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The creature wearing the Doctor’s body could feel the minds of everyone in the zoo. It could feel all their deepest and most intimate thoughts, and it knew all there was to know about each of them. It could feel all of their naked insecurities brushing against it. It unsheathed its mental claws, and prepared to tear down a few. Alf raised her weapon and the battle computer automatically targeted it. She pointed it at the face of the pack leader. The computer had calculated the entire course of the battle and fed her a complete strategy. All she had to do was fire the gun. Her finger was paused over the trigger. She could feel the entire corridor and its occupants in acute detail. She shivered. She froze. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She fell to the ground powerless. She could feel a bullet tear into her flesh, and rip off her arm. And another pulp her leg. She could feel everything. She could feel the sickness in her soul and the pain at her attacker. She could feel the desperation, and the fear, and the guilt. She could feel everything Nick felt when she’d nearly shot him to death. Oh God. Noan killed the Canines. His weapons systems activated and it took barely a thought to deconstruct them at the atomic level. Nick dropped to his knees and crouched down beside Alf. He didn’t know what to do, what was wrong. She was crying and shivering and curled up in a foetal position and he didn’t know what to do because he didn’t know what was wrong and he didn’t know what to do because he’d been hurt. He’d been hurt and tortured, for hours and for pleasure. He’d been hit and torn and hit and cut and burned and sliced and taunted and it had been for hours and it had been for fun and it shouldn’t have happened because he knew who was torturing him and he could feel every single inch of pain and it shouldn’t have been them, anyone but them, and it hurt, it hurt so much and why was it them? Nick felt every detail of what Alf had felt when Nicholas had tortured her. Oh God. Noan watched the humans. They were writhing on the floor, indulging in… some kind of sexual activity it seemed. Their minds were empty. Their limbic systems had taken over when their higher minds had crawled away in shame. They would feel embarrassed later, and ashamed. They could live with it. He didn’t have the time to help them. He heard a voice. A small voice, crying. Walking through the door to the medical bay, he saw a woman, hunched up and crying. A psychic probe revealed her as the creature’s first host. She had been damaged extensively by the experience. He tried to heal her mind. Eventually cohesive thoughts emerged from the terror and sickness. A fear. That the creature could come back. He walked over and touched her. Another wave of biodata swept through him into her, strengthening her psychic defences. She could be useful. The single greatest thought in her mind was revenge.
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