Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [94]
The shot should have turned her into a wisp of vapour. Perhaps Kadiatu’s aim was a little off.
Kadiatu’s arm jerked down forty-five degrees, covering the woman lying on the floor.
She lay there.
She lay there.
She lay there.
Kadiatu turned and walked jerkily away.
And neither of them said a word.
The Doctor opened his eyes. The agony in his shoulder had diminished to a dim thrumming. He was lying awkwardly on his side, twisted in a mass of green tendrils.
He tried to move. There were vines drawn tight around his legs and arms, across his chest. One was looped across his throat, forcing his head back. As he watched, a long spiral of green wound itself around his left wrist.
There was a figure standing over him. She was smooth and white as porcelain. But much more durable. Even before Death had come to life as the first creature fell on the first world, she had existed, as essential and as intolerable as her younger sister.
‘I have come,’ said Pain, ‘to make sure you keep your side of our bargain.’
It ought to hurt.
Ace was hunched against the wall, breathing hard. Her mind had come sharply back into focus. She knew just what to do.
She did not fumble with the combat kit, even though her hands were shaking. The hopper had climbed off of its own accord, half its tentacles singed into flaking black wires. Perhaps it would die.
She unzipped the kit and pulled out the military handscan with her left hand. Very basic things, used mostly for triage; they told you whether you were dead or about to die.
Okay, she’d caught the edge of a plasma burst at extremely close range.
There were extensive burns – probably second-degree – to her right side and arm.
She ought not to be able to move. It ought to hurt, really.
184
The handscan prescribed two military endorphin derms. She pressed them to her arm, added a third one for good measure. If it didn’t hurt now, it was going to start hurting soon.
She unpackaged a fourth derm with shaky fingers, put it on her shoulder.
Traumatized blood vessels would have leaked fluid – how much, she wouldn’t know, and in any case she wouldn’t be able to replace the stuff until she got to a very non-existent medical facility. The derm would help fight off the shock.
She struggled to her feet. The endorphins already sloshing about inside her, giving her a buzz like exercise or combat. They could not completely mask the burning.
So long as she could keep the pain away, she’d be alright. She just had to keep moving until she found the Doctor.
Nicolas burst in through the door of his shop, chest heaving. Benny was asleep, slumped over the counter. She woke up with such a start that she fell off.
They glared at one another across the counter.
‘ De rien, ’ he said. ‘The tricolour’s flying over the Arc de Triomphe. It’s over, it’s all over.’
‘Alright,’ she said suspiciously.
‘Where is everyone?’
‘Fled,’ she fibbed, yawning. ‘Looks as though it’s just you and me.’
‘Soon it’ll be just you. I’m getting the hell out of Paris.’ He stopped, considered, and asked in a surprised voice, ‘Do you want a lift?’
Benny shook her head. ‘I have to wait for my friends here.’
‘You suit yourself, mademoiselle, but they’re rolling barrels down the Champs Elysees to make barricades. It’s more like the pit of hell than the fields of heaven. Everything smells of petrol. I had to escape press-gangs twice – they’re just tearing the streets apart and pulling up the cobblestones to make walls.’
‘I heard the cannons,’ said Benny. ‘But I have to wait.’
‘You suit yourself. I don’t know what your friends have been doing all this time, what it’s all been about, and I don’t care. I’m going.’
Ship guided Kadiatu through the passages until she found the Doctor, cocooned in a tangled mass of greenery. Ship’s nerves. A flock of repair butterflies was crouched on the vines, antennae twitching, unable to get to the damaged component inside.
His eyes snapped open. Kadiatu started and jerked back.