Chapter 11 – The Master's Weakness
When the Doctor first opened his eyes, he saw he was lying messily on a mud floor, a dense forest about twenty metres in front of him stretching for as far as the eye could see.
That was odd. He didn't remember going to sleep here. And there was something else missing. People? People he had been with. But he couldn't remember their names... or their faces.
It was tiring trying to remember. He was so sleepy, his head ached. It wouldn't hurt to sleep a little while longer...
When he next opened his eyes, someone was kneeling over him. Tall, dark-haired... a familiar-looking man.
"Doctor!" the man said with an American accent, sounding relieved. "You're awake! Can you walk? You've hit your head pretty bad... Doctor?"
He didn't have the energy to answer. Heavy head, heavy eyes... He drifted off once more.
When he next woke up, he was being carried by someone.
He opened his eyes and lifted his head, his vision foggy and merged. Someone noticed and suddenly they stopped.
"Hey Doc," that same voice spoke. "Not gonna pass out on me again are you?"
The Doctor did just that.
"Let's see then, Doctor," a voice echoed through a fog of complete darkness. The Master. "Let's see just how far you'll go. Poor Rose has accidentally been infected with a poison devastating to Gallifreyans and humans alike. She doesn't know it yet, but she'll be dead in eight hours unless she gets the antidote, the baby with her. And you know what? I'm going to give you the antidote in a little bottle, Doctor. You have eight hours to reach your precious Rose in the house on the hill and make her drink it before her destiny is sealed..."
"NO!" the Doctor yelled, sitting up straight with his eyes wide, arm stretched out towards nothing as he panted for breath.
"Doctor?" came a voice from next to him, and a hand rested on his chest. His eyes refocused on Jack's face, looking at him with concern. "Are you okay?"
The Doctor swallowed, his arm dropping to his side but his body still tensed as his eyes flickered around their surroundings of a dense dark forest, a small camp-fire lit in the centre of a circle of makeshift beds. "What happened? Where are we?"
"The TARDIS crashed, remember?" Jack said gently. "We all got spat out. No idea where we are."
"Is anyone hurt?" the Doctor asked, pulling away from Jack and getting unsteadily onto his feet, peering through the trees of the surrounding forest in all directions.
"Well, Mickey landed on his ankle and you landed on your head, the rest of us are pretty much okay."
"Good," the Doctor said, but his attention was obviously split.
"What are you looking for?" Jack asked, getting up and moving to stand next to the Doctor.
"The house on the hill," the Doctor replied, spinning around in circles.
"What?"
The Doctor turned back to Jack, his brow furrowed as he tried to recall the dream, but it was slipping out of his grasp like a wet bar of soap. "I had this dream, the Master told me that... Rose was in... the house on the hill, and that she..." He suddenly paused, his eyes widening in horror. He quickly dug about in his pockets, searching frantically for something within. Eventually he drew out a small clear glass phial, filled to the brim with a transparent liquid.
"What's that?" Jack asked.
"The antidote. The antidote to a poison."
Jack stared at the Doctor, almost horrified as he pieced it all together. "You mean... Rose..."
"Is poisoned, and I have the antidote..." the Doctor completed, his throat almost totally dry.
"How long have we got to find her?"
"Eight hours..." the Doctor answered, shoving the phial back into his pocket and making to gather up all of their supplies. "We have to move!"
"No, Doctor," Jack said quickly, grabbing him by the shoulders to prevent his movement. "It's pitch black, we don't even know vaguely where we are, we can't see this house on the hill and absolutely anything could be in this forest. It's not safe."
"We've only got eight hours!"
"Doctor, I've seen the house on the hill. It's not very far. Barely a twenty minute walk. We'll get there in plenty of time, trust me, okay? Dawn breaks in a couple of hours so we'll set off then."
The Doctor considered getting angry, but he knew Jack was right. Anything could be in this forest. He simply nodded and stepped back, running a hand through his hair.
"Get some sleep. I'm watching for tigers," he said, grinning. The Doctor just stared at the ground. "Hey, we'll find her, okay?" Jack said. "And I for one will beat the living crap out of the Master when we find him, and you won't be able to stop me."
The Doctor gave a weak smile. To Jack it seemed like a lifetime since he'd seen the Doctor's smile. He'd missed it.
"Now go to bed. I'll wake you up at dawn and we can go get her back."
"Is he still not awake?" asked a cynical voice as the basement door flew open to reveal the present Master, twirling a laser screwdriver casually in his fingers with his trademark smile on his face. Rose quickly moved in front of the Doctor's double, shielding him with her body. She said nothing.
The present Master raised an eyebrow. "Oh, how brave of you. Thing is, I'd move before I point it in that direction."
"Why?" Rose challenged, trying to appear a bit more confident than she felt.
"Your baby shares half of its father's biological code," the Master said simply. "If you get in the way..." he shrugged, nonchalant. "You get in the way."
Rose shivered at the thought of what this meant, blinking back tears. "The Doctor's comin'."
The Master laughed, but it still somehow had no hint of joy in it. "Yes, yes he is," he said simply, smiling like a lunatic. He knew something she didn't. "I'm afraid he's just a little... occupied."
Rose stared at him. "What do you mean?" she whispered.
The Master laughed again, giving Rose a sympathetic smile. "Oh, he's perfectly safe in my care. At least, physically, anyway..." He turned his attention to the future Doctor lying on the floor, and raised his laser screwdriver.
"Move, girlie," the Master warned Rose. She had no choice. She had to leave the Doctor's double to the mercies of the Master, and she could do nothing about it. She didn't even want to risk running in case the baby was hurt. She shifted away to the corner, tears appearing in her eyes as she curled up into a tight ball...
But then someone else appeared in the basement doorway, and Rose's jaw dropped.
"Another Master?" she whispered.
This second Master, the future Master, made his way to the bottom of the chairs, stopping and smiling broadly at her.
"Hello again, Rose," he said with a smile, dropping to his haunches and clapping his hands together. "I seem to recall a similar situation to this, except that in my version the Doctor's blood was all over the floor."
Rose said nothing. The Master moved away to his present self, gazing down at the Doctor lying on the floor.
"Watch this," the future Master said to his other self, pointing the laser screwdriver at the body on the floor and holding down the button. In seconds the Doctor's double was screaming his lungs out, thrashing around on the floor in a fire of pain before the Master let go of the button and the Doctor's double stopped, panting heavily for a moment before easing open his eyes to meet the gaze of the Master.
"NO!" the Doctor suddenly yelled, his eyes shooting wide open as panic coursed through him. He backed across the floor to the wall without moving his gaze from the Master, curling up and burying his head into his arms whispering a jumble of words from a foreign language,
The future Master stepped forward to wards him. The Doctor flinched.
"Are you going to get up now, Doctor?" the future Master suggested in a patronising manner.
The Doctor instantly pushed himself into both feet, but his head remained lowered to the ground.
"Good boy," the Master praised, and held out a gun. "Take the gun, Doctor."
The Doctor did so, all the while staring at the ground.
"Point the gun at me," the Master commanded. The Doctor obeyed. "Shoot me, Doctor."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the Doctor was suddenly shaking, his teeth gritted as his head raised to stare at the Time Lord opposite him, the gun arm trembling violently. "No... can't... no..."
His gun arm dropped to his side.
"This is brilliant!" the present Master enthused, looking just about ready to jump in the air.
"You haven't seen the best bit yet," the future Master assured, before turning to the Doctor again. "Okay, point the gun at the girl, Doctor."
The Doctor suddenly looked up again, his face blank of emotion as he raised the gun and pointed it directly at Rose's head. She shrank back, confused and scared.
"Now..." the Master licked his lips, enjoying every single moment. "Shoot her."
Rose felt a flurry of panic rise in her chest as she glanced to and from the Master and the Doctor, unable to believe what was happening. She could only watch as the Doctor's finger shifted against the trigger, her heart pumping... and pulled.
The gun clicked. It was empty. The Masters suddenly burst out in fits of laughter, enjoying every single moment. But the Doctor was trembling again. His eyes remained fixed to Rose, his arm still pointing the gun at her, but his entire body was shaking...
He dropped to the floor and began to fit violently. The Masters quickly stopped laughing, but now for once looked a bit caught off guard.
"What the hell is this?!" the present Master demanded to know from his future counterpart.
"I don't know, he's never done this before!" the future Master replied, frantic.
"He's havin' a seizure!" Rose said quickly, moving in between the two Masters without a second thought as she pillowed the Doctor's head with the cushion she'd used earlier. "It's rare in Time Lords, it's why you've never seen it before."
"What do we do?!" The Masters had lost all sense of authority as they turned to Rose for guidance. "I've never seen anything like this!"
"The Doctor gave him this drug, but I dunno what it was, we're just gonna have to wait until it finishes."
"Why is he doing this?!" the future Master demanded to know. "Is it bad?!"
"I don't know, the Doctor didn't say much..."
"Will he die?!"
Rose stared at him, a small smile appearing on her face. "You're really scared of him dyin', aren't you? You'll do your best to make him suffer and break him enough to shoot me, but you won't let him die."
"What do we do?!" the future Master grated, raising the laser screwdriver to her belly in a threatening manner. "TELL ME!"
Rose wiped her smile from her face quickly. "Do you have a medical facility? An oxygen mask? A bed?"
"We can go to my TARDIS," the future Master answered, looking back down at the Doctor. "He's stopped."
"He might start again in a minute," Rose said. "Lift him between you, if he starts convulsin' again put him down and let him do it."
They obediently lifted him and carried him out of the door, Rose following on. Even if she couldn't escape without the Doctor, she might be able to make their time here a bit more comfortable now that she knew the Master's weakness.