Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [10]
He sat staring at the dead screens. Finally he said aloud,
‘That wasn’t her.’ He shivered. He didn’t need another ghost.
‘That wasn’t her,’ he said again. ‘That was imagination. That was stress. That was what they want. Do they think they’re going to get to me like that? They’re not going to get to me like that.’
He punched the intercom pad. ‘Cailio? In here.’
If they thought a security screw-up and a bunch of bad publicity was going to break him and keep him off the Company Board they had badly underestimated Kiy Uvanov. They might not know it but they were dealing with a man who had killed killer robots. Nothing frightened him. Nothing got to him.
Cailio Techlan padded back in. She was smiling. Why, Uvanov thought to himself, was that stuck-up little aristo bitch laughing at him?
Chapter Two
The Doctor was fascinated. In the chamber he was observing the liquid had drained away totally and the six bodies lay on the mesh floor, flopping and twitching as one and silently opening and closing their mouths like so many stranded fish. He thought he could hear pumps somewhere below the gantry and he was coming to the conclusion that what he was seeing here might be a group medical facility or an industrial process of some sort. Or just possibly both.
Trying to get a better view of the bottom of the chamber, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the observation port. He felt the smooth click of the release catch as the front of the chamber pushed open slightly and then began to slide back.
He stepped away from it and looked around. Everywhere in the vast dome on every level the chambers were opening. There was a sudden faintly acrid smell, which reminded the Doctor of hot sea water and rotting seaweed. It occurred to him suddenly that whatever was happening might be better viewed from a safe distance and he hurried back to the ladder and shinned down to the floor. Above him figures were beginning to shamble out of the chambers. Unnaturally quiet, they milled about aimlessly on the gantries. For the first time since he began watching them the Doctor realised, they were moving independently of one another. At least they were until they saw him - when the aimlessness and the independence immediately vanished. They all stared down at him. There were he estimated two hundred or more of them.
‘Hullo,’ he called out, raising his right hand in what he hoped was an obviously friendly and non-threatening way. ‘I’m the Doctor. Who are you?’ There was no response or movement from anyone. ‘Don’t all speak at once.’ None of them showed any sign of having heard him. ‘Could you grunt maybe?’ He smiled his best smile. ‘Everyone doesn’t have to grunt of course, you could just nominate a gruntsperson.’ He looked around at the gantries lined with staring people. ‘Not so much as a smirk,’
he said. ‘Tough house, I think is the phrase.’ He lowered his hand and shrugged. ‘What happens now, I wonder?’
As a group the two hundred or more not quite identical individuals moved to the ladders with a new purpose and a silent determination, and started climbing down.
‘Not a good audience reaction, I feel,’ the Doctor said. He could not be sure but as far as he could see their purpose was to reach him. He had never been comfortable with crowds - they were too easily turned into mobs and this crowd seemed to have a head start in that direction. He rapidly revised his estimate of what constituted a safe distance and decided that leaving in the TARDIS was the sensible option. The problem was he couldn’t leave without Leela and at that moment he had no idea where she was.
She was disarmed and on her hands and knees and the heavyset security operative was taking too much pleasure