Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [10]
20
A single butterfly flickered down and landed on 24’s shoulder, touching its antennae to his face. ‘Where’s that trolley?’ snapped Ms Cohen.
None of the hired hands moved to help her. Their faces were pale and taut.
Groenewegen was looking everywhere but at the subject.
No matter what they did, he always escaped. And this time they’d killed him, and he’d escaped that too.
Ms Cohen sat cross-legged on a bench, eating the nothing-flavoured stuff Meijer had brought her in a plastic bowl. She watched Number 24.
He was comatose, a tube coming out of his nose, draining away the fluids from his damaged lungs and throat. They had fastened the shackles around his wrists and ankles, covered him with a silver blanket as though to hide the fact that they’d bound a dying man.
It had been his most desperate escape. He had been nearly frozen to death.
He had been exposed to hard vacuum for at least thirty seconds. When they’d dumped him in the airlock with the other corpses, he’d pried loose a maintenance panel and climbed out through the wall. And the airlock had cycled before he’d been able to get the panel back into place.
Ms Cohen had borrowed the Leech in order to study it. It sat on a shelf.
She was certain that it moved from time to time, that it was watching them, waiting, greedy but infinitely patient. Watching 24. Watching her.
The crystal shape on her monitor changed. His eyes came open, just a little.
He had been the one watching the sky on the starliner. He had been waiting for the Ants. And now here he was on board their ship, immune to their process, escaping and escaping over and over. He was not just a prisoner.
There was something he wasn’t telling them.
‘You planned this, didn’t you?’ she said aloud.
‘Think I . . . planned . . . ?’ His voice was almost inaudible, a painful whisper.
‘Didn’t plan this.’
Ms Cohen’s spoon clattered onto the floor.
Meijer chose that moment to enter the lab, stooping under the low door.
‘How is he?’
Ms Cohen looked from her silent patient to Meijer. ‘It’s touch and go,’ she said gently. ‘Meijer, I need access to the computer again.’
‘Now what?’
She got up and moved out of the lab. Meijer followed, looking puzzled.
‘Normally,’ she said, when they were in the corridor, ‘I’d study the behaviour of a patient. The way they relate to people, the sorts of things they like to do. In this case, the only behaviour exhibited by the patient are the escapes. I want to study them.’
21
Meijer thought for a moment. ‘There’s a security report for each of them,’
he said slowly.
‘There is?’
‘Something to do,’ he said. Watching her.
‘I can’t fly a shuttle,’ she said. ‘Let me see the reports.’
‘Tomorrow.’
She slept curled around the lap-top again. The Ants wouldn’t care how much computer time she had. It didn’t matter what she did, really – what could she possibly do?
She was woken by the sound of low voices. No, of one voice.
She opened her eyes, staying perfectly still.
‘You promised,’ he was saying, in a fragile whisper. ‘Had a bargain . . .
need . . . little bit longer. It’s not that bad. Really . . . not that bad.’
She moved her head, just slightly. He was looking up at an imaginary someone standing over the bed. ‘I’ve survived worse . . . Just one more week. One more day. Just one more day – just one – no, don’t – oh – ’
The rotating fractal on the screen flared and vanished.
Ms Cohen leapt from her bench and snapped on the lights, fumbling frantically with her handscan.
Dead. He was dead.
How the hell was she supposed to do CPR on a man with two hearts?
She unclipped the cuffs around his left wrist and ankle. She grabbed 24 and rolled him onto his side, dislodging the tubes in his face. She snatched up the Leech. It twitched in her hand as she slapped it into the back of his neck and activated it.
He convulsed, shouted, started to breathe again. Ms Cohen wrenched the Leech off his skin, threw it onto the bench. He was shaking violently, spitting blood, but he was alive.
The guards shoved open the door. ‘What the hell?’ shouted Caldwell.