The Doctor's TARDIS, One Hour Later
The Doctor pulled the two data chips out of his pocket and regarded them silently. He looked over at the TARDIS console; as expected, its computations had come to an end and the results were ready for him to examine. He set the coordinates to the moon currently housing the Master's TARDIS, re-pocketed the data chips and headed for his quarters. He would look at Nyssa's results first, then compare them to his own. Then, if necessary, he would compare both sets of results, separately and combined, against the data run through the Master's TARDIS.
Because you just never knew.
The Doctor's TARDIS, Two Hours Later
The results were, as Nyssa warned, not good. Nor were the results from the analysis by his TARDIS. He let out a curse that would have impressed even Ace, who was quite proud of her collection of unacceptable words and phrases from multiple cultures and eras of both Earth and other worlds they'd visited. "Chin up, Doctor," he muttered to himself. "You still have to combine the data."
The Doctor's TARDIS, Two and a Half Hours Later
The results didn't get any better. Nor did the Doctor's temper.
He felt his TARDIS arrive as he pondered the results. He stood up, heading directly for the Console Room. "One more set to correlate," he muttered. "Then we shall see what we shall see."
He refused to admit defeat.
"It's early days, yet," he admonished himself as he passed through the TARDIS door and trudged the half-mile to the Master's TARDIS.
Uninhabited Moon of Gas Giant Nmbrama VII, Five Minutes Later
"I have to check on the data," he said to Ace and Kyris as they ran out to meet him. He made deliberate eye contact, even though the last thing he wanted to see was the hope in their eyes fading to disappointment.
He continued walking, even though they'd stopped and were, no doubt, staring after him. "I had Nyssa look the test results over for me at the medical facility on Terminus, but I have to check her preliminary conclusions against the tests I left for the Master's TARDIS to analyze. I'll be a few hours."
He could feel their disappointment, just as he could feel Noni's disappointment when she greeted him at the TARDIS door. He repeated the same words to her that he'd said to his son and Ace, passing quickly through the Console Room and heading directly for the auxiliary control room. The Master's modifications had rendered the main console unusable to anyone not in possession of the alien technology he'd appropriated. Someday he might be inclined to try and unravel that particular mystery. But not today.
The Master's TARDIS, Three Hours Later (Give Or Take)
"So. Are we a danger to Susan, or what?"
Ace, of course. Kyris was no one's doormat, but Ace would always have the first word in any confrontation.
"You're not a danger." That was the easy part. Before they could do more than offer each other relieved hugs, the Doctor plowed on. "But you can't be with her, either."
"What? Why not?" "I don't believe you!" "Tell us."
Ace and Noni's outraged shouts almost completely obscured Kyris' quiet question, but the Doctor heard it. Just as he saw the anger in Ace's eyes, the disbelief in Noni's, and the sudden despair in his son's.
He spoke quietly, emotionlessly, because to do otherwise would be to give in to his own despair, his own sense of failure. Because what the Master had done, the Doctor did not believe could be undone. "He's altered you both on a genetic level, manipulated your DNA just as I suspected." Now for the hard part… "He's made it so that you are permanently out of temporal phase with Susan. I'm so sorry," he added, but got no further before a furious Ace interrupted.
"What does that mean, permanently out of temporal phase?" She glared at the Doctor. "What did he do to us?" Her voice was pitched perilously high, and Kyris reached over to touch her arm. Gently, but she flinched as if she'd been struck.
"He's manipulated our DNA on a quantum level so that we cannot exist at the same temporal location as Susan," Kyris put in quietly. Noni had retreated as far away from the console as she could, shaking her head, holding her hand to her mouth to stifle the sobs. She'd studied the theory behind such forbidden temporal sciences in her Temporal Ethics classes, but had never expected to come face to face with the results of such illicit tampering. Not to her friends, not like this…the sobs overwhelmed her and she sank to her haunches, burying her face in her hands.
"Not only Susan," the Doctor put in. If the first part was painful, this was downright cruel. "Because of that tampering, the two of you have been rendered effectively infertile."
"Of course." Kyris sounded far more in control of himself than the Doctor suspected he actually was. "He's made it so we're out of phase with anyone sharing our combined DNA, right? Is that it?"
His father nodded unhappily. "Unfortunately, yes. That is exactly what he's done."
Kyris looked at Ace, his face suspiciously blank, his voice controlled. "So we'll never be able to have any other children, not with each other." The Master had robbed them of their daughter and their future at the same time.
"Fix it." That was Ace once again. While Noni sobbed and silent tears slipped down Kyris' cheeks, her eyes were dry, fierce. Unflinching. "You know what he did, now fix it."
"Ace, I don't think I can. I know what the results of the Master's tampering are, but I don't know how he did it." More words he wished he didn't have to speak. "All I can tell is that you two are vibrating on a unique quantum level, specifically one that is unable to match the exact quantum reality of anyone who shares your combined genes."
"What, so you're saying that even if you take us on the TARDIS right now and go to Earth, we won't get there?" Ace's voice was full of disbelief, her eyes hard.
"That's a distinct possibilty," the Doctor agreed. "But not the only one. I'm not entirely certain as to how it would work; as best I can tell, if I try to bring you to her in my TARDIS, it will be as if you literally vanished into the space between one second and the next. And you'll stay that way until I remove the TARDIS from that particular time and space." He had never felt so helpless, not even when Adric died. "Another possibility would be that the TARDIS will simply find itself unable to materialize in the correct era. In any era where Susan exists."
"Then work backwards, do that reverse engineering thing." Ace's voice remained implacable. "Find a way to fix this, Doctor."
He looked directly into her eyes, intending to repeat his protests, to make her understand him, but faltered beneath the intensity of her gaze. Ace, he realized, would never take "no" for an answer. Not to this question. "I'll do my best," was all the Doctor said.
"Good." Ace turned that uncomfortably hard gaze on Kyris. "While you're doing that, we'll be looking for the Master. When we find him, we'll make him tell us what he did, make him help you fix it."
"This isn't a Time Lord thing!" Noni burst out. She'd risen to her feet, and although the tears continued to stream down her cheeks, she'd brought herself under control enough to follow the conversation. "The Master probably stole someone else's technology, just like he stole the technology to control the TARDIS from anywhere, just like he stole the technology to transfer his consciousness into a new body! What if even he doesn't know how to reverse it?"
"He'll know." Ace's voice was confident. "If only because he would want to be able to fix it if it happened to him. He'll know, and we'll make him tell us."
"Kyris, I don't think I can do anything to bring back your healing abilities, either." There it was, the last block on the headstone of their hopes. "It's somehow tied in to the genetic tampering the Master did. It doesn't appear to be something I can work on separately, although I will try to do so," he hastened to add. "I'm sorry." The words were simple, but the Doctor meant them.
"You're not the one who's going to be sorry." Ace's voice was vicious. Hatred burned in her eyes. "That bastard is going to pay for this. I'll kill him." She meant it, too, and Kyris, the one to normally counsel restraint, couldn't find it in him to try and calm her down.
"If it's the last thing we do," he agreed instead. His father looked at them, opened his mouth as if to object, then slowly closed it. "He's done worse than kill us. Don't tell Susan this is what happened to us," he added fiercely. "Even when she's grown. Don't you dare tell her." He had accepted the inevitability of the trap the Master had laid for them, even if Ace hadn't.
"I won't," his father agreed, and never mind that he'd already told Susan he would report on her parents' ultimate fates when next he visited her. Her and her husband and three children, two of them named for people she would never see again. He wished suddenly that he'd forced Kyris to meet her when Ace discovered her identity, so that she'd at least have one memory of his presence to treasure. But it was too late for that; the Master had taken his revenge in a manner calculated to cause the most pain, then vanished into the mists of time and space before he could be forced to reverse it.
"I want proof." Ace's voice was brittle, edged with belligerence. "Take us to see her, prove it to me, that I can't hold her in my arms."
"Ace, I know I'm right," the Doctor said, trying to find the right words, to make her understand the futility of such an effort. "The mathematics are complicated, the genetics even more so, but I understand enough to know that what I'm telling you is the truth."
"Prove it," Ace snarled. "Right now. Give us the coordinates of where she is, Kyris and I will take the Master's TARDIS and find out for ourselves. Without him on board, mucking things up, it works the way it's supposed to. Kyris can pilot it now."
The Doctor hesitated, seeking his son's eyes. Kyris looked exhausted, worn out, but when Ace put out her hand, he took it without hesitation. "We're going to try. If it works, we'll bring Susan back to Gallifrey."
"And if it doesn't?" The Doctor's voice said "when" instead of "if".
"Then we'll hunt down the Master," Ace replied. "You concentrate on figuring out exactly how he did this to us. We'll find out where the rat has slunk off to. And don't worry," she added. "We'll keep him alive until we can force him to fix this." And no longer than that, her expression said.
"Is that what you want?" The Doctor asked his son. Kyris nodded, pulling Ace closer and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. The Doctor took a step back. "Very well. I promise I will never stop searching for way to cure this."
"How will we find you?" Kyris asked suddenly. "Should we set up a place and time to meet?"
The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the device he'd created for tracking the Master's TARDIS. "Use this to find me," he said, placing it into his son's hand.
"What is it?"
"It's a more sophisticated version of what I put together the first time we were tracking the Master's TARDIS," his father explained. "It can easily be calibrated to locate my own instead. I'll transfer the information from my TARDIS before Noni and I leave." He leveled a glance at the young woman in question. "I presume you'll be coming with me?" She nodded, using her sleeve to wipe her face dry. He returned his attention to Kyris. "Since I want you to find me, you can rest assured this will work the way it's supposed to."
Kyris let go of Ace long enough to step over to his father's side and offer his hand. The Doctor took it, then pulled his son closer for a long embrace. "Godspeed," he whispered in Kyris' ear. Ace merely nodded at him curtly. He recognized this mood; she was set on a particular course, and nothing was going to be allowed to distract her. Especially not sentiment.
Noni, however, was having none of it. She hugged Kyris as he returned to Ace's side, then threw her arms around Ace, who endured the embrace but seemed unable to spare the energy to return it with any enthusiasm. She nodded when Noni whispered her farewells and good lucks, allowed her cheek to be kissed, but that was all. It was going to be the greatest challenge of her life, trying to find the Master when no one knew where he was or even what he looked like, but this outcome was inevitable. She and Kyris, chasing the Master, while the Doctor chased a cure.
"It's time to go." Noni moved away from the other two with a great deal of reluctance. She wanted to go with them, he knew without her saying anything, but they both knew that was impossible. Ace and Kyris needed to do this on their own, and Leela would have a few choice words for him if he allowed her eldest daughter to disappear into the void without what she would consider adequate supervision.
"It'll be good to get home," was all she said. There were still tears glittering on her cheeks, leaking from the edges of her eyes. Watching Ace and Kyris suffer like this, knowing in her gut that the Doctor was right and they would never see Susan again, was as painful as giving Susan away had been. Worse, even, although she'd sworn nothing could possibly hurt as badly as that moment.
"Your parents must be frantic," Kyris as he opened the main door, letting in the warm afternoon breeze. "They'll be relieved to see you're all right."
"Yeah." Noni's voice was unenthusiastic. Returning home, back to Gallifrey, trying to live the life she'd had before all this…it wasn't going to be easy, but she suspected the Doctor wasn't about to invite her to keep traveling with him. She sensed he needed to be alone just as much as Ace and Kyris did.
They left, without another word, the Doctor trudging toward his TARDIS in stoic silence, Noni glancing backward with every step, blinking away the tears that threatened to once again overwhelm her. When they arrived, she didn't immediately follow the Doctor inside, electing instead to watch the Master's TARDIS until it abruptly vanished. She took that to indicatethat the data transfer was complete, and reluctantly went inside.
The Doctor cleared his throat as she closed the door behind her. He began manipulating levers on the Console, but slowly. "We have one stop to make before I take you home..."
"Your first self, I know," Noni agreed. She looked at him, scrubbed tiredly at her eyes and slowly moved toward the interior door. "To take care of his memories, right?"
He nodded. "Unfortunately." He hesitated. "I could take you home first..."
"Take care of the unfinished business first, but don't expect me to come with you to see him." Her eyes filled with pain. "I don't think I could bear to see Susan again, not knowing what I know..." Her voice trailed off and she turned sharply away. Without another word she pulled the interior door open and dashed through it. It slammed shut behind her, and the Doctor was alone.