Julius stared at the Doctor without fear. "The only hope you have of preventing this and saving her is to stay away. If you go anywhere near her, especially now, you will both end up dead. The known universe will end, and that can only be stopped if you stay away." His hands were open, relinquishing any authority. "I can't stop you, so I won't try. You can do one or the other; stay away from her and let her live, or chase her and watch everything you once held dear crumble." He looked the Doctor in the eye. "Choose wisely."

The Doctor stared back at the Krize general, breathing deeply. All manner of thoughts ran through his mind, all the information he had collected in the previous months. What Katie could be, what she had done, what would likely happen if he did follow. It all added up to certain heartbreak, and probably death and destruction.

But then, didn't everything he did?

"I made her a promise Karzon," the Doctor said tightly. "One that I've broken once already. She begged me to find her, and she shouldn't have to do that."

He pressed several buttons on the vortex manipulator and vanished, following the signal from the stolen TARDIS coming from the Rahki ship.

Julius sighed. One of his soldiers came to stand next to him.

"Do we still follow sir?"

"No. We head home."

The soldier seemed appalled. "Sir, the Doctor went after Scorch; the Project will close the hour he gets caught."

"I know."

"It's hopeless already?" the soldier said, more as a statement than a question.

Julius ignored the bluntness of the sentence. The Krize military was very young; they were still figuring it out, including building the habit of respecting rank. No matter; after today they wouldn't need an army again. Even if it all went wrong.

"No. We've been running interference for a very long time, and it got us what was needed."

"Sir?"

"We sent the Grixzen after her while she was still human to force her off Earth early so that she'd be more open to him. We came here today to keep them from being taken together. If they had, it would most certainly be hopeless."

"You knew he would follow Scorch."

"I did. She's a killer, and he's the most dangerous person this universe holds. The perfect set of friends. Woe to any who try to hurt one, because the other will seek vengeance. But they've got to have the chance first."

Katie sat up with a deep gasp, drawing in air like a drowning woman as she rolled onto her hands and knees. She started choking on air, dimly aware of a lot of whiteness and someone nearby.

"It's okay, just breath slowly," a female voice said. Katie felt someone touch her back, moving their hands up and down it. "Match your breathing to my hands."

Katie did as she was told, her head feeling incredibly foggy. A loud buzzing kept up a steady drone, like there was a bee stuck in her ear. No, like there was an entire hive flying around her body.

"Oh, just let her alone," a wiry male voice said. "She'll come around like the rest of us did."

"Be quiet 24," the female voice said again. "We look after our own."

"Oh please 25," the wiry voice—24?—mocked, his tone clearly showing his rolling eyes. "She's not from our series. We're going to be incinerated, and she's one of the first newbies."

"I'm glad of it," a stronger male voice said. "I'm tired of waking up with half formed memories. At least the headaches will stop, and we can all drop the charade."

"Wouldn't you rather live?" the female—25—asked. The buzzing in Katie's head was dying down, which she was very thankful for. Just the small conversation had given her several questions, the first being where she was.

"Of course I'd rather live," the second man said. "But that's not likely to happen."

"You can let yourself be led to the slaughter if you want 23," 25 snapped. "I'm going to be looking for a way out right up until the second I die. Are you feeling better?"

This question obviously being directed at Katie, she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good, thanks." Sitting up, Katie set her back against a glass wall, looking up at the woman who had helped her. Katie blinked in surprise.

"You're…" The woman smiled.

"Yes, we all look this way."

23 moved so that Katie could see the large room better. It was blazingly white, making it reek of the sterile and laboratory. Glistening partitions made of glass were set up everywhere, looking to have no real purpose other than to create small three sided rooms. None of that interested Katie though. All around, there were people, about a hundred of them, all copies of the same man and woman. There were a few slight variations from one to the next, but essentially they were all the same: deep red hair, dark green eyes, moderate skin, and freckle-like spots running down from their temples to disappear into their collars.

Katie couldn't hold back her gasp as she realized what they were. "You're all Jahra!"

The man with the wiry voice spoke up. "What was your first clue?" he asked sarcastically. Katie looked at 24, noticing his body build matched his voice. The female, 25, blinked, giving her an odd look.

"Of course we're Jahra. What else would we be?"

Katie stared at her, a face scarily similar to her own. "Ah…I'm…I'm not sure. Probably still dizzy or something. Um, where are we?"

"The holding bay, currently occupied by the Epsilon-200 series," the stronger man—Katie thought he must be 23—said. His voice matched him as well, Katie noticed before he continued. "This is where we sit when they bring us back. We all just returned from the Memory Transfers."

"Is that where they take all your memories and stick them in a computer?"

24 gave her an incredulous look. "Of course it is. You should know this."

Katie smiled. "Right, sorry."

"Where are your specks?" 23 asked.

"My what?" Katie asked.

"Your specks," 25 said, pointing to the spots on her own face. "You don't have any."

"None of my series did," Katie said truthfully.

"Odd, but not really surprising," the woman answered with a nod. "They keep breeding us to look less and less like them."

"The Rahki," Katie said, keeping the question from her voice. 24 seemed to hear it anyway.

"Of course the Rahki are the ones breeding us," he said in disgusted disbelief. "You are so thick."

"Be polite for once 24," 25 said. "She's obviously from a servant batch. They've caught Sparky; no need to download all that knowledge anymore like they did for the rest of us."

"You seem awfully calm about it," 24 said sullenly.

23 scoffed. "Please 24, we have this same conversation every time our series is brought back. You whine about how it's not fair. You knew this was going to happen the first day we were turned out. We get programmed, we live people's lives, get brought back to have our memories drained, and once we're worn out or get too outdated we get incinerated. It's part of life."

"At least I'm not just sitting and waiting for them to take me like you are, or repeating the same empty hope over and over again like 25 does."

"I do not!" the young female protested. 24 rolled his eyes, and 23 gave a grudging nod.

"You do 25. Every time, always talking about earning a life for yourself. It's not going to happen."

"Empty hope is better than none," Katie quietly said, purposefully drawing attention back to her. The three looked at her.

"For some," 24 said bitterly.

"So…who's Sparky?" Katie said, knowing full well who it was. 25's face lit up and the other two groaned.

"Sparky is what all the normal Jahra Rahki call her. She's got a designation like the rest of us, but she's got a real name too."

"What's her designation?"

"Experiment He-Zayin-Aleph."

"That's not Greek," Katie said, surprised. 25 shook her head.

"No, it's Phoenician for E-F-A. They even used a separate set of letters for her project!"

24 heaved a great sigh. "Yes, yes we know. She's so amazingly special, and they worked on her design for millennia, and she got a real life on a planet with a family, and won't know she's one of us until she has her base layer activated, and even once she's brought back she won't have her memories removed. But it isn't so amazing for her the whole way, now is it?"

"It'd be worth it!"

"Please 25, would you really want to spend the last years of your life unable to touch anyone? And then have it all drained from you for what seems to be the end of the universe or something equally dastardly?"

"Oh, good word!" Katie said, nodding. "What's this about getting your own life?"

"Something went wrong with Sparky," 23 said with a bit of a smile. "She left Sol 3 too early, and her tracking device was damaged. We all got a laugh out of that; the Rahki make a Jahra with her own mind and she goes missing."

"Still found her though," 24 said in an irritated manner. "They always do. All the Jahra who found out something about her, anything about a piece of her timeline were given their own lives. Set free. At least that's what they say."

"Why would the Rahki lie?" Katie asked innocently. All three stared at her. Even 25 seemed a bit surprised Katie would ask such a thing.

"We're nothing to them," 23 said. "Recorders, that's all. They don't have a good reason to keep us around, even if we did bring back something so important."

"What about that one from Delta-0 series?" 25 insisted. "What was he, number 009 or something?"

"He brought back a TARDIS Key." 24 gave her a look. "It was even his personal key. Little hard to beat that."

Katie's hand instantly flashed to her neck. She'd forgotten about the TARDIS Key. She ran her hand frantically around her neck, knowing that it was useless to search. The Rahki had taken her Key. She noticed for the first time that she was wearing something similar to hospital scrubs like every other Jahra. She leaned back in shock, the fact that she still had the necklace the Doctor had given her small comfort.

"Shit," Katie said, forgetting to restrain herself. "Shit. They've already run me through. Brilliant." She crossed her arms, tapping her nose and clicking her teeth in puzzlement. "But why stick me here? What good does that do them?"

Ignoring the looks 23, 24, and 25 were giving her she stood up, she started pacing back and forth, one hand rubbing the necklace as she muttered under her breath.

"Transported here, obviously given an electric shock to overload my cells and knock me out. Run me through the full examination, check the energy levels, and then…what? Plunk me in one of the generic waiting rooms? It'd make more sense to just hook me up to something and start the siphon, take a couple cell samples to start cloning and soldier breeding. Instead I'm here." Katie clicked her teeth together, pointing at the three Jahra without looking at them.

"How did I get into this room?"

25 stuttered a little, but spoke up. "Um, you were just here when we were. We're brought in en mass, all unconscious, and we wake up about the same time. You just took a lot longer."

"Was there a blackout before I woke up?"

"A what?"

Katie sighed in irritation. "A blackout. A…a small section of time where nothing existed for several heartbeats." She waited a second before waving her hands. "Well?"

23 shook his head. "No, there wasn't. You just kept laying there and then sat up gasping like you hadn't been breathing for a long time."

Katie resumed her pacing. Nearby Jahra had also taken an interest in her sudden movements, and now nearly everyone was listening to her. "That's not so good. No wonder I hurt so much; I've got so much power zipping through me I can't even die properly. But why just drop me in here?" She froze, her eyes wide.

"Oh, of course!" she groaned. "I get snatched, the first thing the Doctor's gonna do is come chasing me. Well, maybe not him. The Krize are gonna start searching for me, but they can't find me if the only thing marking where I'm at is my Jahra DNA and my energy signature. Needle in a haystack full of needles. Lovely."

"The Doctor?"

Katie looked over at 24, his tone and look making her back up slightly. "What of it?"

"All that stuff you've been going on about…it's you, isn't it?" His voice rose slightly, carrying well in the now silent room. "It's you! You're her, the one everyone's making such a fuss over! You're Scorch!"

The Doctor reeled from the transport. Oh, how he hated the wrist worn ways of time travel!

He looked down at the now smoking manipulator. They also had a habit of burning at inconvenient times. So much better with a ship.

Speaking of which, where was TARDIS? He should have arrived right next to her. Instead he was in a plain hallway. He must have missed in his hurry. However, he could feel the engines, and the architecture was definitely Rahki. So, the general location was right; he just wasn't so good at the finer points.

Of course, now this led to the next question of which to find first; Katie or TARDIS?

Heh, TARDIS. Not the TARDIS. Katie had rubbed off on him.

TARDIS wasn't a good person to leave unaccounted for. She could be used for so many different things. Gallifreyan technology in Rahki hands was not comforting. Then again, they already had her; but on the other hand the longer they had access to TARDIS, the more time they had to understand her.

No, Katie first. She was the one he had promised, she was the one both threatened and threatening. Besides, it was never good to leave her unsupervised for long. Stuff tended to happen.

Having used all of two seconds to see and think all this, the Doctor looked around, doing a swift check for any Rahki. Seeing and hearing none—odd on a space ship—he approached a computer access point and turned the sonic on it. Images flashed past as he scanned for where they would have the Energy Extraction going on. The Rahki would certainly have gotten started there immediately, if only to keep themselves safe. Katie was stuffed with all sorts of energy, the most dangerous of which was temporal. It'd have to be siphoned off to some extent.

Ah, a map. Good, he liked maps. Maps were helpful. Oh, but distance wasn't. Three floors down and then it was a good, what, half mile? And that was the direct route through Memory Transfers, where Jahra got processed after they came back from their assignments. Obviously he'd showed up in the Science Quarter of the ship.

So, up then over, or over then up? Or zigzag maybe. Yeah, up over, up over, and up over. Should keep him relatively unseen, which would be a must right now. Be difficult, but he could do it. What was that Katie had told him once? "You have got to be the worst person at being unseen. I think you live to be seen." Yeah, that was mostly true. No fun being clever if no one was watching.

Now that he had wasted ten seconds finding a route and thinking, the Doctor turned down his chosen path, keeping the sonic in his hand.

"Just make sure you fight back Kathryn," he said under his breath. "Just keep fighting."

*Constructive critisisim welcome, praise happily accepted, flames not wanted*