Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [41]
That happens sometimes. You must let me look at it.’ He sat down on the arm of the armchair and leaned forward, bending his long body towards Ace.
At the word ‘radiation’ she had begun rolling up her sleeve and now she was proffering her bare arm to Henbest. Now that he mentioned it, Ace thought she could see a certain flushing of the skin, the beginning of a rash. . . She looked up at Henbest.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she said.
Henbest had opened the white metal case and taken out a syringe. A yellowish liquid slopped in the barrel of the syringe. The needle caught the light as Henbest lifted it.
He leaned forward and plunged the syringe into her arm.
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Chapter Six
A Warm Night
Ace saw her blood go back into the syringe and the yellow stuff from the syringe go into her arm. She was already reaching to push Henbest away, to get the syringe out of her flesh, but she was much too late. Henbest backed quickly away from her, dodging her blow, and leaving the syringe jutting comically from her arm. Ace stared at it. She reached down to touch it.
‘Careful,’ said Henbest. ‘Don’t break the needle. You’ll get an infection.’
Ace carefully pulled the syringe from her arm. Then she wondered what to do with it. Then it seemed too heavy to hold, so she dropped it on the floor. The syringe fell softly on the carpet at her feet. Ace sat back in her comfortable armchair and looked at John Henbest.
Henbest seemed to be moving away from her on a receding tide of light. He rose from his chair and fought the tide of light, slowly wading towards her.
He bent over the sofa and grabbed her under her armpits and lifted her in a businesslike fashion, like he was shifting a sack of potatoes. Henbest moved her from the armchair to the sofa. He fussily arranged the cushions behind her head. At one point Ace’s head lolled back helplessly and she found herself staring deeply, helplessly into the tiny weave of the fleurs-de-lys fabric of a cushion before he carefully lifted her head again so she could see the room.
She saw him go to his desk and sit down and pick up his phone. Before he could speak into it, there was the sound of the door opening and then the sound of someone coming in. Major Butcher stepped into view. Henbest set the phone down. ‘I was just about to call you. She’s ready for interrogation.’
Henbest reached into his desk and took out another case, one coated in black rubber this time, as if designed to survive being dropped in the ocean.
He took out another syringe. ‘The final ingredient in the cocktail that we want to mix in this young lady’s bloodstream.’
He came forward and gave Ace another injection. She didn’t resist. She couldn’t. As soon as she received the second injection her eyes began to drift shut. She heard Major Butcher say, ‘Shouldn’t you swab her arm with alcohol before you do that?’
‘Which one of us has a medical degree?’ said Henbest petulantly.
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Then Ace’s eyes closed and she was lost in a warm floating darkness, listening to voices echo around her.
Ace woke up to find the Doctor looking down at her. She knew right away from his expression that something was wrong. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘How much do you remember?’
Ace felt a twinge of pain in her right arm and looked down to see that the sleeve of her blouse was rolled up and there on the inside of her arm were two pink blotches and two tiny heads of dried blood. The pink blotches already showed signs of darkening into bruises. ‘The bastard. He said something about a radiation rash. Then before I could stop him, he was injecting me.’
‘And nothing after that?’
‘Just a blur. What did he give me?’
‘He would probably call it truth serum.’
‘So I might have told him something.’
The Doctor chuckled. ‘I imagine just enough to confuse them.’
‘Them?’
‘Major Butcher was there, too.’
‘When you rescued me you mean,’ said Ace, sitting up. ‘Thanks for that, by the way.’ Looking around, she was surprised to see that they were sitting in Cosmic Ray’s front room. ‘You