Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [99]
A car had pulled up on the pavement outside. It looked like the kind of car any flash executive might have been proud of. Or at least, he might have been proud of it when it had been new. But the car was an X‐reg, its paint work dented by tiny pockets of rust and worn down by bird droppings. Llewis was rolling his big bulky body out of the driver’s seat, and the door was opening on the passenger side, too.
The passenger was huge. Ogron huge.
‘Looks like I’d better get the coffee on,’ mused Morgan.
Of course. Lost Boy had a brother didn’t he? Another Ogron called Lost Boy, because Ogrons apparently gave themselves names based on family position, so if you were an orphan… Well, Ogron culture probably wasn’t the issue right now.
‘White,’ mumbled Sarah. ‘No sugar. Thanks.’
* * *
Dawn
The Doctor didn’t look out of the window.
He’d been asleep all night. Actually asleep, rather than just resting. Letting part of his consciousness roll the numbers around at the back of his head, but letting the rest drift off and melt into the walls of the cell.
The Doctor still didn’t look out of the window.
He couldn’t ignore the shouts from the courtyard. He couldn’t try to make them part of the background noise. The shouts were different, special. So were the footsteps, the boots on the sand, the bare feet shuffling in the dirt, as the guards dragged Badar away from the building.
The Doctor persisted in not looking out of the window.
More shouts. In the local language. The Doctor tried not to understand any of the words, but the TARDIS was still close enough to push the translations up through his spine and into his forebrain.
The Doctor managed to stay on the floor, his back to the wall, quite specifically not going anywhere near the window.
There was a sound so brief, most of the sentient population of the universe would never have been able to identify it. The sound of metal slicing through bone.
The Doctor gave up, and tried to stand, to at least look out at the aftermath. Ironically, it was only at this point that he realised his legs weren’t working.
* * *
Noon
The guards had come into the cell only once that morning, not long after the execution. The Doctor had already started scrawling the equations on to the floor by then, and he’d expected the guards to break his hands for it, but they’d just shouted at him and left him to his work. Still excited after what had happened at dawn, the Doctor guessed. Breaking bones just wasn’t in the same league.
The equations were messy, but legible. There was nothing in the cell to write with, so he’d been forced to use his finger, pressing it against the cuts in his face to make the blood seep out. Once or twice, he’d found himself cursing the fact that he healed so quickly, and at one point he’d even had to scrape his cheek against the wall to open up the wounds a little. That didn’t strike him as rational behaviour, but he tried not to dwell on it.
By midday – or what he guessed was midday – the equations covered about a quarter of the floor space. Just doodles, really. Distractions, designed to get himself in the right frame of mind for the great work. He wondered whether he’d manage to finish it before the guards stopped him. Of course, it probably didn’t make much difference whether he succeeded or not, but he had to try.
He finished one particularly linear logic chain, then turned on his stomach and crawled back to the first clause of the equation, a cluster of blood scrawls in the corner by the door.
‘Once upon a time, there was an ancient and unimaginable horror,’ he said. Then he paused. ‘Well, that’s not true. There were plenty of ancient and unimaginable horrors. But one of them took a particular dislike to… to me.’
He cleared his throat, coughed a blob of red phlegm out of his lungs. He briefly considered using it to write with.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
‘So this horror decided to