Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [20]
‘You seem to have fainted,’ the youth dressed a bit like a robot said.
‘Did you see the robot?’ Poul asked.
‘What?’ the youth bent closer. ‘What did you say?’
‘There was a robot,’ Poul said more loudly. ‘Did you see the robot?’
The youth shook his head and shrugged. ‘Can you move?’
He offered his hand.
Poul took the hand and struggled to get to his feet. He was giddy and nauseous. He could feel the sweat, slippery cold on his forehead and neck. ‘It tried to kill me,’ he said.
The youth hesitated. ‘Dressed as a robot?’ he asked uncomfortably.
‘No, no. Not like you,’ Poul reassured him. ‘It was a robot. It told me it had been sent to kill me.’
‘A robot said it had been sent to kill you?’
‘It had been following me.’
‘Listen, Topmaster,’ the youth said. ‘Whatever you took?
Don’t take any more of it, it doesn’t agree with you.’
Poul nodded and then because it made everything move and tilt and he had to grab the youth’s arm to steady himself he stopped nodding and said, ‘Thanks. I’ll dilute it more next time.’
‘You really should get yourself checked over.’
Poul did his best to smile. The boy obviously still wanted to call him a medVoc and what with all the babbling about killer robots if he had a screaming fit at the approach of a robot paramedic he would probably spend the rest of his life in an isolation unit. ‘I’m fine now I appreciate your help. I’ll go over to that refreshment arcade,’ he gestured vaguely back over his shoulder, ‘and get my breath back.’
‘Refreshment arcade?’ the youth said. ‘What refreshment arcade?’
Poul turned to look at the arcade where he had sat watching the robot watching him - was it really a robot? Already he had started to doubt it himself. The refreshment arcade where he had sat at the table in the front. The refreshment arcade that wasn’t there.
He looked around more carefully. This wasn’t where he had confronted the thing or the man, it must have been a man -
Ander Poul I have been sent to kill you - what’s in a voice, a voice told you nothing. This wasn’t the place. This wasn’t on the route he took to his apartment block. Where was this? Just in time he stopped himself from saying: where am I? and instead he said,
‘It’s a few streets over that way.’ He patted the boy’s shoulder.
‘Bit of a pit. Not to everyone’s taste. I’ll be glad to buy you a beaker of the sweet-wine special though..’
He was relieved to see that he had pitched it just about right.
It was the boy’s turn to make clumsy excuses to get away. As Poul watched him hurry off, dressed in the robot fashion and walking the fashionable robot walk, it seemed more than reasonable that he had been mistaken. Robots could not kill.
Robots could not even threaten to kill. It was a man. It was a man pretending to be a robot. It was the only explanation. Very well, so how had he got here and more to the point where exactly was it?
Now that he looked, he could see that he was on the fringes of a nondescript commercial zone. Small manufactories and markets, all closed and shuttered. He looked around for identification markers. It should not be a problem. He knew most of the city. It was just a case of orientating himself.
And why would someone want to frighten him like that anyway? Maybe it was a street robbery scam. He felt through the pockets of his jerkin. There was nothing missing. In fact there was something in one of the pockets that he could not remember being there. It was some sort of coin. He pulled out the small disc of iridescent red plastic. He examined it carefully.
What was it? He knew what it was if only he could remember.
What did they call it? That was it, right, yes. That was what they called it. They called it a corpse marker. It was a robot deactivation disc.
He barely heard himself screaming.
She woke up in darkness and immediately the silence