Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 34

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.

'And what they did to you at that house...'

'Does it disturb you that I burnt it down?'

Benny swivelled her head to look at him. It was almost as though he was waiting for her approval. 'Yes,' she said, after a moment, 'but only because it was such a normal sort of thing to do. It was the sort of thing I might do, or maybe Ace.'

'I'm getting human in my old age,' sighed the Doctor.

'Are you okay?' she said. 'I mean, having to go back there...'

'I hated having to be rescued,' he said. 'I hated the helplessness.'

Benny sat up and put a hand on his arm. 'You're allowed to fall short of omnipotence, you know. From time to time. As required.'

He shook his head. After a moment, he said, 'You haven't even asked me where the two lookalikes came from.'

'Oh,' said Benny. 'I suppose I...' Didn't have to think about them, because they're dead now, she thought. 'What were they? Did Albinex decide to send in the clones?'

'They were genetically engineered shape-s.h.i.+fters from another dimension.'

'That would've been my guess.'

'They must have crossed over while Ace and I were visiting Llanfer Ceiriog. I expect Albinex found them and put them aside for a rainy day. Another loose thread, left untied because I didn't know about it.'

Benny leant forwards and pushed her fingers into her cropped hair. 'Jason and I should have done our own investigating using the time rings. I should never have contacted you.'

'I've missed you,' he said simply. 'It's been good to see you again.'

'Just like old times, eh?' she said. He smiled, and looked up as Isaac and Joel emerged from the treatment room.

'Send in the clones,' groaned Benny, as they got up.

'This whole thing is wrecking my finely tuned wit.'

It was late evening when they made it back. Isaac had ordered Joel to bed, so the boy had the Doctor help drag his desk over. He was holding the keyboard in his lap, typing one-handed, the bandaged arm resting against his chest.

The Doctor was sitting on the end of the bed, reading fanzines from the cardboard box. He clucked his tongue, absently. 'I see what you mean about the UNIT dating,' he said. 'Why don't any of these authors agree?'

'It's the D Notices,' said Joel, from behind his screen.

'You can get three different dates which all make sense, going by hearsay. I could write a killer article if you'd answer a few questions...'

'Ah,' said the Doctor, 'but would anyone believe that you'd interviewed me?'

'Point taken. Anyway, the Admiral would have a fit. Hey, look at this.'

The Doctor leant back so that he could see the screen.

'Ah.' His eyes flickered over the text. 'That's just what we've been looking for. Well done.'

He folded away the fanzine and got up. 'Where are you going?' asked Joel. 'Albinex's base,' said the Doctor. 'I hope.'

Tony met him on the landing. 'Did you have any luck with the bulletin boards?' said the Tzun.

The Doctor nodded. 'There was quite a detailed sighting posted about an hour ago. I'm going to go and take a quick look at the area.' He put his hands in his pockets. 'I think I'll borrow Albinex's car.'

'I'll come with you,' said the Tzun.

The Doctor looked at him, standing very still.

'Just you,' he said, after a long moment. 'And don't tell anyone else.'

'Oh,' said Tony. 'All right.'

Alekto

She appeared for the last time at eleven o'clock.

The crew were scattered about the town. Ms Randrianasolo was guarding Woodworth, who was curled on the desk, deeply asleep. Joel was at his computer, despite Isaac's insistence that he go to sleep. Graeme was soaking with the coffee pots in the sink.

Isaac was in the coffee shop, talking with his daughter and sonin-law. Jason had been expounding a somewhat Bowdlerized version of his adventures, while Benny watched the two men warming to each other. It was a boy thing, she thought. They'd been in combat together, so now they were buddies.

'Yeah,' Jason was saying, 'it happened to me on Christmas Eve. One minute I'm walking down Oxford Street, the next I'm flat on my back in an alien swamp.'

A bee landed on the table. Absently, she brushed it away, and yelped as it stung her.

'I thought I'd been abducted by Santa -' Jason stopped in mid-anecdote.

Isaac took Benny's hand and carefully brushed the sting off. 'We'll put some ice on that,' he said.

The three of them looked down at the table, where the bee was buzzing its last.

Jason jumped to his feet. 'The Doctor,' he said. Suddenly his hair was blowing, as though there was a draught in the shop. 'Where's -'