Title: Monster in the Dark

Author: Nemo the Everbeing

oOo oOo Chapter 10: Reset to Zero oOo oOo

The Master woke up. White light. White so stark and blinding it was the heart of an atomic blast. White like the marble that flowed from the human's feet as she'd finally made her move.

Made her move in a cavern full of . . . all those tormented faces . . .

With a gasp, he jerked himself upright. His arms reached out blindly for support, which meant that he had arms, which was good. His upward momentum was halted by the sudden tug at the skin of his temples. He froze. A creeping sense of dread stole through him, but he quashed it. He just needed a moment to regain his bearings and assess the situation. He would be fine.

He was no longer in the mindscape, he was almost certain. The room certainly looked like the one in which they had built the mind-bender. Every item which they had used, discarded, or ignored sat where they had been dropped before the ordeal. There were no strange additions, no subtractions, no infernal metaphor in sight. It was clear, concise reality, right down to the pull of the electrodes connected to his head.

He had escaped. He'd made it out alive. Astonishing.

Still shaking from the terror and the residual pain of the injuries inflicted upon him in the mindscape, he tore at the electrodes. If he didn't remove them immediately he could be pulled back into the mindscape. He would have to face those figures in the walls once more . . . those faces which screamed and begged and beckoned him to join them at long last . . .

No! He had no time for such irrelevant fears. He had enough to deal with without some heretofore unknown guilt complex making itself known. He pulled the last electrode free from his head and staggered from the chair. His inferior body was in riot. He got three steps before collapsing to the floor and sucking air, focusing his will on retaining the contents of his stomach.

He took an experimental breath and felt meager lungs fill, unhindered by dust, blood, or bone. He shook from the aftershocks of the experience. By rights, he should be dead.

But he wasn't. He was breathing, and intact, and even if he seemed to be shaking uncontrollably, it really wasn't that surprising given all he'd been through. He gave the room a more calm assessment than his previous attempts to confirm the reality of his situation. This was still hostile territory, after all. One miraculous escape was not enough. He had to remove himself from this craft. The alternative was to leave the Doctor free to choose to go back on his word. He could be abandoned on some backwards child-planet even after everything he had done! He wasn't about to let that happen.

He jerked to his feet and fell back down as vertigo hit him. He landed amidst an abandoned pile of biotubing and it squelched around his hands. His head whipped around. Had they . . . no they hadn't. The Doctor and his companion were still unconscious. He rolled his eyes at himself and let out a gust of breath. Well of course they were! He'd made sure of it. Engineering a few minutes to himself upon ejecting from the program had been the most natural act of self-preservation. The two of them were still caught between realities in an ingenious little mental holding pattern

He got to his feet again, careful to retain his balance. He had to think. He couldn't allow himself to be killed. He started to pace. Surely there was a way out of the situation. He just had to think!

He tripped over something. His feet thudded a few graceless steps before he could catch himself on a countertop and turn to see what had been in the way. That ridiculous clubb-thing—what had it been called? The shock-negotiator. He stared down at it. Yes, that had distinct possibilities.

The weapon was in his hands before he really knew he'd picked it up. He crossed the room in a daze. He had a clear enemy and, now, a means to dispose of him. There would be no guilt. Being here, in the TARDIS, in this danger, was no fault of his own. His enemy had put him there. He'd been dragged into the situation, never mind that it had nearly killed him. The Master did not take well to nearly dying.

He raised the club.

And then he lowered it. He couldn't. Not this way, and not just because those accursed temporal grace circuits would stop him before he could do anything. No, the situation was delicate. Murder gave him no advantage, not when the TARDIS controls were still locked out. Besides, he was not a thug. That kind of physical violence was beneath him. Usually.

He didn't think about the twinge of horror at the mere thought of killing the Doctor in such a way. He couldn't do it, but it had everything to do with logic and logistics. It had nothing whatsoever to do with sentiment. He dropped the shock-negotiator.

There had to be a way to unlock the TARDIS controls! The Doctor was scatterbrained as a rule. Would he have written down the lockout code somewhere? He rushed across the room and snatched up the Doctor's discarded jacket. He dug through the pockets. A watch from the Academy. No. A sonic screwdriver. No. An apple-core, which the Master immediately flung across the room. No! He tried every pocket, spreading the odds and ends he found there on the floor at his feet. There were scraps of paper, yes, but none which could be an aide-memoire for the code. Just idiotic reminders about planets in jeopardy and maintenance needed on the TARDIS console.

He snarled and dropped the jacket. His next search was the Doctor himself, but an inspection of his trouser pockets was just as fruitless. The Master had to quash another urge to club the impossible little man, temporal grace or not. It was useless, though. He had to . . . he had to . . .

He had to breathe. Small wonder his ideas were lacking. Decent plans needed time and application. Even if he'd managed to stop stumbling about like a lunatic, he was still less composed than he'd like. The Master closed his eyes and afforded himself a few moments to Then, his footsteps heavy, he trudged over to the seat he'd just vacated at the mind-bender and collapsed into it. He scrubbed at his face with shaking hands.

He needed some way to ensure that the Doctor let him go. For that to happen, he needed a weakness to exploit. He needed an advantage. His gaze traversed the room. Of course, when he saw it, he felt a bit foolish for not having seen it sooner.

The human. She was extremely important to the Doctor, of that the Master was certain. Even if the Doctor wouldn't sacrifice the universe for her, she apparently came close enough to warrant a sense of dilemma. Close enough was perfectly acceptable. The human was the key. All he had to do was engineer a situation in which her life would be in danger and only he could get her out of it. That was bargaining power, and that would guarantee his safe release.

He rose and crossed the room in swift, decisive steps, noting with satisfaction that his strength was returning. He looked down at her helpless form, a delicate tumble of flesh and bone on the metal of the gurney. It was strange, but in that instant, he felt he had known her for a very long time.

Time became relative when minds touched minds, perhaps. His direct contact had been brief, but it had been enough. He'd seen in this human a life duller than words could describe. All things which stood out in her mind as important—her mother driving her from their home, her first boyfriend, all the faces of those she loved—it was all so trivial.

She actually thought she knew about love and loss, this tiny being. About desperation. What could she hope to know about these things? He glanced back at the Doctor, but pushed those thoughts aside as he realized the direction they were taking. Love and loss were trivial themselves, in the end.

He had work to do. An escape to accomplish. He considered the tubing which connected the girl to the mind-bender. He didn't have time to detach her and spirit her away. It was better to reprogram the machine to do the threatening for him. He reached for the monitor panel.

And her eyes flew open.

"Oh, God, I was right. It was you." Her eyes narrowed as she took in his hand poised next to the panel. "All right, Mr. Hooded Claw," she said, "back away from the . . . the . . . whatever the hell this is I'm wired up to."

The Master was floored. How had she completed the eject sequence so quickly? She should still be in the same holding pattern as the Doctor. One glance confirmed that he was responding as planned, so why wasn't she?

"My mind, my rules, remember?" she said. "I knew the buffer was there, and I bypassed it." Her gaze sharpened. "So, what were you going to do? Polish us off, and then scarper? Or were you going to do the gentleman-villain thing? Lock us in a closet and walk away twirling your moustache?"

"Why would I do that? The Doctor's locked me out of the controls."

"Well, three cheers for the Doctor. Although the fact that you're even here sort of cancels out the cleverness. Why are you here, anyway?"

"Your precious Doctor kidnapped me."

"I dose myself into a coma so the Professor kidnaps you?" she asked.

Her reaction resonated for some reason. Perhaps because it mirrored his own when he had been confronted with the Doctor's so-called train of logic. Not that he would claim this human as some sort of kindred spirit. Even a broken clock was right twice a day, if only for a second. "I attempted to point out the flaws in his reasoning, but he can be quite persuasive."

"He zapped you?"

"Poisoned me."

"Nice." She attempted to sit up, but her arms gave out and she collapsed back, groaning and grasping at the leads in her head. She tugged at one, and the Master moved to stop her. Just like a human to try to yank biotubing out of her own head.

"I've got it," she snapped, but he ignored the hint. Now that she was awake, he'd lost his window of opportunity to incapacitate her, and his reaction to the eject sequence was still clinging to him more than he would like. This was not the time to attempt any sort of forcible confrontation with the Doctor's latest protégée, who looked like she would fight like a Mormoth pit beast. And thanks to the temporal grace circuits, there would be no hypnotizing her, either. It was therefore in his best interests to see to her well-being. His own depended on the girl's, or it would when the Doctor rejoined them.

It was with some care that he twisted each lead away from her skull, the small red punctures bleeding a little before subsiding. He checked each injection site, but saw no evidence of fluid leakage from the tubing. Good.

She looked uncomfortable. Apparently she suffered under the same delusion as the Doctor: that—after a few morally questionable acts—he was incapable of doing anything constructive. He supposed he should try to reassure her that he had no murderous intentions towards her, but couldn't quite pinpoint how such a statement should be phrased. At last he settled with, "You bypassed the buffer by force of will and absolutely no technical knowledge. There are going to be repercussions."

As the final lead was detached, the girl rolled onto her side and retched. While he was willing to prevent brain damage, this was beyond the pale. He jerked his hand back, saying with some measure of disgust, "Such as that, for example."

She pushed her hair back and glanced over her shoulder, her watering eyes narrowed. "The older bloke in the suit. Was that what you looked like back when . . . when you were a real . . . when you still had a Gallifreyan body?"

He stiffened, hearing the words she had so politely rephrased. Back when he had been a real Time Lord. Well, quite. "That was my thirteenth regeneration," he said, his voice flat.

The human girl sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest after a quick peek underneath. Her face was creased in thought. It seemed his reply had sparked some sort of brainstorm; not that he was interested. He had far better things to do than be psychoanalyzed by a being whose sum total of life would barely get her out of early childhood on Gallifrey.

He would have changed the subject, but the human got there first. "He'll be like you someday, won't he?" she asked, although it didn't sound like a question.

Of all the things the Master wasn't expecting to hear. . . He looked at the girl, really looked at her. From what he knew of humans, this reaction didn't make sense. She should be leaping to the Doctor's defense. He was her friend.

She looked up at the Master, and seemed older somehow. "It's what I saw in your mind. For a split second, I got this bird's-eye view of your entire life. All your regenerations. You didn't used to be like this. You know. Snidey McVillain, evil genius extraordinaire. The lives you had before this, some of them, they reminded me of him. A lot of them reminded me of him." She whispered, "And now I'm worried that someday, he'll be you."

The Master was so surprised that all he could think to say was the truth. "He already is."

A lock of her hair fell into her face. "No," she said, "I can't believe that. Everything you do is for yourself. He's done some terrible things, yeah, but it's always been for the greater good."

The Master shrugged. "Different motive, same means. Does the fact that I do terrible things to stay alive whereas he does them for 'good' make his actions more understandable, or less so?"

She snorted, but the sound had no gusto behind it. "Well, I can tell you one thing he's got that you don't, mate, and that's me. It's why we're a team, him and me. He hatches the plots and I make sure they go off without a hitch. And when he gets lost in those plans of his and forgets that there are people involved, and that the big picture's not the only thing worth something in this universe . . . well, I'm there to shout at him. Loud. See, that's my job too. Snap him back to his senses when he gets carried away."

That was the reason she stayed? To be his moral compass? Who did she think she was fooling? No one was that altruistic. "I saw something in your mind as well," he said. "Something you seem to be either too blind to realize yet, or you're just refusing to tell me."

The single glance she shot at him over her shoulder was filled with suspicion. So she didn't know. How human. The Master smirked. It would never happen to a Time Lord. He wondered what would happen when she finally worked it all out. Would she run? That, too, would be quite human. But what about the Doctor? Did he know? The Master couldn't imagine that he didn't. Was he ignoring it? The Master found himself smiling. If the Doctor knew, if he was encouraging it to ensure her continued presence, it was horrendously manipulative. Good for him.

The girl saw his grin and her suspicion deepened. "Look," she said, "if you want to start singing 'I Know Something You Don't Know,' be my guest. Just do it somewhere else, yeah? You're spoiling the mood."

He had to push her, to see how far this obstinate denial of the facts really went. "I could tell you," he said, keeping his tone nonchalant, "but knowledge loses some of its potency when shared."

She snorted, and he thought she hadn't taken the bait. She slipped off the gurney and stood, looking at her bare feet on the TARDIS floor. "You're wrong," she said in an undertone. "You're so bloody wrong, and you've been wrong for years. Maybe forever, I dunno. There's nothing more powerful than sharing what you know. Look at me. Pretty average product from late twentieth century Earth. My resume isn't exactly the stuff of legends—broken home, academic failure, criminal record and a chip on my shoulder—and I'm not even out of my teens. Leaving aside what Fenric did to me, look what's happened: the Doctor took me in and taught me stuff. But turnabout's fair play, right? He helps me by teaching me, and I help him when Fenric's threatening the known universe." She shrugged with a nonchalance which suggested that facing down ancient evil wasn't exactly an infrequent event.

"You didn't manage it alone," the Master said. "Come now. You teach a dog to guard your house, and one day it kills a burglar. Does that make you more powerful? No. It just means that the dog has done what it was trained to do."

"You may not end up ruler of the universe, but you've still got a dog who'll look after you. Power isn't always what you've got, but what your friends are willing to lend you." She cocked her head. "I would have figured you'd have known that already. What did you used to call yourselves back in the bad old days? The Gallifreyan Triumvirate?"

The Master had no words with which he could retaliate. Nothing to use against that. He had thought of power differently in those days. And if the three of them had stayed on Gallifrey and achieved power in conventional, political arenas, sharing might have been possible. With Theta anyway. He suspected he would have had to kill the Rani before she did the same to him.

But that was long ago, and trust was a childish fancy. Betrayal was inevitable. Theta's main problem, no matter how advanced he was in intellect, was that he clung to that sort of infantile ideal. He needed someone to trust, because he couldn't bear to be alone. In this, he would never change . . .

The Master's smile sharpened. He saw it all in a moment of epiphany. The Doctor's incarnations all had one thing in common: the need to stave off loneliness. Debonaire, Bohemian, dull and noble, garish and arrogant . . . ruthless and manipulative. But always in need of companionship. And here she was, standing before him clad in a sheet. The Master took new notice of her poise, her intelligence and wit, her courage and resourcefulness. All characteristics the Doctor prized highly in himself.

And then the Master knew this Doctor's great weakness, and it wasn't in strategy or personality or anything so complex. It was all in the person of an average human girl. The Doctor had picked a young woman with no reason to ever want to go back to Earth, and enough loyalty and affection that she wasn't likely to run off on him, and then he'd set to work. He'd crafted the perfect companion for himself. His conscience, his friend, and his weakness. The one who wouldn't leave him and consequently the one he'd allowed himself to depend upon.

The Master leaned back against the counter. He still had need of the Doctor's cooperation to get him back to his own TARDIS, but after that, they would resume the game they'd always played, and when they did, the Master had a new weapon in his arsenal.

The girl started to walk, but her feet were tangled in the sheet and she staggered. The Master watched with a detached interest as she managed to steady herself. "Arsing sodding thing!" She caught his expression and snarled, "You try walking about wearing a bloody sheet!" She shook her head. "Why'd he take my clothes, anyway?"

"He had to restart your heart. After that, I'm sure he felt the need to check and make sure you didn't do yourself any further damage. You humans do tend to go in for the grand gesture." Really, after confronting an ancient evil without a shred of clothing to her name, the girl concerned herself with whether or not he could see her spine? How very human.

He turned and retrieved the Doctor's jacket from where it lay, crumpled in a heap of brown cloth on the floor. He then held out the article of clothing. She gave it a suspicious look.

He smirked and said, "I'm a gentleman villain, remember?"

She took the proffered article of clothing, of course. It was either that or continue to hold up the sheet. She turned her back on him and slipped the jacket on. The sheet dropped to her feet, but the brown wool came down to her mid-thigh. She did up the buttons and then turned. She looked ludicrous, but more or less covered.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"It's a jacket, and not even mine. Don't be effusive."

"Don't be snide," she said. "I don't mean about the jacket. And it's hard enough to thank the baddie without running commentary, okay?"

He held up his hands and forced himself to remain silent. If the human wanted to grovel, he supposed he could let her. Perhaps fate would smile on him, and the Doctor would wake up to the sound of his human gushing all over his archenemy. That would be delightful. So the Master adopted an expression of polite consideration and said, "You have my undivided attention, Miss McShane."

"You saved my life." Her tone was less than grateful, but she was at least acknowledging the fact. "And in a roundabout way, you saved his too. What I'm saying is, I guess this makes us equal."

The Master couldn't contain his snort of derision. "And how, precisely, do you come to that conclusion?"

"Well, I beat Fenric. It was my idea."

"Yes, but you wouldn't have had it if you were the brainless vessel of a lunatic parasite. Try again."

She walked over to a counter and picked up the small mirror he'd used to calibrate some of the deeper recesses of the mind-bender. Then she turned and held it out to him, flat in the palm of her hand. "Then let's go a mirror for a mirror."

He frowned. He wanted no reminder of what he looked like in this form. "Why would I want that?" he snarled.

"Believe me when I say you do," she said.

He eyed her, trying to gauge intentions and motives. Slowly, he stretched out his hand and took it, remembering vividly the mirror in the mindscape and the sight of his rotting flesh.

He risked a glance. And then he had to take another, this one longer, first searching and then incredulous. Blue eyes looked back at him, and though his mouth hung agape in wonder, there were no fangs apparent.

All the signs of the virus and the toll it had taken were gone.

"And all our debts are paid in full," Ace said.

He looked up at her, at this human girl whose mind had . . . had . . .

He couldn't bring himself to thank her. To do so would be to admit that she had done something for him, something he hadn't been able to do for himself. They were still, after all, talking about a complex chain of events in which all of them were an integral part. It was just as likely that this . . . this cleansing had come about by accident and the human was using a convenient set of circumstances to her advantage. He huffed his dismissal of the very idea. "And this makes us even?" he asked. "You overestimate your own abilities."

"You save my life, I save yours. Yeah. I'd say that's even."

For once, the Doctor's timing was impeccable. Just as the Master sensed a very awkward silence looming, the mind-bender's hum became sporadic. He turned to see that it was shutting down as its last mind was processed out.

He stepped forward, the desire to see the job done correctly overriding his desire to let the Doctor attempt to disconnect himself from the machine. While it would be entertaining, it could well damage him, and until he fulfilled his end of the bargain and returned the Master to his TARDIS, that was simply unacceptable.

He checked the Doctor's condition—heartsbeat, pupils, respiration—and his hand moved with efficiency, even as he could tell that the grace given him by the cheetah virus was gone along with all the other, less attractive attributes. Still, the hand was his, unaffected and unencumbered. No more virus. He had well and truly outdone death.

Before he could even touch the first lead, the Doctor's eyes flew open. His Gallifreyan reflexes were instantaneous and he was fully alert with no groggy transition. For a second, neither moved. They just looked at one another, assessing. Finally, the Doctor said, "Not the face I usually expect to see when I wake up."

The Master raised an eyebrow, amused in spite of himself. For a second, the Doctor smirked at him and he smirked back, and their centuries-long battle was put aside. For a second, Theta and he were the closest of friends. Inseparable. Unstoppable.

But time would not be denied, and the second was over in a flash. The Master straightened and schooled his features back into a mask of neutrality as he said, "Rest assured, my dear Doctor, that I will attempt to never let it happen again."

The Doctor gave him a small nod, acknowledging what had happened. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Fenric did you no small damage." And then his eyes widened and he obviously understood what he was seeing. "The virus," he said.

"Gone."

The Doctor nodded, their eyes locking as an understanding was reached. The Master had been out of the game, trapped in a different battle, but that time was over. They were ready to start their game anew. The Doctor's eyes glittered at the challenge, and the Master anticipated that this could well be the start of something immensely diverting.

And then the Doctor turned away from the Master, his attention refocused on the girl. "And you, Ace? How are you?"

If she was startled by how suddenly he'd addressed her, she didn't show it. "De-cheetahfied and de-Fenrified. I feel light as air."

He smiled and nodded, relief clear in his expression.

"So," the girl said. "He's fine. I'm fine. That just leaves you. And maybe John-boy."

"Who's John-boy?" the Doctor asked.

She grinned. "Tell you later," she said, and it was like a joke to which the Master wasn't privy. "Seriously, you okay?"

He reached up and fingered the leads attached to his head. "I seem to be attached to a coat rack," he said.

"Noticed that."

He fumbled to detach his leads, but the Master batted his hand away and took over, muttering, "The last thing I need is for you to damage your brain and trap us in the vortex."

"Can't have that," the Doctor agreed, that smile still playing around his lips.

The Master detached the last lead, and checked the Doctor over again. His heartsbeat was a little fast, but steady. His respiration was deepening, and his eyes . . . "Your pupils are dilated," he said.

"Give my mind a few seconds to cool down before you look to announce my imminent death," the Doctor grumbled. He took several deep breaths and then rose on enviably steady legs. When he looked up at the Master again, his eyes were flat and he was all business. "Side-effects of the machine?" he asked.

"Your human threw up, but nothing else. We'll have to wait a bit longer if we want to determine long-term effects." The Master, content that the Doctor wasn't going to die and spend needless hours regenerating, moved back to the machine. He checked the biotubing, first one strand, then a whole handful. "All the biotubing is completely corrupted. After a single session, there's not a strand that isn't showing some signs of discoloration."

The Doctor nodded. "Small wonder. It was designed to mediate interactions between three minds and a virus. Fenric upset the balance."

The Master agreed with the Doctor's assessment, although he wouldn't admit it. They were lucky that the mind-bender had held together throughout the entire ordeal, as cobbled-together as it was. A testament to his engineering abilities, he supposed.

There was a rustle of fabric. The Master turned in time to see the girl cross her arms over her chest and look deliberately away. She was troubled, but the Master didn't know precisely by what. He glanced over at the Doctor to see that he had been similarly distracted by the girl's reaction.

"Ace?" the Doctor ventured.

She glanced up at him and heaved a sigh. "What's this, then? 'Understatement of the Year' competition?"

"I'm not—"

"Fenric upset the balance? Yeah, that's one way of putting it."

The Doctor shifted awkwardly and said, "I was referring to mechanics."

The girl breathed, hard and harsh, and then snapped, "Yeah, well, so was I."

The Doctor glanced at the floor, uncertainty writ upon his features. It was as though some line were being drawn in the space between them, and the Master wasn't allowed to see any of the workings which led up to it. It rankled. What irritated him even more was the realization that he was intrigued. But he did know that something had happened in the mindscape. Something which had rattled this human woman even more than the theft of her mind. The Master attempted to divine what that something might have been, but things were too murky.

The Doctor, too, was giving his human a covert, searching look, but he wiped it from his face when he noticed the Master's eyes on him. The Doctor turned to him, smiled blandly, and said, "Would you like to go now?"

The Master was suspicious by nature, and the ease with which this was happening set him on edge. He frowned. "What," he asked, "just like that?"

"You fulfilled your end of the bargain. It's only fair that I fulfill mine." There was something more behind the words, something that spoke of regret.

And the Master understood. The Doctor had never expected him to go as far as he had. The plan had been concocted in a second of mental contact. There had been general ideas, but nothing more. The Doctor had to reach his companion without Fenric seeing. The only way either of them could think of succeeding was through a distraction.

Which the Master had provided. What he hadn't expected was Fenric's retaliation. Throughout his many lives, he was always focused on the avoidance of death. Outrunning the all-consuming dark. Yet, in that moment, something in him had accepted it. He had been willing to die for the Doctor.

He couldn't understand it now. Neither of them could, apparently. Perhaps there had been some sort of lingering connection after their mental contact on the mountain. Perhaps the unreality of the situation had simply driven him a bit mad. Whichever it was, the Master knew that as he had lain dying, that ancient part of him which had found a bittersweet kinship in a bookish temporal theorist had silently rejoiced.

It was dead now, that part of him. He was almost certain. Thank the Guardians it was dead.

He turned on his heel and retrieved his jacket from where it lay, folded on a counter next to his cape. He pulled both on and buttoned them. When he turned, the Doctor gave him a nod and left the room.

They filed through the halls of the Doctor's TARDIS. The Doctor's human slipped away somewhere along the line, presumably to put on something a bit more substantial than a jacket. The two Time Lords arrived in the control room, and the Doctor's fingers flew over his console.

Soon, the time rotor began to rise and fall and the ancient (and horribly unkempt) engines wheezed into life. With the grinding ululation particular to the Type-40 capsule, they slipped out of the vortex and back into the universe.

The viewscreen came alive, and there, just as he had left them, were the crystals. He could see the crushed patches where he'd fallen, and the path through which the Doctor had dragged him. Everything was resetting to zero.

He drew his cape about himself with nervous fingers. The external doors of the TARDIS glided open and he was hit by the smell of an alien atmosphere, sharp and metallic.

The Doctor didn't move from where he stood, his eyes fixed on his machine. "Go on, then, if you're going," he said.

And there it was, that invitation. After what had happened, after those last moments where they'd given themselves over to the gestalt and had collapsed into one another, the Doctor believed he could save the Master.

The hypocrite.

"Doctor," he said, staring out onto a crystalline world and already beginning to formulate ways to destroy this man, his nemesis. "The next time I see you, I'm going to kill you."

And the Doctor's smile was an understanding. "You'll try."

The Master smirked and swept out of the TARDIS. He heard the door close behind him and the shriek of the engines as it departed.

He lifted his head and looked at the stars. Millions of them, and so many inhabited. Infinite possibilities stretched out before him, and he had only to punch in coordinates. Somewhere crowded, he thought, somewhere with pliant minds in need of his direction.

He strode toward his TARDIS, his cape catching and flapping in the breeze, and the mathematical perfection of the crystals shattered under his feet.