Author's Note:
Thanks so much to the people who took time to review the previous chapter - it seems to be a very busy time of year and that just makes me even more appreciative of the readers who still remember that writers need encouragement like a plant needs water :)
So big kudos to the following folks: EmmaMarie, Celestial Valkyrie, SophieQueenOfTheWorld, SawManiac211, EDZEL2 (x 2), MountainLord-92, Theta'sWorstNightmare, MayFairy, sailormajinmoon, Imorgen, Ahsilaa, DoctorWhoFan93, DoctorDiva23, KlinicallyInsaneKoschei (so good to have you back), Beautifulspace (x 2), Marzipan and The Writing Kat.
To DoctorWhoFan93: You are more than welcome for the reply, I love to get your reviews! The Master knows that if Tejana's goes back through the crack, the Chaos-Master will kill her and his child, and he's determined not to let that happen. Now the crack is closed, Tejana will need to find another way back to the Doctor :) Plenty of Hart and River Song in this one, hope you enjoy!
To beautifulspace: Hi there, glad you are back. Hope you are feeling better now. The inspiration for Gallifrey in my story came from many places, but mostly from "The Deadly Assassin" (which you can read my version of, including Tejana, if you go to my profile page) and from the novel "Divided Loyalties". The rest came from inside my head, which is such a tangled place, it's beyond explaining, LOL. Thanks for the reviews!
To marzipan: Thanks very much for your comment on this story and also on "Because The Sadness Lasts Forever", much appreciated. For the Master, there is a very thin line between love and obsession, so he has no intention of ever losing Tejana now he has her.
Thanks also to all the people who have been reading and reviewing my new story, "Extraordinary", it's been wonderful to get your feedback on something that's so new to me!
Now, on to the chapter. I'm not sure why this story seems to go on twists and turns I don't always plan - it seems to write itself sometimes. But here it is, nonetheless.
Hope you all have a lovely Easter and enjoy the new Doctor Who episodes \O/
- CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT -
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."
- T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets
Pushing open the trapdoor at the top of the stairwell, the Doctor climbed through on to the roof. Outside, the sky was a dull, pale grey and the air smelt strange and heavy, as if it had been packed into a place altogether too small for it. This was the part of the museum the public never saw - the concrete rooftop, ugly and stark, covered with soot and bird-droppings, with steam rising fitfully from the heating vents. It was surrounded by other equally unattractive building tops, crowded together in an urban jungle of draped power lines and twisted pipes. Overhead, the sun blazed low in the sky, veiled in a concealing haze of cloud, bathing everything in an unhealthy orange glow.
The Doctor's eyes narrowed as he stared up at the corona of burning light. Then he strode purposefully across the roof, dodging the steaming vents, searching for something he could use to give him the answers he needed. Behind him, he could hear his three companions scrabbling through the trapdoor in his wake.
"What, it's morning already? It was midnight just a few minutes ago!" Amy exclaimed in surprise. "How did that happen?"
The Doctor didn't bother to turn around. Amy. He thought of the few concise words his future self had managed to whisper in his ear down in the museum foyer and his hearts clenched. Her voice reminded him that he had to hurry, because he didn't have long.
"History is shrinking," he called back over his shoulder. "Isn't anybody listening to me? The Universe is collapsing. We don't have much time."
At last he saw what he was searching for – a small satellite dish attached to a pole. Adjusting the settings on his sonic screwdriver, he leaped up beside the round, flat object, and carefully aimed the device at it.
"What are you doing?" Hart asked impatiently.
"Looking for the TARDIS."
"But the TARDIS exploded!" Rory objected.
The Doctor wrenched the satellite dish from its mounting. There was a small flash and a bang as the electrical wires were roughly disconnected. "All right then, I'm looking for an exploding TARDIS."
"I don't understand!" Amy said, her tone rising in frustration. "So, the TARDIS blew up and took the Universe with it. Why would it do that? How?"
Carrying the satellite dish, the Doctor ran past them and jumped up on to the raised edge of the roof. "A good question for another day!" he responded, gazing up into the sky. Then he turned back around, the horizon stretching like a panorama behind him, to look challengingly at them. "But for now...total event collapse means that every star in the Universe never happened. Not one of them ever shone. So, if all the stars that ever were are gone, then what...is that?" He gestured up at the ball of fire hanging low in the grey sky. "Like I said, I'm looking for an exploding TARDIS."
All three of their heads tilted upwards, their eyes following his pointing finger.
"But...that's the sun!" Rory said, as if he was stating the obvious.
"Is it?" Lifting up the satellite dish, the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to amplify the receiver. "Here's the noise that sun is making right now."
A wheezing, groaning sound echoed across the flat rooftop. His three companions looked at each other in astonishment. It was unmistakeably the sound of the TARDIS engines.
"That's my ship burning up. That's what's been keeping the Earth warm."
Rory's head was on one side, his face a picture of concentration. "Doctor, there's something else. A voice."
Everyone else listened hard, but the only audible noise was the familiar grinding sound of the TARDIS.
"I can't hear anything," Hart said with a dismissive shrug.
Rory glared at him scornfully. "Trust the plastic!" he retorted, indicating his ears.
Frowning, the Doctor adjusted the settings on the sonic screwdriver, intensifying the amplification. All at once, a woman's voice floated in the air. "I'm sorry, my love. I'm sorry, my love. I'm sorry, my love."
The words repeated over and over again in a sad litany, like a broken record. The Doctor felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. It's my fault, he thought with a shattering chill. I told her to go and get the TARDIS... all my fault...
"Doctor, that's River!" Amy cried, as if he had needed to be told.
Hart's head jerked up, the smirk falling from his face as his eyes shot back towards the burning orb in the sky. "River!" he echoed.
Amy ignored him and focused urgently on the Doctor. "How can she be up there?"
"It must be a recording," Rory suggested uncertainly.
The Doctor shook his head, his mind racing as he put all the pieces together. "No, it's not a recording." An adrenaline shot of hope burst through his veins. "Of course, the emergency protocols! The TARDIS has sealed off the control room and put her into a time loop to save her. She's right at the heart of the explosion!"
I'm sorry, my love... I'm sorry, my love... I'm sorry, my love...
Throwing aside the satellite dish, he began to frantically reprogramme the vortex manipulator. If he could just synchronise it with his symbiotic link with the TARDIS, just long enough to generate some coordinates...
It kept happening, over and over again.
River connected the cables to the doors and charged them from the energy cells in the TARDIS console, glittering sparks of electricity flying around her head. Then she ran to the doors and flung them back, only to find a wall of stone facing her, sealing off any escape.
"I'm sorry, my love," she whispered, glancing back over her shoulder as the console exploded into a blazing white fury.
Only for it all to start again - connecting the cables to the doors, charging them from the energy cells in the TARDIS console, running to the door and flinging them wide, only to find a wall of stone facing her.
"I'm sorry, my love!"...the console exploding...and then she was back connecting the cables to the door again...
Over and over again, the same thing, an infinity of times.
Until, at last, something changed. Until she ran to open the doors and found the Doctor leaning nonchalantly against them, a grin on his face. "Hi honey!" he said. "I'm home!"
River looked pointedly at her watch. "And what sort of time do you call this?" she responded with an answering smile.
They materialised back on the rooftop together, arm in arm, like a couple who had just been on a romantic stroll. Despite the overwhelming seriousness of the situation, the Doctor was still smiling. Oddly enough, having River back with them seemed to make everything better, even though the circumstances hadn't actually changed.
To be honest, he still wasn't at all sure how he felt about her. To quote his good friend, Winston Churchill, she was 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'. So far, everything she had done seemed to support her claim that she would be an integral part of his future. But until he found out a bit more about her - particularly the truth of why she had been incarcerated in the Storm Cage Prison - he refused to be entirely convinced she could be trusted. The one thing he did know, however, was that he thought about her far more often than he should, even when she wasn't around. Not to mention that she had featured quite prominently in a couple of steamy dreams he preferred not to remember, in case he blushed in front of everyone. After all, he might be a Time Lord and over nine hundred years old, but he was still a man. And River was most definitely a woman. Even now, in the midst of all this trouble, he was acutely aware of her lush, curvaceous figure as she stood beside him. Oh yes, he thought distractedly, most definitely a woman.
"Amy!" River exclaimed, pulling her arm from his and moving forward to greet the red-headed girl. Then she spotted Rory and her eyebrows rose. "And...the plastic centurion?"
"It's OK, he's on our side," the Doctor hastened to inform her.
With a sceptical expression, River stepped nearer to Rory, studying his face closely. "Really? I dated a Nestene duplicate once...swappable head. It did keep things fresh. Doctor, I..."
She broke off abruptly as her eyes fell on John Hart, standing just beyond the other two. To the Doctor's surprise, all the colour drained from her face in utter consternation. He couldn't recall ever seeing her quite so taken aback before.
"Tobias Wolfe!" she breathed. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Actually, I go by John Hart these days," he replied calmly. "Hello, Babe. Good to see you too."
Tobias Wolfe? Babe? The Doctor looked back and forth between them as they stared at each other, little prickles of irritation running over his skin. There was a sudden mesmerising tension in the air, hot and electric, poised and waiting, like a lightning storm brewing and about to break. Babe? By now, he was familiar with Hart's peculiar tendency to assign a nickname to nearly everyone he came in contact with. 'Princess' for Tejana, 'Blondie' for the Master (yeah, that had to have gone down well), 'Julius Caesar' for Rory, 'Evil Twin' for the Chaos-Master, 'Doc' for himself. In the short time he had known the ex-Time Agent, the list was already quite extensive. He hadn't decided yet whether the habit was down to Hart's arrogance, to save him the effort of remembering other people's names, or whether it was a deliberate psychological tactic to get under their skins. Either way, it was very annoying. But for the man to be on close enough terms with River to call her 'Babe'...what exactly did that mean?
"Call it a wild stab in the dark, but I'm guessing you two know each other, right?" he queried sarcastically, knowing it was none of his business but needing to ask the question anyway.
Neither of them replied. In fact, he wasn't sure either of them even heard him. Instead, to his shock, River took three steps towards Hart and pulled his head roughly down to her for a hungry, passionate kiss, her fingers wound tightly into his light-brown hair. Hart responded enthusiastically, his arms locking into place around her waist, holding her hard against him.
The kiss was full-on, with no holds barred, the Doctor noted with extreme vexation, with plenty of tongue action. Irritation slid suddenly into anger, a dark, resentful feeling stirring deep inside him. A feeling that, if he had been prepared to look closely at it – which he absolutely wasn't - he would have had to admit was jealousy.
"Right, OK, fine...I'll take that as a yes," he said curtly. "Why does everyone keep doing that today?"
Everyone except me. As quickly as it had come, he pushed the traitorous thought away, ignoring the disturbing image of what it might be like to kiss River, and glanced back towards Rory and Amy, who merely shrugged, not knowing what was going on any more than he did.
At last, River broke the embrace and stepped back, still gazing up into Hart's face. He looked down at her with a smirk of purely male satisfaction. River smiled sweetly back at him.
And then she punched him hard in the jaw.
Hart never even saw it coming. He just went down like a ton of bricks, a befuddled look on his face. Amy gave a peal of laughter and Rory grinned broadly.
The Doctor, feeling oddly exultant, crouched down beside the fallen ex-Time Agent. "I suppose you're going to tell me you didn't deserve that one, either?" he asked mildly.
In the back of his mind, something stirred, some kind of distant recognition. River had hit Hart in the exact same way Rory had. The same unusually-powerful right hook. That was odd. It was rare that two miscellaneous people would have the identical physical reaction in a fight. Unless they had trained under the same teacher, which of course they hadn't, because Rory wasn't trained at all. Or if they were related, which of course, they weren't. A coincidence, then. Just a really weird coincidence.
"Oh, he deserves it, all right!" River said, flexing her hand to make sure nothing was broken. "And he knows it."
Hart glared at them both, wiping a trickle of scarlet blood from the side of his mouth. "Well, if you're going to get upset about every little thing..."
"Every little thing!" she repeated incredulously. "You abandoned me on a disabled freighter in the middle of nowhere and took off with the experimental warp drive we were there to acquire."
"Acquire?" A malicious grin crossed Hart's face. "Oh, come on now, Babe, it's not like you to be shy. Why don't you call a spade a spade? You mean 'steal'. And as for leaving you behind, that was just business, nothing personal."
River's gun was in her hand so quickly that the Doctor hardly even saw her draw it. "Then I'm sure you'll understand that this isn't personal either!"
Hart's eyes widened in sudden alarm. "Whoa, steady on. You can't just kill me."
"Why not?" she asked icily. "You're hardly going to be a loss to the Universe, are you, Tobias?"
At that point, the Doctor thought it was probably time to intervene. He didn't really think River would kill Hart in cold blood, but he had to admit, he wasn't a hundred percent sure. From the expression on Hart's face, he wasn't sure either. Gingerly, the Doctor stepped in between them, his hands raised.
"Put the gun away, River!" he said. "He's not worth it and we've got more important things to worry about."
For a few seconds she hesitated. But then she gave him a sunny smile and slotted the weapon calmly back into its holster. "Whatever you say, my love." Her eyes played over his face. The hard, intent look she had given Hart was suddenly gone and instead her gaze was warm and teasing. "You weren't jealous, were you?"
To his dismay, the Doctor felt a revealing flush creeping up from under his shirt collar. "No," he lied, self-consciously straightening his bow-tie. "Of course not. Jealous? Why should I be jealous? I'm never jealous."
"Of course you're not, Sweetie," she agreed indulgently. "Now, questions. I have many questions. But number one is this – what in the name of sanity have you got on your head?"
The Doctor's hand moved upwards until he felt the fez. In all the excitement, he'd forgotten it was even there. But he had no intention of admitting that to River. She'd already rattled him enough for one day.
"It's a fez," he said. "I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool!"
River looked over his shoulder at Amy and raised her eyebrows. Before the Doctor could react, Amy snatched the hat from his head and threw it high into the air. In the blink of an eye, River's gun was magically in her hand again, and a laser bolt was flying with unerring accuracy towards the soaring fez, which exploded into tiny, scorched fragments drifting lazily on the breeze.
"Hey!" the Doctor protested crossly.
"Well, you wouldn't let me shoot Tobias. I had to shoot something!" River laughed.
Amy giggled and the two women gave each other a conspiratorial high five.
Whatever the Doctor would have said to that, he never knew, since at that moment, Hart's voice cut through the air like a knife. "LOOK!"
The ex-Time Agent had stopped nursing his injured jaw and was staring at the edge of the building behind them. Whirling around, the Doctor saw a pair of bandaged hands clinging to the parapet.
"Oh my God!" Amy breathed, as slowly the thing pulled itself into view. A humanoid shape, swathed from head to toe in filthy strips of linen cloth, its movements stiff and ungainly.
"What is it?" River demanded. "Doctor?"
"It's a mummy! An Egyptian mummy, from the North Africa display downstairs!" he bit out. "The light from the Pandorica is bringing them back to life!"
More hands were appearing now, more cadaverous figures pulling themselves up and over the edge of the roof.
"They're on the other side too!" Rory shouted. "They're climbing up the fire escapes! There's dozens of them."
It was like a scene out of a classic horror movie, the shuffling mummies bearing down on them, their arms outstretched, bandages dangling loosely. Just the sort of thing that would appeal to the Chaos-Master's twisted sense of humour, the Doctor guessed. He could almost hear the creature laughing from here. There was only one way out, and that was to retreat back down into the building.
"Run! RUN!" he shouted, pushing his companions in front of him, herding them back to the stairwell they had originally come up. "Move! Move! Come on, go!"
But River twisted aside, her blaster pistol already firing. Several mummies fell backwards over the edge of the building and disappeared, only to be replaced by more scrabbling up the fire escape.
"Like I said, Doctor, I have to shoot something!" she said brightly. "Now get going! Do whatever it is you have to do! I'll cover your escape."
"We'll cover your escape!" Hart said suddenly. He was on his feet, a long length of steel pipe in his good hand. Then, at River's glare, he swished the pipe through the air with a whistling sound, and added with a mocking grin, " You don't seriously think I'm going to let you have all the fun, Babe?"
"You're injured already!" she snapped, flicking her eyes towards his sling.
"Never stopped me before!" he laughed over his shoulder, before wading out into the fray, swinging the pipe one-handed in a lethal circle around him.
River fired a few more well-placed shots, picking off the front-running mummies. "Doctor, you have to go, NOW!"
Knowing he had no choice, his hearts heavy, the Doctor went, pulling a reluctant Amy and Rory with him, back down the stairs.
Back to where the Chaos-Master was waiting for him.
Back for the final confrontation.
She had nothing.
The desolate thought echoed through Tejana's hearts as she watched the three deadly shapes gliding smoothly towards her, their weapons aimed and ready to fire. Daleks. Her greatest enemy - her greatest fear, her greatest hatred – the loathsome creatures who had changed her forever from the person she had once been.
Somehow, these three had accomplished the one thing the entire Dalek fleet had never managed during the length of the Time War, the one thing that countless numbers of her people had courageously died to prevent. They had used the crack to penetrate into the very heart of the Time Lord Citadel.
The horror of it nearly numbed her brain. These were Time War Daleks. Their weapons were specifically designed to kill Time Lords instantly, with no chance of regeneration. If they were permitted to escape this room, the consequences were beyond imagination. At this point in history, the Time Lords were peaceful to the point of indolence, confident in the power of the transduction barrier to protect them from all threat. They had no concept of battle or warfare. They had never before encountered the Dalek race, couldn't possibly comprehend the danger that had materialised in their midst. They wouldn't stand a chance. The Daleks would slaughter every last Gallifreyan on the planet before they could be stopped.
Just like they did on Trion, oh gods, Trion, men, women and children, lined up to die, screaming, screaming, always the sound inside her head of the children screaming...
Once again, she had nothing, just as she had nothing back then. No resources to fight them. No battle-TARDIS, no warp-silo, no sonic cannon, no time-torpedos, all the weapons she had used to such good effect during the War. No battle squadron, no elite strike force. Just her, armed with nothing but a single laser screwdriver, which might take out one of them, but never three, not before their laser weapons turned her into ash.
And the only back-up she had were two bewildered boys and one severely pissed-off ghost.
The Daleks slid to a stop in front of her. Raising her chin, she straightened her back and stood proudly. She had no doubt that they would exterminate her. But she refused to cower before them like a frightened child. She would happily die before she did that.
"Our sen-sors in-di-cate we have un-der-gone a spa-tial and tem-por-al shift," the lead Dalek barked. "You will tell us where we are."
Tejana's eyes widened as the implications of the demand sank in, a small ray of hope penetrating her despair. They didn't know where they were. They had no idea they were on Gallifrey. She had assumed that the cracks were the result of some new Dalek weapon, part of a plan to destroy the Time Lords before the War even began. But what if they weren't? What if these three were not an advance party for an invasion at all, but had arrived here accidentally, just as she had? Maybe, just maybe, Gallifrey still had the tiniest chance, if she could only think of something. Damn it, Tejana, think! THINK!
"And why would I want to do that?" she asked coolly, trying to buy herself some time.
"We are the Da-leks. We are su-preme. You will o-bey, or you will be ex-term-in-at-ed!"
Kat, what's going on? Theta's voice asked in her head, making use of the psychic link for the first time since he had discovered she was a Time Lady. What the hell ARE these things?
They're Daleks, she responded harshly. The most efficient and lethal killing-machines in the Universe. Stay quiet. You need to let me handle this, or history itself may be destroyed. Do NOT speak. Do NOT move. Do NOT draw attention to yourselves, either of you. Do you understand me?
Yes, I understand, he said, curiosity and reluctance in every nuance of his mental voice.
Koschei had stopped fighting Theta as soon as the crack snapped shut. Tejana wasn't sure whether the Master was still possessing his body or not, and she didn't dare take her eyes off the Daleks to find out. Either way, she could only hope that Theta could manage to keep him quiet, as she had instructed. Both the Doctor and the Master were well-known to the Daleks. If they scanned Theta and Koschei and realised who they were, everything would be lost.
"If you're so supreme, you should be able to figure out yourselves where you are," she said aloud, deliberately provocative, determined to keep the attention of the intruders focused on her. "Why do you need me to tell you?"
The lead Dalek glided close to her, its sucker-arm extending and sweeping back and forth. Tejana tensed, knowing she was being subjected to a life-form scan.
"You are a Time Lord," the cyborg intoned. "You are an en-em-y of the Da-leks."
Her mouth twisted in contempt. "All Time Lords are enemies of the Daleks!"
But the sucker-arm continued to twitch. "No. You are...more. You are...known. Re-cords con-tain con-firm-ation of your bio-data."
Alarm seized her. She had no idea that the Daleks were in possession of her bio-scan. But there had been so much espionage during the Time War. As one of the Elite Strike Commanders, she supposed it wasn't surprising that the enemy had effectively issued a digital 'wanted poster' on her. Any moment now, the Dalek would make the connection, figure out that she was the Doctor's daughter, and it would all be over.
But, strangely enough, the identification, when it came, did not centre around the Doctor at all. A hologram, evidently generated by a small projector located on the Dalek's outer casing, sprang into life before her. It was a tall, slender girl, with short, ragged nut-brown hair, wearing a well-fitting grey combat suit. Her face was taut and grim, her hazel eyes filled with hate and determination. The stone cold eyes of a remorseless killer. Tejana caught her breath. This was how she had looked during the Time War. This was the part of her life she had tried so hard to forget.
"Your face has changed, but the bio-scan does not lie. You are the Exe-cution-er," the Dalek announced.
Tejana blinked in surprise. "I'm the what now? I think you'd better check your records again. You've made some sort of mistake. I've never even heard that name before."
"There is no mis-take. You are known. The Da-leks give titles to on-ly the great-est of their en-em-ies. You are the off-spring of the Time Lord known as the Pred-a-tor. You have slain thous-ands of our kind dur-ing the War. You are named a-mong us as the Exe-cution-er of the Da-leks," the creature repeated inflexibly. "Your hate and your kill-ing rage are held in high es-teem. It will be a great priv-i-lege to have the hon-our of ex-term-in-at-ing you."
The offspring of the Predator? Staring into the hypnotic blue light of the cyborg's eyestalk, Tejana struggled hard to process what she had just been told. The Predator had to be the Doctor, obviously. She had heard of them calling him the Oncoming Storm before, but never the Predator. And she had been given a title too? The Executioner of the Daleks, no less? Once, back during the War, the name would have filled her with fierce exultation. To know that the enemy both respected and feared her would have been cause for nothing but celebration. Now, however, with those days of darkness and insanity so far behind her, it sickened her to discover that the Daleks had admired and even lauded her for her hatred and bloodlust.
You have to destroy them, Ana, a new voice spoke urgently into her mind. The Master. Without needing to look over her shoulder, she realised he had abandoned young Koschei's body again and had reverted back to his incorporeal form. If you don't, they will kill you, then my younger self and the Doctor's, then they will destroy all of Gallifrey.
Yes, well, thanks for that analysis, Captain Obvious! she shot back furiously. But I'd actually figured that much out for myself. I don't suppose you've got any suggestions? Unless you think I can just bore them to death with my scintillating conversational skills?
The psychic link, he responded. You need to use it as a weapon.
A cold feeling of dread crept across the back of her neck. That's impossible. I've never used it to harm anyone. I can't...I just can't.
You must. You need to draw on the power of the Eye of Harmony, focus the energy of the other Gallifreyan minds around you, just as you did back in the ballroom. And then you need to use it to kill.
Ice seemed to be creeping over her hearts. Her psychic ability had always been her one main talent, the thing she was best at. When she was a tiny child, before he had run away from Gallifrey, the Doctor had always taught her that it was a gift that brought with it an enormous amount of responsibility. It needed to be used only in the right way, never for the purposes of evil. Above all, do no harm. She had stuck scrupulously to that rule all her life. The idea of using her gift to kill - even to kill Daleks - brought with it such a wave of revulsion that she felt weak at the knees.
I can't.
Listen to me, Ana, he urged. I will give you all the help I can, but I can't do it for you. Think how much it cost the Doctor to use the Moment to end the War. If you don't do this now, all of that will be for nothing. The Daleks will win before any of it even begins. You need to rip their consciousness from the Pathweb and force them to self-destruct.
The Pathweb. Of course. It was a telepathic link, the unnaturally shared intelligence of the Daleks, containing information on their history and experiences. When the Daleks spoke of their "records", they were always referring to the Pathweb. And being a telepathic link, it was vulnerable to psychic attack. Even here on Gallifrey, at the height of her strength, she could never hope to harm the Pathweb itself. It was much too vast for that. But she could conceivably penetrate it far enough to isolate these three Daleks. Sundered from their shared consciousness, they would not be able to function alone, and they would have no choice but to destroy themselves.
"Se-cond-ary ref-er-ence scans com-plete," one of the other Daleks spoke up suddenly. "All avail-able tri-angul-ation da-ta in-di-cates that we are on Gall-i-frey."
"Im-poss-ible," the lead Dalek replied. "The trans-duc-tion barr-ier can-not be breached."
"No err-or has been made. The spat-ial co-ord-in-ates are con-firmed."
The blue light at the end of the lead Dalek's eyestalk flickered for just a moment. Tejana had no real knowledge of the range and extent of emotions they could experience. They were different from the Cybermen, who felt nothing at all. Inside those armoured shells, the Daleks were living organisms, genetically mutated to feel nothing but hatred and contempt for any other race apart from their own. They were not supposed to react as individuals, but as representatives of the whole. However, these three had just been given an opportunity no other Dalek had ever been granted in the history of the Universe – the chance to rampage across Gallifrey herself, killing as they went. She could almost see the personal triumph and glee glaring in that cold blue light.
"Gall-i-frey will be claimed for the Da-lek Em-pire!" the leader exulted. "All Time Lords will be ex-term-in-ated! The Da-leks will reign su-preme and none shall stand a-gainst us!"
"EX-TERM-IN-ATE! EX-TERM-IN-ATE! EX-TERM-IN-ATE!" the other two echoed, their voices rising, the sound deafening in the small room.
Something twisted painfully inside Tejana and snapped. The screams from the dead of Trion rose in her ears again. There was no choice. There had never been any choice.
"Do you really think I'll just stand by and let you destroy everything I love?" she asked. "I allowed you to do it to me once before. But not again. Not ever again."
"You are not a threat," the Dalek responded with iron confidence. "You have no weap-on. You are un-armed."
Tejana closed her eyes and began to summon her strength. "Ah, but you've forgotten," she said coldly. "I am the Executioner."
All at once, inside her mind, she was standing in a field of fire. Orange and gold flames leapt around her, higher and higher, hot and scorching, pulsing with power. In her hands, point downwards to the ground, rested an enormous sword, double-edged and glittering silver. It was heavy, as heavy as sorrow, weighted down with regret and guilt. But she knew that somehow she had to lift it. Striving to feel the undiluted presence of the Eye of Harmony. Fighting to draw to her the psychic energy she needed to raise the gleaming blade. It was the same struggle she had undergone on the ballroom floor, but harder, so much harder, because this time she was calling the power not to save, but to kill. Not accidentally, or in the heat of battle, but deliberately, in cold blood. Even as the thought came to her, the sword seemed to get heavier still, as if defying any possibility that she could ever lift it, the shine of the blade going dull.
I can't think like this, she told herself frantically, knowing she was fast running out of time. She was the last frail protection Gallifrey had. Somewhere outside herself, she could sense the Daleks raising their weapons, ready to incinerate her. I need to become what I was back during the Time War. I need to BE the Executioner of the Daleks.
However, try as she might, she couldn't do it, couldn't force herself to lift the sword. She could hear them now, hear their harsh inhuman cries, penetrating from the outside through her psychic barriers, "EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE THE EXE-CUT-ION-ER! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
Defeat and despair crowded around her. She was going to fail, just as she had failed on Trion. And this time, it wasn't the fate of one small, insignificant planet hanging in the balance. This time, she alone would be responsible for the demise of the Universe.
But then she felt it, the presence behind her, the arms coming around her.
"You're not alone, Ana, not any more."
His voice, calming and reassuring her. His hands on hers, wrapping around the terrible sword, sharing the burden with her.
"Together," he said.
"Together," she echoed.
In perfect unison, his strength combining with hers, they braced themselves and lifted the sword high above their heads. Flames roared through the air, swirling around them in a corona of heat, blazing along the length of the blade, silver-sided death ripping the night in two.
"The Pathweb, Ana," he rasped in her ear. "Quickly, you have to find it and visualise it."
She reached out, searching for it, feeling for it through the darkness, and just like that, it was there, sparkling in front of them like an enormous, glittering spider's web; an intricate, endless network of crystalline threads.
"DO IT, ANA!" the Master yelled. "DO IT NOW!"
Summoning every last scrap of willpower, she raised the incandescent sword even higher, conflagrant with the accumulated psychic power of her people, and then brought it down, tearing the Pathweb into ragged shreds.
"I AM THE EXECUTIONER!" she screamed, before everything spun away from her into darkness.