Winner Takes All (18 page)

‘Now, you need to search around a bit. I'm hoping there's a sort of map thing, a plan, diagram, anything that looks like that.'

Robert began to explore the room. He felt nervous going past the frozen Quevvil – what if it came back to life just as he was in front of it? But he took deep breaths, and the monster remained statue-like, latest exhibition in the Chamber of Horrors, an expression of what might be shock still stuck on its hairy face.

On the wall behind them, he uncovered what the Doctor wanted. It was a bit like a tube map, only loads more complicated, all spaghetti lines twisting and turning and intersecting each other. Here and there tiny coloured lights blinked, some blue, some white. The white ones were moving along spaghetti strands, one noticeably faster than the others, while the blue remained immobile. As Robert watched, a white light became still, and changed to blue. A few moments later, another blue light flickered and disappeared.

‘That's it,' said the Doctor, looking quickly around before turning back to the screen. ‘Brilliant. Now for stage – how many stages have we had so far? Stage whatever of the plan.'

Rose soared over a Mantodean, the poor misguided creature having had the idea that stalking towards her with its jaws open would somehow worry her. Catch me if you can, she thought, leaping ever higher and faster.

She reached the top of a series of stone steps, and there she finally stopped, gliding to a graceful halt. She wasn't out of breath; she didn't ache or have a stitch. Technology like this, and they use it to further a war. Just went to show how people could be clever and yet have no brains at all.

Her hand went to her pocket – and pulled out her recently retrieved mobile phone. Her other hand started to press its keys. It scrolled through the address book. It stopped at a name. It pressed ‘dial'. It held up the phone to Rose's ear.

Mickey jumped when his mobile rang. To his astonishment, the display told him that it was Rose calling. He clicked it on hurriedly. ‘Hello? Rose?'

Rose's voice said, ‘Hello, this is the Doctor.'

Mickey took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. It still said ‘Rose'. That'd definitely been a female voice. Rose's voice.

‘You don't sound yourself, Doctor,' he said. ‘D'you have some sort of accident?'

‘You're probably a bit surprised,' the voice said. ‘Or more likely you've just tried to be witty. Rose can hear you but I can't, and she can't answer back, so you might as well just shut up and listen. I need you to do something. It's really important, and unfortunately I don't have anyone else I can ask.'

‘Thanks a lot,' Mickey muttered, convinced by the rudeness that this really was the Doctor, who was for some reason using Rose's voice to speak to him. And further than that, he really didn't want to speculate.

‘Now,' continued the Doctor, ‘I hope you're better at playing
Death to Mantodeans
than you seemed, cos believe me, you're gonna have to play like you've never played before . . .'

Rose listened to herself in some amazement as she outlined the plan. Her mouth was opening and her tongue was going up and down and words were coming out, and she couldn't do a thing about it. It was totally and utterly freaky.

And she seemed to have developed a northern accent.

Mickey was feeling slightly stunned. It was one thing to get a phone call from your ex-girlfriend, it was quite another to get a call from her new man using her vocal cords to speak to you, or something, and it was yet another thing entirely for him/her to casually drop into the conversation that she's – he's – calling from another planet, and needs your help to save the world again. Or a world, anyway, he wasn't too sure about that. All he knew was that the plan the Doctor had outlined was not only impossible, as well as bordering on the insane, but practically speaking totally difficult because it involved him having a telly, which he didn't any more. That actually felt like a far more insurmountable problem than the loony saving-the-world bits. It was getting latish now, nearly eleven, he'd have to find someone who'd let him come in and play a dozen games of
Death to Mantodeans
without asking awkward questions. If Jackie had been home he'd have had a chance – after the lecture about disturbing her beauty sleep . . . Maybe he could break in to Rose's flat – but if he got caught, the police wouldn't listen, they'd lock him up, and then who'd save the world?

A thought struck him. There was a telly at the youth club. The club was supposed to shut at ten, but Bob, who ran it, let some of the older lads hang out for longer if it wasn't a school night. Worth a go.

Mickey bundled all the games consoles into Mrs Burton's shopping basket on wheels, and limped off. The stairs were a bit of an ordeal, especially with the basket thumping down behind him, but he made it eventually.

As he headed down to the youth club, Mickey threw a quick glance up behind him, at Rose's flat. The windows were dark, of course.

The youth club windows were dark too, but he could hear something from inside. He tried the door – locked – then knocked, loud enough to be heard, not loud enough to wake up anyone nearby.

The noise inside stopped abruptly, but no one came to the door. Mickey knocked again, a bit louder. Still nothing. ‘Come on, open up,' he called, still trying for an impossible combination of loud and hushed. ‘It's Mickey Smith.'

After a few moments, he heard a key turn in the lock, and the door swung open a crack. A pair of defiant eyes stared back at Mickey. He recognised the face: it belonged to a lad called Jason Jones. Mickey thought it quite unlikely that Jason had permission to be here, especially considering he was accompanied by a distinct whiff of cigarettes and alcohol fumes.

Mickey pushed his way in. Jason shut the door, and sulkily followed Mickey into the main room. ‘What d'you want anyway, Mickey?' he said. Mickey knew he commanded some slight grudging respect round here, as an older, car-owning guy who had, at least for a while, been going out with by far the most attractive girl on the estate. Further kudos derived from his having been suspecting of murdering her, even though it'd turned out that he hadn't. Mickey had heard whispers that he had a gun collection, a knife collection, and several dismembered blondes under his floorboards.

There were two other lads in the main room, sat in front of the telly. Mickey recognised both of them. And to his horror, they weren't all he recognised. There, frozen on the screen, was a distinct image from
Death to Mantodeans.
Not the training level, the real thing. Mickey waited till the two of them had swung round to face him before answering Jason's question. ‘I want use of that telly, and your help. Does Bob know you're here?' he carried on before they could react. ‘And does your mum know you're sitting here with a can of lager and a fag?' he said to Anil Rawat, who nearly dropped his drink in fright. Mickey waited till all three heads had been shaken. ‘Well, if you want it to stay that way . . .'

They clearly did. Mickey took the empty chair in front of the telly, and Jason pulled up another one. Mickey held out a hand and the third lad, Kevin, passed him the control pad for the game.

‘It's your lucky night,' said Mickey. ‘Cos we've got a lot of games to play . . .' He pulled out his mobile, and began to call Rose.

The Doctor asked Robert to watch the tube map thing as he continued to play the game. After a while, Robert noticed something. As the Doctor made Rose turn right, the fastest of the white lights would turn right too. If Rose was going straight ahead, the same light would go straight ahead.

‘How many white lights altogether?' the Doctor asked.

‘Six,' said Robert. ‘Four of them are quite near the outside. One's further in, and Rose is furthest of all.'

‘So they're the active players,' said the Doctor. ‘The ones near the outside will be games that haven't long started. That'll be Darren Pye and the others, I reckon.'

‘Mr Snow and Mr and Mrs Nkomo,' said Robert. ‘What about the other one?'

‘A game that was already being played,' said the Doctor. ‘Could be

anyone.'

‘What about the blue lights?' Robert asked.

The Doctor hmmed. ‘You say you saw a white light turn blue, and a blue light go out?'

Robert nodded, then remembered the Doctor wasn't looking at him. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘Then I would think the blue lights are people in inactive games. They're standing there waiting for someone to move them again.'

‘Or for a Mantodean to find them,' said Robert, who'd realised what it must mean when a light went out. ‘And then . . .'

‘I'm afraid so,' said the Doctor. ‘Game over.'

SEVENTEEN

M
ickey was getting everyone organised while he was waiting for Rose – or for the Doctor – to answer the phone. The Doctor had explained that because the only sense he was sharing with Rose was sight, he'd have to keep looking at the phone to check if it was ringing, so Mickey would have to be persistent.

There was a black-and-white portable in the kitchen, and Mickey had got Jason to bring that in. Anil had booted up the youth club's ancient PC and was connecting to the Internet, and Kevin was sorting through the pile of consoles that Mickey had brought with him.

‘The trouble is,' Mickey was calling across to Anil, ‘anyone who's playing the game won't be checking the message board. And we don't want to get anyone starting a new game. But see if you can find anyone anyway. No one should have got any games from alienkillerl984 yet, cos he won't have had time to sell them on, but warn people he's a dangerous loony or something, just in case.'

‘OK,' said Anil.

Kevin had started to connect up a console to the portable television.

‘You can ignore ones that haven't got past the training level,' Mickey told him. ‘But if they have done, remember, you mustn't start a new game. Only find out if they've got a saved game that's still active.'

‘Yeah, you said,' said Kevin. He pressed a few buttons, waited for the screen to come to life. ‘Not this one,' he said.

‘Try the next one, then,' said Mickey. ‘Come on, lives are at stake.'

‘Yeah, right,' said Kevin. Out of the corner of his eye, Mickey noticed Kevin's finger circling round his right ear in the classic ‘he's a loony' gesture. Still, as long as they kept doing as they were told, he'd cope. He'd been called a lot worse. Much of it by the Doctor.

Speak of the devil . . . Mickey's phone was finally answered. ‘This is the Doctor,' said Rose's voice. ‘I hope you're paying attention. If you've found any active games, this is what I want you to do . . .'

Robert was still watching the map, his eyes darting between the six points of white light. Suddenly, one of them started to behave erratically, jumping first one way and then another. ‘Got one!' he called to the Doctor.

‘Brilliant,' the Doctor replied. He kept talking, under his breath, but Robert knew that the Doctor wasn't still talking to him, he was muttering the words he was making Rose say. ‘Good work, Mickey. Right, I'm sending Rose to meet your player. Keep doing exactly what I told you. If you feel resistance, you haven't overridden the controls properly. Rose, soon you'll meet another player. I can't undo the control disc on their forehead, not at this distance; once it's been activated one wrong move could make their brain go squish.' Robert shuddered at the thought. Thank goodness his disc had never been activated. ‘What I hope I can do, though,' continued the Doctor, ‘through you, using the sonic screwdriver, is undo the circuits that make people explode if they leave the Mantodean stronghold.'

‘You hope?' said Robert, worried.

‘I'm sure,' said the Doctor reassuringly. ‘I'm sure they won't explode.' He carried on speaking through Rose. ‘Mickey, you'll then follow my instructions from before. But you've gotta find all the other people in there too.' He turned to Robert. ‘How many are there?'

Robert ran his eyes all over the map, swiftly counting up. ‘Still six white lights,' he said.

‘Six people moving around,' the Doctor said. ‘One of them's you, Rose.'

‘Eight blue lights,' said Robert. As he watched, another of them was suddenly snuffed out. ‘Seven,' he said. ‘Seven blue lights. Someone else's just died.'

The Doctor reached back and squeezed Robert's shoulder. ‘Seven people stuck here and there,' he said, telling Rose and Mickey. ‘That's paused games, Mickey. That's people in trouble. You've gotta find them. That's twelve lives in your hands.'

‘So, no pressure,' muttered Mickey, staring at the screen in front of him. It showed a tunnel. Hard to believe that someone was really in that tunnel; harder to believe that the life of whoever it was depended on him right now.

‘Found one,' called Kevin, who was still trying the pile of consoles one by one.

‘Brilliant,' said Mickey. ‘Right, reactivate it, jump the person around like I showed you, and then wait for instructions.'

‘So . . . are we going to be getting the prize?' said Jason. ‘The one for winning the game.'

‘Yeah,' said Mickey. ‘We're gonna be getting the prize.'

Things were starting to become complicated – well, even more complicated. The Doctor, who could obviously keep a dozen things straight in his mind at one time, was relaying instructions to Mickey for both the games. Mickey was trying to control the one on the main telly, and pass the instructions on to Kevin too. It wasn't working. Mickey's poor controller was ending up going round in circles. He finally handed the control pad over to Jason, and concentrated on separating out the instructions for each game.