The Doctor's TARDIS
Another disappointing day was coming to an end. The Doctor had dredged up a few other possibilities, bolt-holes the Master had been known to use once in a great while, but none had shown any residual energy from the other TARDIS, nothing recent enough to investigate. So they'd returned to their earliest possibilities, hoping something had changed, but again finding nothing. Noni was getting ready to head back for her room and a few hours of restless, interrupted sleep when the Doctor's sudden exclamation stopped her in her tracks.
"Bingo!"
Noni's heart skipped a beat, then resumed thudding within her chest, hard enough to hurt as the adrenalin flow increased. "You found them?" She rushed to his side.
"I found them!" The Doctor's voice, his expression, were filled with elation. He'd taken a moment to run one last scan before sending the TARDIS to their next destination, and had almost missed the energy spike in his discouragement. "Now, to just pin them down exactly in time and space..." He continued muttering to himself while Noni, fully awake now, tried unsuccessfully not to hover.
She backed up hastily when the Doctor sprang into motion, dashing around the console to pull a set of levers, then racing back to enter some numbers via a series of buttons on the opposite side. Noni held her breath as he slammed his palm on the button that set the time rotor into motion, rising and falling in time with her still-racing heart. "Are we really on their trail?" She'd started to lose hope, to believe that the hints the Doctor's first self had given them weren't going to be enough to find Ace and Kyris; if this turned out to be a false alarm, she didn't know how she could bear it.
"Yes, we're really on their trail," the Doctor replied, his voice ringing with confidence. "It's only a matter of time now; even if his TARDIS moves again, I'll be able to follow."
"And then?"
The Doctor stared at her blankly. "Then we get them out, of course."
"And after that?" Noni pressed.
"After that, we'll see what we shall see." An evasive answer, just as she'd expected. And the stubborn set to his chin told her she was a far patch from being able to bully him into giving her a more definite one. One involving the retrieval of Susan, for instance. If Ace and Kyris were alive and well--and they had to be, she refused to believe otherwise--then there was no reason to keep them from being reunited with their daughter. No reason at all.
She clung to that thought as she stared at the time rotor, silently willing it to hurry up.
The Master's TARDIS
"Where are you?" Ace demanded, looking around wildly. The room remained unchanged; same dark paneling on the walls, same dark carpeting, same desk, same console. Same occupants: herself, Kyris, and a now ghostly-white Tegan.
"Don't bother searching for me, Dorothy." Ace started at his unexpected use of her real name. "I'm not here in the physical sense. I hope that doesn't disappoint you, Tegan," he added, with a cruel chuckle.
Tegan was shaking; she hadn't realized how his reappearance, even in disembodied form, would affect her. "Go to hell," she managed, although her voice was as shaky as the rest of her.
"So you've been monitoring us from somewhere else, is that it?" Ace was defiant. "Still on Gallifrey, are you?"
"Only in a sense," the Master replied. "I've been watching you for quite some time, waiting for the right moment to reveal my presence. And here it is; I couldn't have planned it better myself. At first I didn't want you to reveal Tegan's condition to her," he added, apparently addressing Kyris. "But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. It had a kind of delicious irony to it, especially since I knew exactly how she would react."
"And why exactly is your presence inside the TARDIS? Because I know you're not just communicating with us from another location," Kyris said. His voice was even, but Ace could tell he was just as angry as she was. The conversational tone he managed reminded her very much of the Doctor when faced with similar circumstances. "Who killed you, my father?"
"Very good, boy, very good indeed," the Master said after a moment. "As a matter of fact it was that bitch, Leela, who put a knife in my head. All because she felt her half-blooded whelp was in danger. For some reason, she felt...very strongly about it." He sounded amused.
"You seem to be taking it very well, getting killed just when you thought you had everything you wanted. I assume you had our baby as well as Noni, or am I wrong?" Kyris' tone remained conversational, but Ace knew a bulls-eye when she heard one.
The Master's silence stretched out for long instant. When he finally spoke, it seemed to be with great reluctance. "I had them both, yes, after disposing of you two and sending my TARDIS away so you couldn't be located. Unfortunately, I was unaware of Leela's presence until after I'd revealed my plans to the Doctor regarding her daughter's future. She was a last minute addition to those plans," he added. "Originally I'd only intended to retrieve your daughter, but I was forced to reevaluate that decision when I saw Noni. Such a lovely child," he mused.
"I just wish you were still alive so I could kill you myself." Ace tried to ignore the implications of the Master's words, but couldn't. Plans. Plans for Noni, plans for Susan…She felt cold all over. "On second thought, I'm glad Leela killed you. I hope it hurt. A lot."
"When I realized who your daughter grows up to be, I decided I preferred not having her about from infancy," the Master continued, ignoring Ace's outburst. "It will be so much better to take her from the Doctor's first self. I believe he had a few run-ins with the Daleks during that time period; it wouldn't take much for me to influence the outcome of one of those instances to ensure her untimely demise."
Before Ace or Kyris could respond to that horrific possibility, he turned his attention back to Tegan. "As for Noni, she was going to be company for you, Tegan. Someone to help you during your pregnancy and attend you at child birth. Perhaps even someone to replace you in my bed; the young are so much more...malleable. Eventually I know I could have 'persuaded' her to enjoy my advances."
Persuaded. He meant hypnotized, mind control. Tegan's skin crawled as he continued speaking, obviously enjoying her horrified reaction. She fought down a surge of nausea that had nothing to do with her current condition. "Why?" she demanded, feeling her throat catch with fear for a young girl she'd never met. "You've already got your insurance," she spat the word out distastefully. "Why would you do that to someone else?"
"Never fear, my dear Tegan; no one could replace you in my heart." She closed her eyes and shook her head, once, swiftly, as if trying to dislodge his voice from her ears. "But, as I told the Doctor, I've felt a recent urge for creating a family of my own, especially after seeing how domestic my old enemy has become." He spoke those words with a certain amount of relish. "You are the means for preserving my future; Noni was going to be the one to ensure my bloodline, since I doubt very much the genetic loom will ever be used to weave anyone from my particular genealogy." He sounded genuinely regretful at that revelation. None of his listeners exhibited any signs of sympathy. "I've been mulling over the prospect of fatherhood, and it holds a certain appeal. Young minds, molded in my image, with Susan, as I'd originally intended, believing herself to be one of them--"
"BASTARD!" That was it; Ace had had enough. Eyes wild, she swiveled her head in multiple directions, searching desperately for something she could destroy, something to make that hateful voice stop. "You're not using us to get yourself a new body!" She grabbed up the tool kit, heaved it directly at the computer monitor on the desk, smashing it to pieces before Kyris or Tegan could stop her.
The Master's mocking laughter rang out. "Do you think that will have any effect on me at all? Do you think I would be so careless as to allow you access to something that could cause me harm?"
"You worked hard enough to keep us away from it!" Ace shouted defiantly.
"I let you find this place," the Master corrected her smugly. "I made it just difficult enough that you thought the goal worth achieving, and when I was done toying with you, I allowed you to make your way here. Just as I made sure the information Kyris needed to put two and two together was available to him immediately after discovering Tegan's condition." More laughter; the Master found a great deal amusing today. "That equipment you destroyed was merely a means for me to integrate the program with the TARDIS systems when I initially downloaded it, Dorothy, after certain modifications were made to the main console. Now that I'm part of the TARDIS itself, I don't require any such external hardware to do things...like this!"
A hum of energy was the only warning they had; suddenly, Tegan felt her ears pop. She started to back up, only to bump into something, the wall she thought, but when she looked, it was a good two feet away. She reached up tentatively, only to have her hand meet some kind of unseen resistance, a vibration that gave a faint static discharge as her fingers explored it. One that she couldn't penetrate, no matter how hard she pushed.
"Don't bother, Tegan; you can't escape the force field. It's merely a precaution; I don't want you or anyone else causing you harm. It's permeable to air, so you needn't worry about suffocating. Or hope for it," the Master added spitefully.
"I'm not having this baby! Ever! You know I'll find a way to get rid of it!" Tegan was on the verge of hysteria. She felt panicked, trapped, and not just by the force field. "You bastard! Let me out!" She pummeled her prison with both hands, to no effect.
Ace, chest heaving, was moving toward Tegan, obviously determined to find a way to free the other woman. Kyris had moved next to her when a golden glow suddenly enveloped them, crackling with energy. A flare of static caused the hair on their hands, the back of their arms and necks, to stand on end. Their bodies convulsed as they cried out in pain. Tegan screamed at the Master to stop, beat her fists futilely against the unyielding surface that imprisoned her.