Fans Fiction Stories of the Nightmare Child - Chapter 4 - Antipathy by Lady Mayhurst

 

Chapter 4: Antipathy 

The Doctor could not ignore Domina’s question about her brother. Antipathy, as he had been called had waged a war across the stars and his story was not one to be told gently, for he would have to warn Domina that her fate may very well end up like his and whilst he wasn’t there to stop her brother, to help him, he could help her, he would need to help her as it was his duty to do so. He sat down and gestured an irritable Fritz to sit as well and he cast his mind back hundreds and hundreds of years to recall the memories of Domina’s mother.

   “When I first met your mother, she was on her 5th cycle, that’s to say that she had been remembered five times by then. It was a way of preserving someone by using a biomass inside a remembrance tank, so that not everything about them died. Laura kept her memories for a long time but she became warped and unstable after a while. I guess the human mind can only cope with so much. She travelled with myself and Fritz in my TARDIS, which I am sorry to say corrupted the ear piece she wore to protect her from harmful signals as all humans wore back in those times but my TARDIS was nearly destroyed in a dimensional rift and as I had interfaced her ear piece with the TARDIS, I inadvertently rewrote her biodata to make her the first and only Type 102 time ship.

   It didn’t take long for the Time Lords to find out what I had done and they came for her, wanting to breed her for their own gain, so we took her, Fritz and I, and we went on the run to hide her. She was a mistake; she was lucky to survive and I couldn’t have guaranteed the survival of every being put through that process so we did what we could to keep her safe. The problem was, she was uncontrollable, she would disappear at a moment’s notice and without my TARDIS fully intact it was impossible to track her down. She only really felt safe when Gallifrey and the Time Lords were destroyed. She came back then, helped me rebuild my TARDIS and created the ancestor cell, a memory format that contained the whole of the time vortex and she installed it into my brain. It worked for a fashion, it suppressed a lot of my memories and jumbled them around a bit which is why I tend to get things muddled up. I kind of think this is why my TARDIS has trouble locking on to exact timelines, she interfaces with me you see and goes where I tell her to, unfortunately it’s not always where we end up.” 

The Doctor laughed a little and was met by two blank faces and a slight shake of the head by Fritz who had spent many an adventure trying to help the Doctor unscramble his brain enough so he could come up with a plan to save them. His laughter was false as it hid a truth he was only just coming to realise. Clearing his throat by way of a distraction he continued his story, trying desperately how to figure out a way that would make sense.

   “Sorry, I go off on a tangent sometimes. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, memory cell. I and I alone contain the knowledge needed to resurrect the Time Lords so that makes me very exclusively important, and very dangerous. It’s why I continue to run and why those I chase continue to run from me. Kind of a suit of armour in a way although there are some that would hunt me down and try to drain that knowledge out of me. Imagine having the whole of time and space in your head, I can’t imagine how to even start telling you what that feels like, but you already know don’t you Domina? You have the same memories as I do for some reason, that’s why you grew up knowing all about me, oh not from stories or whispers that you might have heard, but from memories, my memories and the ones of your mother. The dimensional rift caused more than an interface with my TARDIS, it caused one with me too because I am imprinted to it, so your mother took everything I had, every memory, every regeneration, every event in the past present and future and every detail contained in the memory cell and it corrupted her further, to the point where she wanted to recreate herself, to become the mothership of all type 102 TARDIS’, a god like idea to make herself immortal and she succeeded.

   I left her on Earth in 2012, so as I said, not long ago. I was hoping she would reintegrate herself back into the human race and become more like them again, maybe even help them with her vast knowledge of technology to advance them beyond their own imaginations to become energy sufficient so that when the time came in the very distant future to fight galactic wars and expand across the universe, they would know how and for a time, I was convinced she would do so, but she had played a trick on me, fooled me with my own tactics because she knew how I worked and what I would believe. By the time your brother, Antipathy was born, it was too late, she had fled earth and hidden herself from me on the home world, backwards in time in violation of the Protocols of Linearity, so that he would be born before she even existed. It was her intention to trap him there, to keep him hidden and safe because even she knew what he would become” 

“The first type 101-form, as unique as his mother, but so deadly that his cries of as a baby could set heavens on fire. I don’t know what happened to him. I heard rumours he escaped the Homeworld and went on a rampage throughout the Spiral Politic, before disappearing to another continuum. Or that he had been destroyed immediately after his birth, some even say he is comatose in the City of the Saved and is preserved for the sake of all humanity and creation.” 

The doctor stood up and scanned Domina and her TARDIS console once more and looked at the readings with a furrowed brow of resignation before continuing his story. 

“Time travel is fickle. It’s so fragile and uncertain that you never really know how any one journey or step in time will affect the rest of the universe. This was one reason the Time Lords existed, to prevent disasters and control time itself but they became far too engrossed in their own importance and the rest is history, for you as well as me but if these readings are right and I’m sure they are, it means that when your mother left the home world, she was forced back into a mainstream timeline and then it would seem, she was sent backwards further to the very moment she was last human, all human without the influence of the faction paradox and my TARDIS, and then somehow, she became pregnant with you and was flung further through time to land on the shores of Gallifrey to give birth to you before finally collapsing on the shores to die. 

Somehow Domina, she died before she was born and you came before your brother which explains why you’re both so messed up. Time has fractured you both and I was right before, you’re not Gallifreyan nor a Time Lord, not in the conventional sense anyway and I did honestly think that what brought you here was your connection to Earth, but that was before I saw your TARDIS, before I really saw you and I’m sorry Domina, I really am but I think somehow, something to do with how you and your mother can interface with your ships and with me, that you might be my daughter, or to be exact, a child of my TARDIS!" 

 

 

(Author notes) 

Before his birth, Antipathy lived within the internal architecture of his mother — an infinite womb. He was Compassion's first child, an imperfect prototype never meant to live. He was psychologically damaged and defiantly hated being forced to leave her. The Great Houses tried to get rid of him by sending him on a suicide mission, but he escaped. He screamed across the universe, consumed with hate for his mother for giving birth to him.

(ref: https://factionparadox.fandom.com/wiki/Antipathy )

 

Fans Fiction The Mystery of Mayhurst Manor part 2 by Sarah Cambridge

The heat was well and truly beating against the cellar door as the Doctor spoke, revealing the truth he was trying to get through to his shocked companion.

   She had always hated the thought of being trapped in a building that was on fire, ever since she had watched the film The Towering Inferno, one night when she’d had the prison TV room to herself after Trish the Snitch got everyone in trouble on C wing for helping themselves to extra potatoes at dinner, leaving them all confined to their cells for the night. Lady C, as it was well known, was very allergic to potatoes and hadn’t had so much of a crisp since she was 5 years old and had blown up like an air balloon during one of daddy’s parties which ended abruptly with the sound of ambulance sirens and mummy crying into her wine glass as her baby girl looked like the Sloth from the goonies.  Now here she was, living her nightmares and once again in a life and death situation courtesy of the Doctor.

   “That’s it! I’m leaving right now and going home!  You can stay if you like Doctor but I will not become part of the fire and rescue service for an empty house!  I took that pendant knowing the lady of the manor had died and there was no one, not one living member of her family left and it was all due to be sold at auction. I just got there first and saved myself some serious money. Its my retirement fund and you can’t have it. I won’t let you!”

   She was almost in tears at this point. Scared of the fire raging against the door knowing that was all that was standing between her and death, and angry that her beautiful pendant might be taken from her when she had gone to great lengths to protect it and keep it hidden.

The doctor shook his head in confusion and shouted at Christina who nearly dropped the phone she was holding as she was about to text herself in the past.

   “You don’t understand, do you? Is it because you have smoke in your ears or have I not explained it properly? That pendant is the reason Mayhurst Manor is on fire! This house, the Mayhurst family, they weren’t just a load of posh people who had some money. They were witches! Well, Lady Jane was and from a very noble family line too. Lord Harry took her name and title when they married, albeit it for the money but he had no idea who she really was, but they had a daughter. Harriet-Jane Mayhurst, or as you and I know her, Harri the witch? That pendant had a protection spell on it to keep Harri safe after her mother had died because she knew that once her husband discovered her magical heritage and in turn his daughters, he might not be too pleased to know he’d married a witch, and as it happened, he wasn’t!  He killed Lady Jane himself and locked Harri in the cellar, this cellar for 5 years when she was 7 years old so that she could never receive the gifts her mother would bestow upon her when she became of age. Lord Harry’s death was the only reason Harri was found by the staff who had ventured into the cellar in search of his will. You taking the pendant from here after her mother had died, made her vulnerable and she became tortured, twisted into her magical beliefs, believing her father’s rantings that she was as evil and as vile as her mother, until she became cursed by her magic, not gifted.”

   Lady C listened in silence, her fury and impatience growing more each second as the Doctor’s tale of the one person in the world that gave her more hassle than Hugo ever did, was Harri the useless witch. She had worked at the manor around 10 years ago, turning up on her doorstep days after Lady C had returned from the planet San Helios, claiming the Doctor had sent her to help out.  She was to cook, clean and protect the manor with her magic and although Lady C had never really believed in that sort of thing before, having just returned from an alien planet and arrived home by flying bus, she had resigned herself to every possibility in the hope that nothing would shock her anymore. Unfortunately, the only thing Harri helped with was herself to lady C’s vodka supplies and spent most of her time in the stables with Hugo showing him how to turn knackered ponies into dead ponies with the flick of her magic wand. Harri was the bane of Lady C’s life but the Doctor insisted she stay there because as he told her repeatedly whenever she complained…

   “One day, you’ll thank me” …. So far, she had not!

  

   “Oh, so what you’re saying is that the reason Harri is so bad at magic, so unbelievably lazy, useless and rude is my fault? That stealing the pendant made her the way she is? That if somehow I could go back in time and leave the pendant for her in this very cellar when she was trapped down here that it would enable her to receive her magic properly and then she’d become the good wonderful witch she was always meant to be?”

   Lady C scoffed at the idea and muttered under her breath about how ridiculous all this was, but then, suddenly had an amazing idea! Take the Tardis back in time to when Harri was here and leave her the pendant. They could literally drop it off 10 minutes after her father had left her here and she would never go through 5 years of hell meaning she would never turn up on her doorstep years later in the mood she was in and give her 5 years of hell. It was an ingenious plan. Before she could open her mouth and tell the doctor just how clever she was, he grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards the portal, shouting behind him over the roar of the fire.

   “We’ll go back to the Tardis and take the pendant back in time to the moment Harri was put here by her father. That way she’ll get the protection her mother left for her and she’ll get the magic in the way she was supposed to get it, not all backward and twisted. Maybe she’ll turn out to be a better person and the two of you might actually get along. Might save all that nasty business with the ponies too.”

   Before she knew it, she was back in her own vault stepping in spilt gin, and the Doctor picked up the pendant case and opened it carefully, his eyes full of admiration as he looked at it.

   Lady C however was full of annoyance at having her plan and pension plan stolen. Deciding to let it go, she slipped her mobile phone back in her pocket after pressing send seconds before she was dragged through the portal, her look of annoyance now turning to one of quiet smugness.

   “Didn’t you ever wonder why it glowed the way it does or why it vibrated as you held it Christina?” The Doctor asked softly as his eyes lit up with the magical light the pendant omitted.

   “It’s full of magic, literally bursting at the seams waiting to be set free to its rightful owner. You keeping it here for so long could potentially have caused a catastrophic explosion of immense power that the world would never be able to cope with. It’s a wonder you don’t get yourself killed from time to time.”

He was as furious as he was concerned for her, but that was how it was with lady C, she would never learn her lesson.

   “Yes whatever.” she said airily pretending she didn’t care anymore and made her way over to the Tardis waiting to be let in where her mood became a lot darker.

   “But I swear to god Doctor, if we succeed and we get back here and she’s miss magical bloody mega witch with a billionaires fortune living the high life, famously flouting her magical talents all over the news for all to see whilst I have to scrape by on what I can steal, you will feel my wrath until your never ending dying days!”

It would be just her luck to return to an alternate universe where Harri was loved the whole world over and she wasn’t.

   The Doctor looked confused once more and glared at her thoughtfully as he opened the Tardis door and let her saunter in, wondering how women managed to change their moods and their minds so quickly. He dashed in after her and placed the pendant on the console and tapped in some coordinates.

   “Right! I’ll land, you go in, give Harri the Pendant and then leave again. No talking, no helping, no remarking on the smell or mess or giving her any indication who you are or where you’ve come from. In and out, do you hear?”

   Lady C nodded and shrugged and sat herself down impatiently waiting to do as she was told and hoped that by the time she got back, if all was well and Nelson’s column hadn’t been turned into Harri’s Column, she would be walking back into a world where she would never have to go begging to the Queen again, in fact…..she might even be the Queen!

   Seven years in the past, in the year 2012, the notorious cat burglar known as the Lucky cat was about to leave her house the deSouza Manor and go on one of the biggest diamond heists of her life when she received a text from an unknown number. It read….

   “GN 2013/14 Auroras Encore. Pineau De Re. £1000,000 on each. Stash the winnings in Hugo’s clean sock drawer.”

She then gave her past self a name with instructions on what to do with it.

   “Take the Koh I noor you’re about to steal to the Queen and tell her if she wants it back, she’ll have to give you the throne or you’ll tell the world who your real mother is.”

To be continued…….

Fans Fiction Viva Torchwood by Doreen Freitag

Translation by Birte Schieder

CHAPTER 4

     After having parked the car they approached the destroyed warehouse. The road tanker had done a good job. The side of the building facing the road had a huge hole in one of the walls and pieces of something that had been molten beyond recognition were proof of the great heat that must have existed at the site. The building was surrounded by yellow tape and a couple of signs reading ‘Danger of collapse’ warned people not to enter the warehouse.

    Rex Matheson lifted the barrier tape and all of them approached the building. They could still smell the burning. With a movement of his arm, the CIA agent pointed them in the direction where he had found the corpses. One after another they entered the remains of the warehouse and reached the burnt room.

  Jack and Gwen had gotten out their flashlights and pointed into one corner of the room, where three corpses laid on the floor. Catherine had to cover her mouth with her hand and tried to fight back a choked sound. Comforting her, Jack put his hand on her arm.

  ‘We left those for you,’ Matheson explained and grimaced with disgust. ‘We've already had the others fetched up. Overall, we have found forty-six bodies in here, three were human and forty-three were your Weevils. No idea how they got here.’

  Gwen stooped over the corpses. ‘They're a female and two males. They seem to have worn some kind of collar.’

  ‘All of them did, by the way,’ Rex Matheson added. ‘But there's another reason why I wanted you to come here. We also found it in this room.’

  He stepped towards an intact metal table which was covered in grime and lifted the canvas covering the item which laid there.

  Jack inhaled abruptly and exchanged alarmed glances.

  There on the table was a glove made out of metal, which was free to move in every single piece of the glove. Also it seemed to have survived the fire with almost no damage.

  ‘You know what that is?’ Matheson asked astonished.

  ‘The Risen Mitten,’ the Captain said quietly. ‘I didn't think I would see such a thing ever again.’

  ‘A glove for resurrection?’ Catherine had understood the words and asked the question.

  ‘It's a vicious thing,’ Gwen answered in Jacks name. ‘I almost died from it once. And another one wasn't really lucky for Owen, either. So I wouldn't really say it's a positive thing.’

  ‘But this one is different,’ Jack said and approached the table. Catherine could see how the Captain didn't want to touch the glove. He had his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and only stooped over it with his upper body. ‘It looks much more filigree and agile and it has some kind of sensors at the fingertips and a control panel built onto the palm. The others didn't have that. Must be an update and I actually don't want to know all the extras this one has included. Pack it in and take it back to the headquarters with you. And be careful that no one pulls it on and touches a corpse with it - just for fun.’

  ‘All right, I'll tell Jim, he'll have everything arranged,’ Rex Matheson said and quickly left the room.

  Out in the sunlight again, they first squinted and tried to get used to the brightness of the Californian desert.

  ‘What else have you got?’ Gwen wanted to know.

  ‘There's a collecting space where we file more finds which haven't been completely burnt. I can show it to you if you want to.’ Matheson pointed towards the less destroyed end of the warehouse.

  ‘Have the people here already been questioned on the fire?’ Jack asked and while putting on his sunglasses, he turned his gaze towards the crossroads with only a few buildings.

  ‘No, until now we've had everything classified,’ the CIA agent replied. ‘I wanted to wait for you to come here.’

  The captain smiled meaningful, but only Catherine, who was standing next to him, had seen his amusement.

  ‘Well then I'd say that Catherine and me are heading to the supermarket,’ the Captain decided. ‘Maybe someone over there can tell us something about this issue.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gwen said, nodding, ‘I'll have a look at these finds with Rex, then.’

  ‘Come on, Scully,’ Jack smiled and offered her his arm. ‘Let's begin with this old-fashioned way of investigative work.’

  ‘I can't remember Mulder and Scully to be working with linked arms,’ Catherine, who had linked arms with Jack with a laughter, said while they left. Being close to Jack Harkness, it was easy to push the displeasing memories of the corpses in the warehouse away.

  ‘Well, that's what makes us two special. I like to handle things in my own way. But after all your hair looks a lot like Agent Scully's.’

  Catherine smiled back at him and they walked towards the crossroads in silence, their arms linked. Jack's face showed a grumpy expression when he looked at the huge white rooster on the roof of the mini-supermarket. Catherine figured it was supposed to show the range of articles, but in her eyes, it didn't really do its job well.

  ‘I hate chicken!,’ the Captain said and turned towards the entrance door.

  They entered the small and stuffy room. The market seemed to be empty, except for one person.

  A tall man with a muscular build approached them from the counter and stopped in front of Jack, his arms crossed. Chewing a gum, he gave him a once over. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  They might not seem like a typical tourist couple, but Catherine couldn't think of a reason for this weird welcome.

  ‘No thanks,’ Jack replied, ‘we don't want to buy anything. We'd just like to ask you some questions.’

  ‘You'll also have to pay for those,’ another male voice said, coming from an adjoining room of the small supermarket.

  ‘Don't you get involved, Spiky! I'm doing that on my own.’ While he said that, the giant turned towards the adjoining room and Catherine could see a Beretta under his belt. She stepped backwards, alarmed.

  Jack immediately grabbed her hand and quickly pulled her back next to him. Addressing the man in front of him, he said: ‘We're here on behalf of the CIA because of the burnt warehouse over there. Did you notice anything unusual in the last couple of days?’

  ‘I think you're in the wrong place, sir.’ The giant's smirk became more and more self-complacent and Catherine could see the white chewing gum he had between his yellow teeth.

  ‘But you did notice that the warehouse was on fire, didn't you?’ Catherine asked uncertain and could feel how, all of a sudden, Jack was all tensed up.

  ‘Lady, I don't like to repeat what I said,’ the giant said and moved his arm in her direction.

  Jack immediately positioned himself in front of Catherine and stopped the man from approaching them by holding his hand forward. ‘Okay, keep calm. We just had a question and we're doing our job. There's no reason to go mad, okay?’

  The man stepped backwards. ‘So, if you want to buy something, then you're welcome to do so, but no one will answer your questions here.’ He turned abruptly and left Jack and Catherine in the room.

  After he had disappeared in the adjoining room, Jack and Catherine could hear parts of a muted argument.

  ‘I don't like this at all,’ Jack said and got his mobile phone out of his pocket. A moment later, Gwen was on the phone. ‘We need your assistance here. Looks like we stirred up a hornets' nest here.’

  The Captain had just finished his sentence when the giant entered the room again. He had pulled his gun. ‘Hey, what did I tell you, mister? You can either buy something now or you will immediately leave my shop, understood?’

  Catherine could feel her heart beating fast. So this was how it felt like when a situation was about to escalate and life was in danger.

  Jack grabbed Catherine's hand and pulled it up in the air, together with his. ‘Okay, okay, you're right. We're leaving now.’

  All of a sudden, the second man entered the room through the small door. ‘Hank, have you gone mad? You're ruining everything. We can't let them go now!’

  They could hear a car approaching quickly from the outside.

  ‘Shit,’ the giant shouted, lifted his gun and aimed at Jack. All at once, Catherine realised that the man was about to pull the trigger and instinctively threw herself between Jack and the man.

  Just like in slow motion, the man fired his Beretta. Catherine could feel how Jack pushed her away from him. She fell to the ground and was horrified to see how the bullet hit the Captain in his heart. Then he was catapulted backwards, hit the wall and lay there, lifeless.

  ‘Hank, you're such an idiot,’ the other man screamed and pulled the giant into the adjoining room. Catherine could hear them opening another door which must have lead outside. Then they left.

  ‘Jack!’ Catherine rushed up to him and kneeled down in front of him.

  A car stopped in front of the supermarket, the tyres crunching on the broken rocks.

  Steps quickly approached the entrance door. Rex Matheson and Gwen stormed into the room. They must have summed up the situation with one glance because they immediately focussed on the small adjoining room. They deigned to look at the Captain for a second time, however.

  Catherine looked at them in disbelief. Captain Jack Harkness was lying on the floor, dead, and they didn't even care?

  She stared at the lifeless face and could feel the tears coming.

  ‘Jack,’ she whispered and caressed his cheeks in despair. She didn't want to lose him before she had even had the chance to properly get to know him!

  And she was still alone with the dead man. What was going on here?

  ‘Gwen,’ she shouted, loud and demanding.

  Gwen finally turned around and looked like she remembered something she forgot to do. She exchanged a quick glance with Rex, which Catherine couldn't quickly interpret, and quickly came to her.

  She squatted down next to Catherine and cupped her tear-flooded face with her hands. ‘Listen, Cathy! Jack is all right! He'll be with us in a second again. Trust me, okay?’

  In this very moment, Catherine would have believed every promise that Jack wasn't dead, so she nodded hopefully.

  ‘Stay here with him,’ Gwen said. ‘Rex and I will try to find the men.’

  ‘Okay,’ Catherine whispered and put her hands on Jacks chest protectively.

  ‘Good,’ Gwen replied and smiled at her to encourage her. Just shortly after that, she had left the room with Rex.

  Catherine left one hand on Jacks shirt. She couldn't feel a heartbeat. But in the past few weeks she already had experienced so many unusual things, that she just hoped Gwen could keep her promise.

 

  She brushed Jack's hair out of his face with her other hand and tried to stay calm. It broke her heart to see his motionless face and his closed eyes.

  For a couple of - how it seemed - never-ending seconds nothing happened and Catherine started to doubt Gwen's words again. She started to panic. Tears streamed down her face and one fell from her chin onto Jacks lower lip. It lay there like a pearl and seeing that let Catherine become desperate.

  Then, suddenly, he woke up, breathing in deeply. His head bounced up and fell down again, but his eyes were open now. The tip of his tongue slid over his lower lip and he frowned, he must have tasted the salty tear. For a moment, he looked around as if he was searching for something or somebody. Then his eyes found Catherine.

  ‘You can't imagine how glad I am to see you,’ he said and smiled happily.

  ‘Jack! You're back again! I thought I lost you.’ Catherine laughed and cried at the same time and caressed his face again and again without really noticing it. She couldn't believe that these eyes looked at her again and that his cheeks got a healthy colour again.

  Suddenly his hands grabbed her fingers and stopped her movement.

  Catherine noticed what she had been doing there and could feel herself blushing. ‘I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... I just...’

  Jack didn't reply. He lifted his hands to her neck and softly pulled her head down to his. When their lips met, Catherine felt like a light, golden flash just went through her body. Jack kissed her with such passion that thousands of small fires and sparks appeared in her body. She felt such an overwhelming stream of energy rushing through her body that she couldn't help but moan with surprise.

  When Jack eventually stopped kissing her, Catherine could feel her body glowing with energy. Just like every single cell of her body just had been renewed.

  ‘Jack, what was that?’ Catherine asked. She felt inebriated.

  ‘I think you call it a kiss,’ he smiled and his eyes glowed from satisfaction, like she had never seen it before.

  Catherine shook her head. ‘THIS wasn't just a kiss!’

  ‘Didn't you like it?’ he quietly asked.

  ‘Yes, it did,’ she said and caressed his face again. ‘And I want more.’

  ‘Aha. That's what you get from it,’ he jestingly replied and slowly sat up. When he looked into Catherine's eyes, he could see how insecure she was and added: ‘But I'll tell you something, Cathy. I also want more. A lot more.’ He ran his thumb over her lips and Catherine enjoyed the prickling that came from it. When he took his hand away, she sighed malcontent.

  He got to his feet and flattened his coat, while he examined the bullet hole in the cloth. He didn't look too happy about it. ‘But first we'll have to save the world again. Are you coming?’

  Catherine smiled and got to her feet as well. ‘Aye, Captain.’

  Jack pointed towards the door through which Rex and Gwen had disappeared before. ‘Through there?’

  ‘That's right,’ she answered. Before he could run through the door, she grabbed his hand and stopped him. He turned around.

  ‘Jack, does that mean that you're always coming back? Every time?’

  He took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms. She breathed in the flavour of the coat's cloth and patiently waited. For the answer she knew and feared.

  ‘Yes, Cathy, that's what it means. I'm always coming back.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘It's been far too long already.’

  ‘That's cruel.’

  He held her away from him and looked into her eyes. ‘Yes, it is.’

  For a moment she could see an unimaginable old agony which tore his soul apart, and shivers ran down her spine. When he noticed that, he closed his eyes and pulled her to him again for a deep hug.

  The sound of a gunfight from outside brought them back to reality. Jack grabbed Catherine's shoulders and said: ‘Stay here and call this Jim in Rex's office! If we called the local police, we'd have to explain too many things and who knows who else is mixed up in all this.’

  He pulled out his gun and exited the supermarket through the rear exit.