Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [6]
He pulled her to her feet. Her legs were asleep. She looked around dazedly, leaning on the bench. The drip hung from its stand, still spattering nutrients into a puddle on the floor.
The right clamp had been wrenched free from the bench. There was blood on it, and a small swarm of butterflies, intent on repairing the wrecked component.
‘Whudee do?’ she said, her tongue thick inside her mouth.
12
‘He cost Groenewegen fifty thousand,’ said Meijer. ‘Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.’
‘How’d he get past you?’ Ms Cohen asked, but Meijer was herding her out into the narrow corridor. An alarm was sounding, a ping-ping-ping that echoed angrily through her head.
‘A heat sensor picked him up in the shuttlebay,’ said Meijer, breaking into a run. Ms Cohen followed. The smooth vegetable walls flickered past, bizarrely, as though they were running through the middle of a stalk of celery. ‘They’ve got him cornered in the kitchen.’
They burst into the shuttlebay. Ms Cohen slowed, trying to take in the huge area, the shuttles suspended in the air, large as houses, a hodgepodge of vessels stolen from hijacked spacecraft. And then they were back in another corridor in the Ant farm.
The kitchen was a jumble of freezers and ovens, some of them probably from the Cortese. Four hired hands had pinned Number 24 to the ground.
Two others stood by, their guns shivering in their hands as they kept them trained on the captive. ‘You missed the fun, boss,’ said Groenewegen.
‘Give me that,’ said Meijer. The hired hands stepped back. 24 was switched off again; he lay loosely on the floor, eyes as blank as the screen of a crashed computer. Meijer reached down and wrenched him to his feet, twisting the damaged arm behind his back. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he hissed into the prisoner’s ear. ‘Fifteen crukking minutes! You’d better be more polite to the lady, or I might let Groenewegen take his fifty thousand out of you in chunks, yes?’
24 didn’t look at him, didn’t respond. Slowly, slowly, Meijer started to twist his arm. The hired hands watched, hungrily.
‘I just set that,’ said Ms Cohen.
And then she saw it. Just a flicker, just a tiny flicker running across the subject’s face, as Meijer tried to break his arm. He wasn’t catatonic. He wasn’t in shock. He wasn’t insane. He was completely aware of everything that happened to him.
‘Oh, and that’s another thing,’ Meijer told her, smiling. ‘He never screams.’
Ms Cohen threw up.
13
Chapter 2
Run! Run! As Fast As You Can!
En skulde aldrig ha’ sine bedste buxer på, når en er ude og strider for frihed og sandhed.
You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
(Henrik Ibsen, En Folkefiende, 1882)
‘Meijer?
‘Will Groenewegen ever collect his fifty thousand?’
‘Well, will he?
‘Meijer?
‘You’re from New Haarlem, aren’t you?
‘When was it you learned English?
‘How do you know what the Ants want you to do?’
‘ How was it you learned English?
‘Meijer?’
The electroencephalogram didn’t tell her anything either.
‘It looks like the workings of an active, aware brain. Beyond that –’
Meijer sighed, tucking his arms behind his head as he watched from a corner of the lab. ‘He is an alien,’ Ms Cohen protested.
Meijer had been watching her for hours. Not Number 24. Her. Her palms were alive with sweat as she manipulated the EEG’s controls. ‘I’ll need more time to calibrate the monitor. And – and I need to see the process.’
‘On him?’
‘On somebody else, first,’ Ms Cohen whispered. She put her damp hand on her mouth. ‘Somebody else.’
Number 24 was watching her from the bench. Actually, he was staring at the wall; she was just in his line of sight. She moved around the other side, away from his eyes, and started to pluck electrodes from his hair.
He was so angry. It was worse than Meijer’s ugly, hungry stare. It was worse than the silent Ants. She felt it when she touched him, when she pressed electrodes to his throat or spine, when she felt his re-set arm. She wondered if Meijer felt it, if that was why he wanted to hurt