Doctor Who_ The Taint - Michael Collier [29]
Seconds later the Doctor was rifling through the files. 'What am I doing?' he asked aloud. 'I can take them to my room and read them in peace. Return them in the morning.'
Nothing in the room seemed to object to his plan, so he nodded happily and, after bundling the files under his arm, went back to his room.
***
Russell Waller shivered in his bed at every tiny sound carrying through the dark, tugging on his forelock of hair, his skin damp with perspiration. He felt that something was walking up and down past his door, waiting for him to fall asleep before slowly turning the door handle and walking in. He wanted to crawl into somewhere small and dark, and hide.
As the night wore on, he became convinced there were four or five of the things out there, poised to take him.
3.5
Morning light spread itself thinly round the Doctor's room, and revealed him hunched up in bed, fully clothed, pondering the sheets of paper littered around him.
Abruptly, he scrambled out of the covers and leapt to his feet, the papers seeming to gather themselves more neatly in his slipstream. He flicked through them once more as he stacked them together.
'You kept quiet about all this, now, didn't you, Dr Roley?' he muttered, crossing to the door. A floorboard creaked loudly as if protesting its owner's innocence. The Doctor rutted and opened the door silently, tiptoeing off back downstairs.
A clock struck six.
***
'Where am I?' muttered Sam.
In the seconds that followed she chastised herself for uttering those words -
that had to be the single most unoriginal phrase possible for someone recovering from unconsciousness. She could've said, 'Anyone get the number of that Dalek?' or 'is the world dancing to the beat in my head or am I just concussed?' or...
No one had answered the question, anyway, regardless of its merit. She could see a pale, blurry expanse of ceiling - no, it had to be a wall: she was lying on her side. A cell? Clues, clues... She moved her head a fraction, but her vision lurched as she did so. She waited for the feeling to pass. 'What the hell was I -'
Suddenly, a low rumble sounded behind her, and she froze. It was a ghastly sound, unearthly, inhuman.
She realised it was something snoring.
'Oh my God,' she whispered, and, remembering she had arms and hands, used them to ascertain she was naked except for her undies. She was lying on something too soft to be a floor but surely not soft enough to be a bed...with someone else (arms and hands again)...someone snoring and stark-bollock- naked beside her -
She turned and found a man breathing all over her on this scuzzy mattress in this scuzzy bedroom and...
'Fitz! What’s going on here, you - '
Sam sat bolt upright, screamed out the words, then collapsed back in agony. Her head seemed to be telling her in no uncertain terms that if she wasn't quiet it would simply have to turn itself off again. The outburst did have some effect on her bedfellow, however: with a yell of alarm and panic, he jumped out from the blanket as if propelled by an unseen force and scuttled over to the wall before realising where he was.
'Jesus, Sam...' he began, rubbing a hand over his bleary eyes. 'What the hell do you think you're doing? It's barely six o'clock.'
Sam breathed deeply, her fingers gripping the threadbare blanket. 'What am I doing? What am I doing? You get me out of my skull, get me into bed, and -' She stopped, clutching her head again.
'Don't you remember?' asked Fitz, softly. He covered his modesty by placing a small plant between his legs.
Sam barely heard him. Suddenly she was back in the alley, the metal man with the weird voice and his Mend advancing silently towards her like mime artists, the struggle, Chubby, all of it... Then confused memories of someone rifling through her mind as if it were a clothes stall at a jumble sale. And Fitz.
'Back outside Molly's. You helped me,' Sam said.
'I suppose you could say I saved your life, yeah...'