Author's Note:
Hello, my name is Brownbug, and I am addicted to writing the "One Moment in Time" series. I tend to feel a bit at a loss if I don't have a story simmering away in the back of my mind. Which is why I have started writing this one, even though the series is already so long. But I have a feeling that this may well be the last one, so I want to thank the people who have been following and commenting, I appreciate it more than I can say - MayFairy, Weiryn, gallifrey calls now, MountainLord-92, TheWritingKat, Imorgen (x 3), SawManiac211, Ahsilaa, TheGreatWhite, EmmaMarie, irishartemis, Lexy Summers, Daughter of the Master, sailormajinmoon, Lost Moon, JessieDear13 (x 2), Theta'sWorstNightmare and CharcoalFaith.
To sailormajinmoon: Thanks again, I'm really happy you've liked all of them, that's terrific. The net will slowly be closing in around Tejana in the next few chapters, as you will see. And no, you are, right, the Master isn't a happy camper right now ;)
To Lost Moon: Aw, that's such a nice thing to say - it's nice to be the queen of anything, so I'd be more than happy to be the Queen of Master/OC, thankyou!
Okay, lovely folks, here is the next chapter...
- Chapter Seven -
"But know this, Time Lord...you are not alone..."
- The Face of Boe, Gridlock
To Tejana's immense surprise, once she and Dyoni had finished making up their allocation of rooms, she was given the rest of the afternoon off, up until it would be time to serve the evening meal. Dyoni had laughed at the look on her face.
"Of course we get time off," she said. "We're not slaves, you know."
"Could've fooled me," Tejana grumbled, thinking of all her various aches and pains.
"Go and get some fresh air. It will make you feel better."
Fresh air? Inside the Great Dome? Tejana wanted to retort. Like that was ever going to happen.
But she bit her tongue and escaped out into the Academy gardens before any one else could think of something for her to do. She wasn't absolutely sure servants were permitted to openly walk within the main gardens, but since there didn't seem to be anyone around to forbid her, she didn't let it bother her. It was a gorgeous day. From the angle of the twin suns, Tejana guessed the season was late summer. She could hear birds singing in the tall maldor trees and smell the perfume of the arkytior flowers. The freshly-mown red grass was short and springy beneath her feet. She closed her eyes and drew all the poignant sensations deeply inside her, relishing them as they danced across her skin and sparkled through her blood like champagne bubbles; that singular, overwhelming feeling of being home at last. She couldn't help marvelling at the familiarity of it all, as if she had been here only yesterday instead of centuries ago. The conflicting feelings her home world had always roused in her had never gone away, they had only been buried, because after the devastation of the Time War, she could never bear to look at them again.
On days like today, she remembered, you could almost forget the artificial, rarefied environment in which the Time Lords lived, forget about the enormous crystalline Dome stretching overhead, enclosing the Citadel within an impenetrable protective barrier. As Tejana knew from her own bitter experience, it was on days like today that you could make believe you were free.
She tilted her head back and looked up into the stunning burnt-orange sky. She couldn't see the Dome, but every single part of her knew it was there, shutting her in all over again. Once, those transparent perimeters had been her only horizon. Now her horizons stretched to the very ends of the Universe. Or had done. The last thing she had ever expected was to end up trapped on Gallifrey again.
Cracks in time and space. The more she thought about it, the more it worried her, not just for her own sake, which was bad enough. No, it was bigger than that, much bigger. Over and over in her head, she listed the cracks she had seen, hoping to find some sort of pattern, hoping to find it all made sense. The crack that had swallowed the megalosaurus back at the Naismith mansion; the crack that had almost swallowed Jack in the kitchen of the Hub; the enormous crack on the Isle of Avalon which she had closed using the White Point Star. She had assumed all of those were directly related to Rassilon punching holes in reality using his temporal manipulator. But what if they weren't? What if something else was causing the fabric of time and space to break down? Something even bigger, if that was even possible...? Certainly the crack she had fallen into at Stonehenge had nothing to do with Rassilon, as far as she knew. And hadn't the Doctor mentioned something about there being a crack in Amy's bedroom wall as a child? Tejana wrinkled her forehead, trying to remember. It hadn't seemed all that important at the time, so she hadn't really paid all that much attention. But she was sure he had said something about closing it with his sonic screwdriver.
But if the cracks had been emanating from something other than Rassilon's temporal manipulator, what the hell was it? What could possibly be powerful enough to break all the Laws of Time and fling her all the way back into Gallifrey's past? No, wait a minute...not just Gallifrey's past...the Doctor's past. Somehow, this all kept coming back to her father. And the last time she had seen his current incarnation, the Pandorica had been opening. A mysterious, legendary box, opening at his touch. As if it knew him. As if it had been waiting for him.
A cold shiver ran up Tejana's spine. What had been inside that thing? A goblin? A trickster? A warrior, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies, just like the ancient legends had said? Something terrible enough to break down the barriers of time and space. At the thought, a gut-wrenching fear began to gnaw away inside her – a fear that this time her father had bitten off even more than he could chew. Somehow she had to get out of here. Somehow she had to get back to Stonehenge.
But she couldn't do it alone. And in this time and place, there was only one other person who could help her.
"Lord Theta?"
The blonde boy whirled around, his expression one of surprise. "Kat! You startled me. Usually no-one ever comes here but me. How did you know I'd be here?"
"I didn't," she lied. He was sitting cross-legged on a smooth round rock in the middle of a small, walled contemplative garden. The air was heavy with the evocative, intoxicating scent of schlenk blossom. Smooth white sand stretched around the central rock, carefully raked into mysterious whirls and swirls, a pattern that was both limited and yet infinite at the same time. Tejana knew that if you stared at the intricate grooves for long enough, you could begin to sense the ebb and flow of the Time Vortex, surging through your blood.
When she had arrived, Theta had been sitting with his eyes closed, his face a picture of calm serenity. In actual fact, she had taken a calculated risk to find him. Praying no-one would notice, she had used all her skill to crack open the psychic link, just the tiniest little bit, and had used it to home in on his location. Now that she was here, she found she could recall her father mentioning how he'd liked to slip away from all the others, even Koschei, to sit in this quiet spot, just to be alone, just to think. She didn't like invading his privacy – it made her very uncomfortable. But this was kind of an emergency.
"I like to come here too," she faltered. "It's so...peaceful. But I can go away, if you'd rather?"
"No, of course not," he said generously, just as she had known he would. "I wasn't doing anything important anyway. Just thinking about stuff. Come and sit beside me."
She did as he asked. Careful not to disturb the rippling sand, she made her way over to him and perched herself next to him on the large rock. He slanted a rueful glance at her pale face.
"You look like you didn't get any sleep at all last night," he commented. "Are you all right?"
She smiled at him, wondering why it was so much easier to accept concern from this version of the Doctor than it was from his older self. Maybe it was because Theta treated her like an equal instead of like a child. Or maybe because he didn't expect or require anything from her. "I'm fine, thank you."
"I'm so sorry...about how my friends treated you. You were right, it was my fault. I should never have..."
"It doesn't matter, really, I promise," she said quickly. "It's not that. I've...just got some other things going on."
He nodded sympathetically. "Is that why you came here? To think things through?"
"In a way."
"Is it anything I can help with?"
She took a deep breath and raised her eyes to his. She hated lying to him, but she had to couch this properly, or she would ruin everything. A Shabogan maidservant wouldn't know anything about the space-time continuum. Too much detail and she would give herself away.
"Have you ever seen any...cracks...inside the Citadel?"
A frown crossed his face. "Cracks? In the walls, you mean?"
"Not...ordinary cracks," she said hesitantly. All at once, a feeling of apprehension shivered across her skin. She looked over her shoulder, but there was no-one standing there. Or at least no-one that she could see. "Cracks that glow with white fire," she finished in a hoarse voice, wrapping her arms defensively around herself, as if she was cold.
All the gentleness vanished from Theta's face. His eyes sharpened and his hand flew out to grip her arm urgently. "Why are you asking me this, Kat? Have you seen something like that?"
She gave him a slow, uncertain nod, trying to ignore the creeping sensations enough to keep her facade of ignorance believable. "Yes. It scared me. But I didn't know who to tell, so I thought that maybe you..."
"You did the right thing!" he exclaimed, his face alight with excitement. "Where exactly did you see it?"
"In the servant's corridors near the kitchen," she replied, bringing to mind the dark, stone passageway where she had first materialised.
"What did it look like?"
"It was just hanging in the air. It was shaped like a horrible smile. And white light was streaming from it."
Theta jumped to his feet and began pacing about. In that moment, he reminded Tejana so much of his future self, she could almost see a vision of Eleven superimposed over his figure. "Time-fire! It must have been! You're lucky you didn't get too near it, Kat. They say Time-fire can wipe a person out of reality, so that they never existed at all. No-one would have remembered you'd ever been alive. You'd just be...gone!"
Tejana widened her eyes, doing her best to look shocked at this information, even though something in the back of her head was screaming that she had been there, done that and got the T-Shirt. "So...you've never come across anything like that on Gallifrey before?" she probed.
Her dubious attempt at acting was wasted, since Theta was already caught up in his own thoughts, his pacing becoming more and more agitated. "No, never. It shouldn't be possible. I don't suppose you could be mistaken? No, of course not. If you hadn't actually seen it, you wouldn't know what to describe. But a crack in time and space, here on Gallifrey? Not just classroom theory, but a real, actual, honest-to-goodness crack. Who knows what that might mean?"
"You can't tell anyone!" Tejana objected in sudden alarm. If the other Time Lords started investigating, the anomaly of her presence would soon be detected. And she knew enough of Gallifreyan politics to realise that returning her to her own time was probably the last thing they would ever do. They would be much more likely to lock her up in the cells beneath the Citadel for endless questioning. She had no intention of ever returning to those cells again. She would kill someone first.
"Hey, calm down, Kat," Theta said soothingly. "I didn't say anything about telling anyone else." He slid his arm comfortingly around her shoulders. "You're shaking! This really has you rattled, doesn't it?"
Tejana swallowed convulsively. She could hardly tell him that it was her own bad memories upsetting her. "I just don't want to get into any trouble," she whispered.
"You won't, I promise. We'll keep it between us," Theta assured her. "Unless Gallifrey is threatened in any way, of course. Can you show me exactly where the crack was?"
She nodded and rose from the rock, preparing to lead the way out of the garden.
Theta watched Kat move carefully across the raked sand, her footsteps as light as a dance as she made her way to the garden gate. Now that she couldn't see his face, his brow was furrowed in worry - more worry than he had wanted to show her. Poor little Kat was scared enough already. She was so small and vulnerable. He didn't want to terrify her further by explaining just how serious these cracks could be.
He got to his feet and was about to follow her, when something caught his eyes. On Kat's side of the rock, there were some marks in the sand that hadn't been there before. Leaning over, he looked closer and saw that they were letters. But it wasn't Gallifreyan script. To his surprise, he realised that it was written in English, a human language from the planet Earth. The letters were crudely drawn, the lines extremely wobbly, as if it had taken someone a great deal of strain and effort to form them. Nevertheless, they were still readable, if completely cryptic.
They said: "YANA".
He stared at the word in puzzlement. YANA? Was it an acronym? A message? Did the letters stand for something? If so, what? For a brief, wild moment, he wondered if Kat had written them there and he almost summoned her back to ask her about them. But then he dismissed the notion as ridiculous. Kat was a maidservant. She probably couldn't even read and write Gallifreyan particularly well, let alone English. Besides, all his classmates knew of his quirky obsession with the planet Earth. He got mocked about it all the time. Obviously one of the other young Time Lords had been here and had written it as some sort of stupid joke and he just hadn't noticed.
"Lord Theta, are you coming?" he heard Kat calling.
"Yes," he said, dismissing the odd writing with a shrug and heading for the gate. "I'm coming."
Behind him, he didn't notice the sand smear back and forth, obliterating the writing, as if someone had swiped angrily at it in a storm of utter frustration.
Consequently, there was nothing left to be seen when the detachment of Chancellery Guard arrived a short time later.
"What news?" Lord President Drall demanded, staring unseeingly out the window of his office towards the peaks of Mount Cadon.
Behind him, Chancellor Umbast shifted his feet nervously under his formal robe. "Nothing good, Your Supremacy. The cracks in Time are slowly spreading, reaching further and further back towards us. All along the space/time continuum, suns are simultaneously going supernova at every point, wiping entire galaxies from the history of the Universe, as if they had never been!"
"And Gallifrey?" Drall inquired in a sharp voice. "How long do we have?"
"We don't know for sure, my Lord. The transduction barrier will protect us for quite some time, but eventually..."
"Yes, yes, I quite understand the peril we're in, Chancellor," Drall snapped. What he didn't know was quite what to do about it. He could feel droplets of sweat beading down his back. Of course, this couldn't have happened in his predecessor's term of office, could it? Oh no, Lord President Saran had managed to have a long, uneventful incumbency and had now happily retired, leaving the responsibility for this resolving this disaster all down to Drall. "We'll keep this under wraps for now. There's no point starting a mass panic, so it will be business as usual, until we formulate some sort of solution. Have we at least managed to pick up the trail of the intruder?"
"After a fashion," Umbast answered reluctantly. "We managed to detect some anomalous psychic energy in the gardens of the Prydonian Academy, but when the Guard arrived, there was no-one to be found."
"And now?"
"Nothing. There was no way to trace even which direction the intruder went in. We've never known a Time Lord with this degree of perfect shielding before."
"Apparently, there's quite a few things we don't know!" Drall said acerbically, turning to glare at his unfortunate subordinate. "Which doesn't exactly fill me with optimism for the future, Chancellor Umbast."
Umbast scowled, his face tight with suppressed anger and humiliation at his failure. "He can't keep it up indefinitely. Sooner or later, he'll have to slip up again, and then we'll have him."
"Then let us sincerely hope that it's sooner rather than later," Drall replied, turning back to the magnificent view. "Because we're running out of time. Whoever this renegade Time Lord is, every one of my instincts tells me that he or she is the key to this disaster, and I want them found."
Unaware that she was already being hunted, Tejana guided Theta to the corridor where she had first materialised, happy that he didn't appear to be in any way suspicious of her story. As soon as she pointed out the place where the crack had been, he pulled out a chunky device and began waving it through the air. Almost immediately, it started to beep, with a high-pitched, extremely annoying sound. Tejana stared, trying to work out what on Gallifrey he was doing.
Seeing the look of confusion on her face, he grinned. "My newest invention!" he bragged proudly. "I call it the sonic screwdriver. Well, it was either that or 'point-and-click-thingy-with-a-cool-light-in-the-end', and I thought sonic screwdriver had a bit more of a ring to it. No-one's ever had anything like it before."
Tejana could hardly restrain the delighted answering grin that crept across her own face. History, she thought to herself. History in the making. The device in his hand bore little resemblance to the elegant, streamlined, multi-purpose tool it was destined to become. It was too big, clumsy and misshapen. But her eyes devoured it eagerly, taking in every detail, unable to resist the fascination of this insight into her father's past.
"So that's the reason you stood Lady Ushas up at last year's Otherstide Ball?" she said impishly.
Theta blushed, even the tips of his ears turning bright red. "Oh, so you heard about that, did you?" he muttered. "Actually, that was just the prototype back then. This is the new and improved version. It does a lot more things."
"What sort of things?"
"Oh, you know...scanning things, fixing things, opening doors, that sort of stuff," he responded vaguely. "And it's especially great if you feel really bored and get the urge to whack up a set of shelves."
"Sounds...amazing."
He turned in a circle, in the centre of the corridor, listening intently to the beeping noise. "Can't get it to do deadlocks though, no matter how hard I try. Or anything wood, for that matter," he added gloomily. "Koschei reckons it'll never catch on. He says I should try making a laser screwdriver instead. More useful, he says, a weapon and a tool combined."
"But you don't agree?" she asked, thinking uncomfortably of the beautifully-crafted laser screwdriver resting in the safety of her jacket pocket back in her room.
"I don't have much time for weapons," he replied curtly. "Anyway, it looks like you were right about that crack being here. The screwdriver is picking up a large amount of rogue temporal energy, so it must have been a fair size. What ended up closing it, did you see?"
"No," she lied. "I ran away."
He shot her a quick, curious look at the flat tone in her voice, but he didn't make any comment. Instead, he continued, "Going by the theory they teach in the Academy, the only thing that can close a crack of that size is to absorb a complicated space-time event. And there's not too many of those around."
"Perhaps it managed to absorb a Time Lord?" Tejana suggested, ensuring her voice was tinged with an appropriate amount of voyeuristic horror. "Right here, in this very corridor?"
Theta snorted. "What makes you think a Time Lord would qualify as a complicated space-time event?"
"They wouldn't?" she queried, in genuine bewilderment this time. She had always been taught that every Time Lord was a complicated space-time event. As a people, that was just who and what they were.
"A complicated space-time event is made up of an infinite number of strands of differential energy," Theta explained in an almost school-teacherish fashion, this time poignantly reminding her more of Ten than of Eleven. She almost expected him to whip out Ten's black-framed spectacles and put them on. "Every decision you make affects the Universe in some way, big or small. Every time you go one way instead of another, differential energy is released, as the choice you make denies millions or maybe even billions of other possibilities. And the more substantial the differential energy released, the more complicated the space-time event becomes. But Time Lord society has stood still for so long that it's practically ossified. Thanks to the policy of non-intervention, none of the decisions the Time Lords make have any impact on the Universe as a whole. Once, perhaps, any one of our race would have been the absolute definition of a complicated space-time event. But not any more. We're nothing but useless figureheads."
Images of the Time War flashed across Tejana's inner eye. Fire. Blood. Destruction. Carnage. Ruin. Death. Every single decision any Time Lord made, no matter how small, impacting on millions of lives across the galaxies. She drew in a short, sharp breath. Be careful what you wish for, my father...
"Are you OK?" Theta asked anxiously. "You've gone all pale again."
"I'm fine," she responded. "But you...you sound so frustrated, Lord Theta. As though you hate it here."
Moodily, Theta stretched out his hand and ran it down the stone wall. "Sometimes I do. My life is already mapped out for me. I can see it like a road, stretching straight out in front of me. No bends, no curves, no surprises, no mysteries." He tossed the bulky screwdriver up in the air and caught it again, before slipping it back in his pocket. "I'm promised to be married, did you know that? As soon as I graduate. Melanakaturadilena of the House of Fire Stone. She's a nice girl...or so they tell me. I wouldn't know. I've only met her once or twice. But I'm to take her to this year's Otherstide Ball in a couple of days, to make our intentions public."
The bitterness in his voice struck at Tejana like a lash. She knew, of course, that he had never really loved her mother, that she had been born of a union of convenience rather than one of emotion. Sometimes she thought that was one of the reasons she was so determined to cling to her stormy, passionate relationship with the Master, because every second she was with him, he made her feel something, whether it was good or bad. From the beginning, there had never been anything lukewarm between them. But knowing the prosaic truth about her parents' marriage didn't help to ease the hurt of seeing the rebellion and disgust in the eyes of her young father-to-be.
"You..." Her voice seemed to catch on a painful lump in her throat and she had to try again. "You really don't want to marry her, do you?"
Theta sighed and shuffled his feet. "I don't want to marry anyone. There's so many other things I want to do. I wanted to travel the Universe with Koschei. I wanted the two of us to see everything there was to see, to go places our people have only ever dreamed about. But I'm never going to get the chance."
"But...what about children?" she asked. She didn't really want to hear his answer, but somehow, she just couldn't let the subject go. It was like poking at an open wound to see if it would hurt. "Don't you want children one day?"
He gave her a tolerant, lop-sided smile. "Of course. Eventually. All Time Lords want a son to follow them and carry on the family name, that's just the natural order of things."
"A son?" Oh gods, not only did he not want me, I was never even the right gender! "What about a daughter?"
"I don't know...I've never really thought about it before," he responded, his eyes far away and distant, as though he was imagining it as he spoke. "Actually, yes. I think I'd love a daughter. It would be wonderful. But it would be a lot harder, I guess."
She frowned, not understanding. "Harder how?"
"Well, there'd be more to it," he shrugged. "A son would be more straightforward. I'd know exactly how to treat him, what to teach him. But a daughter, that's different. Complicated. There'd be so much I'd want her to have."
Complicated, Tejana thought. Yes, that was how their relationship had always been...complicated. She looked away from him, hiding the pain in her eyes, hearing Eleven's voice back at the Underhenge - "This isn't what I wanted for you, Tejana..."
Her lips quirked in sadness. "My father was always very good at telling me what he didn't want for me. But he never really managed to say what it was he did want."
Theta smiled comfortingly and took her hand. "Probably the same things all fathers want for their daughters. The same things I would want for mine."
"What things?" she asked shakily.
"Love. Laughter. All the happiness in the Universe. Magic and wonder and joy. And most of all, above everything else, for her to be safe."
Tejana looked down at his hand holding hers and hot tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, all the emotions she felt for him burning in her chest - all the hero-worship she had felt as a child, all the adoration she had felt in her girlhood, all the deep love and respect she felt toward him now she was an adult, despite being able to see all his faults and foibles.
Most of all, above everything else, for her to be safe... Her hearts cried out at the words. Oh gods, Doctor, I'm so sorry...please let there still be a chance to straighten it all out between us...
"Hey, you're crying," Theta said in immediate concern. "What did I say?"
A small smile shone through her tears. "Exactly what I needed to hear," she told him, her voice choked with feeling. "I love my father so much, but a lot of things have come between us lately, and I regret that more than I can ever say. But right now, I feel closer to understanding him than I have in a very long time."
He grinned back at her. "You're welcome."
Leaning forward, she kissed him swiftly on the cheek, afraid that if she stayed any longer she would reveal too much. "Thanks for listening to me about the crack. But I do have to get back to work now, or Fionnula will be on the warpath again."
"I'll run these scan results through some of the Academy data banks as soon as no-one's looking, see what I can turn up," Theta assured her as she walked away from him up the passageway. "One way or another I'll get to the bottom of this, I promise."
She looked back over her shoulder at him. "You always do."
And then, before he could answer, she hurried away.
It was semi-dark when Captain John Hart finally dragged himself back into consciousness. Blearily, he tried to force his eyes open, trying to remember where the hell he was. His head was pounding like a bass drum and his injured shoulder was aching mercilessly. As he moved, a beer bottle that had been sitting on his chest overbalanced and fell to the floor with a sharp clink, which suggested that there was already a pile of similar bottles somewhere down there. Across the room, a large television screen fizzed with black and white static.
He gave a heartfelt groan. Oh yeah, he had it now. He wasn't on Mnemosyne any more, he was on board Blondie's TARDIS. He'd been celebrating his close escape from death and had lost count of how many beers he had drunk. It had to have been more than a few, because these days it took a hell of a lot of alcohol to wipe him out, even after his so-called rehab. And from the lousy way he felt, together with the amount of time he appeared to have lost, he supposed he must have been unconscious for quite a while. His eyeballs felt like somebody had been polishing them with sandpaper and his mouth tasted like he'd been licking the bottom of an ashtray.
"That does it," he growled aloud, levering himself to a sitting position and dropping his head into his hands. "I am never drinking again."
And if you believe that, you'd believe any-goddamn-thing, he added silently, knowing himself only too well.
As the room slowly re-oriented itself around him, he realised that something strange was niggling at him. In his befuddled state, it took him a moment to put his finger on the problem. Then it came to him. His wrist felt light and empty. The heavy leather strap of his vortex manipulator was missing – a strap that was always there, no matter what. At first, he felt a jolt of extreme alarm, until he vaguely remembered taking it off and handing it to Tejana. She'd been looking all sultry and sexy and beddable in that hot new dress and she'd asked to borrow it. What was it for, now? Something about Blondie and going to see her father about arranging a wedding. It was all a bit hazy and unreal. She'd told him she wouldn't be very long. He couldn't be positive, what with the whole passing out thing, but surely that was hours ago?
He got carefully to his feet, still supporting his aching head in his hands, and stumbled towards the door, swearing viciously as he almost tripped over the rubbish strewn all over the floor. With some difficulty, he managed to make it to the top of the stairs leading down to the console platform. The control room was completely empty.
"PRINCESS!" he yelled loudly, grimacing as the noise seemed to echo around the silent room, piercing his foggy brain like the blade of his samurai sword. "BLONDIE? Hello? Is anyone there?"
There was no answer. He tilted his head, listening carefully. The TARDIS was huge inside, he knew that. Maybe it was even infinite. Corridor after corridor led off far into the distance, leading God only knew where. Tejana had warned him a number of times about wandering off and getting lost in the bewildering maze. His two companions could be anywhere in there and he would never be able to find them unless they wanted him to. Nevertheless, right at this moment, every sense he had was warning him that he was alone inside the time machine.
Slowly, he walked down the stairs. The time rotor was still and unmoving. He knew next to nothing about the TARDIS systems, but he was aware that meant they weren't currently flying through the Time Vortex. The other thing he knew how to do was to activate the big exterior scanner screen on the wall, so that was what he did next, expecting to see the bright lights and cheerful colours of the intergalactic shopping mall. Instead, he saw a dark, gloomy cave, lit only by the flickering orange glow of several flaming torches, placed at intervals around the stony walls. In the middle of the room, he could just make out the outline of a huge, grey box. Everything seemed to be covered with dust and cobwebs.
Hart raised his eyebrows in surprise. Obviously he had missed a bit of action while he was out cold. "Oooo-kay..." he muttered. "So...it looks like Blondie tracked you down and decided to follow you after all, Princess. No big surprise there, I guess. Not that this would be my first choice for a wedding venue, but what the hell would I know?"
For a few minutes, he studied the scene on the scanner. Nothing moved and he could see no trace of either the Master or Tejana. It didn't look as if anyone had set foot there for centuries, let alone recently. But after losing their TARDIS once before on Mnemosyne, he couldn't see either of them straying too far away from the time machine. Which meant that either one or both of them had to be nearby.
Reaching out, he lightly touched the door control and opened the interface between the TARDIS and the outside world.
Author's Note: All right, I'm hoping all readers are big enough Who-fans to remember that the acronym YANA means "You. Are. Not. Alone.", yes?
And Captain John Hart is back on deck - will the Pandorica ever be the same?
Next chapter - Anzor makes his move...