The Doctor Of War ³

Heaven Sent

(5100 words)

As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower, always coming. You will run. It will walk. You will rest. It will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long. You will sit too still or sleep too deep, and when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over."

In a large room containing a teleport chamber and its separate control console, a blackened hand reaches for a lever, squeezes the grip to release it, and pulls. The owner of the hand gasps and falls, cogs turn, and the hand turns to dust. Light fills the teleport chamber the Doctor and I appear, coughing and gasping. The machinery slows and stops. I open the curved perspex door of the teleport chamber and steps out followed by the Doctor who closes the behind him. He remembers the moment the Quantum Shade raven entered Clara's body, then scoops a handful of sand from the floor and lets it trickle through his fingers "if you think because she is dead, we are weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So, for your own sake, understand this. We are the Seer and the Doctor. We're coming to find you, and we will never, ever stop" I say.

The two of uscautiously leave the room and go anticlockwise along a curved corridor with deep square openings cut in the outer wall to admit light. The Doctor leans out of one to see the shadows of spokes cast on the ground far below. Then he looks up at the outside of a tall tower.

"The equipment in that room is consistent with an augmented ultra-long-range teleport. So, we're not more than a single light year from where we were, and we're in the same time zone" the Doctor says, we look up out of another opening at the sky then across a courtyard at more towers. Then we start to walk back clockwise "when the sun sets, we'll be able to establish an exact position by the stars. Then you'll have a choice. Come out, show yourself, or keep on hiding. Clara said we shouldn't take revenge. You should know, we don't always listen" the Doctor says, I find a spade with soil on it leaning against the inner wall.

"Oh, what's this? Well, are you gardeners? I hate gardening! What sort of a person has a power complex about flowers? It's dictatorship for inadequates. Or to put it another way, it's dictatorship. Come on! Chop, chop! The Doctor and the Seer will see you now! Show us what you've got! We just watched our best friend die in agony. Our day can't get any worse. Let's see what we can do about yours!" I shout.

A black and white circular image forms on the screens. It is a view of them, from someone looking through a narrow slit in a wall. We look out of the nearest opening at the wall across the courtyard. It has narrow slit openings, and there is a figure in pale grey veils standing at one of them. The two of us back away and check the view on the nearest screen. The hunchbacked figure turns away from the slit and moves along the corridor. According to the screens, the being moves slowly, as if it is dragging a leg. Each step is a thump, and we get closer. The Doctor wafts away a fly, then we retreat from the approaching sounds. The two of us run down a narrow corridor to a wooden door, but it is locked. We're about to run back, but the being is at the other end of the bridge.

"We know you. we've seen you before" the Doctor and I run back to the door and puts their hands on it "we used to know a trick, back when we were young and telepathic. Clearly, you can't make an actual psychic link with a door, for one very obvious reason. They're notoriously cross. We mean, imagine life as a door. People keep pushing past you. All of that knocking, but it's never for you. And you get locked up every night, so if you're just a little bit nice" the door unlocks "see, Clara? Still got it" I open the door to reveal a solid wall just a pace behind it. The monster is a few feet away "but we. Er, we can't actually see a way out of this we've finally run out of the corridor. There's a life summed up. Oh, now this is new. we're scared. We just realised that we're actually scared of dying" the monster has arrived and is just reaching out with its four-fingered hands when it stops dead "something I said? What did I say?" I shrug while the Doctor flicks a fly away.