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By Root 202 0

further apart. The Control creature sensed the growing feeling of isolation and loneliness. It also felt strange and had done ever since the day when, in the depths of its despairing misery, it found it had shed its tail. As Control struggled to understand, it felt only hatred for the one who had become Josiah and from whom it could never escape. But far more than Josiah, it feared the anger of the power they both served: the fulcrum on which both their lives were balanced. If it was woken, they would all burn in the fury of Light. Control clawed at the door from the inside; the prison was open, but the creature was too frightened to go out.

The glare from the membrane became fiercer as the Doctor and Ace took their places beside the crystal slab.

Keeping his distance behind the safety of the gun, Josiah ordered them to drive the extended crystal rods into the console on his instruction.

Squinting across the console from the intensity of the glow, Ace confided, ‘After this I’ll get a job at Sellafield.

It’ll be safer.’

‘Just do what I do when I do it,’ muttered the Doctor.

‘Very helpful,’ she grumbled.

‘Lower the first rod,’ instructed Josiah, but the Doctor was having none of it.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he began like a front-of-curtain, music-hall comic, ‘skeletons in the cupboard, husks in the cellar...’

‘Bats in the belfry!’ chimed in Ace.

Josiah raised his gun as the rumbling of the ship grew louder.

‘Just do it!’ he snarled.

‘Now, now,’ quipped the Doctor. ‘You’ll never evolve into a nice Victorian gentleman if you shout.’

Ace glanced at the figures by the cell door. ‘Did those husks really used to be him?’ she asked. ‘And I thought my family were trouble.’

You should see mine, the Doctor was about to say, but he thought better of it and added, ‘That’s right. Not much improvement on the reptile, is he?’

‘I said now!’ yelled Josiah, taking several steps forward.

‘Now!’ shouted the Doctor and rammed as many of the rods into the slab as he could manage at one go.

Ace followed suit as the Doctor turned and pulled the bronze waste-paper basket from its steam vent on the wall.

The ship roared as a jet of vapour spurted out and caught Josiah full in the face. He stumbled back with a scream, his hands to his eyes and fell to the floor, where he lay scrabbling in the glare for his dropped spectacles.

Ace kicked the gun out of reach as he lunged for it.

‘Nice try,’ she grinned.

For a second she saw his uncovered eyes. Veinless white globes with black spot pupils and no irises stared at her with inhuman loathing.

As the roar of the angry ship subsided into its steady regular pulse, Josiah’s eyes seemed to flicker with palest blue. The glare from the screens and membrane dulled into the faintest glow and Josiah rose unsteadily to recover his composure and face his enemies.

‘I think congratulations are in order,’ said the Doctor expectantly.

‘Congratulations,’ said Ace, just as she caught the first twitching movements of the husks. ‘Maybe not...’ she added as the door to the cell began to creak slowly open.

‘Professor! Here we go again!’

Josiah cried out and began to stumble towards the tunnel and the lift. The husks bellowed and chattered Control’s anger as they staggered forward. The Doctor grabbed the still transfixed Nimrod and, with Ace’s help, dragged the manservant after Josiah.

Through the eyes of the flailing husks, Control saw its chance of escape vanishing. Relinquishing its driving will over them, it darted from its cell. Control’s flying grey rags made it look like a monstrous bride in pursuit of an absconding lover.

The Doctor caught the door as Josiah tried to slide it closed against him. He and Ace bundled the unconscious Nimrod inside the plush compartment and Josiah, seeing the approaching shape, forced the metal gate across.

There was a scream as Control snatched at the closing gap and thrust a filthy, gloved claw into the cramped interior of the lift.

‘Give me my freeness!’ snarled its voice, as the claw lashed the air only inches from the lift’s occupants.

Josiah, his eyes full