Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [134]
Savar brought the sword down on his shoulder, and the arm flopped back. All part of the same movement, the blade swept up, cutting his nose and cheek.
He swung the broadsword straight at Omega’s head.
Omega caught it in one hand, tugged it from Savar’s grasp and tossed it over the edge of the pulpit.
‘There is only one future.’
He gave a great shout, an animalistic roar from deep inside him. When he had finished he stood there uninjured, his broken bones mended, the blood gone from his wounds.
‘There is only Omega.’
He waved his hand, and Savar evaporated. The blind man’s cloak tottered back, slapping into the ground in front of Larna.
She slumped.
Omega bent over her. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I really see why the Doctor has his companions. Doing all this is really much better with an audience.’
‘You turned him,’ she said. ‘You transformed him into the blind Savar, the alternate one.’
‘Not just Savar.’
She could hear screaming. Men howling, like wolves.
Agonised sounds that started like words.
Larna looked up at him. Omega had his back to her, he was staring up at the containment globe. The iron was bubbling, blistering, disintegrating. At its heart was a chink of something. The singularity.
‘Night has fallen on Gallifrey. Can’t you feel it? Oh, don’t worry, my dear. You’re protected, here in the stasis halo. But out there, they’ve all transformed. Voran, Pendrel, all of them.
They’re blind and alone, desperate. Without the power of the Eye to protect them, without Rassilon watching over them, hear what they’ve become. Hear what they are really.’
A man crying. A choir screaming in harmony. Strangulated calls and guttural, primeval noises. Explosions, shattering masonry, falling statues, burning flesh. All of the sounds echoed down from the Citadel, filtered through the thick limestone walls.
Larna pulled herself up, stood eye to eye with him.
‘With the power of the singularity, you’ll be able to do anything, have anything. Is this really what you want?’
The Doctor’s face smiled down at her.
‘Yes.’
He stepped off the edge of the pulpit, fell towards the singularity, grasped it, became god.
As the power flowed through him, Omega shed the Doctor’s skin. He became a vast, hunched creature like a bull or a warthog. The armour that surrounded him was built from solid plates of metal, the sort of cladding usually only seen on battleships. He had ram’s horns, a beard that curled down his breastplate. His right hand burned with the singularity where he had touched it. He was no longer a man, no longer an animal… no, he was a force of nature like a hurricane or a forest fire.
Men can’t fight the hurricane.
Omega saw that it was good.
There was a slow clapping from behind him.
He turned. The Doctor was there, mocking him with applause.
‘Apotheosis,’ the Doctor said. ‘The merging of your physical body and the power of the singularity.
Congratulations.’
Omega’s eyes flashed red, he willed the Doctor’s destruction, invoked the fundamental powers of the universe to annihilate him.
The Doctor yawned, held up his right hand. Flame flickered around it. ‘Snap,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ve got a singularity of my own. Let me show you something.’
They were standing on grey, devastated ground. A desolate place, the sky full of fog, and gravel and tektites underfoot.
‘Where are we?’ Omega demanded.
‘A planet in the seventh galaxy which died in nuclear fire.
The twelfth world of its star system. It is centuries since that war and the radiation levels have fallen. The sky is still black, the oceans and lakes are still frozen.’ The Doctor paused.
‘This is Skaro.’
They began to walk on the broken, blackened soil.
‘Is there anything living here?’ Omega asked.
The Doctor drew a deep breath. ‘A fifth of the population died in the initial attack. Toxic gases, waste and biological agents filled the air as the cities burned. Every piece of asbestos, every drop of toxic waste. Another fifth of the population died, because