The laser cut easily through the skin and the thin layers of tissue beneath, cauterizing it cleanly, and finally baring the orange and red bands of tissue that wrapped in glistening striated layers around the Doctor's ribs. She switched the tool so it stopped cutting and used a small forcefield to hold the wound open, then with her other hand picked up the tool that would extract a few strands of the muscle tissue. She could see herself that it was still twitching on occasion, caught between the toxin urging it to contract and the counteragent. With a few deft swipes, she liberated several fibers of muscle and placed them in a medium designed to support Gallifreyan tissue.

Flexing her neck, she straightened for a moment. "That's the first done. How are you, Doctor?"

He didn't open his eyes, merely nodded. "Fine, Nyssa. You're doing as well as I knew you would, perhaps even better. Do you have a nerve cluster selected to remove?"

She started to nod and offered a quick foolish smile to Tegan's wide but calm and trusting brown eyes. "Yes, I saw a few good candidates just beneath two bands of muscle. I'll want nerve cells that carry signals to the muscular structure. If the toxin is tailored to such a specific grouping we must give it the right target to attack."

"Of course," the Doctor agreed. His breathing picked up a little, which Tegan and Nyssa both understood as a signal that he wished Nyssa to get started again.

The biochemist picked up the device she had used to extract the muscle tissue and reset it before bending over slightly again. "You must tell me the moment you feel anything. I've isolated the nerve stem. I'm about to sever it."

Tegan's free hand fell onto the Doctor's arm nearest her, the one not folded over his head, and she watched his face for the least sign of discomfort, knowing full well that if Nyssa had said it was necessary that she run him through with a sword he'd calmly damn well let her. His breathing had quickened slightly, still too shallow for even his kind, but he squeezed her other arm twice as if trying to reassure her. Tegan smiled slightly, odd that their conflicts had become so familiar that they could now have them without opening their mouths. Even on an operating table he was trying to keep the upper hand. Bloody Time Lord. Her smile faded for a moment as his grip tightened sharply and she felt the muscles in his other arm knot beneath her hand even as she clamped down on it. She returned his grip, if not as strongly just as fiercely. At the same exact moment, Nyssa straightened.

"That's done. I'll have this sealed up in moment. Are you all right, Doctor?"

He opened his eyes, "There is one problem."

Nyssa's eyes widened but her voice was steady. "Tell me."

"Tegan's very close to breaking my wrist." He grinned wickedly and Tegan released her grip with an annoyed flourish.

Nyssa sniffed a small relieved laugh and after a moment Tegan gave into one of her own. "You have anything in there that'll make him not such a smartass?"

The Doctor lowered his arm and sat up when Nyssa's hand withdrew from pressing the small bandage in place. "You'd be bored with me in a matter of hours, Tegan."

It wasn't the Doctor but Tegan was, in fact, bored for the next several hours. Nyssa and the Doctor had spent it in the lab, testing one thing and another on the nerve and muscle tissues that the young Trakenite had removed. Hoping to contribute something, Tegan had returned to the Console room and replayed the feed from the outside monitors on the Doctor and Nyssa's visit to Gallifrey. The same six guards rotated shifts, none of them coming nearer to the TARDIS than the protective shield would let them in her first few hours of observation. A few guards came and went with the Doctor; the only one who stood out and took her attention was the Castellan, a somewhat stout fellow with a head of curly blond hair and a voice as blustering as she knew hers could be. She was glad she hadn't run across him, they might still be arguing.

And then it came, a few of them had entered the TARDIS, ostensibly searching for the Doctor but at least one of them had been up to something else. These were just the equivalent of palace guards, she reasoned, probably not persons who would act against the Doctor themselves. They had to be working with someone or for someone who had cause to hate the Doctor enough to kill him. She frowned sharply as she froze the feed on those who had entered the Console room that day. Obviously the Doctor hadn't been there or he would've noticed the sabotage to the TARDIS no matter what else was occupying him or if she'd been there, she would have. She wondered how he'd gotten to 900 plus ticking off as many people as he had.

Saving the shot of the guards, including that very loud and blunt Castellan, she started to head back to the lab to see if Nyssa and the Doctor were any closer to an antidote. The inner door opened just as she rounded the side of the Console away from the wall monitor; Nyssa and the Doctor walked into the circular room, both looking somewhat relieved to Tegan's bleary eyes.

"Well, did you find a cure?"

Nyssa interposed herself between Tegan and the Doctor, as was her usual role, ironically –even unconsciously – protecting him from Tegan's impatient wrath. "Not yet, but we've developed a drug that is much stronger and more effective at keeping most of the symptoms at bay. The Doctor has weeks now before it will become a danger again. We need to get to whoever developed this toxin and hope that they have an antidote."

Tegan's chin came up and she did what she did best after she got through the initial anger, jumped in with both feet and damn the consequences. Her eyes warmed on Nyssa, "Okay, that's great news. We've met worse deadlines," her eyes lifted, "Let's get started."

Still looking a bit worn, he smiled brightly at her, "Indeed, it seems you already have, Tegan. What have you been doing while we were in the lab?" He knew already, he thought, his eyes on the monitor where the Castellan and the guards who had come looking for him were displayed.

"Your last trip to Gallifrey, right? I was scanning the tapes… or whatever you use to keep track of who gets near the TARDIS. That bunch is the only one I've seen get in here. The one with the dark hair has disappeared back near the wall a few times, near where you found that thing. If it was him, I think he must've been working for somebody. Just a guard wouldn't have reason to want to knock you off – probably," she finished with a teasing snap. "Know him?"

The Doctor stared at the dark-haired Gallifreyan for a long moment, recalling centuries of path-crossings and unhappy encounters with his oft-lamented homeworlders. "No, I can't say I do, but as you say, his problem, if he is indeed the culprit, need not have been with me but with some other demon that made him exploitable to someone who already had reason to see me dead… for good." He huffed in an unstrained breath and smiled at the Australian. "We have somewhere to start, at least. I'll contact the Castellan. He's a bit of a blowgut but an honest sort."

"He took you off to be murdered," Tegan growled, dubious.

"Well, we all have our jobs," the Doctor replied lightly and in contrast, in apparent better spirits. "And you have done yours very well, Tegan. I pity whoever has done this when we find them."

Tegan merely scowled anew. "When can you get up with this… Castellan?"

"I shall send him a message and we should hear back in a few hours. For now, I believe all of us should get some rest." The Doctor's hands slid into his pockets and his head suddenly lowered as he faced the two women. "I'm afraid the next few weeks are going to be… somewhat difficult. There is a question I must ask you both, although I already know the answer. There is a substantial chance that I may not survive this trap and I would like to know if you wish to return to Earth. Nyssa, I know that Tegan would help you make a new start there. It's not home but---."

Nyssa raised a hand to silence Tegan, who had begun to take the breath that would lay into a Time Lord from a planet she barely knew existed, who had outlived her by centuries, and who understood a few important secrets of the Universe she didn't know existed. "Doctor, we will not be having this discussion. We are not leaving you to face whoever has done this; they obviously have knowledge that can and has been used against you personally. If something did happen, the TARDIS will take us wherever we need but I am making it clear that there will be absolutely no further talk of us leaving."

Her words, quietly spoken, and in no uncertain terms, were as powerful as if Tegan had been allowed to blast down the walls, something that Tegan seemed to understand as well as he did. She put her arm around Nyssa and hugged her tightly. "That's telling him, Sis." She looked back up at the Doctor with an expression that brooked no argument. "Okay, Silly, you've got your answer. Now send that message and we'll get some rest… all of us."

Alone in their room, Tegan started to ask Nyssa more about the Doctor's chances and stopped herself. There was no point dragging this out further; the girl needed rest and probably didn't want to think anything more about the challenge they were facing and she certainly already knew she was not alone in her concerns. Tegan opted for bringing them both a cup of hot tea from the galley and settling down with a book on her own bed, one that she had snatched from the vast library aboard the TARDIS, anything that wasn't full of maths and would keep her mind occupied. Nyssa smiled her thanks as Tegan settled down on her own bed.

"What is it your reading?"

"The first book in English without numbers when I went through the door. The place is like a dust collector's dream. Thousands of years ahead of Earth and Gallifreyans don't have robot maids." She opened the huge pinkish covered book and looked at the inside cover, "It's called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", published on Earth in 1998. Gee, talk about your advanced releases."

Nyssa laughed, a sound both of them were glad to hear. "Sounds a bit too much like our real lives."

"Too right," Tegan snapped, "but maybe reading about someone else's adventures will make me feel not so crazy. There's a part of me that can't believe I came back; it spends more time yelling at me than I do anyone else but I'm the only one that can hear it. Kind of like having my own personal Mara back in my head."

Nyssa smiled again. "It seems you've put a great deal into perspective while you were gone, and I must tell you again how glad I am to have you back. The Doctor is a wonderful man but he's hard to share with when it's more than knowledge and having lost so much, I need much from friendship. I was considering leaving myself, but I didn't want him to be alone."

"No, not with the trouble he gets in." Tegan agreed then looked at her friend for a long moment, "He means well, you know. It can't be easy for him to live so long and not be around his own kind who do. And he's a lot more friendly than that first bloke of him I met. I guess saving the Universe is a bit of a distraction. Gotta grade them on a curve under those circumstances."

Nyssa nodded, smiling again as Tegan again picked up the heavy book. "We'll survive this, too. You'll have to share some of that indestructibility with the Doctor."

Tegan hadn't wanted to go there but Nyssa had taken the steps. "If I could… He must be frantic and won't show it. He can't just get a face-lift out of this one. It'll be up to us if this creep gets really nasty, and here I am a air hostess who failed algebra, lost two jobs straight, and know as much about the galaxy as day-old dingo." She shook her head disbelievingly and sighed. "What the hell was on my mind?"

"Fate, Tegan. It wasn't time for you to leave. You're needed here. It was very different without you. He was different, almost wandering in himself as much as the Universe. There… there was no…" the Traken girl's voice trailed off and Tegan looked over to find her asleep with the near empty teacup balanced in her hand. Tegan got up and put it on the nightstand, not having the heart to wake her despite her curiosity. Surely she couldn't have had that great of an effect on the Doctor. Who'd miss someone yelling at them as much as all that?

The next "morning" relative to TARDIS terms came several hours later. The Doctor looked up at the two women as they entered the Console room, Nyssa wearing her usual maroon Traken attire and Tegan in a red sweater and black leather skirt and her ever-impractical shoes. He had once decided she was wearing them to increase her height but then she needed little to get her noticed under most circumstances, especially if she wanted to be heard. Nyssa could, if she chose, fade into a crowd and use her keen mind to observe, while Tegan seemed forever to find herself the center of attention. It was a good pairing in truth, traits that served them well when they needed a diversion and an analysis apart from his own at the same time. His eyes returned to the screen as they flanked him to see what he'd been watching, a countdown timer that told him the return time from a message to Gallifrey.

"If the Castellan has been good about checking his messages, we should know the identity of the guard shortly. They'll have him brought in to custody for questioning, very effective questioning."

Nyssa's head rose and her eyes met his. "You can't mean torture?"

"No, not in the sense that you mean, but the guard isn't a Time Lord, and I am still the Lord President in Abstentia so special measures can be taken. If he doesn't tell what we need to know on his own, he will be scanned telepathically, and he will have no way to resist an interrogator's mind."

Nyssa merely nodded, accepting it for what it was given the fact that this was their best chance to save her friend. Tegan seemed to have reached the same acceptance but her experience with the Mara left her a bit more uncomfortable. "What if he doesn't know anything? I mean, it's pretty circumstantial."

"True," the Doctor answered, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and turning to lean on the Console, "But he'll be given a choice, submit to a low level mind probe that will tell if he has any more knowledge, one that is intrusive and perhaps embarrassing, but not dangerous. If he does have knowledge, he will be given the chance to share it or face a mindprobing that will leave him very little in the way of a mind."

Tegan nodded, satisfied. "Well, it's up to him if he knows anything but if he doesn't, we're back to square one. What then?"

"Always ready to move forward, that's my Tegan." The Doctor smiled engagingly but her expression remained slightly grim and a twinkle of impatience appeared in her eyes. "Well," he continued, "we have two options should he know nothing. I can go back in time and create an observation field outside the TARDIS for the time we were there and I can also ask for medical help from Gallifrey."

Nyssa's eyes suddenly widened, "No, perhaps there are three options. If you can leave her then create an observation field outside the TARDIS, couldn't you also send just the interior of the TARDIS back in time to the correct period and create an observation field on the inside?"

The Doctor shook his head quickly, "No, I can't. That would corrupt the state of temporal grace inside the TARDIS to the point that it could destabilize completely. We can't move through time and space externally and internally as well, and at the same time maintain an observation field. Three intersecting time events focused on three varied time streams would likely create a state of chronic hysteresis, a time loop, Tegan. The two of you may never realize it but I would be stuck for eternity repeating the same few minutes of time over and over and fully aware of it. I would guess it would take me a few years before I began to go mad." He smiled flittingly for a minute but neither woman smiled in return. "I got caught in one with Romana once but she was a Time Lady so we were able overcome the temporal effects and escape it. I'm afraid neither of you would be able."

They passed the next hour or so in infrequent and idle chat as the Doctor finished returning to the TARDIS to its usual pristine state, one that covered the myriad of glitches that sometimes added unwanted drama to their adventures. For her part Nyssa was going over her notes about the toxin, trying to find any weakness in its molecular composition that they could exploit, and Tegan was sitting in a chair she had dragged into the Console room so as not to miss anything, her nose buried in the book she had retrieved from the library. It was heavy and resting in her leathered lap. The Doctor noticed the rate at which she was turning pages with some amazement and was about to ask what she was reading when the comm-alarm went off, followed by a loud slap from the deck as Tegan missed in her attempt to grab the book as she stood. She glanced down but didn't bother to retrieve it as they gathered around the screen.

It was not, however, the ruddy, stout Castellan but someone else, a thin humanoid with a bluish cast to his narrow face and eyebrows that were thin streaks upon his eyes and wrapped around into his thinning, dark hair. His mouth was little more than a slit and pointed white teeth showed through it when he finally spoke, his voice a thin whisper that carried a tone of impatience. "This took much longer than I thought."

The Doctor drew himself up and pushed Tegan and Nyssa away from him slightly. "Who are you?"

The man sat back a bit in what looked like a small throne, the angle of his transmitter widening. "I am called the CareTaker by most. My name is Aquintal Miros. You, Doctor, may call me, perhaps, savior."

Ignoring the Doctor's warning hand, Nyssa moved closer. "You are responsible for the Doctor being poisoned."

"Yes, of course."

Nyssa glared and fell silent and The CareTaker nodded once. "I have my reasons. You'll learn them and what I require when you arrive, Doctor. In brief, I need a task done for which only a Time Lord is suited, and so few leave Gallifrey that I had no choice in selecting you. My only other alternative was the Master and his assistance, while forcible, would result only in retributions on a far greater scale than the disaster I am hoping to undo and prevent. I am not, despite what you think and feel, an evil man, merely one with no options."

Tegan took her turn, unstoppable once breath had been taken. "Oh, that's a shame. Don't any of you in the Psycho of the Week club have any loyalty to one another?"

A gleam appeared in The Caretaker's utterly black eyes as they focused on her. "From my observations of Gallifrey, I know Miss Nyssa, but who are you?"

Tegan's voice dropped, her accent thickened, and she took a step slightly in front of the Doctor even as he reached to stop her. "Me? I'm Trouble."

"Really? Then you will also be of help." The Caretaker raised himself up in the tall-backed chair. "I have sent coordinates. Succeed, Doctor, and you will have the antidote to the toxin in a matter of days. I am confident that Miss Nyssa has already seen to it that you have that long. I made certain there were some weaknesses in the formula, but none that would render it useless without my allowing it. I will expect you in a few hours, Doctor, Miss Nyssa,… Trouble."

The comm went dead and the screen faced to black. It took a moment before any of the three spoke. It was Tegan, furious and with nothing yet to direct her anger. "Oh, he'd better be expecting real trouble and not just playing with words."

The Doctor, after a glance at the screen on the Console, couldn't help but smile at her. "I'm sure what he's not playing with is, what do you Humans say… a full deck."

"I'm glad you can joke," she snapped, her eyes going back to the blank screen.

The Doctor turned from her to look somewhat resignedly at Nyssa, "Well, it seems we now have that third alternative. Do send a message to the Castellan, tell him that we may have a solution and will be delayed, if we arrive at all. I wonder if it's still a trap if you know it's a trap when you're walking into it." The Doctor looked between both women again; Tegan met his eyes firmly when they fell on her and held them.

"He's already sprung the trap, Doc. He needs you for something. The same time we got a third alternative, we ended up not having any choices at all."

The Doctor took a slow, slightly tight breath as he regarded the human woman, his blue eyes focusing his soul on the comforting slow fury he found there. "You know, of all the forces in the Universe, I think I hate irony the most."