Oscar looked embarrassed. Not only had he had his face drawn all over by tiny aliens from another planet, but now even girls in peril were refusing his help.
Amy smiled. 'Ahem, whole city in danger. You're the only cop to have avoided being captured. I think they're going to need you up here, don't you?' Oscar was wavering, so she ploughed on.' I need you up top. Whatever Strebbins is planning, you need to stop it. The more men she sends out, the more people she's giving to the Vykoids.'
Oscar still hesitated, and Amy felt touched by his old-fashioned chivalry.
'C'mere.’ she gestured to him. 'You've been brilliant. Just don't think of me as an ordinary girl and that'll put your mind at rest. Thanks for your help.'
Amy planted a big kiss on his cheek. He blushed, and Am y laughed, 'From now on, though, just
137
DOCTOR WHO
remember, what you city slickers need is a small-town girl to show you how to do it!'
With that, Amy zipped off, running down the steps to the Subway station:
138
Inside the Subway station,
it was dark and gloomy. With all the New Yorkers safely inside their homes, the platform looked neglected and sad. From what Amy could see, the ticket-booth attendants and guards had long abandoned their posts.
Amy peered inside the empty ticket booth, and tried the door marked 'Staff'. Everything was locked up, and there was no sign of the Doctor. She made her way to the platform, but realised there were very few places left to look. However much she hated the idea, she realised there was only one way for her to go - along the tunnel itself. She stared at the psychic paper, hoping for guidance, but it was still glowing with the same message: I'm below you.
Was the Doctor was a little bit psychic, she 139
DOCTOR WHO
wondered. Maybe it wasn't just the paper that could read minds; perhaps he could do it as well. That would explain how he was able to appear so clever all of the time - if he just read the mind of the person he was talking to and said everything they knew back at them.
Just at that moment, she thought, she could have done with something a little more helpful than I'm below you. Left or right? She didn't even know that much. If the Doctor was in danger, she probably had very little time, and going the wrong way might mean she got there too late. But how could she be sure?
Only one thing for it. She closed her eyes tightly, imagined the Doctor, used all she could to reach out for him with her mind...
... No. She felt nothing. Amy felt a bit stupid for even trying, and also pleased. She didn't like the idea of the Doctor being able to see inside her mind.
The decision remained. Left or right? If only something could make her choose.
The low growl made her jump. Amy opened her eyes to see an urban fox stalking out of the dark, its eyes glowing eerily blue in the shades of the station.
That made her mind up. She leapt onto the tracks and headed off to her left, away from the angry fox, walking to downtown New York the unconventional way. With all of the power in New
140
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
York out, Amy had to move slowly, feeling her way through the gloom. Oscar's torch could show her the tracks ahead, but the gaping blackness of the runnel beyond was a forbidding mystery, and Amy had no idea what she'd find in the dark, or who might be trying to stop her getting to the Doctor.
Part of Amy wondered how she was going to save the Doctor when she got there - but she knew she had to try. She'd seen the Doctor come up with clever plans on the spur of the moment and thought to herself that she'd be as brilliant as him if she had the opportunity to do it. But nagging away at her was how helpless she'd been when Oscar was being tormented by the little midgets. Still, she'd got him out in the end. At the moment the score was Amy Pond one, Vykoids nil.
The psychic paper glowed again and Amy eagerly opened it to see the message.
If you can see this, you're going the right way. If you can't see this, then.. Oh, haven't really thought that one through, have I?
Amy laughed. The message faded and then a new message came back onto it:
and HURRY UP!
This was quickly followed by:
PLEASE.
Amy started to move off, but the paper glowed yet again: Actually, ignore me, psychic link a bit hard to control, 141
DOCTOR WHO
so I may well be wittering on a bit, but anyway, less reading, more running!
Amused at his cheek, Amy hurried along the dark tracks into the unknown. As her eyes got used to the dark, she could make out more of her surroundings. The glossy posters and adverts soon gave way to cracked plaster and crumbling bricks, curving close above her head, with strange drips of water and curious green stains. Sometimes the runnel was close in around her; at other times it seemed cavernous and impenetrable in the gloom.
Not that Amy wanted to look too closely. Wherever the beam of her torch fell, Amy could see little furry black creatures scuttling out of the way. Rats. She told herself they were probably friendly ones. Like the one in Leadworth Primary School that they used to take home at weekends (until Ian's cat killed it). He was called Ratty, and the boys in class had liked to set him running up and down the girls'
necks.
Amy hadn't been scared then, and it would take more than rats to put her off her mission now. She thought to herself how funny it was that in all the games she used to play when she was 8 years old, the Raggedy Doctor had been the one saving her from mean boys and scary rats. Now she was having to go through a dank, vermin-infested tunnel to save him. Amy's amusement didn't last long, as she realised she'd probably always suspected this was
142
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
going to be the case. It was clear from the moment they met that he'd needed Amy Pond to sort out his life for him.
The tunnel opened out, and her torch showed a row of sidings that stretched out into the gloom. Parked up near to the line was an empty Subway train, standing idle on the tracks. For some reason seeing it sent shivers down her spine. It was like a ghost ship, or a haunted house. Something designed to be full of people felt wrong when it was quiet and so dark. It should be taking New Yorkers all the way to Coney Island, not sitting silent and still in the shadows.
The train looked far bigger and more mechanical from track level, and Amy hurried past. Unknown to her, a little pair of eyes peered out at her as she crept past. To the watching Vykoid's tiny ears, her timid footsteps sounded like the clunking boots of an unwieldy giant.
The tunnel was less flat than Amy expected. Above ground, New York may have been divided up into neat grids and numbered streets, but underneath the city the Subway sloped and twisted as it made its way from place to place.
The psychic paper glowed again.
Are you still there, Amy?
Wondering if he genuinely expected an answer, Amy looked up along the tunnel and saw a glow of light around the next bend. She raced forward,
143
DOCTOR WHO
running out into a vast Subway station. Brand new and shiny, this was part of the Mayor's regeneration scheme, and it looked posher than most buildings in Leadworth. The space was dimly lit with hundreds of tiny lamps, no bigger than pencil sharpeners.
Amy approached slowly and carefully. Straining her eyes, she could see that the floor of the huge platform looked bumpy and uneven. As she moved closer, the torchlight revealed the true nature of the bumps. All along the platform, people had been tied up and covered with blankets.
Hauling herself up off the tracks, Amy crouched down beside the nearest person. His legs had been bound, and there was a gag in his mouth. Panic rose in Amy. Everywhere she looked people were lying, trussed up. The Vykoids were using this as a storage for captured humans.
A set of doors swung open, and Amy hit the ground, fast.
Just in time. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a blur of colours and high-pitched grunts of exertion as the Vykoids dropped off another load of people.
Their methods were extraordinary. A team of Vykoids would carry in a body, and lay it down for trussing by a separate group. They worked like mechanics at a Formula One pit stop. The team specialising in tying the gags around the prisoners' mouths would take a piece of cloth five times longer than they were, and spread it out like they were 144
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
shaking a sheet. Then they gently lowered it over the mouth, and a separate Vykoid tied a knot behind the head.
Meanwhile, a second team tied a cord around each hand and, attaching it to a miniature Vykoid crane, hauled each hand until they were floating together, zombie-like above their captive's chest.
On a signal, both hands were dropped and a waiting team of Vykoids snapped a long chain cord tightly around it. This looked like the most dangerous part of the operation, and Amy imagined that every Vykoid dreaded being responsible for cuffing the giants. The feet were taken care of by two teams of Vykoids on mini-bulldozers. They had attached special jaws to the bulldozers and, facing each other, the two bulldozers gradually pushed the ankles together. Occasionally they paused and shouted out for someone to throw more ball bearings under the ankles so they would move more easily.
Once the prisoner's feet had been pushed tight together, a mesh of nettings was dropped over the ankles, and sealed together with some sort of heat gun.
After they'd been trussed up, the bodies were shunted along to a freshly scrubbed section of platform where white-coated Vykoids opened the eyelids of the prisoners, and dropped something into their eyes, with tiny pipettes. It took two Vykoids to hold each pipette, which looked like cannons in their little hands.
145
DOCTOR WHO
Amy wasn't sure, but she thought she saw them take a lunch break during all this. And had she seen a visit from what looked like an inspector with a clipboard, or was she just cracking up under the pressure? Maybe he was a Union Rep, checking up on the minutes they'd been working, and that Health and Safety regulations were being followed.
'Wow!' Amy thought. They've been waiting thousands of years, and they've been planning all that time.'
She watched in awe, as twenty-five people were processed in this way in under a minute, then neatly tucked under blankets. It was as if they wanted to keep the prisoners as safe and warm as possible. Amy remembered what the Doctor had said the captured people would be used for, and shuddered in horror.
Everyone around her was about to be taken to a faraway planet.
They would never again see their families or eat a doughnut or drink an expensive takeaway coffee.
As soon as the Vykoids left, Amy started to untie the man next to her. He was a big bloke, still wearing his dirty work clothes and a high-visibility jacket. He was clearly a builder, dragged away from some night-time work site. Tearing off his gag, Amy saw that he was fast asleep, breathing calmly, and actually snoring a little. The drops she'd seen the Vykoids put in their eyes were probably keeping them out of it, Amy thought. And if the Vykoids
146
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
were finding it that easy to process a big man like him, what chance did the rest of New York have? By the time the sun rose, New Yorkers would have been stolen from their beds and trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys.
Another of the bodies seemed to move. Treading carefully, but still making a few people squirm as she stepped on them, Amy made her way towards it. With delight, she saw that it was the Doctor.
'Oh, here you are.’ she told him. 'You could have been kidnapped to a luxury bar, or maybe the sixth floor of Macy's.
But no. You chose a disgusting sewer. Again. Shall we take a minute to reflect? They caught you. Here I come, Amy Pond, saving the day!' She took the gag off the Doctor's mouth.
'Second thoughts, I could get used to this.' She put it back on.
'Only joking! I wouldn't leave you like this. Or would I?'
Amy loved the way his face went slightly flushed when he was on the back foot. She pulled the gag from his mouth again, and the Doctor looked so pleased she thought he was about to kiss her.
'Amy Pond! Never have I been so glad to see you!'
Amy leant in closer. 'What is that you have stamped on your face?'
The Doctor winced. 'Funnily enough I can't tell... Can you untie my leg?'
Amy was too busy looking at the writing on his 147
DOCTOR WHO
forehead. 'Now that is good, that is priceless. I told you you were skinny. Even the pint-sized invaders agree!'
Written on the Doctor's forehead, in tiny red letters, was:
'Suitable for light manual labour only.'
Reaching through the gloop, Amy untied the Doctor's feet and retrieved the sonic screwdriver from a box, where it had been labelled 'Possible rock-cutting tool.'
As soon as he was free, the Doctor started on Amy: 'You took your time! I was the first one they brought down here, now look at everyone here.'
Amy raised an eyebrow, not willing to be knocked off course by the Doctor. 'Ahem, avoiding the obvious here... I.