Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (10 page)

‘I don’t know what she’s playing at,’ I said.

Bentley shrugged. ‘She could write any form of sedition on that.’

‘Is that a worry?’ I asked.

‘She is an associate of 428.’ As if to prove it, Clara started to carve cabbalistic signs on the whiteboard. I would have dismissed it as nonsense only … what if this was some kind of coded computer virus, picked up and recoded by the cameras? Perhaps that was how the systems failures were being triggered. How 428’s accomplices were receiving their instructions.

I went down to see her.

*

‘There you are! Hello!’ she beamed as I emerged onto the landing pad. She threw out her hand. It impacted with the electric field. She winced and snatched it back. ‘You could have told me that was there.’

‘You knew it was there, Clara,’ I wasn’t in the mood. ‘What is the code that you are you drawing?’

‘Noughts and crosses.’ She tapped the board. ‘Want to play?’

‘Not an …’ I started to form the sentence ‘alien computer virus’ in my head but it dwindled and slunk away. ‘Never mind.’

‘Are you the Governor here?’ she asked.

‘You know I am.’

‘And you’re supposed to call on someone the first time they visit, aren’t you?’

‘You’ve visited here three times already,’ I was bored.

‘Ohhhh,’ she sighed. ‘Excuse me,’ she walked off round the corner. I heard her shouting and kicking something made out of wood. She came back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Small argument with my transport.’ She shrugged. ‘Let’s pretend I’m a time traveller.’

‘No harder than pretending you are the Queen of Jordan.’

‘I’m sorry?’ She looked puzzled and then her face cleared. ‘See, now, what I’m doing, is I am pretending I am a time traveller and that this is actually my first meeting with you in order to fool you into giving me
a second meeting—’

‘Fourth.’

‘So guess what – it’s worked!’ She clapped. ‘I’m delightful.’

‘You’re overdoing it,’ I said.

‘Just a little,’ she admitted. ‘On my bad days, Katy Perry wonders who’s stolen all her twee.’

‘Where’s this going? I am rather busy.’

‘So am I,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to fit in three previous meetings with you. And then there’s my art class with 2B. Need to give them a project. No ideas, have you?’

‘Placards,’ I suggested. ‘FREE THE DOCTOR’.

‘You’re kidding. Does it work?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ll consider it,’ she said seriously. ‘Listen, can you do something for me? It’s the Doctor’s birthday—’

‘Is it?’

‘No, but let’s pretend,’ she beamed. ‘And I’ve got him a present.’

‘Prisoners aren’t allowed presents.’

‘But he’s over two thousand years old. Well over. I think. Don’t know how many more birthdays he’ll have. Back in a jiff.’ She went around the corner. The door to her unseen spacecraft opened with a wooden creak. She came back, holding an elaborately decorated cake. ‘Ta da!’ she said, placing it on a rock. ‘It could be worse. I could have made cupcakes. That would have been unbearable. Also, I find cakes tricky,
so I threw all my eggs in one mixing bowl and just did the one big cake.’

‘The one big, not at all suspiciously big cake?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Anything hidden inside it?’

‘Nu-huh.’ She shook her head solemnly. ‘Scout’s honour. Not that I ever was a scout. But I have collected children from Scouts and listened to them talk about lighting fires. So I am practically a scout.’

‘Back to the cake,’ I said. ‘You expect me to take this cake and present it to your friend?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Funny candle,’ I said.

We both surveyed the cake.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well, he’s, as I said, over two thousand, and that’s quite the fire hazard in candles, so I just went for one big special candle.’

‘It’s metal and it glows.’

‘I know!’ she clapped her hands together. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’

I leaned close to the fence. ‘Funny thing. Your friend had something very like that in his possession when he entered this prison.’

‘Really?’ She was all innocence.

‘He also recently made himself a device that could open doors. And it made a sound very similar to the one that candle is making.’

‘Did he?’ Her eyes were wide with innocence. ‘He’s
very clever. What was it?’

‘A spoon.’

‘Wow, you’re kidding, a spoon?’ Clara giggled. ‘Do we always have this much fun when I come and see you?’

‘Pretty much. Sometimes.’

‘Well that’s something. Then I shall definitely come and do this loads,’ she said. ‘Just checking though – no chance you’ll take the cake?’

‘None whatsoever,’

‘Fair enough,’ Clara sighed. ‘I’ll just give it to Danny and tell him it’s because he’s been nice. He’ll like that.’

I suddenly felt … jealousy … about this Danny.

She gave me a mock salute. ‘Well then, I’d best be off. See you earlier. Give the Doctor my love. I’m very envious. It sounds like he’s having a delightful time.’

Prisoner 428 had not been cooperative. The Prison does not use or condone torture. The Approved Protocols forbid anything like torture. They even prescribe the allotted Safe Stress Positions. We do not allow torture.

428 went for his mandated exercise period. I did not notice the way he limped slightly, held his arm, or how his face looked. I was only watching on the camera out of curiosity. He had not provided Bentley and her team with any valuable information. I’m not really sure I expected him to know anything more.

I watched him pacing the bare-walled enclosure of the Isolation Exercise Cell. It’s an empty, blank square. The stone floor had ground itself to dust under the steady pacings of the occupants. 428 walked around it slowly and steadily, his left leg dragging slightly. ‘Are you happy?’ he said, seemingly to no one.

As her tranquillisers wore off, Marianne had roused from her stupor. But she had not been very helpful. Obviously, she hadn’t seen anything. She said she had heard something. But all she said she’d heard was screaming. A lot of screaming. And then she’d started to cry. So we sedated her again. This time very strongly. There was some question about whether it would be a good idea to rouse her from it. Her condition had deteriorated. I held her hand as she went under and she squeezed it tightly at first, and then gradually let go, like she was slipping away.

‘You’re my friend,’ she said weakly, and I felt so empty.

‘You know, this is all a waste of everyone’s time.’

428’s voice woke me from my reverie. He wasn’t looking at the camera, simply marking out the room, thinking aloud.

‘The Governor knows I don’t know what’s happened to the people on Level 6. I’d love to help. I really would. Before it’s too late. And, if you let
me out of here I … No, doesn’t matter,’ There was bitterness in his voice. ‘What I can tell you is that there’s something very wrong in this prison. I heard systems failures mentioned. I’ve experienced them. They’re getting a little worse every day, aren’t they? Every day that I’m kept in here. That’s not, by the way, a threat. I just know that the sooner you let me out of this, the sooner I can help you sort this out. And save lives. I’m very good at that.’

Outrageous. I shook my head, sickened by him. His records proved that he was quite the reverse. His records had said that. No one who came here was innocent. That he insisted on this heroic pretence was somehow even more disturbing. I know that Bentley had shown him the files of his crimes during interrogation and he’d just laughed. Laughed in her face. I found that chilling.

Prisoner 428 continued to pace the Exercise Cell. Then he leaned against a wall and sighed. A long sigh of defeat.

When he spoke again his voice was softer. ‘I can’t get out. She can’t get in. Time’s running out. I’ve got to save them.’ And then he shut his eyes. He’d told me he didn’t sleep, but suddenly 428 looked very tired indeed.

Which was when the walls peeled apart and the Custodians emerged from their docking stations. They were as silent as ever. Four of them. They
converged on 428, who eyed them warily.

‘Oh, so that’s what this is, is it?’ he said. He began to circle them, looking for an escape route. There was none. Their slim cylinders cracked open and antenna emerged. Sharp antenna.

My first instinct was a thrill of pleasure. Good, I thought. Let him suffer. Time to pay for all that you’ve done, 428.

The Custodians closed in on 428. One sliced at him and he fell back, a cut running down his cheek and his sleeve.

‘So now we know,’ 428 was grim, holding his arm, dodging around the Custodians. The Custodians closed in on 428. I could no longer see him, but I could hear his cries.

‘Now we know the kind of Governor you really are. You’re not worth saving after all.’

That was unfair. I shouted in my office where no one heard me. This wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting. I was on my feet, blipping the Control Station. I had to stop this. No one was answering my blip. No one at all.

On screen, the Custodians closed in on 428 again.

I ran out into the Control Station. Everyone there declared they knew nothing about what was going on. A shade truculently. I ordered the Custodians in the Exercise Cell deactivated, but they did not respond to the command circuit. Or, the people on duty told
me they did not.

I ran down to the Exercise Cell. The Governor has an override. I can open almost every door inside the Prison. This had gone too far. This prison does not allow torture or violent punishment.

I knew Bentley was following me. She was shouting. Bentley should not shout at me. I could hear cries coming from the cell. It would open to my palm print.

Only it didn’t. The alert signal went off.

We were caught in a power outage.

Bentley glowed with satisfaction. ‘428 comes under attack and a power outage happens. Most convenient. That proves a theory of mine.’

‘Did you – did you authorise this? What’s going on in there?’ I demanded, shouting, full of fury.

Bentley looked dead ahead, voice cold. ‘I had no idea, Governor.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘Open that door.’

Bentley produced a manual key. It would take time. But we still had over six minutes.

Inside the Exercise Cell all was silent. I was expecting to see the battered body of 428. I think that was all I was supposed to have found. I wasn’t supposed to have been watching. The camera footage would have been mysteriously corrupted and all that we would have had to go on was 428’s broken body.

But there was no body. Just four deactivated
Custodians. Four very damaged Custodians.

Had 428 done it again? Had he tricked us and escaped?

The seal to a docking station opened, and 428 staggered out. He was in a mess, but he was alive.

‘So,’ he grinned. ‘Hard luck. I’m still alive. I couldn’t open the door, but I could get into the docking station. Nice place to be while those four knocked seven bells out of each other.’

‘It was … I had no idea … It wasn’t supposed to happen.’

‘Clearly the systems outage affected their programming’ said Bentley, coldly. ‘An accident.’

428 held up a hand, bored by us. He yawned.

A new alarm sounded. The power outage had become an Imminent Systems Failure.

‘Right then, tickety-boo,’ growled 428. ‘Another power outage? Let’s go and have a look, shall we?’

428 stood in the Control Station. He moved swiftly from panel to panel, warily ducking under and around Custodians. By the time we got there, the systems failure was at over a minute.

‘I’m guessing that at about seven minutes things start to go critical and you have to phase out various systems.’

I was impressed he’d got that.

Bentley wasn’t. ‘You worked that out suspiciously
quickly.’

428 nodded. ‘I did, didn’t I?’ He clearly didn’t care what she thought.

I could sense the tension between the two of them. In an ideal world I’d have him back in solitary by now and Bentley under close supervision pending an investigation. But there wasn’t time.

This time we were totally locked out.

428 stepped back. Clearly he’d completed his survey of the Control Station.

‘Bentley was right for once,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s responding. I’m wondering if there’s a way to delay things – buy a little more time.’

‘Only if we eject Level 7,’ I told him.

‘What is Level 7?’

‘I don’t like to talk about it,’ I admitted. I was aware of Bentley watching me. I knew that whatever I said now would be brought up later. I never could say the right thing in front of her.

‘Clearly you don’t want to talk about it, Governor. But you’re in a lot of trouble.’

‘Level 7 is a self-contained unit of the prison. It is a large storage crate.’

‘I see. And what’s it doing here?’

‘Storage.’

‘Of what?’

I felt uncomfortable. ‘My job … my job is the safe
running of the Prison. Mostly, Level 7 falls outside of my jurisdiction.’

‘But you know what it is?’

‘It’s outside my remit.’

‘You know,’ 428 tapped his teeth with his fingers, ‘after the Second World War the villagers near Dachau claimed not to know about the death camp on their doorstep. Not a clue. Utter innocence. Wide eyes. An American general couldn’t quite believe it. And yet he almost did. The village was so near the death camp, but seemed so utterly normal, so quiet, innocent. Until he realised no one in the village hung their washing outside to dry. Because of the smell.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Level 7 stinks. And you know it does.’

‘It’s not my responsibility.’

428 made a disgusted noise. ‘And you were only obeying Protocols.’ He glared at me.

‘I’ll blip the commander of Level 7. We call him the Oracle.’

I called up the Oracle on my tablet. He stared out of the screen, his fat eyes filled with delight, his fingers waggling in excitement at seeing me.

‘Ah! Why, it is you, Governor, and I knew it would be. And who can this be …? Why yes, of course, this is Prisoner! 4! 2! 8! How wonderful. I wish I could say unexpected, but I knew it would be so, I shall, yes I must, settle for Wonderful.’