9 – Conditional Accuracy
Cameron did not usually trouble himself with researching alternate timelines. He'd found that the one he had to focus on daily was enough of a handful, and tracking down the various what-if's and could-have-been's caused his head to throb dangerously. He remembered what had happened the last time he'd had such a headache, one that ultimately resulted with his physical body splattered across his office, and the memories were enough to make him wish to avoid a recurrence of the phenomenon.
Yet headaches were all that he seemed to get these days, ever since he'd regained custodianship of the Time Lord Office. Nothing of the cranial-exploding variety, thankfully, but the kind of creeping pain that set one's teeth on edge with each new development had been what he'd felt since the moment he'd taken the reins back from his daughter. Cameron felt a deepening sense of self-loathing as he perused the records of Lilith's tenure as Curator that only worsened when he realized that he'd been the indirect cause of her decline. It's bad enough that I caught her in bed with the man, he mused sourly. Even worse, her reports are a mess.
He would not have even noticed the alternate timeline had it not been for hearsay bounced from table to table at the cafeteria during lunchtime. Cameron was used to not hearing from his daughter and grandson for significant intervals and news of eccentric behavior from either of them was hardly noteworthy, but the recurring theme throughout each story led him to believe that further investigation was due: "He's dead. Can you believe it – the Doctor's dead!"
"What're you going on about?" Junior finished up his notations on a form, punched two holes in the top, and slid it onto the top of a thick sheaf of similar papers on one side of a file folder. He secured the pile of forms inside the folder, snapped it shut, and slapped the folder down into the inbox on Cameron's desk, looking questioningly at his grandfather when the latter flinched. "Of course he's dead. He died when I was little. Now this office is yet again a laughingstock and the only thing keeping it around is that certain of our laws prohibit genocide – that, and Mother still refuses to believe that Lena is gone and the body possessed by our last surviving client. She doesn't want to risk killing off one of her own children."
Cameron studied Junior for a few silent moments. Years of anger, depression and solitude had eroded the pleasant face of adolescence into something harsher, and his entire frame was tense as if he were ready for a fight. But to fight what? Cameron wondered, then continued aloud, "And you?"
"What about me?"
"What do you think about it?"
Junior sighed. "Lena died when she let that freak into her body. There's nothing of her left. I'd say kill her and get it over with – I'm sick and tired of all of this." He turned and walked to the office door, pausing only to retrieve something leaning by the door that Cameron hadn't noticed.
The older man eyed the object with curiosity – a stout wooden pole etched with mysterious glyphs, a wicked metal barb affixed to its top – and raised an eyebrow. "What in the name of the Matriarch is that thing, and what is it doing in my office?"
"It's a harpoon, Granddad. You can't exactly expect me to go hunting unarmed." Then Junior was gone, leaving Cameron staring in his wake.
"You can try and talk to her, but good luck. She hasn't said a word for the past two hundred years." Avery stood between Cameron and the meditation alcove, barring his access with her slight form that he knew belied a fearsome physical strength. "I think you're the last person she wants to see right now anyway."
"You don't know that -"
"You're right, I don't, but I can certainly guess. You haven't said a single nice thing to her since you came back, so what makes me think that you'd start now?" Knowing she'd made her point, Avery pressed a combination of keys and erased one wall of the alcove, allowing Cameron to see inside. His heart sank when he saw a pale, insubstantial figure sitting on the floor gazing unseeingly at the far wall, a beatific smile on her face as her mind wandered far afield. "This is one of her better days, Cam. Just leave her be."
Cameron brushed his daughter's thoughts lightly, curious as to what she saw that made her smile like she did. He was startled to see that, in her mind's eye, she sat on a barren, dusty hill overlooking a field of desiccated, spindly plants. It had been a lush pastoral landscape at one time in the past, but that was long ago. What was so captivating -
A light breeze blew the clouds away from the moon overhead, allowing its forgiving rays to fall over the waste below. Under those gentle beams the land began to transform, withered foliage turning green once more and dried-up seed pods bursting into flowers in colors that strained his imagination to grasp. Cameron withdrew from Lilith's mind and caught Avery's eye. "You saw them too – the nimbus lilies?" Avery asked, and Cameron nodded. He'd read Lilith's descriptions of that field in her reports and now shuddered to think of what forces drove her to hide there. "I think it's best if you go now. I'll let you know if anything changes."
The timeline was there waiting for Cameron when he returned to his office. It took some searching to find it, but it was there, indexed neatly in the back of a dusty, rarely-read volume on the bottom corner of his bookshelf. He pulled it from its hiding place, settled in his chair, and placed his hand over the page so that its contents would be displayed on the blank wall behind the desk.
A series of percussive explosions – fire, soon extinguished by a massive gush of water as an entire river poured in – shimmering light, the Empress escaping to safety however false, no such escape for the hero of the hour – The empty clatter of a sonic screwdriver on pavement snapped Cameron out of his reverie and he sat up straight in his chair, disengaging from the record book as a fresh realization came over him. "What if that's the way it's supposed to be?" he muttered, laying the book out on his desk and opening a desk drawer to reach for the correct form. "Chaos follows that man wherever he goes. Imagine what it would be like, how peaceful if he weren't there to get into things!"
The slightest of misgivings sniped at him as he began to write, reminding him of Junior's predatory oddness stalking out with a harpoon in hand, of Lilith and her empty dreams of flower-filled fields – to which Cameron gritted his teeth and forced the thoughts from his mind. "All it will take is one report and then it will all be over."
Interdimensional Oversight Commission Official Report
Serial Number: 10-31B
Originator: Cameron – Caretaker, Time Lord Office
Subject: Racnoss Incident (Continuation)
Summary of Events: The Empress of the Racnoss failed in her attempts to turn the Earth into a feeding world for her offspring due to the Doctor's intervention. After issuing his usual offers of peaceful resolution – which were, as usual, turned down – and, lacking any other means to proceed, the Doctor proceeded to flood the lair of the Racnoss by bursting the walls with explosives and allowing the Thames to resume its natural course. The Empress was able to briefly escape to her ship before it was destroyed by UNIT forces. Unfortunately, the Doctor was unable to escape the flooding and was drowned before he could regenerate.
Recommended Action: None recommended. Further intervention would result in the breach of several applicable laws.
Junior crouched down behind a rock outcropping and struggled to catch his breath. The beast wasn't fast or particularly bright, but what it lacked in speed and smarts it made up for in sheer persistence, leviathan strength and an eye-watering stench that made it nearly impossible to engage in close quarters. Its saliva, dripping from a yellow-fanged maw in copious quantities, was acidic enough to wound. In short, Lena had engineered a magnificent species to guard her new home – and to make it worse, there were two.
The first of the pair had taken Junior the better part of an hour to subdue, if only in a temporary fashion, by maneuvering it into a particularly unstable part of the old quarry and diverting his energies to collapse the stone. It would take a crew of humans a day to clear the rubble, half that with heavy machinery, but he had no way of knowing how long it would last against the mutant guardian and had instead moved on towards where he guessed his prey to be hiding. Then the second beast had appeared and Junior was back to square one.
He'd returned to the Commission's dimension long enough to make a few basic calculations based on what he'd encountered, and the harpoon that Junior now hefted in his free hand had been the result deemed most effective by the Enforcer database. Let's hope they were right, he thought, then fought off a gag as the first evidence of the beast's approach reached his nostrils. Booming footfalls echoed off the of the quarry walls, pounding faster and faster as the creature drew nearer. It scented its prey and let out a keening shriek of victory, gathered itself on massive haunches and vaulted into the air so as to crush the pitiful two-legged man-thing from above -
Junior steeled himself for impact and brought the harpoon up at just the right moment. The wooden pole quivered in his grip but the sharp metal of the barb remained true to its purpose, slicing through the vulnerable juncture between armor plates and lodging in the beast's heart. Its hunting wail turned to one of despair as thick blood gouted from the wound, liberally spattering Junior with a toxic slime that caused the fabric of his clothing to scorch. He used the last of his strength to heave the weighty carcass away and quickly peeled off his jacket. His shirt came off next, the ravaged cloth used to sponge the smoldering, tar-like goop away from key areas and then tossed aside just as quickly as the coat.
"Ooo la la! Disaster strikes and off comes the clothing, just like in the films!" Junior flinched at the sound of the voice, delicately feminine in jarring contrast with the catcall it offered. "I've never understood the purpose of the hero becoming shirtless, but if it seems to work..." There was a pause and a disappointed mew as the owner of the voice regarded her slain creation. "I spent months working on that one! Months! And you felled it with a bloody harpoon, you shameless man." Faint scuffling sounds and a most in-effeminate grunt were followed by the appearance of a most unlikely form on top of the corpse. "You're just like him, you know that? Rampaging around destroying all of my hard work just because you think it isn't right."
Junior could only boggle as the young woman reached into one of the long sleeves of her kimono and withdrew a pair of rubber laboratory gloves which she then donned in order to more safely probe the wound surrounding the giant spear. "But who are you to judge? That's one thing he never got through his thick skull – the fact that he, and you, have no right." Lena then carefully lowered herself down to the ground again, using the harpoon as a handgrip. She crossed to the beast's mouth and, seemingly oblivious to the stench, stuck her head in to get a look around. This only lasted for a few seconds and then she returned to the fresh air, eyes watering above an appreciative grin. "A true piece of work, that. And so are you, now that I think of it."
She's small and doesn't seem trained to physical combat. I could kill her in three movements and then this whole mess would be over. Junior lunged, aiming for Lena's center of balance, his pulse hissing in his ears with the thrill of a long-sought goal coming to swift completion.
"You've spent your whole life trying to be him and yet you never got quite... close enough." Lena turned on one sandaled foot and caught Junior by the neck, her grin turning feral as the vulnerable flesh of his neck came into contact with the lethal compounds coating her glove. "So sad. You try so hard, but in the end you can't save anyone – much less yourself."
Junior's vision began to waver as the toxic chemicals worked their way through his system, rapidly absorbed through the skin and circulated by the frantic pulses of paired hearts, and he weakly clawed at Lena's glove-encased hand. She rolled her eyes and gave one final squeeze -
"Matriarch, why do I even bother with these things?" Junior wrenched the knot loose and flung his necktie down on the bathroom counter with a grimace. He checked his appearance in the mirror one last time and willed himself away, choosing to appear in the hallway outside of his grandfather's office so as not to disturb his elder with a sudden unexpected entrance. A brisk knock on the door elicited an absentminded admittance, and Junior quietly stepped into the office.
Cameron sat hunched over the desk, pondering over the final words of his current report. He tapped his pen on the desk blotter for a moment, glanced up to see Junior watching him, and waved his grandson to one of the guest chairs nearby. After scribbling out a few short phrases, Cameron dropped the report into the in-progress bin and leaned back in his seat to give Junior an assessing look. "How're you feeling today?" he asked after a moment had passed, the younger man growing visibly uncomfortable as the seconds stacked. "Well rested, I hope? No need to go hunting?"
Junior raised a puzzled eyebrow. "I'm fine, thanks. Dad hasn't caused you any more problems, has he?"
"No more than the usual." Cameron glanced down at the trash can next to the desk where an official form lay torn in neat halves, then looked back to Junior. "He's lucky to be alive. I hope you don't happen to share any of his ambitions or who knows what things would come to."
This brought a laugh. "None that I know of. It's hard enough keeping Mum in line as is." Pause, then, "You look tired. I'll get the coffee started, shall I?"
"Please." Cameron studied his grandson as the latter moved about the office, the model of quiet efficiency as he prepared the coffeepot for its morning percolation. One has to be subtle about these things, he mused. Sometimes we only need make minor adjustments...
