Текст книги "Doctor Who- Beautiful Chaos"

Автор книги: Gary Russell

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

She almost asked her granddad what he thought it was about, but didn’t. Because if it went wrong, if it all turned out bad, she didn’t want him blaming the Doctor for anything.

Donna realised this was the first time she’d actually found herself questioning the Doctor’s actions for quite some time. And she didn’t like it.

A couple of hours passed. They had been allowed to stop occasionally, the younger people sorting out food (usually by using their Mandragora powers to blow doors off shops and nick stuff).

At one point, the Doctor and Netty had sat together in a deserted burger place, while the boys munched on cold chips and muffins. Netty had found some paper on a clipboard and was writing something on it, and the Doctor was nodding.

Wilf asked Donna whether there was any point in trying the microwave ovens, and when she glanced back Netty was alone, and the Doctor was trying to talk to the Greek man.

There wasn’t time for microwaving burgers, as they were told to start walking again, despite the Doctor’s protestations.

The boys were soon tired again. Netty and Wilf were very tired indeed. Donna was utterly exhausted, but the Doctor… he just kept going. He had Lukas and Joe up front with him now, trying to take their minds off it all by giving them a history of Cromwell Road and the various buildings as they marched along it.

The old American couple by rights ought to have been dead on their feet, but no, they were always there, one or other, sometimes both, with their arms pointing forward, ready to use their Mandragora power as she’d seen at the Copernicus Array the night before.

It was dark by the time they reached Hammersmith, and Donna reckoned it would take another hour or so to reach Brentford. Possibly longer, as Netty and Wilf were

stopping more and more often.

‘My granddad is very old,’ she said at one point to the Greek man, eliciting an outraged, if exhausted, ‘Oi, I’m fine’ from Wilf.

The Greek man just shrugged and said that Madam Delphi would not be kept waiting.

It wasn’t a cold night, but neither was it the height of summer and, by the time they started walking down the carless, people-free Great West Road, it was nearly midnight.

Donna was with the Doctor. Wilf and Netty were with the Carnes boys.

Wilf tried to keep their flagging spirits up with tales of his exploits in the parachute regiment, like he’d done for Donna when she’d been their age, albeit on long car trips rather than painful hikes across scary cities.

‘Why don’t you let these people go home?’ the Doctor suggested, stopping suddenly. ‘Madam Delphi only wants me, I’m sure. Look, we’re in Chiswick. Let Donna take Wilf and Netty home. And let the boys head off, too.

Please?’

The Greek ignored him and kept going.

‘Not that Gramps or I would leave you for a moment,’

Donna hissed at him as she walked to catch the Doctor up, ‘but why do you think they do want all of us?’

The Doctor looked her in the eye. ‘Insurance,’ he said simply. ‘Threaten to hurt me, no use. Anyway, they need me alive for whatever reason. Threaten to kill you, it’s leverage. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Wilf said. ‘We chose to get involved with

all this. I’m proud to stand beside you, Doctor. So are my soldier boys here.’

The Carnes lads nodded, Lukas a little more enthusiastically than Joe, it had to be said.

The Doctor looked at Netty. She was starting to walk erratically, drifting towards the central reservation of bushes.

‘It’s the exhaustion,’ the Doctor said sadly as Wilf headed over to guide her back to the group. ‘Her mind’s going again like last night.’

‘Then why’d you bring her?’ Donna said a little more aggressively than she’d intended.

‘I didn’t expect to be walking,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Donna let herself drop back a couple of steps.

Something in the Doctor’s plan had gone wrong, and he was actually worried.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Suddenly a set of headlights flashed ahead of them and, as one, the Doctor’s group shielded their eyes. A small minibus screeched to a halt in front of them.

‘Hey,’ Donna yelled. ‘You gotta help us!’

The Doctor went to stop Donna, but it didn’t matter.

The minibus door opened and a woman called out.

‘Hop in, folks,’ she said in a cheery Irish accent.

‘Madam Delphi’s waiting.’

One by one, they piled in.

‘You couldn’t have come about three hours ago?’ Wilf grumbled as he helped a confused Netty up the steps into the vehicle.

The woman laughed. ‘I’m Caitlin and, on behalf of MorganTech, I apologise for your discomfort. But that’s nothing to what’s coming. And no, Madam Delphi believes exhausted prisoners are far more malleable than fit and able ones. The only reason I’m here is it’s nearly midnight. And time’s getting on. Hold tight!’

Caitlin did a U-turn and roared off down the A4, towards the Brentford business area known as the Golden Mile.

‘Here we are,’ Caitlin said, slowing down.

Ahead, Donna saw the Oracle Hotel loom out of the darkness, lights on in every window.

‘Ha!’ the Doctor laughed. ‘We’re going to see the Delphi at the Oracle. Very witty. Not.’

‘It’s midnight,’ Caitlin announced as she pushed the minibus doors open. ‘Today is now Monday. The universe will never be the same again.’

And she smiled.

And Donna shivered.

MONDAY

The Doctor, Donna, Wilf and their friends were led up to the penthouse suite by Caitlin, who kept her hand resting on the butt of a revolver tucked into the waistband of her trousers.

As the Irishwoman pushed the penthouse doors open, the Doctor marched in and glanced around. He began clapping slowly when he saw what was inside.

‘Madam Delphi, I presume?’ he said. ‘Of course.

You’re not a real person, are you? You’re a computer!

Well, I say a computer, more of an artificial intelligence, housing an ancient malevolence that should never really have been freed from its dimension. How are you, Mandragora? It’s been a few centuries.’

‘This… form is oh-so much more capable than a fleshy human body, Doctor,’ Madam Delphi said. ‘As a Time Lord, as someone who can stand so much more spatial and temporal trauma, your body is just what, if you’ll

excuse the excruciatingly bad pun, the Doctor ordered.’

The Doctor said nothing.

‘You’ve heard that one before, haven’t you?’ Madam Delphi asked.

The Doctor and Donna now stood at the front of their exhausted group, Wilf, Netty, Lukas and Joe hovering a few steps behind. Facing them, in a protective circle around the Madam Delphi computer, were Dara Morgan, Caitlin and the Mandragora converts who had walked them there.

‘Oh, hullo,’ said the Doctor, as if addressing a meeting of the WI. ‘This all looks very impressive. Nice room.

Nice hotel. Nice gesture.’ He pointed to where the old American lady had raised her arm in the now-recognisable Mandragoran position to fire a bolt of lethal Helix energy.

‘Although a bit unfriendly.’

‘I do apologise. You just can’t get the staff,’ the computer’s feminine voiced boomed out from speakers dotted around the room. ‘Welcome to my hotel. Can I recommend the gym? Great pool, I understand.’

‘What’s the bar like?’ Donna asked. ‘I mean, not exactly five-star without a good bar, is it?’

‘Ah, Donna Noble, welcome to you, as well. I think you’ll find we offer four bars, three restaurants and an à la carte room service 24/7.’ Madam Delphi then chuckled.

‘Gotta say, though, we aspire to a greater recognition than just five stars.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Well, I reckon you’re looking for about five million. What do you think, Donna?’

‘Gotta have good service to get five million stars,

Doctor. Do you remember that hotel on Cassius? That was a proper five-star hotel.’

‘Oh yes!’ the Doctor grinned at her. ‘And they understood customer relations, too. Remember when we had that little problem with the lizard?’

‘Do you get lizard problems in Brentford, Madam Delphi?’ Donna asked. ‘Cos if there’s lizard problems to be solved, I don’t think it’s that great a hotel.’

‘The Oracle is—’ started Dara Morgan, but Madam Delphi shushed him.

‘The Doctor and his sweet friend are just playing for time, Dara. Trying to figure out how to stop us, how to get out of the Oracle alive, how to “help” their precious planet Earth.’ Madam Delphi took a beat then continued, more silkily and thus slightly more menacingly. ‘But you really aren’t going to stop us, Doctor. I offer no guarantees about people getting out alive. And, from my perspective, helping Earth is precisely what we are doing.’

The Doctor walked towards the group, and they parted, almost reverently, so he was now looking straight at the screens of the computer.

‘Last time we had a chat, I sent you into the darkness, licking your wounds. Remember that?’

‘Of course.’ Madam Delphi’s sine waves pulsated ferociously. ‘I have waited so long for a chance to get to you personally. To make you pay.’

‘Oh, not the old revenge on the poor Time Lord schtick, Mandragora? I mean, you’re better than that. Go on, give us a better reason.’

Madam Delphi giggled. ‘It’s not the first time since

1492 that the Mandragora Helix has been to Earth, you know.’

‘Yup, that I do know. The Sacred Mountain of Xi’an, if I remember? Then there were the Orphans of the Future, all that white and crimson cowl stuff. Oh and the Mandrake nightclub stuff, now that was pretty good, I have to say. But each time, it’s just been a fragment of Helix energy, hasn’t it, a little sparkler sent out to test the waters. This time, we’ve got the whole bonfire. So why now? Why send me little psychic-paper messages to get me involved, to bring me here… ahhh… Yes, you wanted to get me here. This exact day, this exact time. Why?’

‘The stars are aligned,’ Dara Morgan said.

‘I’m talking to Madam Delphi, thank you, not the hired help.’

‘How dare you—’ Dara Morgan began.

‘Oh, do belt up,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘I mean, who are you anyway?’

‘I am Dara Morgan. I set up MorganTech. I created the M-TEK, I devised—’

‘Oh please, you did nothing that the Mandragora Helix didn’t tell you to. No, who are you really? Who did the Helix take, distort, manipulate and totally screw up before reimagining you as Dara Morgan?’

‘What?’

‘Lukas?’ the Doctor barked. ‘My research assistant,’ he explained quietly to Madam Delphi. ‘Donna was busy.

Family matters.’

Donna frowned. Not that he was getting Lukas Carnes to do his research, but why he’d said ‘family matters’. She

threw a look at Wilf but he shrugged. Then she glanced at Netty, staring intently at the stand-off before them. When Donna looked back at the Doctor, she recognised a look in his eyes. A look that, if given voice, would have been some variation on ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘No,’ she mouthed. ‘Don’t you dare!’ but the Doctor’s attention was back on Dara Morgan.

‘All over the world, Dara Morgan, billions of people will fall victim to this alien consciousness you’ve given access to the world. And that’s going to happen today.’

‘I know,’ smiled Dara Morgan. ‘How brilliant is that?’

‘Well, it’s brilliant from the point of view of your M-TEK being a pretty damn brilliant piece of technology, augmented by alien know-how and distributed quite magnificently to people who, I imagine, had no idea what it would do to them today.’

‘Not a clue.’

‘There’s a lot of blood on your hands, Dara Morgan. If I were a policeman, I’d have you arrested but, as Lukas will now explain, that’s not possible.’

‘Dara Morgan came to prominence eight years ago, making his first claims about MorganTech on a news special, broadcast live on 31 December 1999.’

‘End of the millennium, neat.’

‘Before that, there’s no trace of any such person.

MorganTech was registered as a private limited company at 5.29pm that same day.’

‘So who were you before Mandragora got hold of you?

Before reimagining itself as a human, becoming the anagrammatical Dara Morgan?’

‘Oh, I get it now,’ Wilf called out. ‘That’s very clever.’

‘Yes, thank you, Granddad,’ Donna hissed. ‘But let the Doctor focus.’

Before anyone could stop him, the Doctor put his hands to either side of Dara Morgan’s head, fingers pressed against his temples and whispered, ‘Open the locked doors, and let yourself out.’

The assembled acolytes took a step towards the Doctor, and Madam Delphi pulsed menacingly. ‘Stop him,’ she said.

In his mind’s eye, the Doctor could see an image. A dark night, cold, damp. He was walking down a lane, hedges high on either side, rain trickling down his neck.

He shivered. He was angry… No, not angry. Hurt.

Bewildered. She’d said no. No to what? Who was she? In his hand was a box, soft, velvety. And inside it, yes, he could imagine it. Silver band, plain diamond. All he had been able to afford. And she’d said no. Said that she needed to get away from Derry, wanted to go to Sydney.

Or San Diego. Or anywhere other than close to him. How had he got her so wrong? How hadn’t he seen this coming? How was it possible to love someone that much, so that every time she walked into a room, every time she spoke, smiled, laughed, his heart would leap. That just knowing she was in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the hallway was enough to send those fantastic, amazing, wonderful thoughts rushing through him? Yet when it came to it, when he’d said ‘I love you’, she’d said she wanted to get away. No ‘I love you too, but…’ No ‘Thank you, but I’m sorry.’ Just an ‘Oh my God, are you for real?

No, I’m getting away from Ireland as soon as possible. I don’t want to be tied to anything here!’

It was as if someone had ripped everything out of him that mattered and walked all over it.

You’re not the first person to fall in love and be rejected, he told himself rationally.

But he didn’t want to be rational. What was rational about being in love anyway? What was rational about offering yourself up to someone only to be squashed?

And here he was, lost and alone. Everyone had said she wasn’t interested. Everyone had tried to say he was wasting his time. But when you’re in love, you grasp at anything, you believe that one day you’ll wake up and they’ll say, ‘You know what, I’m wrong, you’re right, you are the person for me.’

But that hadn’t happened.

It never happened.

Instead he’d seen the lightning ripping across the night sky as he stumbled along the road, tears mixing with the rain, thinking that all he wanted to do was be home now.

Home.

Ten minutes’ walk, max.

More lightning. Blue, white and purple… Purple?

It struck the ground in front of him, knocking him backwards.

He remembered seeing the little box with the ring vanishing in a sudden conflagration, literally and metaphorically drawing a line under that part of his life.

He felt as if he were on fire, too. All he could see was purple light, surrounding him now, blotting out the

hedges, blotting out the road, the darkness, the rain.

And then the voice. All around. In his head. Coming from the sky and his heart at the same time.

‘It is your time. Callum Fitzhaugh is no longer relevant. Now you have a greater cause.’

The voice stayed with him long after the purple fire had gone, over days and weeks as he willingly gave himself a new purpose.

The next morning he touched the keypad on a cashpoint machine and it spurted out two hundred pounds.

Eight more cashpoints that morning. Then more in different towns. Then he set up an account. He manipulated the online banking, untraceable movements because he fed figures into the computers that erased all traces of his actions.

Within three weeks, he was a multimillionaire. He had buildings all over the world. He owned companies which he then closed or merged and, within a month, MorganTech had come into existence due to the manipulating influence of the voice in his mind that told him how to do it.

Next he had put together the computer system that would change his destiny. Somehow the voice guided him as he built Madam Delphi, felt that voice in his head transfer into the hardware, somehow, creating artificial life on a scale unheard of before now.

‘I need you,’ the voice had soothed. ‘Now and for ever.

I need a human interface, a connection to the world of flesh and blood. An avatar in reality.’

So Dara Morgan had been created.

He remembered coming from a rich family of bankers and investment traders. His parents died in a private plane crash, and MorganTech had passed to him when he was just 21.

He remembered more false memories, events, people, qualifications and parties. None of them real, but each time he imagined a part of the fictional history, it came true. The voice showed him how a society that relied on computers for information, that no longer used paper and ink to keep records, could so easily be manipulated in accepting the history, the lies, the fabrications you told it via the keyboard were true.

He remembered the voice telling him how to develop the M-TEK over a few years, so that the market would trust in it. Trust in MorganTech. This was a long game.

And he remembered seeing her in a street in Dubai one afternoon.

She was with a couple of men, going through a sheaf of documents in a roadside café.

He had listened as the men had explained that they needed to think about whatever deal they were doing and moved away. Then he went to sit beside her.

She looked up, initially intrigued, then surprised and then shocked. Eventually she found her voice. ‘Cal?’

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Dara Morgan.’

She laughed, a soft, gorgeous, beautiful laugh that brought back all that love he’d felt years earlier.

But the voice in his head hissed, ‘No. Remember the ring. Remember the tears and the pain. Do not give in now, Dara Morgan.’

‘You do look like him, Cal,’ she said. ‘What brings you to Dubai?’

‘Mandragora will swallow the skies,’ he said. ‘Let me show you, Cait.’

He took her hand, and her eyes flashed with violet Mandragora energy. Then she had opened the folders she had been going over with the businessmen earlier. ‘Sign here please, Mr Morgan.’ And he did, because the voice told him to.

Within an hour, MorganTech owned a chain of five-star hotels across the world, and Caitlin had become his first convert.

With a gasp, the Doctor pulled away from Dara Morgan, who immediately collapsed to the floor.

The whole thing had taken less than a second in real time but, to the Doctor, it had seemed like for ever.

He staggered away from Dara Morgan as the rest of the Mandrogara-influenced group turned on him, arms raised, ready to deliver the death blast.

‘No!’ Madam Delphi’s sine waves were bouncing up and down on her screens. ‘No, I need that body. It’s why I have waited these long centuries for the Doctor to present himself. The last of the Time Lords, possessed by Mandragora Helix energy, animated by me!’

The disciples lowered their arms.

And little Joe Carnes wrestled away from his brother and ran to the Doctor. ‘No,’ he yelled. ‘Leave him alone.’

Lukas was at his side in a second, and then Donna and Wilf were there, too.

They stood between him and the Mandragora-possessed computer.

‘Yes, thank you all,’ the Doctor said. ‘But not really necessary.’ He smiled at Madam Delphi. ‘So what a lot of choices. Kids no one would take seriously, an old man with a heart condition who could drop dead at a moment’s notice, his friend Henrietta, an expert on the stars…’

He threw a look behind them all, a look only observed by Donna.

Henrietta Goodhart was still by the door, as if trying to make sense of what was going on.

The Doctor was looking at her with a mixture of sadness and… what was that, Donna wondered. Panic?

Desperation? As if he were willing her to say or do something?

But it was no good. Netty wasn’t with them at the moment.

‘The lights are on, but no one’s driving.’ The sort of thing Donna could imagine her mother saying. A horrible phrase, but one Donna couldn’t disagree with right now.

And it was as if the Doctor thought Netty had let him down, somehow.

‘Donna,’ the Doctor hissed. ‘Your mobile. Now.’

She pushed it into his hand and, keeping an eye on Madam Delphi, he expertly scrolled through her address book.

‘Donna?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why isn’t your granddad’s number in here?’

‘Cos he never turns the bloody thing on. What’s the point?’

‘Oh great. Thanks.’

‘Why are you ringing him? He’s standing here.’

‘His phone is in Essex. I need to call it.’

Donna closed her eyes, imagining her fingers on the keypad and hissed the numbers at him. As she said each number, he pressed the key. When he heard the call go through, he hung up.

‘I hope you’re right, cos if you’re not…’

‘Someone just got a strange call?’

‘And the world will end. But hey-ho, it’s been fun.’ He passed the phone back to her.

‘You won’t get him,’ her grandfather was saying to the computer. ‘This man is brilliant, he’s saved this planet, the whole universe, probably, more times than we’ve had hot dinners. You’ll have to go through us to get him!’

God bless Granddad, but Donna seriously doubted that was going to stop Madam Delphi. The Doctor needed something from Netty, Donna was sure of that. So he needed to be bought time.

‘You want a body to inhabit that’s been round the galaxy, lady,’ she said, ‘take mine. Oh, I might not have two hearts or hair that defies fashion, but this body’s seen a bit of outer space action.’ She pushed the Doctor right behind them now, so he was closer to Netty.

Madam Delphi’s screens pulsed again. ‘Noble by name, noble by nature, is it?’

‘Oh, like I haven’t heard that before. One night when Neal Bailey decided to get frisky at the Odeon, he muttered in my ear, “Now cracks a noble tart, how about a good night sweet Donna.” I clumped him one where it

hurts and walked out. Mind you, I reckoned he knew his Shakespeare and should’ve got Brownie points for originality. My dad didn’t agree and bopped him on the nose down the pub the next week.’ Donna smiled sweetly at the computer. ‘Ever had a bloke come on to you? No, course you haven’t, cos you’re all electrics and wires and stuff. All alone, aintcha? That why you’re doing all this, is it? Looking for love? Should’ve gone for the Lonely Hearts angle, instead of the astrology bit.’

Wilf tugged his granddaughter’s arm. ‘You’ll make it cross.’

‘Really, Granddad? That had never occurred to me.’

She winked at him. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

Madam Delphi pulsed angrily. ‘Wish I could get my head around why the Doctor always surrounds himself with silly humans. I mean, what purpose do you serve?

Other than sacrificial lambs. How many travelled in his TARDIS before you, Donna Noble? And what happened to them? I mean, you reckon you’re going to travel with him for ever. You think you’re the first to believe that?

Course you’re not. But you’re here and they’re not.

Wonder what happened to all of them, then?’

Donna wasn’t going to let this get under her skin –mainly cos that was a question she’d asked the Doctor before and she’d been more than satisfied with his response.

But it clearly struck a chord with her granddad.

‘Sweetheart, that’s a good question.’

‘Really, it’s not right now, is it?’ she snapped back.

‘Is there a churchyard with tombstones, all lined up

with their names on them, d’you think, Donna?’ said Madam Delphi. ‘Got a plot of land saved for you, has he?’

‘Maybe,’ Donna replied. ‘I don’t much care, to be honest. I live for the here and now. And right here, right now, all I can be bothered to worry about is stopping you and your little army of zombies here.’

‘Destroy them,’ Madam Delphi said, so matter-of-factly, so casually, that it took Donna a second for it to sink in.

But sink in it did when the disciples, as one, raised their arms, ready to fire their bolts of energy.

Nothing happened.

‘Destroy them!’ shrieked the computer.

Still nothing happened.

‘Destroy him,’ Madam Delphi demanded, but the disciples did nothing except frown and look around themselves in surprise. It was as if they’d just awoken from a dream.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’ll be me. Well, actually if I’m being honest, it’ll be a lovely lady called Miss Oladini – never got her first name, very rude of me. Anyway, she’s just knocked your alignment off a bit, cancelled out all the power you have over the descendents of San Martino, en masse. Clos, kaput.’

‘ Finito,’ Donna said in a cod Italian accent.

‘And that’s not all!’

Donna looked to her left. Dara Morgan was standing to one side, a laptop in his hands, his fingers flying over the keys as he typed one-handed. ‘I’ve sent out a cancellation signal via the net to the M-TEKs everywhere. As soon as

they are synched with computers, instead of downloading your orders, they’ll install a virus, which will defrag the platform, and erase their memories completely.’ Dara Morgan tapped the return key one last time. ‘And I’ve password protected it.’

‘I’m a megalomaniac supercomputer, linked to billions of electronic outlets throughout the world, you silly little man. You really think you’ve stopped me? I’m disappointed in you, Dara Morgan.’

Dara Morgan shrugged. ‘Stopped you for good? Doubt it, but I’ve certainly slowed you down, so the signal won’t be activated in ten minutes. Probably not for a few days now – plenty of time for the Doctor to stop you.’ Dara Morgan smiled. ‘And my name is Callum Fitzhaugh.’

A deep electronic sigh came from Madam Delphi.

‘Caitlin?’

And the Irish girl, Callum’s beloved who had rejected him nearly ten years before, drew her revolver from her waistband and raised it.

‘Caitlin, don’t,’ Callum yelled. ‘Fight the Mandragora influence. Remember who you really are!’

Caitlin frowned. ‘Cal?’

‘Yes, it’s me!’

Caitlin shrugged. ‘Never liked you then, don’t much like you now.’

And she fired one bullet that went through Callum Fitzhaugh’s brain and out the other side.

He was dead before he hit the carpeted floor.

The newly awoken disciples screamed and yelled in confusion and started to run out of the room.

‘Go with them,’ Donna hissed to the Carnes boys. ‘Get out of here – Lukas, you get Joe home. Don’t stop running till you get there.’ She turned to Wilf. ‘You too.’

‘Blow that, Donna my girl. I’m too old to run and I’m here with you to the end. Told your father I’d look after you, and by God I will.’

It occurred to Donna that the Caitlin woman could have opened fire by now, so she looked to see what she was doing. She had placed the gun on the desktop and now sat facing Madam Delphi’s screens.

The Doctor walked past Donna, almost incidentally easing Netty into Wilf’s arms, muttering, ‘Hold her tight, Wilf. Like your life depends on it.’ He then crouched down beside Caitlin, snaking his hand out for the gun.

‘Take it,’ she said quietly. ‘Callum and I have done enough damage to warrant what I did.’

‘You were under the control of Mandragora,’ the Doctor said. ‘I broke him free of it, he broke you free.’

And Caitlin looked him in the eye, a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘Madam Delphi never controlled me.

Mandragora never controlled me, it didn’t need to.’

‘Then who told you to shoot Dara Morgan or whatever his name was?’ Donna asked.

‘His mind has been… slipping for days. He was beginning to remember things… he was a weak link. I had to eliminate him.’

‘You had to what? Why? He might have just saved the human race! Is that what this has all been about?’

And Caitlin suddenly looked the Doctor straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, a tear starting to well up.

‘What have I become? What has working for this thing done to me? I just killed someone. Oh my God… I just shot him without thinking.’

‘Bit late for tears, chum,’ Donna said. ‘Working with Mandragora, you’ve probably killed loads of people.’

‘I know,’ Caitlin said quietly. ‘I was out of control, hungry for… for power. I wanted control over my life.’

‘I control everything,’ Madam Delphi pulsed back.

‘Including your life!’

‘No you don’t, you stupid box of wires. I chose this life because I thought I wanted it. But you know what, I got it wrong.’ Her fingers were flying over the keyboard now.

‘I’m shutting down the wireless, putting up your firewalls.’

‘That won’t stop me.’

‘No, But it’ll isolate you for a bit.’ Caitlin looked sadly at the Doctor. ‘I’ve done my bit Mr Time Lord. It’s up to you now.’ And she pushed her chair back and knocked into the Doctor. Apologising, she moved around him and walked over to Callum’s dead body. ‘We could’ve had the world,’ she said as she knelt beside him.

The Doctor tried to make sense of Caitlin’s words.

Wireless. Firewalls. Pointless things, Madam Delphi was a far more powerful computer than that. He tapped the keyboard and a blast of purple Mandragora energy nearly took his fingers off. ‘Now now, don’t get grumpy.’

‘I will still destroy you, Doctor. You will be—’ And she fell silent.

Then he saw what Caitlin had really done. She’d talked nonsense, knowing that Madam Delphi would waste a few

subroutines tracking down what she’d claimed to have done. Having found the firewalls and wireless untouched, the computer was now looking elsewhere. It would keep her silent and occupied for… well, not long, frankly.

But there was a calculation going on, he could see it on one of the screens, it was like a mini-virus itself, a self-replicating mathematical equation that was using up bytes with each passing second as, by trying to solve the equation, it actually multiplied it. The Doctor grinned.

Caitlin was good at what she did, even if it would only take Madam Delphi another few seconds to counter it. He glanced towards Callum’s body, expecting to see Caitlin.

The body was alone.

The Doctor felt his pockets. The revolver was still there. But something else wasn’t.

‘Donna,’ he hissed. ‘Donna, I want you to get down to the lobby. All those people will be confused, disorientated.

Half of them might not even speak English for all we know. They need someone cool and rational to sort them out, explain things to them.’

‘But as no one fitting that description is available,’

Donna said, ‘I’ll have to do it.’

The Doctor grinned at her. ‘Oh Donna, you’re the best there is. Now, off you go – no, not you, Wilf. You and Netty stay here.’

‘Why can’t they come with me?’ Donna asked sharply.

‘Family matters,’ the Doctor said. ‘Trust me, they’ll both be downstairs safe and sound with me in a few minutes.’