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2
The Time Lord slouched unconscious against the cream seat, where he had dropped in his fit of panic.
His cheek rested against the cool material, expression blank and peaceful.
Anyone would have thought him the real Doctor, seeing him like this - unless they had caught sight of the vertical scar on the back of his neck, half-hidden in his hair.
His eyelids twitched, and slowly blinked open.
The slack muscles of his hybrid body became taut and quivered as he rose to consciousness; his body felt like a live bomb, ready to go off at any uncertain point.
Something crinkled and made noise around his body.
He looked down - he was wearing a white sheet with loose sleeves. Clinical. Papery.
He tore it off, feeling it did not belong to him.
The trousers and shoes he left on - they were familiar. They fitted, at least.
He had spent an eternity screaming. His throat was parched and sore, his lungs strained.
Now, instead, he slowly pulled himself up onto the chair and slumped with his head between his knees, fighting off nausea.
He had been screaming because... because he didn't know what was going on.
He only knew that he felt insane.
And that he had no idea why. No notion of how he had ended up here, what he was.
Why there were words in his head, meanings to everything he looked at.
It was like remembering things from a dream long ago.
Everything was so... bewildering.
He had known to run to this blue box. How? What was it?
He had never seen it in his life, but he had seen it in his own mind, known where it would be, waiting for him.
The monsters - there were things, hideous things - that had tried to kill him, and that he had hunted down, in a haze of vengeance and fear.
Why did they want him? And what had they been doing to him?
Were they the cause of all this?
Where was he?
More importantly, where was he meant to be?
Huge chunks of information were just missing. Had he been unconscious when they kidnapped him? How long for?
And if so, where had they brought him from? Why him? What was significant about him? What did they need?
Why had they been cruel? How had they even managed to catch him, when they'd run like rodents from him afterwards?
Where had he been heading? Was he there for a purpose? Had he achieved it?
Had it been to kill them?
That last thought sat inside him with a satisfactory weight.
An image of silver, squirming things encased in thick glass shot through his mind.
He didn't even know what it meant, or if it belonged to him.
There was a feeling, a raging, instinctual, awful feeling somewhere in his gut.
It told him that it wanted something. He wanted something.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
The enemy's face... contorted in agony as it breathed its last.
Wet drips of fluid and the softness of internal things against his fingers as the tool sliced through.
The fierce - triumph - of the kill.
The thrill of the chase tearing his veins with electricity, pain in his pumping lungs, desperate squeals as he caught small hands and stepped on cracking ribs.
His belly pulled at him again with more violence, more fire.
Some escaped.
And that wasn't good enough.
He stood looking up at the single exit of the laboratory: a round shape in the ceiling, with a gravity platform for a door.
He didn't know how he knew it was a gravity platform.
How could he know the function of something he had never seen?
Why was he so clever and so stupid? The thought enraged him more than ever.
There was a panel in the floor. Decorated with assorted symbols. The right sequence was required.
Only, he didn't need a sequence.
His hand moved automatically, reaching for the inner pocket of a jacket he wasn't wearing, and instead touching his bare skin.
He swore under his breath and set about the lab to look for the tweed coat. There it was, hanging up with other very familiar-looking garments.
He retrieved a Sonic Screwdriver from it without putting the clothes back on, and ran to assume his place at the exit.
His anger that he knew the name 'Sonic Screwdriver', but not where it came from or why he owned one, was overriden by the pleasure of success.
One quick zap with his new tool, and the platform dropped from the ceiling, waiting at his feet.
He took a single, shaking step, and it accepted his bodyweight without effort.
His upturned, murderous expression was illuminated by the rays of light from the city above him.
He rose like Satan himself, from the black pit, into heaven's brightness.
He blinked in the new, blinding room, trying to get his bearings.
He was inside a small clinical-looking space, lined with screens, switches, levers, buttons, touchboards, coders...
Jackpot.
His fingers moved at lightning rate across the sleek panels of controls.
His brain was working heavily too - calculating, connecting the various buttons to various meanings, gradually overriding the city's system.
He didn't really have a plan. He just did what he felt like doing.
First, open all the doors. Every door in that heavily blockaded fortress. Really shake them up.
He thought of the faces, the dumb confusion, the panicked rush for cover that didn't exist any more. Let them know exactly what he could do. Then advance.
The hairs stiffened on the back of his neck just minutes after he had begun his sabotage.
Somebody had joined him in the room.
He turned around, and to his mild surprise saw that he was severely mistaken.
Not somebody, but somebodies. Several. About a hundred, in fact.
They stood at the main entrance - behind them he could see the passage leading up to the city.
They all had guns, and they were all pointing them at him.
Walking on four hands really did have its advantages. It was only their lack of noisy shoes that had allowed them to sneak up on him.
He suddenly realised that he didn't have a weapon, and wondered why.
It was probably stowed in that blue box, somewhere. Should have thought to bring it along.
But he didn't feel afraid. Very much to the contrary.
He felt an awful lot better than he had been on his own, in that infernal silence. Now... he felt good. In control.
"Ah. Hello." he smirked a very intimidating smirk.
"Step away from the security panels."
"I don't think I want to."
"These aren't stun guns any more, Doctor. These are built for bigger things. Be warned."
He staggered back a pace, glaring at the Soul who had spoken.
Again with the name-knowing. It was worse than not recognising anything at all. Somehow, he knew that was his name. How did they know it?
"What did you call me?" he choked.
"You have to listen. We've made a mistake -"
"Yes, you really have."
"Now you need to come with us and talk this over -"
"TALK!" he roared, so suddenly that it was their turn to jump backwards, "I don't talk! I act. And that's all any of you need to know, so go on, shoot me."
"What?"
"Shoot me! Shoot me dead! I don't know what's happening to me and I don't want to!" he spat, spreading his arms out in defiance.
"Doctor, we can help..."
"STOP calling me that!"
"We can help you."
"Were you helping me when you did this to me?"
His fists were balled up with utter fury. All hell blazed in his grey-green orbs.
At least, they should have been grey-green.
The Souls did a double take, because they abruptly realised that the Time Lord they had been dealing with looked more disturbing and harrowing than any of them could have guessed before now. Their own burnt orange eyes, ringed silver around the pupils - the only visible sign of the Souls' presence - widened in dismay.
His irises weren't silver-ringed like theirs at all. They were silver-blotched.
Luminous smudges interrupted the ordinary green hues, as though the Alpha Soul was... bleeding through. As though it were injured, maimed, cursed.
"By the Mother." the military leader stuttered.
The Time Lord huffed, and with a speed they couldn't match, pressed a single square button near the top of the panel.
The Souls quickly resumed their offensive positions, lifting their guns and aiming.
"Don't touch." their leader warned.
"I told you to shoot me." he answered in a wry tone, "I'm afraid you missed your chance."
The city above their heads rumbled and quaked with massive impact. The Souls fell to the floor while the Time Lord held onto the controls to keep himself steady.
The explosions were getting closer, so many of them. They could sense them sweeping through the entire area.
They could sense the deaths, like a wave, rolling dozens upon dozens at a time.
The fuses of the controls began to fizz and spit sparks. The Doctor backed slowly away from the bewildered, fearful soldiers.
His face was shadowed, smouldering with dark temper, and worst of all - solemn triumph.
This was where he belonged. This was what he was here for.
To watch everybody else burn.
A huge, monstrous explosion just outside the door knocked the Souls flying. Arms flew everywhere, most not attached to bodies any longer. Heads knocked against walls and floor, split and bled. All but one died instantly in that single eruption. The Time Lord stood rigid, breathing heavily.
The single survivor was on her back, gazing weakly up at him as she clutched the piece of debris that was stuck in her torso. Her orange eyes gleamed as her graceful, equine face contorted in agony.
To his horror, she reached out a spare arm towards him, trembling with the effort.
"Doctor." she whispered, in a strangled voice, "Please... Please, help me."
The next explosion would wipe out the controls room. He didn't have much time.
He glanced down, and grinned at the gravity platform he was standing not feet from.
The Soul's expression was halfway to hopeful, encouraged by his smile, as he met her stare again.
He paused, and sneered with such malice that she recoiled where she was lying.
Then he dropped through the circular exit to safety, as the room finally went up in fiery light, and crumbled into fragments upon the corpses of the soldiers.
