"Jenny?" Someone gently slapped her cheek. "Jenny, wake up." Another slap. "Jenny, can you hear me?"
Jenny groaned, opening her eyes. Branden's face swam into focus.
Jenny jolted upright, nearly knocking him over. "I thought you were upstairs, checking over...!"
Branden clapped a hand over her mouth, shushing her. Outside came a series of screams, followed by a burst of gunfire and an angry thud-thud-thud of large feet. Branden ventured a glimpse over the top of the crates surrounding them, then shoved both Jenny and himself down to the ground — as a series of bullets flew through the air above them.
"The door's jammed open," Branden whispered into her ear. "I was going to leave the moment I realized I couldn't close it — but then I found you. I didn't want to leave you behind."
Jenny peeked over the crate, seeing a dead human and a dead bird-like creature in the hallway, their bodies overgrown with a thick orange moss. A badger-beaver sprinted past the door, hissing and extending its claws.
Mutajar's machine was now powerless. It had done its work.
Jenny leapt to her feet and ran to it, checking it over. Not too much damage from stray bullets. And Mutajar had been right — only the top layers had been released. Maybe if Jenny could find some way to reverse all this...
Branden leapt out and grabbed Jenny, yanking her back behind the crates as a bear-shark lumbered inside, shot a volley of bullets into the room to make sure no one was hiding there, then grunted and lumbered off.
"Force field," Jenny whispered to Branden, checking to make sure the coast was clear. She gestured for him to wait, as she leapt across the room, throwing herself at the panel beside the door and stabbing at buttons. A badger-beaver spotted her and charged, claws extended.
Jenny slammed her hand down on a final button.
The force field shot up around the outside of the room — and the badger-beaver was thrown back against the far wall of the corridor.
"That'll protect the machinery until I get back to reverse everything," Jenny said, breathing a sigh of relief. Turned to Branden. "You stay here." Turned to the door. "I gotta go get Kardeni."
Branden leapt out and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her away from the door. "Leave her!"
Jenny spun around. "How can you...?"
"She's been lying to us, Jenny!" Branden said. "She's a monster. She deserves what she gets."
Jenny sighed and tugged her hand away. "Just because she blew up Galia-3 in a previous life doesn't mean we should..." She trailed off, as she noticed the confused look on Branden's face. "Right... you weren't actually talking about that, were you?"
Branden shook his head. "I did what you said. Went to Kardeni's office. Turns out, an undercover Time Agent was already turning over the office herself, looking for something."
"Mutajar," Jenny muttered.
Branden nodded. "Mutajar told me all the really good stuff was in Lantro's office, down in the basement. So I went there and..." He flicked his wrist, and an archived email message popped up.
Attached is a draft of the claims paperwork we were discussing earlier. As per our conversation, I have filled out Galia-3's forms as if it were a real planet. I've also ordered a gravity scan of the system (also attached) which we can use as proof that we didn't know anything Time Lord was here. Please check and make sure I've covered our tracks on everything.
In terms of the real work, I believe I've made a breakthrough with the Battle TARDIS. I'll drop by Mr. Stenman's at 4 to discuss. Very exciting!
Zeera.
Jenny stared at it.
"That's the least of it," said Branden. His hands were shaking. "Mutajar went through everything in Lantro's office. Unlocked every secret hiding spot. There's incriminating documents everywhere, and they're all about Kardeni."
"She knew about all this from the beginning," Jenny said.
"Before the beginning." Branden flicked his wrist and pulled up an academic paper — never published — written by Zeera.
Jenny's eyes widened as she skimmed it. The paper hypothesized a Time War battle had been fought in an unnamed star system — now the Galia system. Kardeni predicted that a proper archaeological excavation could uncover a treasure trove of Time Lord weapons and artifacts.
"When did she write this?" Jenny asked.
"During her short time in graduate school," said Branden. He flicked his wrist, and the paper was replaced by a different one. "Here's the first — unfinished — draft of her graduate thesis. Or this was as much as she wrote before she dropped out. Guess what she studied?"
The title hung in the air:
'The Linguistics of Censorship in the First and Second Rassilon Eras: the Gallifreyan Rosetta Stone'.
Jenny reached out and touched the edge of the pages to flip through it. Seeing this, Jenny was starting to wonder if Mutajar's assumption about Kardeni being a Time Lord was perhaps a little premature.
"It's incredibly clever," Jenny said, skimming through it. "She's pointing out that the first time Rassilon was in charge, everyone still spoke Old High Gallifreyan. The second time, everyone spoke modern Gallifreyan, and the Time Lords also had an off world colony with completely different languages — but the same censorship laws. She looks at what kinds of phrases people use to get around the censors in the languages she knows, then uses that to check the Oxford Gallifreyan dictionary definitions, and, subsequently, translate the Old High Gallifreyan." She turned back to the front of the thesis. "'Dedicated to the memory of my parents — Lanterners who used to tell me Time Lord stories every night as I fell asleep.'" Jenny looked up at Branden, confused. "What's a Lanterner?"
"Academics who try to find those weird telepathic lantern things the Time Lords sent out," said Branden. "We've got a huge repository of them stored back on Earth."
Jenny nodded, slowly.
"And there's more." Branden spread open his hands, and the whole room filled with holographic data and documents. As Jenny looked through them all, her stomach tightened. The more she looked, the less convinced she was that Zeera Kardeni was a Time Lord, and the more certain she was that, regardless of that fact...
Zeera Kardeni was definitely a criminal.
"This makes it seem like this whole thing was her idea in the first place," said Jenny. She turned back to Branden. "But that makes no sense. If she came up with the idea, why's she just a secretary and not running the company?" Jenny looked back through the documents and picked out a contract that showed what Kardeni's 'cut' was supposed to be. "I mean, she's got money problems! Even Lantro said she didn't get..."
Jenny trailed off.
It suddenly hit her. Lantro said she didn't get paid enough. And Lantro was the one hiding all this stuff in his office. So when he said she didn't get paid enough — he knew!
"Come on." Jenny grabbed Branden by the arm and dragged him towards the panel, setting the force-field to be remotely released by her biodata, so she could open it up again from the other side. "They're setting her up as the fall guy. And that means we finally have leverage to get her to tell us the truth."
Branden struggled, trying to pull Jenny back. "Are you insane? You don't know what it's like out there!" He waved his hand and a phone icon appeared in the air. "Why don't we just call her?"
Jenny waved her hand through the icon and it disappeared.
"Because Mutajar thinks Kardeni is a Time Lord," said Jenny, as the force-field went down. "And I'm not convinced that she's right."
The outer door to 78B was dangling off its hinges, and the inner door was still open — just the way Jenny and Mutajar had left it when they'd exited. Jenny shuddered. Had Mutajar done that on purpose?
Jenny's hearts sunk even more as she walked forwards and could see the mess that had been room 78B. None of the machinery was operational anymore. Everything had been smashed apart. Bits of it had been taken, other bits had been set on fire. The room was a complete mess.
"She's already dead, isn't she?" Jenny breathed.
An arrow barely missed them, and Branden shot past Jenny, dragging her after him. "Dead or not, this is the most defensible space I can see, at the moment."
They ran inside, then punched a button and slammed the inner door shut behind them. They could hear the thud of things striking the inner door from outside — but none of the attacks made so much as a dent. Jenny took a moment to catch her breath.
It was cut short by a burst of gunfire from inside the room.
Jenny and Branden both dove to the floor, scrambling to find cover. It was only then that Jenny realized the gun made a strange sound — one she'd heard back when Stenman had used that staser.
"Mrs. Kardeni?" Jenny called out. "Zeera? It's okay. It's just us!"
The gunfire stopped. Then, a little warily, "Which 'us'?"
Jenny stood up, revealing herself, her hands in the air. "Me and Branden."
A sigh of relief, as a disheveled and somewhat panicked Zeera Kardeni emerged from her hiding place. "I thought... for a minute, I thought that other one had..." She dropped the staser to the ground. Her hands were shaking. "Oh, God. What a nightmare!"
Branden emerged from his own hiding place. His eyes were a lot less forgiving. "A nightmare you created. Isn't that right, Zeera?"
Kardeni blinked. Looked at Jenny.
"We found your graduate thesis," Jenny explained, slowly edging towards Kardeni. "And that paper you wrote, theorizing that there were Time Lord weapons buried here. And a whole bunch of really incriminating documents that basically say you've been in on the criminal part of this since long before day one."
Kardeni froze.
Then, she lunged for the gun.
But Jenny was faster. She jumped Kardeni before she could start firing, and wrestled the staser from her hands. She put the safety back on, then tossed the gun to Branden. She let go of Kardeni, who slumped against the wall, her head down.
"I take it that means we're right?" Jenny asked.
"I'm not saying anything," Kardeni insisted, glancing around herself, nervously. "I can plead the fifth. I have rights!"
Boom!
The room shook, as a sound like an explosion erupted from just behind the door. Somehow, the door still remained whole and locked.
"Zeera," Jenny said in a very calm but cold voice, "Stenman and Hoyer are both gone. Everyone in this building is getting slaughtered. And the documents that were left behind blame you for everything." She stepped forwards. "It's only a matter of time before the authorities show up."
"They're blaming me for...?" Kardeni buried her face in her hands. "I don't know what to do."
"Start telling the truth," said Branden, sternly, "and don't stop until the end."
Jenny held up her hand to stop Branden. She ran over to Kardeni, and in a gentler voice, "Zeera — you know where the access point is, to get us to the full control room. If Dad gets there, he can..."
"He can't," Kardeni cut in.
"You don't know how resourceful he is," Jenny insisted. "We'll find a way to get a message to him. I can..."
"No, I mean really, he can't," Kardeni said. "He's in the vault. You can't reach the main control room from inside the vault. It's impossible." She gave a small shrug. "And with Protocol Z in place, we can't get there, either. I'm sorry."
"Why? Where is it?" Branden demanded.
Kardeni hesitated. Then, very quietly, "On Galia-3."
For a moment, no one spoke.
"What?!" Jenny cried.
"Galia-3 doesn't exist," Branden reminded her. He stepped forwards. "I've seen the empty space where it should be. There's nothing there!"
Kardeni fidgeted with her hands. "There isn't a planet there. That's true. But there is something there; it's just... hidden." She swallowed hard. "We linked Galia-3 to this planet through a particular metamorphic rock — installed at a number of points in the planet's history, to stop erosion from washing away our control. But that rock only leads into the vault."
"Into the..." Jenny stared, as she realized the truth. "Galia-3 isn't a planet. It's the Battle TARDIS."
Kardeni nodded. "To get to the main control center reliably, you have to travel back 50 million years and get sucked into the center of Galia-3's gravitational pull." She shrugged. "That's how he found the TARDIS in the first place."
"He?" Jenny asked, stepping forwards. "So it wasn't you? Then who found it? Stenman? Hoyer?"
"Andrew Lantro," Kardeni corrected, looking up into Jenny's eyes. "Why do you think one of Andrew's closest friends wound up working here in the first place? This was all his idea. He brought me in."