For a moment, before they'd landed, Romana felt herself dying. It was as if every part of her DNA was unravelling, all at once, and she couldn't regenerate.
Couldn't even breathe.
"There! Got it!" the Doctor cried, and threw the materialization lever.
Then, just as Romana was sure she was on her last breath…
Everything stopped.
Romana was fine.
"What…? How…?" Romana began, catching her breath.
"The Dalek Battleship was orbiting, outside the Oltizitz War zone," the Doctor replied. "I just scooted it inside, a bit. And, of course, brought it to one particular point in time."
He raced to the door, and flung it open.
"Come along, no time to lose!" the Doctor shouted, as he ran outside.
"Doctor, the entire ship will be swarming with Daleks! You can't…!" Romana began, racing after him.
Then hesitated.
She was standing in the middle of a swarm of frozen Daleks. The lights on their domes were stuck in mid-flash, their gunstalks in mid-wave, the computers in mid-computation.
"How…?" Romana began.
The Doctor pounded a button on the side of the hull, and a window opened up. Outside the battleship, Romana could see a very small reddish planet, near its neighboring greenish planet. And a fleet of warships frozen in mid-descent towards the greenish planet.
"Well?" the Doctor asked, as if the tableau answered all her questions.
Romana sighed. "Doctor, you'll have to remind me exactly what I'm looking at. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to travel, properly, around the universe."
"Oh, Romana!" the Doctor chided. He flung an arm around her shoulders, and pointed out the window. "Right now, there are two pairs of us. The you and I from now, and the you and I that are right about… there!" He adjusted his point to a planet. "Inside the TARDIS! Commanding the Key to Time to freeze the universe, just before a certain Marshal can blow both Atrios and Zeos to smithereens."
Romana's eyes lit up. "Of course! Back in my first incarnation! We faked a sixth segment, so we could stop the universe!" Romana laughed. "So that's what you meant when you said we'd be crossing our own timelines! Terribly clever, Doctor."
The Doctor beamed. "Yes, it is, if I say so, myself!" He spun around, and raced off. "We don't have long. Time to find Seo and her younger-self, get everyone back to where they should be, and sort out this problem of you dying, once and for all!"
Romana sighed.
"No, we really don't have long," Romana agreed, remembering from several lifetimes ago. "After all, we only froze the universe for a minute. Afterwards, we placed the universe in a time loop."
And from what Romana had felt, in the TARDIS, just before they'd materialized… Seo was only seconds away from death.
If time began to loop, Romana would quickly find herself dying, once more.
"Time loop! Marvelous idea!" the Doctor called back to her. "I must have been a genius, when I thought that one up."
"Yes, but seeing as I was close to death, when time stopped," Romana said, racing to catch him up, "I'd prefer not to spend the last few seconds of my life dying over and over again."
The Doctor beamed. "Not to worry! That won't happen!"
"Why not?" Romana demanded.
They spun around a corner.
"Because, first of all, you and I are outside of time right now — and will remain so!" the Doctor replied. "And, secondly, because I know how to cure you!" He paused, closing his eyes a moment, as if listening to an echo trapped inside his mind. Then beamed, and began to run. "This way!"
Romana raced after him.
"You can still hear Seo, can't you?" Romana asked. "She's still using you as a buffer, while she interfaces with your TARDIS."
"Yes, but she's very faint — like an echo," the Doctor said. "I wouldn't expect anything more, now that she's frozen like everyone else."
Nearby, he saw a Dalek begin to twitch.
"I think that's the beginning of our time loop," Romana said, noticing it, as well.
"Good thing we're almost there, then!" the Doctor said, turning one final corner. "Just through this door, and…!"
The final door was locked.
The Doctor, instinctively, reached for his sonic screwdriver. Then remembered that the younger-Seo had stolen it.
"Romana," the Doctor said, spinning around. "You wouldn't happen to be carrying around a spare sonic…?"
But Romana was also missing.
"Romana?" the Doctor called, retracing his steps.
He nearly collided with Romana, as she ran towards him, a small pen-like tool in her hand.
She showed it to him.
"I found it on the floor," Romana explained. "Dropped, beside a cluster of broken machinery and two bulkheads that looked like they'd been forced open."
It was the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
"By a stroke of luck, this happens to be exactly what we need!" The Doctor turned around, and buzzed it at the door.
The door whooshed open.
Revealing a large metal room, full of machinery banks and twitching Daleks, their gun-stalks pointed at the imprisoned woman strapped to a gigantic ringlike machine, her left hand glowing a brilliant purple.
In midair, racing towards her, was a Dalek extermination beam.
"No wonder you felt close to death," the Doctor remarked, watching as the beam circled around the time loop, getting closer and closer to Seo and then retreating back to the start of the loop. "By the look of it, we only had a few seconds left."
He spun around, and began to reprogram one of the Dalek machinery banks, nearby.
"You get her down," the Doctor called, to Romana. "I'll end Project Olitzitz, once and for all."
"Me?!" Romana felt this was highly unfair. Why was she the one who had to climb up and release someone? She was President of Gallifrey! Presidents didn't climb around in a very undignified manner, inside Dalek battleships. "Can't you at least hand me your sonic screwdriver?"
"Can't," the Doctor said, buzzing the computer bank with it. "Busy."
Romana sighed. But she could see that, with every moment she delayed, the time loop was expanding. Getting closer and closer to the moment the beam struck Seo, and Romana died, as well.
She swallowed her pride, and climbed up the Nightmare Ring.
"Don't worry," said Romana, as she approached the frozen Seo — who was looking halfway between fear and trying frantically to think up a way out of this. Romana reached out, to undo the straps of her restraints. "I'm certain the Doctor has everything under contr…"
Romana cried out, as she touched Seo, and a spark shot through the entire Nightmare Ring machine. It zigzagged across and through it, crackling and sizzling, creating a burst of chronic interference that made Romana almost lose her footing and tumble to the ground.
Seo gasped, and unfroze, with a start.
"No, wait, you can't…!" Seo began to cry out.
Then realized… the Daleks around her were stuck in a loop. And the Dalek extermination beam had never actually hit her.
"What the…?" Seo said.
"Yes, sorry about that," said the Doctor, still messing around with the Daleks' computer. "Had to short out the differential between you and Romana. That's what was causing the problem, see."
Romana, meanwhile, recovered her footing, and caught her breath. "Differential?"
"Yes, well, Seo's placed so much of herself into the Key to Time, by now, that she's practically part of it," the Doctor replied. He leapt over to another computer bank, and buzzed it with his sonic. "All that glowing green energy she placed, inside! With that much raw power, you could probably grow a whole other Seo, if you wanted!" The Doctor paused, thinking this through. "Granted, she'd probably act a bit different and actually be a seventh segment to the Key to Time… but…"
Romana decided to ignore the Doctor's ramble, and instead, release Seo from the machine. She quickly undid the restraints.
"You do realize, Doctor, that I'm not actually part of the Key to Time, anymore," Romana called out, as she did so. "Astra took my place as the sixth segment, back at the Chaos Pool, remember?"
"Ah, but even so, you've still got a connection to it!" the Doctor said. "We encountered duplicates of two of your three incarnations, while searching for the Key to Time. And Seo could only properly manipulate the Key to Time when both Queen Astra and Queen Strella were part of her Pacifist group."
"Queen Astra and Queen Strella?" Romana grimaced. "I… see."
"Somehow, you're still connected to the Key to Time, Romana," the Doctor continued. "And it was the very fact that you hadn't come into direct physical contact with Seo — even though every other part of the Key to Time had — that was causing you to die and the Key to be ineffective."
"Uh… huh," Seo said, trying to take in everything around herself. The time loop, gradually stretching. "And why's everyone else… looping?"
"Key to Time," the Doctor said, then launched into a rapid-fire explanation of what he'd done, and where he'd taken them. Ending with, "And, therefore, I could use my brilliant plan to save both you and Romana, at once!"
Seo still looked a little dazed.
But nodded, as if she'd understood it all, perfectly. "I… see."
The Doctor buzzed the computer terminal, one last time. Then beamed.
"Aha! Brilliant!" the Doctor cried.
Romana helped Seo climb down the Nightmare Ring. "I suppose you're going to tell us what terribly clever thing you've just done, now?"
"Set the program to delete itself, once time properly restarted," the Doctor said. "And I just deleted the Daleks' way of tracking where Seo was." Pointed the sonic up, and buzzed it at the nearest bulkhead that Seo was about to run through. It slammed shut, before Seo could escape through it. "Oh, and there's no need to escape the Lady President, Seo. She's already pardoned you."
Seo blinked. She still looked a little dazed and disoriented from the temporal differential shorting out. "She's… what?"
"Narvin supplied evidence against certain members of the CIA, in exchange for your freedom," Romana said, carefully omitting that one of the people he'd given evidence against, had, in fact, been himself.
"I… see." Seo pressed her hand up to her head, feeling faint. "I'm sorry, I'm just feeling… a little…"
She almost toppled over.
Romana raced out, to grab her. Caught Seo just before she hit the ground.
"Yes, of course! Her younger-self is still trapped!" the Doctor realized. He jumped over a set of computer banks, and began racing up the right side of the Nightmare Ring, to help Seo's younger-self get free. "No wonder she's feeling faint. She's still partially improbable!" He buzzed at the restraint field surrounding the trapped girl. "How are you feeling, Romana?"
Romana was about to reply that she was feeling fine… when Seo suddenly snapped her eyes open, grabbed Romana by the arms, and in about three acrobatic martial arts maneuvers, had wrestled Romana into a headlock.
"Roma…?" the Doctor began.
But yelped, as he felt himself grabbed and slammed against the Nightmare Ring machine.
It was Seo's younger-self.
She'd unfrozen, back when the older Seo had unfrozen, and had been spending the intervening moments freeing herself from the Daleks' trap. The first chance she'd had, to grab someone… well, she took it.
"The Doctor," the girl growled. "The one with the delicious blood. How convenient." She turned to Seo, hatred burning in her young eyes. "You. Admit you're not my future-self, or I kill your friend. Right here. Right now."
Seo shrugged. "Go ahead. I need him dead, anyways."
The girl almost dropped the Doctor, she was so shocked. "What?"
"Sorry, Doctor, but the Black Guardian's made it very clear — either you die, or Narvin does," said Seo. She turned away from the Doctor. "And I can't let Narvin die."
"Seo, think about this!" the Doctor shouted. "The Black Guardian will never let you…!"
The girl punched him in the stomach. "It's not your turn to talk, dumbo." She looked up at Seo, again. "So… what? You're going to let me kill the Doctor, so I'll let you go?"
Romana, still caught in a headlock, tried to twist out of Seo's grip — but Seo expertly noticed the motion and slammed her elbow down in Romana's back, pushing her into the Dalek machinery.
"Stop struggling, Time Lady," Seo warned. "Or I'll do some real damage." She tossed back her hair, and glanced at her younger-self. "No, I'm not just letting you kill the Doctor. I'm giving you everything you've ever wanted. The power to become the supreme being in the universe: the new Daleks."
The girl's younger-self broke into a large, toothy grin. "So… you admit it! You're not my future!"
Seo shrugged. "In exchange for giving you supreme power over everything," she said, "you're going to do two things for me — right now." She wrestled Romana down, again. "One. Use the Nightmare Ring to wipe out the Daleks. And two… use it to wipe out the Time Lords."
"Oh, you backstabbing, thankless…!" Romana cursed, still struggling to get free.
Seo kept her grip on Romana. "Except for Narvin and the Lady President, of course." She easily countered Romana's attacks, and kept her restrained. "Narvin is mine. And as for the Lady President… well… I get to kill her, in revenge for what her people did to me."
The girl looked dumbfounded. "What's this? Some kind of new game or something?"
"Not a game," Seo said. "I said I'd stop this Time War, and I'm going to stop it. Even if I have to wipe out both sides, to do so."
The Doctor carefully adjusted his grip on the sonic screwdriver, trying not to make it too obvious that he was altering settings. "The surge from the Key to Time, this close to her former-self, must have flipped her into some fugue state, between them both. She's become partially evil."
If he could just snap her out of it…!
"She isn't my future!" the girl said, grabbing the sonic screwdriver out of the Doctor's hands. She stuck her tongue out, at the Doctor. "It's my sonic, now, Doctor."
"This has nothing to do with the Key to Time," Seo told the Doctor. "Truth is… I've gotten a better offer. I wanted to believe that I could change the Daleks, stop your Time War, make the universe better. All by myself! And you know where that got me? Two seconds away from death, Doctor. Just two seconds."
"Seo, earlier, you told me that all you ever wanted was to give back the time and lives you took away," the Doctor insisted. "Think! Remember! All those planets you rebuilt! All those people you care about!"
Seo's eyes were still cold, calculating, and cruel. Her face still impassive. "I was wrong," she said, simply. "There's only one person I should have followed, right from the very beginning. Only one person really cares about me."
The girl, still holding the Doctor, shuddered. "The Shadow," she muttered.
"No," said Seo. "Not the Shadow." She glanced over to her left. "Him."
Everyone looked to Seo's left. A strange man, dressed all in black with a dead crow on his head, was standing there. An evil grin on his face.
"So you've finally given in," the Black Guardian said. "After all that defiance, all that anger…"
"Everything I thought I knew was a lie," Seo cut in. She twisted Romana's arm, until Romana shrieked. "The Time Lords made my life hell. And even after I practically punched the Daleks in the face with 'inner peace', they still just wanted to kill." She shook her head. "They're both as bad as each other. Only Narvin is salvageable."
"Then you agree to be my agent?" said the Black Guardian. "You agree to everything?"
"Spare Narvin," Seo said, "and… yes. It's a deal." Glancing back at her younger self, irritated, she added, "What's taking you so long? Just eat the Doctor, already!"
The girl shrugged. "I'm enjoying the show." She gave a dark smile. "Besides. I want to see you kill the woman in the stupid hat." She nodded at Romana — who was, indeed, wearing a really stupid hat. "Because, if you don't… I'm not buying this act for a second."
The Black Guardian glanced between Seo and her younger self. "She has a point."
Seo maneuvered Romana under her left arm. Then extended her right hand out, to the Black Guardian.
"This hand is me," Seo said. "My essence. What some might call… my soul." She took a long, deep breath. "Take it. All of it."
Her younger self's jaw dropped open.
"You stupid idiot!" the girl shouted. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Romana still struggled to break free. With Seo only using one hand, she could feel less resistance to her struggles. Romana knew… this was her chance.
The Black Guardian regarded her, carefully. "You'd really give me everything? You'd surrender, completely?"
"If you save Narvin, then yes," said Seo, hand still extended. "I'll be your agent. My soul is yours. My life is yours. Everything I am… is yours."
"Seo, don't do this!" the Doctor insisted. "You're still dazed from the Key to Time differential shorting out. When you get back to your normal self, you'll regret this."
"You wanna stop her?" the girl asked, loosening her grip on the Doctor. She grabbed him by his collar, and hurled him to the ground. "So stop her! Don't let her give him anything!"
The Doctor began to run.
Romana, meanwhile, finally managed to pull free from Seo, and grabbed a wrench, nearby, to thud down on Seo's head. Seo, noticing the motion, snapped her left hand up and caught Romana by the wrist.
"Do it," Seo said to the Black Guardian. "Take my right hand. Now."
The Doctor sprinted. "Seo, no!"
But he was too late.
They were all too late.
