Doctor Who MA08 - Time of Your Life by Steve Lyons

Author:Steve Lyons
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T02:21:16+00:00

Eight

hen the Doctor awoke, he was lying cramped in a W claustrophobic pod, staring through a plastic shield at harsh white studio lighting. His chest ached, his Peace Keeper-inflicted wounds aggravated by Shepherd’s blaster. He could also feel some drug in his system: he had been sedated, to keep him out longer.

He heard a voice, muted by his sealed environment, dulled yet further by the spinning of his own head. Shouting, over-excited, talk of spheres and contestants and... what was that name again? Death-Hunt 3000! The original application of the Marston Sphere. He wished he had questioned Kaerson further about the show.

The capsule shuddered and moved, the lights above him blurred and vanished and he knew that he was being thrust feet first into a tunnel. His chest tightened as his speed increased and he was flattened by the G-force. Everything flashed into white-dominated negative and he could feel the sickening lurch of teleportation. Then the sky above was red, the pod jerking into sudden but surprisingly cushioned deceleration.

Like Earth’s transit technology, he thought, installed during the first pushes of intergalactic colonization, outlawed soon afterward. But what matter that where Network profits were concerned?

He only appreciated how stuffy his transport had become when its plastic lid hissed open and sweet, damp, fresh air hit his nostrils. He felt momentarily nauseous, but he could not indulge such symptoms. If the game rules were as he imagined, there was no time to be lying here. He levered himself over the rim and dropped onto ground which was soft, wet, black and artificial. The sky was equally fake. It had to be, if he was inside a Marston Sphere. Trick lighting, an angry background to evoke angry emotions; a blood-red swell conveying an apposite image to viewers hungry for violent catharsis. Great gnarled black trees punctured the atmosphere.

Below, thin mist fingers camouflaged dirty brown scrub bushes, restricting sight to a hundred metres in each direction.

It was like a cartoon fantasy land: Gloomy Wood, thought the Doctor. He wasn’t surprised that, even within his limited field of vision, there were five cameras.

Something yelled at him to ‘Duck!’ He was still looking for the source of the warning when a great white bird swooped. It almost caught his eye with a vicious peck, and he was carried to the ground by the force of his belated dodge. The bird screeched, circled and took aim again. He pulled off the cap which came with his maintenance overalls, hurled it with devastating accuracy and caught the creature on its second attack run. The cap landed neatly on its head, removing its sight and orientation so that it slammed headlong into a tree. It plummeted from the sky with an uncomfortably pain-filled squawk and the Doctor chose to run before it recovered.

There were obviously dangers here beyond merely those of his competitors. One opponent had been felled already, but he would have to outlast four more to escape this game. He wondered how he knew all that. Then he noticed the earpiece, a circular chunk of white plastic jammed into his right lobe.

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