Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [83]
‘Sounds like they’re checking out the road,’ Michael whispered, his body pressed up against hers in the loamy confines of the hollow. He brushed a bit of earth from her face and then looked away, suddenly embarrassed.
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she warned in a low voice.
They fell back into their awkward truce-silence for ten minutes. Michael broke it. ‘Who was that ugly little bloke back at Graystairs? The one who said that you should be dead. What did he mean?’
‘That,’ Ace said, ‘was Sooal – the bloke that runs the place.
He tried to kill me earlier. Then he sent his henchwoman after me to finish the job.’
‘And what happened to her?’
Ace grinned. ‘Sorry – can’t tell you. If I did, I’d have to kill you.’ She grinned again at Michael’s expression and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘This is between you and me, right? But I’ve just spent about 24 hours in the Orkneys, getting cold, wet and dodging bullets – well, energy beams, anyway.’
‘So who was it that I was talking to last night? Your evil twin?’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ she said, revelling – rather cruelly
– in his confusion. ‘The Doctor’s not the only one who can time travel, you know. Anyway,’ she said hastily, realising that the thawing atmosphere between the two of them was also thawing her tongue. ‘Let’s drop it – the Doctor’d have my head on a stick if I told you any more.’
Michael grunted, clearly unsure whether to take her seriously, and they resumed their silence. Finally – and about half an hour after they’d burrowed under the tree – he took a deep breath and began to slide out. ‘Come on. They’ll have gone by now –
probably into the village.’
Extricating themselves from the rotting tree, they brushed themselves down, all the time keeping their eyes open for any sign of their attackers. The road above the bank seemed deserted. Michael told Ace to stay where she was whilst he checked out the road. A couple of hours ago, Ace would have argued with him; but she was getting tired and just a bit fed up with all of this. She wanted to get back to the Doctor as soon as possible, get him somewhere safe, and get this whole bloody thing over with.
Michael poked his head through the bushes at the side of the road and beckoned her, giving her a hand up the bank.
Cautiously, they stepped out into the road. They were alone.
Ace turned to Michael with a grin – which, to her great surprise, was returned. He wasn’t developing a crush on her, was he?
Despite the growing suspicion that Ace was developing a crush on him, Michael couldn’t bring himself to dump her. Not yet.
Was he growing soft? Considering how he felt about the Doctor, why the hell was he putting himself on the line trying to rescue him? He suddenly wished that it was Claire there with him, instead of Ace, and immediately felt bad about it.
‘Which way?’ asked Ace in a whisper.
He looked around. His years in UNIT hadn’t been completely wasted, he thought wryly as he recognised the snapped branches, the odd little dumps of bushes and the dips and rises in the ground that he’d made a mental note of on their way out of the wood. The journey back to the hut took only half the time it had taken them to get away, and there was no sign of their followers, which was a relief. They saw the hut and Ace raced on ahead.
‘He’s gone!’ Ace shouted, as she reached the hut and opened the door. Michael instinctively glanced round to see if anyone had heard. He jogged the last few paces.
Ace was right – the hut was empty.
Chapter Thirteen
They searched the area in widening circles for over half an hour before Ace, red-faced and fuming, finally conceded the Doctor’s disappearance. Michael said nothing, not sure whether she was closer to tears or to a shouting fit.
‘I knew we shouldn’t have left him,’ she glowered. Michael didn’t point out that it was her idea. ‘They must have found him.
He wouldn’t have gone wandering off like this on his own.’
She looked at him, as if expecting an answer. All he could do was shrug. ‘Maybe