Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [49]
She shouted when someone shone a light in her face.
‘Jenny!’ she stage-whispered.
‘Hello.’ The xenobiologist shone the light at the ground. ‘I have been sent to take your place. Go quickly.’
‘Is Zaniwe—’
‘She is fine, with the others in the dome.’
Benny looked back at the kids. ‘I will look after them,’
insisted Jenny. ‘Go on. They are waiting for you.’
Benny squeezed the other woman’s hand. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘You also.’ Benny caught a last glimpse of Jenny’s serious face as she pelted out of the dome.
The Doctor and Roz were waiting for her. ‘Come on,’ he said, setting off at a jog across the grass.
Benny didn’t stop to ask questions; she ran after them.
They reached the TARDIS within five minutes.
‘Right,’ said the Doctor. ‘In you go. I’ve preset the flight controls.’ He held up his hand. ‘Roz will explain everything.’
‘You’re not coming? How’d you get out? Where’s Chris?’
‘He’s fine. And I have a prior engagement.’ He grinned and squeezed her hand. ‘I’ve got to dash before I’m missed.
Be back soon.’
Benny nodded, watching him vanish back into the blackness. Roz pushed the TARDIS door open. ‘Come on,’
she said. ‘We’ve got a lot of preparation ahead of us.’
‘Good,’ said Benny, following her in, ‘because I’ve been stuck in that dome changing nappies all day.’
* * *
Chris helped move stuff around the lab, passed people needles and cotton when he was told to, and tried not to think about the Turtle.
They were still processing people, at a quarter of the rate. There were only two troopers now, and the lieutenant had taken the Doctor away for some reason or other. Byerley had been ordered to return to his quarters and rest, while a Company medic continued the testing. When he’d refused, one of the soldiers had held on to him while the medic injected him with a tranquillizer. Roz had had to carry him out. That had been an hour ago.
Chris felt very light, like paper. It wasn’t just that he didn’t have his armour any more (what had Roz done with hers?).
They had taken away his ripped tunic, given him some of Byerley’s old clothes, functional black stuff, shirt and trousers. They were too tight.
People had kept asking him how he felt. ‘How are you?’
Byerley would ask, peering at him, his brow pulled into a line of concern. Chris would just nod. Forrester kept shooting glances at him, as though he were doing something wrong.
He kept picking up stuff from the colonists, whenever they hit a particularly high spike of fear or anger. He supposed the telepathic lieutenant was hearing it too. He really wanted to know exactly what was going on, but he supposed that if no-one told him, no-one could read his mind and find out.
After a long time even the troopers decided to call it a night. Since he was technically still a patient, they simply locked him into the Other Room.
The pyrokinetic was there, heavily tranked, just a body on a trolley. Dot was in there, sitting on a chair, hands folded in her lap, pretending to be deaf. No, she was deaf; she was just pretending that she couldn’t hear — not the sounds coming from the other room, not the yelling from the forest.
It had occurred to him that the lieutenant didn’t just automatically know what everyone was thinking. Otherwise, he’d have realized about Dot. Which meant that the lieutenant had to want to read someone’s mind for it to happen. Maybe it was the same kind of skill that allowed you to sort out a single conversation from a room full of people talking, a single sound from background noise.
That meant that if you didn’t draw attention to yourself —
if they didn’t turn their searchlight beam on you — they wouldn’t know what you were thinking.
He rolled his head, looked at Dot. She noticed the movement, turning her head to look at him. Did she know what he was thinking?
She closed her eyes. In the back of his mind, a picture started growing. After a moment, he let it.
She was four years old. She was being punished.
She didn’t know what she had done. She was always being punished, for hours and hours every day, no matter