Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [86]
‘What’s happened here?’ he said, more to himself than to Tegan. But she answered, her voice a mumble, her eyes gazing into the middle distance.
‘We took them by surprise. There was so much anger in us.
We needed to kill. It was good. Made us feel so good. But we didn’t kill them all. We... we wouldn’t let ourselves kill them all. We took some. They became us. But the killing. It stopped us hurting. For a little while.’
The block of ice in his stomach extended tendrils along his limbs and up his back. His instinct was to shake Tegan out of her fugue, but his rationale urged him to use the situation to his advantage, to glean as much information as he could.
‘Who are we?’ he asked gently.
‘We are Xaranti,’ she replied.
‘What happened to the other people in the hospital? The ones who escaped. Where did they go?’
Her eyes widened a little. ‘They went up. They got away from us. We couldn’t catch them.’
‘Up?’ Mike said. ‘Up where?’
‘To the top.’
‘The top of the building?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s up there?’
Her face remained deadpan and he thought she’d switched off. Then she said, ‘We couldn’t get through. There were barriers.’
Mike pondered for a moment. It seemed his initial theory that half the patients had been killed by the others had been wrong. Perhaps part of the Xaranti plan had been to keep those infected out of hospital - and indeed away from other environments and situations where their affliction may have been discovered - until a stranglehold had been established on the town. Which meant that the missing patients had been infected during, not before, the Xaranti attack.
‘Tegan,’ he said now, his voice quiet but intense, ‘Tegan, can you hear me?’
She stared at him, a tiny frown appearing, her eyes swirling with confusion.
‘You are Tegan Jovanka,’ Mike said firmly. ‘You are Tegan Jovanka and an alien force is trying to take over your mind.
But you’re strong, Tegan. You can fight it. Fight it, Tegan.’
The frown became a wince of pain. Tegan snatched her hands from the wheelchair grips as if they had become hot and rubbed at her forehead as though trying to erase a stain from her skin - or from beneath it.
‘I am... we are... no, I am Tegan,’ she gasped. Her eyes crinkled into slits and her mouth stretched wide to reveal her clenched teeth. She gave a little scream and fell forward.
Mike caught her smartly. She opened her eyes and looked at him, her face etched with fear and dismay.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked softly.
Her face crumpled and she began to sob, clutching at him.
‘So scared,’ she whimpered. ‘I don’t want... this to... happen to me again.’
‘I know,’ Mike said, ‘I know.’ He held her until her sobs had subsided. At last he said, ‘Are you ready to go on?’
‘Where?’
‘To the top of the building. That’s where everyone is.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You told me. When you were... when you had your funny turn. It’s like you’d clicked in to their thinking again for a minute.’
She was silent, finding the information unpalatable. Finally she said, ‘I’m still useful for something then, at least.’
He wasn’t sure how to reply, so he gave her a squeeze instead. They wheeled the Doctor out of the ward and across to the lifts. The topmost button was 12, which Mike pressed.
As the lift approached their destination he raised his gun, pointing it at the opening doors.
The corridor ahead was as featureless as the rest they had seen. It was silent and deserted, too. Mike stepped out first, checking around, then motioned for Tegan to follow with the Doctor. To their left, at the end of the corridor, were the stairs that led down to each of the lower floors. To their right, the corridor was foreshortened by a huge pair of vault-like doors. In large red stencilled letters on