Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 30
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Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 30

(Graffito, Prydonian Academy) The Doctor woke up.

His wrists were bound behind his back. It felt like electrical wire. He was lying at an odd angle on the floor. Living floor, tasting of salt and vegetation.

Kadiatu's fingerprints were bruised into his shoulder.

He shrugged, trying to get more comfortable. Oh ankles tied as well. She wasn't taking any chances.

He was wearing a uniform. The dun fabric was coarse against his skin.

Oh, no.

It had all been a dream, hadn't it?

He pressed his cheek against the cool floor. He had never left Ship. He couldn't escape outwards, so he had escaped inwards. Saving Ace, meeting Kadiatu, all of it, a pitiful fantasy.

Then the ganglion in his shoulder burst into life. He twisted in his bonds, tiny flashbulbs going off in his field of vision.

That had been done to him after he'd left Ship. Afterwards.

It had been in Kadiatu's cellar they'd used hoppers to transport the medical equipment. They'd implanted a tiny seed in the ganglion, a little fleck of Ship's living matter. The living thing had grown, slowly coiling itself around the sensitive nerve cluster, sucking sugar out of his blood. And now it was ready to germinate.

He could have wept with relief.

The hopper's movement felt like being shoved through a wall. But it was better than the free fall through the raw stuff of the Vortex. Ace stumbled across the rough floor, the machine convulsing around her chest.

181.

Ace looked herself up and down. All her bits were where they should be.

She turned quickly, arm loosely bent, pistol aim taking in every corner of the room . . . no corners. It was a great curving hall, the inner wall studded with tall neon tubes.

Empty. Silent. No. A sound like little bells dripping water.

The air was crisp, like the puff of dampness as you opened the fridge. Oh, yes, she had been here before.

Benny was stooped over the Doctor, frantically trying to get a response out of him. Blood was trickling from his mouth and nose, sluggishly. His eyes had of him. Blood was trickling from his mouth and nose, sluggishly. His eyes had flickered shut. flickered shut.

They were going to do the same thing to the Doctor that they did to Kadiatu.

She had to be there. She had to stop it. And yet, the pit of her stomach was still spinning not from the jaunt through the ether, but from the knowledge that she wasn't going to be able to stop it. Because he meant for this to happen.

Benny and she had sometimes joked about switching off the gas in the TARDIS in case he tried to shove his head in an oven. But she'd been in that dark three a.m. place herself, and sometimes she wondered if he was old enough to hope, somehow, that this time he might actually be killed.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The feeling she'd had in Egypt when she threw up on Sedjet's front lawn, the insane feeling, it was coming back to her.

She went to the tubes. Each was the right size to hold a large human being.

There were hibernation controls at the base surprisingly similar to the ones she'd seen aboard the Admiral Raistrick Admiral Raistrick. Maybe they'd picked up an IMC ship in their travels and pinched the technology.

The first tube she checked was empty, and the next, and the next. Surely there'd be someone here, he was here somewhere, she might be able to get the machines to work, she might be able to save them She realized she'd been running around the curve of the wall, shouting. For how long?

Every tube was empty.

She was too late. She'd failed. She hadn't saved him.

A black blossom of pain erupted in her chest. She started to crumple it up, stuff it down no, hang onto it, hang onto it She sat down on the floor, took deep breaths. She stopped, hand cramping around the hilt of the gun. No-one had heard her yelling or come to kill her.

Or take her away to the funny farm. Oh, God, was she coming apart at the seams?

Ship was empty because it had processed everybody. Everybody except the Doctor, and he was next.

182.

The burning erupted through her. She came to her feet, grimacing like a panther. 'You monster!' she shouted at the walls. 'Monster! You alien monster bastards! You took Sedjet away, you took Alan away, you took Jan away, but you're not going to take the Doctor away!'

The Doctor got out of his bonds and out of his cell and he ran.

His shoulder was electric, burning, but he made the pain drive him on.

There were no alarms, no guards, only Ship, the curved walls surrounding him. He felt their attention as he fled, Ship sensing him, watching him.

It was like the bad moment on a roller-coaster, just before the top of the first dip, when you realize you've left it too late to get off. In a moment you'll be falling, falling Chest heaving, he stumbled against a wall. The layout of the corridors was different to the pattern he remembered. Ship had rearranged itself was probably rearranging itself even now, its interior becoming a labyrinth to trap him. He imagined he could hear it breathing.

Half a dozen thick green vines leapt out of the wall and snatched at him.

He sprang back. The vines were growing out of the living stuff of the corridor, lashing out, blindly groping for him.

He bolted, turning down another passageway where the light was redder, twisting back on his course. He didn't know where he was going, he just had to keep going, keep going, keep going The thing in his shoulder squeezed squeezed.

He collapsed in mid-stride, lay on the spongy stuff of the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, face white as paper. He did not move. He barely breathed. His heartsbeat was an agonizing motion in his chest. He wished it would stop.

While he lay there, the tendrils quietly grew from the wall behind him, slowly looping over and around and beneath him until he disappeared inside the solid cage of vines.

Neither of them said a word.

Kadiatu was waiting for Ace when she exited cold storage. Ace was in firing position the instant she saw the African woman. She hesitated. Perhaps she hesitated because she'd personally killed exactly three hundred and ninety-nine sentient individuals. One more would make it four hundred. Perhaps she was just tired. But no matter what happened, she had to save the Doctor.

Kadiatu's body kept trying to leap into combat speed, her arms and legs jittering with the urgent need to move, to fight. No matter what happened, Ace could not be allowed to save the Doctor.

183.

Kadiatu's gun arm jumped up into firing position and the bolt leapt across the short space between them and a coruscation of light exploded in Ace's midriff and around her and she fell sideways, hair flying, shades spinning away, her body still following the arc of the dodging motion she was trying to make. Her gun stuttered, peppering the walls and ceiling with flechettes.

The shot should have turned her into a wisp of vapour. Perhaps Kadiatu's aim was a little off.

Kadiatu's arm jerked down forty-five degrees, covering the woman lying on the floor.

She lay there.

She lay there.

She lay there.

Kadiatu turned and walked jerkily away.

And neither of them said a word.

The Doctor opened his eyes. The agony in his shoulder had diminished to a dim thrumming. He was lying awkwardly on his side, twisted in a mass of green tendrils.

He tried to move. There were vines drawn tight around his legs and arms, across his chest. One was looped across his throat, forcing his head back. As he watched, a long spiral of green wound itself around his left wrist.

There was a figure standing over him. She was smooth and white as porcelain. But much more durable. Even before Death had come to life as the first creature fell on the first world, she had existed, as essential and as intolerable as her younger sister.

'I have come,' said Pain, 'to make sure you keep your side of our bargain.'

It ought to hurt.

Ace was hunched against the wall, breathing hard. Her mind had come sharply back into focus. She knew just what to do.

She did not fumble with the combat kit, even though her hands were shaking. The hopper had climbed off of its own accord, half its tentacles singed into flaking black wires. Perhaps it would die.

She unzipped the kit and pulled out the military handscan with her left hand. Very basic things, used mostly for triage; they told you whether you were dead or about to die.

Okay, she'd caught the edge of a plasma burst at extremely close range.

There were extensive burns probably second-degree to her right side and arm.

She ought not to be able to move. It ought to hurt, really.

184.

The handscan prescribed two military endorphin derms. She pressed them to her arm, added a third one for good measure. If it didn't hurt now, it was going to start hurting soon.

She unpackaged a fourth derm with shaky fingers, put it on her shoulder.

Traumatized blood vessels would have leaked fluid how much, she wouldn't know, and in any case she wouldn't be able to replace the stuff until she got to a very non-existent medical facility. The derm would help fight off the shock.

She struggled to her feet. The endorphins already sloshing about inside her, giving her a buzz like exercise or combat. They could not completely mask the burning.

So long as she could keep the pain away, she'd be alright. She just had to keep moving until she found the Doctor.

Nicolas burst in through the door of his shop, chest heaving. Benny was asleep, slumped over the counter. She woke up with such a start that she fell off.

They glared at one another across the counter.

' De rien, De rien, ' he said. 'The tricolour's flying over the Arc de Triomphe. It's over, it's all over.' ' he said. 'The tricolour's flying over the Arc de Triomphe. It's over, it's all over.'

'Alright,' she said suspiciously.

'Where is everyone?'

'Fled,' she fibbed, yawning. 'Looks as though it's just you and me.'

'Soon it'll be just you. I'm getting the hell out of Paris.' He stopped, considered, and asked in a surprised voice, 'Do you want a lift?'

Benny shook her head. 'I have to wait for my friends here.'

'You suit yourself, mademoiselle, but they're rolling barrels down the Champs Elysees to make barricades. It's more like the pit of hell than the fields of heaven. Everything smells of petrol. I had to escape press-gangs twice they're just tearing the streets apart and pulling up the cobblestones to make walls.'

'I heard the cannons,' said Benny. 'But I have to wait.'

'You suit yourself. I don't know what your friends have been doing all this time, what it's all been about, and I don't care. I'm going.'

Ship guided Kadiatu through the passages until she found the Doctor, cocooned in a tangled mass of greenery. Ship's nerves. A flock of repair butterflies was crouched on the vines, antennae twitching, unable to get to the damaged component inside.

His eyes snapped open. Kadiatu started and jerked back. As though she were the one in trouble.

'I have nothing to say to you,' he said.

185.

Kadiatu took out her handscan and slowly waved it over him. 'The first step was making the gatekeepers, the time machines that looked like human beings. We grew them using scraps of DNA, from real human beings and from Ship. Then the hoppers.' She closed the scanner, put it away. 'And this is the third step.'

'That's the old cliche, isn't it? It won't hurt if you don't fight it.'

'Are you listening to me?' She squatted down on the floor opposite him.

'Relax and enjoy it. What nonsense.'

'You wrecked Ship's plan to use the gatekeepers to stabilize the rifts. It could have tried again. But it realized there was a way to give itself the power to travel through space-time.'

'Where's your sister? I thought she'd be here.'

Kadiatu leaned back on the wall. She was alone, and he wasn't even listening to her, he was having a conversation with someone who wasn't even there. 'Look what they've done to me . . . ' she whispered.

'Don't imagine I'm afraid of you. Familiarity breeds contempt.'

'It could have been me, you know. Or Bernice, or Ace. All it takes is a time traveller. But I convinced the Ants that you were the best candidate.

You've crossed the time field more often than any of us. You may be the most experienced time traveller the universe has ever seen. All Ship has to do to access that experience is to install you.'

The vine around the Doctor's left wrist tightened suddenly. The tip of the vine nosed against his skin, splitting into finer tendrils. One by one, they began to push their way into his flesh. He struggled in his green bonds, going into convulsions as Ship's stuff began to fuse with his nervous system.

The vines pulled tighter, holding him still. The tendrils burrowing into his wrist began to shove their way up the nerves of his arm. His teeth were fiercely clenched, his head rolling and rolling. He did not scream.

'The whole process won't take more than an hour,' said Kadiatu. Soothingly? 'Once the tissue makes its way into your central nervous system, you'll be an inseparable part of Ship.' She looked down at her hands, the fine green lines winding their way down her aims. 'And then we'll be able to go anywhere in space-time. Anywhere at all.' She sighed, sleepily. 'I just want to go home.'

'Click your . . . heels together,' the Doctor snarled.