9781785949753 by Smakprov Media AB

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Hello, Sweetie!

This book is for anyone who’s always wanted to put themself in my fabulous shoes. Well, who wouldn’t? I’m a professor of archaeology, writer of Melody Malone detective mysteries, a time-travelling marvel, an intimate of the Doctor . . . and, as you’ll discover within these very pages, incarceration in Stormcage Containment Facility cannot cramp my style. And what style! (Did I mention my shoes?)

You’ll take my role in this adventure. Read the first entry, decide what I should do next, and then turn to that numbered entry in the book. It reveals the result of your choice, and our escapades continue with each new option that you take at the end of each entry.

Want to keep track of where you’ve been? There are some handy boxes to tick to show the choices you’ve made – think of those as your ball of thread in the Minotaur’s labyrinth. (Which reminds me of a very bad first date I once had – though that’s a tale for another time!)

Beware – it’s a tangled universe of risks and reversals. Some of your choices will be brilliant, while others will turn out to be unwise. You can start again from entry 001 at any time because the whole thing’s a bit . . . oh, don’t make me say it . . . timey-wimey.

Ready to make your first choice? Or should I say, my first choice. And don’t you dare skip ahead and read things out of sequence . . . spoilers!

Now turn the page to begin.

River x

001

An alarm blares, and you’re instantly awake. It doesn’t matter where you are, what situation you’re in, after years of adventuring, your body and brain know that a few moments’ sleepiness could be the difference between life and death, and they react accordingly.

But the alarm can’t be for anything major. No one’s rushing to deal with an emergency. There’ve been quite a few attempted break-ins recently, the sort that are no real threat – the automated security systems simply do their job and zap. It’s probably another one of those. Yes – the alarm’s already been cut off. Your sleep was disrupted for nothing.

You hear voices outside your cell and lie still, trying to listen. It’s a couple of guards chatting to each other as they saunter down the corridor. Guards at the Stormcage Containment Facility are supposed to stay well away from the prisoners – especially the extra- extra-top- security prisoners like you. But somehow, the rules never seem to apply to Professor River Song. Perhaps it’s your smile. Perhaps it’s your devil-may- care attitude. Perhaps they can’t quite believe that someone as charming and friendly as you could really be guilty of the terrible crime you’re supposed to have committed: the murder of the Doctor. (Spoiler: you are and you aren’t guilty. It’s complicated.)

You listen in on their conversation. Maybe your sleep wasn’t disrupted for nothing after all! This particular alarm was alerting the prison to a ship entering its airspace (not that there’s any air out there).

A new prisoner is being brought in.

Now, that’s a pretty big deal. Stormcage is for the worst of the worst. Well, the worst of the worst, and you. That means you’re looking at someone on the level of the Master, or Magnus Greel, or the Vesag Domino. Someone pretty scary. ‘Better not

leave me alone with him,’ you hear one of the guards say. ‘I had friends there.’

You strain to hear more but the guards are already out of audible range. That’s frustrating.

You know what the procedure is for new inmates. There’ll be a complete lockdown for current prisoners while the defences are switched off briefly to allow entry. The shackled prisoner will be taken first to the decontamination showers for complete chemical disinfecting, then led through five layers of security to the isolation cell. Calling it ‘the isolation cell’ is amusing because it implies that there’s some sort of socialising going on in the other cells, when of course no prisoner is allowed contact with any other prisoner at any point. What it means in practice is that if, theoretically, there was a prisoner who regularly escaped their cell to hang out with other inmates, getting to the isolation cell would take them just a little bit longer.

You smile. You always appreciate it when the guards do something to alleviate your boredom and it’s been ages since you’ve had an extra challenge. Getting to the isolation cell in under eight minutes – your current record – might be a fun thing to try later.

Although . . . it would be good to know who you’d find at the end of that. You might be very cosmopolitan, but there are people you’d rather cut off your right arm than meet – unless, of course, it was the kind of meeting where you were aiming a gun at their head, or perhaps something more elaborate with, say, rusty thumbscrews and several dozen trained mole-rats.

You’re considering your options when another alarm sounds, but once again it’s cut off quickly. That means that the ship has docked, and . . . yes, there it is. A green light bathes your cell and the corridor outside. Even you wouldn’t try to get out during lockdown – not if you wanted to keep all your body parts in an aesthetically pleasing order.

The new prisoner has entered Stormcage.

Lockdown won’t last long. The energy field uses up vast quantities of power so it’s not kept running a second more than it needs to be. You sit and twiddle your thumbs, trying to figure out your next move. And suddenly . . .

You’re disorientated. You’re sitting up on your bed, but it feels as though you’re lying down – and standing upright – and heading in many different directions. Your head’s going one way, your stomach’s going another, your legs are running left and right and forwards and backwards. You feel nauseous and curl up into a ball. All you can do is wait for the sensation to pass.

Eventually you open your eyes and find that your cell has returned to its usual gloom. That means the energy field’s been deactivated. Lockdown is over.

Turn to 014

002

Your eyes adjust quickly as you slip through the fissure in the rocky outcrop and into a cave. Behind you, the little stream gurgles over pebbles towards the river.

You adjust your torch so that its beam splays out ahead of you to reveal a space twice your height. All right, you think, let’s see where this leads.

Water splashes towards you from the darkness, spilling over your boots and soaking your socks. There’s flat, firmer ground to one side and you can pick up the pace. The stream may trickle through this place, but now a River runs through it.

Stalactites drip overhead. Nothing more than spikes of calcium salts, and no indication of taranium ore.

You’re starting to wonder whether anyone could be concealed in the dark. The torchlight reveals no side tunnels or caverns to divert you. What you do see is a pinprick of light ahead of you. Not someone else’s torch, and not a reflection, but a flash of sunlight approaching as you hasten onwards.

The opening grows larger, and you slow your pace. The water in the stream now flows in the direction you’re moving into the brightness. You’ve reached the cave exit.

Sunlight flares as you step warily out onto hard, dry, grey clay. There’s the sound of rippling water nearby. Once your eyes have adjusted to the brightness, you can make out a swiftly flowing channel flanked by muddy banks.

You’re almost unsurprised to see a pool of becalmed water to your right, with a wizened olive tree stooped over it like some impossibly aged Narcissus. In the pool, moored to one tangled branch by a grubby length of rope, is a kayak.

When you turn away from the kayak to look back at the cave you’ve just stepped from, you see it is a tall fissure in the rock of a steep hill. To one side of the opening, a mossy path

winds its way awkwardly up the incline through a covering of scrubby gorse.

If you decide to use the kayak, turn to 184

If you choose instead to climb the path up the hill, turn to 093

003

The rift has punched a hole through all dimensions, but you know it must have a specific origin. There will be one reality – and only one – where every action, choice, reaction, all came together in the exact way to create that conflux point. If you can disrupt that . . .

But first you have to find it, which is much, much more easily said than done.

However, you’re a child of the TARDIS and you’re in a time machine with a quantity of taranium. You couldn’t get more temporally tuned-in if you tried. Temporal and dimensional aren’t the same, but they are related. The rift has definitely made your time-senses tingle. Perhaps that’s enough . . .

With your hands on the ship’s controls, you allow your mind to drift away, to search for the still point from which all the dimensional chaos springs.

And find it.

You throw out a mental grapnel and reel yourself in. It’s disorientating, nauseating, discombobulating . . . but it works.

You step out of the Dalek timeship, and immediately see – yourself!

You’re unconscious, stretched out as part of some strange contraption and wearing a hideous metal cap with wires sprouting from it.

Now it makes sense. This is what Silex wanted you for. You’re the core of his machine. You will be the creator of the rift. No wonder you were able to find this dimension so much more easily than you’d anticipated. Your mind was calling to itself.

You have the time destructor, and here’s the obvious target – yourself. If you undo the existence of this River Song, the rift will never form.

But she’ll be time locked. You’ll be time locked. You will never

have existed. Time-locking yourself . . . that’s not just any old paradox. That’s the granddaddy of all paradoxes. The gigaparadox. The ultra ouroboros. It’s universe-ending. That’s off the table. So what remains? Could you get yourself out of this? No. You’re already too close for comfort: the Blinovitch Limitation Effect is no joke. You could leave, and hope for the best. Or . . . you could kill that other you. You know yourself, and you think you’d be okay with that. Better than what’s in store.

If you leave, turn to 084

If you choose to sacrifice your other self, turn to 066

‘Going so soon?’ says the prisoner, as he struggles with his manacles.

You waggle your fingers in a breezy wave as you head out, just as casual. ‘I’m late for a very important date. Ciao for now.’

Oh, you’ll get to the bottom of this mystery of course, but it’s going to be on your terms, not his.

You give yourself another spritz of perfume and navigate the defences – nine minutes twenty-seven, not your best time, but far from your worst, especially when you’re distracted.

You’d remember those eyes if you’d seen them before, of that you’re certain, but the way he looked at you – that wasn’t someone who recognised you from a mugshot or the cover of an archaeology book. That was someone who knew exactly who Professor River Song was, and you’re going to stay out of his way until you have at least an equal amount of knowledge.

As you approach your cell, you see a pair of armed guards heading towards it from the other direction. How annoying! They’ll see you’re gone.

You sprint ahead noiselessly. But even though you reach the cell first, you know they’ll spot the gate opening as you let yourself back in. The glamour perfume won’t help with that. Then the whole prison will go on high alert and everything will be such a faff !

Just as you’re debating what to do, an alarm goes off. You duck out of the way as the guards run past you. Saved by the bell!

If you retrace your steps to find the cause of the alarm, turn to 159

If you take advantage of the distraction to let yourself back into your cell unseen, turn to 082

005

The Dalek ship feels darker, more sinister now that Hennessey has gone. You study the controls briefly but you’re pretty confident you know what you’re doing. As the ship takes off with the grinding groan of time getting grated into particulate parts, you set the controls to take you thirty-six hours into the future, close to the area in which your manipulator set you down.

While you wait for the systems to calibrate the journey, it occurs to you that the on- board Dalek databanks may hold helpful information.

‘What do you know about Tgalin?’ you wonder aloud.

On a screen comes a dusky image of an icy world, its poles marked as if with rouge. SITE OF DALEK OUTPOST is written there. You note the date beside and translate into Earth-relative. ‘A few million years ago,’ you realise, and prompt for further information.

The base is long- since defunct, or more accurately, timelocked. There’s not much info, but it seems Silex was the ruler of Tgalin in a time of decline. He entered into an alliance with the Daleks in the hope of restoring glory days, but the Daleks waged war from Tgalin – Time War against Gallifrey, presumably – and left nine-tenths of its population stranded and sterile. Silex was declared a war criminal and exiled by the survivors. Ironically that was what saved his life, as Tgalin was utterly destroyed when key battles from the War were replayed by the Nightmare Child over and over, devastating that entire sector of space.

A sector sitting squarely in the middle of the cat’s- cradle journey Jasmarna has been etching into creation. Silex wants to get back to his long-lost empire – whatever it takes.

With a shiver, the Dalek ship comes to rest. You check the readings outside. There actually aren’t any. What’s happened out

here on Kembel’s surface must have hollowed all hell out of the planet. You suppose it’s not called a time destructor for nothing.

To go outside, turn to 171

To keep checking the databanks, turn to 137

Silex shrugs. ‘I imagined you as having a certain degree of intellectual curiosity, Professor Song. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. You are exactly where I want you – where I need you, to be. Whether you understand the details makes no difference. You have no choice as to what happens next.’

And you don’t. You have to turn to 165

The corridors leading deeper into the refinery are smooth and gently lit by glowing panels in the ceiling. At least, they are so long as you remember to keep your concentration up. If you relax too much, the passageways become cold, shadowy stone, and ancient artefacts of indeterminate origin stand on pedestals beneath flickering torches. They tempt your professional interest – as intended, of course – and you want to pick them up, study them, catalogue them. Resisting the urge brings you almost physical pain, and you keep moving onward.

At least until you nearly run into a figure hovering just above the floor in the dim light. You mistake her for a child with grey skin at first, suspended in mid leap. Then you see the large, dark eyes and the rabbit-like ears held in balance either side of the round face.

‘A Goblin?’ you breathe, fascinated. You shake your head, concentrate hard, trying to see through the illusion. But you can’t. This really is a Goblin – and from the looks of things, suspended in time.

Deliberate trap, or a temporal twist of taranium? If the latter, perhaps this Goblin has been exposed to a large quantity of the stuff . . .

If you want to try to free the Goblin, turn to 044

If you decide Goblins are more trouble than they’re worth, turn to 097

008

‘Pick your times, don’t you,’ you pant. You draw your pistol, but a swipe of the Cyberman’s steel boot jars the weapon from your grip and sends it spinning across the floor.

It bends over you, one arm swinging down like a hammer. You roll aside as the impact pulverises the rock where your head had been.

You scramble up and run from the Cyberman. It fires its weapon. The energy blast misses you but strikes the rocky wall of the launch bay, peppering your face with shrapnel. With a gasp of pain, you recoil.

The Cyberman is about to fire again when the cargo ship initiates warp drive. The forces unleashed turn the Cyberman into so much slag and clinker, but there’s nothing left of you but a shadow on the ground.

THE END

‘Instead of wasting time throwing accusations about,’ you say, ‘let’s find out what’s actually wrong with you.’

You kneel down and get closer to the bars. He’s not even groaning any more. In fact, it looks like he’s barely breathing.

Cautiously, you reach out to touch his cheek. Despite the sweat on his forehead, his skin is as cold as ice. His incredible violet eyes stare upwards, focused on nothing. He’s giving a pretty good impression of a dying man. Whatever his wishes are, you need to summon assistance.

You try to pull your hand back – but you can’t. It’s like you’re stuck to him! ‘Hey!’ you cry, but he doesn’t react.

A sensation spreads through your body, your every cell tingling – and not in a good way. You start to feel extremely weak.

The prisoner’s eyes are blinking, his pupils no longer fixed on the middle distance. There’s colour in his cheeks again. It seems as though when you lose strength, he gains it. If only you could summon help . . .

You have an idea, and point your laser tweezers towards the alarm on the wall outside the cell.

The beam dances across the wall as you try to straighten your weakened arm. The prisoner thrusts his own arm through the bars in an attempt to grab the tweezers, and as you summon all your remaining strength, you not only manage to activate the alarm, you also pull away from him.

You fall heavily onto the floor and hear a tinkle of broken glass – your bottle of glamour perfume has shattered.

The man picks up one of the discarded manacles, an imposing chunk of metal. You might be covered by a glamour for now, but nevertheless you try to drag yourself backwards, further away from the cell. You need to get out of the range of any makeshift weapon.

But you’re not his target. As you watch, he starts smashing the metal ring into his own face.

A small white object tinkles to the floor of the cell – a tooth. The man has knocked out one of his own molars! That is not, in your opinion, normal behaviour. He picks up the tooth. It glints in the low lighting and you can see it’s not really a tooth. He must have had whatever it is implanted in his mouth in order to smuggle it inside Stormcage. Good trick. It would have taken a lot of ingenuity to make it undetectable.

What is it? A drug? A bomb? Some tiny piece of advanced tech? It’s unlikely to be anything benign; you’d bet your bottom credit on that.

You don’t know what this man’s up to, and the state you’re in, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. You might as well have an OUT OF ORDER sign hanging around your neck. Right now, you’re useless. You watch in trepidation as the prisoner starts to apply pressure on the tooth-like object and you brace yourself for what’s to come – an explosion?

But instead of there being a loud bang, the prison suddenly falls silent.

The alarm stops. The lights go out, leaving you with just the faint luminescence of the irradiated walls. He’s cut the power! That’s the only explanation. But is it just for the isolation block, or for the whole of Stormcage? The technology, not to mention the ingenuity, it would take to do something like that would be incredibly complicated. It would take someone like the Doctor . . .

Surely not . . .? An ingenious genius in disguise – that sounds very Doctorish.

But no. You peer through the semi- darkness to where the prisoner is staring through the bars of his cell. The hardness you’ve seen in those eyes . . . You’ve witnessed some of the Doctor’s worst moments, times when he’s had to make impossible

decisions, but never once has there been the faintest trace of cruelty on his face.

More than that, you would recognise him. Oh, it sometimes takes you a second or two to register a new face and you’ve definitely been taken by surprise a few times. It took you a while to get your head around that little scruffy bloke with the recorder, and the romantic one in the Byron cosplay with the shoe fixation was a bit of a surprise too. Yet you know, absolutely know, that even the most sophisticated disguise or masquerade can’t hide him from you for long. The man you are looking at is categorically not the Doctor.

Heavy footsteps are approaching. Guards? Yes. You recognise voices as commands are barked. ‘You four, check isolation. You four . . .’

The instructions continue as you lie weakly in the shadows. Part of you is tempted to stay hidden and let things carry on without you; no point in inserting yourself into trouble that doesn’t concern you. That’s simple self-preservation.

But you think further ahead and realise the difficulty of your current position. Not only are you alone with a potential psycho but, if the power is restored and security protocols are activated while you’re outside your cell, you could end up with your feet swapping places with your liver and your intestines tied in big bows around your neck.

You make up your mind to reveal yourself to the guards when they appear.

Except they don’t appear. Instead of more footsteps, you hear gunshots and screams. Then more gunshots. Then more screams. Finally, the footsteps come again. But the people who arrive in the isolation block aren’t Stormcage guards. You don’t know who – or even what – they are. In the faint light you see five figures, though you can’t make out their faces.

Because they don’t have any faces . . .

There are five of them, their features unformed, like modelling clay figures shaped by a small child.

Two of them immediately go to the cell door, as though responding to silent orders, and begin work on the lock. One of the remaining figures is standing between you and the exit. In your weakened state it’ll be hard enough to drag yourself across the room; you definitely don’t have the flexibility to manoeuvre yourself past them.

You shakily adjust your tweezers. Even at maximum power they won’t cause serious injury, let alone kill, but they should definitely create a path to the exit for you.

You aim at the figure standing between you and the exit. Your arm wavers, but you get them in the shin! They cry out in surprise – a deep, male voice – and raise their own weapon, as you try to force yourself forward.

But you’ve overestimated how much strength you can summon. Even your best effort can barely push you a few inches forward, and the barrel of the pistol is pointing your way – they might not be able to see you, but you’ve given away your position.

The tweezers are in your hand. You only have one last desperate hope . . .

Roll a dice:

Lucky 6? Turn to 018

Otherwise, turn to 087

010

You feel the familiar tug at your atoms as they stream through space and time . . .

‘Aargh!’ You find yourself ripped roughly out of the vortex almost immediately. You’re falling . . .

You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe! You’re falling and you can’t breathe . . .

You slam onto something. You can breathe again – or you’ll be able to once you’ve recovered from the impact. You scrabble desperately for a handhold on the sloping surface you’ve landed on. Once you’re fairly sure you’re still alive, and might remain so for the next few minutes at least, you’re able to take in your surroundings – and they’re terrifying.

You work out where you are. You’re underneath Stormcage. You’re on the roof of a spaceship with its own gravity field. Outside that gravity field float bodies: some clearly Stormcage personnel, others . . . something else. And beyond those bodies is the entrance to hell.

It’s like a tornado, a whirling maelstrom spinning upwards from a point somewhere beneath the ship that crackles with strange energy. Your time- senses are fully aware that there’s something very wrong going on here.

You feel sick . . . so sick . . . Your vortex manipulator has gone haywire, the maelstrom is a magnet drawing it in – and you with it. You think of the intruders in your cell . . . and other faces spring to mind. Faces just as disparate, but so deeply loved – and you know you have one last desperate hope.

You grab your laser tweezers and send a pulse through the vortex manipulator. Will it work? It’s a million to one shot – but the Doctor’s beaten worse odds than that before . . .

Turn to 099

011

It’s time to split. You turn your back on the Boy and run from the room into the corridors as rumbling vibrations build all around. As you run, you try in vain to raise anything more than a flicker from your vortex manipulator. The only way you might just clear the danger zone is by pushing your stamina to the limits.

You’re almost at the exit when a huge shockwave knocks you off your feet. The corridor caves in around you. Steel sheeting thunders down beside you together with a shower of rock dust. Coughing, panting, you get back up.

Keep going, you tell yourself.

A square of sunlight ahead shows you the way out of the catacombs of the conversion plant. You put on a surge of speed.

But fresh tremors, harder and deeper than before, break the ground under your feet. Your heart skips as you fall into blackness beneath a ton of rubble.

You don’t get up again.

THE

END

012

‘I’m River Songbird,’ you declare, hands on hips. ‘The most famous songwriter this side of the Quark Nebula. And you are . . .?’

‘Flashpin Kadark. I’m on Jasmarna’s staff.’ The purple creature stares at you. You wonder if the lipstick’s done its thing. ‘You must know,’ she says at last, ‘that Jasmarna has a strict policy of never performing or producing any material other than her own.’

‘She will change her mind,’ you say confidently. ‘I told you, I’m River Songbird. A musical genius. My songs have even charted on Hastus Minor.’

Flashpin’s eyebrows rise so far they almost leave her purple head. ‘Impressive. Nevertheless, Jasmarna cannot make music with anyone else.’

‘Why not let me try to convince her? A good collab is great for business.’

‘Not for Jasmarna’s business. Now, I’m afraid you must leave.’

‘But I’ve come a long way—’

With a roar, Flashpin inflates to three times her current size, knocking over a nearby chair. She extends her enormous arms and grabs you round the shoulders.

‘You’re leaving,’ she hisses.

If you refuse to go, turn to 140

If you go quietly, turn to 127

013

You know the wound is bad when you see the crimson stain spreading through your pale cloak. You’ve been shot in the stomach. You clutch the heavy fabric against the injury, but it’s already soaked through.

You hear a crunch and clatter and look up to see the surgical crew tackling the Cyberman. It doesn’t go well. With each fierce swipe of a Cyber- arm, bones shatter. Implants short out. The Boy’s people go down.

‘Subtle,’ you mutter, staggering forward.

Stealth mode abandoned, the Cyberman stalks over to meet you halfway. ‘You are compromised,’ it states. ‘Loss of blood. Severe internal injuries. You will cease function imminently. Logic dictates immediate repair.’

You snort. ‘Beautiful bedside manner.’

The Cyberman pulls one of the twitching, half- processed patients off their gurney opposite a shining metal panel and dumps them on the floor. Moments later, it’s lifting you onto it.

‘No,’ you insist. ‘No way . . .’

The Cyberman crosses to a side-room where racks of Cyberconversion suits stand like empty sentinels along the walls. ‘You will be preserved without pain,’ it says calmly.

Metal braces snap around your wrists and ankles.

‘You will be upgraded.’

‘I don’t want this!’ you hiss, and the effort spikes agonisingly in your wound.

‘Your efficiency will be increased,’ the Cyberman states.

Wires thread under your skin and a plate locks over your ribs.

‘You will be made suitable to assist in the full conversion of this settlement.’

The words bring a rush of unexpected relief. Gratitude. Thank

heavens you’re being made so much better. So much stronger. It’s for the best. It’s right and efficient and, above all, logical. Then pain knifes everything from your mind, and you scream.

Turn to 176

014

You still feel as though you’ve been twirled around a dance floor by an overenthusiastic gorilla, but you can probably stagger on – if necessary.

You have a few items in your cell that aren’t quite what they seem – there’s the eyebrow tweezers with some distinctly noncosmetic functions for a start, and that almost-empty perfume bottle contains a few drops of a ridiculously rare substance that doesn’t actually make you invisible, but causes the eye of the beholder not to register your presence; invisibility by function, if not by fact.

So . . . what now?

If you give yourself a spray of glamour perfume and break out of your cell, turn to 102

If you conserve your supplies but break out anyway, turn to 074

If you decide to stay in your cell until you’ve recovered fully, turn to 082

9781785949753

STORMCAGE A RIVER SONG ADVENTURE

STORMCAGE

STORMCAGE A RIVER SONG ADVENTURE

ALEX KINGSTON

BBC BOOKS

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

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