Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [101]
The Doctor continued to stare and then ran across the Drain those creatures dry.
room to Cooper, his hands flapping in agitation. ‘Show me Then came another contact. Begging it to stay, demanding your nova! Show me!’
it to stay. A strong contact, no... an unprecedented contact. It Cooper tapped some figures into the console. The was the creature from the monastery again! And this time, Doctor’s eyes flicked down the screen. He drummed his he wasn’t shielding himself.
fingers against the console and ran a hand through his hair.
There was so much energy there, such a wealth of Ace felt a bit deflated. A bit of recognition wouldn’t do experience - almost as if he had lived several lives.
any harm, she thought.
The Sentience pulsed an urgent signal and finally pulled The Doctor turned full around and his face was suffused free of its earthly prison. Light blasted from beneath the with joy.
moor, sending tons of soil shooting into the heavens.
The bulk of the Sentience joined with the portion wrapped Lowcock held his breath. The crypt was completely dark around the church eves and scorched across the moor, but he felt a little cheered by the close proximity of his coagulating into a vast, glorious cloud around the dish of fellow villagers. Several had pressed themselves between the telescope.
ancient tombs, as if trying to vanish into the walls themselves.
‘At your mark, Doctor,’ said Cooper coolly.
Above them, the stone floor echoed with the sound of The Doctor nodded and shut his eyes. Ace had shown him footsteps.
the way. If he could only manage it half as well as she...
Lowcock crossed his fingers.
Memories flooded his mind.
Please, please, please...
That first visit to Revolutionary France. Times before that.
Jill Mason grasped his hand. He could hear her frightened He and Susan travelling alone in the TARDIS, or the Ship as breathing fluttering in his ear.
he had liked to call it then.
The footsteps came closer.
Fleeing through that terrifying forest to the plain where The Sentience was on the point of withdrawing from the the TARDIS stood. The months in China with that Venetian moor and it boiled and swirled in the atmosphere, traveller. Slowly dying from the deadly radiation of the struggling to understand its failure. No life form had ever planet Skaro. And it was Susan who had gone off into the had the will to resist it before. The lure of the past was jungle to save them. Brave Susan...
always so great.
Need
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
He forced himself to concentrate on her image. That dark, pretty face. That uniform she had first worn at the school and so hated that she’d buried it deep in the TARDIS.
‘Oh, Grandfather. I can’t be seen wearing that.’
Not ‘with it’, she had told him. Not the sort of thing for a fan of John Smith and the Common Men. Susan...
And then that terrible day. Defeat of the Daleks and the liberation of Earth but... but he had been forced to make her stay behind. It had been what she needed, what she wanted in her heart. To stay with David Campbell and make a life for herself. A life away from him...
She had stood outside the TARDIS, tears pouring down her face, the key to the Ship clutched in her hand. ‘One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back...’
He was here now. Waiting.
‘Susan?’
‘Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. ..’
The Doctor’s voice was calm and assured.
Come back to me. Come back to me...
‘I’m here, Grandfather.’
‘Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am Her voice was strangely beautiful, haunting...
not mistaken in mine...’
Ace shivered.
Come back...
‘Tell me who you are,’ urged the Doctor.
‘Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear...’
‘I am Susan...’ the apparition murmured.
Susan...
The Doctor chewed a fingernail thoughtfully. ‘Yes, you’re
‘Grandfather?’
Susan. But tell me why you’re here. Tell me what you seek.’
The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. Susan was standing Susan fluttered her eyelids and the light streaming from