Part 34 (1/2)

Isaac flipped out his handscan. 'Downstairs in a large room. Probably the gym. I'll go.'

'You stay right here,' said the Doctor. 'Benny, Jason, go and see if they're all right. Be careful. Albinex's signal was masked, so there's one more person in the building besides us.

Benny looked between Isaac and Joel. The boy was looking up at the Admiral, trying not to cry.

'Right,' she said. Her father pa.s.sed her the handscan.

Jason followed her down from the stage.

Behind her' Isaac said, 'Good lad,' and reached down to tousle Joel's hair.

Benny picked up the handscan from where they'd dropped it. Jason stepped over the felled door and looked into the room. It had been torn to pieces, broken furniture everywhere, pictures ripped down from the walls. Only the security bars on the shattered windows had kept the monster in.

'What the h.e.l.l was that thing?' he said.

Benny shook her head. 'We'll get the exposition later,'

she said 'Come on.'

Jason picked up a severed chair leg. He fell into step behind her, trying to keep an eye out in all directions at once.

The gym was silent, their footsteps echoing like tiny gunshots. 'Here,' said Benny, her whisper carrying loudly.

Jason nodded and followed her to the open door.

Benny leant on the doorway. 'What have we here?' she said, loudly.

Jason looked over her shoulder. Chris and Roz were in a clinch on the floor, leaning up against a pile of mats. They jumped and looked up, guiltily, like a couple of teenagers caught by their parents.

Teenagers from a horror film. They were both smeared with blood. 'I'm not even going to start start on the Freudian implications of this,' said Benny. on the Freudian implications of this,' said Benny.

Jason put a hand on her shoulder. 'Are they the real ones?'

'Your average monster clone,' said Benny, 'isn't capable of simulating human embarra.s.sment so accurately.'

A bright-red Chris helped Roz to her feet, wiping her blood from his mouth and throat. 'Let me have a look at that,'

said Benny, serious now. 'What happened?'

'I think this did,' said Jason. He nodded down at the corpse in the corner. Benny looked, and bit her bottom lip so hard it bruised.

Ms Randrianasolo had fetched a couple of black plastic body bags from the van. Isaac had liberated a stretcher from a first-aid locker. 'I'm not dead yet,' murmured Joel. 'I feel happy...'

The Doctor was kneeling beside his double. A pool of blood was leaking out of it' black-purple' like ink from a broken pen.

The thing's face was fixed in a lethal snarl. He hoped he looked a bit more peaceful when he died.

He reached down and turned the thing's head, pus.h.i.+ng the rough ponytail out of the way. Its skin was already stone-cold. There was a triangular symbol etched into the skin over the collarbone. 'Bingo,' he said to himself.

He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Benny and Jason were back, and Chris, helping Roz. The Doctor jumped up.

'It's not bad,' said the Adjudicator. 'Everyone stop making such a fuss fuss.'

Ms Randrianasolo and Isaac had gently lifted Joel onto the stretcher. 'How is he?' said Jason.

'He'll be fine. Doctor, you and I will take Roz, Joel, and Ms Randrianasolo, and get to the hospital. Everyone else will clean up the mess and be ready to meet us when we get back.'

Benny looked down at the body bags. 'Euw,' she said.

Roz refused to have anything to do with twentieth-century medical treatment. She sat in the van, letting Chris work on her with a medikit. 'We can't all crowd into Casualty,' said Isaac' as they pulled up. 'Doctor, Benny, you come with me.

The rest, stay here.'

They carried Joel in on the stretcher, despite his weak protests that he could walk. Isaac overrode the nurse who told him he couldn't follow the boy into the treatment room and marched in after him.

Benny and the Doctor sat in the waiting room, surrounded by kids with asthma, sprained ankles, and an author who'd managed to stick herself in the eye with a copy of her own book.

'They've done this before,' Benny murmured. The Doctor raised his head from the battered National Geographic National Geographic he was pretending to read. 'Isaac made the cleaning-it-and-it-went-off story sound very real and panicked' but it was a script.' he was pretending to read. 'Isaac made the cleaning-it-and-it-went-off story sound very real and panicked' but it was a script.'

'Is Joel going to be all right?' she asked.

'If he's lucky he'll just need st.i.tches,' said the Doctor.

'I hate this,' she said. 'I hate people getting hurt around us.' She threw up her hands. 'It's not their job job.'

'It is their job,' said the Doctor. 'Being part of Isaac's crew carries the same sort of risks as being part of the TARDIS crew. Though perhaps not on the same scale.'

'He's not a soldier,' said Benny. 'He's just a kid.'

'Albinex doesn't care about the collateral damage,' said the Doctor. 'Or he wouldn't play with nuclear weapons.'

Benny hunched forward and cupped her chin in her hands. After a moment, the Doctor put down his magazine. 'A penny for them,' he said.

'Another waiting room. I was just thinking about waiting for Cristian at the mental hospital... he was even younger than Joel, then. More collateral damage,' she said bitterly.