"Thought you'd get away with it, didn't you? Thought you could fool me. Thought I was just some flat headed military idiot who'd fall for anything. You and the Doctor."
The Master, who had been plodding steadily along, ignoring him, lifted his head at this.
"Me and the Doctor? What can you possibly be talking about?"
"Oh, think you can still bluff your way out, do you? Well, I'm afraid you're out of luck. No doubt he told you about his attempt to get the girl released by holding me hostage. Perhaps he forgot to tell you what he let slip while he was throwing his threats around."
"The Doctor let something slip, did he?" murmured the Master half to himself. "I think I'm starting to see where this is going."
"He wanted her taken, you see, not to my office where we were, not to one of the escape pods, not to some secret location where his Tardis was hidden, no. He wanted her taken to storage bay 14B. Does that ring a bell? It should, because the only thing in it is your Tardis."
Feigle grinned victoriously at the sight of the Master closing his eyes, placing the fingertips of one hand gently in the space between his eyes.
"Ah, you see it now, don't you? You know you've made a mistake setting yourself against me.
"You're right," the Master said, and Feigle swelled with triumph. "I have made a mistake. I neglected the possibility that the Doctor might move against me personally before attempting to rescue Jasmine. With hindsight it's obvious, since I'm clearly the only one involved in your bargain basement little army capable of obstructing him in any way. Of course he saw the need to get me out of the picture."
Feigle smirked.
"Nice try, but it won't work, I'm afraid. When he told me about the storage bay he had me at gunpoint and he was giving me orders. He thought he was home and dry. He thought I was going to order one of my men to take the girl to your Tardis where you could fly to the other side of the galaxy before anyone could stop you. He thought I was an armchair general who relied on his soldiers to back him up, who'd never have the nerve to tackle him singlehanded."
The Master showed his teeth and gave a low, dark chuckle.
"Tackled him singlehandedly, did you? Tell me, how long did he have to spend pretending to have forgotten your existence? How many times did he have to wave his gun under your nose before you plucked up the nerve to grab it? I'll give him credit, it can't have been easy convincing a feeble hearted beribboned buffoon like you to take any sort of action and leave you thinking you'd done something brave."
"Quiet." Feigle held up a hand to signal a halt and the whole party stopped by a pair of black plastic swing doors. "You're not wriggling out of this. I let you get away with your veiled insults and your superior attitude in the past but this is where it ends. Get in there."
The Master stepped forward to the threshold of the room and inspected it critically.
"A padded cell? Are you suggesting I plead insanity?"
"Hold him."
Two guards seized the Master by the upper arms and held him rigidly while Feigle drew something slowly from the pouch at his belt. A pressurised, pushbutton hypodermic.
"Now don't be frightened," he said, advancing with the instrument held high. "This'll just sting for a moment."
He jabbed the point into the Master's throat, touched the button, and a faint hiss signalled that the hypodermic had done its work. Feigle stepped back, his smile flickering on his mouth.
"You think of yourself as quite the all-round scientist, don't you? Well, here's a test for you. What effect will the intravenous injection of 20 milligrams of rivocite hexium have on your physiology?" He feasted triumphantly on the stiffening of the Master's frame, the chilling of his eyes. "Congratulations, I see you do know. Dead in twelve hours, most of that time spent in screaming, nerve shattering, blood boiling agony. That's why you're in the padded cell. I wouldn't want you taking the easy way out and smashing your brains out against the wall. In with him."
With a shove, the guards sent the Master stumbling back into the cell. Feigle stepped forward into the doorway.
"Well? You've never been short of a sarcastic little putdown before. Don't tell me you're finally lost for words."
The Master paused, touched his fingertips to the point on his neck where he had been stuck with the hypodermic, then looked at them with an air of curiosity before turning his black, hollow eyes on Feigle.
"You will be dead very soon."
Feigle smiled contemptuously.
"I'll come and visit you in a few hours. I think I want to hear you beg me to kill you."
The doors of the padded cell hummed shut.
--------------------
In the dim reddish glow which was the only illumination of the vault's interior, Jasmine sat perched on the edge of a shelf and tapped her heels idly together. The chamber was not large, considering the vast metal door which protected it, and consisted mainly of rows and rows of labelled drawers of many different shapes and sizes. She had had to struggle out of one of these drawers, into which she had been deposited in her coffin-like box once it had been mechanically drawn into the vault, and had found that it was labelled simply "Jasmine". She had explored for a while, but those drawers which were not empty mostly contained nothing but anonymous data cartridges. The only one of interest had been the one labelled "Anthropos".
The robot which was the cause of all this had been a disappointment when she pulled open the drawer for a look. It looked quite basic compared to the sentinel droids, just a simple humanoid form with a flat grey metal faceplate, a circular grill for a mouth and lifeless eyes of red glass. Eventually sheer boredom had caused her to play with the litle remote control pad she found alongside it in the drawer. She had got the lights in its eyes to come on, and discovered that it would obey her spoken commands, but it wouldn't do anything of its own accord. Whatever its mechanical mind might be capable of, for the moment it was an empty vessel.
So she was telling it her story.
"I think the Doctor will come and save me in the end," she said. "He usually does, although not as often as he likes to make out. I've got him out of trouble once or twice myself, you know? So I can't help thinking, perhaps it was wrong to ask the Master to take me out with him. Perhaps once I open up the safe and hand you over the Master and I should just shake hands and I should head back to my cell. Wait there for the Doctor. But that's absurd. I mean, listen to what I just said, I'm seriously considering turning down a perfectly good, solid escape route, and why? Because it's not the Doctor's escape route. That's idiotic, that's just blind faith, and if nothing else the Doctor's always taught me to think, to rely on my own intelligence. Otherwise, I might as well be a robot." She glanced over at the silent machine and shrugged apologetically. "No offence."
She was quiet for a moment, gazing reflectively up at the high ceiling. She smiled to herself and continued more softly.
"The Doctor. What can I tell you about him? He wanted to give the bride away at my parents' wedding, but my mother said if there was any giving away to be done she'd do it herself. They made it up to him the following year and let him be my godfather. Now..." She frowned, trying to get this right. "Now they're gone, and he's the only friend I have, anywhere. We travel around at random. Sometimes we help people, but for us time just passes, nothing changes. He treats me like a child, and the annoying thing is he's right to do that, because compared to him that's all I'll ever be. He has no idea how many times I've almost left him. All those places we've visited where I've thought, here I could have a real life, a home, a career, friends, a family... But I never have, I don't think I ever will. I'm only human, as he sometimes tells me. But he's... he's the Doctor. How could I ever choose something else? After all this, how could I go off and be just a regular person? Seeing the universe, helping him save people's lives and freedom is the best... the best destiny I could hope for."
She looked over at the Anthropos, standing in the corner. Its dully glowing red eyes really did seem to be on her, as if it was listening, but it made no move.
"Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to bore you with all that stuff. I've had no one to talk to for a while, I think I may be going slightly mad. I hate this place. I'm really looking forward to being rescued."
A sharp, trilling electronic sound made her look down at the spherical device clutched in her palm.
"Oh. Looks like the Master's ready for us. Let's get this door open."
--------------------
Halfway along the corridor towards his office, Feigle pressed for a second time the button on the spherical gadget his men had confiscated from the Master, but again there seemed to be no response. With an impatient shrug he was about to discard it into the waiting hands of the nearest guard when an ear-splitting, jagged noise from somewhere around the next corner made him freeze.
"What was that?" he rapped out.
"Energy weapons," said the nearest soldier, his voice muffled by the helmet. "Heavy, too."
"I know that you idiot! I want to know who's firing heavy energy weapons in the corridor. Go and check."
"Me?"
Feigle hissed like a snake in sheer fury, a drop of spittle landing on the man's visor. When he spoke his voice was icily level.
"Yes, you."
The soldier edged forward an inch at a time, while the sounds of combat grew closer by the second. He was still metres from the corner when a sentinel droid, the fiery orange halo of plasma weapon impact still dissipating about its armoured limbs, came staggering backwards into view and crashed like a runaway truck into the far wall. The soldier was already running full tilt back towards the rest of the group when the droid vanished from sight in a cloud of blazing superheated vapour from the devastating follow-up volley.
Feigle and his men stared in disbelieving horror as the flames faded again. The corridor wall was completely destroyed for a distance of ten feet in both directions, along with the entire contents of the rooms behind it. The robot was virtually undamaged; a little scorched in places, leaking fluid from an elbow joint, some circuitry exposed at its throat, but sufficiently functional to release a storm of retaliatory fire from its own heavy weapons.
"Quickly!" ordered Feigle. "We've got to..."
All at once he realised he was alone. His troops were sprinting for their lives in the opposite direction.
"Stop!" he shouted, running after them. "Come back! Wait for me!"
--------------------
The Doctor tiptoed cautiously along the cell block passageway, his head twisted around to keep one eye on the battling sentinel droids at the entrance. They were far too busy to concern themselves with him. He counted his way along the cell doors, stopped, and in a matter of seconds had sprung the lock with his sonic screwdriver. He found himself breathing a little quicker than usual as the door slid open.
The girl sitting in the corner of the cell looked up at him with wide, strangely calm eyes. The Doctor grinned broadly.
"Hello, Jasmine."
She gave him a pleasant smile in return.
"Hello, Doctor."