Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [90]
They were still wary. Although the Communists were leaving, a new assault was underway. The lines hummed with talk of how the anarchists and militia were fifth columnists, funded by the Germans to create havoc and distract the legitimate government from the war effort. Rumours of retaliatory strikes spread, a cycle of tit-for‐tat shootings that would snipe away at the fragile alliance. Even after all this time, the Doctor wondered how people could be persuaded to let go of the violence. It was tempting, always, just to lash out in pain. He knew he had done it in his past, succumbed to that desire for swift revenge, the kick or the shaking that expressed that hurt. Five hundred dead though, and now rising again.
There was no sign of Anji downstairs, although one of the bleary-eyed men on the machine gun nest remembered her passing him on the stairs. But that had been days ago, before the fighting broke out. In the main exchange hall, the manager had looked distracted. He’d waved his hand and suggested the Doctor look about for himself. The man had been chewing his thumbnail, cajoling various people down the phone lines, demanding reassurances that Salas was gone. The Doctor had briefly wondered about asking if the man was aware there was something alive within the phone system. Then he had looked again at the frazzled nerves and decided not to bother.
Instead he’d glanced at the schematic of the building’s wiring, upside-down and coffee-stained, taking in the complexity of lines and connections quickly. There had been a single line that didn’t fit: a single connection permanently on, one end leading up into the attic instead of down the main trunk lines. He wondered what would happen if he tugged on it? Grinning, he’d bounded up the narrow, rubbish strewn stairs two at a time and into the attics.
The lock was smashed on the final, fourth door. The room beyond was dark, discouraging.
He pushed on it gently, slipped in and paused, letting his mind get used to what lay beyond. He heard the whispering first: a harsh low sound hissing in the air like so much static interference. There was no immediately obvious source. There were words in it though, in all sorts of voices. There was no pattern to the changes in tone or key, just random words, churned out and indistinguishable.
Then his eyes grew accustomed to the room. Hanging frozen in the air were hundreds, thousands of images. He could read the captions, the time and date stamps, the locating coordinates. He could see the patterns the images were sorted in, the links between one group and another. He noticed one set, stamped as Bilbao a fortnight before. There were glimpses of Anji, Fitz and himself. Yet the figures faded in and out, fluxing. Of course, they weren’t tied to this time, he realised. Whatever had been observing them had seen the same moment both with and without them. And whatever was observing them hadn’t been able to decide which was the real one because they both were.
‘I.’
It was the first word that had come clearly out of the sound montage. The first he had been able to hear now he wasn’t concentrating on it.
‘A camera.’ A different voice, male. Then a third. ‘It’s.’
‘Shutters.’
‘Open.’
Never the same voice. It was as if whoever, whatever, had plucked the images was also plundering the myriad conversations buzzing through the net below to create a voice. The Doctor stepped forward slightly into the room, trying to look beyond the fluttering cells. They danced in front of him, trying to build a barrier, he felt. He searched for the right words to say. Somehow he felt a basic ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor,’ wouldn’t be well received. Yes,