5

I immediately began trying to think of a way to escape. I looked up and around, certain there must be a way to break the force field. It had emerged from the floor, and I wondered if that held the solution. Unfortunately, when I tried to touch it, I accidentally bumped into the wall of light – making it close in more tightly. Wira whimpered.

‘I don’t understand what we’ve done to displease her,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Why would Lania do something like this?’

‘Because she’s been deceiving you,’ I explained. ‘Her name isn’t Lania. She’s the Rani. A Time Lord like the Doctor. Er, well, Time Lady.’

She was certainly no one I’d ever expected to see again. Our last encounter had been on Earth, during a trip to the Industrial Revolution, when she’d been trying to extract a sleep-inducing chemical from innocent humans caught up in the chaos of the time. I remembered that part pretty well because she’d tried to do it to me too.

‘She’s a scientist.’ That was an understatement, but I didn’t quite know how to articulate to Wira the full extent of the Rani’s obsession. To the Rani, science trumped all other things in life. Sometimes she had specific, selfish goals. Other times, she’d get caught up in the experiments themselves: science for the sake of science. Her experiments were what had got her exiled from Gallifrey, and that single-minded focus on her research had replaced any morality she might have had – and certainly any regard for life forms she considered beneath her.

‘We have to warn the Doctor,’ I told Wira. The girl was so frightened, I wasn’t even sure if she heard me. ‘He’s the only one who can –’

A clatter of metal was the sole warning I had before a hole in the ceiling suddenly opened, and the Doctor came tumbling down to the floor, landing in an ungraceful heap of rainbow plaid. Nonetheless, he rose to his feet with all the dignity of an Olympic gymnast who’d just landed a perfect somersault.

‘Please go on,’ he told me cheerfully. ‘The only one who can … what? Awe the masses with his wit and charm? Stump the most revered intellects of your time – or any time?’

‘The only one about to get shot!’ I yelled. ‘Look out!’

The two reptilian men that the Rani had left on guard were charging forward, brandishing their guns. The Doctor ducked as one of them fired, emitting a blue burst of light that instead hit the force field surrounding Wira and me. The ray bounced off our prison wall, back at the lizard-man who’d fired it. He keeled over backwards, hitting the floor with a thud. Wira jumped in alarm, hitting the wall of light and triggering another restriction in our space. I gripped her hard and pulled her closer to me, scarcely daring to breathe at how near the walls were now.

The remaining creature advanced menacingly on the Doctor, who was searching around frantically for help. Then he spied a metal ceiling panel that had fallen down with him. He picked it up and swung it with astonishing force, missing, but effectively dodging an attack. His second attempt struck the reptilian man in the head, and he crumpled to the ground. The Doctor clung to his makeshift weapon and paused, waiting for movement from his fallen foes. When nothing happened, he knelt down and studied the one he’d hit.

‘He’ll be out for a while.’ The Doctor looked over at the one who’d been hit by the ricocheting gun blast. His face fell and, to my surprise, he touched the creature’s cheek. ‘The gun was on its highest level. Shame. I always feel so guilty killing the Rani’s engineered lackeys. They’re already in a sorry state. They never have a fighting chance to begin with.’

‘They seemed to have a fighting chance when they abducted us,’ I countered. ‘And when that one nearly shot you. You got lucky.’

The Doctor picked up the guns and carefully placed them on a counter. He wiped his hands together, as though they were dirty. For a fleeting moment, I saw true regret in his eyes, and then he was back to his usual self. ‘Skill, my dear. Not luck.’

‘Well, why don’t you use some of your skill to get us out of –’ I bit my words off as I replayed his comments about engineered lackeys in my mind. ‘You know the Rani’s here.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I’d suspected when I sent you to investigate – which I see you did with your usual thoroughness. Listening to Evris’s stories simply confirmed it, and I got away as quickly as I could to find a quiet way to come in and take a look. Air tunnels aren’t my favourite way to travel, but they work.’ He strolled around the room, clucking his tongue at what he saw. ‘My, my, she has been busy.’

‘Do you think you could –’

‘– do this?’ He pushed a button, and the force field vanished. I sagged in relief, feeling as though I’d suddenly emerged from being underwater.

‘Yes, thank you.’ I gave Wira a quick check, but mostly she seemed scared, with no signs of physical damage. Wrapping her arms round herself, she sat down against a nearby wall and looked about her in disbelief. I gave her a small pat on the shoulder before turning my full attention to the Doctor. ‘How did you know about the Rani?’

‘From her little winged calling cards. I’ve seen some of her creations before, both the kind she breeds, like the ones we encountered outside, and the ones she manipulates – like those poor saps on the floor. That gold sheen is a side-effect of the process.’ He paused to push a few buttons and read what came up on a display. ‘Anyway, I could’ve written that off as a coincidence until I started hearing all that talk about Jonos’s “brilliant and cultured” alien bride. Those certainly aren’t the words I’d use to describe her, but she is a scientific genius … so I suppose convincing others that she’s pleasant might be only a little harder than genetically modifying reptiles.’

‘But why is she doing it?’ I asked. I stood by him as he scrolled through information on a computer, but most of it made no sense to me. ‘What in the world do pterodactyls have to do with tricking someone into marrying you?’

‘Tricking?’ asked Wira. She lifted her head up from where it had rested on her knees. ‘What do you mean?’

That earlier love I’d sensed in her shone through her eyes, and it broke my heart. ‘It’s like I told you before,’ I said gently, ‘Lania’s not who she seems. She’s misled all of you as part of some plot to get Jonos to marry her.’

‘But why does she need to trick anyone?’ asked Wira. ‘Jonos already loves her.’

‘What Peri is being too delicate to say is that she – the Rani – isn’t in love with poor Jonos. Or should I say lucky Jonos.’ The Doctor shuddered. ‘Can you even imagine a lifetime shackled to that woman? He’s really dodged a bullet, assuming we can get to the church on time to save him from some untimely demise. Tell me, what do you make of this?’

It took me a moment to follow the topic change and drag my gaze from the stricken Wira. I leaned closer to the Doctor and tried to understand what he was showing me. ‘You could have been a little more tactful with her,’ I whispered.

‘I told her the truth.’ The Doctor made no attempt to regulate his volume.

‘We don’t know that he’s going to meet an untimely demise.’

‘No, but most likely. Remember who we’re dealing with.’ The Doctor was still playing flippant, but I again caught a ghostly hint of worry in his eyes. ‘Now, look at what we have here. A mess of biological data – and I do mean mess. There’s no order to it, just a jumble of entries, genetic records. The only thing I can tell for certain is that it’s all Koturian.’

‘But if she doesn’t love him, why would she marry him?’ moaned Wira.

The Doctor gave her a brief, irritated look before returning to the data. ‘Probably something to do with his Phasing, if I had to guess. Although, guessing the Rani’s thoughts … Well, that’s something few have ever had success at. It’s amazing that she was able to collect so much data without anyone noticing.’

I stared at the screen without really seeing it. ‘Because she didn’t collect it herself. The pterodactyls did. They took skin and blood from their victims and brought it back to her. And they took some of the actual victims too.’

An eager gleam filled the Doctor’s eyes. ‘So help me, Peri, you might be on to something. None of the Koturians thought to connect the attacks to Jonos’s fiancée. Why would they? Most people expect the claws to come out after marriage. Creative choice of data collection, I’ll give her that.’

‘Is it?’ I asked wryly. ‘When we last left her, you trapped her in her TARDIS with a T. rex. Maybe she found a way to pass the time.’

‘Did I?’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. Well, never let it be said the Rani can’t make lemonade out of lemons. Or efficient biogenetically engineered research tools out of a frightening prehistoric encounter.’ Straightening up, he began pacing the room. ‘The Rani isn’t the type to collect that information without a reason. There’s a purpose; we just need to find it. She’s deposited the raw data here. But her actual work … that’ll be somewhere else. Here, help me.’

He began running his hands over every smooth surface on the consoles and counters he could find. I immediately followed suit, not knowing what I should be looking for until, a few minutes later, my fingers ran over an almost imperceptible bump in an otherwise flat surface. ‘Doctor?’

Excitement filled his eyes as he walked over and saw what I was pointing to. When he ran his hand over it in a circular motion, a square indentation appeared in the metal. He tapped the surface, and it slid open, revealing a small compartment.

‘And here we are.’ Triumphant, he lifted a small tetragonal crystal. ‘The Rani, while unpredictable in many ways, is also predictable in others. She’s set this lab up like the one in her TARDIS, and she’s too paranoid to leave data on anything she can’t easily take with her. This is going to have our answers.’ He strode over to another computer and inserted the crystal into a slot I hadn’t noticed.

Another loud sigh came from Wira. ‘Poor Jonos.’

The Doctor grimaced at the interruption to his brilliant reveal, but mercifully left the girl alone. ‘As suspected,’ he said. ‘Here’s where the order is. She’s got their genetic information organised by age and gender, as well as how far along they were in their Phasing windows.’

‘So you know what she’s doing?’ I asked.

‘Not a clue,’ he admitted. ‘But it doesn’t matter. It’s safe to assume she’s up to no good, so we’ll stop her now and ask questions later. If she took you, she knows I’m here.’

I nodded. ‘She doesn’t know what you look like, though. She asked if you’d regenerated since the last time we saw her – she’s not a fan of this appearance, you know.’

He chuckled. ‘Yes, she’s made that very clear before. You'd think she’d be kinder about it, though, seeing as she knows as well as I there’s not much we can do about it. Besides, I think it’s clear that I just keep improving.’ Studying his reflection in a monitor, he gave a decisive nod.

‘It’s so sad,’ said Wira. I wasn’t even sure if she was talking to us at this point. ‘Jonos will be wasting his one chance at Phasing on a woman who doesn’t love him.’

That seemed to finally make the Doctor snap. ‘Honestly, are you going to keep –’ He froze in shock, and I took a few steps towards him.

‘What is it?’

‘That. This.’ He held up the crystal he’d taken from the console. ‘That’s why the Rani’s studying the Koturians. She’s trying to affect Time Lord regeneration somehow. She must suspect – or perhaps she’s found – a connection between our respective transformations.’

‘Is there one?’ I asked, startled. ‘They’re completely different processes. Theirs comes from love. Yours from death.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But both result in a complete transformation of the body. And if anyone can find connections between things that have no business being linked together –’ he paused and gave the lizard-men a meaningful look – ‘then it’s her. Come on, we have to stop that wedding.’

Without waiting to see if I, or Wira, was coming, he hurried to the double doors and pulled on one of the handles. There was a bright flash of light, and he jumped back with a cry of surprise.

‘We just can’t get a break today,’ I said, running over to him.

‘The Rani apparently didn’t want to take any chances,’ he said, scowling at his hand. ‘It’s a credit to you, really, that she thought you’d escape both the sizian field and her minions.’

‘She didn’t seem to give me much credit,’ I said. ‘She kept saying I was stupid and silly.’

‘Don’t let her get to you,’ said the Doctor, kneeling down to study the door. ‘You’re not stupid in the least.’

‘Can we climb out through the ceiling?’ Wira asked.

I turned and was surprised to see her beside me. She’d wiped away her tears and a determined expression gleamed in her eyes. The Doctor gave her an appraising look.

‘Well, you’ve already undergone a transformation of your own, haven’t you?’ he said.

She held her head up higher. ‘If we can stop Lania from taking advantage of Jonos, then I want to help. Just tell me what I need to do,’ she said fiercely.

I could see a smile start to curve at the Doctor’s lips and then he put on a stern mask. ‘Right, then. We could go through the ceiling, but it’d take longer … and be a lot more uncomfortable. No, ladies, we simply have to blow this door up.’

‘Blowing something up is simple?’ I asked.

‘Simple, yes. Easy, no.’ He peered around the lab. ‘Too bad she didn’t leave any explosives or fuel lying about.’

I pointed. ‘What about the guards’ guns?’

‘Unfortunately, their deadliness comes more from a signal to disrupt biological functioning than any sort of brute-force destruction.’

‘But they must have a battery or fuel source, right?’ I insisted. ‘Is there some way we could ignite it?’

The Doctor retrieved one of the guns and dismantled it, revealing a silvery rectangular object. He held it up to the light. ‘Yes and yes. Go get the other one.’

I hurried to comply. Meanwhile, he knelt down in front of the doors and carefully set the battery in front of them, pressed right up to where they met. He laid another object on top of it and then placed the second battery on top of that. I tilted my head to get a better look.

‘Is that your sonic lance?’

‘Yes.’

He turned it on, sprang up and grabbed my hand. We reached the far side of the lab just as the batteries exploded and took out a good chunk of the doors’ lower halves. He returned and gripped hold of the new openings. The doors gave easily.

‘Your lance is in pieces,’ I pointed out, kicking a fragment with my toe.

‘I have a spare, and I’ll be careful not to blow it up. Now, come. We have no time to lose.’ He turned to Wira who was scurrying over to join us. ‘You can take us to the wedding?’

She still had that fierce air about her and pointed upwards through the house’s labyrinth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s being held in the chapel over at the Flamingo.’ And she sped away.