Author's Note: I do switch to calling Kardeni Zeera every so often because I was worried you'd get her confused with her husband, Craig Kardeni. No significance to the name change. It's just for clarity.
Enjoy!
Seo switched off the audio feed to the call. She reached out to Kardeni, who'd woven her hands through her hair, her eyes staring into the distance.
"Ashley was important to you, wasn't she?" Seo asked. "Who was she? A friend?"
"She wasn't real!" Kardeni insisted. "None of it was real. I spent years in therapy, trying to accept it. I've seen videos of me talking to 'Ashley', except I'm all alone, talking to myself. There was never any Ashley Victoria Stenner. She was just a figment of my imagination!"
Seo frowned. Then searched through the databank for information relating to Ashley Victoria Stenner.
All the records that had been missing for Zeera suddenly popped up — for Ashley. Right up to the moment she turned nine. Then... nothing. No records.
"She certainly seems real," Seo put in. She turned back to Kardeni. "So who was she?" She grimaced, then amended, "Who did you think she was?"
"My best friend when I was little," Kardeni said. "We were inseparable. School. Sleepovers. Holidays. We did everything together. Used to pretend we were sisters." She sucked in a sharp breath. "But, like I said — none of that actually happened. Ashley didn't exist."
The Doctor popped the top of the chair back on, and hopped down. "How'd you two meet?" He ducked down by the side of the chair, and yanked open a panel. "Or rather, what do you remember about how you two met?"
"In my parents' study," Kardeni said. "She had just found something. That's how I first remember seeing her — looking at something in her hands. She hid it from me. I never found out what." She shuddered, looking away. "The therapists had all kinds of psychoanalysis on what that might mean."
Seo turned to the Doctor. "Do you think Ashley found the fob watch?"
"No," the Doctor sighed, still fiddling with the chair. "No, Seo — I don't think there ever was a fob watch." He stepped back, his eyes fixed on the chair. "Whatever happened here, it's not reversible."
"Then what did...?"
"Ashley find? Don't know. Could have been anything." The Doctor pulled a spare memory wafer out of his pocket and stuck it into the chair. "Memory wafer? Data core? Plenty of those missing from here." He tweaked a few settings on the side, then adjusted a set of capacitors. "Could even be a bit of TARDIS coral. Battle TARDISes have a bit of a reputation for altering people's minds. And this one's a bit traumatized."
"What are you talking about?" Kardeni demanded. She shook her head. "There is no Ashley. I told you. She didn't exist!"
"I said that about Twilight — a ghost that wanted to kill me and take over my body," said Seo. "But it did exist. It was real." She put a hand on Kardeni's arm, soothingly. "The Apos'alu went through that machine and became a ghost in need of a body. Maybe you did, too. You were like Twilight was to me — except you didn't know what you were doing. And you succeeded."
"This is all ludicrous!" said Kardeni, shrugging Seo off. She stepped away from them. "It's deranged." She put her hands on her chest. "I didn't kill Ashley. She never existed. And I'm not a Time Lord! It was just Andrew's stupid joke."
Seo looked between Kardeni and the Mark 12. "This is pretty elaborate for a joke."
The Doctor glanced back at Kardeni, nodding over at Seo. "She has a point."
"Andrew's jokes are always..." Kardeni began.
"No. Not that. I mean she has a point about Andrew Lantro." The Doctor turned around, locking eyes with Zeera. "Because here's the thing: whether or not you're really Bivazeer is immaterial. Biv is gone, and with no fob watch, there's no way to get him back. But that doesn't change the impact this theory has had — both on your life, and on the lives of the Time War survivors that Lantro lured into this vault and killed to keep your secret."
"You can't be..."
"Serious? You keep saying that." The Doctor brushed his fringe from his eyes. "But just because you want to pretend something's a joke doesn't make it a joke. Lantro said I wasn't the first Time War survivor to come here — that he killed the others and fed their bodies to the killer moss. I don't know if he did that to protect your identity, or if he used rumors of your Gallifreyan origin as a lure to draw in survivors and extract information about Time War weapons from them. But what I do know is — he definitely wasn't joking."
Kardeni fell silent. Her face went pale.
"And then there's you." The Doctor buzzed the server with his sonic, and a series of dates hovered over the different messages sent between Lantro and Craig. The dates went back a long, long ways... back before Stenman-Hoyer... back before Zeera got married... back to when Zeera was still in undergrad.
Kardeni stumbled backwards, her eyes glued to the dates.
"This server wasn't originally here, Zeera — it was moved here," the Doctor said. "Because this has been going on for a long, long time. And because of that, we can see how things have changed."
He buzzed his sonic again.
The earliest messages popped up. Seo tapped on them.
"...Careful. We don't want to hurt anyone..."
"Just find the fob watch and get it back. We can keep it locked away forever. She never needs to know about it..."
"I don't even care who she used to be. I just want to make sure creeps like Denoring can't ever get that close to hurting her again."
The Doctor pointed at the messages. "Before you started working here." He gave another buzz of his sonic screwdriver. "And here's after you started working here."
Seo began tapping.
"...blew his brains out. You shoulda seen it. The look on his face!"
"Nope. He didn't have the watch in the end. But you should have seen him beg for his life when we were done with him. Scared. Whimpering. Crying. We gotta get Biv to do that before we kill him."
"You know, funny thing is, I think the thing I'm looking forward to most right now is cutting that fucking 'Biv' down to size. Ever thought we'd be saying that?"
"This is after you started compromising your morals," the Doctor told her. "Overlooking bad behavior. Dismissing greed and corruption and paranoia as commonplace or as some kind of joke. And look how their mission has changed."
An image popped up — a photo of Craig Kardeni and the kids with hunting rifles. There was a giant blown-up cutout of a different photo of Bivazeer — but the cutout had targets over both hearts, was riddled with bullets, and had gotten his head nearly cut off, with X's over his eyes. One of the kids had drawn blood with red marker.
'Time Lord Hunting with the family,' read the caption.
Zeera shuddered.
"This is what happens," the Doctor said, "when you decide to let things slide. When you sit there and turn a blind eye because you're benefiting financially. This is where it leads."
"But I needed the money!" Kardeni insisted. "I just wanted my kids to grow up safe — in a neighborhood without all the murders and beatings and burglaries. I wanted to give them what I never had."
The Doctor gave a long, heavy sigh, shaking his head. "You don't see it, do you?"
He buzzed his sonic again.
And brought up a series of messages dated earlier today.
Andrew Lantro: Mutajar's a fucking Time Agent. Undercover.
Craig Kardeni: Who?
Andrew Lantro: The bitch who wants the watch.
Craig Kardeni: You mean the one I said we should kill, but you said was harmless?
Andrew Lantro: Don't rub it in, Craig. Wipe the M12 — temporal stuff first. Torch everything else. I'll deal with Mutajar & the Time Lord. I don't know what Mutajar's told the Agency so far. We might have to put the backup plan into place.
Craig Kardeni: Zeera's gonna kill us for this. You got the evidence against her?
Andrew Lantro: Ready to go. Evidence. Lawyer. And a program in the Battle TARDIS that'll use the symbiotic link to make her look crazy as shit during the trial. She'll be fine.
Craig Kardeni: Not guilty by way of insanity isn't fine.
Andrew Lantro: If I go down for Galia-4, they'll look at what I did with my cut of the money and find out everything. How angry do you think your wife's gonna be then? I'm covering both our asses here.
Craig Kardeni: Fucking Biv.
Andrew Lantro: We'll bust her out of the loony bin when the heat's off. She'll be scared shitless but she'll be fine. Besides, the Time Lord asshole I'm with has a working TARDIS. Might make a good present for Zeera when we get her out. He won't be needing it.
Craig Kardeni: You know, that just might work. Does he know her? Does he have the watch?
Andrew Lantro: Don't know. Maybe. We can search his TARDIS for it after the Ouribiu are done picking their teeth with his bones. Then I'll set it up for Zeera. I got some ideas for it that'll put the toy train to shame.
Craig Kardeni: I swear you kill these Time War survivors just to take their shit and turn it into elaborate presents for my wife.
Andrew Lantro: What can I say? I like to see the lady smile.
Craig Kardeni: Seriously, Andy. She's my fucking wife. Hands off.
Andrew Lantro: I'm locking her in an insane asylum to protect you, Craig. If she knew what I know, she wouldn't be your wife.
Zeera's jaw dropped.
"And of course, when I start looking for anything dealing with time travel," the Doctor continued, buzzing again.
Everything went blank. All that was left were a bunch of stars labeled "FILE EXPUNGED", and one last star blinking away in the corner. Seo tapped on it.
Craig Kardeni: It could be anyone?
Andrew Lantro: Yep. The fob watches have some kind of psychic influence. Makes people want to pick them up. Doesn't have to be someone obvious. Probably isn't. Could be anyone she's met in her whole life.
Craig Kardeni: Then we gotta go through everyone. We're gonna need guns, a time machine, and a huge stack of cash.
Andrew Lantro: I can get the time machine, you've got the guns. How the fuck are we gonna get the cash?
Craig Kardeni: That's your department.
Zeera put a hand over her mouth.
She couldn't stop staring.
"Your parents told you that the Time Agency was corrupt, didn't they?" the Doctor asked. "That's why you saw no problem with Lantro's weapons-selling enterprise." He put his hands into his pockets. "But you know why they said that, don't you? Because the person beating everyone up and threatening them and killing them..."
"...was Andrew," Zeera breathed.
"Your past," said the Doctor, "is a product of your present. Lantro and your husband needed a time machine and a stack of cash. The Agency gave Lantro the time machine. But you, by working here, were the one who gave them the money."
Zeera was speechless.
"Something to think about, anyways," the Doctor said, turning back to the chair, and resuming his work.
Five minutes later, the Doctor beamed and sonicked one last panel of the chair. "Et voila!" He thumped the top, and the chair hummed with power. "Perfect. All hooked up on this side. Zeera, any...?" He paused. Stepped forwards, a bit concerned. "Zeera?"
She was sitting on the floor by herself, just staring into the distance. She didn't seem to notice that he had finished — or called her name.
The Doctor came over to her. Leaned down. "Zeera?" Waved a hand in front of her face. "Hey-ho!"
She started, as if out of a dream. "What?" Put her hand to her head. "Oh, sorry. Just thinking about..." Then shook her head, and tried to shrug it off. "Doesn't matter. What can I do?"
The Doctor offered her a hand up and pulled her to her feet. "You all right?"
"No." Kardeni sucked in a sharp breath and smoothed out her business suit. "But my problems aren't important for the moment. I said I wanted to do this. I'm going to do it."
The Doctor clapped her on the back with a grin. "Splendid. Any word from Yimi, yet, on how their side is going?"
"Hold on, I'll check." Kardeni closed her eyes and focused. "Yes. Yes, she says that she and Jenny are almost through with their part. They got into some trouble earlier, but they think they found a way around that."
"Even more splendid! Double-splendid!" The Doctor clapped a hand against the chair. "In that case — Seo?" He winked. "How about we put you back together again?"
The swarm was growing, and so was the Apos'alu's strength. It glowed like a fire within her eyes. Reverberated off her body like a vibrating tuning fork. With every new member of her swarm, her power grew more than it had before.
"Nearly time," Mutajar said. Her eyes narrowed. "Minutes, at most. After all these centuries..." A small, angry smile spread across her face. "I can hardly wait."