oOo

"I said, what did you do with the Master?" The tone was belligerent, but overlain by anxiety and something else Ace was in no condition to recognize. "Who are you people?"

Ace struggled toward full consciousness; whatever had knocked her out had done a spectacular job. She rolled onto her side, fighting the nausea that threatened to overcome her as she pushed herself up on her elbows. Once she'd achieved a sitting position she lowered her head so it rested on her knees. "Where are we?" Her voice was muffled, but audible.

"In the Console Room of the Master's TARDIS." The voice sounded less belligerent, more curious and even a little bit hopeful. "Do you know how you got here?"

"We thought it was the Doctor's TARDIS." Ace raised her head as a third voice joined the conversation. "I'm Kyris and that's Ace you've been talking to. We were traveling with him." Ace breathed a sigh of relief. He sounded slightly more alert than she felt. He managed a smile as their eyes met, although he was as pale as she suspected herself to be. "There was a note, we came inside, and then..." His voice trailed off. Ace shook her head slightly, to indicate her own lack of knowledge, then groaned and rested it against her knees again. Whether they'd been hit or drugged or both, she couldn't muster the energy to care. Her head just hurt too damned much. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths while the Australian woman, a brunette in a short skirt, took up the speculative thread.

"And then the Master did something to you, knocked you out, then headed off somewhere. Leaving you here." There was a considering pause. "I think he expected to be back already, or he'd never have done that. And he definitely wouldn't have let me find you like this."

"Who are you?" Ace mustered the interest to ask as the pain ebbed. At least for the moment. "Were you a prisoner too?"

"Of course, no one's daft enough to be on the Master's TARDIS willingly!" came the sharp reply. "At least, I'm not. My name's Tegan Jovanka, I used to travel with the Doctor--"

Ace looked up, ignoring the residual pain as she stared at the other woman. Kyris was staring at her as well. "Tegan Jovanka is dead," he contradicted flatly. "You can't possibly be her." But there was uncertainty in his voice, and Ace suspected he believed she was who she said she was. In spite of the evidence to the contrary. And if Kyris was doubtful, then that meant it was even more likely she was telling the truth. At least, that she thought she was.

"Dead, eh? Well, that explains why no one's come looking for me."

Ace frowned. There was a certain amount of bravado, of flippancy, almost, in the other woman's voice completely inappropriate to the current situation, but she suspected it was nothing more than a cover up. Ace was the first to admit that she wasn't always the most observant when it came to other people's feelings, but even she could sense the weary hopelessness underlying Tegan's every word. She's almost given up, Ace realized. "It's the only reason the Doctor wouldn't have looked for you," she said slowly. "But he'll be looking for us, which means he'll find you as well."

"How did you get here?" Kyris asked as he finally pulled himself to his feet. He reached over to pull Ace up as well; she felt the power flow between them as he negated the lingering effects of being knocked out. She smiled gratefully, then returned her attention to Tegan, neither moving away from Kyris nor letting loose of his hand. Later, when they had some privacy, she'd ask him why his healing powers hadn't saved him from unconsciousness in the first place; she had a vague idea that drugs wouldn't work on him, but knew it was neither the time nor the place to bring that particular subject up.

Tegan was answering Kyris' question. "One minute, I was flying our Cessna, the next..." She shrugged. "I woke up here. Been here ever since. For months, it seems. Hard to judge time in a TARDIS." She smiled, grimly, as if to acknowledge the irony of her words.

"How come we didn't see you when we were on board before?" Ace asked suspiciously. "Kyris was a prisoner here for weeks and weeks."

"Was that him?" Tegan looked at him with renewed interest. "The Master was gloating about someone, but he doesn't exactly share the intimate details of his life with me." There it was again; something she'd said made Tegan's voice shaky, some memory, and Ace knew she wasn't just imagining things. "I knew about another prisoner, but I never saw who it was and I reckon he never saw me. I was still locked up at the time." She snapped her mouth shut and looked away.

"How did you get out?" Kyris was watching Tegan closely. Ace suspected he was sensing the same thing she was, something about Tegan that was a bit...off. She was definitely hiding something.

Tegan's expression turned evasive. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Which makes me want to know the answer even more," Ace shot back, not bothering to temper her suspicion. "Don't tell me you picked the locks."

Tegan crossed her arms and shifted from foot to foot. "What does it matter? I got out. When the Master disappeared, I came here, where I found you lot. End of story."

Kyris caught Ace's arm. "I think the interrogation can wait until we figure out where and when we are, and how to take control of the TARDIS."

"Can't you just work it out?" Ace asked, distracted from her questions. She glanced over at the console. It didn't look any more complicated than the one on the Doctor's TARDIS, at least to her untrained eyes.

Kyris shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. It looks like the Master's made some changes, and quite frankly his TARDIS doesn't like me."

Tegan snorted. "That's a new one. The Doctor's TARDIS may have had a mind of its own, but it was still him that was running things."

"And it's still the Master that's running things here," Kyris said. "Even though he's not on board." He paused. "I still don't understand why he isn't." He looked at Tegan.

She shrugged. "Like I said, I figured you'd done something with him." Her tone conveyed disappointment.

"Yeah, we did something with him, all right: Let him take us captive," Ace muttered. "At least he didn't get Patience...he didn't get her, right?" She grabbed Kyris' arms, panic in her eyes. "If he had her, he'd be here now, right?" She couldn't believe she'd forgotten that her daughter was in danger. Let Noni still have her, safe, at the house. Please God...

"I'm sure she's fine," Kyris said soothingly, but he looked as frightened as Ace.

Tegan looked from one to the other. "Who's Patience?"

"Our baby," Kyris replied quietly. "She's almost two months old. She was with us on Gallifrey, staying with Leela and Andred when the Master tricked us onto his TARDIS. Old friends of the Doctor's," he clarified.

"I know who they are," Tegan replied, her expression softening sympathetically. "Kyris is right," she tried to reassure Ace. "If the Master had your baby, he'd be here by now. Gloating."

"But if he doesn't have her, then where is he? Still on Gallifrey? He can't stay there for long, no matter if he gets his hands on her or not," Ace fretted. She looked ready to punch something. "He's an outlaw, it's only a matter of time before someone finds out he's there and does something about it." Her expression turned hopeful. "Maybe that's it; maybe the Doctor or the Gallifreyan authorities got him."

"In which case they'll force him to tell them where we are," Kyris added. "So our best bet is to just sit tight."

"Never my best sport," Ace muttered.

"Mine either," Tegan said wryly. "But it seems that's all I've been doing for months. Sitting tight."

"Everyone thinks you're dead," Kyris reminded her. He frowned. "Even the data retriever," he said slowly. "I don't understand why that didn't work." Apparently he'd decided to believe Tegan was who she claimed to be.

Tegan looked confused. "Data retriever?"

"It's something my mother designed and built," Kyris explained. "Romana's mobile interface for the TARDIS computers was--"

"Romana is your mother?" Tegan interrupted, sounding fascinated. "You're a Time Lord?"

"He's more than that, he's the Doctor's son," Ace put in proudly.

Kyris shrugged, embarrassed, as Tegan gaped at them. "The Doctor and Romana?"

"The retriever was the reason the Master killed her." Kyris paused, and Ace squeezed his hand sympathetically. "She's dead and so are a lot of the Doctor's old companions. That's what started this whole mess; the Master was killing old companions of the Doctor's, one for each regeneration, or so we thought. You being alive sort of puts a damper on that assumption."

"Who else did he kill?" Tegan's voice was barely a whisper, and she'd gone back to clutching her arms to her chest, huddling against herself as if fighting a cold wind.

Kyris recited the list. The death list, he'd always called it. He knew it by heart, and so did Ace. Romana. Jamie McCrimmon. Jo Grant-Jones. Melanie Bush. Almost Sarah Jane Smith.

Tegan listened stoically as Kyris gave a brief synopsis of the Master's murderous rampage. She smiled briefly when she heard that Sarah Jane had survived, but the frown quickly returned to her face. "What about Nyssa and Turlough?" The smile made a brief reappearance as she was reassured as to their continued well being. "So this data whatsis, it's how you found out the Master was killing people? And you used it to check on me?" Kyris nodded. "Did you look for me after the plane crash?"

"Yes, especially because there was no body," Kyris replied. "But the disk refused to show anything more, the way it does when its reached the end of a person's timeline. So we assumed you were dead."

"Unless you really are," Ace pointed out. "Have you made sure you're not an android copy or clone or something?"

"I'm me," Tegan snapped back. "I'm no android, I can promise you that." Her eyes were haunted. "I don't know anything about clones, so I guess that's possible, but what difference would it make? I mean, I remember everything about my own life, so if I've been killed and replaced with an exact duplicate, would it really matter? Maybe the Master just found some way to block the scans from your mother's retriever thing. Is that possible?"

Kyris nodded reluctantly. "Yes, I suppose it is. Was there anything special about the room you were being kept in?"

Tegan closed her eyes. "It wasn't one of the regular rooms, more like an actual cell. All metal walls and floor and, yes, even the ceiling." She opened her eyes again. "Except for the bed, that was the only thing in the room that wasn't metal. Big, bloody comfortable thing..." Her voice trailed off as her gaze turned inward.

"Well, even if the room was shielded, my father was still able to track us so that means the TARDIS itself isn't." Kyris' eyes lit up. "Of course, he must be tracking us now! Even if the Master refuses to tell anyone where we are, the Doctor will still be able to find us." He glanced down at the TARDIS console, stubbornly frozen in place, and gently disengaged his hand from Ace's. "In the meantime, I think I'd like to work on this, maybe I can get it to at least send out a beacon or distress call or something." He frowned and crouched down, tilting his head to look sideways at some equipment attached to the underside of the console. "Now I wonder what this does..." he murmured.

"Well, he's off in techno-land now," Ace pronounced. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head. He reached up and patted her hand in a distracted manner, then returned to muttering to himself. Ace turned to Tegan. "Why don't you show me where you were being kept prisoner, in case there's something I can figure out about it." And why don't I get you to tell me why you're not still locked up, she thought grimly as Tegan moved toward the inner door. Because if you're working with that bastard, I'll make you wish you really were dead.