Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [58]
Vael gripped her shoulder and pulled her forward. "Process. It's Vael Phazel. I've brought you the alternative. This is the source of disruption to the Time you planned. I promised you I'd bring it."
Ace wrenched his hand away. "You bastard!"
The Process completed a somersault and leaned its second head towards her. The circle of its mouth formed a lipless pout.
Ace was revolted. She fought off a desire to run, even to fling herself off the platform to get away from the monster.
"Is this the alternative?" grated the Process. The monster constantly swayed with the same predatory nervous energy that Ace had seen in polar bears at the zoo. And they were supposed to be mad as well.
"I found it searching for the Doctor," Vael added.
"Where's Shonnzi?" demanded Ace.
The vile head swung closer to Ace and declaimed, "The Doctor. The Process destroys him at the World's Beginning!"
"Like hell!" Ace retaliated. She wondered what time the ghostly clock showed now. Was it still 11:56?
"The Future, it was stolen from the Process by the Doctor!"
"Good!"
"And now you've found it again," insisted Vael. "Don't you recognize the source of the disruption when you see it?"
He gripped Ace's arms tightly, his fingers pinched the skin through her jacket. The Process gurgled as it leaned in still closer. She turned away her head from the stench.
"This disruption, it will be cut off at its source." It arched back its head and unleashed a rasping howl of triumph which rang in the girders. "The stolen Future, when it is secured, the Process will be complete at last!"
Vael shoved Ace on to the centre of the platform. Metal clanked as the girders over the platform tilted backwards. She realized too late that both the Process and Vael had moved to the edge of the area. Wheels turned as a steel spindle lowered through the opened canopy.
She ran at Vael with a shout, but be sent her sprawling backwards. Above her, the spindle began to turn at a ferocious velocity. It threw out a filament of translucent thread that glittered as it fell. As fine as a single hair but expelled at such speed that it coiled around Ace in a frantic spiral. It clung to her, stinging as it wound her in a sparkling cocoon.
The cat walked through the entrance to the Tower as if it owned the place.
It sauntered past a sentry, ignoring the stare of twenty-four clustered eyelets. When the clumsy guard came lumbering after it, the cat turned and spat an angry warning. It dodged the lunging claws with the degree of elegance that only a cat can muster, and swiped at the heavy boot as it shot between the frustrated guard's legs.
The cat was very particular about who picked it up. Only Pilots had that privilege.
Behind it, the guard was chirruping urgent messages to its comrades. The response came thundering up the tunnel to meet the intruder.
Intruder? What audacity! What presumption!
The cat slipped between the iron ribs. It sat out of reach, so elegant among the clanking mechanisms of the excrescent growth that fouled its world.
The guards gathered, staring through the gap, trilling in anger at their tormentor until a sudden new presence blotted out the starlight in the main doorway.
The dark apparition passed the Tower's threshold. It moved unerringly forward with a terrible grace, and the guards shrank before its pall of shadow. Step by step, along the cold passages of metal bones. A black flame, an embodiment of night, invoked by the terror from which all phantoms are born.
The mechanisms jolted and grated. The spindle jammed in a shower of sparks and a startling silence fell across the Tower. The thread from the spindle snapped.
Ace crouched on the platform floor trying to catch her breath through the shroud that bound her. She heard the Process croak with rage. Repeatedly it ordered for the work to continue, but the machines were unresponsive.
Angling her head against the tight stretch of the filament, she was able to see out across the platform.
The Process was swinging its head through a wide arc as if it was