Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

No, sorry, we’ve moved on from Chapter Nine. I’m sure you all did your best, it’s a tricky one for the smartest of us. Try again, if you really must, but human brains are not equipped for this sort of thing. Stick to texting and soaps—I do.

No, really, pipe down. You’ve all read Chapter Nine, every last one of you. I’ve got the records right here, look. Oh, you can’t see, I haven’t turned on the webcam. Well, sorry, I don’t want to use that till later, it’s murder on the bandwidth.

Oh, hang on—just had an email from the publishers. (Well, I say ‘just’. As I explained, I’m writing from ten years in the future so, really, I’m catching up on my messages a decade late, which is pretty good for me.) Ah, now, this is interesting. Owing to you lot whinging so much, they’re adding an extra bit to the book. At the very end, you will find an additional blank page (the cover price will reflect this, I’m afraid). Next time you read Chapter Nine, turn here and make a mark. That way you can assure yourself, whatever the state of your memory, you have read the chapter in question. Satisfied? Good, good.

Now. UNIT has some very strict protocols regarding written material covering any aspect of their various missions—the silly old whelks. Nothing can ever be held on computer, or any form of digital storage. No, the only accounts you will ever find of UNIT activity are handwritten by one or more of the participants. It is their belief, bless them, that handwriting cannot be hacked (hee hee!) or corrupted (oh, my aching sides, stop it!).

Once, during one of my many visits, I asked old Alistair (Lethbridge-Stewart, do keep up!) what was the most important quality in a UNIT commander. He thought for a moment, in his usual grave way, and said, ‘Good handwriting!’

Oh, we laughed. But we always laughed, he and I, right up to the end. The mischief we got up to! But look, you’re not reading this book to hear about two old boys, chortling away together in a hospice, I do realise that—the fact is, I just don’t care. He was a good friend, the bravest of soldiers, and a devil with the ladies till his last day. Gracious me, that man could tango—but as soon as a pretty girl came in, I was shoved straight out of the way.

Kate was the apple of his eye, of course. She could do no wrong by him. Though when she came to see him at the hospice, he’d tell her she was his only visitor, just so she’d come round more often. The old dog! Sometimes I was right there, hiding under the bed.

Now Kate’s handwriting, it must be said, is exceptionally good (ah, see how I slalom back into relevance) as you are about to see for yourselves. Or rather, you aren’t, since this will be a printed version. Now I’ve already told you that the existence of anything other than handwritten accounts of UNIT operations is forbidden by law, but there are pretty good reasons for this exception, and I have a high degree of confidence that many of you won’t be arrested for owning this book. You will recall that the Doctor, in one of his aspects, was deep beneath the National Gallery investigating the mystery of the oil paintings with the missing figures, before he jumped into a mysterious time vortex and got involved in the Elizabethan Zygon shenanigans (what a delightful way to be able to describe one’s day).

Fortunately, an account of how events unfolded in his absence, has become available to us in the impeccable handwriting of two of UNIT’s finest. You may wonder, as you read, why and when and even how this account came to be written. All will become clear in due time. Or it won’t, if I forget to explain it. It’s a rollercoaster, isn’t it?

Chapter 4 In the Absence of the Doctor

LOG 34445986++8U
EXCERPT ONLY
STATUS: VERIFIED
CONTENT: RESTRICTED
AUTHOR: KLS2

EXCERPT BEGINS

My earliest memory is of a bird standing on one leg, on a beach.

My saddest memory is of my father, sitting by a fireside, clutching a whisky. There were tears in his eyes, and my mother was snatching me away.

My vision swam and I focused. My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

… I dropped the sheet back into place and steadied myself on the wall. I could feel the sweat on the palm of my hand against the cold of the stone. Why those particular memories, I wondered, and why here and now? I made an effort of concentration and forced myself back into the present: I was in the lower levels of the Under Gallery, eighty feet below the London streets. Seven storeys of forbidden historical artefacts were stacked between me and the sunlight. Was there something here, possibly alien, that could affect a human brain? I noted, without surprise, that I’d just referred to myself as a human brain—alien contact, over time, often results in dissociative cognitive processes. I decided to action a psyche evaluation for myself at the first opportunity. I found a handkerchief and carefully dabbed the sweat from my face and hands. I had a UNIT response team under my command, the Under Gallery had been breached, and the Doctor had just gone missing—I needed to maintain appearances.

‘We’re not supposed to touch them,’ came a voice from immediately behind me.

Petronella Osgood. I remembered a note on her file, and had to suppress a smile: Petronella has a talent for being under your feet before you even know she’s in the room. She was also, in the absence of the Doctor, UNIT’s number one tactical asset.

‘The statues—we’re not supposed to approach or touch them,’ she said. Her eyes flicked to the handkerchief I was slipping in my pocket, then back to the sheeted figure behind me. She must have seen me adjusting the covering as she arrived.

‘It’s just a statue,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Take a look.’

‘We’re not allowed to—’

‘We have an incursion, normal protocols are lifted. Examine the statues, examine anything you like—but it’s the stone dust on the floor the Doctor wanted you to focus on. Did you get a team?’

‘There’s a few more heading over from Tower Base—McGillop’s already helping me, but he’s being a bit thing.’

‘A bit what?’

‘I don’t want to say.’

‘Well, you sort of did say.’

‘I stopped before the adjective, I’m improving. Where is the Doctor? Is he still downstairs?’

I debated what to tell her. Although she had an IQ so high Geneva Base had rejected the test results three times, her temperament could be unpredictable. I had a memory of saying she was so uptight it was a wonder her feet managed to reach the ground. I considered how best to explain to her that just one floor below us a time portal had opened up, leading to Elizabethan England, and the Doctor had jumped through it, apparently with no means of returning.

‘He’s off site,’ I summarised. ‘Get back to work.’

‘How could he get off site, he was downstairs, and the only exit is—’

‘Off site,’ I repeated. ‘Stone dust, off you go. No, no, wait a moment!’ I remembered Clara listening to the Doctor talking on the other side of the portal. ‘I think there’s three of them now,’ she’d said, and then looked a little stunned to be told there was a precedent for that.

‘Actually, I was looking for you,’ I went on. ‘Am I right in saying, there’s a precedent for three incarnations of the Doctor being present in the same time zone?’

‘Yes, we’ve got records of that. The Cromer Files. But it only happens in the direst emergencies.’ She said ‘direst emergencies’ with a dramatic widening of her eyes, as if she practised in the mirror every night. On her personnel file someone had added ‘fangirl’ to her list of qualifications. ‘You know, when the danger is so terrible, even the Doctor cannot stand alone.’

‘Inhaler.’

‘Yes, sorry.’

‘Send me any information you have on the strategic advantages of three Doctors in play, simultaneously.’ I said. ‘Then get that stone dust analysed. I’d better get back down there.’

‘Is Clara alone, then? Because you said the Doctor was off site—’

‘Back to work!’

I hurried down the stairs. If the active presence of three Doctors indicated a bigger emergency than normal, then possibly it was time for us to take aggressive action.

Clara was still standing at the portal, listening, and I could hear the Doctor’s voice, prattling away. ‘No, hang on, wait! The Tower, you said the Tower! Brilliant, love the Tower. I demand to be incarcerated in the Tower with the rest of my boy band.’

Clara noticed my arrival. ‘He’s talking rubbish. That means he’s got a plan.’

I filed the insight. ‘Has he made any attempt to come back through?’

‘The fez didn’t make it. I guess he can’t either.’

‘Not easy, finding time travel in Elizabethan England.’

A woman’s voice from beyond the portal was saying something about the Doctor not taking the Tower lightly, unless he was in a hurry to lose his head.

‘Oh, what’s in a head?’ came the Doctor’s laughing voice. ‘What’s in a tower? Just another day at the office.’

Clara looked at me, frowning. ‘I think he just winked at me. When he said “office”, he winked.’

‘You can’t see him,’ I said.

‘His voice does a thing when he winks.’

‘He winks audibly?’

‘He really does.’

I searched my memory for any possible cypher in the word ‘office’. There were a list of known code words used by the Doctor, which distracted me for a moment, before the obvious occurred. ‘Dear God, that man is clever,’ I said. ‘Come on!’

I sprinted for the stairs. Behind me, I heard Clara shouting: ‘No, Kate, wait! I think the portal is closing.’

‘We don’t need the portal,’ I shouted back. ‘Come with me!’

‘Where are we going?’

‘My office,’ I said, ‘otherwise known as the Tower of London.’

‘UNIT HQ is housed in the Tower of London,’ I explained, in the back of the car.

‘Which is where they just took the Doctor,’ replied Clara. She was frowning now, trying to piece it all together. I remembered how quick and clever she’d been on her last visit.

‘Nearly five hundred years ago, yes.’

‘Well, I know he’s got a big old life span—but he gets cranky if he sleeps in.’

‘As I’m sure you realise, we can do better than just leave him there for hundreds of years.’ I clicked a switch and a glass screen rose, sealing us away from the driver. ‘Clara Oswald, I need to inform you that the Unified Intelligence Taskforce does not know of, condone, or have access to any means of time travel.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we do, and I’m lying. Excuse me.’

Ignoring her look of bewilderment, I got on the phone and gave the necessary orders. The dungeons in the Tower were all to be searched. Numbers, I told them—a string of numerals, scratched into a wall or a floor. As soon as they were found, they needed to be sent directly to my phone. I was careful not to tell them of my current location, or that I’d left the Under Gallery. The operation had entered a critical phase, and all information was now tactically weighted.

By the time I had briefed them all, we had arrived at the Tower. We walked through the Jewel House door, and entered the maze of corridors. I was using my Zero Pass so that my arrival wouldn’t be flagged. Avoiding the operations room, and the security cameras, I led Clara by the most circuitous route to the Black Entrance. She frowned at what looked like a pair of cupboard doors, then stared as I opened them. Fifty feet of corridor stretched in front of us, as tall and thin as a canyon. Dust hung in the dim light like a swarm and yellow circles pooled the floor below green-shaded lamps. At the far end was an iron door, and a man with a shadowed face, and a white shirt. He was sitting at a desk and remained as still as a mannequin as we started towards him.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Clara.

‘Bit World War Two,’ she said.

‘That was the last refurb, yeah. Just before it, actually. Where do you think we are?’

‘Should I know?’

‘I think you’re probably figuring it out. I can hear cogs whirring.’

Clara shrugged. ‘In the Under Gallery, those empty cabinets—all the stuff you moved to more secure premises.’

‘Yes?’

‘There was a letter B next to all those cabinets. Whatever this place is called, I’m guessing it starts with a B, and it’s where you put all the stuff you think is dangerous.’

Smart, I thought, and doesn’t mind who knows it—which is to say: clever, but not wise.

‘The Black Archive. Highest security rating on the planet. The entire staff have their memories wiped at the end of every shift.’ I pointed to the lights. ‘Automated memory filters in the light fittings.’

We had arrived at the desk. Atkins looked up at us. His eyes were as watery and panicked as I could remember seeing them, and he looked thinner and more ravaged than ever. Repeated memory wipes, on a daily basis had their consequences; it may have seemed necessary to someone once, but face to face with the living result it just seemed barbaric.

‘Access, please,’ I said.

Atkins nodded at each of us in turn, carefully: ‘Ma’am. Ma’am.’ Concentrating hard, like a child remembering instructions, he moved to the iron door behind him, the key already in his hand.

‘Atkins, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, ma’am, Atkins. It’s my first day here.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Still getting used to this place, ma’am. First day here,’ he repeated, oblivious.

I looked at Clara. ‘Been here ten years,’ I whispered, and nodded at the lights. She looked shocked, and I didn’t blame her.

‘He’s a volunteer,’ I said, ‘Not that he knows that any more.’

There was a cool draught from the opened door, and Atkins moved aside to allow us through.

‘Thank you, Atkins.’

‘No problem, ma’am. It’s my first day here.’ He gave us both a puzzled look, as if trying to remember something. He would be doing that for the rest of his life.

I stepped Clara through into the warehouse. It was a huge black cube of a room, and the walls gleamed like polished granite. I looked around. I hadn’t stood on this spot for a very long time. It was now crammed with shelves and packing cases and a few of the Under Gallery cabinets. Other than seeming taller and more spacious than the building around it would allow (the advantage of stolen technology), it could have been any storage hangar anywhere. Until, of course, you looked more closely at what was on the shelves, or placed your hand on the smooth, shining walls, and felt their heat. Decades of alien contact had left UNIT with an extraordinary amount of extraterrestrial technology on its hands. Given that most of it had been harvested during attempted alien invasions, a high percentage of the technology was some kind weaponry. The Doctor had wanted to destroy it all, or take it off world, but UNIT had been too quick for him. Now, as a matter of procedure, it was all stored here, in the one place on the planet the Doctor’s TARDIS could never go. Whoever had control of this room had effective control of planet Earth. Which could, I reflected, prove to be the key strategic error of the entire human race.

Clara looked around, and I could tell she was determined not to be impressed. She was easy to read, in some ways, and I wondered if she knew how dangerous that could be.

‘The largest repository of abandoned and redeployed alien technology anywhere on the planet,’ I told her.

‘And it’s all just under lock and key—bit basic, isn’t it?’

I followed her look to the still open door. Through it, I could see Atkins reaching for the phone on his desk. His movements were slow and nervous.

‘Can’t afford electronic security down here, we’ve got to keep the Doctor out,’ I said. ‘The whole of the Tower is TARDIS-proofed. He really wouldn’t approve of the collection.’

‘But you’re letting me in?’

Atkins had lifted the phone now. It was one of the old dial telephones, probably here since the Second World War, and he seemed momentarily confused about what to do with it.

‘You have a top-level security rating from your last visit,’ I told her, and nodded towards some photographs on the wall. She glanced at them—and then stared, visibly rocked. She could see herself in a number of the photographs, standing on the same spot, in the same room she thought she had just entered for the first time. ‘Memory filters,’ I apologised. I glanced over at Atkins again—he was still hesitating, phone in hand. Now, confused, he hung up again. His hand shook as he withdrew it. The poor man was a dreadful mess.

‘But why was I here?’ Clara was asking.

‘We have to screen and interview all the Doctor’s known associates—we can’t have information about the Doctor and the TARDIS falling into the wrong hands. Public knowledge about him can have disastrous consequences.’ I pointed to the two movie posters on the wall, and saw her eyes widen.

‘Peter Cushing played the Doctor? The guy from Star Wars?’

‘Oh, yes. Twice. We did try to suppress the films, but they kept showing up on bank holidays.’

‘Has the Doctor seen them?’

‘Seen them? He loves them. He loaned Peter Cushing a waistcoat for the second one, they were great friends. Though we only realised that when Cushing starting showing up in movies made long after his death.’

‘What’s that doing here?’ she asked. I didn’t realise what she was talking about till I followed her look. The Gallifrey Falls painting—the one shown to the Doctor when he had arrived—was leaning against the wall, as if someone had just left it there.

‘I don’t know. That’s odd, I didn’t give any order for it to be moved.’

‘Does it matter?’

We’re in the middle of an invasion, I wanted to shout, everything matters! ‘I don’t know, I’ll check what’s going in a moment. This way.’ I led her to the centre of the room, where there was a small steel chamber—a tiny cube within the larger cube of the Archive. There was a door, which could only be opened by my retinal scan. I activated the lock, and led Clara inside. She found herself staring at what appeared to be a leather wrist strap mounted on a stand. She managed to remain as unimpressed as ever.

‘A vortex manipulator,’ I said. ‘Bequeathed to the UNIT archives by Captain Jack Harkness, on the occasion of his death. Well, one of them.’

‘What is it?’

‘Time travel. One-man time travel, basically. Pop the strap on your wrist, and off you go. Top security rating of any item here—no one can know we have this, not even our allies.’

‘Why not?’

‘Are you serious? Americans with the ability to rewrite history? You’ve seen their news coverage.’

‘Okay—so this is how we’re going to rescue the Doctor?’

‘We can’t. I doubt there’s enough power in it for a two-way trip. And anyway, we don’t know the activation code. The Doctor knows we have this, so he’s always kept the code from us. If he wants us to help him, he’s going to have to change his mind.’

Finally, Clara understood. ‘And he’s in the same building as us, five hundred years ago.’ She grinned. ‘He’s going to leave us a message.’

‘Carved into a wall, I assume. I’ve got my team looking for a string of numerals, in the old dungeons. They’ll send me what they find.’ I plugged my phone into the contact node on the wall—the only way a call could be received within the Black Archive. Perhaps because my mind was on the phone, I heard the turning of the dial, even across the room.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to Clara, ‘I have to talk to Atkins.’

Atkins was still dialling, when I got to his desk. As gently as I could, I removed the receiver from his hand and put it back in the cradle. ‘Please don’t report my presence here,’ I said.

‘It’s protocol, it’s procedure.’

‘It became procedure because I made it procedure. What I’m telling you now is that it’s not procedure for today.’

‘It’s my first day. It’s procedure. I’m sorry. It’s my first day.’

I looked at him for a moment. What had been done to this man, in the name of security, was beyond cruelty. UNIT had a lot to answer for. ‘Listen. We are in a state of emergency. At times like this, information about my whereabouts becomes of such strategic value, it is withheld from everyone. For the safety of the entire planet. Do you understand?’

He tried to. I could see it in his face. But his eyes clouded again. ‘It’s my first day.’

My jaw tightened. After many years of service, I still felt the same anger when I witnessed the indignities so often visited on the brave. ‘Come here,’ I said.

‘Sorry, ma’am?’

‘Stand up and come here, please.’

He did as he was told, of course, and stood, terrified, in front of me. I could feel him shaking as I wrapped my arms around him. ‘Ma’am. What are you doing?’

‘I’m hugging you, Atkins, is that all right?’

He hesitated. ‘It’s my first day.’

‘What has been done to you is unacceptable, and insofar as it is my place, I apologise on behalf of the people who did it to you. Do you understand?’

‘I think so, ma’am.’

‘My regrets.’ I squeezed tighter and felt him relax. ‘Sorry,’ I said again. I sat him back in his chair, wiped a little drool from the corner of his mouth, and angled his head so that it wasn’t obvious, at least from a distance, that his neck had been snapped.

As I turned to go, I felt my blood freeze. A pair of eyes, bright as diamonds, stared out of the dark. A few feet in front of me, barred in shadow, was a Zygon.

I felt a surge of panic, and controlled it. This couldn’t happen, not now! I had to be more careful. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

My earliest memory is of a bird standing on one leg, on a beach.

My saddest memory is of my father, sitting by a fireside, clutching a whisky. There were tears in his eyes, and my mother was snatching me away.

My name is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

When I opened my eyes, the Zygon was gone, and Kate was again looking back at me from the mirror. I dabbed the sweat from my face. In my anger and stress, I had let the body print slip, and that couldn’t happen again. I had successfully penetrated a strategically significant target on planet Earth, and humankind’s most powerful weaponry was in my grasp—now, more than ever, I had to maintain appearances.

I re-entered the Black Archive, and this time closed the door. I had been able to grant Atkins a death without fear, and I was very much hoping I’d be able to do the same for Clara Oswald.

EXCERPT ENDS

LOG 46667300++6U
EXCERPT ONLY
STATUS: VERIFIED
CONTENT: RESTRICTED
AUTHOR: PO2

EXCERPT BEGINS

It’s all a bit of a jumble at the moment, but writing it down will probably help. Or it won’t. But I have to write it down anyway so, you know, here goes.

I remember being huddled in one of the corners, and I could hear them all moving about. There wasn’t screaming any more, so I assumed they’d got everyone, and they’d find me eventually. I was so scared I thought might just shake into tiny pieces. But I was also cross with myself, and I think the Doctor would have been cross too. Because it was all my fault! I was the one who’d noticed. Why didn’t I keep my silly mouth shut?

We’d been three floors down in the Under Gallery, and McGillop was being a bit thing, but I’d managed not to say anything about it. Not that he was grateful, of course, which was typical. I’d made a point of hiding my feelings ALL DAY but he kept not noticing anything.

The Doctor had told us to analyse the stone dust / rock powder / sand deposits, but the trouble was that the stone dust / rock powder / sand deposits really weren’t very interesting, and McGillop kept going on about it. ‘It’s sand. Just sand. What does sand matter?’

Oh, I thought, look who’s crossest pony in the paddock! But I decided to keep that sort of language to myself, because sometimes he’s quite handsome (except short). The rest of the team had arrived, and there was equipment everywhere now, and cables straggling (is that a word?) all over the place. I think they were probably working away, but I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t remember most of their names and had to keep avoiding eye contact. Sometimes they stood right in front of me, which meant I had to shut my eyes. I don’t think anyone noticed, but it’s hard to tell when you can’t see.

‘What does the sand matter, Oz, got a theory?’ asked McGillop, in his usual way, because he’s Irish (which is fine).

‘Why would I know?’ I asked.

‘Because one of us is pretty, and one of us is a genius, and, unfortunately for me, they’re both you.’

He was probably being sarcastic in some clever way, but I couldn’t work it out, so I decided I’d get cross about it later.

‘I do actually mean that,’ he said, with a nice smile (suspicious).

I decided to completely ignore him. And then I didn’t. ‘The composition is interesting,’ I told him, running some of the stone dust / rock powder / sand deposit through my fingers. ‘Marble, granite—lots of different stone, but none of it from the fabric of the building.’

‘Okay. So?’

‘So where did it come from? It’s not from the walls or ceiling. These are secure premises, and we know all this sand wasn’t here before. So how did it arrive?’

‘Maybe something got broken?’

‘Like what? Like what got broken? A great pile of different kinds of rock got broken, and then got distributed evenly over every floor in the Under Gallery? Even if there had been a pile of rocks here, which there wasn’t, who smashed them up and who distributed the sand?’ He was all frowny now, so I smiled at him prettily.

‘Maybe whatever came out of the paintings,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense. I know we’re supposed to keep an open mind, but what lives in Elizabethan oil paintings that wants to break out and smash up rocks?’

It was then I started having thoughts. There weren’t any rocks here that could have been broken up, but if you thought about it, there was an awful lot of stone.

‘Can I pour you some tea?’ asked McGillop.

‘I’m not pouring you tea!’ I snapped.

‘No, you’re not, I’m pouring you tea, because that’s my job when you’re thinking, and I can see you’ve started up the engines.’

I could hear him pouring, but I didn’t look because my brain was going all fast. Now he was standing in front of me, offering me a cup. He held it with the handle towards me so I wouldn’t burn myself when I took it, which probably meant he was burning his own hand as he stood there. I realised that was probably kind, but was it also patronising? I decided I’d make up my mind about that later, and send him emails. ‘Thanks. Sorry. I’m just doing sums.’ Then I took the cup from him, because I thought he might start crying.

‘Do you want me to get your laptop?’ he asked.

It didn’t take long to run the numbers. I calculated the total floor area of the Under Gallery, estimated the average depth of the sand, and with a good idea of the cubic volume now present in the Under Gallery, modelled it into different shapes. I ran several possible distribution patterns, before realising there was enough sand in the gallery to make approximately fifty man-sized piles. I cross-referenced this with my file on the Under Gallery, and noted there were exactly fifty-two statues here. All of which were covered. Nine of which were surrounding us, in this corridor, right now.

‘I said,’ McGillop was saying, ‘do you want me to get your laptop?’

I looked at the cup in my hand. The surface of the tea was quivering, like that bit in Jurassic Park when there’s a dinosaur stomping about. It wasn’t a dinosaur though, it was me, shaking. I looked at the sheeted statues lining the walls of corridor. I checked for exits. There was only one, twenty feet away, and you’d have to jump over all the cables and packing cases we’d brought in.

‘Oz? Are you all right?’ McGillop was looking at me, but I found I couldn’t look at him, because I’d suddenly forgotten how to use my neck muscles. I concentrated on speaking.

‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘Right now, this minute.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘The things from the paintings. I know why they smashed the statues.’ My voice was a bit shaky, and I was already thinking I shouldn’t be saying this out loud.

‘Why?’ asked McGillop.

‘Because they needed somewhere to hide,’ I blurted said.

Nothing happened for a moment—then all the statues under their sheets just seemed to relax and straighten up, like children at the end of a game of hide and seek. And then, slowly, all the covered heads turned towards us.

I was running before I even thought about it. ‘Run first,’ the Doctor always said, ‘make time, think hard!’ I jumped over the packing cases and raced up the stairs. All around me, sheets were falling from statues, and strange lumpy hands were reaching out of the dark. I ran and ran and never screamed once. I crashed into a cabinet, and suddenly the floor was all rats, skittering and scrabbling about, but still I didn’t scream.

Now I was staring at a wall. ‘Eventually,’ the Doctor had said once, ‘everyone runs out of corridor.’

I could hear it behind me. I turned.

It was about seven feet tall, and red, and wet-looking. Its skin was covered in suckers, and it had a huge baby head, and tiny, bright eyes. It looked like it was grinning, but I think it was just the shape of its teeth.

At the back of my mind a file opened. Zygons, Loch Ness, shape-shifters.

It came to a halt a few feet away, and just stared at me. At first I thought nothing was going to happen, then a droplet of yellow goo ran down between its eyes, leaving a track of slime, and with a loud crack the whole face started to split apart. As it opened, the flesh stretched like pizza cheese between the slowly separating halves. I didn’t scream but the wall was suddenly pressing very hard against my back. The whole head had now flowered open, falling apart into segments, like a peeled orange, and with a horrible, sucking, gurgling noise a new head started to grow in the middle of the neck stump. At first it was the size of a fist, featureless with just a round mouth. Then it wriggled and grew, and a pair of little human eyes popped open and looked right at me. Features were now forming round the eyes, and in a few seconds I realised whose face I was looking at. ‘Hello Petronella,’ squeaked a rapidly growing replica of my own mouth, ‘I’m Petronella.’

I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see the next bit. When I opened them again, a perfect duplicate of me was standing there. There was even a green chemical stain on the left sleeve of my lab coat, which was never going to come out. (Shut up, Mum!) I reached for my inhaler, then realised it was already in my mouth.

The other Osgood smiled, and held out her hand. ‘Could I borrow the inhaler, please. I don’t seem to have copied that. Rush job, sorry.’ She gave the little wheezy cough that I knew so well. ‘Oh, I do hate it when I get one with a defect.’

For a moment it felt as if I was in both our heads, looking out of both pairs of eyes. She was still live-linked with my mind, I realised, and probably still downloading me. She was stealing every last private little thing that was mine. Just pulling it out of my brain and taking it for herself. All my stupid secrets, all the things that made me ashamed. It was the first time I really wanted to scream.

The next bit was quite confusing. There was suddenly this terrible noise everywhere, and it took me a moment to realise that it was coming from the other me. She was screaming and screaming—not like she was scared, like she was furious. And then there was this mad look in her eye, and she lunged at me. I threw myself back against the wall, convinced I was about to die—but all she did was push right past me and run, still screaming, down the corridor.

For a moment, I thought I should follow, but then I found myself leaning against the wall, and a moment later, sliding down it. I sat there, huddled and shaking, and I wondered what I could possibly have done to frighten a Zygon away. Were my memories really that horrid? Was I so embarrassing? I had to be sensible, though—there might be something to be learned from this, and the Doctor would want to know. But I hoped it wasn’t that incident with my sister and the dead turtles.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but it was only McGillop who found me, thank God! ‘The statues are all Zygons,’ I told him, as he helped me to my feet. ‘They’re shape-shifters, they’ve copied me!’

‘Yeah,’ said McGillop. ‘They copied me too.’

‘What happened to your duplicate? Where is it now?’

McGillop gave me the sad smile that I’d always quite liked (but not really, just as a friend). ‘Standing in front of you, I’m afraid. I’m the duplicate.’

Oh! This was pretty bad, I thought. And then I was a bit angry, and I was thinking that they’d better not have hurt McGillop in any way at all (because he is a valued colleague, like lots and lots of other people, including women).

‘Okay,’ I said, and fixed him in the eye, just like the Doctor would. ‘Well, I’ve scared off one of you Zygon duplicates already, I can do it again.’

‘No, I’m afraid you didn’t.’

‘Yeah, I did, it ran straight down that corridor. Screaming.’

He was still giving me the sad smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was Osgood.’

I had the biggest Gosh! moment ever. Of course! Oh, of course! I wasn’t Petronella Osgood at all—I was the Zygon!

It was tricky, sometimes, downloading all those memories through one little psychic link. Sometimes the donor mind could overwhelm you, especially if strong emotions were involved. Also, this mind was huge, I realised. Quite the largest mind I’d ever ingested. There were millions of random thoughts, bounding around all over the place, like a stampede of cartoon ponies. It was as much as I could do not to duck.

‘We’d probably better kill Osgood super quickly,’ I said. ‘She’s awfully, awfully clever, and there’s hardly any room for me in here. Also, she took my inhaler.’

‘It will be a pleasure,’ said McGillop. ‘But we have new orders—we have to join the Commander. The Black Archive has been penetrated, but the Doctor’s associate, Clara Oswald, has gone missing from inside it.’

I was barely listening. The size of this mind, it went on and on. An intelligence like this couldn’t just be switched off. ‘No, wait, don’t!’ I said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Find Osgood, but don’t kill her. As long as she’s alive, I’ll have a feed of her memories and abilities. And she’s mega-tastic brillo-clever.’

‘She talks like a moron,’ said McGillop rudely.

‘You don’t have to tell me, Mr Grumpy Sausage! But, seriously. She’s so smart she’s officially listed as UNIT’s number one tactical asset.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Well,’ I added, with a shrug, ‘in the absence of the Doctor.’

EXCERPT ENDS

LOG 46667300++6D
EXCERPT ONLY
STATUS: VERIFIED
CONTENT: RESTRICTED
AUTHOR: PO1

EXCERPT BEGINS

So I did. I screamed, right in her stupid face. She looked kind of shocked for a moment—and that was when I had the idea. If she was still linked with me, maybe she was feeling all the same fear I was feeling. Which you might think would make us equal, but that’s wrong. Fear is only a disadvantage if you want to attack—it’s brilliant if all you want to do is run away.

So I just sort of lunged at her. And I was right. She stumbled out of my way, looking all frightened, and I ran for it. And I made sure I kept on screaming and screaming.

‘Scream when you’re running away, and keep it going,’ Sarah Jane Smith once told me (she was one of the Doctor’s companions and easily my equal-second-favourite). ‘That way they’ll know exactly how far away you are.’

‘Why’s that good?’ I asked.

‘Because then you stop screaming and double back the way you came. A few minutes later, you’ll see them dashing past your hiding place—they never bother looking properly if they think you’re further away.’ Then she said: ‘Head down, dear, I think the eyes are hatching!’—but that’s another story.

Sarah Jane was super-awesome—I’d grown up wanting to be her—and she was also right. A little while later I heard Other Me and Other McGillop walking right past the cabinet where I was hiding.

‘Why the Black Archive?’ I heard myself saying.

‘Check your memories. That’s where they store all the alien weapon tech—best arms dump on the planet.’

‘Therefore the first place the Doctor will attempt to defend.’

Good point, other me!

‘The Black Archive is TARDIS-proof, he can’t get in there.’

Oh McGillop, I thought. Tell the Doctor there’s a wall he can’t climb over and he’ll meet you on the other side.

‘Oh McGillop,’ Other Me was saying. ‘Tell the Doctor there’s a wall he can’t climb over and he’ll meet you on the other side.’

Oh, she’s a clever one. ‘Why are you calling me McGillop?’ asked Other McGillop as their voices faded down the corridor.

I scrambled out of the cabinet. I knew exactly where I had to go now, because I had a theory, and I had to see if I was right. A little while earlier, I’d found Kate replacing the covering on one of the statues. She’d told me she’d seen nothing of interest under the sheet—but, logically, she should have seen a Zygon under there and I’m pretty sure Kate would have remembered seeing something like that (though she’s always losing her phone, and vouchers). So, theory: that was a Zygon copy of Kate. Question: what was under the covering I’d seen her replace?

It took me a few minutes to find the right statue. I pulled off the sheet. And oh my goodness, there was Kate!

She was bound up in horrid, red, rubbery stuff (like string, made of Zygon) and at first I thought she was dead. Then she moaned and I started yanking away at the stringy stuff.

‘Kate! Oh my goodness, you’re not actually dead,’ I reassured her. ‘That really is tremendously good news,’ I said, to keep the positive feedback flowing.

‘… Petronella?’ Kate said, so weak. She only called me Petronella when she was stressed.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Petronella. The Real Petronella, just like you’re the real Kate.’ The red stringy things were snapping quite easily, but I had to be careful because they were holding her up, and I didn’t want her to fall on top of me and cause inappropriate sexual tension in the workplace (which I’m against). ‘Those creatures, they’re Zygons, they can turn themselves into copies of people. But I think they have to keep the original alive, so they can refresh the image, so to speak.’

‘Where did … where did they go?’ she mumbled. She was spitting red stuff out of her mouth, which was a bit disgusting.

‘Tower Base. The Black Archive.’

‘What did you say? That’s not possible!’ Her head was almost complete free of all the yucky stuff, and she was trying to focus on me.

‘It is possible, I’m afraid. They don’t just steal your faces, they take your memories—bit embarrassing when you think about it—so anything you know, she knows. She can access the Archive.’ I broke the last of the stringy things, and Kate collapsed forward. Fortunately I got out of the way, and she was able to hit the floor, uncompromised.

‘That’s right, you have a little rest down there,’ I said as she scrambled to her feet and started dashing along the corridor. She really is tremendously ace at times. Basically, I’ve always wanted to be Kate. But then some days I just want to be anyone else except me, which is a bit sad when you think about it, so I don’t (except now, accidentally).

‘If those creatures have got access to the Black Archive,’ she was shouting, ‘we may just have lost control of the planet!’

‘Probably best keep your voice down,’ I said, mostly into my inhaler. ‘This place is crawling with them.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she snapped. ‘They’ve been stuck in here for hundreds of years and they’ve just disposed of an armed UNIT response team. They’re not going to hang around and play canasta! They’ll already be at UNIT HQ, taking over.’

Kate is really very clever about all the military stuff, although she is mainly a science person (and gardening) and she was right (though I would have to look up canasta). The whole place was deserted. By the time we’d got to the top, Kate had called one of her special numbers, and a car came whizzing up, and me and Kate and McGillop all piled inside. (I forgot to mention I went and looked for McGillop when Kate was making the call, but only in case we needed any extra help. I found him under one of the statue sheets, on only my fourth attempt. He was all shivery and his eyes were really wide, but he was unhurt and Kate was basically fine about the tiny delay, and I probably shouldn’t have shouted.)

‘What are they?’ McGillop kept asking, in the back of the car. ‘What are those things?’ I had my arm round him, but only because I thought he might be about to cry (Irish).

‘Zygons. You must have read about them, they’re in the files.’

‘I haven’t memorised all the bloody files, you know,’ he said, rubbing away tears with his sleeve (which I do sometimes). ‘I’m not like you.’

‘Oh, stop it, I did not memorise the files,’ I said. ‘On purpose,’ I added.

And then he looked at me and started laughing, in a really sort of high-voiced way, and I didn’t know what do. But I held his hand, which seemed to be okay. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be McGillop—although he is very popular and has lots of friends, so, maybe a bit.

The car was very fast (the driver missed a short cut, though, so I took his number to give him constructive feedback later) and we were at Tower Base in no time. But when we got down to the Black Archive, we knew that we were already too late. Atkins, who was always very nice, was sitting outside, as usual, but when he didn’t stand up or say anything, Kate reached out and touched his arm. His head just flopped sideways onto his shoulder and it was horrible.

I’d never seen a dead person before so I’m afraid I was sick (in a waste bin). When I looked up again, Kate had covered him with her coat. ‘The sad thing is,’ she said, ‘he thought he died on his first day.’

McGillop and I looked at each other, and he was as white as a sheet, and I think I was too (though he was trembling more). Kate had taken the spare key from Atkins’s belt and was now unlocking the door. As it opened, we could hear a voice from inside. And it was totally weird because the voice was McGillop’s.

‘The equipment here is phenomenal,’ he was saying, and they’d got his accent just right, even though it was regional. ‘The humans don’t realise what half this stuff does. We could conquer their world in a day. If I was from round here, I’d say it was Christmas.’

‘No,’ said Kate, striding ahead of us, into the Archive. ‘I’m very much afraid you wouldn’t.’

McGillop was looking at me. ‘We have to go with her.’

‘Do we?’ I asked, which was wrong of me, but I was very scared.

‘Because she needs you, and where you go, I go.’ He’d taken my elbow, like he was going to guide me into the room. ‘You’re UNIT’s number one tactical asset, remember?’

We didn’t seem to be moving anywhere, and his hand on my elbow was shaking so hard. ‘I think you’ll have to push a little bit,’ I said. ‘Or we really won’t get anywhere.’

‘I know. I’m trying.’

‘Tell you what. You keep hold of my elbow, and I’ll tow.’

‘Okay.’

We made our way into the room. UNIT’s number one tactical asset, I was thinking. Not really. Not on a good day. Only in the absence of the Doctor.

EXCERPT ENDS