Doctor Who: The Blood Cell

by James Goss

  ‘So …’ Clara continued, ‘Of course you did your best. And HomeWorld said that they’d come for you. But they’re not coming, are they?’

  ‘No …’ admitted Bentley. ‘And there’s only a few hours before the systems shut down completely. Life support is already failing. The Defence Array is bombarding us. We may freeze. We may suffocate. We may get blown up. If the Custodians don’t find us first.’

  ‘It’s not a problem, actually,’ insisted Clara. ‘I’ve still got my spacecraft.’

  ‘No.’ And here Bentley gloated. She always loved having an advantage over someone. ‘I’ve seen what the Defence Array’s done to the surface of this asteroid. It’s scoured it. If it was on the landing pad, your ship will be dust.’

  Clara shook her head. ‘It’s actually very resilient. Indestructible. Stubborn. It’s the one reason why I keep the Doctor on as my driver. He’s a hopeless pilot, but his ship … trust me … his ship is going nowhere. I can take you to it. Come on now,’ she continued. ‘Why not pop down the gun and come out, and you and I will go find my ship. Don’t worry about my boys.’ She indicated us. ‘They’ll stay well back.’

  There was a pause, and then Bentley came out of the TransNet room, and surveyed Clara. She was still holding the gun, but it was by her side.

  ‘I’ll think I’ll keep the gun,’ announced Bentley firmly, but with a touch of the sulky child.

  ‘Oh, I was sure of that,’ said Clara, a touch sadly. ‘You’re the type. Come along. Let’s go find the ship.’ She turned back to the Doctor. ‘You two, see if you can round any other survivors up. We’ll see you back at the ranch.’

  And then, calmly, they walked out of the Control Station.

  The Doctor turned to me and let out a huge breath. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t stand people with guns any more. I used to be able to handle it, but … I guess it’s old age.’ He hobbled painfully towards the TransNet booth. ‘However, it’s got us some access.’

  ‘What about Clara?’

  The Doctor limped forward, and hunched over the TransNet terminal. ‘She’s using her full-on “Taking Class 3B for History” mode. She’s bombproof like that.’

  He pecked away at the keys, trying to get into the TransNet. ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘It’s like a dial-up modem without the constant whining. But I think I’m about to find out what’s going on back home. Just a few more seconds.’

  Which was when we heard the screams from the corridor.

  12

  The long corridor outside was empty. There was no sign of Bentley or Clara. The Doctor stood at the intersection, shouting Clara’s name. He made to run off, took a few stumbling steps, howled in pain and frustration, and then pulled up to a halt, limping back to me. His face thundered.

  ‘You!’ His finger jabbed at me. ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed with him glumly. ‘How exactly?’

  ‘Because …’ And the Doctor paused. ‘Actually, tell you what, pick a reason. I’m busy.’ He stood there. He didn’t look busy. He looked lost.

  ‘Did a Custodian take them?’

  ‘Not a helpful question,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘They’re just killing. No. It’s whatever that other creature was.’

  ‘But that’s also killing.’

  ‘Yes, and leaving the bodies lying around. But it’s also taking some of them. So maybe, maybe there’s just the tiniest chance for her. For both her and Bentley. But, just so’s you know, it’s mostly Clara I care about.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Anyway –’ his face twisted nastily – ‘Bentley will be fine. She’s got a superior attitude and a gun. That never fails.’

  I coughed. ‘Doctor, if I may … I preferred you when you were less ranty.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve shouted whole planets out of the skies.’

  ‘But … this whole prison is tearing itself apart. And apparently the HomeWorld is too. Aren’t there more important things? Than, er, than …’

  ‘Do go on.’ His tone was deadly.

  ‘… Than the girl,’ I finished feebly.

  He spun round and only winced a little. ‘No. And you know that, don’t you?’

  I did. I rather liked Clara. I nodded.

  The Doctor smiled back at me. Just a little.

  ‘I was just, well, saying …’ I stammered a little. ‘I was just saying the right thing.’

  The Doctor held up a hand. ‘Governor,’ he said, ‘Starting from now until all this is over, don’t bother saying the right thing. Take your better nature out for a trot around the block. It needs the exercise.’ He vanished back into the Control Station.

  The Doctor surveyed the ruined Control Station and then went over to the prison map.

  ‘Something’s hiding inside this prison – or rather, something’s been hidden from you.’ He waved a hand at the map. ‘Now, you see … We take maps on trust. We have to, otherwise the world wouldn’t work. We’d spend all day wondering if someone’s cut a few corners on the coastline or left out some shops. But what if the map was part of the lie?’

  I looked at the map of The Prison. It was so familiar to me. I knew every step of it. All six levels and conduits leading down to Level 7.

  ‘Thing is,’ said the Doctor, ‘it’s just a computer image. It’s not real. If we want to find Clara and Bentley, we have to make it real. Luckily, you’ve got the most sensitive scanning equipment in the system here. The only problem is it’s dedicated to scanning the skies for any approaching craft. Now, I’m going to turn it inwards, but to do that I need …’

  The Doctor dived under the wreckage of a terminal.

  ‘I need a shopping trolley,’ he said, emerging.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shopping trolley … shopping trolley … Marge Simpson,’ he snapped, performing a mystical mime. ‘Old dance move from the Astoria. I’m trying to tell you I really need to get my anti-grav trolley. Which is full of lovely things I stole from the workshop. Including a network hub controller.’

  ‘What’s one of those?’

  ‘That’s why I said “lovely things”. I don’t just do it for effect,’ The Doctor beamed. ‘Just bring me the lot. It’ll save time. If I’m right, it’s parked down on the stairs by Level 4. Can you pop down and get it for me?’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Alone.’ The Doctor tugged at the cabling. ‘I’m busy and immobile. And maybe, if you see any Custodians they’ll leave you alone. After all, you are the Governor.’

  ‘I think that’s precisely why they will kill me.’

  ‘Ah, well in that case, good luck.’ With a grin, the Doctor vanished under the console.

  ‘I, ah …’

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes before the lack of a network hub controller irritates me,’ he growled. ‘Get going, Governor.’

  ‘I have a name you know,’ I said, a little hurt.

  ‘Sure you do,’ his voice muttered indistinctly, ‘But it’s a little late for learning new facts now, isn’t it?’

  I left him to it and found the staircase. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t feel at all happy about this. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have anything. Just a really nervous expression. I got the feeling the Doctor and Clara ran up and down corridors all the time. But I just felt very alone and frightened.

  In theory it was very straightforward. Just go down four flights of stairs, and collect the Doctor’s trolley. But the lights had gone in the stairwell. I made do by toggling the light on my communications blipper as a torch. It would shine for five seconds and then go off. I could see where I was going. I could pick my way over the bodies.

  From time to time the asteroid shook and lurched. The Defence Array was still pounding away at the surface of the rock. We were fairly solid, but even so, at some point there would be an explosive decompression. And maybe that would be it. Maybe all my worries would be over when I was sucked screaming out into space. I’d never have to worry about everything I’d got wrong in my life eve
r again. I could just enjoy a little peace.

  I smiled at that.

  My comm blipped. At first I could hear breathing. I nearly spoke back to it, but an instinct stilled me. I could just hear breathing and another noise. A steady clicking. Then a voice. It was Bentley’s. She sounded in great pain.

  ‘Please … let me go … take her …’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Well, that was Clara accounted for.

  ‘Why are you doing this? What can you want with us?’

  More dragging.

  ‘Yeah,’ Clara again. ‘I’m just a tourist, and Tin Knickers here doesn’t strike me as cooperative.’

  More dragging.

  Bentley spoke again. ‘Where are you taking us? You’ve brought us all the way down here.’

  ‘Yes.’ Clara sounded wooden. ‘I mean, where are we now, would you say?’

  ‘Well,’ began Bentley. ‘We’re on Lev—’ She cried out in sudden pain and then the comm terminated.

  Shaken, I moved on further down the staircase.

  And then I heard it. The gliding noise. I was on Level 3. Just one more flight of stairs to go. But the stairwell was hopelessly blocked by rubble. And, just beyond the door was the unmistakeable sound of a Custodian, gliding forwards and backwards. Waiting for me.

  Clara would have charmed it. The Doctor would have shouted at it. My arsenal was rather more limited. Perhaps it would obey me – well, so the Doctor thought. Fat chance. Nothing around here had ever really obeyed me. Sweating, I crouched still in the darkness. The Custodian beyond the door showed no signs of moving away. Had it sensed me? Possibly.

  I crawled back up the steps, feeling my way among the bodies, trying to see if there was anything useful in their clothes. I felt a terrible sense of revulsion at this. I’d let these people die and now I was going through their pockets. It was fairly fruitless. I found a bunch of keys, which seemed ironic.

  I made my way back down the steps, thought things through, and then, a couple of moments later, I stepped behind the staircase door and flung it open.

  The Custodian glided onto the landing, illuminating the damaged staircase with the light on its fascia. It swivelled left and right, trying to locate me. Its antennae were out and snapping lethally. I threw the bunch of keys off to the left and the Custodian fired a blast as it rolled towards them. As it did so, I smashed a lump of rubble into the back of its head near the recharge port, and then another, breaking the light.

  The Custodian ground back and forth, disoriented. I darted to the left, snatched up the keys and ran out of the door, closing it behind me. I fitted a key to the lock. It didn’t work. I tried another one. The fourth one worked. Sort of.

  The corridor filled with the metallic clank of the Custodian grinding against the stairwell door. There’d be no way back through there. And probably more Custodians on their way.

  My comm panel blipped.

  It was Clara, whispering.

  ‘Hey you,’ she said. She was sounding very casual.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘But you wouldn’t like it. Is the Doctor with you?’

  ‘No. I’m getting some things for him. He’s trying to find where you are.’

  ‘Right. No idea. After the last go, it knocked us out.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘I’m going to say I haven’t a clue, because if I tried telling you, you really wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Right. Are you scared?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yes,’ Clara replied. ‘Please get a move on.’

  ‘I will do,’ I said. ‘If something’s been hiding in my prison then I … well, I need to …’

  ‘I’m fairly certain it’s broken a few rules. You can give it a lecture.’

  ‘Thanks. Stay safe.’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh. Get the Doctor. Hurry.’ Clara ended the conversation.

  While we’d been talking, I’d been making my way down to Level 4 using the gangways in the Prisoner Accommodation.

  The whole cell area was eerie and unsettled. It had never seemed a cheery place, but now, empty, the Prison seemed terrifyingly dead. It had been designed to be a cramped space, full of life. It was now utterly lacking even the menacing patrol of Custodians.

  My feet echoed against the metal stairs like thunderclaps, but somehow I made it down to Level 4.

  The Doctor’s trolley was wedging open a door. There’d clearly been a firefight in the corridor between Custodians and Guardians. One Custodian lay on its side, case cracked, antennae twitching weakly. Several more Guardians were in crumpled heaps along the wall. It didn’t look as though the Guardians had won the battle.

  In the darkness beyond the doorway, an ominous gliding was coming closer. I had to hurry.

  The trolley was too damaged to move. Realising there was no way I could drag the trolley back to the Control Station, I filled my pockets with the assortment of junk, hoping one of them was the network hub controller. I made my way as quickly as I could back up to the Doctor.

  The Control Station was even more of a mess. Half the TransNet room had been pulled out and patched into the terminal the Doctor was wedged under.

  I dumped the components in a rattling heap on the floor.

  ‘Doctor, I—’

  A hand shot out from under the console, grabbed a lump of metal, waved it around and then threw it away. The hand grabbled on among the junk.

  ‘Doctor, listen, Clara and Bentley, they’re alive – they called me—’

  ‘Network hub controller!’ The Doctor sprung up from underneath the desk, holding one of the items I’d brought. He hastily wired it in between the TransNet system and the terminal he’d been working on. ‘Thing about your TransNet hook-up is that it’s rubbish at conveying a signal all the way to the HomeWorld. But it should be pretty good at using the local Sensor Array. I just need to get the sensors to look inwards instead of outwards and … and …’

  There was a loud thunk from the terminal he’d been working on. The illuminated prison map went dark.

  I looked at the Doctor. ‘Clara said they’re in a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Of course she would. They are.’ The Doctor continued to stare at the blank screen. ‘Come on … come on … come on …’

  It flickered.

  ‘UPDATING … UPDATING …’

  The Doctor made hopeful motions.

  The screen refreshed again.

  ‘Currently installing update 1 of 83. Please do not turn this terminal off during this process.’

  The Doctor gave a howl of frustration. I thought about saying something, but he silenced me with a glare.

  ‘It’s not a delay,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It’s a really good chance to work out what I’m going to do next.’ The prison map sprang into life – a picture of the whole asteroid, the detail gradually filling out as the Sensor Array finished its sweep.

  The Doctor gave a roar of triumph. ‘Can you see that?’

  At first glance it looked pretty much the same to me.

  ‘Oh, brilliant!’ cried the Doctor, ‘On the way here, I was counting the steps. Between Level 7 and Level 5 … I noticed there were a few more steps – a bit more space between levels.’ He jabbed a finger at a shady area of the map I’d not noticed before.

  ‘It may just be barrier shielding,’ I suggested.

  ‘Barrier shielding against what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Solar radiation?’

  ‘Piffle.’ The Doctor pointed at the map jubilantly. That shaded area was gradually clearing as the Sensor Array finished its sweep. It showed a chamber in between Levels 5 and 6.

  ‘What is that?’

  The Doctor didn’t answer. He was already lurching towards the door. ‘When you went down to Level 6 you found it empty, didn’t you?’ He snatched up a semi-functioning tablet which he appeared to have stuck together with tape. ‘It’s where you put the prisoners you wanted to forget about. Which mean
s that you wouldn’t notice if it was being gradually emptied …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cells had been tidied, all trace of their occupants removed. They’d been empty for some time.’ The Doctor held up the tablet, waving around a vast array of spreadsheets I’m fairly certain he shouldn’t have been able to access. ‘I told you to check the logs. These are the dates on which power fluctuations occurred. And this graph shows the dates when hopeless cases were transferred down to Level 6. They match pretty closely, don’t they?’

  We got to the stairwell, and he started limping as fast as he could down it. His eyes glinted in the dark. ‘I’m very much afraid you’ve been feeding something for a long time.’

  ‘And that’s what’s got Clara?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Something very hungry.’

  Infuriatingly, we didn’t go straight to Level 6. Instead the Doctor led us to the medical wing. Abesse was stood by the door, guarding it with a rifle. She saluted when I appeared.

  ‘Good of you to show up, Governor,’ she said drily. She hefted up the gun. ‘I took this from a fleeing Guardian. Power-pack fully charged. He’d not even tried firing it. He just ran straight into the arms of a Custodian, so he didn’t get far.’

  ‘Well, then, I’m pleased you’re alive, 203. Er … Abesse.’

  Abesse saluted the Doctor, a little less sarcastically. ‘I’ve followed your instructions, sir,’ she said to him. SIR?

  ‘Your instructions?’ I boggled.

  The Doctor acknowledged the salute. ‘Thank you, Major. Where’s the patient?’

  Abesse led us to the back of the sick bay.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like people with guns?’ I said.

  ‘I’m flexible in a crisis,’ he admitted. ‘And anyway … Abesse is good people. She thinks before she shoots.’

  ‘She’s a mercenary,’ I hissed.

  Abesse heard me. She turned and smiled dangerously at both of us. ‘Tell me more,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ continued the Doctor, ‘Abesse is a mercenary. Which means that she has no agenda other than wanting to live.’