A/N: Hey everyone! Apologies once more for any spelling and grammar mistakes that have possibly slipped through the net.

The Doctor was staring at the empty space where the TARDIS had been just moments ago. All he could think about was Kari, and what was going to happen to her. He was blaming himself, for not listening to her and leaving when she said, for thinking that he knew better. He knew that he should have learnt by now to listen to her.

"Doctor!" Martha shouted at him, trying to close the door as the Futurekind tried desperately to get at them.

He charged over, grabbing Jack's wrist as his did. With his sonic screwdriver in his hand, he worked away at the vortex manipulator, knowing that he needed to get them out of there. "Hold still! Don't move!" He called, although he knew it wasn't that easy to keep still when they were trying not to get killed. "Hold it still!"

"I'm telling you, it's broken." Jack protested. "It hasn't worked for years."

"That's because you didn't have me." He said, finishing up what he was doing to it. "Martha, grab hold, now!" He cried, before slamming his hand down on the device.

A moment later, and the trio appeared in a bit of a whirlwind. "Oh, my head." Martha moaned, clutching onto her aching head as she tried to steady herself against the wall.

"Time travel without a capsule. That's a killer." The Doctor said, getting his breath back and standing up properly and leading the way out of the alley that the three of them had arrived in.

"Still, at least we made it." Jack said, checking out where they were. "Earth, twenty first century by the looks of it. Talk about lucky." He bragged.

"That wasn't luck, that was me." The Doctor told him sternly. He wasn't in the best of moods, because he had lost his Kari, and he knew that he needed to get her back. Only Kari knew what the Master was capable of, and she was stuck with him.

They ended up sitting in the centre of a shopping area, trying to work out their next move. "The moral is, if you're going to get stuck at the end of the universe, get stuck with an ex-Time Agent and his vortex manipulator." It was clear that Jack wanted to get some of the credit for getting them out of there in one piece.

Martha looked at him, and then at the Doctor. "But this Master bloke, he's got the TARDIS. He could be anywhere in time and space."

"No, he's here. Trust me." The Doctor said, looking around and making note of everything that he could see. There was all this 'Vote Saxon' paraphernalia around the place.

"Who is he, anyway?" Martha asked him, wanting to find out exactly what was going on. "And that voice at the end, that wasn't the Professor." She added, remembering that the man's voice was completely different.

Jack looked at the Doctor and then back at Martha, seeing that he wasn't really paying that much attention to what the woman was saying. "If the Master's a Time Lord, then he must have regenerated." Jack informed her, seeing that the Doctor wasn't going to.

"What does that mean?" Martha had absolutely no idea what regeneration was still, so she was going to need it explained to her.

"It means he's changed his face, voice, body, everything, New man." Jack told her.

The Doctor still had his mind elsewhere, and his eyes were focused on a man, in ragged clothes, tapping a particular rhythm on the side of his tin mug. There was something staring him right in the face, he knew there was, but he just couldn't pin point what it was.

"Then how are we going to find him?" Martha wondered.

Suddenly the Doctor was back with them. "I'll know him, the moment I see him. Time Lords always do."

Jack just looked at him, and the look on his face just told him everything. "I'm sure Kari is fine. She knows how to look after herself, I made sure of that." Jack told him, hoping it would be some form of reassurance for him. Instead, the Doctor just looked at him, waiting for a further explanation. "What, did you think that when she came to visit we just partied from dusk till dawn?" He said, a smirk on his face. "No, I taught her a few things, in case she ever needed it."

"You taught my Kari how to fight?" The Doctor asked him, clearly not believe it.

"Doctor, she needed to know how to defend herself in case anything ever happened. Trust me, she'll be fine." The Doctor nodded at him, knowing that he was probably right. The only issue that he had, was that maybe Kari hadn't been that far yet.

"But hold on…" Martha said, something finally dawning on her. "If he could be anyone… we missed the election." She said, just as the large screen in the square turned on. "But it can't be…"

The three of them walked closer to the screen, watching at the news came on. "Mr Saxon has returned from the Palace and is greeting the crowd inside Saxon headquarters." The newsreader said, as the Doctor notice the man on the screen, the Prime Minister.

"I said I new that voice." Martha told them both. "When he spoke inside of the TARDIS. I've heard that voice hundreds of times. I've seen him. We all have. That was the voice of Harold Saxon."

"That's him." The Doctor said, almost in disbelief. "He's Prime Minister. The Master is Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Master and his wife?" He said, looking at the woman who stood beside him. He was relieved, but also disappointed. He was glad that it wasn't Kari, but he wasn't so happy about not seeing her there.

"This country has been sick." The Master said, on the big screen. "This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now, is a Doctor."

"But what about Kari? He took Kari, so where is she?" Martha said, asking what all of them were thinking. They were all worried about her, and none of them knew what to do to find her.

The expression on the Doctor's face just said it all. "I don't know. I thought she'd be with him. I was hoping she'd be with him. I don't… I don't know where she is." He admitted.

Jack knew that they needed to get somewhere else, somewhere out of the open so that they could come up with a plan. "Come on, we need to move. We can't stay out here."

"Uh, my flat isn't too far. We can go there." Martha offered. The Doctor and Jack both nodded at her, and they were quick to follow her away from the shops and the crowd and to some more empty streets.

None of them spoke during the walk. Martha was kicking herself for not realising who Harold Saxon really was. Jack was trying to keep himself together and not worry about Kari too much. He just kept telling himself that she could take care of herself, and that if anything had happened, he would know.

But the Doctor was the most worried out of all of them. There were things that he knew, about the Master, about Kari, and he was terrified of what he was putting her through. He was blaming himself for it all, for letting her out of his sight when they both knew something was wrong. He just wanted to get her back, and for her to be completely fine. Only he wasn't so sure that was going to happen, not with her stuck with the Master.

"Home." Martha said, as they finally made it to her flat. The Doctor just looked to the corner when the TARDIS had last landed in there, and remembered the way Kari just ordered Martha to get back into the ship. A sad smile managed to makes its way onto his face as he thought about how Martha had become part of her time travelling family.

It was quick to snap himself out of it, because there was so much more he needed to be getting on with. "What have you got? Computer, laptop, anything?" He asked, before noticing Jack on the phone. "Jack, who are you phoning? You can't tell anyone we're here."

"Just some friends of mine, but there's no reply." Jack said, giving up on trying to contact his team.

"Here you go, any good?" Martha asked the Doctor, grabbing her laptop for him.

Before the Doctor had a chance to answer, Jack had taken it and was heading over to the desk. "I can show you the Saxon website. He's been around for ages." He informed him, knowing enough about Saxon already.

"That's so weird though." Martha said, trying to get her head around it all. "It's the day after the election. That's only four days after I met you and Kari."

"We went flying all around the universe while he was here all the time." The Doctor told her, realising just how much of a mistake he had made. He knew that there had been so many times when Kari had let on that something was wrong, but he just didn't pay attention to it.

"You going to tell us who he is?" Martha asked, wanting to know exactly what was going on.

The Doctor didn't particularly want to tell her, but he knew he had to give them both something. "He's a Time Lord."

'What about the rest of it?" Martha demanded, standing there in her living room with her hands on her hips. "I mean, who'd call himself 'the Master'?"

The Doctor just looked at her. "That's all you need to know." He told her, before turning his attention back to Jack and the laptop. "Come on, show me Harold Saxon."

After going through the website of Harold Saxon, and his life, they were sitting in Martha's living room, apart from Jack who was making tea in the kitchen. "But he's got the TARDIS." Jack called to the Doctor in the other room. "Maybe the Master went back in time and has been living here for decades."

"No." the Doctor called, having made himself comfortable at the desk, his feet up on the second chair.

"Why not?" Jack asked, coming in with three mugs of tea. "Worked for me."

The Doctor took one of the mugs from him before giving an explanation. "When he was stealing the TARDIS, the only thing I could do was fuse the coordinates. I locked them permanently. He can only go between the year one hundred trillion and the last place the TARDIS landed. Which is right here, right now." He told Jack confidently.

"Yeah, but a little leeway?" It was clear that Jack wasn't that convinced. He knew that there had to be more to it, the man couldn't have made a life in no time at all.

"Well, eighteen months… tops." The Doctor told him, having to think about it for a moment. "The most he could have been here is eighteen months. So how has he managed all this?" He said, looking at the details on the Saxon website. His whole life was there, school, marriage, books, the lot. "The Master was always sort of hypnotic, but this is on a massive scale." The Doctor admitted. He knew that was eighteen months longer than he should have left Kari with the man for, and it didn't do anything to ease his worry over her.

Kari let out a groan as she took in her surroundings. Time travel by TARDIS was still top of her list as far as she was concerned, but her vortex manipulator came in a close second compared to what she was used to. "Okay, where the hell am I?" She mumbled to herself, undoing the strap and shoving it into her back pocket. She needed to keep it hidden, and she knew that, but she wasn't so sure her bag was going to be safe.

As she took in her surroundings, it clicked where she as when she spotted a silver car, and she knew exactly where she was. "Oh no, Martha's flat." Kari said, her eyes widening as she ran towards where Martha Jones lived.

Before she even reached the door, she had her sonic screwdriver in her hand, ready to unlock the door and charge into Martha's flat. She had to warn them, to get them all out. "And tomorrow morning, they will appear." Kari heard the Master saying, knowing he was making his announcement on the television. "Not in secret, but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species."

She threw open the door to Martha's flat, taking them all by such a surprise that Jack ended up pointing his gun at her. "Oh, for God sake, Jack! Will you stop pointing that gun at me!" Kari shouted at him. "I swear, the next time you do it, I'm going to snatch it off you and bloody shoot you with it myself."

They were all just looking at her with wide eyes, but the Doctor was the first one to move. "Kari, you're okay. Oh, I'm so glad you're okay." He said, giving her a tight hug.

"Every man, woman and child. Every teacher and chemist…"

"There is a bomb strapped to the back of the TV!" Kari cried, causing the Doctor to let her go and turn the television around so that he could see it for himself.

"Out!" He shouted, grabbing the laptop from the table and pushing Kari out of the flat ahead of him.

They only just made it outside in time, as the floor the Martha lived on suddenly burst into flames. "See, never waste time with a hug, Doctor. Those are your own words." She told him, trying to catch her breath. She had got to them just in time, and she knew that they hadn't been there that long. She hadn't seen them for less than an hour, but she knew it would have been more for them.

The Doctor didn't listen to her, and just wrapped his arms around her again, but even tighter. "Are you all right? Did he hurt you at all?" He whispered to her, glad to have her there and in one piece.

Kari let out a sigh. "Doctor, I'm fine. He freaked me out a bit, but the Master has always been someone to fear." She told him. "I'm okay."

He pulled away a little so that he could look at her properly, just to make sure she really was okay. "How did you get away from him? How long have you been here?"

"I… jumped." She lied, noticing the way that Jack raised an eyebrow at her. "He told me to go pack a bag, because we wouldn't be staying in the TARDIS. I got to my room, grabbed my bag, and then I jumped. I literally just got here."

"I'm just glad you're okay." He told her, giving her another quick hug, before noticing Martha looking at her mobile phone. "Martha? What are you doing?" He asked her, watching her carefully as Jack took Kari away from him for a hug as well.

"So, you jumped did you?" He whispered to her, knowing that she was lying.

"Okay, so apparently I'm going to write myself a little note with the coordinates one day." She told him quietly, while the Doctor tried to stop Martha from calling her family. "I'm just glad I ended up in the right place."

Her big brother chuckled a little as he gave her another hug. "Sure you're okay?" He asked her once more. All Kari could do was nod at him, she wasn't really okay, and she wouldn't be until the whole mess was over and done with.

When he let her go, the Doctor was quick to latch onto her hand, holding it live a voice. It was pretty clear that he wasn't going to let her out of his sight any time soon. "They're going for Martha's sister, and they're about to take her parents. He's trying to get to us, it's a trap." Kari warned him, knowing what was going to happen next.

He gave her a solemn look, before watching Martha. "Dad, just say yes or no. Is there someone else there?" Martha asked her father down the phone. She paused, obviously waiting for him to answer her. "Dad? What's going on? Dad?" She ended up shouting down the phone.

It was clear from the look on Martha's face that something was wrong. Kari felt guilty, because she knew it was going to happen, Martha's mother had been working along side Saxon to spy on her, to keep tabs on her. She could have warned them, told them what was going on, stopped them for being targets for the Master, gotten them some form of protection. But it was too late for that.

"I've gotta help them." Martha said, rushing over to her Silver Corsa.

"That's exactly what they want. It's a trap!" The Doctor shouted at her, knowing that Kari was starting to drift of into a bad place. He could see that she was starting to take blame, letting herself believe it was all her fault.

Martha glared at him. "I don't care." She spat, before looking at Kari. There was a disgusted look on her face, and she couldn't look at her for long.

With a reluctant sigh he squeezed Kari's hand tighter and dragged her over to Martha's car. He pulled her into the back with him, while Jack jumped in the front with Martha. He held onto Kari tightly in the back, as Martha sped down the road, breaking several laws along the way.

She quickly hit the speed dial number for her sister, trying to focus on driving while it rang. "Come on, Tish. Pick up." She said, needing to speak to her sister, to make sure that she was okay.

"Martha, I can't talk right now. We just made first contact. Did you see?" Tish asked her, sounding father happy. But that all changed, and Kari knew what. "What are you doing? Get off! Linda, tell them!" Tish shouted. Her voice sounded more distant than it had been before, and it made Martha worry all the more.

"What's happening? Tish!" She shouted, before the line went dead. "It's your fault!" Martha shouted, glaring at the Doctor and Kari in the rear view mirror. "It's all your fault!" This time she practically screamed it, and her eyes were locked with Kari's.

Kari was doing her best not to let Martha's words get to her, to not get upset or emotional. They had all promised that no matter what happened, they wouldn't blame her, but Martha was already starting to. But she could understand, the Master had taken her family, it was a shock, of course she was going to be upset. Just because she was blaming her, it didn't mean she believed it. She was just angry, at least that was Kari's reasoning.

When they finally made it to the home of Martha's mother, she saw both her parents being restrained and forced into the back of a van. "Martha, get out of here!" Her mother shouted the moment she had spotted her daughter in the car. "Get out!"

The four in the car looked as the arm officers all took aim at them. "Martha, reverse." The Doctor ordered her, only for her to sit there and stare while more guns were pointed at them. "Get out, now!"

Martha finally seemed to come back to her senses and put the car into reverse, getting away just as the bullets came showering down on them. The Doctor pulled Kari down on the back seat, covering her as the window was shattered and glass shards flew over them both.

"The only place he can go is planet Earth. Great." Martha said sarcastically as she drove away from her mothers home. It was clear she was more than just a little angry now, and Kari could understand it, she really could, but the feeling that she was going to get the blame was growing.

"Careful!" The Doctor shouted, still holding on to Kari.

"Martha, listen to me. Do as I say We've got to ditch this car. Pull over. Right now!" Jack ordered her. He knew what he was doing, he did work beyond the law as it was.

It took a while for them to find somewhere that they could stop, somewhere the car wouldn't be spotted and where they could just walk away without anyone seeing them. "Martha, come on." The Doctor called, walking forward with Kari holding onto his hand tightly. Jack was walking on the other side of her, because she was being way too quiet for his liking.

Martha wasn't listening though, she was once again on her phone and trying to make a call. "Leo! Oh, thank God." She said, letting out a breath of relief at hearing her brother's voice. "Leo, you got to listen to me. Where are you?" Kari already knew what the answer was going to be, he was in Brighton, and he was safe. "Leo, just listen to me. Don't go home. I'm telling you. Don't phone mum or dad or Tish." She warned her brother. "You've got to hide." There was a short pause before she spoke again. "On my life. You've got to trust me. Go to Boxer's. Stay with him. Don't tell anyone. Just hide."

"The Master has intercepted the call." Kari warned the Doctor as they stopped walking and glanced back at the stunned expression on Martha's face. "He's taunting Martha."

"Let them go, Saxon. Do you hear me! Let them go!" Martha screamed down the phone, before the Doctor rushed over and took the phone away from her.

The moment he had it in his hand, he passed Kari off over to Jack. He just wanted her to be safe, and he had no idea how safe anything was anymore. "I'm here." He said, waiting for someone to respond at the other end of the line.

"Doctor."

"Master." The Doctor said, rather uncomfortable with saying that name.

Kari knew what was going on, even if she wasn't part of the conversation, she knew what the Master was going to say to her Doctor. "I like it when you use my name." The Master replied, sounding rather pleased and just a little excited.

"You chose it." The Doctor told him, his eyes scanning everything. "Psychiatrist's field day."

"As you chose yours. The man who makes people better." The Master said to him. "How sanctimonious is that?" He asked.

The Doctor looked over at Kari. Jack had his arm around her shoulders, and he could see just by looking at her that she was more than just a little afraid. But it wasn't just that, there was something else there in her eyes as well. There was sadness, and guilt, and something he just couldn't identify. "So, Prime Minster then?" He finally said, trying to get back to the situation at hand. He would talk to Kari after the call with the man who was Prime Minister.

"I know." The Master replied. "It's good, isn't it?" There was more than just a hint of smugness in his voice as he spoke.

"Who are those creatures?" The Doctor asked, wanting to get straight to the point. "Because there's no such thing as the Toclafane. It's just a made up name, like the Bogeyman." He told him confidently.

There was silence for a moment before a reply came. "Do you remember all those fairy tales about the Toclafane when we were kids back home? Where is it, Doctor?" The Master asked him wanting to know what had become of their planet, their home.

The Doctor replied with one simple word. "Gone."

A scoff came from the man at the other end of the phone. "How can Gallifrey be gone?" It was clear that he didn't believe that Doctor, and he wanted to know more about what he knew and what had happened.

"It burnt." The Doctor told him, trying his best not to remember it all. He looked over at Kari again and their eyes locked. She gave him the smallest of smiles as she rested her head against Jack's chest while he held her.

"And the Time Lords?"

That was one question the Doctor really did not want to answer. He didn't want to remember any of it, but this man was determined to bring it all up once more. "Dead. And the Daleks, more or less." He said, knowing that every now and then, a few stray Daleks showed up. "What happened to you?" It was believed that the Master was dead, just like all the other Time Lords.

"The Time Lords only resurrected me because they knew I'd be the perfect warrior for a Time War." The Master told him. "I was there when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. I saw it. I ran." His voice was starting to get a little quieter as he remembered what had happened. "I ran so far. Made myself human so they would never find me, because I was so scared."

The Doctor understood, because he had been scared as well. "I know."

"All of them?" The Master asked, his whole voice changing once again. "But not you, and your precious little Angel of Time. Which must mean…"

He knew what the Master was pointing towards with that hanging sentence. "I was the only one who could end it. And I tried. I did. I tried everything." The Doctor had noticed that the Master hadn't really said anything about Kari, apart from how she was a survivor of the Time War. It worried him.

"What did it feel like, though?" The Master asked him. "Two almighty civilisations burning. Oh, tell me, how did that feel." The Doctor shouted at him to stop, but he didn't. "You must have been like a God."

The Doctor let out a sigh. "Kari and I have been alone ever since. But not anymore." He told him confidently. "Don't you see? All we've got it each other. The three of us, we're all that's left now."

It would appear that those words seemed to amuse the Master, as Kari knew they would. "Are you asking me out on a date, because I think our lovely Kari would be a little disappointed with that. Don't you?"

"You could stop this right now. We could leave this planet. We can fight across the constellations, if that's what you want, but not on Earth." The Doctor told him, trying to ignore the way he said Kari's name. He always knew he couldn't trust the Master around her, and he would never leave her alone with him, at least not by choice.

"Too late." The Master whispered down the phone to him.

The Doctor frowned a little, not understanding him. "Why do you say that?"

"The drumming. Can't you hear it? I thought it would stop, but it never does. Never ever stops. Inside my head, the drumming, Doctor. The constant drumming."

"I could help you. Please, let me help you." The Doctor pleaded with him. He remembered the time when the Master was his best friend, when they would do everything together. And Kari would be with them, the three of them would have adventures together.

"It's everywhere. Listen, listen, listen." The Master said to him down the phone. "Here come the drums. Here come the drums."

That was when the Doctor noticed it, the man slapping out a rhythm on his thigh, the same rhythm that Martha had been tapping away with her fingers when they had been at her flat. The exact same rhythm that the man had been tapping on his tin mug back at the shopping arcade. "What have you done?" He demanded to know. "Tell me how you've done this. What are those creatures? Tell me!" He said, finally getting to the end of his tether as he walked around a little.

"Ooh, look. You're on TV."

"Stop it." The Doctor spat at him. "Answer me."

"No, really, you're on telly. You and your little band, which, by the way, is ticking every demographic box. So, congratulations on that. Look, there you are." The Doctor stopped outside one of the shops and look at the television screens. There were images of Martha, Jack and himself being shown, and deemed to be terror suspects. He wanted to smile, because Kari wasn't on there, which could only mean that the Master had no idea where she was. He was grateful for that. "You're public enemies number one, two and three. Oh, and you can tell handsome Jack that I've sent his little gang off on a wild goose chase to the Himalayas, so he won't be getting any help from them. Now, go on, off you go. Why not start by turning to the right?"

The Doctor did as he was told, and noticed the security camera that was watching him. Fear flooded through him for a moment, wondering if he had noticed that Kari was there. But he was sure that with her staying so closet to Jack, they hadn't been caught on camera. "He can see us." He told Martha, who was now standing closer to the Doctor, before whipping out his sonic screwdriver to disable the camera.

"Oh, you public menace. Better start running. Go on, run."

"He's got control of everything." He said, signalling for Jack to bring Kari over to him.

Martha just looked at him, completely and utterly lost. "What do we do?" She asked, just as Kari got there and wrapped her arms around the Doctor.

"We've got nowhere to go." Jack reminded them all. They couldn't go to the Torchwood base, and they couldn't go to Kari's house either. It was clear that they were being watched, that the Master was waiting for them to go there. It wasn't safe for them anywhere.

"Doctor, what do we do?" Martha asked him, watching as he just wrapped his arms around Kari and rested his chin on her shoulder.

"We run." The Doctor said quietly. He had so much running through his mind, so much that he needed to work out. The Master didn't know where Kari was, he had no idea that she was with the Doctor. That was a good thing, it was good that he had no idea where she was, because it meant that he had a better chance of keeping her safe.

"Uh, there's an abandoned warehouse not too far." Kari told them all quietly, avoiding the glare that Martha was sending her. "It should be safe enough for us to settle in until the Doctor comes up with a plan."

The Doctor just looked at her, he could tell just by the way she was speaking that something was wrong. He could already see that the tension between her and Martha was growing, and he would be having words with Martha about that. "Come on then, we can't stay out in the open." The Doctor said, giving her hand a small squeeze. Kari just looked over and gave him a small smile, it was the best she could manage with the way that she was feeling.

A/N: Well, I hope that was okay for you all. Still plenty more to come over the next few chapters. I have some major plans for the Master, LOTS!

Anywho, I want to thank all of you who have favourited/followed the story. I've received quiet a few notifications for new readers, love it! And to everyone who has taken he time to review, an absolutely massive thank you for them.

I also want to thank all of you who have PM'ed me, I've had some rather fun and interesting conversations recently with you, and It's been great.

Now, enough of my prattling. I need to get my head down and keep on writing. So, until next week…

Pippa.