by Stephen Cole
25
Ben
We can’t hear the footsteps of the others any more. Polly and Shade have been swallowed up by the tunnel opposite. Hope they find the holy grail quick. Something tells me Tovel don’t have too long.
Hold up, he’s looking at his paws again. They look like they’d fit round our neck a treat. Nice one.
We have a quick butchers at the world according to Tovel. It’s getting a bit misty. You can’t be optimistic with a misty optic, our old mum used to say. And she never even wore glasses, daft cow.
What we wouldn’t give to see her now.
‘You all right, mate?’ we say, keeping the noise down. Tovel keeps looking at us like he don’t really see us. ‘Tovel?’
‘I’m a good pilot,’ he says suddenly. His voice, which used to sound quite posh compared to the others, is getting rougher. Like he’s not working his tongue so well. He’s like an old man suddenly, going downhill fast. We hope he isn’t noticing all this kind of stuff as he goes. ‘Did you hear Haunt say that?’
‘Yeah, course,’ we say. We can’t remember to be honest.
Tovel shakes his head, like he can work loose the Schirr patches, send them flying off like bits of blancmange. ‘“Turn this thing around,” she said. Do you remember back in the control room? “Turn this thing around before…” She never finished.’
He stops still. Looks like he might lay an egg. Finally, he just takes a big, deep breath: ‘And I couldn’t finish it for her either.’
We don’t know what to say. What can we say to that? ‘That’s because you were turning into a ruddy monster, mate’? The Doctor would have something clever to say, we reckon, but no chance of reaching him.
‘It ain’t over yet,’ we say finally.
In a whole load of ways we wish it was. But you’ve got to keep plugging away, ain’t you? Go the distance. Jeez, now we’re quoting our old man.
Tovel don’t say nothing. We don’t even know if he’s heard us. His eyes, piggy under his big brows, have sort of glazed over. He don’t look too steady on his big pins. Then he falls.
We yell his name, try to pull him back up. Feel how clammy, how dead all this new skin on him feels to the touch. We can’t shift him.
Time to close our eyes and tap the ruby slippers. ‘What do I do?’ we yell with our head. Nothing comes back to us. Try again. ‘Tovel’s collapsed. He’s not right. I can’t move him.’
The Doctor’s there. His voice is crackly like an old record.
‘You’re very faint, Ben.’
‘So are you. Listen, Tovel’s fainted, or something.’
A pause. Has he gone, or – ‘He’s fighting against the infection, my boy. You can’t help him.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘Go on alone,’ the Doctor says, like it’s no big deal. ‘But take Tovel’s communicator. You may need it.’
‘What if he needs it? He’s helpless, ain’t he?’
‘Don’t argue, my boy. We have to find the life-support systems, and find the navigational crystals. We’re doomed if we do not. You are able bodied and Tovel is not. You must leave him.’
We know the Doctor’s right. Even before he’s finished his spiel we crouch beside Tovel and slip off his little bracelet. It takes some doing, his wrist has swollen up and the communicator doesn’t come easily. Tovel doesn’t even notice, just stares into space. The lights are on but nobody’s home any more.
We get back up, put on the wrist thing. ‘Be lucky, Tovel,’ we mutter. ‘We’ll soon have you moved back in.’
Then we’re off, on our own again.
We don’t know why but we’re thinking about Haunt.
Switch to Haunt’s viewpoint. Select section 9 on here
26
Shade
Polly bouncing along beside us, we set off back the way we came.
Then a voice presses down on our senses. Seductive and sibilant, proud and gloating. A Schirr voice, powerful, it’s like it’s trying to crush our thoughts into the ground.
Polly’s staring round, wide-eyed. We grab hold of her, pull her on down the tunnel.
We can’t just stop here when she’s got our one and only chance of escape in her hand. We have to keep moving, moving –
To witness these events from Polly’s viewpoint, select section 19 on here
To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on here
To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on here
To switch to Tovel’s viewpoint, select section 23 on here
Or you may withdraw from the neural net – but only after experiencing Frog’s perspective. Select section 27 on here
27
Frog
We hear something. Something soft, a whirring kind of noise.
We stop singing.
Our eyes are stinging. Watering. We think that’s why the ceiling seems to be blurred at first.
No.
No, there’s something pretty weird happening. All the glass is sparkling. Around where Roba shot at the stuff. You try and look at a piece and it shifts, becomes another piece. Like there’s a blindspot somewhere in our vision, and God knows, there probably is by now.
But then we see the angel come swooping into our field of vision and we know we ain’t just imagining all this.
We can’t move. Even if we could we’d be too scared stiff to move a muscle. We’re helpless. That angel thing knows it. Behind it there’s a crack in the wall that was never there before. A black split, in and out of focus. Secret passage. But it can’t keep our eyes off the angel.
We watch, stuck like we’re made of stone as it hovers just above us. Its wings flap. We feel the breeze they make, it’s like a summer wind. The angel shifts just a little. We follow it with our eyes, wishing we could fly too. Is this us thinking, or is this what we’re becoming, but the angel thing’s kind of beautiful.
It hovers above the bodies. Reaches out to what looks like a frozen drop of water sparking in mid-air just above one of them pool ball heads.
The lights take a dip. And the Schirr on the platform start twitching like they got a few of them flea bugs under their nightgowns.
We wanna run screaming but we’re stuck here watching.
And we hear the scary bitch voice of one of them speaking loud. We hear it in our head before we hear it in our ears, and then the echo of the voice after it. Like there’s more than one Schirr talking. We’re feeling like there’s all kinds of stuff hiding in this web that we never knew about. And we wanna scream or something, but we know we’d never be heard over these words.
‘Please remain still,’ the Schirr says. DeCaster says. ‘You’re not going to die, humans. You’re going to live forever…
‘We are going to live forever.’
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You exit the neural network
Now turn the page
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PARTNERS IN CRIME
I
THE DOCTOR PAUSED outside the control room, trying to focus. Frog, of course, must be trapped inside with the emerging Schirr. He had tried to contact the others in the network, but without success. Still, he had done all he could for them. If they weren’t here already, he knew they soon would be. Where else could they go?
Steeling himself, he strode with all the dignity he could summon into the pentagonal chamber.
It seemed to have come alive. The golden trellises high in the walls glowed like neon, and the light was caught and reflected all ways by the glass in the ceiling, brightening the place considerably. The air was warmer, and shot through with a sickly-sweet stink like dustbins left unemptied for too long.
‘Well, well,’ the Doctor said. ‘Quite a gathering, I see.’
The Schirr corpses on the sullen stage were heaving for breath, laboriously. They looked weak. Their pink-white eyes rolled in their sockets as they acclimatised to life again. It seemed to pain them.
In front of them stood DeCaster, an al
together more powerful creature in long white robes. His fleshy brows were knitted together in a dark frown. The red pinpoints of his pupils fixed on the Doctor. The nose was a jammed-up snout, like a pig’s, except it waxily joined a huge, broad top lip that drooped down either side of his face. The chin was dominated by a thick, trembling lower lip.
Beside him, easily as tall but more massive than the Schirr leader, stood one of the Morphiean constructs. It stood still as the statue it resembled.
‘Of course.’ The Doctor chuckled darkly with satisfaction. ‘You didn’t steal the secrets of the Morphieans’ dark sciences. They were supplied to you.’
DeCaster said nothing, but he watched the Doctor closely.
‘Well, what of Denni?’ the Doctor asked, stepping closer. ‘As your accomplice, should she not be present here, at the end, hmm?’
DeCaster’s fleshy lips stretched back into a wide smile. ‘Denni,’ he said. His voice was like that of a woman’s, sensual and soft. ‘Human female. She was offered in ritual, fed to the propulsion drives.’ He pulled something from his robe and threw it at the Doctor’s feet.
Blonde dreadlocks, still attached to a bloody slice of scalp.
The Doctor nodded sadly. ‘I suspected she would be dead. I suppose she had outlived her usefulness.’
As he spoke, a long crack appeared in the far wall, behind the platform and the TARDIS. The secret door became visible to the Doctor as it opened, its edges blurred with strange energies.
Through it, silently, stepped Marshal Haunt. She raised a finger to her lips.
DeCaster’s mouth quivered. ‘Denni’s usefulness was as meat.’
The Doctor endeavoured to appear undistracted. ‘Er… Come now, surely you undervalue her contribution to your cause?’
Rifle raised, Haunt stole closer behind the Schirr.
‘She has, after all, manipulated events very much to your advantage, has she not?’
Haunt circled the platform and crept right behind DeCaster and the construct.
But DeCaster must have heard her. He whirled round, bore down on her.
And turned back, his smile even wider.
Haunt pointed the gun at the Doctor’s head.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ the Doctor demanded hoarsely.
‘Can’t you guess, Doctor?’ Haunt spoke without any sense of triumph. ‘It was me who arranged all this. Not a training mission. A rescue mission.’
There was a sudden clattering of feet from the narrow passageway outside the control room.
DeCaster’s long, twisted ears twitched. ‘The humans should all be paralysed,’ hissed DeCaster. ‘We transmitted the disabling pulse along the network. How can they still move?’
Haunt looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know. A mistake in the ritual?’
‘Impossible,’ hissed DeCaster.
The Doctor tutted. ‘I’m afraid you got rather ahead of yourself, didn’t you.’
‘You?’ DeCaster’s brow furrowed further as he stared at the Doctor. ‘This is your work?’
‘Over here, Doctor,’ Haunt snapped. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off.’
The Doctor didn’t move. He gave her a pitying smile. ‘But you’ve expended so much energy to keep enough of us alive… I really don’t think your master would be pleased if you killed me now.’
DeCaster blasted out a hiss of breath from his snout, and stamped towards the Doctor with alarming speed.
The Doctor shrank back instinctively, but a moment later the Schirr’s huge arms had clamped around him. He was twisted about to face his friends as they ran into the room: Ben, Polly, Shade and Creben. The others must still be lying in dark corners, changing, unable to move.
‘Be still,’ DeCaster snarled, his breath hot and wet in the Doctor’s ear. ‘Drop your weapons or I kill this one.’
‘No!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘He won’t do it!’ Damp, fleshy fingers pressed down on his mouth and nose. He could barely breathe.
‘Haunt!’ Ben yelled, his amazement at finding her alive clear on his face. ‘Can’t you do something?’
She fired just above their heads. A yellow bolt of laser fire smashed into the wall behind them.
Ben looked shocked. ‘Not quite what I had in mind.’
‘Throw down your weapons like the Schirr says,’ Haunt bellowed. ‘And raise your hands!’
The soldiers obeyed, bewildered. Ben hesitated, but Polly looked at him imploringly, and he followed suit.
‘What is this?’ Creben snapped.
The Doctor managed to twist his face free of the thick, sticky hand. ‘Your marshal has betrayed the people of the Earth and their empire,’ he shouted. ‘She has used you all.’
He heard the Schirr’s rumbling laughter behind him.
II
Polly stared in horror at the tableau before her. Haunt pointing the gun at them. The stone angel as it floated forwards and trampled the soldiers’ weapons into scrap. The dark bulk of what used to be Frog, lying silent in one corner. The huge Schirr bodies moving, swaying, breathing in and out, and the frail form of the Doctor caught in the grip of the biggest one of all.
Shade was trembling beside her, his eyes fixed on Haunt’s. Creben was speechless. Polly wondered how it must feel for them, such a total betrayal.
‘Used us?’ croaked Shade. ‘Why?’ He still stared disbelievingly at Haunt.
Haunt regarded them coldly. ‘I have my reasons.’
‘Our bodies have been weakened by the rituals,’ DeCaster said. The contrast between voice and appearance made him all the more repellent. ‘Worn out, unable to heal. We need…’ He smiled again, bared huge square teeth. ‘We need your assistance.’
‘You’re taking our bodies to replace your own?’ Creben demanded. ‘One for each of you?’
‘No wonder she said no one dies without her say so,’ Polly murmured.
‘We appreciate human flesh,’ DeCaster told him, and licked his lips. ‘We have groomed your bodies, healed them, made them pure. Now we each shall be as one. Two of my disciples – you may have noticed their absence – they have been casting the prelude to the joining ritual. It is now complete.’ He grinned over at the motionless stone cherub. ‘A lengthy piece but a most satisfying one.’
‘That’s the reason for all this deception,’ Creben realised. ‘The tableau, the mystery… once we were here, you needed time to prepare yourselves for us.’
The Doctor nodded with some difficulty. ‘So they stayed hidden in plain sight… fooling us all.’
‘I thought you needed ten to make your magic work?’ Ben challenged. ‘You bumped off your mate. What happens once you get past the warm up and the match kicks off?’
‘We do not need the traitor,’ DeCaster hissed. ‘The neural network has united your minds. When we join with you, our minds will absorb yours. It will give us the power of many… enough for our purpose.’
Polly felt brave enough to speak up at last. ‘Purpose? What is your purpose?’
Haunt shook her head. She wasn’t saying.
‘So,’ the Doctor said, crumpled in the big Schirr’s crushing grip. ‘You always planned for the real-time neural network to be in place.’ He looked pitifully dejected. ‘And I made it possible for you.’
‘I had Shel marked out for that task,’ said Haunt. ‘But yes, Doctor, you were an excellent replacement.’
‘Well, we know how to balls up your little game, don’t we?’ said Ben, and he pulled at his webset.
It wouldn’t shift, no matter how hard he tried.
‘You’re doing this!’ Polly shouted at DeCaster.
He laughed and nodded. ‘You cannot remove the websets now.’
‘And your ritual cannot proceed unless I allow it,’ the Doctor said. His composure had returned, it seemed, and with it his innate sense of authority. ‘You said yourselves, these people should be paralysed by your powers. They are not.’
‘What have you done, Doctor?’ Haunt demanded.
‘You expect me to tell you w
hen so much is still a mystery to me?’ He chuckled. Then he winced, struggled feebly against the monster’s tightening grip. His simple bravery made Polly well up as she watched. ‘The moment I tell you, I have nothing to bargain with.’
‘There is no bargain to be made.’ DeCaster pressed his upturned snout against the Doctor’s cheek and inhaled. ‘Your mind is fresh, but your body is old. It is alien.’ He glanced over at the statue, his pale eyes betraying a flicker of annoyance. ‘The Morphiean constructs should really have deliberated more carefully over who they culled.’
Polly stifled a cry as the stone cherub moved smoothly into life, swivelled its head round to view DeCaster. ‘Our instruction was to bring the numbers down to nine.’ The statue’s voice was brittle and dry. ‘This we have done.’
‘There is much you must learn about the body, Morphiean.’ DeCaster said, turning his attention back to the Doctor. He caressed the translucent skin of the old man’s cheek. ‘About the nature of flesh.’
‘So the Schirr gain Morphiea’s powers of the mind, and Morphiea regains the pleasures of the physical form.’ The Doctor laughed hollowly. ‘Is this your exchange? Hmm?’
DeCaster abruptly released the Doctor, who gasped in pain as he hit the floor.
‘Your sabotage is negating the onset of the ritual,’ the Schirr leader hissed. ‘Tell us what you have done.’
‘I will not,’ the Doctor insisted, ‘until I know the truth. I will not be a catspaw in your game,’ His voice became sly. ‘But tell me and I may willingly assist you.’
‘Doctor!’ Ben protested.
The Doctor wouldn’t look at him. ‘There’s nothing more we can do, my boy.’
Haunt looked at DeCaster for assurance it was OK to speak. ‘All right,’ she said uneasily. ‘I came here with two doctored droids, neither able to kill, and nine personnel. Ten of us for ten of them. I didn’t know Pallemar had been executed until I got here. Whatever he told Pent Central about this place, or my involvement in setting it up, it must’ve been enough for them to check it out.’
‘They sent Shel,’ Polly whispered.
‘But when you arrived, one of your squad was considered surplus to requirements and executed,’ the Doctor deduced. ‘Poor Denni. Fed to the propulsion units, I suppose.’
