A shocked silence fell over the room once the Master's body hit the floor. Graham and Ryan both peered around the corners from where they were both hiding and their eyes widened, shock spreading across their faces. The Valeyard spoke up before either of them could make any kind of noise, looking between Yaz and the Master's unconscious figure on the ground a few times.
"I-" She cut herself off, clearly beyond words at this moment and took another second to think before she continued, "Okay, no idea. Why?" She tilted her head with a raised eyebrow towards Yaz who stood across the room from her, the dart gun still in her hand but lowered now to her side.
"I never trusted him from the start. Like he'd ever actually try and save the Doctor.
"Right… well… So, you'd rather get him killed?" The Valeyard stepped closer to Yaz, her head still tilted, and her mouth pursed in light-hearted question. God it was strange, seeing the Doctor's expressions being used by someone else. "I thought you wanted the Doctor back?" The Valeyard asked slowly and Yaz just shook her head, a scowl on her face.
"I'm tired of being lied to. Of not being taken seriously. Of being treated like I'm some sort of pet, just there to keep some ancient being company. By both the Doctor and the Master. I get it, they're old, they're tired. I don't deserve that."
"No. No you don't." The Valeyard nodded in agreement with her, taking a step towards her.
"I'm tired of people thinking that I'm some kind of idiot just because I don't have 3000 years of running around the universe under my belt. I understand right from wrong."
"Yeah, you do. You're no idiot." The Valeyard stepped closer still, reaching out a hesitant hand to rest it on Yaz's shoulder, "Humans, I always knew you lot were a resourceful lot. You always saw what was right, deep down."
"You get it. I mean you pretty much trusted Lee with your life, to keep you safe." The Valeyard seemingly froze at the mention of the man's name and she whirled around, her eyes wide in something akin to panic. Something rabid and filled with pain but Yaz tried to continue on, showing that she meant no harm in bringing the man up. "I remember meeting him, back when you turned yourself human. We ran into each other; I don't know if you remember."
"I remember." The Valeyard responded quickly, her voice tight.
"Yeah, well. I just, I could never imagine the Doctor that I know putting that kind of trust in any of us. I don't know how many of her former companions she would, but not us."
"He wasn't a companion. He was-" The Valeyard cut herself off, those words sounding so heavy and history filled as she swallowed hard that Yaz couldn't help but draw her eyebrows in in question. "He was more than that. Don't lump him in with all of the Doctor's-" She cut herself off, but it was clear that was going to be something derogatory from her tone. She seemed to shake herself into focusing and continued, "Either way, it's nice to have someone getting where I'm coming from."
"I- I didn't do this for you, I just…" Yaz sighed heavily and the Valeyard waved her off, motioning quickly towards the doorways where Ryan and Graham were both stood, both watching in horrified shock.
"I understand. You might want to explain yourself for them, though." Yaz glanced around to both men, her expression hardening before she looked back to the Valeyard.
"Later." The Valeyard just shrugged, beginning to pace back and forth casually.
"So, what was the plan? Exactly?"
"You really think they actually said?" Yaz scoffed, ignoring the looks sent by Ryan and Graham, their confusion as she stepped past the Valeyard towards the other side of the room, the other woman turning with her before she shrugged.
"Yeah, fair enough." The Valeyard relented, then took in a heavy breath and turned back around to face the Master's prone body. "Suppose I should deal with this then, shouldn't I?" She reached into her pocket, reaching for her blaster once more to finish this off quickly. Yaz used her moment, her grip on the dart gun tightening as she raised it once again and darted forward, firing the next bolt into the back of the Valeyard's neck. The woman gasped, the blaster dropping from her hand and clattering across the floor as her hand reached up to the back of her neck, grasping awkwardly at the dart with eyes wide as she looked up to Yaz and began dropping to one knee.
"When I said I was sick of everyone not taking me seriously," Yaz stared down at her, unflinching as the woman dropped finally to the floor, "I suppose I don't mind this one time."
The Master could hear voices talking as he came too, his brows furrowed while his eyes were still closed and he reached up a hand to try and rub at his eyes, only to realise that one of his arms were restricted somehow. He finally opened his eyes, looking down towards his right arm and raised a confused eyebrow at the pair of handcuffs around his wrist that kept him shackled to a radiator. His confusion only deepened as he turned his head to figure out where he was, and he found himself inside the Black Archive room. Ahead of him he spotted River Song and Yasmin Khan stood next to one another, both looking over something in River's hands. Graham and Ryan were both spread throughout the room, Graham sat down in an old looking armchair in one of the corners, and Ryan was sat on some boxes at the other side of the room. One quick glance further showed him the Valeyard, slumped over inside one of the Vinvocci glass cases, unconscious somehow.
"There better be a very good reason for you shooting me." He growled out, allowing the warning threat into his voice, but when both women turned around, neither looked all that threatened and it simply ruffled his feathers all the more for it. This was rather embarrassing. Because whether or not she'd turned on him for real, a human had just gotten the better of him, and not even one of the respectable ones. He'd take River Song, even Clara Oswald. By the time he'd had Martha Jones in his grasp, all those years ago, even he'd had to have a begrudging respect for her. These ones weren't even anything impressive. It was almost humiliating.
"I've said it from the start," Yaz told him, slowly taking a few steps towards him, her voice level and sounding just as annoyed, "The Doctor's a Time Lord. I don't know how evolution works for Time Lords, but if you spent millions of years on one planet with one species, then eventually your body alters to fit that. Also, reloomed. I assume, whatever that is really, would probably have corrected any defaults that were found. Two hearts." The Master stared at her for a moment, resenting the fact that she had a point, and one that he'd continuously brushed off no matter how many times Yaz had brought it up.
"But how… you took a risk. What would you have done if it hadn't worked?" He narrowed his eyes, not yet willing to let it be known that he thought she was right.
"I knew it would," She growled out her words, "because she kept saying 'heart'. As in one heart. She didn't realise how much that body has changed. Safe bet. Plus, Kate said it had worked on the Doctor before. A previous incarnation, yeah, but still the Doctor."
"Then why did you knock me out?" The Master asked, outraged. He pulled at the metal around his wrist, "Why am I handcuffed to a radiator?"
"Because 1." Yaz threw up a finger, "I had to give her some kind of reason to trust me to get close enough, because if I took that first shot and missed that would've been game over. 2." Another finger went up, "You wouldn't have even let me try if I'd asked you. So, I stopped you from getting in the way. And 3." Another finger. "I just wanted to knock you out at least once. I don't like you, so if I could have done it with my own fists, I definitely would have. But you know, you take what you can get. And 4." She crouched in front of him this time, her eyes narrowing into a glare, "I never trusted you not to try and kill both of them from the start." He scoffed for a moment, trying to work up the outrage despite knowing that she was right.
"I'm offended you didn't trust me enough to-" At her continued deadpan expression the Master let out a heavy sigh and shrugged up a shoulder, "I mean, I was never going to actively try, but if things didn't work out then maybe I wouldn't have tried very hard to stop it, let's say that." He went silent for a moment and looked her up and down, begrudgingly feeling respect blossom in his gut towards her. "You're one of the smart ones." He watched the smirk begin to appear on her face and couldn't help himself as he leaned towards her, his voice lowering to a near whisper, "They're usually the kind of ones that die. There's a reason the Doctor's always the smartest person in the room, she likes to surround herself with idiots." The smirk left her face, but she said nothing more to him, just got to her feet and walked back over to River. He pulled at the handcuff around his wrist and called over to her, "You aren't going to let me out?"
"Let yourself out." She called back just as snarky, and the Master scowled at her openly and used his free hand to reach into his pocket for a lockpick or something else he could use to open the lock in mere seconds. Once free he gave his wrist a few customary rubs, as though his double bypass system would really allow the lack of blood flow from something so feeble, and then made his way over to Yaz and River, peering down at what they were looking at.
"I take it you've already started?"
"Of course. Just finishing up initial scans, we'll need her awake for the next part." River spoke up, barely glancing up from the pad in her hands, and that just made him scowl more.
"Why didn't you tie her down?"
"It can't be opened anyway. She'll be waking up in a minute or two, you timed yourself quite well."
"That's a big risk and I'm the one that will be in trouble if she escapes." He countered angrily and River fixed him with an annoyed expression.
"I think at this point, it will be all of us. So the sooner we get this done, the better."
"Could've gone a lot quicker if you hadn't knocked me out." He'd just got his complaint out when the Valeyard had begun to stir, her head lifting from its place pressed against the glass case, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion as she looked about at her impromptu prison cell. Then she let out a heavy huff of breath, rolling her eyes as her head tilted backwards behind her. Only once she was looking up did she freeze, recognition sparking in her eyes and she pushed herself to her feet.
"No! Let me out, now." Her voice let out her words in a low growl, her hands reaching into her pockets only for her to frown, confusion replacing her anger for a moment before it returned twicefold as River simply reached onto a nearby table and picked up the Valeyard's blaster, showing it – and the other array of weapons she'd had on her person.
"Yeah," Yaz said, stepping forward as she crossed her arms, "we already went through your pockets."
"You're gonna regret this," The Valeyard hissed at her, pressing herself against the wall closest to them, "I swear, as soon as I am free, I'm gonna-"
"Is it done?" Yaz just turned, not listening as the woman finished her threat, peering over the pad in River's other hand.
"Almost, 93%. We'll be able to activate the sequence in a minute or two." River paused and looked over to the Master, "Make yourself useful then," She motioned over to the panels near the wall that the cells were essentially plugged into, that could monitor and alter the power feed, "I'll be keeping a close eye."
"I'm not a child." He snapped, bristling as she treated him as less than the moronic humans surrounding them.
"Then act like it." She replied sugary sweet and he simply snapped his teeth at her then stomped his way towards the panel anyway to look over the levels that were all holding steady as they were simply needed for running a scan right now. The real test would be when the power would be needed to create a perfect replica of the Doctor. This wouldn't be a metacrisis situation, this was going to be pure makeshift science at its finest.
"Let me out, now! If you let me go now, I might not even kill you." The Valeyard snapped again and the Master sighed and turned away from the control panel to look at her again, addressing her and capturing her attention as he spoke.
"You brought this on yourself. You could just give the Doctor back control and none of this would need to-"
"Why should I?" She all but screamed out the words cutting him off, hands tearing at her hair as an angry sob tore its way from her throat, "Why should I? They were the ones who ruined everything! I tried! I tried to be good! I tried to just leave! A whole childhood used as a science experiment. Experimented on, tortured. Ripped open again and again and again. And I finally escaped because they turned on me! They'd never seen me as one of them. They just wanted to use me. And then I finally met someone who actually seemed like they cared, someone who loved me and did everything in his power to keep me safe, and they ripped him from me as well." She slammed her fists against glass one last time before the rage seemed to disappear and she slumped forward, her forehead pressing up against the glass as her shoulders began to shake from the silent tears. "I just wanted to escape. I just wanted to get away from them. They hunted me down, killed Lee, and expected me to just come back and be compliant again. They couldn't let me be happy for once in my miserably long life." She shook her head slightly against the glass, "I wanted to wipe them out. Make them burn, suffer like he suffered. Like I had suffered. Instead, they tried to get rid of me. I ripped immortality from their hands before stuffing myself away into the dark depths of my mind and throwing myself into the prime distributer of the looms. And then the Doctor takes over, runs around in my body. Using my regenerations. Using my name. And none of it happens to her. She gets to run away; she gets to stay away. She's the one you're all trying to save. This is my body! Not hers!"
"Not anymore." The Master spoke back after a moment of silence, surprised that he found it in himself at this point to feel pity for her.
"I'm sorry, but the universe needs the Doctor. You've been gone too long." River said next.
"You wouldn't exist without me." She hissed out her words to the Master, the anger forming again in an instant, "The Time Lords would have never existed without me. Regeneration came from me. You owe me for just existing."
"If you wanted the Time Lords wiped out," the Master stepped in closer to the glass in front of her, eyes narrowing and voice lowering into something with a hint more taunting in it, "then you shouldn't have played around for so long." The screech of rage at his words had her slamming her fists against the glass again.
"Damn you! This is my body! Mine! I didn't get trapped away for so long for someone like you to force me back in again. I won't let them win! Your kind don't get to win!"
"It's your kind too." Yaz snapped, speaking up for the first time a few minutes and the Valeyard's eyes snapped to her, enraged at the suggestion.
"I am no Time Lord! I'd rather die!"
"Well those knock out darts are specifically designed for Time Lords. That body has had millions and millions of years to evolve without you in it. It changed. It has two hearts, and all the DNA structure of a Time Lord that any medical scanner in the world registers it as Time Lord." She motioned a hand to Ryan, gesturing to the scanner still held in his hand and he hesitantly placed it in her palm. Immediately Yaz moved forward towards the Vinvocci glass case and held the scanner's display screen against the glass so the Valeyard could read. "This is your results. This is that body's results. It's not yours anymore." As she spoke the Valeyard's eyes raced across the small screen, taking in the results and what they meant with increasing amounts of horror and disgust.
"No. You're lying. It's a lie! I'm not one of them. I will never be one of them!" The Valeyard was snarling and all but throwing herself against the glass walls of her cell as the Master and River began racing from panel to panel trying to start the sequence before the worst could happen. The noise of the machine above her, and the one across the room, powering on became rather loud, almost drowning out the Valeyard's enraged screams.
"The power levels are growing unsteady." River said, tone worried as she began flicking switches, the Master doing what he could to help, both of them trying to divert as much power away from anything else they could to keep this going. The lights in the room began to flicker on and off, a low humming noise could be heard over the noise of the cases. The Fam all let out noises of surprise when a few of the bulbs in the hanging lights above them exploded.
"At this rate we're going to cut out the power in the whole of London." The Master spoke up loudly and River just nodded, speaking quickly.
"I know. We keep going!" The power levels continued trying to rise and the noises got even louder. Through the now near darkness of the room they could just about make out as a shape began to take form in the previously empty case, before the remaining few bulbs shorted out and they were cast into darkness.