Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [66]
The Doctor’s grey eyes probed her for a long moment, and then he turned back to the window, apparently satisfied with her reply. ‘So who did? Moriah?’
‘Doctor, don’t confuse the Toys with human beings. We’re in the middle of deactivating all the Toys. Destroying them. It’s not as if they’re real. They can’t be murdered. If Moriah is deactivating the Toys which have escaped then he’s acting within his remit. But I can’t believe he could have anything to do with you being brought here or kidnapping anyone else off the streets.’
‘Can’t believe it or won’t?’ the Doctor snapped.
‘There must be a rational explanation.’ Julia was aware that she was almost pleading.
‘Of course there is,’ a new, deep voice whispered from the doorway.
Julia whirled round to face the newcomer. Moriah stood by the open door to the ward, his large body almost filling the doorway. His heavy features set into a frown. Julia was almost overcome with relief: perhaps now this whole misunderstanding could be cleared up?
‘Director,’ she began, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. The strangest thing appears to have happened. . . ’ Her voice trailed away and she found herself completely lost for words. How could she possibly explain the events of the morning? She was searching for the right phrase – for any damn phrase! – to introduce the Doctor, when she heard a door behind her swing closed.
The Doctor had vanished.
Patsy’s plan was insanely dangerous and was going to get them all killed, but Chris hadn’t been able to come up with anything better at the time. As he lowered himself, gingerly, out of the window of the door in the guard’s van, he was suddenly deluged with alternative possibilities.
111
The train must have been travelling at least sixty miles an hour. At this speed, the wind was like a hurricane, howling in his ears, ripping through his clothes, pushing him back along the side of the train. It felt as if someone had turned a firefighter’s hose on him.
He risked a quick glance up. Patsy was staring at him, a look of deep concern on her face. She gave him the thumbs up and then disappeared back inside.
This wasn’t going to work.
There was a short ladder just to the right of him, designed to give engineers access to the roof of the train. Although, Chris suspected, not usually when the train was travelling at top speed. He reached out with his right hand, leaving himself hanging from the window with his left. The ladder was just out of reach.
Typical.
He was going to have to swing for it. One handed and into the wind. No trouble. At this speed he would be torn to shreds by the ground if he fell.
Pulling up on his left arm, he threw his weight against the wind and stretched out with his right. His fingers touched the edge of the ladder, and he scrabbled desperately for a grip. For a second he thought he was going to fall back, but his grip held and he pulled himself across until he was hanging from the ladder with both hands and he anchored his feet on a rung.
For a long moment, he allowed himself to stand on the ladder, fighting against the wind which threatened to rip him from it. Then he lowered himself down until he was level with the huge metal wheels of the train. The mechanism which locked the two carriages together was huge and covered in old, dry grease. If he had a laser cutter he could burn through the old metal in seconds, allowing the last carriage to separate from the train.
But he didn’t have a laser. Only a wrench Patsy had liberated from the guard’s locker. He stepped from the ladder on to a small ledge between the two carriages. He was partially sheltered from the wind and he could concentrate on his task.
Patsy’s plan depended upon him being able to separate the guard’s van from the other carriages of the train. It had made sense in theory. She would act as bait, luring the faceless creature into the last carriage. Assuming the creature complied, she would then climb on to the roof of the train and cross on to the penultimate carriage and signal Chris to separate it from the last.
Well, it had