The Master's TARDIS
The Master had never been very good at dealing with setbacks, and this was no exception.
Kyris, continuing his docility, followed him as ordered to the console room to await developments. Whether he was joining the Master as hostage, shield, bait or just so his father's enemy wouldn't have to be alone, he didn't know and didn't care.
In spite of his precautions, they'd tracked him down. Followed him. Found him.
It wasn't at all as he'd expected things to turn out.
The Master glanced over at his captive, frowning at the hint of a smile on the boy's mouth. Habitual suspicion forced the words out of him: "Don't expect them to come to the rescue. No matter what you've got planned, it won't work."
A stab in the dark, that; Kyris knew what the Master didn't, that there was nothing planned, at least on his part. He rashly allowed the smile to stretch into visibility, then drew it back into his mouth along with his breath as he suddenly realized the point in time he now faced.
Ace, lying on the floor, clutching a bleeding stomach. Kyris, unconscious, unable to help as the life trickled out of her while the Master and the Doctor wrestled grimly in the background.
Ace, lying on this very floor, dying, and now look what his actions had brought them to: the set up for that moment. Kyris cursed himself ten times over for a fool, tensed to rush the Master and found himself facing the muzzle of a deadly looking weapon. "Don't even try it. Your abilities aren't worth as much to me as my own life. If you so much as twitch, I will kill you." His own mockery of a smile passed briefly across the Master's lips. "I'll regret it, no doubt, but I will do it."
Kyris subsided, helpless. He would gladly sacrifice his life if it would change the future he'd seen, but the Master would shoot him down mercilessly, then wait for the Doctor and Ace to appear and, no doubt, do the same to them. Dead, Kyris would be useless. Even more useless than the unconscious idiot he saw, again and again in his mind's eye, lying on the floor, chest going in and out, breathing, but useless while Ace bled to death beside him.
He would prevent that scenario at all costs.
Kyris braced himself as the Master landed the TARDIS. "He'll hound me to the farthest corners of the Universe," the Master said by way of off-hand explanation. "I prefer to choose the time and place of any confrontation." There was a lecturing quality to his voice. As if Kyris were a student interested in the Master's thought processes.
As if he heard Kyris' thoughts, the Master flashed him a sardonic smile. "Don't worry, right now I just intend to talk to him." But the promise of violence was there, in his eyes, in the gun he still held tightly clenched in one hand, in the anticipatory curl of his lips.
Kyris was not reassured.
oOo
Pounding on the door. A muffled demand for entry. The Doctor's unmistakable voice raised in query. "Kyris? Are you all right?"
Kyris started to respond, subsiding only as the Master waggled the gun in an "ah-ah-ah" gesture and motioned him to the back of the console room. He seemed to be considering strategies, but whatever his thought processes, in the end he merely reached over and opened the door. "Do come in, Doctor, no need to pound; I've been expecting you."
The Doctor cautiously poked his head in, zeroing in immediately on Kyris. A relieved smile appeared and disappeared so quickly Kyris wondered if he'd imagined it. Then his father's glance moved to the Master. "Well, I see you've not harmed him."
"On the contrary, my dear Doctor; I did my best to kill him. Interestingly, he healed himself before my eyes and offered me a bargain."
"Of course he did," the Doctor murmured. "Now it's my turn to do the same."
The Master's eyebrow rose. "Really? How predictable."
"Dad, no!" Kyris shouted before he could stop himself. Once again the Master's weapon swung around, this time to his father.
"This is growing tiresome," the Master growled. "Kyris has offered himself as my personal physician, so to speak; what could you offer that I might want more?"
Not the disk, Kyris thought urgently, willing his father to hear him, somehow. If the Master found out he'd been lying about its destruction, he would begin to doubt Kyris' other words, the ones he meant, and that would be disastrous for them all.
"I offer myself, as you no doubt surmised," the Doctor replied. His voice was calm, even. Unemotional. "I'm who you really want. You got my attention by killing my former traveling companions and Romana, and so I'm here. Where you want me."
The Master studied him. "Really. How...convenient. And tell me, Doctor; what's to keep me from killing you and then killing your son and companion right after?"
"That'd be me, actually."
Ace had slipped in behind the Doctor, waiting for him to move away from the still-open door while keeping the Master's attention firmly on himself. It had worked brilliantly; Ace now had the drop on the Master with a more conventional weapon than the slender black tube he held.
It wasn't the plan, of course, at least, not the Doctor's plan. That plan had involved him bargaining with the Master for Kyris' freedom, at least stalling so he could get his son away and hopefully do something about the Master as well; Ace wasn't sure, as she hadn't really listened when he first explained it to her, knowing it was doomed to fail. She knew what she was going to do, never mind the Doctor's attempts to keep her and the baby safe. She knew he'd asked her to wait in the TARDIS, to which she'd cheerfully--and untruthfully--agreed.
Now her plan was the one going forward. Ace pulled back on the hammer slowly. Making sure the Master saw her do it, so he'd know she wasn't bluffing. She ignored the Doctor's exhortations to leave, Kyris' demands to the same effect. The Master was a threat; he was a murderer many times over, and he wanted her baby. There was no way in hell she was going to let him get away with any of it. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Never one to give in gracefully to the inevitable, he aimed his own weapon at Kyris and fired even as Ace's bullets slammed into first his shoulder, then his side, then, ultimately, his chest. He breathed his last as Kyris healed himself, then joined her and the Doctor as they returned to their own TARDIS.
That was Ace's plan. She saw it so clearly in her mind's eye as she squeezed the trigger that it took a moment for her to realize that nothing had happened. The gun didn't fire, the bullets remained, passive and useless, in the chamber, even as the Master casually allowed his own weapon to drop to the TARDIS floor. "Temporal grace, my dear. Weapons are useless in a TARDIS. Careless of you to forget."
He, too, had forgotten, Kyris realized, even as he threw himself forward to intercept Ace's mad dash for their tormentor. She slipped past the Doctor's outstretched arms, her face distorted in a furious grimace, eyes flashing fire. The Master ducked Kyris' tackle almost as casually as he'd dropped his bluff-weapon, continuing the movement to throw a roundhouse punch that struck Ace directly in the abdomen, bringing her crashing to the floor in a breathless heap.
Ace curled around herself, gasping for breath, the fury gone from her eyes, replaced, Kyris realized as he pulled himself up from the floor, by a panic all out of proportion to the trifling blow the Master had struck. It wasn't even incapacitating, not for longer than a few seconds; why was she still lying on the floor, holding her stomach, tears suddenly pouring from her eyes? He felt his hearts clench with a sudden terror. Had the Master a knife hidden about him, was he witnessing her death, firsthand this time? But no, there was no blood, just a weeping, semi-hysterical Ace huddled on the floor, a sight that froze him for a fatally long moment. Just long enough for the Master to throw himself at the Doctor, grapple him back out the still-open door, literally kicking him out and slamming the door shut behind him, locking it as Kyris finally staggered to his feet.
He ignored the Master as the renegade ignored him, each bee-lining for a different destination; the Master to the TARDIS console, Kyris to Ace. Something was wrong, had to be horribly wrong, for Ace to react like this to a simple blow to the abdomen. There was something he wasn't getting, and for the moment it was more important than trying to get to his father.
"Ace? What's wrong?" Kyris whispered, dropping to his knees and taking her hand in his.
He nearly collapsed as the shock of her panic exploded in his mind. As a Healer he knew he had the potential to become sensitized to the pain of others through mere physical contact, but he'd never realized how powerful that sensitivity could be. Just as he fought himself under control, panting from the unexpected effort, the reason for Ace's panic almost brought him down a second time.
He stared at her incredulously, mouth open but unable to speak as he struggled to take in what his healing sense was telling him. Slowly he spread his fingers over Ace's abdomen as she raised her tear-streaked face to meet his. "Save her," she whispered.