Doctor Who_ Winner Takes All - Jacqueline Rayner [53]
And she needed a hero right now, oh, God…
There was a Mantodean. There was she, stuck like a lemon in the middle of the room, and she could see it down the corridor… any second now – oh, help, it had seen her, it had seen her…
She tried to scream out with her mind, praying desperately that in a spectacular twist the implant in her forehead would turn out to be able to transmit thought waves to its controller. Doctor, help! Doctor, help!
Doctor – It was skittering closer, multi‐faceted eyes examining this intruder in its path, this alien creature that threatened the security of its home. Not that she was doing much threatening at the moment.
As Rose watched, the creature’s mandibles sprang apart, like a gardener whipping open a pair of pruning shears. If they were slammed shut, her head would fall to the floor as easily as an unwanted twig.
Doctor, help!
And then… her knees braced, and she was flying into the air, soaring towards the high ceiling, and her arms were reaching over her head –
– and she grabbed hold. Of what, she had no idea, she couldn’t look upwards, but for all she knew her fingernails were digging into solid rock. If she didn’t know what she was doing was impossible, she wouldn’t fall – like Wile E. Coyote happily running across thin air until he thought to look down.
Her legs raised up, and her head was pointing downwards enough for her to see that the Mantodean could no longer reach her. It was scurrying about under her, probably very annoyed. She was just starting to feel – not safe, but some relief that she wasn’t about to die that very second – when she thought about grasshoppers, and the ‘hopper’ bit of their name, and weren’t praying mantises really like them, and weren’t Mantodeans really like praying mantises, and did that mean they could hop up high, say, ceiling high…
The Mantodean was bouncing slightly on its back legs – preparing to jump? It was right under her, it would grab her, bring her down, snip off her head…
Rose’s hands stopped gripping.
They opened wide.
She fell.
She landed right on top of the Mantodean.
Rose expected to be hurt, but she didn’t seem to be. She didn’t think the Mantodean was, either, just knocked to the ground, probably a bit dazed. She found herself jumping to her feet, running away, leaving the giant insect still lying in the middle of the floor. Round a corner, over a chasm, through a door, into a tunnel. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s SuperRose.
The Doctor was back in control, and she was safe. Well, as safe as she could be round here, anyway.
* * *
‘There,’ said the Doctor, whose anxious eyes had belied his cry to the screen of ‘Soon get you out of there, Rose, no problem.’ His frantic fingers finally eased off the controls.
‘She’s OK,’ said Robert, relief flooding through him.
‘Not out of the woods yet,’ said the Doctor. ‘Robert, keep an eye on the screen. Tell me if you see anything – and I mean anything. Threatening bit of dust, anything.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Robert asked, doing as instructed but able to see out of the corner of his eye that the Doctor had levered the top off the console.
‘Few adjustments,’ said the Doctor. ‘This thing’s pretty sophisticated, but not enough, to my mind, not for what I need. Those Quevvils are good at this sort of thing, obviously, but they can’t make this sort of delicate adjustment, not with those great claws…’ He tutted. ‘Rose won’t like it, though.’
‘You mean you’re going to improve the controls? Make her do more things?’
‘Yeah and yeah.’
‘No, I don’t think she is going to like that.’
‘Nope.’
The Doctor seemed to have stopped still all of a sudden. Robert held his breath – had the Doctor heard a Quevvil coming or something?
He risked the tiniest glance at the man, and what he saw in his face was frightening. Hurriedly looking back at the screen,