Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [67]
Bump bump.
That might have been her shoulder breaking. Bregman didn’t notice the pain, particularly. She was too busy concentrating on the voice. It was the same voice she’d heard when she’d first arrived at the ziggurat, not exactly inside her head, not exactly outside her head. It was louder now. She guessed she was getting closer to its source.
Bump. Bump bump. Bump.
Sam was somewhere above her... below her... whichever way was up... trotting down the steps and calling out her name. Kathleen. The name sounded funny, for some reason. No one called her Kathleen any more. She was Bregman. Or, Lieutenant. Or, Miss Chicken-Legs, to the rest of the staff at Geneva.
Bump bump.
When had she stopped being Kathleen and started being Bregman? No, look, that wasn’t important now, and besides, the voice was telling her not to worry about it. It was staring into her eyes (yeah, so voices couldn’t actually stare, so what?), smiling gently (and they couldn’t smile, either, but again, so what?). All she had to do, the voice explained, was reach its body. It needed company. Human company. It had a message, from the future, but only a human being would be able to understand it.
No more bumps.
She’d reached a landing, on the first floor below ground level. The stone underneath her was spattered with blood, probably her own. For a moment, she lost track of the voice, and that was when she noticed the pain. The nerves started untwisting in her shoulders and legs. She felt blood trickling over her lips. For the first time since she’d started falling, she seriously considered screaming in agony.
But then the voice spoke again. Down, it insisted. The next level down. Bregman peered across the landing, and saw the steps stretching out in front of her. She heard Sam stepping onto the landing behind her, breathing heavily.
‘What are you –’ Sam began, but she shut up when Bregman threw herself down the next flight of stairs.
Cousin Justine ordered Manjuele to help get Trask onto his feet, which didn’t exactly put the little Brother in a good mood. Manjuele got a good whiff of the dead guy’s BO while he was doing it. The stiff didn’t smell of putrefaction or old meat or anything, but it wasn’t a nice experience. Like sniffing chemicals. Kind of flat. Kind of stale.
Trask didn’t even thank him, once he was up and about. He just said something about the Time Lord being dangerous, then stomped out through the doorway. Justine kept her eyes fixed on the zombie as he lurched off down the corridor. She looked like she was going to start slobbering any minute.
Wouldn’t that be typical, thought Manjuele, if she had the hots for a stiff? Bitch must have thought she was too good for anyone living and breathing. He’d been trying to get into the Cousin’s pants for months, first by playing the humble-but-obedient servant, then resorting to the old rough-but-good-natured-street-urchin act. So far, no progress. Sure, she was his Cousin, she was supposed to be his elder in the family, but what the hell?
‘Got a present for you,’ he said.
Justine noticed him, at last. Manjuele stuck his hand into his pocket, and pulled it out with the biosampler wrapped around the knuckles. He waved it in front of the Cousin’s eyes, so she could see how full the collection valves were.
‘Human girl,’ he said. ‘Found her in the shr–’
‘No.’ Justine put her finger to her lips. ‘Not here.’
Manjuele looked over his shoulder. Homunculette lay on the floor at the other side of the room, face-down in a puddle of his own spit. The Time Lord wasn’t unconscious, as such, but his senses weren’t going to be doing much work for the next couple of minutes. Justine had gone straight for the major neck nerves. They were big on Time Lord anatomy, back on Dronid. ‘Don’t worry ’bout him. He’s not gonna hear a thing.’
‘Not