Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [17]
‘Well,’ she said to the plaster roof when they had finished with her, ‘here I am in Ancient Egypt.’
She laughed once more, another hoarse bark. She wanted to laugh until the tears rolled down her face, while the women servants peered at her from behind the curtains. Rescued in the desert by some macho nobleman, who swept her into his arms and carried her off in his chariot.
She had nothing. Nothing at all. Even the clothes she had been dressed in had been taken away, the woman servants intrigued by the curious, heavy fabric. She did not have her combat suit nor any of the things from her room in the TARDIS. She didn’t have so much as a tube of toothpaste.
She wished she’d paid more attention on those trips to the Museum. She had no way of working out what year it was. No-one would know where or when she was. There wasn’t going to be any rescue from this trap.
But she was alive, and, once she’d had some sleep, she would be in reasonable shape. And somehow, she could understand Ancient Egyptian. Funny.
She frowned slightly, her eyelids already starting to flicker as her thoughts started to tangle together. The wooden headrest was surprisingly comfortable. It felt good to be lying down.
They had both been lying on the floor. Ace could not feel the texture of the weird stuff it was made of, some rough material that looked like scales or bark. All she could feel was the deep cold spreading up from it.
The Doctor’s eyes were closed. There was a great purple bruise on his left cheekbone, from the impact of a human fist, the skin split open with the force of the blow. He lay on his left side, facing her, his broken right arm curled against his chest. She was seeing him from a crazy angle, unable to move her head.
He opened his eyes and looked at her blankly. A drop of blood, brilliant red against his white skin, ran out of his nose. Some message pressed at her from behind his eyes, like an optical illusion she couldn’t quite make out.
Often she had hoped he couldn’t read her thoughts, but now she hoped that he could. Just know that I’m here, she thought, just know that you’re not alone.
Hands strong with panic dragged Ace up from the floor. ‘Come on, move!
We have to get out of here!’ Bernice was still glowing faintly as the energy from the space-time rift drained out of her force shield. She looked like an angel, a guardian angel come to save them.
Ace tried to grab at Benny, but her muscles wouldn’t work. A sharp, deep ache was working its way from her shoulders to her fingers. Benny grabbed 34
her wrist and snapped a force shield generator onto it.
Then she bent and grabbed the Doctor by the scruff of his overalls and stumbled backwards, trying to drag both of them at once, cursing with frustration.
Ace wanted to apologise for being so useless, but all that happened was her head lolled to one side and a rough moan came out of her mouth.
An incredible light was sleeting through the cold chamber from behind them. Ace recognised the signature of the space-time fracture. Benny dropped her and swore.
The light was coming out of the fracture, flickering, exploding in pops and sparks from a patch of air that hurt her brain to look at. There was broken glass or plastic all over the floor.
Benny was stooped over the Doctor, frantically trying to get a response out of him. Blood was trickling from his mouth and nose, sluggishly. His eyes had flickered shut.
Ace wished she could tell Benny that the Doctor was dead.
But the light from the rift was echoing inside her head, and she felt herself being erased, wiped away until there was nothing left at all.
35
Chapter 4
Rent
More nonsense has been written about the Amarna period than any other in Egyptian history.
(Margaret Murray)
Ill.
You don’t have to do anything when you’re ill.
Sometimes, when Ace was very young and she had a cold, her mother would stay home from work to look after her. Little Dorothy would play with Lego, crashing the spaceship set into the police station set. She had a jigsaw puzzle of a family at the beach,