Author's Note: Good morning all, here is the update for today!

Thank you very much to the following lovely people who reviewed yesterday's chapter: Romana-II, Aietradaea, The Mouse's Rose, mericat (x 2), tree1138, Bad Dog No Biscuit, MayFairy, xxTeam-Masterxx and crazychika495 ( x 4).

And I actually did manage to post another chapter on "The Master's Rose" as well yesterday, so yay for me, woot ,woot!

Hope you enjoy this one...


CHAPTER NINE

Smoke poured from the APC console, an acrid smell of burning filling the air, making it difficult to breathe. Coughing harshly, Tejana struggled to rise, her head spinning from the impact with the wall. With a stab of fear, she saw Damon through the drifting smoke, lying crumpled on the ground.

"Damon!" she yelled, forcing herself to crawl across the floor, trying to reach her friend. She came across the dead guard Solis first, lying on his back, still and lifeless, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. But then, much to her relief, she heard Damon give a tortured groan close by, the sound guiding her to him through the billowing smoke. He was trying to sit up, his hands clawing at his bruised throat, a livid red mark giving mute testimony to just how close he had come to being murdered. Tejana threw her arms around him and cradled him against her, supporting his head on her shoulder as she stared wildly around at the chaos filling the room.

"What the hell is happening?" she cried, trying to make herself heard over the ear-piercing, whining noise suddenly emanating from the APC console.

"The circuits!" Engin returned, overwhelming panic evident in his voice. "Someone's trying to trap the Doctor in The Matrix by overloading the neuron fields! I must cut the power!"

"NO!" Damon rasped, pulling free from Tejana's arms, the sound tearing roughly out of his ravaged wind-pipe. "You can't! If you cut the power, the Doctor will die in there!"

But Engin's hands were already flying over the console, ignoring the dangerous sparks erupting all around him. "I must! The circuits are blowing! If there's a fire, the whole panatropic net...thousands of brain patterns...all will be destroyed!"

Fully convinced now of the Doctor's innocence and knowing he had to act quickly to save him, Castellan Spandrell leapt forward with the agility of a cat and seized the old man, pulling him firmly back from the console. "They're not alive!" he growled. "But hopefully the Doctor still is!"

At that moment, the Doctor took in a massive gasp of air and his eyes sprang open. Tejana gave a shout of relief, unwilling to admit even to herself how terrified she had been for her father. "It's all right, Castellan! He's made it!"

At once, Spandrell released Engin, allowing him to press the purple button and cut off the power to the console. The shattering, high-pitched noise fell silent and the electrical sparking across the circuits ceased. Gradually, the choking, debilitating smoke began to dissipate. With a rasping cough, the Doctor managed to sit up, wiping the sweat off his face with his sleeve.

"Do you mind?" he said crossly to Engin. "This is a non-smoking compartment!"

"What?" Engin asked, confused.

The Doctor ran his hands through his wild mop of curly hair, making it stand on end more than ever. "What?" he repeated blankly, looking around him in a disoriented fashion.

Tejana helped Damon to stand and they both came forward to stand with Spandrell and Engin beside the Doctor's couch, exchanging an anxious glance with the two older Time Lords. Who knew what kind of damage the Doctor's mind had sustained in the psychic nightmare generated by The Matrix?

"Doctor," Tejana began cautiously. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," the Doctor responded, collapsing back on to the couch.

Spandrell nodded. "Yes, you'd better rest. You took quite a beating in there."

"You should see the other fellow!" the Doctor said wryly. Then he sat bolt upright again, like a jack-in-a-box on a spring. "Where is he, by the way?"

"Who?"

"Goth!"

Spandrell stared at him in disbelief, sure now that the Doctor had lost his sanity. "Goth?"

"As in, Chancellor Goth?" Tejana added, equally astonished.

"Yes," the Doctor told her. "The Master's legman." Then, flicking his gaze to Spandrell's face, he said gravely, "He's the assassin, Castellan."

A light of sudden understanding dawned in Spandrell's cool grey eyes. All at once, putting the pieces together in his mind, he had absolutely no doubt that the Doctor was telling the truth. "So that's why he wanted such a quick execution!"

"Yes, that's right!" the Doctor answered grimly, climbing to his feet with a grimace of pain. Weakened from his ordeal, he wavered and almost staggered, until Spandrell caught him firmly under the arm. "It was Goth, remember, who ordered my TARDIS to be transducted from outside the Capitol in the first place. He knew I had doubled back from the Guard and was still inside it. He must have his own link to The Matrix, a sort of tap-in. We've got to trace it back to him before he recovers."

His eyes fell on the still-smoking APC console and a speculative frown crossed his face. "What's underneath here?"

Engin shrugged. "Just service ducts."

"Is that all?"

"Well...a long way down...vaults and foundations dating from the Old Time."

"Come on, come on!" the Doctor said impatiently, already turning for the door. "Show me!"


Engin led them through a series of dark corridors, descending further and further beneath the Capitol, into the very depths of the gutrock of Gallifrey itself. Tejana guessed they were even lower down than the holding cell complex. The air smelled stale and was freezing cold, every breath she took visible as a little white puff of condensation. The walls of the passageways seemed to be hewn out of pure stone, imposing and ancient. She gave a shiver, thinking of the immense weight of the Citadel above them, her debilitating claustrophobia running rampant as she imagined vividly what would happen if it all began to cave in. Guessing what was going through her mind, Damon slipped his hand into hers, reassuringly twining their fingers together. Tejana gave him an appreciative smile, grateful that her friend knew her so well without a word needing to be said.

At last they came to an archway, leading into a gloomy chamber.

"It's the Adytum," Engin whispered. "From the Old Time. It's located directly under the Records Room."

With the Doctor in the lead and Tejana and Damon bringing up the rear, the small group entered in single file. The room was small and roughly circular in shape, its size similar to that of the Records Room above.

"Doctor!" Spandrell exclaimed, pointing to a dark, cloaked figure sitting stiffly on a chair.

Cautiously, the Doctor approached, alert for any sudden attack, but the figure remained motionless. Reaching out, he flipped back the hood in one swift movement. Tejana caught her breath in horror. The creature he had exposed was absolutely hideous. Clearly once humanoid, it was now little more than a skeleton, its desiccated flesh waxy and molten like candle wax, its face hideously veined and decayed. Dull, lidless eyes stared lifelessly back at them, the creature's teeth bared horribly in a soulless grin.

"The Master!" the Doctor breathed, instantly recognising his enemy. Putting his hand beneath the folds of the black cloak, he felt for a heart-beat. Finding nothing, he reached for one of the Master's scarred and twisted hands, searching for his double pulse.

"Is he dead?" Spandrell asked quietly.

The Doctor nodded, his expression unreadable. "Yes."

In the meantime, Damon had located another couch further back in the room, connected to a tangle of circuitry closely resembling the original APC console in the Records Room. Laying back on it was Chancellor Goth. As the young Time Lord drew closer, Goth gave a deep, gurgling moan.

"The Chancellor's still alive!" Damon called over his shoulder.

The Doctor, Spandrell and Engin crossed the room to join him, staring down at the injured Chancellor. The electrodes connecting Goth to The Matrix were still attached to his head, his facial features blackened and horribly burnt.

"Not for long, by the look of it," Spandrell said, without much sympathy.

Coordinator Engin leant down to check the Chancellor's life signs, shaking his head sadly. "He must have taken the full shock."

"So...Doctor," Goth groaned. "You beat us in the end."

"Goth," the Doctor said, putting his hand on the dying man's arm. "Goth, why did you do it?"

"Wanted power. Wanted...to be President."

The Doctor frowned in puzzlement. "But you would have been."

"No," Goth responded, shaking his head weakly. "President...told me...I was not...his chosen successor."

"So you killed him?" Spandrell demanded, determined now to obtain a definite confession to the murder.

"For him. For the Master...his plan."

The Doctor tightened his grip on the Chancellor's arm, trying to keep the man's fading mind alert. "What was his plan, Goth?"

Goth drew in a ragged breath, the death rattle already echoing in his throat. "Met...him on Terserus. He was...dying. No more regeneration possible. Promised me...share all his knowledge...if I brought him to Gallifrey."

"Goth?" the Doctor persisted. "Goth! What was his plan?"

But Goth's mind was already wandering and he did not even seem to hear the question. "Couldn't fight...his mental dominance," he muttered hoarsely. "Did everything he asked. Sorry now."

With that, the Chancellor's last breath slipped away between his dry, cracked lips in a long drawn out sigh and his head lolled to one side, his eyes staring at nothing.

"Goth! What was...?" the Doctor tried again, only to be interrupted by Engin's hand on his shoulder.

"It's no use, Doctor. He's dead."

"No answer to a straight question." The Doctor sighed in frustration. "Typical politician!"

Standing in the background, Tejana found her attention drifting. She hadn't known Chancellor Goth very well, but what she had known she hadn't liked. To be honest, she wasn't particularly interested in his ultimate fate. Instead, she found her eyes repeatedly drawn back to the still, macabre figure seated in the chair nearby. Hesitantly, she moved closer, staring down at the Master in reluctant fascination. She couldn't help thinking of the portrait she had found long ago, hanging forgotten in the old Deca common room, in the dusty depths of the Endless Library. It had shown the Doctor and the Master as boys, during their Academy days, their arms around each other, smiling in mutual comradeship. Theta and Koschei, painted by Ushas. Hungry for the slightest trace of her lost father, Tejana had taken the picture and hidden it in her dormitory in the Academy, looking at it so often that she knew every detail, every brush-stroke, running her fingers over and over their painted faces. This decrepit, decaying corpse, so hideous, so repellent – how could this be the same Koschei? How was it possible? The smiling, dark-haired boy in the picture had been handsome and charismatic and brilliant. He had friends, family, people who loved him. He had a future. And yet, somehow, he had ended up here, dying in this cold, dark crypt, alone and unmourned, his body twisted and broken, his soul ravaged and consumed by hatred and evil. All at once, Tejana felt an unexpected wave of pity for him. Hardly even realising what she did, she raised her hand and stroked her fingers gently down the horror of the dead creature's ruined cheek, as though in a gesture of comfort. It was so strange. She knew she had never come across the Master before and yet she felt such an odd sense of familiarity...

"Tejana? What are you doing?" Damon asked sharply, his voice startling her as he suddenly appeared beside her.

Automatically, almost guiltily, her hand dropped back to her side. "I...nothing," she replied, unable to explain the inexplicable heaviness of her hearts, even to herself. "Nothing at all."