by Doctor Who
Tyko escorted him as far as the lift. As the doors rumbled shut between them, Jack strained his stomach muscles to lift his head, to shoot one final look of contempt at the young nurse. He wasn’t sure what reaction to expect. Would he be ashamed and look away? Or would he gloat over his victory?
He did neither. Tyko’s eyes were blank, neither happy nor sad about Jack’s fate. As if it meant nothing to him: another day, another name 123
on his pad.
The lift doors opened again and Jack was wheeled out into the less sterile surroundings of the ground floor – the old part of the house, where the squeak of the trolley’s front left wheel was softened by carpet. The ceiling was wood-timbered and the lights left blurred trails in front of his eyes as they rolled by.
Then strips of a heavy, transparent plastic batted briefly about his head and he was in a different part of the asylum altogether. A new part, one of the extensions he had seen from outside. A part where the walls and the ceiling, like those in the central block, were a dirty off-white, where an antiseptic smell filled the air along with a faint whiff of ozone.
And a part where somebody was screaming, yelling their throat raw.
Then the scream gave way to a plaintive whimper, which subsided in turn.
Jack could almost have believed that the sounds had been staged –a way of heightening his anticipation of what was to come – except that anticipation was probably illegal here.
This wasn’t happening. No way did Captain Jack Harkness go out like this. He was fated to die in a blaze of glory, at a time and place of his own choosing – when and where it really mattered – not to live out his days as a vegetable on some backwater world. He was sure of that, confident in his own abilities. He would get out of this. He just didn’t know how yet.
He hadn’t struggled when they bound his wrists. But he had, in-stinctively, tensed his muscles and held his clenched fists as far away from the trolley as he could. The orderlies had thought they’d yanked his straps tight, but Jack had gained a little leeway around his right wrist. Just a little, no more. He’d been pulling on the strap ever since, surreptitiously. He had been able to work it up to the base of his thumb, but it wouldn’t slide over.
He was wheeled into a basic operating theatre, where a red steril-ising light cast everything in a harsh glare. Against it, the face of his surgeon was a hazy shadow with his nose and mouth obscured by a half-mask – but Jack had no problems seeing the tool he was wielding.
124
The surgeon thumbed a switch on the side of the pen-sized device and a thin wire extruded from it, its end flaring alight like a captured miniature star.
‘I don’t want you to worry,’ said the surgeon. ‘I’m just going to thread this wire up your nose. The brain has no pain receptors, so you shouldn’t feel a thing. It’s a simple procedure, not very delicate at all. It’ll be over in seconds and you’ll retain control over most of your bodily functions.’
‘You oughtta know,’ bluffed Jack, ‘I’m a time agent, come here to investigate why this planet of yours is so backward. Harm me and you’ll have a hundred warships up your butt before you can blink.’
‘Yes, well, Mr Harkness,’ said the surgeon, not unkindly, ‘that’s exactly the sort of lie we’ll be hoping not to hear from you again.’
And he leaned forward, until the glowing end of the wire filled Jack’s world.
Jack was pulling on the loose strap with all his might, in danger of wrenching his right thumb from its socket, not caring if he did. But even if he could get one hand free, what good would it do him? He’d hoped the orderlies would have left by now, but they were standing around, on guard. Six of them plus the surgeon.
Fortunately, Jack wasn’t alone either.
He knew, as soon as he heard the shriek of the alarm, that the Doctor or Rose, and maybe both, would be behind it. He was still getting used to that: to the fact that he didn’t have to pull the rabbit out of his own hat every time now.
The orderlies checked their pagers and looked at each other, uncertain whether to answer the call if it meant leaving their infamous prisoner unguarded. The surgeon, his burning light no longer in Jack’s eyes, made the choice for them, chivvying them out. ‘If this patient ever was a danger to me,’ he insisted, ‘he won’t be for much longer.’
With a squelching of bones, Jack finally pulled his hand free. He wrapped the empty strap around his fingers, trying to disguise what he’d done. Until the surgeon leaned over him again.
Then Jack tried to snatch his pen device – but the surgeon reacted just too fast, pulling away, backing out of the range of Jack’s next 125
swipe, calling for help.
Jack just hoped the alarm was too loud for the surgeon’s voice to be heard, hoped that he could free his other limbs before the orderlies came back.
He was still fumbling with the strap around his other wrist when the surgeon lunged at him, brandishing a liquid-filled hypodermic. Some sort of anaesthetic, no doubt. Jack caught his attacker’s arm before the needle could puncture his skin, but he was struggling one-handed against two – and the force of his efforts was so great that his trolley tipped onto its side, crashing to the floor with a jarring impact, so that Jack was splayed vertically like a mounted fish.
The surgeon had lost his grip on the hypo. It skittered to the floor beside Jack, who crushed it with his fist. While the surgeon was rushing to prepare another dose, Jack untied his left hand and made short work of his ankle straps.
The surgeon was coming at him again, and Jack grabbed the trolley and raised it above his head as a shield. Scrambling to his feet, he drove his attacker backwards into the clear door of a freezer cabinet, rattling the bottles within. While the surgeon was winded, Jack dropped the trolley and floored him with a punch to the jaw.
He whirled around to greet two returning orderlies.
The fight was short but sweet, and Jack won it by two knockouts. But the alarm siren had cut off and he knew his distraction was over.
He righted the trolley on which he’d been bound, then threw a sheet over the top so that it hung to the floor and concealed the unconscious orderlies beneath. The surgeon he hid behind the freezer cabinet. He picked their key cards from their hip pouches and considered taking an orderly’s uniform – but they were both shorter and narrower around the shoulders than he was.
Jack found a roll of surgical tape and wrapped up his three prisoners, tying their hands behind their backs and covering their mouths.
He locked the doors of the operating theatre behind him, checking through their small round windows that no one could be seen, that the room looked empty. Then he hurried to where he thought the 126
scream had come from. He found another theatre but this one was closed too. He shivered at the thought that it had claimed its victim and appreciated the timing of the alarm that had saved him more than ever.
He knew where he was going. Even strapped to the trolley, he had memorised his route on the way in, mindful of the likely need for a quick escape. He soon found his way back to the hanging plastic blinds through which he’d been pushed and into the main part of the house. He took cover as two orderlies walked by, talking animatedly about the state of the world today, about how more and more people were being lured into fiction use.
He was creeping down a carpeted corridor, the front door only two turns away, when he saw Rose.
Two orderlies had her arms. Two more were standing behind her.
As Jack watched, they carried her into a lift. Rose was awake, but not fighting. Her expression was vacant. She was dragging her left leg as she tried to walk – and a terrible fear knotted Jack’s stomach.
What if they had done to her what they’d tried to do to him? What if it had been her scream he had heard?
No, he reassured himself. It had been a man’s voice, he was sure.
And chances were it had been Rose who had sparked the alarm, in which case they hadn’t had time. . . They had probably just given her
a ‘shot’, as Tyko had put it.
The lift doors closed and Jack hurried over to check the floor indicator, to see where they were taking her. It stopped on the fourth floor of the central block.
He looked around for the stairs.
Jack waited for the orderlies to move away from the door. They turned and came back to the lift, at last, and he darted back into the stairwell until they had passed.
Then he sprinted for the dorm into which they had taken Rose.
He ran the surgeon’s key card through the reader – the wrong way round, as it happened. A light flickered red. And there were footsteps, 127
coming towards him. Someone was about to round the corner – and, stuck in the middle of the corridor like this, Jack had nowhere to hide.
He fumbled with the card again, cursing under his breath and wishing he’d tried to squeeze himself into an orderly’s jumpsuit after all.
The lock disengaged and he almost fell through the door. As he closed it behind him, Rose looked up from the room’s single bed where she lay, hugging herself. Her eyes were red and swollen, but hope ignited in them as she saw him.
Then it was gone, replaced by confusion and suspicion.
‘Jack? Is that really you? Tell me it’s you.’ The words were laboured and a little slurred, as if it was an effort to say them.
He put a finger to his lips, silencing her, as the footsteps approached down the corridor. He crouched with his back flat against the door, so he couldn’t be seen when the barred hatch above him opened.
He would have recognised Cal Tyko’s voice even if the nurse hadn’t introduced himself. ‘And your name is?’
Rose didn’t say anything.
She raised herself onto her elbows,
favouring her right side, blinking in the light of the room’s enormous TV screen. She looked at Tyko – and then, to Jack’s horror, she looked directly at him.
‘Who were you talking to?’
Rose returned her gaze to the nurse.
‘Just now. Don’t lie to me, I heard you as I came along the corridor.
You were talking to someone.’
A short silence, during which Jack held his breath.
‘You know there’s nobody in here, don’t you?’ said Tyko. He had only to try the door, to find it unlocked, and the game would be up.
Jack could take him out, of course, but not before he raised the alarm
– and there were orderlies all over this part of the asylum.
Rose looked at Jack again, then she seemed to make a decision that came as a relief to her. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know that.’ She sank back into her mattress.
In a more kindly tone, Tyko said, ‘I know this must be disconcerting for you. The medicine doesn’t last long and it’s wearing off. You’re starting to imagine things again. If it gets too much, we can give you 128
another shot, but it’s far better if you can overcome these delusions by yourself.’
‘No one else here,’ muttered Rose sleepily.
‘There’ll be a reception cell free in an hour or so,’ said Tyko. ‘I’ll send the orderlies to collect you and we can have a little chat, yes?
Then I’ll be able to help you.’
The hatch closed and Tyko’s footsteps echoed away.
Jack breathed out, whistling through his teeth. ‘Close thing.’
‘Go away,’ said Rose, turning her back to him.
‘Rose?’
‘I said go away. You’re not real!’
‘Hey, hey!’ He crossed the room and laid a hand on her shoulder.
She flinched. ‘It’s me. Captain Jack. “Not real”? You tell that to the guys I had to lay out to get this far.’
She was studiously ignoring him.
‘Tell you what, if I can get you of here, will you believe I’m the genuine article?’ He showed Rose his stolen key cards and the hope returned to her eyes. Jack fanned out the three cards with a grin. ‘I’m building up a collection.’
‘I need you to tell me something. You’ve heard of the Jagrafess, yeah?’
‘The Mighty Jagrafess?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe?’
Rose was grinning now too. ‘That’d be the one. You are real! Oh, God, you’re real!’ They hugged each other, but suddenly Rose pulled away and her smile faded. ‘The Doctor. . . I was with him. . . ’
‘Was he captured too? Is he around here somewhere?’
Rose shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. He wasn’t really here at all. When they put that needle in me, he just. . . faded. . . like a ghost. . . Jack, what’s up?’
He had straightened and was pacing with his fist to his lips, his brow furrowed. ‘You’re right, I don’t. I don’t understand.’ He turned back to Rose. ‘If it can happen to us too. . . They call it “fantasy crazy”.
129
That’s what you’re telling me, right? You’ve been seeing things that aren’t there.’
‘I s’pose, yeah.’
‘Like the doctors and the police have been saying all along. Did they do something to you, Rose? Is that it?’
‘I don’t think. . . ’
‘When did it start? When did you first see this ersatz Doctor? Was it after you came to the Big White House?’
Rose screwed up her face in concentration. ‘We got separated. I was running along and he was just there. I didn’t know how he’d. . .
I mean, he could have been real before then, I s’pose, but. . . No. No, I don’t think he was. In the taxi. . . The way nothing he did seemed to work and no one seemed to see him.’ Her voice heavy with self-recrimination, she added, ‘No one except me!’
‘I thought we had it all worked out. I thought these people were being brainwashed, but the media, all this. . . ’ Jack waved a hand at the silent TV. ‘They need it. They need to know – to see – what’s happening, what’s real, all the time or else. . . else. . . ’
‘They start to imagine,’ said Rose numbly. ‘It happened before as well. This morning, I saw. . . I was seeing things. I did think. . . I dunno, but I wondered if it could be to do with Static. I saw Static, Jack.’
‘Domnic said this Gryden guy hadn’t been around too long – not as long as the fiction ban – but I guess he could. . . ’
He was distracted by the TV. It was showing live footage of what a subtitled reporter referred to as a ‘fiction riot’. The rioters appeared to be few in number and unarmed – unlike the police, who were laying into them with guns and shock batons. The disturbance was quickly quelled and the subtitled reporter warned that this would be the fate of all those who chose to believe in Hal Gryden’s warped fantasies.
‘I guess they ran out of stories about traffic lights and car-park spaces,’ said Rose.
Jack had made up his mind. ‘What they’re doing here,’ he said, ‘it’s wrong. I don’t care if the inmates in this place are sick, if fiction is driving them nuts or what – what they did to you, what they tried to 130
do to me, it’s just. . . it’s wrong.’
‘So let’s stop it.’
They looked at each other and their faces broke out into simultaneous grins.
Jack produced the key cards again and handed one of them to Rose.
‘You up to this?’
‘Still a bit stiff down the left side, but it’s wearing off.’
‘You take this floor, I’ll do the one above. First inmate I find who’s halfway sane, I’ll give ’em the third card, they can start on the third floor. The cops think they’ve got trouble now? Let’s show ’em what the word really means!’
131
It was back. The same monster, at the foot of her bed again. Kimmi knew all too well its fierce red eyes and its big black mouth and the tufts of blue hair that sprouted from its bottom lip. She had backed away from it as far as she could, to where the bed met the wall at the pillow end. She was scrunched into the corner, sobbing, terrified that the monster would drag her back to that place.<
br />
Then it sprang for her, and she screamed and woke, sitting bolt upright in her bed.
She was cold with sweat, her heart racing, and she wanted to cry.
She hadn’t had the dream for so long – but no matter how many times she told herself she was over it, how many pills she took, it always returned. Always as real as the first time. And in that dream, she was no longer the confident and respected Inspector Waller, the identity she had built for herself – she was helpless little Kimmi Waller again.
The Doctor. It was his fault. He had wormed his way through her protective shell to expose the frightened child beneath.
All she could do was try not to think about it.
It was late afternoon. A few more hours before she went back on duty. She had been on late shift for as long as she could remember, 133
ever since she’d joined up. She liked it that way. She preferred to go to sleep, and to wake, with daylight in her eyes and the sound of traffic in her ears. During the day, she could hear people talking on the street and moving in the flats to each side of hers, and above and below. During the day, she didn’t feel so lonely.
It was harder to keep out the dream at night.
She fixed herself a light snack from a recipe she had found in a magazine. She pottered about the flat she had decorated alone to an approved colour scheme. She ignored the snuffling of the monster in the bedroom, because she knew it was fictional. She did a bit of cleaning, just killing time, keeping herself busy.
She was needed more during the night. It was during the night that other people had bad dreams.
Her newspaper arrived at about half past five and she was shocked to discover how much the world had changed in her short absence.
The newsreader on 8 News didn’t know which incident to report first. Her delivery was breathless, her eyes wide and staring, and it was clear to Waller that she was on the verge of going fantasy crazy herself.
There had been rioting, looting, thefts, even a couple of murders.
The newsreader was at pains to point out that the outbreaks were isolated, that most of the streets were still safe – but she was obliged to confess that such an explosion of crime was unprecedented.
