Doctor Who_ Hope - Mark Clapham [16]
Does that mean were allowed in? asked Fitz uncertainly.
I believe so, said the Doctor, turning back to the guards. He idly stuffed his valuables back into his coat pockets. We accept the offer.
The guards nodded, and while one disappeared into an alcove with the Doctors apple core the other tapped on a keypad to open the door.
These people must really like fruit, whispered Fitz as they walked through the vast doors.
Im just glad they didnt take the reward card, muttered the Doctor. Theres six months worth of points on there.
Having let the three strangers into the Palace, the two doormen resumed their positions in the alcoves within the gateway, lances raised in case of attack. Born in the martial community of Victory, their dedication to their jobs involved maintaining a zenlike sense of stillness during inactive periods. Intelligent yet focused, watchful without being paranoid or twitchy, they were the ideal guards. Which made their failure to react to the group of hooded figures approaching them all the more unlikely. They did not respond in time to defend themselves and avoid the taser jolts that slammed into their bodies, disrupting their nervous systems and leaving them slumped against the walls. As the hooded figures gathered around the keypad, attaching the necessary equipment to hack the doorcode, the two doormen lay unmoving.
Powlin sat in his office, sipping red hot caffy from an old, chipped beaker. It was warm in the watchtower, but he could still feel the cold from outside, gripping him deep within. The caffy went some way towards remedying this, while also nudging his brain cells into life. Another victim, another body in cold storage in the depths of the watchtower. Powlin wouldnt bother attending the post mortem. He knew what the diagnosis would be. Cause of death was the decapitation itself, a procedure so quick and efficient that the victim was probably dead within seconds. One burst of pain as the weapon sliced through flesh and bone. The weapon in question was some form of cutting tool, probably with a microengineered blade judging by the clean nature of the wounds.
Not that this series of crimes had always been so clean. When the decapitations began, a couple of months before, the first few had varied in efficiency. One victim had his skull cleaved in half, straight down the middle, and Powlin still wasnt sure whether this was the work of the same killer or just part of Hopes everyday brutality. The militia was an organisation with limited influence, but these killings soon became unacceptable even by Hopes standards. They rapidly dropped into a pattern, and became professional, repetitive acts of butchery. Every two to three nights one or two victims would be found, usually around the edges of Hope, usually the kind of vagrants and lowlifes no one particularly cared about. No personal effects or valuables were ever taken, and the heads were never found.
Powlin sipped his caffy again, and flinched as it burned the surface of his tongue. Although tonights killing had left him with no definite leads, his own role in events as the first living witness to one of the slayings provided fresh, albeit confusing, evidence. Powlin dug around in the papers next to his chair until he found some scrap paper, then began to crudely sketch the figure he had seen standing over the body. It had all been so indistinct, but he had made out a couple of features round black eyes or eye sockets, a narrow muzzlelike face, the general pallid whiteness of the creature. Powlin looked at his primitive drawing. Although humanoid, what he had drawn didnt seem to resemble an Endpointer, certainly not any of the residents of Hope. The creature had fled across the ice, away from Hope. Could the city be facing a threat from outside? Powlin gripped the warm mug tighter. This was far worse than the savagery he was used to as Militia Chief. This was something other. Something alien.
Now this, Fitz thought, was more like it. Now he understood