"Are you okay?"

She is sitting in the dark console room, looking at the fruits of his labour.

"Are they… anti-grav speeders?" she asks, ignoring the question.

"Yeah," he grins. "Should help with the patrolling a bit, eh?"

"I'm not quite sure I understand."

"Understand what?"

"Where we are? What's gone wrong? All of it, really. I'm not a Time Lord, not a Gallifreyan. They say things like 'the planet is cracked' and 'lifeboat protocols', and you all nod like you know what it means, but I don't."

He leans against the console next to her and appears to consider his words carefully. "Do you want me to explain?"

More silence, filled with muffled laughter from the kitchen. She wonders when he learned to be this considerate.

"Can you? Will I understand?"

He shrugs. "I can't answer that part."

"Go on then. How is the world cracked?"

"You know the Earth is made of tectonic plates, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Imagine it like that. Except on all those different plates time is in a different place. Like… Medieval Europe is floating past prehistoric America. And they don't just move past one another slowly. They slip and phase in and out of synchronicity with one another."

"How did it happen?"

"I don't think anyone really knows."

She gives him a shrewd look. "You do."

He is very still. "What makes you say that?"

"I know you. I can tell when you're lying."

He scuffs his feet on the floor, not able to meet her gaze. It is his turn to sigh. "I have a-a surmise. A theory, yes. Call it a working hypothesis."

"Which is?"

"Lifeboat protocols. The cities were temporally locked to prevent chronology bombing by the Daleks," he catches her frustrated look, "which is just a fancy way of saying they attack from multiple points in time and try to stop the defences being built in the first place."

"Okay…"

"It means they would be impenetrable to people left outside unless they had a TARDIS. The rest of Gallifrey would have to fend for itself once the lifeboats were loaded, see?"

"I thought all of Gallifrey was frozen in time, though."

"I think the lifeboat protocols may have, uh, interacted with the temporal lock I created. That's why the TARDIS was able to come here. The places outside the lifeboats are bleeding through. But I can't make contact with the Citadel or the War Council or any other Time Lords. They're still locked out."

"So, how do we fix it?"

"We can't. The lifeboats are locked from the inside. That was the point."

"Even if we find the TARDIS?"

He tries not to wince. "Maybe. Have to find her first, though."

In her mind's ear she hears the voice of the War Council: No sir, all thirteen. She drums her fingers on the broken console. "Is that why you built the speeders?"

"Clara," he say, and he folds his fingers around hers, stilling the restless movement. "I don't know where she is. If I did, if I so much as suspected… I'd tell you."

She glances down at his hand on hers, back to his earnest gaze. "I know," she says, "Sorry… I just−"

But she can't quite put it into words; the horrible twist in her gut she suspects is kin to jealousy when she sees Cora and the Doctor tinker together. A version of herself with two hearts, not one; a longer lifespan, an intimate understanding of TARDIS engineering…

"You made two," she says, "two speeders."

"Yes?"

"Well, which one of me are you going to take with you?" she teases, trying to make the obvious choice a joke; something funny. As so often happens in her moments of crystal clarity, he merely looks confused.

"They're built to carry two each, Clara."

"Oh." Now she merely feels stupid. "I see."

"Were you−?"

"No. Shut up," she replies quickly. A flush has risen in her cheeks. "Tell me where we're going to take them."

"There's a… a secret vault. A day's journey from here using the speeders, maybe two."

"A secret vault?"

"It holds supplies. Weapons. Things that I can use to repair this TARDIS."

"Really?"

"Probably." He sighs at her sceptical expression. "Okay, possibly."

"How do you know about it?"

He shrugs. "I built it."


The setting sun paints pink across the endless white sand. She is half dozing against his back, lulled by the deep thrum of the speeder and the heat.

Sen pulls alongside. "We need to stop soon."

"Just a little further," she hears him say, the rumble of his voice in her chest.

"The desert isn't safe at night, Doctor," Sen persists. "We need to establish−"

"Look."

Clara lifts her muzzy head, following the line of his outstretched finger. Amongst the shimmering heat haze, folded between two dunes, there is something. The suggestion of right angles and straight lines.

"Looks like a mirage," mutters Sen, but obediently turns her speeder to follow.

It isn't a trick of the heat. As they move closer Clara can see old stone walls casting long shadows in the sunset. The shell of an enormous house; a grand manor. In the dying light she can see sockets for long rotten beams, and several floors' worth of empty fireplaces. Sand has blown across the tumbledown stones, scouring soft the gothic arches, rounding the sharp angles of huge empty window frames. Even a ruin, the scale and grandeur of the place is breath taking.

The Doctor brings their speeder to a halt in the dappled shade of one cathedrallike window. They dismount clumsily, her legs as sleepy as the rest of her. Lashed together by five feet or so of rope, it is difficult to dispel the tingling in her toes. She hops from foot to foot, awkward, as Cora and Sen take in their surroundings.

"What was this place?" asks Sen.

"The House of Lungbarrow," replies Cora, sounding slightly awed. "A ruin before the war, of course… I recognise the windows. Still beautiful."

"What?" Sen shoots her a sharp look. "No... Lungbarrow is an ancient seat, there's no way−"

"Ahem," the Doctor coughs, "I believe you were interested in establishing a bridgehead?"

Sen nods. "Before it gets dark."

"There's a vault we should be able to make relatively secure. This way."

"What about the speeders?" Clara points. "Bit of a giveaway that we're here. And worth stealing."

Cora grins in response to this, reaching over her handlebars to flick a switch. The speeder seems to move out of focus for a moment, edges blurring, and suddenly a piece of broken stone is standing in place of their craft. "Chameleon circuit," the engineer explains, her smile a mirror to Clara's own. "There was enough of it left for me to add camouflage."

"Okay, now that is pretty useful. Doctor, why-?" The look on his face kills her gentle teasing. "Doctor?"

"This way," he repeats, terse.

They edge through the ruins of the manor house. "Doctor?" Clara whispers, following through the maze of tumbled architecture. "Where are we?"

"She told you. House of Lungbarrow."

"And what's that to you?" she continues sharply. "Are we−?"

"We're here." He cuts across the question roughly, jabbing a finger at a pile of tumbledown stones no different to the hundreds of others around the place. He fumbles in the pocket of his borrowed desert suit, comically short in arm and leg, and extracts the sonic screwdriver. A quick pulse and the stones disappear, replaced by a rusted trapdoor.

"Is this it?" Sen sounds sceptical.

"This is it. You want to go first?" he fires back. Instinctively Clara finds her hand has strayed to his ill-fitting sleeve. A warning, a comfort; she isn't sure which. Only knows that the Doctor on edge like this, spoiling for a fight, is as dangerous to himself as those around him.

"No, thank you. After you."

He holds Sen's scowl with one of his own for a long moment, before turning to open the rusty door. The stairs revealed, descending into darkness, are no more appealing. The Doctor clicks on a torch, part of the desert gear, and leads the way down. Tethered to him, Clara follows suit.

At the bottom of the stairs is a light switch. The Doctor gives it an experimental flick and to their surprise the lights buzz and click for a moment, and illuminate. Vault was a good description, Clara realises; two bench-lined walls form a corridor to a complicated looking door.

"What's wrong?" she asks, catching the Doctor's expression.

"Not sure," he lies. "Stand back."

She takes up all the slack their rope will allow as he walks towards the door, gently placing his hand on the locking wheel.

"Doctor…?" Cora this time, although she's not sure if the Doctor realises, so similar are their voices; his attention is focussed on the vault.

"Just needs a little… push!" he manages, grimacing with effort as the wheel begins to turn under his hands. A creak, a clunk, and the vault is opened.

There is a long silence. "Well?" asks Sen, but Clara already knows the terrible answer; can read it in the slump of the Doctor's shoulder, his stillness.

"It's empty," he manages.

"What?" Sen pushes past, to see for herself. "No it isn't!" She pulls a dusty box off one of the shelves. "Rations, ammunition. It's all still here!"

He looks distracted for a moment. "Well, yes, I suppose… but, but the Arch Recon Regen." He points to a suspicious gap in the piles of grimy boxes. "Someone's taken it."

Cora looks at her feet. "It's a blow Doctor, but at least the rations−"

"Do none of you understand?" he snaps. "Empty headed idiots! No one should have been able to find this vault, let alone rob it."

A ringing silence follows this outburst, Clara and Cora avoiding one another's gaze. Sen, ever the pragmatist, merely shrugs. "Someone else must have known about it, Doctor," she says, "Unless you built this place yourself."

He spins on his heel, ready to storm out, remembering Clara is attached to him only at the last second. "We'll fetch the sleeping mats," he says thickly.

Once again, it is walk or be dragged. Outside night has fallen, more stars filling the dark sky than Clara has ever seen. "Doctor," she tries again, "what is going on?"

He ignores her, and at last she digs in her heels, pulling him to a halt. "What are you doing?" he demands.

"Stop," she commands. "Just, stop. Talk to me. Something isn't right here. This isn't you. Why are you so… unsettled?"

He sighs, tugging at his too-short sleeves awkwardly. "It's this place," he manages. "Never liked it."

"Where are we? And no lying. Not this time."

He looks mutinous for a moment, but his lordly anger has long ceased to work on her. "Home," he eventually says. "For a time."

A sick swoop in her stomach at those words; a tiny piece of the endless puzzle he will always remain slotting into place. "Who else knew about the vault?"

He shakes his head. "All dead."

"Someone must have known."

"No."

She shakes her head at this flat denial in the face of the evidence. "Okay. A different approach then. Who would walk into a vault like that and ignore all those other supplies to take… what did you call it? Arch Recon? That's TARDIS stuff, isn't it?"

He nods. "It's worse than that," he says, "They reset the chameleon circuit when they left."

"So?"

"So, it means they're either a Time Lord or someone like Cora, who works very closely with them."

"And that's bad?"

"It's not good. Cora's TARDIS distress call would have been…" He trails off. "Well, it's very odd that they didn't respond."

Overhead a shooting star flares, a flash of hard light throwing the broken stones into sharp relief for a brief second. For a second his shadowed face seems every one of his two thousand years; ancient and worn. She shivers in spite of herself. "What next then Doctor?" she says, hoping to bring him back to something more like himself.

He sighs. "I think… I think it's about time that we went and met the King."