Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [124]
They’d been beautiful once: ornate embroidery over the finest cottons and silks. The rubbery cloak he wore looked newer, as though it had been broken out of stores only a few years ago.
She took another step, and now they were inches apart.
His face was kind. This was an honourable warrior, not some vicious fighter.
She reached out, stroked his face. She was still afraid of him. This man was a statue, held in place by the same processes that stopped yesterday being today, or page two hundred and thirty-seven of a book from being page two hundred and thirty-eight.
She was a Time Lord of Gallifrey, she had graduated top of her year. And now she was here on an alien artefact, trillions of years from home, in charge of the situation, entrusted with the life of a member of the High Council. This was where she had always wanted to be, and now she was letting her irrational fears conquer her.
Larna smiled, and closed her eyes. She was at one with the universe. Her isolation was liberation. This is how she always hoped it would feel. There was danger here, there was uncertainty, but there were real choices and opportunities. She didn’t know what would happen next, or what she would see when she opened her eyes.
Something brushed against her hand.
Her eyes and mouth snapped wide open. There was a small sound, not even a yelp. Larna realised that she had made it.
There was a trail of dust over the man’s face and shoulder.
It had been dust and plaster from the ceiling.
She started breathing, brought her body’s production of adrenaline back to something like its normal levels.
Calm again, she turned her back on the frozen warrior, back to the fire in the centre of the room. The medical unit was still there, solid as a standing stone.
She was just in time to see it topple onto the fire.
It crushed the light out of the fire, sending a cloud of cinders billowing in all directions. The room was suddenly dark, but Larna was already striding across it, certain of where she was heading. Its antigravs had failed, all its power had gone.
‘Doctor!’ she shouted. He’d be all right in there, protected by the unit’s casing for a little while. She couldn’t say how long.
Pain! She’d caught her leg on something. A metal beam.
She stopped, reached down to assess the extent of the injury. When her hand came up sticky with her own blood, she felt as if it had infected her, as though the particles of rusty metal were growing inside her body like bacteria.
She was dizzy, she had to sit down. Some part of her brain guided her safely down to the floor.
It saved her life.
The medical unit burst open in a shower of shrapnel. The heat of the flames must have generated pressure enough to–
‘Doctor!’ she shouted again. She was on her feet, her wounded leg forgotten.
The remains of the medical unit were twisting and curling in the heat of the flames.
Larna stood at a safe distance, knowing that if the Doctor was still in there that he would be dead. Her only hope was that he had somehow been removed. She made her way forward, but the heat was intense.
There was clattering behind her. Larna tugged the Magistrate’s gun from her belt and held it up like a torch.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked.
The shadows were moving. A glimpse of a head here, a limb there, all around her. She was casting some of them herself, but not all of them. Not all of them. There was someone else here.
It was the Doctor.
He stumbled out of the shadows, steadying himself on the side of a shelving unit.
‘Doctor,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me.’
He stood properly, straightening his back, staring around, a little wildly.
The room shook, the brickwork beginning to grind against itself. Trails of dust and plaster hissed down.
‘Great power… unleashed. We have to get to safety.’
For a moment she wondered if he’d become another Savar, driven mad by what he had seen.
She took his hand. He looked down at first, unsure, but then looked her in the eye and broke into a tight, uncertain, smile. He looked her up and down, as if he barely knew her.
Finally, he lurched