Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [42]
‘His body’s fighting it,’ the woman said gently.
Martha rounded on her, riled by her calm and reasonable tone of voice.
‘And what if it doesn’t?’
‘Yours did,’ the woman pointed out.
‘But he’s not like us. He’s not. . . ’ Martha faltered, suddenly unsure of what the Doctor might have told them about himself. He’s not human. She couldn’t tell them that. Here she was again, thrown into the middle of a situation she knew nothing about.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ she asked the woman.
‘Ty – Ty Benson. I visited you in the hospital.’ She looked back at the Doctor, as if drawing a comparison. ‘I heard about what happened –
about you attacking Sam and Carolina.’
Martha looked back at the bed. Was the same thing happening to the Doctor? She knew he was strong, knew that he wasn’t human – but what if that made him more susceptible to the slime-thing?
Martha had seen him possessed by a living sun – and survive. What did she really know about him, about what he was capable of, about his weaknesses? She reached out a hand to his forehead, but his head snapped up and he tried to bite her, smiling slyly when he failed.
‘Martha,’ Ty said in a very serious voice. ‘How much do you know about him – the Doctor?’
‘What d’you mean?’ She couldn’t take her eyes off the Doctor. He’d relaxed back onto the bed, but his face was still flushed and his chest rose and fell raggedly.
Ty gestured to a display panel hanging above the Doctor, much like the one that had been over her own bed. It showed the pale blue outline of a body, numerous patches of colour and flashing dots around it and on it. And pulsing on the chest there were two reddish circles, one over each lung. They flashed alternately.
‘He has two hearts,’ Ty said.
‘Oh,’ said Martha, trying not to look as if she were frantically thinking of what to say. ‘Yeah.’
‘ Two hearts,’ repeated Ty, clearly making some sort of point.
Suddenly there was a scream from the reception area and a loud, indecipherable shout. The doors slammed open and the red-haired receptionist rushed in, her face pale.
‘They’re out there – in reception,’ she stammered. ‘Otters.’
Martha realised, with a flash of guilt, that seeing the Doctor here had driven all thoughts of the otters from her head.
‘Lock the door!’ Martha shouted. ‘Block it with something!’
Martha rushed to the double doors and grabbed the handles, just as they began to shake and rattle. In her panic, she almost let go. Ty joined her, and whilst they held the doors shut, the doctor in the white coat brought over a drip stand and pushed it through the handles, barring the door.
‘Where else could they get in?’ Martha demanded. ‘Quick! C’mon!’
The doctor glanced through a door at the far side of the Doctor’s bed, and darted over to shut and lock it.
‘That’s it?’ said Martha, scanning the room. There were just the two doors – and a window, with heavy wooden shutters already closed.
Ty nodded and gave a start as the double doors, still barred, began to rattle ominously.
‘What do they want?’ she whispered. ‘Why are they acting like this?
They’re harmless.’
‘Yeah,’ said Martha scathingly. ‘Right.’
‘No,’ insisted Ty. ‘They are. Normally, anyway.’ She rubbed her eyes.
‘It’s those things – those slime-things. They’ve changed them, made them more aggressive.’
‘Like they changed me and the Doctor,’ Martha observed.
She
glanced at him again. He seemed to be sleeping, although his eyes flickered and darted about under his eyelids, and his hands clenched and unclenched. ‘What about everyone else?’ the redheaded receptionist said, her voice tiny and scared.
‘If they’ve any sense,’ Martha said, ‘they’ll have barricaded themselves in.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Do we have any weapons?
Guns, anything like that?’
‘We’re in a biology laboratory, honey,’ Ty said pointedly.
‘Drugs, then – tranquillisers.’
‘There’s tranquillisers back in the zoo lab.’
‘We’d need to get past the otters to get to them,’ Martha said, pressing her lips