Sparks of lightning erupted against the canvas of the night sky, illuminating the treetops overhead and the road that stretched ahead of me. I cursed under my breath and tried very hard to ignore the trembling of my arms. The rain was pounding into the windshield, the wind pulling at my truck and threatening to blow me off the road, but still I pushed forward. I had to get home. If I had known how strong the storm would be, what the storm would do to me, I would've stayed in Forks and tried to make it home the next day. If I had known anything at all, I would've never stepped outside that day. But I didn't know. How could I?

Another flash of lightning, another peal of thunder, another howl as the wind tore through the trees. And then, through the din of the storm, came a soft beating. It was a drumbeat, steady and quietly strong. A simple four-beat rhythm - onetwothreefour onetwothreefour onetwothreefour. I pressed my foot to the brake pedal and stilled, strained to hear the beat.

It was close to midnight and I was in the middle of driving down a highway that wound through a forest. There was no one around for miles. Hell, no sane person would be standing outside blasting a four-beat rhythm in the middle of a storm! But still, I could hear the beat echoing and growing louder. It was as if it were coming from another car driving towards me. But I hadn't seen another car for at least 45 minutes.

And then came, what I at first thought was another flash of lightning but was truly, a burst of light about a dozen feet in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, yanked the steering wheel to one side, and screamed. The truck skidded, slipped, and finally flipped after it lost traction on the wet asphalt, then shuddered to a stop as it rammed into the wall of light. The truck was propped on the passenger side and the windows were all either cracked or had shattered from the impact. I could just make out the four-beat rhythm over the rushing of my blood in my ears and the pattering of rain on the remaining windows.

I peered through the windshield and could just make out a silhouette through the frantically running wipers and downpour; it was standing in front of the wall of light, unmoving. Then, suddenly, it stepped forward, crossing through my headlights. My heart skipped a beat. I could feel my chest rising and falling faster and faster, feel the sting of tears in my eyes, feel the sudden ache in my neck from the whiplash of my truck overturning, feel the four-part drumbeat pulsating inside my body.

"Help!" I finally screamed. "Help! Help, please! Somebody!" I let out a sob as my body started shaking. My throat was already hurting as I screamed again, at the top of my lungs, terrified.

The car door flew open and I jumped, my heart leaping into my throat as I turned and strained to see into the inky darkness. The silhouette stood there, its face and chest only just visible in the light emanating from the wall. It was a man with brown skin, floppy black hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and a dark violet pea coat. The rain was pouring down on him as he stared silently at me.

"Please," I whispered, half terrified by the predatory look in his eyes. "Please, can you help me?"

Without a single word, the man reached forward and grabbed hold of my left arm. He unclicked my seat belt with his other hand, then started to pull me out of the car. The rain had made both the inside and outside of the car slick, and was all but blinding me as it poured into my eyes and down my face, but after a bit of struggling the man had managed to help me climb out of my seat and onto solid ground.

But I had hardly a moment to catch my breath before the man started to pull me away from the truck. His fingers were cold and firm, digging into my arm as he guided me towards the light-wall. He had appeared out of nowhere, I would've said he came from the light-wall itself if I didn't know better, and he had a terrible shine in his eyes when he helped me out of the wreck I made of my truck - I knew something wasn't right. But he was strong, stronger than his lanky appearance let on, and no amount of struggling I was doing was helping me to free myself.

"Sir, you're hurting me," I said, hoping it was just a misunderstanding on my part and he would turn out to be a normal person. "Um, can you let go, please? You're really hurting me."

He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me. "Hold on tight," he said, grinning like an absolute madman. His English accent did nothing to calm my nerves. Then, he jumped and took me with him into the light.

On the other side of the light was a room. The light disappeared soon after we had appeared, leaving behind the worst muscle cramps I had ever felt in my entire life. I doubled over, moaning as tears welled in my eyes, but the man remained at my side. I could hear the grinding of his teeth and the shuddering of his breath as he finally released my arm. Was he in pain too? Was it the strange light that had caused it? I didn't dwell on my questions for very long - the pain was so intense that I finally fell to my knees, having to brace my hands on the floor in order to keep from collapsing.

"It will pass," said the man. I tilted my head back to see him adjusting the collar of his button up shirt.

Through the haze of my pain and shock, I chose to look around at my surroundings in the hopes that it would distract me. The room was dark, only lit by a dim orange glow that came from a single large skylight that made up nearly of half of the ceiling, and furnished with a stool and several small tables, each littered with beakers and burners, wires, stacks of papers and books. At the very back of the room sat a small cot, beside it, in the corner, a Romanesque pillar about a meter wide, and set into one of the walls stood a wooden door.

"What is this?"

The man grinned and spread his arms out. "This is my Master suite."

A chill ran up my spine. Whoever he was, wherever he had taken me, I knew it was wrong. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that worsened every time I happened to look at the man's face or hear his voice.

"Are you going to kill me?"

Dark, unhinged eyes met mine. "No," he answered, shaking his head. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was crouching beside me, hunched over like a wild animal. "I would certainly like to. But I need you."

I shook my head, trembling. "No. Y-You don't even know me. You don't need me."

"You don't know anything," he snapped. His hand shot out and took hold of my chin, his fingertips bruising my cheeks. His voice was low and dangerous and slightly muffled as he spoke through his gritted teeth. "I need you and I'll have you, even if I do not want you!" His mood suddenly switched and he smiled almost sweetly at me. "You might even enjoy it. You'll get to blossom into anything you want with the freedom I'm about to give you. Anything sick and twisted your precious little heart desires."

I bit back a sob. "Oh."

His terrible laugh echoed in my ears. "That's my name, love. Don't wear it out."

He released my face with a rough push and I finally collapsed, falling onto my stomach. He stood and straightened his pea coat, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to throw up and curl into a ball and cry. I wanted to wake up from the nightmare I had suddenly been thrust into. But somehow I knew that things would never again be the same for me. Hell, I'd be lucky if I lived past the next day. I didn't know then how right I was to think that.

The man, the psychopath who said his name was my gasp of sorrow, walked towards one of the tables and picked up a piece of paper. I watched him as he read through it, front and back, watched him bend over to inspect the strange liquids inside the beakers, watched him rub thoughtfully at his beard. I looked up at the skylight and watched a lonely orange-gray cloud pass by. I looked across the room at the wooden door and my cry caught in my throat.

I experimented with pushing myself onto my hands and knees. The deep aches and cramps had mellowed out enough for me to carry my own weight, so I tried standing. The man turned partially towards me, but kept his attention focused on the paper in his hand. He was exactly halfway between me and the door. Did he do that on purpose? It seemed he hadn't when he set the paper down and walked towards another table, leaving me an open path to the door. I quickly looked around myself for any kind of device or object I could use as a weapon, but there was nothing. I'd have to grab one of the instruments on the table when I passed by it. There wasn't much on there that I could see that would be doable as a makeshift weapon, no pencils or other vaguely pointy objects, so I decided to try grabbing one of the beakers as I passed and use it as a projectile if needed.

I watched the man - he was engrossed in the papers on one of the other tables, completely ignoring me. I shot forward without a second thought, blindly reaching for a beaker as I approached and passed the table. My hasty grab had ended up knocking several stacks of paper over, which undoubtedly made the man turn around. By the time I had reached the door and curled my fingers around the handle, I half expected him to be behind me ready to wrestle me away from my escape. But he wasn't there. I pulled at the same time I glanced over my shoulder, eyes frantically searching the room until they finally landed on him. The door didn't give and he didn't move a single muscle. In fact, he still hadn't turned around to face me. I pulled on the door handle again, twisting and turning to no avail. What?

"Did you really think I was going to leave the door unlocked?" The man finally met my eyes. And that's when I knew that I was doomed. "I will give you points for creativity, though. Even if your plan was a little... lackluster."

I shook my head in disbelief. Then, quick as a whip, the man zigzagged his way between the tables and towards me. I panicked, flattening myself against the door for a moment before suddenly bolting to the right. He mirrored my movements, watching me with a sick laugh as I tried to dodge in and out of his grasp. I threw the beaker in his direction at one point and he easily ducked out of the way. Then, a couple large strides later, he was standing so close that my chest just touched his. He grabbed me by the forearms and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"We've played your game now, Batyah. It's time for you to play mine."

He knew my name. Stranger still, as I looked into his eyes, I felt like I was looking at a ghost. The haze of shock was beginning to fade now that the pain and my truck and the rain were gone and I was left with the cold hard reality of my kidnapper and his burnt orange prison. Those eyes, that face, the violet pea coat and dark plaid trousers, they were all familiar. I hadn't stopped to think about it in the immediate confusion of the wreck and the light-wall, but now I had the time and space to do exactly that: think.

"Oh, my god." My jaw fell open. "It's you." He smiled, cold and cruel. "But that's not-. You're not-."

"Except I am."

I shook my head violently. "No. You're not real."

A hand closed around my throat and squeezed. "Does this feel real to you, love?" He backed me up, step by step, until I thudded against the wall. "Call be by my name. Go on."

"No."

The hand around my throat tightened its grip and I choked a little. "Say it," he growled.

I looked into those big, dark eyes and prayed to G-d that this was just a dream. What I wouldn't give for the monster before me to just be a dream.

"Say it!"

My voice was weak and strained when I finally spoke. "Master."

"Again."

"Master."

The Master's eyes rolled back into his head in some sick display of pleasure. He shuddered, squeezing my neck just a little tighter for a few more seconds before finally releasing it. I took in a hungry, desperate breath, slumped between the Master and the wall. Tears were starting to roll down my cheeks as realization set in. Someway, somehow the man- no, the Time Lord I had seen on my television screen a year ago was real. He'd taken me from my home to some terrible place to do only G-d knows what to me and he was sick, hungry for wickedness. Sitting on my couch a year ago, he'd scared the shit out of me. Standing in front of me with a glazed look in his eyes, I felt certain I was going to die.

"Today's the day, Batyah."

"What day?"

"The day I recreate you. The day you are reborn!"

A whimper sounded in the back of my throat. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

The Master wound an arm around my shoulder, his hand tightly gripping the back of my neck. I winced and shied away from his touch, but there was nowhere to go - he was everywhere. I was guided across the room to the table nearest the little cot and made to sit at the lab stool. I watched the Master rummage through the items on the desk and felt my stomach drop when he flipped open a leather roll-up, revealing a shiny collection of needles and glass droppers. Maybe I should have run from him then or try to wrestle one of the needles away and use it on him, but I didn't think to even try. After all, the only place I could have hidden from him was in a bare corner of the room. So instead, I continued to watch what I assumed to be the preparation of my torture session.

"This process," he began as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a test tube of iridescent liquid, "is a tricky one. I have to be careful with you and your delicate human shell." He chuckled to himself. "It's a bit like roasting an egg. You have to boil it first before you roast it or pop! Egg everywhere." The Master cupped my chin again and smiled, wiggling my chin back and forth as if I were a toddler. "And we wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"You're going to torture me."

"Oh, darling, it might feel like torture, but I promise you it's not. This is strictly science. Now go lie down." I glanced at the cot, but didn't move. The Master looked up from his test tube and needles and raised a brow. "I wasn't asking."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"No." The Master chuckled and shook his head. "Not telling. D'you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because I want you scared. I like seeing you shake. It makes my hearts happy."

I turned away, grimacing against the flashes of images running across my mind's eye as I considered just how far the Master would go to ruin me. Would he only torture me? Would he go farther than that? Would he kill me, assault me? I had no way of knowing, but my mind anxiously explored the possibilities.

A hand on my shoulder drew me from my thoughts. I started, turning back towards the Master to see him hovering over me. His hand moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck again, pinching me by the skin and forcing me off of the stool. It was impossible not to see the needle in his other hand, shining grimly in the light, as he walked me to the cot. Sitting down on the mattress felt like sitting down for an execution. The sleeve of my hoodie was rolled up to expose my left forearm and the Master bobbed forward on his toes when he saw the bright blue color of my vein just beneath my skin.

He gently massaged the crease in my arm, his fingers light and delicate. It was almost sweet. But when he leaned forward with the needle in hand, I flinched and pulled away. My voice was the softest of whispers when I squeaked out a "no", begging him to back up and leave me be. A quick slap across my cheek was enough to silence me long enough for the Master to stretch out my arm and slide the needle inside my vein. I choked back a sob as I felt the cool, iridescent liquid flow inside me, leaving a deep itching sensation behind as it burned through me. The needle was then pulled out and a handkerchief pressed to the entry point to catch my blood.

"Oh, you're going to smell so good with all that vortex energy inside you." The Master flashed me a giddy smile as he jumped up and down. "Can you imagine it, you and I? Drenched in blood and wreaking havoc together while the Doctor looks on in horror? What a pair we'll be."

"I would never-"

"Yes, you would," he snarled, deliberately enunciating each word. "And you will. I've made sure of it."

That iridescent stuff! I realized. I stared agape, hopeless, at the Master. "What did you do to me?"

The Time Lord beamed proudly at me. "I made you like me."

I stumbled off of the cot and blindly forward, bumping into another table after just a few steps. I didn't know what he meant or what had been inside that test tube, except it wasn't good. And for all I knew, the Doctor was nowhere to be found, assuming she (or he) really existed. No one was coming to save me because no one probably even knew I existed. I slid my fingers under the rim of my glasses, covering my eyes as I tried to block out the world around me.

"Tell me, Batyah, what makes you human? Better yet, what makes you good?" I could hear the Master's voice encircling me, presumably while the Master himself prowled around me like a hungry wildcat. "You follow the rules and morals that your society has set in place. You go to church and pray to your little god every week, and pretend you're better than everyone else because you follow the rules. But what about those secret, nasty little urges deep inside you, eh? I know you have them." His voice grew closer until finally his mouth rested on the shell of my ear. "You don't act on them, you hide them away in the recesses of your mind. You fight them and ignore them until you die and you can atone for what few sins you did while you were alive. So answer me this, Batyah bat Avraham v'Sarah." I bristled at the use of my Hebrew name, my sacred name that had been half bestowed and half self-chosen. "What happens to all your human rules when you stop being human?"

My hands dropped to my sides and I opened my eyes, turning to face the Master. "You keep my name out of your mouth," I snarled. "I don't know what the hell you did to me, but my name is sacred. Do not defile it."

He laughed again, this time throwing his head back while his entire body shook with the force of it. "Sacred? And how long is that going to last?"

"You don't know me! You have no idea who I am! My name, my god, my essence is sacred. Clearly yours is not."

The Master ran his tongue along his teeth. "Who knew all I to do was mention your god to get you riled up?" He leaned forward, his nose brushing mine. "How sacred will your god be when he fails to save you from me? Hm?"

"At least if I'm dead, you won't be around to torture me!"

"Who said I would ever let you die?" Another laugh that made me shudder and the Master refused to back out of my space. "Batyah, today you are reforged in blood and the fire of the vortex itself. You are never going to die! That's my gift to you and your curse." He took my hand in his and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. "May you live a long life."

Those words were like a slap in the face. The Master knew I was Jewish, he knew my name and my customs, and he knew what those words meant to me. He knew it was an Anglo-Jewish tradition to say those words to someone in mourning - someone, perhaps, like me. He had the audacity to use my people against me, to steal my autonomy, to profane my faith?

"Monster!" I shouted, putting all my strength into the effort of shoving my hands into the Time Lord's chest. "Bastard!"

No matter what I said, what I did, he wouldn't stop laughing. His laughter was everywhere, echoing in time to the four pattern drumbeat of my fists beating against his chest. A sharp pain shot up the side of my abdomen, then. I faltered, just for a moment, but it was long enough for the Master to overpower me and pin my arms behind my back. He looked down at me with what could be described as fondness as the pain began to worsen and I started squirming.

"It's starting." He turned and started for the Romanesque column in the corner, dragging me along behind him. "Come on, love. Can't waste time!"

As much as I wanted to fight him, the pain was quickly becoming overwhelming. It was a burning sensation that traveled from my heart to the rest of my body, eating up my senses as it progressed. My vision was starting to turn hazy and gold-tinted, fading in and out of focus and in and out of normalcy as I stumbled somewhat blindly after the Master. A panel set into the column opened up, allowing the Master and I to slip inside into a second, larger room.

This time, the room was made of red-tinted metal. There were no windows, no lamps, no furniture, nothing except a console in the center of the room illuminated by several red electronic screens. It was a TARDIS console room, undoubtedly the Master's. A panel of the console looked to be pried open, which revealed a small light that illuminated the interior in a soft golden glow. The light felt warm as we approached it, heating my chilled fingers and nose once we were close enough.

The Master forced me to kneel, then crouched beside me with one hand on my shoulder. "Touch it," he instructed.

Upon closer inspection, which was beginning to prove difficult as my body spasmed and my vision went haywire, the light was shining from some kind of rock about the size of my hand. The Master didn't have to ask me twice; the rock was inviting, urging me to touch it and warm myself by its heat. So I stretched out my hand and placed it gently upon the rock. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, everything happened. The light exploded around me so brightly that I felt as if I were standing on the surface of the sun. It swallowed me whole as tendrils of light began to spiral along my arm and up around my shoulder blade. I could feel it stretching around my neck like a vine, then branching off both towards my torso and towards my head. By the time it reached my eyes, my vision had already succumbed to the unrelenting whiteness of the light and I stopped being able to see anything other than the light. But with my sight gone, I could feel the rest of my body become enveloped piece by piece in the light tendrils.

A searing pain started in my fingertips and I screamed. I felt like I was being torn apart and put back together again. The white light suddenly disappeared, flashing and fizzling out into a dark, muddy vortex of rainbow iridescence that pulsated all around me. There was a wind tearing at my hair and clothes, stronger than any wind I had ever faced in my 25 years. The pulsating colors began to take shape under the guise of massive soundwaves, then bursting into vibrant fireworks everywhere I looked, even far beneath my feet as they dangled in what could only be the vast emptiness of space. I watched from both within and outside of myself as my body fractured into thousands of tiny pixels. Then those pixels exploded and buzzed around each other while a disembodied scream hung in the air. Golden-white light, impossibly bright, danced in the cloud of what remained of my body, slowly working its way through each pixel like a needle and thread as it began to stitch me back together.

I slowly returned to my body as it was reshaped, finally settling inside it with a little gasp. As the light finished stitching together my arms and legs, I began to take in my surroundings with a new understanding. I was in the time vortex. That's what the Master had meant when he said that I had vortex energy inside me, that's what he had put inside me. And then he had taken me inside his TARDIS, opened it up and revealed its heart to me like Rose Tyler had done once. I could feel the energy of the vortex and of the Master's TARDIS humming within me. The four-beat rhythm was there, as distant as a dream, but there was something else singing to me, some otherworldly and beautifully lilting voice. It was a song I had heard and known for years before, a song associated with the Master only by proxy because it wasn't the Master's song at all - it was the Doctor's.

My heart suddenly clenched deep in my chest. "Doctor," I whispered, a cloud of gold dust escaping my lips. The Doctor can save me, I thought. If he's real. So I raised my voice and shouted into the emptiness of space and time, "Doctor!"

From somewhere came the voice of the Master. "No no no no, don't you dare!" I could have even sworn I felt the Master's hands on me, trying to drag me from the vortex and back into his reality.

I called the Doctor's name again and again, fighting against the presence of the Master as he tried to stop me. The more I focused on the Doctor, picturing his (and her) different faces, the fainter the Master's presence became. The vortex itself began to fade in and out as if I were a TARDIS whisking myself away to some unknown place. Somehow I knew that if I could focus enough on the Doctor or on escaping, then I could be free of the Master and he wouldn't be able to do a thing to stop me.

The Master's voice still called to me, though. I could hear him shouting and beating his fist against his chest, scolding me and promising to reign hell on me if I didn't return to him that very instant. G-d, won't he shut up? I turned, my legs dangling uselessly, and focused on the Master. His face slowly reappeared and he flashed me a wicked grin, obviously smug that I was returning. But he didn't know the power that was thrumming to life in my fingertips. Neither did I.

I raised a hand and pointed at him, and simply said, "No more."

A lightning bolt of golden-white light burst from my fingers and shot him between the eyes. He screamed and howled, then vanished. With his presence no longer weighing me down, I turned my thoughts to the Doctor. Wherever there was danger or pain, the Doctor was usually there trying to make everything right again. I had to find her. Over a dozen different faces flashed before my mind's eye, finally stopping on the face I most strongly associated to the song buzzing inside my brain: the post-war, big-eared Northern Doctor, my first Doctor.

All of a sudden, as if I had been loaded into a cannon, my body was shot forward. The vortex and constellations and the entirety of the universe whizzed past me faster than the speed of sound while the time winds tore at my hair and clothes. I felt as if I had jumped out of a plane and was hurtling towards the Earth, parachute not included. A bright pinprick of light ahead blossomed into a giant, shining hole in reality. It was the same as the wall of light that I had overturned my truck trying to evade. Without slowing down, my body hurtled towards the light as shadows and figures began to appear on the other side of the light-wall.

I screamed, so shrilly and so deeply that I felt like my throat had been scratched raw, as I was thrown from the vortex, through the light-wall, and into a new world of orange and coral lights. First, I hit the ground and felt my head reverberate against a metal grate. Then I rolled over and over myself until finally smacking straight into a wooden wall of some kind. My eyes were squeezed shut immediately after as a wave of nausea swept over me.

The lilting song I had heard inside the vortex was gone, leaving only the echo of voices and footsteps. I could hear a man speaking in an American accent, a girl with a bubbly London accent, and a second woman, her voice a rich alto with hints of a Northern English accent, their voices far away and impossible to understand. The ground creaked beneath me as a presence appeared by my side, casting a shadow over my face. I groaned, and turned to my side so my back was facing the voices and the strange new presence I had yet to see.

A hand rested on my shoulder and I curled into myself. "Leave me alone," I begged.

"Batyah," came the gentle Northern voice. "Batyah, look at me."

"Doctor," I said, more to myself.

"I'm here, Bee," said the voice. A second hand urged me out of hiding and pulled me onto my back, gently brushing the hair from my face, but I kept my eyes shut. I was too afraid to open them. "Here, look at me."

I shook my head. "No. Doctor."

"I'm here!"

Finally, I opened my eyes. Staring right at me was a woman. She was handsome with a firm jawline, prominent cheekbones, a broad Greek nose, and the darkest midnight skin I had ever seen. I looked into her eyes, wide and dark like tree bark, and froze. There was something familiar in those eyes, something beautiful and vast and ancient. The woman smiled and took my face in her hand.

"I'm here, Bee. It's okay. You're okay."

A million questions were racing through my mind - who are you, where am I, what just happened to me, where's the Doctor, will you help me? I couldn't decide what to ask. I reached out and took hold of the woman's jacket, the leather lapel stretching and creaking faintly.

"Help me."

Her brows furrowed together, her eyes shifting across the breadth of my face as if searching for something. "What happened?"

"He took me. He-... I don't know how." I started rambling in a blind panic, my mouth barely able to keep up with all the words spilling out of me. "H-He showed me the heart of the TARDIS and then I was in the vortex and I exploded. And he put something inside me. I think it was the time vortex. I think he put the time vortex inside me. He said I wasn't human anymore. He said-."

"Who said?" There was a storm brewing in those eyes, but it didn't scare me. "The Master?"

I nodded. "The Master."

"Bee, tell me where we are."

That made me pause. "I don't understand."

"You and me. Where were you last?"

"No, I don't understand. What are you talking about?"

The woman frowned. The storm in her eyes seemed caught between a miserable rainfall and a lightning storm. "What's my name?"

I shook my head, completely at a loss. "I don't know."

Another voice, the voice of the bubbly Londoner, sounded from somewhere behind the woman kneeling before me. "Doctor? Is she alright?"

As the woman turned to answer her, I caught a glimpse of a couple standing several paces away. On the right was a man with close cut brown hair and bright, concerned eyes; his arms were crossed over his chest. The girl standing next to him was short and pretty with blonde hair and brown roots, and a burgundy and gray zip-up hoodie. She chewing worriedly at her lower lip with her hands drawn close to her stomach where she was scratching at her cuticles. It took a moment for their faces to register, but they were unmistakable once I realized who they were.

"Rose? Jack?"

All three people turned their attention to me and I recoiled into myself, startled. The woman who had come to my aide was staring at me as if her heart had just been shattered. I took a second look at her, noting the over-sized ears and leather jacket, the nearly shaved head, and v-neck jumper. It was almost as if she was the-

"Doctor?"