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'This was your work,' said the Doctor, standing up and facing them.

'Yours too, Doctor,' said Lucy. 'Your box upstairs gave us the information we needed.'

The Doctor marched forward to Watson. 'Put him right,' he said. 'Now.'

Watson laughed in the Doctor's face. 'It took a lot out of us to do that to him.' He yawned for effect.

'Do it,' said the Doctor, quietly.

Watson smiled at him, indulgently. 'Even if we wanted to, we wouldn't know how.'

'You're acting like destructive children,' stormed the Doctor. 'Whatever powers you're finding within yourselves, you must control them. You must use them for -'

The Doctor suddenly gasped and clutched his ears.

'Russell, Muriel, my dear,' Watson said. 'Hold our friend the Doctor.'

They did so, gripping him by the arms. Fitz noticed Maria totter backward as if finally able to move from under their scrutiny. Then her legs twisted under her and she fell to the floor. He ran over to her.

'You all right?' he asked.

'Can't move my legs,' said Maria, banging her fist on the floor.

Fitz was able to pull her a little further away, and got a cushion for her, listening all the while as Sam took on the others.

'Let go of the Doctor,' said Sam.

'Why?' said Lucy, fingering a curl of the Doctor's hair. 'I think I might want him.'

'Well, you can't have him.'

'Can't I?'

'No one can,' Sam said. 'Least of all a dried-up old cow like you.'

'Go, Sam!' muttered Fitz to himself.

Lucy angrily marched over to Sam, then stopped. Confusion, then alarm, spread over her face. 'Davydd?' she called to him. 'I can't... I can't...'

The Doctor pulled himself free of Russell and Mrs Kreiner, who were suddenly looking distressed, and backed away to stand at Sam's side.

'Can't what, exactly?' asked the Doctor, apparently genuinely curious.

Watson too was looking alarmed, deflated even, his veneer of urbane command peeling away. 'It's her!' he cried, looking at Sam. 'It's her!'

'What's he talking about, Doctor?"

The Doctor clicked his fingers. 'Of course!' he cried. 'Maria! Tranquillisers, quickly.'

'I can't move,' Bulwell moaned."They've crippled me!'

The Doctor thought hard.'All right, one thing at a time... Fitz, give me a hand with Roley.'

As Fitz walked nervously over to the Doctor, his mother fell to her knees.

'Fitzie, my darling,' croaked his mum. 'Help me. Take me away from here, help me get better.'

'Don't listen to her,' snapped the Doctor. 'It's not your mother talking. The devil consciousness has taken hold.'

'But why?' asked Fitz, staring helplessly at his mother. 'How can she just...?'

'The leeches aren't operating correctly. These poor people are sick, your mother included; their minds are confused.'

'Don't try to patronise us, Doctor,' snarled Watson, clutching hold of Lucy for support. 'We know just what we're doing, and just what we're going to do to the likes of you.'

The Doctor flashed him a tight smile. 'Not right now you're not, not with Sam here.'

'Doctor... Why? ' Sam asked with weary patience, her eyes open now, concentrating on Lucy.

"The program's been implemented with higher efficiency in your head. The psychic resonances from your leech must be confusing their own.'

'Crosstalk?' asked Sam.

'Spirited discussion, anyway,' said the Doctor, grinning. 'Fitz, you take his legs.' Together they dragged Roley, weakly protesting, over to Maria. Fitz saw the tears in her eyes, but could think of nothing to say.

'Make him as comfortable as you can,' the Doctor instructed. 'Maria, I’ve got to fetch the paraldehyde. Where is it?'

'You can't leave me here!' protested Sam, and Watson laughed.

'As far as the leeches are concerned, your brain is the most civilised among us,' said the Doctor, urgently. 'It's holding sway. You don't have to do anything - just stand there and hold them till I get back.'

'The stuff's stored next to the Restraint Room,' Maria muttered. The Doctor was gone in a moment.

***

Azoth caressed the back of Taylor's