Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [103]
‘Who?’
The Doctor didn’t answer. He looked around the corridor, his eyes finally falling on a doorway nearby.
‘Empty guest room,’ he said. ‘Stay here and look after Kathleen. I have to get back to the auction.’
They dragged Kathleen’s unconscious form into the guest room, and laid her out on the bunk. Sam wondered if the bunk would have a nibble at her biodata and grow an appropriate duvet. The Doctor gave the Lieutenant a quick once-over, but he looked anxious to get away.
‘You’re sure she’ll be OK?’ Sam asked.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Her personality’s been pushed to the back of her mind. She needs time to recover. To find herself again. Keep an eye on her, come and get me if her condition changes.’ Then he turned back to the doorway, and promptly disappeared.
Finally, Sam let herself relax. There were no chairs in the room, so she slumped down onto the bunk next to Kathleen. The woman was still as death, her eyes tight shut.
Sam still didn’t know exactly what had happened down in the vault. There were bits and pieces of the dream floating around under her scalp, memories of doing things she couldn’t imagine doing. Dying her hair, even though she knew she was a natural blonde. Going to a family planning clinic a month before her sixteenth birthday, even though she’d never... had to.
Another life. A life without the Doctor. No, more than that; a life the Doctor was never destined to be a part of. Now the dream was over, he felt alien to her. Like a virus. Something that had worked its way into her system but didn’t belong there.
Another life. A life in the real world.
She wasn’t sure whether the thought was exciting, or horrifying.
Little Brother Manjuele scratched, and scratched, and scratched. There was an itch, somewhere inside his face, and he was determined to get at it. Above his head, everything was black. Part of his mind, the part that wasn’t squirming, realised he was back in the shrine, in control of his own body again. The rest of him didn’t care. It just wanted to scratch.
He felt his nails scrape against his skull, but he kept scratching anyway. No, wait. Those weren’t his nails. He had the biosampler strapped to his knuckles, and for the last five minutes he’d been using the prongs to score away the flesh on his cheek, trying to get at the itch. He’d cut his face right down to the bone. There was blood trickling across his skin, dripping onto the control dais under his head. The skulls hummed a lullaby at him, but he could tell they were trying not to laugh.
He’d been lying here, ripping his own head open, not even noticing what he’d been doing. He didn’t mind the pain, particularly. He was used to cutting himself.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
He’d never met a real-life Time Lord, not before today. Now he’d met two. Homunculette was a walking joke, but the guy in the green velvets was different. He’d poked something into Manjuele’s head, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat doing it. Hah. No wonder the family was scared of the Time Lords, if they could do that kind of damage. What had the girl called the guy? Doctor?
Doctor. Justine had said something about a Doctor.
Manjuele stopped scratching.
The Doctor.
He remembered. What Justine had told him, about the Time Lord who’d once almost wiped out the whole family on Dronid. And he remembered what she’d told him about the Relic. The body in the box.
Manjuele was on his feet in a second. His suit was covered in biomass, great splashes of it, sticking to the cloth where he’d fallen onto the dais. The blood from his cheek started dripping onto the floor of the shrine. The Little Brother felt the biosampler slipping from his fingers, falling to the ground at his feet.
The Doctor was here. Somehow, the stiff had climbed out of his coffin, and if what Justine had said was true, he wouldn’t be happy until everyone here was dead.
The Doctor made sure he had a big smile on his face before he strolled