Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [110]
And minutes later, they’d found themselves arriving where the TARDIS had landed. Ahead of them, they could see four of the Imperial Guard in a levicar, and just in front of them were Trove, Sensimi and the other girl.
Trix’s skin was burning; something was wriggling and writhing in her head and down over her chest, and she felt she might burst at any moment. The Imperator shouted something, and she found herself repeating it, distantly, as though someone else was actually speaking. At the back of her head, she was sure she could hear whispering voices, but their words were fuzzy and indistinct. She suddenly felt dizzy, and everything flared brightly around her.
And then the world stopped.
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For a moment, Trix wondered if it was just that they’d reached a peculiar kind of stand-off. But then she saw one of the little mokey things, like Looloo only not dressed up, moving across the grass to Trove in the kind of slow-motion she’d only ever seen in wildlife films. Everything flared brightly in weird pseudo-colours, like a computer-enhanced image.
I HAVE ALTERED YOUR PERCEPTIONS, TRIX said a voice in her head, and it all came flooding back to her in a series of slamming, stuttering shocks: the tiny worm of alienness that had been squirming away inside her, down where she couldn’t see, where she’d been forbidden to look, consolidating its hold on her, grubbing about in her memories, trying to make sense of everything that made her her; forming connections, reaching its little claws into all the strands of her being and pulling them taught, tight, the strings of a puppet, tested out to see how they might make this marionette dance. Reo had had control over her body a long time ago, she knew – picking up all this from the thing in her head in a shadowy sleet of discarded half-thoughts – but had needed the confidence of knowing her mind before it acted openly. Reo wanted to know more about Fitz and the Doctor, how they fitted into all of this, where their loyalties and knowledge lay. And now – too late, of course, for it to be of any possible use
– Trix knew that Reo was surprised and shocked at developments. Although she had no direct access to Reo’s thoughts or memories, she sensed a dark echo of Reo’s concern, at its sudden worry that something it hadn’t expected had happened. The stakes, as far as Reo was concerned, had suddenly been upped, and it could no longer afford the luxury of time spent looking for Trix’s friends. She remembered the boy. Joshua. Joshua.
Dead. She’d left him for dead, there, in that doorway. She’d just left him.
For dead. A rapid flicker of images – of Joshua, his parents, his night-time trip to follow his father, the discovery and burning of the alien ship, Joshua’s finding of the thing in his father’s drawer, the thing that Trix now wore on her chest – strobed across her vision, overlaid on reality.
They went around and around in her head, multiplying themselves like reproducing ghosts until she thought her skull would burst. A babbling chorus of memories from Joshua threatened to rip her sanity to shreds.
YOU CAN DO NOTHING FOR THE BOY NOW said Reo. HE IS DEAD.
You bastard! shrieked Trix silently, struggling hopelessly against the paral-ysis that had overtaken her. You left him to die. He was just a boy, just a little boy.
ALL THINGS MUST DIE. HIS DEATH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN WITH SUFFERING.
That’s not the point! That’s not the bloody point! You made me leave him.
YOU COULD NOT HAVE SAVED HIM Reo said with a calmness that made Trix want to scream. NOTHING COULD HAVE SAVED HIM. HE WAS DEPENDENT UPON
ME. HE WAS MERELY A VEHICLE.
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Like I’m a ‘vehicle’? Is that what you’re saying? That I’d die without you, too?
THE SUBVERSION PROCESS IS NOT COMPLETE YET. ALTHOUGH I NOW HAVE
FULL CONTROL OVER YOUR BODY AND FULL ACCESS TO YOUR MEMORIES, YOU