Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [83]
‘Who’s Sarah Jane Smith?’ asked Fitz, forgetting not to ask the question out loud.
The shadow ignored the question. ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ it said. ‘You told yourself the spirits weren’t real. You told yourself they couldn’t touch you. You thought you could ride out the initiation, so you could keep an eye on the Faction from the inside. Isn’t that right?’
That was when Fitz felt it. The fear was coming, building up inside his receiver, a kind of fear that he knew damn well had to end with a knife in his ribs or a bullet in his head. He knew it wasn’t real, but it didn’t matter. The darkness was coming, and the shadows were moving aside for it, letting it into the shrine from its own realm of Paradox.
‘The spirits aren’t real,’ the shadow went on, whispering through the static in Fitz’s ear. ‘But then, television isn’t real either. That doesn’t mean it can’t change you.’
With that, the shadow shrank back into the darkness. Fitz stared at the patch of floor where it had been, and saw that there was a new silhouette there, the shadow of something solid, something that was standing right in front of him in the shrine. The last thing Fitz noticed, before the fear exploded in his ears and he looked up at the thing’s face, was that the new shadow had only one arm.
* * *
11
One Girl and Her Ogron
(the beginning of a beautiful friendship)
Lost Boy pointed at the human woman. He couldn’t read the expression on her face, but her eyes were open wide, and her jaw was dropping. Lost Boy wondered if that meant she was getting ready to bite him.
‘Woman,’ he said, trying to keep his voice low, so as not to disturb any of the other humans in the settlement. ‘Want woman. Now.’
Lost Boy wasn’t sure what the function of this place was. The floor was smooth, as floors tended to be in human places, and littered with furnishings that looked much too small to be comfortable. There were filings pinned to the walls, religious etchings and lunar charts Lost Boy didn’t recognise. He’d pounded the table when he’d come through the door, to get the full attention of the human man, as was the custom. Oddly, the table had snapped. He wondered how anybody on this planet could hold a proper conversation when the tables were so fragile.
The woman edged away from him, towards the door on the other side of the room, but the man made no attempt to protect her, as Lost Boy had expected. The man’s face was covered in little grey tufts of hair, though, so he was probably sick.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ the woman said.
The man looked at her, then at Lost Boy, then at the metal sticks that hung on the wall next to the window. Lost Boy realised that some of them had been sharpened, so the man must have been searching for a weapon.
That wasn’t acceptable. Lost Boy strode over to him, grabbed his arm, and snapped it. Surprisingly, the human made no attempt to snap Lost Boy’s arm in return, as was traditional when you wanted a mutual disarmament. Instead, he just sank to the floor, making strange whimpering noises.
‘Leave him alone,’ the woman barked. ‘We’re not supposed to be here. The girl… the girl you know… she doesn’t exist yet. She’s from another time.’
Lost Boy didn’t understand any of this. So he just grunted. ‘Don’t want girl. Want woman.’
The woman stopped backing away. ‘You want me? You came here just for me?’
‘Followed you. Found your machine.’
‘My…?’ The woman’s eyes opened even wider. Lost Boy wasn’t sure whether they were supposed to do that. ‘The Land Rover? The, um, vehicle?’
‘Used Remote’s computer. Stole records from…’ Lost Boy rolled the words around his head for a few moments before he said them out loud. ‘…Vehicle Registry Office. Followed you. From your house. Followed you here.’
‘You can