Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 15

'We can swing by the hotel.' Sam walked a few steps, squeaking and leaking.

'I think I need a new pair of shoes.'

Walter met them in Berkeley, in front of a science-fiction bookshop. They crouched behind Walter's car, across the street. 'It was about half an hour after the place closed,' said the little salesperson. 'I was sitting in the car outside Mickey D's, and I saw two of them come out. They took a taxi here. I saw them break in. They did something to the door. . . I'm pretty sure they didn't have a key. Two of them.'

Sam stared through the car window. The brightly lit shop was empty. 'So where are they now?'

'They went into the back room,' said Walter. 'I've been watching the whole time. G.o.d knows what they're doing back there.'

'I think it's time we found out,' said the Doctor. 'Fitz and Sam, you come with me. Walter, you'd better stay here.'

Walter smiled nervously. 'I was kind of hoping you'd say that,' he said.

It took the Doctor thirty seconds to pick the lock. 'Slow,' murmured Fitz. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him and softly pushed the door open.

He shut it behind them without a sound. Sam's hands had curled into fists.

She expected the grey men to appear from behind the bookshelves, raving as they tried to grab her. But the shop was silent.

The Doctor strode up to the door at the back of the shop, still somehow managing not to make any noise. Sam found herself following him. He was 98 just going to walk into the danger. She wanted to be with him. Fitz was following, too.

The door wasn't locked. He pushed it open.

The room inside was dark there was a desk, some shelving, a wooden staircase leading down. Sam started no, it was a dummy, dressed in an elaborate costume.

The Doctor indicated the stairs there was a faint light coming from below.

Sam nodded tightly. She wished she had some kind of weapon. They followed him down into the darkness.

She was halfway down the stairs when someone put their hand on her shoulder.

Sam screamed, the sound jerking out of her of its own accord. She pulled forward, but the hand was still there, holding her in place. Wait, stop, how how many fingers were there many fingers were there? Another hand descended on her other shoulder, like a leaden spider.

Fitz shouted, 'Walter, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!'

She hadn't felt wrong. There were too many fingers too many fingers and he wasn't just touching her, the fingers were going under her skin under her skin She screamed again, reaching down to Fitz, who was coming back up the stairs to her. He looked past her at whoever was dragging her up, reeling her in.

One of the Henches tackled Fitz, bringing him down hard on the concrete stairs. He made an ugly noise as the air was bruised out of him. Behind him, she could see the Doctor, dazed against the wall, the other Hench slipping a blindfold over his eyes.

Sam tried to kick, to hit, to do anything to get loose. She couldn't turn, she couldn't see who had hold of her, she could only feel those cold hands reaching through her skin, fingernails sc.r.a.ping her bone.

'Try not to damage yourself,' said a man's dry voice in her ear. And with his third hand he pushed the blindfold down over her eyes.

Chapter Nine

Abducted by Aliens.

Think of me as a person.

That's what the women did in the kidnap movies. Chat with the man, make him see you as a human being, so he won't dump your body in a ditch somewhere.

Trouble was, Sam couldn't think of anything to say.

She scrunched up her face, trying to take the pressure of the rag off her eyeb.a.l.l.s. The Henches had tied it tight before shoving them in the van, and tightened it before unloading them here. Wherever this was.

The blindfold moved a fraction, and this time she almost got her eyes open before the pain stabbed in. She swore.

'Sam?' called Fitz, from somewhere behind her. 'Talk to me. Let us know what's happening to you.'

The blindfold fell back into place as she flinched. It was hopeless. If she moved her head even a fraction, that sharp tearing line of pain lit up in the bone of her forehead. It was as if her skull was nailed to the metal frame she was lying on.

Five nails. Her hands and feet were pinned the same way.

'At least keep talking so we know you're still there,' Fitz went on. 'Just tell us Oh no. Oh no. He's '

She heard a sharp strangled intake of breath, a scream being sucked inward.

'Fitz!' she shouted. Don't turn your head, remember you can't turn your head She listened, but there was nothing but the hum-buzz-tick of machinery.

'This is madness!' the Doctor shouted, somewhere to the right. 'If there's something you want from us, why don't you just ask?'

The man's dry voice drifted across the room. 'I'm afraid this is a matter in which simple-subject interviews will not suffice,' he said. 'Particularly when the specimen in question is as notoriously, er, notoriously inaccurate inaccurate as you are. My results must be unambiguous.' as you are. My results must be unambiguous.'

'Christ Jesus,' whispered Fitz.

100.Sam called, 'You OK?'

'Nnh.' Barely audible. 'Blacked out for a moment.'

'What happened?' No answer. 'Well?'

'It was. . . weird. . . I can't '

'Ow,' said the Doctor.

She had to fight to keep her breathing steady. Breathe too hard, and your head'll only pull against that pin-nail-needle.

'Listen to me,' said the Doctor's voice. 'Judging by this thing, you've got some kind of higher-dimensional technology. Which means you must have noticed what's happening to this city. What's already arrived '

'Yes. The Kraken.' The voice was close to her ear now. 'The second most interesting specimen in the area, I must admit. One moment.'

Something opened up inside her spine.

The cold ripping pain made her heart stop, made her head fill up with blackness. Did she scream?

'You should stay still,' advised the voice in her ear, 'and quiet. This does require a certain amount of concentration.'

The pain wasn't in her back. It was where she was pinned, 'cause her whole body was tightening in a reflex, pulling against the pins. She forced her head back into place. The pain in her forehead went away, and all she had to do was stay still, rigid, as something crawled around inside her spine.

It didn't move, it just it was there, and then there, then there, without actually going from one place to the next. Just a tiny point of something wrong inside. It hadn't even broken her skin.

The Doctor was saying, 'With technology like that, you could stabilise the scar in an instant. You could solve all our problems '

'I'm afraid not. That would disrupt the habitat.'

She couldn't feel the thing in her back any more. The inside of her cheek hurt like h.e.l.l she must have bitten it. The trembling made her forehead throb.

'Oh please,' snapped the Doctor. 'It'll disrupt the habitat a bit more if some vast raving monster from outside reality flattens a path through the no stop that stop stop I SAID STOP IT ' I SAID STOP IT '

'Interesting. So that's what that one does.'

'Stop. Give it back.' The Doctor's voice was high, shaky. 'Give me back the violet.'

'All right, they're prepared. Take them away.'

And there were hands all over her, holding her arms down as they unpinned her hands from the frame, and then tying them together again, and the Doctor 101.

was crying out, 'Give it back! Now!' as they lifted her, and she asked whoever was there, 'Look, what are you doing?' as they jostled her forward, a louder 'Just tell me what you're going to do,' as the bodies pressed in on all sides, herding her along, and it all burst out in a final scream of ' Just tell me what are Just tell me what are you doing! you doing! ' '

The voice didn't answer.

She was squeezed between two big men on the seat of the van. There were more, crowded all around.

'Fitz ' she said.

'Here,' he said raggedly. She could hear the Doctor muttering to himself.

The driver started the van's engine and put on a CD of treacly piano ballads from before she was born, cranked up to disorientating levels. He'd pulled the same trick on the trip there. Now, even if the Doctor or Fitz was sitting right next to her, she'd never hear what they said.

She reached out in front, to where she thought the Doctor's voice had last come from, and found a pair of bound hands. She clutched on to them. They held on to her, just as desperately.

Finally the van stopped, and the CD mercifully stopped along with it. The men shovelled them out through the door, Sam clinging to the Doctor's hands like a lifeline. And then she heard the van roar off.

After a few seconds she slid her hands down his wrists and started fumbling with the old rope that tied them. He reached up and unknotted the rag that was squeezing against her eyes.

Her eyes sprang open in relief, but the dark didn't go away. After a moment's panic she realised it was night it had been daylight when they were grabbed.

They had been dropped back outside the bookshop.

The hands turned out to belong to Fitz.

He gave a faintly embarra.s.sed smile as he untied her wrists. 'You all right?'

he asked.

'Bloomin' marvellous,' she muttered. She just wanted to hold on to him, or the Doctor, or anyone really. But no way was she going to break down now.

' Fine Fine. How about you?'

'Oh, fine. No, really, just fine. Promise.' His hands were shaking against hers.

'Oh, this is charming,' snapped the Doctor. 'Look. They left this.'

He'd shaken off the rope so quickly it was as if he'd never been tied up. Now he was pacing past them and clutching a copy of Manilow Sings Sinatra Manilow Sings Sinatra. 'They 102 didn't want me to hear any pa.s.sing sounds that might help me puzzle out where they took us. But this ' he waved the alb.u.m 'is just adding insult to injury!'

Sam plucked the CD out of his hands. 'Oh, for G.o.d's sake '

'There's something in my neck,' quavered Fitz.

He was standing frozen, one hand to the back of his head. Her fingers leapt to her own neck, and found it just below the base of her skull, a small metal b.u.t.ton, flat against her skin.

As though someone had pushed a drawing pin right into her spine.

Without thinking, she pulled at it, trying to get her thumbnail under the edge. Immediately she felt that tiny point of wrongness lodged in her spinal cord, ready to rip its way loose to the surface.

'The connection's folded into a higher spatial dimension,' said the Doctor quietly. 'Look.' He pushed his hair aside and showed her the b.u.t.ton in his own neck. The matt-black disc was etched with circuitry. He pressed the skin down at its edge, so they could see underneath, see that the disc wasn't actually attached at all.

'All right,' said Fitz shakily, 'what's it for?'

'Specimens,' spat the Doctor. 'Unambiguous results. Not disrupting the habitat.' The words flew out in random directions. 'Don't you see? We've been tagged tagged.'

'Christ, you're right,' said Sam. 'He let us go so he could observe us in our natural habitat. This thing's probably a transmitter.'

He nodded frantically. 'Telling him where we are.'

'Maybe letting him see what we're doing.' The disc was a cold circle under her palm.

'More than that. These things reach straight into our central nervous systems.

He's the one who's been doing strange things to my mind and now he'll know exactly what he's doing to me. I'm a perfect experimental subject now.'

'Give me back the violet,' said Sam.

The Doctor nodded. 'This time he made a real change. A permanent one, not some transitory hallucination. He made me colour-blind.'

'What?' said Fitz.

'What?' said Sam.

'Indigo, violet, all the shades of ultraviolet all gone,' said the Doctor. 'They all just look. . . black black to me. But what is it to me. But what is it for for, what is he doing doing, what does he want want? Ah, Fitz?'

Fitz was staring off down the alleyway, at the skyline. Sam followed his eyes to a small roiling ma.s.s of clouds, suspended over the Bay. 'I dunno. . . ' he 103.