Doctor Who_ Winner Takes All - Jacqueline Rayner [54]
The Doctor didn’t answer straight away. Robert tried hard not to stare as he got up and began to sweep things on to the floor, crash, smash. Robert was terrified the Quevvils might hear the noise, terrified the Doctor might break something important; most of all, terrified of the Doctor.
‘How dare they!’ the Doctor yelled, thumping the wall with his fist. ‘How dare they make me do this to her! Rose is not a toy!’
‘She’ll understand,’ Robert ventured after a moment, scared of making things worse, but knowing he had to say something. ‘She’ll know you had to do it, why you had to do it.’
The Doctor didn’t seem to hear him. His voice was calmer now, but icier; scarier. ‘You don’t treat someone like that. You don’t treat a person like that. And they’re making me do it, making me degrade her like that. We’ll get out of this, won’t dwell on it, won’t ever mention it again. But, back of our minds, it’ll always be there.’ He thumped the wall again, then, after a frozen second, sat back down and picked up the controller. ‘I’ll just get on with augmenting my friend then.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Robert whispered.
‘I know,’ the Doctor whispered back. ‘Thank you.’
* * *
Rose had stopped moving again, and was trying not to panic. Had the Doctor abandoned her? Would another Mantodean find her? What was that pain… in… her… head…?
Things were moving inside her: in her mind’s eye she could see fibres worming around, wriggling along the pathways of her body. If she was X-rayed now, she’d look like one of those diagrams of the nervous system, a million wires threading through her, and she could feel every one of them. Then – after only a few seconds, or perhaps a lifetime – the pain faded, but a feeling remained, swamping every bit of her, from a tickle in her throat to a tingle in her toes.
She started to move – involuntarily, as before, but smoothly, oh so smoothly – no longer was she a jerky string‐puppet, now movement flowed like a ballerina swanning across a stage. An onlooker would find nothing risible in Rose’s deportment now, though they might well be in awe of her grace and strength and speed. She was a gazelle, a cheetah, a wonder of nature. Pits yawned beneath her, and were gone in the blink of an eye. Corridors flashed past, barriers were breached as she barely paused for breath. If Rose could have cried for joy, she would have done.
* * *
‘Wow,’ said Robert, watching the features of the Mantodean stronghold flash past, as if he was watching it on fast forward.
‘Pretty good, if I do say so myself,’ said the Doctor. He’d switched off his anger, pushed it back – was concentrating on the job at hand, not what it meant. ‘Lot of wasted potential, the human body. Right, time to get to work. I’m gonna be keeping a close eye on Rose –’ his eyes didn’t leave the screen at all while he was talking – ‘so I’m going to be relying on you, Robert.’
Robert swelled with pride inside.
‘First, you need to get us untied.’
Robert set to work. Their bonds were made of plastic and were tough, but now there was no watchful Quevvil waiting to pounce, he was able to set to and attack them with vigour. With the help of the Doctor’s scalpel, they were both soon free.
‘Now, you need to search around a bit. I’m hoping there’s a sort of map thing, a plan, diagram, anything that looks like that.’
Robert began to explore the room. He felt nervous going past the frozen Quevvil – what if it came back to life just as he was in front of it? But he took deep breaths, and the monster remained statue‐like, latest exhibition in the Chamber of Horrors, an expression of what might be shock still stuck on its hairy face.
On the wall behind them, he uncovered what the Doctor wanted. It was a bit like a tube map, only loads more complicated, all spaghetti lines twisting and turning and intersecting each other. Here and there tiny coloured lights blinked, some blue, some white. The white ones were moving along spaghetti strands, one noticeably faster than the others, while the blue remained immobile. As Robert watched, a white light