Doctor Who - Telos - 02 by Citadel Of Dreams

Author:Citadel Of Dreams [Dreams, Citadel Of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

BEFORE

The two patrolmen were dressed in uniform black, and with their close-

cropped hair and the identical set to their faces they might have been

twins. There was something unnatural about the way they moved, Joey

thought, as they advanced on him: each limb moving independently of

the others, in precisely controlled amounts that in sum total

approximated human walking, in the same way that a mask

approximates a face.

‘You are coming with us,’ one of them said, tonelessly. Again, there

was the sense of disconnectedness, as if the patrolman were speaking the

words by rote. ‘We are constables of the City Patrol – Black Watch

Division.’

‘Black Watch Division,’ repeated the other. ‘You are coming with us.’

Despite the unreality of his circumstance, these words hit Joey Quine

like a dash of slops in the face. Everyone – everyone, that is, who moved

in what might be called his circle of acquaintance – knew of the Black

Watch. They were a section of the Patrol who informally kept the streets

safe and clean for respectable folk, by the simple expedient of removing,

quite terminally, those they found disreputable. Hardly a night went by

but in the morning some derelict was found, knifed and floating face-

down in the canal, as an example to others. Funnily enough, despite all

the Watch’s best efforts, there continued to be a healthy supply of street

beggars and derelicts for such unfortunates to be an example to.

Backed against the paint-sealed window, Joey looked down again at the

man Smith. Quite apart from the obvious fact of being dead, the body,

he now noted, bore no resemblance at all to the dapper little man he had

encountered on Market Hill.

The patrolmen took hold of him. The flesh of their hands touched him

– and, quite by reflex, Joey felt the Thing in his mind stir, and open its

inner eyes, and cast them to the minds of his captors –

– and Joey Quine was running through the streets again, with a certain

extra degree of exertion than before. There is a world of difference

between running after some stranger in the vague hope of preventing

him from killing some other stranger, and fleeing from concrete forces

who you know damned well are intending to kill you.

It was times like these that you let the City help you, spoke to it and let

it guide you through its alleyways and hidden plazas, trusted in it to

fetch you in the end to safety

Joey stopped. Where had that thought come from? Where had that

manner of thinking come from?

In all his years of living in Hokesh, one Joseph Quine hadn’t had the

slightest feeling that the City wanted him to be there at all – quite the

reverse, in fact. One day had followed another, nights had followed one

another, occasionally under shelter, and the City was the just the place in

which he spent them. He’d never once thought of the City as a living

thing, except –

Except that he had, hadn’t he?

He could catch a breath of the feeling, deep inside himself, connected

in some way with the blank places in his memory. There was a sense of

connection with the City, so deep and basic that he had not thought

about it consciously.

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