Falls the Shadow (24 page)

‘Yes, nemesis,’ the Doctor agreed.

‘Or guilt?’ the grey man suggested darkly.

The Doctor seized up. He had to argue with the grey man, he knew that. He had to justify himself. But when he tried, he found there was nothing there, no justifications, not even explanations. He turned away, trying to hide his face.

‘I’m sorry.’ His accuser seemed upset by the effect of his barb. ‘My remark was designed to wound. I can only apologize.’

The Doctor acknowledged the apology with a grim nod. But he still felt bitter and afraid and
small
. He wasn’t fooled by physical shapes. The grey man was larger, more terrible, than he had imagined.

‘I’m sorry,’ Winterdawn said. ‘All that went over my head.’

‘We were discussing things of minor importance.’

‘You said something about empires?’ Winterdawn’s eyebrows arched.

‘Things of minor importance,’ the grey man stressed. ‘There are weightier matters to be considered. I am here… against my better judgement. Normally I do not interfere. I try to encourage local solutions.’

Winterdawn smiled, a smile full of patience and lacking in humour.

‘The problem is partly of my own creation, but mostly, Professor Winterdawn, the responsibility is yours.’

‘Mine?’ Winterdawn was genuinely startled by the remark.

‘Your interference has unleashed a wave of destruction on the universe. I fear your actions have been negligent.’ The grey man seemed to sense the confusion and fear growing on Winterdawn’s face, and changed tack, ‘No – I’m not here to censure you. No matter what else I may have become, my conscience is still my own. You acted in ignorance. No blame can be laid with you.’

The man in grey paused and Winterdawn took advantage of the situation to unleash a bellow mixing outrage, fear, confusion and anger.

‘Blame for what?!’

The grey man spoke again, softer and slower:

‘Your experiments with the metahedron. You do not understand the functions of the engine. Your manipulation resulted directly in the physical effects you desired, but there were… other effects. The metahedron is a device for manipulating the structure of reality. When you used it, parts of the fabric of reality were affected.’

‘Affected?’ the Doctor asked, recognizing a euphemism when he heard one.

‘Distorted.’ The grey man stumbled through his words. ‘Mutated. In some areas, totally destroyed. Much of it was of a trivial nature and was repaired by the natural functions of the cosmos. Other parts are beyond repair. I have no idea what the consequence of that will be. It will be many millenniums before their effects will be seen. And then…’ He paused again. The Doctor saw that he was shaking.

‘On the physical plane this damage has manifested itself as
sentience
. Wholly negative, destructive sentience. These sentiences have already, ah, killed or maimed a number of people.’ A note of hysteria had crept into his previously calm voice. ‘I… I heard a child die. Winterdawn,
they are loose in your house
!’

The silence that followed was brief.

‘You knew!’ Winterdawn howled. ‘You knew and you didn’t do anything! There’s a bunch of bloody psychos in my house, and you’re content to stand around and witter on about local‐
bloody‐
solutions! You bastard! If my daughter’s hurt, I’ll… Christ knows, I’ll
haunt
you!’

The Doctor stepped forward trying to calm the screaming figure in the wheelchair. It seemed to work. The tirade ended, Winterdawn fell silent. But his eyes glowed with suppressed anger.

‘I did my best,’ the grey man said cautiously, his back to the pair of them. ‘Local problems call for local solutions. There are… local agents.’

‘Where were
they
then?’ Winterdawn scowled. ‘I didn’t see them.’

The Doctor blinked. And understood. He faced the grey man.

‘It was you.’ he said simply.

‘I have no affection for the Time Lords of Gallifrey, nor any mayfly‐
race that claims for itself the status of gods. But if flung into a chaotic situation, they are more than capable of stabilizing matters.’

The Doctor had nothing to say. He knew the power it required to disrupt the smooth functioning of a TARDIS.

‘I plucked a TARDIS from the time streams at random,’ the grey man confessed. ‘I placed it in the house. I was certain a Time Lord would attend to matters without fuss. I underestimated the forces they would face. I continue to be surprised by the sheer magnitude of my stupidity.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ the Doctor said smoothly.

‘I was surprised it turned out to be you,’ the grey man continued. ‘You would have brought new thinking to the situation. They side‐
tracked you.’

The Doctor nodded again, speaking with insistence:

‘Yes. Now I’m side‐
tracked, and my companions are trapped in the same house as these destructive forces…’

The Doctor’s voice snapped the grey man out of his lethargy.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said eagerly. ‘You must go back. There is still time. There is always still time.’

‘“There is always still‐
time, and there is always flowing – time,”’ the Doctor replied, plucking the quote from memories of dusty books in the Academy library.

‘I warn you things will have changed in your absence,’ the man said.

‘Are you still relying on “local solutions”?’ Winterdawn spat.

‘I cannot join you, if that’s what you mean,’ the grey man said. ‘I have a prior engagement. The damage done extends far beyond the physical plane. I must attend to that. Now. Go.’

Darkness collapsed around them.

Jane Page’s cell was bare. It was somewhere in the heart of Winterdawn’s home. Page didn’t know exactly where, nor did she care. She knew that she was something less than human, but she cared less. This knowledge was useless, sitting uneasily on the edge of her consciousness, acknowledged only because she hadn’t the nerve to challenge the idea.

All Page cared about was herself. It was all she had left. She dwelt on the here, on the now, on the grey expanse around her.

She couldn’t see it properly. Gabriel had stripped her of her gun, her coat, her freedom and her glasses. Her eyes were weak without them. She was a prisoner. Harsh ropes chafed at her wrists and ankles, binding her securely to a harsh metal chair. There was the cold – a light draught that cut through her body to stab at her bones.

New bones, she realized. No more than a day old.

Dark colours blurred before her. Gabriel.

‘They burn Dante where you come from,’ he said, casually terminating a long silence. ‘Very apt. If you had read him you might understand why you must undergo this ordeal.’ Dark blur held something towards her face, prodding it sharply into her cheeks.

‘You will notice I have a number of instruments whose application will cause pain. To you. Possibly. I doubt that you feel pain. Your nervous system isn’t developed enough. You are without a doubt not human. You will notice that however much you may scream, I will ignore you. You might be real, you might not be, but in the interests of individual freedom I would prefer to assume that you’re not. After all I don’t want my own prejudice to become outweighed by the possibility that I might be committing some vague ethical offence against a human’s rights. Still, who wants to live when you’re having fun? I don’t care. Why do I bother justifying myself? You’re not human, you don’t deserve an explanation! Let’s begin!’

‘Praise be,’ Page droned blandly. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

Something lodged itself into her throat – a huge, hard, solid shape with a metal taste and a mechanical curve. It stopped at the back of her throat. Page swallowed coolly, trying not to gag, well aware of what the shape was.

Between her teeth was the barrel of a gun, probably her own. Page went numb as she understood the danger. It was there – every time she breathed or swallowed she became aware of the icy lump of death in her throat.

‘Come on Pagey, let’s have a song.’

Page was silent, too scared to risk it.

‘Sing,’ Gabriel snapped.

Silence. The taste of the gun and the fear of death.

‘Sing!’ A hand smashed into the side of her face, matched by the force of Gabriel’s yell. Taking the hint, she formed the words.

‘Land of hope and glory,’ the words were forced and unrecognizable, but they were coming, ‘Mother of the free…’

‘That’s enough,’ Gabriel insisted. ‘That’s quite enough.’

The thing was withdrawn from her mouth. Page relaxed, a little.

‘Was it the singer or the song?’ she asked.

‘A bit of both. Tell me, have you ever tortured anyone?’

‘I have. It’s cruel to be kind.’

‘You’re a butcher, Jane Page.’

‘That’s what they said, while they still had tongues.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes,’ Page lied without passion. ‘Sometimes. I prefer the gun, the target. Torture prolongs the effect, makes me uneasy.’

‘How does it feel to be on the other end?’

‘Not good,’ Page continued. ‘Empty. Cold. Perhaps lonely.’

‘Soon, we shall be together,’ Gabriel said, his blade tickling the underside of Page’s chin. ‘Any tips? This is my first time. I’m a torture‐
virgin, I suppose.’

‘Eyes are good. Nails and teeth if you have the equipment. Breasts, if it’s a woman. Start with psychological torture, it gets them in a better state,’ Page mused. ‘On the whole it’s a matter of technique.’ She paused suspiciously. ‘Why am I telling you this?’

‘Because I want to hear. And I am very persuasive. Psychological torture,’ Gabriel responded sympathetically. ‘Possibly you think that if you’re co‐
operative then I might change my mind.’

Page blinked, the longest blink she had ever known. It lasted for a fragment of a second. In that time she felt Gabriel tug away the topmost buttons of her blouse, felt the knife‐
point falling into the gap.

‘Welcome,’ Gabriel’s voice sang loud and terrible in the darkness, ‘to the outermost circle of Hell.’

Justin Cranleigh’s body lay motionless on the floor of the nursery, a thing twisted and broken from a fall. Round his head was a halo of shattered glass. The window above him was punctured – a jagged hole punched into its surface. It was no longer black.

The voices were gone.

Tanith stood by the body, staring down and considering. Her mind was wrapped in chaos, a tumult of information absorbed into a structureless whole stretching into a void of static and white noise. Confusion screamed deranged songs on the inside of her head, too many to be learned properly.

After an hour’s silent vigil, she was joined by Gabriel.

‘It’s over,’ he said simply, smiling as he divulged the news.

‘Today, the Shadowfell. Tomorrow, the world!’ Tanith declared. The notes from underground broke into laughter, before kissing with all the pleasure and passion they could muster.

‘Love and death!’ Gabriel called.

‘Love and death!’ Tanith echoed. ‘Long may they reign!’

Suddenly the real world came back into focus. There was stone floor beneath the Doctor’s feet, electric light flooding his eyes, a tetrahedron by his shoes. The shock of being confronted with something real was almost too much for him. He placed a hand on Winterdawn’s chair to steady himself.

He was in the cellar, the room from which he had left the universe years and seconds earlier.

The Doctor cast his eyes round the room cautiously. They fell on an object sitting abandoned in the corner, gathering dust. He picked it up, studying it sadly.

It was a mask, dirty and cracked. Two empty eyes stared up at him accusingly. A hollow grin sat poignantly on its brittle wooden lips.

‘Truman,’ the Doctor whispered. He felt an uncomfortable feeling of loss and sorrow.

The metal door of the cellar creaked suddenly. The Doctor tensed.

‘Who’s there?’ he called cautiously, letting the mask fall, forgotten.

A dark shape burst through the door. It darted across the room, a flurry of awkward movements, flinging across the floor into the arms of Professor Winterdawn. The chair creaked ominously under the new weight.

‘Dad!’ the shape screeched. ‘Thank God!’

The voice seemed to draw Winterdawn completely back to reality. The old sharpness entered his bleary, confused eyes.

‘Sandra!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought…’ He never completed the sentence. He didn’t need to.

‘Dad. There are people here,’ Sandra said, gasping for air and words. ‘They got into the house. They killed Harry. They made
me
kill Moore.’

Sandra held up her hands so both Winterdawn and the Doctor could see the layer of blood built on her fingers.

‘Gabriel and Tanith,’ Sandra said. The hate and the fear with which she invested the names were difficult to ignore. ‘They’ve made us do so many things,’ she whispered.

‘Sandra,’ the Doctor asked slowly, ‘Ace and Bernice, are they…?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sandra turned. ‘I tried to kill Ace, they made me. ’Sokay, she got away. Oh God.’ Sandra’s eyes burst with tears. She buried her head against Winterdawn’s chest. The professor drew his daughter closer. A sour expression had grown on his face.

‘I must find them,’ the Doctor said simply, hurrying from the room.

On the far side of the door was a nightmare. The cellar passages were gone. In their place was a network of corridors from every floor of the house, woven together into a mockery of architecture. Tunnels swirled and shifted, forming new junctions, breaking older ones. The layout of the house spread out before him, labyrinthine and transient, a maze with liquid walls. The Doctor considered the new architecture carefully, not trying to map it nor follow its writhing contour.

He stepped into the heart of the storm.

Closing his eyes, he ran. The only possible direction. Forwards.

He stopped eventually, opening his eyes.

The house had reverted to an older, more formal structure. A staircase rose ahead of him, leading upwards towards an infinitely distant ceiling. The Doctor felt a shudder of
déjà vu
, but paid it little attention. The stairs seemed solid enough. The Doctor pounded upwards, taking long strides.

Two figures stood on the stairs, barring his way. A man and a woman dressed in eccentric clothes. They stared down at him with hateful eyes. The Doctor met their gaze with equal hostility.