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By Root 280 0

herself a little higher so she was half-sitting on the dresser. She really ought to get a chair, she thought for the umpteenth time since they had relocated to the hotel. They had started out working in the Doctor’s back room but the view from the window, the dark gloom of the so-called lightwell had depressed them too much. The Doctor had likened it to his basement flat, gathered their stuff and barged into her room. At least here they could open the French windows and watch Las Rambles. If she’d got around to getting a chair, she could have sat by the window. Leaning over the verdigris Modernista rail for hours. She pushed herself off the dresser and walked over to the windows. The street was sparsely lit, the first pale green leaves on the trees lit from below. She could pretend she was in Paris in the springtime, so long as she didn’t look down.

‘Anji?’ The Doctor had his very reasonable voice on, the one that lured you into revealing stuff best kept private. She didn’t particularly want to detail it all but he’d been gently pushing ever since Jueves had left. So she started, trying to explain how she started to respond by instinct, not reason. She berated herself on her stupid decisions and tried to explain the creature she saw.

‘At first, it was just a shape, something indistinct. Once I caught up with Eleana though it became more defined. I thought it might be a civil guard, but it didn’t move right. It was if it was leaving echoes of itself behind it. You know like when you drag a mouse across the screen but it leaves a trail because resources are low? Like that.’

The Doctor had moved back to their map and was looking at the list of stories connected with the parc. ‘That doesn’t fit with what anyone else has said.’

‘Nothing does! That’s the whole damn problem!’

‘No, no. You see, if you look at other accounts they all know what they saw, or thought they saw. There’s the odd overlap: a woman in Eixample claimed a statue was watching her, another claimed his carved balcony came to life. The two aren’t the same event but they are internally consistent. You didn’t see something definite, you saw traces of something else.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning maybe I was on the right track using the TARDIS to search for anomalies!’ He almost bounced as he crossed to the window and gripped her arms. He shook her slightly. ‘I was on the right track – we can perceive this because we’re slightly dislocated.’

He beamed at her, the first genuine big smile since November. She’d have enjoyed seeing it more if he would stop shaking her: she thought he’d be dislocating her shoulders if this kept up. And she didn’t want to see his face fall, not now that he was animated at last, but...

‘But the TARDIS isn’t working, Doctor.’

She expected it to be like kicking a puppy but all he did was release her arms. From the street shouts were echoing, distorting. She didn’t try to listen for once but watched the Doctor as he paced, his hands describing lazy arcs as he tried to articulate his thoughts.

‘Yes, but maybe there’s a reason for that. An external reason. I’ve been assuming something is intrinsically wrong with the girl, but what if she is just can’t handle the data coming in? Just like you with the whatever it was in the parc! I’ve been looking in the wrong place. You were right, Anji. The solution is here, in these snippets of people’s lives and not in wires or books.’

Anji realised she was grinning too, not least because he’d admitted she might have had the right approach. She hugged herself, holding the satisfied feeling tight.

‘So...?’ she asked.

The hammering on the door made them both jump. Anji realised the shouts in the street were getting louder, more coordinated. Five months in this city had taught her to recognise the sound of an angry mob. She’d not been paying attention. She quickly closed the windows to Las Rambles and moved away from it. The Doctor had flattened himself against the wall next to the door. They were getting far too used to this. She knelt down behind the bed, ready to duck under it at the sign of trouble.