Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [39]
The creeps couldn't see it, but it was obvious they didn't care about it at all. They were dangerous, the kind of people you saw all over the place but didn't pay any attention because they looked so dull, but a part of you knew that if they needed to, they'd mess up your life without blinking those dead eyes.
'Now,' the Doctor began. One of the creeps thrust a gun in his direction furiously. The Doctor raised his hands and backed away quickly. 'Let's not be hasty,' he said.
'You were communicating with it,' the one with the grey streak looked at me coldly.
'How can you keep it penned up here?' I said. 'Do you have any idea what it is?'
'What did it say?' His eyes didn't waver.
'It told me what you were doing.' I sounded confident, but I still didn't really understand. I was just trying to pick the reality from the impressions it had given me in the Oval Office.
'What is that, exactly?' Grey Streak said.
'The Blue Moonbeam tablets contain some element of this creature, removed in this laboratory,' the Doctor said. 'Once consumed, it infects the host and turns him or her into a hybrid of this creature, but without any control – an invisible killing machine. But no human being could cope with that, and within time they are consumed by the forces unleashed within them.' He glanced at me. 'At least, that's what I'd guess. You were speaking aloud as it communicated.'
I moved to the corner and sunk to the floor, hugging my knees, overcome with a wave of paranoia.
'The question is, what could possibly be the point of all this?' the Doctor continued.
'Where's Mathilda?' I said suddenly, grinding my teeth.
The creeps' faces were as much masks as the ones they'd taken off, but I saw something – the faintest shadow – on Grey Streak's expression.
The Doctor saw it too. 'Gone.'
'Gone?'
'Disappeared. A loose end.'
A chill ran through me. 'They killed her!'
'Ah, but she was a cog,' the Doctor said. 'Unimportant.' He seemed to have grasped what was happening; it was still beyond me.
Grey Streak checked his watch. I guess he'd heard enough to conclude that we weren't a threat. 'Get rid of them,' he said. There was no emotion there; it was like he was ordering a cup of coffee. They all traipsed out after him, apart from the one who obviously handled that kind of business; I couldn't tell him apart from the others.
He took out a gun and fitted it with a silencer. In my state, I had the sudden feeling I was in Goldfinger and the Doctor was James Bond. He'd do something ... I don't know, a karate chop, and save the day. It didn't happen that way.
What did happen was just as dramatic. There was a sound outside the door and the creep went to investigate. As he grabbed the handle, the door burst inwards. The creep went flying, the gun skidded to the far wall. Ben piled in and stood over the creep with one fist raised, but the creep had hit his head and was already out. Ben glanced at the Doctor. 'You wouldn't believe the trouble we had finding you. What are you doing, hiding away in here?'
'You took your time, didn't you?' The Doctor sniffed. 'I was about to re-assess my opinion of your ability to act on your own initiative.'
Polly came in and rushed over to me with Stimson close behind; he looked unusually anxious. 'What is going on here?' he said.
'Goldfinger,' I muttered, drifting again.
'We have to free the Colour-Beast,' the Doctor said. 'It may have the power to prevent the tragedy that is unfolding. It was calling to me, plucking memories from my mind to entice me, making them real somehow, or the perception that they were real, so it must feel that I have the ability to release it.'
'What if you can't get it free?' I said. 'Those creeps could be back any minute –'
'Go back with Mr Stimson,' the Doctor said to me. 'Do whatever you
can to end the event early ... guide people out of there.'