Wearily she pushed herself up into a sitting position and swung her feet off the side of the table. Might as well cooperate, she felt, as the experience of being hauled off down the corridor back to her cube was best got out of the way quickly. But the order for the sentinel to come and take her away was forestalled by a barked command:
"Step back from the prisoner. She's coming with us."
The white-suited man paused, and Jasmine's head turned to look at two black-clad troopers striding towards her across the lab floor. The fabric of their suits was armoured with plates of gleaming dark metal, and the impenetrable visors of their helmets hid their faces completely except for their jowly chins and thin lips. Each grasped a bulbous, chunky energy weapon in both hands.
"General wants to see her," one said.
They didn't wait for a response, but marched past in front of the scientist's face, and one of them grabbed Jasmine by the wrist, wrenching her violently forward off the bench to crash down onto her knees on the floor. She scrambled up, only to be sent sprawling again by a vicious dig in the ribs from the muzzle of a gun. The two of them seized her arms, gloved fingers digging bruisingly into her, and dragged her off.
One of the scientists, an elderly, distinguished looking man with a square cut, snowy white beard, looked up from the readouts of this latest procedure long enough to observe the girl's departure, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the floor as she teetered in the remorseless grip of the soldiers. He frowned with a vague sense of unease and said to his colleague:
"Doesn't this seem a little..."
The other man clapped him on the shoulder.
"Now, now. You know better than to get emotionally involved with the test subjects. Soon the experiment'll be over and she'll be disposed of, quick and painless. Remember, it's all for science."
--------------------
Through the station, past sentinel droids, cleaning droids, maintenance droids, servitor droids, delivery droids and no people at all. By the time they reached their destination Jasmine was slumped against her escorts' grasp and was allowing herself to be half carried along the endless succession of passageways. But she was still alert, taking notice of how her surroundings were changing, from the gleaming, clinical white plastic which had been her home for the past month to a gentler, more softly lit environment with carpeted floors and abstract artworks on the walls. Her eyes widened to see, at the end of the latest corridor, a curved porthole, and a scintillating starfield beyond. It struck her afresh just how long it had been since she saw the sky.
Jerked to a halt at a grandiose set of bronze-look double doors, she waited while one of the soldiers pressed a discretely unobtrusive white button in the wall, and was rewarded by a preremptory shout of "In!" from the other side. The doors slid open to reveal a huge room, with a small man at its centre.
The room was dome-shaped, oak coloured, very warm, with carpet that rose to the ankles and tangled between her bare toes. It was virtually featureless, undecorated, the one item of furniture the vast expanse of desk beyond which the sole occupant was visible from what seemed a great distance, sitting on a high backed, black upholstered swivel chair which was also the only chair in the room. The size of the chair and desk made him seem diminutive by comparison, but in any case he couldn't have been more than five foot six. He was in his forties, with close cropped ginger hair, pale skin, and a face which seemed almost rigid but which was constantly on the move, the muscles of jaw and eyesockets working and pulsing with suppressed energy, the thin lips twitching and writhing over his teeth. Tightly buttoned into a black uniform with gold braid running down the arms and row upon row of medal ribbons on the chest, he watched her approach with small, pale, bright eyes.
"Well now," his voice was sharp and abrupt, the words gabbled out in bursts. "So this is the child we've gone to all this trouble for. Somehow I'd expected something a bit less mundane. All right, let's have her closer. I want a look."
A violent shove between the shoulderblades sent Jasmine stumbling forward, forcing her to save herself by grabbing the edge of the desk. The man leaned back in his seat, showing his teeth in a taut, stretched little smile.
"My name is Feigle. General Feigle. You should be honoured, human. Your pathetic little backwater of a planet would normally be beneath my notice. Does it please you to know that coincidence has caused your existence to be of some significance?"
If this is an exchange of insults, you're short, ugly, and that suit does nothing for your complexion. Jasmine wished she'd said it, but she was tired, frightened, her arms hurt where the soldiers had held her, and as she straightened, pulling her hands away from the desk, keeping her eyes clear and her face composed was the best she could do.
"What do you want from me?" she managed to ask with a steady voice. Again Feigle bared his teeth in a joyless smile.
"Oh, nothing at all. But, you see, you'll soon be dead, and I wanted to meet you in person before that, so I can gauge the success of this experiment from first hand knowledge. So come on, I want to get to know you. Tell me how it feels to be a helpless, humiliated captive in this place, to know your life or death are subject to my whims. Have you given up hope yet? Have you accepted that neither the Doctor nor anyone else is coming to save you? Are you ready to beg me for your life?"
He leaned forward, eager for a response, and the sight of his flushed, excited face sparked a revulsion in Jasmine from which she drew strength. Her lip curled, she folded her arms, and then the alarms sounded.
"Alert, alert. This station is now in an emergency situation. All non-technical personnel please stand to the escape capsules and await further instructions. Repeat..."
The calm yet imperious female voice went on steadily, while sirens whooped in the background. Feigle leaped to his feet, his whole body fidgeting.
"What's going on? Is this for real? Are we in danger? You!" He pointed at one of the soldiers. "Go and find out! And you..." He pointed at Jasmine and fumbled at the holster at his belt. "Don't start celebrating. If we have to evacuate, then it's best I kill you right now."
But Jasmine wasn't really listening. She had noticed, at the moment the alarms went off, a circular hatch sliding soundlessly open in the wall. It said "Escape" on it in big red letters, which she was taking as an omen. Of course, now Feigle was in her way...
After hearing many stories of the Doctor's previous adventures, and his previous companions, she had remarked that it might be a good idea if she was to learn to fight, like that mad woman in the skins, so she could be of use in a tight corner.
"Oh, no," the Doctor had said. "Slippery slope. One moment you're pulling a few martial arts tricks as a last resort, the next you're standing alone, trying to hold the bridge singlehanded against a rampaging mob of angry, hairy men with sharpened metal implements. Far better to run for it, and try and come up with a more cerebral way around the problem."
"But what if there's someone in my way while I'm trying to run for it?"
"Ah. In that case..."
And he had explained.
Jasmine's leg swung up, and Feigle's eyes widened in horror, his mouth falling limply open, as her foot crunched home between his legs. He toppled sideways, and the soldiers were far too late to stop her diving headfirst through the hatchway and sliding down the chute beyond. She was aware of the alarms cutting off immediately, and the light from the room behind her being cut off by the hatch sliding shut. She whooshed out of the chute and rolled to a halt in a dark and silent little room. There were tiny portholes here, just six inches across, and a sturdy looking, tightly sealed oval door in black metal.
"Jasmine!"
His voice. She whirled, and was disappointed to see nothing but a series of pockets and pigeon holes in the wall, stuffed with nameless gadgetry.
"No, over here."
She followed the sound, and plucked from its holster a six inch grey plastic rectangle, flat and weightless in her palm. Her face lit up with relief, as if she was free already, at the sight of the Doctor's face looking out at her from a playing card-sized screen .
"Ah, there you are. Well done, Jasmine, I wasn't sure how quickly you'd pick up on the idea. Now, this chamber accesses the escape capsule for the general's quarters. You just need to go through the airlock, then follow my instructions for launch, and you'll be blasted away from the station much too fast for anyone to follow. I'll pick you up in the Tardis."
"Right." Clutching the communicator tightly, she turned to look at the hatch. "Right. How do I get through the door?"
"I've reset the access codes. Just type into the keypad, 92413956, and press the big black switch."
She did as she was told, and with a hiss of unlocking clamps was through into the airlock. The second door at the end of a cramped six foot tunnel on the other side was opened by a simple tug on a lever, and she was through into a spherical space capsule, just large enough for one person, its interior encrusted with a confused tangle of controls and storage lockers. There was one chair, thickly upholstered and steel reinforced, with a complex safety harness hanging ready for use.
And in the chair sat a man.
He was large, still, and pale-skinned, garbed in a featureless black tunic suit. His sharply trimmed black beard gave him a satanic appearance, but it was his eyes, when he raised them to focus upon her, that sent a shiver through her bones. She could see nothing there. They were like two unfathomable pools of dark water, all their secrets hidden beneath a calm surface. Unhurried, he reached out and took the communicator from her, thumbed a switch which darkened the screen and obliterated the Doctor's face.
Jasmine found herself paralysed, scarcely able to breathe, still frozen in place half way into the capsule.
"Who are you?"
The man's voice was quiet, mellifluous, with a thrumming note of power.
"You may address me," he said, "As Master."