Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (8 page)

I felt so tired that day. That was my only excuse for everything that came after it.

There’d been two more power outages in the night, one more in the daytime, and then, just when I’d turned in for the night, another came. The worst one yet.

The siren woke me. It felt as though I’d only just put my head down, but it seemed two hours had passed. I worried that one day I’d actually drift back off and sleep through an emergency.

I pulled myself out of bed and hurried to the Control Station. Bentley was there. She actually looked tired, for once. Since Donaldson’s death she’d been looking tired a lot. Several other Guardians were there – more than were strictly needed to man the workstations. They were hanging back, against the walls, out of the way of the Custodians. Was it my imagination or were the Custodians getting twitchy? There was something about the haste of their movements that
seemed almost ill-at-ease.

My gaze went automatically to the Situation Clock. We’d had five minutes of this already. The day’s disruptions had been fairly small by comparison – three-minuters. Little nothing emergencies. Now, we were pushing well towards six minutes. The map of the Prison plan, promising to update. But nothing was going on.

‘Report?’ I asked the room, hopefully.

For once Bentley didn’t answer. She had vanished under a control panel, cursing. Her deputy Marla came hurrying over, holding up a plastic clipboard. ‘Sir, the outage is affecting the rerouting. We can’t get into the system to stabilise it.’

‘Soon you will have to consider the fate of Level 7.’

The Oracle’s words returned to haunt me – perhaps he wasn’t a total fraud. The noise of the sirens grew. We had now slid past six minutes and work was stopping. All eyes were fixed on the board. They were slowly drifting towards me, expecting me to tell them what to do. To produce a miracle.

Bentley finally pulled herself up from under the control panel. ‘There’s nothing we can do, Governor,’ she said, tersely admitting defeat, ‘We can’t hack into the system to deactivate it. Once we hit seven minutes we’ll have a cascade failure.’

Bentley was the kind of person who could say ‘cascade failure’ without looking at all sheepish
about it. She didn’t even give off the impression that she’d heard it once on a training course, thought it cool, and memorised it for later use. When she said ‘cascade failure’ she meant it.

Thinking of what the Oracle has said, I nodded. ‘Can we isolate and eject Level 7?’ I asked. It was the only bit of The Prison that could be ejected. At least they’d have some chance, and it would free up critical resources. Buy us a little more time.

Marla checked a couple of icons on her clipboard. ‘They’d have limited motive power and only enough oxygen for twelve hours’

I didn’t care. ‘That’s probably twelve more hours than us. The Oracle may think of something. After all,’ I smiled, ‘he seems to have an opinion on everything else around here. Start the uncoupling.’

If nothing else, it gave everyone something to do.

The clock hit six minutes and forty seconds. Funny. Once we got to seven minutes, there’d be no great explosion. None of us would die. Probably the first we’d notice is the lights going a little dim. The air getting a trifle warm. The doors taking a bit longer to open. But once the cascade failure had happened, then the collapse of the prison would speed up from there. Death would creep over us. And it wouldn’t be pleasant.

At six minutes and forty-five seconds, another alarm went off. The two sirens wailed at each other
like courting beasts, a sound that was ugly and blocky and shrill, and then the main alarm cut out. Mercifully, the clock reset and the Prison Plan flickered, seeming to shift slightly, before finally reloading. It was as if nothing had happened.

Almost silence.

Except …

Bentley spotted it. ‘Level 6. All the doors are open.’ That explained the other alarm still sounding.

Level 6?

‘And another thing,’ sighed Bentley. ‘428 is out of his cell.’

Normally Bentley would deal with this. But she had remained in the Control Station, going methodically through the systems, checking off each one and ensuring its performance was optimal. Until the next time the whole thing fell over.

So I went looking for 428. I took a Custodian. Just in case.

The annoying thing was that 428’s timing was dreadful. This was the worst moment to be pulling his running-around stunts. He was normally more careful. He usually slipped in and out of his cell without troubling the alarms, but this time he’d lit the board up like a festive display.

As we made our way to Level 3, I marvelled at how quiet The Prison seemed at night. Even with the alarm,
there was just muttering from the cells. Clearly, they’d got used to sleeping through the alarms. I called out to reassure people that everything was under control. The thing is, I didn’t know if I was lying or not. We’d been less than twenty seconds away from a slow and lingering death. With a bit of luck, most of them wouldn’t have woken up.

428’s cell was open and empty. A note was pinned to the door: ‘Back in 5 mins. Sign for any parcels’. I did not find it funny.

The Custodian was able to trace his footsteps. They led right the way down to Level 6.

Level 6 looked wrong. If the rest of the Prison had been quiet, this was icy. There wasn’t a sound. It was just one long corridor at the bottom of The Prison. We put people here we did not want to think about. I’m not proud of that, but there are some people in The Prison you just can’t handle normally. When corrective therapy and normal restraint fails, then we have little option other than to drug them up and ship them down to Level 6. It was where we could forget our failures.

My Custodian sent out a worried alarm chirrup. I queried this on my clipboard and then I realised what its problem was. It was trying to connect to the other Custodians on the level but there were no other Custodians here. Normally you don’t notice
them. They’re either housed in the walls, or gliding up and down corridors, silent and efficient. The Custodians are part of the Prison. On Level 6 there were no human Guardians – only Custodians. Even if they weren’t patrolling the corridors you’d expect to find them docked in the walls. But nothing. Not a sign of one. Curious. You got so used to having them around as part of the furniture that their absence was disconcerting.

That there was no sign of the prisoners was one thing. But for the Custodians to have vanished as well was extremely odd. I looked behind, just to check that the Custodian I’d brought with me was still there. It was. The corridor back to the lift stretched away behind it. It suddenly seemed a very long way away.

And then the light at the end of the corridor flickered and went off.

Without thinking, I turned to the Custodian and ordered it to investigate. As soon as it glided off, I knew it had been a mistake to send it. But I couldn’t bring myself to call it back. I just watched it smoothly passing down the corridor, listening to the slight hum as it travelled. It went into the darkness. I could still see its shape moving. I could still hear it. Or could I? I blinked, and now all I could see was darkness.

I was now on my own, and we were under threat. I blipped for help. But there was no answer from the Control Station. I was cut off.

Carefully, I reached for a cell door. It was open. Inside was empty.

I blipped up to the Control Station again. I used the code for Escaped Prisoner. The situation was getting even more serious. And, in theory, my emergency call should be carried on the core transponder. No need for complicated communications. And yet still no response.

I reached over to another cell door, a terrible suspicion forming in my mind. It was also empty. I looked around more forensically. No sign of a struggle. No facetiously helpful note.

I tried out three more cells. All of them empty. Then I backed out into the corridor. I was completely alone. My footsteps echoed.

I opened another cell door, belonging to Prisoner 37. It was also, obviously, empty. I stood, looking around. There was something wrong about the sheer emptiness of the cell, as though I was missing something. I tried to work out what it was.

It took me a while to work it out. The cell was neat. Not the neatness of someone with good habits. The entire cell had been scrupulously tidied after its occupant had left. There weren’t just no signs of a struggle. There were no signs that anyone had been here for a while. How long had Prisoner 37 been missing? I was pondering this when I heard the footsteps outside. Something, someone was coming.

I did not react as the Governor of the Prison. I reacted as a frightened man, as a coward. I told you I was tired. It’s the only excuse I can offer. With a frightened man’s ingenuity, I slid the door closed silently and crouched low down, out of sight of the window. I felt a terrible fear, like a child’s game suddenly being played in deadly earnest by grown-ups. The footsteps got closer.

I tried to work out a way of fighting back. If I pushed the door … well, would that work? Could I use the door as a weapon? Would it knock my attacker off balance, giving me a chance to …

I counted the footsteps. They were not stopping at any of the other cells. This meant that, in all probability, they weren’t coming for me. They did not know I was there.

The footsteps passed my cell. I breathed out. The footsteps stopped.

They came back. They stood outside my door.

This was it. Either I somehow used the door against them or I prayed they weren’t looking for me.

I breathed in, tensed up, and shoved the door. It didn’t spring open, it didn’t fly open. It just eased open gently. Of course. The doors had been fitted with hinges which prevented them opening too quickly.

A hand took the door. A hand opened the door.

Someone stood over me. Watching.

I found I could barely move.

It took all of my courage to look up, to open my eyes. To see …

Prisoner 428 was standing over me.

‘Hello, Governor,’ he said. He was wearing a sardonic smile, clearly amused at finding me huddled on the floor. His smile was so sour it was practically a grimace. ‘And what’s a sir like you doing crouching in a place like this?’

I launched myself at him then.

He’d caught me at my most vulnerable. But I was going to show him. I had been carefully trained in restraint procedures.

Looking back, I’d like to think I’d caught him off guard. I’d like to say he wasn’t expecting it. I’d like to think I surprised him. But I’m really not sure. He seemed winded by the assault, and it was halfway down to the ground with him that I remembered how Abesse’s fight with him had gone. I suddenly worried that this hadn’t been the cleverest of moves.

‘Seriously?’ said 428.

We were both lying on the floor, half in and half out of the cell. I had him in a Subdue Lock that should have been going my way. ‘Seriously? The doorframe is really digging into my back and I think you’ve bruised your knee. You’ll probably need some liniment rubbing into it.’

The thing about 428 is that he never turns it off. That’s what suddenly and hugely got to me then. That
air of quiet, almost smug amusement. I once threw a surprise birthday party for my wife. I’d arranged it all really carefully, and there was absolutely, definitely, no way she could know – it was a surprise. And yet, on the walk to the house, Helen kept giving me a look, a little smile that said that she knew what was coming.

And that was it. That was what Prisoner 428 was doing now. That slight twinkle in the eyes that says ‘I know what you’re up to. I know what’s happening. There are no surprises. Not for me.’ Damn him. Damn 428. Damn the Doctor.

I started shouting then. I don’t think I need record everything I said to him, but the gist of it was that I was fed up playing his games, I wanted to know what he’d done and what had happened to the prisoners.

‘Actually, so do I,’ said 428.

I let go of him. I stood up, gasping and winded. 428 did the same.

We stood there, warily looking at each other.

‘Something rubbish has happened here,’ said 428 looking up and down the corridor. ‘Rubbish. It’s a technical term.’ He saw my look and held up his hands. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and seemed genuine. ‘If you think I’m annoying now, you’d have hated me when I was young.’

I took a step forward, and winced. 428 was right. I had bruised my knee badly. ‘So … 428.’

‘Governor, sir?’

‘All the prisoners on this block are missing. As are the Custodians. Where are they? What have you done with them? The only thing I find here is you. I find that suspicious.’

‘And the only thing I find here is you. I also find that suspicious.’ He winked. ‘Touché.’

‘I’m the Governor here,’ I said.

‘So you say,’ said 428.

An uncomfortable moment passed.

‘I
am
the Governor,’ I protested.

‘Really? Perhaps you simply look like him. And, if you are, then where is your Custodian?’

I pointed to the darkness. ‘It went to investigate down there … and … didn’t come back.’

‘Mind you,’ said 428, sitting down on the bunk. ‘If you were an alien shapeshifter, you’d have a better story than that. See?’ He spread out his hands. ‘See how trusting I am? How quick I am to give people the benefit of the doubt? You really should try it some time. You might have fun.’

I slumped next to him on the bunk. ‘Look, why did you get out of your cell?’ I realised how truculent I sounded. ‘Why did you trigger the alarms?’

428 leaned back and clicked his tongue. ‘Normally I’m a bit subtler, aren’t I? But I think we’re both tired. And that alarm had been going on for over six minutes. I say that, just to sound casual and so that I’m not
letting on that it had been 6 minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Normally you can feel power being rerouted to cope with the system failure. You know, the air gets a little sticky, the gravity goes by 0.3 per cent and then by 0.8 per cent … Those little tell-tales. But this time nothing. Which meant that this time, before it ended, it was so bad your system was locked out of whatever was going on. It really needed a kick up the backdoor.’