Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [35]
Seconds later, nothing was left of the door. There was a flurry of movement, after that: a shape standing on the other side of the threshold, a girl, someone Llewis hadn’t seen before. The girl froze in the doorway, realising that Guest and the redhead were in her way, that there was no chance of getting past. Another voice shouted something, and Llewis was sure it was Ms Bland.
Guest raised his arm, the one Llewis hadn’t been able to see from the lift. There was a weapon in his hand, a grey plastic handle with a glint of silver at the snout.
Stun gun. Electrical discharge weapon. Llewis had spent enough time wandering around COPEX to know the basics.
‘Ik,’ he said.
It just slipped out, really. He hadn’t breathed for what felt like hours, and the air was forcing its way out of his lungs, bit by bit. He hoped Guest wouldn’t hear it, that the man would still be listening to whatever it was he’d been listening to.
But Guest did hear it. He turned his head, smoothly and calmly, until his eyes were covering the lift doors. The woman turned as well. So did the girl.
‘Ik,’ Llewis repeated.
And suddenly the girl was moving again, pushing her way past the redhead, shouldering the woman towards Guest. The girl sprinted away up the passage, and vanished around the nearest corner. The woman with the Cold looked startled, confused, until Guest handed her the gun. Then she started running after the girl, one hand still curled around the vial at her neck.
The next thing Llewis knew, the lift doors were sliding shut in his face, the mechanism obviously responding to a call on another floor. The last thing he saw, before the lift cut off his view of the passage, was Guest’s face. Turning back to face him. Staring.
* * *
Room 1.16
They’d hired two rooms when they’d arrived from Anathema. They’d expected to need only one, but they’d soon worked out that there was no way they could share their living space with the transit threshold. The machinery kept picking up random signals from the local information networks, and the interference was more than even Kode could stand. As it was, two rooms hardly seemed sufficient. Kode and Compassion were sleeping in the same bed, which made at least one of them deeply unhappy.
Guest was quite content to sleep on the floor, or even in a chair. Ready. Alert. In case they were attacked.
They’d be attacked soon, surely. Somebody would notice they were here, in this particular part of Earth, at this particular time. The transaction with the locals had to get the attention of the highest authorities. It had to.
Guest had taken the lift down to the room on the first floor, the room where they kept the equipment for generating the threshold. He didn’t know where the man Llewis had gone, after he’d witnessed the assault on Room 3.06. He didn’t know what effect the incident might have on their plans, either. Nor did he know why Bland had been spying on them. He’d left Kode to guard her, but he doubted the boy would be able to get any useful data out of the woman.
Perhaps this was it. The attack. Perhaps he should ask the local TV transmissions for advice. Whatever happened, though, they had to be ready. That was the important thing. Remember to stay alert, Guest told himself. And above all else, remember the co‐ordinates.
Relative 101 by 4E.
Soon, the words would actually mean something.
The room on the first floor was much the same as the room on the third, although Kode and Compassion had shifted all the furnishings into one corner. The equipment had been set up in the middle of the room, the actual threshold indicated by a single line, drawn in chalk across the grey carpet. The generators had been arranged around the line, six mechanisms in a loose ring. Guest knelt down by the chalk, fingering the vial around his neck.