Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 3
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Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 3

Ms Cohen had borrowed the Leech in order to study it. It sat on a shelf.

She was certain that it moved from time to time, that it was watching them, waiting, greedy but infinitely patient. Watching 24. Watching her.

The crystal shape on her monitor changed. His eyes came open, just a little.

He had been the one watching the sky on the starliner. He had been waiting for the Ants. And now here he was on board their ship, immune to their process, escaping and escaping over and over. He was not just a prisoner.

There was something he wasn't telling them.

'You planned this, didn't you?' she said aloud.

'Think I . . . planned . . . ?' His voice was almost inaudible, a painful whisper.

'Didn't plan this this.'

Ms Cohen's spoon clattered onto the floor.

Meijer chose that moment to enter the lab, stooping under the low door.

'How is he?'

Ms Cohen looked from her silent patient to Meijer. 'It's touch and go,' she said gently. 'Meijer, I need access to the computer again.'

'Now what?'

She got up and moved out of the lab. Meijer followed, looking puzzled.

'Normally,' she said, when they were in the corridor, 'I'd study the behaviour of a patient. The way they relate to people, the sorts of things they like to do. In this case, the only behaviour exhibited by the patient are the escapes. I want to study them.'

21.Meijer thought for a moment. 'There's a security report for each of them,'

he said slowly.

'There is?'

'Something to do,' he said. Watching her.

'I can't fly a shuttle,' she said. 'Let me see the reports.'

'Tomorrow.'

She slept curled around the lap-top again. The Ants wouldn't care how much computer time she had. It didn't matter what she did, really what could she possibly do?

She was woken by the sound of low voices. No, of one voice.

She opened her eyes, staying perfectly still.

'You promised,' he was saying, in a fragile whisper. 'Had a bargain . . .

need . . . little bit longer. It's not that bad. Really . . . not that bad.'

She moved her head, just slightly. He was looking up at an imaginary someone standing over the bed. 'I've survived worse . . . Just one more week. One more day. Just one more day just one no, don't oh '

The rotating fractal on the screen flared and vanished.

Ms Cohen leapt from her bench and snapped on the lights, fumbling frantically with her handscan.

Dead. He was dead.

How the hell was she supposed to do CPR on a man with two hearts?

She unclipped the cuffs around his left wrist and ankle. She grabbed 24 and rolled him onto his side, dislodging the tubes in his face. She snatched up the Leech. It twitched in her hand as she slapped it into the back of his neck and activated it.

He convulsed, shouted, started to breathe again. Ms Cohen wrenched the Leech off his skin, threw it onto the bench. He was shaking violently, spitting blood, but he was alive.

The guards shoved open the door. 'What the hell?' shouted Caldwell.

'It's alright,' said Ms Cohen, kneeling beside 24. 'It's alright. He'll be alright.

I've saved him.'

Meijer was nodding sagely, as though he knew something about medicine. Ms Cohen said, 'His vital signs are stable now. Double cardiac arrest. Vicious. But I don't think it's done any damage that can't be healed.'

'I'm not worried,' said the hired hand. 'He can take anything.'

They were hunched over her lap-top, looking at a map of the ship. They'd pieced together the data from the sensors and from the hired hands' reports.

Now she was slowly superimposing the routes of 24's escape attempts, looking for what they had in common.

22.'He's tried everything you can think of,' Meijer was reminiscing. 'He imper-sonated one of us once only worked that one time, there aren't that many of us. He's jemmied four different kinds of door-locks, including a padlock. He's fought a few of us he used some kind of nerve pinch on Groenewegen once.

That's why we carry him around on the trolley. Once, he deactivated a force shield with a spoon spoon. And there were other things.'

'Like what he did to me.'

'Stuff from his bag of tricks. You never know what he's going to come up with next.' Meijer wiped his forehead with his hat. 'It's so dumb. He can't get away. He's been in that shuttle bay half a dozen times, and he's never managed to get away. We just keep catching him and processing him, over and over. Twenty crukking times. I mean, is he enjoying it? Why doesn't he just give up and get it over with?'

Twenty times, without ever getting the result they wanted. Completely single-minded, doing the same thing over and over 'I'll need more time to, to study this,' said Ms Cohen. It came out as a gasp.

Because she knew. She knew.

Was her breathing really as loud as it sounded?

She shifted, stretching cramped muscles, trying to not make any noise.

It was what the escapes did not not have in common that made her realise. have in common that made her realise.

Fourteen times, he had been caught in the kitchen or one of its storage areas.

Ten times, in starboard engineering. Eight times in the corridors between the two. Three times in the shuttle bay.

Almost every escape had taken him through the shuttle bay, slung beneath the hub of the ship. Not once had he tried to take one of the shuttles.

He must know how to pilot a shuttle. Same as he knew how to use the guns he just wasn't going to murder anybody. He wasn't trying to get to the bay.

He was trying to come here. Here. Cold storage.

The cryogenic capsules were terrifying in the pale blue light tall, fleshy sarcophagi, their inner surfaces coated with frost, the shapes behind the doors barely suggesting faces, limbs. She tried to imagine her own face behind that glass, her own heart beating once per minute as she slept the sleep of the dead.

Cold storage was a circle at the very centre of the ship's doughnut shape.

The capsules curved away in a long wall, circling around a great shaft that stabbed through the middle of the Ants' vessel. In the centre of that shaft was a hideous, actinic light, hanging in the air, a long line of energy threaded through the centre of the craft. Whatever the hell it was, it made the Ants'

ship go.

23.Somewhere, a door slid open.

She checked her lap-top again. The sensors in the immediate area were still shut off. Good. She wondered how much longer it would be before the Ants noticed.

Number 24 came into her line of sight. He was moving slowly, one hand pressed against his chest, his other hand holding some small piece of machinery. At every tube he paused. She could hear his ragged breathing in the frozen silence, see the cold plumes of steam coming out of his mouth.

At last he found the tube he wanted. He knelt down at its base, activated the control panel there. A great puff of steam erupted from the capsule. Machines hissed into life as he manipulated the controls.

He lay down on the floor in front of the tube, waiting. A greenish light was beginning to glow inside the capsule, and fluid was dripping behind the glass.

As the light grew brighter, Ms Cohen recognised the woman who had been with him on the starliner.

As she had known she would.

She stayed in the green shadows, the cold, waxy cuticle of the wall pressing against her back. Stayed silent and invisible.

'What are you . . . going to do?' he asked.

The tiny rasp of his voice fluttered through cold storage. Ms Cohen's fingers were frozen to the gun as she stepped out, keeping the weapon between them.

'Ship knows what you're doing,' he wheezed. 'Interested to see what will happen.'

'I don't understand.' Her fingers hurt.

'Still think the Ants . . . in charge?' He didn't move as he spoke; his voice just drifted into the cold air. It was like listening to a corpse. 'Meijer . . . far from the truth. They're just Ship's hands.'

'Who's, who's the pilot?'

'No-one but Ship. Perhaps, once . . . now it's just following orders.'

The capsule had completed its thawing cycle. Now the translucent lid began to hiss open, condensation puffing into the air. The woman inside made an incoherent sound and fell out.

Meijer caught her.

He looked at the woman for a moment, holding her in the crook of one arm.

She lolled, her teeth chattering in her head. He dropped her onto the floor.

'The whole time,' he said, turning to Ms Cohen. 'The whole time he was trying to get in here. Because of her.'

Ms Cohen was shaking, keeping her gun trained on 24. Half a dozen hired hands were following Meijer, flashlights pushing through the mist of condensation. The beams intersected at the crumpled little figure on the floor.

24.Meijer reached down and grabbed him. 24 made no attempt to resist as he was dragged to his feet, the same arm pulled behind his back again. The hired hand looped his other arm around 24's throat in a mugger's grip. The machine he had been carrying rolled away on the floor, pulsing with some internal light.

Meijer twisted his arm behind his back, wrenched until he felt muscle start to tear. 'Scream, curse you!' he spat. 'Why don't you scream?'

'Doctor?' said the woman on the floor. She squinted into the flashlights, limbs twitching dully. 'What? What?'

'So that's what the game's been about,' Meijer hissed into his captive's ear.

'Her. What was the point? What was the crukking point?'

He tightened his grip. 'We processed a four-year-old this morning. Subject 51. We'll make her number fifty-two.'

With a movement that was almost graceful, Meijer twisted the arm he was holding one more notch. There was a crack crack.

The Doctor screamed.

The sound was cut off by an explosion. Ms Cohen forced her hands away from her ears, snapped her head around in time to see the glass cylinder smashing outwards. The light inside roared and spluttered.

Something had jumped out of the light and through the glass wall, spraying fragments in all directions. It was shaped like a human, but it glowed violently, covered in seething light, like some sort of toxic angel.

The hired hands shrieked and ran.

The light around the figure was changing as it came towards them, shading down through blue and green to a hot yellow. Ms Cohen thought she could make out features behind the light eyes, hands. It was a woman, it was just a woman, not even armed. She had long blonde hair and a satchel slung across her shoulders.

Meijer shot at the figure, a finger of energy stabbing out of his gun to connect with the cocoon of light. The field flared and exploded upwards and outwards. The glare caught Meijer in the face and chest. His uniform and hair burst into flames. There was a sudden movement on his face his eyes, melting Ms Cohen ran from cold storage, screaming and screaming like a banshee.

And now, Ms Cohen had finished remembering.

She gave one last spasm and hung loose in the chair. The Leech settled itself into a more comfortable position on her neck, waited a few seconds, and bit her spinal cord in two.

And Ship continued on.

25.

Chapter 3.