Author's Note: And we're back into it! The rest of this story is pretty much a sprint to the end... which is saying something, because we're only about half-way through the story.

"After you were teleported back here, Seo showed me the truth about Stenman-Hoyer," Mutajar was explaining to Jenny, as they ran through the corridors of Stenman-Hoyer's main complex. "It's monstrous, Jenny. Everyone here's going to do some hard time over this."

Jenny's mind was spinning. "I don't think you're seeing the full picture. Kardeni showed me this message..."

"Oh, don't even get me started on her!" Mutajar interrupted. "You know she's not really Zeera Kardeni, right? That's just a disguise. And given what she did in her former life, it's no wonder she's wrapped up in a criminal scheme like this one."

Mutajar shushed Jenny, as they ducked into a nearby room, waiting while a few employees walked by — and another ran by in the other direction. Jenny was still trying to get this all straight in her mind.

"Be that as it may — Kardeni seemed really scared of something locked away in that other dimension," said Jenny, as Mutajar opened the door and dragged her back into the hall. "And I'm not convinced she's wrong."

"Dangerous to her!" Mutajar retorted in a whisper. She slowed her run to a walk, taking more care to look casual as they entered a busier corridor. "The only stuff in those other dimensions are the so-called 'slaves'. They're good people, Jenny. They don't deserve what's happened to them. Kardeni just knows that when they take their revenge, she'll be the first one up against the wall."

Jenny hesitated. Yes, Kardeni had shown Jenny that warning message about the Apos'alu, but... Jenny, herself, hadn't been able to read it. Kardeni had translated everything. What if she had purposely mistranslated it? Maybe it wasn't a warning at all. Maybe Mutajar was right, and Kardeni was making up some false justification for why they needed to keep the dimensions sealed.

"Your friend, Seo, showed me everything," Mutajar whispered, as they passed through the downstairs lobby and made their way towards the steps leading to the basement level. "She opened some kind of dimensional doorway to a... I don't even know what. There's world after world in there, all filled with slavery and horror and death. She and I got separated. I tried to reach her, but... ran into some complications." She flashed a smile at an employee passing them by, then added to Jenny below her breath, "The Doctor's in there, too. I couldn't reach him, either."

Jenny sucked in a sharp breath, trying to think this all through as they descended to the basement.

"I'm not saying your story is wrong," Jenny said, at last, "but is it possible that you've overlooked something? Maybe there's more to this than you know."

"There isn't," said Mutajar. Her eyes were very hard and very determined. "I know exactly what I'm doing, Jenny. Exactly." She opened up the door at the bottom of the steps and ushered Jenny down to the basement level. "And there's nothing anyone can say that would stop me."

The basement level hallway was abandoned, save for the ghosts in the distance. They raced down it, their shoes scuffing the tile floor — but stopped just before the ghosts. Mutajar flashed a red ID card against the reader, and the door whirred, then whooshed open.

One of the ghosts turned, as if noticing Jenny. It reached out for her. Jenny, without really thinking, reached back.

Mutajar yanked her into the room before she made contact. "What are you doing?!" She pushed a button on the other side of the door and it slid shut. A buzzing sound echoed through the rooms, and a force field sprang up around the walls. The ghosts didn't come inside.

Mutajar dropped Jenny's hand, and ran.

Jenny turned, intending to follow, but stopped in her tracks.

The machinery Mutajar ran towards was unlike anything Jenny had seen before. It was complex, intricate, a large tower of bits and pieces cobbled together — but she had no idea what they did or how they worked. What was this?

And why did it look so... rough?

"I guess it's lucky for me that I found you in a room with so much useful stuff," Mutajar said, as she began to take components out of her pocket and hook them up to the machine. "Granted, I'm not actually an engineer, but it's amazing the kinds of things you can learn with a little bit of time and a lot of determination."

Jenny felt a shudder run through her, as she realized the truth. "You didn't sabotage their machinery. You built this yourself — specifically to tear apart that dimensional boundary."

Mutajar twisted a set of wires, a small grin on her face. "Clever." She stepped back, examining the device. "But right now, this'll only cut through the top few layers. I plan to cut through all of it. Everywhere. Everything has to come out."

Mutajar stepped towards the machine again — but Jenny darted forwards and stood in her way. She wasn't letting Mutajar touch the machine one more time until she'd thought this through properly.

"Jenny..." Mutajar sighed.

"You're releasing a whole bunch of enslaved creatures into this complex," Jenny said, "while both Stenman and Hoyer are gone. The slaves are going to be angry. They're going to want revenge! And when they realize there's no one to take their revenge on, they'll just start killing everyone here."

Mutajar crossed her arms. "So what?"

Jenny stared. "I'm sorry?"

Mutajar shook her head, giving a little laugh and placing her hands on Jenny's shoulders. "Jenny, Jenny — don't you understand? Everyone here is a criminal. They're all complicit. We want them to die."

Jenny yanked herself out of Mutajar's grip. "How can you say that?" She flung her arms out. "Most of the people here have no idea what's really going on! They're innocent...!"

"No one is innocent," Mutajar interrupted. Her voice lowered, as she met Jenny's eyes. "So many horrible things have happened here, Jenny. So much pain. So much death. A whole planet in this star system was ripped to temporal shreds, its inhabitants tortured and distorted by the ravages of a time battle. And then Stenman-Hoyer Co. came, and Zeera Kardeni returned, and the torture and death and misery started all over again." A fire ignited inside her eyes. "But I'm not letting her get away with it. That psychopath won't escape justice a third time."

Jenny felt her jaw fall open, as she struggled to reconcile the Kardeni she knew with the one Mutajar was describing. It didn't seem to fit. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, haven't you worked it out, yet?" Mutajar shoved her out of the way, and began working on the machine again. "Zeera Kardeni's the one who destroyed Galia-3."

Jenny blinked. "What?!"

"Well, sort of," Mutajar amended. "This all gets confusing with the chameleon arch involved. Let's just say that she is a very evil person who massacred a whole team of Time Lords to hide her crimes, then used a chameleon arch to turn herself human and escape justice."

"A chameleon...?"

"It means that Zeera doesn't remember what the non-human version of her did," said Mutajar, running to the other side of the machine and tweaking it a little. "Well, not unless she opens the watch. But her human-self is still the same person, deep down inside. That's why she came running back here, first chance she got, to start the whole thing up again."

Jenny bit her lower lip. Was any of this true? It would certainly explain why Kardeni knew so much Gallifreyan. But Jenny still had a hard time imagining that the Kardeni she knew was actually a hardened criminal.

Besides, why did that justify destroying everyone in the Main Complex right now?

"But there has to be a better way to do this," Jenny insisted, running over to Mutajar and yanking her away from the machine. "Putting aside the whole issue of whether you can charge Zeera for crimes committed by sort-of-another-person — there has to be some way to free the slaves and apprehend Kardeni that doesn't involve killing all the innocent employees. I can help!"

Mutajar shoved Jenny away from her. "You have no idea what I've been through!" she shouted. "You know how many times I've died? You want to know how it feels, getting fractured and torn apart like that, only to find yourself murdered over and over again?" She put her hands on her chest. "Because I can still feel it all, Jenny. The bullet passing through my skull. The crunch of my bones as I'm buried alive. The burn of the fire across my flesh." Her eyes narrowed. "You want to know whose fault that is?"

Jenny stepped backwards. "How is that...?"

"Possible? You tell me!" Mutajar raised up the non-functioning vortex manipulator, advancing on Jenny angrily. Jenny found herself stumbling back. "But apparently, it is — because that's been my life for centuries, now. Maybe even millennia." She lowered her wrist. "I've been fighting back. Trying to break free. When I met you and your sister in the forest — I met you at the farthest point I could reach before the Battle TARDIS would start clawing me back." She ran her hands through her hair. "It's been torture, Jenny. A never-ending nightmare! And why? Because that genocidal psychopath currently calling herself Zeera Kardeni was scared I'd tell Rassilon the truth."

"But you're... I mean, you're actually a...!" Jenny stumbled over a crate behind her and felt herself falling and crashing against a pile of them. "You're a Time Lord!"

Mutajar just stared at her like she was the stupidest person she'd ever met. Then, finally, she grabbed Jenny by the hand and yanked her to her feet. "I don't have time for this. Where's your TARDIS key?"

Before Jenny had a chance to answer, Mutajar grabbed the chain around Jenny's neck and yanked hard until it broke. The chain holding the TARDIS key came off in her hand.

"Ow!" Jenny protested, hand against her neck. Then, trying to grab the key back, "Hey!"

Mutajar pulled the key out of reach and knocked Jenny sidelong into the pile of crates a second time. "Sorry, but like I said, I've got no time." She turned away and ran back to the machine, inserting Jenny's TARDIS key into the machine beside another — one that Jenny recognized, from the pink bunny keychain, was Seo's. "I don't know how long I'll be able to exist this far outside the vault. At some point, the magic's going to be over, and I'll be swept back inside — trapped again, waiting for death after death after death." She ripped out a set of wires, making sparks fly, then shoved them elsewhere, wrapping the metal filaments into the copper of the other wire. "I can't let that maniac escape."

Jenny picked herself up out of the pile of crates. Noticing a metal bar on the ground nearby, she grabbed it, arming herself as she advanced on Mutajar again. "Does the word 'Apos'alu' mean anything to you?" Took another step forwards. "How about 'Biv'?"

Mutajar paused. "I haven't heard those names for a long..." Then, with a small, nervous laugh, "You probably shouldn't know about any of this. I'm going to have to get out my memory worm before this is all over."

Jenny's eyes narrowed. She ran at Mutajar with the steel pipe, intending to send it crashing through the machine and — hopefully — Mutajar's head.

Mutajar spun around at the last minute and caught it.

"You're making a mistake, Jenny," Mutajar said. "There was a mix-up back at the beginning. It's too long to explain, but — I swear to you, I'm not the bad guy!" She ripped the steel pipe out of Jenny's hands and dropped it to the floor with a thud. "Seo and the Doctor are still stuck in that death-trap — and I'm the only one who knows enough to save them."

Jenny bunched her hands into fists. "You don't care about them. You just want to release the Apos'alu."

"Why would I want to do...?"

"I'm not an idiot," Jenny snapped. She pointed at Mutajar. "You were part of the War Council, sent here to capture the Apos'alu for Rassilon — except instead, you got caught in its trap." She crossed her arms. "Of course, that's not your mission anymore. Because, like Dad, you can tell that there are no Time Lords in the universe." Her eyes narrowed. "So what are you really up to? The truth, this time!"

Mutajar met her eyes and said nothing for a long, long moment. Then, finally, she turned back around to the machine, again. "The truth." She yanked a wire out of the machine, and it sparked in her hands. "Very well. Truth is, a long time ago, someone betrayed the Doctor — and myself. So I've vowed to make sure it never happens again. Not even by those who call themselves his 'friends'."

Mutajar turned around and shoved the live wire at Jenny, who yelped and tried to leap backwards — but too late. A jolt of electricity shot through her, making her nerves flare up with pain.

She collapsed to the ground.

The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was Mutajar plugging the cable back into the machine, then shoving her wrist and the vortex manipulator through the green glow at its center. The vortex manipulator gave a soft beep, as it began working normally again.

Mutajar's smile grew. "At last," she breathed. She hugged the vortex manipulator to her chest in a burst of sheer relieved joy. "At last!" Then she stopped herself, focused herself. "No. Can't celebrate yet. I have to finish this." She poked at the vortex manipulator, programming in her journey. "Step one — save the Doctor."

She pressed a final button on her vortex manipulator, and vanished.

Second Author's Note: One quick extra little thing here. If you have been introduced to a character under one name, that is the name I will be using for the remainder of the story in the narration. The characters may refer to each other differently in the dialogue, but the narration will keep the same names. I only deviate from this policy once, at the tail end of the story, and for a specific reason. But at this point, the names will remain steady in this story. This should alleviate a fair amount of confusion.

(So, for example, if it were to turn out that Jenny is actually Zaphod Beeblebrox (which she's not), then you might see something like this in the story: '"But Zaphod Beeblebrox, where did it go?" Seo asked Jenny.')

Sorry for having to put this in here. I was going to say at the beginning of Chapter 1, but I completely forgot.