by Doctor Who
Something terrible has happened to her, I can feel it.’
‘Well, we’ll check it out,’ Don Arco assured her. ‘Soon, OK? Now, don’t let yourself get distracted. We need focus. How long before we’re ready to take this system for a test drive?’
‘A matter of hours,’ she said hollowly. ‘Your atmosphere is prepared in the SCAT-house, my dear.’
175
His bulk shuddered with satisfaction.
‘Then we shall go there
shortly.’
Flowers turned away, feeling the spike of her Blathereen guard’s claws in her shoulders. She stared at the patch of sunlit garden she could see through the smeared window.
A dark shadow was sliding over the lawn.
Flowers craned her neck upwards to see what was coming.
She blinked.
It looked like a monitoring platform.
A split second later, the building rocked as the platform smashed into the floors above them. Flowers was jolted free of the guard’s grip. The windows shattered, shards of glass spitting from the frames, and the guard cried out as wreckage from the ceiling collapsed on top of him. A slab of masonry landed close to her head, and she rolled aside, trembling.
‘What’s happening?’ shrieked Don Arco. At once, his guards rushed to encircle him. ‘Ugh! That’s fresh air coming in through those windows!’
‘We’re under attack!’ shouted Ermenshrew.
The Doctor was staring round in bewilderment too, but clearly he wasn’t about to waste a good distraction. Freed from his guard’s grip, he dashed over to where Flowers was cowering beneath the window.
‘What hit us?’ he demanded. ‘A great big floating tower thing?’
Flowers dusted off her glasses and stared up at him. ‘A monitoring platform, yes. How did you –’
‘There’s another one coming straight for us!’
He yanked Flowers up from the floor just in time for an enormous blast to knock her down again. But somehow the Doctor kept his balance. As he dragged her back up, heading for the main doors, a big crack in the glass-mottled floor appeared in front of them. Swiftly, he bundled Flowers across to the other side, just before the crack widened into a minor chasm.
Ermenshrew was lumbering towards him, eyes narrowed with malice. ‘You’re going nowhere.’
176
‘The air!’ gasped Don Arco. Through his protective circle of Blathereen, he was flapping about like a fat fish out of water. ‘Leave them, Ermenshrew. We must evacuate! Regroup! Reassess! Retaliate!’
‘Re- eally does go on, doesn’t he?’ beamed the Doctor. He turned and leaped across the divide, landing with a clumsy flourish. To Flowers’s relief, the crack widened further. ‘I think perhaps you’d better go to him.’
With an impotent hiss of rage, Ermenshrew stomped back towards her half-brother.
The Doctor hauled up Flowers as the ructions went on between floor, walls and ceiling. ‘Quick, before the whole place falls down.’
‘What about Ecktosca Fel Fotch? And Dram?’
The Doctor gave a cursory look round. ‘Already cleared out. So let’s get after them.’
‘But you heard Don Arco and Ermenshrew. They’re going to the SCAT-house, they’re going to use the amplifier!’
‘We can’t stop them if this lot comes down on us – come on!’
Rose heard the explosions in the Blathereen lair in stereo – for real as well as from the tinny monitor speakers. She’d seen the ceiling crashing down around the Doctor’s ears, and through the capsule’s doorway – or rather, their improvised skylight – she could see a plume of black smoke darkening the sky.
‘What was that?’ shouted Dennel.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rose, ‘but we’ve got to get to the Doctor.’
‘No. We’ve got to get away from Justicia and warn EarthGov,’ Robsen insisted. ‘To think that those things have been manipulating us. . .
using us.’
‘Believe me, the Doctor’s our best bet for getting out of here.’
‘Look, Rose, I’m the warder here –’
‘You’re not a warder!’ she stormed. ‘You haven’t been for months.
To the Blathereen, you’re just another inmate! That makes us equal, yeah? And wherever we head for, first things first. We need to get out of this thing!’
177
Robsen opened his mouth to protest, but no words came. The capsule bounced off something, shook them to the floor.
‘The engines aren’t pushing us,’ Dennel reported. ‘It’s like we’re being dragged along by some giant magnet!’
With a last splintering crack, they finally ran out of things to knock into. The monitoring platform was slithering over a smooth surface now, and picking up speed.
‘I think we’re out of the forest,’ said Robsen.
‘But not out of the woods,’ said Rose. ‘We’re still accelerating. If we hit something now –’
The capsule hit a bump and lurched dramatically. It spun anticlock-wise, bringing the doorway back within reach.
‘I think I’m gonna be sick,’ Dennel groaned.
Robsen grimaced at Rose. ‘Let’s jump for it before he adds his guts to the mess we’re in.’
Rose scrambled over to the doorway and leaned outside. The grass was rushing by beneath her. The crumpled monitoring platform was moving like a missile now, ploughing a deep groove through a massive, overgrown garden. The wind lashed her hair around her face as she squinted dead ahead.
And swore.
‘That high-rise I saw before,’ she shouted back through the doorway.
‘Something’s crashed into the top of it. And we’re about to crash into the bottom! Move yourself, qui. . . ’
Rose stopped talking as two figures emerged from a doorway in the glass and steel base of the building. They stood frozen as the wreck of the monitoring platform bore down on them, closing fast.
Rose started waving manically. ‘Doctor!’ she shrieked. It was him.
There he was with that Flowers woman she’d seen on the screen in the Governor’s office. ‘Doctor!’
‘Rose?’ First he stared, gobsmacked. Then he started whooping and jumping in the air, his long leather jacket flapping around his lanky frame. ‘Rose!’
Behind her, she felt Robsen push past through the doorway. He hit the ground and rolled over and over.
178
‘Get out of the way, Doctor!’ she yelled.
Flowers pelted off, but the Doctor stayed put. ‘You all right?’ he called, grinning madly.
‘Yeah!’ Rose shouted, grinning back despite herself. ‘But get out of the way!’
‘Come on!’ yelled Dennel, as he too dived from the capsule.
‘Yeah, jump for it!’ The Doctor started running towards the slithering platform. ‘Jump! I’ll –’
Rose took a deep breath and jumped from the platform, just as it hit a raised flowerbed. She went whooshing through the air. For a second she was a kid back on the estate, jumping from a swing after a really big push, pretending she could fly.
And though she came down with a bang, she landed in the Doctor’s arms, and inside she was still flying.
But he couldn’t hold her, not at that speed. They went down together in a tangle of arms and legs, falling winded to the grass. Then the capsule collided with the side of the building. A fierce heat swept across Rose’s skin and the ground shook with another colossal explosion.
A plume of fire a mile high was balling up the side of the building.
But Rose’s eyes were locked into the Doctor’s own.
‘Found you,’ he grinned.
She shook her head. ‘I found you more like. Typical. Bet you forgot all about me.’
‘Forgot how much you weighed,’ he complained, gently disentan-gling himself. ‘That was gonna be a perfect catch, too. . . ’
Rose turned to find Robsen and Dennel running towards her from one direction, and Flowers flapping her way from the other. Her face
was covered in soot, except for panda eyes shielded by her glasses.
‘Rose Tyler, I presume,’ she said, holding out a hand to help her up.
‘The genius.’
‘Genius at finding trouble,’ Rose agreed. As the others arrived, and the flames licked and swirled around the shattered frontage of the building, she made brief introductions. It wasn’t easy with Dennel, since he was in a kind of trance, staring at the flames.
179
‘What’s up with him?’ whispered Flowers.
‘He’s got a thing about fire,’ said Rose. When she saw the disapproving look on Flowers’s face, she went on defensively, ‘He never hurt anyone!’
‘Only old buildings,’ he agreed faintly.
The Doctor looked between Rose and Dennel suspiciously. ‘You’re not making things domestic again, are you?’
‘No!’ she protested.
‘Only I know how you humans love your domestic stuff.’
‘Just quickly, Doctor,’ said Flowers, ‘what happened?’ She gestured at the inferno raging behind them, choked on a stray gust of oily smoke. ‘What brought those monitoring platforms crashing down on us? We barely got out alive!’
‘Yeah.’ Robsen gestured to the caved-in wreckage. ‘That one we were in got dragged through a half-mile of forest before it smashed into that building. Think I preferred the ride through that invisible tunnel.’
‘Oooh, a warp-hole,’ said Flowers sympathetically.
‘Yes, they’re
nasty.’
‘And you can make them nastier.’
The Doctor looked suddenly
sheepish. ‘Flowers. . . you know I rigged that warp-hole portal? Set up a repulsion field to shunt anyone who followed us out of the way?’
She nodded – then groaned. ‘Let me guess. To balance out the repulsion field, you created a local attraction field to try to hold it stable.’
The Doctor pulled a face. ‘But the screwdriver excited too many energy wavelengths in the portal.’
Rose felt she could hazard a guess. ‘And your local attraction became a big draw, right?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Gravity and anti-gravity fields colliding, collapsing. Anything using similar energies got drawn into the vortex.’
‘Anything with anti-gravs, for instance,’ Dennel realised. ‘Say bye-bye to a few monitoring platforms!’
Rose dug her elbow in the Doctor’s ribs. ‘You are so jammy!’
‘It was skill,’ he said, affronted.
180
‘It was a cock-up!’
‘Making cock-ups at the right moment is a skill!’
‘Er, excuse me?’ Robsen was pointing past them. ‘Would you call this a cock-up?’
Rose turned and her heart sank.
The Doctor and Flowers weren’t the only ones to make it out of the building alive.
Through the smoke and the flames and the fumes, Blathereen were spilling from the caved-in entrance.
Six, eight, twelve. . .
They
emerged in an unending stream, sooty, battered and extremely fed up. Their terrible claws were clenching and unclenching, and their black eyes held a hunger for blood.
‘Back into the forest,’ snapped Rose as the monsters approached,
‘it’s our only chance.’
As one, they turned and ran, the Blathereen lumbering in pursuit. Rose felt like a fox trying to outrun a pack of hounds. It was a strangely silent pursuit, no growls or threats or gloats – only the creatures’ footsteps thump-thump-thumping on the ground behind.
Somehow that made it more frightening.
Flowers started to tire first. ‘I can’t keep up,’ she wheezed.
‘You have to!’ snapped the Doctor.
‘If we can just make it to the forest,’ said Robsen, ‘perhaps we can lose them.’
‘There it is!’ cried Dennel. The sight of the treeline spurred him on; he broke into a sprint.
Then he skidded to a halt as four more battered Blathereen burst out from the forest, fanning out to head them off.
‘Must be the ones we knocked down,’ said Robsen gravely.
‘We’re trapped,’ said Dennel, running back to join the group.
They huddled together as the Blathereen advanced, gurgling and salivating, clicking their monstrous claws.
181
Rose shut her eyes, waiting for the inevitable. But then another sound carried from the forest. A cheering and clattering and crashing and shrieking. . .
She opened her eyes again in time to see hundreds of borstal kids come piling out of the forest, waving sticks and fists, yelling in fear and anger and liberation. A huge, terrifying lynch mob out for blood.
Blathereen blood.
‘Get them!’ bellowed Maggi. ‘Stop the monsters! It’s the only way we’ll get home!’
‘Her again,’ muttered Robsen.
‘Never knew she had it in her,’ said Rose, while Dennel just stared.
The mob wasted no time getting stuck in, and the Blathereen blocking the way to the forest were soon overwhelmed through sheer force of numbers. Rose could see the other Blathereen swapping glances, wondering whether to finish their hunt and stay and fight, or to stuff this for a game of soldiers and go get some new orders.
For now, they decided to stuff it, and retreated back towards the burning building.
183
There was no hope now for the Blathereen who’d been ambushed.
Rose’s stomach turned as the violence escalated.
‘Friends of yours?’ said the Doctor faintly. ‘Running wild, no plan, no organisation, underestimating the opposition – they could all finish up dead.’
Flowers turned to Robsen. ‘Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on this lot?’
He winced. ‘I’ve resigned.’
‘Hang on. . . Hey, Riz!’ shouted Rose, jumping up and down. ‘Look, Dennel, it’s Riz!’
Riz, face scratched, hair wild, stared over in disbelief. ‘Rose!’ She rushed over and flung her arms around her, doing that slightly spaced laugh of hers. ‘Are you OK? None of us knew what happened to you. It went all round the block. . . You’re like everyone’s hero! And Dennel
– are you all right? And. . . ’ She grinned as she saw Robsen hanging back. ‘Warder Robsen!’
‘You can drop the warder bit,’ he told her. ‘I’m like you now. Just trying to stay alive.’
‘Better stay out of sight then,’ she suggested. ‘That lot weren’t good to the warders they met on the way.’
‘Is. . . Is Jamini OK?’
‘When I last saw her,’ said Riz shiftily.
‘How’d you get here?’ asked Flowers. ‘Through a warp-hole?’
‘This little black platform in Blanc’s bedroom. Maggi said it would lead us to safety, but it took us here. . . ’
Rose couldn’t believe it. ‘They’re really taking orders from her?’
‘She showed them Blanc and the Governor were monsters – got them killed. After that, this lot seem to think she knows what she’s talking about.’
‘What about Kazta?’ asked Rose. ‘Thought she’d be well in there with a ruck going on –’ Then she saw Kaz emerge, bruised and bloody but satisfied, from the heaving throng. She marched straight over to Rose. And offered her hand.
‘Sorry for what I done.’
184
Rose took the sticky red hand gingerly. ‘Just be careful what you’re doing now.’
The Doctor swapped an impatient look with Flowers. ‘Well, this is a nice get-together, but there’s stuff to do. We’ve got to –’
‘We’ve got to take the monsters’ lair!’ bawled Maggi at the top of her lungs. ‘There’ll be ships for you all there! Ships that can fly us –’
‘Do you mind not interrupting when I’m trying to save the world?’
shouted the Doctor indignantly. ‘Quite a few worlds, actually!’
The rabble piped down a little for all of about two seconds.
‘Who the
hell are you?’ Maggi demanded.
‘Yeah, who’s he think he is?’ came an angry voice from the crowd.
‘He’s hanging with a screw,’ said another. ‘Probably a screw himself?’
Kazta set them straight. ‘He’s hanging with Rose Tyler!’
At this, an awestruck silence settled over the mob. The Doctor looked mildly miffed for a moment.
‘Never mind her –’ Maggi began.
‘Oh, shut up a minute, Jalovitch!’ Kaz bellowed.
Riz nudged Rose. ‘You’ve become a bit of a hero since you’ve gone.’
‘Speak to them,’ the Doctor urged.
‘All right, you lot,’ Rose began uncertainly. Having any kind of control over a mob made her feel deeply uncomfortable. ‘You’ve got to calm it down a bit, yeah? These monster things are dangerous – I know, believe me. And you won’t have the element of surprise any more.’
‘It’s not the Blathereen themselves you need to destroy, anyway,’
the Doctor added, and this time the crowd stayed quiet. ‘It’s their technology. You’re on Justice Delta right now, the nerve centre of all Justicia. Once, the buildings here were filled with people. Now they’re stuffed full of alien computers, working out how to end all life on –’
‘Destroy the buildings!’ someone yelled impatiently. ‘Let’s do it!’
‘Wait a minute!’ Rose shouted.
‘Yeah, Rose is talking!’ Kaz bellowed.
Rose turned to Dennel. ‘You know how to do in buildings properly, don’t you? Fire boy.’
185
He nodded, his eyes shining. ‘I can do this, Rose. I can do this.’
‘When Dennel was your block-walker, he listened to you when you had problems,’ Rose told the mob. ‘Well, now we’ve all got problems, and you’ve got to listen to him. He’ll show you how to torch every building here, but you have to do as he says, yeah? No offence, Maggi. . . ’ She trailed off. ‘Where is Maggi?’
The girl had gone.
‘Who needs her, anyway?’ yelled Riz. ‘We got Rose now.’
‘Sorry.’ The Doctor put his arm round her. ‘I need her more than you do.’
‘You’ve got Kaz,’ said Rose. ‘And Dennel.’
Dennel pressed something into her hand. It was his lighter.