Doctor Who_ The Deviant Strain Part 19

'There was an accident. Containment leak.'

'Biological?' Brodsky asked, his voice husky.

Klebanov nodded. 'They sealed it solid. Standard procedure.'

'What leaked?' the Doctor asked.

'What about the people?' Catherine said before Klebanov could answer. 'What happened to them?'

Klebanov's face was drained of colour. 'They're still in there.'

The Doctor put his hand on the scientist's shoulder, turned the man to face him. 'I said, what leaked?'

'Does it matter?'

'Of course it matters.'

'He wants to know,' Jack said, 'if it's still dangerous. Because if not that's the best place to defend. To survive. It's already sealed solid, if we can just get into it.'

'We can blow the wall here,' Levin said, pointing to one of the blocked*off storerooms. 'Yes?'

'Yes, sir,' Krylek told him. 'Probably. Depends how thick it is.'

'You're crazy,' Klebanov said. 'We could all die the moment you open that chamber.'

'Yeah.' Rose told him, 'the alternative being what exactly?'

'Die trying to survive,' the Doctor said. 'Or just die. We need to draw the remotes in so I can get to the ship. Way's blocked at the moment. So, any other offers?'

Whatever the answer was, it was drowned out by the shouts from outside. Several soldiers ran in, and one of them hurried over to Levin and talked to him quietly.

As they spoke, Minin opened a drawer of his desk. He glanced up to see if anyone was watching him and caught Jack's eye. The man hesitated, then pulled a bottle of colourless liquid from the drawer. He pushed it into his jacket pocket.

'We're out of time for debate,' the colonel announced when he had heard the report. 'Lieutenant, get the explosives and gather the men. Bring the civilians. Let's blow that wall and find out whether this thing's still dangerous or not.' He was looking at the Doctor. 'Agreed?'

'What are you waiting for?' the Doctor asked.

There were two storerooms that used to open into the sealed*off main lab. They headed for the one nearest the conference room.

Even so, it was a nightmare journey. The outer wall was crumbling tentacles reaching through the concrete and thrashing along the corridor. One of the creatures was blocking the end of the corridor that led back towards the main doors. It sc.r.a.ped and squelched against the walls as it dragged itself along.

Krylek and one of the soldiers rolled grenades down the corridor. Everyone ran the other way, and soon the corridor was filled with noise and smoke and confusion.

Brodsky, pale*faced, was keeping pace with Rose when he suddenly disappeared with a cry. She turned round to see the man struggling and clawing at the floor of the corridor as he was dragged back. He was looking right at her when his face collapsed in on itself.

Catherine screamed, clutching Rose's arm, and they ran on. In front of them Rose could see Jack pulling Valeria along, urging her onwards. Dust and grit showered from the ceiling. A tentacle fell through in front of them and Rose pushed Catherine aside, so she narrowly missed it.

'Come on!' the Doctor urged from somewhere ahead of them.

Gunfire and explosions from behind.

There were too many people to fit in the storeroom. They were spilling out into the corridor. The Doctor, Levin and Krylek pushed their way through. Jack, Rose and Valeria were left at the back.

The young*old girl just stood, staring into s.p.a.ce. Her wrinkled face was stained black from the fire and one side of it had been scalded on the hot metal of the digger's front scoop. Rose smiled at her, but as ever there was no response, no flicker of interest or acknowledgement in the eyes.

Further along the line of people in the corridor, Jack could see the girl's father watching. His expression was as blank and unreadable as his daughter's.

The sound of gunfire echoed along the corridor. Two soldiers appeared round the corner, half running, half stumbling as they turned to fire at the enemy behind them.

But as the first tentacles lashed out after the soldiers, the corridor filled with even more people. They were coming out of the storeroom and back into the corridor. Levin and the Doctor were ushering them out urgently.

'Can't we get through?' Rose wanted to know. 'We can't stay here.'

One of the soldiers cried out as a tentacle wrapped round his leg and brought him down. The end of the corridor was lit with a blue glow as the creature approached.

'They're blowing the wall,' Jack told her. 'You don't want people standing beside it when you set off the charges.'

'If it's a choice...' Rose started to say. But she was interrupted by the arrival of the Doctor.

'Krylek's setting the charges,' the Doctor said. 'But it'll take him a minute.'

'We don't have a minute,' Rose replied.

The creature filled the corridor now pulsing forwards, tendril*like tentacles whipping and flailing. People pressed back against the cold concrete walls as they tried desperately to keep out of the way.

'Hold it back,' the Doctor said. 'I'll help Krylek. Half a minute. Can you do that?'

'Yes,' Jack said. 'We'll do it.'

'I don't know how,' Rose told him, but the Doctor was already gone.

'I do,' a voice said quietly beside them. It was Minin. He was holding the bottle that he had taken from his desk. He pulled out the stopper and pushed his handkerchief into the bottle.

'You need something to burn. Something more than just the alcohol that won't be enough. Let me help,' Jack told him.

'I don't need help.' He had a lighter. Was walking slowly along the corridor towards the grotesque creature squeezing its way towards them. 'You get them to safety, Captain. They're my people. I've looked after them as best I can. Now it's your turn. Don't let me down.'

The white of the handkerchief became orange and red as the lighter touched it.

The creature's squeal of triumph was Minin's scream of pain and defiance as it caught him, dragged him towards it. His hand was shaking, ageing, withering. But somehow he managed to smash the bottle to the ground beneath him as he collapsed. Into the flames.

Tentacles dragged him back through the pool of fire. His clothes were igniting and burning. The creatures were squealing and retreating as the man staggered and stumbled after it driving it back down the corridor.

Then the corridor was full of dust and smoke. Jack's ears rang with the rumbling roar of the explosion as Krylek's charges ripped through the concrete wall at the back of the storeroom.

'Come on!' The Doctor's voice cut through the confusion. 'Everyone inside, quick!'

Jack grabbed Valeria's hand and led her through to the storeroom. The Doctor was standing just inside the door, ready to slam it shut as soon as everyone was inside. He saw the shock on Rose's face.

'Minin?'

'Bought us some time,' Jack said.

The Doctor nodded. He closed the door. 'Right, everyone wait here while we go inside first. Never know what we might find.'

'What do you expect?' Jack asked.

'Will it be dangerous?' Rose said.

'If the toxin's still active, we're already dead,' Jack told her.

'It isn't,' the Doctor said.

'Sure?'

'Yep. You can tell from the plans that the air conditioning's still connected to this area. Always has been. There was never any toxin. Never any leak.'

'Then why's it sealed?' Jack wondered.

'Let's find out.'

Levin, Krylek and most of the soldiers had already gone through the ragged hole in the end wall. They were standing in a short section of corridor the other side. The floor was coated with a thin layer of dust, but otherwise in the light from the storeroom it looked like every other corridor in the building. At the end of the corridor was a heavy metal door.

'Do we open it?' Levin asked the Doctor.

He nodded. 'Yep.'

'You know what's inside, don't you?' Levin said as Krylek turned to the door.

'Yep.'

The door swung open. Beyond it blackness.

'Power should be on. There's a light switch on the wall to your left,' the Doctor called to Krylek. 'It's marked on the plans.'

Fluorescent lights flickered into life as the Doctor followed Krylek and Levin into the huge room. Rose followed, with Jack leading Valeria after them. The rest of the soldiers and the villagers streamed in behind them.

'Close and bar the door,' Levin called out. He did not turn. Like everyone else, he seemed unable to take his eyes off the scene revealed in the room.

It was a huge laboratory. Equipment was piled up on workbenches and antiquated computer systems stood against the walls tapes and switches and dials and meters. Dust lay heavily over everything so that the gla.s.s jars and tubes and pipes seemed opaque. Several surgical trolleys were in the middle of the room, linked up to an arrangement of tubes and pumps, similar to the equipment at Sofia Barinska's house.

But none of this was what held the attention of the people standing inside the door. Fifty people men, women, children, soldiers, time travellers. All staring at the figures that lay on the trolleys, or sat propped on lab stools so that they leaned over the workbenches. Several were slumped against the walls or computer banks.

All wearing hooded lab coats that had once been white but were now grey with dust and mould. Skeletal arms and bony hands poked out of the ends of the sleeves pale and brittle as stone. The faces were shrunken, withered husks mummified and skull*like. Fleshless and grey.

Silence.

Then the creaking, like a ship starting to set sail. Movement. Skull*heads turning slowly towards the doorway. Figures jerking into unsteady life twisting, rising, shambling...

'Who are they?' Rose breathed.

'The scientists who found the s.p.a.ceship about fifty years ago,' the Doctor said. 'The scientists who adapted its systems to keep them alive. If you can call this life.'

'It isn't always like this,' said a voice behind them.

Klebanov pushed his way through the crowd of people. He stood staring at the decaying figures that were slowly shuffling towards them.

'He's right. Sofia wasn't like that,' Rose said. 'Not all the time.'

'Takes a lot of energy, though. This lot are waiting for the power to build enough to give them all a dose. Isn't that right?' He was talking to the nearest of the skeletal figures.

Its reply was cracked and dry, like old hones. 'Is it time?' the figure whispered hoa.r.s.ely. 'Have you found a way for us all to live again? To live for ever?'

But it wasn't talking to the Doctor. It was talking to Klebanov.

The chief scientist nodded. 'It is time. And look...' He turned towards the people crowded into the back of the room, opened his arms to include them all. 'I've brought you food,' he said.

FOURTEEN.

From the storeroom behind them came the sound of crashing masonry as the creatures started to force their way through.

'Not doing that great,' Jack said. 'Plan D?'

But the Doctor ignored him. He was talking to Klebanov. 'So was Barinska working with you? Or was she freelance? Cos she'd been here for a while, hadn't she?'

As Klebanov started to reply, the Doctor glanced at Jack. A look, no more but Jack knew what it meant. Plan D was up to him while the Doctor kept talking.

'She found the ship almost a century ago. Didn't understand it, or what it did for her when she meddled,' Klebanov said.

The Doctor nodded. 'She'd been able to draw off some energy, influenced by the pilot's lingering soul and spirit. But it needed a scientist to adapt it further.'

'Barinska showed me the ship when I took over as director here in 1947.'

'No wonder Minin couldn't find a record of your a.s.signment. He was looking thirty years too late.'

The husks of the scientists were shuffling forwards, arranging themselves in a semicircle around the people. The villagers were frightened but quiet. Everyone watched the Doctor and Klebanov, which gave Jack a chance to tap Lieutenant Krylek on the shoulder. The two of them slipped away, hiding within the group.

'And you all think you're gonna live for ever, is that it? No idea why, of course. That's the pilot's influence again. Wanting you to want to stay alive until you've done his job. So what was the deal? She stays young. Her and you. And the rest of your mates wait here while you sort out a solution, a way of keeping you all young and vibrant?'