Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [80]
‘Which is?’
‘You’re going to have to bid at the auction. Like everyone else.’
‘Over my dead –’ the Doctor began.
He was interrupted by a snapping, crackling noise from the body of E-Kobalt. The new limbs had finished growing. The crystal had split open at various strategic points across the torso, making way for four thick, tube-like extensions. Not crystalline, the Doctor noted; the limbs looked more like some form of flexible metal. One ended in a pincer, one ended in an open tube not unlike a flame-thrower, and the other two ended in flat plates that might have been feet. Presumably, thought the Doctor, the Kroton had some kind of malleable metallic core. Impressive, but hardly efficient. No wonder the things had to suck out peoples’ neural energies to stay alive.
A low groaning sound issued from E-Kobalt’s head, the one part of its body that hadn’t changed shape during the metamorphosis. Flakes of crystal fell away from the Kroton’s skin, the torso sculpting itself into something smooth and sharp-edged before the Doctor’s eyes.
‘Wakey wakey,’ he muttered, as new sensory systems began to form across E-Kobalt’s body.
***
Sam threw herself at the wall again. The pink stuff stretched under her weight, but it didn’t break. The wall was like a membrane, tough enough to hold her back, but thin enough to let her see shapes moving around on the other side. There, at the centre of the vault, Sam could make out the silver glow of the casket, and the tangle of shadows surrounding it. Kathleen was there, somewhere, lost among the silhouettes of the things that had reached up out of the floor.
The wall hadn’t been there a minute ago. It had grown from the brickwork, like something organic. Sam could see purple veins running through the membrane, pulsing in time to the shrieking of the walls. The exit tunnel was behind her, but something red and sticky had stretched itself across the corridor in front of the stairway, a web of razor-fine fibres that looked to Sam like one of those retinal patterns you saw in biology textbooks.
The floor trembled under her feet. She stood aside, and watched as two thick-stemmed flowers grew from the cracks between the stone slabs. The blooms turned to look at Sam, tiny black eyes squinting out of their half-formed faces. Sam tried to ignore the fact that they looked just like Kathleen.
The slabs shifted again, as new shoots forced themselves up into the light. Sam kept side-stepping them, until she ran out of floor and found herself pressed up against one of the vault’s solid brick walls.
There was no choice, then. She’d have to make a break for it down the corridor, and deal with the retina-web when she came to it. She’d worry about Kathleen later.
Another shoot exploded from the wall by her ear, spraying her with chips of stone. Sam ducked. The shoot swung to and fro above her head, moving from side to side like an elephant’s trunk. Sam didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. If it was searching for something, it was probably searching for her. She didn’t want to give it any clues. Finally, the bud at the end of the shoot burst open.
And there was a baby inside it.
A humanoid baby, the size and shape of an average one-year-old, sculpted out of sticky red biomass. Its skin was a map of clotted veins, and its big black eyes stared out of a fat, fleshy face. Sam almost gagged. The baby floated above her like a helium balloon, a thick umbilical cord connecting its belly to the bud that had spawned it. It rubbed its eyes, with tiny-fingered hands. Then it looked down at Sam.
It was, without question, the most repulsive thing Sam had ever seen. Not least because it was so familiar. Yeah, its skin was the colour of dried blood and it looked like it had been made out of mincemeat. Yeah, all babies were pretty similar anyway. But Sam’s mother had shown her the old photos often enough.