Episode Eleven: His Brother's Keeper
"We're in a tractor beam!" the Doctor cried over the roaring, wailing grind of the engines. The fire on the console was growing, sparks were flying wildly, and the TARDIS was rocking so violently that they were barely able to keep themselves from being tossed about the room. "I can't stop it; it's moving too fast!"
The Emperor's voice boomed from every corner. "If I were in your shoes, I'd hold on to something!"
The TARDIS suddenly began to tumble, rolling end over end as it was dragged through space. Red floodlights filled the room, and the emergency siren began to wail. Holmes, Watson and the Doctor held on for dear life for a nightmarish eternity until, just as abruptly as it began, it stopped.
It had landed on its side. They'd managed to catch themselves on the railing near the steps leading to the door, but were still struggling to gather their thoughts as the console room filled with smoke.
"Boy, is this familiar," the Doctor wheezed. "Holmes! You there?"
"Yes – yes, I'm here."
"Watson?"
Watson coughed reactively. "Fine. Battered but fine."
"Okay," said the Doctor, "we're all fine, relatively speaking. The TARDIS is on fire and we should probably get out before we suffocate to death. Holmes, can you climb to the door?"
"I think so, yes."
"Good, yes. On you get. Follow that detective!"
One by one they clambered across the railing, tugged their way down the steps and struggled to the door. Holmes managed to push it open and was the first to fall through, rolling out onto a flat, cool floor. The Doctor followed, and Watson emerged last, still coughing.
Holmes tumbled onto his back. "It's at moments like these that I have trouble remembering why I agreed to travel with you," he said.
"Was it my sparkling personality?" the Doctor asked as he caught his breath.
"I think it was the time machine," Watson panted, resting his forehead against the floor. "What the hell happened?"
"Something very spacey-wacey. No offense, but it would be tough to explain to a physicist, let alone a physician from 19th century London."
The Doctor lifted his head. They were, not for the first time, surrounded by men in black leather suits with very large guns.
"So there's that," the Doctor said. "Holmes, before you look up, I have a very important question for you. The most important question you'll hear in your lifetime. Are you ready for it?"
"Probably not," Holmes admitted.
"Do you have the crystal?"
Holmes's fist tightened around the little gemstone. "Yes," he said. "I nicked it off the console when we started to shake."
"Good!" said the Doctor with a wildly inappropriate smile. "That's good. Actually, it's excellent, because if it were still in the TARDIS it would have eventually been incinerated. Follow-up question to the most important question in your lifetime: would you mind passing it over here?"
"Oh, I'm afraid I can't allow that."
The new voice was echoed by the sound of footsteps on a hard floor. The Doctor was the first to scramble to his feet, though he made sure to pull Holmes and Watson up by the arms.
He took a moment to adjust his jacket and bowtie before he finally looked at the newcomer.
"Emperor Nimaidi, I presume," the Doctor said, his hands dropping to his sides only after he was satisfied with his shirt collar. "This is a meeting long overdue. I have to admit, I expected someone younger."
He seemed human to the untrained eye, but the Doctor could detect subtle similarities. He was, for example, almost a foot taller than average, and his skin was too pale and his limbs were too long. His glossy white hair and the fine cobweb of wrinkles around his eyes betrayed his otherwise youthful physique. The long formal robes were gilded and made his sharp, golden eyes stand out on his thin face.
The sea of soldiers had parted for him, and those closest had raised their guns in salute.
"And I expected someone older," remarked the emperor mirthfully, "though as I understand it, you're older than you look, aren't you, Doctor?"
"Quite a bit, yes." He clapped his hands together. "So, now that we've got the flirting out of the way, how about we get down to the heart of the matter, eh? Because let's be honest; we've been dancing around it long enough. What is it you want, and why should I care?"
The emperor smiled, and it was a black expression on his white face. "I'd hoped for the opportunity to get to know you a bit better, Doctor, but I suppose you're right. If the stories about you are true, then I can't risk making the same mistakes." He glided towards the Doctor, footsteps sharp and echoless, and came to a stop in front of him. "That starts with not blurting out my plans just because you ask."
The Doctor seemed surprised. "Really? Normally people just sort of do."
"Give me some credit. I'm much smarter than that. I'm probably even smarter than you." He raised his voice to address the small army encircling them. "Watson and the Time Lord go to the prison. Take Holmes to the Eye. Don't harm them yet."
"No!" Watson cried, hurrying towards Holmes. Two large guards caught him by either elbow. "No! Let go of me! Holmes!"
"Watson!" Twice as many guards that had descended on Watson and the Doctor came upon Holmes, grabbing every available limb. "Release me, you barbarians!"
"Emperor, it doesn't have to be this way!" the Doctor said, thrashing against the guards that held him. "I can leave now and we can both get out of this unscathed."
The emperor chuckled. "Oh, isn't it always the way? You have to give everyone a choice. It just isn't in you to simply assume that someone will always choose villainy." With a gesture of one long, thin hand, the emperor signaled for Holmes to be taken away.
"Doctor!" Holmes cried as he was dragged away. "Check your left pocket!"
Scarcely before Holmes finished talking, the Doctor's hand was stuffed into his pocket. Past the trombone and the rubber chicken and the bag of marbles, he felt a familiar surface beneath his fingertips.
"Oh, Holmes, you clever, clever, man!" And before the guards knew what had hit them, his sonic screwdriver was buzzing against the face of the crystal.
The force of the ensuing explosion surprised even the Doctor. Everyone within ten feet toppled to the ground, and the crystal rose higher into the air, shining and prismatic in the white floodlights.
"THREAT DETECTED," said the crystal. "INITIATING DEFENSE PROTOCOL ALPHA."
A focused beam of light sliced its way towards the guards, leaving a hot red trail that burned its way through the leather suits and made the skin beneath start to sizzle. The guards screamed and recoiled, leaving Holmes to shake his way out from the center of the group.
"Run!" the Doctor cried. "Run, run, run!"
"No!" the emperor called as the three of them took off away from the startled army, who were firing wildly at the tiny white crystal. "Get them! Get them!"
As they sprinted through the wide white room – which the Doctor thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, looked rather like a hangar – the now floating crystal whizzed through the air to keep up with them. They were forced to duck gunfire until they made it around a corner into a corridor and through several doors.
When they finally came to a stop, it was in what appeared to be a large aquarium full of silver fish. The Doctor locked the door behind them.
"Should be all right for a little while," the Doctor panted, "catch your breaths, have a hug. Go on, hug!"
Watson spared no further time before he pulled Holmes into his embrace. "God, that was close," he said into Holmes's neck.
"Initiate default cloak," the Doctor said to the crystal, before it took the shape of a floating white cylinder. "No, no. Not that one. Initiate the other cloak."
And then, standing in front of them as if it weren't abjectly bizarre, was Mycroft Holmes. He was standing straight as a rail, eyes forward.
Holmes pulled away from the embrace to look at Mycroft. "What is it? Tell me, Doctor, because I know for a fact that this is not my brother."
"Well, no. Strictly speaking, it isn't your brother. But I'll get to that in a minute. Can you access any of the local databanks remotely?"
Mycroft was silent for a moment before he answered: "NEGATIVE. DATABANKS SEALED. DIRECT ACCESS REQUIRED."
"Well, if we're going to figure anything out, we'll have to start there. I think I've been spoiled by years of enemies telling me the entire plan." The Doctor rumpled his hair. "If I were an evil emperor with all the money I could ever need, where would I put my databanks?"
"What are you?" Holmes asked Mycroft tightly. "Answer me."
Mycroft's head turned around and his eyes moved down Holmes's body, as if scanning him.
"CANNOT COMPLY WITH REQUEST."
"Why the devil not?"
"ACTION DEEMED UNSAFE."
Holmes laughed humorlessly. "Even as some absurd alien technology, my brother still decides what I should and should not know." He looked to the Doctor, whose hands were still in his hair. "Well? You said that you'd tell me what it is."
The Doctor frowned and began rubbing his hands together anxiously. "The answer is sort of complicated," he admitted. "Most empirically, it's called a Cloaked Receptacle and Overseer of the First Tribunal. But it usually goes by the acronym."
Holmes suddenly gained a look of deep-running pain. "A – you call it a CROFT? It's – it's my CROFT?" He lifted one hand and pressed it to his temple, as if quelling a headache.
Watson put a hand on Holmes's forearm. "Are you all right?"
"I've… I've suddenly got a splitting headache," Holmes whimpered.
The Doctor's frown only deepened. "Yes," he said, "you've been getting lots of those lately, haven't you?"
"Doctor, enough of this," Watson hissed. "If you know something, say it! This is neither the time nor the place to be circuitous!"
For several long moments, the Doctor said nothing. He was looking at Holmes with a deep and profound sadness, but also a sort of resign. Eventually he turned his head to Mycroft and said, "Initiate vanity template."
His posture suddenly became quite loose and Mycroft spent a while adjusting his cravat.
"Well, that's better, isn't it?" Mycroft said mildly. "Do we actually have a plan or are we going to continue to stand around in an aquarium until we are discovered?"
Holmes's headache seemed to subside. The Doctor's strange, unknowable pain did not.
Holmes looked to the Doctor pleadingly. "Please, Doctor," he said, "tell me what's going on."
Again the Doctor fell silent. He looked down at his clasped hands. "No time," he said. "We've got a databank to find." When he looked back up at the pair, his bravely broken face was shining sadly. "Come on, then. No time to lose."
o :: o :: o
Whenever the Doctor was trying to do some good, honest sneaking, every creaky floorboard and every rusty door worked in tandem to conspire against him.
It certainly didn't help that wherever they were, the halls were absolutely labyrinthine. The Doctor couldn't be sure what purpose the whole structure served, but whatever it was, the emperor had deemed it necessary to include a terrarium, a planetarium, a laboratory, and what appeared to be a small art gallery.
Holmes kept looking over his shoulder at Mycroft, who was taking up the rear. He didn't say it, but the Doctor could tell that he was apprehensive just being around something that looked like his brother but clearly wasn't. The Doctor couldn't blame him. And in the back of his mind, the Doctor wondered what he should do about it – because eventually, he'd have the time to explain.
It wasn't until nearly twenty minutes of poorly executed sneaking had passed before the four of them came to a very promising door with a sign that read "TECHNICIANS ONLY – NO ADMITTANCE".
"That's good!" the Doctor said, buzzing the latch with his screwdriver. "A keep out sign usually points me in the right direction. Come on, boys."
"What is it we're looking for again?" Watson asked as they slipped carefully through the door and into a dimly lit room full of monitors.
"The primary databanks," the Doctor said as he scurried up to the nearest monitor and tapped through a few options. "The emperor won't tell me what the plan is, so I'll have to find out myself if I'm going to properly sabotage it." Several menus flickered to life on the screen that made the Doctor frown. "Wherever we are, we're not terribly far from earth," he said, "only about 700 light-years. We're not even that far into the past, about 12,500 years before your time."
"What can you find about the Eye of God?" Watson asked, leaning over the Doctor's shoulder as he worked.
"The entire databank is called the Eye of God," answered the Doctor. "The whole station, too – that's what we're on, a massive space station. In fact, the Eye of God is an entire intergalactic corporation owned, operated and managed by Emperor Nimaidi. Whatever his plan is, it's at least as old as the company, which recently celebrated its 400th birthday."
"What does the company do?" Watson asked. "That may give us some clue."
"They are…" He spent a while buzzing at the screen with his screwdriver to bypass security clearances. "If I'm right, they're the first major corporation from the Omicron civilization to master time travel. They facilitate it for recreational, industrial and corporate purposes. These space stations exist all throughout space and time, but for some reason this one in particular is the biggest. Which, of course, raises the question of why."
Watson squinted at a monitor just above the one the Doctor was studying. "What is that?" he asked, gesturing towards it. The Doctor looked up and frowned.
"That's…"
He pulled the monitor down to his level. Slowly rotating on the screen, surrounded by meters and diagnostics, was what appeared to be— "That's a diagram of a black hole. A huge black hole – supermassive, if my days of quantum physics don't fail me. They're monitoring it from every possible angle and in every possible dimension. How are they getting all this data?"
The Doctor went back to puzzling over the screens. Watson looked back to Holmes, who was leaning against the wall and staring, almost disdainfully, at Mycroft, who was in turn watching the Doctor. Watson crossed the room and stood next to him.
"You must not get too distracted," Watson said as he took one of Holmes's hands in his own.
"How can I help but wonder?" asked Holmes, whose eyes didn't move away from Mycroft. "To what degree is this… this thing actually my brother? How much of my life is based on a lie?"
Watson touched his fingertips to Holmes's chin fondly. "You," he began, "are Sherlock bloody Holmes. There is no force on heaven or earth that could erase all the good you've done in your lifetime. Whatever happens, whatever changes, you will always be the most brilliant and most wonderful man I have ever had the privilege to know."
Holmes leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Watson's. Despite the mounting fear, despite the anxiety, despite the danger, the words calmed him. "Doctor Watson," he said, "again, you are my rock in a choppy sea."
"And so long as you live I shall remain just that," Watson promised.
They kissed and Holmes felt safe. His hands wandered to the back of his neck and he stepped forward so their bodies pressed together.
"Blimey!" said the Doctor just as the room filled with a small, rapid beeping. "Wow, that's a lot of power. That is a phenomenal amount of power. That's a thousand times the power it takes to run a space station like this! Why does it need so much power?"
"Look there," Mycroft said, pointing to the screen. "The majority of the power is being routed to one particular dock."
"I noticed that too," the Doctor said, sounding grim. "What could possibly be on Dock 12 that's chewing up so much energy?"
"I suggest we find out. Doubtlessly, we are already being searched for and we don't have any time to lose."
"Agreed. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's the heart of the matter. Holmes, Watson, we need to get going."
Holmes smoothed out Watson's waistcoat before he turned to face the Doctor. "Aren't you worried that you'll be walking into a trap? Surely the emperor knows that you'll show up to this singular location eventually."
"Holmes, I'm going to share a secret with you," the Doctor said as he put both his hands on his shoulders and gazed meaningfully into his eyes. "I actually have no idea what I'm doing."
"At last, he admits it!" Watson cried.
"I just sort of fly into adventures by the seat of my pants and tell myself I've got a plan, but that's just to keep anyone who happens to be around me from panicking. But in the time you've known me, has this ever let you down?"
Holmes sighed heavily. "No," he admitted, "I suppose it hasn't."
"Then trust me. I've been in stickier situations before and made it out! But just in case, here."
The Doctor produced Holmes's katana and Watson's rifle from the pockets of his jacket and handed them out appropriately.
"Mycroft, have you got something to defend yourself?" asked the Doctor.
In response, Mycroft held up his walking stick and used it to break a fist-sized hole in the metal wall.
"Right, good!"
"And what about you, Doctor?" Holmes asked. "Do you have something to defend yourself?"
"I've got the three of you and a sonic screwdriver. I'm absolutely sorted. Well, come on, then! We have ourselves a mystery to unravel!"
o :: o :: o
He was so close. He'd sacrificed half a millennium of blood, sweat and tears for this moment, and he would not let it fail.
In the back of his mind, he knew that it always came down to proving himself. There was a time when that fact alone would have been enough to send him paralytic with shame and bitterness, but after 500 years, he had become immune to the sting. He'd spent his entire life proving that he could surpass every limit put to him.
Too poor. Too strange. Too weak.
Objectively, it was petty. But anger was just as efficient a motivator as any other, and it had brought him this far, right to the cusp of his final destiny. By day's end, there wouldn't be a soul in the universe who could say a word against him.
Dock 12 was pitch black. He waited in the observation room high above, reclined in his chair, with his long nails drumming on the arm.
Patience… he'd had it for 500 years, and he could wait a few more minutes.
"Your Excellency?"
It was Corporal Streya, of course. He recognized her voice. He liked Streya; she was just as bloodthirsty and ruthless as he was. He had big plans for her once his own plot came to fruition.
"Corporal," he said, "what can I do for you?"
"The troops are getting antsy."
"You have your orders, Corporal. I expect you to hold to them."
"But just to wait?" she pressed him urgently. "Calling off the search parties was preposterous enough, but do you really think they'll just waltz into your trap?"
"Oh, Streya," the emperor purred, "I know they will. It's what makes the Doctor who he is. He'll walk into the plot knowing that it's there, with the impossible and irrational belief that he'll work his way out of it. In his defense, he has a sterling track record to back it up, but, like everyone else, he will make the mistake of underestimating me."
His long, thin hands flexed and writhed on the arms of the chair. His heart was thumping so wildly he almost couldn't stand it. He was so close.
Streya, for her part, didn't answer. He heard her walk forward, and she eventually came into view when she stopped by the observation window, looking into the darkened room.
"You realize, of course, that I'm operating on faith," Streya said. "I don't like doing that."
"And you won't have to for much longer," he assured her. "In just a few scarce hours, the universe as you know it will change forever."
She looked good in her sharp golden uniform, with her dark hair in a tight bun and her freckles muted in the dull ambient light. The emperor had never had time for things as ridiculous as romance, but if he'd ever had to love someone, it would have been someone like Streya.
"You have everything in place for the fallout, I trust?" the emperor asked.
"Twenty million strong standing ready," she answered, as if it weren't such a staggering number, "and we have our best technicians analyzing the felled ship the Doctor left behind."
"Have you been able to get inside?"
"Unfortunately not, Your Excellency; whatever's keeping it locked is stronger than we anticipated. But I'm told we're getting good readings from the outside."
"Still, a pity. I would have liked to see it from the inside."
He rose from his seat and stood next to her, and together they looked down into the darkness. They could only just make out the haziest outline of the behemoth of a machine as it hummed and rotated in the middle of the room.
"If I may, Your Excellency," Streya began after a lapse of silence, "what is it specifically that makes you so sure the Doctor will come through that door?"
"You've read the legends about him as much as I have, Corporal. It's who he is. He's hardwired to respond to any threat to the universe, and I'd wager that by now he sees me as a growing danger if nothing else."
She looked at him, curious but detached. "Is that really what you want, Your Excellency?" she asked. "You never struck me as the type who wanted to watch the world burn."
He didn't answer immediately. He pressed one long, thin hand to the cool glass, right over the machine.
"I don't want to watch it burn," he replied slowly. "I could do it better, you know."
"Do what, Sir?"
"I could be a better god than any mythos. I could be mightier than the god of Purganon, greater than the god of Abraham. I could put to shame the Great Old Ones. I could be powerful and merciful. I could turn the universe into something better. I can. I will."
Streya watched him silently through sharp black eyes as the emperor's hands balled into tight fists of tense anticipation. His long, thin limbs shook with growing anxiety.
"Soon," he whispered. "So very soon."
Streya didn't say anything that was on her mind, but that didn't surprise the emperor. She was very good at minding her place and always had been. It was one of the many things he liked about her.
"And what about Holmes?" she asked. "You've spent so much time focused on the Doctor, that I think it's fair to say you might be underestimating Holmes. He is, after all, the greatest genius the universe has ever seen."
"So the story goes," he said as he recovered from his clutching anticipation and smoothed out his white, gilded robes. "Still, the honey's in the trap and it should all work out. I think even Holmes isn't immune."
"Sir," she said, and he looked down. A small pool of light had formed by the door, so small that it looked more like a smudge of yellow on a sea of black. Four figures emerged carefully through the darkness, feeling their way closer to the center of the room. "They're here."
"Right on schedule," the emperor purred. "Give the order to release the slouchers."
"At once, Sir," she said, before she spun on the ball of her foot and walked out of the room.
The emperor was left alone, watching with a hammering heart as they moved closer and closer to their destiny, and to the destiny of the entire universe. His blood ran hot and every sense was tough and taut as whipcord.
This was it, he thought. This was the beginning of the end.
o :: o :: o
"Good Lord, it's dark."
And it was, the Doctor thought. Oppressively so. With all the power flowing through this one room, one would have thought that some of it could have been spared for lights. He fished around in his pocket for a while before he came up with a small light orb that allowed them an unimpressively small pool of yellowish light.
"Why here?" Holmes wondered aloud. "Why this room, specifically?"
"There you are, Doctor!" boomed a voice from everywhere. "I was beginning to think you'd keep me waiting!"
It was the emperor, of course. And all at once, they heard the soft rushing of air from all directions. Watson's grip on his rifle tightened and Holmes unsheathed his katana. Though it may very well have been the Doctor's imagination, he could have sworn that the ambient temperature dropped several degrees. And there was the faintest sound… the sound of hissing.
"I'd never be so rude," the Doctor said bravely. "Why don't you come on out and we can talk face to face?"
"All in good time," the emperor said, morbidly cheerful. "For now, say hi to my slouchers."
"Slouchers—?" Watson began, but he was cut off by Holmes's abrupt cry.
When the Doctor turned, Holmes was being held by both arms, in the vise-like grip of two enormous, crooked creatures. They were thin as lathes and black as pitch, with oblong heads dominated by sharp, jagged white teeth. Their limbs were long and bent, and every breath hissed from their chest.
"Let him go!" the Doctor cried.
"Yes, they're quite terrifying, aren't they?" the emperor said as Holmes thrashed wildly in the slouchers' grips. "I designed them myself and had them genetically engineered. They're wonderful servants, and they're so very good at keeping everyone in line."
One of the slouchers bent down and looked at the Doctor closely, his terrible teeth gnashing and his forked tongue twitching in its cavernous mouth.
"Take him up, boys, and get the others to the platform."
"No!" Watson cried. "Stop it! Let him go! Holmes!"
Six more slouchers descended upon Watson, Mycroft and the Doctor. Their hands were hard and cold as ice and despite their best efforts they couldn't escape their grip. The three of them were pulled onto an immense platform beneath a large metal machine hanging overhead.
"Do you want to know the best part about my plan, Doctor?" the emperor said as the slouchers held them in place. "I mean, the really beautiful part about it? I based the entire thing on knowing the truest and purest essence of you. All I had to do was set it up just right and you fell in line simply because it's who you are. I tuned it all specifically to you, and you reacted perfectly!"
"Just let him go—" the Doctor began.
"I mean, did you really think I lost in each of our little tête-à-têtes? Do you think I had you kill all of my operatives on Pleistocene earth because I was simply that inept? Do you think the evacuation warning on my ships over Noxasia simply weren't working, and that's why everyone on board died when you fired upon them?"
The Doctor was silent, his face screwed in confusion.
"I designed the traps specifically so you would kill them," the emperor said, his voice low and gushing with black mirth. "I wanted to rip apart your conscience. I wanted you to hate yourself as much as you possibly could and I wanted it all fresh in your mind for this moment."
The platform on which they stood was suddenly flooded with light. The machine above them hummed to life.
"FIVE PERCENT," the machine buzzed.
"No prison can hold the Doctor, after all," the emperor said. "No prison but the one he makes for himself! All the guilt throughout your life, Doctor, everyone you've ever killed – how heavily does it weigh on your heart?"
"TEN PERCENT."
"Guilt is a paralytic, Doctor. And with an emotional amplifier, I'll be sure that it will be irreversible!"
The Doctor looked up at the machine. It was on a charging cycle, but he knew at once what it meant.
"Just sit back and think about it, Doctor, about all the blood on your hands. And my machine will make sure that no other thought will ever cross your mind again!"
"You can't do this," the Doctor said.
"Oh, but I can. Actually, I am. And while that warms up, I bring your attention to downstage center!"
Another light source flooded the room. The wind picked up. In the very center of the chamber, in an immense, flat, glass cylindrical container, was—
"The black hole," the Doctor said. "The one I saw in the diagram!"
"That's what all the power's for," Mycroft said slowly. "It's being routed in here to contain the raw power of a black hole."
"But that means…" The Doctor suddenly felt very cold. "You – Emperor, you're trying to create a Rassilon Star!"
A thrashing Holmes was tugged up a set of stairs that curved around to the top of the cylinder. The fierce wind blew his hair and coat madly, and the slouchers held him steadfastly in place as the emperor emerged on the far side of the cylinder.
"The raw power of a singularity can't be manipulated in and of itself," the emperor said. "And oh, how widely the legends vary! What does it take to make a Rassilon Star? After five hundred years, I now have my answer!"
"No," the Doctor cried. "No! Don't!"
"Holmes?" Watson said. "You think Holmes can do this impossible thing?"
"The greatest genius in the universe will open the Eye of God!" the emperor cried. "Slouchers! Prepare him!"
Holmes, screaming and writhing in the slouchers' iron grip, was hoisted onto a metal hook and slowly lifted over the top of the captured black hole.
"THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT."
"Holmes!" Watson called desperately.
"Listen to me!" the Doctor said.
"Oh, it's gone a bit beyond that," the emperor teased.
"Not you! Holmes! Listen to me!"
Still jerking in the bonds that kept him attached to the hook, Holmes looked across at the Doctor, his face streaked with fear.
"Holmes," the Doctor said, "I'm so sorry. I don't have time to explain everything you need to know!"
"Doctor!" Holmes cried, continuing to thrash. "Watson!"
"FIFTY PERCENT."
"It's going to hurt," the Doctor said, his voice full of heartbreak, "but it won't last forever."
Holmes had given up struggling in lieu of trembling silently as he was lowered into the top of the cylinder.
"I'm so sorry," the Doctor said. "I'm so sorry!"
"Release him now!" the emperor roared, and Holmes fell, hard and swift, into the twisting black vortex.
"No!" Watson cried, hot tears stinging his eyes.
"SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT."
It was hard to hear anything over the roar that the machine made at that moment. But the Doctor could clearly hear the sound of Holmes's desperate, pained scream.
And then, just barely visible through the rattling, tempered glass, there was an explosion of golden light. Sherlock Holmes had begun to regenerate.
