Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [49]
‘The creature?’ Trix shook her head. ‘Do you?’
The boy looked her straight in the eye and with utter conviction said, ‘Yes.’
‘Well you’re cleverer than we are, Reo. D’you want to come and meet my friend Fitz? You can tell him about the soldier and where it lives.’
Reo glanced over her shoulder.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
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‘He’s not there any more.’
Trix turned sharply to look. And, of course, Reo was right. Fitz and Farine had gone.
Out in the middle of nowhere, Ake sat on the grass and stared at his fingers.
They were normal again. Well, not quite normal, he knew. But they looked like they’d done before his encounter with the wave. He peered into the distance in the dark. The wave had moved on, spreading out, consuming and converting as it went. The air sparkled and tingled as though swarming with a multitude of tiny fireflies: the energy released from the conversion process, he knew distantly, unconcerned. He dosed his eyes and let himself be mentally subsumed, feeling the echoes of sadness and regret that had swamped him as the wave had rebuilt him.
Unfortunate though it was, Ake thought slowly, it would not be long now until everyone and everything on Espero had been converted. He felt his eyes prick with tears, tears that weren’t his own.
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Chapter 11
‘You’re not planning on killing me too, are you?’
‘Stay here,’ said Trix to Reo, and cautiously went to the corner of the street, peering around it into the square to see if Fitz and Farine had gone back the way they’d come. But there was no sign of them. And as far as she could see down the narrow sidestreet, there was no one at all.
‘Did you see where they went?’ she asked Reo. He nodded, and pointed down the street into the darkness.
‘Come on then – we might still be able to find them if we hurry.’ Trix stood up and started off, only to glance back and see that Reo wasn’t following.
‘Come on Reo,’ she said. ‘We have to find them.’
‘Why?’
‘Eh? Because Fitz is my friend, and if I don’t find him, I’ll be stuck here on this planet.’
Reo just stared up at her with his big brown eyes. She sighed. She couldn’t just leave him, could she? Could she? Maybe she could: it wasn’t as if she knew enough about this place to be much of a guardian. But he was just a little boy, and considering the violence that she’d witnessed earlier, and the night beasts, how could she just leave him?
Trix felt a sudden sense of irritation at the boy’s intrusion, and an ever greater sense of shame at her irritation. She thought of Anji again. Damn.
‘Don’t you have any friends?’ she asked, trying a different tack. ‘You’d want to find them, wouldn’t you, if you lost them?’
‘Not if they ran away from me like yours did,’ he answered without a hint of malice.
Good point. She opened her mouth to say something clever and adult and sensible, but Reo cut in.
‘I’ve lost something,’ he said, his gamin little face looking up at her.
‘What?’
There was an almost imperceptible pause. ‘A toy.’
Great, thought Trix. She was about to get emotionally blackmailed into finding a hula hoop.
‘We can get you a new one,’ she said. ‘A better one!’ This parent stuff was easy, she thought – although not a role she’d ever want to play permanently.
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‘Not better than this.’
‘I’m sure we can.’
Reo stared up at her, his mouth set in a thin, determined line. He wasn’t going to start crying, was he? God, don’t let him start crying.
‘This is a very special toy,’ he said with almost comic solemnity.
‘Did your mummy and daddy buy it for you?’ Trix was getting tired of this now. Every second that Reo kept her here was a few more yards’ distance between her and Fitz.
‘No, but it’s very special. Very valuable.’
It was almost as if the child knew which of Trix’s buttons to press. Granted, the concept of ‘valuable’ to a ten-year-old might amount to nothing more than,
‘Mummy said if I lose it she wouldn’t buy me another’, but there was something knowing, almost calculating, in the way he said it.
Before she knew what she was doing, Trix had asked him how valuable.
‘Probably the