"Gonna give them what they need," said the Doctor. "A hero." Catching Rose"s smirk and raised eyebrow, he added, "I don"t mean me. Hal Gryden. These people created him because they needed somebody. Least I can do is make him real for them I mean really really real make their dreams come true." real make their dreams come true."
"I don"t get it," said Rose. "You"re gonna what? pretend to be Gryden yourself?"
"And let everyone see him," realised Jack. "Or at least let them think think they"ve seen him. Don"t you get it, Rose? Then, when they think about Gryden, they won"t be imagining him they"ll be they"ve seen him. Don"t you get it, Rose? Then, when they think about Gryden, they won"t be imagining him they"ll be remembering remembering the Doctor." the Doctor."
"Using the left hemispheres of their brains instead of the right," ventured Rose, her brow furrowing as she remembered what the Doctor had told her.
"Best way to stop someone dreaming is to make their dreams come true," said the Doctor. "Should calm things down for a while. One problem."
"As always," said Rose cheerfully.
"Inspector Waller won"t be too chuffed about this."
"We"ve still got the hostages," Jack pointed out.
"Yeah, but the way the cops see it, ideas are more dangerous than any physical threat and we"ll be spreading ideas like mad. Soon as I start my speech soon as they see what I"m doing, and they will, on the infoscreens outside, just like the rioters will they"re gonna storm this building. Not much I can do about that. You"ll just have to be ready, all of you."
"We"re ready," said Jack.
"No, we"re not!" said Rose.
"As we"re ever gonna be," Jack amended. "We can"t hold them back, but we can buy you, say, ten minutes."
"Should be enough. I"ll need a camera person. Volunteers?"
One of the patients raised a tentative hand.
"Fine," said the Doctor. He clapped his hands together, took a deep breath and met the eyes of each of the onlookers in turn. "Well, then," he said softly, "I think it"s time to man the barricades!"
SIXTEEN.
There was a mattress blocking the barred window of the empty dorm, bolstered by a bed and a chest of drawers.
Rose peeled back the edge of it and looked out cautiously across the Big White House"s concreted grounds. From up here, she could see over the perimeter wall to where the road was swarming with black uniforms. More police bikes were arriving all the time and as she watched a black truck pulled up on the edge of her field of vision and cops started to unload equipment through its back doors.
She hated this part: when the plan was made and the risks spelled out, but before everything had kicked off. And this time it was worse, because she knew she couldn"t let herself think about what was to come.
It was the same for everyone, of course. She could feel their antic.i.p.ation, their fear, like a physical force. She was comforted by the weight of the table leg in her hand.
So long as she didn"t think about what the cops might be carrying.
The Doctor had never pretended he could save her from everything. Rose didn"t even want him to.
As if she hadn"t read his expression when he"d asked for a camera person, caught the flicker of his eyes towards her. He had to know by now that she wouldn"t have taken him up on his offer, his way off the front line. He had still had to make it.
She glanced at the TV screen on the wall. It was showing fires and riots and looting; people throwing concrete blocks at cops and even at the cameras. Rose could hardly believe she was looking at the same streets she had walked just a few hours ago. Everything had spun out of control so fast. It hardly seemed real.
One major channel, apparently, had been taken offair when its studios had been invaded. A police spokesperson was urging the public to remain calm, to stay in their homes until he broke down in tears and confessed to the world that there was nothing he could do, that his force was outnumbered and that, contrary to his previous statements, the truth was that everyone was going to die.
The programme"s editors cut back to a stunned newsreader who fiddled with her data pad and tried to think of something to say.
She was spared the effort as her image suddenly crackled and died. There was a brief burst of static, then a new picture wobbled uncertainly into view.
The Doctor was out of focus at first, visible only from the neck down. He rushed forward until his navyblue shirt filled the screen. He seemed to be having a row with the patient behind the camera; Rose cranked the volume up and heard m.u.f.fled voices. Blurred fingers clashed over the lens. Then the Doctor"s face dropped into view, ridiculously huge, his nostrils gaping like caverns. He blinked, grinned and backed away until he was perched on his desk, now perfectly framed.
"Um, yeah, hi," he said and he smiled again, selfconsciously. he said and he smiled again, selfconsciously.
Come on, Doctor, thought Rose, pull it together!
"You"re watching Static," said the Doctor, playing with his hands, said the Doctor, playing with his hands, "broadcasting on all frequencies for... for as long as we can. I think you all know me, though I might not look quite as you imagined." "broadcasting on all frequencies for... for as long as we can. I think you all know me, though I might not look quite as you imagined."
Rose looked out of the window again. From here she could see an infoscreen and the edge of another out in the street, and they were both displaying the Doctor"s image. His words were even subt.i.tled; presumably, that was automatic.
She wasn"t at all surprised, then, to see that a change had come over the cops. Most of them had just been milling about, but now they all moved with a purpose. Some of them were returning to their bikes, while others...
...most of them were surging through the front gates...
"They"re coming!" yelled Rose, racing out of the dorm into the corridor, careful to lock the door behind her. "The cops are coming!"
The warning was echoed from six other doors and was greeted by agitated murmurs all the way up to the stairs.
An elderly woman dropped the kitchen knife she"d been carrying and fell to her knees. She was laughing hysterically, but crying too. "You"re finished now, you fiction geeks!" she wailed. "You"re headed for a real big dose of reality. You just wait till they get you back in the operating theatres, you just wait!"
And, over the racket, Rose could just make out the Doctor"s voice: "I"m Hal Gryden and I"ve got something important to tell you." "I"m Hal Gryden and I"ve got something important to tell you."
The shouting began on the ground floor.
Rose"s stomach tightened at the sound. There were only a few people down there. Their job was to hold the doors as long as they could, then fall back to the stairs. At best, they would buy seconds but even seconds counted.
Only a few people. But Captain Jack was one of them. Rose and the rest of the thirdfloor army were crowded into the s.p.a.ce in front of the lifts, the more eager of them spilling out onto the stairs with their makeshift weapons. They were listening and waiting, in a silence so heavy that it could almost have suffocated her.
Domnic was beside her. He had slipped through the crowd, trying to make it look like a coincidence that he"d ended up just here. She smiled at him and he smiled back weakly, struggling to be brave.
Rose was picturing Jack in the thick of the fight downstairs, giving orders, dispensing jokes and innuendo to keep up the morale of his troops. Living up to a rank that she was almost certain he had bestowed upon himself.
They"d never get the better of him. She believed in him.
But what if something went wrong?
"I messed up," the Doctor was broadcasting, more confident now, getting into his role. the Doctor was broadcasting, more confident now, getting into his role. "I"ve been telling you that fiction"s good, and I stand by that. But I got one thing wrong. I was treating the symptoms, ignoring the cause." "I"ve been telling you that fiction"s good, and I stand by that. But I got one thing wrong. I was treating the symptoms, ignoring the cause."
Two of the four lifts began to rise. They rumbled past her floor, on their way to the fifth: a diversion, to make the cops think the Doctor was all the way up there.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. If everything was going according to plan, then Jack and a few others would be coming this way.
The lifts came to an abrupt halt, all at once, between the fourth and fifth floors. Jack had expected that, though. He"d known the cops would have an override device and he had taken precautions.
Fighting had broken out on the stairs, two floors down. Rose could hear booted footsteps and gunshots and yells. The cops must have run into the firstfloor defenders: a smaller force than was stationed up here, but their role was just as vital.
The Doctor was using the whole of this fivestorey block as his aerial. That would make it impossible to pinpoint his signal to a single room and the cops would be desperate to find it. Jack had reckoned they"d split their forces, try to search every floor at once. The longer they could be held up on the first, second and fifth floors, the more time the Doctor would have.
The fourth floor was reserved for the hostages and for those patients who couldn"t or did not wish to fight. They would surrender as soon as the first uniform appeared.
The lifts were heading downwards, pa.s.sing the third floor again. Rose swallowed anxiously. If the cops gained control over them...
But then, with a judder and a terrible screeching,they ground to a halt. The patients on the top floor had followed their instructions and jammed the gears.
The fighting was still coming closer, though.
It sounded as if the cops had reached the second floor, too soon. That meant they were already wading through the patients on the first, searching rooms, narrowing down the location of their primary target.
"There"s no need to fight, no point. It"s not what I wanted. I wanted you to dream of building, not of tearing things down."
Jack came barrelling out of the stairwell and Rose"s heart leaped at the sight of him. He was flushed with excitement. A small bruise grazed his temple and his grey jumpsuit had a tear down one sleeve.
"OK," he cried, "looks like we"re up. Good luck, everyone!"
And after that, there was no time for worries any more.
It looked like a solid force of black, surging towards her.
The police came charging up the stairs, preceded by a barrage of blue blaster fire. The defenders were tackling them, hitting them, but their helmets and padded armour absorbed most of the blows, and they were hardly slowed at all.
A couple of cops fell, but their colleagues didn"t care. They just trampled over them, as they trampled over their foes, climbing with singleminded purpose.
Rose was doing her best, but the people around her were inexperienced, half of them panicking, some trying to back out of the stairwell and run. She was pushed this way and that, just trying to find the room to swing her weapon. A blue ball of energy fizzed past her hip, to hit a young kid squarely in the stomach, flooring him.
Jack had gone into battle ahead of her. He was somewhere further down the stairs and she thought he must have been overrun because she couldn"t see him.
And then a cop was reaching for her, planting a gloved hand in her face, trying to push her over. She braced herself against two people behind her and kicked as hard as she could at his stomach. He was winded, doubled up, and Rose brought her table leg down hard. The cop"s helmet rang with the impact, the vibrations rattling the bones of Rose"s hands. The cop almost fell, but was caught by two of his colleagues behind him. Rose wrestled with him, tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the gun from his hand, but he held on to it with all his strength. Still, the two of them were effectively blocking the stairwell until the cop recovered his wits and gave Rose a push that sent her reeling.
Total time gained for the Doctor: about ten seconds.
"Rose! Rose!"
Someone was screaming her name. Rose realised that she had fallen back almost as far as the thirdfloor entrance. She fought her way out to Domnic and her eyes followed the direction of his pointing, trembling finger.
She was back in front of the lifts. From here, white corridors stretched in three directions: one straight ahead, leading to a T-junction, the other two left and right, meeting windows at the points at which they turned away. The windows had been barricaded, of course, as well as the defenders had been able to manage. But the barricade to the left was shaking, falling apart, and Rose could see a shadow behind it and hear, even over the clamour on the stairs, the whine of hoverjets.
She ran for the window, intending to sh.o.r.e up the last upended bed.
She was too late.
A bright light smacked her in the eyes and, when her vision cleared, there was a cop climbing through the window frame, through shattered gla.s.s, pushing chests of drawers and other clutter out of his way.
And another waiting to follow him, balanced on a floating disc outside.
And behind them, a third cop on a police bike, its engines straining to keep it this high, its searchlight glaring.
Rose ran at the first of the invaders, whirling her table leg, yelling to Domnic to help her. She met the cop before he could get into the building proper, caught him still straddling the window sill. She struggled to push him back out, trying not to think about whether he was padded well enough to survive a threestorey drop. One of his mates would catch him, wouldn"t they?
She was attempting to get his gun, but, like the cop on the stairs, he was too strong and Rose remembered what Jack had said about micromotors in their uniforms. Still, she almost had it until she realised that the cop on the disc outside had drawn his own gun and was aiming...
She ducked, using the body of the cop in the window as a shield.
She realised that this gun didn"t look like the others. It was bigger and silver.
And something whistled over Rose"s head, to land with a plop in the corridor behind her.
Some sort of a gas bomb. It was releasing fumes. Thin, green fumes.
Her first thought was to grab it, to hurl it outside, but her opponent had a grip on her arm and he yanked her back, away from it. Her hands flew automatically to his neck and she felt a catch there... No time to think. She just popped it, pulled the helmet from the cop"s head. His grip was released as he threw up his hands to stop her but he was a fraction too slow and Rose staggered back out of his reach.
Something was scratching at her throat. Her eyes were filling up and she knew the gas was to blame. She put on the helmet, noting that she could see perfectly through the visor, which was opaque from the outside, and that she could breathe again, stale but untainted air.
The cop had extricated himself from the window frame and was running at her. Rose could see his face now, albeit cast into shadow by the searchlight behind it. It was surprisingly young, pale, still suffering from acne and twisted in hatred for her. The gas was getting to the unmasked man he was wheezing and spluttering. There were tears on his cheeks, but he still had his micromotors, and he was driving her down onto her knees, raising his fist to strike.
And Domnic appeared from nowhere, through the green mist, screaming at the top of his lungs, cannoning into the cop and Rose got just the briefest impression of his face, all screwed up and teary, both eyes tightly closed.
Domnic and the cop fell, and neither of them got up again.
They weren"t the only ones.
Patients were running from the stairwell in all directions, desperate to escape from the gas, too many of them failing and as Rose watched helplessly, the barricade fell from the window beyond them and another gas bomb flew into the building.
The first cops had emerged from the stairwell and they were tussling with the weakened defenders. Some had already got past them and were opening hatches in dorm doors, checking inside for the Doctor.
Rose almost didn"t hear the hoverjets behind her until it was too late.
She whirled to see the police bike powering towards her, its rider hunching to fit through the broken window and yet still catching his shoulder painfully on the frame.
Rose"s first instinct was to flatten herself against the wall. Her second was for the people in the melee behind her patients and cops alike and as the bike brushed past her, still accelerating, she grabbed its rider and was pulled along with him.
Her flailing foot found the back of the saddle, giving her leverage, but she had only a second. Faces were starting to turn towards them, people starting to scatter but only b.u.mping into each other. What was this guy thinking?
She knew the answer to that one. Even cops could go fantasy crazy.
She reached over his shoulders, clamped her hands over his, squeezed hard, and just hoped that the brakes were in the handlebars of this thing.