Chapter 15 – Brilliant at Planning

Susan leaned over her Great Gran's shoulder and frowned. Equations were zipping by so rapidly that she could barely grasp the basic outlines of what the Lady Professor was doing.

"I have to work out trajectories through multiple dimensions or the ships will never escape the Void and reach their proper destinations," she explained to Susan who nodded, still feeling far out of her depth. "Shouldn't you finish the work on the Chameleon Arch Bio Data?"

"Hmm? Oh, I finished that lot hours ago," she answered absently, missing the startled look of appraisal on the older woman's face.

"Did you?"

"Yeah, it was dead easy, not like all this," she responded, trying to follow the convoluted equations and failing.

"Dead easy?" her Great Gran chuckled and shook her head. "Well, I'm glad that you find it so, dear."

"How soon do we need to leave?" she asked next.

"We'll need to go soon; the way that Time is getting knotted is growing worse with each passing day. Within two months or so, Time will become so tangled that it will lock up, even without the High Council's intervention, and there will be no way out." Susan shivered at her words. To be trapped in Time with the Dalek Fleet, unable to escape, was a terrifying thought.

"Then the sooner the better," Susan answered.

"Yes." There was a long silence while the equations were worked out in the staccato rhythm of the Lady Professor's typing. "Susan, I have already done a great deal to prepare the way for you all to restore our people in a new universe, but I can't tell you what I've done."

"Why not?"

"Well, should Rassilon get into your head, he'd know too much of our plans. Also, I've erased my own memories of what I've done. I left myself a checklist, so I know what I still have to do, but I can't recall what I've actually done."

Susan stared, dumbfounded, at her Great Gran, her mouth slightly open, as she tried to figure out a response to that.

"Okay Great Gran," she finally answered, not sure what else she could say.

The Master stared at the monitor in satisfaction. It had taken him far too long, but he'd finally removed the 'leash' that Rassilon had placed on him. He was bleeding, his skin scored in a dozen places from where he slashed himself open to pull the physical cords from inside of himself.

He probably hadn't needed to, not after he'd disarmed them, but he hated the idea of these things being in his body. He wanted to be free of them, he wanted there to be nothing Rassilon had touched anywhere near him.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to unlock his TARDIS.

He stood in its dim interior, smiling the smile of a predator that's just scented his prey.

The Doctor stood at the TARDIS controls, staring at the equations as they spooled by and his hearts contracted in fear.

"Two months at best," Romana murmured behind him. "Then Time will lock."

"Yes."

"I've been recalled to Gallifrey, Doctor," she told him as she leaned against him, arms slipping about his waist. "The High Council requires my reports."

"I don't want you to go," he answered softly. "It's not safe. The bombing…"

"I know."

"Romana, you could just go away, I could drop you someplace…"

"They would find me, Doctor. That's the problem with a telepathic race; they can always find you, eventually."

"You'd only have to hide for two months," he spat out, bitterness in his hearts. "After that there won't be anyone to come looking for you."

"We might win, you know, stranger things have happened," she teased, her new black hair draping across his back, and he could feel the tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

"Yes, of course. We might win," he answered, but his voice was as bleak as his thoughts were.

Watching her walk out of the TARDIS and towards the Citadel was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.

But it wasn't the hardest thing of all.

That was yet to come.

Deep inside the Great Battle TARDIS, Susan stared at the time lines, watching as they stopped coiling and twisting and suddenly seemed to freeze. The Sickbay looked as though light and color had been drained out of it. Her patients began to babble and cry out, in surprise and in fear. She moved quickly to soothe them all; soldiers, techs, civilian contractors, the Star Hammer's sick bay cared for them all.

Time Lock.

She'd never seen it before. It hadn't happened in millions of years, not since the times of legends and fables. She'd hoped never to see it. Her time sense was blinded, she felt as though she was flailing in the darkness. The Battle TARDIS moaned beneath her, the decks creaking in the sudden strain. She heard the crew running, shouting, the captain's voice over the speakers.

"Attention all Crew, Time Lock is initiated, repeat Time Lock is initiated, prepare for real space travel conversion!" She shivered hearing that, the Vortex was closed to them now, only certain routes might remain open, but they were trapped now in real space. With the Daleks.

She ran to the communication panel and opened a contact to her grandfather.

Long minutes passed with no answer and she breathed out in relief. He was outside the Time Lock, otherwise he would have answered. The Time differential would make synching communications complicated; he might not answer for days as he tried to work out a method. So that part of the prophecy was taken care of. Now somehow, the Master and she had to make it out as well, which might very well be impossible.

Her inbox had three messages, she scanned through them in sudden hope, but not one of them was from him. With a feeling of resignation, she listened to the messages and then deleted them.

The messages were each from three different men, all high ranking Time Lords, hoping to meet with her, for dinner, tea, or a walk, perhaps. She frowned. The latest three attempts by Rassilon to marry her off, she guessed, none of which were remotely appealing to her. In the last fifty years she must have had a dozen or more persistent suitors stalking her through her daily life. If it hadn't been so annoying, it would have been funny. The "Ape-lover" was suddenly a hot marital commodity.

She blew her breath out and forced herself to be calm. Rassilon couldn't move against her family without losing support in the council. To force a bonding was a serious offense, it was the rape of a sentient mind, and no crime had greater penalties.

But she'd planned on being on the other side of the Time Lock when he finally grew desperate enough to try it anyway. Now, she was trapped in here, with an increasingly desperate megalomaniac.

What was with her luck? She was caught between two psychopaths, and while the Master was, oddly enough, the lesser of two evils, he certainly wasn't a catch either. Why couldn't she have ended up with at least one sane man in her immediate circle. She certainly couldn't consider her Grandfather to be sane, because even if he wasn't psychotic, he was certainly not all there sometimes. She found her lips stretching into a fond smile thinking of him. Well, maybe it was her; maybe she was a touch crazy herself.

"Susan?" Andred, with Leela on his heels came charging into the sick bay.

"Are you both alright?" she asked, thinking they were coming in for treatment.

"The ship is being recalled to Gallifrey, you are being summoned to the High Council!" Leela blurted and Susan's face drained of color.

"God help me," she whispered.

The Cruciform was falling. The Dalek Emperor was coming. Terror seized the Master and deep in his mind the urge to flee was growing. He would die here and that couldn't be allowed. He had a great destiny, a purpose that must be achieved. He couldn't die amongst the sheep!

He'd planned for this eventuality, he had what he needed to break the Time Lock and escape, but he'd always planned to have Susan with him when he left. Even if he'd had to knock her out and carry her away, he had to take her with him. He couldn't leave her to die here, she belonged to him. Dar was coming with him too, the three of them, they would escape together.

His vision blurred and the drumming suddenly was so much louder, it felt like his head would explode and then, suddenly, he realized that he was in his TARDIS.

No, wait! This wasn't right! Dar! Susan! He had to go get them! His head hurt so badly that he could hardly stand it. He fell forward and the ship took off. The TARDIS core he'd specially modified was ejected and as it imploded, it ripped at time, pulling open a gap that allowed the Master's TARDIS to exit on its preprogrammed path.

Susan was marched into the High Council room by a familiar burly CIA agent. He stood at her elbow and she guessed he was there to keep her from escaping. She wondered why he was always the one who showed up, just when she most wanted to be somewhere else. She realized that he was the one who'd been standing behind the Master on that Trans Mat so long ago as well. Her resentment towards him ratcheted up higher.

Rassilon turned a benignly smiling face on her, but the cold fear in her gut was not eased by that.

"My Lady Susanatrevalar, the High Council wishes to speak with you," he announced and Councilor Flavia frowned.

"Lady Susan, it has been indicated to us that you have refused offers of marriage from quite a number of rather impressive suitors."

"I do not choose to marry at this time," she told them. "Though I fail to see why this is of import to the High Council. We are trapped in a Time Lock and you are worrying about my marital state? Is such trivia truly worth your consideration?"

"It is when we have reason to believe that you are the Arkytior," Councilor Flavia informed her and she could feel the Agent beside her stiffen in sudden agitation, an anxiety that matched her own.

"This has been told to me for weary centuries, yet no proof of it has ever been offered. I have displayed none of the signs, so I fail to see why this belief remains," she answered back in a tone that she hoped displayed none of her terror.

The Visionary entered then, leaning on her staff, muttering, her face painted in swirls of prophecy and settled into the empty chair at the end. Susan was stunned, for it was unheard of for a member of the Tower to come to the Council, their participation in government had been banned for millennia.

"Arkytior she is, she is, though she hides from it, she does," the Visionary mumbled and Susan froze, while the Council all turned to examine her.

"Then we shall see her bound for her safety and ours," Rassilon announced.

"You can't do that! It's rape!" she cried out. "I will not submit to such a monstrous thing!"

The High Council blanched at her words and several turned away, shame on their faces.

"Too late, too late, she is bound already, bound into madness and despair, bound into the sound of drums," the Visionary chortled.

"What does she mean?" Councilor Gomer demanded.

Rassilon turned and stared at Susan, his eyes blazing in fury and he rose, stepping towards her. She shrank back from him, but the Agent held her arm, not letting her flee.

"My Lady, will you explain to the Council what is meant by the Visionary's words?" he demanded and she could see that he would rip the knowledge from her mind if she did not speak.

"It was you who let it come to pass," she told him, bitterly. "You wanted my mind broken open, so you sent the Master in to pull my soul apart." She laughed, a sound that made the agent flinch beside her. "Instead, I went into him to pull him apart, to save myself." She shook her head in memory of her folly. "I Saw him and he Saw me," she finished, her voice dropping nearly to a whisper. She looked up into the raging anger of Rassilon and straightened her spine. "You sent him after me, so live with the consequences of it!"

He raised a hand as though to strike her and then, seeming to realize where he was, he lowered it again.

"Nearly two hundred years you have kept this from us? You have been bound to him and you said nothing?" he demanded. "Why?"

"If I had told you, you'd have killed him," she answered, she knew that he was endangered by this revelation, but she didn't know how to get a warning to him. She felt the agent twitch again beside her and wondered at it. "It was no more his fault than it was mine, why should he die for following your orders?" The agent, brown eyes surprised, stared at her. He must think her mad to protect the Master, but she didn't care.

"He is of no worth! His life is nothing! He's a psychopath, a mad dog!"

"He's a far better man than you are, my Lord President!" she spat out at him and the fury in his eyes was a vast terrifying thing. "He never set out to rape me for his own benefit!"

"Your value to us is inestimable, you could have been our salvation!" he screamed.

"Or your destruction," she retorted. "I know the old legends! The Arkytior is an amoral creature, a thing of rage and fire, a creature that lives to destroy, that cannot discern between enemy and friend! You would ask me to become something that would obliterate you! Are you so far gone in your fears that you would unleash such a hell upon yourselves?" She turned, imploring the High Council to see sense, to recognize reason, and they stared back at her, but all she could see was their terror of death, their fear of the coming end.

"We will have the Master killed, and then you will be bound to a Time Lord of my choosing, my Lady," Rassilon informed her and she felt an incandescent fury.

"You leave him alone!" She was struggling against the Agent's grip, but he held her tightly and then cleared his throat.

"My Lord President, the thing is; I had come before you to inform you that My Lord Master has disappeared." She stilled and turned to look up into the placid face of the agent with sudden hope.

"Disappeared? Impossible!" Rassilon bit out and then began typing away at a panel on his desk. "He's escaped, deactivated his leash, and hidden himself," he whispered in disbelief and Susan smiled, joy bubbling up inside of her. He'd escaped. If they could both make it to the other side of the Time Lock, then the universe could be saved as well.

All was not yet lost.