"You!" He advanced on her, knuckles whitening in his clenched fists, as if he would strangle her there and then. "You'll be sorry. You'll curse yourself for daring to raise a hand to me. You'll beg for the chance to lick my boot and pray for forgiveness. Do you know what that machine down in the lab can do to you? You think it's only for giving unhappy dreams? It can make you believe you're experiencing every torture ever devised, bones crushed, skin flayed off, guts torn out. You'll scream your way through it all until you die of your wounds and then we'll reset the machine and you'll go through it all again, over and over till I give the word to stop."
Jasmine grasped for the brave joke, the defiant retort, tried to think what the Doctor would have said, but her jaw and mind were locked by the simple, straightforward fear of this vicious little man's revenge. She stayed silent, straining every nerve to stay composed, and not give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down in front of him.
"You!" Feigle jabbed a finger at the Master, hovering silently at her shoulder. "Take her back to her cell, and then prepare a torture program for her. And it had better be good. I want to see the visualisation tomorrow."
"As you wish," came the Master's soft voice. He touched Jasmine lightly between the shoulders. "This way, young woman."
He directed her out of the main doors and into the carpeted passageway beyond. He escorted her along, once the doors had slid shut behind them, not by dragging her by the arm, not by shoving her so she stumbled in front of him, but by walking along at a steady pace beside her with his hands linked behind his back. The notion that she might attempt to make a run for it did not seem to have occurred to him.
"What..." Jasmine rubbed agitatedly at her forehead, aware she might not want to know the answer to this question, but unable to prevent herself from asking it. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Mmm?" The Master looked over at her, as if she had disturbed him in the middle of some inconsequential but interesting reverie. "Oh." He waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about that. I'll tell him I tortured you and mock up something suitably gruesome for him to watch. He'll be happy."
She stopped dead, and found herself bending weakly forward, hair falling over her face, shivers of relief running through at her at the removal, with a few calm words, of the nightmare vision which had loomed inescapably before her. She looked up, and found the Master watching her, a trace of impatience drawing down his features.
"Thankyou," was all she could say.
His dark eyes were almost black, and his gaze seemed to cut right through her.
"Be assured of one thing. If it were in my interests to do so I would visit on you tortures that would have Feigle running and crying for his mother. It so happens that in this particular instance it will be quicker and simpler to fake it."
She didn't doubt it, but for the moment he was the first person she had met over this last hellish month who had helped her in any way, and she was grateful.
"Thanks anyway."
A faint smile.
"Ah, this is a human thing, isn't it? Well, you're welcome."
They walked on a little way in silence.
"I nearly made it," she recalled. "I'd have escaped if it hadn't been for you. I'd have been with the Doctor in the Tardis, safe, right now."
"Yes, you would. And Feigle's decision to have you brought to one of the luxury apartments, with ready access to an escape chute, would have been looking rather foolish. That, at least, would have been entertaining."
"But how did you know?" she persisted.
"How did I know...?"
"How could you be waiting for me in that escape capsule? How did you know the Doctor would try to get me out that way?"
The Master shrugged.
"It's what I'd do."
There was another silence. But Jasmine had been a long time without anyone who would respond to her at all. She eyed a hulking sentinel droid, discretely standing like a statue in an alcove in the wall, then looked up and down the deserted, silent corridor.
"Where is everyone? This place is huge, but all I've seen is a handful of scientists in the laboratory and then you lot. There must be more, somewhere."
"A few. But this station is the foremost designer and producer of androids in the quadrant. If for marketing purposes only, they're keen to show that with enough robots you hardly need people at all. There are some administrative staff, a hundred odd scientists, and that's it."
He didn't look round at her as he spoke. His tone was level, soft, and uninflected. But at least he seemed willing to answer questions, so she pushed on:
"Do you know why I'm here? What they want from me?"
"Yes, of course I do." A pause, and he looked down at her expectant face. "Oh. No, I'm not going to tell you."
"Why not? What harm could it do? I sit in my cube, I get taken down the corridor to the lab, they give me nightmares, then they take me back to my cube again." Jasmine tried to stop her voice becoming ragged in her frustration. "So how's any of that going to change if you just tell me why?"
"Well, I'm simply concerned that if the Doctor contacts you again via the reality simulator then you'll pass the information on to him and that will give him an advantage."
"What are you talking about? He's never contacted me except through the communicator today."
The Master gave her a little nod of acknowledgement.
"I commend you. I can see the Doctor has made one of his better choices of companion. Only a fraction of a second's pause before your denial. But much hangs on that fraction of a second, Jasmine, and you have now told me what I wanted to know."
This, at least, brought silence, and Jasmine passed the rest of the journey with the sickening knowledge that she had let the Doctor down, and given away his secret to this man, whose name she knew from stories which had been fun and exciting to hear, but who she had never been prepared to meet face to face.
The door of her cube rolled open at the touch of a button, and Jasmine looked despairingly into its blank interior.
"At least tell me why they're treating me like this. Can't I have a bed? A chair? Something?"
The Master stood disinterested, hands behind his back.
"I'm afraid your physical wellbeing is simply not a priority. As long as your mind's intact they will keep you in the cheapest, least complicated manner possible. In fact, the original plan was to remove your brain and keep it alive in a jar, but ultimately it was decided that the risk of neurological damage during the extraction process outweighed the convenience of the arrangement."
"And then what?" asked Jasmine bitterly. "When they've finished with me?"
He paused, just for a moment, as if this was something he had genuinely never considered.
"Well, if no one else has any use for you, you'll be disposed of. I think the biology department might want to keep your body. We're a long way from Earth and I don't suppose they have a complete human specimen."
He inspected her frozen, strained face with a detached interest, and cocked his head on one side in a vague expression of sympathy.
"Perhaps you'd like a tour of the facilities before you go back to your cell. The establishment is actually very fascinating."
"You're hoping to get a bit more information out of me?"
"Of course. But who knows, perhaps you'll manage to get something out of me? Gain a clue as to what convoluted plan has brought you here. Besides which, I'm tired of contact with nothing but militaristic buffoons like Feigle, and I'm sure you've had enough of staring at the four blank walls of your cell. A short break will be refreshing for both of us."
Jasmine hesitated, but he was right about the cell. There was little she would not rather be doing than sitting in there on the hard floor through long hours of nothing. A walk, a tour, even in this company, would at least be something.
"All right," she said.