Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [9]
He looked for something brittle to break for luck, but found only reinforced carbon, silicon and mica dust.
An alarm rattled the confines of the office. The cube turned flame red. Hofwinter swallowed hard on a suddenly dry throat. The God of Fate has to be tempted. Like the fish in the icy rivers of Gallifrey, it takes only the juiciest of bait.
'What's happened?' said the captain. 'Have we been found out?'
Hofwinter began to flick the instruments on the port. 'It's gone,' he croaked.
'What's gone?'
'The beam. Something's cut across it. Cut it off. We've lost the subject.'
Jomdek was confused. 'So what do we do?'
'Nothing!' snapped Hofwinter. 'We merely initiated the sealed orders as instructed. We do nothing and know nothing!'
***
Where are you going?
'Home. I'm going home,' she thought.
Dorothée was drifting without sense of touch or inner feeling. Just her thoughts cut loose. She had to hang on to them or they'd unravel off into the darkness. The same way her body and her bike had gone.
Where's home? came the other voice.
'Earth. England. No, now it's France. Paris.'
Better make up your mind, hadn't you?
'Paris,' she insisted.
You reckon you'll see that again?
The interrogator's voice was hard and mocking. Another woman's voice locked inside her own thoughts. It was turning her thoughts over and trashing them. They were al she had. 'What do you want?' she thought.
You tel me.
'I want to go home!'
And that's Paris, is it?
'Yes!'
15
Liar!
'No one calls me that.'
No one calls you anything.
'You just called me liar.'
Must be your name then.
There's no chance to think when someone's already in your thoughts. 'Fine. Cal me Liar,' protested Dorothée .
'What about you? What do you call yourself?'
Don't you know?
Dorothée could feel the grin in the voice. A childish laugh, cruel the way only kids can be. It both frightened her and was comfortingly familiar.
I'm your worst enemy. I'm just behind you, it sneered.
'Where? Who are you?'
Tell me who you want me to be.
'What I want is to go home!'
Tough!
'Jesus crukking Christ!'
Dorothée sat on the low bed. The white room was empty and cold. Six blank wal s. No windows or doors.
A noise behind her. She turned round.
The girl was in black, a plain black bodysuit and boots. So black, the light found no surface on it. In the shadowless room, the girl's face was lost in dark obscurity. It appeared formless, unfinished or undecided.
Then the shadow lifted and a face slid out from under it. The young woman had long, tangled brown hair and large brown eyes that returned Dorothée's stare. She'd seen them earlier. Cold and accusing.
She'd always reckoned, in the vast photofit lottery of the Universe, that anyone could look like anything. But not that. Not just like that.
'Crawl back in the mirror,' she said flatly.
'Mirrors don't answer back,' answered the girl.
She stepped up nearer the bed. 'I'm... Ace.'
'Like hell,' said Dorothee.
'It's true.'
'Prove it.'
Ace raised the sleek black carbine that was slung over her shoulder and shot Dorothée at point-blank range.
16
C
hapter Two
A Long Shadow
The Castel an's office, from which al security matters in the Capitol were controlled, was sparsely furnished; an impartial place with no views or windows of its own. It sat at the heart of the great Citadel, wedged like an afterthought into the ancient masonry of that august and sprawling edifice.
Castellan Andred sat at his desk, irritably tapping one finger on a stack of pending reports. The confirmation of a top-security visitor to the Capitol was overdue and at present there was nothing he could do about any of it.
Andred had been elevated to his post over a year ago, but still he felt like a novice. The shadow of his predecessor had a long reach.
There seemed to be an army of elderly Time Lords, largely indolent high-benchers, who gravitated in to see him with such regularity that he was growing suspicious that they had worked out a rota. Could he attend to a faulty service lift in Tower 3? How long before