Right, re-uploading this to try and fix formatting issues. I'm aware that there are some problems with other chapters; I'll be working on getting them all fixed ASAP. Many thanks to everyone who's stuck with the story this far.

Jefferson opened fire, slaughtering the Ood, and Barry grimaced. He could've grabbed the bullets, he knew, but he couldn't think of any other way to stop them.

"We're stabilizing," Zach announced. "We've got orbit."

Barry hurried to the communicator. "Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me? Doctor, Ida, are you there?"

Danny joined them, reporting that all of the Ood had gone mad, but Barry shook his head.

"It's not them. It's, it's the thing in the pit. It's possessing them."

"How do you know?"

"It's obvious," Barry shrugged. "The writing on the wall, what Toby said…it's all gotta be related. Something with immense psychic powers. It's been buried for a really, really long time, in orbit

around a black hole. Five bucks says you guys woke it up with your drill. That's how it always works."

"All very nice theories," Jefferson interceded, "but what do we do now?"

He opened the door, revealing several Ood, and promptly slammed it shut again. They conferred with Zach over the comms, and Jefferson and Zach recommended "strategy nine." Thankfully, the comm squealed to life again, and the Doctor's voice echoed through. He reported that he and Ida were fine, and that the pit was open, but nothing was coming out.

""It said Satan," Barry fretted.

"Come on, Barry," the Doctor ordered. "Keep it together."

Zach ordered the two of them back up, and for once in his life, the Doctor obeyed orders.

"Best news I've heard all day," the young man breathed, but tensed again when Jefferson pointed his rifle at Toby.

"What're you doing?" Barry demanded.

"He's infected," Jefferson growled. "He brought that thing on board. You saw it."

"Yeah, and are you going to start shooting your own people now? Is that what you're going to do?" Barry stepped forward, aggressively blocking the gun with his own body. "Is it?"

"If necessary."

"Well then, you'll have to shoot me if necessary, so what's it going to be?" Barry gestured behind him. "Look at his face. Whatever it was, is gone. It passed into the Ood. You saw

it happen. He's clean. We don't kill our own people."

Jefferson sighed and lowered his gun. "Any sign of trouble, I'll shoot him."

Barry nodded and turned to Toby. "You okay, dude?"

"Yeah. I don't know."

"Can you remember anything?"

"Just, it was so angry. It was fury and rage and death. It was him. It was the devil."

"Come on," Barry murmured. He put an arm around Toby's shoulders and pulled him along.

"So what's strategy nine?" Barry asked as they followed Jefferson towards the command center.

"Open the airlocks," the older man said without looking back. "Flush all of the Ood out into the vacuum."

"Great," Barry muttered to himself. On top of everything else, they had to save all the Ood, which would mean finding a way to flush out the…whatever it was. Because no more innocent lives were going to be lost today. Not while he had anything to say about it.

"Okay, we're in," Ida reported. "Bring us up."

"Ascension in three, two, one," Jefferson counted. And then, naturally, the power went out.

"This is the darkness," a voice rumbled through the speakers. The screen flickered and changed to reveal the Ood. "This is my domain."

"You little things that live in the light, clinging to your feeble suns which die in the..."

"That's not the Ood," Zach called. "Something's talking through them."

"That's what I said," Barry muttered in a stage whisper, rolling his eyes.

"It's him, it's him, it's him," Toby gasped, rocking back and forth. Barry put a hand on his shoulder as the Doctor inquired which "Devil" this was.

"All of them," it rumbled succinctly, and Barry swallowed.

"What, then you're the truth behind the myth?" the Doctor scoffed.

"This one knows me as I know him," the voice continued, unfazed. "The killer of his own kind."

It went on to claim that it had been chained under the planet by the Disciples of Light before the universe had begun.

"You know nothing," it scoffed at them. "All of you, so small. The Captain, so scared of command. The soldier, haunted by the eyes of his wife. The scientist, still running from Daddy. The little boy who lied. The virgin. And the lost boy, so far away from home. The valiant child who thinks he can run and run fast enough to escape his demons. But the truth is the reverse. All of you will die, and I will live."

Then the screen flickered, and just for a second, it showed a giant horned beast, tossing its head and roaring. Everyone started speaking at once, until the Doctor sent a wave of feedback through the comms, and Barry winced. He looked down at his hands and consciously unclenched them.

"You want voices in the dark, then listen to mine," the Doctor ordered. "That thing is playing on very basic fears. Darkness, childhood nightmares, all that stuff."

"But that's how the devil works," Danny whispered.

"Or a good psychologist," the Doctor shot back. "What makes his version of the truth any better than mine, hmm? Cos I'll tell you what I can see. Humans. Brilliant humans. Humans who travel all the way across space, flying in a tiny little rocket, right into the orbit of a black hole, just for the sake of discovery." They smiled at each other. "That's amazing! Do you hear me? Amazing, all of you. The Captain, his Officer, his elders, his juniors, his friends. All with one advantage. The Beast is alone. We are not. If we can use that to fight against him…"

Just then, the wire snapped, and a cloud of dust rose up.

"Doctor!" Barry yelled. "Doctor, we lost the cable. You all right?"

Nothing but static.

"Comms are down," Zach reported. "I've still got life signs, but we've lost the capsule. There's no way out. They're stuck down there."

"Any chance you guys have another ten miles of cable?" Barry asked, not really expecting a positive answer. When Jefferson shook his head, Barry nodded decisively.

"Okay, fine. We…"

And then, as if the situation hadn't been bad enough, the Ood started cutting their way in. Jefferson estimated that they had eight minutes left.

"Right. So we need to stop them, or get out, or both," Barry determined, punching one fist into the other hand.

"I'll take both, yeah," Danny nodded. "But how?"

"Like the Doctor said," Barry grinned wildly, feeling the adrenaline start to build. "Why do you think that thing cut him off? Because the Doctor's got a superpower of his own, and that's his brains. He never gives up, he never gives in, he always finds the way out. So come on! For a start, okay, we need some lights. Captain Zach, is there a backup power supply, or something?"

"They've gutted the generators," the captain said slowly. "But the rocket's got an independent supply. If I could reroute that…Mister Jefferson?"

In short order, the lights were restored, and Barry punched the air, grinning. "Right! Great job, everyone. Let there be light! Okay, next step. We need to either stun the Ood long enough to get past them, or find a way out. Zach, Mister Jefferson, you start working on that. Toby, can you start working on translating that language? Information's power, and we need all the power we can get."

"I…well…since that thing was inside my head, it's like the letters made more sense," Toby muttered.

"Residual memories from the possession, right," Barry nodded. This was something he'd learned from the Doctor—when in doubt, spout gobbledygook and act like you knew what you were talking about. "Danny-you're in charge of the Ood. Any way of stopping them?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Well, then find out," Barry shot back. "We need to get control of the base, get the Doctor and Ida out, and get ourselves outta here. Let's go!"

"Oh, my God," Danny breathed a short while later, hunched over his computer screen. "It says yes. I can do it. Hypothetically, if you flip the monitor, broadcast a flare, it can disrupt the telepathy. Brainstorm!"

"What happens to the Ood?" Barry asked.

"It'll tank them, spark out."

"All right. Make it so, Number One!" Barry ordered. Danny blinked at him, and Barry shook his head. "Not a Trekkie? Don't worry about it."

Danny shook his head. "No, but I'd have to transmit from the central monitor. We need to go to Ood Habitation."

"Okay, so we'll go to Ood Habitation. Mister Jefferson, sir. Any way out?"

"Just about," he murmured. "There's a network of maintenance tunnels running underneath the base. We should be able to gain access from here."

"Ventilation shafts!" Barry cheered. As it turned out, they actually didn't have any ventilation at all, but Zach volunteered to remotely manipulate the oxygen field and create air pockets. It took until the Ood were almost through, but they managed just in time, and began crawling.

Then the Ood started following. Barry muttered angrily to himself—he couldn't exactly speed-crawl, especially with the others in front of him. He had a nasty feeling that if he tried, he'd go head-first into a wall. Jefferson stayed behind to hold off the Ood, and as they crawled around one corner after another, the Ood came after them with all the fury of hell.

"Where are they? Are they close?" Barry asked.

"I don't know. I can't tell. I can't see them. The computer doesn't register Ood as proper life forms!" Zach shouted.

"Geez," Barry muttered, rolling his eyes. Just then, the door in front of them slid open, and they hurried through. Jefferson stayed behind, and Barry flinched at every echoing gunshot behind them, reassuring himself that dead men couldn't shoot.

"Eight point two. Open eight point two. Zach!" Danny bellowed.

"John, I have to open 8.2 by closing 8.1!" Zach snapped. "You need to move, now!"

Barry turned to watch as the older man hurried towards them.

"I'm going to lose oxygen, Jefferson, I can't stop the automatics!"

"Keep going!" Danny yelled. The security chief crawled into sight, but the door was already beginning to close. Barry had a horrible flashback to when he'd been trapped in Maxwell Lorrd's bunker with the Dalek. Not again, he promised himself, and dove.

Feeling the lightning crackling around him, Barry slipped his hands under the door and pushed upwards. He had almost no leverage, and the door was heavy, but he managed to hold it for just long enough for Jefferson to slip underneath. With a gasp of relief, Barry let the door slam shut.

"Thanks," Jefferson gasped out.

"No prob. C'mon," Barry ordered, and they followed Danny and Toby into the final section. Unfortunately, when section 9.2 opened, it was already full of Ood, and they had to scramble for a terminal as the Ood advanced, eyes glowing crimson. Hands shaking, Danny stabbed at the controls, and the Ood collapsed.

"You did it!" Barry cheered.

"We did it!"

"Yes!" Danny punched the air.

"Zach, we did it," Barry reported. "The Ood are down. Now we've got to get the Doctor and Ida."

"I'm on my way," Zach responded.

By the time they were able to patch the comms through the central unit, though, Ida reported that the Doctor had already fallen into the pit.

"Of course he did," Barry muttered, facepalming in despair. Zach gently took the microphone and addressed Ida.

"There's no way of reaching you. No cable, no backup. You're ten miles down. We can't get there. We've got to abandon the base. I'm declaring this mission unsafe," he continued grimly. "All we can do is make sure no one ever comes here again. Officer Scott…"

"It's all right," she said quietly. "Just go. Good luck."

Barry closed his eyes and bowed his head. It was turning out to be one of those days. He realized that Zach was addressing him.

"Barry? You coming with us? We can, uh, drop you off somewhere."

The young man closed his eyes and looked off into the distance. "The Doctor will find us," he promised. Zach opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Sure he will."

"He's survived all kinds of stuff," Barry continued, gripping the console. "Stuff you wouldn't believe. He'll manage. Somehow. And he'll come back for me. I have faith, okay? I have faith."

"Sure," Zach nodded again. Barry flinched. He sighed and let go, turning away from the console, from his friend, and towards a future that had just become a hundred times more uncertain.

He'd faced all kinds of monsters and hopeless situations, but as long as the Doctor was there, he'd always felt like everything would be okay. Now, the Doctor was gone, possibly lost forever, and he was alone, two thousand years and trillions of miles from home. But no matter what, no matter how, he would deal with it. Somehow.

"Let's go."

And then his phone rang again. He answered it.

"Is it…him?" Toby asked, eyes wide. Barry gave him what felt like his first real grin in a long time.

"Better! It's the Doctor. He says he's safe at the bottom of the pit. I'm gonna join him. You guys, get to the rocket, but don't lift off yet, okay? Might need to hitch a ride."

"How are you going to get down there?" Zach demanded, and Barry's grin widened. "Like this."

He held out his ring-bearing hand, and in the blink of an eye, he was suited up. "Later, guys!" he called, and with a gust of wind, was gone, running straight down the mineshaft.

In less time than it takes to say it, Barry had joined his friend at the bottom of the pit, moving fast enough that the cold and lack of air didn't even have a chance to bother him. Looking around, he smiled and made a phone call to the surface.

"Ah, Barry!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Excellent! Look, c'mere."

"Doctor, guess what?"

"The history of some big battle," the Doctor gabbled on, taking Barry's hand with one of his own and shining the torch on hieroglyphic-inscribed cave walls with the other. "Man against Beast. Don't know if you're getting this, Ida. Hope so. Anyway, they defeated the Beast and imprisoned it."

"Doctor…"

The Doctor ignored him, though, pointing his torch at two bronze urns, identical to the pair painted on the wall. "Or maybe that's the key." He touched one, and they both lit up. "Or the gate, or the bars."

"Doctor!" Barry repeated, but even he was distracted by the impossibly big, red, horned beast snarling down at them. He flinched as it lunged at them, then realized that it was chained by its horns and wrists to the cavern wall.

"I accept that you exist," the Doctor called to it. "I don't have to accept what you are, but your physical existence, I'll give you that. I don't understand. I was expected down here. I was given a safe landing and air. You need me for something. What for? Have I got to, I don't know, beg an audience? Or is there a ritual? Some sort of incantation or summons or spell? All these things I don't believe in, are they real? Speak to me! Tell me! You won't talk. Or you can't talk. Oh, hold on, wait a minute, just let me…"

"Doctor…"

The Doctor started pacing, running his hands through his hair and gesturing wildly, completely ignoring Barry as he did so. "Oh! No. Yes! No. Think it through. You spoke before. I heard your voice. An intelligent voice. No, more than that. Brilliant. But, looking at you now, all I can see is Beast. The animal. Just the body. You're just the body, the physical form. What's happened to your mind, hmm? Where's it gone? Where's that intelligence? Oh, no," he breathed, looking up at where the rocket was rumbling into the air. "Wait a minute, the rocket! Barry, didn't you tell them to stay?"

"I did," Barry said, rolling his eyes, "Until just now, when I told them to lift off and get outta here."

"What?" the Doctor bellowed, finally giving his friend his full attention. "Why would you do that?"

"Because the TARDIS is right back there, and I don't want them in danger any longer than necessary," Barry replied, pointing with his thumb.

"Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" the Doctor demanded.

"I tried," Barry muttered.

"Oh, never mind. Brilliant! Molto bene! Now then," he turned back to the Beast. "You're imprisoned, long time ago. Before the universe, after, sideways, in between, doesn't matter. The prison is perfect. It's absolute, it's eternal. Oh, yes! Open the prison, the gravity field collapses. This planet falls into the black hole! You escape, you die. Brilliant!" he cheered, then stopped.

"But that's just the body. The body is trapped, that's all. The devil is an idea. In all those civilizations, just an idea. But an idea is hard to kill. An idea could escape. The mind. The mind of the great Beast. The mind can escape!" He spun, pointing his torch directly at Barry, who shielded his eyes. "Oh, but that's it! You didn't give me air, your jailers did. They set this up all those years ago! They need me alive, because if you're escaping, then I've got to stop you. If I destroy your prison, your body is destroyed. Your mind with it."

He lifted the rock, then his shoulders dropped again.

"But you're clever enough to use the whole system against me. Because if I kill your mind, I also kill all the others."

"Can we use the TARDIS somehow?" Barry asked. "Materialize onboard or something?"

"Barry, yes, brilliant! Good man!" the Doctor praised. "We'll use the TARDIS to create a gravity cone, tow the ship away."

"We can do that?"

"Pfft," the Doctor snorted. "My people practically invented black holes. Well, actually, we did."

"Wait, what?"

"Right!" the Doctor announced. "First things first, but not necessarily in that order."

He turned to Barry. "You want to do the honors?"

"How 'bout one each?" he asked, and the Doctor grinned back at him.

"Sounds fair. This is your freedom, big guy. Free to die!"

He smashed one of the urns with a rock, and Barry drove his vibrating fist through the other. "Go to hell."

"Wait!" Barry exclaimed as they entered the TARDIS. "Ida. And the Ood!"

"Go!" the Doctor ordered. "Get them all in here!"

"I'm gone," Barry promised. The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors and stood back. A burst of orange lightning shot in, depositing Ida on the jump seat. The lightning shot in and out again, almost invisible to a human's senses, leaving two Ood standing together. And another, and another, and another, only instants apart. In the time it took for a human's heart to beat twice, all fifty Ood, two humans, and a Time Lord were squeezed into the console room. As the Doctor shut the door and strode towards the console, Barry leaned on one of the Ood's shoulders for a moment as he pulled out a concentrated calorie bar from a compartment in his belt.

"Sorry," he said, but the Ood merely blinked at him and held up its translator ball. Barry flinched before he could stop himself, but it didn't attach to his forehead and electrocute him. Instead, when it lit up, the Ood spoke.

"You are quite welcome, sir. You saved our lives, after all."

"Yeah. Glad to," Barry smiled, clapping it on the shoulder. "How we doing, Doctor?"

"Yep, fine, just getting the ship out of harm's way," the Doctor said cheerfully, then flipped a switch to turn on the comms. "Sorry about the hijack, Captain, this is the good ship TARDIS."

Having towed the ship to safety and reunited Ida with Zach, Jefferson, and Danny (Toby had, apparently, still been possessed after all, and Jefferson had had to shoot him out the window, to

their regret), the two friends stood side-by-side at the console, Barry leaning against his friend in relief, before straightening up abruptly.

"Doctor?" he whispered after a second.

"Yes?" the Doctor responded in a normal tone of voice. Barry shot the nearest Ood a look.

"What if—you know—the Devil's still in this lot? Hiding, like he did with Toby?"

"Nah, thought of that already," the Doctor replied with his "I'm-so-clever" grin. "Set up a basic cleansing matrix using the TARDIS' telepathic field, amplified by the Ood's own psychic abilities.

Any trace of anything that shouldn't be in their heads is gonna be wiped cleaner than a, a, one of those really clean things. Like a window! Except not like a window…"

Barry barked out a laugh and plonked himself down on the seat as the Doctor gabbled on. He'd noticed that one of the downsides of having an accelerated metabolism was once the adrenaline got going, the crashes afterwards could completely wipe him out. He unwrapped a second bar and began to chew, daydreaming of a nice soft bed.

"Zach?" the Doctor called. "We'll be off, now. Have a good trip home. And the next time you get curious about something…Oh, what's the point," he rolled his eyes affectionately. "You'll just go blundering in. The human race."

"But, Doctor," called Ida. "What did you find down there? That creature, what was it?"

"Don't know," the Doctor admitted, casually flicking a switch. Barry had come to the conclusion that at least half of them didn't actually do anything and that they were just there because the Doctor liked having something to fiddle with. "Never did decipher that writing. But that's good. Day I know everything? Might as well stop."

"What do you think it was, really?" Barry asked.

"I think…we beat it," the Doctor responded after a second. "That's good enough for me."

"Right!" he added after a second. "Onwards, upwards. Ida? See you again, maybe."

"I hope so," she replied.

"And thanks, guys!" Barry called. "Take care!"

"Hang on, though, Doctor," Ida asked. "You never really said. You two. Who are you?"

"Oh," the Doctor and Barry grinned at each other. "The stuff of legend."

And once again, Barry proves that his mind and heart are as important as his speed. Kudos to whomever spots the Thawne reference. As always, please let me know what you like and don't like!