CHAPTER TWO - THE DETERMINANT
Within the confines of San Francisco's Walker General Hospital, was the morgue. In body room number eight, the seventh Doctor lay on a gurney, seemingly dead. His body had suffered a major seizure during an operation to save his life, after he had been gunned down, soon after arriving in the city. He was covered in a white shroud and was waiting for the regenerative process to begin, when suddenly, his lifeless body vanished. The first player in the Master's deadly game of revenge had been lifted from his appropriate time zone and deposited within the Determinant.
Outside, in the hospital, time froze.
The Doctor slowly allowed his eyes to open, ever so slightly. Quickly, he closed them again. He felt disorientated, and a strange electrical buzz filled his ears. The Doctor tried to remember what had happened. He opened his eyes fully and looked around himself. He was lying sprawled out on the floor of a dark and brooding alleyway. The sound of traffic was all around him, obviously he had arrived in a big city somewhere, but why was he laying down?
The Doctor sat up on one elbow. He had a terrible feeling of foreboding, a feeling that he shouldn't really be there at all. Reaching out with his hand, he picked up his well loved Panama hat and threw it onto his head. A little shakily, he got to his feet, and realised that he had been leaning against the door of the TARDIS. As he went to open the door, his faithful transport vanished into thin air.
"Well, I didn't do that!" he exclaimed.
Thunder rumbled overhead, with the promise of a storm. The Doctor held out his palm, and something fell from the sky and clattered on the floor by his feet. It was a black umbrella, with a stylised question mark handle. The Doctor himself had owned just such an umbrella once. Suddenly another fell from the sky, and another, and another, and soon the Doctor was running for shelter as a torrant of umbrellas pelted down on him from above.
The Doctor found refuge inside an old brick doorway to a boarded up shop. Where in the universe did it rain umbrellas? The background noise of the city faded away into silence. Cautiously, the Doctor ventured out of his hiding place.
The Master chuckled at the look of bemusement on the Doctor's face. The umbrella storm was a nice touch, he thought. Now it was time to really challenge his enemy.
The Doctor circled the area of ground where the TARDIS had but moments ago stood. Who was capable of hi-jacking a TARDIS? The answer was any number of entities. The Time Lords perhaps, or the Guardians, or maybe a Chronovore. A sudden gust of wind blew the Doctor's hat off. A heavy gale was blowing through the alleyway, causing the Doctor's jacket to flap about him madly. The savage wind swirled about him, pulling him in all directions. Suddenly, it subsided and mocking laughter echoed all around him. Familiar laughter.
"Oh no!" The ground beneath the Doctor's feet collapsed inwards, and he tumbled into a black void.
The Doctor lost track of how long he had fallen head over heels through nothingness, when a silver, metallic floor suddenly rushed up to meet him. He landed in an undignified heap, legs sprawled out behind him. The metal floor was cold, but it gave off a faint electronic hum. The Doctor rubbed his bruised head and tried to remember where he had heard that sound before. Getting to his feet, he realised that he was in a long stark corridoor. The Doctor followed the corridoor along until he came to a large metal door. A kind of pressure pad was placed at mid-height next to the door. The Doctor placed his palm against the door. Nothing happened. Reaching into his sports jacket he produced his sonic screwdriver. The small device buzzed as he held it's tip against the pad. The pad blew off the wall in a shower of sparks and scorched wiring.
The door whispered open, and the Doctor stepped into a huge, dark, circular chamber beyond. It was some kind of amphitheatre. A circular disk was situated in the centre of the floor on the bottom level. The Doctor peered into the gloom.
The Doctor remembered now where he was. He was standing in the Imperial court chamber on the Dalek homeworld of Skaro. It was on that disk, where his arch-nemesis the Master had been imprisonned and later put on trial. The Daleks had calmly and efficiently exterminated his existence.
All the lights in the chamber suddenly blazed on, and each tier of the amphitheatre contained an unbroken line of Daleks, their gunmetal grey shells shining brightly in the harsh light. Thousands of eye-stalks stared coldly at the Doctor, and likewise the same number of weapons were aimed at him. Quickly spinning round to escape the way he had entered the chamber, the Doctor's path was barred by a cream and black shelled Dalek.
"Stay where you are!" The Dalek intoned in it's grating and distinctive voice. "Do not move, or you will be exterminated!"
The Doctor grinned at the abonination in front of him.
"Daleks!" he mused. "You never did learn the art of conversation, did you?"
The Doctor stared hard into the lense on the end of the Dalek's eye-stalk. "I wiped out your miserable race once" a sudden frown passed across the Doctor's face. "Or at least, I think I did."
The Doctor turned away from the metallic monster and glanced up at the dizzying heights of the chamber. Where was the crippled, twisted genius behind his most hated of foes. The Doctor spun around and prodded the Dalek's shell.
"Where's Davros?" he asked.
"My dear Doctor" a smooth and cultured voice replied. "It isn't Davros or the Daleks that you should concern yourself with!"
The Doctor turned to face the voice. The Master stood proud and erect on the disk, hands behind his back. The Doctor stared long and hard at his enemy. The neat hair and beard were the same, but it was the Master's eyes and teeth that had changed. His eyes were those of a cat, and two long, sharp canines glinted in his mouth.
"So I see you escaped from the Cheetah planet's destruction" the Doctor said in a conversational manner. "But the memory lingers on"
The Master nodded. "Quite so, Doctor!" the Master retorted. "The Cheetah DNA corruption continues to ravage my body"
The Doctor looked grave. "You're still turning into an animal!"
"One day I shall forget everything, I shall succome to my base instincts, and then...." the Master lost his train of thought, and the Doctor realised just how much strain he was under trying to keep the Cheetah enchantment at bay.
"He's worn out!" the Doctor thought to himself.
"But my will is strong, Doctor!" the Master stated, as though he had caught the thought. "That is why I shall destroy you while I am still able to!"
The Doctor glared into the Master's eyes. "The hunt!" he snapped.
The Master's eyes blazed with pure savagery. "Yes!" the Master snarled, gnashing his pointed teeth.
"The chase!" the Doctor continued. "The smell of your enemy on the wind, the fatal blow, the taste of your enemies blood in your mouth!"
The Master arched his back and howled, a terrible, inhuman wail.
"Go hunting!" the Doctor cried at the top of his voice, and the Master tensed every lithe muscle in his body and then leapt into the air, where he vanished, carried back to the hunting grounds on the planet of the Cheetah people.
The Doctor glanced around himself. The Daleks were all standing silent and unmoving. He was certain now that someone or something had been playing around with his timeline, but there was still a terrible unease at the back of his mind.
"There's something terribly wrong here!" he sighed to himself.
Slipping quietly past the dormant Dalek, the Doctor re-entered the long metal walled corridoor, and he stopped dead, thunderstruck. The TARDIS was sitting in the middle of an intersection of four corridoors. Cautiously, the Doctor approached the blue box. Could it be another trick of the Master's devising? Another illusion?
The Doctor warily placed the tip of his right index finger against the TARDIS exterior. The door swung inwards and a big neon sign in bright pink flashed on and off in front of him.
" LOOK BEHIND YOU "
The Doctor turned on his heels, but not quickly enough to avoid the devastating firepower of the four Daleks which had quietly surrounded him. The force of the deadly energy beams blew the Doctor backwards into the TARDIS. The door closed behind him, and the TARDIS dematerialised.
The Master was enjoying the destruction of his enemy.
"No regeneration yet, Doctor!" he chuckled. "Your torments are just beginning!"
The Doctor lay on his back on the console room floor, his face a tight mask of agony as the radiation from the Dalek's weapons coursed through his body.
"No!" he screamed mentally. "Not like this! This is wrong!" Clenching his fists into balls, he rolled over and reached up towards the TARDIS console, but it was no good. His strength failed him, and he fell heavily back onto the floor. This time he did not get up.
The Doctor felt a cool sensation moving across his forehead. Was he alive? He wasn't sure. He had the terrible feeling that he shouldn't be, but why? He risked opening his eyes. He was obviously lying down somewhere, because it was unmistakably a ceiling that he was looking at.
A hand came into view, a hand which held a damp flannel. He felt the cool sensation once again on his forehead. Why was he being comforted? Why was it so difficult to move all of a sudden?
A face appeared in his line of vision. It was a young female face, both hard and compassionate. Recognition dawned on the Doctor.
"Ace!" he whispered.
"You've been in the wars proffessor!" she said warmly. "Try to relax, I'll look after you"
As she went to dab the Doctor's forehead again, he shot out a hand and grabbed her wrist in a vice-like grip.
"What's happened to me? You're not even supposed to be here!"
Ace prised apart the Doctor's fingers and placed his hand on his chest. He lifted his head and urgently looked at his surroundings. He was in a small room, tucked up inside a neat, clean bed. Someone had undressed him.
"What is this place, and where are my clothes?"
Ace put a finger to her lips. "Rest proffessor, and I'll explain everything!"
The Doctor's head sank back onto the soft pillow. The room, he noticed was bathed in a cold blue light. He couldn't see any windows. To his left, a piece of machinery emitted a constant, regular beep, beep, beep. He glanced across at it.
"Why am I hooked up to a heart monitor? It's hardly giving a correct reading for someone like me who has a bi-cardiovascular system!"
Ace remembered that the Doctor had two hearts. "Proffessor, you're in hospital"
"Hospital? Am I ill then?"
"You could say that"
"Really? Why?"
"You've been shot!"
The Doctor closed his eyes and said nothing. Ace had never seen such a defeated look upon his face before, in fact, he seemed resigned. His skin was deathly pale and cool to the touch.
"Proffessor?" she ventured.
Ever so slowly, the Doctor turned his face towards hers. He reached for her hand and took it gently in his. "Thank you for being here!" he said quietly.
Ace gripped his hand tightly. She tried to say something, anything that could rally the Doctor's spirit, but words failed her.
The Doctor shook his head sadly. "I'm dying, Ace!"
"There must be something we can do!" Ace shouted in desperation. "Can't you regenerate?"
"Not this time!" The Doctor's voice was getting weaker by the moment.
A single tear ran down Ace's cheek and splashed onto the Doctor's face. "Please don't die, Proffessor!" she pleaded.
The Doctor tried to raise a smile, but his energy, like his life was ebbing rapidly away. "Nothing lasts forever, not even a Time Lord!"
"Daleks did this to you!" Ace spat the words out.
The Doctor blinked, once. "So that's it!" he thought to himself. The Dalek firepower had overwhelmed his regenerative capacity. His body could not trigger the renewal process. It was all over.
An icy numbness overtook his body, and it became increasingly difficult for him to think coherently. His Time Lord body was closing down, and a kind of peace settled over him. The Doctor thought he could hear his own voice talking to Ace.
"And so Time's Champion takes his final bow, enter in, the eighth man bound!"
Total darkness closed in around him.
Ace watched in reverent silence as her friend slipped quietly away from her. She wondered if Time Lords went to heaven? She released the Doctor's hand and it dropped lifelessly back onto the bed.
He was gone.
Within the confines of Siralos, the Master coldly observed the events that he had orchestrated. He hadn't felt this good since he had destroyed Logopolis. He reached up with a black gloved hand and wiped away a non-existant tear.
"Such a loss!" he stated solemly, and then burst into fits of laughter.
The temperature in the small room had dropped considerably after the Doctor had died. A thin sheen of frost had settled over the Doctor's skin. Ace felt chilled in more ways than one. Without looking back at the bed, she ran from the room.
The Doctor sat bolt upright in bed with a gasp. Beads of sweat had formed on his brow, and his breathing was fast, but he was alive.
"Bad dreams, Doctor?" The Master stood at the foot of the Doctor's bed. "Did you think that I would let you off so easily?"
The Doctor studied his adversary. "A new look! Another stolen body?" he enquired. "Not this time, Doctor"
The Doctor glanced down at himself in bed. "Would it be too much to ask for, if I could perhaps be clothed?"
The Master snapped his fingers and the Doctor's clothes appeared at the end of the bed. He watched the Doctor like a hawk as he got dressed. The Doctor smiled at him. "That's better!" he said. "Now then, what sinister little scheme are you involved in now, may I venture to enquire?"
"Why naturally, your destruction, Doctor!" the Master purred.
The Docctor gave an extravagant yawn "That's original, but I must warn you that I no longer have my old inclination to play games"
The Master raised an eyebrow.
"Like a fine wine, I've matured over the years!" the Doctor continued.
The Master held up a hand for silence and chuckled. "But my dear Doctor, you are already playing a game!" he explained. "A game of my own devising, which will end with your total anhiallation!"
The Doctor shook his head sadly.
"Look around you Doctor!" the Master stated. "Notice anything different?"
The Doctor couldn't believe his eyes. His surroundings had completely altered. The small hospital room had vanished, and now he and the Master were standing in the middle of a huge, grey, dusty plain. Mountains lined the horizon in the far distance, and there was no sign of any other life on the plain apart from the two rival Time Lords.
"Do you recognise this place, Doctor?" the Master taunted.
The Doctor knew exactly where he was, and it frightened him. "Yes! This is the wilderness beyond the Capitol" the Doctor stated flatly. "We're on Gallifrey!"
The Master laughed and applauded the Doctor. "Just so!" he chuckled mirthlessly. "You havn't been here in a long time have you Doctor, I wonder why?"
A chill ran down the Doctor's spine.
"When was the last time you saw your family?"
An all encompassing fear gripped the Doctor. "No please, not them!"
The Doctor dropped to his knees in front of the Master. The ground beneath him began to tremble and shake as something huge began to push it's way up from below. The plain behind the Doctor erupted into the air as his old ancestral home, the forgotten house of Lungbarrow emerged from it's long burial and towered over him. The old and rotten timbers creaked loudly as the edifice settled into it's new position above the plain.
The Master smiled cruelly down at the Doctor.
"I'm still toying with you, Doctor. You amuse me, but be warned, the second I tire of you, will be your last!"
The Doctor turned to face his old home. It's battered and warped front door screeched open on rusty hinges. He slowly got to his feet and glared at the house. The Master quietly moved beside him.
"They're waiting for you, Doctor" he said softly.
Without a backward glance at the Master, the Doctor strode purposefully up to the house's front door and went inside. The door slammed shut behind him and the house once again sank beneath the surface of the barren plain. It's wayward child had returned to it.
Within the confines of San Francisco's Walker General Hospital, was the morgue. In body room number eight, the seventh Doctor lay on a gurney, seemingly dead. His body had suffered a major seizure during an operation to save his life, after he had been gunned down, soon after arriving in the city. He was covered in a white shroud and was waiting for the regenerative process to begin, when suddenly, his lifeless body vanished. The first player in the Master's deadly game of revenge had been lifted from his appropriate time zone and deposited within the Determinant.
Outside, in the hospital, time froze.
The Doctor slowly allowed his eyes to open, ever so slightly. Quickly, he closed them again. He felt disorientated, and a strange electrical buzz filled his ears. The Doctor tried to remember what had happened. He opened his eyes fully and looked around himself. He was lying sprawled out on the floor of a dark and brooding alleyway. The sound of traffic was all around him, obviously he had arrived in a big city somewhere, but why was he laying down?
The Doctor sat up on one elbow. He had a terrible feeling of foreboding, a feeling that he shouldn't really be there at all. Reaching out with his hand, he picked up his well loved Panama hat and threw it onto his head. A little shakily, he got to his feet, and realised that he had been leaning against the door of the TARDIS. As he went to open the door, his faithful transport vanished into thin air.
"Well, I didn't do that!" he exclaimed.
Thunder rumbled overhead, with the promise of a storm. The Doctor held out his palm, and something fell from the sky and clattered on the floor by his feet. It was a black umbrella, with a stylised question mark handle. The Doctor himself had owned just such an umbrella once. Suddenly another fell from the sky, and another, and another, and soon the Doctor was running for shelter as a torrant of umbrellas pelted down on him from above.
The Doctor found refuge inside an old brick doorway to a boarded up shop. Where in the universe did it rain umbrellas? The background noise of the city faded away into silence. Cautiously, the Doctor ventured out of his hiding place.
The Master chuckled at the look of bemusement on the Doctor's face. The umbrella storm was a nice touch, he thought. Now it was time to really challenge his enemy.
The Doctor circled the area of ground where the TARDIS had but moments ago stood. Who was capable of hi-jacking a TARDIS? The answer was any number of entities. The Time Lords perhaps, or the Guardians, or maybe a Chronovore. A sudden gust of wind blew the Doctor's hat off. A heavy gale was blowing through the alleyway, causing the Doctor's jacket to flap about him madly. The savage wind swirled about him, pulling him in all directions. Suddenly, it subsided and mocking laughter echoed all around him. Familiar laughter.
"Oh no!" The ground beneath the Doctor's feet collapsed inwards, and he tumbled into a black void.
The Doctor lost track of how long he had fallen head over heels through nothingness, when a silver, metallic floor suddenly rushed up to meet him. He landed in an undignified heap, legs sprawled out behind him. The metal floor was cold, but it gave off a faint electronic hum. The Doctor rubbed his bruised head and tried to remember where he had heard that sound before. Getting to his feet, he realised that he was in a long stark corridoor. The Doctor followed the corridoor along until he came to a large metal door. A kind of pressure pad was placed at mid-height next to the door. The Doctor placed his palm against the door. Nothing happened. Reaching into his sports jacket he produced his sonic screwdriver. The small device buzzed as he held it's tip against the pad. The pad blew off the wall in a shower of sparks and scorched wiring.
The door whispered open, and the Doctor stepped into a huge, dark, circular chamber beyond. It was some kind of amphitheatre. A circular disk was situated in the centre of the floor on the bottom level. The Doctor peered into the gloom.
The Doctor remembered now where he was. He was standing in the Imperial court chamber on the Dalek homeworld of Skaro. It was on that disk, where his arch-nemesis the Master had been imprisonned and later put on trial. The Daleks had calmly and efficiently exterminated his existence.
All the lights in the chamber suddenly blazed on, and each tier of the amphitheatre contained an unbroken line of Daleks, their gunmetal grey shells shining brightly in the harsh light. Thousands of eye-stalks stared coldly at the Doctor, and likewise the same number of weapons were aimed at him. Quickly spinning round to escape the way he had entered the chamber, the Doctor's path was barred by a cream and black shelled Dalek.
"Stay where you are!" The Dalek intoned in it's grating and distinctive voice. "Do not move, or you will be exterminated!"
The Doctor grinned at the abonination in front of him.
"Daleks!" he mused. "You never did learn the art of conversation, did you?"
The Doctor stared hard into the lense on the end of the Dalek's eye-stalk. "I wiped out your miserable race once" a sudden frown passed across the Doctor's face. "Or at least, I think I did."
The Doctor turned away from the metallic monster and glanced up at the dizzying heights of the chamber. Where was the crippled, twisted genius behind his most hated of foes. The Doctor spun around and prodded the Dalek's shell.
"Where's Davros?" he asked.
"My dear Doctor" a smooth and cultured voice replied. "It isn't Davros or the Daleks that you should concern yourself with!"
The Doctor turned to face the voice. The Master stood proud and erect on the disk, hands behind his back. The Doctor stared long and hard at his enemy. The neat hair and beard were the same, but it was the Master's eyes and teeth that had changed. His eyes were those of a cat, and two long, sharp canines glinted in his mouth.
"So I see you escaped from the Cheetah planet's destruction" the Doctor said in a conversational manner. "But the memory lingers on"
The Master nodded. "Quite so, Doctor!" the Master retorted. "The Cheetah DNA corruption continues to ravage my body"
The Doctor looked grave. "You're still turning into an animal!"
"One day I shall forget everything, I shall succome to my base instincts, and then...." the Master lost his train of thought, and the Doctor realised just how much strain he was under trying to keep the Cheetah enchantment at bay.
"He's worn out!" the Doctor thought to himself.
"But my will is strong, Doctor!" the Master stated, as though he had caught the thought. "That is why I shall destroy you while I am still able to!"
The Doctor glared into the Master's eyes. "The hunt!" he snapped.
The Master's eyes blazed with pure savagery. "Yes!" the Master snarled, gnashing his pointed teeth.
"The chase!" the Doctor continued. "The smell of your enemy on the wind, the fatal blow, the taste of your enemies blood in your mouth!"
The Master arched his back and howled, a terrible, inhuman wail.
"Go hunting!" the Doctor cried at the top of his voice, and the Master tensed every lithe muscle in his body and then leapt into the air, where he vanished, carried back to the hunting grounds on the planet of the Cheetah people.
The Doctor glanced around himself. The Daleks were all standing silent and unmoving. He was certain now that someone or something had been playing around with his timeline, but there was still a terrible unease at the back of his mind.
"There's something terribly wrong here!" he sighed to himself.
Slipping quietly past the dormant Dalek, the Doctor re-entered the long metal walled corridoor, and he stopped dead, thunderstruck. The TARDIS was sitting in the middle of an intersection of four corridoors. Cautiously, the Doctor approached the blue box. Could it be another trick of the Master's devising? Another illusion?
The Doctor warily placed the tip of his right index finger against the TARDIS exterior. The door swung inwards and a big neon sign in bright pink flashed on and off in front of him.
" LOOK BEHIND YOU "
The Doctor turned on his heels, but not quickly enough to avoid the devastating firepower of the four Daleks which had quietly surrounded him. The force of the deadly energy beams blew the Doctor backwards into the TARDIS. The door closed behind him, and the TARDIS dematerialised.
The Master was enjoying the destruction of his enemy.
"No regeneration yet, Doctor!" he chuckled. "Your torments are just beginning!"
The Doctor lay on his back on the console room floor, his face a tight mask of agony as the radiation from the Dalek's weapons coursed through his body.
"No!" he screamed mentally. "Not like this! This is wrong!" Clenching his fists into balls, he rolled over and reached up towards the TARDIS console, but it was no good. His strength failed him, and he fell heavily back onto the floor. This time he did not get up.
The Doctor felt a cool sensation moving across his forehead. Was he alive? He wasn't sure. He had the terrible feeling that he shouldn't be, but why? He risked opening his eyes. He was obviously lying down somewhere, because it was unmistakably a ceiling that he was looking at.
A hand came into view, a hand which held a damp flannel. He felt the cool sensation once again on his forehead. Why was he being comforted? Why was it so difficult to move all of a sudden?
A face appeared in his line of vision. It was a young female face, both hard and compassionate. Recognition dawned on the Doctor.
"Ace!" he whispered.
"You've been in the wars proffessor!" she said warmly. "Try to relax, I'll look after you"
As she went to dab the Doctor's forehead again, he shot out a hand and grabbed her wrist in a vice-like grip.
"What's happened to me? You're not even supposed to be here!"
Ace prised apart the Doctor's fingers and placed his hand on his chest. He lifted his head and urgently looked at his surroundings. He was in a small room, tucked up inside a neat, clean bed. Someone had undressed him.
"What is this place, and where are my clothes?"
Ace put a finger to her lips. "Rest proffessor, and I'll explain everything!"
The Doctor's head sank back onto the soft pillow. The room, he noticed was bathed in a cold blue light. He couldn't see any windows. To his left, a piece of machinery emitted a constant, regular beep, beep, beep. He glanced across at it.
"Why am I hooked up to a heart monitor? It's hardly giving a correct reading for someone like me who has a bi-cardiovascular system!"
Ace remembered that the Doctor had two hearts. "Proffessor, you're in hospital"
"Hospital? Am I ill then?"
"You could say that"
"Really? Why?"
"You've been shot!"
The Doctor closed his eyes and said nothing. Ace had never seen such a defeated look upon his face before, in fact, he seemed resigned. His skin was deathly pale and cool to the touch.
"Proffessor?" she ventured.
Ever so slowly, the Doctor turned his face towards hers. He reached for her hand and took it gently in his. "Thank you for being here!" he said quietly.
Ace gripped his hand tightly. She tried to say something, anything that could rally the Doctor's spirit, but words failed her.
The Doctor shook his head sadly. "I'm dying, Ace!"
"There must be something we can do!" Ace shouted in desperation. "Can't you regenerate?"
"Not this time!" The Doctor's voice was getting weaker by the moment.
A single tear ran down Ace's cheek and splashed onto the Doctor's face. "Please don't die, Proffessor!" she pleaded.
The Doctor tried to raise a smile, but his energy, like his life was ebbing rapidly away. "Nothing lasts forever, not even a Time Lord!"
"Daleks did this to you!" Ace spat the words out.
The Doctor blinked, once. "So that's it!" he thought to himself. The Dalek firepower had overwhelmed his regenerative capacity. His body could not trigger the renewal process. It was all over.
An icy numbness overtook his body, and it became increasingly difficult for him to think coherently. His Time Lord body was closing down, and a kind of peace settled over him. The Doctor thought he could hear his own voice talking to Ace.
"And so Time's Champion takes his final bow, enter in, the eighth man bound!"
Total darkness closed in around him.
Ace watched in reverent silence as her friend slipped quietly away from her. She wondered if Time Lords went to heaven? She released the Doctor's hand and it dropped lifelessly back onto the bed.
He was gone.
Within the confines of Siralos, the Master coldly observed the events that he had orchestrated. He hadn't felt this good since he had destroyed Logopolis. He reached up with a black gloved hand and wiped away a non-existant tear.
"Such a loss!" he stated solemly, and then burst into fits of laughter.
The temperature in the small room had dropped considerably after the Doctor had died. A thin sheen of frost had settled over the Doctor's skin. Ace felt chilled in more ways than one. Without looking back at the bed, she ran from the room.
The Doctor sat bolt upright in bed with a gasp. Beads of sweat had formed on his brow, and his breathing was fast, but he was alive.
"Bad dreams, Doctor?" The Master stood at the foot of the Doctor's bed. "Did you think that I would let you off so easily?"
The Doctor studied his adversary. "A new look! Another stolen body?" he enquired. "Not this time, Doctor"
The Doctor glanced down at himself in bed. "Would it be too much to ask for, if I could perhaps be clothed?"
The Master snapped his fingers and the Doctor's clothes appeared at the end of the bed. He watched the Doctor like a hawk as he got dressed. The Doctor smiled at him. "That's better!" he said. "Now then, what sinister little scheme are you involved in now, may I venture to enquire?"
"Why naturally, your destruction, Doctor!" the Master purred.
The Docctor gave an extravagant yawn "That's original, but I must warn you that I no longer have my old inclination to play games"
The Master raised an eyebrow.
"Like a fine wine, I've matured over the years!" the Doctor continued.
The Master held up a hand for silence and chuckled. "But my dear Doctor, you are already playing a game!" he explained. "A game of my own devising, which will end with your total anhiallation!"
The Doctor shook his head sadly.
"Look around you Doctor!" the Master stated. "Notice anything different?"
The Doctor couldn't believe his eyes. His surroundings had completely altered. The small hospital room had vanished, and now he and the Master were standing in the middle of a huge, grey, dusty plain. Mountains lined the horizon in the far distance, and there was no sign of any other life on the plain apart from the two rival Time Lords.
"Do you recognise this place, Doctor?" the Master taunted.
The Doctor knew exactly where he was, and it frightened him. "Yes! This is the wilderness beyond the Capitol" the Doctor stated flatly. "We're on Gallifrey!"
The Master laughed and applauded the Doctor. "Just so!" he chuckled mirthlessly. "You havn't been here in a long time have you Doctor, I wonder why?"
A chill ran down the Doctor's spine.
"When was the last time you saw your family?"
An all encompassing fear gripped the Doctor. "No please, not them!"
The Doctor dropped to his knees in front of the Master. The ground beneath him began to tremble and shake as something huge began to push it's way up from below. The plain behind the Doctor erupted into the air as his old ancestral home, the forgotten house of Lungbarrow emerged from it's long burial and towered over him. The old and rotten timbers creaked loudly as the edifice settled into it's new position above the plain.
The Master smiled cruelly down at the Doctor.
"I'm still toying with you, Doctor. You amuse me, but be warned, the second I tire of you, will be your last!"
The Doctor turned to face his old home. It's battered and warped front door screeched open on rusty hinges. He slowly got to his feet and glared at the house. The Master quietly moved beside him.
"They're waiting for you, Doctor" he said softly.
Without a backward glance at the Master, the Doctor strode purposefully up to the house's front door and went inside. The door slammed shut behind him and the house once again sank beneath the surface of the barren plain. It's wayward child had returned to it.
