Yimi's eyes snapped open as she tumbled into a puddle of mud beside the Doctor. The world around them was black and bleak, save for the shimmering glow of distant magma. Disembodied screams and terrified-looking ghosts echoed around them. Yimi tried to sit up, but was suddenly overcome with the illusion that she was surrounded by high-rise buildings — and a bomb was falling towards her. She screamed and ducked — but then it was gone.
She got up, and thought she could see a strange, furry-looking creature screaming as it was dissected by tin pepper-pot looking things — but then that vanished too.
The Doctor grinned, offering her a hand and hauling her to her feet. "Hello. Don't believe we've been introduced. I'm the Doctor. You're Yimi. That was the Apos'alu." He spun around, dragging her after him. "And this is the part where we run!"
Yimi's feet burned as she ran. She couldn't see Seo anywhere now. She couldn't figure out how she'd managed to before.
"How did I...?" Yimi asked.
"Leap of faith!" the Doctor replied — quite cheerily, Yimi thought, for someone who'd been threatened with almost certain death a few minutes ago. "Sort of. A bit. You reached for something using your faith in the Apos'alu. That gave us a direct path to her power base. Biv came up with that trick." He grinned. "Good ol' Biv."
Yimi shivered as she passed through a stretch of air that felt like an arctic tundra for no reason. Then it was gone.
"Now, technically, that shouldn't have worked," the Doctor continued, "since Biv blew up Nitvenah way back. But I figured that, the moment this prison was reconfigured as a vault, the Apos'alu would have taken full advantage and recreated her home planet. That's probably why she was able to start breaking free. Well, that and the chameleon arch. And Faye Mutajar. And Seo, come to think of it." He reflected, scratching his chin. "Good thing Biv's not here to see that one."
"The Abo...?" Yimi winced, as she found herself overcome with yet another vision — this one of death and blood and a battlefield. It left her as soon as it had come. "Seo said Abozalu was someone called 'the Master'."
The Doctor winced. "Because he taunted us about that fob watch over and over again on the Valiant, but Seo never actually knew why." He sighed. "This, Yimi, is a good example of how my marvelous and rather brilliant system of saying, 'I'll explain later' and then never actually explaining later — starts to break down. See..." They stumbled to a stop as a geyser of magma and steam and water exploded in front of them. The Doctor yanked them both out of the way of it as it splashed down where they'd just been standing. "Never mind! I'll explain later." Then he yanked her behind him and they ran in a different direction.
Yimi was panting heavily, struggling to keep up.
"Apos'alu!" the Doctor said, slowing a bit for Yimi as he kept running through the dark landscape. "Incredible mental powers, the Apos'alu. At full power, she could see through any lie, manipulate any person. Even a Time Lord like me."
Yimi looked lost.
The Doctor glanced at her. "Sure you want to hear the full story? Might put a bit of a dent in your belief that the Apos'alu is a god."
Yimi nodded.
"Well, then," the Doctor said. "Buckle up!"
Kardeni, for a moment, wouldn't answer Jenny's question.
"Zeera!" Jenny snapped.
Kardeni closed her eyes, giving a long, heavy sigh. "My parents used to research Time Lords. Some of the things they found were beautiful. Amazing. Other things were terrifying." She shuddered. "I stumbled across some mention of a monster who melted people's brains and left them writhing as they were literally eaten alive by piranhas made of their own shortcomings." Her hands trembled. "It gave me nightmares. I used to wake up screaming."
Jenny had a feeling she knew where this was going. "And that's what's here?"
"I couldn't believe it at first," Kardeni said, opening her eyes. "I thought it had to be some kind of sick, twisted joke." She shuddered. "But it isn't. It's really here. And I think... it's after me."
"Before the Time War," the Doctor explained, "there was a third planet in this system. Galia-3! Formerly known as Nitvenah. During the war, there was a particularly nasty battle fought on Nitvenah. Destroyed nearly all life on the planet. Left it looking..." He gestured around them. "Sort of like this."
"And you fought at this battle?" Yimi asked.
"I didn't," said the Doctor. "Bivazeer did. But later in the war — much, much later — Ollistra stuck us together on some counterintelligence missions. Rubbish missions! But Biv was all right. Dependable. Moral. Brilliantly clever." His head sagged, eyes fixed on the ground, sadness seeping into his features. "Shame he died, really..."
Kardeni kept stabbing at barely-functional buttons, still attempting to find some way to get Lantro out. The screens flickered, then died again.
"The Apos'alu," Kardeni said with a shudder, as she pried a panel off the main console. "According to that warning I found from Biv on the battle TARDIS, its species evolved on Galia-3 after the Time War ravaged the planet's surface. They were linked to the planet." She began rewiring things. "They felt the pain and fear and anger of its previous inhabitants who'd been ripped apart and burnt and turned inside out. So when they took to the stars, they plotted their revenge."
"The... Apos'alus?" Branden asked.
"No — I don't know what their species was called," Kardeni said. "But it was a hive society, dependent on their Queen. 'Apos'alu' is their word for 'Queen'." She grabbed a spare part from a nearby derelict device, and slotted it into place. "Separated from each other, both the swarm and the Apos'alu would be weakened. That was what Biv was supposed to do. Separate them, capture the Apos'alu, and take it back to Gallifrey."
"But he didn't," Jenny guessed.
"And that's the warning," Kardeni confirmed. "Biv claims he has proof that Rassilon chose the weapons used in the Battle of Nitvenah on purpose, to kill off the natives and force-evolve a more useful species. He..." She suddenly started laughing. "I guess you could call it 'Plate Cracking'. Rassilon 'Plate Cracked' the species into existence."
"And that's where we come to the Apos'alu," the Doctor said. "She looked a bit like a phoenix, back then. All fire and feathers. Her race evolved out of this temporal chaos," he spread out his arms to gesture at the constantly shifting, temporally scarred landscape around them, "its evolution shaped by the weapons that were dropped here and the paradoxes that were formed here as time changed over and over and over again." Dropped his hands. "Apos'alu. Insanely powerful. Terrifyingly telepathic. Could survive the worst ravages of the Time War. Used to swoop into the midst of a battle and just kill everyone. Destroy everything. Parsec after parsec after parsec — dead." He wiped some of the hair from his eyes. "Used to do it to neutral planets, too. Nasty."
Yimi nodded.
"Thing is, the Apos'alu and her swarm always returned to Nitvenah," the Doctor said. "Had to be a reason. Didn't know what. But it meant we knew where to find them. So Ollistra sent a team of us —Biv and myself included — out to Nitvenah to destroy the swarm and capture the Apos'alu."
"You were there?" Yimi asked.
"Oh, yes, I was there," the Doctor said. "Daleks were, too. They sent in their own team. Tried to beat us to it." He sighed, face filled with awful memories. "It was a bloodbath. Everyone was killed. It was all down to Biv and me, in the end. I still can't quite believe we pulled it off."
"What did you do?" Yimi asked.
"Biv worked it out," the Doctor said. "The planet Nitvenah, itself, was the species' power source. That's why he destroyed it." He scanned the horizon, then changed course slightly — as Yimi struggled to keep up. "Then we had to decide what to do. Of course, we both knew better than to hand the Apos'alu to Rassilon..."
"Why?" Yimi asked.
"Let's just say we had our suspicions about his role in all this," said the Doctor. "So that was out. Bivazeer wanted to kill the whole species, but I talked him out of it."
Yimi seemed surprised.
"So we built this place," the Doctor said, "out of Biv's TARDIS. We grounded it so it couldn't fly. Locked them all inside. The swarm's at the center — surrounded by an impenetrable barrier that could only be unlocked by a certain encryption key. Bivazeer knew it. Well, he wasn't supposed to. No one was supposed to. But he had that sort of mind. See something once, and it's in there forever."
Yimi nodded.
"The Apos'alu," the Doctor continued, "we ripped into little subsections of herself and scattered across the outer layers of the prison. Meant that if any bit of her escaped, the other pieces of herself would pull her back in." He trailed off, a frown settling across his face. "She must have used the chameleon arch to reunite most of herself. And now she's killing off the scraps of herself that didn't make it in. Clever."
For a moment, he said nothing.
Just thinking.
"Yes, right, where was I? Oh, yes!" The Doctor clapped. "Built the prison. Trapped the Apos'alu. Big success." His mirth died down into a sigh. "And then the Daleks caught up with us. The internal dimensions of Biv's TARDIS were folding in on themselves to create the prison. The Daleks were everywhere. Biv and I just ran and ran and ran. Never thought we'd make it out alive." He ran a hand down his face. "Next thing I knew, Biv'd managed to activate some kind of teleport. Shoved me inside. 'Right behind you!' he said. And then..." The Doctor clicked his fingers. "Just like that. Just one second. He was gone. Killed by a Dalek."
Yimi could see the horror in his eyes as he relived the memory.
"Such a waste," the Doctor muttered. "Such a pointless, stupid waste."