Doctor Who_ The Devil Goblins From Neptune - Keith Topping [115]
He was allowed one television station - NBC - and then only at certain times. It was as though they were keeping something from him.
When he was alone, which wasn't often, he remembered the crumpled UNIT file he had found in the wreck of the truck in Switzerland, completely by accident. It was a medical report from a group of scientists engaged in top-secret research on Nedenah DNA. The list of names included one he instantly recognised. Mary Bruce. His wife.
The report went on to suggest that quarantine procedures be tightened after the children of some of the research staff had died of leukaemia. That list of names included one he knew well. John Bruce. His son.
The file was dated three months after John's death. They had known all the time. They had known that they were playing with fire, that messing around with alien blood was likely to have some effect on those who came into contact with it. But people like Control and Hayes had just let the experiments continue.
He cried then. Not for his wife, nor his dead son, nor the marriage that had been torn apart by secrets and lies long before John's illness and the counsellor who'd done more harm than good. He cried for himself. He had played their game, and lost. And was damned.
Night time. Bruce got out of bed to find no one in his room.
Softly he padded to the door to check on the corridor, but it was deserted. He looked at his watch. In the long, dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning.
The gun was lying on the chair, obviously left there by Steve Cowper, who had been on shift until midnight. Maybe Steve was trying to tell Tom something - he was an old friend, after all.
Thomas Bruce picked up the weapon and felt its velvet touch in the darkness. He hobbled slowly across the room to the bathroom, and switched on the light. In this little cubicle, the shot would sound like a clap of thunder. It would be the last thing he would hear.
Bruce looked in the mirror and saw his own face reflected back at him. Tired. Haggard. Lost and alone. The last thing he would see. He spoke softly, to himself.
'Goodbye.' The last voice he would ever hear.
He put the gun in his mouth. He wanted to say something else, something relevant, something profound. His final statement to the world before he splattered his brains all over the white tiles. But he couldn't think of anything so he just pulled the trigger.
Click.
Bruce stared down, stupidly, at the gun in his mouth. He removed it and cracked open the chamber. No bullets. His mouth was dry and he felt sick. Behind him, he heard the door of the cubicle open slowly with a creak, like a sound effect from every bad horror film he'd seen.
'When you join the CIA, Tom.' said Control, 'you join for life. You don't think we'd let you take the easy way out, do you? We decide when it's over, not you.'
Bruce turned, his shoulders hunched. Ignoring Control, he limped back into his bed, and pulled the sheets over his head.
SECOND EPILOGUE:
FEELING SUPERSONIC
It was a bright, clear day in early spring. In the eight months since she'd left UNIT, many things had happened in the life of Dr Elizabeth Shaw. A return to Cambridge, briefly. Then travel, to Australia, the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Her future as a scientific pundit had been assured when she stood in for an ill colleague during the televising of one of the Mars landings, and had charmed Patrick Moore into submission with her laconic wit.
Her first book, Inside the Carnival, had brought her money, fame, and death threats. UNIT, and Cambridge, were a million miles behind her now.
Except today.
She had been invited back to officially open the newly built Trainor Foundation building. As she arrived her attention was drawn to the plaque she was to unveil later in the day.
PROFESSOR BERNARD TRAINOR, 1916-1970
A LIFE LIVED IN THE PURSUIT OF SCIENTIFIC
EXCELLENCE,
AND TO THE BENEFIT OF MANKIND
OPENED BY DR ELIZABETH SHAW, 24TH MARCH