Doctor Who PDA73 - Fear Itself (8th) by Rick Wallace

Author:Rick Wallace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T02:44:28+00:00

The room filled with light. Sound vanished. Fitz flailed for a handhold. Something flashed past on the left. Then sound returned and he dropped to the floor.

The Doctor was pressed up against the exterior wall, holding the long metal slab of his lab bench. Their room had been hit by a hurricane.

Fitz touched his cheek, bleeding where a bottle had smashed against it.

‘We’re in trouble,’ the Doctor said.

‘What happened?’

‘An overload, taking a chunk of the bull with it.’ The Doctor stepped cautiously back from the bench, which stayed attached to the wall. Fitz was aware of a high-pitched whistling sound, air getting cold, his ears starting to hurt.

‘Bugger,’ he coughed.

The bench creaked, a thin crease forming down its middle.

Fitz tried the door again.

‘That won’t work,’ the Doctor said, sorting through the chaos, turning the debris over. ‘And that bench isn’t going to hold.’

Fitz began studying the walls, checking off escape routes. It didn’t take long. ‘No way out.’

The Doctor kicked through the remaining equipment.

‘There’s nothing here to shore up that bench.’

‘They’ll come for us.’

‘They’ll need to cut through and there’s no time.’

Fitz watched him then, looking around the room, studying everything. So focused, springing into life, reaching down to pull the Bunsen burner free along with a length of rubber hose. He lit the flame, told Fitz, ‘Find the oxygen bottle.’ The bench gave another creak, began to buckle. Quickly.’

‘What’s the plan?’

The Doctor was heating the end of the hose, plunging his fingers into the flame to manipulate its shape. ‘When the seal goes, you’re going to have to use the oxygen to breathe.’

Fitz handed the bottle over, and the Doctor began to mould the pipe on to it with one hand, adjusting its valve with the other ‘This is undiluted, you want to sip at it, not take full breaths.’ Fitz nodded.

‘Start ripping up that sheet.’ Fitz did as he was told.

‘What’s this for?’

‘There’s an airlock three hundred metres to the left on the Station hull.’

Fitz paused, something creeping upwards in his mind.

‘There’s only one bottle.’

The Doctor said nothing.

‘What happens, to you?’ Fitz insisted.

‘You tie yourself on to me, pull me to the airlock.’

‘You’ll die,’ Fitz said.

‘There’s no other way.’

Fitz looked at the bottle then the creaking lab bench. His breath was steaming in the air, his lungs cold, his ears throbbing. ‘Yes, there is,’ Fitz said. ‘You take me.’

‘No,’ the Doctor answered.

‘You’re stronger, your constitution’s better, you don’t smoke thirty a day. If I take you, we’ll both die. The other way round and we’re in with a chance.’

Fitz lashed a sheet around his wrist, knotting it to another, throwing the free end across to the Doctor. The bench screamed, wind from nowhere tearing through the room.

‘When we get out of here,’ Fitz shouted, ’we need to talk.’

There was a pause, then the Doctor nodded, tying the sheet around his waist.

They stood there for a moment, fixed against the maelstrom around them. The Doctor spoke, but Fitz couldn’t hear the words. It didn’t matter: he could read the Doctor’s lips well enough.

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