The old Doctor, the man who had taught her virtually everything she knew that had ever come in useful for anything, had listened patiently and attentively to her chaotic and overexcited version of events. He sat on one of the hard plastic benches that lined the registration bureau waiting area, leaning forward with his chin resting on his hands where they clasped the head of his stick, his weak grey eyes never leaving her face. When she was done, his dry, quiet voice seemed to speak to her out of her childhood.
"Well, you've had an unsettling experience, haven't you? I must say I think you're coping with the phenomenon of one Doctor being replaced by another with rare aplomb."
"Huh. Yes." Jasmine fidgeted agitatedly on the opposite bench. "Well, you should have seen me when you first regenerated into him. I..."
The sad, serious look in his watery eyes made her fall abruptly silent.
"Please don't tell me my future," the old man said. He straightened and shifted his hands on his stick. "So. This is the last place your own Doctor was seen."
"Yes. I mean, yes, but... I mean, the man said so, but I'm sure this building wasn't here this afternoon. They don't even use concrete on Agrathus."
"Mm. Coupled with my own presence when I clearly shouldn't be here that's more than a little worrying. This is where I found myself all of a sudden when I'd just been out for an innocent walk on the hillside. A sudden swoosh and I was here, which, frankly came as something of a relief. The guards at the fort were giving me some very straight looks."
"Guards?"
"Indeed. And yet that very fort stands in ruins across the street, with nothing to repel intruders but a rather worn-looking velvet rope. Most interesting."
With a hunching of his shoulders, he shifted more weight onto his stick, in preparation for pushing himself upright. Instinctively Jasmine jumped up to help him, but with a grunt of effort he was on his feet. Frail as he was, she realised, this Doctor was not the virtual invalid who had been forced to regenerate when he found himself physically incapable of helping her rescue her guardian. His shoulders were bowed, but his stance was firm. He leaned heavily on his stick as he led the way towards the exit, but moved briskly, and she lengthened her stride to keep up.
"So where do you think he is?" she asked. "The other Doctor?"
"Well, now. He was here, and now I'm here. There would be a certain reciprocal elegance if it should turn out that he is now where I was then. I use the word 'now' loosely, of course."
Jasmine sighed, and concentrated, running over this sentence in her mind.
"You're saying the two of you have switched places? Switched times, I mean?"
"Exactly. Which brings us to the issue of what power could have caused such an event. For instance... um... hmm." He halted in the middle of the archway. "You said you thought this building we're standing in wasn't here earlier today?"
"That's right."
"And what about all of these buildings out here?"
Jasmine looked, and a chill shivered through the marrow of her bones. It was night, but she could see for miles thanks to the endless ranks of thousands upon thousands of yellow lights, stretching away to the horizon. Their steady glow showed her the tower blocks, faceless and identical, the factories pouring thick greasy smoke into the sky, the quarries which bit great chunks out of the mountainsides. The metallic smoky odour she had noticed before returned magnified tenfold, and she almost choked on the foul, grimy air. The relentless, grinding din of machinery, the cold artificial light, the bleak stretches of grey concrete, all seemed to swirl about her like a fevered dream of hell.
"No," she whispered, shrinking back behind the Doctor. "What have they done? It was so beautiful here."
"Quite so," he replied quietly. "But I fear the loss of some green hills is the least of our worries."
At that moment a deafening banshee wail started up, and the vehicles streaming along the tangle of highways laid out before them could be seen speeding up or veering off hastily onto sidestreets. Lights in windows and streetlamps started snapping out, a darkness spreading like black flame across the landscape. Then in a crackle of white flashes from all over the city rockets could be seen launching themselves skyward, hurtling up on columns of fire to vanish into the clouds. The Doctor and Jasmine stood and watched the pulses of dirty yellow light visible from the explosions far above. Speaking to herself rather than expecting an answer she asked:
"What are they shooting at?"