Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [5]
‘Subject 24 has been thawed for nineteen days now. In that time, he’s escaped twenty-six times.’
Ms Cohen blinked at him.
‘Knocked out guards. Busted doors. Shut off force shields. Opened locks.
Do you know, he got out of his capsule in cold storage? We couldn’t believe it, he should have been frozen stiff. No matter where we put him, he gets out somehow. It’s like he’s magic.’
‘And you’ve never had that kind of trouble either?’
‘No. So I can’t guarantee that the hired hands will be wearing their kid gloves. He nearly killed two of us, one time.’
‘Really?’
‘Me and Groenewegen. We found him in the shuttle bay with somebody’s gun. He had the drop on us, would’ve been easy for him to shoot us and take one of the shuttles. Some of them’ll do FTL, wouldn’t have taken him long to find help.’
‘But he didn’t.’
Meijer shrugged again. ‘I guess he just didn’t know how to use the gun.’
They brought Number 24 to the lab strapped to a metal trolley. It must have been salvaged from a spacecraft, perhaps the Cortese. Three armed guards followed Meijer as he pushed the trolley along. 24 took no notice of it. The ceiling slid past his eyes, ignored.
‘Right,’ said Ms Cohen, trying to sound professional. ‘Put him on the medical bench.’
There were metal clasps crudely grafted into the living stuff of the bench.
The three guards lifted 24 onto the slab and fastened the clasps around his wrists and ankles. It looked like a dissection set-up. Ms Cohen wondered when she would throw up.
‘I can’t see him getting up and walking away,’ she said to Meijer.
The hired hand just smiled sourly, wiping his forehead with his cap. He sat down on the floor, cradling his gun in his lap. ‘Groenewegen, Caldwell, you’re on first shift. And nobody better fall asleep this time.’
‘I give him four hours,’ Groenewegen said.
11
‘Five’ll get you eight he’s gone in two,’ said Caldwell, closing the door. There was a low hum as the force shield kicked in.
Ms Cohen unclipped her patient’s left arm from the bench. Meijer was watching like a hawk, but the arm was limp, the hand cool and soft, relaxed.
When she probed the fracture with her fingers, he didn’t wince or flinch.
Dissociation? Catatonia? Deep shock? Police psychic probes had tended to have that kind of effect, which is why they had been made illegal. Or it might be something about his diet, or some medicine he ought to be taking.
Whatever it was, he was completely unaware of what was happening. And perhaps he was better off that way.
But the escapes – now, that was atypical. Some part of his mind was still working, watching for opportunities, solving problems. It might be some vari-ation on obsessive/compulsive disorder. She found herself writing an abstract for the paper.
She pushed a drip into his arm, hoping that her educated guesses about his blood chemistry were accurate. Meijer said he’d hardly eaten since they’d brought him here – he wouldn’t eat when they were watching, even if it was through hidden cameras, and he wouldn’t eat when the food was drugged.
He knew, somehow.
She used one of the Ants’ machines to heal the fracture. Another device adapted from Earth technology, but simplified and improved. How many human beings . . . ? They were obviously putting their stolen knowledge to good use.
A soft hum came from the device as she slowly ran it down his arm, watching the fracture heal, the screen showing the structures hidden under the skin.
She wished the machine would show her his mind as clearly.
She gently laid his arm down on the bench, and picked up the handscan.
He sat up, twisting, his other arm still clamped to the bench, and his hand came up and his eyes met hers and he was so angry and he caught the skin of her forehead between forefinger and thumb and he was so angry and a cold fizzing erupted through her face and ate into her brain and then and then Meijer was shouting in her ear, shaking her. ‘Come on!’ he shrieked.
‘There’s a hunt on. You need to see this.