Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [76]
They followed the silent signal down to the gym, treading softly across the echoing wooden floor, until they came to a door.
Roz’s left hand curled into the Adjudicator symbol for right here. Chris nodded and positioned himself to the side of the door. Roz put the handscan into the big pockets of her jacket and counted down three, two, one, go!
Chris booted the door. It wasn’t locked. He ran into the room ahead of Roz, nearly knocking over a pile of hockey sticks.
There was nothing in the room but sports equipment and Dorothée.
Well, Ace, really. She’d been in her late twenties when she’d dropped the nickname. Roz crouched down beside the sleeping girl’ pulling out the handscan. ‘She’s about eighteen,’ she said. ‘She’s full of chlorpromazine. Enough to knock out four people.’ She pulled the medikit out of her jacket.
‘Wow,’ said Chris. ‘She looks completely different.’
‘How do you mean?’ said Roz, taking out a derm.
‘At the wedding she was kind of tense and relaxed at the same time. Like a hunting animal.’
‘I guess this is before her life started to go haywire,’ said Roz’ pushing the derm onto the skin behind Ace’s ear.
‘Hey, wait a minute,’ said Chris. ‘Did you say she was eighteen?’
Roz nodded’ watching the young woman stir as the derm wiped the tranquillizer from her system.
‘Well’ didn’t she leave Earth when she was sixteen? If she’s eighteen’ she ought to be off with the Doctor somewhere. So where did Albinex get her from?’
‘Why don’t you ask her?’ said Roz’ a moment before Ace jumped on her and tried to rip out her eyes.
Benny and Jason ought to have been following a handscan through the narrow hallways of the centre. Instead’ they were having a stage-whispered row about who should go first.
‘Look,’ said Jason for the third time. ‘If there’s anything here, I want it to go through me first, right?’
Will you please drop the macho thing?’ said Benny. ‘I’ve had about a billion times more experience at this sort of thing than you.’
‘If you think you’re the only one who’s faced down hostile aliens —’
‘I didn’t shag them into submission!’
‘ Look,’ said Jason. ‘We’re supposed to be on a mission here.’
‘That’s right! We are!’
They glared at each other.
The handscan screen started to flash. They both glanced down at it.
‘Let’s do this in alphabetical order,’ said Jason.
‘First name or last name?’
The point abruptly became academic. A door exploded outwards, knocked right off its hinges.
‘Doctor!’ said Jason.
‘What the cruk!’ said Benny.
The Doctor climbed over the door, fingernails pressing into the wood of the doorframe. He was wearing an ill-fitting black uniform. His hair was too long, tied back out of his face.
He bared his teeth at them. His eyes were red instead of blue, as though he was a flash photograph.
‘Oh shit,’ said Benny and Jason together.
They dropped the handscan and legged it.
Slow motion:
Joel drops and rolls, frantically pushing himself out of the line of fire.
The Doctor grabs Albinex’s gun arm as the Navarino tracks to take another shot. He pulls back, hard, knowing to expect the alien strength. Another shot bursts in the ceiling.
Isaac, coming up the stairs behind Joel, has flung himself to one side, landing hard on the wooden floor of the hall.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he explodes.
Ms Randrianasolo is racing up the steps from stage left.
Upstage, Joel is yelping ‘Shit! Shit! Shit! Medic!’
Albinex wrenches his gun arm out of the Doctor’s grip and elbows the Time Lord in the ribs, hard enough to send him stumbling back across the stage. The Doctor collides with Ms Randrianasolo.
Isaac, halfway off the hall floor, sees the terrible moment in which Albinex could swing his hips back and forth and put a bullet into every single one of them.
The Navarino bolts, leaping down from the stage and sprinting for the doors. The Doctor follows, moving past Isaac even as the Admiral gets up off the floor.
The hall doors explode inwards as Benny and Jason run in,