Nate was troubled.

This was all about Charlie. Everything was always about Charlie.

Normally, he didn't mind – usually, he was glad of it. Charlie was his best friend.

But now, with Charlie acting so strange - so fixated upon his story of the Doctor, it bothered him.

It could have been the accident; Charlie was struggling to adjust to life after death. It felt like he had changed, though. That scared him.

Nate rubbed his eyes.

The room around him was growing dark; the artificial ambience of dusk creeping along the old wardrobe in his bedroom.

Hunched up in the corner of his bed, he was alone, watching the lights in the buildings above flicker and die.

Ever since Charlie had met Sam, Nate found himself drifting further and further away from him.

Charlie really wanted to be back in the real world, time travelling with his alien Doctor.

That was it. Charlie didn't want him in his life. Not really.

Nate shook his head, trying to empty his mind of thoughts about Charlie.

It was tearing him up inside.

Charlie was his friend. Charlie was his only friend. If Charlie didn't want him… it confirmed his worst fears.

He had felt like a burden on Charlie his whole life. Now he was a burden to him in the afterlife.

Charlie always hung out with him at weekends, playing videogames so late into the night, they sometimes fell asleep mid-match.

Charlie had listened to all his petty rants about people and their stupid, pointless problems.

Charlie would put up with him and his stupid outbursts.

It was always Charlie.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…

They were the only memories he had. The only ones he had bothered to remember; the only ones his mind had retained. The only ones he could concentrate on enough to rewatch.

His whole life had centred on Charlie.

It was as though without him, Nate didn't exist.

"Focus!" the voices hissed.

Nate jumped, slamming his back into the wooden bedpost.

The creatures had returned, just as he had dreaded. Standing at the foot of the bed, breathing heavily, lingering in the darkness.

"Concentrate on those memories."

"Why?" Nate mouthed. "Why is he so important to you?"

"You'll have to speak up, we can't hear you," a female voice snapped sharply in his ear.

Nate jumped.

There was a woman in the room with them.

Nate had never seen her before in his life – yet one look at her terrified him. Was it the soulless eyes? They radiated an aura of hostility, of remorselessness.

He had never seen a serial killer before; looked them in the eyes. He knew he had now.

She had killed people, and she didn't care.

She twirled her fingers around the handle of her plum-coloured umbrella, idly passing the time.

"You've served your purpose," she said, the light sing-song humour dropped from her voice in an instant. She was deadly serious. "It's time to let the Servants of Chaos take your memories. A ninety nine percent data capture is good enough."

Nate frowned. He didn't understand what was going on. Was this a nightmare? It had to be, right?

He knew people still had nightmares in the afterlife. Charlie was having so many.

But it wasn't a nightmare. Every time he saw the monsters, he knew it was real.

"We will take the memories of Charlie Drake," the creatures snarled, shuffling towards him. "With them as our weapons, we will take our revenge against the Doctor!"

Nate couldn't move.

He was an idiot. Charlie had been right this whole time.

"Don't struggle," the woman uttered sternly. "You'll only make it worse for yourself."

Nate gasped, as a harsh glow split the room in half; a white crack running from the ceiling to the carpet, parting reality.

The disfigured creatures reached out with their frail tendril-like limbs. They seemed excited to try and touch the quivering light.

Deep wounds in the creature's skulls opened up, revealing the maggot-ridden flesh beneath. These wounds might have been mouths, but they looked more like bleeding gashes.

Nate could see a stream of his thoughts being pulled towards the shimmering light.

They were taking his memories – his memories of Charlie.

He tried to resist – to stop them taking Charlie from him. Stop them from hurting him. He couldn't.

"No!" he cried. "Charlie!"

"Clara, Clara, Clara…" the woman mocked him, rolling her eyes.

"Charlie!" Nate yelled.

"Whatever," she grumbled.

Glowing silver threads knotted together at the centre of the white crack, weaving a shape out of the air.

Then, materialising in front of his eyes, was Charlie.


Missy watched the scene unfold, carefully calculating all the possible eventualities. This little show had to go according to script, for the Doctor's sake.

"How can this be happening?" the boy muttered in shock, his gaze locked onto Charlie's form, rapidly taking shape in front of him.

The boy's memories were being extracted from his skull; a stream of data transferred straight into a new body, generated by the Nethersphere.

Okay, it wasn't really, but she had to make it look believable for the Servants of Chaos.

"I made him, just like I made you," Missy crowed.

Nate twisted his head towards her. It seemed to take a great deal of effort to tear his eyes away from Charlie. "Made… me…?"

"Yes," Missy sighed, "I've just booted up this simulation. You've only existed for about five minutes. I implanted all the data from a previous version of you. You only think you've lived your whole life, because that's what you remember."

She laughed, showing him that she cared about him as much as they cared about the simulation of the bluebottle trapped in the net curtains. There were a lot of flies in the afterlife. It added to the ambience. Reminded everyone they were dead.

Missy produced a small mirror from her jacket pocket, and checked her eye shadow.

If one was going to be a drama queen, one might as well look good. It was one of the many benefits of suddenly becoming female. You could really glam yourself up for Armageddon.

Actually, Missy reconsidered, it had never stopped her before.

"You know," she simpered, "there's really no way to tell if you're real, or just a copy made up from half-forgotten memories."

The human was crying again. It was funny, really. So Missy continued, because that seemed to upset him more.

"And thanks to some extremely clever neural engineering, courtesy of yours truly - ah-thank-you-very-much - I've just recreated the mind of Charlie Drake from your mind, which I now have uploaded on my hard drive."

She gestured to the room around her. The Nethersphere, the hard drive she had nicked from Gallifrey, now containing the minds of every human that ever died throughout history, was an extremely useful bit of kit.

"…It's a bit of a drain on the processor, mind you. Look at the lag!"

Missy twirled round, and skipped away, watching the cascade of Missys' following seconds behind her.

"Very well done, Master," Charlie sneered, clapping slowly.

The boy's mock applause – that confidence – was enough to grab Missy's attention.

The voice did not belong to a human adolescent.

"Charlie?" Nate murmured.

Charlie rolled his sleeves up, and rubbed his hands together, excitement electrifying the space around him.

He ignored Nate, and took a step towards Missy. She narrowed her eyes at him, sizing him up.

"Yes, Time Lord, I know who you are." Charlie grinned. "Know this. You can't stop me. The Doctor can't stop me. The world crumbles under my majesty. The universe will tremble at my name."

Charlie's eyes flashed with an intense yellow glow; bewitching torchbeams homing in on her.

"I am the Mara!"

Charlie snapped his fingers, and the Servants of Chaos seemed to explode in a haze of dust. They were gone. They no longer existed. The Mara had destroyed them and everything they were in seconds.

"We can start with this 'Nethersphere' of yours," he spat.

Missy gasped.

A slight inhalation slipping through her lips was enough to signal her surprise to the Mara.

The memories of Charlie Drake contained a virus. He was infected with the Mara. Her realisation came far too late.

"Stop the simulation!" she screamed. The world ground to a halt.

Nate froze, his consciousness suspended in time. The fly buzzing in the window stopped, glued to the glass.

Charlie's body seemed to glitch.

Pausing the simulation wasn't stopping a creature with power like the Mara.

In a second, the boy's body was replaced with a writhing serpent.

Complex as it was, this world was only a computer simulation. Switching forms was as simple as selecting a new profile picture for the Mara. Hashtag: #IAmGoingToKillYou

Missy clasped the teleporter bracelet locked around her wrist, and the simulation dissolved.

Her conscious form was extracted from the hard drive – back in her palace of the dead.

She glared up at the grey sphere, its blinking red lights fading and dying.

The Mara was taking control of the Nethersphere.

The Mara. It had to be stopped.

Missy knew of the Mara, though they had never crossed paths before; Missy knew of the power it held. She knew that Only the Doctor had defeated the Mara before.

And when there's no Doctor in the universe you've created… someone else has to stop the monsters.