AN: Finally. I have completed it. Took me longer than I wanted, for a couple of reasons that I will disclose at the end of the chapter, but I just want to say thank you so much to those of you that left a review/comment and enjoyed "Utopia". Apologies that I couldn't get around to them, but this chapter was a more complicated than I expected, but it was fun to write. Regardless, I hope you guys/gals enjoy…
The Sound of Drums
Malcassairo Silo
100,000,000,000,000
The TARDIS crew had taken longer than they wished for in regards to the unlocking of the control room door, but when it slid open, they found themselves dashing through the hallways and the staircases of the Silo, but in their aimless running, they found themselves back in the Silo's longest hallway, and just down at the end, through a thin cloud of smoke, they could see and hear the onrushing horde of the Futurekind, and they were their newfound target. "Back! Back! Back!" The Doctor ordered, the group coming to a quick stop before they turned around and sprinted off down more hallways and staircases until they reached the hallway leading straight to the Professor's laboratory. However, in a small moment, they heard Chantho give out an agonized scream, and then before they could blink, the laboratory door slid shut, its locks bolting with a loud clang right before them. "Professor!" The Doctor called as they almost literally slammed their bodies against it, the Doctor and Clara bringing out their sonics once again as the Captain busied himself on the door's control panel. "Professor, let us in! Let us in!" But no response came from within the room, and without a sideways glance, the Doctor bellowed, "Jack, get the door open, now!"
"They're coming!" Martha exclaimed, almost able to see the shadow of the horde coming close to the corner at the end of the corridor.
"Professor, are you there?!" Clara demanded in the same tone as the Doctor's, their sonics running across the surface of the door. "Chantho?!"
"We just need to explain! Whatever you do, don't open that watch!" The Doctor ordered through the door, still receiving no answer.
"Jack, hurry up!" Clara ordered, the Captain's fingers almost flying across the control panel, but the door would not budge.
"I'm begging you, Professor, please listen to us!" The Doctor continued. "Professor, where are you?!"
They finally received an answer, yet it was an unexpected one. The glass pane of the door flared up in a blue light, and they could just hear Professor Yana crying out in agony. "Out of the way!" Captain Jack ordered, moving the three beside him away from the control panel. "Mind your eyes!" He warned as he took out his revolver and slammed the butt of the pistol against the panel, causing loud crackling sparks to emit from the panel, but the destructive action did the job. The door slid open, and everyone sprinted inside.
The Doctor and Clara barely saw the unmoving form of Chantho on the ground, a black pistol lying beside her outstretched hand before their eyes moved up to the sweating and pain filled form of Professor Yana, leaning against the open doorway of the TARDIS. Yet…his eyes were very different now. For a small second, there was silence in the room as the Doctor stared at the Human turned Time Lord, and in an instant, staring into those old, almost relieved, yet equally enraged eyes, he recognized the man. He took a step forward, wanting to reach out and help the man, to heal him, and Clara echoed his action, just seeing the old man as a life form in need of help, but he did not seem to agree. The man then stepped back completely into the box and slammed the door shut, and the sudden action sent a surge of fear into the couple and they sprang forward, slamming themselves against the doors of the TARDIS. The Doctor, with a shaking hand, drew out his TARDIS key and inserted it into the lock, but it did not work. No matter how many times he tried to twist and turn the key, it just kept jamming before it even moved within the lock. Clara then took out her sonic to override the basic lock on the doors, but she was prevented by a loud whining clang from within, activating the deadlock seal and keeping the couple out until the mutinous pilot so desired. "Let us in!" The Doctor pleaded before he started to slam his palms against the unyielding doors. "Let us in!"
"Doctor, don't!" Clara ordered, bringing his hands down even as her eyes conveyed the same emotion as his.
"Doctor, Clara." They briefly glanced behind them to see Martha kneeling over the unmoving form of Chantho, and she looked up at them with a sorrowful gaze. "She's dead."
"Martha!" Captain Jack called, and they looked up to see him with his back against the door, and he was pushing against it with all his might, but it stopped just a single foot before it reached the other side, jumping back at every attempt with a loud whine of protest. "I broke the lock! Give me a hand!" With a last look back at Chantho as Martha closed the dead girl's eyes, she jumped up and ran over to the Captain, slamming her body against the door as she did her best to aide him in the efforts.
"I'm begging you, everything's changed!" The Doctor called back into the TARDIS, him and Clara refocusing their eyes upon the silent blue box. "It's only the two of us! We're the only ones left! Just let me in, please!" There did come another answer to the Doctor's pleading, and yet again, it was not an expected one. The windows of the TARDIS lit up in a familiar golden light that made their eyes widen, and just for a moment, they thought they could hear a man screaming in agony, but the screaming seemed to continue even as the light subsided into nothing, yet the screaming now turned into growling and a thunderous stampede of feet that got closer and closer by the moment.
"Doctor, Clara, they're coming!" Jack called over to them, him and Martha still struggling with the weight of the door. "You better think of something!"
An uneasy silence fell in the room, filled only by the grunting of Captain Jack and Martha, and the horde of cannibals that were getting closer and closer to their new target, until they, for a second, thought they could hear a man laughing in triumph, before a loud beep came from the TARDIS, followed by a new man's voice. "Now then, Doctor!" There was a pause as the man's volume decreased for a small moment. "Oh, new voice." There was no sound for a moment except for a small, faint muttering, most likely the man trying out the new voice before he spoke up again, this time the voice now infused with a bitter anger, and yet…there was just a tiny amount of glee, almost childish glee in his tone. "Anyway. Why don't we stop and have a nice little chat while I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me?"
"Hold on!" Martha called, but the TARDIS couple barely heard her, or they did hear her, but they did not acknowledge it. "I know that voice!"
"I'm asking you, really, properly, just stop! Just think!" The Doctor responded in an unabashed begging tone, unable to take his hand out of Clara's grasp as his gaze remained fixed on the TARDIS.
"Use my name." The voice ordered, and the Doctor gave a small gulp with an intake of breath before responding.
"Master…I'm sorry."
"Tough!" The Master snapped back, and they instantly heard the sound of the liftoff sequence as wind began to rush through the room. The Doctor, with a betrayed scowl on his face, took out his sonic and flicked it on. The dematerialization was briefly halted, and they could hear the Master snarling at them from inside the TARDIS. "Oh no, you don't!" After a small moment, the Master refocused the TARDIS on the liftoff, before he paused and infused a tone of mocking farewell into his voice. "End of the universe! Have fun! Bye bye!" At the last word, the Master flicked the exterior microphone off, and the loud beep sounded again as the TARDIS light bulb flickered and flared above the box, before she slowly disappeared from the room, accompanied by the sounds of her wheezing, groaning engine, leaving the crew stranded inside the Silo.
"Doctor, Clara, they're here!" Captain Jack called, and they heard the horde slam up to the door of the laboratory, their bloodthirsty snarling making it almost impossible for the crew to hear each other. "We can't hold out much longer!"
The Doctor and Clara briefly exchanged a look, before the Doctor pocketed his key and Clara pocketed her sonic as they sprinted over to the doorway, reaching out for the Captain. "Jack! Give us your right arm!"
"What?!"
"Just do it!" Clara demanded, and as they grasped onto his arm, they wrenched back his sleeve to reveal his Vortex Manipulator underneath. "Hold still!" Clara ordered as the Doctor used his sonic on the wrist pad, flicking the fingers of his free hand across the tiny buttons.
"It doesn't work!" Captain Jack protested, him and Martha staring at the snarling Futurekind Chieftain through the glass pane of the door.
"Just hold still!" The Doctor ordered. "Martha, give Clara your hand!"
"I'm telling you, it's broken!" Jack tried to protest as he also tried to hold the door still at once. "It hasn't worked for years!"
"That's because you didn't have us!" The Doctor retorted as he finished, pocketed his sonic away and kept one hand on the wrist pad, Clara slamming her free hand on top. "Martha!"
"All right!" Martha called, giving Clara her own free hand to place it on top.
"Hold on!" The Doctor ordered one last time as he entered the space-time co-ordinates into the wrist pad before pressing a single button. For a single second, the noise of the room evaporated into a single, crackling spark of electricity, their visions filled with a blinding flash of white light before they landed in a new place on completely new ground. This ground was a man-made concrete path, unlike the smooth floor of Yana's laboratory, and they could feel the cool breeze of the air and the light warmth of the sun. When they opened their eyes, the white light faded and they found themselves in a small alleyway in London, but immediately the crew found themselves lurching over to hold onto their knees, an irritating headache pounding away in their minds as their bodies felt stiff like a board.
"Oh." Martha gasped, holding a hand to her forehead as everyone else grunted and groaned from the trip. "Oh, my head."
"Time travel without a capsule. That's a killer." The Doctor remarked as they took deep breaths before clicking their necks and backs with a groan, and they started off out the alleyway and onto a London sidewalk, even as their pace was somewhat slow as they tried to get their legs to wake up again.
"Well, at least we made it." The Captain said optimistically as they found themselves in a town square, sitting down gratefully onto a group of outdoor chairs, Clara leaning onto the Doctor as she massaged her aching ankles. "Earth, 21st Century by the looks of it." He pointed out before stretching himself out again with a deep breath and a groan, following it up by leaning back onto the chair. "The morale 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." Captain Jack remarked dryly as he tapped his wrist pad.
"But this "Master" bloke, he's got the TARDIS." Martha pointed out as the Doctor leaned onto his knees, staring around the town square, which Clara quickly noticed and began to follow. "He could be anywhere in time and space." Martha added, but the Doctor just shook his head.
"No, he's here. Trust me."
"Who is he, anyway?" Martha asked as she rubbed her neck. "And that voice at the end, that wasn't the Professor."
"If the Master's a Time Lord, then he must have regenerated." Captain Jack answered, but it just made Martha blink.
"What does that mean?"
"Time Lord death cheat." Clara inputted, gazing around the square at all the people walking about and the posters hung up on all the walls in sight, simply saying, "VOTE SAXON" or, "SAXON IS YOUR MAN". "When a Time Lord or Lady is about to die, they regenerate and heal every cell in their body. Troubling side effect is that they change every physical aspect of their form. New voice, new hair, new eye color, different height, everything. In a lot of ways, they become a new person."
"Clara." The Doctor whispered, his eyes staring straight at a homeless man in rugged clothes, holding a mug in one hand and a single coin in the other. "Look." Clara looked over, and saw that the man was tapping the coin against the mug in a rhythm of four. "1, 2, 3, 4." Clara muttered, her eyes squinting a bit as the Doctor took her hand again.
"I should've known earlier." The Doctor explained in her mind. "The Master has a drumbeat in his head, and it's that same rhythm."
"So…where is he-"
"Hold on." Martha blurted, her eyebrows furrowed as she looked over at the "VOTE SAXON" posters. "What day is it?"
Everyone stared at each other before Captain Jack looked down at his wrist pad. "May 2nd, 2008."
Martha blinked with squinting eyes for a moment. "That's four days after Lazarus." Martha muttered before her eyes laid upon one poster, and this one bore different words to the rest. "SAXON VICTORY." "That's right. Tish told me about that."
"About what?" The Doctor asked.
"The election." Martha answered, her eyes darting around as she noticed everyone was walking in one single direction, up the town square to the enormous public television screens. "It just happened. There wasn't much fuss or fighting or drama, nothing. Nobody cared about his opponents, just him. He just won by a landslide, bigger than the last Prime Minister. And he's…" Martha gave out a little huff as she stood up, and motioned for the group to follow. "God, if the Master can be anybody then…"
The TARDIS crew seemed to aimlessly join the sheep like horde of people as they stared up at the public screen, showing a red newsroom and a female presenter in a cream dress suit, looking straight at the camera with a polite yet beaming smile as she began to speak, her voice echoing out into the town square in a booming, almost authoritative manner. "Mr. Saxon has returned from the Palace after being announced officially as the new Prime Minister of Great Britain. After a landslide victory, Mr. Saxon rose quickly into his new seat, delaying the announcement due to recent local events that were heavily rumored to be that of extra-terrestrial origin. Mr. Saxon is about to make his first official announcement to the public upon the entrance of 10 Downing Street, which the public has affectionately nicknamed, "The Saxon Headquarters.""
The camera cut from the newsroom and to front door of a rebuilt 10 Downing Street, looking the same as it ever did, just with a finer paintjob and the stark clean look of a brand-new establishment. Standing in front of the door was a man, smiling and waving at the crowd of nearly screaming reporters. The man, who they quickly guessed was the Prime Minister in question, was brown haired and dressed in a typical clean black and white suit. "I said I knew that voice." Martha muttered in astonishment as the TARDIS crew continued to stare at the screen. "When he spoke inside 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 muttered in eye widening realization as he watched the newly elected Prime Minister smile on the screen. "He's Prime Minister. The Master is Prime Minister of Great Britain."
Harold Saxon took a step forward, continuing to stare straight at the camera with a confident yet silken smooth smile. "Great Britain…London….England…so much has happened to this country in the past two years alone. But we should not remain distracted from what is so important to us. This country." Harold Saxon said with his arms out for a moment before bringing them back in, the reporters on the other side of the camera having grown silent as he spoke. "This country has been sick, and it needs all of our help. It needs healing. It needs compassion. It needs companionship. In fact," He started with a blink as his smile grew just a little bit mischievous, "I'd go as far as to say that what this country really needs, right now, is a doctor." With one last smile, he stepped back with a wave that re-commenced the clamoring of the reports before he turned around and walked into the building beyond.
10 Downing Street or the Saxon Headquarters
11:00am
The Master opened the front door and walked into the building, watching with a well-practiced smile as assistants and secretaries alike came almost rushing at him, passing over red folders filled with paper files into his hands. He could barely hear them talking in amongst the chatter, but he did catch a couple of words like, "Finance" or "Military" or even "Policy". Walking down the hallways and turning corners until he reached the door of the Cabinet room, he paused and turned around to look at Augustus. "Right." He muttered, checking his hands and fiddling with a single green ring on his right hand, engraved with the silver symbols of his home language. "What do you think?" He asked, motioning around to the place, but Augustus didn't seem to emote. "Come on, Aug. Give me something to work with." The Master said, almost in a whining tone, but Augustus just shook his head, the ghost of a teasing smirk appearing and disappearing in a single instant.
"Not impressed." Augustus responded, and the Master rolled his eyes, but stopped as Augustus gave a little realizing gasp. "Almost forgot, sir." He walked a few steps forward and handed over a small paper bag with something solid inside, and the Master peered in, smiling as he saw a tiny black remote with a single red button, and he placed the paper bag into his pocket.
"Thank you, Aug." The Master responded, before leaning over as if to whisper a dark secret into the man's ear. "Be sure that no one interrupts the…frightfully important meeting." He said, and Augustus stepped back with a nod as the Master turned to the door-
"Sir!" A voice interrupted, and the Master effortlessly restrained his urge to snarl and instead turned around with a smile of greeting at the new onlooker.
The smile widened ever so slightly at the intruder, the Jones woman, but a part of his mind was puzzled for a moment. Name. Can't remember-
"If you don't mind me asking. I'm sorry, but it's all a bit new." She briefly excused before blinking. "What exactly did you want me to do?"
Oh. Oh. He repeated in his mind with a slight nod. "Yes, uh…sorry, what was your name again?"
"Tish." She immediately answered with a polite nod. "Leticia Jones."
Ah. That's it. "Tish." He tried, not entirely sure if he enjoyed or disliked the way it rolled out of his mouth before shrugging just a bit. "Well then, Tish," He started, playing with the word a bit, before he reached out to place a single finger under her chin to keep her head up, "you just stand there and look gorgeous." He finished, and Tish seemed to blink at that before blushing a little to herself. "And now, time to get Britain back underway." He said, glancing around the room with a smile before he opened the door to the Cabinet room and closed it behind him, feeling all the pairs of eyes belonging to each and every patient politician that sat in 13 of the 14 leather chairs in the room, leaving one chair, his own, perfectly empty. "What a glorious day for Great Britain." He announced into the room, moving around the large table to stand beside his empty chair. "Downing Street has been rebuilt, the Cabinet is in session." He listed for a moment before grasping all the folders in both of his hands with a smile and declared, "Let the work of government begin." Then, he tossed the folders up above his head, unable to contain his grin of delight as he watched all the files and the empty folders flitter about for a moment before floating down onto the table, the politicians heads or even the carpeted floor. The Master gave out a little snigger as he looked around at the confused or unaffected faces watching him, and a part of his mind felt unabashedly just a little bit disappointed, and his childishly sulky frown expressed his feeling. "Oh, go on. Crack a smile. It's funny, isn't it?" He asked as he made sure his suit was buttoned properly and sat down in his chair, looking around for at least some form of a genuine smile. "Funny? No?" He asked, his voice descending into a little mutter as his eyes darted around before landing on a man with curled brown hair with small, black rimmed reading glasses and a puzzled gaze. Uhh…Andy. Antoni-no, uh…Al-ah! "Albert?" He asked, almost pleading for assistance, and the man just blinked at him. "Little bit funny?"
Albert answered immediately with a well-practiced smile of etiquette. "Very funny, sir." With a blink and a small cough, he leaned forward and folded his hands together upon the table. "But perhaps if we could get down to business, there is the matter of policy, of which we have very little."
Ugh, yawn. "No, no, not yet." The Master quickly interrupted, leaning forward upon his right elbow, pressed lazily into the table. "Before we start all that, I just want to say thank you. Thank you, one and all." He added with a smile as he looked around the room upon the puzzled yet flustered faces of the politicians before his smile turned into a grin. "You ugly, fat faced bunch of wet, sniveling traitors." He said earnestly, and it made everyone look at each other with a frown and share an awkward smile, or chuckle.
"Yes, quite funny, sir." Albert said with the same awkward chuckle. "Very funny. But I-"
"No, no, no, no, no, that wasn't funny." The Master interrupted, the grin gone from his face to turn into an irritated, tired scowl, realizing with a blink that he had stood up from his chair and had his fists pressed against the table, but he didn't exactly complain against it. "You see, I'm not making myself very clear. Funny is like this." He widened his face and eyes into a bright, stereotypically childish grin before blinking it away. "Not funny is like this." He turned his face into a stereotypically childish scowl before blinking it away. "So, right now, I'm not like…" He paused to bring back the grin before blinking it away, "I'm more like…" He paused again to bring back the scowl before blinking it away, "and you want to know why? Because you are traitors." All of his spectating politicians looked taken aback by his final statement, and it made the scowl deepen on his face. "Yes, you are!" The Master spat, silencing any protesting comments that could have started spilling out of their mouths. "As soon as you saw the vote swinging my way, you abandoned your parties and you jumped on the Saxon bandwagon. So, this is your reward." Sitting back into his chair, he pulled out from under the table an oxygen mask and placed it over his mouth, almost grinning with delight at the bewildered faces of the politicians. But before he could pull out the remote, Albert interrupted with an almost meek voice.
"Excuse me, Prime Minister, sir. Do you mind my asking, what exactly is that?"
Are…you…serious? Restraining the roll of his eyes, the Master answered with a shrug. "It's a gas mask."
Albert leaned forward with a blink, his right ear tilted towards the Master. "I beg your pardon, sir?"
The Master gave in and rolled his eyes as he took hold of the mask and temporarily pulled it away from his mouth. "It's a gas mask."
Albert nodded with furrowed eyebrows. "Yes, but, err…why are you wearing it?"
The Master scoffed for a moment with another shrug. "Well, because of the gas."
"I'm sorry?" Albert muttered, and the Master rolled his eyes as he pulled the mask away for a moment.
"Because of the gas." He answered, irritation starting to seep into his voice as he leaned back in his chair and pulled out the little black remote.
"What gas?" Albert asked, and this time, the Master did not even bother to remove the mask.
"This gas." He muttered as he pressed the button. The three grey-black conference telephone stations upon the table each popped up a singular pod that immediately began to squirt white-grey gas into the room. The Master just watched as each and every other person present began to choke violently upon the gas, their throats coughing and hacking away in fruitless paranoia, some stumbling out of their chairs onto the floor or holding onto the table for as long as their slackening hands could, which wasn't very long.
One lone man, standing up from his chair with his reading glasses absent, pointed an accusing finger at the Master and declared, "You're insane!"
The Master just grinned underneath his gas mask and flipped both of his thumbs up at Albert as the man coughed and hacked at the air before collapsing dead onto the table, and the room fell silent. All silent, except for the Master's fingers, which were tapping against the table in rhythm with his mind. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
A small interruption came from the ringtone of his mobile phone, which he plugged into the nearest conference telephone station, before plugging in a headphone jack and placed the wired buds into his ears. "Sir?" Came Augustus's voice.
The Master pressed a button on his gas mask, and it gave a small beep that was echoed by a similar beep from the station. "Don't worry. Everything went well." The Master replied, which to his own ears was a bit muffled, but Augustus's response was a rather unexpected wince.
"Not so loud, sir."
"Sorry." The Master replied, lowering his voice a bit. "Is the team ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then send them in. Get the rest of her family."
Martha's Flat
11:15am
"Ah, home. Thank god." Martha commented as the TARDIS crew entered her flat, the Doctor immediately taking off his overcoat and tossing it onto a chair.
"What've you got?" The Doctor asked, him, Clara and Captain Jack darting their gazes around the room. "Computer, laptop, anything?"
"Give me a second." Martha muttered as she searched around her flat, whilst the Captain pulled out a phone and began to dial a number.
"Jack, what are you doing?" Clara asked. "You can't tell anyone we're here."
The Captain paused for a moment before he hung up the phone and pocketed it away with a frown. "It was just some friends of mine but there was no reply."
"Here you go." Martha said as she pulled out a black laptop and handed it to Jack.
"Well, I can show you the Saxon websites. He's been around for ages. And yet, he hasn't." He explained as he sat down at the table with the laptop and started to work away at the internet whilst the Doctor equipped his "Brainy Specs".
"That's so weird." Martha muttered as she took a bottle of water out of her fridge and swallowed a large sip of the liquid. "We went flying all around the universe, and yet he was here all this time?"
"I'm afraid so." The Doctor answered simply as Martha stepped over to her phone and turned on the answering machine.
"You have one new message." An automated female voice spoke from the phone. "You have a message received at 7:00am."
There was a small beep, followed by a click, before Tish's voice floated out of the answering machine. "Martha, where are you? I've got this new job, you won't believe it. It's weird, they just phoned me up out of the blue. I'm working for Harold Saxon."
"What?!" Martha blurted, the trio behind her turning around with furrowed eyebrows and wide eyes.
"First day today. Should be fun, hopefully. But I am a little nervous. Still haven't met the man himself. Anyway, hope to chat later. Do call me back when you can, and, uh, bye for now!" Tish's voice beamed in farewell before the beep and the click returned.
"To play the message again, press 1. To delete the me-" Martha cut off the automated voice by pressing 2 on the answering machine twice, which was followed by a small high-pitched beep, and the words, "Message deleted."
Martha then looked at the trio with squinting eyes. "That's twice in a row that she got offered a job out of nowhere. That's not a coincidence." She shook her head with a sigh as she moved back over to the Doctor and Clara, noticing with a blink that Jack wasn't there, instead standing inside her kitchen, filling up four mugs with coffee.
"Sorry about not warning you." The Captain apologized as he came out with the four steaming mugs and handed them around.
Martha just shrugged at him as she took a sip of the coffee before placing the mug down on the coffee table. "But if he has the TARDIS, then what if he went back in time and has been living here in secret for decades?"
"No." The Doctor immediately answered, and Martha raised her eyebrows up at him in response, so the Doctor clarified. "When he was stealing the TARDIS, the only thing I could do was fuse the co-ordinates and lock them permanently. He can only travel between the year one hundred trillion and the last time the TARDIS landed, which is right here, the year 2008."
"Yeah, but…" Clara started with a dull expression, "leeway?"
The Doctor blinked. "What?"
Clara rolled her eyes. "Doctor, I love that box, but quite frankly, she is a piece of junk."
The Doctor slouched his shoulders with a whine. "Oh, fine, a month." He responded but Clara's silent glare made him rephrase it. "2 months. 3. 5. 8. 10." He rambled in correcting himself, and Clara just sighed at him. "All right, 18 months, tops. The most he could have been here is 18 months."
"Then how has he managed all of this?" Clara asked, and the Doctor took a sip of coffee with a frown.
"That's what I was wondering." The Doctor muttered with a breath. "I mean, the Master was always sort of…hypnotic, but this is on a massive scale."
"I was going to vote for him." Martha inputted, making everyone blink at her.
"Really?" The Doctor asked, his face perplexed, even as Martha shrugged.
"Well, that was before I even met you two. And I liked him."
"What was his policy?" Clara asked.
"Don't you remember?" Martha retorted, but Clara shook her head.
"Wasn't paying attention." Was her answer. "So, what was his policy, hm? What did he stand for?"
Martha blinked, and just shrugged. "I don't know." Was her answer, but it started to trail off into a mutter, right in tune with her fingers, which began to tap against her other hand in a rhythm of four. "He always sounded good. Like you could trust him." She added, and her eyes started to glaze and blur as she stared at the wall, everyone else looking at her with squinting eyes. "He spoke about…" She paused for a moment and blinked her dazed gaze at the wall, her head beginning to tilt down to the floor, "I can't really remember, but it was good. Just the sound of his voice." She added, her voice low, almost weary and sleep deprived, her fingers continuing to tap against each other. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
"What's that?" The Doctor interrupted, and Martha's head shot back up with fervent blinks, her dazed gaze becoming present and alert once again as she looked at them with wide eyes.
"What's what?" Martha asked, her tone no longer weary and back to normal again.
"That!" The Doctor answered, pointing towards her fingers, which had stopped the tapping rhythm with Martha's refocused mind. "That tapping, that rhythm! What were you doing?!"
"I don't know!" Martha retorted, looking about as if she had completely forgotten what she had just previously been doing. "It's nothing, it's just…I don't know!"
A noise from the laptop suddenly interrupted them, a drumbeat of four, and they turned around, seeing in big red letters against a blue flashing backdrop, "SAXON BROADCAST ALL CHANNELS". Clara hurried over to Martha's TV and switched it on, hearing the same drumbeat and spotting the same message on the screen as rest of the crew gathered around behind her. "Our lord and Master is speaking to his kingdom." The Doctor remarked dryly as the rhythm stopped. The screen flickered for a moment, and the Master came into view, sitting at his desk in the Prime Minister's office of 10 Downing Street.
"Why not the Cabinet room, I wonder?" Captain Jack asked aloud as the Master smiled and began to speak.
"Britain, Britain, Britain."
Sitting at his desk, his elbows resting on the leather chair's arm rests with his hands interlaced, he stared to the camera in front of him, and made discreet glances to the monitor on its left side, where it showed the live feed picture of himself. Also standing on the left side of the camera was a man holding a recording microphone, whilst on the other was Augustus and Tish…and some political representatives that the Master could not be bothered to remember the names of. "What extraordinary times we've had." The Master said after a moment. "Just a few years ago, this world was so small. And then they came." He said with a dramatic stare into the camera before letting it slide away for a moment. "Out of the unknown, falling from the skies. You've all seen it happen. Big Ben destroyed, a spaceship hanging over London. All those ghosts and metal men, and the large, screaming drones that floated in the skies above us. The Royal Hope Hospital disappearing to the Moon, just to greet the rhino men, and the Christmas star that came to kill. Time and time again, and the government told you nothing. Well, not me." The Master snapped, his eyes blazing a fierce fire of determination at the camera. "Not Harold Saxon. Because my purpose here today is to tell you this: Citizens of Great Britain…I have been contacted." He finally said after a moment, watching with contained glee as Tish's face morphed into bewilderment. "A message to Humanity from beyond the stars. And here it is." He unlinked his hands and motioned to the camera, watching as the man recording gave a thumbs up, allowing him to relax for a brief moment as he looked over to the monitor, where the feed had switched to a silver steel sphere with charcoal linings, said linings flickering and blinking with many small lights.
A distinctly female voice came from the sphere in the recording, even if the voice was somewhat modulated due to its…nature. "People of the Earth, we come in peace. We bring great gifts. We bring technology and wisdom and protection. And all we ask in return is your friendship."
The feed cut back to himself, and the Master gave a little "Aww" face. "Oh, how sweet." He cooed lightly. "And this species has identified itself." He added after a moment's pause as his fingers intertwined once again. "They are called the "Toclafane", and tomorrow morning, they will appear, not in secret," He paused after his hasty snap before smiling again, "but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species will begin. Tomorrow, we take our place in the universe. Every man, woman, and child. Every teacher and chemist and lorry driver and farmer, and…" He paused for a moment as if trying to rack his secretly massive and impressive brain for another example before shrugging a bit to the camera, "oh, I don't know, every…medical student?" He smiled at the camera for a moment before the smile turned into a warm grin. "Until tomorrow, this has been Harold Saxon, watching and caring over you all, as you have so sorely needed and deserved." With that, the camera feed shut off, and with a well-practiced gaze of self-worry, he looked at everyone else in the room and asked, "How'd I do?" The answer came from a unanimous cheering and applause, and he pretended to slouch in his seat as if his given message had taken all the energy out of him. The Master briefly saw Augustus moving over to place a large black laptop in front of him on the desk before he started to funnel everyone and the equipment out of the room, leaving the Master to himself. And yet, at first, his mind just drifted away as the room around him vanished into a mute blur. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
"And this species has identified itself." The Master said on the TV, as the TARDIS crew watched with furrowed eyebrows as the Master paused for a moment to intertwine his fingers again. "They are called the "Toclafane"."
"What?!" The Doctor blurted out.
"And tomorrow morning, they will appear, not in secret," the Master paused after the hasty snap before smiling again, "but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species will begin. Tomorrow, we take our place in the universe. Every man, woman, and child. Every teacher and chemist and lorry driver and farmer, and…" the Master paused for a moment, seemingly racking through his mind for another example before he smiled again, "oh, I don't know, every…medical student?" There was a small beat of silence before the Doctor, Clara, and the Captain looked at Martha with alert eyes as she looked at the TV screen with the same expression, before the Doctor moved to the TV and turned it around on its stand, and attached to the back of it was a large black device, with two large black looped cables protruding from the ends and the center had a beeping blue light. The Doctor whipped out his sonic to remove the device from the TV screen, even as the Master's message ended, his last words barely heard in their minds.
"Doctor, what is that?" Martha asked in heightened concern as he held up the device for all to see before he used the sonic for a moment and then ripped out the looped black cables, making the device spark and burst, forcing him to drop it to the ground as everyone else around him jumped with a gasp of shock.
"Homing beacon…of sorts." The Doctor added as he stared down at the broken device with a frown. "But why?" He looked up, glancing around the flat for a moment before his eyes landed upon the front door. "What's that?" He asked, pointing up to a small point above the door. Sticking to the wall, and barely discernable unless focused on, was a small black dot, but when they moved closer to get a better look, it really bore the appearance of a tiny camera with a single, dim, dark red light inside.
"Is that part of the…beacon?" Martha asked as the Doctor used his sonic to carefully pry the tiny device off the wall.
"Could be a trigger." The Doctor answered with an accusing squint of his eyes. "Triggers upon people moving through the front door."
"Doctor." Jack called, but no one immediately listened to him.
"But why?" The Doctor wondered aloud. "If he was going to that length, then why not just have it trigger a bomb and blow us all to kingdom come-"
"Doctor, be quiet!" The Captain snarled, and everyone stopped, looking at him in alarm. Silence fell in the flat as Jack inched towards the thin white blind covered window, craning his head towards the glass. A revving of an engine. A small tire screech. The motor of a car, no, not car, van. Then, the vehicle stopped, and silence fell again, and an instinctive alarm of dread in Jack's mind started to blare out in protest and warning. "Doctor, Clara, Martha, get whatever you need now." He quickly ordered, and without protest, the Doctor put his overcoat back on, pocketing away his "Brainy Specs", whilst Martha grabbed whatever little valuables she needed, namely keys and wallet, and Clara took hold of the laptop. The trio stood together, staring at the Captain in worry as he reached out a finger and drew the blind away just a tiny bit to stare at the street outside. The street itself was empty, in fact, far too empty, no car, no person, not even a rubbish bin to be seen. However, there was a shade of black past the trees on the other side of the road, and a rustle of movement, followed by the slamming of a van's back door. Then, he saw a man, or a woman emerge, clad head to toe in full armed, black government protective gear, and holding something like-RPG! The Captain stepped away from the curtain, wrenched back his sleeve to expose his Vortex Manipulator and started fiercely inputting in co-ordinates. "Grab hold! Quick!" Jack exclaimed, taking their free hands to put it upon his own wrist pad before pressing the activation button, and just as they heard the missile fire, they vanished in a crackle of electricity, re-appearing inside an alleyway yet again, but this time it was a different one entirely. Not brown bricks but black, and just a little bit…of a mess.
"Blimey." The Doctor breathed as everyone took a moment to regain themselves after the trip. "Everyone all right?"
"Yeah." They all said in groaning unison as Clara and Jack clicked their necks, whilst Martha placed her hands on her lower back to reassure her spine.
"Ow, that hurts." She muttered before releasing her pressured hands after a moment. "Where the hell are we now?"
"America." Was the Captain's answer as he drew back his sleeve, even as the TARDIS crew looked at him in puzzled bewilderment whilst he began to furiously input more codes and commands.
"Why are we-"
"We can't go into hiding just yet." Captain Jack quickly interrupted Martha. "If the Master knew we were coming back, then he would about this." He explained, briefly pointing at the Vortex Manipulator. "I need to cover our next jump."
"And where are we goi-"
"Back to London." Was his instant answer as he glanced up at Martha. "Martha, if you want to call anybody, you should do it right now."
Martha's eyes widened and she quickly nodded before inputting Francine's phone number and pressing the call button. "Come on." She muttered as the phone rang and rang, and then, it stopped. The ring tone came to a halt with a click and then grew silent. Martha, with a concerned frown, looked down at her phone and it displayed nothing to indicate that it was either ringing or currently in connection with another phone. She rung the same number again, but nothing. Martha, her hands starting to shake and tremble, inputted a different number, this one for Clive, but yet again, nothing. "What the hell?" She muttered before inputting another number, this one for Tish, and this time, there was an answer.
"Martha, can't talk now." Was Tish's hurried answer before Martha could sigh in relief. "We just made first contact. Did you see-" Suddenly, Tish was cut off, there was a clatter that sounded like the phone being dropped, followed by a loud shuffle of multiple pairs of feet, and one voice yelling in fear and indignant anger. "What are you doing?! Get off!"
"Tish? Tish?!" Martha exclaimed, but she could only hear Tish's nonsensical demands growing fainter and fainter before the line was cut off. "Tish!" Martha yelled fruitlessly before letting out a snarl as she inputted one more phone number, Leo. "Come on, Leo, pick up." This time, to a tiny little amount of relief in her heart, the line connected. "Leo!" Martha gasped, and she heard a little chuckle of puzzlement on the other end.
"No need to talk like that, Martha." Leo retorted. "Did you see that "Saxon" thing on TV? He's a little bit bonkers, isn't he?"
Martha didn't bother answering the question, instead retorting with a question of her own. "Listen, Leo, where are you?"
"On a sidewalk." Leo responded sarcastically. "On Earth."
"That wasn't an answer." Martha snarled back, and Leo chuckled in response.
"You're starting to turn into Mum if you keep that attitude up."
"Listen, Leo, wherever you are, just stay put, okay?" She asked but didn't bother to wait for an answer. "Don't phone Mum or Dad or Tish, just hide, and don't tell anyone where you are."
"Is this what your family has turned into, Miss Jones?" Another voice spoke into the call, one that sounded just like Harold Saxon himself. "Playing a little game of hide and seek?"
"Where is my family?" Martha snarled, and the sudden shift in tone drew squinting frowns from the trio around her.
"Being taken care of." Was the Master's response.
"Leo, get off the line, now." Martha ordered, and she didn't hear Leo's voice make a response or a retort, but she did hear the dull ringtone of a disconnected line for a moment, signaling that he did listen to her.
"It's been a long time since we saw each other, Martha Jones. About, what, one hundred trillion years?"
Martha looked directly at the Doctor with a hard stare before she spat, "Let them go, Saxon." With a nod and a motion of her hand, the Doctor reached out a hand, and just before she handed him the phone, she spat out one last furious demand. "Do you hear me?! Let them go!" She could just barely hear the Master chuckling in response before she handed the phone to the Doctor, who then paced just a few steps away from the group to lean against a wall, before he placed the phone to his ear after taking a deep breath.
"I'm here."
"I'm here." The Doctor's voice wafted out from the conference telephone station, and the Master felt himself grow…pleasantly calm. The room seemed to grow quiet around him, despite the fact that the Master was utterly alone in the empty Cabinet room, the bodies of the politicians having been quickly and effectively removed out of sight.
Reaching over to press a single button on the station, he transferred the call to his personal mobile phone, and with an ecstatically trembling hand, he placed it against his ear. "Doctor." He breathed out.
"Master." Was the response, and it made the Master shiver, although he couldn't tell if it was in relief, or delight.
"I like it when you use my name." He admitted, and the Doctor gave a little snort in response.
"You chose it." The Doctor reminded. "Psychiatrists field day."
"As you chose yours." The Master returned, thrusting one hand into his pocket as he began to lazily pace about in the Cabinet room. "The man who makes people better. What was your phrase, something like, "Something cruel or cowardly"?"
""Never be cruel and never be cowardly"." The Doctor corrected, and the Master rolled his eyes.
"How stupid is that?" The Master asked rhetorically before he blinked. "Sorry, did I say that aloud? I meant to say, "How sanctimonious is that?""
"You never said you didn't like it." The Doctor retorted.
Shit.
"So…Prime Minister, eh?"
"I know!" The Master replied, almost squealing in childish glee. "It's good, isn't it?"
"Who are those creatures?" The Doctor asked.
The Master nearly rolled his eyes at the sudden change in topic. And he still does that.
"Because there's no such thing as the "Toclafane"." The Doctor continued. "That's just a made-up name like the Bogeyman."
Oh, you won't like the answer. "Do you remember all those fairy tales about the Toclafane when we were kids, back home?" No answer, and the Master halted his pacing with a sigh. "Where is it, Doctor?"
"Gone."
""Gone"?" The Master retorted, as if unable to comprehend the word. "How can Gallifrey be gone?"
"It burnt."
"Burnt." The Doctor's voice echoed in his mind, and the Master had to hold back a flinch.
Oh. A simple voice muttered in his mind, and the Master blinked at it before breaking the moment of silence. "And the Time Lords?"
"Dead."
The Master, whether he would admit it or not, felt genuinely shocked at that answer. "Dead? All of them?"
"And the Daleks." The Doctor answered, before he sniffed and added in a mutter, "More or less." There was another moment of silence where the Master just stared ahead into the middle distance, but instead of his rapidly blinking eyes, it was the Doctor's voice that restarted his mind again. "What happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were a spectral snake in the body of an American."
Liar! A voice hissed in his mind, one that sounded just like his last form, but only…younger. The Master, however, just shooed it away before returning to the conversation. "Rassilon." On the other end of the line, the Doctor gave out a low groan, and the Master snorted in response. "Yeah…the pompous prick." The Master spat briefly before sitting down in a nearby leather chair. "He resurrected me because he thought I would be the perfect warrior for a Time War. Sent me to…" No, that's too-
"Sent you to what?" The Doctor asked.
"I was there when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform." The Master responded, brushing the question aside. "He…it…they cannibalized it." He corrected after a moment. "Turned it into…" The Master trailed off with a sigh as he leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. "I met him, Doctor." He admitted, and the only response from the other end of the line was silence. "The Dalek Emperor sent me to meet him, and…I was so scared." He said finally, his voice no more than a mere whimper. "I don't know what happened to the Cruciform, or…whatever it became, but there was just a chance for me to escape, so I did, and I ran. I ran so very far away, and I made myself Human so that he could never find me. Is…" The Master paused for a moment to swallow a little knot in his throat, "is he dead?" The Doctor did not respond, and the Master quickly realized that he didn't need to respond, and his eyes blinked repeatedly at that before switching the topic. "All of them? Every single one? Even General what's-her-face?"
"His." The Doctor corrected.
"Oh." The Master breathed out, both physically and mentally before blinking once to himself. "Did he keep that afro?"
"Nope. Bald."
The Master cocked his head to one side for a moment before standing back up from his chair. "All of them dead, but not you. Which means…" The Master trailed off, and the Doctor gave a sigh on his end of the line.
"I was the only one who could end it. And I tried, I really tried." The Doctor hastily added before pausing for a moment. "But I couldn't."
The Master stopped his pacing and pressed one hand against the table before leaning slightly against it. "But what did it feel like?" The Master asked, feeling a simmering bubble of glee inside him as he spoke. "Two almighty civilizations burning." He added, and felt a shiver run through him, a smirk spreading across his face. "Oh, tell me, how did that feel?"
"Stop it!" The Doctor snapped, and the Master chuckled as he moved away from the table and towards a large globe of the Earth, pretending to hold it in the palm of his own hand, trying to imagine what that kind of power would have felt like.
"You must have felt like God." The Master purred.
"Please, stop it." The Doctor retorted again, his voice more of a guilty whimper that made the Master quieten down for just a moment. "I've been alone ever since." The Doctor admitted, and the Master frowned at that. "But not anymore, don't you see?" He pleaded, and the Master's frown turned into a puzzled squint of the eyes. "All we've got is each other."
The Master snorted out a little laugh that was not reciprocated. "Are you asking me out on a date?" He retorted dryly.
"You could stop all of 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 Master sniffed as he moved back over to his laptop and sat down in the seat. "Too late." Was his simple response, and it seemed to have stunned the Doctor into a silence for a brief moment.
"Why do you say that?" The Doctor asked.
"Because you lied." The Master answered as if it was obvious. "You're not alone, otherwise who is she?" He asked as he clacked a few keys on the keyboard to bring up a document provided to him by UNIT through Augustus. But don't tell them that.
"What?" The Doctor asked. "Who are you-"
"Clara Oswald." The Master interrupted, and he was sure that the Doctor's eyes blinked and widened on the other end. "Born 30th March 1986 as an only child. Parents died in 2005, currently living in Blackpool-
"Leave her alone!" The Doctor growled.
"But I'm not interested in her background, Doctor, I want to know…" The Master paused for a moment to lean back in his chair, propping his feet up upon the table, "what does it feel like?"
"What?" The Doctor asked in a low mutter, and the glee the Master had first felt now turned into…a sense of longing.
The Master closed his eyes, trying to ignore the rhythmic drumbeat in his own head. "Oh, what does she feel like?"
"Don't talk about her like that!" The Doctor snapped, and the Master was briefly taken aback by his tone before it suddenly clicked in his head, and he began to chuckle aloud. "What?"
"So you two are a couple!" The Master responded, almost in a delighted childish squeal. "I thought as much."
"You've been spying on us, haven't you?" The Doctor accused, and the Master did not deny it, but he did not answer the question aloud. "What do you want? What have you done?" The Doctor asked, his voice both angry, and full of fearful dread. "Who are those creatures? What have you done?!"
"Nothing." The Master retorted as he clacked at the computer, and it brought up a live news feed of a woman speaking the camera, the right side of the screen filled with three pictures of the Doctor, Martha, and handsome Jack himself. "Ooh!" The Master exclaimed with a grin. "Look at that! You're on TV!"
"Stop it!" The Doctor snarled. "Answer me!"
"No, seriously!" The Master retorted, his voice still full of childish glee. "You're on telly!" With a clack of a key, the audio was unmuted, and the Master quickly said, "Listen to this." Then, he took the phone away from his ear and placed it within hearing range of the laptop.
"The ringleader calls himself, "The Doctor", and is aided by "Martha Jones" and a man called, "Captain Jack Harkness". They are known to be armed and extremely dangerous."
The Master muted the news and put the phone back to his ear. "You are public enemies number one, two and three." He quipped lightly with a smirk before blinking. "I left Clara Oswald off the list considering that…well…there's a past version of her currently alive in Blackpool. And you can tell the little dwarf that I will be leaving her past version alone, mainly because she doesn't interest me." The Master admitted with a sniff. "Oh, while you're at it, you can also tell "Handsome Jack"," He quoted with a dramatically seductive flair, "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." He added, the grin sliding off his face into a concentrated frown as he clacked at the computer to bring up a schematic map with a pinging red dot located within an American alleyway. "Now then, Doctor, off you go." The Master shooed with a non-existent hand as he stood up from his chair. "I think the best option for you right now is to run." The Master paused for a moment, but the only response that came through was the Doctor's ever so slightly unsteady breathing. "Doctor, did you hear me?" He asked before taking the phone away for a moment before hanging it in front of his face. "I said: Run!" The Master demanded before ending the call and looking back to the laptop. The light continued to flicker for two quick moments before it simply vanished. The Master zoomed the schematic map out, but no matter where he looked all over the map of the Earth, the light never re-appeared, and the realization quickly dawned on him. "Captain Jack, you sly devil."
Unknown Building, Britain
7:30pm
The metal creaked and groaned under the sudden foreign pressure, screaming out in protest from the aching joints unused for so long. But with a sudden heave, the metal gave way, and the large door slid open, all the way to the top, revealing to the intruders a dark, damp and decrepit warehouse beyond, filled with shadow and no light, its windows all boarded and covered with blank, brown paper, tearing to pieces at the edge. A flashlight clicked on and shone into the warehouse, the only sound within being the drip drop of water from the old and damaged metal roof. "Wait here." Captain Jack ordered to his accomplices, withdrawing a revolver and moving slowly inside, flickering the light of the torch all around the large and expansive room, spotting abandoned upstanding barrels lying about in random spots of the room as he moved off to the side wall, up towards a control box with many buttons and a little metal stump that was once a lever. Pressing a few buttons on the box, the Captain set the torch into the nape of his neck before grasping the destroyed lever and lifting it up with a grunt, and with a loud spark and crackle of electricity, the lights in the warehouse returned to life. Some bulbs were long since taken or blown into nothing, but some bulbs hanging from rafters below the ceiling were still alive, but only just. Now that there was more light inside the warehouse, the Captain spotted some folded-up metal chairs leaning against the wall, and alongside which was a folded metal table with a round top, it's color of teal long since faded into a dull haze.
"Jack?" Came a whispering call, and he turned back to see the Doctor, Clara and Martha slinking into the warehouse, slowly and carefully lowering the large metal door behind them.
The metal door slid shut against the slab floor, but the sound was a little too loud, and it made them wince as they looked back at the Captain, who with a harsh scowl, motioned for them to keep quiet as he pocketed his deactivated flashlight away. "Don't move." He mouthed before moving away from the wall, checking for any sign of extra doors, but there were none. Even the back-entrance door, which it's skeletal silhouette could still be seen, had long ago been turned into just another part of the back wall. The only occupant of the warehouse left was a small metal box that lay against the wall. Moving over and lifting the lid off, Jack found a large group of lanterns, and inside the lantern's glass were lightbulbs. With a hurried hand, he motioned the group over to him, letting his irritated scowl melt into a concentrated frown as he picked up a couple of lanterns and shoved them into the waiting hands of the TARDIS crew. "Sonics. Light them up." The Captain ordered simply, whilst he and Martha grabbed the folded table and chairs and drew them out into the center of the warehouse.
"Jack, what is this place?" Martha asked as they set up the table and started to unfold the chairs.
"Storage unit." Jack answered, and whilst it was officially confirmed that they were alone, the creaking of the old walls and the roof kept him feeling uneasy, but not full of fear.
"Will Harol…the Master find us here?" Martha asked as the Doctor and Clara brought the now lit and bright lamps over, placing them about on either the table or the floor of the warehouse.
"No." Jack answered as he moved away and back to the control box, grasping and lowering the broken lever, the lights in the warehouse shutting off with a crackling flicker. At least, I hope not.
8:00pm
"Tomorrow morning, Britain will be welcoming an extraterrestrial species for the first time."
"Bollocks." The Master retorted as he clacked at a key, switching over to a different news feed, whilst his right hand held a glass of whiskey, swirling about with an almost careless gesture of indifference.
"The President is said to be furious that Great Britain has taken unilateral action."
"That's the point." The Master retorted again before letting out an irritated sigh and pressing a different key, swapping over to a channel that was not about the news. Instead, it was about some rather strange alien creatures with large rectangles in their stomach, either dancing or twirling about in a green, flowered covered field, and it briefly made the Master a bit confused before he started to laugh in curious joy at the sight. Then, one of the creatures, who seemed to have green skin of some kind, stopped moving and looked down at its stomach, an obvious cue for the camera to zoom in. Then, to the Master's ever growing surprise of gleeful giddiness, a kid appeared inside the stomach, yet up close it looked more like a glass screen. The obvious answer occurred to him even as he heard a small, materializing flash in the air to his left, and he briefly glanced over to see a single Toclafane sphere hovering in the room. "Have you seen these things?" The Master asked, glancing back at the sphere for a moment before looking at the laptop. It seemed like the creatures and the kid were speaking in a conversation, but admittedly, the Master was too distracted to listen to the words. "This planet is amazing." The Master blurted with a grin as he pointed at the laptop. "Television in their stomachs. Now THAT is evolution." The Master commented as he took a sip from the whiskey and swallowed with a small scrunched scowl as he looked at the glass with a blink. "Bloody hell. I'm pretty sure I used to like this stuff." He muttered before shrugging it off and putting the glass aside.
"Is the machine ready?" Came the female voice of the sphere.
The Master let out a small breath as he glanced back to the sphere but did not emote anything. "Tomorrow morning. It reaches critical at 8:02 precisely."
"We have to escape, because it's coming, sir." The Toclafane explained in agitation, and the Master was sure that the expression in his eyes was getting duller and duller by the second. "The darkness. The never-ending darkness. The terrible, terrible cold. We have to run and run and run!"
"Eight o'clock tomorrow morning." The Master responded without emotion. "Tell your people that the world is waiting." The Toclafane dematerialized without another word, leaving the Master alone as he stood up from his chair and moved over to the window, peering out through the closed blinds at the night covered city of London. A night that whilst it wasn't raining, it was starting to give a low pour, and it did nothing to improve the Master's quickly tempered mood. I wonder…what are you doing right now, Doctor? What is going through that head of yours?
8:50pm
"Got it yet, Captain?" The Doctor asked as he clacked away at Martha's laptop, said woman hovering over his shoulder with her eyebrows furrowed in concern.
"Almost." The Captain replied as he worked at an almost ferocious pace on his Manipulator. "Just getting us into the government's wavelengths and network." He added before he pressed a single button and a small beeping noise of victory came from the wrist pad. "Ah, here you go, Martha." He pressed another button, and a government file popped up on the laptop, and the Doctor moved aside a little to let her read it.
"Mostly it just says they've been taken in questioning." Martha muttered before she paused with a blink, and then her eyebrows raised up very slowly as she finished reading. "Huh. There is no mention of Leo." At that knowledge, she began to chuckle a little with a small smile. "My brother's not as daft as he looks." She commented before her frown returned, this time a frown of puzzled irritation. "I'm talking about my brother on the run. How did this happen?" She wondered aloud, but no one, not even herself, bothered to answer. "You sure Clara will be okay on her own out there?" Martha asked the Doctor.
"Yes." Jack answered before the Doctor could. "Because of this." He pressed another button on the Manipulator and it brought up a muted news footage of the TARDIS trio becoming brand new public enemies.
"Why…why no mention of Clara?" Martha asked.
"The Master didn't want to make it too complicated." The Doctor answered, earning only frowns in response as he briefly took off his "Brainy Specs" to rub his eyes for a moment. "Past self? In Blackpool?"
"Oh." Jack and Martha droned at once with a slow nod.
"Wait, why would the Master even need to bother?" Martha asked, and that made the frowns of puzzlement return. Even the Doctor's expression mirrored their own at that question.
"I'll take a quick peek." Jack answered, returning to his wrist pad. "Might have borrowed a file or two from U.N.I.T."
"God, we sound like we're talking about Clara as if she's a lab experiment." Martha realized with a shiver of disgust.
The conversation was interrupted by the large metal rolling door sliding up, and the woman in question popped inside and slid the large door shut behind her, carrying in one hand a large plastic bag, filled to the brim with something that looked like cloudy grey paper wrappings. "What you talking about?" Clara asked as she walked over, swapping the bag over to her other hand and rolling her free shoulder for a bit with a groan. "You know, all this running is great for leg day, but it does literally nothing on the arms." She quipped dryly, earning a scoff from Captain Jack.
"Use a gym." He replied, and Clara just stuck her tongue out at him in response.
"How was it?" The Doctor asked, popping up from his chair and moving over to take the bag from Clara and place it on the table.
"Quite boring, really. And pretty cold." Clara replied, briefly getting pulled into a loose hug before they all sat themselves in chairs around the table, after the Doctor took his overcoat off and tossed it over Clara's shoulders.
"Miss Oswald." Jack purred with a grin. "You should keep that on."
"Quiet you." Clara retorted as they took out a large paper bundle each and unwrapped them to reveal-
"Fish and Chips isn't exactly original, Clara." The Doctor protested in a small whine.
"Are you not going to eat, then?" Clara retorted with a smirk, and the Doctor quickly scoffed a single chip into his mouth, before almost pausing with a slightly shocked look before nodding a bit.
"Actually…they're not bad at all." The Doctor said, quickly taking back his previous whine with a small cheeky grin, and it made Clara roll her eyes at him.
"So, Doctor, who is he?" Jack interjected, and the new question made the cheeky or amused smiles fade a little bit. "How come the ancient society of Time Lords created a psychopath?"
The Doctor gave out a little sigh as he swallowed another chip. "I never found out, really. And I'm not sure he did either."
"Okay." Jack muttered for a moment with a blink. "But what does that make him to you? A friend, or…"
"He was friend, at first." The Doctor added solemnly, but the moment was broken by a little chuckle from Martha.
"I thought you were going to say he was your brother separated at birth."
The other three looked at Martha with a slight furrow of concern. "Martha, you need to lay off the Star Wars references." The Doctor muttered.
"Nope." Martha retorted, earning smirks for a moment before they faded away.
"But all the legends of Gallifrey made it sound so perfect." Jack inputted with a small frown.
"Perfect to look at, maybe." The Doctor half agreed. Then, with an intake of breath and a swallow of a piece of deep-fried fish, he leant back in his seat, staring at a point just above the crew's heads. "And it was. It was beautiful." He said with a little gulp against the persistent taste of the fast food. "We used to call it the "Shining World of the Seven Systems"." And on the "Continent of Wild Endeavour", in the "Mountains of Solace and Solitude", there stood the Citadel of the Time Lords, one of the oldest and most mighty races in the universe, looking down on the galaxies below." For a quick second, the Doctor felt as though he could see himself standing in the plains beyond the Citadel, looking upon the trees with gleaming silver leaves, but it all too quickly turned into the hell that was the last day, and he shut himself out of the muddled memory. "The children of Gallifrey," He started, taking the other three out from their distant gaze of imaginative wonder, "were taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. For your initiation, you had to stand in front of the "Untempered Schism". It's a gap in the fabric of reality." He quickly explained at their brief look of puzzlement. "Through it, you could see into the Time Vortex itself." For a moment, the nostalgic and awe filled smile on his face turned into a dim sadness. "You stand there, eight years old, just a child, staring at the raw power of time and space." The Doctor continued, his voice lower, but not quite the level of a small mutter. "Some would be inspired, some would run away…and some would go mad." He added with a tired sigh. "I always wondered if that's when it all started for him. Just staring into the whole of eternity, and not able to bear it."
There was a moment of tense silence that fell, all four of the crew almost able to cut through it with a knife, but the first one that spoke was Clara, trying her best to alleviate it. "What about you?" She asked before popping a chip into her mouth.
The Doctor shook his head with a chuckling sigh. "Oh, the ones who ran." He said as if it was obvious. "I never stopped." He added, and the line brought small smiles to each of their faces, but it only lasted for a moment.
The silence that fell only lasted for a single minute before Jack's Manipulator started to beep out a notification, and he put down his bundle of food onto the table and rubbed the chip crumbs and grease off his hands before taking a look. "Hehe." Jack chuckled to himself with the cocky smile of a man pleased with himself.
"What?" The Doctor asked after exchanging a look with Clara and Martha.
"Managed to recover some Saxon related files." Jack answered before blinking. "Through an…encrypted channel. And a masked Manipulator." He quickly added before pressing another button. ""Archangel Network"?" He muttered with raised eyebrows.
"What? What have you found?" The Doctor asked.
Jack was about to answer, but the smile on his face faded a tad before he lowered his arms and looked down at the ground, almost in meek, childish guilt. "Since we're telling stories, there's something I haven't told you." As the rest of the crew looked at him with furrowed eyebrows, he simply pressed a few buttons and the screen of the laptop changed to show a large "T" logo, composed entirely from white outlined hexagons, and underneath was a title in thin white letters, "Torchwood".
"You work for Torchwood?" Came a growling answer, and when Jack glanced up, he saw that between the Doctor and Clara, only one of them was trembling slightly in barely restrained anger. "Jack?" Came Clara's repeated question when he didn't immediately answer.
"I swear to you, it's different, it's changed." Jack retorted, both guilty and a touch irritated. "There's only half a dozen of us now."
"Everything Torchwood did and you're part of it?" Clara snarled back, and Jack had to take a breath to contain himself from retorting in the same manner.
"The old regime was destroyed at Canary Wharf." Jack retorted, his jaw set firm. "I rebuilt it, I changed it, and when I did that, I did it for you in your honor. Both of you." He added, his tone border lying on irritated snapping before he caught himself. The Doctor and Clara, despite not saying anything, still looked like they were almost completely furious with him, and the Captain decided that it was wise to change the topic. "Harold Saxon." Jack introduced, redirecting their attention to the laptop screen, which showed a copied newspaper clipping of Harold Saxon and the headline, "ARCHANGEL IN THE HEAVENS". "Former Minister of Defense. Came into prominence when he shot down the Racnoss on Christmas Eve. Nice work, by the way." He quickly added, and the couple, just for a moment, had a small smile on their faces before they turned back to the computer screen. "But his first real, public appearance was before that, when they launched the Archangel Network."
"What's "Archangel"?" The Doctor and Clara asked in unison.
"I've got Archangel." Martha answered with an obvious shrug, taking out her phone. "Everyone's got it."
"It's a mobile phone network." Jack inputted, earning a small roll of the eyes from Martha. "Launched at the same time Harriet Jones was removed from office." There was a small moment where the Doctor and Clara frowned at that knowledge, and Jack just cocked an eyebrow at them before carrying on. "Look." He clacked at a couple of keys on the laptop, and it brought up a rotating globe of the Earth, and stationed around it were, just as the name suggested, a network of linked satellites orbiting around the planet. "Archangel's gone worldwide. That includes every other network. They are all carried by Archangel." He finished, and the Doctor's frown deepened, his mind obviously working at a thousand miles an hour as he stared off into the distance.
"Then…" He paused for a moment before his eyes shot wide open and he gave an ecstatic gasp of realization. "It's in the phones! Oh, I said he was a hypnotist!" He held out a hand to Martha, who gave her phone over without a word, and he began to work at the device with his sonic. "Wait, wait, wait." He muttered as he worked, then stopped. But nothing happened, and he gave a small groan. "Hold on." Reaching over, he banged the bottom of the phone against the table, and before anyone could protest, the phone began to blare out a single sound. It was something akin to a beeping clock, but it never ticked away in synch with time. Instead, it was just a single, repeating rhythm.
1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
"There it is." The Doctor muttered, and everyone stopped even moving to listen carefully to the rhythm. "That rhythm, it's everywhere, ticking away in the subconscious. And every time people would talk or think about Harold Saxon for too long, they start to mimic it. Refresh its presence in their minds."
"What is it?" Martha asked with a frown. "Mind control?"
"No, no, no, no, no." The Doctor answered quickly. "It's subtler than that. Any stronger and people would question it." He added before his voice dropped into a tense whisper. "But contained in that rhythm, in layers code, "Vote Saxon", "Believe in me", whispering to the whole world."
There was a small moment of silence before Clara spoke up. "That haze." She muttered, pointing to the thin blue haze created from the linked satellites around the globe on the screen. "Why does that look like a shield?"
The Doctor frowned at that for moment before staring off at nothing in particular. "Shield, or armor." He muttered. ""I see a suit of armor around the world."" He said before blinking. ""Peace in our time."" But after another moment, he just shook his head. "Maybe." He muttered.
"Doctor?" Clara asked. "What?"
The Doctor leaned back for a moment, rubbing a hand over his face after he took his "Brainy Specs" away for a moment. "If a Time Lord can hone their physic ability well enough, they can literally sense another Time Lord upon the same planet, kind of like a, uh…" He clicked his fingers for a moment before scratching his neck, "let's just say a muddled tracking device."
"Can you?" Jack asked, Martha and Clara's faces echoing the same question.
"Nah, I'm rubbish." The Doctor answered with a small scrunch that earned scoffs in response. "But the Master already knows that, so why…" He paused for another moment, squinting his eyes in concentration. "He did say he ran away from the War, but it was he was afraid. Unless…" His voice dropped lower into a mutter as his eyebrows furrowed, "unless there's more. Maybe there was something else he was running from."
"Or someone." Jack offered, and the Doctor shrugged briefly at that.
"And he did leave us behind in a hurry." The Doctor added with a sigh. "And I know him. That wasn't him being cruel or bitter, no, he was afraid. But why would he be?"
"When you say it like that, you make it sound like he wanted to run away from the Time Lords." Martha inputted.
"It would certainly give weight to the network being a shield as well." The Doctor responded before he gave out a breath and rubbed his hands together for a moment. "Either way, we won't find out here."
"Hold on a minute." Clara interrupted, making the Doctor pause as he turned to look at her. "Are you…planning something? Like actually coming up with a real, proper plan?"
"What? No!" The Doctor responded, slightly taken aback by her words. "Of course not! Come on, Clara, you know me!" Then, just for a moment, he grew a little bit sheepish and his tone became meek. "I call it a work in progress." He muttered, and Clara rolled her eyes at him as the Doctor fished around inside of his pockets. "No, when I said, "We won't find out here", I meant it literally. We'll have to get closer to the Master in order to investigate further." He blinked at that for a moment. "That and take it down."
"And how are you going to do that?" Jack asked.
"I'll intricate myself into it." The Doctor answered before he sniffed. "Trouble is that since I'm rubbish at being a telepath, it will take me a long while to do so." The Doctor scratched at his neck as he drew out a pencil, some wire, and some long string from his pocket with his free hand. "It's either that or we try to lock the Master out from the field, but that would require us getting REALLY close to him." Jack chuckled aloud at that, and everyone groaned in response. "Not that kind of close." The Doctor retorted, and Jack pouted in childish response.
"So, how are we going to get closer to the Master, then?" Clara asked, and the Doctor on cue withdrew out a single TARDIS key and held it up before them.
"With keys."
Clara blinked at that, tilting her head to the side a little as her eyes widened and then narrowed. "Keys?" The Doctor nodded hastily with a wide grin on his face. "Doctor, what are keys going to do?"
The Doctor's grin disappeared, turning instead into a roll of the eyes. "Lots of things, Clara." He retorted before inhaling a breath. "Come on, give me a hand."
"How-" Martha was cut off as the Doctor started tearing apart her phone and laptop without mercy, and it made her eyes widen childishly. "Doctor!"
"What?" The Doctor asked curiously, and Martha's eyes narrowed at him accusingly.
"I'm so going to kill you for that." Martha growled.
"You can just get another one." The Doctor retorted as if it was obvious, relenting only when Clara smacked him over the head. "Sorry." He grumbled as Captain Jack placed the laptop screen down and started pressing on his Manipulator. "Captain?"
"Just taking a recheck of my…" Jack paused for a moment with a blink, and they couldn't tell if it was guilty or amused, "borrowed Saxon files." He finished and everyone just cocked an eyebrow at him as he sat down for a moment. "Most of it is just his life before he rose to prominence." He said as he continued to flick through the files. "Went to Cambridge University, won a rugby trophy, doesn't say what for." He quickly added, causing the crew to blink for a moment even as they worked, piecing together pieces of the broken tech with four TARDIS keys. "Went into business, wrote a novel, the lot."
"Hold on, wrote a novel?!" The Doctor blurted out, making Jack pause in his mini investigation. "Come off it!"
""Wrote a novel."" Jack quoted with a stern glare in his eyes. "But there is no such novel." After a pause, Jack looked back down at his Manipulator with a squint of his eyes. "Surprised no one's made a fuss about that."
"Well, I was just about to say." The Doctor muttered with a breath. "The Master doesn't exactly have the patience to…write."
Jack hummed at that, but a sudden uneasy silence fell into the room as he slowly looked up from his Manipulator and stared straight at Clara. "What?" Clara asked.
"The Master has…certain files from U.N.I.T concerning you." Jack answered, but it just made Clara blink again.
"What? Why?"
"A lot of it is just trivial information." Jack answered, briefly glancing down at his wrist pad. "Family, place and date of birth, previous occupations, all except for one. And if this record order is accurate, it was his most requested file." Jack then briefly took off his Manipulator and handed it over to Clara. When the Captain glanced at the Doctor and Martha, recognizing their puzzled looks, Jack gave the explanation. "The file is a…shall we say a medical file. It breaks down what Clara is as a living being, from all that is Human, and what is…no longer Human." When Jack glanced back over to Clara, she just wordlessly handed the Manipulator back, an unreadable expression on his face, and for a small second, the Captain was afraid that he had taken it a step too far. "Clara? You all right?"
Clara looked up and smiled, although the smile was admittedly very tired, and a bit sad, yet it relieved the Captain all the same. "Yeah. To a point." She added with a small shrug.
"What happened?" Jack asked, but when Clara didn't immediately answer, Jack readily guessed what it was. "Was it Rose?"
Clara sighed, but she nodded regardless. "Yes." She answered in a small muttered before using her right hand to rub at her forehead. "Tried to make me like him." She explained simply, pointing to the Doctor. "Didn't exactly work."
Jack nodded slightly at that. "So what's it like?" He asked, tapping the center of his chest.
"Silence." Clara answered, her eyes fixed on the floor. "That's all it is. Like you're standing in a room, completely still, and utterly alone." There was a small pause where she took a deep breath and glanced around the warehouse, but it was Jack that spoke first.
"Are you okay with it?"
Clara looked up at him with raised eyes for a moment before she nodded. Then the nod became a shake of the head. Then the shake of the head became a shrug of the shoulders. "Sometimes it's…it's just there, not doing anything. Other times, it feels…overwhelming." At that, Clara went silent with a shake of her head, and Jack decided to change the angle of the conversation.
"Sometimes I wish I could sleep properly." Jack said with a sigh, earning blinks from the crew. "A new member of my crew at Torchwood, Gwen, once said, "You seem to live here."" Jack said in his best impersonation of a Welsh accent, and it made them scoff briefly before he returned to his topic. ""You don't, do you?" I just shrugged and said, "Gotta be ready. The 21st Century's when it all changes…and I hate to commute."" The TARDIS crew laughed at that for a moment, and he smiled before carrying on. "She then asked, "Where do you sleep?" and I said, "I don't.""
Clara raised her eyebrows at him ever so slightly. "Did you lie?"
"Yes…and no." Jack answered with a sigh. "Sometimes I can go the normal route, 6, 7, 8 hours of sleep a day, 7 days a week. Then sometimes…" He paused before giving a slight shrug, "I can stay awake for far longer." He paused for a moment to rub at one of his eyes before thrusting his hands into his pockets and staring at the floor. "My…mind can play tricks on me if I don't sleep enough, but…sometimes my body just doesn't want to." Jack added with another shrug. Then, he took his hands out of his pockets, stretched a little, and gave out a single breath. "Still…immortality's not so bad at the end of it." He said, earning little smirks or snorts from the crew.
Hoping to re-energize the atmosphere of the room and the crew, the Doctor placed the four TARDIS keys upon the table in a single line, all with thin string looped through the tiny key ring holes and suddenly proclaimed, "And we're done!" Everyone jumped a little at that, giving out little snorts of giggling laughter as they did, silently cursing the Doctor for his behavior, to which he just winked with a click of his tongue. "Four TARDIS keys. Four pieces of the TARDIS, all with low level perception properties, because the TARDIS is designed to blend in." He explained as he pocketed away his "Brainy Specs" then paused at the words he had just said. "Well, sort of." He quickly corrected, earning little scoffs to which he just ignored. "But now the Archangel Network's got a second low level signal. Weld the keys to that signal and…" He took hold of a single key and turned to Clara, "Clara, you can see me, yes?"
"Yep." She nodded.
"What about now?" He then placed the key right over his head, letting the metal dangle down the center of his chest, crossed his arms behind his back and waited. Clara tried to look at him, she really did, but somehow…it seemed like her eyes just did not want to look at him and when she fought back, the Doctor became incredibly blurred, making her close her eyes to fight the feeling off. She opened her eyes again and tried to look, but still, she could not, her eyes having to blink rapidly to remove the blur in her vision, faintly hearing Captain Jack chuckling beside her. "No, no, I'm here." The Doctor called, holding up one hand to wave at her, and the blur that was once him had quickly vanished and she managed to look straight at him without any worry. "What's it like?" He asked.
"It's like…I know you're there, but…I don't want to." She answered before she took a moment to rub her eyes. "God, that hurt."
"Yeah. Sorry about that." The Doctor said as he took the key off, moved back to the table to pick up the rest of the keys and handed them out to the rest of the crew.
A brand-new notification sound came from Jack's Manipulator, and they all paused in silence as he checked the wrist pad. "Well, that's convenient." Jack commented, putting his arms down to thrust his hands into his pockets. "President Winters is already on Air Force One and it will be landing in London City Airport at 9:30pm. Something about Harry Saxon has ignored the First Contact policy."
"No, he wouldn't have ignored it." The Doctor retorted with a squint of his eyes. "That was deliberate."
The Captain shrugged. "Either way, we have a place and time to get close to the Master. Or at least…witness him." Jack corrected lightly as the Doctor was about to interrupt, receiving instead an answering nod as they all pocketed the TARDIS keys away and started to pack up all the borrowed chairs and lanterns, returning them to their previous place in the warehouse. Then, they cut off the last light, exited and locked the front door, leaving the warehouse alone and in darkness once again.
"Now remember, don't run." The Doctor ordered softly as they walked off to the nearby gravel road. "Don't shout. Just keep your voice down. Draw attention to yourself and the spell is broken. Just keep to the shadows."
"Like ghosts." Clara offered, and the Doctor nodded.
"Yeah. That's what we are. Ghosts." Without another word, they slipped the TARDIS keys over their heads and walked off in silence. No one bothered them. Not the people going about on late night shopping trips. Not the little gang of young adult boys having a laugh in a street alleyway. Not even one homeless man sitting by himself at the entrance of a broken-down shop. They were utterly alone, up until one single moment when no one else was around when Captain Jack spoke up in a whisper.
"So, this is what it's like to be you?"
"Yes." Clara answered, her tone completely emotionless. "Just silence."
London City Airport
9:45pm
"Thought we wouldn't make it in time." Martha whispered as the four of them silently walked around the edge of the landing strip in the cold, nighttime wind, watching as an armed force of black government vehicles drove up to a waiting Harold Saxon, accompanied by government guards, British Army and U.N.I.T personnel. The vehicles came to a quick halt, before a flurry of U.N.I.T soldiers and government guards scuttled out of the cars, whilst one dark brown-haired man in a simple black and light blue suit with a long dark coat with matching gloves started to walk up to the Master. The Master himself was also wearing a black coat with matching gloves, for no amount of advanced Time Lord DNA could hold back the simple chilling breeze of the night.
"We nearly were." Jack whispered back, sneaking a look at the dormant but not deactivated Air Force One before they stopped walking, Clara huddling into the Doctor for a bit of warmth, watching as the President of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain gave a formal greeting of a nod and a salute.
"President Arthur Winters, sir." The Master greeted, dropping his hand from his salute.
"Mr. Saxon." President Winters returned, cutting immediately to the chase. "The British Army will stand down. From now on U.N.I.T has control of this operation."
The Master furrowed his eyebrows in puzzled bewilderment at the stern order. "You make it sound like an invasion. Or a hostile takeover."
The President seemed to be restraining the urge to roll his eyes at the Master, or he was trying not to squint his eyes in irritation. "First Contact policy was decided by the Security Council in 1968, and you've just gone and ignored it." The President almost spat in accusation, and the Master gave a perfectly nervous shuffle of the feet and a side glance of the eyes.
"Well, you know what it's like." The Master said almost meekly. "New job, all that paperwork." He paused for a moment as if trying to remember something, or possibly just trying to remember the faint taste of food in his mouth with a roll of his tongue. "I think it's down in the back of the settee." The Master half admitted with a scrunch of his face. "I did have a quick look. I found a pen, a sweet, a bus ticket, and…err…have you met the wife?" The Master blurted, almost as if he didn't mean to, motioning a hand to nothing before he paused, turned around and then slouched his shoulders in resignation. "Right. I don't have a-"
"Mister Saxon, I'm not sure what your game is," The President interrupted, quickly silencing the Master, "but there are provisions at the United Nations to have you removed from office unless you are very, very careful." The President warned in a growl, his tone accompanied by a clench of his fist. "Is that understood?" The Master, to the TARDIS crew's surprise, and to the President's further irritation, raised up a hand and mimed closing his mouth tightly together like a zip, acting with the flair of a stand up performing with a live crowd. "Are you taking this seriously?" President Winters snarled, and the Master quickly nodded with a raise of his eyebrows. "To business." The President said, quickly returning to the topic at hand, even with his face still set in an irritated expression. "We've accessed your files on these…"Toclafane" but first contact cannot take place on any sovereign soil. To that purpose, the aircraft carrier "Valiant" is en route. The rendezvous will take place there at 8am." In a sudden interruption, the Master starting making really loud noises akin to muffled talking through a gas mask, and the TARDIS crew, to their horror, gave out a little snigger at his action before quickly silencing themselves. "You are trying my patience, sir." President Winters warned with a roll of his eyes, and the Master mimed an unzipping of his mouth, giving out an almost believable sigh of relief as he did so.
"So America is completely in charge?" The Master retorted in a lighthearted tone that made the crew snigger involuntarily again, whilst the President's scowl deepened into greater creases on his face.
"Since Britain elected an ass?! Yes!" The President spat, and the Master looked just a little bit taken aback at his tone. Or was it offended? The TARDIS crew could not really tell. "I'll see you onboard the Valiant!" The President said with an air of finality, turning around to walk back to the government vehicles.
"3, 2, 1." The Doctor muttered in a countdown and right on cue, the Master stopped the President in his tracks.
"It still will be televised, won't it?" He called innocently, and President Winters turned around to look back at him. "Because…I did promise, and the whole world is watching."
The President gave out an irritated sigh, but answered the question regardless. "Since it's too late to pull out, the world will be watching. Me." He added with a snarl, then he turned and walked away before the Master could stop him with another interruption. The rest of the President's personnel followed him back into the vehicles, quickly driving away, the air around the Master growing quieter as he stood by himself on the air strip, all his personnel moving away at his wordless command to give him space to think. The Master started to turn around, gazing around him with a furrowed, almost unreadable expression, which was one moment playful, the other an ice-cold fury, but at whom they could not tell. For just a split second, the crew thought that the Master's eyes landed upon them, but just as quick as it came, it was gone, and the Master's attention was diverted as a large police van came speeding up the airstrip, stopping a small distance from the Prime Minister, where one of the armed guards jumped out of the front seat and moved to unlock the back door. The Master, with a sudden and deadly ferocious glee on his face, raced over and waved his hands as the prisoners within were escorted out. "Hi, guys!" He called with mocking enthusiasm, and when Martha saw the enraged yet terrified faces of her family, minus her brother, she took a single step forward with a sharp intake of breath, but was restrained by three pairs of arms from the Doctor, Clara and the Captain.
"Saxon, you bastard!" Francine cursed, her, Clive, and Tish struggling against the handcuffs as they were escorted/literally dragged out of the vehicle and towards a more…incognito vehicle, guards already standing patiently outside its back doors.
"You can't just do this!" Clive half cursed, half protested, but the Master just gave a mocking wave in the style of Queen Elizabeth II herself.
"I'm going to kill you for this!" Francine cursed before the family was dragged into the back of the black incognito van and the doors were slammed shut behind them.
"Oh my…" Martha started to say in a trembling voice, but the unnecessary words escaped her.
"Don't move." Captain Jack warned.
"But-"
"Don't." Clara echoed, yet her tone was much sterner than Jack's, but it did the job, rooting Martha in the spot.
"What say I use this perception filter to walk up behind him and break his neck?" Jack offered in a snarling tone, although there was a tiny bit of a quip in his words, but it went unnoticed.
"Now THAT sounds like Torchwood." The Doctor retorted in a growl, but it made Jack silent regardless. "We're not here to kill him. We're here to save him."
"What if he doesn't want to be saved?" Martha retorted.
"Then everything he has done would not make sense." Clara answered in an emotionless tone. "We have to give him a chance, Martha. That's the rule."
Martha and Jack kept themselves silent, despite a small part of them that was screaming in protest, screaming out to deny the logic, but they didn't. Instead, Jack just pulled back his right arm sleeve and began to press away at the buttons on the Manipulator, quickly bringing up some files regarding the previously named aircraft carrier. "The aircraft carrier "Valiant"." Jack muttered, quickly skim reading through one of the files. "Was designed and constructed back when Harold Saxon was Minister of Defense, with conjoined assistance from U.N.I.T."
"Okay." Martha muttered in an attempt to calm herself. "And how do we get onboard?" When no response came, she glanced up to Captain Jack, seeing his eyebrows raised high, and she gave out a sigh. "Oh. Right."
"I've got co-ordinates set for the engine room at 7:45am. Hopefully everyone on the ship will be within the flight deck, ready for the big event." Jack added before pressing a few more buttons and holding his arm out and steady. "All hands-on deck." He quipped lightly, earning a smirk and a snigger from the trio standing beside him, but they did as he bade them to do, placing their hands upon the Manipulator before he pressed a single button and they disappeared in a flash of electricity.
The Bridge of the Valiant
7:30am
The elevator door slid open, and the Master, accompanied by three British Army guards, walked right into the large, warmly lit room, moving around the massive, oval shaped glass conference table in the center, and on the other side was a small stairwell that led to the proper Bridge controls of the aircraft carrier, surrounded on the front and the sides by large, thickly protected panes of glass. President Winters himself stood with three government officials at the bottom of the stairs, whilst the rest of the room was filled with reporters, technicians, camera men and armed U.N.I.T soldiers, all moving frantically about through the room, trying as respectful as they could to move past anybody else along with the multiple cameras that had been set up at the edge of the room. The Master, with his hands in his pockets, walked over to President Winters, who had quickly stopped his discussion and turned to look at him. "Welcome onboard the Valiant, sir." The Master greeted, watching without surprise as the President's eyes narrowed at the sight of him. "You like it?" He asked, holding out his hands, motioning to the entirety of the room they stood within. "I helped design this place when I was Minister of Defense. Still some of my greatest work." He beamed proudly, not at all flinching his expression as the President seemed to withhold back an irritated sigh.
"That is not saying much, sir." The President grunted out.
Ugh. Misery guts.
"And what are you wearing?" The President asked in disgusted bewilderment, looking at the Master's sleek black coat with red lining instead of a simple suit.
"Clothes." The Master retorted dryly. "Anything I can do?" He asked after a moment with a nonchalant shrug. "I could make the tea. Or is that not American enough?" He asked, watching with a sense of inner, gratified glee as the President's scowl started to deepen, accompanied by a small, irritated hiss of breath. "I could even make grits." The Master offered, before pausing with a blink as if he had never heard the phrase before. "What are "Grits" anyway?"
"I would very much appreciate it if you could just stand back and keep quiet. Sit, if you have to." The President ordered in a snarl before turning away without a word.
The Master pretended to roll his eyes at that before turning and moving away, his hands reaching back into his pockets. One hand, his right, started to twitch impatiently against a small tube-like device inside his pocket, but he held it back with a sigh. Patience. He thought as his other hand pulled out a phone and began to dial Augustus' number. He waited, and he waited, listening as the line droned the tiny little sound that would have meant "Connecting", but soon, the line connected, and Augustus answered the call.
"Yes, sir?"
"Are you in position?" The Master asked as he stepped over into the corner of a room, motioning for his escort guards to stand back for a moment.
"Yes, sir. Might I ask, how long must I be here? This place is a little bit damp." Augustus complained.
The Master scoffed. "You can fix that without a problem." He retorted before inhaling a breath. "You will know if everything goes wrong up here, then you can leave."
"Understood, sir." Without another word, the Master cut the line and walked over to sit in one of the many wheel capped chairs at the conference table and waited. Not too long now.
The Valiant's Engine Room
7:45am
The TARDIS crew appeared in a crackling flash of electricity, already stumbling to their knees or against the wall as they held their heads or their aching necks in groaning agony. "Oh, that thing is rough!" Martha exclaimed with a gasp as they began clicking the aching parts of their body, trying to fight off a tiny little ringing in their ears and a small dull throbbing in their heads.
"Oh, I've had worse nights!" Jack retorted as he clicked his neck with a loud groan. Taking a small minute to recover themselves, the TARDIS crew stood upright, the Doctor and Clara lightly clinging onto each other whilst Martha and Jack leaned against the wall, their hands pressed against one of the many pipes as they regained their breath with uneven panting. The small puffs of steam from vents in the walls, floor and ceiling didn't help much either, the crew having to stumble away from them as to not get hit directly in the face with the hot air. What else they could see was bathed in a bright yellow light, but they quickly noticed that the lights in the room were colored purple, but the yellow light was instead streaming in through the many windows in the walls. "Welcome to the Valiant." Jack introduced after they all finished gathering themselves back together, and Martha moved over to stand by one of the windows.
"Now THAT is what I call a view." Martha muttered in awe at the rising sunset on the horizon, the crew staring in silence for a moment before Martha blinked, her attention quickly shifting to a different point of focus. "Hold on. I thought this was a ship. Where's the sea?" She asked, seeing only the tops of large white and grey clouds.
"A ship for the 21st Century, protecting the skies of planet Earth." Jack explained.
"Oh." Martha muttered, and they nodded before Jack patted her on the shoulders.
"Right. Come on." He ordered, and the crew followed Jack through the long corridors of the Valiant's lower decks, turning many corners until they came to a small intersection, a path in front of them, a path to their left, and a small stairwell path to their right.
"It's this way." Jack said, pointing to the path in front of them, but when the Doctor and Clara didn't move, him and Martha turned to look at the couple with furrowed eyebrows. "Come on, you two. This is no time for sight-"
"Shhh!" They interrupted with a finger pressed against their own lips.
"Can't you hear it?" The Doctor asked, his and Clara's gazes fixed upon the walls of the Valiant, but Jack and Martha just exchanged a small, puzzled glance before they shook their heads.
"Hear what?" Jack asked.
"Listen." The Doctor muttered, and the two of them fell silent. It was admittedly rather difficult to focus their hearing for a distant noise, considering the puffs of steam vents and the rumbling of the massive ship around them, but there was a noise. Tiny, almost indistinguishable, but it was there. And it was very, very familiar. "Brilliant!" The Doctor beamed, turning to the stairwell and instantly rushing down the steps. "This way!"
"Come on." Clara ushered before swiftly running after the Doctor, Jack and Martha exchanging a small, puzzled glance before moving into action. Running right down a long hallway, right through a thin wall of steam, towards a double set of large, steel doors at the very end. Coming to quick halt, the Doctor grasped the large handles and swung the doors wide open, and upon the sight of the TARDIS standing within the room on the other side made the entire crew grin and laugh in relief.
"Yes!" Clara exclaimed.
"Oh, at last!" The Doctor echoed, the two of them rushing first over to the TARDIS doors, followed by a grinning Martha, and Jack, whose own grin started to quickly slide into a frown of confusion and concern.
"What's she doing on the Valiant?" He muttered aloud. He didn't have to wonder for long as the couple in front of him and Martha unlocked the doors and swung them open, sprinting inside before swiftly coming to a horrified halt. The inside of the TARDIS was completely drowned in a deep, blood red light emanating from the console, or what was left of it. The panels and all of its intricate buttons, levers and switches were completely in ruins, turned instead into a large mess of blood red cables and black wires, the time rotor itself was no longer a light blue, but instead a burnt orange, and the console was surrounded by a metal mesh barrier. And if the sight alone was not enough to shock and horrify them, the whining, wounded moaning and crying from the TARDIS around them was enough to solidify it. And the loud dull ringing of the Cloister Bells didn't exactly help much either.
"What?" Clara muttered, almost wanting to take a small step back, but it became a small step forward. "What has he done?"
"Clara, don't touch anything." The Doctor quickly warned, placing a hand on hers.
"But what has he done to her?"
The Doctor didn't answer for a moment, his expression a blend of rage, pain, and horror. "He…no, he can't have." He muttered, letting go of her hand and starting to pace around the console, looking at it as if wishing that it wasn't real, but it was a fruitless effort.
"Doctor, what is this?" Clara asked.
"He's cannibalized the TARDIS." The Doctor answered through gritted teeth, unable to tear his eyes away from the burnt orange time rotor.
"Is this what I think it is?" The Captain asked through a furrowed face of horrified realization.
The Doctor, without looking, took a breath and answered. "It's a paradox machine."
Martha and Clara both looked a little confused, but Clara instead found her attention taken by a small gauge meter at the bottom of the metal mesh, and she squatted down to look closely. "Doctor?" She called, and the Doctor moved around to see what she was looking at before squatting down right beside her. "This is not a safety gauge, is it?"
"No. It's for the power reading." The Doctor answered with a blink as Jack and Martha moved to stand behind them.
"As soon as the gauge hits the red, this whole machine will activate." Jack added with an intake of breath, looking at the lights in the power cables, giving off an effect of travelling up and down the cables from the ruined console to the ceiling of the room. "At that speed it will trigger at…" Jack paused, rolling back the sleeve of his right arm, checking the time on his Vortex Manipulator, "2 minutes past 8."
"And first contact is at 8." Clara added with a squint of the eyes before she blinked. "What does this machine do?"
"It normalizes paradoxes." Jack inputted, and Clara looked at him with a frown, to which he just shrugged. "In-in a nutshell." He added.
"Okay, but why? Why would he need one?" Clara asked.
"I don't know." The Doctor admitted, running a hand down his face. "I mean, if it comes into effect at 2 minutes past first contact, then it must have something to do with the "Toclafane" but I really don't know why."
"More importantly can you stop it?" The Captain interjected, and the Doctor grinned up at him.
"Yeah. We just rip it apart." With that, the Doctor stood up and reached his hands over to touch the metal mesh, but he instantly flinched away with a cry as a burnt orange barrier flared over the metal mesh for a moment, flickering before it disappeared.
"Oh, now that's just cheating!" The Doctor spat, rubbing his hand with a wince before Clara took over for him.
"Right, so, paradox machine protected by a force field." Jack summarized sarcastically. "Any ideas to the source?"
"If the Master is smart, he'll have it on Earth."
"And if he's not, they'll be here." Clara added in a low, growling mutter.
"Either way, we need to deal with the Master first." Martha inputted. "And how are we going to do that?"
"Oh, I've got a way." The Doctor answered nonchalantly, earning frowns from the trio around him and he grinned in response. "Sorry, did I not mention?" He quipped lightly as he took a hold of his key in between his forefinger and his thumb, tapping it for a moment before letting it go. "If I can get one of these around the Master's neck, it can cancel out his perception and everyone will see him for real."
"One problem though." Clara inputted with a thin smile. "It will be hard to go unnoticed when everyone's more focused than a dog looking at food."
"Oi!" The Doctor retorted with a slightly offended look. "Not every dog is into eating." He muttered after a moment.
"We should get the flight deck, and quickly." Jack interrupted, looking down at his Manipulator. "It's 7:55."
7:58am
"One-minute left everyone!" President Winters called, and anyone that wasn't in position started to move frantically about the room, whilst the President himself ascended up to the middle of the stairwell, standing on a decently large landing platform with one hand braced against the railing. "According to the treaty, all armed personnel are requested to leave the flight deck immediately, thank you!"
Does that include me? The Master quipped in his head as he lounged back in his chair, his feet propped up on the table, and one of his hands began fishing through his pocket. Let's see, a chess piece, a small ball of string, my music player…thingy-AHA! He drew out from his pocket a white paper bag and fished a finger inside to draw out a single orange colored piece of candy. Is this really a jelly baby? The Master mused as he inspected the candy in between his fingers. Looks more like a totem. A rather overweight one at that. Nevertheless, the Master shrugged and popped it into his mouth, his eyebrows raising in surprise. Not bad.
"We're broadcasting at 7:59am with the arrival timed for eight hundred hours exactly." President Winters announced as an assistant began to start a countdown from 20 to 0. "And…good luck to all of us." He added with a nod and a smile before he rested his right arm on the railing and looked at the camera down below, the room quickly falling into silence with the exception of the flight deck door opening and a shuffle of four pairs of feet came into the room, but no one paid them any mind. President Winters eyes flickered for a moment to the assistant, watching as she counted down the final seconds. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. She then flicked a thumbs up in unison with the camera operator and the President refocused his eyes on the camera with a warm smile. "My fellow Americans."
Ugh.
"Patriots, people of the world." The President continued, his eyes flickering only to the teleprompter beside the camera. "I stand before you today as ambassador for humanity, a role I will undertake with the utmost solemnity. Perhaps our Toclafane cousins can offer us much, but what is important is not that we gain material benefits, but that we learn to see ourselves anew." The President took a moment to take a breath before continuing on. "For as long as man has looked to the stars, he has wondered what mysteries they hold."
Potato men? Sisterhood of Karn? Daemons from the planet Daemos? I could go on all day.
"But now, after these past few years and especially now, we know that we are not alone. And I ask you now, I ask of the Human race, to join with me in welcoming our new friends." Stepping back a pace and holding his out in presentation, he declared for the room and the world to hear, "I give you the Toclafane!"
Right on cue, four Toclafane spheres materialized in the air behind the President, just hovering, only moving through little agitated twitches. The Master took a moment to glance at the reactions of the people in the room. Some had their eyes wide in bewilderment, delight, shock, or even fear. Nevertheless, the Master exhaled a small, shaky breath, finding it rather difficult to sit still, his hand twitching in his pocket, fingers brushing against the silver tube, aching to use it. Oh, look at his face! The Master exclaimed mentally, looking at the President who was trying his best to keep his emotions intact, but some were breaking free of his control. There was a blink of fear, a blink of agitation, a smile of excitement, and a clench of the fist in self reassurance against an underlying, distrusting fear.
"My name is Arthur Coleman Winters, President elect of the United States of America, and designated representative of the United Nations. I welcome you to the planet Earth…and its associated moon." The President quickly added with a tiny exhale of breath, waiting for the Toclafane response, his mind racing at a thousand miles an hour, theorizing on what their first words could be, what they could want, where they come from-
"You're not the Master." Came a male voice from one of the spheres, which hovered over to President Winters, keeping a small distance of a few feet from his face.
"We like the Mr. Master." Came a female voice.
Come on, come on! The Master pleaded in impatience, moving his legs down to plant his feet upon the floor, trying to keep his twitching limbs out of view.
"I…" President Winters tried to say something, but it just came out as a dumbfounded stutter for a moment before he…somewhat regained his footing. "I can be master, if you so wish." He offered in puzzlement, and when the Toclafane remained silent, he took it as a positive response. "I will accept mastery over you, if that is God's will."
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
If the sphere's had faces, the Master knew that they would be exchanging puzzled and confused glances with each other. At least, that's what he imagined. In reality, the Toclafane spheres just continued to hover, before one that was furthest to the President's left hovered forward a moment before stopping it's movement. "No." The male voice finally spoke. "Man is stupid."
The President looked a little taken aback by the comment, but a female Toclafane voice spoke before he could. "Master is our friend."
"Where is my Master?" A second male voice, much younger than the first, pleaded in almost childish desperation. "Please? Pretty please?"
And…now. The Master relented with an almost defeated sigh and stood up with a small groan. "Oh, all right then, it's me." Turning around to face the rest of the room, he held his arms out like a magician performing a trick, and declared, "Ta-da!" The expressions in the room went utterly haywire. But most of them were confused, bewildered, and even taken aback in amusement. "Sorry, I have this effect, and it makes people become obsessed with me." He admitted before furrowing his eyebrows in puzzlement. "Is it the smile?" He asked with a grin. "Is it the aftershave?" He asked, wiping a hand across his chin before pretending to be disgusted by it and shaking his hand for a moment before continuing on. "Or is it the capacity to laugh at myself?" He asked before sighing with a shrug. "I don't know. It's crazy!"
"Mr. Saxon!" Came the outraged and deeply confused voice of the President from behind, and he turned around to look up, thrusting his hands into his pockets without a care in the world. "What are you talking about?!"
The Master grinned, but his own impatience was starting to wear thin, letting just a little of his façade melt away, watching in delight as the President almost took a step back in fearful confusion. "I'm taking control, Uncle Sam."
The President's eyes flickered around the room for a moment before refocusing on him, watching as the Master turned back around to look at the room as well. "How?"
"How indeed?" The Master retorted, paying very close attention, and someone, right at the back of the room, stepped just a toe out of line. The blur that made him unable to look at the back of the room for almost a few minutes had cleared away, and the Master's eyes looked up. There, standing with clenched fists, the Master's eyes fixed upon a short brown-haired, big eyed woman, who glaring back at him in anger and rage. Clara, Clara, Clara. The Master mused, smiling for a moment as his hand grasped the silver device in his pocket and pulled it out. He looked at it for a second before placing his other hand on the bottom end, twisting it a few times before he twisted back around to look at President Winters and pointed the device straight up at him. "Like this." The Master pressed a single finger upon the button and the device fired a bright yellow beam, and upon hitting the President in the chest, Arthur screamed and cried in agony for a three short moments before the Master stopped and Arthur's suddenly battered and bleeding body fell straight back, his spine giving a sickening crunch as it impacted against the stairwell. The Master then dove straight up to stand above the President, a grin proud on his face, shaking from the adrenaline rushing through his body. "Hi." The Master growled in delight as Arthur whimpered and moaned, his bloodshot eyes quickly growing heavy and weary. Any second now and he would simply pass on. Can't do that, I'm afraid. Standing up, the Master glanced at the stationary Toclafane, and simply ordered, "Kill him." One of the Toclafane responded by moving to hover straight above the dying President, and it's form shot out six metal spikes from its lower half, before one of them fired a single red blast at the President, disintegrating him. There was nothing left of the ordeal now. No blood, no smoke, no body, no ash, nothing. It was as if the President was never even there. The Master grinned and laughed as if it was the funniest joke in the whole world, turning back around to see that his own men, who had disguised themselves as technicians, assistants and camera operators, had pulled out secret black pistols and were aiming them at everyone else, who were already cowering at the far wall and beside the large glass table. The Master then looked at the camera which previously was focused on the now deceased President Winters, and he grinned, but it was no longer a warm smile. Now, it was a deadly smile of a vicious cat that ate the canary. "Peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully."
"Stop her!" A guard interrupted, and the Master looked up to see Clara rushing towards him, but she was instantly restrained by a pair of guards.
"Let her go!" The Doctor's voice called in, but before he could do anything, he also was restrained by a pair of guards, and quickly hauled over to be placed beside Clara.
The Master, for a moment, found himself unable to speak. He had anticipated them to do something, but…not precisely that. "Well, well." The Master purred, before he pretended to blink in disappointment. "Doesn't exactly work without a pair of horns-" He was interrupted however as Clara tried to wring herself free, earning in return a punch in the gut from one of the guards. "Oi!" The Master bellowed, and the guards, and Clara, stopped moving upon command. "None of that. Let them go." He ordered, and the guards let Clara and the Doctor drop to the floor, but as they looked up, they found themselves unable to move as the Master pointed his laser straight at them. "I will do it, if you will not stay put." He ordered, and when neither of them protested, he grinned and relaxed back at the top of the railing, his laser dangling lazily between his fingers. "Well then, Doctor." He greeted with a grin, looking straight at his…Old friend? Enemy? Hard to tell anymore. "Been a very long time." He added before looking at Clara. "And Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara. We meet at last." Then, for a moment, he paused, his eyes furrowing upon the sight of Clara's face. "Not sure if the eyes are too big or the face is too small." He muttered before shrugging nonchalantly. "Either way, you are much stranger in person."
"Stop this!" The Doctor interjected in a fearful, rage induced voice that almost took the Master aback. "Stop this now!"
"Blimey, someone's a little bit protective." The Master said with raised eyebrows, before his eyes flickered to the back of the room when Captain Jack and Martha took a step forward. "Oh, and look." He said, leaning back with his hand clenched tight on his laser, his eyes staring straight at the Captain. "It's the girlie and the freak. Although…" He paused as if contemplating a problem, tapping a finger of his free hand against the railing, "I'm not sure which one is which." Upon his words, Captain Jack deepened the scowl on his face and started forward, but the Master immediately pointed his laser at him and fired, the Captain screaming in agony before collapsing to the ground, Martha rushing to his side as the Master held the laser up in the air for the Doctor and Clara to see. "Laser screwdriver." He introduced with a slightly teasing glint in his eyes. "Who would have a sonic?" He asked rhetorically before grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. "And the best thing is, he won't be dead for long, so I get to kill him again! That is absolutely brilliant!" The Master beamed.
"Master, please, just calm down." Clara pleaded, and the Master found himself rather puzzled at her change in attitude. "There are better ways to do this, just calm down."
The Master blinked before glancing at the Doctor. "I must say, you have discovered a really strange taste in girlfriends, Doctor." The Master commented, but the Doctor didn't pay attention to the quip.
"Just stop, please." The Doctor said in the same tone as Clara, but his attempt did not take the Master by surprise. "If you could see yourself-"
"I'd need a mirror for that." The Master retorted dryly before looking at the camera. "Do excuse me. A little bit of personal business. Back in a minute." The Master stepped down to the bottom of the stairs before sitting down in front of them, the Doctor and Clara looking at him in frightened, rage induced confusion. "Let's see, how to restrain all the adrenaline pumping through your entire form?" The Master wondered, clicking his fingers before grinning. "I've got it." With that, the Master took a deep breath, even if it really did not do much to calm the racing blood of his body, and then spoke. "Do either of you remember Professor Richard Lazarus?" He asked, and he could see the glow of realization in their eyes, and it made him smile in relief. "Now, yes, I did help fund the project to make it real, and I'm sure you have already guessed that little Tish could not have gotten that job by herself." He said, watching Martha's face glower out of the corner of his eye before carrying on. "You see, I…shall we say, intercepted your tip to U.N.I.T, and I managed to perfect the technology, or at least I perfected it enough for a small, little screwdriver." He held up the laser for a moment, tapping it with his finger before carrying on. "Now I can use it on anyone I so wish. I can make them age or grow younger, all at the press of a button. I can even do it to you, Doctor." The Master threatened with a growl, pointing the laser straight at the Time Lord in question, relishing in the fear on the Doctor's face and how Clara immediately jumped in between the two of them.
"Don't you dare." She growled, and the Master grinned at her in amused reassurance.
"Don't worry, dear, I can only do it if I had the Doctor's biological code." He retorted with a smile, before blinking with a slight pouting face for a moment before grinning with a click of his fingers. "Wait a moment, I do." The Doctor and Clara turned around to see two of the Master's subordinates carrying a large steel case into the room before placing it upon the glass the table, and the Master stood up, bounded straight over them, and opened the case for them to see a severed Time Lord hand sitting in a liquid filled jar. "I've got his hand!" He declared with a deadly snarl, before snapping a finger at Clara, giving out a single, simple order. "Get her out of the way."
"No!" Clara exclaimed, but she was already being hauled out of the way by the two guards beside her, and the Doctor was forced to remain on the floor by the guns pointing straight at his head. "Doctor! Please, don't!"
The Master, his lips drawn into a thin line, pointed the laser menacingly at the Doctor, just basking in the expression on his face before he drew the laser back and switched the settings around to what he desired. "A Time Lord can live for about…oh…" He paused for effect, twirling the screwdriver about his hand for a moment, "seven, eight hundred years in one body." The Master made another pause as his face twitched in correction. "Give or take. Could live up to a thousand if you're lucky." With a deadly smile, the Master pointed the screwdriver back at the Doctor and let it stay there. "But at some point, regeneration will kick in. Now, if I suspend your ability to regenerate, I could age you as much as I want. So, why don't we go for...oh…900 years?" With a flash of fury, the Master flicked the screwdriver on, and the Doctor turned into a blurry mass, convulsing and twitching on the spot, his arms flailing about as if to grasp something but failing to do so. The rest of the room faded into a muted silence around him, and all the Master could focus on was the Doctor, listening close to every single whimper, moan, and guttural scream of agony, and his smile grew wider and wider, the deadly gleam in his eyes glowering more and more with each passing second until, just as quickly as it started, the Master stopped, and the Doctor collapsed to the ground.
"Doctor!" Came the scream from Clara, who had wrenched free of the guards and dove forward to help the Time Lord. "Doctor?" The Doctor raised his head, revealing every inch of his face, now covered with wrinkles and creases, the eyes now only showing weariness of age and his once brown mess of hair was now stark grey and drooped down over the sides and back of his head. "Doctor." Clara muttered, drawing him into a comforting hug, and the Master, for not the first time in the day, found himself speechless.
"Huh." He muttered, lowering his laser screwdriver as he saw the Doctor return the hug with an agonized groan. "I might have been wrong about you, Clara."
"Piss off." Came Clara's snarling response, and the Master chuckled.
"I was definitely wrong." He added as another figure came over to help the Doctor, that of Miss Jones. The Master looked over with a frown to see Jack still clinging onto his life, but the Master just shrugged it off and looked back to the trio. "And look at that. The would-be doctor." The Master remarked sarcastically, and Martha looked up at him with a scowl, to which he just smiled. "But that's not all, Miss Jones, for we have flown them in all the way from prison!" He declared, his hand pointing straight to the entrance, and Martha stood up with a face of worry that turned into realizing horror at the sight of her family, minus Leo, being dragged into the flight deck by a group of guards, and Martha's gaze immediately fixed with that of her mother's.
"Mum?" She whimpered.
"Rough day, darling?" Francine asked in what would have been an attempt at a reassuring tone, but the shaky smile and the tears in her eyes betrayed that feeling.
Martha could not find herself to respond to her mother's question, be it the sight of her family restrained in cuffs or held at gunpoint by the guards surrounding them, but it was the Master pointing his screwdriver at her with a menacing smile that made her do nothing. "Get back." The Master ordered, and she wordlessly backed away to kneel back beside the dying Captain, and the Master lowered his screwdriver to turn to the Doctor and Clara.
"The Toclafane." Was the first, weary words from the aged Doctor's mouth, and it was almost difficult for the Master to hear them. "What are they?"
The Master squatted down in front of them and motioned to his ear for the Doctor to repeat his question. "Just answer the fucking question." Clara snarled, and the Master grinned at her.
"I could." He retorted with a smirk before leaning in just an inch to whisper his next few words. "But if I did, your hearts would break. Same goes for you, Miss Oswald." He added with a glance to Clara. "You may not have one literally, but it is still there."
"Is it time?" The older, male Toclafane voice asked, and the Master stood back up and paced up the stairwell to stand in the middle of the circling spheres. "Is it ready?"
"Is the machine singing?" Came the female voice, and the Master looked down at his watch before smiling up at them in acknowledgment.
"2 minutes past." With his smile spreading into a massive, childish grin, the Master sprinted over to the Valiant's flight deck controls, took out his music player and hooked it in, selecting a song and pressing play. It took a quarter of a minute, but quickly enough the female voice began to sing, and the Master stepped back with his eyes closed. "Such a feelin's comin' over me. There is wonder in most everything I see. Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes and I won't-oh!" With a start, the Master remembered just one more thing, causing him to rush back over to the top of the stairwell, looking down at the camera with a sheepish smile. "Sorry, Earthlings, forgot to say, uh, you know…" He paused for a moment as a tremendous crack rang through the sky above their heads, echoed by a grand rumbling like an earthquake, and his sheepish smile turned pleased yet menacing at once, "end of the world." He finished with a shrug. The Master then turned right back around to race over to the console, looking up to see a massive tear in the sky, beyond which was the dead space of the far future, and through the tear came millions and millions of tiny spheres, flying down past the Valiant and to the Earth below. "Six billion Toclafane." The Master muttered with a smile. Now…eradicate? Slaughter? Decimate? Yes, I prefer that one. Decimate. Tapping his foot to the music, the Master flicked the switch for the exterior speaker and ordered loud and clear, "Remove one tenth of the population!" He flicked the switch off again, knowing that by now the Valiant would have gotten many distress signals from the Earth bases down below, but he had disconnected them, and all that came through the speakers was the music. "Somethin' in the wind has learned my name, and it's tellin' me that things are not the same. In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze, there's a pleasin' sense of happiness for me." The Master sang as he turned around, dancing a little as he walked slowly back to the top of the stairwell. "There is only one wish on my mind. When this day is through, I hope that I will find that tomorrow will be just the same for you. All I need will be mine if you are here. I'm on…" The Master stopped singing, trailing off as he reached the top of the stairwell, a slightly cold wash of realization flowing over him as he saw no sign of Martha on the flight deck. Not by her family, who were exchanging confused and terrified looks, not Captain Jack, who had finally succumbed to his wounds, albeit not for long, or by the hugging couple just below him, staring up at him in cold defiance, and was that pity? No. And yet…the Doctor would do that, wouldn't he? Looking down upon the couple, he clicked his fingers and motioned for them to stand, which took them a bit considering the Doctor's forcefully advanced age, but Clara helped him up the stairs and the Master pointed them to the front of the flight deck. When they stood still, looking through the glass and down upon through the thin clouds to the burning cities of planet Earth below, the Master smiled. "And so it came to pass that the Human race fell, and the Earth was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion as master of all, and I thought it good." The Master looked over to the Doctor and Clara, watching as they seemed barely able to contain the cold fury on their faces, but the Master just grinned and gave a pleased sigh. I have missed this.
AN: I will admit that I had a few choices for what song I wanted to use for the ending. "Under Pressure" by Queen was up there for a while, but when I got to writing the scene, I found that it didn't really fit. So, I decided on "Top of the World" by The Carpenters.
Okay, the main reason why this chapter took so long, for which you may have recognized after reading, is the character of "Lucy Saxon". I'll be honest, I was trying to find a way to incorporate her into this, but when I started to think about connecting this with "Last of the Time Lords" and eventually "The End of Time" I found what I wanted to do did require her. Yes, she wasn't the only character that I removed. "Vivian Rook" was removed and some of her lines was even given to Captain Jack, because, for a similar reason, she wasn't needed. I do hope you understand and appreciate some of these changes, because at the end of the day, your enjoyment of my story is what I care about…okay, that came out a little bit wrong, but you get my meaning. ;) Anyway, as always, thank you so much for reading and please leave a review if you wish. :)