Doctor Who: Ruby Red by Georgia Cook

Author:Georgia Cook [Cook, Georgia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2024-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Silence swept the clearing. The Doctor stood, brushing himself down with a sigh. ‘Charming, isn’t she?’ he said.

‘What did she mean, she’ll soon have the means to make this world her own?’ said Ruby.

‘Posturing,’ said Helgadane, sheathing her sword. ‘She knows she’s beaten.’

‘She didn’t sound beaten to me,’ said Ruby. ‘She sounded smug. And what did she mean she hasn’t been attacking the camp?’

‘Well. It looked like an attack to me,’ said Cellisamere.

The Doctor eyed the boy carefully. What would he do, he thought, if he were an invading parasitic force? He’d need bodies, lots of bodies, preferably unharmed and undamaged. So what would be the point in attacking anything, unless it was with a specific purpose?

‘What if she wasn’t attacking?’ he said slowly. ‘What if she was pushing?’

‘Pushing?’ asked Ruby.

He turned to her. ‘Think about it: what’d you do if someone came screaming at you through the trees? Even if you’re a big, heavily armed soldier. You’d run away eventually, right?’

Helgadane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I do not run,’ she said.

‘No? Always been a fan of it myself,’ said the Doctor, cheerfully. ‘Right, what would everyone except Helgadane do?’

‘You think she’s herding us,’ said Ran, her eyes widening. ‘I noticed that, back at the camp, everyone’s moving, bunching together.’

‘Moving where?’ Ruby asked.

‘If I had to guess,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’d say in the direction of her parasites.’

‘For what – some kind of mass infection?’ said Ruby, staring around at the surrounding trees. ‘That is … so gross.’

‘Then it’s simple!’ said Helgadane, slamming a fist into her palm. ‘We find more of her puppets, and we follow them, and we destroy her!’

‘How do we do that, sister?’ Cellisamere glanced at Onfim’s sleeping form. ‘We can’t follow this one. She knows that if we set him free, we’d go after him.’

‘If the Genetrix is herding the army,’ said Ruby, ‘surely we just need to follow the direction they’re taking?’

‘And overtake them,’ the Doctor agreed.

‘But it’s pitch black out there,’ Ran said. ‘Even with swords to light the way—’

‘We could be picked off way more easily,’ the Doctor concluded. ‘If we fall … no one gets to rise again.’

‘And if that thing gets hold of the TARDIS,’ Ruby said softly, ‘nowhere in the universe is safe.’

The Doctor’s gaze returned to Onfim, small against the towering fir tree behind him. An idea bubbled in the back of his mind.

‘I’m going to do something,’ he said, kneeling in the grass beside the unconscious boy. ‘I’m going to try to merge minds with the Genetrix.’

Ruby’s eyes widened in horror. ‘You’re going to what?’

‘She can lie to us all she likes out here, but she can’t hide from her own mind. She’s made herself at home in poor Onfim. I’m just going to pop in and see where she’s hidden herself.’

‘Absolutely not! Out of the question! We’ll find another way!’

‘What other way, Ruby?’ the Doctor asked.

Silence swept the clearing.

‘You can do that?’ Helgadane asked, softly, from behind Ruby. ‘Merge with such a creature?’

‘Yeah!’ said the Doctor. ‘Done it loads of times.

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