Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [123]
The red eyes boring down on him grew brighter, the Magistrate heard himself yelping, and couldn’t help but look away.
‘I have watched you, I have seen all your lives. I know what you have been and what you will be. You do not deserve an end like this. Serve me!’
‘No,’ the Magistrate said, summoning as much dignity as he could.
‘So be it.’
With a wave of a hand, the Magistrate vanished.
The ground was shaking at irregular intervals as Larna reached the room with the fire, the one where the Doctor was safe in his medical unit. It sounded as if there was vast machinery beneath her, like the engines of a vast ocean-going liner. Machinery that was spasmodically grinding down to a halt. The sounds were mechanical, echoing, distant.
She walked towards the fire, the only point of heat in the room, the only source of light apart from weak lamps mounted on the walls and a soft blue halo around the medical unit. The firelight was enough to define the outlines of the shelves, and the shapes of the items stacked on them, but it wasn’t enough to tell what the items were.
The only sound was the heartbeat thump of the medical unit’s generator. She knelt to check the readout. It told her that the Doctor was in a deep coma, with no signs of physical injury.
Larna held up the TARDIS key.
There was a noise from the back of the room. A rustling, clattering noise.
She was on her feet in an instant, head down, poised for an attack.
The three unconscious Needle People would be where she had left them. She picked her way across the rubble to check each one of them in turn. The first was holding out his hands as if he was trying to ward her off. Some instinct prevented Larna from getting too close. She told herself not to be so foolish: the Z-cap was still plainly visible on his forehead.
The second man wasn’t going anywhere, the Z-cap was saving his life. There was a hole in his chest, a wound made even more vile by the fact that it wasn’t moving, that the blood was held in pace by the stasis field. Larna wondered who these people were, what they were called. On the Station, she had scanned the area for life signs. There were a number of groups of hunting carnivores, but very little else in the way of life. Although they couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that there were other inhabitants, they hadn’t found any other Needle People anywhere. Did they feel as lonely, as isolated as Larna felt here? She knew that she had a Station and a planet to return to. This ruin was all that these people had.
Where was the third one?
She turned, trying to reorientate herself. He had been by one of the three doors, but which one? Whatever direction it was into shadows. She steeled herself, allowed her pupils to dilate to improve her vision. The way was clear: the people had cleared a route through the debris to the door. Beneath the rubble was a beautiful marble When there had been sunlight here, it must have been possible to beautiful gold-green veins there, but such subtleties were a thing of the past in this deadening darkness.
There was another clattering. Coming from the direction she was heading. Larna took a deep breath, but didn’t stop.
The last one was standing where he should, the Z-cap stuck firm to his head where the Magistrate had put it. He was the last one here, she corrected herself. There was the other one, the oldest, frozen to the floor of the control room.
This one was darker than the others. He looked calm, confident. Again, something prevented her from getting too close. She was six feet away. Even from here, even in the darkness, she could see that his metabolic processes were in stasis. He wasn’t breathing: his chest wasn’t rising, his nostrils were perfectly still. Even the most skilled gymnast would not be able to hold that one-legged pose naturally, not without some tremble of muscles, some slip of his foot.
He was in stasis, so why was she so afraid of him?
She told herself to stop being so foolish and took a step closer.
His clothes were worn, faded. The cuffs