Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [111]
HAVE BEEN MUCH HARDER TO SEQUESTER THAN I HAD ANTICIPATED. BUT YOU
ARE NOW MY CARRIER. WITHIN A FEW HOURS, THE PROCESS WILL BE COMPLETE
AND YOUR PERSONA WILL NO LONGER BE REQUIRED.
And then I’ll die? Like Joshua? You’re just some bloody parasite, aren’t you –
a tapeworm, hitching a ride. What the bell are you?
I AM A MAKER, TRIX.
You said that before.
She watched the mokey move a few inches closer to Trove, the rest of the bizarre tableau before her frozen.
WE ARE THE MAKERS OF THE BIOSHIPS, OF TAIN – THE TOY I MENTIONED
EARLIER. I BELIEVE THE MAN WHO THREATENS THE GIRL IS A BOUNTY HUNTER, SENT BY THE OON TO TAKE TAIN. I AM HERE TO ENSURE THAT TAIN RETURNS
TO US.
What are you talking about? Tain? The Oon? Trix’s head was spinning: one moment she was riding to the rescue with Tannalis, Boadicea in an anti-gravity car, and the next she was paralysed, her body taken over by an alien thing on her chest. She wondered whether she’d done anything that she ought to be ashamed of, anything else that Reo had made her do and then forced her to forget.
NO came the Maker’s voice. I HAVE BEEN QUIESCENT SINCE THEN. YOUR
NEURAL STRUCTURE HAS BEEN PARTICULARLY RESISTANT TO SUBVERSION.
Well whoopee for me Trix thought bitterly.
I UNDERSTAND YOUR RELUCTANCE TO SUBMIT CONTROL TO ME said the Maker. BUT IT IS FOR THE BEST.
For whose best? From where I’m sitting, it looks like a pretty uneven-handed deal.
YOU MADE THE CHOICE the parasite whispered, like some sort of vengeful spirit, taunting her. YOU TOOK ME FROM THE BOY WILLINGLY.
Trix felt sick. Really sick. Reo was right – her own greed for what she’d thought of as a camouflage device had led her into this. She’d been so desperate to be anyone other than herself. And now she had her wish: very soon, she’d never be herself again.
Suddenly, as if his conversation with Trix had been nothing more than an aside, a chatting-to-the-neighbours-over-the-garden-fence, Reo said: AND
NOW TROVE MUST BE STOPPED.
And the Maker pressed the ‘play’ button on the world again.
200
Chapter 23
‘Sorry I’m late.’
Trix watched as the mokey suddenly hurtled at full pelt across the grass, as if an invisible lead at which he’d been straining had been cut, and clambered straight up Trove’s leg and on to his arm, the one held against Sensimi’s forehead. With an equally fluid movement, Trove smacked his hand back into the little animal’s face. Trix almost heard the snap of its fragile neck as it dropped to the ground and lay there, dead. Trix thought again of Joshua.
LET ME SHOW YOU WHAT I AM CAPABLE OF NOW said Reo, and Trix’s whole world smeared across her field of vision. One moment she was at Tannalis’s side in the levicar, and the next. . .
There was a rush of air and everything wheeled around her. She had no real control of the movements of her eyes, and the disparity between what her inner ear told her, where she was trying to look and where Reo was actually directing her eyes filled her head and her stomach with nausea. She wanted to throw up, but Reo suppressed it like the most instant dose of Andrew’s Liver Salts she’d ever had.
And then she was landing, perfectly poised, on the grass beneath the car, her legs bent in a springy crouch. She caught up with what her eyes were doing and saw Trove, his arm still around Sensimi’s neck, his hand poised near her head, moving his eyes in slow motion to catch up with her.
MY IMPROVED SENSES ARE OPERATING AT APPROXIMATELY TEN TIMES THEIR
NORMAL SPEED said Reo, with all the suaveness of a used car salesman trying to flog her some boy-toy capable of 0 to 60 in five seconds. SOON, I WILL BE
CAPABLE OF MUCH MORE.
My senses thought Trix. My senses.
She imagined – although she couldn’t be sure – that she’d stayed in the crouch for a fraction of a second before her legs, seemingly more resilient and powerful than before, straightened out, and she almost flew through the air.
Again, the world somersaulted around her, a mad, giddying blur of green and brown and blue. Only as everything righted itself again did Trix realise that, in all probability,