Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [96]
Her head swung from side to side, waiting for the Doctor to spring out from somewhere – even from the sluggish water of the canal. A pair of geese ran out of their way. UNSAFE
ICE, warned a sign. A guy riding a bike glanced at them and sped away in panic.
Now Luis was leading her, his cool fingers still intertwined with hers. She understood now that there was nothing left of her friend; she was being pulled along by an alien, not a human. A machine built out of the ruins of Luis’s brain, using his neurons for scrap. There were so many things she needed to think about. What the Doctor had told her about the eggs. About whoever had come up with this technology in the first place. About what Luis was doing to her mind, to her brain. But she couldn’t think about any of it now They had to get rid of the Doctor. And then they would go somewhere quiet, and she would be able to sort it all out.
A side path split away from the towpath. Luis didn’t hesitate, turning onto a wooden bridge that crossed the first gush of the Potomac. He stopped partway across, turning his head slowly, like someone moving the aerial on top of a TV.
Maybe the rocks were getting in the way: everything here was stone, slashed and sliced and shattered by the water. It seethed beneath the bridge in patterns as complex as the static on a screen, forming miniature whirlpools, little channels, swirling backwaters.
Suddenly Luis was moving again. The bridge became a raised walkway across an island of grey rocks and grey trees.
There was no-one here. Swan wanted to stand still for a moment, to sit down and rest. Everything was lit up with winter sunshine, fresh and cold and clear, as though frozen in crystal. A single raptor drifted overhead, black wings spread wide. It folded itself into a tree as they ran by.
There was a second bridge, this time over a rocky gully where only a trickle ran through. ‘Stop,’ said Swan quietly.
Luis stopped in his tracks, staring intently up ahead.
‘Wait here for one minute,’ she murmured. ‘Then follow me.’
She went forward. How far did the wooden trail lead? She could hear furious white noise ahead, the sound of the Great Falls. The Doctor was running out of dry land.
The trail ran out, suddenly, turning into a wide wooden platform on the edge of a cliff. There was a huge rock in the centre. Swan edged forward in case the Doctor might be crouching behind it, keeping the shotgun at the ready. But there was no-one here. Swan barely glanced at the Falls themselves, a gorge a hundred feet wide, a great flat expanse of rock being demolished by violent water.
He must have left the trail. The only cover was the boardwalk; everything else was raw trees and rocks tumbled like dice. But if he was down there, hidden by the wood, he couldn’t see her. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
this was crossing the bridge behind her. She decided to move things along. She pointed the shotgun down at the planks and pulled the trigger.
Wooden, shrapnel and smoke exploded up around her. She dodged back, cursing, blinded for a moment by a rain of splinters. She batted them out of her face with her gloves.
The Doctor appeared from beneath the platform on the far side. He held a ball of plastic in his hand. He stared at her: where was Luis? Why weren’t they together? In that split-second, Swan knew she had the drop on him. Behind her, Luis stepped up onto the platform.
Look Ma – top of the food chain!
‘ Do it,’ screamed Swan, but Luis already was.
It was like sticking your thumb into the torn wires at the back of an electric kettle. It was like jamming your head inside a bell and then striking it as hard as you could. It was like putting on headphones and pressing ‘play’ without realising the volume is turned all the way up. It was the feeling of the circuitry printed inside your head getting ready to shift and change.
There was a crucial instant, like the moment of unbalance on a tightrope, when the Doctor was about to fall. Mentally flailing for anything to grab onto, anything