CI5TARDISCI5TARDIS
The Doctor gaped at Bodie.
"What?" Bodie stared back at him.
"We need to rescue Doyle."
"What?!"
"Have you gone deaf?" The Doctor frowned at Bodie's vehement tone.
"No need for that," he said, "what I mean is how could you possibly remember him? How – how is that even possible?" Bodie shrugged – he didn't understand anything about space-time or parallel universes or any of that stuff. The Doctor bounded over and glared into his eyes. Slightly uncomfortably Bodie shifted but held his gaze while the Timelord inspected him. He thumbed the sonic and brought it up to Bodie's face. As the whirring device lit up scant centimetres from him he couldn't repress a short intake of breath.
The Doctor stepped back and shook his head in disbelief. It was Bodie in there. They wasn't any kind of intruder or alien being inhabiting that body, it was just Bodie.
"It can't…" he began, "that's not…" Bodie was getting tired of the delay. Doyle was in danger, he knew that in his bones, and the Doctor was wasting time with him!
"Look – what are you on about?" Suddenly realisation dawned, but not on Bodie. The Doctor sprinted up to the control panel and whooped;
"You clever girl! You brilliant, brilliant timemachine! Ha ha!" The agent gawked at him in silent amazement as he praised his machine. He spun round looking elated.
"She was siphoning off the extra power, that's why she wasn't moving! She recognised what we needed and she worked it out! It's brilliant!" He clicked his fingers and pointed at Bodie, "The Z Cube!"
"The what?"
"The Z Cube in Cowley's house! It saves memory; it saved Cowley's memories of the original timeline!" He glanced over Bodie's bewildered expression and hastily explained, "Look, a great big universe existing for four million years – give or take a few decades yeah? It takes a lot of power to wipe that out but snatches can… linger for a while, the Z Cube must have saved a few of the nearest ones, namely you and Doyle, so the TARDIS – she's brilliant, she really is – had found that data and," he slammed his hand into his hair a few times and then continued; "restored it. In you, you're Bodie from this world but you're also Bodie from the re- sorry - original time! That's why you can suddenly remember! Oh, this is fantastic!"
Bodie frowned, trying to take this all in. It wasn't helped by the Doctor hopping up and down manically.
"So you're saying there are… two of me, in one body?" He paled, "is that bad?" The Doctor inclined his head ruefully.
"Yeah, uh, kinda, you see the human body isn't really supposed to have more than one consciousness in at once. It gets a bit… crowded. But it won't be a problem because we'll get this all fixed before there can be any lasting damage."
"What kind of lasting damage?"
The Doctor ignored him and began throwing switches. The centre of the TARDIS started moving and the creaky hum filled the air.
"We are back in business!"
CI5CI5CI5CI5
Doyle was going stir-crazy. The…Trickster whoever – whatever – he was had left him alone in the barren white landscape presumably to stew. He was feeling slightly panicky as he couldn't see a way out of this. He was being held captive in some unknown place by a psycho-thing, and rescue or escape didn't seem possible. If it was even really happening. Slowly he sat down, pulled his knees up to his chest and began to think. C'mon Bodie, where are you?
TARDISCI5TARDISCI5
The grinding of the ship echoed and faded as the Doctor wrenched a final control. Bodie bounced up behind him.
"Do you know who's taken Doyle?" His tone was half-worried half-angry. "Was it the Griske-"
"Graske," he corrected, absently biting his lip and not turning around.
"Well?" When the Doctor didn't answer he demanded; "Is he in danger?"
"No – no, he won't be harmed," the manner with which he mumbled this only made the agent louder.
"Then do you know –"
"Doyle wasn't taken, Bodie… he was killed. He's dead." He glanced over his shoulder. Bodie was shocked. Furiously he rounded on the Timelord.
"You said he wasn't going to be harmed!"
"He won't!"
"But-"
"Listen!" The Doctor's face was sombre, he was only just realising what he had said. "He's now a bit like Schrödinger's Cat – hopefully without the box, poison, hammer or gas," he paused at Bodie's expression, "no, bad analogy, forget that – the point is that he's both alive and dead at the same time. He's in Limbo."
"What's that when it's at home?"
"It's a great big white place where the Trickster reigns."
"Who's the Trickster?" The Doctor shrugged and answered;
"A being in eternal exile, he and his… group feed off chaos – they change things, usually they're so small nobody notices but sometimes the consequences of the change cause disasters."
"Like London going up in flames?" Bodie asked.
"Exactly,"
"So how do we get Doyle out?" Bodie wasn't going to be deterred. The Doctor raised his spindly shoulders to the sky, his eyebrows swooping down.
"I don't know."
