Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [100]
‘What’s a stasis chamber?’ asked Ace.
‘The ultimate in safe-deposit boxes,’ he whispered through gritted teeth. ‘A bubble of damped space-time, frozen and impenetrable.’ He turned away from her, eyes narrowing. ‘This,’
he said after a moment, in cold steely tones, ‘has got to stop now.’
And before she could stop him, he strode boldly into the laboratory.
Joyce stood on the dark landing, listening to the gentle, homely sounds of snoring, wondering why her own home never really felt like one. She shook her head: she knew she was just being maudlin, reacting to the events of the last couple of days. Mum, Michael’s sudden appearance and revelation, everything that was going on around her. Weirdness was what she did for a living –
but that had always been other people’s weirdness, weirdness she could approach with a detachment that she hadn’t had to try too hard to cultivate. Now she found herself struggling against clicking back into that detachment, scared that if she managed to turn it on, she’d never be able to turn it off again. It was like her comfortable, familiar UNIT labcoat instead of her tweedy skirt and jacket – practical and eminently sensible, but just not appropriate right now. She wondered what had happened to the Doctor, and whether Sooal would continue her Mum’s treatment. She didn’t trust him an inch, but Mum was responding to the treatment, God damn it. And she wasn’t about to see her mother’s future vanish in a puff of her own self-righteousness.
Sooal surveyed the carnage before him with quiet satisfaction.
Piled into the tiny kitchen, like the remains of a macabre bonfire, were the smoking, blackened bodies of the Tulks, one or two of them still twitching feebly, still clinging to life. He fired again –
just to be sure.
The door to the back stairs opened cautiously. He raised the gun again, and lowered it when he saw that it was just the human woman – Joyce? – who’d been rescued from the processor. He wasn’t sure what she was doing down here, but it was only a minor irritation. At the moment nothing could spoil his triumph.
‘Well?’ he said, when she finally looked at him.
She was clearly speechless. It occurred to him that she’d probably never seen death on this scale before – and certainly not in this manner. Perhaps he would be doing her a favour if he shot her now, added her body to the carbonised pile.
‘If you’re going to be sick,’ he said wearily, ‘there’s a sink over there.’
But she just stared at him, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘You monster,’ she said. ‘You absolute monster.’
‘I’ve been called worse,’ Sooal said.
‘Oh, I’m sure you have,’ said a voice from behind him. Sooal whirled to see the Doctor standing in the doorway to the laboratory, a look of intense sadness on his face.
‘You must be the Doctor,’ he said graciously. ‘Nice that you could come back to us.’
‘Unfinished business,’ the Doctor replied frostily. His gaze swept over the bodies at his feet. ‘Was all of this really necessary?’
‘Don’t shed any tears for the Tulks, Doctor,’ Sooal sneered.
‘Ogrons in dinner jackets. Animals, every one of them.’
The Doctor stared at him with the coldest, most withering look that Sooal had ever seen. Behind the Doctor were the girl and two old people. At their feet was a scruffy black dog.
‘I see the cavalry has arrived,’ he said. ‘That is the correct phrase, isn’t it?’
‘Too right, you scumbag!’ growled the girl. ‘You are so going to pay for all this.’ She glanced at the two old people behind her, as if looking for confirmation. There was something odd about them, thought Sooal. Not their faces – more the way their faces hung on them. Like fleshy, saggy masks. He had a bad feeling.
‘What about my mother?’ It was the woman again.
‘What about her?’
‘Her treatment... what about her treatment?’ The woman was almost trembling, although whether through anger or fear, Sooal wasn’t sure. And, frankly, didn’t care.
‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ she said softly, looking past Sooal at the man in the cream hat. ‘You understand, don’t you?’
The Doctor