Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [37]
The low growl made her jump. Amy opened her eyes to see an urban fox stalking out of the dark, its eyes glowing eerily blue in the shades of the station.
That made her mind up. She leapt onto the tracks and headed off to her left, away from the angry fox, walking to downtown New York the unconventional way. With all of the power in New
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York out, Amy had to move slowly, feeling her way through the gloom. Oscar's torch could show her the tracks ahead, but the gaping blackness of the runnel beyond was a forbidding mystery, and Amy had no idea what she'd find in the dark, or who might be trying to stop her getting to the Doctor.
Part of Amy wondered how she was going to save the Doctor when she got there - but she knew she had to try. She'd seen the Doctor come up with clever plans on the spur of the moment and thought to herself that she'd be as brilliant as him if she had the opportunity to do it. But nagging away at her was how helpless she'd been when Oscar was being tormented by the little midgets. Still, she'd got him out in the end. At the moment the score was Amy Pond one, Vykoids nil.
The psychic paper glowed again and Amy eagerly opened it to see the message.
If you can see this, you're going the right way. If you can't see this, then.. Oh, haven't really thought that one through, have I?
Amy laughed. The message faded and then a new message came back onto it:
and HURRY UP!
This was quickly followed by:
PLEASE.
Amy started to move off, but the paper glowed yet again: Actually, ignore me, psychic link a bit hard to control, 141
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so I may well be wittering on a bit, but anyway, less reading, more running!
Amused at his cheek, Amy hurried along the dark tracks into the unknown. As her eyes got used to the dark, she could make out more of her surroundings. The glossy posters and adverts soon gave way to cracked plaster and crumbling bricks, curving close above her head, with strange drips of water and curious green stains. Sometimes the runnel was close in around her; at other times it seemed cavernous and impenetrable in the gloom.
Not that Amy wanted to look too closely. Wherever the beam of her torch fell, Amy could see little furry black creatures scuttling out of the way. Rats. She told herself they were probably friendly ones. Like the one in Leadworth Primary School that they used to take home at weekends (until Ian's cat killed it). He was called Ratty, and the boys in class had liked to set him running up and down the girls'
necks.
Amy hadn't been scared then, and it would take more than rats to put her off her mission now. She thought to herself how funny it was that in all the games she used to play when she was 8 years old, the Raggedy Doctor had been the one saving her from mean boys and scary rats. Now she was having to go through a dank, vermin-infested tunnel to save him. Amy's amusement didn't last long, as she realised she'd probably always suspected this was
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going to be the case. It was clear from the moment they met that he'd needed Amy Pond to sort out his life for him.
The tunnel opened out, and her torch showed a row of sidings that stretched out into the gloom. Parked up near to the line was an empty Subway train, standing idle on the tracks. For some reason seeing it sent shivers down her spine. It was like a ghost ship, or a haunted house. Something designed to be full of people felt wrong when it was quiet and so dark. It should be taking New Yorkers all the way to Coney Island, not sitting silent and still in the shadows.
The train looked far bigger and more mechanical from track level, and Amy hurried past. Unknown to her, a little pair of eyes peered out at her as she crept past. To the watching Vykoid's tiny ears, her timid footsteps sounded like the clunking boots of an unwieldy giant.
The tunnel was less flat than Amy expected. Above ground, New York may have been divided up into neat grids and numbered streets, but underneath the city the Subway sloped