There was no food or water for three days.
April threw her half-frozen hands in the air, stretching her aching muscles in an attempt to stop the pain. She was exhausted, but she couldn't sleep so close to The Doctor. His heat made the cramp in her throat too much to bear. The withdrawals of food and water rations were becoming more commonplace these days, and the times kept extending. It was part of another paper by Doctor Thyx, examining the effects of starvation and dehydration of the body of a Time Lord.
She hadn't been fully able to explain what had happened to her to The Doctor, purely because she barely knew herself. She didn't remember anything from her past - apparently she had been human once. And then one day, she just fell from the sky, straight into the lap of the Dakari - the 'mad scientists of the universe', according to The Doctor. There were a thousand theories as to how and why she fell, and a million more as to how she managed to go from human to Time Lord (whatever that meant). All she knew was that they hadn't even attempted to solve her speech problem, or her heart condition, or the tumour. After being seen by hundreds of the metal-eyed professors, they had done nothing but test her rather than actually treat her.
April had another attack of light-headedness as she sat up, and had to wait a good five minutes before the stars stopped swarming in front of her eyes.
She was almost relieved when she heard the approaching footsteps of the guards thudding down the corridor. They flicked the switch that changed the light settings from moonlight to daylight, and then entered. The Doctor awoke with a start. She looked up at the guards. Crestfallen, she saw no food or water in their hands.
'The Tetra is to be taken to Doctor Thyx for examination,' they said, their gravel voices in perfect sync.
She shook her head violently, which hurt immensely as her drying brain battered off the sides of her skull. The guards barely reacted at all, as if they had expected it.
'If you refuse,' they said, 'then neither you nor your companion will receive your rations for the next week. Your vital scans show that neither of you will survive if rations are withdrawn.'
April looked at The Doctor. She could tell what they said was true. His lips were cracked, and he had lost the vivacity with which he sprung so unexpectedly into her life.
April gave the guards a small nod. The Doctor grunted protests through a dry throat and tried to shoo the guards away, but April calmed him with a glance over her shoulder. She saw genuine pain in his eyes as the Dakari dragged her to her feet and hauled her down the corridor.
Doctor Thyx was waiting for her in the testing room. He wore an almost stereotypical white lab coat over his twisted hunchback shoulders and a two-headed stethoscope around his neck.
'How do you like your new cellmate, Tetra?' he jested. She was not amused by his underhand humour. She never had been. The guards threw her down onto the floor in their usual manner, and then left the two alone.
'Right,' Thyx said. 'No operations today. Good news for you then, at least.' He sighed. 'Apparently, we have to start putting the interests of our subjects first rather than science. Ridiculous government. If only they knew what we had in here...'
He pulled out a brown file and flicked through pages of shorthand notes. April propped herself up against a nearby cabinet, closing her eyes to avoid the blinding glare of the exposed light bulbs on the titanium surfaces.
'You should be glad to know we're almost finished with you down here,' he announced.
'Oh?' she croaked.
'One week left on your trial schedule, and then we hand you over to Madame Fury's department.'
No. No, not Fury.
'I told her,' Thyx said, 'that you should be ready by then. After the effects of the final trial, then you should be good to go. Is that alright?'
No! NONONONONONO!
Nausea overcame her, and she felt stomach acid rise up through her throat. Her hand rose to her mouth, but the vomit spilled over her fingers and onto the floor. It fell all over her shirt and trousers. The stench was revolting, but her mind was elsewhere. She barely noticed the incident at all. She was in a state of pure panic.
Thyx sighed heavily, cursed her and her pathetic nature, and then called the guards in to take her to the cleaning chambers.
'Oh come on,' he said, 'it's not that bad. She's seeing your new friend first.'
'Isn't he beautiful?'
The Doctor felt bare cold metal underneath the skin of his hands. He forced his eyes open slowly, and then crammed them shut to escape the blinding glare of the light reflecting off the titanium floor. His cheek was bleeding - not badly enough for any concern, but it stung bitterly as if the wound had been rubbed in salt. A rough hand on his shoulder pulled him up from the floor, sharp claws digging into his skin. He looked up into a vaguely human face. In fact, it would have been entirely human, had it not been for the twisting, twirling metal that replaced the skin encompassing a pair of alarming bright yellow eyes. Another Dakari.
The Dakari placed a hand on his stinging cheek and began rubbing her thumb across the wound. As his eyes began to focus, The Doctor could see the rest of her face. She was much older than the Dakari which had taken him from his cell, but there was an air of vivacity about her. Her face was alight with glee, although what she was so pleased about he couldn't tell.
Eventually, she withdrew her hand and stood to her full height - which admittedly wasn't much, but her confidence and something in the way she positioned herself made her seem like the tallest being in the room. She turned to the guards who had dragged him here.
'Leave us,' she commanded. There was a pause as they bowed slightly, then they marched away, heavy feet like drums against the floor.
The Doctor grabbed a hold of a nearby table and hauled himself up cautiously from the floor. The desk held a variety of papers, diagrams, and vials. A few The Doctor recognised, and some he didn't. That made him worried, very worried indeed. The Dakari returned to his side with a small metal cup filled with water. He was lax to take it, but the sandpaper texture of his throat and the dizziness of his mind led him to reach out and grab it, gulping the liquid down until he was gasping for air. When he brought the cup down from his mouth, he saw that he had barely taken a drop.
'It refills itself,' the Dakari said, sensing his confusion. She took the cup back and placed it on a pile of folders.
'Who are you?' he asked, his voice considerably less raspy than before. She straightened.
'My name is Madame Fury. I am the Director of Operations and Experiments of the Dakari Settlement on Titan. I assume you probably haven't heard of me?'
Alarm bells began ringing in The Doctor's mind. The nerves along his back began to tingle. He shook his head. Her happy demeanour vanished.
'Liar,' she hissed. 'The Tetra may not be able to talk, but she is wise enough to communicate with her own kind when they are in danger. She will have told you about how we got off on the wrong foot, I imagine, and how that has led to rather...strained relations between us ever since. But I assure you, Doctor, that I mean her no harm.'
A thousand and eleven questions sprung to The Doctor's tongue. He settled for one. 'Why do you call her The Tetra?'
'The Dakari word for "earth-dweller" is "tetra". And I understand Time Lords prefer to give themselves a title than reveal their true name?' The latter comment was weighed down by its heavy direction at him. It burned in his ears.
'What do you want with a dying Time Lord anyway?' he said, not sure if he meant himself or April. Fury clearly took it as meaning April.
She put her hands on her ridiculously thin hips, and, exasperated, said, 'Are you really expecting me to reveal my plans to you, Doctor? We aren't in some ridiculous Earth film.' Then she shrugged slightly. 'Although I suppose that either way it does not matter. The Tetra herself will soon know. Perhaps it is better coming from you than us.'
Fury took a small vial from a desk behind her and passed it to The Doctor. 'Be careful with it, Doctor,' she cautioned him. He lifted the glass into the light, and saw, contained within the confines of the vial, a tiny strand of hair - mouse brown. His mind began whirring in infinite directions as he stared at the small strand, each one ending at the same conclusion.
'You're using her DNA,' he stated eventually. His own conclusion was too dark for him to say, so instead he asked, 'What do you want that for?'
He passed the vial back to the beaming Dakari, who placed it carefully back on the desk. Still with her back turned from him, she muttered, 'For cloning, obviously.'
'Why would the Dakari want to try - and ultimately fail, by the way - to clone a Time Lord, who has a tumour, a heart condition, and can't speak?' The Doctor asked, crossing his arms to sneak his hand into his jacket unseen and take out the screwdriver.
Fury turned back to face him. 'In case the breeding programme fails, of course,' she smiled.
Abhorrence and surprise slammed into him - not a wonderful combination. 'Breeding programme?' he repeated in disbelief.
'The latest scientific trend to take the Dakari, Doctor, is preservation - in all forms. Some are perfecting cryogenics. I, on the other hand,' she said, gesturing to herself, 'am doing something a little more important and something a little more practical. I have been helping certain races from becoming extinct, and my God, did I think fate had given me a mission the day we found The Tetra. A female Time Lord, albeit with health problems, with the ability to reproduce. And then, a few months later, we find a suitable breeding partner.'
The Doctor staggered backwards. 'I'm not mating with anyone, if that's what you're thinking, Fury,' he said. There was a stark reminder of a moment with Donna all those years ago, and then the present snapped back into his thoughts. He felt an anger inside of him. That this Dakari should be meddling with such things disturbed him, and her methods made were more than unsettling.
'Not you, no,' she said. 'We have another partner. Not a Time Lord, but, in a way, better. You see Doctor, I don't just preserve races anymore; we improve them. By using a partner of another similar species, it should eradicate any hereditary diseases within a few generations or so, so whatever cubs- sorry, children - are produced are unlikely to carry any of The Tetra's defaults. But they will be Time Lords. Your own family history should tell you that the Time Lord DNA ultimately prevails.'
'Why am I here, then? What do you need me for?' The Doctor said, almost snarling. Her remarks - calling children 'cubs', acting as if April was barely even so much as an animal to her - infuriated him.
Fury leaned back against the edge of the desk and began drumming her fingers against the metal. She sighed, 'How to put this simply for you...On Earth, there is a species you call a cheetah. Almost extinct now - which is a shame really, because they were my...inspiration shall we say for your part in this particular experiment. Despite being the most fantastic hunters, they are also incredibly nervous. When kept in captivity, they can become too nervous to even breed, and even when a mating is successful, their intense stress causes them to miscarry. So, one particular breeding programme introduced service dogs to make them feel safe. Low and behold, the cheetahs bred successfully. You are the dog, Doctor, and The Tetra is the cheetah.'
'Why do you want to...breed from April?' His stomach churned. A chill ran up his sweating spine. Fury's tapping made him shiver, as if she was running her cracked nails down a chalkboard. He felt more than just uncomfortable now, more than angry. He felt disgusted. He thought back to April, all alone in her dark cell, drowning in silence and shadows. He remembered the innocence in her face, and the fright in her eyes when they had first met. How Fury could treat her with such malice was truly beyond him. He felt very defensive, and in that instance he realised just how like a dog he was - protecting her.
Fury tilted her head to the side. Her yellow eyes went wild, and she spoke with a ravenous passion that made him feel ill inside. 'We want to bring back your race, Doctor. The Dakari are very good at saving races from extinction, so I wanted to up our game. The Time Lords were the gods of the Ancient Times. They kept the universe from falling into chaos and war. Now without them, entire constellations have turned to blood, entire planets have become graveyards - Doctor, we need your kind.' She was in his face now, staring up at him with her eyes ablaze in the rapture of her tale.
He began shaking his head in disgust and helplessness. 'No, no, you don't understand! The Time Lords are gone. Pretty soon I will be too.' He took a step towards her, stretching out a single shaking finger. 'That is a good thing, Fury. The Time Lords were...arrogant, war-mongering, power-craving - every single one of them-'
'Even you, Doctor?' Fury let her words hang in the air for a moment, smiling smugly at him.
'Especially me,' he growled. 'I have killed so many people, so many races, but compared to the rest of my kind, I am merciful. You have no idea the death and destruction this programme of yours will cause. So am I ordering you now - shut it down.'
There was a pause. The Doctor realised he was towering over Fury, staring down at her whilst his rage burned inside of him. He took a step back and looked down at the floor, silently cursing himself for letting his anger take over. Madame Fury began tapping the desk again.
'What about The Tetra then, Doctor?' she asked. 'Is she as evil as you?'
Tap.
The Doctor looked up. Fury was grinning. 'She's barely a Time Lord; you can't judge her on the same standards,' he said.
'Why not?'
Tap, tap.
'Because it's not the same!' he cried.
'Exactly!' Madame Fury exclaimed. She half-ran toward him in her fervour, grasping his arms in a vice-like grip. Her mad eyes bore into his skull. She broke out into a shrill hysterical laughter. Fury almost fainted from her breathlessness. The Doctor tried to shake her off, tried to pull away, tried to run - but her fixed grip was unyielding. For a moment, he thought he was in some cruel nightmare or a horror film. When she began to speak through her raucous laughter, her voice was piercing and metallic. 'I can change everything!' she shrieked. 'Everything your race did wrong - I can fix it! I can make your race a force for good! I have that power now, Doctor! I can, and I will! And who is going to stop me?!'
Her grip softened slightly as her fingers began to drum again against his arms. Tap, tap, tap.
'I will,' The Doctor warned her with a low voice.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Fury's madness evaporated, and in its place was a stout defiance. Her duress became tighter on his right arm. The Doctor felt his blood struggle to pass her fingers and his muscles contracting. 'I don't think so, Doctor,' she sneered.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.