Disclaimer: Anything recognizable is property of the BBC. I don't own Doctor Who and I don't make a cent off of this.

The Curse of Immortality

Chapter 1

Somewhere in time and space a blue police box, otherwise known as a TARDIS, spun aimlessly through the Space-Time Vortex, waiting for a place to land. Inside this TARDIS a lone Time Lord wandered aimlessly through the endless corridors, waiting for an idea of where to land.

It has been a week since the Doctor had left Gallifrey, and in doing so leaving Leela and K-9. At first he had enjoyed being on his own, having the TARDIS to himself again. No curious companion asking him what he meant by various technical jargon, no worrying about another person on an alien planet, and no smug robot dog correcting every little thing the Doctor did. For the first few days he enjoyed this new found freedom. By the fourth day the silence of the TARDIS started to get to him, so he had taken to talking to himself more frequently. By the sixth day the sound of his own voice was starting to annoy him.

Today the Doctor had finally gotten bored. Very bored. Hence his purposeless wandering through the TARDIS.

"Ack!" he cried as he entered the console room, tripping over a discarded panel of the new K-9 unit's body casing. The whole room was littered with pieces of K-9 Mark II; an earlier attempt of the Doctor's to alleviate the intense boredom. All it ended up accomplishing was a broken speech circuit and a burnt scarf. After that the Doctor had decided that it was best to find something else to preoccupy himself with before he ended up smashing the thing to pieces out of frustration.

Twelve hours later, he was back in the console room, rubbing his newly bruised shin and glaring at the offending casing. Even when disassembled K-9 still somehow managed to retain an air of smugness, the Doctor thought.

"If you're going to be like that," he scowled the scattered robot dog. "Then I may just leave you like this."

At the back of his mind he knew that it was rather foolish of him to threaten a robot pet that wasn't even assembled yet, but he didn't particularly care at the moment. He was bored stiff; anything that distracted him from that fact was good in his book.

Deciding to have another go at his earlier project, he picked up K-9's head from where it was lying on the console and looked it over. From the place where the neck would join dangled the broken speech circuit. The Doctor frowned. The repair job called for very delicate and precise work.

"Like repairing a computer with a sledge hammer," he muttered under his breath, not looking forward to the job ahead of him. Picking up his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor took up the task yet again.

See me…

The Doctor shook his head. He didn't know where that thought came from, but quickly summed it up to a bored consciousness and chose to ignore it.

Listen to me. You must listen to me.

Suddenly the console room was gone. Everywhere he looked the Doctor could only see an endless black void. He became aware that he couldn't even feel his own body, as if his mind had become detached from it. At the back of his mind he realized that he was receiving a very powerful telepathic message, and the question of who from was nagging at him.

He had little time to mull over or do anything about this when a very faint image presented itself before him. The image was mostly red, and when he looked hard enough he could make out the shape of a woman. As she spoke, the image became clearer until the Doctor could make out who it was.

The Sisterhood needs your help. There is little time. Hurry.

As quickly as it came, the image was gone. The console room snapped back into view as if nothing had happened. The Doctor found himself lying on the floor and with a splitting headache. Slowly he got to his feet, feeling a little weak.

Obviously not believers of subtlety, the Doctor thought, rubbing his head. It had been many years since his last encounter with the Sisterhood of Karn, when he helped them to defeat Morbius. Still, he remembered them well and had recognized Ohica in the vision.

"They probably need help with the chimney again," he said to himself, recalling his last visit. However, the sheer force of the message told him that the situation was a little more urgent than some soot build-up. At least, he hoped so.

Or else Ohica has a lot of explaining to do, he thought. You don't use that much mental force for a message to merely say 'fix our fireplace'.

To his dismay the Doctor noticed that, during his journey to the floor, he had dropped K-9's head and the speech circuit he had meant to repair, thus damaging it further. Glumly, he decided to save himself the bother and made a mental note to himself to find a replacement. Placing the head on the console, he began plugging the coordinates in for Karn.

"It's something to do at least, isn't it K-9?" he said to the robotic head with a grin.