Nyssa paused, her finger resting on the lever that would activate the program.
She really didn't want to do this.
She didn't want to be here.
She didn't want it to end like this.
But she couldn't imagine living in her own world any more.
In space outside, the Mara had grown immense, to impossible dimensions. What Cyber-matter she did not consume was amassed around her or drilling into her, their numbers overriding their individual fear, for now.
But it wasn't going to be enough.
She pressed the button and the TARDIS shuddered around her. "Shields are down," she informed the Master. "The hull is permeable now."
And in that moment, the Mara saw them, saw inside the tiny box to the power that lay within. And she leapt.
"Now!" The Master shouted as he activated the console, the rotor grinding up and down, Adric's head gyrating with the motion as the ship partially dematerialized. And rematerialized around the Mara.
Nyssa threw herself back against the wall as the shimmering green scales ripped through the console room and in an instant, smeared the Trakenite against the wall into a bloody, pulped stain.
But Nyssa's program was still running.
The Mara roared with delight. She was so much more now, as she groaned and shifted with the new dimensions and assimilated the last of the cyber-matter into her new TARDIS body. Her body was everything now: organic, cyborg, mineral and TARDIS. She could see everything now.
And at the far edge of space, in the deepest well of time, she saw a light, the only light left anywhere. She could taste its power, even from here.
She licked her lips with a forked tongue the size of galaxies and raced toward Torus, gravity and light bending around her tremendous bulk.