Martha's feet were aching again. They were still covered in cuts from the glass in the restaurant, and she had been pushing down the pain for the past hour or so, but now in the few moments of quiet as the Doctor slung his coat over a coral pillar and powered up the TARDIS, the wounds stung as if they were fresh.
Martha sucked air between her teeth, leaning back in the pilot's seat and trying to concentrate on something else. The Master raised an eyebrow at her.
"Problem?"
Martha avoided his eyes. "My feet hurt. That's all."
The Doctor looked up from the console, and seemed to notice the bandages between her shoe straps for the first time. "What happened?"
"It's nothing," said Martha impatiently. They had more important things to be dealing with. But now the Doctor was giving her those big concerned eyes, and she sighed. "Lord blasted half the windows in London. I got cut."
"You weren't wearing shoes?" the Master asked with a hint of incredulousness, as if he couldn't quite believe Martha was that stupid. She glared at him.
"I was, until he made me take them off and walk across ten feet of broken glass."
The words came out more sharply than she'd intended. The Master looked down at the console and said nothing.
The Doctor cleared his throat. "First aid kit, under the seat. Use a few drops from the bottle of green oil. You'll be fine in ten minutes."
"Huh." Martha reached below the pilot's seat and her fingers found a plastic box. "Don't suppose you'd like to donate any of this special space medicine to UNIT?"
The Doctor gave her a look of disapproval, although he was smirking slightly. "That is lóe leaf extract, from the sacred moon forests of the planet Tanyang. The extraction and distillation process takes over three hundred years. I reserve it for special occasions."
Martha made a face as she opened the first aid kit. "Right. I'll try not to spill any."
"Good," said the Doctor, pushing a few buttons on the console as the TARDIS hummed into activity. "Now! Time for my stupid and dangerous plan."
"What are you going to do?" asked Martha, retrieving the bottle and pulling her feet up onto the pilot's seat. The Doctor moved around the controls, his face rippling in the glass of the time rotor.
"I'm going to use the TARDIS to isolate the Agni's telepathic frequency and hack myself into the psychic network. If I can talk to the parasite, maybe I can reason with it."
The Master folded his arms. "You're right. That is stupid and dangerous."
"I'm glad you concur," grinned the Doctor.
The Master followed him round the console. "Listen, Doctor. My brain is part of that network, and I can't even feel it. Nobody has ever communicated with an Agni."
"First time for everything," shrugged the Doctor, his fingers flying over a keyboard.
The Master grabbed his wrist, forcing him to stop typing, and glared at him.
"You have no idea how powerful it is. It could blow your brains out!"
"Maybe my brain's a lot bigger than yours," said the Doctor, pulling his arm away and returning to the controls. "Trust me, I've handled worse before. It'll be fine."
The Master made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.
"It's a brain parasite, for god's sake! What are you gonna do, chat about the weather?"
"I don't know." The Doctor looked up at the Master, his expression suddenly pensive. "But that's the thing. If I don't strive to discover before I destroy, then… I become like you."
Ten minutes later the Doctor stood before the console. Thin wires trailed from within his spiky hair, down the sleeves of his suit jacket, across his splayed fingers and into the workings of the TARDIS, giving him the eerie appearance of being wired up to hospital machinery. He took a deep breath and looked at his companions.
"I'm about to join the Agni network. I don't know what will happen. But no matter what I do, don't disconnect the wires. The TARDIS will protect me."
Martha nodded, feeling apprehensive. Her feet had stopped aching thanks to the green oil, and the cuts had completely vanished so she had removed the bandages. She had also found a spare t-shirt, jeans and boots in the wardrobe while the Doctor was working, and now felt almost normal again as she sat back in the pilot's seat.
The Master leaned against the railing beside her, watching the Doctor with narrowed eyes, as if he was just waiting for something bad to happen.
The Doctor took another breath, slower this time, and closed his eyes.
There was silence apart from the rhythmic ambience of the TARDIS engines as the Doctor stood perfectly still in the soft blue light, almost like a statue. Then the wires began to glow slightly, and energy seemed to surge between his body and the console.
Suddenly he gave a yell and staggered backwards into the railing. Martha started forward but the Master held out an arm to stop her.
The Doctor gasped in pain, then doubled over with his eyes squeezed shut as the wires pulsed brighter, almost blinding. Then abruptly the TARDIS made a low whirring sound and the light shut off. The Doctor collapsed, grabbing the railing for support as his eyes snapped open.
Martha pushed past the Master and rushed to the Doctor's side, kneeling down and supporting him as he panted with exertion.
"It's OK, Doctor. I've got you. Deep breaths."
"Ah!" the Doctor struggled to his feat, leaning heavily on Martha. "That hurt. It blocked me out. Doesn't trust my big old Time Lord brain."
"Great," said the Master, clapping his hands conclusively. "So can we get on with figuring out how to kill the damn thing, and then move on to finding my stupid clone?"
"No," panted the Doctor, manoeuvring to the console and starting to pull the wires out of his hair. "I sensed it - just for a second, before the TARDIS disconnected me. The Agni is alive. It's a conscious, feeling creature."
"So?"
"So, we need to give it a chance."
The Master stared at him in disbelief. "Seriously? It's a deadly parasite."
"It can't help that!" the Doctor disconnected the last wire from his head with a grimace of pain. "It's just doing what it was born to do."
"Yes - killing us all!" The Master glanced at Martha. "Back me up, here."
For once, Martha actually found herself seeing the Master's side. She put a hand on the Doctor's arm.
"Doctor, my family are in danger. My planet. And I know you're all about peace and everything, but if we don't stop this thing… like you said, it'll squeeze our brains out. We need to destroy it before it destroys us."
The Doctor stared at her, and then the Master, disgust on his face. "Should have known. Couple of soldiers, the both of you."
"Well, what do you think we should do?" cried Martha, losing patience. "How are you planning to talk sense into something that won't even trust you to get near?"
The Doctor blinked at her for a moment, then suddenly exploded like a firecracker.
"That's it!"
"What?"
The Doctor spun round, strode over and tapped the Master on the forehead. "You're the stupid clone! Where's the Command Cube?"
"In my pocket."
"Gimmie, gimmie!" The Doctor snapped his fingers, practically bouncing up and down with enthusiasm. Looking disconcerted, the Master slowly removed the golden cube from his pocket and passed it to the Doctor, who ferried it to the console, put it onto a metal plate and pushed a button underneath.
"What are you doing?" asked Martha, eyeing the cube curiously.
"Something very clever," the Doctor replied, digging under the console to retrieve tools and a spool of thin silver wire.
"But the cube is broken," objected the Master. "It burnt out when I took it through the Time Vortex."
"Not burnt out," said the Doctor with glee as the cube began to glow. "Supercharged. It just needs a hardware upgrade."
The Master gave a disgruntled cough. "Um, you didn't think to mention this earlier?"
"Didn't want you getting any ideas," muttered the Doctor, putting on his glasses. "If I splice it into the TARDIS's command circuits, reformat the psychic parameters and reinforce the casing, it will become twice as powerful."
"And how does that help, exactly?" asked Martha, watching as the Doctor began twisting the wire around the glowing cube, slowly building up layers like a cage. He explained as he worked.
"The cube works by projecting your thoughts around you in a trust field. It's like a perception filter - but instead of making you unnoticed, it makes you significant, important. Subliminally influences people to trust you, and listen to what you have to say." The Doctor glanced up. "Like the Archangel network. Everyone voted for Harold Saxon without really being certain why."
The Master smiled with just his eyes. The Doctor kept on talking, now pulling the scanner screen around as several Gallifreyan symbols clicked into place on it.
"I'm going back into the Agni network. But this time, I'll have the trust field. Hopefully, that means the parasite will let me in and speak to me."
Martha nodded, starting to grasp the idea. "Right. Okay."
"You think that's going to work?" the Master folded his arms, unconvinced. "It's already blocked you once."
"Ah, but this is the extra clever part." The Doctor drew out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the cube, which was now almost completely covered by wire and still glowing. "Instead of hacking in with the TARDIS, I'm going to join the organic way; by forming a telepathic link with another living mind. Stand back."
They all took a step away from the console and the Doctor activated the screwdriver. Sparks flew from the plate as the cube heated up, the silver wire melting and fusing together, smoking and bubbling and becoming almost too bright to look at.
Martha shielded her eyes, coughing in the acrid fumes, and waited for the glow to subside. Then she heard a hiss of steam and an 'Ouch!', and opened them again to see the silver object smoking slightly, and the Doctor sucking the fingers of his left hand, a pained expression on his face.
The Master tried not to laugh as the Doctor grudgingly grabbed some pliers with his other hand, and then carefully transferred the smoking object into a solution of foul-smelling silvery liquid, which emitted even worse smelling steam as the metal rapidly cooled. At last, he held up his creation triumphantly.
Gone were the smooth lines and golden sheen of the Command Cube - it now resembled a lump of metal attached to a wire.
The Master made a face.
"Did you have to make it so… crude?"
"It's a rushed job," admitted the Doctor, squinting through his glasses at the now-cooled cube. "But this should do the trick. Mondasian eutectic alloy cage. Stronger than diamond." He used another pair of pliers to bend the end of the wire over into a loop, then dug some ribbon out of his pocket, threaded it through the loop and tied it around his neck. The silver lump bounced on his chest like an extremely ugly necklace, and he beamed at them both like a child who had just finished an impressive science project. "Lovely! Right, time's a tickin'… let's make that psychic link. Come on, Martha."
Martha blinked as he approached, motioning for them to both sit on the floor. "What, me?"
The Doctor nodded, removing his glasses as he sank into a cross-legged position beneath the console. "You."
Martha glanced up at the Master as she followed the Doctor down to floor level, folding her legs to mirror his pose. She felt bizarrely like he was going to take her through a guided meditation.
"Why not him?"
"You trust me, that will build credence. Plus, I need him to cut the link if anything goes wrong." The Doctor looked at the Master. "Think you can do that?"
The Master nodded. "Punch you in the face, got it."
Illustration for chapter 25 on DeviantArt: atlantihero-kyoxei/art/Joining-the-Network-875103219