The Shortest Life
by ErtheChilde

'Underneath you, there's a war going on.'

Summary: Joined by a future companion that he is not sure he trusts, and a Time Agent he definitely doesn't trust, the Doctor sets out to stop temporal terrorists from destroying the Earth's timeline.

Canon-Compliance: Set between the events of Day of the Doctor and Rose.

TWO

At the interruption, Val took a step forward, positioning herself between the Doctor and the Time Agent. Her posture wasn't unlike a mother wolf defending her pup, an image he might have been more indignant about if it wasn't contributing to a troubling suspicion.

More an idea, really, and one that had been forming since she waltzed into the nondescript room with her half-truths and devil-may-care swagger.

'How long have you been awake?' Val asked coolly.

'Since "rude as ever",' the woman on the chair retorted. 'You didn't actually hit me that hard.'

'I wasn't actually aiming for brain damage. Time Agent.'

'Aw, doll, you know who I am but I've got no idea who you are,' the Doctor's former interrogator leered. 'Wanna change that?'

'Maybe after I've had inoculations for some of the STIs you've got flying around the fifty-first century.'

'Forty-ninth.'

'My mistake.'

The agent was looking at Val like she couldn't decide whether she was annoyed or impressed; it was a sentiment he shared. Both those emotions took a back seat, however, to the information that simple exchange had provided him with.

Apparently he and Val had had – or would have – dealings with the Time Agency. Possibly in the fifty-first century. That knowledge was obviously not integral to maintaining the timeline, or she wouldn't have mentioned it. He had noticed how careful she was being in giving him too much information, despite his insistences he would forget, and with her admitted understanding of time paradoxes…

He had half a mind to track down whatever version of himself she knew and demand what he'd done to this woman.

If he was even around to ask. He suspected he might not be, and it was this dark unease that had begun to form when he watched her clinical neutralization and confinement of the Time Agent.

She had some kind of combat training in addition to her alleged time-travel knowledge which she wouldn't have gained from him. Possibly she could have had it from before he met her (would meet her?), but he doubted it. There was a high probability he was looking at a companion that had moved on from travelling with him. He'd even hazard a guess that she was working for UNIT, except they usually provided back-up.

Val was very clearly alone, and that was a warning sign.

As much as a part of him wanted to trust her – which was suspicious in itself considering at the moment he knew and trusted no one – it wasn't unheard of for a former companion to become a threat after leaving him. Or even while travelling with him.

He well remembered Turlough.

Now wasn't the time to analyse his misgivings about the future, though, and instead he addressed the stranger.

'Got a name we can use? Or should we just call you 'Agent'?'

'Gertrude Farrell,' the woman answered after a calculating glance. 'And you two? The Doctor and "Val", was it? Who are you?'

A charming, yet faintly canine smirk broke out on Val's face. 'The stuff of legends.'

Her words rang like yet an inside joke that he was not privy to, yet suspicions over her identity and motives aside, he couldn't help the temptation to grin as well.

There was just something about her…

'Yeah, that's great, but it doesn't help me trust you any,' Gertrude Farrell said dryly. 'Neither does keeping me tied to a chair. And I'll have my wrist strap back too, thanks.'

'Tell us who you're after and maybe we'll talk,' Val countered. 'Considering you attacked the Doctor, we've got less incentive to trust you just yet.'

'By now your little lie detector should've told you we're not teamed up with whoever you're looking for,' the Doctor pointed out. 'You never did answer about why you're after him.'

'From the sound of it, blondie here's already run into him,' Gertrude said with a cold smile. 'Ferrety looking bastard with a really pretentious way of talking?'

'That was him,' Val confirmed.

'Malcolm Lowell,' Gertrude explained. 'He used to be one of us. Or, well, will be one of us, in my time stream. He's from the Agency's future.'

'Meaning he's likely got information on every operative who's ever worked for you lot,' the Doctor scoffed, and added under his breath, 'Neanderthals and their Vortex Manipulators…'

'Be nice,' Val chided absently.

'He knows the Archives well enough to have profiles on everyone, yeah,' Gertrude verified, ignoring the jibe. 'He's been dodging us for five standard years, jumping timelines whenever there's even a hint of Agency presence. That's why everything is off the books now and why we've been authorized to neutralize him using any means necessary and to keep it quiet.'

'Including torturing innocent bystanders, yeah?' Val reproached.

Gertrude had the decency to sound somewhat apologetic. 'Your friend was using anachronistic, alien technology to track a temporal anomaly. On top of that, his bio- and temporal signatures are so far from the contemporary period that it was a logical assumption to make.'

'Well, you know what they say about assuming,' the Doctor quipped lightly.

'Look, I feel bad about it, but I had to make sure. It's a small price to pay to keep the timelines safe.'

It was a sentiment the Doctor could understand, even if he didn't particularly enjoy having his insides zapped for the sake of protecting continuity. Val made a face as well, but appeared willing to cede the point, because instead of continuing on that thread, she asked, 'So what's he doing here, of all places?'

'Your guess is as good as mine. His MO for the longest time was just selling future technology to developing companies and worlds a few years of their actual invention date. It caused some minor headaches in the early days, little tweaks to the timeline, but nothing really paradoxical.'

'Let me guess – it didn't stay that way?'

'He started stepping up his game a few years back – began dealing in ideas and tech that completely changed the face of various worlds. Not only did it cause a ton of mayhem and an increase in warfare throughout certain quadrants, but in some cases entire timelines got destroyed. We've had Agents flitting back and forth through time like crazy trying to fix the weak points. Mostly he sticks to distant worlds, far from human historical events. Except now…well, he's here.'

'In a time period when even the smallest change can unmake everything,' the Doctor finished. The news of this Lowell character's deeds, his audacity at mucking about with the timelines the Doctor was meant to protect, angered him. 'You think there's someone he's meeting with?'

'Obviously. He's got to sell his merchandise to someone for anything to happen.'

'He probably cloaked himself and any of the tech on him the minute he showed up,' Val put in.

'Including whatever you're trying to get back,' Gertrude agreed. 'I haven't had any luck lately. I've been in 1999 for three weeks now, jumping back and forth trying to scan news of events for a sign of where he might be. But as far as I can figure, there's literally nothing going on right now. And then I got an indication of alien technology and…the rest you know.'

'So we've got a rogue ex-Time Agent running about with a super-secret gadget I apparently can't know about, and – hang on, you never did say what exactly your boy was trying to sell.'

'We're not completely sure, since every operative that's come close to catching him has been neutralized. Including my partner.' Gertrude's expression darkened at that. 'But the last location before he came here was the Stirling Quadrant – around the time localized CETP generators were in vogue.'

A chill crept up the Doctor's spine. 'And you think that's what he's got?'

'Maybe not an actual device, but the plans for one.'

'One's as bad as the other,' the Doctor said darkly. 'Technology like that won't just alter history – it'll destroy it and every part of the universe that's been touched by it.'

There was a momentary pause, and then Val cleared her throat. 'For those of us that don't speak Popular Mechanics for Time Travellers, what's a CET?'

'CETP,' the Doctor corrected, filing away the reference to the twentieth century in his growing mental dossier on the woman. It appeared she was contemporary to this period, then. 'Stands for 'Continuous Electromagnetic Tectonic Pulse'.'

'And that's what when it's at home?'

'A big technology-off switch,' Gertrude supplied. 'Shuts off all higher electrical function and basically turns off the laws of physics within a planet's atmosphere.'

'Around the twenty-sixth century a particularly technology averse group of humans from the Stirling Quadrant figured out a way to cancel out all industrial development on their planet,' the Doctor elaborated. 'They built devices – localized CETP generators – which they buried down deep in a prospective planet's core during the terraforming process and then activated.'

'They were a huge hit with all the back-to-the-land societies,' Gertrude continued. 'The generators could send people back to simpler times. No computers, no indoor heating, no functional explosives – just good old work of human hands. Nothing wrong with that, of course, until some genius weaponized it.'

'It's why it was outlawed 'bout a century later – not before it caused a dozen different genocides, though,' the Doctor finished with a scowl. 'Not difficult to wipe out your enemies if you cut off every bit of machinery they depend on.' He crossed his arms. 'What I'd like to know is how this Lowell character found someone in this time willing to buy it. S'future technology. No one from now should know about it, let alone be in the market.'

'I don't think his contact is from this time,' Val said thoughtfully. 'Before he stole the – before he stole from me, he stuck around to gloat a bit. He said something about mistaking me for his contact because my temporal signature's not from this time.'

'His contact could just be a middleman,' Gertrude realized. 'Another time traveller that somehow has stake in this time period. If Lowell were to sell the device schematics to his contact, that's who would find a buyer in this century. Easy job, no clean up once the transaction's over. That's got Lowell written all over it.'

'There are some materials a CETP generator needs that don't exist yet,' the Doctor pointed out, 'meaning there'd have to be someone funding research into the synthesis of those materials.'

'So if we find out who'd be interested and who might have the technology now, maybe we can find out who the middleman is. That's not a lot to go on.'

'It's better than calcium decay and pig technology.'

Val's remark earned confused looks from both Gertrude and the Doctor.

'Any point in asking you to elaborate?' he attempted.

'Not a chance,' she grinned, doing that thing with her tongue and the corner of her mouth that made him falter a second or two.

'I can come back when you two are done,' Gertrude suggested.

'It takes three days for a particularly adept human to build a CETP generator,' he went on quickly. 'That's with all the right parts. With rudimentary materials and accurate plans, I'd day…about a week before it'd be functional. Crude, but could still cause damage.'

'Anything interesting supposed to happen around here within the next year?' Gertrude asked.

'Nothing that really matters to history,' he mused, thinking up whatever relevant information pertained to the situation. 'Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia, which could possibly be affected by lack of technology – hm, first female president of Finland, though a CETP wouldn't be much use in that case – France defeats Italy in the World cup, which isn't exactly vital, but I can see a rabid football fan –'

'Y2K!'

Both the Doctor and Gertrude went silent at Val's outburst, uncomprehending.

'What now?' the Time Agent asked.

'The year 2000?' Val prompted. 'In a few days it'll be coming up on the millennium. And there was that huge Y2K conspiracy. You know, the big to-do about how computers would fail, airplanes were going to fall from the sky and the world would end at midnight?'

'That's just dumb,' Gertrude remarked. 'Agency expeditions indicate it ends in the year 5 billion.'

Val shook her head. 'I remember 1999. There were all those nutters going on about how everything was going to stop at New Years. People quitting their jobs and throwing end-of-the-world parties left and right.'

'They must have felt stupid when it didn't end.'

'Not half as stupid as all those sects out there who were absolutely sure they were getting a one-way ticket to Paradise come Doomsday,' the Doctor pointed out, catching on to what Val was implying. 'A lot of those were privately funded, too. Real wealthy. They'd've taken a blow to the coffers when the planet kept spinning, and then spent decades dealing with their credibility mucked up. The really well-off ones might even hang on a few centuries, same way the Freemasons did.'

'They might have future supporters who decided to go back and ensure their predictions about the end of the world came true,' Gertrude realized, eyes widening as she caught on as well.

'It'd be a suicide mission for them, disrupting their own timeline like that. But I guess in their eyes, they'd be doing their duty,' Val finished.

'Not that any of their kind would get to enjoy it,' the Doctor pointed out. 'I bet your friend Lowell hasn't explained the concept of paradoxes to his buyer.'

'Speaking of, how's that work for him?' Val wanted to know. 'If Lowell sells this anti-technology thing to someone and it gets built here, they flip the switch and the Earth goes back to the Stone Age. Doesn't that mean every human in space and time beyond a certain point would just...disappear?'

'He's insane enough not to care, I think.'

'Unless he's found or created a paradox machine to protect himself from any temporal consequences of his business,' the Doctor mused darkly. 'Might be using a modified form of a Monan occlusion field.'

He didn't explain what that was, and although Val looked like she wanted to ask about it, she stayed on task. 'So how are we supposed to find him?'

'By "we", y'all mean the three of us, right?' Gertrude demanded. 'As in, you're gonna let me out of these cuffs sometime soon?'

'Don't pretend you haven't had your wrists free since you woke up,' the Doctor told her, making Val glance up with a start. 'Cuffs like those are built with isomorphic fail safes to ensure their owner doesn't end up in exactly this kind of situation.'

'Then you know I could've taken you both out if I needed to but didn't,' the Time Agent said, unrepentant. She stood, folding her loosened arms in front of her. 'I figure we're all on the same side, anyway. So how's about instead of standing around glaring at each other we figure out how to find Lowell?'

'That depends on if you think you can stick to using your brain instead of your stun gun for a bit,' Val told her glacially.

Gertrude held up her recently freed hands in a defensive gesture. 'Hey, I get it. You're ticked I stunned your partner, and I'm sorry, but it was totally a mistaken identity thing. How about we save the world first and then you and me can do the chick-fight thing?'

Val considered her, and then nodded.

'But you're not getting the Vortex Manipulator back –' when Gertrude opened her mouth to protest, she went on, '– not 'til we've got this mess sorted.'

'And how do you expect to do that? Trying to follow someone who can hop through time without our own device to hop through time? Not going to work.'

'Leave that to me,' the Doctor spoke up. 'Need to figure out where he'll be before we can follow him, anyhow.'

'But how? We don't even know when this thing is going to go down.'

'I think it's safe to say it's happening tonight, or I wouldn't be here,' he answered.

He knew all too well the TARDIS tendency to bring him to places that – while he might not have been aiming for them – he was needed. That, and the addition of a trigger-happy Time Agent and mysterious time travelling possible-companion made this point in time a temporally compromised one, and that was far too much of a coincidence to actually be a coincidence.

'But he's still got a Vortex Manipulator and who knows what else,' Gertrude pointed out, shooting Val a suspicious look that was likely concerning her mysterious device. 'He could be anywhere on the planet.'

'One problem at a time,' the Doctor said, although he too wondered exactly what Val had had stolen from her. If she thought he wouldn't try to find out, she obviously didn't know him as well as she said.

· ΘΣ ·

The Doctor strode into the TARDIS, relieved to find she was once again allowing him inside. He shouldn't have been surprised. She knew he wasn't about to leave in the middle of a crisis or whatever puzzle he was trying to solve, and definitely not one that involved universe ending paradoxes, Time Agents and a rather perplexing matter of the mysterious Val.

He was also relieved to see she had fixed at least some of the console hardware while he had been out.

Pulling the scanner around, he watched out of the corner of his eye as Val and the Time Agent followed him into the ship. Val's eyes were dancing and a wide smile broke out over her face.

'Hello, gorgeous,' he heard her murmur, reaching out to stroke one of the coral support struts with the same familiarity and affection he himself displayed.

The sight of it sent a sharp queer jab of not-quite-pain through his hearts.

Clearly she had travelled with them for more than just one trip, which made his inability to remember her all the more confusing. Another tally in the "Future" column.

'This is…' Gertrude was staring at the cavernous interior of the TARDIS with the same gobsmacked expression everyone who saw it for the first time had. '…It looked smaller on the outside.'

He rolled his eyes as he booted up the TARDIS data mainframe.

Time Agents. Always had to be different.

'What're you doing?' Val wanted to know, coming over to join him.

'Smartest ship in the universe – she could find a wasp's personal timeline within the entire existence of its species,' the Doctor replied as he navigated quickly through the various programs in the system in search for the one he was looking for. 'One of the basic equations that lets the TARDIS navigate the Vortex involves possible and probable timelines. If I tweak it, I can likely get her to lock onto this Lowell character.'

Val's eyebrows raised in surprise. 'You can do that?'

'You saying I haven't before? Shouldn't be more difficult than some primate from this period using an Internet search engi – ' He trailed off as the screen flickered. 'No!' Swirling Gallifreyan text told him that there was an error. 'No, no, no!'

'I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's not working,' Gertrude remarked, attention wavering from the dimensional transcendentalism of the TARDIS.

'The program's damaged,' the Doctor said, 'Or it's no longer possible to operate it within the existent parameters.'

He hadn't used the search program since before the War, which meant that it was still geared to a mainframe where Gallifrey was the centre of the Normal Space timeline. Even a ship as advanced as the TARDIS could be hindered by obsolete technology. He would have to recalibrate everything, but that would take time – time which they didn't have.

A solution to the problem presented itself readily; in fact, it had been in his mind since the Time Agent pointed out that they didn't know where their quarry was going to be.

A particular gift of the Time Lords had always been the fact that they had the entirety of Time and Space running through their heads. Every second, they could see what was, what had been, what could be and what must never come to pass.

Part of that gift was a mere accident of fate, a genetic quirk allowing the Time-sensitive gene to activate; most of it was due to exposure to the Untempered Schism. From that terrifying moment, only centuries of study and mental practice at the Academy allowed a Time Lord to ignore the constant flux of Time in their minds for the sake of their sanity.

Unless your name was Master or Rani or Rassilon.

It was that mental fortitude that had given him the strength to shut his eyes to the dance of past, present and future – to effectively switch off his time sense – after the War. It had been the only thing that kept him from succumbing to the crushing guilt of his deeds.

The necessity of opening his mind back up to that part of himself was terrifying, and his mental wounds were still too painful and raw for him to want to try it.

'Right, Plan B,' he announced jovially. 'Old-fashioned and slow, but then, what's an adventure without a bit of unpredictability in the face of danger?'

'He's gonna start making sense sometime soon, right?' Gertrude asked Val archly.

'Don't count on it.'

'We can't stop the exchange from happening tonight, cos we don't know the where, the when or the who – well, half of the who, at any rate,' the Doctor mused. 'So we'll have to settle for narrowing down who stands to benefit from CETP technology and stop 'em before they get their hands on it.'

'But that means Lowell gets away!' Gertrude objected.

'S'not really my immediate concern,' the Doctor told her. 'I'm more worried about the universe not ripping apart, not a Time Agent who's gone AWOL. We can deal with him once we make sure reality doesn't explode –'

'If he gets away, more than one reality will explode,' Val interrupted. 'If he figures out exactly what the device he took from me does, we – and every universe out there – are going to be in trouble.' She offered him an apologetic look. 'Sorry. Trying to skirt around the need-to-know information with you is hard.'

'Already told you I'm gonna forget all this,' he pointed out.

'Yeah, but I know you – and if you found out the whole truth, you'd bust out of your own timeline to do something about it, paradox or not,' Val said quietly. 'Especially right now, so soon after…'

She trailed off, and understanding hit him like a blow to the solar plexus.

She knew about the War.

'How do you…?'

'You told me.'

'But you're still…' he couldn't finish the sentence. She knew about the War, knew he was the only one left, and likely knew what he had done.

And she was still looking at him like he was more man than monster.

'You did what you had to do,' she told him, voice firm as though she could hear his thoughts. 'Sometimes you just…have to. It hurts, but you go through with it because it's what needs to be done. Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.'

To say he was stunned was an understatement. To discover he would travel with someone in his future was one thing, but to learn that he had talked about the most painful bits of his past to some barely-grown human? More time must have passed between now and their meeting than he thought for him to be that comfortable.

It made him feel both guilty and hopeful that some of his pain would lessen.

'Can one of you fill me in on what you're talking about, or do I need to know the secret handshake?' Gertrude deadpanned, abruptly reminding them that she was there.

'It doesn't matter right now,' Val answered, in a tone that forestalled any other questions on the subject. Then, she adopted a clinical, detached tone that was different from the earnest way she had been talking before. She scrutinized the Time Agent, her eyes flitting around like she was doing a rapid calculation. 'Your Vortex Manipulator – it has uplinks to the information systems from your time period, right? Agency Records, the Torchwood Archive, library planets, that kind of thing?'

'Of course. Not that it'll help us find any event that hasn't happened yet until after it's become established fact.'

'Weren't you listening to the Doctor? We don't need to find an event, we just have to narrow down who Lowell could be dealing with,' Val answered, business-like. 'We can use it to compile a list of organizations that are traditionally anti-technology starting – I don't know, when did people first start hating technology, anyway?'

This was directed at him.

'There's a hole with no bottom. Some of you lot never got over the abacus…but I figure you're talking about complex machinery, so on Earth that would have been in the early 1800s.'

'Right. We start with them and make a list of all similar people or organizations that came afterwards and which became defunct over time,' Val explained, and the Doctor couldn't help but think that she had slipped into a different persona, the way official sounding jargon spouted from her lips like she had learned it by rote. 'Also, whoever Lowell's working with would have had to be familiar with those generators, or they never would have contacted Lowell about a deal for them.'

'So we would only really need to search until the thirtieth century, instead of the full range of a Vortex Manipulator,' the Doctor contemplated. 'Maybe the thirty-third – that's when the last counterfeit devices disappeared.'

'Right. That makes our search pool smaller – and we can narrow it down more if we cross-reference that information with any terrorists Gertrude knows who could have connections.'

'That would take forever,' Gertrude protested. 'It might even burn out my Vortex Manipulator and then I'll be stuck in this crappy time without being able to get home!'

'We could deal with that if we had to,' Val retorted. 'But I think with a little jiggery-pokery on the Doctor's end of things, we could temporarily boost the power and speed up the process.'

Even as she said it, the Doctor started to catch on what she was suggesting, and he nearly kicked himself for not coming up with the idea himself. It had been a while since he had had to solve seemingly unsolvable conundrums.

'That'll still have a lot of left-over options that we just don't have time to weed through,' Gertrude was protesting.

'Not if I used some of the TARDIS's remaining operational systems to provide the extra power,' the Doctor mused. 'We could even modify it to evaluate the potential temporal weak spots in individual timelines.' He shot Gertrude a reproachful look. 'Temporarily. The Time Agency doesn't need any more excuse to meddle where they're not wanted.'

Gertrude looked like she had something to say to that, but Val forestalled that by handing over the wrist strap.

The Doctor wasted no time creating a jerry-rigged hook-up of the device to the console. The TARDIS grumbled about the inferior technology meshing with her systems, but tolerated it as he silently promised to recalibrate the mainframe to ensure this sort of thing never happened again.

'Do you need me to –?'

'Got it, thanks,' he cut Gertrude off as he familiarized himself with navigating the information systems of the Manipulator. That was all he needed – a Time Agent on his ship, let alone anywhere near the controls of his TARDIS.

After several minutes of quick searching, Gallifreyan symbols rapidly flying by, he let out a triumphant cry.

'Hah! Give the man a medal! Looks like December thirty-first, 1999,' he determined. 'There's potential there – if all high forms of high-energy-density technology were to stop working, modern civilization would experience a crash. It could take a few months, but it'd happen. Billions would die. There's one group poised to take advantage saying they predicted it. They'd end up taking over and imposing a luddite, theocratic society. The Neo Dark Ages, if you will.'

'You think that's possible?' Gertrude asked, sceptical.

'If we're lucky.'

'What do you mean, "if we're lucky"? How is that lucky?'

'Cos it means chronovores don't up and devour all of this reality, that's why. It means some of the universe will survive to restart from the point when everything changes. But seeing as how no one's around to ensure that happens anymore, I wouldn't hold your breath.'

'Then we've got to stop it!' Gertrude cried. 'This group…what are they called? We can track them down.'

'According to the records here, it's the Congregation of the Unending Trinity.'

'Who?' Val asked.

'Some New Age group that got its start around now,' he told her. 'In this time period they've been predicting nuclear war and the end of the world for a solid decade. They're holed up on a few properties outside of Cardiff – underground shelters, stockpiles of food, clothes, weapons – that sort of thing.'

'It's always bloody Cardiff.'

'They get their fifteen minutes of fame before 2000, obviously, but by the thirty-second century they're little more than a fringe group of zealous fanatics that occasionally has members immolate themselves when they think people are forgetting they exist.'

'If they're a fringe cult, where would they get the know-how or even the money to hire an Ex-Time Agent to sell them stolen technology like a…CETP, you said? You'd think that'd be a bit pricey, yeah?'

'My thoughts exactly.'

'Not…necessarily,' Gertrude offered, sounding more hesitant than she had since they met. When the Doctor and Val waited for her to continue, she added, 'I mean, members of the group in the thirty-second century would definitely have no way of affording that. From what I remember about them, they were living in work-camp conditions that bit. But there would have been any number of former members who left and made something of themselves.'

'And not every member of the group would've left cos they didn't believe the core teachings anymore,' the Doctor caught on. 'Some might've left cos the party line wasn't cutting it anymore…I assume you've an inkling?'

'More of a vague idea. Have you ever heard of Angra Gorg?'

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply negatively, but Val tensed and a shadow passed over her face. 'The terrorist, yeah? Responsible for the bombing of the Lagrange colonies?'

'Another adventure-to-be?' the Doctor inquired, gaining only a tight smile in response.

'We've encountered him before,' she confirmed. 'But I thought we'd dealt with him. I guess not. I didn't know he was born into any cult, though.'

'You must have run into him before he collapsed the third moon of Jupiter,' Gertrude said. 'He claimed that was done in the name of the CUT's teachings. And then he promised he was preparing something even bigger and just disappeared. No one ever heard from him again, and even the Agency hasn't turned up anything on him throughout its existence.'

'So maybe he didn't just disappear. Maybe he came here.'

'The era he's from, that's about the time you lot take your first steps into time travel,' the Doctor mused grimly. 'It would fit.'

'Advances,' Gertrude snorted. 'It didn't really get off its feet for another two hundred years – those early devices were primitive and dangerous.'

'They should've stayed that way,' the Doctor countered. 'You humans have no business messing around with things you don't understand.'

'Oh, yeah, because you're one to talk –'

'Can we put the Time-Lords-versus-Time-Agents argument aside for a mo'?' Val interjected. 'I think Gorg is a bit more important right now.'

'Maybe,' Gertrude allowed, offering the Doctor one more glower. 'Maybe not. All of this is just a bunch of guesswork – the connections are too coincidental.'

'No such thing as coincidence,' Val declared. 'Not in my experience, anyhow. From what you say, this bloke has the motive and the means – and who says it wasn't Lowell who contacted him? Set up a meeting close enough to Volcano Day to put things in motion but far enough away that the Time Agency wouldn't notice.'

Volcano Day? the Doctor wondered.

'Even if you're right, it still doesn't help us much,' Gertrude said. 'We don't know where he is. And now we've got two nutjobs getting ready to destroy the world.'

'Actually…' the Doctor trailed off, an idea forming, 'we might have more than you think.'

'How?'

'Well, you both know what he looks like, right?'

'Yeah,' Val agreed, while Gertrude nodded.

'Then we can tap the CCTV system here. It's not the most advanced bit of security, seeing as it's 1999, but it's better than nothing.'

'Still too much like searching for a needle in a haystack,' Gertrude protested.

'Not really,' he told her grimly. 'As you said, time travel devices from the thirty-second century weren't just primitive and dangerous – they had adverse side effects on anyone who used 'em. Problems with dematerialization and rematerialization, body reconstruction…they were only really good for one or two trips. To a body not used to it…well, they'd need time and a place to recover.'

'They'd avoid hospitals,' Gertrude theorized slowly, 'And the currency from the thirty-second century is different from now, so he'd need to go somewhere free.'

'Homeless shelter, maybe – if he didn't rob someone so he could afford a room somewhere,' Val suggested. 'And most of those have security feeds in case of trouble.' She turned to the Doctor and held up her phone. 'Think you can fix this so it can tap into the security network?'

'I'll do you one better – I'll get it to lock on to the face of our friend Mr. Gorg,' the Doctor smirked, reaching for her phone. He already had his screwdriver in hand.

· ΘΣ ·

It took longer than expected for them to find the requisite CCTV footage, and only because Gorg's face was no longer completely like the one either Gertrude or Val remembered.

The Doctor hadn't lied when he explained the problems associated with primitive time travel. The man on the film footage had obviously suffered the brunt of it.

His face was hideously distorted, with the right side appearing normal if unnaturally pale, while the left was distinctly lower. His left eye, nostril and part of his mouth were out of sync with the rest of his face, as though someone had drawn a line down the middle. From the stoop in his shoulder, obviously other parts of his body had been afflicted as well.

'And that's why you shouldn't attempt time travel without a proper shield,' the Doctor had said contemptuously, glad to see that despite her bravado, Gertrude looked a little green.

After identifying Gorg, it took a bit of legwork and inquiries in three different homeless shelters before they finally caught up with him.

He was loitering in the entrance of the Clapham Junction train station, eyeing the schedules from just outside of the barriers. He could have been any other person waiting for someone off the evening train, if it hadn't been for his hideous visage – even that was hidden by a high collared coat and cap.

The Doctor sauntered up to him once the transport security guards headed off on their rounds, while Val and Gertrude positioned themselves at the exit to keep him from running.

'Ay-up chuck, fancy a bit of chat?' he led with.

The disfigured man's head inclined to him, and something like anger registered in his good eye, before he realized he'd been approached by a stranger. Something in the Doctor's eyes must have tipped him off, because a second later he bolted.

Obviously whatever damage had been done to him physically and mentally hadn't done away with his fight or flight instinct.

Val sprang forward to block him 'Calm down, we just want to –'

He gave an animalistic growl and shoved her off, sending her careening into the doorway as he passed. Gertrude took off after him, fumbling with her stun-gun as she did so.

The Doctor paused briefly to haul Val up by the hand, and they hurried after the other two. It didn't occur to him until they nearly lost Gorg at the bridge above the train yard that they were holding hands the whole time they were running, and he only noticed when Val let go of him so that she could climb over the wall.

They ended up running across train tracks and trying to get ahead of incoming trains. Gorg ran without having any obvious idea of where he was going, his only goal obviously being to get away.

It wasn't until they made it to an underpass on the other end of the train yard that they managed to get the jump on him – literally. Val surged forward and wrestled him to the ground, sending them both into a heap.

He reared around, apparently trying to take a bite out of him like some kind of animal, but Gertrude had caught up and held out some kind of sonic device that had him cowering in a foetal position before he could manage it.

'Nice tackle,' she said with approval.

'Interoffice rugby matches,' Val panted back.

Gertrude stepped forward, hauling Gorg to his feet and shoving him into the wall by his throat with one hand, the other holding her weapon of choice.

'Oi, leave off!' the Doctor snapped, shoving her and her weapon aside. 'There's better means of persuasion out there, you know.'

'We don't have time for better. This is fast and effective.'

He rolled his eyes, holding back a few choice things he had to say about that and instead focussed solely on the man in front of them. Catching and holding his eyes, he spoke quietly, 'Angra Gorg, I've a feeling you're in a lot of pain right now. But if you tell us what we want to know, I promise I'll do my best to make it stop. That sounds good, yeah?'

The man stared at him for a bit longer than a standard blink, and the Doctor felt a brief jab of pity. This man might have been known for his chillingly calculated intelligence once, but now he was only passingly related to that.

'He said we could make it stop – I could make it stop – I would be the Saviour, the martyr and peace would reign,' Gorg whispered, low and conspiratorially, a line of drool creeping out of the corner of his mouth. 'No more of the sound – the whirring, constant whirring and gnashing and beaming – just silence. Blessed silence for the Congregation, and I would be…I would be.'

He nodded to himself.

'How did you get here?'

'Gave me a device, the sneaky one did. Didn't want to use it, but war means sacrifice. Sin for the good of the many,' Gorg giggled. 'Pressed the button – vorp! – landed here. This place is so loud, so dirty and horrible…the pit itself with demons at every turn. Knew when I got here, this was why I'd been chosen – the righteous one shall enter the pit and deliver us all from evil. No more sound – but pain! So much pain!' He whimpered wetly, raising a shaking hand to his mismatched face. 'Scars. Battle scars before battle.'

'How were you going to do that? How'd he intend to win the battle?'

'Fellow soldiers. Brothers in arms against the Abomination, the Destroyer that creates itself,' Gorg rambled. 'The CUT are just the foot soldiers, we bear the message but he will strike the first blow –'

'This is taking too long,' Gertrude interrupted, nudging the Doctor out of the way. 'Where are you meeting Malcolm Lowell?' Gorg's eyes went wide. 'Answer me, you piece of filth, or the last few minutes you have alive will be the longest, most painful you've ever –'

He seemed to be struggling. '…kil…kill…n…'

'Oh, trust me, killing you is definitely on the agenda, but not until you tell me what I want to hear!'

'Stop it!' Val snapped. 'Can't you see he's having trouble breathing?'

Bloodshot eyes focussed on Val, and Gorg gasped out a blood dribbled, '…Witch…hour…'

He gave final shudder and then went still.

'What'd you do?' Val demanded furiously. 'You didn't have to kill him!'

'I didn't!'

'It wasn't her fault,' the Doctor interrupted, and then added, 'Not entirely, anyhow. Sonic scrambling and the work-over probably didn't help, but Gorg wasn't long for it, especially once he decided to run.' He gestured at the man's face. 'Look at him – now imagine what his insides must look like. Veins and muscles that don't line up? He's probably been haemorrhaging internally since he got here.'

'So that last chase finished him off.'

'Exactly.'

'I'll have my apology now,' Gertrude prompted blankly.

'Sorry I accused you of torturing someone to death,' Val replied sweetly. 'This time.'

'D'you both mind retracting the claws for a mo?' the Doctor interrupted. 'Or shall we put the possible destruction of the universe on hold until you're done with the domestics?'

Val had the decency to look embarrassed.

'Sorry,' she said, directing it to both Gertrude and the Doctor. 'But the fact of the matter is, we don't have any way of tracking Lowell down now.'

Gertrude nodded in rueful agreement.

The Doctor smirked. 'Oh, I wouldn't say that.'