Doctor Who_ Timeless Part 25

Perfect, thought Trix, creeping quietly away from the doorway. She'd drag herself off into a dark corner, play dead and wait for this circus to leave town. Then she'd catch up with Fitz, wherever he was, and She froze suddenly, face down to the floor, as light, dancing footsteps approached. Seconds later long fingers pressed against her wrinkled latex neck.

'Still alive?' Kalic.u.m's voice was cold and low in her ear. 'Splendid.'

'You wish to take that?' Sabbath seemed incredulous.

'A human will be useful. The young man was too badly damaged. I'd barely begun to play before he was dead.' Kalic.u.m chuckled. 'After so long waiting, the work on Guy will take mere minutes. A simple mechanical operation. No skill involved... No art...'

Trix felt the chill point of a blade behind her ear, bit her lip and screwed her eyes shut as it parted her skin in a graceful spiral down to her neck. He t.i.ttered softly and dabbed his finger in the blood she felt seeping from the cut.

'I'll show you a piece of work with this one.'

'So what do we do now?' Anji wondered, once she and the Doctor had made it back inside the TARDIS.

He was leaning heavily on the console, head thrown back like a conductor in rapture, like he was somehow drawing strength from it. 'Perhaps the question should be, what are we supposed supposed to do now?' to do now?'

'Well, then: what are we supposed...?'

'It's like I was saying before. I wonder now if any of us are free agents. The triumph of this reality over all the alternative realities vying for supremacy has allowed for the development of a single, definitive history of events a chronicle of the web of time from the start of the universe to its eventual destruction.' He straightened up, flexed his fingers and stretched. 'And I'm dreadfully worried that some force is using that predictability to its own insidious advantage.'

She met his gaze with a supercilious look of her own. 'Is that what the wraiths think?'

He nodded, flicked a couple of switches on the console.

'Sabbath?'

'The people he's working for, certainly. The wraiths '

'Seems to me you're putting a lot of faith in these wraith creatures.' Anji felt the floor s.h.i.+ft beneath her as the TARDIS took off. 'What if they messed with your mind? What if they're using you?'

'They have been using me. Now I've offered to act for them of my own volition, not under their influence. I have to, you see.'

'It's what you'll do that worries me,' muttered Anji.

'Yes, me too,' admitted the Doctor, apparently missing her subtext. 'But free will has to triumph... or what's living for?'

Anji felt so tired she could weep. 'What are these wraiths, anyway?'

'The last line of defence in the vortex. You know that all sorts of extra-dimensional creatures have been allowed access into the material universe since even before the multiverse went into meltdown. And the wraiths, if you like, are a living part of the environment that has supported those creatures.'

'Like the air they breathe?'

'Not really.' He shuddered. 'But I suppose it's as a.n.a.logous as you can get. In any case, that environment they function as a part of is being... poisoned.'

'What, like, polluted?'

'Again, roughly a.n.a.logous.' The Doctor sighed noisily. 'A new presence is infesting the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time. A new presence... that has been there since the beginning of the universe.'

Anji slumped to the floor in a defeated heap. 'So when you say new, you really mean as old as it's possible to be.'

'Since we're trading rough a.n.a.logies, I mean loosely speaking that yes, this presence is as old as time itself but that it wasn't there yesterday.' The Doctor s.h.i.+vered. 'It's resolved itself out of nowhere, and suddenly it's everywhere.'

'And only the wraiths can tell because they're on the outside of creation looking in.' Anji put her head in her hands. 'So how can we reverse it? I a.s.sume that's what we've got to do?'

'Chloe and Jamais could take us back there,' said the Doctor. 'They've been there before, when they '

'When they saved our lives, stopped the TARDIS breaking up. And when you made your promises.' Anji realised the contents of her bag were spilling out again. And noticed her phone. 'G.o.d, Stacy's been trying me about a million times. Do you think she's found Basalt?'

'Basalt,' scoffed the Doctor. 'He's the least of our problems now.'

'But he could get away! Doctor, if it's going to take another hundred years for the other universes to all cancel out he'll be able to enjoy the rest of his life somewhere scot-free '

'It's galling, but an unpleasant sideshow, nothing more,' he snapped. 'Don't you see? It's Sabbath we must find! Whatever he's scheming it must be close to fruition, and our actions have been serving him and his plans indirectly all along.' He smashed his fist down on top of the console. 'And it's going to stop.'

Twenty-seven Timeless Stacy woke up a little after half-ten to find Anji's apartment deserted. There was a fug in the air that spoke of too many sweaty bodies in too small a s.p.a.ce with not enough soap. A shower would be heaven right now, she decided.

She padded out in her T-s.h.i.+rt and knickers and found a scrawled note pinned to the bathroom door.

Didn't want to spoil your dreams with a wake-up call. Gone to warehouse, address on phone pad. We'll be in touch. Meantime... Congratulations/commiserations. You were right.Fitz Stacy frowned. He'd scrawled an arrow leading to a pile of papers. She recognised her list of apparent victims on the top, and beneath it was a pile of Guy's FEPA licences. Some of the names came with helpful translations in blue biro. Jesus. All those doppelgangers, those impossible victims, gone to feed the fishes in the cold grey wash of Basalt's killing grounds.

'You were right,' she told herself. Inside she felt so empty she could almost hear the echo.

So where did that leave her?

Alone, by the look of it.

She suddenly felt desperately homesick for her Brooklyn apartment, for the calm of her office at the facility, for all the things she'd worked so long and hard to attain. But now she had something approaching proof. Wasn't that enough to let her quit all this madness now? To hand the evidence over to the proper channels so that they could investigate, expose, see that justice was done?

Like h.e.l.l.

What was making her see this through?

Maybe because, when she thought of that calm office of hers, she always saw him there in it with her.

'I need an exorcist,' she muttered, and pushed open the bathroom door. She would have a shower and hit the streets again, try to chase him down. Just thinking about the effort involved made her yawn.

She found a fresh towel in Anji's airing cupboard and soon figured out how to work the shower. The hot water steamed over her like mist.

And she closed her eyes and started picking her way through a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment. The light didn't work in the hallway, but then there was nothing to see. All the belongings were stored out back. You had to feel your way down a gloomy pa.s.sage till you came to the windowless bedroom, large and square with thick walls. Throws on the bed that made you want want to throw, mismatched colours and angular patterns. The TV was set to the listings channel, telling her everything she might watch if her head could just hold on to any of the details long enough. to throw, mismatched colours and angular patterns. The TV was set to the listings channel, telling her everything she might watch if her head could just hold on to any of the details long enough.

And he was there again, in the corner, waiting for her. Pulling her to the bed. The tight bruise of his grip made her feel alive for a moment or two and she fell back unresisting and Her eyes snapped back open, but everything was still mist and steam. Stacy moaned and yanked aside the shower curtain.

Basalt was coming at her with a knife.

She shrieked and fell back against cold tiles.

But the nightmare broke for real, then, and there was no one there. She was alone, slumped and sobbing in the steamed-up bathroom.

And just like that she thought of Nencini, alone and helpless in some scuzzy apartment somewhere. Basalt had been out late last night, but where? What if he'd realised Trix and Fitz had split and decided to do the job on Nencini himself?

Swearing, she clambered out of the bath and scooped up her clothes. She racked her brains, trying to remember that address Fitz had given for the Italian guy. Come on, he'd been sitting right beside her when he'd said...

A gift from elegant Boyard Towers, Streatham.

She hurriedly dressed and grabbed her A to Z. She was used to wasting her time searching wide areas for needles in haystacks. Overweight Italians in a tower block should be a cinch.

Anji ran to escape an explosion of thick dust as the Doctor yanked down another old spring-fastened monitor from the shadows of the control room's high ceiling.

'We need to find the Jonah Jonah,' he said by way of dubious explanation.

'You think Sabbath's on Earth?'

'Sure of it.' The Doctor hunched myopically over the console and stabbed at a sequence of switches. 'To think we've spent all this time trying to see the bigger picture... and all we've seen is a single fragment. A snare to the interest, a mystery to draw us all into our proper positions.'

'Come again?'

'We've been led by the nose into something as big as the universe itself.' He snorted. 'Sabbath! He fancies himself the great puppet master. He's manipulated us all. And since all his poor players are here, strutting and fretting their final hour upon the stage, I can't imagine he'd want to miss their farewell performance.'

Anji pointed to the monitor. 'So what's that for? You think he's planning a live broadcast or something?'

'The Jonah Jonah should be giving off a time signature of sufficient magnitude to be detected. We found Erasmus's craft easily enough.' should be giving off a time signature of sufficient magnitude to be detected. We found Erasmus's craft easily enough.'

As he flicked a switch, a blast of deafening feedback came from the monitor, nearly knocking Anji off her feet. The Doctor yanked out a patch lead.

'No good,' said the Doctor, as he hurled the lead into a dark corner. 'That's how we found it easily enough. It's swamping the systems. Must be very badly s.h.i.+elded...'

'Maybe it's decaying,' said Anji, keeping her hands close to her ears as the Doctor started fiddling with the console again. 'Gone rotten like their people. Like their world.'

The Doctor was ignoring her; he'd pressed his ear up close to a black dial like he was a safecracker listening out for the click of tumblers. 'It's a long shot, but there's always a chance the Jonah Jonah's emitting radiation on some other frequency...'

But Anji was tiring of deflection tactics. 'I saw what you were like when Chloe was telling her little tale. And I remember our conversation in the car park. Her people are your people. Her ruined world is the place you come from, isn't it?'

'Be quiet,' the Doctor told her sharply.

'Why so scared to face up to it, Doctor?' Anji asked, emboldened by her tiredness. 'You belong! Erasmus and Chloe travel in time and s.p.a.ce like you do, the atmosphere in their s.h.i.+p helps you heal... Like them, you're a survivor of some great cosmic disaster thing...'

'A survivor,' breathed the Doctor. 'Is that how you think of me?'

Anji didn't say anything, chilled suddenly by the coldness in his eyes. The control room seemed darker somehow, the usual comforting hum sinking to a deeper vibration, almost lost.

'Spared the fire... I don't survive, Anji. I only endure.' He shook his head a fraction, set his chestnut curls bobbing. 'Death has forgotten me.'

'Will you touch wood, please, Mr Melodrama?'

'I celebrate life. I defend it, treasure it, preserve it whenever I can. Because... because all I can do is feed from it.' He smiled at her sadly. 'Perhaps in order to die, you have to truly live. Not muddle by in this patchwork, vampiric existence I cling to.'

'You're not like that,' said Anji, almost petulantly. 'You make a difference to people, you...'

'Yes, quite. Here I am, the proud proponent of free will. Doing all I can to put right the injustices I perceive. While someone, something else has been studying the greater picture and my actions within it. And with all my championing of life...' He wiped his nose with the back of his hand like a schoolboy. 'Seems I will prove to be its ultimate betrayer. Chasing round after the threads of a mystery that doesn't matter any more. St.i.tched up.'

'All right, enough,' Anji told him. 'Find Sabbath.'

He ignored her, staring into the beady blackness of the monitor screen.

'Find him! Now!' she shouted.

He didn't react.

Anji took a deep breath. 'Look, Doctor, I can't argue with you. I can't fit my thoughts round the size of your reasoning, I'm only human. But I know you can't just stop now in the middle of all this and mope. You can't suddenly start worrying that whatever you do, it's been accounted for already, ready to be used in some meticulously set-up scheme.'

'Anji,' he said without turning round, 'I appreciate your loyalty but you don't understand '

'I don't understand, you're absolutely right.' Anji found she was close to tears without really knowing why. 'But that's not going to stop me arguing with you and it's not going to get me off your back. If people stopped doing stuff just because they didn't understand it, no one would ever achieve anything, we'd all still be knuckle-grazers living in caves, scratching our backsides and wondering where the sun went every night. So I'm going to keep on ha.s.sling you till you snap out of this, because even if the fates have foretold this little sulk since before the dawn of time, I don't care. All right?'

The ensuing silence was only broken when the console gave a loud ping.

A small blob of light flickered on in the ancient monitor.

'I was expecting perhaps a small round of applause after a speech like that,' said Anji, a little more subdued, 'but I suppose a "ping" will suffice.'

'Interesting,' muttered the Doctor.

'What is?' she asked cautiously.

'This signature response on the screen. It suggests the tiniest glitch in time, almost as if...' He turned back to the console in time to find a small light bulb start winking on and off. 'Aha! Yes. A small pocket of matter nearby has been cauterised from the time stream and is being held in stasis.'

'It has? Gosh.'

'Which sounds to me like some sort of temporal priest hole to hide something precious from wraithlike eyes... Something or someone.'

Anji felt her stomach tighten, and felt suddenly sick. 'Guy?'

'I think Sabbath's got him.' He tapped the glowing blob on the screen. 'So we must get Sabbath! First we find out where the others have got to, and then we get very, very busy.'

She half-smiled. 'Welcome back to the land of the surviving.'

The Doctor placed a small but impeccably formed kiss on the palm of his hand, and blew it over to her. The TARDIS thrummed with sudden energy as he steered her back to Docklands.

Chloe feels her strength fading fast, bound up in the net that knits itself around her and Jamais. It glows with an energy that deadens her senses and his powers. It's to keep them locked here to this place and time. Chloe doesn't need words in a book to tell her that.