Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [54]
‘You got her, sir. Perhaps the boy used that gun on her, to stop us getting hold of the body.’
Cosgrove nodded. ‘Good thinking.’
‘Sir, the kit the boy was wearing was bullet proof. He took four rounds, didn’t even knock him off his feet.’
The technology was impressive, Cosgrove thought. He’d once been hit while wearing a Kevlar vest. The bullet didn’t kill you, but you knew you’d been hit. You got pushed over, you had a bad bruise for a month.
‘I killed the woman, I can kill the boy.’
* * *
Malady and the Doctor looked to the top of the staircase at the sound of the first shot.
A moment later, it was clear there was a firefight going on downstairs, between Jaxa and Roja and the British special forces.
It wasn’t so clear who was winning.
The Doctor was getting to his feet. Malady pulled him down.
‘No. Stay put.’
They were half hidden here, able to get a good look at anyone coming up the stairs without being immediately obvious to them. A moment later, her instincts were proved right. Roja came running up the stairs. His face was covered in a balaclava‐like hood. He was carrying another raygun. He was clearly in retreat.
Malady waited a moment, until she was sure that Jaxa wasn’t right behind him. As she moved to stand, this time, the Doctor pulled her down.
She thought he was trying to stop her shooting, but he was just waiting until the boy was nearer. Roja wasn’t looking for them – he’d obviously forgotten his mission. Something had distracted him. Given the gunfire a moment before, and the absence of Jaxa, it wasn’t too hard to guess what.
The boy stumbled straight past them.
Malady and the Doctor leaped out, as if they’d practised the move together. Malady grabbed the boy, the Doctor twisted the gun out of his hand.
The Doctor yanked the hood off.
The boy’s eyes were red with crying, his nose was running.
‘Get off me!’ he shouted, but he just wasn’t strong enough to put up much of a struggle.
They could hear clattering footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘Cosgrove’s men,’ the Doctor said, lifting something from the boy’s belt, a silver tube.
He examined it, then twisted the end. A control panel unfolded, Malady wasn’t quite sure how.
‘Simple enough controls.’ The Doctor grabbed his lapels. Now, Roja, what was your mission?’
‘I’m to take you back to Sabbath.’
‘Ah… Sabbath. You’re one of his, are you? What’s your story, then?’
‘I’m his Cabin Boy.’
‘Yes, of course you are. Just his style. You do realise you don’t exist, don’t you? It was Tom the cabin boy. There was no one on the Black Pig called Staines or Bates. There was a Barnabas, and a first mate who didn’t have a name, but –’
‘Doctor, what are you talking about?’ Malady asked.
‘If you don’t exist,’ the Doctor said, ‘you make the perfect agent, don’t you? Not so easy to catch. Impossible to kill.’
‘I exist. Let me go and I’ll show you I exist.’
‘And how would you do that?’
‘I’d hit you. Then I’d show you.’
‘Is that how we’re to justify our existence in the new order? By how hard we can hit people?’
‘You can see me,’ Roja said. ‘So I exist.’
‘People see all sorts of things, don’t they?’
‘I exist. I exist. People remember me.’
‘They think so therefore you are?’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that.’
Malady was shaking her head. ‘I don’t understand a word of this.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘English pop culture, Malady, don’t worry about it. Just another bit of misplaced self‐aware seventies nostalgia with no place in the twenty‐first century.’ He twisted the top of the silver tube and the controls furled up and slotted themselves back in place.
‘Time to go.’ He squeezed the end of the time machine, just remembering to grab Malady’s hand at the last moment.
Cosgrove and Stevens arrived a moment later to find Roja yelling into thin air.
‘I exist! I do! Come back! I exist!’
Cosgrove blew the back of his head off with a single shot.
‘No need to shout about it,’ Cosgrove told him quietly.
* * *
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