June 26, 2010 – Firbourne House, outside London

Mycroft Holmes' official title was not particularly impressive—he was merely the Permanent Under-Secretary of Coordination & Operations. What this meant in practice, however, was that he coordinated almost everything. His brother might choose to believe that he'd gotten power through some sort of nefarious machinations, but Sherlock was quite wrong. It was simply a matter of concentration—relentless, unending concentration on every single detail that might be important.

Today, however, Mycroft Holmes wasn't concentrating on government affairs. All week long he'd been cooling his heels at a fashionable resort hotel outside London.

Firbourne House was an establishment that catered to the elite. It was extravagantly expensive and aggressively stylish. The resort's pampered guests were provided with every possible amenity—spa, sauna and gymnasium, tennis courts, even a bridle trail—but the hotel was just a bit too far from the City for him to commute to his office in Whitehall. That's precisely why he'd been sent here. His superiors had graciously suggested that he should spend two or three weeks at Firbourne House —perhaps more—"until you can get things straightened out."

It hadn't really been a suggestion.

The man who held the reins of the British government in his hands twiddled a titanium white oil crayon in his fingers and stared critically at the half-finished drawing in front of him. It was a night landscape of the wooded grounds around Firbourne House. The full moon shone overhead in a sky full of stars and the lights of London glowed in the distance.

He'd been working on this picture for days, but he had to admit that it wasn't very good. Supposedly the Holmes family had art in the blood but there were no signs of it here. It really didn't matter, though—once this particular piece was finished he would never dare to display it.

He heard gravel crunch right behind him and immediately after that, the officious words of a stranger.

"Your picture is very pretty but there's a mistake in it."

Mycroft repressed his initial spurt of anger almost automatically. Over the past few months he'd become accustomed to this sort of thing. Today's annoyance was just another twist of the rope. He turned to glare at his unwanted art critic.

Pushing forty, unfashionably styled ginger hair, perhaps fifteen pounds overweight. Her cheap shoes and grey linen suit screamed Marks & Spenser. No engagement or wedding ring; she was clearly a woman on the shelf.

"A mistake? Let me tell you what you're about to say. You're going to tell me that there are no such things as stars. Believe it or not, I'm aware of that—everyone's aware of that."

And that was his problem. Mycroft had never actually seen these so-called 'stars'—he wasn't as mad as all that—but sometimes he dreamed of them swirling mysteriously around the moon.

Miss Ginger puffed up with indignation. "Oi! Don't put words in my mouth! That's not what I was going to say at all."

She jabbed a callused typist's finger toward the flaring white dots he'd speckled across the sky. "Look there! You've drawn the constellation of Orion upside down. That red star, Betelgeuse—it ought to be on top. And the blue one, Rigel, should be on the bottom."

Startled, Mycroft gave the woman a more careful evaluation. She still seemed quite ordinary—but like him, she was a Stargazer. Unlike him, however, she was claiming to know the names of some of the 'stars.' Of course the most likely explanation for this was that she babbled out her delusions whenever she saw anything remotely star-shaped.

But then he re-examined his artwork and realized that, yes, he had added some red and blue highlights when he drew those two 'stars.' Why had he done that? Weren't stars supposed to be white? And why hadn't he noticed that until she mentioned it?

At this point Mycroft's well-honed analytical sense kicked in. Delusion was still the most likely explanation, but it was possible—although highly improbable—that the woman somehow knew something about these 'stars.' He had to find out the truth. If there was some sort of conspiracy going on that he hadn't been briefed about—then perhaps he wasn't going mad after all.

He shifted his irritated glare into an engaging smile—the one he usually reserved for small children and the less problematic members of the royal family. "I'm impressed that you managed to catch my error. You must have a good eye. But it's too hot for me to stand out here and correct it now. Would you care to join me inside for lunch?"

His art critic's disgruntled pout swiftly changed to an expression of surprised pleasure. "That—that would be nice. Yes, I would. I'd enjoy that very much."

Of course she would. The woman had to be desperately lonely. To be labeled a Stargazer was to be walled off from the rest of the human race.

It was the work of a moment for him to cover the unfinished drawing. "I'm Mycroft Holmes. And you?"

"Donna. My name is Donna Noble."

The resort's three-star café was practically deserted when they walked inside. Dr. Merriweather, a sallow brunette tapping away as usual on her laptop, was the only other guest that he could see. She was supposed to be an endocrinologist on sabbatical, but Mycroft had deduced almost immediately that she was a psychiatrist sent to observe him.

Selecting a table as far as possible from his oblivious spy, Mycroft sat down with his new source of intel and perused the menu. Everything looked delicious but he really shouldn't eat any of it—except perhaps the garden salad? When Donna ordered the chicken Kiev, however, he decided to fling caution to the winds and boldly followed her example. Afterwards he would call for the dessert tray, too. He might have been sent out to pasture but that didn't mean he had to eat grass.

By the time lunch arrived they were 'Mycroft' and 'Donna'. He started off the conversation with safe topics—the wretchedly hot weather, what did she think of the rose gardens, whatever could the Americans be up to now. After a time he remarked vaguely that he was a minor government official in London, very boring, nothing worth talking about. She replied just as vaguely that she was a temporary office worker, very boring, nothing worth talking about either.

Eventually their conversation turned to travel. For a mere office temp Donna Noble had managed quite a bit of globe-trotting—Cadiz, Tenerife, Cairo. Mycroft ventured a few guarded anecdotes about his own out-of-country peregrinations and discovered that Donna considered them much more interesting than he did.

After he finished the last scrap of his chocolate rumcake he suggested a walk after lunch. Donna smiled self-deprecatingly and rose to her feet. "Walk off some of the calories we just ate, you mean. Sure, why not?"

"Calorie counting is old-school banting. My diet specialist tells me that the best way to lose weight is to choose foods that accelerate your metabolism." Mycroft offered Donna his arm in a grand gesture, pinned her fingers in the crook of his elbow, and shepherded her outside to find a secluded place suitable for an interrogation.

The June sun was burning down fiercely as they strolled along one of Firbourne House's picturesque cobblestone paths. A few resort guests were braving the heat of the day, but most were reading under the awnings or picnicking beneath the shade trees. They were laughing and enjoying themselves as if they didn't have a care in the world.

How he loathed them, each and every one.

Donna had dressed for the heat, but Mycroft, who'd never been one for 'casual wear', was soon sweltering in his three-piece suit. He was briefly tempted to remove his suit jacket, but no, once you admitted to yourself that you were uncomfortable there was no end to the fussing you put yourself through. Eventually he spotted a covered lawn swing tucked away behind the tennis courts. It was far enough from the main building that nobody would be able to eavesdrop on them.

"Shall we sit down over there in the shade?"

"Good idea," Donna agreed. "I think I'm beginning to melt."

When they reached the swing, she settled herself on its wicker seat and Mycroft sat down right beside her. He considered himself a good judge of character, and it was obvious to him that Ms. Noble wouldn't care for the pressure of a vacation flirtation. She would prefer friendliness and camaraderie, and when absolutely necessary, he could do 'camaraderie.'

Squeezing her hand in a comradely gesture, he asked, "Donna—who sent you here to Firbourne House?"

Donna used her free hand to brush a damp lock of hair away from her forehead. "When my granddad won some money in a lottery my mum talked him into it. She'd read about that videogame executive who got better here and she thought it was worth a try."

"Richard Garriott?" Mycroft had read that news story too. After Garriott had been caught attempting to build a rocketship in the American desert, his board had packed him off to Firbourne House for a 'rest cure'. "I seriously doubt that he was 'cured' of anything—but he did figure out what he needed to say to get his company back."

Donna nodded, unsurprised. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. Mum and I used to worry about my granddad. Wilf has a telescope, you see, and he looks up at the moon most clear nights. Mum never dreamed I'd have enough imagination to be a Stargazer."

She stared into the dazzling sunshine and said gruffly, "But it was me."

Clearly, Donna was no babbling lunatic. She was a rational woman, her speech was lucid and sensible, and her emotional responses were more normal than any you'd get from the Holmes family. But she believed in stars.

And that was more than enough to doom her.

With the skill of long practice, Mycroft kept the bitterness out of his voice. "My brother Sherlock never bothers to look up at the sky. Nothing matters to him but his work. He doesn't even know that I'm here."

Of course Sherlock could easily deduce what was going on if he spent even a moment thinking about his own brother… No. Don't think about that.

After glancing at his strained expression, Donna swiftly changed the subject. "So, what kind of work does your brother do?"

"He's a consulting detective." Responding to her blank stare, he gave her his usual explanation. "He solves murders through the power of deductive reasoning and then explains to the Metropolitan Police why their own solutions are completely wrong."

Donna laughed. "Oh, they must really love him for that."

"Apparently in particularly difficult cases they do consider him useful as a last resort."

"A lot of times that's why office temps like me are called in—as a last resort when the regular staff's running around panicking."

Mycroft smirked. It would be amusing to see Sherlock's face if he was told what she'd said….

Enough of this. These pleasantries had been crafted for a purpose.

"Donna—it was my superiors who sent me here. They won't let me return to work until I can convince them that I'm sane. You know how that goes." When she nodded, he pushed on grimly. "You're my last hope. You seem to know something about these 'stars'. You even named the ones in my drawing. How were you able to do that?"

Donna frowned as she tried to track down an errant memory. "I'm sorry, Mycroft—I have no idea how I come up with the things that I say. Words just pop into my head and I don't know afterwards why I said them. It's—it's been happening more and more recently."

He didn't need to state the obvious. She was running out of time the same as he was.

"Do you ever dream about the stars?" he asked more gently.

Donna ran her fingers through her damp hair. "No, never. But when I look up at the sky at night I find myself thinking, 'I know there's something out there.'"

And that was one more thing they had in common. But in her case, there was information hidden somewhere in her mind—information that Mycroft Holmes desperately needed. He pursed his lips. "Ever been hypnotized?"

"I can't be hypnotized," she said flatly. "It's been tried."

Now that was very interesting, because he couldn't be hypnotized either. MI5 had a training program for government workers who handled 'eyes only' documents. True, two data points didn't prove a theory—but they certainly made it worth investigating.

"Those odd star names—Ryegell and Beetlejuice—do you know what they mean? Have you ever heard of them before?"

"I'm afraid that I just don't remember. I feel like the answer's on the tip of my tongue but I can't spit it out."

He would check the names out later on the Internet, then. "As it happens, I have heard of Orion. He was a young hunter in a minor Greek myth who became the lover of the goddess Diana. She was tricked into shooting an arrow at him and killed him by mistake."

"I went to business school. Greek mythology was not a part of the curriculum."

"But mythology is everywhere!" he protested. "You must have run into references to it now and then. Didn't you ever watch Troilus and Cressida? Mourning Becomes Elektra? Clash of the Titans?"

Donna was already shaking her head. "No, no, and no."

A sad commentary on the state of British education, although irrelevant to his current objective.

Mycroft had become increasingly convinced that 'Orion' was more than a mere 'constellation'—whatever that was. It sounded like a security password. He was no IT expert, but he understood IT security concepts. Most people who used passwords were essentially witless. Once they created their first password they followed the same pattern for all the others.

Here was a task that was tailor-made for his own strong suit—absolute, relentless concentration. He might have a chance now—if Donna would cooperate with him.

"Donna, I want to try something that could be very important for both of us. I'm going to recite names from Greek mythology and I want you to tell me if any of them sound familiar to you. I think they're connected to these 'stars' somehow."

"Okay," she said promptly.

So the woman was willing to place herself in the hands of a man she'd met only hours before. That would get her into trouble sooner or later. Repressing his sigh of relief, Mycroft patted Donna's own hand, then slid his thumb around to the pulse point on her wrist. If her heartbeat altered when she heard a name, he would know instantly.

"All right then, here we go. Do any of these names ring a bell? Zeus, Hera, Ares, Demeter, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus…"

As the list went on he couldn't help but feel a bit ridiculous but there was no help for it. "Theseus, Medea, Achilles, Patroclus, Odysseus, Iphigenia, Agamemnon, Perseus, Circe…"

At least Donna didn't think this was silly. She was concentrating almost as hard as he was.

What else? Monsters. It was the monsters that people found most memorable. "Scylla, Charybdis, Minotaur, Cyclops, Hydra, Sphinx, Chimera, Cerberus, Medusa…"

Something must have clicked in Donna's head, because she twisted away from his grasp and stumbled to her feet. Her eyes were completely black—the irises had been eaten up by the pupils. "Medusa! The Medusa Cascade!"

It was as if someone else—or something else—was occupying her skin. Perhaps that someone else knew the answer to his question. "What are the stars? You must tell me!"

She skittered away from him and shook her head as if something was rattling inside. "They're all gone—everything's gone! Nothing's left but the Earth and Moon. Donna wasn't supposed to remember this. You shouldn't have made her remember..."

Donna was shuddering convulsively as if she was having a seizure. He had to know the truth, so he'd pushed her and he'd pushed her and he'd pushed her—and now he'd broken her. Mycroft felt a reluctant stab of guilt. This was his responsibility. He grabbed at her hand to steady her…

…and the world shattered into a brilliant kaleidoscope.

Laser-light schematics flickered into existence to etch holographic wallframes all around them. A glowing mist oozed up from the grass to form a gleaming green floor while a translucent column rose from a stylized hexagonal console and began to emit a 'whomp whomp whomp' that rattled his teeth and bones.

This had to be some sort of hallucination—Mycroft could still make out the lawn swing and tennis courts beyond the electronic representation of what seemed to be a control room. They hadn't left the grounds of Firbourne House.

Rainbow ribbons were shooting out from the column to slap into Donna's forehead, one after another. She staggered, but he still had hold of her hand so he was able to keep her from falling. Her face was chalky and her eyes unfocused, but at least they looked like human eyes—they were no longer those horrible black voids.

Mycroft's danger instincts were on high alert. They had to get out of here somehow, but how? Laser beams—you didn't just saunter through strange laser beams. Someone had to come up with an explanation fast and he didn't think that it was going to be him.

"Donna," he whispered, "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

His increasingly-surprising companion straightened up and exclaimed with an air of completely inappropriate cheerfulness, "Oh! Isn't this funny! It looks like the control room of the Doctor's TARDIS."

"TARDIS? What do you mean, TARDIS?" Mycroft muttered in disbelief.

"It means 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space'," Donna said matter-of-factly. "The TARDIS is a time machine that can move in space too. I used to travel in it awhile back."

His brain cells were screaming that there had to be a more rational explanation than that. While he was trying to come up with one, Donna unexpectedly hauled him toward the console. Caught by surprise, he stumbled and nearly fell on the spurious green floor.

"What's going on, old girl?" Donna asked the column, which had started to move up and down within the console in an unnervingly suggestive manner.

The voice that answered her was clearly mechanical—but also sounded female.

"The universe is undergoing a total event collapse. Throughout all space and time, every star has gone supernova. Only the Earth and its Moon remain, but the TARDIS field that protects them is weakening."

Donna's expression was incredulous but unfazed. "Wait! Wait! I thought I'd already handled that! Who's causing this?"

"Entities unknown to the Doctor are causing the TARDIS to simultaneously explode at all points in history. This explosion will ultimately erase the universe."

Erase… the… universe…

He wasn't going to break down and babble, Mycroft told himself sternly. Above all else, there would be no babbling.

"What can we do to fix this?" Donna asked without missing a beat. "Can you take us to wherever this started so we can stop the entities?"

"I cannot transport you anywhere," the machine voice said with a tone of regret. "What you perceive as the TARDIS control room is only a holographic projection. TARDIS itself is fixed a thousand miles from Earth and cannot move either in time or in space."

"So—there's really nothing we can do to help?" Donna took a deep breath. "All right, where's the Doctor? What's going to happen next?"

The column flashed a digital light pattern. "Fifteen minutes into the future of this timeline, the Doctor will crash the Pandorica chamber into the heart of the TARDIS and seed the TARDIS explosion with atoms from the original timeline in order to reset the universe."

Donna sighed with relief. "Good old Doctor. I should have known he'd come up with something."

Mycroft Holmes was not babbling. No, he wasn't. He was maintaining a very tight control over himself and he was standing very, very still…

…until Donna Noble started to topple onto the floor—or onto the grass, whichever it really was. He clamped down on her wrist and lowered her carefully, then bent to touch her forehead. Not good—it felt clammy and cold, and her breath was rattling in her throat.

He didn't need to be a superscientist to realize that the ribbons striking her forehead and seeping into her skin were harming her. Every time one of them hit, Donna winced and her eyelids flickered weakly.

Time machines and event collapses were beyond his comprehension, but if there was one thing that Mycroft Holmes understood, it was intimidation. He directed his best imposing glare at the translucent column and demanded, "Who are you? What are you doing to Donna Noble? What is your authority to do this?"

The voice that came from the column was solemn but not indifferent. "I am the TARDIS matrix. DoctorDonna is dying and I can do nothing to prevent it. A human mind cannot survive full intersect with the TARDIS systems."

"Then stop intersecting with her, you bloody thing!" If they were going to be erased anyway, he might as well be rude.

"What you request is outside the capability of the TARDIS control system. DoctorDonna has been sealed to the TARDIS."

Mycroft's blood boiled. It never failed. Whenever a slightly harder-than-usual problem turned up, some flunky would always yammer, 'It's not in my job description.'

"Check your systems again," he said icily. "If you have the power to reboot the entire universe you must have a way to 'unseal' a woman who's dying right here in front of you."

The column flashed several more times. Was it checking its systems as he'd ordered or was it bringing weapons systems online?

It was the former, thank goodness.

"In theory, it would be possible to run your request during the reset as a subroutine. But before I can allow you to override the Doctor's reset protocol I must first receive instructions from an authorized sentient operator."

An authorized operator. That would have to be Donna. Or Doctor Donna, as the Matrix referred to her. Mycroft crouched down and brushed Donna's cheek. His heart sank when she opened her eyes but didn't seem to recognize him. In her current condition she wouldn't be able to give orders to the TARDIS—she wouldn't even be able to string together a coherent sentence.

His ultimate archenemy—the blithering rulebook—had finally defeated him.

Then the control voice spoke again. For a machine it sounded a trifle tentative, and oddly enough—as he finally realized—it had an English estuary accent.

"Perhaps…"