Winner Takes All

by Jacqueline Rayner

  He grinned. ‘Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll tell you this, though, there were snogging couples using it even then. Had to be careful that their powdered wigs didn’t get caught on twigs. Last thing you want, you lean in for a snog and suddenly this impressionable young lady’s seeing your hairdo as nature intended. Puts you right off.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you know that from personal experience,’ she said, glancing at the Doctor’s closely cropped head and battered leather jacket and trying to imagine him in full Restoration get-up, velvet, brocade and periwig. ‘I really don’t want to know. Ewwww!’

  The Doctor laughed, his eyes never leaving the screen. ‘Not my scene,’ he said.

  As the minutes passed, Rose got increasingly nervous. ‘I really reckon it’d be a good idea to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Those aliens are gonna be back here soon, and we don’t have any weapons or nothing . . .’

  ‘Just a bit longer . . .’ said the Doctor, eyes fixed on the screen.

  But Rose was feeling really agitated. ‘Can’t you do whatever you’re doing back home, if we just got hold of a couple of consoles?’

  He shook his head, although he said, ‘Maybe. But if what I think is true, there’s no time to lose . . .’

  Rose suddenly remembered something. ‘There’s a sort of diagram out there,’ she said, pointing through the door. ‘Maybe that’d help you do it quicker.’

  The Doctor darted through the door, and she heard him call, ‘Yes!’ He popped his head round the doorframe and gave her a thumbs-up. ‘This’ll do it!’ he said. ‘Rose, pick up the control pad, and do exactly what I tell you.’

  ‘But I don’t do computer games!’ she cried.

  ‘You do now,’ he replied.

  So she sat there, and did her best to keep up with the rapid and complicated instructions the Doctor was calling through from the next room.

  ‘Why’s he doing this?’ she asked Mickey.

  ‘Dunno,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But it’s been bugging him. He’s been desperate to try this out. Trouble is, those Spiny Normans got a bit unhappy if you didn’t stick with their plan, so he’s not been able to do what he wanted.’

  The Doctor’s voice floated through again, sounding excited: ‘This is it, any minute now . . . Keep an eye on your screens!’

  Rose focused her gaze in front of her. But suddenly the control pad in her hand juddered. She tried pushing the button to carry on ahead, but it resisted her touch. It looked as if the same thing was happening to Mickey.

  ‘Doctor!’ she called out. ‘It’s going all funny!’

  He hurried back in. ‘Aha!’ he said. ‘That means we’re getting close, I reckon. Got to maintain the fiction of the game, see. Thought there might be some sort of safeguards.’ He took Rose’s control pad and prised off the cover, then began poking around inside it with his sonic screwdriver. Having put the cover back on, he handed it to her. ‘There,’ he said. ‘See what that’s like. Few adjustments and that plan out there, we should be able to get round this.’

  She tried again, following the Doctor’s continuing instructions. There was still a bit of resistance, but she could push through it now.

  On the screen, the viewpoint was jogging forward, jiggling up and down as if created by a camera held by a running man.

  ‘Here we go!’ called the Doctor.

  And as Rose watched, something appeared on the screen, something she’d not seen in the game before. She glanced over at Mickey’s screen. Something similar was coming into focus there too, coming closer and closer.

  Both screens swam into focus at almost the same moment. Each screen showed . . . a figure. A human figure. A familiar human figure.

  Mickey’s screen showed a lad in his twenties. He had shoulder-length hair and was wearing glasses and a black T-shirt with a picture of screaming skulls on it.

  Rose’s screen showed a woman in her sixties, wearing a tea-cosy hat and a buttoned-up coat. Both had flashing discs sticking to their foreheads. Both had metal cubes – the disruptor of the game’s introduction – strapped round their necks.

  ‘I’ve seen him down the pub,’ said Mickey, sounding confused.

  ‘That’s Mrs Hall,’ said Rose, feeling a bit shell-shocked. ‘Mum said she’d gone on holiday.’

  The Doctor had come back into the room. He crouched down next to Rose. ‘Your mum said she’d won a holiday. On the scratchcards.’ He waited for that to sink in.

  Rose turned to stare at him. ‘There are real people playing the games?’ she said, making sure it was a question, giving him the opportunity to tell her, no, don’t be stupid, Rose, what a ridiculous idea . . .

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his jaw set in anger. ‘Here you go, humans, have something for nothing. Oh, wait, actually we want something in return after all. You think you’re getting a holiday, well, let’s make it an action-packed one. Come to our planet and die for us.’

  Rose felt sick. ‘All those people – all those people who’ve won holidays . . .’ She looked at the screens again. Mrs Hall was staring, her eyes trying to say something to the lad from the pub. The lad from the pub was looking the same, desperate and scared.

  Mickey dropped his control pad, his eyes wide with horror. ‘What happens when you lose the game?’ he yelled. ‘What happens? What happens when you see those insects coming towards you and they open their jaws? What happens when it says “game over”?’

  Rose turned back to the Doctor, hoping for . . . She didn’t really know what she was hoping for. For him to put it right, she guessed. To wave a magic wand and make it OK again, or better yet, to make it never have happened at all. ‘Did you know?’ she said, trying not to sound as if she was accusing him. ‘Did you know what was happening?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t, no. I just thought there was something going on. Once we knew it was happening for real, I wanted to see what they were using to play the games.’

  Mickey suddenly pointed a trembling finger at the screen in front of him. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’ he muttered. As Rose looked, the green forelimb of a Mantodean appeared, waving at the side of the screen.

  ‘Don’t just sit there!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Get them out of there!’

  Rose pressed a button. On Mickey’s screen, she saw the black T-shirt bloke turn to his right. Her hands were shaking. ‘I can’t do this!’ she said. ‘I can’t control a person like they’re a toy!’

  The Doctor grabbed the controller from her. He started manipulating the controls, and in seconds the lad had disappeared from Mickey’s screen, but the Mantodean was still there. Mickey had dived for the controller that he’d dropped on the floor, but he wasn’t quick enough. He began to stab frantically, desperately, at the buttons, trying to move Mrs Hall – to reach for the gun – anything . . .

  The mandibles of the Mantodean filled the screen.

  And then there was just the simple phrase: ‘Game over’.

  ‘Sorry, you’ve not won this time,’ whispered Rose, numbly. ‘Please try again.’

  Mickey leaned over the side of his chair and began to heave. Rose put out a hand to touch his arm, to comfort him, but he shrugged it off. ‘I killed her,’ he said. ‘I just killed someone.’

  The Doctor was still at the controls, eyes glued to the screen, face tense with concentration. ‘Come on, come on,’ he was murmuring. ‘Not far now, nearly out . . .’

  Rose was still feeling nauseous, but then something happened to make her stomach churn even more. She heard a noise. It sounded as if the trapdoor was being opened. ‘Quick! Quick!’ she yelled, panic hitting her.

  ‘Nearly out!’ called the Doctor. ‘Here we go . . . There’s the exit . . .’

  The three of them stared at the Doctor’s screen, adrenalin pumping.

  ‘You’re gonna make it!’ said Mickey. ‘Come on, come on . . .’

  The exit was getting closer and closer. Rose imagined the lad, sweat running off his forehead, legs pumping as the Doctor propelled him towards freedom. Five more steps
. . . four more steps, three, two . . .

  ‘You’re there!’ said Mickey. ‘Come on!’

  Sand filled the screen, the landscape outside the pyramid, one more step and he’d be out . . .

  With a press of a button, the Doctor helped the black T-shirted lad, the bloke Mickey had seen down the pub, take the final step to freedom.

  And the screen went white, blinding white.

  They gazed in disbelief as the light faded and the legend appeared: ‘Game over’.

  The Doctor threw the control pad on the floor. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Mickey, still looking at the screen.

  ‘They must’ve booby-trapped him or something. Something to stop people leaving once they’re in there. Try to escape, and you get blown up.’

  Rose hadn’t quite taken this in when she heard the noise again. ‘The Quevvils are coming!’ she said. ‘We’ve gotta get away from here!’

  They raced out into the first room. The door to the corridor was still locked. Rose put an ear to it. ‘I don’t think they’re down yet,’ she said. ‘Shall we make a run for it?’

  But the Doctor had found something, some sort of receptor built into the wall. ‘I think I can reverse the teleportation field,’ he said. ‘Send you back to Mickey’s flat.’ He waved his sonic screwdriver at her.

  ‘Think you can, or know you can?’ said Rose. ‘I’d rather take my chances with an angry porcupine than end up with my atoms scattered to the four winds.’ And then she took in the rest of what he’d said. ‘What do you mean, send us back? What about you?’

  He frowned, but didn’t stop what he was doing. ‘One, I’ll probably have to stay here to operate this. Two, I need to find out stuff. Like, where their planet is.’

  ‘So we can go there and rescue everyone?’ said Rose.

  ‘Something like that,’ said the Doctor, twisting the end of his sonic screwdriver so it emitted a high-pitched hum. ‘Just need a few more minutes here . . . D’you reckon those Quevvils are down yet?’

  There was a loud thud from outside the door. ‘Sounds like one just fell off the ladder,’ said Mickey.

  Rose smiled for the first time in quite a few minutes. ‘I lip-balmed the rungs,’ she said, producing from her pocket a pot that now contained only faint traces of cherry-scented gunk. ‘Thought it might slow them down.’

  The Doctor was now tapping on a keypad. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘You two, come here.’

  Rose and Mickey walked over to where he indicated. They were standing right in the middle of the room. The Doctor put his hands on Rose’s shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes, that look that made her know she’d do whatever he was going to ask of her, however dangerous it was. ‘I want you to collect up the games,’ he said. ‘As many as you can. We’ve got to stop people playing it. At the moment it’s the only way we might be able to prevent more deaths.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But people aren’t going to just hand them over – they’ll think I’m trying to steal them or something.’

  There was a sound from outside the door.

  ‘You’ll think of something,’ said the Doctor, hurriedly. ‘Right, off you go. I’ll see you later. Meet you at your mum’s.’

  Rose smiled an acknowledgement.

  The Doctor raised his hand to operate the controls.

  The door burst open.

  The Quevvil raised its gun.

  The Doctor’s hand came down.

  Everything went fuzzy again.

  Rose wanted to throw up. It was just as bad the second time. But her vision slowly cleared. She found she was face-down on carpet, but it was familiar carpet. The Doctor had done it! They were back in Mickey’s living room, right on the very spot from which she’d vanished earlier. ‘We made it!’ she groaned, climbing to her knees.

  There was no answer. ‘Mickey?’ she said. Feebly, she shuffled round to the front of the chair. Mickey had also materialised face-down on the floor, but he’d made no effort to move. ‘Come on, you lazy lump,’ said Rose, trying to jolly him along. ‘If I can get up, you can.’ But Mickey still didn’t move. ‘Mickey?’ she said again, suddenly scared. She reached out with a hand. He didn’t stir. She used both hands, managed to roll him over.

  Then she realised. The Quevvil had managed to fire its gun before they had been zapped away. And it had hit Mickey.

  EIGHT

  There’s a war on, Robert, and you’re our only hope. You are the Chosen One, the one boy in all the world. You must fight the forces of darkness.

  And by the way, your mum? She’s not your real mum. How could the Chosen One have a mum like that? You must go to this ordinary coach station

  only it doesn’t look like a coach station, it looks like a fortress

  where you will be transported to your destiny

  here we are, this is the collection point, this is where we were supposed to go, now aren’t you looking forward to it?

  But it was really weird because the stupid promotional people were still wearing their costumes. And then they’d been taken into this strange room, and they’d been zapped to his destiny.

  To an alien planet.

  And it was real.

  These are aliens, they are called Quevvils and they look a bit like porcupines, and they are in a war against these giant insects called the Mantodeans. They’ve been at war a long time, and they’ve developed all sorts of technology, but the Mantodeans have this force field round their stronghold which kills Quevvils and stops teleportation, and so they need humans to get through it, and you are the one boy in all the world who can save their race . . . This scratchcard promotion was all just a clever plan to get you here, to bring you to our rescue – we arranged for your mum (not that she is your mum) to win a holiday in the sun so you could embrace your destiny . . .

  They hadn’t even totally lied, not really. There was sun and there was sand, just like they’d said, because this planet was desert stretching out for as far as you could see.

  But it wasn’t a holiday.

  They’d grabbed people one by one, and stuck these things on their heads. Into their heads.

  ‘All carriers augmented, Frinel.’

  ‘Place them in the holding pen. The controller that will bring us victory has been located on Earth. Carriers must be prepared.’ All except the boy Robert, he is the chosen one – he is the one who will bring us victory . . .

  ‘Bobbles, darling, it’ll be all right, Bobbles, it’ll be all right . . .’

  It wasn’t fair. He was really scared, and this was terrible and real, and however much he’d longed for something out of the ordinary to happen this wasn’t nice and it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t even the good scary that you got from being the hero because he wasn’t the hero, he wasn’t special and he wasn’t important, he was just one of the nonentities and maybe there wasn’t even a hero who’d turn up in time to rescue him and his mum.

  And that really wasn’t fair, because never, in any fantasy scenario in the world, did your mum get to go on the adventure too.

  Rose stopped breathing for a second as she looked down at Mickey on the floor. Then she realised that he was still breathing, and so she allowed herself to do the same. But what damage had the Quevvil’s gun done to him? At least with human guns, terrible as they were, you knew that a bullet went in one place and out another, but something like this – it could have scrambled his insides, for all Rose knew, and in rolling him over, she could have done any amount of damage. But just as she was wondering whether to attempt to move him into the recovery position, Mickey gave a groaning sigh and his hands fluttered by his sides. A second later, he opened his eyes, and gazed without focus towards the ceiling.

  ‘Mickey?’ Rose said urgently. ‘Mickey, are you all right?’

  He groaned again, and seemed to realise where he was. ‘Ooph,’ he said, exhaling heavily. Then a moment later, ‘Ow!’

  ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Rose. ‘Tell me where you hurt.’r />
  Still groaning, Mickey propped himself up on his elbows. ‘My leg! That bloomin’ porcupine shot me in the leg!’ he said indignantly.

  Rose sighed in relief. ‘Thank goodness for that.’

  Mickey stared at her. ‘Oh yeah, it’s great. All hail to the porcupine for shooting Mickey in the leg.’ He leaned forward and began to roll up his jeans leg. The skin on his right knee had exploded in blisters, and he winced sharply as the denim brushed against it.

  ‘You know what I mean. All hail to the porcupine for not shooting Mickey somewhere where it might’ve been fatal.’

  He appeared slightly mollified by that. ‘Reckon they meant to, though. Probably just distracted by all of what was going on.’

  ‘Probably dizzy with high blood pressure from a salt overdose,’ said Rose.

  ‘What about the Doctor, though? Reckon they got him?’

  Rose had been trying not to think about that. ‘Nah. He’d’ve got out of the way in time, easy. They were looking at us. And anyway, they want him to play that game. Even if they caught him, they wouldn’t have hurt him.’ But she wasn’t anywhere near as sure as she sounded.

  She helped Mickey up on to a chair. ‘Will you be all right?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine, babe. I can always play a game to pass the time,’ he said, and then added, ‘I’m joking,’ at her scandalised face. ‘Of course I’m joking. Because one, it’s obviously a joke. And two, someone’s nicked the telly.’

  Rose looked. He was right. ‘Oh, what?!’ she said. ‘Oh, brilliant. He’ll only go and say “I told you so” now.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, the Doctor,’ said Mickey. ‘I bet it’s that bloomin’ Darren Pye that’s nicked it. Anyway, that’s not important now.’

  Rose laughed. ‘You, saying telly’s not important?’

  But Mickey suddenly looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. ‘You just get out there and collect them up, all those consoles. You’ve gotta stop it, Rose. Stop them from killing people.’ And then Mickey was trying to push himself up off the chair. ‘I’ve gotta come with you, gotta help. Can’t sit around when there are people still playing that game.’ He started running on, babbling almost, panicking, about the people going on the holidays and the people sat at home, killing them . . . All very well for the Doctor to say it wasn’t his fault, but Mickey still had the guilt, she could see that.