Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [84]
White sat back, glaring at her. She didn’t let go of him.
‘Get him the hell out of here,’ he said, at last.
Cephas was sitting against SLEEPY’s fin, back pressed to the cool metal, knees drawn up to his chest. He closed his eyes, letting his head open up. He wanted it to talk to him again. But there was only the rushing sound of the wind in the leaves. He was alone.
The others were back at the camp, packing up the last of their equipment. He had already rolled up his sleeping-bag, eaten the last of his ration cubes. Tents and bundles were neatly piled up around the clearing, ready to go.
He had gingerly tested his psychokinesis, but there was nothing left. He couldn’t as much as reach out and pick a flower. It was such a relief.
How were his mum and dad, back at the dome? He had been several kilometres into the forest before he’d stopped to think. He remembered leaning against a tree, his heart pounding in his chest and SLEEPY’s voice pounding inside his head. What if they punished his parents because he’d got out?
He’d hopped from foot to foot for a moment, torn between the need to go back and the need to go forward. But it had been much too late. He couldn’t turn back, give them all away. He was just going to have to trust the Doctor.
SLEEPY trusted the Doctor.
Cephas opened his eyes. One of the lieutenants was crunching into the clearing, two troopers following. The man was holding an infrared scanner. He looked down at the teenager, up at the fin projecting from the ground, around at the gouge through the trees.
Cephas jumped up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Everybody should be ready to go by now.’
Red followed him out of the clearing, looking bewildered.
‘You’re just going through the motions, really, aren’t you?’
Turquoise waved his gun about. Roz rolled her eyes and turned around again. She and Chris had been held by a couple of nervous-looking troopers for about half an hour, and now they and Doctor St John were being shepherded down a dome corridor. The lieutenant’s agitation was obvious. What had happened on the ship? What was happening now?
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You can’t really believe we’re more of a threat than a bloody great warship that’s going to fry the planet you’re standing on.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Byerley angrily. ‘You’re just following orders.’
‘Look,’ said Turquoise. ‘By this point, you’re probably thinking we should just turn around and refuse to move; there’d be no point in shooting us. Well, listen up. You two -’
he indicated the Adjudicators with his gun ‘—-are wanted for interrogation. But we only need one of you.’
‘Ah,’ said Chris.
‘Mmm,’ said Roz.
‘What about me?’ said Byerley.
‘The Colonel wants to talk to you. So quit talking and keep walking. All right?’
The light was trying to kindle inside him. Again. It was patient, the cool light, the hard light, always looking for an opportunity.
It had been a calculated risk that one of White’s lieutenants would have been affected by the virus. That one of them would be able to get inside him. (Goodness knew what the long-term effects on her powers might have been. It was just as well that Benny and Roz had brought the cure forward with them.)
The light flared, its brilliance finding every inch of his skin, glittering in every drop of his blood. He pushed it back, forced it down. He knew this game from long practice. The light was a ferocious potential energy, crammed into every cell. It promised to wash it all away, pain, despair, exhaustion, to leave him bleached, beached, immaculate, empty. Once he let it start its burning, let it break the floodgates, there would be no stopping it.
Someone was shaking him. There was an antiseptic smell in the cold air. He was partly covered by something. His fingers gripped, and found a heat-reflective blanket.
It would be so easy just to go under. He was broken into pieces, memories and senses and thoughts a jumble of nonsense,