Damian struggled to get to his feet, his breathing still ragged. Having all of the air sucked from his lungs in zero degrees temperature as his entire body was buffeted by powerful winds was a painful experience to go through, and his lungs still felt as though they were on fire. His hands shook as he placed them underneath him to push himself onto his feet, and he noticed that his fingertips had turned blue. He let out an uncontrollable shiver as he rose, feeling self conscious as everyone's eyes were turned to him.
Jane also rose to her feet, swaying and almost tumbling when she placed her right leg down. He had seen the Grog hold Jane in the air by her ankle before he reached the far wall where a few phasers were located, and he knew that her bones would most likely be completely shattered. She stumbled over to him, so he held out an arm to catch her though he felt dizzy and could hardly even support his own weight. Clara moved forwards to see if she could help, but Jane waved her away.
Their procession began moving forwards, the Doctor already far ahead and nearing the Tardis, Clara hurrying to catch up to him. Damian rested as much weight on Jane as she did on him as they slowly moved forwards, both of them weary and weak.
Once they finally entered the Tardis Jane hobbled up to the center control and to the stairs that shot off to the side and promptly sat down on the second step, pulling Damian down with her. He eased his long legs out in front of him, glad for the respite. They still had to get the missiles by somehow wrapping the tardis around the large container, making the missiles miraculously appear in one of the infinite rooms of the spaceship. His mind reeled as he tried to grasp the concept, but he decided that it was just too impossible to comprehend. Next they would have to transport to the Time Gate, as apparently the tardis could appear anywhere.
He let out a sigh, the impossible functions of the tardis mind boggling and the aspect of their mission seeming so far away. He needed to regain his strength- he had just recently died, he thought incredulously. If Jane was content with taking a moment to sit and let them recuperate, then he was more than willing to cooperate.
His eyes glanced over to her and he witnessed her expression as she flinched, her fingers tenderly pulling at her boot. The heel of her boot was completely squished, the leather material bent and warped around her ankle. She began pulling it off, letting out silent peals of anguish. Once it was removed she set it aside, revealing her purple bruised and swollen foot.
She gingerly ran her fingers over her ankle, her face twisted into pain. Her teeth clenched tightly as she suddenly squeezed her ankle with all her might and twisted, her bones making a loud popping noise. Damian reached out a hand to steady her as she released her ankle and fell backwards, Damian's grip keeping her upright as she took in shallow breaths and shut her eyes tight from the pain. He watched as her breathing began to lengthen, her foot began to go back to its normal size as the bruises began fading away.
They waited in silence as the two of them regained their composure, Damian slowly warming up as his mind became clearer and Jane rapidly healing her foot. The Doctor was busy fiddling with controls, obviously impatient but willing to let them take a moment to recuperate. Clara was content to stand off to the side and watch them with eager eyes, apparently acting as the restraining force for the Doctor to make him wait patiently.
After another moment or two Jane arched out her leg and held her foot out into the air and wiggled her toes, her slender foot back to normal and completely healed. She picked up the boot and stared at it in disgust, and showed it to Damian. He examined it; its heel was completely mottled and he reasoned that it would be impossible for her to put her foot back inside.
"What do you say about me finishing this mission barefoot?" she asked, setting down her boot and moving for her other one.
Damian smirked. "From what I recall you still have a pretty powerful kick even when you're barefoot," he stated, the embarrassing memory of her kicking him in the head during their fight still painful to recall.
She smiled and wrenched off her other boot.
"Hey, there's no being barefoot in my tardis!" the Doctor said, ambling around the controls towards them.
Jane picked up her demolished boot and tossed it to him, which he caught and held it for a moment to stare at the ruined sole.
"Like you have a problem with being barefoot in here-remember that one time you went barefoot on the moon?" Jane chided, pulling on the rail to get to her feet.
He pointed her boot towards her. "Technically I was in a hospital that happened to be on a moon-along with a Judoon platoon," he said with glee from the rhyme, "but I had to remove my shoes because of radiation. I had no choice."
Jane peered at the boot that he continued to point towards her and placed a hand on her hip. "I'm not putting my shoes back on."
"Fine," The Doctor retorted, quickly tossing her boot over the railing to fall to a section below. "Let's just get going then."
Jane walked up to the controls and began pressing buttons and pulling switches, Damian watching with amusement as he remained on the stairs. The whirring and whooshing sounds began resounding around the room until they suddenly stopped when she flicked a switch, the room falling silent.
The Doctor furrowed his brow in frustration. "Have you been talking to River?" He asked irritably, flicking the same switch that she just pressed, the noise instantly resuming.
"Yes. You leave your parking brakes on."
"I like the noise! It's my signature!" he defended.
Jane rolled her eyes and went back to work, quickly flicking multiple switches and typing in several codes into one of the monitors. "Alright, the missiles are on the tardis."
Damian glanced around him, not noticing anything different. His eyes roamed to the doorway that extended beyond the top of the stairs, and another door that was on the other side of the console. It was daunting to believe that the tardis, that appeared no bigger than a phone booth on the outside, was big enough to carry a huge cargo container in one of its infinite number of rooms.
"Damian would you like to do the honors of putting in the coordinates for the Time Gate?" Jane asked, wrenching him out of his speculative thought process. He nodded and came to his feet and walked to the console, staring into a monitor. He typed in the coordinates and stepped to the side, allowing the Doctor and Jane to get to work flipping switches and setting their course for the edge of the universe. The entire room began rocking so Damian quickly reached his hands for the railing to support himself, still wary of his range of capabilities.
All too soon the noise stopped and the rocking halted. "Alright, we're here!" the Doctor exclaimed triumphantly. "I've positioned us above the planet the Gate's located on because it's the closest I could get." He began moving towards the door.
How could they already be there? It was a several days journey from their previous location, there was no way that they could have travelled the entire distance in such a short amount of time. The Doctor moved to the door and flung it open, the sight beyond the doors making Damian reel in awe.
He walked towards the entrance, his jaw slack as he stared forwards in amazement. The door opened directly off into space, but the atmosphere remained in the room and they were able to breathe normally. A huge whirling mass of flashing purple and black lights the size of a planet lay before them. He had been to the Time Gate before, and it hadn't looked like this. What he was accustomed to was a small planet colored green and blue, surrounded by black emptiness.
Now it was as though he were peering into another dimension, the edges of the universe folding and merging back on itself, tendrils of light extending outwards and spreading rapidly. It was a kaleidoscope of color, the entire mass swirling and twirling majestically. Flares of light exploded from the celestial mass, the rays zooming past the tardis and disappearing into the once blank expanse that was now filled with color.
Jane stepped to his side, her barefeet plodding silently against the metal tardis floor as she stared in awe at the massive connecting point between two universes. "I don't think we have enough missiles," she said dryly.
"Ah, well, that certainly proves to be a problem, doesn't it?" the Doctor said, stepping back inside the tardis. He looked at Damian. "Was it always this big?"
Damian swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "No. No, it was just a small doorway, only big enough for one person to pass through at a time." He stared at the swirling mass that encompassed the entire planet, its color seeping into its surroundings as space itself was dyed purple, the color intensifying the closer one looked at the center. "It was in a room, on the planet, not the planet itself."
"Good! We'll just have to go back in time a bit to when the collision first started happening and destroy the Time Gate before it gets big!" The Doctor slammed the door shut and ran back to the console.
Damian stared at him in shock, his brain rapidly firing through all of the repercussions that would occur if they went back in time. "Wait, if we destroy it before the affections start taking place, does that mean that I'll never have been sent to Jane's ship?"
"Don't be ridiculous." The Doctor stated, fiddling with the controls. "You and Jane are with me, so your timelines will still be in tact. I'm not rewriting your timelines, I'll just be rerouting what happened to the rest of the universe!"
"Can you do that? Stop everything from happening before it happens?" he asked incredulously.
"Certainly," Jane piped up, plodding over to the console as well, her expression hopeful. "Once he blew up his entire universe in order to rewrite everything."
"Really?" Clara blurted, staring at the Doctor with a mix of admiration and shock.
The Doctor grinned and floundered about as if in embarrassment. "Oh, you know, minor details-" he said, waving his hands dismissively.
The tardis suddenly lurched forwards and the four of them were thrown from their feet. Damian landed on his hands and knees but wasn't hurt. The Doctor hurriedly scrambled up and peered at the monitor, clutching onto the console. "We were hit by pure time energy," he said amazedly. Damian looked around him as the lights within the tardis intensified and flared brightly before dimming to return to their normal setting.
They all regained their feet, Damian quickly walking to Jane's side.
"Is it dangerous?" Clara asked, looking towards the Doctor.
He fiddled with a few levers and peered at the screen. "No, the tardis just received an increase of energy from the blast; it's perfectly safe." His eyes brightened with delight as he peered at the three of them. "We can go back in time and fix everything before the collision started. Damian, when did the collision first start taking place?"
"Eight days ago," he responded. The Doctor immediately began typing and pushing different buttons on the console. "Wait-" Damian interrupted. "What if it works? What will happen to me? To all of the people who have been affected-the people on the alternate universe who have been affected because of of the meddling by the people passing through the gate?"
The Doctor instantly lost his smile and paused what he was doing to stare at Damian in contemplation. He clenched his jaw and lifted his face forwards slightly. "I don't know," he admitted. He paused for a moment longer and tilted his head to the side to peer at him. "When did the Time Gate start working?"
"Three years ago is when-" he halted himself, quickly changing his pronoun before continuing, "When the first scientist passed through the gate."
"Three years?!" The Doctor shouted, incredulous. "Give someone a time machine and within three years they've already set their universe in line for imminent and total destruction!" He slammed down on a few levers in his frustration.
Damian bristled in anger, insulted by the Doctor's derogatory statement, but remained silent. He knew that most of the changes hadn't taken place until recently, not until after-
"So are we going to stop them from creating the Time Gate three years ago, or destroy it just before the universes start colliding about a week ago?" Clara asked.
The question hang in the air, none of them willing to answer.
"Alright, before we make the decision we have to know all of the facts." The Doctor stated, his gaze piercing Damian. "The Time Gate leads to an alternate universe, that was originally an identical, parallel universe to your own?"
"Yes," Damian responded, wondering what the Doctor was getting at.
"Three years ago a group of scientists created a time machine that transported them into that universe, and they called the machine the Time Gate."
"Yes. Eventually w--they could choose the specific date, time, and location where they arrived on the alternate universe." Damian confirmed.
"Right, so they began making changes to the universe they entered-each change having drastic effects, until three years later so many things had been altered that the Time Gate began backfiring and the entire alternate universe started being drawn into your own."
Damian nodded somberly, gritting his teeth to prevent him from correcting the Doctor. The changes hadn't been part of the Time Gate's purpose at first; purposefully altering the universe for personal needs and selfish desires hadn't taken place until quite recently. The universes hadn't started colliding until after the drastic changes began taking place.
"For how long have you been working as a scientist at the Time Gate?" Jane asked quietly.
He turned to look at Jane, who was peering at him with understanding eyes. He wondered how she knew about his past: all of his records should have been erased. Having a brother at the very center of the government certainly had its perks, the ability to delete any record was one of them.
He contemplated what would happen if he told them the truth. Would they blame them for everything that happened? Blame him for the murder of millions of lives, the cause of all of the chaos and the collide itself? He knew that they had every right to.
"I left three months ago," he defended, affirming her claim all the same.
"Why? Did you get bored with killing millions of people with some new virus or destroying entire planets; tired of being the child with the magnetizing glass above the anthill?" the Doctor asked darkly, his voice full of accusation.
"No. I never participated in any of that." He felt sick to his stomach, knowing that even though he never did anything like the Doctor suggested, all of those things came to be because of him. "I was forced away because I was staunchly against such actions." His hands twitched in frustration from the anger he still felt about the subject.
"Forced away?" the Doctor asked mockingly. "You mean fired?"
"They couldn't fire me because I built it! They had to send me halfway across the universe and threaten to kill me if I ever returned!"
The room fell into silence as the revelation hung in the air.
Damian sucked in a deep breath of air to calm himself before he began to explain. "I created the Time Gate. Three years ago I passed into the alternate universe, though I didn't know that at the time. I thought I had created a time machine, one that was capable of sending someone anywhere in time, past, present, or future. It didn't take long to realize what it really was. I spent the next few years perfecting the Time Gate, making it capable of also teleporting one to land anywhere in space. Next I made the calculations more precise: capable of planning the exact date and location down to the minute and the inch.
"The authorities and other private parties soon found out about what we had developed, but the Admiral had been able to keep them off our trail. I know that they had wanted access to my device for years, but my brother was able to protect the Time Gate and keep it under my control. I only used the Time Gate to observe, I never wanted to make any changes and made sure that my fellow scientists felt the same. I'm certain that we weren't without our faults as we used the machine, but we never did anything that would warrant such mass chaos and destruction."
"Your brother is the Admiral?" Jane asked.
Damian nodded before continuing on with his narrative. "Three months ago the Time Gate fell out of my brother's hands and he lost all protection over it. Another party entered and stole it from me, forcing me away. Whenever I even neared this edge of the universe they would attempt to shoot me out of the sky."
"Do you know who they are, the ones who took over the Time Gate?" Clara asked, her eyes wide.
He solemnly shook his head. "Several of the scientists who I worked with for all of those years remained behind to help them with their tasks. They did everything you described," he said, looking towards the Doctor, "and worse. They felt nothing for all of the atrocities they committed, as nothing they ever did ever came back to hurt them."
"Until now," Jane said morbidly.
"Exactly."
"So technically," the Doctor interrupted. "All of this," he held his hands out wide, "All of this chaos has been wrought in only three months!?"
"More or less," Damian affirmed.
He rubbed his hands through his hair. "That's what happens when time machines fall into the wrong hands! They certainly moved quickly, didn't they?"
"So now we have a date; it's not too far back and yet it's early enough that there'll be no chance that the universes would have started their collide." Clara stated energetically, looking towards Damian in excitement. "What was the date when you left them?"
"So we go back to the day when I left the Time Gate." Damian said instead of answering. "What will happen to the past me? Will I run into him?"
"Ah-timey wimey, details, details." The Doctor waved him away, striding around the console. "What was the date again?"
"We are dealing with the past, I've had lots of experience with changing the past, and look at what's happening!" Damian stated angrily. "The entire universe is ending because of my Time Gate! Don't tell me that we are going to fix all of this by altering time once again!"
"This is completely different!" The Doctor objected, tossing his hands into the air. "I actually know what I'm doing and I've had centuries of experience!"
"Are you immortal too? Is there anything else I should have known about you before I agreed to enter your ship?" Damian retorted. "Are you really the omnipotent being you claim to be; capable of erasing all of the mistakes that have been made and the millions of deaths that have occurred?!"
The Doctor remained silent for a moment as Damian seethed in anger. His voice more calm and controlled, the Doctor finally responded. "I am not immortal, but I do believe that I will be able to save this universe and the one that had been altered. I'm not omnipotent, and I make my mistakes," his voice dropped in pitch. "But I mean well, and I will do all that I can to make sure that your lives will be saved."
Daiman relented, realizing that the Doctor really did mean well. He had a mission to accomplish, to destroy the Time Gate before the universe was destroyed and everyone became affected. If he had the opportunity to stop all of the chaos from happening before all of the millions of deaths, then he should take it. Honestly it was an incredible opportunity, one that couldn't have happened if Jane's friends hadn't appeared with their time machine. He told the Doctor the precise date of when he had left the Time Gate and the scientists.
The Doctor put in the date and with a flick of a lever suddenly they lurched forwards, Damian fell into the console and clung on to the edge as the whirring noise intensified and the room was rocked back and forth.
The rocking eventually abated and the room was silent once more.
"So..." Clara said once it was silent, "everyone that had died on your ship, Triss, the big cockroach in a purple shirt, and everyone else in the universe, are alive now?"
"Yes, because now we're before the collide and before everyone became affected." Jane said, walking towards the door.
Damian swallowed, trying to wrap his mind around the subject. All of the millions of lives that had been taken, all because of his Time Gate, were fixed. However, he realized that if they didn't destroy it now, the future will still come to pass. He followed Jane to the door.
"I've parked us in the same spot, so we should be looking at the planet the Time Gate is located on," The Doctor explained.
Jane opened the door and the two of them peered out. A small planet was now in front of them where the huge rolling mass of light was once there before. It was a familiar sight to Damian, a place where he had spent several years of his life developing and eventually using the Time Gate.
The Doctor appeared at his side. "So where exactly is the Time Gate located? Do you mind putting in the coordinates?"
Damian nodded and moved back to the console to enter the data, once finished he moved aside and automatically walked to the railing, preparing for the now familiar mode of transport. The Doctor flipped the switches and once again he found himself rocking along with the Tardis's jolts and movements, the sound almost deafening. They landed with a halt.