Touch The Sky: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 3]

Turn Left and Meet That Man

Turn Left and Meet That Man

(Turn Left: Part 3)

Matt never was quite sure what compelled him to run toward the giant web-star shooting lightning bolts. Maybe jet lag had simply drained him of all good sense. Whatever it was, it made him ignore the sound of Stacey calling after him.

"Matt! Where are you going? You'll get yourself killed!"

After a few moments, he was far enough away that the other man's shouts faded into the rest of the cacophony.

It took him twenty minutes, walking and jogging and dodging terrified bystanders and businesslike soldiers, to reach the edge of the lake.

The empty lake.

He wasn't sure what exactly had shot down the flying menace, but he watched it take a valiant beating before falling to pieces in the sky above. Soldiers ordered civilians to stay away but with a deep curiosity he couldn't quite explain, even to himself, he managed to dodge them. Police barriers were already set up, a heaving crowd pressing against them, and when no one was looking he dodged around the back of an army jeep.

A radio caught his attention, the woman on the other end addressing a soldier with callsigns he couldn't quite catch. He did manage to hear, "...what is your report? Over."

"From the evidence I'd say he managed to stop the creature," said the soldier, marching into view to reveal a man in all black except for the red beret on his head. "Some sort of red spider. Blew up the base underneath the barrier, flooded the whole thing. Over."

"And where is he now?" the woman demanded. "Over."

"We found a body, ma'am. Over."

As he spoke, a stretcher clearly bearing a body and covered in a red blanket was wheeled by, heading for an ambulance. Matt felt an odd surge as he watched it and had to resist the urge to stand up and blow his cover.

"Is it him? Over," the woman demanded.

"I think so. He just didn't make it out in time," the soldier said.

The stretcher hit a bump and a thin but strong-looking arm slipped from under the blanket, an odd silver device with a blue tip falling from the body's grasp and clattering to the pavement, forgotten there as the body was wheeled away.

"The Doctor is dead." The soldier cleared his throat. "Must have happened too fast for him to regenerate."

The paramedics lifted the stretcher onto the ambulance, the sound covering up whatever else the soldier said. After a moment he flicked off his radio.

"Escort the ambulance back to UNIT base," he ordered before striding off. Matt stared for a moment more before slipping back through the crowd again.

Caught up in wondering why the past few minutes had affected him so deeply, he didn't see the blonde woman in a blue bomber jacket running toward him until she nearly collided with him. "What happened?" she demanded, overshooting him by a few feet and spinning around to face him again."What'd they find?" Slightly out of breath, she continued, "I'm sorry, did they find someone?"

"I dunno," Matt answered. The woman glanced over her shoulder toward the chaos nearer the lake. "Some guy called the Doctor, I think."

"Well, where is he?" she asked, and he placed her accent as, surprisingly enough, English, though a small lisp distorted it slightly.

"They took him away," he said. She blinked. "He's dead," he added.

Her face fell and she stared at him blankly for several seconds.