Nothing in the Doctor Whoniverse belongs to me. Apparently, my coffee mug was left too long and has grown some sort of sentient, alien fungus. UNIT refuses to return it to me. A recovery mission is planned, but I'm not at liberty to discuss the details. No word yet on the whereabouts of my missing pencils.


He always made it look so easy. Adapting alien tech to alien tech, forcing one device to adapt to a power source completely antithetical to its original design; a trained engineer would call it impossible, throw up his hands and move to Tahiti, but the Doctor made it look easy. That was part of the myth he had created for himself, and sometimes he even believed it. You disappeared under a consul for a few seconds, spouted a stream of technical terms, wink, smile and voila! Save the world. It looked easy, but it wasn't.

"Those two wires, hold them together… carefully!" he ordered.

Andrew did as he was told. He held the wires between a set of mini-pliers pulled from his pocket while the Doctor aimed the sonic screwdriver and fused them together. He wished he had thought to grab the molecular spanner, or at least one of the fusion pliers that he kept in the Tardis workroom, but he hadn't thought of it at the time. He hadn't known what he would see once he opened up Dr. Kuri's kit-bashed generator. Spit and chewing gum, Andrew had said, but it was worse than that, and once the Doctor was through with it, the whole thing would be held together with little more than a stern look and crossed fingers.

"Right." The Doctor pushed aside a loose circuit board. "I need a two-pronged inlet, direct to the power line." He looked, but the machine wasn't built for what he wanted to make it do. "The field-interface stabilizer needs to draw its power straight from the grid or else it'll burn out everything in between."

Andrew pointed past a mess of wires. "Something like that?" he said.

The Doctor scoffed. "That's a grounding cord, not an inlet."

"No, the yellow banding means it's a secondary power conduit," Andrew said, ignoring the Doctor's dismissive tone. He aimed a small flashlight into the darkness of the lower corner. "See, it connects there and there to the main generator, but it's a back-up system. As long as the primary power source holds, that should give you enough energy for your stabilizer without draining the generator itself… at least for a few minutes. The generator is pulling more juice that it should. It'll short out eventually."

"The field generator wasn't designed to work around a human body," the Doctor said, meaning Carmen. "Her electrical field is interfering with the buffers. It'll keep pulling more and more power, exponentially, as long as she's inside." He frowned at the yellow wire. "How exactly do you suggest that we hook this up to a straight wire?"

The field-interface stabilizer was a small box about the size of a Rubik's Cube, and just as colorful. At the back, two metal prongs protruded and were designed to be plugged into an outlet. There was no third grounding prong. The Doctor hadn't expected to need one.

Andrew pulled out his pocket knife and snapped open the blade. "This is double copper bundling," he said. "I can strip the wire, get you two lines that will splice directly to the pongs on your stabilizer there. It's risky, and you won't want to touch the metal directly, but it should work. Of course, with the secondary system bypassed, if generator does blow a fuse, there'll be nothing to stop this whole thing blowing up in our face. Literally."

The Doctor glanced down the steps toward Rose who was watching the energy field intently. Or, no, she was looking at Carmen, at the woman they were trying to save. The energy field had expanded by a full foot around. The mini-sun was still mainly yellow and orange, but there were sparks of green showing between the spinning arms of the lower generator. He looked up at Carmen's frightened face, her twisted body and her rust-red braid brushing her throat.

"Doctor?" Andrew was watching him, the knife in his hand ready to cut the yellow wire. "We could look for another—"

"Do it," he said. "But be careful. All those wires around it are live."

"Believe me, I know." Andrew stripped the wire, cut the copper and expertly twisted it around the prongs of the field-interface stabilizer. He glanced at the Doctor while he worked. "How long, exactly, are you expecting this to last, Doc?"

"Don't call me 'Doc'. Once the stabilizer is plugged in and switched on… we'll be lucky to get five minutes."

"Only five?"

The Doctor nodded. "But we'll have less time than that to get her out," he said. "I'm gonna have to reach inside to pull her out. Once the barrier is broken, there'll be a power surge to compensate…"

"And that'll blow the fuse," Andrew finished.

"The field-interface stabilizer will generate a protective field between this time continuum and the one inside the field. Without it, my arm would age, wither and die seconds after breaking the barrier, but Kuri's generator was never meant to handle so much power at once. The surge will blow every circuit in the system."

"There you go," Andrew said. "The stabilizer is in place." He rose up on his knees and looked over the computer banks. "What will happen to Carmen if the system blows while she's still in there?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't know. Whatever is protecting her inside, I doubt it has the power to take that kind of pressure. Best case scenario, the time winds will blast her to dust in an instant and she won't feel a thing."

"And the worst case?"

His face was grim. "The time continuum inside that field could be running at a thousand years for every second of our time. If she turns to dust in an instant of our time…"

Andrew stared at him. "Is that what happened to Mia?"

He shook his head. "No. She died the moment she crossed the barrier. She never reached the inner field. Her timeline wouldn't have stretched out that way."

"What did she feel?"

The Doctor winced. He didn't do this part. He arrived in a whirlwind, saved as many as he could and left just as quickly. He didn't have to face the families and friends of the ones he couldn't save. Rose was better at it.

"I don't know what she felt, Andrew," he said honestly. "Maybe… hot? Surprised as she fell, and then hot, but it would have been fast."

"Too fast for her to know what was happening to her?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes. Very fast."

Andrew sighed and bowed his head. The Doctor patted his shoulder once, awkwardly, and then stood up, giving the man a moment for his grief. He looked down the stairs at Rose.

"How's she doing?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Same as before, I guess. The field is green at the bottom, but I haven't seen anything blue."

"Good," he said. "That's good."

"I feel like she's looking at me…"

The Doctor frowned and looked up at Carmen's face. Her eyes glittered, reflecting the firelight of the energy field. Like a painting, she seemed to be looking at him, too.

Andrew stood up suddenly, startling them both. "We'll only get one chance at this," he said. "A few seconds before the whole system fails."

"Yes, probably," the Doctor agreed.

"I want to do it."

"What?"

"I'll pull her out," Andrew said. "It's my fault she's in there. It's my fault that Mia confronted Kuri. I knew she was worried. I knew there had been trouble, but I didn't try to stop her. I should have…"

The Doctor shook his head. "You couldn't have stopped this," he said. "Some things, they're meant to be. You can't change the past."

"I can save Carmen," he insisted. "You should be up here, keeping an eye on your stabilizer. I don't know the tech. If something goes wrong, I won't know what to do."

That was true, but the Doctor didn't want to admit it. There may be adjustments that only he could do on the device, and as long as the field-interface stabilizer did its job, there was no more danger to a human than to him reaching into the time-energy field. The Doctor would rather have taken all the risk on himself, but Andrew was determined, his jaw set as steel.

The Doctor nodded. "Alright," he said. "Her right hand is closest to the edge of the field, but you should go for her left elbow, there. There's a break in the railing. You can pull her through, but hang on. If you slip or fall into the field, you're dead."

Andrew nodded and hurried down the stairs, taking his place close to the railing. The Doctor stared into the energy field at the swirling time winds. He frowned at the Carmen's outstretched arm. Rose was wrong. The woman wasn't scraping to get out; she was reaching, reaching for something. But what? She was the only thing inside the energy bubble. Unless she was reaching for something outside…?

The field-interface stabilizer beeped softly. It was charged and ready.

"Doctor?" Rose said, watching his expression curiously.

He nodded to her, and she backed away toward the lab doors, toward the place where Carmen was reaching, the Doctor noticed. He nodded to Andrew and placed his finger on the black switch of the stabilizer. He was eye to eye with Carmen's frozen face, and it bothered him that he didn't know what she was reaching for. It egged at him, her outstretched hand, reaching for the unknown. If all went well, he could ask her himself in a few minutes.

He looked at Andrew. "Right. Ready? Three… Two…"

There was a sound in the hall, and one of the lab doors sprang open and bumped gently against the legs of the guard still sleeping off his stun-gun blast in the corner. Everyone froze. The only movement was the churning electrical fire inside the energy field. The Doctor stood with his finger on the black button; Andrew had his feet planted and his arms ready to reach into the fire to pull Carmen out. Rose stared at the doorway where Dr. Kuri stood with his hand still on the doorknob, and Dr. McNeil stood behind him, one foot angled forward as she stepped, one hand raised to push back a stray strand of gray hair.

For a moment, no one moved, and then Rose – who stood closest to the lab doors – took a step back in surprise. Her movement seemed to wake everyone else. Andrew stood up straight, reaching for Rose to pull her back, but Dr. McNeil had the gun in her pocket. She pulled it out and aimed at Andrew, her finger on the trigger.

"Don't move, any of you," she said. She looked down at the sleeping guard and then at Rose who still held the Doctor's boxy stun gun I her hand. "Put the weapon down," McNeil ordered.

Rose looked back over her shoulder at the Doctor who nodded. She did as the woman said, kicking the weapon away, too, because she knew that would come next.

Dr. Kuri dove for the stun gun and picked it up in shaking hands. "You see! I told you, Chelsey, they are spies. Chinese spies! You should not have let them go."

"What are you talking about, Markus?"

He pointed at Andrew. "Look! The Chinese! They have been wanting to steal my work for years. Why do you think I take such precautions as these? Now this man is sabotaging my generator!"

Dr. McNeil sighed and rubbed her forehead. "That's Andrew Chen. He works for us. He's the electrician, Markus. A Gateway employee."

"He works here?" Dr. Kuri shouted. "I am surrounded by spies!"

Dr. McNeil ignored him. "Andrew, I am disappointed," she said, and sounded like it. "I hired you. Your salary is more than reasonable. Why would you do this to me? Why would you betray Gateway like this?"

He gave her an icy look. "Mia was my sister," he said, coldly.

For a moment, Dr. McNeil stared at him blankly, and then her stern countenance faltered. She glanced at Dr. Kuri, but the man seemed indifferent to the news. He was examining the stun gun, turning it this way and that in a manner that made Rose nervous.

"I am sorry, Andrew," McNeil said with surprising sincerity. "I am so sorry for your loss. If I'd known…"

"What? You would have had me thrown into that fireball, too!?" He shook his head. "The Doctor's told me all about what you're doing down here. The generator and the time field

"You would have thrown me into that fireball, too?" He shook his head. "I know what you've been doing down here, McNeil. The Doctor's explained it all. The souped-up generator and the time field… You're not looking for a new energy source. How many people have died keeping your pet project a secret?"

"They were accidents. Both of them!" McNeil said, but she seemed less certain of herself than she had the last time they stood here. "Mia's fall was an accident. What else could it be? And Carmen isn't dead. Look at her! She's not even suffering."

"Not suffering?" Rose echoed. "She's screaming!"

"There is no scream," Dr. Kuri said. He had finally made up his mind how to hold the weapon and aimed the stun gun at her. It would have been more menacing if he hadn't been holding it upside down.

"You want to hear it?" the Doctor said. "I don't think you do." He was talking to Kuri, but his eyes were on Dr. McNeil and her gun. He stepped back to a different part of the computer system, keeping half an eye on her, but she didn't seem inclined to use it. She was watching Dr. Kuri with growing suspicion.

The Doctor adjusted a few dials, flipped a few switches. He kept a careful eye on the readouts to make sure that there was no power drop or surge in the generator. He found the right frequency and turned the dial, picking out one radio wave from the noise and turning up the volume until what had been a silent hum on the edge of hearing grew in depth and resonance until it echoed through the room in a heart-wrenching scream. It was almost the sound that he had heard in the Tardis, but this cry hadn't travelled across the centuries but came from the woman beside them.

Rose and Andrew both covered their ears, even Dr. Kuri flinched. He glared at the Doctor, but Dr. McNeil was staring at Carmen in horror. "It cannot…" She shook her head. "That's not her."

"It is." The Doctor turned the noise down again, but the scream still echoed in his ears. "You cannot tell me that that is not the sound of a woman suffering."

"And yet," Dr. Kuri said, "you cannot prove that her suffering is in any way my fault. I have told you already that this woman broke into my lab and fell herself into the field. I cannot be blamed for the ineptitude of others. You cannot prove that I pushed her."

"Can't I?" The Doctor turned another dial. There was no guarantee that what he was doing wouldn't stretch an already stretched circuitry past the breaking point, but McNeil had the gun and he needed her on his side. He had seen the echo of Carmen in the second floor hallway and he was pretty sure that he could induce another echo here. "Hold that door open another moment, Dr. Kuri, please," he said.

With a scowl, Dr. Kuri stepped forward and let the lab door slide closed behind him. He smiled triumphantly at the Doctor, but open or closed, it didn't really matter.

"Wait a moment." He adjusted a few more power levels. The echoes were caused by a tiny flare in the time field. If he could induce another flare at the right frequency, with Carmen so close, he just might be able to…

The energy field flared and the lights flickered. The Doctor felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he looked toward the lab doors. Rose and Dr. McNeil looked, too, but nothing happened.

Dr. Kuri smirked. "Well, doctor? I do not see how—"

Mia Chen materialized through the lab doors, and the Doctor felt both his hearts drop.

"Oh, God, Mia!" Andrew cried.

He hadn't meant that to happen. It was Carmen's echo that he had seen upstairs, and Carmen's echo that he had expected to induce down here. He would never willingly have brought back the ghost of Mia for her brother to see.

"She's not real, Andrew," the Doctor said, twisting dials. He hadn't meant to bring back Mia, but now that she was here, he couldn't let her fade until McNeil was convinced. "She's an echo, a memory pulled from the time energy inside the Vortex."

"Mia?" Andrew whispered and reached out his hand, but he couldn't bring himself to touch the shimmering image of his sister. She walked past him, with a glance up at the energy field, and approached the stairs leading to the bank of computers.

Dr. Kuri flinched back. He looked as if he had seen a real ghost. McNeil frowned at him and looked up at the Doctor.

"What is this? A recording? Why should I believe what I see?"

"It is a recording," the Doctor said, "of a sort." He crossed his fingers and let the scene play out. He was fairly certain that Dr. Kuri had pushed Carmen into the time field, but he was less sure what had happened to Mia Chen. She may well have tripped or fallen. "I believe that Mia Chen fell into the time-energy field that Dr. Kuri's generator created. But the machine is unstable, and the wall between the Time Vortex that my people created and the physical world of this timeline is thinning. When Mia died, it created an memory, an echo, and the instability of the machine is allowing that echo to break through."

He glanced at Andrew apologetically. "I saw Carmen's echo upstairs when I went to get the stabilizer. I realized what was happening and thought that I could pull Carmen's echo out here again so that we could see what happened to her, how she fell… I'm sorry, Andrew. I didn't mean to bring Mia back. These are her last moments, three nights ago… the night she died."

Andrew stared at the echo of his sister with tears in his eyes. She stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the bank of computers and moving her lips as if speaking to someone. Her body wavered with every flash of the time field. She was gesturing, angrily, and pointing at the energy field.

"Can you… can we hear what she's saying?" Andrew asked. "If you want to prove it was Dr. Kuri…"

"It was not me," the man himself insisted, but his face was a mask of guilt. He cowered near the railing as close to the lab doors as he could get, and if they had been open, no doubt he would have fled the damning specter, but he had himself closed the doors, and now Dr. McNeil stood with her gun between him and escape. She didn't look ready to believe anything that he said.

"If you are trying to convince me, Doctor," McNeil said, "then I need more evidence. Show me that it was Dr. Kuri in this room with Mia, then I will have no more doubts."

The Doctor glanced at Andrew, and then nodded to Dr. McNeil. He adjusted the computer controls again, turning dials by millimeter and watching the readings so intently that he didn't look up until Dr. Kuri's cry drew his attention.

A second echo, this one of Dr. Kuri, appeared on the stairs only inches from the Doctor himself. Mia's echo was still arguing, but she was also backing away as Kuri's echo bore down on her, shouting and pointing at the energy field, at the computer banks and up to heaven itself. His echo appeared as paranoid and insane as the real man himself.

"That is not me! It is a lie!" Dr. Kuri shouted. "This is cheap entertainment. It shows what you want it to show, not the truth!"

"It is the truth, Dr. Kuri," the Doctor said. "You thought no one was watching, but someone is always watching. Time bears witness to our actions. It remembers what we do."

The echo of Kuri caught the echo of Mia Chen by the wrist and swung her around. He pushed her back toward the energy field. She fought him, he pushed…

And then Dr. Kuri – the real Dr. Kuri – rushed forward. The echoes fractured and disbursed as he ran through them, heading for the computer banks. Maybe he was trying to disrupt the echoes before they damned him completely. Maybe he only wanted to get his hands around the Doctor's neck and strangle the man who had destroyed his career. Andrew jumped between the controls and the raging scientist; Kuri threw his considerable weight against the smaller man and in the struggle lost his grip on the stun gun. The weapon hit the floors, skidded to one side and was sucked into the energy field.

The power surged. The Doctor worked fast to adjust the dials to account for the surge and prevent a full-blown meltdown of the circuits. Andrew grappled with Dr. Kuri, eventually forcing him back from the computers, but the man was strengthened by his anger and broke free, kicking Andrew aside.

"Markus, stop!" Dr. McNeil aimed the gun at her colleague.

Kuri stared at her. "You would turn against me, Chelsey?" he said.

"It's over, Dr. Kuri," she said. "Give up now. I have many friends. You will be taken care of."

"But never to work again," he said with a bitter laugh. "I know how it works, Chelsey. I know I will not do anything of any use again. But I may still be free."

He lunged for McNeil, but Andrew pulled the woman back and out of his reach. Kuri's feet twisted under him, he flailed and caught hold of the next nearest thing. Rose tried to hold onto the railing beside her, but he was a large man and heavy. He fell backwards over the railing, pulling her with him and into the energy field.

"Rose, no!"

"Docto—"

The room was an explosion of light and burning heat. Wires sparked and the Doctor threw up his hands to shield his face. Andrew knocked the gun from Dr. McNeil's hand and then turned his back to the flare, shielding her from the heat and light. Like an exploding star, the burst lasted moments, and when it was all over, so was Dr. Kuri. The man was gone, vanished, his body disbursed like so much dust across time and space. Like Mia.

The flare died down and the heat lessened to the merely intolerable, but the energy field had expanded another two feet at least. The railing around it was melted and bent. The edge of the field was burning dangerously close to the computer banks and several exposed wires were already singed, their rubber sheathes bubbling as it melted. It wouldn't be long before the computer itself overheated and shut down.

"Rose!" The Doctor pulled himself to his feet, staring around him and up into the energy field, dreading what he would see. He fully expected to find that Kuri, Rose and Carmen had all been burned up by the surge.

"Rose!" he shouted. He leaned against the stair railing, then pulled back as the hot metal scorched his hand. The pain was fleeting, as was his relief. Rose was alive but she was trapped inside the energy field; her mouth was open, forming a wide O, the last syllable of the last word she had shouted before she fell. Carmen hung in midair, her right arm outstretched and her right hand wrapped around Rose's left wrist. Dr. Kuri was gone, but both the women were safe. For now.

The Doctor stared at the leather watchstrap around Carmen's right wrist. Andrew crouched near the door, helping Dr. McNeil to sit up.

"Doctor! They're safe. We have to get them out!"

The Doctor nodded. The energy surge had been a symptom of the field's collapse. The star was going nova, sparking erratically and sending off blue and green flames as it strained at the arms of the generator that still spun, still sought to reign in the fire.

"Andrew, the stabilizer!" the Doctor shouted. "Black switch, then blue button. I'll pull her out."

Andrew ran up the stairs to the computers, but he hesitated with his finger on the switch. "You said we only get one chance at this," he said. "There's two of them now. Can you get them both out?"

The Doctor stared at Andrew, and then looked up at the women suspended in the heart of the star. He couldn't. He knew that he couldn't, and there wasn't time. Once he put his arm into the energy field, the circuits would blow. He'd be lucky if he could pull one of the women free, let alone both of them, let alone finding cover before the computers exploded.

"Doctor?"

"I can't," he said, staring at Carmen. "I can't save them both."

It always looked so easy, saving the world, saving the girl. It looked easy, but it never was. Carmen had been reaching for something all along. She had known. It was impossible, but she had known where Rose would fall, and she had spent the last hour - or possibly the past hundred years - moving her hand inch by inch until she was in the right place at the right time to catch her.

The Doctor looked up into Carmen's eyes. She couldn't see him, he told himself, but she was looking right at him. Whatever shield had protected her from the time winds inside the energy field, she had extended it around Rose. She was protecting Rose, but the Doctor couldn't save them both.

"I'm sorry," he said, holding up his hand to her. Carmen or Rose, it wasn't a choice. There was never a choice. "I'm so sorry," he told Carmen, "but I think you already know that."

He stepped back from the energy field and braced himself in front of Rose. "On my mark, Andrew," he said.

"But—"

"On my mark, Andrew!"

The man glanced at him and at the women trapped in the heart of a dying star. He nodded and put his finger on the stabilizer switch.

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Now!"

He heard the click of the switch as Andrew flipped it. He felt the power surge around him as he thrust his arm into the energy field. The heat was unbearable, and the light burned his eyes. He found Rose's hand without sight, caught hold of her and pulled.

The star exploded, and so did the rest of the lab.


Reply to guest reviewer ErinKenobi2893: Maybe... ;)