The Proposal

Adelaide leaned against the Doctor's TARDIS as she, again, watched his recording from inside the computer simulation. Though he was unable to see what the sonic glasses had been recording, they had still recorded the visible reality alongside the Doctor's memory print.

It was intriguing to think about the reality inside the computer simulation, especially when, apparently, Adelaide had known it was a simulation before the Doctor had. She'd tried to tell him that it had likely been because she could actually see, but he still claimed that she'd accomplished the impossible.

Until they found out, through the Doctor's end in her simulated office, that she'd been sent a copy of the Veritas by CERN – after all, the Doctor may have been on the Church's list, but Adelaide was on the scientists'. It was unclear if she'd actually recognized the simulation before receiving the Veritas translation, but the Doctor believed she had.

"Recognize them yet?" the Doctor called, sitting to the side with his guitar in his lap.

Adelaide replayed an image of the creatures again. She knew that she'd never encountered this exact species before – neither had the Doctor, which they'd determined by Adelaide's description of the creatures – but there was something familiar about them. "The shadow world..." She blinked. How had she missed that? The actions, the attire, their... "Oh, of course."

The Doctor straightened. "Of course what?"

"They're known as the Monks."

"You've met them before?"

"Heard of them. The few times their presence survived their evacuation, at least." She turned to face him. "They make a simulation of a planet to determine how easy the planet would be to conquer. Then they make their move."

He frowned. "Attack?"

"Not directly. If I remember rightly, they take advantage of an already existing worldwide catastrophe. It seems they are capable of seeing into the immediate future."

The Doctor nodded, picking at a small tune on his guitar. "The end of your life has already begun. There is a last place you will ever go, a last door you will ever walk through, a last sight you will ever see, and every step you ever take is moving you closer. The end of the world is a billion, billion tiny moments. And somewhere, unnoticed, in silence or in darkness, it has already begun."

Adelaide studied the Time Lord as someone knocked on his TARDIS door. He turned towards the sound, but Adelaide kept watching him. She was very glad that he couldn't see her, even if they were a proper distance apart.

"You talking to yourself in there?" Bill called, clearly the knocker.

"To Adelaide."

"You've been in there for hours. I've been trying to talk to you." Adelaide blinked at that, incredibly annoyed at herself for, clearly, having not been paying attention to her surroundings as she attempted to recognize the Monks. She didn't even know how much time had passed since she'd started. "Have you double-locked this thing?"

The Doctor stood, put his guitar to the side, and moved to take the sonic glasses, which Adelaide held out for him. She was careful not to let them touch, as though worried he would be able to tell her thoughts from the contact, as absurd as she knew that to be. "We were busy thinking." He slipped on the glasses. "Excellent," he mumbled at a volume only he and Adelaide could hear. "Who needs eyesight?"

"Remember those creatures the Doctor and I told you about?" Adelaide called to Bill. Though she respected – however stupid she thought it might be – the Doctor's decision to still keep his blindness secret from Bill, she had not permitted him to keep the simulation and immediate threat a secret as well. "They're called Monks."

The Doctor nodded. He was staring at Adelaide and she wondered if he was using memories to create a new face for her. "If they've modeled every event in human history, if they've simulated entire events streamed from day one till now, think what they'd know. Think what they could do with that."

"The UN called. They want you in Turmezistan immediately. Both of you."

The Doctor made a face, turning and making his way to the door. "Tell them no." He opened it, leaned out, and immediately stopped. Adelaide turned to look over his shoulder and sighed. She really hadn't been paying attention. They'd moved the TARDIS onto a plane she vaguely recognized from Missy's attempts at a Cyberman army gift. "Oh." Clearly, though the Doctor wasn't able to see details, he could still sense the change. Adelaide knew what the Doctor was capable of knowing now, thanks to her investigation of the sonic glasses' capabilities. The glasses could see the outline of shapes, even drastic differences in light, but true physical details were unknowable.

"They wouldn't take no for an answer," Nardole said, stepping into Adelaide's line of sight.

"Rude." The Doctor didn't step back as Adelaide came beside him. "How did they get it out of my office? The windows aren't big enough."

"Oh," a man, some kind of colonel, said. "They are now."

"Are you going to ask what's going on?" Bill asked.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, looking around the space. "Last I heard, you were on a date with Penny. What happened?" Apparently, since the simulation had included Bill's date with the other human, the Doctor had decided it was a good idea to make that come to pass in their reality, despite the fact Adelaide hadn't thought that was actually a good idea.

"Er..." Bill exchanged a look with Adelaide, "the United Nations Secretary-General."

"Awesome."

Bill shook her head. "Nah, that wasn't a metaphor."

"Good, because I really wasn't following it."

"Mr. President, Madame Secretary, I'm very pleased to see both of you," an older man said as he entered the room. Adelaide guessed he was said Secretary-General. "I think we have something of interest." He held out a tablet. The pyramid on it made Adelaide suck in a breath, but the Doctor couldn't see anything.

"Why don't you tell me in your own words?" the Doctor asked him.

Thankfully, the Secretary-General didn't question the request. "It's a matter of a pyramid."

|C-S|

Surprisingly, the United Nations was actually willing to let the Time Lords – primarily Adelaide due to the Doctor's blindness – pilot the TARDIS down to the Pyramid. The Secretary-General even agreed to come down with them. Now, the assembled group stood looking at the massive pyramid in the not so short distance.

"Tell me what you see," the Doctor said, addressing them all.

"A five-thousand-year-old pyramid."

"What do you know?"

Bill looked the pyramid up and down. "It wasn't there yesterday."

Adelaide nodded. "Therefore?"

"It's not really a pyramid. It's something disguised as a pyramid, that just appeared out of thin air, and that's all way beyond human technology, so it's got to be alien. It's an alien space ship."

"Technically, it is a pyramid." Adelaide looked at Bill. "A pyramid is a geometric shape with triangular sides that converge on one point. That," she nodded at the pyramid, "is still a pyramid, even if it didn't originate on Earth, which it did not."

The Doctor grinned at that. "Mathematician and biologist."

"I am the clever one."

The colonel didn't seem overly amused, unlike Bill. "But what's it doing?"

"It could have chosen anywhere on this planet. It chose to sit on the strategic intersection of the three most powerful armies on Earth. So what it's doing, Colonel, is sending us a message."

"What message?"

"Bring it." The Doctor soniced the barrier and walked forward. Adelaide was very thankful that he did not offer her the chance to come along. She would have felt obliged to join him and would have hated herself for it. He knew that and respected it, even if he didn't understand or agree with it.

But she would, as they previously discussed, be able to give him updates on the situation. It would allow him to take advantage of her ability to 'notice everything' and 'use her eyes'.

"Mr. President?" the Secretary-General said, looking to Adelaide as though she would stop him.

"Sir? What are you doing?"

The barrier closed. "Bringing it." He tapped his sonic glasses and Adelaide raised her sonic, using it to transmit to him.

"What's he doing?" the Secretary-General asked Adelaide. "We don't know what that thing is capable of."

"Precisely why he," Adelaide nodded at the Doctor, "is the one going, and not you." She flicked on the sonic, which allowed her to speak to him and hear what he heard. "Nothing yet."

"What are you doing?" Bill asked her.

"I'm the clever one. I'm responsible for observations." Stones at the bottom of the pyramid began to move. "It's opening. Like a door." She took a step closer to the barrier. "One of the Monks is emerging." The creature looked exactly like what the Doctor had seen in the simulation.

"Hello?" the Doctor asked, speaking carefully.

"We know you."

"Then you'll know that there is a line in the sand, and I'm the man on the other side of it. You want to keep me that way."

"We will take this planet and its people."

"You will be prevented. You will be fought."

The Monk didn't seem bothered. "We will be invited. We will take this world. We will rule its people. But only when we're asked. We will talk again."

"The Monk is returning to the pyramid," Adelaide reported.

"When?" the Doctor asked it.

"At the end of the Earth."

"The stone closed." As Adelaide spoke, alerts sounded from every nearby device, including her phone. Everyone took their devices out to study. The clocks had changed.

"11:57 PM," the colonel said.

"Yeah, mine too."

"Everyone's is," Adelaide reported.

"What's that mean, 11:57?" Bill asked Adelaide.

"Also known as three minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Clock."

Nardole frowned. "The what?"

"A symbolic clock face begun by atomic scientists in 1947 that represents a countdown to possible global catastrophe. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the planet is to a global disaster. At the moment, it is set at three minutes to midnight."

Bill's eyes widened. "So now every clock in the world is the Doomsday Clock."

"Due to the Monks."

"Is this a threat?"

Adelaide watched the Doctor turn, beginning to make his way back to them. "I believe it's a warning. The Monks are not direct enough for threats. Somewhere, somehow, the end of your world has begun."

|C-S|

While the Doctor stood before the gathered world leaders, Adelaide sat at the table. She made herself be comfortable with it. Made herself be fine with it.

"Listen to me," the Doctor said, looking around at them as though he could see them. "Those creatures in that pyramid, they have studied your species, your civilization, your entire history. They've run a computer simulation of this world since you lot first slopped out of the ocean looking for a fight, and they have chosen this exact moment and this exact place to arrive. Why?"

"Because a war's about to break out?" Bill suggested.

The Doctor nodded. "Possibly. But whatever it is, they're right here, right now because they believe humanity will be at its weakest."

"Then we'll demonstrate strength," a Chinese representative, a woman named Xiaolian, said. "We will attack the pyramid."

Nardole, behind the Doctor, crossed his arms. "Force is never the answer. Isn't that right, Doctor?"

At that moment, the Doctor ignored Adelaide and Nardole. "Contact your masters. Coordinate your attacks."

Adelaide leaned forward. "Doctor, they will barely damage the pyramid. It's not worth the danger."

"But if they demonstrate strength and unity, they might choose to step away." He moved over towards Bill. "Bill, take that look off your face."

The human, whose expression very closely mirrored Nardole's, shook her head. "There's no look on my face."

"They did not come here in peace. We have to do what we can."

"Which does not mean attacking," Adelaide cut in, though the Time Lord still didn't look at her.

All of their phones rang again. "It's two minutes to now," Nardole reported.

"The Doomsday Clock is moving."

The Secretary-General looked between the Time Lords. "What do we do?" Adelaide clenched her jaw, but stayed silent, watching the Doctor.

"Coordinate your attacks."

At that, Adelaide stood and went to the Doctor's side as he turned to look at the pyramid. Bill, as she did so, went to talk to Nardole. "Doctor..."

"We don't have time to talk," he cut her off.

"It takes time to coordinate attacks," she said.

"Sometimes there's a time for violence."

"And that time isn't now." Adelaide took the Doctor's arm, forcing him to turn to her. "Doctor, we don't know what the Monks are capable of."

"You said they were waiting for the planet to destroy itself."

"I said I thought that's what they were doing. I've only ever heard stories, and those stories were heavily manipulated by faulty memories. The Monks mess with reality."

"Then we mess back."

Adelaide released the Doctor's arm and flexed her fingers. She did not turn as Bill stepped up, despite the human's obvious nervousness. "Did Nardole send you?"

"Might have done. Might have said there was something the two of you ought to tell me."

The Doctor swallowed. He'd turned back to the window as though it would help him see anything. "Funny thing, fear, isn't it? Once it rules you, you're even afraid to admit what's scaring you. For the record, I, for one, fully understand my weakness."

The lie was so strong that even the Doctor winced slightly at what he'd said. Before Adelaide could speak, a bright light burst from the top of the pyramid, briefly blinding the people in the room.

"Oh God," Bill gasped, "what's that?" The Time Lords didn't have to speak before they both turned on their heels and led the way out of the building and towards the pyramid as the rest of the humans communicated to their attackers. "So, why is the pyramid active now?"

"Possibly they know they're about to be bombed."

Adelaide sighed. "I did say that they seemed capable of seeing into the future."

They watched a plane approach the pyramid, but it got caught by the pyramid's light and was lowered to the ground. By the time it landed, three Monks were standing by it, having appeared out of nowhere.

"It's the Monks," Nardole said, frowning. "They've hijacked the plane. How did they do that?" The three Monks turned and returned to the pyramid. Three humans, looking to be the crew of the grounded plane, emerged, looking confused. "Oh, they're fine. The crew are alive."

Three more men emerged. "Who are those guys?" Bill asked.

"I think they're ours," the Russian representative, Ilya, said.

"Yours?"

"We targeted the pyramid with a missile." There was a whooshing sound and a thud, and then a submarine appeared on the ground. "From a submarine."

The Doctor nodded. "So demonstrating strength isn't going to help." Adelaide restrained herself from her expected remark, though she knew the Doctor understood what she would have said.

"We are ready to talk," a Monk said, heard even as far away as the group had stopped. Carefully, the Time Lords both gave a nod.

Xiaolian led the way to the pyramid, which the Monks have left open. Bill stepped closer to the Time Lords. "I mean, this is a trap, right?"

"Almost certainly."

"And we're just walking into it."

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, every trap you walk into is a chance to learn about your enemies. Impossible to set a trap without making a self-portrait of your own weaknesses."

"Great." Bill nodded. "Unless it kills us."

"Well, you could say that about anything." Behind them, the door closed.

A Monk was waiting at the end of the corridor. "The human race is about to end. The chain of events is already in motion. Life on Earth will cease by humanity's own hand. Observe." The Monk turned and the wall behind it opened, allowing it and the group to pass through.

The room beyond had more Monks, but they were all focused on what vaguely resembled a tree of bright fiberoptic cables.

"Ah," the Doctor nodded. "The simulation machine looks a bit different from the outside."

"We are modeling the future," the Monk explained. "Each thread is a chain of days, leading to your end. We can detect when a catastrophe is about to occur."

"And?"

"Stop it from occurring." Adelaide frowned at that. It did not match her understanding of the Monks.

The colonel looked the Monks over. "You don't look much like guardian angels."

"We have chosen this form to look like you."

That, if anything, horrified the colonel more. "You look like corpses."

"You are corpses to us. Your world is ending. You can do nothing, but we can save you."

The Doctor spread his arms. "Save us, then."

The Monk did not move. "To save you we must be asked."

"Then what?"

"We will protect you."

"For how long?" Adelaide asked.

"Forever."

Adelaide looked to the Doctor. "This is how the Monks work. Asking them for help has conditions. If they are invited in, it will be the last free action."

"If you do not ask for help, then see the days to come," the Monk said. Other Monks turned, freeing cables for the group to take. "These are the threads that lead to one year in your future. Take them as proof."

Everyone moved forward, even Adelaide, and took a cable. The destruction they saw...it did not match the established timeline for the destruction of Earth. Earth was meant to die, like all planets, but Adelaide knew it wasn't meant to be now. Not like this.

Vaguely, she heard the humans stepping back from the cables, gasping in their shock. She forced herself to focus on the Doctor's voice as he spoke. "Planet Earth with not a single living thing. Dead as the moon."

"You both seem pretty damn calm about it."

Adelaide released the cable a moment before the Doctor did. "It is not our first dead planet."

"Ask for help," the Monk said. "It will be given."

"Why do you need to be asked?"

"Power must consent."

The Doctor frowned. "Power must consent. What does that mean?"

"Those who hold power on this world must consent to our dominion."

"Why?"

Their phones rang again. "One minute to midnight," Nardole reported.

"You could take this planet in a...in a heartbeat." The Doctor shook his head. "Why do you need consent?" Normally, Adelaide loved consent, but this was not real consent. This was forced. A last attempt for salvation, chosen by the threatened out of desperation over any real love.

"We must be wanted. We must be loved. To rule through fear is inefficient."

The Doctor nodded. "Of course. Fear is temporary. Love is slavery."

The Secretary-General stepped forward. "If consent is what you need, I consent now."

Adelaide turned to him. "No, don't do this, Secretary-General. Do not even consider it."

"What I saw was real. I felt it. If you help us, I consent."

"Please, listen to her!" the Doctor tried.

The Monk stepped up to the Secretary-General and shined a light on him, though the true source of light was unseen. "Do you have power?"

"I have power."

"Does power consent?"

"Please, stop. Just stop this."

The Monk did not pay attention to him. "If your consent is impure, it will kill you."

Adelaide frowned. "Impure? Do you mean..."

"You act out of fear," the Monk said, and it served as an answer to Adelaide's unfinished question. "Fear is not consent." The Monk touched the Secretary-General's forehead and turned him into dust. The humans gasped in horror.

The Doctor's expression hardened. "Planet Earth does not consent to your help, your presence, or your conquest. Thank you for playing the big pyramid game. Bye, bye." He waved. "See you again next week, hopefully not."

"Without our help, Planet Earth is doomed."

"Yes? Well, it's been doomed before. Guess what happened? Me!"

And for one of the only times in her long life, Adelaide was thankful for the Doctor and his knack for interference.

A/N: The Monks really are terrible for Adelaide to face. Weaponizing consent, too involved with time...