Chapter 1 - Pawns and Knights

The White Guardian leaned back and nodded slowly. He was pleased with his last move. The Black Guardian was frowning, thinking through his strategy, and it was obvious that he hadn't expected the sudden appearance on the board of another knight.

The pawns were in play and while he couldn't say that he was feeling overly confident, he was certainly hopeful.

For the last twenty moves the board had been going steadily towards the black, but the White Guardian brought his King into play, hoping that once more he could change the tide of battle.

"You use him far too much," the Black Guardian scolded.

"He's effective, you must admit," he replied and his opponent frowned, shifting uneasily in his seat. The King was effective, too much so for the Black Guardian's peace of mind.

Between them, the chessboard showed images from every point in the multiverse. Savage wars, gentle songs of peace, the full range of life, death, joy, and sorrow.

"She'll burn that Bishop out one day," the Black Guardian warned, "You're playing with fire there."

"Perhaps, but I will take my chances," the White Guardian replied. In truth, it was his main worry right now. He watched his opponent as he pulled a tiny silver insect forward.

"Fine, then let's see how they deal with this, eh?" he chuckled and leaned back.

The White Guardian frowned, but it was a legal move, he could not protest it. He reached out and shifted his own pieces.

"Very Well."


"He's awake," Susan sighed out, looking stricken. "I can feel his mind, very faintly. There is a lot of pain and darkness in him." She fell silent for a moment. "It's awful." She was shaking as she spoke, eyes filling up, but she wiped her tears away with angry haste, frowning fiercely.

"A bit sooner than I had expected, and I am sorry," Adie replied with a shiver of fear She was terrified of what the Master would do to her, if he ever got ahold of her again. She scolded herself for that, the clones had suffered so much more, she was ashamed to be worried about her own fate when others needed her help so desperately.

"There's more," Adie told them and sat down on the hospital bed.

Susan tapped the wall controls and a couch and several chairs built themselves rapidly. With an expression of iron resolution, she settled onto a green velvet settee, with Koschei beside her, his arm around her waist, the two of them holding on to each other, with wary expressions.

"Right, go ahead," Susan said through gritted teeth, while Koschei just watched her with a painfully neutral expression.

"At the time of his demise," she told Koschei, addressing him, because it was almost too hard to look at Susan right then. "Your counterpart was heading up a project titled the Lens of Rassilon."

"I remember that project," he blurted, looking surprised. "I proposed it to the High Council, but they rejected it, said it was too expensive." Another point of divergence, Adie thought to herself. Unless they had rejected it when first proposed and then pulled it out of mothballs later, when circumstances had changed? She wasn't sure.

"Is this what Masha is wired into?" Susan asked, looking worried.

"Yes, her and the other clones," Adie explained, since Koschei was just sitting there, looking unhappy, mouth clamped down hard.

"Cloned from you," Susan commented and Adie nodded.

"The Rani gave me the idea," Koschei groaned. "We had a conversation, after I stopped her from 'experimenting' on some of the Glurpitup Tribe."

"The biological units were considered a necessity because the configuration was heavily based upon Block Transfer Mathematics. No mechanical construct, no matter how cleverly made, could have survived the required Computation," she explained.

"Right, that makes sense," Susan nodded. "If you ignore all the various ethical considerations." Koschei flushed and Adie continued, looking at him, feeling a certain grim unhappiness at what she knew she was going to have to ask him to do.

"Koschei, all of the controls are isometric. That means that the only two people who can handle the controls are you… and him," Adie told him, hoping that if she eased him into it, he might stop looking at her with that broken expression.

"Me and my needlessly complicated plots," he groaned and tried to smile. It was a brave effort, even if a somewhat weak one. "We'd better get the Doctor and Rose in on this, love." Susan nodded her agreement, though she didn't look like she was happy about it.

"This is going to be a delightful conversation," she snarked. "Grandfather, your old best mate is about, only he's off his nut again, care to help us deal with that?" Koschei flinched slightly. She shot him an apologetic look and stroked his cheek with her hand. "Sorry, love, I know this is hard on you too."

"Hard on me?" he asked and looked at her in surprise. "I think it's going to be hardest on you."

"I am afraid it will be hard on everyone," Adie told them, trying to be gentle. She did vaguely recall gentleness, though it was long ago since she she'd actually experienced any herself.


The Doctor looked up from where he was changing Jamie's nappies and frowned. He was kneeling on the floor of the living room, while Jamie was holding his stuffed shobogon tightly, watching him with a drool-filled grin. Rose was on one of the couches, knees up and head down over her tablet, while Donna was sitting on another couch, reading the latest Terry Pratchett and chuckling.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked and he looked over at her. Their bond was growing stronger over time and she had apparently picked up his spike of alarm. She had been working out the equations for the TARDIS corals and her face was still scrunched up in thought.

"Susan... has news for us," he told her and sent her the download with a wince.

"Bloody hell!" she shot back and they jumped up.

"Is that a request for Aunty Donna to take over and spoil little Jamie rotten?" Donna asked in a cooing voice as she, put down her book and went to pick up the one and a half year old. She cuddled him and he gave her a grin and a huge smile. Unlike his sister, Jamie rarely spoke much. He could, but simply chose not to. The Doctor wasn't sure if it was because he despaired of getting a word in edgewise, or if because every need of his was satisfied without ever having to ask.

"If it wouldn't be too great an imposition on you, Donna, yes, please," the Doctor chuckled.

"Come on young man, let's go have fun without them," Donna told him with a huge grin and carried him off gleefully.

"I get the feeling that we are entirely superfluous here," the Doctor murmured to his wife, who nodded in agreement.

"Then, we should go where we are needed," she suggested.


"Koschei, I know that you owe me nothing, but I need your help," Adie told him, wringing her hands. "Once the Master awakens he can take over the Lens again. He can hit a button and all the clones could be killed instantly, or he could decide to purge their personalities, or anything else he wants to do. He has all the equipment directly at hand," she explained, her voice shaking.

"He could kill Masha?" Koschei asked and Adie nodded. "What do you want me to do?" He looked up at her, blue eyes blazing, and she felt something in her relaxing. He was willing to help, which was one obstacle she'd navigated.

"What I want you to do, is to take it away from him. Stop him from destroying them. It's going to be difficult, because while you can log in remotely via a secondary system, it won't have the same rapid response, or the full range of capabilities, of the equipment he'll be using in his lab."

"You keep saying them, the clones, plural, how many are there?" Susan asked.

"The Project required seventy-six," she explained and the ginger haired doctor looked startled by the number.

Martha came in again just then and looked around at them all in concern. She was carrying another tray of food, which she put down next to Susan and Koschei.

"Neither of you has eaten yet, either," she pointed out and Koschei smiled sadly up at her.

"My appetite seems to have fled," he told her and she settled into a chair, looking at him in concern.

"Adie," Susan murmured gently. "What exactly was the project, you haven't explained."

"It was a weapon for the War," Koschei cut in. "The idea was to seed clones on worlds the Daleks controlled, that's why they had to be made so tough,because they had to survive on Dalek-held worlds for days or even months. Then, if the High Council decided the world couldn't be taken back, the clone would be used to destroy that world," he told them, head down, obviously still deeply ashamed, which startled Adie. Even though she had intellectually grasped his reform, the reality was taking longer for her to process. He fell silent, unable to continue, and Adie took over again.

"The basic premise was to concentrate a tremendous amount of energy through a biological focal point. I was never permitted to see how it would be done, but I do know that as long as Masha is here, she could be used as the focus to destroy this planet."

"So, you're saying that Masha isn't a supersoldier of some sort, she's a bomb?" Susan asked, her face horrified and Koschei shook his head.

"No, she's a focus, for the weapon," he told her, face twisting in distress. "Any of them can be the focus. I had planned on using them for Dalek-controlled worlds only, but Rassilon's contribution was to have them be made to look like young girls, to be friendly and kind, so that people will like them and take them in. He wanted a way to destroy any allied world that might try to leave the Alliance as well as the Dalek-controlled planets. People would befriend them, never knowing they were protecting the means to their own destruction."

"That's horrible!" Martha blurted out and Koschei nodded.

"Yes, it is," he sighed.

"And you invented it?" she asked, eyeing him.

"I was a mind controlled puppet of Rassilon at the time," Koschei told her. "Not that that excuses anything," he added.

"No, I've seen movies, mind-control is actually a valid excuse," Martha assured him. The Time Lords all paused to stare at her for a moment.

"Th-thank you, Martha," Koschei stuttered, and his expression seemed torn between being genuinely touched and terribly amused.

"I thought the project was never approved," Susan asked him and he nodded. "Then how do you know all this?"

"Rassilon approached me later to talk about it... theoretically," he told them. "It was right before he sent me to the Cruciform the first time. After the Tower, when I failed him there, he sent me away and the matter was dropped." He smiled at Susan and this smile was genuine. "You changed history, love." Adie nodded, seeing clearly now the pivot point. This is why the Golden Lady had spoken to her, to achieve the universe she was in right now. In her own memories, she had failed, but obviously in that one she had managed it. It occurred to her that success had cost her her life. Her other self had died with Gallifrey. She shivered.

"We changed it together, my hearts," she told him and held his hand tightly in hers.

"That's very romantic," Martha interrupted. "But what happened to this 'project' of yours?" she asked and Adie picked up the thread of conversation again with a frown. They were heading into areas where her knowledge was scanty.

"It was built and then, for some reason, Rassilon decided not to implement it. The project was mothballed, if you will," she explained. "The clones were all made, prepped and programmed… and we were shut down. Literally overnight." She stood up and started pacing, feeling again the old familiar confusion and despair. "I'm not sure why, but it was as if we were just… forgotten. One day we were this bustling project and then suddenly everything was tucked away on a shelf and we were just left there."

"Inside a Temporal Grace Point, you said," Susan reminded her and Koschei looked at her with some chagrin.

"I figured out a way to use the Matrix to 'store' people's timelines so that they could be 'recalled' when needed," he told them. "The problem was that you needed to restore them in a Temporal Grace Point, someplace where probability was so twisted that two possible futures could exist at the exact same time, side by side, without tearing Time apart." Susan was staring at him and shook her head slowly. "My paradox engine was a crude and rather brute force approach to the same issue."

"Oh my brilliant man, that is both genius and utterly awful," she murmured and he nodded.

"I'll take your word for that," Martha told her. "Sounds like voodoo to me." Koschei just shrugged at her and continued.

"That project was shelved as well, the prototype nearly blew out the Probability Shunts that the Doctor and Rassilon had put together to try to combat the Never-weres," he explained and Susan shuddered. Whatever they were, the very mention of the Never-weres made her look utterly terrified for a moment, before she had herself back behind her mask of calm. "It was decided that it was too dangerous. Obviously, in the other timeline, I.. he... must have gotten it working, because that is the only way that two of us can possibly exist in the same universe at the same time."

"So, will he integrate into you?" Susan asked with a hopeful look.

"No," he answered gently and her face went back to being mask-like. "Malla did the Block Transfer Calculations for me on this, though she hated it and me for that, and determined that after a 'period of stabilization', about four months or so, the alternate would diverge sufficiently from the original to allow for them to continue on in that timeline. He's been in cold storage for a lot longer than that, so it's too late for him to integrate back into the timeline and be one of my memories," he told her. "There are now two of me and there isn't any way to change that." He sounded unhappy about it, but Susan's face gave nothing away.

"I see," was all she said.

"The Project has been running for almost two centuries," Adie broke in. "Just before the Master was nearly killed, the clones had been put in time Loops, which were meant to be training sims for them. They were never meant to be kept in them for any length of time though, and I couldn't get them out because the controls only responded to the Master. Now, the Mobius points are collapsing. I have been struggling to keep them open, at least enough to allow the girls to jump from point to point, if one fell apart. For all their indestructible natures, there are things that they can't survive and a Mobius collapse is one of them. Now that I am not there to keep it all going, I doubt he will maintain the points. He'll see no reason to. After all, the equipment is all there for him to…" She spat out the words, hating the very sound of them, "... to run off another copy if he loses one."

"Right! So save everyone and stop the Master, exactly what I'm best at!" a new voice announced. Adie, who had been on edge anyway, just about jumped right out of her skin as the new Time Lord suddenly came bounding in. He was tall and skinny, in a pinstriped suit and blue trainers, his face long and narrow, his hair stuck up everywhere and he was a supernova of energy and bright intelligence.

"'Ello! I'm the Doctor!" he told her and pumped her hand enthusiastically, then gestured behind him to a blonde woman with brown eyes and a wide smile, her energy curiously doubled and echoing. "This is my wife, Rose," he introduced and Adie bowed formally.

"It is an honour and a privilege to meet you," she said in formal Gallifreyan.

"None of that now, young lady," he scolded, but his eyes were merry and his smile broad. "We got rid of all of that nonsense when the planet got destroyed. No point in Houses and that, when there's only about sixty of us left, after all," he told her and she felt the slight wince of pain from the assembled Time Lords, the Doctor included, as he said that.

Adie had not known that their numbers were so few. Had thought, until the last twenty minutes, that Gallifrey had been well and whole. It was the first time she had heard the number and it was as if she had been impaled in the chest; but she didn't have time to indulge in grief just then.

"I… understand," she said simply.

"Right, now, Susan tells me that we have a deadline here," he informed her, clapping his hands together. "So, I say we charge out and save the day, but I suspect that Koschei and Susan will overrule me and demand a plan, so let's save some time and come up with one, eh?" he suggested and flopped into a chair, his wife settling into one beside him.

"I suppose our plan would have to start with me getting remote control of the Lens," Koschei sighed out, looking unhappy about it. "Then we have to rescue the girls from the Mobius Loops, which will be tricky, we'll need two TARDISes."

That was another unexpected harpoon through the hearts; it hadn't occurred to her that there might not be two left. She did not allow the distress to cross her face or her aura, but closed her eyes for a moment.

"Is Romana going to be back soon, we can use hers," Rose put in and the Doctor shrugged.

"The Shadow Proclamation has her putting out fires in the Traken Union right now, and you know how that lot can natter on," the Doctor sighed.

"What about Hedia?" Susan asked.

"Left ages ago, said something about going hub-wards and working her way around to the rim, but she's well out of range right now," the Doctor explained with a shrug.

"The points are booby trapped, by the way," Adie said.

"Of course they are, that is classic Master," the Doctor told her with a jovial tone that she suddenly realized was artfully masking the deep pain he was feeling. He quickly shifted to shield himself in a swirling cloud of good humour and light spirits, but she'd glimpsed the deep, unending sorrow under it all, if only for a fraction of a second.

"Finally," Adie continued. "The project has changed since the time you first proposed it. By the time I was brought onto the project, the destructive capabilities of the Lens were no longer viewed as its primary purpose. The focusing abilities of the clones were viewed as supporting infrastructure for the actual purpose. Unfortunately, I was never able to learn what the true purpose was."

"I'll have to assume that the Master has given up on monologues? He used to be wonderful for bragging all about his plans. How inconvenient of him to change at this late stage," the Doctor teased and Koschei shot him a slightly annoyed look.

"Oh now, Doctor," Rose chuckled. "No plan, no idea, and no time? This is all quite normal for us!"