Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (21 page)

I turned to Abesse, protesting. ‘Stop her, stop her somehow!’

Abesse raised her gun and fired it repeatedly at the base of Marianne’s chair. It should have stopped her. Only nothing happened.

It was at this point that Abesse realised the power-pack was gone from her gun.

I went cold.

‘Marianne,’ I cried out. ‘Stop, please!’

Marianne’s chair swivelled back, facing me for a moment. ‘Governor,’ she said. ‘Remember. It’s just the little people. They don’t count.’ And then she closed in on the Judge, the whining growing shriller and shriller.

‘Go on,’ she snarled. ‘I’m your answer. Judge me. Judge. Me. Because I am guilty.’

The Judge cowered back, that huge figure recoiling from the tiny righteous, crumpled frame of Marianne.

I think I called out her name first.

Or maybe the power-pack exploded first.

Perhaps Marianne cried out.

Or whatever remained of Bentley did.

But when the explosion had finished, peace came to The Prison.

The Doctor was cooking dinner.

‘I’ve got lasagne at home,’ protested Clara.

‘Don’t care,’ said the Doctor. ‘Mine will be better.’

‘Is that even lasagne?’ Clara was dubious.

The Doctor regarded the saucepans carefully, ‘Let’s say it still has the potential to be.’

I sat on a table in the canteen. I didn’t feel like eating.

After the explosion we were all still alive. We were about the only things left in The Prison still functioning. The Custodians had all shut down. All that remained of the Judge was a heap of mostly metal that none of us fancied going anywhere near.

Abesse looked surprised to be still alive. The Doctor hobbled up to her, and, to my amazement, pinched her on the cheek. She pinched him back. ‘I told you,’ he said to her, ‘the less shooting you do, the greater the chance of making it out alive.’

‘You did,’ Abesse admitted. ‘But … some instincts are hard to overcome.’

‘Aren’t they just?’ The Doctor stepped back. ‘For instance, despite all the evidence, I just can’t give up liking you humans.’

And Abesse then did a remarkable thing. She smiled.

You don’t want to know about the stuff that followed. It turns out the big things, such as stabilising the Prison systems, restoring some limited life support and regaining control of the Defence Array, were relatively dull procedures. They all just took a little time. That was all. Not really worth talking about.

Eventually, the Doctor, the man who had once been Prisoner 428, stood up from the control panel he’d been re-routing and rubbed his eyes. ‘That’s that, then. I’m hungry,’ he announced, and limped off.

Abesse didn’t join us for dinner. She was trying to get the TransNet connection working again. She couldn’t wait to see the look on the faces of the people on the other end. Especially when she told them that The Prison was now under the control of Prisoner 203. The outlawed mercenary Major Abesse, with all of The Prison’s files at her fingertips.

So dinner was just the Doctor, me, and Clara.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I insisted.

‘I don’t care,’ said the Doctor, chopping vegetables. ‘This isn’t about you. It was on my list. “Do something about the food.” Hence this.’

‘Oh,’ Clara sighed. ‘Of course. It’s all about the lists with you.’ She tried reaching over with a spoon into the Doctor’s saucepan but he slapped her wrist away, ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘It’s not ready.’

‘Have you even decided what it it’ll be?’

The Doctor shrugged and carried on cooking.

There was a rose in a plant pot on the table. It was covered in buds. They’d flower soon.

I’m still not sure what dinner was. But it was very nice. I started off eating a little of it, and then cleaned my bowl. And had another.

Clara looked at me expectantly. ‘It’s the paprika, isn’t it? I told him to put that in.’

‘I would,’ the Doctor muttered, ‘have put some in anyway.’

‘Of course you would,’ Clara said with a tight smile, and winked at me.

The Doctor pushed his bowl back. ‘And now for dessert,’ he announced.

‘I don’t have room!’ I insisted.

‘Oh, it’s not a pudding, it’s a decision. Your just dessert.’

Clara wrinkled her nose. I just felt dinner turn to lead somewhere in my stomach.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Well …’ The Doctor examined his fork, counting the tines on it over and over, ‘Back home, the HomeWorld Government is falling. It’s a terrible
mess. A really terrible mess. Thing is, the people want you back.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘I don’t deserve to—’

‘Oh, I know you don’t.’ The Doctor’s voice was cold. ‘But the people down there, they think you do. They’ve forgotten all the stupid human things you did, and all they can remember is that you were better than the new lot. A bit. And luckily for you –’ he gestured around at the empty canteen – ‘a lot of the people who can tell them otherwise are gone.’

‘I had … nothing to do with …’

‘Stop that.’ The Doctor jabbed me in my injured shoulder with his fork. I shut up. ‘I don’t care. I don’t go around being a kingmaker. It’s not for me to overrule the will of the people. They think you’re the best of a bad lot. More than that. They’re on their way to declaring you a hero.’

I felt sick. I thought about all I’d done. All that had happened. All that I was responsible for. All that I wasn’t. How much I missed being in power. How much I missed my Helen. How much I missed being happy.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I told him truthfully.

The Doctor leaned back and folded his arms. ‘It’s up to you,’ he announced.

Clara spoke up. ‘You don’t have to go, you know.’ She was smiling at me kindly. ‘We can drop you off somewhere new. You never have to go back. And you
don’t have to make up your mind now. Take all the time you need. We’ve got some washing-up to do – and you wouldn’t believe how long the Doctor takes over that.’

They stood up and went into the kitchen and spent some time bickering over the right way to wash dishes. It seemed absurd. Cleaning plates that would never be eaten from again. But then, the Doctor had said something about how these things always needed to be done properly.

I sat there and I thought about what they’d said. I looked around at the walls of the canteen, painted just the right colour. I looked at the rose. I rested my hands on the bench that the Doctor had made from burnt shelves, and then I rested my head on the bench. It felt cool.

‘Well?’ the Doctor was back, standing over me, holding a tea towel decorated, absurdly, with Old Earth cathedrals.

‘What?’ I said.

‘What’s it to be, Governor?’ asked Prisoner 428. ‘What decision have you made?’

I started off by writing this down. By finishing the journal I’ve been keeping. By reading it through. By making sure it’s as full and honest and open as it can be. For when it’s read. Whatever I choose, I want people to know. That’s all.

I said before that there’s one thing you learn in this job. It isn’t what you say that tells you most about someone. It’s your silence.

And, while I worked it all out, I said nothing.

But I’ve finished now. And the Doctor and Clara are still waiting to hear my answer.

Because it’s time I made my mind up.

Available now from Broadway Books:

JUSTIN RICHARDS
ISBN 978-0-8041-4088-1

‘Vastra and Strax and Jenny? Oh no, we don’t need to bother them. Trust me.’

Marlowe Hapworth is found dead in his locked study, killed by an unknown assailant. This is a case for the Great Detective, Madame Vastra.

Rick Bellamy, bare-knuckle boxer, has the life drawn out of him by a figure dressed as an undertaker. This angers Strax the Sontaran.

The Carnival of Curiosities, a collection of bizarre and fascinating sideshows and performers. This is where Jenny Flint looks for answers.

How are these things connected? And what does Orestes Milton, rich industrialist, have to do with it all? As the Doctor and Clara join the hunt for the truth, they find themselves thrust into a world where nothing and no one are what they seem.

An original novel featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, as played by Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman

Available now from Broadway Books:

MIKE TUCKER
ISBN 978-0-8041-4090-4

‘Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.’

Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. ‘Mummy, there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts … Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous.

But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous.

With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more and more dangerous, the Doctor knows that unless he can decode the strange symbols engraved on an ancient stone circle, and unravel a mystery dating back to the Second World War, no one is safe.

An original novel featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, as played by Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman