Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [82]
It took him the first few hours of the evening to get all the wiring reconnected and tucked back away. Then another half an hour digging through the ‘recycle bin’ of electronics – one of the few things there was access to – until he found the bit of discarded junk he was looking for. He sat cross-legged on the floor, smudging dirt on his face without realising it, as he painstakingly traced each connection through and double-checked. Finally, he switched the new addition on, with a muttered ‘good luck’ and crossed fingers behind his back.
A chunky green LED flickered briefly and the Doctor’s breath caught.
The first sliver of paper was spat from the slot on the front. The ticker-printer was loaded then and he’d got the connections right, despite the lack of a circuit diagram or a user’s manual. Not that the lack of those had stopped him before. Peering closer, he saw that the first inch of paper was blank. Nothing. He released his breath in a sigh. He’d hoped that the TARDIS still retained all the data she had found before the shutdown. The search must have been running for at least half an hour before his incident at the Hotel. The amount of data already retrieved in that time... and maybe even the data that had caused the problem. He’d hoped that he could re-route the emergency power enough to dump all of that data out of her memory, albeit in a highly crude form. Augment Anji’s hard-found information.
The ticker thundered into life.
The mechanical clacking echoed round the stale room as the tape was spat out at high speed. The Doctor caught the first few feet in his hands, fed it through as he read it. Yes! It was the data. He started to smile, then to grin. It was here. All the time the information they had needed was here but he’d been too caught up to see it. The tape began to whirl around him as he skimmed it faster and faster, laughing.
* * *
Fitz stared at the antique rifle in his hands.
He held it lightly, gingerly, unwilling to make full contact. Joaquín slapped him on the back cheerfully. ‘Nothing will happen. Enjoy the view.’
Fitz glanced about, cautiously putting the old Mauser down on the copper roof. He turned the collar of his coat up. Dawn had arrived barely an hour before, the sky pale yellow off the coast. From here, Fitz could see the dark line of the Med through breaks in the city’s skyline. It was still chill enough that he could see his breath as faint mist and for him to wish he hadn’t left his scrounged survival kit back in the Doctor’s hotel room.
An hour ago he had been relatively warm, crammed in a first floor room of the sprawling POUM buildings. All night people had come and gone, ducking rapidly in from the deathly quiet street. Inside, they would hear the clatter of running footsteps, pausing every few feet to duck into shelter, then on again. The odd shout or fusillade of bullets. Then noise down in the foyer and more people pushing into the warmth of the crowded room. Fitz had found a corner and tried to sleep, hunched up and wanting to lie out his full length. But every time he closed his eyes, the images were still there behind them. Looped reminders of what he had seen replaying again and again. In the repeats he’d always find the comment that would have Sasha revealing all. Fitz Kreiner, Ace of Spies. He’d imagine what would have happened if he had done something different, how many lives he might have saved. Or how he might have died in the firestorm at Guernica. He hadn’t managed to sleep properly.
Then Luiz had nudged him, pointing for him to look out of the window. On the street people,