Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [97]
And for those six minutes in London, it had actually happened. He’d been virtual, fictional, someone’s dream.
He could see the pattern of the carpet through Sir Charles’s body. The design was becoming clearer as the thief’s mortal remains faded away into nothing. This was what Anna had found: perhaps she’d tried to touch him, to check for a pulse, and her fingers had slid through him as though he were made of ectoplasm.
The Doctor clung to the foot of the bed, like a drowning man clinging to a bit of wood. The Blue was singing to him, singing rest and peace, singing that it didn’t matter. Singing the Blues.
Blue. It was here.
He jerked open the top drawer of the writing desk, pulled out the complimentary stationery, hurled it onto the carpet in a sudden shower of white wings. Until he saw the first sheet of fragile, yellow paper.
Codex Atlaca, said the writing scrawled on the cover.
He slammed the drawer shut, leaning on the desk until the spike of pain in his head subsided.
He went to the en suite bathroom, rinsed the blood out of his eyes, the red tears from his face. He drank from his cupped hands, splashed the water on the back of his neck.
He took a towel from the bathroom and went back to the writing desk. Gingerly he extracted the codex and wrapped it in the towel, feeling the caustic touch of the paper when it accidentally brushed his skin. Once a blue spark crackled agonizingly around his hand, and it was all he could do not to drop the book.
This will hurt you more than it hurts me, said the flute in his head.
‘What’s the difference?’ asked the Doctor, clutching the lethal package to his chest.
Don’t you care about being hurt?
‘I meant, what’s the difference between you and I?’
Soon, said the flute, nothing at all.
‘I’m ready when you are.’
Ready. Like a good captain. Ready to go down with the ship.
The voice was gone, and with it a pressure inside the Doctor’s head. He felt his nose start to bleed again, fumbled for a handkerchief.
Under the bed, something made a noise.
The Doctor stood still, gripping the book, like a vampire hunter clutching his supply of crucifixes. There it was again. He turned his head slowly, wondering what trap might have been left for him. There was a new sensation pressing at his brain, tantalizing, just at the edge of consciousness, elusive but powerful.
He put down the book and reached under the bed. There was a metal box. He pulled it out.
The box clanked and jumped on the carpet. The lid sprang open. White light washed into the room, floating from the object in the box. He leaned over it, squinting into the sudden tide of power.
It was a stem and a loop, the thickness of his wrist, a rod that curved back on itself. Markings danced up its sides in an alien language, geometrical symbols like Mayan writing.
He touched it, just a brush of his little finger against the stem of the object.
* * *
10.55 pm
‘WE’RE STOPPED AND SURROUNDED BY ICE!’
Phillips yelled and ripped off his headphones. The other boat was so close that the message had nearly burst his eardrums.
‘Keep out, shut up!’ he keyed angrily. ‘You’re jamming my signal. I’m working Cape Race.’
* * *
11.27 pm
Anna slept fitfully, curled up on top of the bedclothes with a corner of the blanket wrapped around her.
Something woke her up. She wasn’t sure what it was. Some noise in the night? She sat up, sniffling, rubbing her red eyes. Cristián was gone, probably to tell the ship’s surgeon about her father.
Oh God, her father… shock, that’s all it had been. An illusion of the grieving mind. Only to be expected.
There was a sound in the air, just loud enough to be heard. It sounded like the wheel of some great engine starting up, an electric sound that sent a chill down her spine. Whatever was it?
She sat perfectly still, listening