Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [69]
White didn’t know that eight of those twenty-four colonists hadn’t made it back. He did know that one of them hadn’t, though.
BAR B had done a superb job of getting the other eight out of the base, directing them through an emergency storeroom and out through unguarded entrances while CONNECTICUT maintained a constant façade on the sensors. She’d even faked a fire alarm as a distraction, blowing out a component with a directed electrical pulse so that the mechanism simply seemed faulty.
Chris had been the second last to get out. The Doctor gave him final instructions — keep them together, no heroics, wait for me — and sent him out of the base.
Only once had the troopers noticed anything. One of them had fallen into a puddle, it seemed, out in the forest.
Very undignified, very embarrassing. The morani had climbed out of the wet ditch, cursing and squeezing water out of his warrior’s hair, and had headed for the nearest unguarded entrance of the base. The ninth colonist, a thrematologist named Liphuko, pushed open the door just as the morani was walking up.
White had ordered the trooper to shoot her. Oh, she was fine now, back in the common area. The Doctor had been with the Colonel when he’d given that order. The Time Lord was going to win this bet if it killed him.
White had assured him it was absolutely the last time he would break his promise. The next person to leave the dome would be killed no matter what. He’d ordered the guard around the base’s exits doubled. Thankfully, he hadn’t ordered a head-count of the colonists, convinced that it had been a one-off mistake, an oversight on his part. He was a little like a puppet with its strings cut now.
BAR B was certain there was no guard.
‘I know death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits,’ murmured the Doctor. He reached for the doorknob.
Dot still wasn’t completely sure what had happened.
Chris Cwej was gone, leaving her feeling jittery, cut off, with only the drugged pyrokinetic for company. Even the Doctor was ignoring her, watching White every moment.
The DKC man’s mind was focused, not broadcasting at random the way everyone else’s seemed to do. She settled for whatever she could pick up: the odd spike of anger or curiosity, the ripple in the air when he sent out orders or someone reported in. When he spoke, she couldn’t ‘hear’ it.
At the time, the Doctor had been messing about with a piece of laboratory equipment, pretending not to be concerned. He was unreadable too, like a billboard without a picture. But Dot could almost follow his thinking by watching his movements, his gaze. He was aware of everyone and everything in the room, where everything was and where it was going. In some ways, she thought, he was almost deaf.
Someone sent in a report to White, a sharp rippling in the air. White spoke his answer out loud.
The Doctor stomped across the room, leant right over Byerley’s desk and tried to grab White by his lapels. Since the Colonel’s armour didn’t have lapels, he took hold of the man’s shoulders and shouted into his face.
Then they just stared at one another.
Dot could feel the electricity between them, the communication — without gestures, without speech. They were — negotiating? But why? What was happening? What had White’s order been?
Abruptly, the Doctor sat down, almost deflating into the chair across from White. The Colonel got up, paced around the desk, stood behind the Doctor.
Dot didn’t dare get up, didn’t dare interfere, watching through the half-open door.
White put his hand on the side of the little man’s face. It was almost a caress, the backs of his fingers brushing against the Doctor’s temple.
The Doctor half raised a shaking hand, fighting the need to pull White’s fingers away as they curled into a fist and twisted.