Blackness, white lines, monsters, death. No escape, fear, something reaching out toward her. Gut wrenching terror...

Screaming at the top of her lungs, eyes wide open, Cassandra sat bolt upright in her bed. Panting hard, she pulled at the sweat-soaked sheets that clung to her legs and swung them from the bunk. Thuds of running boots echoed down the corridor as Neelam ran into view. "Are you alright?" He whispered, trying not to suck down a lungful of air himself. She nodded absently, the adrenaline driven horror of the nightmare still fresh in her mind. "Another nightmare?" Neelam sat down on the bed beside her, and drew her close. "It'll all be over in a few hours. This will end the grip of tyranny he has held us in for so long." 'He' was president Thompson. Head of the colony government, dictator, and twisted law all rolled into one. "I. I have a really bad feeling about this Neelam. Something bad is going to happen, and its all going to be our fault. I Just know it." He just shook his head. "Look its just last run jitters, that's all. You're not the only one who's nervous you know." Neelam stood, and walked to the door. "Now get some sleep. We need you pin-sharp tomorrow. If you don't do your part properly, then we may all die." His boots echoed hollowly up the corridor as he walked away.

The morning was bright, clear skied and crisp. Light frost covered the autumn ground, and birds fluttered from tree to tree. The feeling of impending doom was still clinging to Cassandra as she swiped her bogus security card through the train's reader. The doors opened, and she hauled her two bags through and sat down. The first was a simple handbag, containing general woman things and a small packed breakfast. She pulled the greaseproof wrapping from the Salqar nut butter sandwich, and took a big bite. Munching the bittersweet sandwich, she pulled a small flask of sarfé from he bag and pressed the reheat button. Thirty seconds later it beeped, and she tentatively sipped at the hot drink. As she was drinking, a man in a dark suit sat down beside her and started to read a disposable news pad. Nervously, she quickly prodded the briefcase containing the equivalent of a sixty-pound bomb, out of his way. It wasn't going to go off, but, just in case... She smiled at the man, and he nodded back in acknowledgement. A wan smile spread thinly across his lips.

She didn't realise her hands were twitching until the man said something. "Um, excuse me. Are you alright?" he said, laying his compact reader in his lap. "Oh! Er, yes, yes I'm fine. Nervous disorder. First day at work." He grinned. "I know that feeling." He picked up his reader. "Where are you working for such first day nerves?" This wasn't going to plan, she thought frantically. If I tell him I work at the lab can I risk the chance that he works there too? "Is it at the new lab?" He said nonchalantly. "I heard they were having a presidential visit today. Better them than me. I'm glad I don't work there." Cassandra almost gasped with relief. She nodded dumbly, desperately trying to control her breathing. Was she sweating? "No wonder you're twitching all over the place, I for one wouldn't want to be within a mile of that man. You never know when the terrorists might strike." He was making it really hard. She was trying not to laugh hysterically as the man whittered on about terrorists bombing this, and that, killing innocent people in the name of freedom. A tear trickled down her face from the strain of keeping her face straight. I am a professional. She thought desperately. The man had stopped and was looking at her with sympathy. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you." Upset me? What was he jabbering about now? She wiped the tears from her face. "No. That's alright." Her voice sounded cracked and desperate as she fought back the wracking sobs of laughter. "Well this is my stop." He said as he rose from the chair. "Yours is the next one, so make sure you remember to get off." He put one hand on her shoulder. "Remember the good the president has brought us, not the lives those terrorists have taken away." With that he turned and left her alone in the carriage. As the train moved away, she reached down and clutched the bomb to her, tears streaming down her face. This was going to kill more innocents. People in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she was laughing so hard the tears wouldn't stop. They just wouldn't stop.

The remainder of the journey took another twenty minutes, as the accelerator lab was well outside of town. The train line had been extended especially to ferry scientists back and forth between the lab and the university but the pristine white hadn't lasted long. The constant bombardment of students and some of their less palatable habits had left the train with a lived in feel. Cassandra swiped her card through the security reader, and left the train. The station was more antiseptic than the train. Brilliant white walls and white-light fluorescent tubes were everywhere, along with wide-open spaces. Feeling vulnerable and exposed, she walked across the station. Her brisk, business heels clicking and echoing in the hall. It was silent. She hadn't been expecting this; it was like intruding on someone deathbed. "Halt! Identification." She jumped, and spun round to see a young soldier standing calmly behind her. "Er, sorry miss. Didn't mean to scare you. I nee to see your ID?" She took a deep breath and smiled as she pulled the card from her purse. "You scared the living daylights out of me!" She handed over the card, and held her breath as he ran it through the portable security check. It felt like she wasn't breathing at all when he finally handed the card back to her. "Thank you miss Chalmers. Hell of a day to start work." She smiled and let out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief. "Mind how you go miss." He said as he walked away. "We've had a tip-off that one of the terrorist groups would make an attempt here today." She froze, heart pounding in her chest. There was a leak! Someone had informed the government! What should she do? Run? Call the abort? The soldier stopped and turned. "Damn, nearly forgot. Sorry miss, but I need to run the wand over you." He took what looked like a slim chrome pipe from the holster on his belt and advanced towards her. The bomb, he was going to find the bomb! The soldier quickly ran the wand over her front and down her back. It beeped once. Steady girl, steady. The soldier frowned. "Er, may I ask what you do?" She had to think of something believable, plausible, and real. The cover story wasn't going to fit was it? What has he found? Has he detected the explosives? "Um," She glanced down at her shoes, noting with insane delight the scuffmark on her right shoe. "I deal mainly with isotopes, which is why I'm at the accelerator today. But I also teach chemistry. Why? You haven't detected an explosive on me have you?" He examined the wand, and nodded. "Only a trace, but I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." No! This can't be happening! "Its probably some remnants from an experiment last week. Check my hands." She hadn't washed them properly. She knew now, Neelam was always going on at her about not cleaning properly after handling explosives. She held out her hands, as the soldier waved his wand over them. The detector beeped once more. "Ok, but try and clean yourself up next time miss." She gave a nervous laugh and walked to the elevator.

10:04am Cassandra strode confidently into the lab cafeteria having successfully negotiated two more guards and a physics student trying it on with the new girl in town. Thirty minutes, she told herself, all over in thirty minutes. She bought a mug of sarfé and cake. She was beginning to relax now. The adrenaline driven morning was coming to a close. She pulled out a physics journal, and made a show of browsing through it. She glanced at her watch again, and got up. Picking up the bomb, she placed it on the chair as she stuffed the journal back in her purse. "Tut, tut. I thought you'd have better respect for such an eminent journal." She froze. Why was this happening? Problem after problem had walked into her this morning. What was she doing wrong? Had someone stuck an 'I am a terrorist' sign on her back? "Cassie? Aren't you even going to say hello?" She turned. Professor Hargreaves stood behind her wearing his archetypal tweed suit and half-moon glasses. "Professor!" She threw her arms around him and hugged. "How are you? I didn't know you were working here!" He grinned as she let go. "I started last month. Today's the first day of the new accelerator's life. So, my dear." He took her by the arm. "What's my favourite physics student been up to?"

Fitz was bored. He'd tried playing some of Sam's computer games, but couldn't get on with them. Three hours of wandering amongst the TARDIS library stacks had just made him irritable, footsore, hungry and thirsty. He'd given up wandering the TARDIS corridors looking for the occasional interesting room long ago, and now he was sitting in the, for better words, conservatory, channel hopping on the TARDIS's equivalent of TV. Sam had introduced him to the wonders of the remote control the last time they'd been on Earth, and he'd been addicted to it ever since; although it wasn't doing him much good today. "Sixteen billion channels, and nothing on." He sighed, and paused on local news broadcast about some president visiting some physics lab. The Doctor was sitting in his armchair reading, Sam was in the TARDIS gymnasium keeping fit and Fitz was still bored out of his brain. "I hope something happens soon." He mumbled, and fought the impulse to carry on channel hopping.

"Here's my baby Cassandra. The I.R.A.S. detector. We're going to be able to see farther into the structure of the universe than ever before." He patted the drum-like concatenation of instruments around the exit of the accelerator as if it were a pet. "Professor, do you mind if I dump this somewhere?" She gestured with the suitcase. "Oh, my dear I'm sorry I should have thought before dragging you out here. Put it down over there, no-one will disturb it here." Perfect. The bomb had just been designed to blow a hole in the wall to get the rest of the team in. This was about as close as she was going to get to the president without hurting innocents. She thankfully tucked the case under the professor's detector. "We're using Uranium in the accelerator today and passing the nuclei through a stabilised Plutonium rich cloud. We're hoping to knock loose a string from the firmament. You're welcome to watch if you'd like?" He waggled his bushy eyebrows at her. Smiling, Cassandra nodded. "Wonderful! We have thirty minutes. I'll drive us back." He hopped onto the little electric cart, and turned it on. She looked at him. "I've never seen you so excited. Do you really think you can do it?" He nodded, as he pushed down on the accelerator. "Absolutely! Imagine the possibilities! We could unravel cosmic strings straight out of the substrate of the universe! We would finally have all the unlimited power we need by harnessing their energy. We could use them for terrestrial and space propulsion. We are on the virge of a whole new era of technology! So yes, I am a little excited. The accelerator's been powering up since last night. We're just waiting to push the button." He gave her a huge grin, as the little cart trundled alongside the Vacuum tube. Leaving Cassandra's bomb waiting for its activation signal. It's tiny, weak, transmitter beeped almost plaintively as it broadcast its location for the rest of the assassination team.

Fitz was bored no longer. The presidential visit he had been watching on the local television had turned out more interesting than previously thought. It appeared that most people thought the president was a tyrant. The news report showed scenes of protestors being viciously attacked by armed police; petrol bombs had been thrown, people chaining themselves to fences. There'd even been a streaker! Although Fitz had to admit that while he wasn't the foremost expert on alien anatomy, he was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to see what he had seen. Not even the BBC showed things like this! At least not in is day anyway. The list of things the news crew had been reporting seems endless! Bomb threats, assassination attempts, death threats, you name it. Fitz had to admit though; even under that much public pressure the man should have left office long ago. The fact that he was clinging to power like a wolverine with its jaws clamped over your arm, implied that there was just slightly more than an element of truth to the accusations. He was half inclined to disturb the Doctor's reading, and bring him over to watch. The news crew obviously had some kind of dispensation because they were following the president around. The latest pictures were inside a tiny control room, packed with instrument and monitors. The president was shaking hands with someone, an elderly professor type figure. Behind him stood a very nervous looking, and stunningly beautiful, young redhead. The guards were also eyeing her up, but in a suspicious way. Fitz clicked; she wasn't supposed to be there! Two guards had flanked her, and were practically holding her arms. This was getting good, thought Fitz as he leaned forward on his chair. You could feel the tension from here, and he was light years away! The old man was totally oblivious of the storm brewing behind him as he patiently explained what they were planning to use the accelerator for to the president. Questions popped out of the reporter, and the president's aids as the balding man stood there nodding. Occasionally he glanced at the woman, an almost sly look on his face as the tension slowly built.

Neelam glanced at the locator. A small red dot pulsed rhythmically on the display. Perfect, he knew she wouldn't let them down. The small wireframe map showed a five hundred yard dash to the accelerator control room, and the president. He spat; just the thought of the man brought the taste of bile to his mouth. He started at a tap on the shoulder. He was as jumpy as Cassie had been earlier that morning! Snarling, he turned. "What?" Jaxxson was standing behind him holding a portable holovision. "Er, I think you should see the live report." He proffered the tiny unit. Neelam fingered the power button and looked into the eyes of the president. "So? So what?" Jaxxson pointed to just behind the scientist who had started rambling about the structure of the universe and his grand experiment. "Er, isn't that Cassandra?" Neelam frowned, and spun the display rotate wheel on the side of the unit. Slowly the little room full of people rotated and he got a good look at the redheaded woman in the business suit. The woman flanked by three burly presidential guards. A woman called Cassandra; looking very, very frightened. "Damn! She might blow the whole thing!" He jumped up, and quietly signalled to the rest of the team. "Schedule's changed." He hissed. "We're moving. Now!"

Cassandra was terrified. The two security guards quietly standing next to her was unsettling, but the one behind had the muzzle of a gun stabbing into the small of her back and a huge paw of a hand on her left shoulder. From the front it probably didn't look too bad, but from where she was standing it couldn't get any worse! She'd been surprised when the first guard walked in, and horrified when the president and a holo-crew pushed in behind him. Professor Hargreaves hadn't mentioned that it was his experiment the President was going to be at. The holo crew were the icing on the cake, though. She was on public view for all to see! An aid stepped forward and led the president to a large red button. "Mr president. If you'd be so kind as to activate the experiment for professor Hargreaves?" The president nodded, and reached forward.

The assassination team were inside the compound. Three guards lay dead at their feet as they prepared to make the dash across to the hole that was about to appear in the wall. Neelam took the remote for the bomb from his pocket and flipped back the clear plastic cover. He rested his thumb over the exposed button as they waited for a small troop of guards to disappear around the edge of the accelerator building.

Fitz was literally on the edge of his seat. The woman looked ready to bolt, and by the look of the guards they weren't going to have that. Sam had walked into the control room, brushing a towel across her hair as she dried it. The Doctor was still reading, so she headed over to see Fitz. "What'cha watching?" Fitz quickly grabbed the remote. "TV, some nasty president opening a big physics experiment. Except I think they've just closely avoided an assassination attempt." Sam sat down next to him, still rubbing her hair vigorously. "Really? Why would they want to kill him?" Fitz was beginning to find it hard to keep his concentration focused. "Well he's a bit like Hitler. Doesn't like being talked down to." Sam bunched the blue and white striped towel onto her lap. "So what's that he's doing now?" She said and quickly yanked the control from his hand. "Isn't there anything else on?" Sam's finger reached for the next channel.

Two electronic signals flashed to their destinations within fractions of a second of one another. As the explosion compressed the cloud of plutonium atoms within the I.R.A.S. detector, the stream of super heavy uranium atoms travelling at almost the speed of light, left the accelerator itself and poured into the testing vacuum tube. Both Plutonium and Uranium atoms splintered into their component particles. Quarks and Gluons formed a plasma cloud within the experiment chamber, as the last Uranium atom struck. Energy blew outwards into the cloud of particles, smashing them together and deep within I.R.A.S. a single particle of strange matter was born.

The TARDIS screamed as the temporal vortex was sucked into a lower energy state. Within, columns smashed to the rippling floor, Fitz, Sam and the Doctor were thrown around as a hurricane wind blew threw the console room. The huge, cast ironwork surrounding the console itself, buckled as if being crushed under a tremendous weight, candles guttered out and silence descended in the absolute blackness. A single peal of the cloister bell echoed eerily down the corridors of the dead TARDIS. "I'll keep my mouth shut next time." Mumbled Fitz as he tried not to move. His whole body felt bruised and battered. Probably because he'd first bounced off the indestructible window behind him in the atrium, which had smashed, and then the mangled remains of the console's struts. He opened his eyes, but it didn't make much difference from when they were closed. He decided to try cliché number one. "Owww!" Quickly followed up by cliché number three. "What happened?" A female moan came from nearby. "Well that's the first time that's happened." Groaned Sam, as she propped herself up on a bruised arm. Deep in the darkness a match flared into life, showing the Doctor's face. A large cut on his forehead had bled profusely and his left eye was beginning to blacken. "Is everyone alright? Anything broken?" The match rose into the air, and the little circle of light showed some of the devastated console room. Sam and Fitz groaned in unison. "I thought you said that the insides of the TARDIS couldn't be damaged by something on the outside." Said Fitz, as he shakily got to his feet. The Doctor had wandered over to the console, and was rummaging around the toolkit, which he had pulled from its compartment. "Technically that is true, realistically the internal dimensions are still physically connected to the external shell. Fortunately for us this is a type forty TARDIS and not a type thirty. The type thirty's required a constant power source to maintain the internal dimensions. They were abandoned after a number of rather nasty accidents involving power failures." He triumphantly pulled a small box from the toolkit, and pulled four small legs from it. "Portable lighting unit. Close your eyes this will be bright." The tiny box emitted a loud screech and a brilliant white globe appeared in the air above it illuminating the remains of the console room. "Oh dear." He said, picking up a piece of the shattered remains of the time rotor. Sam limped over to the Doctor. He stood there holding the piece of blue crystal like a small child whose favourite toy had been broken. "Were we attacked Doctor?" He shook his head. "No Sam, to cause something like this requires vast amounts of energy. I'm not even sure the Timelords could willingly destroy a TARDIS." He looked at her. "They are usually just allowed to die when their time comes." He stroked a twisted strut lovingly. "I can't hear her Sam. I can't hear her singing. She won't answer me." He sounded as if he was going to burst into tears. Fitz clambered from the wreckage, and perched himself precariously on a flattened piece of ironwork. "Well if we weren't attacked, what happened?" The Doctor had been staring into space, when suddenly he grinned and breathed a sigh of relief. "She's busy." He looked at the wrecked console. " We need to get to the backup control room. If we're lucky we may be able to salvage some sensor readings. Come on!" He scrambled over the twisted console, and headed of into the darkness holding an everlasting match up high.

The TARDIS corridors were twisted and melted into a strange, non Euclidean morass. Rooms were fused together; Fitz saw the remains of his bed mixed with the Doctors huge steam coffee machine. It was definitely something he rather forgot. Especially if he'd gone to bed instead of watching TV, as he had thought of doing. The butterfly room was a horrific tangled mess of green grass in twisted pipes and weird machinery. The pool now ran around the rim of a huge circular room with another corridor running through the middle. And through out it all, the Doctor kept touching the walls making soothing noises as if he were calming a child who had grazed its knee. They finally reached the secondary control room. It was just as badly damaged as the rest of the TARDIS. One half of it looked as if it had been melted by a blowtorch. The central time rotor was a still bubbling mass of something that looked like pink jelly, and the usually pristine white walls and roundels were blackened and warped as if from fire. The Doctor started playing with the small keyboard on the undamaged half of the console. Meaningless figures and characters flickered fitfully past his eyes as he took in the data. "Oh dear. This could be very serious indeed." He mumbled, as his fingers rattled the keyboard. Sam frowned, and looked nervously at Fitz who had started to poke around the older console room. If the Doctor thought this was serious then that meant they were in real trouble. He hadn't even called their adventures on Skaro 'Serious'. She wandered over to Fitz. "We have a problem Fitz, this is going to be bad." He turned and looked at her. Bravado was chiselled into his expression but the fear gleamed in his eyes with fiery intensity. They both jumped as the external monitor screen behind them opened slightly, and then fell out of it mounting with a shower of sparks. The Doctor rushed over and knelt underneath the screen. "Ah we're in a high energy pocket created by the TARDIS's temporal integrity field." He crawled out from under the screen. "We're lucky, we could have been killed." He said, standing up. "It appears that a 'strange matter' seed has been introduced to the local space-time continuum. Luckily we were in the time vortex when it happened and not in normal space." His companions looked at him expectantly. "This entire sector of space, if not the universe has been transferred into a lower energy state than normal. Our rules don't apply any more, our biology won't work out there, the TARDIS can't operate, and we're trapped like flies in amber." Sam looked at him. "Oh." The Doctor shook his head. "That's not the last of it. The TARDIS is having to expend enormous amounts of energy to maintain the temporal stasis field we're in." Fitz sat down on a bare patch of floor. "Let me guess, it's not going to last forever?" The Doctor nodded. "The spatial link to the eye of harmony on Gallifrey is still open, but the type forty TARDIS's didn't have high energy intake inhibitors installed. While we're stuck in here the TARDIS is literally sucking the life out of Gallifrey, there will be TARDIS's left scattered across the cosmos without power and it appears that the energy output isn't enough to stabilise our little bubble of space-time." It was Sam's turn to sit down. "So we're buggered, is what your saying." She sighed. "Not entirely. If we can locate the strange matter seed we can isolate it. It's like a seed crystal. Once removed from the space-time lattice, everything should return to normal. We should be within a cubed parsec of the source." He rattled the keyboard again. "And from what I can tell it seems to be artificial in nature rather than a natural phenomenon." Sam looked at him. "So what you're saying is, we have to find a single particle of strange matter in a square parsec of space. Space that we can't live in, and none of our laws of physics apply. Its a bit of a tall order, even for you." Fitz put his hand up. "Er, how big is a parsec? And how big is this particle?" The Doctor stroked his chin. "Now then, in Earth terms, one light year is the time it takes for a particle wave of photons, light, to travel about six million, million miles in a single Earth year. Now a parsec is about 3.3 light years, which is roughly 19 trillion miles. Now cube it and you have our search area." Fitz looked around the console room. "And the particle?" The Doctor rubbed a finger across the white console. "Well a strange matter particle would be about the same size as a gluon, maybe a touch larger. Gluons are sub-atomic particles which stick atoms together; in the most basic of terms." Fitz looked at Sam. "We're buggered aren't we." She nodded glumly. The Doctor shook his head. "Not entirely. The TARDIS sensor logs indicate a single point of origin rather than a cascaded natural cause. That would imply that it's artificial in origin. Probably the result of a botched particle accelerator experiment or maybe a damaged hyperspace dimensional stabiliser." He tapped his chin, deep in thought. "Er, would an experiment with strings do it?" Asked Fitz. "Its just that I was watching one on TV when it happened."