The Deviant Strain

by Justin Richards

  Rose could see the soldier tense slightly as the Doctor reached inside his jacket. He kept the movement slow and careful, grinning to show he meant no harm. When he withdrew his hand, Rose could see that he was holding a small leather wallet. He opened it out to reveal a blank sheet of paper. Psychic paper – it would show the person looking at it whatever the Doctor wanted them to see.

  ‘Like I said, we’ve got our orders.’

  The soldier nodded slowly, reading the blank page. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to salute, Doctor . . . I’m sorry, your thumb is over your name.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The Doctor stuffed the wallet back inside his jacket. ‘Right, this is Rose Tyler, my number two. And Captain Jack Harkness here is from Intelligence.’

  Jack was grinning too. ‘You don’t need to know which branch. I’m sure you can make a very good guess.’

  The Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘So, we’re all mates, then, eh?’ His smile faded. ‘And no – there’s no need to salute. Just so long as you do what I need you to do, then we won’t get in your way. Fair enough?’

  ‘So, who are you, then?’ Rose wanted to know.

  The soldier had turned and was gesturing to his men. The rifles snapped up, and the soldiers turned and started to move slowly and carefully across the cliff top. Some were heading for the stone circle, others towards the wood.

  ‘It seems you have been as well briefed as we have,’ the soldier said as he turned back. ‘I am Colonel Oleg Levin. Like you, we are here to investigate the energy spike the satellite picked up. Like you, I would rather not be here. So perhaps we can make this as quick and easy and straightforward as possible.’

  ‘Right,’ the Doctor agreed.

  ‘Despite what they are telling us, I assume the energy was released from one of the submarines, or from the scientific base.’

  ‘That’s what we think,’ Jack agreed.

  ‘What submarines?’ Rose said.

  ‘What scientific base?’ the Doctor wondered.

  Levin looked at each of them in turn. ‘You haven’t been briefed at all,’ he realised. ‘Typical. I’m surprised you even know where you are.’ He sighed and made to move away. As he did so, he seemed to notice the TARDIS for the first time.

  ‘Oh, that’s ours,’ Rose said.

  ‘Equipment,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Stuff. We just got dumped here, like you.’

  Levin nodded. ‘Shambles,’ he muttered. ‘You have Geiger counters?’

  ‘Think we’ll need them?’ the Doctor asked.

  Levin laughed. ‘Don’t you?’

  He turned back towards his men, now disappearing over the snowy horizon. The Doctor, Jack and Rose exchanged looks. The Doctor was shaking his head. ‘No radiation readings much above background,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You did check, then?’ Rose said. She was shivering now, the cold biting into her bones.

  ‘Oh yeah. I think.’

  ‘Think?!’

  A snarl of anger and frustration interrupted them. Levin had a hand to his ear, reaching under his helmet, and Rose guessed he was wearing a radio earpiece. He turned back to them, addressing the Doctor: ‘I’m sorry, sir . . .’

  ‘Just Doctor.’

  ‘Doctor. I think we may have a problem.’

  ‘Define problem,’ Jack snapped.

  ‘A body. In the stone circle.’

  Both Rose and Jack were shivering, though Jack was trying not to show it. The Doctor sent them back to the TARDIS to get warmer coats while he went with Colonel Levin to see the body.

  ‘Have you seen much death?’ the colonel asked as they walked across the snowy ground.

  ‘Why d’you ask? Think I’m a wimp?’

  ‘No. But this body is . . . interesting.’

  ‘Is that what they tell you?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m a Doctor.’

  ‘You could be a doctor of philosophy.’

  He grinned. ‘That too.’

  Colonel Levin stopped. The Doctor stopped as well, sensing that this was the moment when he needed to win the man over. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I resent being here,’ Levin said levelly. ‘I resent you being here. You interfere, you slow me down, and I don’t care what your notional rank might be or who your intelligence officer really is. I have a job to do and I’m going to do it. So cut the wise cracks and the inane grin. If you’re good at what you do, prove it and we’ll get along fine. If you’re not, then keep out of the way and you might survive with your career intact. Clear?’

  ‘As the driven snow.’

  ‘Good.’

  Levin turned and strode off. It took him several paces before he realised the Doctor was not following. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned and walked back.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ the Doctor said. ‘I didn’t ask to come here. But now I’m here, I’ve got a job to do as well. Am I good at what I do? I’m the best. That’s why I do it. Rose and Jack, they’re the best too – so you don’t give them any hassle, right?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘You want to know if I’ve seen much death? I’ve seen more than you can ever imagine. So cut the tough-guy bit and prove to me that you’re good at what you do. Clear?’

  ‘As the driven snow,’ Levin said quietly. ‘Sir.’

  The grin was back. The Doctor clapped his hand to Levin’s shoulder, encouraging him forwards. ‘I told you, it’s not “sir”, it’s just “Doctor”. Hey,’ he went on, ‘they tell me you’re the best. You and your men. So we should get on famously. Let’s do the job and get home for tea.’

  Though the Doctor had insisted he was not actually a doctor of medicine, Levin was impressed with the man’s analysis of the body.

  It was lying beside one of the standing stones on the far side of the circle – the side closest to the village. Looking down into the valley, Levin could see the dilapidated huts and the abandoned dockyards lining the inlet. The stumpy black shapes of the submarines in their rusting pens. It was hardly picturesque, but it was preferable to looking at the body. The man who’d found it had coughed his guts up a few paces away. At least he’d had the sense not to disturb the evidence – if it was evidence. Ilya Sergeyev – hero of Borodinov, a soldier who’d killed a dozen men at close range in the last week with his gun, his knife and even his bare hands – puking up at the sight of a body.

  But then Levin had tasted bile and turned away when he’d seen it too. The Doctor, for once, had looked serious and grim as he knelt to examine it.

  ‘Cause of death, hard to say,’ the Doctor decided. ‘Need more to examine really. I mean, it’s all here. Recent from the state of the clothes, but the corpse has all but wasted away. I guess the clothes fitted before . . .’

  He raised a sleeve of the heavy coat. A frail, withered hand emerged from the end of it. Flopped back down.

  ‘I mean, feel the weight of that. Bones are completely atrophied. As if they’ve been sucked out or dissolved. Gone.’ He sighed and got to his feet. ‘Jellified. Don’t let Rose see it.’

  Levin nodded. He could see the girl and the young man at the other edge of the circle and nodded to Lieutenant Krylek to go and intercept them. ‘Then send someone down to the village. Find the Barinska woman and get her up here to see this.’

  ‘Who’s she? Why inflict it on her?’ the Doctor wondered.

  ‘She’s the police officer. The only police officer. This is her problem, not mine.’

  ‘No,’ the Doctor told him. ‘It’s everyone’s problem.’ He dusted his hands together, as if to show he had finished with the body, and wandered across to the nearest stone.

  Levin followed him, and a moment later Rose and Jack joined them.

  ‘Interesting composition.’ The Doctor ran his hands over the stone.

  ‘Twenty-four of them,’ Jack said. ‘Not quite evenly spaced. A repeating pattern,’ he added with emphasis, though Levin couldn’t see why that might be significant.

  ‘I like the way they sparkle,’ Rose said. ‘Is that quartz or something
doing that?’

  ‘Possibly.’ The Doctor was rubbing at the stone. ‘It’s as if they’re polished. Shiny. No weathering.’

  ‘Are they new?’ Jack wondered.

  ‘They were here twenty years ago,’ Levin told them. ‘They looked as new and felt as smooth then as they do now.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I was here. When it all ended. Or maybe when it began, at least for the poor souls they left behind. For Barinska and the others.’

  ‘Tell us about it,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Didn’t they brief you at all?’

  ‘Let’s assume not.’

  So Levin told them.

  ‘It was one of my first assignments after training. The Cold War was coming to an end, Russia was disarming. We couldn’t afford to keep the same level of military spending. There were two installations here at Novrosk.’ He pointed across at the squat, squared-off buildings round the harbour. ‘The dockyards and barracks.’ Then in the other direction, towards a low-lying concrete complex. ‘The research station.’

  ‘Research?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Secret, of course. Everything here is – was – secret. The submarine base and the Organic Weapons Research Institute.’

  ‘Organic?’ Rose’s nose wrinkled. ‘I take it that isn’t like organic vegetables.’

  ‘That’s what you’re left with after deployment, probably,’ Jack said.

  The Doctor waved them both to silence. ‘Let him finish, can’t you?’

  ‘They kept the research institute open,’ Levin explained. ‘There are only a few scientists still there, but at least they have funding, they get supplies and they appear on some paperwork. They exist.’

  ‘And the docks?’ the Doctor prompted.

  Two tiny figures in khaki were just visible jogging down the snowy hill, reaching the edge of the concreted track leading into the dock area. It was as if the snow didn’t dare settle on the old military base.

  ‘They closed it down. Left the submarines to rot. We were supposed to decommission them. Rip out whatever was of use and take it away. Same with the community – we took the sailors and the troops and the higher-grade workers. Left the rest. To rot.’

  ‘You mean, people?’ Rose said.

  ‘I mean people. There was a whole civilian infrastructure built up round the base. Mechanics and caterers, fishermen and farmers. They relied on the docks and the military for their livelihood.’

  ‘So the military pulled out and left them . . . Left them what?’ the Doctor asked.

  Levin shrugged. ‘Just left them. I don’t imagine they’ll be grateful for our return.’ In the distance, a cluster of tiny dark shapes – people – were gathered round the two soldiers at the edge of the docks.

  ‘And the submarines?’ Jack asked. ‘You said they were supposed to be stripped and decommissioned, right? Only, you mentioned radiation.’

  Levin nodded. The guy wasn’t daft after all. Working in Intelligence was no guarantee of a share of it, but he could obviously think. ‘It’s expensive to completely close down nuclear reactors. We’ve “decommissioned” about 150 subs in the last ten years. Not a single one has yet had its reactor removed.’

  ‘Oh, great.’ Rose blew out a long, misty breath. ‘You’re telling us there’s any number of submarines down there with dodgy nuclear reactors.’

  Levin smiled thinly. ‘Fifteen.’ He waited for them to absorb this before adding, ‘And there are the missiles too, of course.’

  Sofia Barinska was, as Levin had said, the only figure of recognised authority in the community. She was also one of the few with transport. Her battered four-wheel drive screeched to a protesting halt beside the stones. The door creaked as she pushed it open. She glared at Levin and his men, frowned at the Doctor and his friends, shook her head as she caught sight of the blanket covering the body.

  ‘You’re lucky I have any fuel left,’ she told Levin. ‘Don’t expect a lift.’

  ‘I’m surprised you have any fuel at all. You get it from the institute?’

  She snorted. ‘Where else? Who else knows we are here?’

  Rose was watching Levin, surprised at how he was frowning at the woman, as if there was something wrong. But she looked normal enough to Rose – despite being wrapped in a thick coat, her jeans tucked into heavy walking boots, the woman was obviously fit and attractive. Her face was weathered and she looked tired, but Rose guessed she was in her thirties. Her dark hair was tied back in a bun that made her look severe and official.

  Barinska had noticed Levin’s stare as well. She glared back. ‘What is it, Colonel? You’re going to reprimand me for not wearing my uniform, is that it? If so, you should know it fell apart years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought . . . I thought I recognised you.’

  She was surprised. ‘You have been here before?’

  ‘For the decommissioning.’

  ‘Ah. But that was twenty years ago. Perhaps you remember my mother.’

  ‘Keeping it in the family?’ Rose asked.

  The policewoman turned and glared hard at her. ‘This is a closed community. No one comes, no one can leave. What else would we do?’

  Rose looked away. ‘Sorry. Er, where’s your mum now?’

  ‘In the ground.’ Without any apparent emotion or further thought on the matter, she nodded at the body. ‘Show me.’

  A glimpse was enough, then Rose turned away. Jack joined her. A minute later, the Doctor wandered over.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told Rose. ‘They’re all hurting a bit. They’ve been hurting for years. And now this . . .’

  ‘Does she know who it is?’ Rose wondered.

  ‘From the clothes, she thinks it’s a kid who went missing last night. Boy called Pavel Vahlen. His parents thought he’d sneaked out to meet a girl. He never came back.’

  ‘And the girl?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Is missing too, yeah. She’s just nineteen.’ He didn’t need to add, ‘Like you.’

  Two of the soldiers were loading the body into the back of Barinska’s vehicle. It was like a cross between a Range Rover and an estate car. Rose could just make out a faded police symbol on the tailgate as it caught the light when they opened it. Like the buildings round the docks below them in the valley, it looked old and worn out.

  Levin was giving orders to the soldiers and they began to spread out, moving slowly across the cliff top.

  ‘Where are they going?’ Rose wondered.

  ‘Search party.’

  ‘We should help,’ Jack said. ‘Damsel in distress.’

  ‘Damsel probably dead,’ Levin said, joining them.

  ‘Even so,’ the Doctor said. ‘You could do with some help. How many men have you got?’

  ‘Now?’ Levin asked for no apparent reason, though Rose could hear in his voice that it meant something important to him. ‘Thirty-six, plus me.’

  ‘Thirty-seven, then,’ the Doctor said. ‘Plus us. So that’s forty.’

  Levin nodded. ‘You really a captain?’ he asked Jack.

  ‘Oh, yes. Born and bred.’

  ‘Then go with Sergeyev and his group – they’re checking the woods. Doctor, you and Miss Tyler can go with Lieutenant Krylek – he’s heading towards the institute. I’ll talk to Barinska. We need the locals on our side.’

  ‘Point out to her,’ the Doctor said quietly, ‘that they might need you.’

  Levin nodded. Then he saluted and left them.

  ‘Right, woods it is,’ Jack said. ‘See you later, team.’ He set off at a jog to catch up with the soldiers.

  The snow faded and thinned at the edge of the woods. The ground was visible in patches, more and more of it the further in Jack looked, making the woods seem even darker than they were. The trees were skeletal, stripped bare of leaves and greenery. Like the rusting derricks he had glimpsed down at the docks.

  Sergeyev had acknowledged Jack’s arrival with a hard stare. Jack hadn’t bothered telling the soldier he outranked
him. Probably it would make no difference. Probably they would find nothing. The dozen soldiers had fanned out into a line, walking slowly and purposefully through the gloom, rifles held ready across their bodies, angled at the ground. For now.

  They were well trained, he could see that. The way they moved – always alert, not hurrying, no sign of impatience, frequently checking on the man either side as they moved onwards.

  Boring. It would take for ever like this. Jack had no idea how big the wood was, but he didn’t fancy being stuck in it for hours. As the Doctor said, the girl was probably dead anyway. Jellified like the poor teenager up at the circle.

  Teenager? He’d looked about ninety.

  So Jack found himself moving ahead of the soldiers. He earned sighs and glares as he advanced past them. He smiled and waved to show he didn’t care, and he carried on at his own pace.

  She was lying so still, he almost tripped over her.

  Face down, her arms extended, gloved hands gripping the base of a tree as if holding on for dear life. But there was no grip in her fingers as he gently eased them away. Jack thought she was dead, but in the quiet of the wood he could hear her sigh, could see the faint trace of warm breath in the cold air.

  ‘Over here!’ he yelled to the soldiers.

  They were there in seconds. Several stood with their backs to Jack and the others, watching behind them, alert to the possibility of ambush. Sergeyev stooped down beside Jack. He looked about twenty at most, Jack thought, as the slices of sunlight that got through the trees cut across the soldier’s face. Just a kid, really.

  ‘She’s breathing,’ Jack said. He rolled the girl over on to her back. Her hair was so fair it was almost white, spread across, hiding her face. He brushed it gently away with his fingers.

  Sergeyev was speaking quietly into his lapel mike. His words froze as the girl’s face appeared from under the strands of hair.

  She was nineteen, the Doctor had said. From the shape of her body, from the hair and the clothing, from the startlingly blue eyes that were staring up at him, Jack could believe it. But her face was lined and wrinkled, dry and weathered. Jack was staring at the face of an old woman.