Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [125]
‘Yes,’ the Doctor gasped, ‘but you’re not human, are you? You aren’t the Tobias Vaughn that I met in London in the nineteen seventies. That Vaughn died when the Cybermen copied his mind and placed it in one of their metal shells. It thought it was Vaughn, but it was a bad reproduction. And you?
You’re another generation down the line: a copy of a copy. Or has it gone further than that, Vaughn? How much of yourself has been lost along the way?’
The claws dug deeper into the Doctor’s flesh, sending pain radiating outwards through his chest and down his arms.
‘I am Tobias Vaughn,’ Vaughn said from his own mouth. ‘I have his memories. I have his experiences.’
‘“His”?’ the Doctor cried, squirming in his seat as he tried to prise the pincers from his shoulders. ‘How thinly have you spread yourself, Vaughn?
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How many pint pots is your quart divided between?’
‘I was in the bot who waved to you when you first arrived in your time machine,’ Vaughn said, ignoring the Doctor’s words. ‘Do you remember? I had been waiting for you, Doctor. I discovered from the Cybermen that you were a traveller in time and space, and with a thousand years at my disposal, I have searched every database, every video recording, every simularity, every holovid, every simcord for you. I know more about your adventures on Earth than you do, Doctor.’
‘And what exactly do you need me for, if I might make so bold?’ the Doctor hissed through clenched teeth. He was on the verge of blacking out; the world had turned fuzzy around the edges and the fuzziness was encroaching further and further upon his vision.
Vaughn gestured languidly towards the TARDIS. ‘Time travel, of course,’ he said.
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Chapter 16
‘I’m Shythe Shahid and this is The Empire Today , on the spot, on and off the Earth. The buildings are falling. Thirty towers in Overcities around the globe have fallen onto the Undertown following acts of sabotage. Insurance claims are estimated at five hundred trillion Imperial schillings, a sum which will effectively bankrupt the First Galactic Bank, assuming that anybody remains alive to make a claim . . . ’
Forrester hit the wall twice in rapid succession on the puckered spot that had to be a door control. The door itself, an almost invisible slit, opened instantly.
Before it could close she reached through the opening, grabbed hold of Cwej’s hair with her left hand and pulled him toward her.
‘I can’t take you anywhere,’ she snapped. She caught a quick glimpse of three gleaming forms moving towards them. Her right hand came up, finger pumping the trigger of her blaster. A cone of hard radiation filled the opening: an opaque wall of light too bright to look at directly. The bots staggered back, their surfaces blistering, as the fleshy door pulled itself shut behind Cwej.
‘How did you –?’ he breathed.
‘– end up with a partner like you? Goddess knows.’ She scowled at him, then seemed to catch herself and ruffled his hair instead. ‘The door’s pressure-sensitive. I leaned against it and fell through. It must have shut behind me.
Don’t worry, golden boy, I wasn’t trying to escape your adolescent charms.’
She gazed at the now blank wall through which she had dragged him. ‘A wide-beam blaster will blind them temporarily, but it won’t stop them for long. They’ll figure out the door trick pretty soon. We need to think, and quickly. I know that’s not your strong suit, but give it a try, will you?’
‘I don’t think . . . ’ he started, but trailed off as he realized where they were.
‘The engine room?’
‘The engine room.’
He gazed around in awe. The icaron ring – at least, that’s what Cwej presumed it was – lay like a quiescent animal, taking up most of the space in the oval room. Its smoothly contoured lines suggested tension and reined-in power. Great knobbly cables linked it to nodes in the ceiling.
‘That’s what’s been causing all the trouble?’ Cwej breathed. ‘That’s what’s driving people loopy with these icaron things?’
‘Yep,’ Forrester said. ‘The icaron ring.’
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He looked at her dubiously. ‘Are