Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [62]
Sam shouted. Kathleen didn’t respond. The Lieutenant looked alert, but she seemed to be listening to something else entirely.
Sam finally caught up with her in one of the ziggurat’s deeper corridors, near a stairway that presumably led to the basement level. Kathleen tried to hurl herself down the steps, but Sam managed to grab her shoulders before she could make it. She pulled Kathleen back into the corridor, where the woman slid to the floor, and finally stopped moving. Exhausted, at last.
Sam knelt down by her side. Finding Kathleen hadn’t been easy. Sam had stayed hidden in the passage of the Faction’s shrine, while Little Brother Manjuele had performed his “interrogation” in what had sounded like an Americanised South American accent. Finally, there’d been a noise Sam hadn’t recognised. It hadn’t sounded nice.
Kathleen and Manjuele had left the shrine together. Sam had waited a minute or two, then scarpered after them. Out in the corridors of the ziggurat, there’d been no sign of the Faction cultist, but after a while Sam had found Bregman again, hurtling down a torchlit passage into the guts of the building.
Bregman’s face was pressed against the floor now. Sam tried to get her attention. ‘Kathleen?’
No reply.
‘Kathleen? What happened?’
No reply.
‘Can you hear me? What did he do to you?’
Instantly, Kathleen’s arm shot out from underneath her. Sam blinked. The woman was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, so the limb was bare from the shoulder down, and the marks along her forearm were in plain view. Four small dots, the colour of burnt flesh. Like someone had attacked Kathleen with a hole-punch.
‘I gave Manjuele what he wanted,’ Kathleen said, flatly.
Hmm. That sounded ominous. ‘And what did he want?’
Kathleen finally looked up. Not at Sam, though. She was staring into the alcove, where the stairway was set.
‘Can you hear him?’ she said.
Startled, Sam looked around, half-expecting to see the Little Brother creeping up on them. There was nobody in sight. ‘He says he can make it stop,’ Kathleen went on. ‘He says there’s no need to be afraid. He says he’s the one the monsters are afraid of. He can make them go away. There’s evil in the universe. Some things must be fought.’
Oh, hell, she was really losing it now. ‘Listen to me, Kathleen. You’re delirious. I don’t know what’s been done to you, but...’ Sam stopped talking. She knew no one was listening.
Kathleen unfolded her limbs, and started pulling herself upright. ‘He says I don’t have to worry about anything. Not even Displacer Syndrome.’
Sam put her hands around the Lieutenant’s shoulders, more as a gesture of support than to help her up. ‘Displacer Syndrome?’ she queried.
‘Displacer Syndrome. Displacer Syndrome.’ Kathleen practically sang the words. ‘UNISYC personnel are fifteen times more likely to commit suicide than the average human being. Did you know that?’
She seemed to be addressing the stairway. Sam shook her head.
‘I’m coming,’ Kathleen concluded. Then she broke free of Sam’s grip, and threw herself down the stairs.
The Doctor hadn’t spoken in ages. He’d strolled along the corridor to the security centre without a second’s hesitation, Qixotl in tow, and nothing had tried to stop him. The defensive systems should have identified him as foreign matter, Qixotl reminded himself, should have ripped him to pieces. Maybe one of the circuits had messed up again.
Or maybe the stories about the Doctor were true. They said he’d been able to wander through deathtraps without a scratch, while he’d been alive. Which kind of contradicted the stories about how he’d died, but there you go.
The Doctor didn’t even stop in his tracks when he saw the full horror of the security centre. He headed straight for the master console, and the pixscreen obediently unfolded itself from the surface at his touch. Qixotl glanced at one of the tapestries on the far wall, the one depicting the sentient dinosaur sawing