – they’re all practical. I love zombies, vampires and little green men, but we've created something a bit different – the mythology of the aliens and how our villains were created is totally unique. We had a tremendous make up team in Jess Heath and Alice Pinney and a great sculptor named Helena James-Lewis who helped make our villains creepy and memorable.

Kevin McCurdy, who we recently interviewed is also in the film – are we to expect a fair bit of fisticuffs and fight scenes?

Peter: Oh yeeees! It’s not all out action straight away – I’m a fan of the slow build. But Kev brought along a terrific team of actor-fighters and himself was a tremendous force on set. Richard Mylan (Waterloo Road, Don’t Knock Twice) who plays Nav has worked on tons of films and TV but was just saying how much he learnt from Kev and his fight scenes. You will see punch-ups, gory deaths and inventive use of everyday objects as weapons!

Is this your first movie project? If not, what have you worked on before that we may have seen?

Peter: This is my first feature film, yes. Before this I wrote and directed four shorts and two series, including “Secludio” (www.secludio.com) about a guy living in a cabin trying to finish his novel and skyping the outside world - each episode is about 5 mins and features a tremendous cast.

As an actor, I’ve been in tons of plays plus a small role in “Lost” and a TV movie with Summer Glau from “Firefly”. I’m a total geek for all that stuff which is why I wanted to make “Canaries” – it’s the film I’d want to discover as an audience member. I’ve also just had a screenplay optioned that someone else is directing, and I’m loving the collaboration.

When can we expect to see the film?

Peter: This year will have special screenings and festivals – hopefully by the end of the year it’ll be available to everyone.

Will there be a sequel?

Peter: I would love that. I think the characters and the mythology are rich enough that it can expand in several different ways - there are several elements to the ‘story bible’ that can be paid off in future films.

How important is it to you that the cast was diverse and strong?

Peter: There’s a larger conversation to be had about diversity in the industry and it was a challenge to find non-Caucasian actors to audition for some roles.

So many actors-of-colour either never made it to drama school through lack of opportunity (or got out and instantly went to Hollywood!) but we tried to make it as diverse as we could within the casting resources we had.

Given my influences and being raised by a feminist anthropologist – there are hopefully no thankless female roles in the film and we have a great, diverse cast.

This is not just a British enterprise, is it?

Peter: Post-production is a totally international event!

We have a great post production team finishing off the film right now – Milk VFX (Oscar winners for Ex Machina) in London, composer Marengast (LA) some great songs form terrific artists, (all over the place) sound mixer Paul Tristram, (Cardiff) editor Anthony Arkin, and colourist Artificial Peach (both NYC).

Thank you, Peter, for a great interview.

To see the trailer released last Thursday, then copy and paste, or click on the link below. I personally cannot wait for the release of the film. It looks awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdIAA7kv9QY

Big Finish Reviews+ Alien Heart/Dalek Soul by Tony J Fyler

The Fifth Doctor and subterranean tunnel networks. We’re not entirely sure what it is about the Fifth Doctor and subterranean tunnel networks, but something happens to the unsure, generally less cocky, sunshine-tempered, young-man Doctor when you get him underground. It’s as though the pressure of all the earth on top of him compresses his character like a diamond and makes it shine. Earthshock, his encounter with the Cybermen spent at least most of its first episode beggaring about in a subterranean tunnel network and ended in the death of his companion, Adric. And of course his own final adventure, The Caves of Androzani, is often regarded as the best overall Doctor Who story in over fifty years, and involved him struggling through a subterranean cave network. Seriously, if you want to write a guaranteed hit for the Fifth Doctor, stick him in some subterranean caves or tunnels, and see what happens. Probably at least one death, to be sure, but a cracking story along the way, usually.

Alien Heart, the first two part story of the latest release from Big Finish Productions, sticks the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa in some subterranean caves and tunnels.

So that bodes well.

What’s more, for a two-parter, there’s a lot of texture in this story, as Nyssa and the Doctor tangle with relatively primitive natives on a moon of the planet Traxana, acquisitive Earth imperialists, sticky green bogeyspiders and a cave architecture that changes in the blink of an eye – a dark additional threat if you actually intend on doing anything in the cave network or moving about at all.

Alien Heart is tonally very exciting, writer Stephen Cole mixing Classic Who references (it’s a story set during the Dalek-Movellan wars, recently blink-and-you-missed-it glimpsed in New Who, but much more a factor of two Classic-era stories) with modern influences (the bogeyspiders are actually cellspiders – single-celled organisms shaped like arachnids, as seen in Kill The Moon). Alien Heart feels like it exists in a very much bigger universe than many four-part stories, and its two-part structure makes no concession to any smallness of ambition or characterisation simplicity – the unpleasant people here don’t necessarily become good people when it’s revealed there’s a bigger game at stake, a bigger threat to fight. What’s actually going on is sufficiently grandiose to be a Big Finish Dalek plot – the company has a famous knack for doing Daleks as though they really were as clever as they think they are, something the TV version has often conspicuously failed to do. But a word of warning – you’ve only the slimmest chance of working out what actually is going on here until the very end, and even then, you’ll likely be clinging on to sense by your fingernails by the time the dying’s done. It’s the Fifth Doctor in a subterranean cave network, of course there’s dying to be done. In fact, for fans of the Fifth Doctor’s on-screen battle with the Daleks, there’s a familiar amount of dying to be done in this story, which sets up a slablike bank of bleakness for Guy Adams’ Dalek Soul to distil and purify.

Adams’ story is in some ways a simpler affair, and again, fans of Resurrection of the Daleks (surely the Emos of the Who world – almost everyone dies) will be in familiar territory here. But for the less intense fans of the Resurrection bleakness, there’s plenty to ponder in this story. Pity Peter Davison for a moment – born with the face he has, he’s been almost destined to play a succession of ‘nice’ people, or lads at the worst. But here Davison gets to cut a little loose from his nice-character straightjacket and play a ruthless spitting psychopath. Or the Doctor, as he calls himself.

There’s perhaps not an awful lot of underlying sense to Adams’ principal premise – on a Dalek-colonised world, the Pepperpots of Doom are using humanoid chemists and virologists to brew up a batch of something nasty to sterilise the planet of its indigenous life and make it a truly Dalek homeworld…rather robbing themselves of some extermination-fun and allowing elements of risk into their life that aren’t strictly necessary. It makes even less sense when we consider that that humanoid resistance to Dalek occupation is more than a little pathetic. But Adams is intuitively intelligent in his construction of the story, dropping us into it after quite some period of time has elapsed since the end of Alien Heart, so it delivers maximum suspense from its premise, working as both an effective ‘alternative reality’ storyline and a mystery in terms of what is actually happening to Nyssa and the Doctor. Again bringing in just a touch of recent Twelfth Doctor magic, there’s a solid play on repeated, iterative action too, our ‘heroes’ doing the same thing time and time again, advancing just a little with each repetition.

Alien Heart/Dalek Soul marks the beginning in a shift at Big Finish – for many years now, one of their annual releases has been broken down into a three-parter and a single-episode story, sometimes with impressive success, sometimes notably less so. With Alien Heart/Dalek Soul and the stories which follow it, the company rebalances that sense of storytelling, giving us two connected two-part stories, each of which has a very different thrust and tone. As an example of what can be achieved in just two episodes – as if much of the Fourth Doctor range hadn’t already proved this point – it’s an impressive banner-wave, each story created a textured world and its own tone, against which familiar characters can be explored in new ways. Each story works within its own remit, and when you listen to both together, you end up with something richer than either of the halves on its own.

That makes Alien Heart/Dalek Soul worth investing in, quite aside from the strong Dalek deviousness in Alien Heart, the bravura ‘Dark Doctor’ performance from Davison in Dalek Soul, and the notes of nostalgia the combination-story gives for fans of Davison’s entanglement with the Daleks and its signature tonal bleakness. Give it a whirl – but be prepared to look at kittens and puppies for an hour or so afterwards to bring yourself back from the sense of infection by the Dalek mindset.

Big Finish Reviews+ Dethras by Tony J Fyler

Dethras, the latest Fourth Doctor story from Big Finish, is a tale of science, politics, strength, fear, responsibility and a chimpanzee. It’s almost ridiculously timely in an age when anti-science feeling is running high in politics, and the threat of science being shackled by the needs of political gain is both real and frightening. An age where a march for science is deemed a necessary thing.

Written by Andrew Poynton, it’s mostly a study in fear and weakness, but it’s far better and less lofty than that makes it sound. When the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana (Tom Baker and Lalla Ward respectively) land on a Second World War submarine, they find it can’t last long where it is before the outside pressure cracks it open like an egg. And then, because this is a story that fits into a very specific time period when Douglas Adams (he of Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fame) was Script Editor of Doctor Who, they discover a locked room full of scared people and an inexplicable chimpanzee.

Chimpanzees were not standard issue on World War II submarines, in case you were wondering, so the chimpanzee would be inexplicable under normal circumstances. But this particular chimpanzee, who goes by the name of Franklin, is altogether more inexplicable than most, and is also integral to the plot of Dethras, which only begins to make sense when you realise there’s a strong thread of evolutionary theory at work here, twined around what is essentially a power struggle between science for its own sake and the politics which makes use of it, with the Doctor and Romana ending up on different sides, playing each towards the middle. This is the debate over splitting the atom, and then using an atom bomb, but given a science fiction twist to make it modern and interesting.

Poynton takes his core elements – the World War II submarine crew, the chimpanzee, evolutionary theory and the battle between strength and fear – and weaves an intriguing quadruple helix out of them, which dares to ask questions about scientific ethics, paid research, politicians who are governed by fear of the other, and the choice between fear and reason that it’s necessary to make, both in science and in politics, if your endeavours are to ultimately be of benefit to humanity, rather than being advances used purely for profit and war.

No, honestly, we promise it’s not an ethics lecture. That’s what it’s about, but in the foreground there are wars, and hiding, and ultimate weapons of mass destruction, and stand-offs with battleships and green globs of potentially universe-destroying goo and low-level telepathy. There’s Romana being brave and the Doctor being angry and politicians being stupid in a way it’s easy to recognise, and people not being what they seem to be. And, as an added bonus, there’s a chimpanzee!

There’s more even than that, but some of the plot elements make for great reveals and cliff-hangers in this story. Poynton, and director Nicholas Briggs, keep things moving at a steady pace, developing threat, mystery and thrill, and eventually opening out the drama on a broader canvas than you initially suspect is even available to them. It’s impressive, engaging stuff, driven by some standout performances at the core of the story that help make the world against which Dethras is told seem bigger and broader and more real than the two simple episodes of the story’s length normally allow: there feels like there’s a world off the corners of the audio screen, that these are real people with real grievances and motivations, rather than characters created to ask important questions about science, war, and fear.

Alistair Petrie and Sheila Ruskin particularly bring a deep level of realism to their antagonism that hooks you in and doesn’t let you go till close to the end of the story. And, for what this is worth, John Banks is a darned effective chimpanzee. The world is helped to feel real too by some impeccable sound design – from the very first scene, you absolutely feel like you’re listening to a TV story from the early Eighties. You can almost hear the boxy sets, the vinyl spaceship command chairs, the early computer-generated effects and the plywood corridors. Big Finish is frequently renowned for its sound design, but here it’ll genuinely make you prick your ears up. Then you’ll nod and smile.

And as for the title, it would spoil you to find out in advance what Dethras, but suffice it to say that Dethras – a great ‘Doctor Who’ word, that gives no clue whether it’s a planet, a person, an ultimate weapon, a process, or some other thing entirely - is at the centre of the story, the element on which everything turns.

Dethras does a lot with its two episodes. There’s all the high-brow stuff about fear and science and politics, sure, but that’s all woven into the fabric of the character motivations, rather than foregrounded, so it never beats you over the head with its subjects. But there’s also lots of action, lots of surreal, unusual imagery, and some engaging subsidiary characters too, so you care what happens to everyone in the story. There’s tense, Das Boot-style drama, there’s a Star Trek Wrath of Khan-style standoff, and there’s ultimately a sense of accepting and living up to one’s responsibilities.

With a run-time of an hour, Dethras never feels like it has the time to drag, but you come away feeling like you’ve spent at least twice as long on the edge of your seat, and have absorbed an enormous amount of world and argument and action along the way. Dethras is a classy piece of many moods, cogent arguments, and perhaps most of all, an entirely wonderful chimpanzee.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Jago & Litefoot Revival Act One by Tony J Fyler

There’s something inherently joyful, and a little something inherently advertorial, about the Short Trip double-bill 7.03 and 7.04 from Big Finish – together, these two releases form a long short trip, an hour-long adventure with the company’s breakaway stars, Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago. There’s no disguising the fact that they also star the Tenth Doctor, as conspicuously not played here by David Tennant, despite He of the Spikiest Quiff in The Cosmos having made his Doctorial debut in the sound booths last year. Quite apart from an opportunity for Victorian London’s finest to add to their Doctor-count though, The Jago & Litefoot Revival is a chance for Big Finish to show off at least something of how it intends to take the new series Doctors forward on audio, with or without the Doctor-actors’ direct participation.

There’s an initial five minutes of what might, in the theatre, be charitably described as ‘business’ as Litefoot prepares to address one of Victorian London’s eminent societies for clever and curious gentlemen – and there are some lovely Easter egg references there – only to be interrupted by Jago blustering in. That leads to a handful of minutes that feels longer than it is, spent in simply legitimizing and explaining what Jago is doing there at all. That could really have been dealt with in a line or two, and arguably the audio would have been leaner for it, but fortunately, it’s all taken care of pre-credits, so once the Tenth Doctor’s theme music punches in, we’re off to the races with an adventure that sees Jago and Lightfoot in different countries, facing different villains, but more or less feeling the same sentiment – Jago & Litefoot is a tight unit, a magnet for the weird, the mysterious and the otherworldly, and after all these years of battling the bizarre together, they’ve become if not addicted, then certainly invigorated by their adventures, so that life without some eldritch attack or supernatural shenanigan begins to feel rather dull, the two investigators beginning to feel their actual age.

As a way to combat such torpor, Litefoot takes up an offer from his old oppo, Jean Bazemore, to come and take look at her archaeological dig on the island of Minos (We bet she says that to all the boys. Or girls. Or non-binary folk. So…erm…everyone, really), while Jago tries to get on at home, attempting to re-inject the spirit of the golden age of music hall back into London’s veins. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter begin to each advance their own storyline, and the contrast between them is well drawn by writer Jonathan Barnes, and given their own individual colour by director Lisa Bowerman. Benjamin’s Jago has to deal with some bizarre and serious arachnid infestation issues at the New Regency theatre, calling in an exterminator to put down the web-spinning blighters that are colonising his basement (don’t in any way take that as a euphemism). As such, the tone is an insidious cold and foggy London, Jago seeming to feel almost exhausted by the whole business – the acts lining up for a shot at the limelight are fundamentally useless, his life lacks adventure, his friend has scooted off on the holiday of a lifetime if you like mouldy old bits of rock, and to cap it all, he’s got spiders in the basement, which is enough to give any chap a case of the oopazooticks. Meanwhile Litefoot, following a thoroughly boring sea crossing, and a reunion with Joan, finds himself still filled with ennui, thinking about writing his memoirs and feeling like an old man, but the tone of the audio is warmer, more indolent and tinged with hot-boned torpor.

It’s Litefoot though who first advances boredom into adventure, finding an alien artefact and making almost reluctant use of it, while seemingly stalked by a mad-haired gentleman in a brown suit. There’s a clever division of storytelling labour at work here, as Litefoot’s threat is rather esoteric and otherworldly, a high-concept bit of weirdness with a highly arresting aesthetic that would be absolutely in keeping with modern Who. The raison d’etre of the villains is a little hokey, a little Tenth Doctor technogibber, and seems to suggest that at some point in life, everyone will have been visited by the implacable, impossible and creepy creatures that now threaten the Professor, but in terms of Something To Run Away From, they work very well in this setting, and when Litefoot finally meets up with the Man In The Long Brown Coat, you’ll be a hard-hearted Who-fan indeed if you don’t have a bit of a sniffle.

Meanwhile, as Litefoot’s storyline has taken up most of the Doctor-narrative in this episode, we come back to chilly old London town for the ending, with Jago, a thoroughly inept juggler and an exterminator who’s really not sure what he’s got himself in to. There’s a good deal of fun in the Jago section as we head to the end of the first ‘act’ of The Jago & Litefoot Revival, including things it would be cruel to spoiler for you, but there’s great balance too, as HGJ discovers himself stuck in a basement, facing a creature that embodies the other end of his investigative partnership with Litefoot – far less esoteric, far more giant and scuttly and body-horror based. When the two first met up, that balance was baked right into the DNA of The Talons of Weng Chiang – there was a foe from the future, boiling girls down to an energy drink, which was pretty esoteric, and then there was a giant, scuttling rat quite ready to rip your head off. This time out, Litefoot gets the energy-concerns, and Jago gets the giant scuttly beggar. As we say, there’s a clever balancing act here, the tone of Litefoot’s storyline being in the warm and dealing with dangers more of the mind and an otherworldly nature, while Jago, friend and fleecer of the paying public, finds himself faced with something ugly and primal and physical and terrifying, stuck in a chilly basement with a really bad juggler. As an example of what would happen if you picked the dynamics of the Jago & Litefoot series apart, it works hugely well. As an advert for non-Doctoral Doctor Who stories, it’s a case that hardly needs making – most of the Companion Chronicle range did the same thing for Classic Who fans, telling stories that were Doctor-adjacent or indeed had him in a starring role, but voiced by actors other than those who played the role on TV. The Jago & Litefoot Revival, Act 1, reintroduces the idea but aims it at the New Who generation. Jago and Litefoot, which is to say Benjamin and Baxter, aided and abetted as ever by Bowerman behind the scenes, are pretty much cast iron certainties in terms of bringing in the punters these days, but if you were concerned that the New Who Doctors wouldn’t work in the audio format without their particular actors to voice them, the Litefoot storyline, taking up most of the run time here as it does, should be more than enough to convince you that your fears were groundless. Settle in, Geekbrothers and Nerdsisters – the second act will be beginning shortly…

Big Finish Reviews+ Jago & Litefoot Revival Act Two by Tony J Fyler

Ooh!

At the end of Act 1 of Big Finish’s two-act Short Trip bringing Jago, Litefoot and the Tenth Doctor together – or at the very least, Litefoot and the Tenth Doctor together – we were treated to an extra surprise, as, while George Litefoot was running away from a bunch of spectral cowboys on the Greek Island of Minos in the company of He Who Makes Machines That Go Ding, back in London at the New Regency theatre, Henry Gordon Jago was trapped in a basement with a juggler!

No…wait, hang on, let’s have another go at that. Dooby dooby dooby, New Regency theatre, Henry Gordon Jago was trapped in a basement with a giant scuttly thing from outer space!

Yes, that’s more like it. What Act 2 of The Jago & Litefoot Revival makes clear very quickly is that if there’s one thing you never trap in a basement with a giant scuttly thing from outer space, it’s Henry Gordon Jago.

While Litefoot’s storyline of The Gentlemen of the Dice – a great, esoteric-as-all-hell creation from writer Jonathan Barnes – chasing him all over Minos for reasons not entirely unconnected with his harmonica-playing (everyone’s a critic!) took up most of Act 1 of the two-part story, the majority of this episode is spent in London the company of our favourite loquacious theatre manager, as he fends off a fiend with a friend, racing through the stews and streets of Victorian London pursued by a bug that just begs to be CGId into existence.

Now, here’s where things get complicated. George Litefoot’s on Minos at exactly the same time as Jago’s running through London.

Litefoot’s running with the Doctor.

So’s Jago.

We know of course that the whole ‘My Tardis is a good five minutes’ walk from here’ routine has been used before to explain why the Doctor, any Doctor, can be in a zillion places at what is precisely the same time – or indeed a zillion times at what is exactly the same place. But what Barnes does in Act 2 of the Jago & Litefoot Revival is cleverer than that. More delicious than that. And really, when all is said and done, rather more poignant than that.

And that’s all the clues you’re getting about that.

What we’ll say in addition is that Barnes, more than Benjamin or Baxter (Jago and Litefoot respectively), has a great ear for dialogue, and brings it to play here to allow both our eminent Victorians a unique Doctoral experience at one and the same time. With Jago and his version of the Doctor, there are rather more verbal tics to clue us in to the character’s personality, allowing Jago to recount for us his experience of meeting the Doctor at a very particular point in the Time Lord’s life, when, to be fair, being chased by a giant, scuttling CGI beastie more or less meant it was Thursday. Meanwhile, Litefoot’s Doctor, if anything, is even more pin-point in terms of the when and the how of his being on Minos – he gives us a callback to a TV line that will make every listener smile, to explain exactly when and how he comes to be on the island to lend a hand to his old friend Litefoot with a weapon probably a little more effective than an elephant gun.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing, despite the surprises in store for Jago and the punch in the hearts that Litefoot’s Act 2 storyline delivers, is the way in which the whole, more or less reasonable thing is resolved. That takes us from having two seemingly separate scenarios into having one scenario that harks back to a number of Seventh Doctor stories – there are elements of Battlefield in the scripting here, and elements of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Above all, what comes through is the character of the three leads, the Doctor, Jago and Litefoot, and how each of them is made significantly better, richer and fuller in character by knowing both the others, how, given any opportunity, they’d always go back for each other, stand up for each other, make unmakeable sacrifices for each other because each has proved their valour in the others’ eyes.

It’s all rather moving, really.

Whereas Act 1 was carefully balanced to advance one story to a crisis point and then bring the other forward to an earlier moment of peril, Act 2 is the headlong chase to conclusions of both strands, and especially to their entwined resolution, which is far less straightforward than either of the threats initially seem. But there’s still time for moments of quiet and moments of tenderness – Litefoot with his Doctor on Minos is particularly moving, but Jago’s Doctor is able to express a kind of intelligent regret that will seem familiar from the TV as soon as you hear it.

What we end up with across the course of these two extraordinary Short Trips, is more or less a love letter, to classic Doctoring, modern Doctoring, and to the characters of Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot and the actors who give them life too. It’s everything you’d expect and want from a meeting between Jago, Litefoot and the Tenth Doctor – importantly short of David Tennant’s voice – and it’s actually rather more than that too, Big Finish proving it’s better at keeping its air-punchy spoilerific secrets a secret than the BBC is currently able to do.

The Jago & Litefoot Revival might not win any awards. It won’t be the release of the year or anything so grand. But it is a couple of Short Trips that do more than they have to, proving the case for Doctorless Doctor Who for the New Who era just as the Companion Chronicles proved it for Classic Who, while delivering an hour of touching friendships, neat division of the world of Jago & Litefoot, and, as promised, a rejuvenation of both characters as they head into their thirteenth box set of adventures together.

Big Finish Reviews+ Jago & Litefoot 13

The audio adventures of Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago, theatrical impresario, the have-a-go heroes of Victorian London who tangle with the uncanny and the bizarre at every turn, have long been a successful series in their own right. Arguably, as they head into their thirteenth box set of four hour-long adventures, they could be thought of as the most successful spin-off Doctor Who has ever had.

But Jago & Litefoot began in the dim and distant television days of the Fourth Doctor, in 1977, and it’s very much in the spirit of an anniversary celebration of those four decades since they first ‘met’ on TV that Series 13 sets out. This set is steeped well and truly in the blood of Weng-Chiang, and there are people reduced to their life-essences left, right and centre here, along with time travellers from the 51^st Century, foggy, mysterious London stews and streets, the House of the Dragon, the Eyes of the Dragon, the giant rat in the sewers, the Cabinet of Weng-Chiang and its latticework key. This, while in no sense being the return of Weng-Chiang, is a set of four adventures that ring with the same energy as the Robert Holmes original, while taking us significantly sideways in time, to a world in which the Jago and Litefoot we know never got together to fight supernatural villainy, where they never got caught up in the fight against Magnus Greel and never got to meet the Doctor. Showing us a London in which Jago and Litefoot are not the intrepid infernal investigators we know and love allows us to see how far both they and we have come since their first encounter.

The Stuff of Nightmares, the Paul Morris story that kicks us off on round 13, is a mixture of potentially Freudian psychobabble and sci-fi that almost aims to throw you off and just get on with its own business. There are time-travellers with guns, weird dream inversions, with Litefoot imagining himself dead on his own mortuary slab, with Jago about to cut him open, and Jago dreaming the death of the consummate showman – drying on stage before a packed house. Their neuroses seem to be coming to get them, while all over town, a ruthless killer is looking for people who can lead them to Magnus Greel.

The Stuff of Nightmares belts along at a reasonable pace for most of its running time, but you will need to hang on tight towards the end, even if you know what people are talking about as they start spouting off about chrono-quantum. The ending is somewhat challenging, as Jago and Litefoot get to experience life as it was for time agents on post-Greel 51^st Century Earth. A last-ditch escape plan goes interestingly awry, and our heroes find themselves in a London that doesn’t recognise them – at least, not together, and not in any of their familiar haunts.

If The Stuff of Nightmares is the story that gets Jago & Litefoot off to a new set of adventures with a unique range of challenges, Jonathan Barnes’ Chapel of Night is very much the ‘anchoring’ episode of the set. Just the name, ‘Chapel of Night,’ feels like it should come with its own highly portentous musical accompaniment. What Barnes delivers is a second take on Greel’s original experiments, but divorced from his backstory – there are people being fed into machinery for nefarious purposes here alright, but the reason behind the villainy is brand spanking new, and takes advantage of the nature of this box set’s unique twist, a sideways-on look at causality and consequence, and what happens if things happen differently to how you understand them to have happened. There are some impressive vocal performances in this story – listen out for Teresa Banham as Mrs Bartholomew and Jeff Rawle as Toby Brokesmith especially, they light the story up – and you feel like you’ve heard something fresh by the end of it.

The final two stories act as something of a two-parter, and get down to the brass tacks of the premise that arcs through the set – if Jago, Litefoot and the Doctor didn’t stop Magnus Greel when they did, then firstly, who on Earth did, and secondly…are there another Jago and another Litefoot out there in alternative London somewhere, a Jago and Litefoot who never came together as infernal investigators?

How The Other Half Lives, by Matthew Sweet gives us answers to both those questions – if there’s no Jago and Litefoot, unified in their fight against infernal doings and villains, then in a Victorian London as full of infernal doings and villains as this one, someone else must have taken up the mantle so as to ensure there’s still a London left to be in. Someone else must have stopped Greel. And the vampires, and scientists, and murderers and model-makers, and Flickermen and so on and so on – someone else, essentially, must have had the adventures that in ‘our’ world have been had by Jago and Litefoot. Here we get to find out who’s done that.

More shocking though, we learn what the ‘other’ Jago and Litefoot have been upto, having never been brought together to have adventures. Litefoot won’t come as much of a surprise to you, but Jago…

Jago probably will.

Sweet gives us Jago and Jago and Litefoot and Litefoot – two for the price of each – and we’d be lying if we said it didn’t get rather confusing at some points, but there’s a particularly pleasing quest undertaken in this episode, which harks right back to The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

The adventure comes to a climax in Justin Richards’ Too Much Reality, while spurring a final mystery for the double-Jagos and double-Litefoots to solve – killings where the bodies simply fade away. Bringing everything round if not full circle, then satisfyingly close, Richards gives us falling stars, time and dimension-travelling chicanery, and a way to set our heroes on the path to home again, while proving to the other-London’s Jago and Litefoot that the life of infernal investigators is dashed exhilarating, as well as vital work. Our heroes manage to leave the trace of themselves as we know them behind, transforming the lives and pathways of their dimensional doppelgangers, and the set ends on a note that suggests things may be about to get a whole lot more complicated still – promising a fourteenth box set to come.

Jago & Litefoot 13 could be accused of having run out of steam and ideas – the notion of them travelling to a sideways dimension, meeting themselves, and teaming up to fight trans-temporal nastiness is perhaps hardly the most dazzlingly original basic premise, and the heavy mining of their own continuity, both in terms of Weng-Chiang and the previous box sets of their audio adventures, makes Series 13 seem at times really rather like a Greatest Hits collection.

But it isn’t that – it’s miles better than that. It’s a birthday cake, a party, with Jago and Litefoot revisiting some of the key ideas that brought them together, but never doing so in a notably clichéd way. The writers, along with Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter (Jago and Litefoot themselves), whipped along by stalwart Big Finish director Lisa Bowerman, make sure to give Series 13 enough meat of its own to make it, while being a birthday cake, both memorable and unique. Any successful double act is entitled to look back (or indeed sideways) after forty years. Series 13 is Jago & Litefoot doing that, but doing it with verve, flair and a remarkable energy. Series 14 will undoubtedly be different again, especially from the hints dropped at the end of this box set.

There’s yet to be such a thing as a bad Jago & Litefoot box set. This one takes the duo into one of their weirdest environments yet, and they come through it smiling, chuckling even, and heading, arm in arm to the Red Tavern. Where doubtless the world will be ending shortly.

Monday, 1 May 2017

Fans Fiction Mitchell Part Three by DJ Forrest

Mitchell sat on the soft bed in the doctor’s surgery, his legs dangling over the edge and stared down at his feet. He was sat in his socks and boxers, his clothes tossed untidily onto the metal legged chair beside the bed, where a paper towel roll lay spread up the middle of the plastic leather upholstery. Dr. Lexi Barlow was the opposite side of the room, her long shoulder length blonde hair tied back in a pony tail caught the sun as she moved in front of the window. Rays of light shafted through the gap in the drab curtains. She was filling a syringe and had her notes half written on the desk in front of her. It was Mitchell’s monthly check up.

‘You’ve lost weight are you eating at all?’ She called over her shoulder and heard him move on the bed, peeling his legs off the plastic coating.

‘Mitchell, it’s important, are you eating?’

‘Depends what you mean by eating?’ He concentrated on her figure hidden from view behind her doctor’s coat, her figure hugging top that held her body in just the right places presenting a multitude of hopes from each of her patients. He knew she wasn’t dating anyone, there was still that chance, still that hope, and after the expensive meal, the walk back to her flat above this place, she must surely know of his intentions by now.

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ She turned to face him, the syringe ready with a solution to boost his immune system. She saw his thin complexion, pronounced cheek bones, his skin tight around his chest and were those more bruises?

Mitchell sighed. ‘I only eat when I’m hungry. Besides it hurts when I do.’ He looked pained at her; the beatings had taken a lot out of him. If it wasn’t Brody it was Tweedle Dum and Dee, Alex’s men. Why they couldn’t just talk to him like normal human beings instead of answering everything with a left jab.

He watched her push the needle into his skin at the top of his arm and winced. She smiled.

‘You’re such a baby.’

‘Hey that hurt.’ He added taking hold of the cotton ball after she’d removed the needle. ‘I don’t have to come here and take this you know.’

‘True, but then you and I couldn’t catch up and you know you can’t resist our chats, and as I recall it was your turn to bring the cakes.’ She teased. He’d brought her a box of cakes once which had been fresh. What he’d failed to tell her were they were already hers from the kitchen downstairs. He smiled, then grinned.

‘Ok, but on one condition.’ Lexy looked at Mitchell.

‘What’s that?’

‘That you kiss me.’

She shook her head laughing. ‘You never give up do you?’ She popped the syringe into the dispenser and pulled off her latex gloves binning them and returned to her notes. ‘You can get dressed now.’ She called finishing up and signing off the papers, closing the file and pushing it into her filing cabinet.

‘Aww come on.’ He moaned padding over to her, slipping his hand gently against her waist, his chin against her shoulder. ‘You and I... we’re made for each other.’

She laughed and turned to face him, their eyes close, lips even closer.

‘Mitchell please, I am your doctor, not your lover.’

‘Moriarty’s. I bought you dinner.’

‘On a stolen man’s credit card. I do remember.’

‘I still bought you dinner, and flowers, and that cute little laptop, come on if I didn’t like you I wouldn’t go to great lengths, and if you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have accepted it.’ Mitchell added.

He studied her face, inhaled the sweet aroma of her perfume, if he could remember the smell he’d buy her a fresh bottle of it. His hands traced up her blouse, pushing aside her work overall.

‘We could make sweet music together, push aside the boundaries of doctor patient relationships. What have you got to lose?’ With his left hand slipped around her waist he pulled her closer, and felt her breath against his lips, he was almost drunk with her scent. He slowly, carefully dipped his head to meet her lips.

For a moment or two she allowed him to kiss her, felt his soft lips caress hers, her arms slipped around his waist, his soft warm skin, his aroma, her mind slipped back into work mode and she pushed him away.

‘No this is wrong, I can’t.’ She rubbed her lips and turned away. Closing her eyes she hated herself, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Mitchell snatched up his clothes and left the room. She heard the outer door slam shut and sighed.

He worked off his anger that seemed to rise a lot these days, perhaps it was the weather, perhaps he was just sick and tired of playing. He liked her, no loved her, but she’d never see that. Maybe it was the flat, maybe he was pushing it too much, perhaps he had to give her space. He slowed his pace maybe that was it. Maybe he had to allow her to make all the moves now.

Accepting this he walked along the pavement, passed the mini mart, the watch repairers and the ATM machine. He passed the kid stepping from the newsagents with an ice cream on a cone and into the path of the black sedan with Tweedle Dee and Dum.

‘Get in.’ A man in dark shades and a thick neck and pit bull of a face growled.

Mitchell took a step back and shook his head.

‘No, I’m done with this, I’ve had it, you want the blueprint you go get it yourself.’ He saw the brute step from the car, and bolted, cutting across the road. Mitchell dodged between a Number 88 bus and a cyclist. The cyclist squealed on his brakes and shouted abuse before regaining his composure. Mitchell cut through the shopping mall, a small array of expensive shops with few customers, and selling items that the average joe wouldn’t or couldn’t afford.

From the view of the road, the black sedan was still following him, Mitchell frowned. He took the road away from the streets, away from the shops, and out along the railway, out towards the embankment. He could run all day, but the heat and the lack of energy was punishing him. He stopped to catch his breath, the squeal of brakes and he glanced ahead. The sedan was parked.

‘Damn you!’ Mitchell cursed. He thought of the route, he could go under the bridge at the canal, across the barges, out along the old warehouses, but he was too exposed. Where? Where could he go?

The side window slid down and Alex peered out, his dark eyes and impeccable dress sense oozed wealth and power.

‘Give it up and get in the car.’

Mitchell remained where he stood. ‘I’m not getting in. I’m done. I can’t get what you need, I’ve tried drugging the guy, I’ve fucked him sideways and I still can’t access what you want.’ He protested.

‘Get in the fucking car and stop wasting my time.’ Alex hissed impatiently.

‘NO, I’M DONE WITH THIS, DONE WITH YOU.’ Mitchell backed away. He turned and ran, disappearing in amongst the buildings to his left and the throng of shoppers coming out of the shopping centre back in the busy streets once more.

Alex leaned back in the seat.

‘What do you want us to do boss?’ The driver asked, his gruff voice choked in the suit, beads of sweat gathering pace around his thick neck and bald head.

Alex flicked the handheld device that sat on his lap, raising it up he smiled as a red dot flickered through a selection of small squares, zooming in he located the red dot, and isolated the squares to be the shops in the centre. At some point he knew the boy would head home, giving up on being chased, all animals went home in the end. He’d wait.

‘Take me back to the office, we’ll deal with the boy shortly, give him time to think he’s won. Mitchell is a creature of habit, and at 4pm he makes his way back to that hovel he calls a home. And we’ll be waiting.’

Captain Jack Harkness kicked open the door of Building block 3 and came face to face with a large male crocodile, its shoulders just wide enough to squeeze out of the gap. He yelled in fright having almost run into its sharp snapping mouth and called out to Gwen, amidst the screaming coming from the mint sucking Marley.

“GWEN? GWEN, ARE YOU OK?’ He yelled trying to see past the large hulk of reptile. With weapon drawn Jack was torn between firing at it, and firing over its head. In the end he did neither and pressed his comms.

Marley was beside herself with fear; more mints were falling from the torn packet in the pocket of her borrowed coat. Gwen weighed up the situation – quickly, then something became apparent, the size of the creatures could easily have taken both Gwen and Marley in two snaps of their giant jaws but no, they weren’t after them.

“Marley, shut up.’ Gwen became aware of the strength of their jaws so close but still not in attack mode.

‘Marley shut up and look at them, look at the crocs, they’re not attacking, what are you doing, what are they doing?’ Gwen could still hear Jack shouting and called back on the comms. ‘I’m alright Jack, they’re not attacking, they’re....eating.’ She followed the white ball that fell from the shaking girls’ pocket and saw the crocs follow the scent.

‘They’re after the mints. Marley how many more have you got in your pocket?’ Gwen edged towards the girl standing a couple of feet away from her. She was still crying memories of her more recent encounter with them had come to the fore. But even as she watched, she noticed for herself that they weren’t attacking, they were waiting on her instruction. Slowly Marley reached into her pocket and gripped the ripped bag, she yelped as a stray mint fell from her pocket and rolled to the female crocodile that snapped it up inches from her feet.

‘See if you can encourage it to the other side of the room.’ Gwen suggested, as the other crocodile baying for freedom returned to the female.

‘How?’ Marley never took her eyes off the large reptiles.

‘Look at them, I wonder if they’re like dogs, pets, if you can make them do what you want?’

‘Are you serious?’ Marley turned from the creatures and gave Gwen such an incredulous look that Gwen had to admit it was a long shot. She raised a smile of encouragement, right now she wanted to be out in the fresh air with Jack, rather than in here with these.

‘Just a bit.’

Marley swapped three mints into her right hand, the crocs followed the movement. ‘Worst case scenario is I’ll throw and they’ll take my arm off.’

“No worst-case scenario is running out of mints and still being in here. Now throw the bloody mints.’
Jack watched in wonder but also calculated the distance the girls were stationed at, to run back to the exit and escape. He kept an eye on the security guards, but nothing had moved outside.

‘Hurry up I’m not sure how much time we have here.’

Gwen glanced back at the door and wondered if all else failed she could shoot the lock, but judging by the large key that would have slotted into the lock, it might have required more than one round, and if that was the case, she’d not have chance to fire twice. She saw the daylight catch on the backs of the crocodiles, both of which had patches of hair on their backs. She remembered the blurred photographs back in the Hub.

Marley tossed the three mints in her hand past Gwen and into the darkness of the room. At first the crocs didn’t move and Gwen wondered if they knew what they were planning, then as the mints clattered to the ground both creatures ambled after it, swishing their tails from side to side as they ran.

‘NOW.’ Gwen grabbed Marley’s arm and jostled her towards Jack and the way out. Jack pushed the door closed as he heard and saw the crocs making a bolt for freedom and more mints.

‘You alright?’ He glanced at Gwen and the girl, pale as the mint balls in her sweaty hand.

‘I’m good let’s go.’ Gwen turned to run back the way they’d come when she came face to face with fully loaded weapons held by young men barely out of school. In amongst the throng limped an elderly man in white slacks, white open neck shirt, greying to white hair, short cropped, and metal framed glasses perched mid way down his nose.

Jack put away his weapon and noticed Gwen still had hers in her right hand. He stared at the throng of six young men. Six young men with firearms pointing in their direction.

‘I’m sure we don’t need to use those.’ He never took his eyes off the weapons, noting how nervous the fingers behind the triggers appeared to be.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ The stiff English accent boomed from the group that parted like a sea of green allowing Lord Henrick Bishop through. He wasn’t as tall as Jack, perhaps 5’ 8’ but he was muscular and his thick stubby fingers had probably throttled more tardy workers than Jack had done to his own staff over the years.

‘Torchwood I take it?’ His eyes took in Gwen with her side arm, firmly gripped he noted, he glanced with disgust at Jack before his eyes settled on Marley. And what are you doing with them. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. Give you a job? You disgust me, you and your layabout boyfriend, I might have guessed it was you.’ Bishop pointed a stubby fat finger at Marley, and snarled at her.

Gwen glanced at Jack who did the same back before staring at Marley.

‘What are you talking about?’ Jack asked.

‘Her, this traitor in the midst. What is it with young folk, they see something that is different and immediately it’s animal cruelty or they want a share of the wealth, so what is it, missy, see something you liked, thought you’d cash in on it. Was I not paying you enough?’ He raised his hand as if to strike her, as Jack stepped in and took hold of the man’s hand mid swipe. Several raised weapons pointed towards Jack and Bishop.

‘You’ve got the wrong girl, now why don’t we talk about this and you can tell us what the hell you’ve done to these creatures, because from where I’m standing, you’re operating on creatures that don’t belong in this environment, creating monsters you can’t control.’ Jack growled.
‘Oh but we can.’ Bishop snatched back his arm and straightened up.

‘What, with mints, sweets?’ Scoffed Gwen, her eye on the gun-toting teenagers.

‘That was an accident, but it works, it calms them down, all the trainers use them. Or are meant to use them, but your boyfriend...’ He growled back at Marley, who still shaken from the crocodile encounter was still whimpering and a mess from the ordeal. ‘...cost us a life today.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jack narrowed his eyes. ‘And call your dogs off.’

Bishop glanced back at the soldiers. ‘At ease.’ He returned his gaze towards Jack. ‘This is my property. I breed creatures who will adapt to any climate, you can see for yourself Captain, that our world is changing, climates we once had for the creatures of our world are lost to cultivation of green belt land, to swamps and forests. Before long these creatures won’t be able to survive.’

‘So, making monster versions of their former selves will do what exactly?

‘Arm them against the future.’

Gwen raised a brow. ‘Where have I heard that before?’

Bishop rounded on her. ‘We know all about you. Torchwood. How you operate. You will not shut me down. I have dealt with you in the past.’

Marley perked up. She remembered the reports back on the desk, two of the operatives from their Glasgow office had disappeared after inspecting this place. But it wasn’t this place, it was the place on the other side of the anomaly. And why was he referring to Marley as being an employee or his, when she wasn’t.

‘So if you know all about us, you’ll know that we CAN and we WILL shut you down.’ Jack said, studying the man with simmering rage.

‘On what grounds? Clearly it was you who were trespassing. These animals never leave the compound, they are purely here for experimentation purposes. I treat them with respect and understanding, and they are fed, trained, and looked after. I have never ill treated an animal in my life.’

‘It was that word back there, experimentation. Why would you want larger creatures than those of their original state, why would you want to experiment on nature’s creatures?’ Gwen clipped her gun back into its holster and stepped back slightly from the men. She could hear noises from behind the door. She glanced at Jack and gently flicked her head towards it. Jack moved slowly away as he listened to the old man, till Bishop stood with his back to the compound.

‘...and furthermore...’ But that was as far as Bishop got before the walls began to crack around the door frame. The soldiers backed away, Gwen, Marley and Jack edged away, removing their weapons and edging towards the exit, only Bishop remained standing.

‘What the...?’ He could only stare as the wall crumbled in a mass of falling masonry, as Elvis, or the new Elvis pushed at the concrete brickwork and sent the door frame and surrounding wall out with such force that Bishop was forced to retreat. He felt the force of the brickwork clip him, they hit him hard in the back and legs but he kept moving, turning only when the bricks settled.

From where they stood, Jack, Gwen and Marley could see the sheer size of the crocodiles, both now wading out of the swimming pool, the green slime and algae clinging to their scales.

‘Oh my God, the size of them...’ Gwen said, aghast. They were huge, they were bloody huge!

‘Now do you believe me?’ Marley countered, glancing between both Jack and Gwen, open mouthed, stunned by the enormity of the reptiles, the size of Volvo Estates and tails the length of giraffe’s necks.

There was a volley of shots as the young soldiers opened fire on the advancing reptiles, amidst calls of halt from Bishop to no avail. The bullets penetrated the thick hide, but did nothing to stop the crocodiles from wading towards the group, singling out the white suited man, the large mint of all.

Marley turned away as with one snap of the giant jaws, Bishop was bitten almost in two, only his feet to the ankles remained. Jack winced before realising that the scent of the mints were still strong, and given their powerful receptors, it wouldn’t take the female long to realise that the girl standing beside Jack and Gwen still had the treats they so desperately craved.

‘Run.’ Jack instructed pulling Marley back.

‘But if we run Jack, they’ll gain ground.’
‘We have to do something, those creatures get a taste for freedom who knows what they’ll do.’

Marley shook herself free. ‘You go.’

‘No...don’t do this.’ Gwen guessed where this was leading.

‘Back there there’s no Geoff, here I have a chance.’

‘NO, here is another of you. Geoff is going to freak and plus crossing your own time line.’
‘But it’s not my time line, another dimension, another me.’

‘It’s still not a good idea.’

‘What choice do we have, if I can get them into the building, a more secure building....I have to try Captain.’

‘Ok.’ Jack accepted.

.Jack, no, no she can’t.’ But Gwen knew judging by the size of the crocodiles advancing towards them, that Marley was maybe right.

Jack flipped the VM cover and scanned the perimeter, keying into the schematics of the building itself. He could see that three of the enclosures were still intact, but there was no way that these two large hulking creatures would fit back in through the doors.

‘There has to be somewhere else.’ He studied the design as Marley stepped towards the lugging reptiles homing in on her scent.

‘Hurry up and find one because I only have 9 mints left.’

***

Ripley’s Music Hall had been abandoned for over twenty-five or more years. It sat derelict. The wooden beams were peppered with holes caused by woodworm years old. Wallpaper hung heavy with dust, peeled from the walls. Pigeons cooed and sheltered in the loft space, gathering on the window ledge in the dying embers of the day. On the second floor where the balconies once gazed over the stage, Mitchell sat quietly, the opening in the wall where the wooden slats had decayed and the brickwork had crumbled, gave fresh air into the dark building. Mitchell had come here quite often as a boy, it was one of the first places he’d stayed after he’d arrived in London. It provided shelter, and overlooked Take Away Road as he liked to call it – rows upon rows of fast food joints, open from 11am right through to four in the morning.

He sucked the chicken grease from his fingers, the delicate sauce that dribbled down his hands of the marinade. It would never guarantee to fill your belly healthily, but then given that his only vegetables came from swanky restaurants using a stolen credit card, or in the take away boxes of fried, or garnished burgers he was doing well to achieve at least two of his five a day. But she was right, he was losing weight.

He’d bolted the food down, but he knew given the next few minutes the pain in his guts would result in him throwing up what he’d eaten, or suffer the pain for the next 12 hours of what was worse than indigestion. But he needed the energy, he needed sustenance and he needed the hell away from London.

Since leaving the care home his destination had only brought him to London, there seemed something familiar about the city, something that had brought him here, a drive. But now after spending the rest of his childhood, and now a year off his 25^th birthday, he still hadn’t found what he was looking for. But Lexy...how could he live without her?

He felt the first bouts of pain splinter inside him, the sharp jabs as the food passed through to his stomach and began to break down, but it felt as if it had bypassed his stomach. He felt sick, clutching his stomach; he curled up into a ball and cried at the pain, stifling his screams so as not to be heard outside.

***

Marley was silent on the journey back towards Cardiff, in fact it took some time before both Jack and Gwen spoke either. The crocodiles despite their size had been placid, which for a crocodile was unusual to say the least. And after calling for those who ran the operations from inside the computer rooms to open up the large pool that fed into the basement of the main building, a large reinforced room that already housed several other crocs of equal size, the gates were closed and the remaining mints were despatched. Marley watched them mix with the younger, smaller creatures and wasn’t sure but it looked as though the female crocodile, the one who had taken most of the mints from her looked elated at seeing the younger ones.

‘What will happen to them now?’ She’d turned to Jack, who seemed to share her feelings towards the female reptile. He puffed out his cheeks.

‘Can’t rehouse them, the best thing that can happen is they’re put to sleep.’

‘Best thing for who?’

‘Best thing for everyone. After what you’ve endured could you honestly say you’d feel comfortable walking along the shores of Coniston Lake knowing that at any point, a large crocodile would lunge out of the water, or come inland and trash a quaint little town?

‘All for the search of mint imperials, or men in white coats.’

‘Exactly Gwen.’ He raised a brow and a smile at Gwen. ‘Take Marley back to the SUV, I’ll be along just shortly.’

Gwen didn’t have to ask where Jack was going, she knew as well as he that the crocodiles couldn’t live out a life beneath the house forever and being Jack, he’d make sure the creatures were dealt with before he left.

The copier machine had been playing up for the last 10 days on the eighth floor of the almost abandoned BT building in Park Street, Cardiff. Winston Collie, Artemis Fowl’s greatest fan or so it said on the grey t-shirt visible through his white shirt, sat his packet of tic tacs on top of the machine while he fiddled for the controls after unplugging the machine from the wall. He was a dab hand at electronics, he’d taken to watching YouTube videos and knew everything there was to know about all the equipment in any office, anywhere, so there would be a simple reason for the breakdown. Likely Phyllis in Accounts had buggered it up with too many paper clips, it did that, bugger up. And she was a bit heavy handed. You had to be gentle with these machines, treat them like your car, gently, caressing each and every cog and wheel, and everything would slot into...

‘Ahh bugger.’ Winston withdrew his bloodied thumb and immediately sucked it. He peered closer at the open back of the copier, peering back out was a sheared off paper clip. He shook his tousled head, cursed Phyllis and got to his feet. He reached for his packet of mints, but there was nothing there.

‘What the...?’ he spun about, still sucking his thumb, the taste of copper metal and mint a strange combination on his tongue, his other hand rooted out his handkerchief in his right hand pocket of his black pressed trousers.

‘Who the fuck...?’ He saw Dave from Accounts saunter out of another door and called to him. ‘Hey, you didn’t see someone come out of here, did you? Some bastard stole my sweets.’ Dave shook his head and noted the bloodied handkerchief.

‘Bloody paperclips in the machine, that’ll be Phyllis in Accounts that is.’ Dave shrugged and pushed his spectacles back up his nose.

Winston returned to the copier room and searched under the machine, under tables and chairs but the mints were definitely gone. Swearing again, he went in search of a first aid kit.

There was a strong pungent odour further down the corridor, near the staff kitchen, a sort of rotting cabbage on a hot day, or...or like his terrapin tank, the one he used to have before the buggers bit him and he’d given them to the zoo. Winston winced even now thinking of them, the scar was still there on his middle finger, which he held up, then smirked as it looked like a rude gesture. He quickly brought his hand back down.

The staff kitchen was a scene of chaos, beakers, cups and dishes lay broken, and three cupboard doors hung off hinges with severe puncture marks where their middles looked to have been punched with a lump hammer. He stood in the doorway and surveyed the damage.

‘Someone is really pissed and it’s not even Friday.’ He turned to see Dave carrying a stack of papers and a box up the corridor towards him, he was maybe only 200 feet from the door of the kitchen when Winston felt a gust of air breeze past him from behind and spun around expecting to see something, but there was nothing there. He turned again when he heard Dave yell in pain and the papers and box dropped to the ground. Winston could only stare.

‘Dave?’

Dave had completely vanished.

Winston took a few tentative steps towards the box and sheets of accounting papers that lay on the ground and against the wall, like a puddle of paper, but there was no sign of Dave, and his spectacles gave the only indication that he’d been there at all.

By the time Torchwood arrived back at Base, a sea of blues and twos flashed in the evening light and a cordon had been put across the front of the building. Those that still worked in the building huddled in groups in the car park, a few inhaling menthol cigarettes. Winston was talking to a uniformed officer, and had been for the last ten minutes. He wanted to know if he could go home, as much as he needed his laptop for the film he’d downloaded on work time, he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to the office and disappear like Dave did. He’d already told the officer he had no idea where Dave had gone, and he wasn’t known for his jokes.

The team climbed out of the SUV, Jack as usual keen to find out what the problem was came back to the girls after a few moments and reached into the back of the vehicle for their kit.

‘What is it?’ Gwen asked searching Jack’s body language for answers.

‘They don’t know, but there’s a man missing. According to that kid over there.’ He nodded towards a young man sat in the back of an ambulance, red blanket around his shoulders, sipping on a mug of hot tea, while a uniformed officer scribbled details into a flip notebook ‘One of his friends just vanished in front of his eyes.’ He shrugged on the backpack.

‘Another anomally?’ Gwen grabbed her pack.

‘Don’t know, but there’s only one way of finding out.’ He handed the other rucksack to Marley. ‘You coming?’

‘You mean, you want me to help?’ Marley took the bag out of habit.

‘Let’s just say, you passed the initiation test.’ Jack flashed his matinee smile. ‘Welcome to Torchwood.’

***

It was dark when Mitchell came to. The pain in his guts had been so intense he’d passed out, but it seemed to have done the trick, there was no pain any more. He pushed himself up, slowly. Something didn’t feel right. There was a different smell in the building, it was the first thing that had awoken him, a fat sweaty smell, like the kids in the home, body odour.

It wasn’t him. He froze mid way to getting to his feet. Turning towards the doorway there was a darker mass blocking the light. Panic washed over him. He scrambled to his feet, but he was trapped, and the only escape was out of the balcony and that was a long way down.

‘There’s no point running, there’s nowhere to go. So...’ Alex Shepperton stepped out of the shadows throwing a little light into the room from the gap in the wall. He was flanked by his two burly bouncers. ‘...let’s get down to business.’

Syd’s Cafe on the Mile Road was quiet at this time of the evening. Syd usually closed up by seven, but seeing four customers at the six seated table, it was business he couldn’t afford to turn away. The recession had hit everyone hard on this street, Syd was surviving on what came through the doors, he couldn’t afford to turn anyone away, even if it meant closing the doors late, and missing the time with his kids. Money was money, and it was better in his pocket than anywhere else. He busied himself at the back of the shop keeping an eye on the CCTV monitor that sat over the fridge freezer by the door.

Alex Shepperton, immaculate dress sense, set the mug down on the wipe clean table cloth and folded his arms resting them on the table. Mitchell sat opposite, next to him sat one large balding thug in a suit.

‘The thing is, Mitchell, I’ve given you many chances, and all I’ve heard are excuses. Now if my life was threatened and my legs were to be broken I would be doing my damndest in making absolutely sure that didn’t happen. So why am I hearing excuses?’

Mitchell stared at the milky tea he’d not touched. ‘Reuben doesn’t have it.’

‘So who does?’ Alex studied the boys’ face, he looked gaunt compared to other times he’d seen him. His clothes hung off him.

The thug cuffed the back of Mitchell’s head. ‘Well, answer the boss.’ He barked coarsely against Mitchell’s ear. Mitchell yelped and brought his hand up to his head, rubbing his throbbing skull.

‘I’m not doing it. The man’s an animal.’ Mitchell edged along the seat, but there was still no escape, the other side of the thug was a wall.

‘If you do not do this, you will always owe me, you will never be free of me.’

‘I can’t get close to him, he watches my every move, if I slipped something in his drink he doesn’t drink it, he trusts no-one.’

‘His name?’

‘Alastair Brody. He’s Reuben’s boss. He’s an evil fucker, I’m not doing it. I won’t.’ Mitchell sniffed back his emotions as his voice broke. Alastair Brody had forced himself so many times upon each and every rent boy that he’d picked up. None of the victims ever got close enough to stop him, or get free of him, not alive anyway, and Mitchell knew it.

In a coffee shop after the first instance with Brody, he’d shared a coffee with Colin. The young boy who’d found his way into the Thames with his throat cut, had been the last before Mitchell. Whatever Brody was trying to find out about the young men he paid for, Mitchell couldn’t be sure, but if he wasn’t the first to get close to Brody, if he wasn’t the first to be picked up by Shepperton to carry out this deed, then he probably wasn’t going to be the last.

Alex leaned back in the chair. ‘Alastair Brody, he still there eh?’ He sighed heavily.

‘You know of him?’ Mitchell studied the man with the clean shaven face, olive complexion, smoothed back black hair. He looked like the typical gangster from a 1950’s American cop show, Mitchell had seen enough of those over the years, the black and white movies, Tommy guns firing unlimited ammo at the opponent and yet still managing to miss them. He wondered if, nah...

Alex looked back at the boy. ‘Alastair Brody is the head of the Ministry of Defence department that Reuben works for. I thought he’d retired by now, evidently not. You’ll need cunning on your side, and you’ll also need to keep your wits about you. Has he taken you to his apartment yet?”

Mitchell shook his head. ‘Always his office.’

‘He has an apartment that overlooks the banks of the Thames. It has double glazed windows, which I’m not sure open. He has a room to the left of the window, he keeps it locked unless he has visitors.’ Alex leaned forward at the table again.

‘He’s a sado-masochist, more sadist. That last boy used to work for me, used to have your job.’
‘Wait, the kid with his throat cut...worked for you and now you want me back in there. NO.’ Mitchell got to his feet but was instantly pulled back down by the hefty bodyguard.

‘How often have you been to Brody?’

‘Two maybe three times. That’s enough.’ Mitchell felt sick, Alex was using him, like the kid before him and countless others, he wanted to throw up.

‘Then there is no other person to do this job other than you. All the others were killed in the first meeting, the fact that you haven’t shows Brody that you’re strong enough; your stamina can take what he throws at you. Whatever it is, you’re the best man for the job. You’ve got three days. I want the blueprint on my desk by Saturday morning, or Fred and Harry will be round so if you decide against doing this job, get your affairs in order.’ Alex pushed the chair back grating it across the black and white tiled floor, his goons followed suit. Only Mitchell remained seated.

Mitchell watched from the doorway of the café as the black sedan drove away up the street. He pulled his jacket tight around him, and keeping in to the shadows, slunk away up the darkened street. If he could get away from Shepperton he would, but for reasons he couldn’t yet figure, Shepperton knew where he was, at any given time.

If he ran, Shepperton’s thugs would just drag him right on back. He pushed open the door to his downstairs flat. Everything just as he’d left it, even the wolf, who merely lifted his head then closed its eyes again.

Mitchell lay back on his unkempt bed and stared at the hairy scary spider on the ceiling and sighed. Even that couldn’t leave. Stuck to the ceiling from years of heavy nicotine smoke and whatever else was congealed above his head. Just like the spider, he was going nowhere. He had to find the blueprints before Brody introduced him to the murky waters of the Thames.

Captain Jack Harkness strode into the BT building like a man on a mission. Having already spoken to Winston about Dave, he knew enough to know that whatever had happened would be over the head of the local constabulary.

‘Keep these doors closed and do not let anyone in or out until I say so, is that understood?’ Jack had barked at one of the uniforms. Gwen merely smiled before slipping inside with Marley. The solid glass doors closed tightly behind them.

From the start of their business on the 17^th floor Jack had had the schematic of the building homed into his VM and bringing up the holographic blueprint he could detect no life signs anywhere in the building other than the three of them standing beside the reception desk.

‘Dave, was on the 8^th floor when he disappeared. So, let’s check out the 8^th floor. Keep your comms on at all times, there should be a spare ear piece in the bag, put it on.’ He instructed Marley who rummaged in the bag for the piece and stared at it.

‘We never got these in Glasgow.’

‘Tin can on a piece of string?’ Gwen quipped unclipping her gun from her belt holster and checked her rounds.

‘Mobile phone, nothing too glamorous.’ She pulled the ear piece on and withdrew a standard issue Gloch 9mm. She marvelled at how well it fitted her like a glove.

‘Don’t tell me, you never got one of those either.’ Jack remarked choosing the quickest route up to the 8^th floor. He located the Fire Exit. ‘We’ll take the stairs.’

‘We did just I’ve never used one before.’

‘You get used to it. I’d never used a gun before I joined. You soon pick it up.’ Gwen smiled, reassuring her.

‘Are you coming or will you be discussing knitting patterns next?’ Jack growled before leaving the door swinging shut behind him. He took the stairs up, two at a time, breaking into a sweat the higher up he climbed. He was out of practice. Back in the Hub this would have been regular training. He checked the VM and detected movement on the 7^th.

‘Follow with caution.’

Gwen had always been fit, juggling work with Anwen, working on minimal sleep, she was used to belting along the roads and pavements, climbing the stairs two at a time, but there were a lot of stairs, and it was a long time since she’d done anything this energetic. She stopped mid way for a breather. Marley struggled up to the landing and joined her. Jack leaned over the balcony several floors up.

‘Hurry up or would you rather go home?’ He grinned as Gwen raised her middle finger and disappeared to the next level.

‘It was never like this in Glasgow.’ Gasped Marley staring up at the levels still to cover.

‘Believe me, nothing will ever be like Glasgow.’ Gwen pushed herself on and pulled herself up the stairs, gun in her left hand, her comms beginning to scratch, the static build up intensifying. She pressed it, but couldn’t detect Jack on the other end.

‘I think the comms are down.’ She pulled the ear piece off. It bothered her like a lot of things, such as answering the phone in a lightning storm. Perhaps there was static interference up on the 7^th floor, perhaps another anomaly. She pulled her phone from her pocket with her free hand and saw no signal. She growled and pushed on. Floor 7 in big blue letters on a white plack stared back at her beside the Fire Exit. It was sitting unlocked. She pulled the door open and was met by destruction. Damaged and cracked inner walls, in some places looking as if something or someone had been thrown through it. There were waste bins and where some potted vegetation had once sat in the corners of the corridor, were now spread across the walkway like a soil carpet. She saw neither Jack nor anything else that could have been responsible for the destruction but she could hear Jack further along the corridor and whatever he’d found was definitely not coming quietly.

The 7^th floor was wrecked from the moment he stepped onto the open hallway. The soft padded offices leading into the various levels of cubicles containing the call centre equipment had been scattered like deckchairs on a windy day. Flung against the opposite walls, drawers of filing cabinets and desks hung open and askew, contents lying all around the desks as if these had once been soldiers with their innards on display. Jack didn’t have time to think what could have caused it because whatever had caused it was still in that open plan room and came at him with such force, he felt his feet leave the floor and his right shoulder hit the only undamaged wall by the elevator. He yelled as he hit it hard, his head connecting with the corner of the elevator jam and fell to the ground dazed. His gun lay a few feet from him. He groaned, groggily and shook his head to right the blurred vision, it didn’t help. He felt the familiar trickle of blood through a hairline cut on his head. He paused before he got to his feet. His vision might have blurred but his hearing wasn’t impaired at all.

He deduced from the way it walked that it had more than two feet, and judging by the destruction it was definitely something big and what was that smell? It was familiar – too damn familiar! He pressed his finger to his ear and only felt his ear. His comms piece was missing! Damn! He sensed that whatever the creature was, given that it had more than two feet, it was definitely looking for something.

Jack staggered to his feet and pressed his fingers against the headache that was starting to build. He looked at his finger tips – blood. Still, given that he was once again immortal all he’d feel was the pounding headache for a few more minutes. He glanced around and saw his comms near the elevator and retrieved it pushing it back in. When he pressed it, all he heard was the white noise of static. He removed it again.

He retrieved his gun and scanned the room. There was now a definite heat source but it was strangely camouflaged. He narrowed his eyes, followed the direction on the VM and used caution.

The creature was indeed searching for something, but there seemed little in the way of candied goods on offer and the tin of baked beans that it had pierced when it ransacked the kitchen did little to appease its hunger. So on it searched. It was still searching when it saw the man in the uniform, so unlike anything it had seen before, but often a two legged male had something to offer. Inhaling using its strong receptors it detected something different in the man than the one before. It didn’t have what it was looking for. It turned around in the cramped space and whipped its tail straight into the man sending him sailing through the air into the metal doors it had seen open not so long ago. It went back to investigate, because the metal doors had given it a few treats earlier, many packets of candies had fallen nearby, perhaps it would be lucky to find more.

As the computers fizzled and popped, something strange occurred around them. As Jack monitored the VM scanner he saw what he’d begun to suspect all along. As the build up of static electricity throughout the office intensified, the image of a large crocodile became apparent.

‘You must be Elvis!’ He lowered his VM and raised his gun as the creature charged towards him. Several shots fired at the thick skin of the crocodile but Jack could see that this creature was far from solid.

‘Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me!’ He fired a few more but the bullets shot through the transparent body and hit the wall behind, penetrating the double-glazed windows, forcing loose papers to flutter.

The creature kept coming. ‘Shit!’ Jack had long since discovered that waving your arms at a creature to confuse them when they appear to charge, might work with some creatures, but large built like a brick outhouse were not likely to stop in a hurry and given that the snappy end was nearing Jack, he wasn’t going to start putting any theories to the test, and ran.

Elvis, gave chase, smacking various large desks and free standing wall boards out of its way as it chased after the figure flapping in the blue coat. They used to do this at the facility – it was called training! Only Elvis had never trained in an office before!

Gwen and Marley edged slowly forwards taking in the surrounding damage and guns at the ready were prepared for what came at them. Only Gwen wasn’t quite prepared to see Jack cut through the remaining upstanding cubicles, fear on his face, running hell for leather towards her.

‘RUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNN!!!!!’ He yelled as he caught her up. She frowned at first, considering she couldn’t see why he was running, until she saw furniture being cast aside as something large and becoming visible now and then, forced her to run after Jack. Marley didn’t need any encouragement, as soon as Jack yelled she ran back to the Fire Exit and shut the door behind her. Her heart was in her throat, would this nightmare ever?

Gwen cast an eye back. ‘Where’s Marley?’

‘Hopefully taking cover.’ Jack panted searching for another escape route and finding it. Another door. He prayed it wasn’t locked. They reached it at the same time and thanked the heavens it was unlocked. Pushing through they came to another office, another row of cubicles with computers and desks and pot plants. This time untouched. Jack slowed his pace, turning his head to view the door.

‘Where’s Elvis?’ He panted heavily as he stared back. No sounds came, no knock of the door, no crack of the brickwork. He turned to face Gwen.

‘You alright?’ She nodded.

‘How was that possible?’

‘The...anomaly. It must have come through after Marley, it’s the only explanation.’ He heard a roar and the door thumped. Taking Gwen by the arm he steered her towards the untouched office and around a corner and glanced back towards the door.

‘What are we going to do Jack?’

‘At the moment, we can’t kill it.’

‘Why not?’ Gwen checked her rounds while wondering if Marley was alright.

‘It’s not a solid being, I emptied a complete magazine into it and it just passed through. It’s like a ghost but it’s not.’ He sighed.

‘So how do we do it Jack, we can’t keep a crocodile of that size in this building, how are we going to stop it?’

Jack was silent for a few moments, then straightened up and reviewed the cubicles. ‘Mints.’

‘Are you seriously wanting sweets at a time like this?’ Gwen asked. Jack raised a brow at her.

‘No. Those crocodiles back at the facility were controlled by mints. Of course, the guy Dave, he probably had mints, the crocodile took them because he smelt of them.’ He strode towards the first desk and rifled the drawers. Nothing! He went to the next and the one after it, then smiled, shaking a small container of candy.

‘Are you shaking your Tic-Tacs at me?’ Gwen smirked.

‘Check every cubicle; get as much of the mint as you can. I’m going to the generator room.’

‘You’re not leaving me with Elvis.’ Gwen glared

‘While you’ve got the mints, you’re safe. I’ll not be long. If I find Marley I’ll send her up to you.’ He ran to the elevator and pressed the button, as the doors slid open he recoiled in horror. He couldn’t quite make out whether it was Dave or part of Dave, or part of some other person, but remnants of human remains covered the floor of the elevator. He reached in and pressed the basement button and watched the doors close, and took the stairs.

Jack hated leaving Gwen upstairs especially with a large hulk of a creature that could do that amount of damage to a human, but he couldn’t be sure just how many other crocodiles were in the building, and there wasn’t time to tell Gwen what he needed in the generator room. He knew exactly what he had to do.

Marley sat on the concrete floor and hugged her knees as she sobbed into them. She’d not slept much in all the time she’d been in this building, every time she did, the memories of her fiancé came back to haunt her.

With every thump of the door Gwen grabbed her gun and aimed it in that direction.

‘Right, fifteen packets of chewing gum, six tubs of other chewing gum, tic tacs, fresh mint spray, bottle of mouthwash and some menthol cigarettes. Okay. So if Barbara Woodhouse can train a dog to roll over and play dead, I wonder what I can teach a bloody great big hairy crocodile.’ There was a shoulder bag, black with gold chains decoration on the front. Gwen tipped the contents onto the desk, she stowed the mints into the bag and hung it over her shoulder, it went quite well with her black boots.

Shaking her head she rummaged at the various items on the desk, a name made her heart flutter. Millie Harper. An image planted itself in her head and she smiled for a moment before glancing back at the door waiting for Elvis.

The door of the generator room had been locked, but to a man of the future like Jack, a locked door was nothing when you had a Vortex Manipulator. Who needs a sonic?

Along the right hand side of the main wall were a series of yellow panels, inside three were the components, cables and switches that powered electricity to the levels from the basement up to the mast. Jack ran his finger along the series of switches, some were still on, some switched off. He narrowed his eyes. His actions in the next few seconds could cause a multitude of issues for Gwen; for the contents of the building but most of all for the large unstoppable crocodile. But given that they couldn’t live with a partially invisible creature roaming the corridors with an exceptional sweet tooth, it was all or nothing.

Jack switched every single switch ON. The effects throughout the building were illuminating. Computers sprang into action, their Standby graphics logo lit up the monitors across the entire office block, those that sat on the floor exploded like erupting volcanoes, spitting sparks onto carpeted flooring and scattered paper, the Fire Exit fluorescent lighting flickered into life and every floor belted brilliant white light. Marley lifted her head at the sudden change and scrambled to her feet.

Gwen fully laden with mints jumped as the computer nearest sprang into life, the logo flashed and the voices of a thousand Windows erupted into song.

Jack found a signal as he ran back up the fire escape steps, he called Gwen and prayed she still had her phone.

‘Did you find enough candy? Good, leave a trail and get yourself to the roof.’

He returned to the 7^th floor just as Marley pulled open the Fire door and came face to face with the creature. She slammed the door shut and backed into Jack as she stepped away from the Fire Exit. Screaming again as he grabbed her before she pushed them both backwards down the stairs, he pushed her up to the next flight of steps leading to the next level.

‘Find Gwen, and get to the roof.’ He ordered before psyching himself up and exiting the Fire Door firing shots at the reptile now fully animated. It took the hits but it kept coming, snapping and snarling as it gave chase along the corridors. Jack was grateful for the fact that the corridors were narrow enough to slow the creature down, but also fully aware that there was nothing stopping it coming after him, and it wouldn’t stop till it had what it needed, and Jack smelt like a trainer.

On his way back to the 7^th floor, Jack had collected a stash of candy from the cleaning room, or at least it smelt of something minty fresh. He sprayed the cleaning fluid at each turn. He had to get the croc to follow him.

Marley eventually after entering the 8^th floor located Gwen and both made their way to the roof, scattering a paper trail of mints and minty products that would lead the sweet tooth reptile after them.

‘And what do we do now?’ Marley called to Gwen as she stood against the wall of the exit leaning over to catch her breath, her legs painfully begging to rest.

‘Jack’ll have a plan I’m sure.’ Gwen replied between gulps of air.

‘And what if he doesn’t.”

‘Trust me, Jack always has a plan.’ She gave her a smile that she’d used so often before, the smile she hoped convinced Marley that all was fine, even though she doubted that Jack had any kind of plan other than whatever goes up, must undoubtedly come down. Somehow.

Echoing down the stairs below them they heard the growling rasp of the crocodile. Marley heard heavy puffing of breath as Jack emerged on the roof of the building, closely followed by the crocodile. Gwen pulled Marley away from the doorway that splintered and fell away as the muscled creature ploughed through the doors as if they were mere polystyrene blocks, still fully charged, the electricity within the building somehow keeping it alive.

The roof of the building was as large as the floors below it, but with the mast in the middle and all the electrical devices, the now ruined stairwell and the crocodile and three civilians, it wasn’t as spacious as downstairs.

‘Okay I’m assuming you’ve got a plan Jack?’ Gwen kept her eyes on the four legged creature, its tail whipping side to side as it angrily weighed up the man in its sights. It detected another food source, something stronger but concealed by a white probe that fizzed and created a fuzz of confusion within its tiny brain.

‘Yeah.’ He defended then quickly looked at Gwen. “No, but I’m hoping you’ve still got enough products in that bag of yours that will lure the croc to its death?’ He held out his hand for the shoulder bag. Gwen passed it over unsure how this plan was going to work.

‘The last time we were on a building like this, Captain John Hart had minutes before that bomb exploded, are you expecting a rift...’

‘Anomaly.’ Marley called from behind her.

‘Anomaly, rift, I don’t care Marley.’ Gwen snarled. She shot a look at Marley before quickly looking back at Jack and Elvis. ‘Is that what you’re waiting on?’ Gwen’s voice raised an octave before she calmed. Elvis was still weighing up the man in the long coat taking the food source it could so strongly detect. It moved for a closer inspection. Slowly. Calculating.

Jack viewed the contents and raised a brow. There were some definite sweet tooth’s in that office block.

‘I never got chance to see if we’d picked up on any rift activity or anomaly.’ He looked at them both while keeping a mindful watch on the crocodile.

‘So we move for Plan B.’ He smiled awkwardly at Gwen and swallowed hard. ‘I’ll see you downstairs.’

‘Jack...’ Gwen knew she couldn’t stop Jack. She knew what he was going to do. She smiled back at him. ‘Good luck.’

The crocodile saw its food source running away, the smell of mints too much of a temptation to ignore lumbered after Jack towards the edge of the building. Gwen could only watch as the hulk of the creature shook the very roof as it ran, catching up with Jack, leaping after him, after the bag, and disappearing off the roof, the last glimpse of the tail as both it, Jack and the bag began the descent.

Jack’s coat acted as a parachute billowing and at one point as he’d leapt, knowing the outcome of such an act, he was overtaken by the crocodile as it plummeted to earth, hoping for a lighter landing, it’s tail hooked around the bag and pulled Jack towards a much quicker death.

The crocodile crashed through the walkway into the sewers releasing a horde of rats that sprang from the ground and scrambled for freedom. Pedestrians and police at the scene scattered and screamed, climbed on cars and walls to escape the large sewer rats and the mess that followed. There was nothing but flesh and bone as the crocodile slammed into the ground, slamming Jack onto the pavement, his wrist still wrapped around the shoulder bag.

‘Elvis has definitely left the building!’ Gwen said quietly before she and Marley rejoined the party downstairs.

The building was declared unsafe and closed, which pleased Jack no end. It meant they now had full access top and bottom and given his long years of experience at working in a building where old cabling, dodgy plumbing and the ever increasing feel of unworldly creatures locked somewhere within a basement, was going to feel right at home here.

As the office was restored he found a note wedged in between his chair and copy of ‘Moby Dick’ that he’d picked up in an old bookshop. He opened the folded piece of paper to find a phone number and a message:

‘Where the hell are you Captain? Call me urgently on this number your son is in trouble.

Lexy Barlow.’

Jack frowned.

Pages

Tuesday, 2 May 2017

Articles Welcome to Issue 47 - Who & I - May 2017