Doctor Who: The Eyeless by Lance Parkin

Author:Lance Parkin [Parkin, Lance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409072898
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2010-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

BEFORE ANYONE COULD stop him, the Doctor took the last step back through the doorway. As he passed through, in one movement and without looking back, he turned, brought the sonic screwdriver up level with the nearest control panel, operated it, and made the heavy black metal door slam down.

The Doctor didn’t stick around to see what happened next.

The Eyeless who’d been closest to him managed to lurch forward and catch the underside of the door, quickly twisted to hold it about halfway open. The door was inching down, and the Eyeless wasn’t going to be able to hold it for long.

‘Go!’ Alsa was shouting to the others.

The Doctor was already a hundred paces away. He could hear Alsa swearing and yelling, but it was already getting faint and after a moment the sound cut off completely. It felt wrong to abandon her, somehow. That said, there was no indication the Eyeless would harm her – rather the opposite – and she was far safer stuck back there than in the depths of this place.

Alsa’s comm was in the Doctor’s hand, set to display all the internal defences of the Fortress. Within fifteen seconds it had saved his life by spotting a row of nozzles in the floor. They were designed to blast up jets of poison gas, and he’d have completely missed them. The simple motion sensor that would have triggered the trap was easily tricked by the Doctor using a sweet wrapper he found in his pocket.

There were dull clangs of solid glass against metal floor. Footfalls behind him. One Eyeless had got through, but only the one. The Doctor had to slow down a little to neutralise every trap. Unless there was another door he could close behind himself soon – and he couldn’t see anything obvious on the plan – it would catch up with him.

The corridor curved down. There were a number of locked doors to either side, but he couldn’t slow down, so didn’t try them.

He avoided a trap designed to fire plastic straps to snare his chest like a boa constrictor. He left it live, and hurried away. Ten seconds later, the Doctor was gratified to hear it triggered, but also alarmed the Eyeless had been that close behind him. The glass man didn’t breathe, so the trap wouldn’t suffocate it, and it’d be free soon enough.

The Eyeless fascinated him. Did they know specifically about the weapon at the heart of this Fortress, or had they simply marked out Arcopolis as a potential source of advanced technology?

He scolded himself. They must know. It was a long way to come on a whim.

He had to get to the weapon before the Eyeless did. No: faster than that. He needed to get to the weapon before they even tried, because when they tried… well, that would set the Fortress going and make his life difficult.

The Doctor picked up his pace.

If the Eyeless knew about the weapon, he wondered, did that mean they knew all his secrets?

Whatever the Doctor had done to the door, the Eyeless couldn’t undo.

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