The Master's TARDIS
After nearly a week of searching, the Master still hadn't put in an appearance, and the three kidnapping victims still hadn't found the auxiliary control room. As Tegan had predicted, the corridors never led the same way twice, but they were determined not to give up. To hedge their bets they'd tried running string from one point to another, but it always vanished the next time they looked for it. Ace came up with the idea of marking doors they'd already checked; painted-on black X's vanished but when she found a welding torch and burned the marks into the doors, they found them again next time they looked. Some things were apparently beyond glitching.
"At least something's working right," she grumbled. Of course, that meant she had to drag along the welding implements, but she did so uncomplainingly. Tegan's inspiration was to dig up a knapsack and keep a supply of snacks and water handy, so they wouldn't have to hunt up the kitchen every morning.
On the third day, while Ace fiddled with her lockpicks and cursed under her breath as she knelt before yet another door, Tegan dropped the knapsack, stretching and rubbing her lower back. Kyris noticed the grimace of pain and instinctively reached out for her, then stopped. "Tegan, are you all right?"
She shrugged. "Just a little twinge in my lower back. Nothing worse than what I've already been living with."
Kyris frowned. "Maybe this would be a good time for me to check you out," he offered tentatively. He hadn't brought up that particular subject since the search for the auxiliary control room had started, too distracted by the details that decision had entailed to remember he had other things he hoped to accomplish.
"Sure, go ahead." Tegan held her hand out. Kyris still raised conflicting emotions for her, but not to the point where she was still unwilling to let him use his healing abilities to examine her. Hell, she was beginning to develop a genuine fondness for both of her new traveling companions, however unwillingly they'd been thrown together.
Kyris reached for her, and the ceiling promptly developed a series of sprinkler heads which proceeded to douse them all in hard streams of cold water. Tegan yelped and jumped back, while Kyris turned disbelieving eyes upward. "You've got to be kidding me!"
Ace scowled. "Great. Just great. Another bloody glitch in the system!" She blinked water out of her eyes, scrubbing futilely at her face. The door chose that moment to click open, to reveal an empty room also being liberally doused with water. She slammed it shut in disgust.
"I'm not so sure it is a glitch," Kyris disagreed, a thoughtful expression on his face. He completely ignored the water streaming down on him, his attention instead on Tegan.
"What else could it be?" Tegan asked, shading her eyes with her hands and shoving her now-drenched bangs away from her face.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say the TARDIS doesn't want me touching you. No, really," he insisted as the two women treated him to nearly-identical dubious stares. "Think about it. Every time I've asked to check you out, every time I've nearly touched you, something's happened. We hit mysterious turbulence, the lights all go out, and now this!" He waved his arms at the jets of water still streaming down on them. "Each time it happened right as I reached for your hand." He'd obviously been giving it some thought.
"Then maybe it's time you stopped asking permission," Ace snapped. Without warning, she grabbed Kyris and Tegan by the wrists and shoved their hands together.
Tegan gasped as she felt a warm tingle cross her skin, beginning on her hand but quickly enveloping her in a general feeling of well-being. An involuntary smile crossed her face, and a sigh escaped her as she closed her eyes to better savor the moment. She hadn't felt this good in ages. All the little aches and pains that she hadn't consciously noticed disappeared, the mild headache that never seemed to get bad enough to medicate but never really went away, even the lingering heartburn and churning nausea that she felt after most meals, all her stress-related ailments vanished. It was wonderful.
She opened her eyes and looked at Kyris, who had closed his own eyes, her hand clasped loosely in his. "Well? How I'm doing? Any undiscovered injuries?" She couldn't muster the energy for snarkiness, not feeling as good as she did, so the question was asked in a tone of mild inquiry.
"Hmm?" Kyris seemed distracted as he pulled his hand away and opened his eyes. The feeling of well-being lingered after contact had been broken, as did Tegan's smile. "Uh, how do you feel?"
The question seemed as automatic as it was mundane, but Tegan answered it truthfully: "I feel super, better than I have for a long time. Thank you." She glanced over at Ace. "You were right, but don't let it go to your head." She grinned to soften the impact of the words. "All the physical pains I've been living with and ignoring are gone, like they were never there." She'd forgotten Kyris' odd comment in the euphoria of the moment.
"I told you it would help," Ace grinned back, but she was worried about Kyris. She hadn't forgotten what he said, his belief that the TARDIS was trying to prevent him from touching Tegan. He seemed dazed, unsure of himself, and she resolved to ask him about it later, when they were alone. Because if he wanted to say anything in front of Tegan, he would have already done so. Which meant there was something more to the situation, just as she'd feared.
The water had stopped as abruptly as it started. They were drenched, all of them, right down to their skivvies. Not that it bothered Ace all that much, but she felt compelled to ask, "Should we keep going, or go find some dry clothes?" She know which one she'd vote for.
Just like the Doctor's TARDIS, this time machine also held a wardrobe room, although the outfits in it tended toward a monochrome palette. Black, to be precise, with the occasional gray or navy blue thrown in for good measure. Kyris and Ace resisted taking anything from it for as long as they could, but had eventually been forced to at least search for changes of underwear and socks. The wardrobe door had been one of the first Ace marked, with a huge "W" right in its center. But she was reluctant to lose the ground they'd gained, because any backtracking inevitably led them down corridors they'd already explored and marked.
"Let's just find the damned auxiliary console room," Kyris replied, wringing some of the water out of his t-shirt, the one he'd been wearing when they entered the Master's disguised TARDIS. It was Ace's favorite, the black one with the big yellow question mark on it. "I've had just about enough of this nonsense." He shook his hands, and droplets of water flew in every direction.
Ace frowned as he slogged off down the hall, not waiting for her to mark the empty room with her usual "E". Tegan followed, a smile lingering on her face, her hand occasionally rubbing at the small of her back as if she couldn't believe it didn't hurt. Ace stopped watching and started up her welding torch, etched a hurried "E" into the door and trudged after them.
oOo
An hour later, as Tegan was digging into the knapsack for a bottle of water, she was interrupted by a whoop of triumph from Ace. She had managed to open a particularly stubborn door and finally struck gold. As she pushed the door fully open, Tegan was given full view of a second time rotor on top of a second console in a room vaguely reminiscent of a Victorian den, all wooden paneling and dark carpets. Even the console was made of some deep brown material, its base resembling nothing so much as the trunk of a stubby tree. She wouldn't have been surprised to see an antler-covered chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but it was standard TARDIS lighting that greeted them as they filed into the room.
The only anomalous item was a large mahogany desk off to one side, with a padded leather chair in front of it and a smooth leather blotter settled smack in the center of the wide wooden surface. Kyris spared the furniture only a passing glance as he bee-lined for the console, sonic screwdriver in one hand, scrounged tool-kit in the other, a determined look on his face. Ace and Tegan kept out of his way, relieved that they'd finally found the room they'd been searching so diligently for. As an added bonus, it did not appear to have been drenched by the sprinkler system.
"I hope he isn't pinning his hopes on this thing working for him any better than the main console," Tegan murmured to Ace, who had perched on the edge of the desk and was watching Kyris intently. The sense of well-being from her healing had started to fade, and her anxieties were rapidly regaining their hold. She'd grown increasingly convinced that there was no way for them to wrestle away control of this TARDIS, and was no longer able to keep her doubts to herself. Wearily, she dropped the knapsack to the floor by her feet.
Ace shrugged, still watching Kyris as he opened the console base and began examining its circuitry. "Doing something's better than doing nothing. Maybe he'll find a clue as to why the main console's rigged differently; maybe he'll find something the Master overlooked or wired wrong, some kind of loophole we can take advantage of." The glance she gave Tegan was rebuking. "We can't just sit here and wait for the Master to come back, or wait for someone else to rescue us."
She meant the Doctor, Tegan realized. "Has he regenerated, since I saw him last?" She hadn't thought to ask before.
Ace nodded, unfazed by Tegan's confused syntax. She knew which "he" she was referring to. "Yeah, a couple of times, actually. He's on his seventh now."
Tegan knew she shouldn't be surprised by the news, but found herself filled with an unexpected grief nonetheless. The man she'd known, the one she'd traveled with and held such complicated feelings for, was dead. She wanted to ask how it had happened, but kept silent. Knowing he was dead was bad enough; hearing how he died would be even more painful. She might even have been able to save him, if only she hadn't run away like a frightened child... "Do you know what happened to Turlough?" she asked hurriedly, switching to a much less painful subject before her thoughts became even more depressing.
"Went home, to his planet Trion," Ace replied promptly. "Lived to a ripe old age, too, according to Romana's gadget. Married, kids, grandkids, the whole bit." She sounded envious. "After that the Doctor had another girl on board before me; no, two, I forgot about Peri. She was dead before the Master got himself so involved in our lives, although he lied and told the Doctor she wasn't."
Tegan raised an eyebrow at that one. "The Master lied to the Doctor to give him a happy ending?" She'd love to hear the rest of that story!
Ace nodded. "It was all a trick to get into the Matrix. He said she was living across the galaxy as a warrior queen or some such nonsense, to distract the Doctor from what he was really up to." She snorted. "She was too 20th century, that one; there's no way she'd have gone off with some barbarian warrior prince! He was more Leela's type, and even her taste turned out civilized in the end." She stopped abruptly, turning a chagrined glance on Tegan. "Never knew I was such a gossip," she muttered.
"No, I want to know," Tegan protested. "It's not gossiping, exactly, more like catching up with old friends or family you haven't seen in a while. Even if I've never met most of them, I've always felt connected to anyone who traveled with the Doctor."
Ace nodded her understanding. "It is like family." She looked down at her soaking wet feet, scuffed them against the carpet as she followed her own painful line of thought.
"For the five years I was back," Tegan continued, "Sarah Jane Smith and I managed to get together every six months or so, sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit less. Either she'd wangle an assignment to Australia or I'd save up enough to visit her in London." Her voice turned reminiscent. "If I was in England, first I'd visit my grandfather, then Sarah Jane and I would get together with a bunch of the UNIT lot; we saw Harry Sullivan loads of times, and Jo Grant-Jones made it one year..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered that Jo was dead now.
"Yeah, Jo Grant-Jones, mysterious hit and run accident," Ace said grimly. "And Melanie Bush, she was with the Doctor after Peri; I met her before she trotted off with a pirate chappie." That raised a brief grin that quickly faded. "Next I hear of her, she's dead of snakebite in Antarctica, courtesy of the Master. Gotta give the bastard credit for originality." If nothing else, her tone implied.
"A little too much originality," Tegan agreed. Why did every conversation have to end up with the Master? "At least he's left Nyssa alone." She couldn't bear the thought of her friend falling victim to the renegade Time Lord's evil schemes.
"Yeah, she was running Terminus like a proper hospital last time we checked in on her. Very efficient." Ace shook her head. "Working like mad, but I think I remember there being a man in her life. And there was definitely a wedding at some point." She hadn't been paying close attention at the time, more interested in seeing who was still alive.
Tegan's ears perked up at that one. "Nyssa got married? Really? That's fantastic!" She beamed, her first all-out smile since her abduction. "I'm glad someone really did get the happy ending. If anyone deserves one, it's Nyssa."
"Would you two mind cutting the chatter and helping me out?" Kyris interrupted peevishly.
Ace jumped down from the desk, leaving a damp spot behind from her soaking-wet jeans. "What do you need?"
"That." He pointed without looking at some small piece of what looked like monitoring equipment. "I need to make sure I'm calibrating this correctly…" His voice faded into mumbles as Ace knelt down next to him.
"If you don't mind, I think I'll see if I can find the kitchen and restock this." Tegan nudged the knapsack with one foot. The offer was sincere, but she also wanted to have some time alone, to process everything Ace had just shared with her. To come to terms with the bad, and quietly celebrate the good.
"Sounds good." Ace watched as she left the room. When Kyris stopped needing her to hand him new tools or pieces of equipment, she wandered back over to the desk, pulling the chair out and plopping into despite her damp condition. She ran idle fingers across the edge of the blotter, yelping in surprise as a computer monitor and some kind of keyboard appeared out of nowhere. "Oi! Kyris, come have a look at this!"
Kyris scooted out from under the console, hastily wiping his fingers on his jeans. He hadn't made much progress in discerning a way to gain control of the machine, but he had at least discovered that this console was connected to the TARDIS exactly the way he'd expected it to be. It still didn't explain how the main console was working, but it gave him something familiar to fiddle with. Something he might actually be able to affect.
He joined Ace at the desk, examining the unexpected computer. "I wonder what this does," he murmured, tentatively touching the screen. It instantly sprang to life, and Kyris ran his fingers over the keyboard, typing something in that caused the screen to go blank. He let out a frustrated curse, and she let him fool fruitlessly with it for a moment before asking the question she'd been dying to ask ever since he was finally able to check Tegan out.
"What is it about Tegan you don't want to tell her?" she demanded without preamble. Kyris flinched, and she knew she was right; there was something. "Is there something wrong with her you can't fix, something the Master did to her? Poison?" she guessed, not giving Kyris time to respond, rushing to try and get this over with before Tegan rejoined them. "A virus you can't heal? Or is it her mind, has she got emotional problems?"
Before he could answer, the screen in front of them suddenly came back to life, instantly capturing their attention. Ace frowned at the lines of data, but Kyris appeared to be able to follow it without any problems, so she remained behind him, watching from over his shoulder.
Aside from the occasional muttered exclamation, never explained or expanded upon, Kyris was silent for the next five minutes, absorbed in whatever information he was obtaining from the machine in front of him. After the first minute Ace began pacing restlessly in the background, pausing once in a while to see if anything had changed.
"That sneaky son of a bitch!"
That exclamation brought Ace back to Kyris' side. "What is it? What's he done?" No need to ask who Kyris was speaking of.
The door opened and Tegan walked in. "Sorry I'm late, the blasted TARDIS kept reconfiguring itself; I kept ending up in the corridor outside my room!" Belatedly she noted the computer screen and keyboard. "What's this?" She came closer, absently setting the knapsack on the floor next to the still-open console.
"Kyris was just about to tell me," Ace replied. "So go on. Tell us."
"The Master seems to have gotten access to some kind of technology that allows him to directly interface with the TARDIS on a telepathic level, to tap directly into the Vortex without it overwhelming his mind." Kyris sounded fascinated. "It allows him to control the TARDIS remotely, even across vast distances and, if I'm reading this correctly, across temporal and even dimensional barriers."
"You mean he could control this from...from E-Space, if he wanted to?" Tegan guessed, sounding intrigued. "That would explain a lot."
Kyris nodded. "Not only that, but it can also be used to transfer mental energy directly into the TARDIS matrix." At their blank stares, he explained: "If I'm understanding this correctly, the Master's found a way to store mental energy, a person's mind, until it can be transferred to another body." He stopped short, a horrified expression on his face. "Another body," he repeated, as if comprehending something unexpected. Something bad.
"That's very Spock's Brain," Ace allowed. "But why's it so important? So the Master's come up with another way to beat death, so what else is new?"
Kyris was staring at Tegan, who took a step back, disturbed by the intensity of his gaze. "He found another way to put himself into a new body?" she asked, her heart pounding as she had her own flash of horrified inspiration. "Is that why he kept me here, why he kept me alive? So he could take over my body if he needed to?" Insurance, his voice whispered in her mind, and she shuddered.
"No, I think he had something different planned." Kyris hesitated before continuing, choosing his next words delicately. "Tegan, when I touched you--when I healed you--I discovered something about your physical condition. All the problems you've been having, the indigestion and discomfort, the queasiness, they were all symptoms--"
Tegan inhaled sharply, paled, then reddened. "You are not," she said angrily, "telling me what I think you're telling me." Kyris opened his mouth, but Tegan beat him to it. "Insurance," she spat out. "That's what he meant by insurance, it has to be! Insuring his own future, turning me into a...a bloody incubator!"
Comprehension bloomed on Ace's features. "Pregnant?" she breathed. "He attacked you so he could knock you up?" She turned to Kyris for confirmation, shaking her head at his nod. "Unbelievable." She glared ceilingward. "What's the matter, you git?" she shouted angrily, as if the Master could hear her. "Clones not good enough for you?"
"Get it out of me." Startled, Ace and Kyris both turned to stare at Tegan. Who glared right back at them, arms folded tightly against her chest. "I mean it, get it out of me. I don't care what you have to do, but there's no way in hell I'm giving birth to that bastard's child. I'd rather die!"
"Neither option is acceptable."
The voice came from nowhere, but it was unmistakable.
The Master.