Doctor Who - Telos - 06 by Rip Tide

Author:Rip Tide [Tide, Rip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It certainly did. ‘So there were two of them, and one got killed, and

now Ruth’s trying to — But hold on; what is she trying to do? If she

wants his body back, she should be hanging around at the mortuary, not

here.’

‘Quite. Therefore we can make an educated guess that that isn’t what

she wants. And whatever she does want, she thinks your brother can

help her.’

‘I can’t work that out at all,’ said Nina. ‘OK, he was in charge of the

lifeboat crew, but all they did was bring the body back. They don’t know

anything else about –’ She stopped. ‘Oh, shit.’

The Doctor looked at her in surprise. ‘Pardon?’

Nina, though, wasn’t thinking about her language. Something had

abruptly and frighteningly slotted into place in her mind. Steve’s

blistered hands

She whispered, ‘He must have touched him.’

‘What?’ The Doctor sounded baffled. ‘What do you mean, Nina? Who

must have touched whom?’

She told him about Steve’s symptoms, worry growing like a canker

with every moment. ‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’ she finished. ‘If he’s an alien

– Steve must have touched him when they got him out of the water! And

now he’s seeing Ruth, and the blisters have come back, and he’s getting

ill —’

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ The Doctor held up both hands, palms out. ‘Calm

down, Nina.’ He came back from the console and dropped to a crouch

beside her, taking hold of one of her hands and squeezing it until some

of her tension ebbed. ‘Let’s take this step by step. Steve’s hands became

blistered, yes? Did any of the other crew suffer the same thing?’

She frowned. ‘No-o ... I don’t think so, anyway. But Charlie Johns –’

‘The fisherman who died?’

‘Yes. It happened to him.’

‘Was he in the lifeboat crew?’

She laughed, though there was a shaky edge to her laughter. ‘No! He’s

– he was – much too old. This was later, after the ... No, hang on; I’m

getting this all wrong.’ She shook her head as if to clear a muddle, then

made an exasperated noise. ‘Sorry. Steve didn’t get the blisters after they

brought the body in. It was at the same time as Charlie. After the dive.’

‘Dive? What dive?’

‘Oh, it was a few days later,’ she said. ‘One of Charlie’s crab-pot lines

got snarled on the sea-bed. Steve and a couple of others helped him free

it; there was some junk down there, wreckage that the currents must

have brought in, and –’

‘Nina.’ The Doctor’s tone stopped her in her tracks, and his expression

became taut suddenly, his eyes lighting unnervingly. ‘Tell me about the

wreckage. What did they find?’

She shrugged. ‘Junk, like I said. Probably stuff off a container ship, or

something.’

‘They didn’t bring any of it to the surface, did they?’

‘Yeah, they did, actually. Just a scrap, though; it couldn’t tell you

anything.’

‘What happened to it?’

The light in his eyes had intensified and Nina’s heart began to thump.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because it might be the most important clue so far! Tell me, Nina,

what happened to that piece?’

‘Steve gave it to Charlie, and Charlie made it into a pendant. He was

good at making jewellery; he used to –’ Then she stopped, as the

connection, the howlingly obvious connection that she hadn’t thought of

until now, hit her.

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