When Adric woke up, he thought for a moment that he must still be unconscious because it was so terribly dark- then he noticed the logical fallacy inherent in this reasoning and decided it was just very dark. Then he remembered he could open his eyes. What he saw was entirely unexpected.

Before him stood a woman in her early twenties, with bobbed mousy brown hair, tea-coloured eyes, and a smirk, looking up at him with no small amount of amusement, her hands clasped behind her back in a gesture that conveyed both innocence and the feeling that she was hiding something potentially dangerous behind her back.

"Who. . . ?" Adric began, and his broken ribs decided to remind him of their unhappy state, and his injured throat seized up and turned his words into a truncated cough, which caused his ribs to submit further protest and his injured head to smart. The woman grinned.

"You'd think, wouldn't you, that after the beating I gave you, you'd remember who I am." She shook her head in a mockery of disappointment. "Mathematical genius you may be, but in all other respects you're a complete idiot."

Adric tried to speak again, but the pain in his side was growing worse by the moment, and all he managed was a soft gasp of pain. The woman gasped and adopted the patronizing tone and face used to speak to babies and dogs.

"Aw, poor boy! Does it hurt much? You poor little thing, that's why we don't bite, you see? It makes the Master very angry, you see." She took a hand from behind her back and displayed the bloody toothmarks thereupon. "You got nothing less than you deserved, you wretched little creature. Maybe it'll teach you to keep your teeth to yourself."

That was it then, the final proof: this woman was the Master.

"But you're a girl!" Adric gasped, his own voice sounding childish in his ringing ears. The Master laughed, throwing her head back and cackling.

"Well spotted!" she cried, when she could speak past her amusement. "What was your first clue?"

"That's impossible. . . ." He would have said more, but his ribs seemed swollen with pain, pouring it out into his body faster than it could drain away.

"Obviously it's not. Just improbable. Trust me, you're no more surprised than I was."

"How?"

"Oh, well, you know, once you exceed the natural number of regenerations, everything starts going haywire. I'm rather enjoying myself."

This was too much for Adric. The floodgates that had been keeping his mind free of his body's pain burst, and the last thing he heard before the darkness swallowed him was a noise of disgust and the words, "There he goes again."

When he woke the second time, he remembered immediately to open his eyes. He found himself, instead of staring down at the black marble interior of the Master's TARDIS from what he could only assume was the same Hadron web in which he had been suspended only a few weeks before, looking up at a long array of blue tube lights. The brightness assailed his eyes and head like an army with pickaxes, but at least he knew he wasn't dreaming. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea how long he'd been asleep. His natural instinct was to sit bolt upright, but there was something holding him in place- fortunately, since about three seconds after the instinct came he realized that his ribs were still broken. Well, good, he thought, at least I haven't been asleep that long.

"Hello," said the Master, from somewhere nearby. Adric looked around, finding he had at least full mobility in his neck, but still did not see her. "Feeling any better? I had to disconnect you because you were scrambling my sensors."

"What have you done?" Adric demanded through gritted teeth. Although his broken ribs were healing, they still hurt.

"Oof, where to start. Well, when I first left Gallifrey-"

"To me."

"Oh, to you. I should have known, it's always about you. Well, you see, my ship's computer is tragically outdated; I realized that when I had you create Castrovalva. Such wonderful things were suddenly within my grasp, things the Doctor couldn't even dream of. Of course, then he stole you back, and I was left with my inferior equipment again, and after Castrovalva collapsed, it was even worse than usual. So you see, I came to get you, because I need your mind."

"How did you escape?"

"Escape? Oh, Castrovalva. Well, I didn't. Those wretched citizens were going to tear me to bits, but the algorithm collapsed before they could, and I was trapped in a time-space loop."

"And you managed to get back to your TARDIS and reverse the loop polarity long enough to slip out?"

"Ooh, yes, well done! Unfortunately it had all taken its toll on my old body, so I had to get a new one."

"Why . . . a girl?" In his pain and confusion, he forgot the words 'are you.'

"That wasn't my choice, I told you. I attempted a forced regeneration using some technology I borrowed from Gallifrey-"

"Stole, you mean."

"If you like. But it didn't work particularly well, and I ended up with this. Not that I'm complaining."

"You haven't answered me."

"I haven't? Oh, no, I haven't. I put you back in my web- just for a bit- and I was going to test the capabilities of the block-transfer computation with a much bigger project than Castrovalva. But then you lost consciousness and I had to bring you here to recuperate. That's all right, though, the tests can wait and so can I. You're no good to me muzzy. Or dead. Especially dead. That can't be fixed as easily."

"Bigger than Castrovalva?" said Adric, who was about four sentences behind. "By how much?"

"That's not important right now. Focus on recovering. How long does it usually take your bones to heal?"

"Weeks." Adric replied. "Sometimes months."

"You little liar." There was an edge to her voice that suggested he should remedy this situation as quickly as possible, or suffer for it.

"Days, I meant. A week and a half at most."

"That's more like it. Remember, Adric, I've been studying you for quite some time now. You'd best not try to guess what I have and haven't found out. I don't like liars."

Adric gulped and nodded. He had forgotten for just a moment that this woman was the Master, quite possibly the most evil being in the entire universe. He would have to be careful not to do that again.

"Where am I?" he asked after a suitable pause, hoping to distract the Master from her annoyance at him.

"In my medical bay. Does the Doctor not have one in his TARDIS? Maybe I'm not as far behind as I thought." This seemed to considerably improve her mood.

"Why can't I move?"

"Because you're shackled to the table. I can't have you getting up and wandering away in the middle of the night. Even I have to sleep sometime."

Adric raised his head as far as he could and looked down the length of his body. There was blood staining his tunic- that was the first thing he noticed- and, sure enough, his hands and ankles were clamped to the metal slab on which he lay with heavy steel bands.

"Oh." he said.

"Are you all right? You look a bit peaky."

Adric wasn't sure he'd ever seen so much of his own blood before. It spread out in a wilted flower from the site of his broken ribs, causing him to wonder just how broken they really were.

"Oh, the blood. Don't worry about it, you're fine. The bones poked right through your side. It was horrible," she said gleefully, "but I managed to stuff them back in and get them lined up properly. You needn't look so offended."

He let his head drop back onto the table, feeling ill. The idea of the Master's hands forcing his broken bones back into place, bloody up to the second knuckle, and a smile on her pretty face, was almost too much to cope with. A wave of nausea swept over him at the same time as cold chills trickled down his spine, and he tried not to let his discomfort show on his face. That would amuse her far too much-

Pretty?

"Well, I'll leave you to it. Worlds to conquer, mischief to make, chaos to sow, you know."

He was vaguely aware of her rising and walking past him- she paused a moment to pat his cheek in a cruel gesture of complete control- and left the room, flicking off the lights as she went. Adric's face burned where she had touched him, as though his skin itself were shying away from the touch. He lay there in the dark for endless hours, mustering all the hatred he could manage towards the Master.

Feeling anything else- camaraderie, gratitude, trust- would simply be unacceptable.