Doctor Who: In the Blood

by Jenny T. Colgan

  ‘Ugh,’ said Donna.

  ‘Then they feed off . . . well, they feed off emotional energy I suppose. Specifically, anger. Anger produces hormones which they feed on. And they turn that on itself, spawning and respawning and performing a kind of furious feedback loop in the host . . .’

  ‘Why do they kill you, then?’ said Donna.

  ‘Lots of parasites kill the host,’ said the Doctor. ‘Usually when there’s enough of them to burst out and feed back into the network . . . it’s why you spit when you’re angry.’

  ‘I don’t spit when I’m angry!’

  ‘It’s why every mammal in the galaxy spits when they’re angry except for you.’ The Doctor rubbed his neck. ‘And who are the angriest people in the world?’

  ‘Terrorists?’ hazarded Donna.

  The Doctor shook his head, sadly. ‘No. All of their anger is out, I’m afraid; in the air around us.’ He sighed. ‘No. No. It strikes people who are frustrated but generally can’t do anything about it. Who are stuck. So the Rempaths circulate and build up and build up.’

  ‘Your classic internet troll,’ said Donna. ‘In front of his computer, typing angrily about stuff he can’t do anything about.’

  ‘He?’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Donna, realising. ‘No, my friend Hettie, she gets right antsy about women who do children differently from her . . . She’s always on the internet telling them off about it . . . Oh my God. You don’t think she might be . . .’

  The Doctor blinked. ‘That friend you were staying with?’

  ‘She got the right hump with me!’

  ‘Who could possibly do that?’

  ‘Shut up . . . Oh goodness, Doctor, is it fixable?’

  The Doctor paused for a long time.

  ‘That bad?’ said Donna gently.

  ‘It can be. When people start to die, other people start to get upset and angry and go online to complain about it and . . . well, you can see.’

  ‘What’s it feel like?’

  ‘According to the literature, it feels like an icy finger, reaching out. Reaching out to grasp at your heart. To turn it to a shard of ice.’

  Donna blinked. ‘Like the Snow Queen?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. It’s quite the historical document.’

  Donna looked around. Everywhere on the bustling streets people were staring down at their phones. Tapping, typing. Nearly walking into others, and tutting crossly when they did so.

  ‘Remember,’ said the Doctor. ‘Rempaths need two things to proliferate: a connection . . . and anger.’

  Donna shivered. It was such a beautiful day. But now around her she couldn’t help thinking . . . She looked at a man standing on a street corner, shouting into his phone about his car service not turning up in time . . . And the woman over there, what was making her so upset that she was reading . . . Would these people . . . The idea of people gradually getting angrier and angrier, until they died and continued the cycle . . .

  Would humanity give up its devices if they were warned what was coming?

  ‘We’re doomed,’ said Donna. She looked at him. He was nodding.

  ‘It is very difficult that the nature of the disease is precisely what would make you not listen to someone telling you how to not get the disease.’

  ‘So, why did it start here?’

  ‘Fastest, best internet in the world. Everything starts here. Including the horrible ones.’

  They were standing in front of a row of cafés, all of which were set up like computer labs, with juice bars at one end and rows and rows of large screens in front of them. Young lads were sitting, gaming furiously, typing, throwing things at each other, drinking and teasing one another. It looked like a school where the teacher had left the room.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Donna, as they crossed the road towards it. ‘Does this mean I’m going to have to be, like, all lovely and nice all the time in case I get the disease?’

  The Doctor looked at her. ‘Why don’t you just be lovely and nice all the time because that’s the right thing to do?’ he said.

  ‘Because, Spaceboy,’ said Donna, ‘not all of us have billion-square-foot mansions that can fly to live in. And no job. Or bills. Or mortgage. Or annoying families to worry about.’

  The Doctor turned to look at her quizzically. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You don’t even have an alarm clock!’

  ‘I . . . I do so have an alarm clock!’

  ‘Yes, which you used to time that skipping race we had.’

  ‘I still think you—’

  ‘I did not make an illegal move! There are no illegal moves in skipping!’

  ‘I’m just saying—’

  ‘Noillegalemovesinskipping’ said Donna quickly as she stepped back onto the pavement.

  The Doctor raked his fingers through his hair in agitation. ‘Do you really . . . Do you really think I have an absolutely amazing life with nothing to get worried about?’

  Donna straightened up and looked at him. ‘Well, if you can’t, who can?’ she said gently. And then, still seeing no reaction, ‘So, why don’t we just pretend that you do?’

  And they disappeared into the bustling crowds of the city.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  The noise levels of the shoot-em-up games and Skype conversations inside the cafés was immense.

  Everywhere they went, the Doctor went behind the scenes and started up a conversation about routers and hp speed that Donna couldn’t follow at all, so she went and watched the kids play.

  They were playing military games for the most part: running joint missions and blowing other people up with astonishing skill and alacrity. She watched them quietly, even as they looked at her with nervous curiosity, and she saw the teenagers they truly were behind their eyes. Just boys after all. Even if their gaming machine guns looked eerily like the real thing. Even with the noise and the shouting. The jump from that to actual shooting, with excitable, hysterical teenage boys, and . . .

  She was lost in thought as the Doctor re-emerged from the latest place they’d visited, folding a napkin into his pocket. The café owner looked furtive and grave, and watched them thoughtfully as they left the building.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ said Donna glancing behind her. ‘He looks very unhappy.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the Doctor. ‘The psychic paper came up with something that said Gukga anjeon bowibu, and that pretty much did it.’

  ‘So, where are we going?’

  ‘Aha,’ said the Doctor. ‘He knew exactly what we were after. And he didn’t even care why.’ His face was sad for a second. ‘OK. The fastest, darkest most secret side of the web . . . Hey!’

  He hailed a little motor scooter that was passing, which had a double seat mounted on the back of it. The traffic on Seoul’s wide streets was alarming, but this seemed designed to whip through it, however precariously.

  ‘This is more like it.’ The Doctor sat back cheerfully as the little bike puttered speedily through horrifyingly slender gaps in the incredibly dense traffic. Hundreds of cyclists had to veer out of their way as they tore towards them, the driver shouting cheerful abuse all the while, and getting some back. Donna shut her eyes.

  ‘You’re the one who wanted to travel in a different way!’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Yes, in luxury, not as a near-death experience!’

  The Doctor laughed as they narrowly missed a huge old open truck full of goats. ‘Come on, live a little.’

  ‘A very little,’ said Donna. ‘Does he know where he’s going?’

  No sooner had she said this than the little vehicle crossed the astonishing Banpo bridge, with its coloured fountain of water cascading down, into the older town of Yongsang, where it soon turned off and darted down a narrow, practically invisible side street.

  Instantly things changed. After the shiny cars and huge skyscrapers of Gangnam, here there were narrow alleyways and closely built apartments teetering towards each other; washing
hanging in between the windows on ropes. Stray dogs darted past them and they splashed through puddles that looked as though they had been there for some time.

  ‘Uh oh,’ said Donna. ‘Now I’m getting a bit anxious and foreign about this.’

  ‘Ssh,’ said the Doctor. ‘He knows where we mean.’

  And the bike swung round into a little cobbled square. They were deep in what was left of Seoul’s old town by now; a wooden temple sat there, its low doors swinging open. The houses were sometimes little more than brightly coloured shacks, slightly listing.

  Here there were bolder stone buildings, with pagoda built roofs, and glimpses of the old city walls. It was rather charming. Everywhere people went about their business, not in the sharp suits and western fashions of the main streets, but, once or twice Donna saw, in more traditional dress. Children’s voices rang out, as well as many more little scooters honking their way through lanes far too narrow for cars.

  Finally, tucked away behind a square in Itaewon, there was a tiny alleyway. Four restaurants stood in a row. None of them appeared to sell anything other than pig’s feet.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in the mood,’ frowned Donna as she paid the man and the Doctor strode off behind one of the ornate little wooden huts. The building was half stone – at the bottom – and half wood, with the now familiar pagoda-style tilted roof. Tiling was inlaid into the walls, with complex figures carved on them Donna couldn’t decipher. They glanced at each other.

  Then they pushed open the heavy red wooden door and entered in.

  The room beyond did not have to go silent; it was already silent.

  It was huge, far larger than it looked from the outside. Immaculately clean and quiet, with a steel door facing them and, to their right, banks of computers, brand new and sleek. Their large screens hummed quietly. Behind each one was a man or a woman, an international mix, each fiercely concentrating, their eyes flickering nervously upwards as the Doctor and Donna entered but then straight down again and away. There was a deeply hushed feeling in the room, like the reading room at the British Library, or an operating theatre: a sense of fierce embedded concentration. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Morning!’ said the Doctor, sizing up the room in an instant. ‘Now, somebody must know which of those four pig’s feet restaurants is the best. I love the artisan quarter, don’t you?’

  A large local man who had been standing silently behind the door stepped forward. He towered over both of them. ‘I think you are in the wrong place,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Now that,’ said the Doctor to Donna. ‘Him saying that basically proves that he’s in the right place. Totally!’

  ‘Totally,’ agreed Donna.

  ‘And you must leave,’ said the man. He looked briefly to his side. A rather furious-looking curved sword was tucked into his belt.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Donna. ‘That’s really lovely. I mean, that’s a proper big sword that is. I mean, you could easily take off two, three heads at a time with that. Easy.’

  The man frowned, and drew the sword. All the faces at screens behind them, amazingly, simply bowed down and went back to work, as if they weren’t there. If anything bad was going to happen, Donna realised, they weren’t going to be helped or saved by a single person in this room. Which pretty much solved the problem of whether what they were up to was good or not.

  Not.

  ‘You distract him and I’ll do some sword kicking,’ she whispered to the Doctor.

  ‘Sword kicking?’ said the Doctor ‘Honestly, I don’t think that’s a thing.’

  ‘It might be a thing,’ said Donna, swinging her ankle. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I’m sure they teach them how to fend off sword kickers,’ said the Doctor. ‘Seriously, that’s, like, day two.’

  ‘You. Finger,’ the man grunted at Donna.

  ‘You what?’

  Without ceremony, the man grabbed her hand, slammed it down on the desk, and separated out her pinkie. Then he lifted his sword.

  ‘One finger per minute. Until you leave.’

  Donna squealed. ‘Not that one! I wear my nan’s ring on it!’

  The Doctor gently put his arm between the sword and Donna’s hand. ‘Go for this one,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a spare.’

  The man blinked in confusion.

  ‘But before you do, you may want to mention to whoever is behind that door . . .’ He raised his head to the security cameras and gave them a wide and cheerful grin. ‘Hey! Person! On the other side of the door! You know that there’s Rempaths on the loose? They’ve been unleashed on Earth and they’re moving through the internet? You may not know what they are, in which case I strongly recommend we stop and chat. But if you do know what they are, then . . . well, I don’t know how you feel about the widespread potential loss of your client base. It seems to me something you might like to discuss. Because I might be able to stop it.’

  The man drew up his sword arm and it glinted, menacingly, in the dull glow from the computer screens dotted around the space. The people in the room still did not lift their heads, not one of them.

  ‘Move your arm out of the way, Doctor!’ said Donna. ‘Move it.’

  The man grunted. ‘This sword will go through them both, don’t worry about that.’

  ‘They’re the worst kind of internet virus,’ shouted the Doctor at the camera. ‘You know it and I know it.’

  Suddenly there was a buzz. A light above them in the ceiling, next to one of the cameras, gently flashed on, and then the camera started to whirr. The large man paused, his sword still held in the air.

  There was a very long pause. The air was completely still apart from the humming of the room. And then: nothing.

  The man holding Donna fast, appeared to make a decision and jerked up once more with the sword; its blade glinted above his huge head.

  Donna and the Doctor shared only the briefest of glances, but it was enough. With a bang Donna kicked out to the side, and the Doctor tickled the man under his risen arm. The man twisted up and immediately collapsed down on the side, and the two of them dived away.

  Unfortunately they dived in different directions.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  ‘Doctor!’ shouted Donna, who stood at the door, ready to exit.

  The Doctor by contrast was right on the other side of the room, banging on the other, steel door. They looked at each other in consternation.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ said Donna. ‘Don’t you think we should head out and regroup?’

  ‘There’s got to be someone in there,’ the Doctor said, as the man recovered himself and stood up, a furious look on his face, spittle dripping from his lips. ‘Good sword kicking by the way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Donna.

  The man was clearly trying to advance on both of them, which was a difficult exercise, but he was looking from side to side, covering them with a gun he’d taken out of his pocket.

  ‘So, what,’ said the Doctor, staring at the pistol. ‘You genuinely preferred to come at us with a sword?’

  ‘Those are some serious issues you have,’ said Donna, as the man’s head whipped around. ‘You should see a therapist of some kind. I mean, what do you even do with all those fingers?’

  The man roared in anger and raised the gun to fire at the Doctor first. The Doctor ignored him, and knocked even harder on the door.

  ‘Someone’s in there,’ he said. ‘Someone knows what’s going on.’

  Donna was staring out at the rows of bent heads.

  ‘Come on!’ she implored them. ‘One of you tell him to stop or get a policeman or something? Huh? Come on!’

  Nothing moved. Nobody changed.

  ‘Whatever happened to empathy?’ shouted Donna.

  The Doctor nodded at her. ‘It’s true. Normally in a crowd there’d be somebody. Somebody who’d help. It’s normal human instinct. But here . . .’

  The safety catch came off the gun.

  ‘OK,’ said Donna. ‘Maybe we will go. Let’
s totally go. We’re going! Bye! Doctor! Come on!’

  ‘It is too late,’ said the man. ‘You have seen too many of the faces in this room. You can never leave.’

  Donna tried the main door. It was locked.

  The Doctor whirred round to gaze at the ceiling.

  ‘Rempaths!’ he roared suddenly. ‘Rempaths are here! And if that doesn’t frighten you, you’ve obviously never seen them in action.’

  Once again the little camera blinked, once, twice, red, and whirred around to face the Doctor. Once again there was a silence in the room.

  And then the man continued to advance, bearing down on them with the gun, covering first one, then another. Donna edged towards the Doctor, reaching out to grab his hand. The man bore down on them both, a huge mountainous figure over them, looming closer and closer as the sound of the people typing to drown them out stepped up a notch when . . .

  There was a tiny click.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  The woman standing in front of the now-open door was rotund. Her face was covered in the pale white make-up Donna associated with geishas, but Donna couldn’t imagine anyone less subservient-looking.

  She was wearing a tightly wrapped hanbok in bright fuchsia pink on the bottom, and a paler pink on the shawl-like top, with a bright red ribbon hanging from it, and the bun in her hair, her open face and her squat rounded body reminded Donna, oddly, of a cake. The red ribbon she was wearing matched her sharply drawn lipstick. She smelled of something cucumbery, bright and herbal, sharp and unusual, and her face was strict, but kind, her cheeks round and highly rouged.

  ‘Ian. Put the sword down, please. And the gun,’ she said, quietly and rather nicely. ‘Can’t you see we have guests?’

  She spoke in perfect English.

  Donna glanced around. ‘Ian?’ she said.

  *

  The heavy steel door clanged shut behind them, and they stepped into the most surprising room Donna could think of. Outside, the banks and rows of computer screens had been incredibly bland, and a surprise after the traditional decoration of the old building from the outside into a high-tech world within.