Sparkling Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Two} [COMPLETED]

9. Ghost Machine

In the middle of the night I wake up for a glass of water, and Owen is still up reading documents about Lizzie.
"Will you please go to bed?" I mumble whilst pouring water. He grunts in vague reply, and I roll my eyes.

But then I think about his obsession with this girl, and I set down my glass and go over to him. As he's sitting in the armchair, without speaking I slide my arms around his shoulders, linking my fingers just over his heart. He leans backwards into me.
I feel the warmth radiating from his skin and close my eyes to soak him in.

Elizabeth Lewis. Raped and murdered under the bridge of the river Taff in 1963. And Owen saw it. I didn't: I was walking with the team when I spied my friend activating the machine that sees moments lost in time; I ran and snatched it off of him, but he looked at me with such an intense fear lining his face that I wanted to hug him like I am now. I understand his helplessness.

"Owen," I murmur softly into the shell of his ear, "you can't help her. It's already done - just like Katie."
At his dead fiance's name, he takes a sharp breath in through his nose, then looks up at me. A corner of his mouth turns up slightly to smirk at me humourlessly, then his brows arch downwards and he slips into sad nostalgia.

"Please come back to bed," I add, then withdraw my arms and walk back to our room. I feel awful for what I just did, but he needed to hear it. He can't change what's happened in the past, just like he wants to with Katie, deep down.

Sometimes I look at him and know he's remembering her. And I pretend I'm okay with it, because we're not together. But I'm not okay. Not at all.

~∆~

The next day I'm in the Hub, writing down all the information stored in my universal brain of the ghost machine that's turned out to be a quantum transducer, when my phone rings. Recognizing Owen's number like the back of my hand, I flip it open and say, "What?"
"Oh, that's nice, don't give a rat's bollocks that I just caught Bernie Harris, then," comes his indignant gravelly voice. I'm so caught up in the tone of his voice that I don't properly register their content until...
"You've got Bernie?"
"Yes," he says on the other end, "So can ya bring everyone to the pub near Lidl in Splott. Now?"

I notify the others and we drive into Splott, my knee bouncing up and down. I can barely contain my curiosity on this technology: where did Bernie find it? What has he seen with it?

When we get into the pub we immediately spot the two guys conversing at a table, and Jack places the transducer in front of Bernie.
"Well?" our boss encourages, and the teenager looks at the piece then to us in shameful worry.
"Me and a mate was using this lock up down on Moira Street. Used to belong to this old guy. Soft in the head, he was. Still loads of his stuff in there but we chucked most of it. There was this old biscuit tin full of foreign coins, weird bits of rock, and that. Thought it might be worth something. We might take it down the Antiques Roadshow or something."

At the mention of the old man, I can see him tottering down the street talking his head off about aliens and whatnot. He seemed to be the sort of man we would've employed, if we'd have known about him.

Bernie continues: "So I takes the tin home with me and that thing starts switching itself on. It makes you see things. Real things. Real people. I was down the Old Wharf in the bay. I seen this woman, with a bundle, something wrapped up. It was night time, and she was putting it into the water all secret like. It was weird, cos it was like I was her, somehow. She was scared, because she knew what she was doing was wrong. I knew, without seeing, it was her baby wrapped up, dead. She hadn't told anyone. Then she just ran away."

Toshiko and I glance at each other. Just imagining that scene is too much to delve into. But we can both see it.
"And I realised, I knew her. She's old now, but she lives up by the Catholic Church in Splott. So I goes up to see her, told her what I'd seen, and she give me money not to tell anyone else."
I whip my head to stare at the boy. "You blackmailed her?!" I ask furiously, and he's quick to shake his head.
"She offered. Look, I've seen things you wouldn't believe. There's the old bridge on Penfro Street. I saw a man and a girl from ages ago. He was following her back from a dance along the canal-"