Part 22 (1/2)

'I don't know. Really, I don't. I left Dronid before the fighting started. I'm telling the truth, I promise.'

'THERE-IS-AN-OB-VI-OUS-CON-CLU-SION,' the four Highest Brains rumbled. 'TIME-LORD-WEAPONS-TECH-NO-LO-GY-IS-IN-ADVANCE-OF-OUR-OWN. WE-MUST-STU-DY-THE-GE-NE-TIC-AR-MA-MENTS-OF-THE-SPE-CIES. WEAPONS-SUCH-AS-THESE-MAY-GIVE-US-A-DE-CIS-IVE-AD-VANT-AGE-O-VER-THE-ME-TA-TRAX-I.'

E-Kobalt knew what they really meant, of course. The Krotons were already winning the war, but new weapons were always useful. Once the Metatraxi had been defeated, the Absolute would expand beyond the Quartzline Front, and it was bound to run into other hostile races along the way. 'What-are-your-instruc-tions?' E-Kobalt asked.

'RE-TURN-TO-THE-FIFTH-LATT-ICE. FROM-THIS-MO-MENT-ON-THE-ME-TA-TRAX-I-ARE-NOT-YOUR-CON-CERN. YOUR-MISS-ION-IS-TO-LOCATE-A-MEM-BER-OF-THE-TIME-LORD-MI-LI-TA-RY. THE-DOC-TOR-WOULD-BE-AN-I-DE-AL-SUB-JECT-FOR-AN-AL-Y-SIS.'

E-Kobalt acknowledged the orders, and started weighing up its options. If it had to track down a Time Lord warrior, Dronid would probably be the place to start. Even if the battle had ended by the time the Fifth Lattice got there, the Time Lords might have left some of their dead or wounded units behind.

And the Time Lord must have guessed what E-Kobalt was thinking, because it squealed: 'You won't be able to get near Dronid. You won't be able to. The High Council's going to sterilise the planet as soon as the fight's over. It'll be off limits for years. You won't be able to make planetfall. I'm serious.'

The tendril clenched. The Time Lord yelped. 'YOU-HAVE-YOUR-OR-DERS,' the Highest Brains told E-Kobalt. 'RE-TURN-TO-THE-FIFTH-LATT-ICE. WE-WILL-BE-GIN-A-FI-NAL-BI-O-LOG-IC-AN-AL-Y-SIS-OF-THIS-TIME-LORD-UN-IT. YOU-WILL-BE-NO-TI-FIED-OF-AN-Y-DIS-COV-ER-Y-THATMIGHT-a.s.s-IST-YOUR-MISS-ION.'

'Er, what does ”final biological a.n.a.lysis” mean?' asked the Time Lord. But the tendril was already lifting the alien high above the floor of the cavern, and new limbs were sprouting from the crystalline walls, scalpel-pincers poised, bio-intake tubes at the ready.

E-Kobalt turned, without a word. It wasn't the Kroton way to salute. The Commander of the Fifth Lattice started the three-day trek back to its dynatrope, its objectives clear, its mind already formulating a search strategy.

Behind it, the Time Lord unit began to scream.

10.

WHAT IS IS AN IDENt.i.tY CRISIS, ANYWAY? AN IDENt.i.tY CRISIS, ANYWAY?.

The Doctor ran his fingertips along a strand of the web. It was sharp, sharp enough to give him a wound the size of a papercut, and it s.h.i.+vered when he let go of it. Traces of life, the Doctor decided. He took another look at the web's design. Clearly a retinal pattern, stretched across the top of the stairway that led down to the lowest level. Before he'd shut down the security systems, it probably would have responded much more aggressively. He imagined it wrapping itself around his flesh, cutting its way to the bone. Now he'd taken all the systems off-line, the web was dying.

He could have been more selective, of course. He could have only switched off the systems that threatened Sam and her new companion, but that would have taken time. So he'd deactivated the lot, from the roof to the vault. Presumably, Qixotl's damping fields were off-line now, as well. The Doctor hoped no one would upset E-Kobalt too much.

He reached into his pocket for a penknife, but the knife failed to materialise. He was mildly annoyed by that. Perhaps it was the stress; according to old Yeltstrom, you couldn't be at one with your pockets if you weren't entirely calm. The closest thing to a knife he managed to find was his sonic screwdriver, and the mark one version, to boot. He couldn't remember which features he'd built into the mark one, so he pointed it at the web, pushed the trigger, and hoped for the best.

The web began to shrivel, the strings blackening and dropping to the ground like pieces of old fettucini. Eventually, there was a hole in the web big enough for him to climb through without injuring himself.

He had to cut through another three of the retina webs before he reached the lowest level. The floor there was covered in mulch by the time he arrived. The slabs had been pushed aside, torn from the ground by sick-looking growths that reminded the Doctor of leftover spleens. Now the systems were down, the growths were starting to rot, filling the atmosphere with the scent of offal.

Sam lay on her back in the undergrowth, her body wrapped up in tendrils of crispy black bioma.s.s. The creepers had died and calcified, holding her limbs in stiff, unnatural positions. Her eyes were wide open, although her pupils were rolled up under the lids. Scattered around her body were the corpses of things the Doctor really didn't care to look at too closely.

He crouched down by Sam's side, then tried to pull her into a sitting position. The tendrils snapped as soon as he put pressure on them. Sam made a faint moaning noise, and her head lolled forward.

The Doctor brushed the back of his hand against her face. 'Sam? Sam, it's over. You can wake up now.'

Her pupils rolled back into place. Two blurry green eyes focused on the Doctor. He smiled encouragingly.

For a moment, Sam didn't respond. Then: 'I dreamt something,' she said.

Ah. Now, thought the Doctor, is this going to be an insignificant meaningless delusional dream, or a portentous prophetic dream with serious ramifications on the cosmic scale?

'I was a heroin addict,' Sam went on. Then she shook her head, a bit groggily. 'No I wasn't. I'd taken heroin, but I wasn't an addict. Is that possible?'

The Doctor felt faintly embarra.s.sed. 'I don't know. I'm hardly an expert.'

'Everything was different. I remember getting drunk a lot. I never get drunk, do I? Oh, G.o.d. There were other things. This boy. I was fourteen. No, fifteen.' Sam was shaking, the Doctor noticed. 'It was another life. A whole other life. I mean, I was me, but I was someone else. I never met you. You know the first time I saw you, I was running away from those dealers at Totters Yard? I remember, it was different. They were my friends. No, they weren't my friends, but I used to... oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d, I don't believe this.'

The Doctor rested his hand on her cheek. Lying to her might be the best idea, he decided. 'It was only a dream, Sam. Dreams only mean what we want them to mean.'

'But it didn't feel wrong. You know? It felt like it was the way things were supposed to be. And when I woke up, and you were there, I... it didn't feel right any more. It felt like I wasn't supposed to be here. Like I was supposed to be back in London. King's Cross. I've hardly ever been to King's Cross. Why should I dream about it like that when I've hardly ever been there?'

The Doctor wondered what he should say. To an extent, she was probably right. By taking Sam off in the TARDIS, he'd changed her timeline, and by a.s.sociation, the timeline of her whole species. But he'd taken risks like that a billion times before, nothing bad had happened so far. Well, nothing very bad. What was different this time?

'Who am I?' Sam asked, between breaths, and the Doctor suddenly realised she was crying. Sort of. Shallow, half-hearted sobs, as if she knew she ought to be upset, but wasn't sure how to go about showing it. 'Who am I supposed to be?'

The Doctor put his arm around her. He didn't have an answer.

Before Sam could say anything else, there was a muted gurgling sound from somewhere nearby. Sam stopped crying in a second. The Doctor felt her limbs go stiff in his arms. Slowly, he disentangled himself from her, and stood.

A few feet away, a second figure lay among the kidney plants. It was curled up like a foetus, and the similarity didn't end there. Its eyes were wide open, but then, the Doctor doubted it had any eyelids. It was the creature he'd seen on the pixscreen in the security centre. The antibody's umbilical cord had withered away, and without the City's systems to support it, it had fallen to the ground, ready to die.

'What is it?' asked Sam. Her voice wasn't much more than a squeak. Mercifully, she couldn't see the thing from where she was sitting.

'Nothing,' the Doctor told her, not taking his eyes off the antibody. 'Nothing at all.'

The antibody turned its soft, swollen head. Two huge black eyes stared up at the Doctor from the undergrowth.

It gurgled again. Three syllables. The Doctor wouldn't have identified the sounds as words, if he hadn't been able to see the antibody's lips moving.

'It's-not-fair.'

Without a word, the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver. The antibody followed the movement of his arm. It stopped thras.h.i.+ng its little stunted limbs.

'It's-not-fair.'

The Doctor pressed the trigger.

The cells of the antibody had already started to collapse in on themselves. The screwdriver accelerated the process. The creature's skin wrinkled, then turned black, shrinking and hardening across its bloated body. Tumours blossomed across its cranium. The eyes sank into the underdeveloped skull.

Eventually, there was nothing left of the antibody but a husk. The Doctor lowered the screwdriver, but didn't turn away.

'Doctor?'

The Doctor didn't move.

'Doctor? What's going on?' Behind him, he heard the rustling of dried bioma.s.s as Sam tried to pick herself up off the floor. He felt his fingers tightening around the shaft of the screwdriver.

'Alien bodies,' he whispered.