Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [16]
The machines were smooth. Perfectly smooth. No flaws, no controls, just moulded hooks of pure silver.
‘Terrific,’ said Sarah.
‘Nnnh?’ queried the Ogron.
‘You said they gave equipment like this to the Saudis? To the other humans?’
‘Nnnh,’ affirmed the Ogron.
‘I don’t suppose they also supplied them with instruction manuals? No, I suppose not.’
‘Nnnh,’ mused the Ogron.
Sarah stood back, and put her hands on her hips. ‘K9 was right. I bet he’d have this sorted out in a second. Can’t you remember anything about the way the Remote people use this stuff? Some movement they make, maybe.’
Lost Boy thought about this. ‘Move their heads,’ he said. ‘Touch ears.’
Just at that moment, the door to the bathroom seemed to explode.
It was pushed open from the other side, hard enough to snap it off its hinges and splinter the panels. There was another Ogron in the bathroom, taller than Lost Boy, darker in skin tone. The one who’d been at the office a couple of hours earlier. He’d punched the door open, wrecking it in the process.
Lost Boy moved forward, ready to strike out at his brother. The other Lost Boy barely reacted. He raised his arm, and Sarah saw the blunt end of a gun.
‘Don’t –’ she began.
The other Lost Boy squeezed the trigger. A dart of plastic leapt from the end of the gun, on a strand of microfine wiring. The dart embedded itself in Lost Boy’s chest, tearing open his badly fitting shirt. There was a spark. A crackle. Lost Boy stumbled backward, his huge body slamming into the wall, shaking the whole structure of the room.
The other Lost Boy stepped forward, pressing a switch on the side of the gun to retract the dart. A second figure stepped around the Ogron. Kode, still in his business suit, a happy smile on his face.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry, was that OK?’
Sarah’s jaw bobbed up and down a bit before she could find an answer. ‘You were waiting for us,’ she said
‘Yeah. We’ve got transmitters inside the Ogrons. Saw you coming.’ The other Lost Boy gave him a funny look, which Sarah didn’t feel up to trying to interpret. Kode shrugged at him. ‘It’s a basic security precaution,’ he added. ‘Honest.’
Sarah looked over at Lost Boy. Her Lost Boy. He was obviously alive, and at least partially conscious. He lay sprawled against the wall, his arms flailing as though he couldn’t quite control them properly, the pupils rolling up under his eyelids. Sarah considered going over to him, but the other Ogron was waving the gun about in a vaguely menacing fashion, so she gave it a miss.
Kode tweaked his ear. Instantly, the silver machines started to throb, humming with a soft, steady pulse. The sound of static filled the air. Moments later, a doorway did indeed appear in the middle of the room. Sarah tried not to look at it too closely, just in case it gave her a migraine.
‘You’re supposed to use the Cold to do this,’ Kode mumbled, as if Sarah cared about the technical details. ‘But there should be enough on the carpet already. It’s not like we’re going far. Just a couple of thousand klicks.’
‘Where to?’ Sarah asked.
‘Where you wanted to go. Saudi Arabia. I’ve set the coordinates for the same place as last time, when we dropped off the samples. One of the big cities there, I think.’ He kept smiling. ‘We’ve got the same aims here, you know that? You want to get to that TARDIS, and so do we.’
‘You’re saying we should work together? Is that it?’
‘Actual I was kind of thinking about holding you at gunpoint and forcing you to lead us there.’ Kode nodded at the gun in the Ogron’s huge hand. ‘I got the idea from the local signals. Using a weapon as a threat instead of just killing people with it. We don’t do things like that where I come from. The zombie ships just blow places up.’
Lost Boy finally regained his senses, and got to his feet, his big arms thumping against the walls as he steadied himself. Sarah wondered if any of the other hotel guests would come to investigate the racket.
No, probably not. Most of them were