Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [105]
Gilliam just stood there watching the strange proceedings. Only now did she fully take in her surroundings. She was in some kind of hospital. It looked old fashioned and uncared for. Forgotten. The abandoned ward was occupied with the strangest mix of people. Gilliam grimaced at the strange, faceless creatures which had stumbled, disorientated, to the floor after she had confronted Moriah. They now lay twitching and spasming on the linoleum floor.
Puppets with their strings cut.
But despite all this strangeness, Gilliam knew that she had come home. This was Earth. Probably the twentieth century, although she couldn’t say exactly when.
She was home.
The little man in the tweed jacket came bounding over, then stopped a few feet in front of her, reigning in his enthusiasm. There could be no mistaking him. He’d changed of course. There wasn’t anything left of the man she had known and travelled with. She wouldn’t have recognized him from a description or even a photograph. But when she had walked into the room 182
and seen him confronting Moriah she had known immediately. Well after all, who else would be confronting a monster with only an umbrella for a weapon?
Only the Doctor. The person who had abandoned her without a word on an alien planet with a man she didn’t love.
‘Hello, Doctor,’ she said, careful to keep her voice even.
‘Hello, Peri,’ the Doctor replied, stepping forward a little cautiously. ‘How are you?’
She slapped him so hard that he tumbled to the floor.
After the last of the dormant Toys had been carried through the secret doorway in Moriah’s quarters, they had barricaded themselves in the underground cavern. There was nothing to do now but wait for the Doctor to fix Moriah’s glass spheres so they could transport everyone back to London.
Jack rubbed his aching arms as he sat quietly, watching the Doctor busy himself with the strange fiery spheres. It had been hard work moving all the dormant Toys. It took two people ten minutes to carry one of the frozen mannequins from the ward down to the circle of glass spheres in the cave. If anyone remained in contact with a Toy for more than a few minutes, it would start to come alive, empathically responding to them. Preparing to transform itself into. . . Jack shivered and tried to put the thought out of his mind.
They’d left Moriah in a straitjacket in the same cell in which Jack and Mikey had been imprisoned. Jack grinned to himself, pleased that their enemy was getting a taste of his own medicine.
The woman who called herself Gilliam was sitting on an outcrop of rock a few feet away from Jack. She and the Doctor had barely exchanged a word since she had slapped him across the face. Every few minutes the Doctor would sneak a look over to where the woman was sitting, but she never once met his gaze.
Dennis was still unconscious from the general anesthetic. He lay on the rough ground with his head resting on Mikey’s lap. Mickey smiled at Jack as he approached and the two boys sat and talked for a little while. Jack wanted to ask Mikey how he felt about his little ‘brother’ now that he knew who or rather what he was, but he couldn’t find a way of introducing the topic into the conversation.
Jack was surprised when the woman, Gilliam, wandered over.
‘Hi,’ she said, trying to sound amiable, although Jack got the impression that she was uncomfortable about something.
Jack looked up at her and smiled. She was a striking woman, probably in her early forties, maybe a bit older. Her face was heavily lined around her eyes from the sun.
‘I take it that you’re the latest?’ she asked in her nasal American accent.
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Jack frowned. ‘Latest what?’
She nodded over to the Doctor. ‘Don’t you travel with him?’
‘Travel? Where to?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ She was about to move away when something