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CHAPTER NINE

The Doctor stood in the doorway of Harold Saxon's office, his eyes rapidly scanning the room. It was beautiful and very comfortable, tastefully decorated in accents of green, with a wide expanse of soft, cream-coloured carpet and pale ecru walls. The furniture was both sumptuous and elegant, particularly the large, polished desk that dominated the room. There were no windows except for the ornate domed skylight overhead, the multi-hued stained glass glowing periodically as the lurid flashes of crimson light still pulsed across the sky.

But the Doctor's attention was fixed on the plush leather couch at the back of the room on which his daughter lay, her long copper hair tumbling around her in bright disarray, her shirt wide open to the waist, clearly revealing her small, high breasts. The Master hovered over her, half sitting and half lying, his own shirt gaping, his tie and jacket carelessly discarded on the floor. It wasn't too difficult to figure out exactly what they had been doing and why the causal nexus had been ripped apart.

For a moment, the Doctor felt an overwhelming surge of anger at his daughter's incredible selfishness and irresponsibility. But then his eyes met hers and his fury melted away into a wave of pain and compassion. Despite seeing him in the doorway, she made no move to cover herself. Even worse, her gaze contained none of the rebellion and defiance he expected. Instead, her green eyes were wide and blank, as though she had retreated to a safe place far inside herself, rather than deal with the reality of what she had done.

Tejana had always been a fighter, first and foremost. Her pride had never allowed her to admit defeat, her stubbornness had never permitted her to lay down and die, no matter what happened. The Doctor had never thought he would see the day when she would be this indifferent, this passive, this...broken and destroyed. And it killed him inside, because he hadn't realised when he should have, and because he had done nothing to help her.

The Master's head whirled around and a taunting grin spread across his face as he saw his old enemy.

"Well, hello, Doctor."

The Doctor stepped into the room, with Amy and Rory following closely behind. Rory took one look at the scene on the couch and blushed to the roots of his hair, before averting his eyes pointedly to the floor. Amy, on the other hand, was taking it all in with great interest, particularly the tantalising view of the Master's lean, muscular chest. Crossly, Rory put his hand over her eyes, only to have her push it away.

"End of the world, Rory," she reminded him in an impatient voice. "Not exactly the best time to worry about my modesty, is it?"

The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and stood casually facing the Master, his posture relaxed, his chin tilted and his gaze steady and serious as he watched the other man get to his feet. He had to play this very, very carefully, for all their sakes. He wasn't sure how much of the situation the other Time Lord already understood and the Master of this time-line had always been extremely unpredictable and difficult to deal with – sadistic, malicious and as capricious as a child. He was also more than a little insane. But, somehow, the Doctor had to convince him that letting Tejana go was in his best interests, without telling him any more than he had to.

"Hello, Master."

The Master looked him up and down, his expression one of pure contempt. "So, a new regeneration for you too, Doctor. I guess that means you're from the future as well, just like our dear little Tejana here."

With that, he pulled Tejana up from the couch into his encircling arms, holding her close to his naked chest in an imprisoning embrace that was more of a threat than a caress. One glance at his daughter's pale face soon confirmed to the Doctor that he wasn't going to get any help from her direction. She was completely unresponsive, allowing the Master to handle her like a doll. The Doctor felt cold fear for her twisting between his hearts. The Tejana he knew would never stand passively by while the two men she loved fought over her, like two dogs over a bone. It was as if her grief and despair had swallowed her whole and she just didn't care any more.

He walked further into the room, careful not to make any sudden moves.

"If you know that, then you must realise you have to let her go," he said to the Master, choosing his words cautiously, aware that any further escalation in the paradox would instantly draw the hunting Reapers to them like sharks sniffing out blood. "She needs to come with me, before the causal nexus is totally compromised."

"Is that right?" the Master mocked. "Oh, but Doctor, are you so sure she even wants to go with you? Maybe she'd rather stay right here. After all, she came looking for me, remember?"

"She's...not herself at the moment. She doesn't know what she's doing."

The Master's expression tightened in sudden anger, both his hands moving to possessively cradle Tejana's belly. "She's pregnant with my son!"

The Doctor flinched. He had really, really hoped he had managed to get here in time, before the Master discovered the truth about the baby. Reasoning with him now was going to be close to impossible and they were running out of time.

The other Time Lord must have caught his look of dismay, because he smiled even more mockingly. "Oh, Doctor, did you really think I wouldn't figure it out? My son. Your grandson. How about that, huh? Who would have thought? I guess that makes us one big, happy family now, doesn't it...Dad?"

"That's a matter for the future. You know perfectly well we can't talk about it now!" the Doctor retorted. "The Laws of Time..."

"Don't lecture me about the Laws of Time, you sanctimonious idiot!" the Master spat. "You don't get it, do you? You never did, even when we were kids. We're Time Lords! If we don't like the future, we can just change it, because that's our right! And, believe me, if I'm going to die before my son is born, that future is not acceptable to me and I'm not going to allow it to happen. So from now on, for as long as she's carrying my child, your precious daughter stays right here with me!"

"You're the one who never understood the Laws of Cause and Effect!" the Doctor responded, his eyes blazing with anger, all caution now thrown to the winds. "You didn't understand it on Logopolis and you don't understand it now! When will you learn that every change you make has consequences?"

"Consequences that I can easily avert," the Master interrupted arrogantly. "In just a few short days, my masterpiece will be complete - my Paradox Machine, built with my own hands from the bones of your decrepit old TARDIS, Doctor. And once I activate it, I'll be able to bend Time to my will, in any way I choose. And what I choose is to keep my son!"

"Except that you don't have those few short days! Right now, we're lucky if we have minutes!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Those consequences that you say you can so easily avert? They're up there already, flying around over London!" the Doctor snapped, pointing up towards the skylight above them. "Reapers, dozens of them! They've come through from the Time Vortex and they're hunting down the anomaly that called them into this world – in other words, the paradox caused by you and Tejana being together!"

For a moment, the Master merely stared at him. Then he threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "Reapers? Oh, come on, Doctor – you can do better than that! The Reapers are nothing more than a Gallifreyan fairy tale, meant to scare little Time Tots with the oh-so-terrible dangers of creating a paradox. They don't really exist."

"Do I look like I'm joking?" the Doctor shot back. "For once in your life, just listen! Can't you hear the people screaming outside? The Reapers are devouring London even as we speak."

Sure enough, once everyone stopped speaking, a distorted medley of high-pitched screams of terror could be heard drifting up from the street below, echoing faintly around the luxurious top floor office. For the first time, the Master began to look a bit uncertain. "No," he muttered. "No, that isn't possible."

At that moment, a frantic Miss Dexter pushed past the Doctor into the office. "Mr Saxon!" she gasped. "Sir, there are monsters out in the streets. Big, winged creatures, like vampire bats! They're killing everyone in sight. We have to get you to safety immediately."

The Master stared incredulously at his trusted employee, knowing she would never lie to him, and then looked back at the Doctor, disbelief written across his handsome face.

"You see now? I'm telling the truth!" the Doctor said urgently. "Give Tejana back to me. She's the one causing the paradox. If I can get her back within the protective temporal fields inside the TARDIS, maybe we can manage to reverse all this, like drawing the thorn out of an infected wound. If there's no paradox for them to hunt, the Reapers might go back where they came from."

But before the Master could answer, an enormous black shadow passed over them, blotting out the light and enveloping the room in a freezing, bone-deep cold. Everyone looked up, their heads angling back in a weird sort of unison, their eyes inexorably drawn to the skylight above, as if by some huge, terrible magnet.

"Too late!" the Doctor groaned. "They've found us."

Then the world seemed to tilt and the skylight shattered into a million lethal, glittering shards, like a storm of crystal rain. But instead of falling down into the room, the jagged prisms of glass just hung sparkling in the air, as if frozen in time, the crimson light refracting through them like huge drops of blood.

And there, in the middle of it all, appeared the Reaper, its great wings slowly beating against the cold, heavy silence, its beady eyes fixed hungrily on its prey in the room below.