Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [85]
No. I don’t have to die to be free of this. I’ve already changed so much in this lifetime, I can let go of my past without letting go of who I am. I release myself from the burden of hating myself for things long since done. I free myself from the task of being perfect and handling everything. No more prisoners. No more self-accusation, self-flagellation, self-castigation. I don’t deserve it. None of me does.
Not even the person I used to be. No need to lock him away, no need for any of me to blame myself. I keep thinking as though I killed him, but I didn’t.
I’m not dead.
Less weight on me now, the soil more loosely packed. Getting close. Lungs like hot coals. Don’t rush. Don’t push. Pushing only makes it harder, drains your strength more. Don’t try to control. Relax and let the movement move you. Simple unconscious rhythm of your hands and body will free you. Like breathing. Very like breathing.
Muscles sizzling.
The change could start any moment now.
Not sure
whether this cat will be alive or dead when the box opens. Don’t know if I’ll have a new face when I break free.
Don’t need to worry about it either. If it happens then it happens, but if it does I won’t be trapped: I will go on. I will be the one who’s still alive, 172
because I’m not just who I am right now: I’m who I was and who I will be too.
I am the Doctor. I am the Doctor.
I
AM
. . . touching air.
Fingers free, scrabbling for a grip above. Left hand breaks through too.
Don’t breathe, don’t breathe, there’s still a foot of soil over your face, whole body tightening with a final breathless convulsion, funny how it’s so much more agonizing when you’re this close, not sure whether your body is going to give out just before the finish line or rally for that final PULL
free.
Weight falling away from my face. I breathe. Head turns. I can move. I cough, spluttering out the chunks of dirt I’ve just inhaled, sucking in another lungful of air.
Out. I am. Free. We’re all free.
I pull the rest of me loose and start to stand up, getting as far clear of the ground as I can just because I can. Stumbling to my feet, feeling all this precious wind on my face. My gasps sounding like laughter.
Through streaming eyes I somehow see Death, reclining against a tree stump, watching with a smirk.
‘There now,’ she says, ‘that wasn’t so bad, was it?’
173
19
Needlessly Messianic
Joel Andrew Mintz had never killed anyone before.
Te Yene Rana, on the other hand, had stopped counting at one hundred.
She had pulled the small, pale human out from under a corpse, and slapped him around until he’d stopped screaming. When he’d got a good look at her, snatching up his eye magnifiers from the soil and jamming them on to his face, he’d started screaming again.
Now he was sitting at an odd angle on the ridge, surrounded by bodies, his eyes large and blank behind those little circles of glass. She’d only picked him up because she wanted a look at him.
‘You’re from the future? Right?’ she said, poking him with the barrel of her laser rifle.
‘Uh, yes, yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve never killed anybody before. Did I tell you that?’
‘I think you mentioned it. Thanks.’
This ridge had been the centre of the battle camp. She could see small groups of fighters moving around nearby, picking up corpses, carrying away the wounded. All very routine.
‘Where’s the leader?’ she demanded.
He looked around, but he wasn’t taking anything in. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t be helped. I don’t know. Is he still alive?’
She picked him up by his collar. He struggled a bit. ‘Is he one of these cadavers?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t think so,’ he managed, at length. ‘He must be somewhere else.’
She dropped him. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘He’s probably off organizing whatever’s left of his troops. Will he come back here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the human. ‘I guess so.’
‘Then I’ll wait.’ She picked up an overturned