‘The statues—we’re not supposed to approach or touch them,’ she said. Her eyes flicked to the handkerchief I was slipping in my pocket, then back to the sheeted figure behind me. She must have seen me adjusting the covering as she arrived.
‘It’s just a statue,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Take a look.’
‘We’re not allowed to—’
‘We have an incursion, normal protocols are lifted. Examine the statues, examine anything you like—but it’s the stone dust on the floor the Doctor wanted you to focus on. Did you get a team?’
‘There’s a few more heading over from Tower Base—McGillop’s already helping me, but he’s being a bit thing.’
‘A bit what?’
‘I don’t want to say.’
‘Well, you sort of did say.’
‘I stopped before the adjective, I’m improving. Where is the Doctor? Is he still downstairs?’
I debated what to tell her. Although she had an IQ so high Geneva Base had rejected the test results three times, her temperament could be unpredictable. I had a memory of saying she was so uptight it was a wonder her feet managed to reach the ground. I considered how best to explain to her that just one floor below us a time portal had opened up, leading to Elizabethan England, and the Doctor had jumped through it, apparently with no means of returning.
‘He’s off site,’ I summarised. ‘Get back to work.’
‘How could he get off site, he was downstairs, and the only exit is—’
‘Off site,’ I repeated. ‘Stone dust, off you go. No, no, wait a moment!’ I remembered Clara listening to the Doctor talking on the other side of the portal. ‘I think there’s three of them now,’ she’d said, and then looked a little stunned to be told there was a precedent for that.
‘Actually, I was looking for you,’ I went on. ‘Am I right in saying, there’s a precedent for three incarnations of the Doctor being present in the same time zone?’
‘Yes, we’ve got records of that. The Cromer Files. But it only happens in the direst emergencies.’ She said ‘direst emergencies’ with a dramatic widening of her eyes, as if she practised in the mirror every night. On her personnel file someone had added ‘fangirl’ to her list of qualifications. ‘You know, when the danger is so terrible, even the Doctor cannot stand alone.’
‘Inhaler.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘Send me any information you have on the strategic advantages of three Doctors in play, simultaneously.’ I said. ‘Then get that stone dust analysed. I’d better get back down there.’
‘Is Clara alone, then? Because you said the Doctor was off site—’
‘Back to work!’
I hurried down the stairs. If the active presence of three Doctors indicated a bigger emergency than normal, then possibly it was time for us to take aggressive action.
Clara was still standing at the portal, listening, and I could hear the Doctor’s voice, prattling away. ‘No, hang on, wait! The Tower, you said the Tower! Brilliant, love the Tower. I demand to be incarcerated in the Tower with the rest of my boy band.’
Clara noticed my arrival. ‘He’s talking rubbish. That means he’s got a plan.’
I filed the insight. ‘Has he made any attempt to come back through?’
‘The fez didn’t make it. I guess he can’t either.’
‘Not easy, finding time travel in Elizabethan England.’
A woman’s voice from beyond the portal was saying something about the Doctor not taking the Tower lightly, unless he was in a hurry to lose his head.
‘Oh, what’s in a head?’ came the Doctor’s laughing voice. ‘What’s in a tower? Just another day at the office.’
Clara looked at me, frowning. ‘I think he just winked at me. When he said “office”, he winked.’
‘You can’t see him,’ I said.
‘His voice does a thing when he winks.’
‘He winks audibly?’
‘He really does.’
I searched my memory for any possible cypher in the word ‘office’. There were a list of known code words used by the Doctor, which distracted me for a moment, before the obvious occurred. ‘Dear God, that man is clever,’ I said. ‘Come on!’
I sprinted for the stairs. Behind me, I heard Clara shouting: ‘No, Kate, wait! I think the portal is closing.’
‘We don’t need the portal,’ I shouted back. ‘Come with me!’
‘Where are we going?’
‘My office,’ I said, ‘otherwise known as the Tower of London.’
‘UNIT HQ is housed in the Tower of London,’ I explained, in the back of the car.
‘Which is where they just took the Doctor,’ replied Clara. She was frowning now, trying to piece it all together. I remembered how quick and clever she’d been on her last visit.
‘Nearly five hundred years ago, yes.’
‘Well, I know he’s got a big old life span—but he gets cranky if he sleeps in.’
‘As I’m sure you realise, we can do better than just leave him there for hundreds of years.’ I clicked a switch and a glass screen rose, sealing us away from the driver. ‘Clara Oswald, I need to inform you that the Unified Intelligence Taskforce does not know of, condone, or have access to any means of time travel.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we do, and I’m lying. Excuse me.’
Ignoring her look of bewilderment, I got on the phone and gave the necessary orders. The dungeons in the Tower were all to be searched. Numbers, I told them—a string of numerals, scratched into a wall or a floor. As soon as they were found, they needed to be sent directly to my phone. I was careful not to tell them of my current location, or that I’d left the Under Gallery. The operation had entered a critical phase, and all information was now tactically weighted.
By the time I had briefed them all, we had arrived at the Tower. We walked through the Jewel House door, and entered the maze of corridors. I was using my Zero Pass so that my arrival wouldn’t be flagged. Avoiding the operations room, and the security cameras, I led Clara by the most circuitous route to the Black Entrance. She frowned at what looked like a pair of cupboard doors, then stared as I opened them. Fifty feet of corridor stretched in front of us, as tall and thin as a canyon. Dust hung in the dim light like a swarm and yellow circles pooled the floor below green-shaded lamps. At the far end was an iron door, and a man with a shadowed face, and a white shirt. He was sitting at a desk and remained as still as a mannequin as we started towards him.
‘What do you think?’ I asked Clara.
‘Bit World War Two,’ she said.
‘That was the last refurb, yeah. Just before it, actually. Where do you think we are?’
‘Should I know?’
‘I think you’re probably figuring it out. I can hear cogs whirring.’
Clara shrugged. ‘In the Under Gallery, those empty cabinets—all the stuff you moved to more secure premises.’
‘Yes?’
‘There was a letter B next to all those cabinets. Whatever this place is called, I’m guessing it starts with a B, and it’s where you put all the stuff you think is dangerous.’
Smart, I thought, and doesn’t mind who knows it—which is to say: clever, but not wise.
‘The Black Archive. Highest security rating on the planet. The entire staff have their memories wiped at the end of every shift.’ I pointed to the lights. ‘Automated memory filters in the light fittings.’
We had arrived at the desk. Atkins looked up at us. His eyes were as watery and panicked as I could remember seeing them, and he looked thinner and more ravaged than ever. Repeated memory wipes, on a daily basis had their consequences; it may have seemed necessary to someone once, but face to face with the living result it just seemed barbaric.
‘Access, please,’ I said.
Atkins nodded at each of us in turn, carefully: ‘Ma’am. Ma’am.’ Concentrating hard, like a child remembering instructions, he moved to the iron door behind him, the key already in his hand.
<
br /> ‘Atkins, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, ma’am, Atkins. It’s my first day here.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Still getting used to this place, ma’am. First day here,’ he repeated, oblivious.
I looked at Clara. ‘Been here ten years,’ I whispered, and nodded at the lights. She looked shocked, and I didn’t blame her.
‘He’s a volunteer,’ I said, ‘Not that he knows that any more.’
There was a cool draught from the opened door, and Atkins moved aside to allow us through.
‘Thank you, Atkins.’
‘No problem, ma’am. It’s my first day here.’ He gave us both a puzzled look, as if trying to remember something. He would be doing that for the rest of his life.
I stepped Clara through into the warehouse. It was a huge black cube of a room, and the walls gleamed like polished granite. I looked around. I hadn’t stood on this spot for a very long time. It was now crammed with shelves and packing cases and a few of the Under Gallery cabinets. Other than seeming taller and more spacious than the building around it would allow (the advantage of stolen technology), it could have been any storage hangar anywhere. Until, of course, you looked more closely at what was on the shelves, or placed your hand on the smooth, shining walls, and felt their heat. Decades of alien contact had left UNIT with an extraordinary amount of extraterrestrial technology on its hands. Given that most of it had been harvested during attempted alien invasions, a high percentage of the technology was some kind weaponry. The Doctor had wanted to destroy it all, or take it off world, but UNIT had been too quick for him. Now, as a matter of procedure, it was all stored here, in the one place on the planet the Doctor’s TARDIS could never go. Whoever had control of this room had effective control of planet Earth. Which could, I reflected, prove to be the key strategic error of the entire human race.
Clara looked around, and I could tell she was determined not to be impressed. She was easy to read, in some ways, and I wondered if she knew how dangerous that could be.
‘The largest repository of abandoned and redeployed alien technology anywhere on the planet,’ I told her.
‘And it’s all just under lock and key—bit basic, isn’t it?’
I followed her look to the still open door. Through it, I could see Atkins reaching for the phone on his desk. His movements were slow and nervous.
‘Can’t afford electronic security down here, we’ve got to keep the Doctor out,’ I said. ‘The whole of the Tower is TARDIS-proofed. He really wouldn’t approve of the collection.’
‘But you’re letting me in?’
Atkins had lifted the phone now. It was one of the old dial telephones, probably here since the Second World War, and he seemed momentarily confused about what to do with it.
‘You have a top-level security rating from your last visit,’ I told her, and nodded towards some photographs on the wall. She glanced at them—and then stared, visibly rocked. She could see herself in a number of the photographs, standing on the same spot, in the same room she thought she had just entered for the first time. ‘Memory filters,’ I apologised. I glanced over at Atkins again—he was still hesitating, phone in hand. Now, confused, he hung up again. His hand shook as he withdrew it. The poor man was a dreadful mess.
‘But why was I here?’ Clara was asking.
‘We have to screen and interview all the Doctor’s known associates—we can’t have information about the Doctor and the TARDIS falling into the wrong hands. Public knowledge about him can have disastrous consequences.’ I pointed to the two movie posters on the wall, and saw her eyes widen.
‘Peter Cushing played the Doctor? The guy from Star Wars?’
‘Oh, yes. Twice. We did try to suppress the films, but they kept showing up on bank holidays.’
‘Has the Doctor seen them?’
‘Seen them? He loves them. He loaned Peter Cushing a waistcoat for the second one, they were great friends. Though we only realised that when Cushing starting showing up in movies made long after his death.’
‘What’s that doing here?’ she asked. I didn’t realise what she was talking about till I followed her look. The Gallifrey Falls painting—the one shown to the Doctor when he had arrived—was leaning against the wall, as if someone had just left it there.
‘I don’t know. That’s odd, I didn’t give any order for it to be moved.’
‘Does it matter?’
We’re in the middle of an invasion, I wanted to shout, everything matters! ‘I don’t know, I’ll check what’s going in a moment. This way.’ I led her to the centre of the room, where there was a small steel chamber—a tiny cube within the larger cube of the Archive. There was a door, which could only be opened by my retinal scan. I activated the lock, and led Clara inside. She found herself staring at what appeared to be a leather wrist strap mounted on a stand. She managed to remain as unimpressed as ever.
‘A vortex manipulator,’ I said. ‘Bequeathed to the UNIT archives by Captain Jack Harkness, on the occasion of his death. Well, one of them.’
‘What is it?’
‘Time travel. One-man time travel, basically. Pop the strap on your wrist, and off you go. Top security rating of any item here—no one can know we have this, not even our allies.’
‘Why not?’
‘Are you serious? Americans with the ability to rewrite history? You’ve seen their news coverage.’
‘Okay—so this is how we’re going to rescue the Doctor?’
‘We can’t. I doubt there’s enough power in it for a two-way trip. And anyway, we don’t know the activation code. The Doctor knows we have this, so he’s always kept the code from us. If he wants us to help him, he’s going to have to change his mind.’
Finally, Clara understood. ‘And he’s in the same building as us, five hundred years ago.’ She grinned. ‘He’s going to leave us a message.’
‘Carved into a wall, I assume. I’ve got my team looking for a string of numerals, in the old dungeons. They’ll send me what they find.’ I plugged my phone into the contact node on the wall—the only way a call could be received within the Black Archive. Perhaps because my mind was on the phone, I heard the turning of the dial, even across the room.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to Clara, ‘I have to talk to Atkins.’
Atkins was still dialling, when I got to his desk. As gently as I could, I removed the receiver from his hand and put it back in the cradle. ‘Please don’t report my presence here,’ I said.
‘It’s protocol, it’s procedure.’
‘It became procedure because I made it procedure. What I’m telling you now is that it’s not procedure for today.’
‘It’s my first day. It’s procedure. I’m sorry. It’s my first day.’
I looked at him for a moment. What had been done to this man, in the name of security, was beyond cruelty. UNIT had a lot to answer for. ‘Listen. We are in a state of emergency. At times like this, information about my whereabouts becomes of such strategic value, it is withheld from everyone. For the safety of the entire planet. Do you understand?’
He tried to. I could see it in his face. But his eyes clouded again. ‘It’s my first day.’
My jaw tightened. After many years of service, I still felt the same anger when I witnessed the indignities so often visited on the brave. ‘Come here,’ I said.
‘Sorry, ma’am?’
‘Stand up and come here, please.’
He did as he was told, of course, and stood, terrified, in front of me. I could feel him shaking as I wrapped my arms around him. ‘Ma’am. What are you doing?’
‘I’m hugging you, Atkins, is that all right?’
He hesitated. ‘It’s my first day.’
‘What has been done to you is unacceptable, and insofar as it is my place, I apologise on behalf of the people who did it to you. Do you understand?’
‘I think so, ma’am.’
‘My regrets.’ I squeezed tighter and felt him relax. ‘Sorry,’ I sa
id again. I sat him back in his chair, wiped a little drool from the corner of his mouth, and angled his head so that it wasn’t obvious, at least from a distance, that his neck had been snapped.
As I turned to go, I felt my blood freeze. A pair of eyes, bright as diamonds, stared out of the dark. A few feet in front of me, barred in shadow, was a Zygon.
I felt a surge of panic, and controlled it. This couldn’t happen, not now! I had to be more careful. I closed my eyes and concentrated.
My earliest memory is of a bird standing on one leg, on a beach.
My saddest memory is of my father, sitting by a fireside, clutching a whisky. There were tears in his eyes, and my mother was snatching me away.
My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.
When I opened my eyes, the Zygon was gone, and Kate was again looking back at me from the mirror. I dabbed the sweat from my face. In my anger and stress, I had let the body print slip, and that couldn’t happen again. I had successfully penetrated a strategically significant target on planet Earth, and humankind’s most powerful weaponry was in my grasp—now, more than ever, I had to maintain appearances.
I re-entered the Black Archive, and this time closed the door. I had been able to grant Atkins a death without fear, and I was very much hoping I’d be able to do the same for Clara Oswald.
EXCERPT ENDS
LOG 46667300++6U
EXCERPT ONLY
STATUS: VERIFIED
CONTENT: RESTRICTED
AUTHOR: PO2
EXCERPT BEGINS
It’s all a bit of a jumble at the moment, but writing it down will probably help. Or it won’t. But I have to write it down anyway so, you know, here goes.
I remember being huddled in one of the corners, and I could hear them all moving about. There wasn’t screaming any more, so I assumed they’d got everyone, and they’d find me eventually. I was so scared I thought might just shake into tiny pieces. But I was also cross with myself, and I think the Doctor would have been cross too. Because it was all my fault! I was the one who’d noticed. Why didn’t I keep my silly mouth shut?
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