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Waterguard Humba pushed open the door of Mandrells, the run-down old casino. Few people lived on Gidi now, but somehow the odd, barely sustainable small businesses in the town kept going. He sniffed the dank, odorous whiff of alcohol and Rhine weed that there always was in here. ‘Beryl?’ he called out. He heard a clatter at the end of the wooden-floored hallway and smiled. The casino wasn’t open yet, but Beryl Mathers would be here, making the tables shine and polishing the gambling dice. ‘Beryl?’ He stopped. There was something wrong. Something was moving at the end of the hallway, but it was too erratic… not methodical enough to be someone washing down the floor or noisily dusting the tabletops. Why didn’t she answer back? He stepped closer, his boots sending echoes ringing into the semi-darkness. What he saw when he reached the counter at the end of the room and peered over, chilled his blood. ‘For the love of Azure…’ he whispered, losing control. Behind the counter, sitting in a nest of discarded brooms and mops, was a creature of the like he’d never seen before. A thing from the bowels of hell, he’d bet. It was like an enormous bat, but with bulging green eyes that seem to swell with a vast, burning intelligence. Its breast was lined with wiry fur, and, up this close, Humba could see that it was buzzing with a form of energy, almost as if it were pulsating with power. Despite all this, the devilish monstrosity was not somehow real. He could see through it for a start, and it was encased in a translucent blue aura, like the old hologram projections he had once been shown as a child. He stepped back, very slowly. The creature seemed to be emitting a high pitched whine, almost a static scream… then suddenly it twitched its fearsome pincers and, without warning, two enormous bone-flanked wings opened out behind it. It howled. Humba scrambled backwards, clutching blindly at the jumble of assorted objects behind the counter. He grabbed at a smooth, cold stick-shaped club and swiped at the terrifying creature before him. It shrunk back in fear, wailing like a child. Humba turned on his heels and ran for the exit. No sooner had he turned round, than the creature was in front of him, blocking the doorway. Except it didn’t move at all – it just changed position, even for one split second appearing to be in both places at once, as if he were in a film from which a section of the action had been spliced out; there was no way it could have passed him. That was only the half of it. Humba knew – he didn’t know how, he just knew – that the creature had moved to block his path as a direct result of him deciding to turn and run. ‘You read my mind you son of a bitch,’ he murmured. The creature just sat in front of him, chittering to itself, not even seeming bothered about attacking him. ‘Well, we’ll see if this doesn’t fix you.’ He closed his eyes and deliberately blocked his thoughts, concentrating on an image of nothing. At the same time, with as little conscious thought as he could manage, he forced his legs into action and ran round the thing towards the open door behind it. When he opened his eyes fully, he was running through the door. He had done it. As he cleared the building, he chanced a look behind him at the casino. For a moment, it remained as it always had, shabby and uninviting. Then suddenly there was a flash of light, like a silent explosion of static generated from the creature inside the building. When he looked again, for a second Humba could not believe his eyes. The whole building had vanished, leaving the wind to caress the dusty roadside where the creature sat, devoid of the building that had until moments before stood around it. Its pincers snapped loudly, power still buzzing over them. Then it spread its wings and disappeared. Humba stopped and wondered why he was running. Cy took Nick gently by the hand, and led him over to the tank. Nick was mesmerised, staring into the baleful green eyes of the Protii, a smile spreading over his face. ‘Nick…’ the Doctor warned. Cy shot him a backwards glance. ‘It’s too late Doctor,’ he said. ‘Nick is going to share his gift with us… and we are going to share our power with him.’ ‘He’s going to be a puppet, a slave!’ bellowed the Doctor. ‘Stop it, you do not know what they are capable of!’ He was raging now, his face flushed with anger. ‘Power? What’s all this about power?’ Vera sounded confused. ‘You said we were saving them from extinction Cy. You said the whole race would be gone…’ Cy took Nick’s wrists and gently locked them into two silver bands linked to the machine on which the tank was resting. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been tricked Vera,’ said the Doctor. ‘Even if the Protii could be utterly destroyed, you’d only have been doing the universe a favour. How did you do it? How did you re-animate this one?’ Cy smiled evenly. ‘Well, that was all thanks to my dear old Nan.’ Cy grinned walking up to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Weren’t it Nan?’ Vera looked apologetically back at the Doctor. ‘Doctor? What’s going on? Everything is all right isn’t it?’ ‘I’m afraid not Vera,’ replied the Doctor. ‘This young man and Professor Endlemann have been using the bones of the Protii you supplied to re-construct the creature by somehow drawing off energy from space. Only they don’t realise what they’ve been doing.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Cy sneered. ‘Where do you think all that mental energy is coming from?’ ‘From space,’ Cy replied simply. ‘Endlemann said that…’ ‘Yes from space!’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘And you know where in space? The Protii collective!’ Humba wiped the perspiration from his forehead and jerkily inhaled, puffing and panting as he at last reached the safety of his hut. He fumbled for the key, but then dropped it as a ringing, buzzing sound filled his ears. There was a strange chanting, far away and yet deafening. It was evil… malevolent. Like a thousand twisted children crying out in unison. “Born of anger… born of evil!” it sang, almost joyous in its devastation. ‘The wretched souls in hell…’ murmured Waterguard Humba. He tore his mind away, and rushed into his hut, bolting the door behind him. Once inside, he worked quickly. From out of a desk drawer he pulled an oak-carved box with a wire on top and a big red bulb mounted on it. To this he connected two leads, and finally he flicked a switch on the side. The bulb began to flash a bright red. He glanced out of the window, pulling aside the grimy curtains. There was nothing out there, only the streets and the huts as usual. Suddenly the air was filled with crackling, and the red light stopped blinking. Humba heaved a sigh of relief. Contact at last. At that moment, there was a thundering all around him. He froze. Then it came again, hammering hard on the door of his little hut and shaking the floorboards. He rushed to the door, and to his relief saw that it was Alf. Hurriedly, he unbolted it and she flew inside. ‘Waterguard Humba, thank goodness!’ ‘Are you all right miss?’ He looked concerned as she began to get her breath back. ‘Yes, but it’s good to see you.’ She smiled. ‘Listen, something very strange is going on up at the house. We have to help Nick.’ ‘I’m afraid your friend Nick is the least of our worries,’ Humba told her gravely. ‘I’m afraid we’re under invasion. By something very nasty indeed.’ ‘You’ve seen it too?’ Alf gasped. ‘The big insect bat thing?’ Humba nodded. ‘I was just radioing for help. Don’t worry miss, reinforcements will be on the way very soon.’ ‘That’s a relief. I only hope the thing you saw and the thing I saw were the same.’ ‘What do you mean? Oh, I see. You mean there could be more than one of them? Good gracious, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.’ ‘Yes well.’ Alf frowned. ‘You’d better hurry up and radio through for those reinforcements Humba. We may just need them.’
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