Falls the Shadow (2 page)

The grey man crossed the threshold into the dark. Wood slammed against wood behind him. The man wheeled round to find the rectangular shape of daylight blocked out. He turned slowly, thinking that he heard something. A quiet, childish giggling, but with an edge, with malice, with an ugly depth. Barely audible. Perhaps.

He began to search. Before the door closed light was a minimal luxury. Now that was gone. Darkness wrapped him, drowning him. This didn’t bother him unduly; he could feel the shapes of the rooms and their contents spread out around him.

Shuffling forward, the grey man tripped over a wooden beam and pitched forward. Grey cheeks flushed pink, and he cursed his stupidity. Broken nose, some bruising. Stupid, stupid. He righted himself, feeling his bone structure slip back into place, and his skin healing. His pride was irrevocably damaged.

Again! Giggling. The sound of malicious amusement, louder and longer this time. He knew, definitely, that he wasn’t alone.

‘Who’s there?’ he called out softly.

The pause was broken by the sound of a voice, nearby but distant. A voice full of pain and fear. Horrified, the man realized it was the voice of a child.

‘No more… please, it hurts…’

Further understanding crept within the grey man, accompanied by a deeper thrill of horror. He stumbled blindly through the darkness towards the voice, succeeding in tangling himself in the cobwebs which sprouted exactly where he wanted to go.

‘No!’ he called. ‘Rose sent me! You know Rose?’

‘Rose? Yes, she…’

The voice broke suddenly, clinging onto the sound of the word like a jammed tape recorder. Then it changed, turning the word into a scream. A scream of fear and pain, and worse than pain. The sound escalated, shrieking upwards into higher pitches, higher volumes.

The grey man listened, paralysed with his own fear, horror and revulsion. Someone, he thought, must hear this. Someone… There are people living on the floor above, they must… He should do… He should do
something
. He
should
.

The scream stopped, prematurely and permanently.

The man in grey buried his face in his hands.

He lowered his hands.

He saw the lights.

There were two crackling balls of electricity, spitting random psychedelic sparks, alive, sentient, studying their quarry warily. The force‐
lines of the cosmos plunged round into the hearts of the electrical flames. The man saw their raw power. He never imagined they would be like this, even in his most pessimistic forecasts. Immense power combined with immense intelligence, cunning enough to distract him for so long. Physically they were beautiful. Their minds were huge and full. They could have been giggling.

The light they cast was intense but did nothing to relieve the blackness. It made the dark deeper by contrast.

The grey man watched them patiently, waiting for the inevitable and no longer caring. Then he turned his head away, unable to bear the sight.

‘Well?’ he demanded, without hope of an answer.

The attack came swiftly. The lights swept forward and began to burn him. A reservoir of energy concentrated into the exact physical space he occupied. The lights spun round him, pumping more energy, channelling it through his body until it swelled, bloated with the unbearable pressure, and burst. His molecules splintered, stripped away until they were meaningless particles drifting around in the darkness. More dust.

The grey man’s body was destroyed less than a second after the attack. Whether the lights were surprised that his energy‐
index remained intact, he couldn’t tell, but he doubted it. They knew their enemy. They concentrated their attack on his soul.

The new attack was gradual, subtle, eating at the structure of his mind, crashing mental blocs together into a confusing sculpture of chaos. The man’s mental helix shrieked. The pain was… distracting… but tolerable. Even in torture he could recognize a skillful strategy. His mind was consuming itself. The worm Ouroborous, feeding on its own tail…

No more than he deserved. He allowed the pain to wash over him, and tear what remained of his mind to shreds.

Rationalizing while still coherent. Events seriously out of hand. Priority engage specialist operators. Destabilize scenario! Danger, but…

His last coherent thought: This has happened before. Last time, I died.

The lights hissed and withdrew to contemplate their other victim while the grey man’s mental helix imploded silently. The entire process had taken something less than five seconds.

Outside the clouds burst and it began to rain.

A woman dreamed in the darkness.

Her name was Jane Page, Sally Carpenter, Elisabeth Pinner, Christine Dennison, Penny Holmes, Stephanie Lister and many others. She could be whoever she wanted to be, or whoever she was required to be. She never used her real name any more. There was a serial number buried somewhere in a computer file – that was all that remained of her ‘real’ self. She loved the freedom of not being tied to a single identity.

Sally Carpenter was a housewife. Elisabeth Pinner made dresses. Christine Dennison was a student. Penny Holmes, a secretary. Stephanie Lister ran a painting business. Jane Page was ‘something in computers’. No matter which job she claimed, her work was the same.

She dreamt that she was required to be Jane Page.

She fell through the darkness, lost in the patterns of her bodyless mind. The dark was warm and infinite. She dreamed patterns of total order, a private world of angles and straight lines, sanity and uniformity.

There was someone singing in the back of her dream. She couldn’t ignore it, but she couldn’t concentrate on perfection while the song distracted her.

There was a hissing, guttural voice crackling in the high notes of the song. Whispering to her, whispering her name.

‘Crazy Jane. Crazy, crazy…’

She dropped through the darkness, dreaming. Dreaming the darkness.

‘Question. Why is it so bloody dark in here?’

Ace had a headache. A vicious, slow throbbing of muscles beating against the inside of her skull. Movement was agony. There was no justice in the universe – she hadn’t been drinking.

She lay still on her bed in her room in the TARDIS, staring at the darkened square of ceiling, trying not to move even when the shape of the pillow became uncomfortable beneath her head. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t do anything, and there was someone slicing chunks out of her brain with a blunt knife. Hell must be something like this, with time off for good behaviour.

She whiled the night away working her way through a complex train of interconnected, trivial thoughts. One thought led to another and another in a meandering line through her memories. Killing time, trying to sleep. After a couple of hours, she gave up and took a couple of aspirin. It left her with a dead taste in her mouth, which didn’t make her feel any better, so she crawled, half‐
dead, back to bed.

She touched her hair nervously, seizing clumps between her fingers and tugging. It was comfortably long now, but she repeated the ritual endlessly, just to reassure herself. The hairs bristled tediously against her hand. Five minutes later, she had drifted into a light sleep, which gave way to a deep sleep and dreams.

She dreamed about the Doctor, flying through time and space in a gleaming structure the size of a city. Only, when he opened it up, there was only a cupboard inside. No, that was putting things the wrong way round.

Bigger inside than out. The city, the living machine was inside the police box. No doubt about it. The Doctor was explaining it to her. Not the usual, probably untrue, spiel about dimensional transcendentalism or forced perspectives. Something different. Something weirder.

‘Have you ever considered,’ he was intoning, monotone lightened only by a slight Scots accent, ‘that you might have things the wrong way round? That the world is on the inside, and the TARDIS is the outside? There are an infinite number of doors and each and every one leads into a different part of time and space.’

He leant forward, his dark, hard features swimming unevenly in and out of focus. He tapped her nose with his finger. Patronizing. He didn’t try it when he was real. Scared of losing the finger.

The Doctor had moved on. He was gliding through the darkened passages of the TARDIS. He passed through corridors – gleaming white plastic walls with their indented roundels. He passed through cloisters – dark passageways of stone clad in ivy. He passed deeper into the heart of the TARDIS. All the lights were dim, the distant mind of the TARDIS was accommodating its passengers, maybe even imitating them. It was asleep.

The Doctor was moving through the corridors like a haunted man. A fiery but dark purpose burned in his sharp, grey eyes. Stalking the passageways of his home, seeking out the dirty walls and slapping on thick layers of white emulsion before anyone else could see them…

And then Ace woke up.

Her headache was gone, worn away by pills and sleep. Generally, she felt fresher, relaxed, calmer than the last miserable evening. She woke happier, in the dark. The fascinating ceiling was invisible. The walls were invisible. She sat up in bed and looked around, recognizing the vague shapes of familiar furniture. That was unusual. Not actually disturbing, just unsettling. Normally, when she woke, the TARDIS would perceptibly brighten, flooding the room with a comfortably low level of light. Not this time. The TARDIS wasn’t responding. The bedroom remained obstinately dark.

‘Question,’ Ace said. ‘Why is it so bloody dark in here?’

No response. No sudden hum of power. No flare from the brightening triangular lights set high on the walls and the ceiling. No light.

Ace toyed with the idea that the Doctor had been messing around with the TARDIS environment circuits. Or maybe she wanted darkness – a subconscious demand that the TARDIS was reacting to. It was more than just a time machine, or her home – it was a living thing, infinitely more complex than herself. Even the Doctor, for all his Time Lord insight, didn’t understand it. Only the TARDIS really knew. Maybe this was all planned…

There was no sound.

The sound of the TARDIS was a constant thing, a never‐
ending low drone. Never distracting, always there, just on the edge of her hearing. It was reassuring sound, it meant that the TARDIS was working properly. It was the life of the TARDIS. It never stopped.

The TARDIS was silent.

Ace got out of bed and stumbled through darkness to her wardrobe. She dressed quickly, pulling on her combat suit, leaving off the gloves and the optional extras to save time. First things first. Wake the Doctor. Possibly he’ll know what’s going on (
that
was optimistic). Wake Bernice, then… well, then the Doctor can sort it out.

You’re scared. You’re scared the TARDIS might be dead.

‘Ace?’ the voice came from the far side of the door, muffled but still unique. ‘Ace, are you awake?’

‘Doctor,’ Ace called back, fighting the urge to whisper. ‘What have you done to the lights?’

‘Nothing,’ the voice replied with urgent honesty. ‘Ace, please come out here. Emergency situation. Battle stations.’

You’re not alone,
she told herself,
he’s scared too.
Something in his voice gave it away. He was speaking faster, sounding lighter than normal. Ace wasn’t fooled.

She unlocked the door, pulled it open clumsily. The Doctor stared back at her on the other side.

Ace saw that she’d been right. He was scared. It was on his face. His marvellously flexible features were softened into a picture of unhurried determination. Ace saw a mask. The Doctor’s face was a fluid mix of features that never seemed the same twice, a face of infinite facets balancing dark wisdom and authority with childish wonder. It was the face he had been born to wear. Even in deepest contemplation, there was always something magical and lively there, persuading Ace that life might be worth living after all. She couldn’t see it now. He was truly afraid.

A masochistic voice piped up at the back of Ace’s mind.
There must,
it said,
be something seriously wrong.

‘Take this,’ the face said, as something was shoved into her hands. Looking down she saw a plain plastic cylinder, a battery torch, identical to one she used to have as a kid. She’d had hours of fun with that. Minutes at least. The Doctor also wielded a torch, the dull beam aimed straight at the floor.

‘Don’t use it till mine goes out,’ the Doctor told her, in a gentle Scots lilt. For a second, it seemed that the Doctor, the real Doctor, was back. Then his face flattened again.

In the shadows behind the Doctor was Bernice Summerfield. The aggressive sharpness of her thin face was softened and blurred by drowsiness. Someone else, Ace noticed, caught unawares by this
emergency situation
. She seemed pale and gaunt, though that was probably the dim light more than anything else. Her dark hair was a mess, reminding Ace that her own was probably in a worse condition. Bernice’s clothes were a hastily assembled collection, probably the first things that fell out of her wardrobe. Very practical.

The Doctor was immaculately presented, by the Doctor’s standards at least. His hair was, if anything, tidier than usual, displaying generous amounts of his high forehead. His clothes were, amazingly, cleaner than normal. The usual suit, its smooth cream seeming drab in the omnipresent darkness. His shirt was darker than normal, but still managed to contrast with the coarsely textured black tie he sported. Ace had long ago formulated the theory that he had twenty or thirty identical sets of clothing in his wardrobe, and wasn’t greatly surprised.

‘Doctor, what the hell’s going on?’ she appealed to him, cramming every heartfelt inch of exasperation into the question.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ the Doctor replied, seeming better for saying it. ‘I think a trip to the console room’s in order, answers for the rooting out of. Shall we go?’

‘Don’t have much of a choice, do we?’ she said, trying to smile. The Doctor tried to smile back, then he swept away. Ace fell into step behind him, following the dark shape of his shoulders and the beam of light in front of him. She found herself walking shoulder‐
to‐
shoulder with Bernice. At first there was an awkward silence. Ace was too frustrated by the lack of any obvious options to talk, while Bernice seemed drowsy. Probably recovering from being woken in the middle of a hangover. Ace turned to her. She had to talk to someone, if only to exorcise the frustration. And she wasn’t too keen on holding a conversation with the Doctor’s back, was she?

‘He hasn’t told you anything, has he?’

‘What? And break the habit of a lifetime?’ Bernice managed a tired smile.

‘He looks bloody terrified.’ Ace let her voice sink to a low whisper.

‘You should have seen him when the lights went out. I told him he hadn’t fed the meter in a while and we’d been cut off.’

‘And?’

‘He didn’t laugh. Do you think we have a crisis?’ Benny sounded tense and cheerful. Ace found she didn’t want to answer.

‘What do you think?’

Bernice hummed softly, before replying.

‘I think we should panic.’

‘Don’t panic now.’ Ace shook her head. ‘Save it for later.’

The console room was dead, crypt‐
dark and sepulchre – silent. The console was lifeless, its central column motionless. Even the tiny lights built into the internal structure of the column had been extinguished. These were the pulse of the TARDIS. If they were dead, so was the ship.

Without the activity of the console, the room seemed empty. It was a massive room anyway, but now it seemed cavernous. It was the burial ground for something ancient and incomprehensible. Ace felt like she was disturbing hallowed ground. Their footsteps echoed off the walls.

The Doctor didn’t seem to feel the heavy atmosphere. Either that or he was doing a good job of ignoring it. He made for the console. Ace and Bernice edged uneasily along the periphery of the room, watching the Doctor work. Ace enjoyed getting involved in the mechanics of the TARDIS, but this was one time that the Doctor could have the centre to himself. Bernice was watching the Doctor with clinical detachment, one professional in one field observing another. When she moved, it was stiffly, carefully measured. Ace could see that she was one step from panic. Grudgingly, Ace admitted that she was too.

It depends, she thought, on what the Doctor does.

He was a small man, but as he leant over the console to study the dead instruments, his silhouette contracted. His head shrunk into his shoulders as he leant further forward. A ghostly torchlit reflection of his face appeared in the central column, twisting in the curve of the glass. There was something about the inhuman silhouette that Ace found eerily familiar. It was just like normal. The Doctor working in a well‐
lit console room, bent over the console, his face set in concentration, head lowered to display a receding hairline. He might have been setting co‐
ordinates or reading from a rare first edition perched on the console top, taking readings from delicate instrumentation, thumping the delicate instrumentation whenever he didn’t like the readings. It was one of the regular features of Ace’s life. The difference now was the darkness and the desperate atmosphere.

He worked faster than usual. Normally he was careful. Now, he circled the console, fruitlessly trying to find something – anything! – that worked. Ace watched his frustration grow. After a few minutes, he straightened up to stare stone‐
faced at his companions.

Almost in unison, they moved to join him at the console.

‘Everything’s dead,’ he said softly. He leaned forward again and tapped on the console top. He straightened up and Ace was surprised to see his smile.

‘Phenomenal power…’ he said, slowly and softly.

Ace felt herself smile too, involuntarily. The real Doctor was back, magical and lively as ever. Nothing had been explained – but that was further proof that the Doctor
was
back.

‘Pardon?’ she heard Benny distantly.

‘Sorry, no…’ the Doctor mumbled. ‘This reminded me of a sticky situation I’ve been in before. Daleks perhaps. No, this is different.’

Please,
Ace wanted to scream,
don’t say that we’re perfectly safe.

‘We’re perfectly safe,’ the Doctor continued. Ace scowled.

‘That’s very encouraging,’ Benny chimed softly. ‘Please don’t spoil the effect by adding “until the air runs out and we asphyxiate” or something similar.’

The Doctor shook his head without looking up.

‘Not all the systems have been shut down. The TARDIS is dormant, not dead,’ he stated, with uncharacteristic simplicity. ‘All the essential systems are working perfectly. Oxygen.’ He shot a wry glance at Benny.