Free Doctor Who: Lungbarrow by Marc Platt

directly out of the mirror as if he knew only too well that he was being spied on.
    The old woman cackled to herself. Her servant looked on, its carved, androgynous mask of a face devoid of emotion.
    Suddenly the air moved. There was a second figure standing beside Chris. A ratty little man had just walked through the closed door. He had ragged clothes and corpse-coloured skin, and he returned Chris's look of disbelief with eyes like roundels. A mutual realization that each could see the other. He gasped, cringed and turned tail back through the door.
    Chris grabbed at the little man, but missed. There was a cry from behind him. He turned and saw the old woman, her eyes darting in his general direction as if she had half glimpsed a ghost.
    He slid through the door into the passage. There was no sign of the little guy, but in the distance, where dusk was already gathering, he saw a light coming from under another door. Without thinking, he was drawn towards the glow. Halfway there he realized that his legs weren't even moving. He passed straight through the wal into the full lamplight.
    Three people were in the room. Two of them, both men, stood beside a crouching desk which was strewn with documents. One was elderly with coarse black hair, one metre eighty-five, angular, wearing a dark-green robe.
    The other was a soldier, uniformed and helmeted in scarlet and white.
    The man in green scooped up the documents and glared round. 'My Cousin Innocet. She's been here,' he said, his rage barely contained. 'I'll kill her.'
    Chris looked at the third figure. She was standing right next to him where he had come through the wall, oblivious of his presence. She held herself flat against the hidden side of a painted screen. A tall woman, taller than Chris, two metres at least, but still dwarfed by the furniture. She was pale-skinned, with shoulder-length red hair braided in a plait, wearing a rust-coloured gown, and a look of utter terror on her face.
    'I have to leave, sir,' said the soldier. 'I'm overdue at the Capitol. What do you want me to deliver?'
    The man in green took a moment to sift through the papers. 'It's gone,' he said.
    The woman swallowed hard. She was unable to move. In her hand, she was clutching a document.
    'Stolen?' said the soldier.
    'Mislaid,' the man in green said firmly. 'I have a copy, Captain. You can take that to the Agency. It'll be enough.'
    Chris began to suspect that these were events that he was supposed to see. All part of the program.
    The woman moved slightly and her gown rustled. The man in green and the captain exchanged glances. They scrutinized the room and started to move around the furniture. Chris watched, intrigued, uncertain whether, or even how, to intervene in the holoprogram.
    The woman looked as if she would either scream or faint at any second.
    'Curtain,' ordered the man in green and the heavy drapes by the window lifted themselves to reveal nothing behind them.
    The two men turned towards the screen.
    Caught by that moment, Chris moved out into the room and shouted.
    No one heard him. He ran at the desk and pushed at the stack of files on its top. His hands went straight through them. But there must have been some miniscule reaction, because three pieces of paper lifted off the surface and fluttered to the floor.
    The two figures turned towards the movement, walking back to the desk. They glanced at each other again.
    'Screen,' ordered the man in green.
    The painted screen folded itself up neatly, but there was no one behind it.
    From his vantage point, Chris saw a panel in the side of an alcove close silently. The others missed it.
    'You said you had another copy of the document, sir,' said the captain.
    The man in green scowled with embarrassed anger. He slid a folded paper out of his robe. 'Twelve hundred pandaks to make the delivery.'
    The captain paused. Then he took the document and put it in his case. 'I'm sorry about the business of the edict, sir.'
    'You're just the messenger,