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By Root 651 0

bit of running around, a few shouts and threats and so on, the Doctor was leaning back in his chair, a gentleman of leisure. Eventually, faced with not many options, he’d voluntarily taken his old seat in the games room, hoping that the Quevvils would thus register him as being a prisoner again without remembering that prisoners are usually tied up. So far, it seemed to have worked. He was holding the control pad in his hands, but hadn’t started playing the game again. If he had his way, that would never happen. He’d been trying to keep a conversation going instead, and had managed it for quite a while now, without, however, finding out anything of use.

‘Bit of a waste,’ he said to the Quevvil guarding him. ‘Blowing up your pawns if they leave the game. Just means you’ve got to get more of ’em.’

‘We cannot risk the carriers returning to our base,’ said the Quevvil. ‘If the primed disruptors were then activated… That is, in the game –’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Exactly how thick do you think I am? It’s not a game, I have worked that out.’

The Quevvil seemed flustered. ‘Humans do not have the intelligence…’

The Doctor didn’t point out that he wasn’t human. ‘Yeah, you’re right, teleport a couple of humans into your secret underground base, shoot ray guns at them, force them to play – they’ll never work it out.’

The Quevvil snarled. ‘Your mind cannot comprehend the truth.’ It raised its gun. ‘But you will play the game.’

‘Don’t think I will, thanks all the same,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m a bit anti setting off to kill these Mantodeans who’ve done nothing to me. And I’m not that keen on risking the life of some poor kidnapped human, either.’

The Quevvil started to wave its gun – and then lowered it. It had a cunning look in its eyes that the Doctor didn’t like.

‘So far, you are the human who has progressed furthest into the Mantodean stronghold. But it is only a matter of time before others penetrate into the heart of it. We have waited for years; we can wait longer. We came to this planet and started in this small area to see if the idea had merit, if the humans were intelligent enough, if our technology was sufficient on Toop –’ the Doctor grimaced in frustration; they kept merrily mentioning the name of their planet but it meant nothing to him, he’d never heard of it; why couldn’t they drop its galactic coordinates into the conversation? – ‘if it could cope with a small number of carriers and controllers. We hardly expected to find a controller who would succeed immediately – indeed, with hundreds of games out there, only a very few controllers have passed our training level, a mere handful showing themselves worthy of our dedicating our full resources to them. So we are already prepared to extend the plan. We will take it to more towns, across this country, and then to other countries. We will increase the number of winning cards. Humans are greedy: order them to aid us and they would protest, but make it seem like a prize, like something for only a select few… ha! They will snatch at any chance of getting something for nothing! The more humans who play the game, the more competent controllers we will find, and the more carriers we will need… If you played the game for us now and did as we wanted, got to the centre of the Mantodean stronghold, no more humans would have to die. But until someone succeeds, the game will continue to be played.’

‘Stop calling it a game!’ yelled the Doctor in fury. ‘People are dying!’

‘Our research suggested that death was a common pastime on Earth,’ said the Quevvil. ‘Humans spend much of their time killing. There is hardly a species on Earth that humans do not kill, including other humans. That, with your greed and cunning, was why you were considered ideal subjects for this task.’

‘Yeah, we humans are a bit rubbish,’ said the Doctor. ‘A lot of us aren’t very nice at all. I can’t defend all that killing we do, all that greed and cunning. So I’m hardly going to sit here and commit genocide just to save a few of us, am I? What have these Mantodeans ever done to me?’ He threw down