If this looks oddly familiar, it's because I've done a total restructure of chapters 30-34, which have now become chapters 30-39. More on that somewhat later. If you'd read up to the "old" Chapter 33 (the last of the very long ones), then feel free to skip straight through to Chapter 38 to pick up where you left off.

You may want to read this and the next one several times. There is a lot packed into these two – hints about the nature of Earthsphere, hints about who Stanley and Iverson are, a lot of stuff about the repticore... and above all, one key revelation about Amelia Pond which drastically changes the context in which many of her actions should be viewed, especially from now on.

Similar sort of chapter but with more plot. Aware this is risky, so please leave a review if you have questions as to where I'm taking Amy or my rationale for doing so (I do have one).

CHAPTER 34. Morning on Earthsphere: 1 April 2011

The noise was barely audible, but even so it woke Iverson in a fraction of a second. Instinctively, he stood and grabbed a nightrobe off a hook, heading for the source of the sobbing. It was muffled and uneven – either someone didn't want to be heard crying or they were sobbing into a chair.

Or, as it turned out, both.

Amy was asleep, as would be sensible at this time of night – but this still registered as a first for him. He'd never seen the Time Lady sleeping before, but it was clear that unconsciousness didn't bring her comfort.

She was curled in the sofa, her ginger locks cascading across her cheek and down the seat, her arms drawn protectively in her chest. She tossed and turned in her sleep, muttering in some unintelligible language as tear after tear flowed squeezed from closed eyelids. Looking at her, no one could have guessed that she was a being of immense power and ability and not just an ordinary young girl going through a very, very tough little period in life.

"Amy?" He tried shaking her awake, but she whimpered and curled even tighter, digging herself into the sofa. She was dead to the world until a time of her choosing. After a few minutes, she seemed to calm slightly, the muttering ceased and the tears dried up. Iverson continued to stand over her, watching. Even in this dishevelled, vulnerable state, she was breathtaking, her slender figure rising up and down with her breaths, her hair a fan of brilliant flame on the sofa seat.

How can someone so strong, so beautiful, be so broken inside?

He shook his head sadly – whatever it was, there wasn't much he could do to help her. Amy shuddered again. Clearly, the demons of her dreams had not left permanently. He went back to his room and returned to her with a spare blanket, draping it gently over her slender frame before going back to bed.

The Windcatcher didn't like failure, and neither did his employers, evidently.

They weren't angry. Not really. Just the dignified, blank disappointment that characterised those with far more power than mere mortals could dream of. And he wasn't even one of those. They had mused aloud whether he was equipped to carry out the contract, a suggestion which made his fingers quiver with silent rage, though he kept his voice level as he gently inquired as to who could do a better job.

After all, he was only doing this because he had to. He didn't enjoy chasing Time Lords – not least because it was exceptionally difficult – but it was his job. He was a professional and would remain so.

He didn't enjoy killing people either. Not unless he had to. After all, didn't he tell that idiot not to say his name? What, did he think he was just a bit embarrassed by it and people would point and laugh in his face? Sure, he was marked for death anyway, the mercs the Windcatcher hired invariably were as they were far too dangerous when left to their own devices, but he'd have bought himself another half-hour otherwise. So no, he didn't appreciate jibes about his body count either, especially given his target.

But he'd made his point. The contract was the contract and he would either fulfil it or pay the penalty. He had no intention of doing the latter.

He strolled down a street of one of Earthsphere's many cities, making no attempt to hide himself and yet completely invisible because of it. It was a truly beautiful place, Earthsphere, a paradise in every sense of the word – clean, peaceful, prosperous. If only they knew its greater purpose.

Well, he knew. And he had access to the Earthsphere blueprints, more to the point. Which meant he knew that it was almost certain that the Time Lady had fled with her friend to one of many enclaves where the equaliser field was more or less absent, and hence beyond its tracking capabilities.

Ordinarily, he would have simply sent men to the ones he felt most likely and done a sweep there, but there were problems aplenty with that – for one, there were far too many enclaves for it to be even remotely likely that he'd pick the right one by chance. Two, he could send an entire army of mercenaries against her and it would probably bear no fruit, especially if her boyfriend got involved (as he almost certainly would if the Windcatcher tried a stunt like that). Three, he needed to be close by for this, so he could pin her down. The risk was that if he played his hand too early, the Time Lady would flee to the TARDIS before he was ready for them to do so.

No. He had to know precisely where they were. He'd already tried leading his off-suit cards before to catch her off guard, and had been unexpectedly trumped as a result. Another mistake and he'd lose... and he never lost.

He headed to the middle of a park, standing in cool shade, far from any eavesdroppers, and sent his message.

Showtime.

The next morning, he found her leaning over the edge of the upstairs balcony, staring at the multi-coloured hue of the blood-red, dark-blue sky as the sun made its first appearance for the day. The air was brisk, but pleasant – like a splash of cool water in the morning. Against the backdrop of the rapidly brightening sky, she was a picture of dignified, restrained power, with her bright coppery-ginger hair cascading over her leather flying jacket and the sword still attached to her belt. She didn't move or make any acknowledgement of his presence as he walked up to her.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Iverson asked gently. Amy continued to stare into the distance, her face impassive, her vibrant green eyes lost in thought.

"It reminds me of home," she eventually replied in a quiet voice.

"The skydome was designed to replicate Earth's, you know, along with the rest of the landscape. Old Earth – before its atmosphere was too heavily polluted to see sunrises like these."

"That would explain the name, then."

"Yes. Earth is seen by many of the peoples here as a faraway paradise, a distant utopia only now accessible in far-off fairytales and stories. For billions, this is the closest they will ever come to seeing the human homeworld," he said with a hint of scoff.

Amy must have picked it up, because she frowned and turned her head to look at him. "You don't sound especially convinced."

He smiled and turned to stare out at the rolling, verdant-green hills, the snow-capped peaks to the side, the rays of dazzling sunlight banishing the last of the night. "The thing that all utopias have in common, Miss Pond, is that they don't exist."

She frowned at him. "Earth does. It's my home."

"Oh, I didn't say Earth didn't exist. But ask yourself – would you call it a utopia? You've had the benefit of actually living there, something only the privileged few with access to time travel have the possibility of experiencing. And no one here has grown up there."

She opened her mouth to reply yes, but something stopped her. Memories of vague news reports she hadn't paid much attention to, brief soundbites on TV. Famine in Africa. War in the Middle East. Hunger. Disease. Death.

"Guess not."

"Indeed." He shifted, leaning on the fence with his elbow so he could face her properly. "How are you holding up, Amy?"

"Fine," she replied off-hand. "I miss him, but I'll live." She didn't need to specify what she meant by 'him'.

He knew that was a lie. He'd seen that that was a lie. There was a shadow around her eyes and thin streaks of makeup around her cheeks. She hadn't just spent a few moments crying as he'd seen – she'd spent most of the night in tears. But she seemed better now, so he decided not to press the subject... too much.

"You're up early. Most girls your age wouldn't be up for hours."

"Most girls my age aren't Time Ladies. I don't sleep much now."

"That's true."

"Of course it is." She glanced across at him curiously. "And you? Why are you up at this sort of hour?"

He chuckled. "Amy, I'm ex-military. We had to get up at five in the morning and go on a ten mile run every day."

"Remind me never to join. That doesn't explain why you're doing this now, though."

"Who said I didn't enjoy it? I'm about to go for a dash up the mountain for a few hours."

They both shared a laugh at that, the sound rippling through the air like the sound of a waterfall cascading into a clear, pristine pool. Unusually, Amy was the first one to return to seriousness.

"You sound like you've seen a lot. Like, you're more cynical about this place than anyone else I've talked to."

"One doesn't necessarily lead to the other, Amy," he reminded her. Now that she thought about it, he was right – and she knew the perfect example of someone for whom the opposite was true. "But yes, I have. Too much."

"We all have," Amy replied quietly.

He gazed at her, a crease between his eyebrows and curiosity sparkling in his eyes. Who was this girl, really? Lonely, vulnerable youth or the immensely gifted alien – which of them was the true Amy Pond? Or was it both?

Too difficult. Talk about something else.

"My brother would have loved to meet you, you know. He idolised your kind, studied them deeply – and especially your Doctor. He was always an idealistic chap," Iverson added, with a hint of disdain in his voice.

"I hope he meets him. They'd get along swimmingly. Me – not so sure."

"A long time ago, he told me that there are only two types of people with power – those who want it, and those who don't. Those who want it are destined to misuse it. Those who don't will be the ones others look up to. I get the feeling the two of you are in the latter."

"I certainly didn't ask for this," Amy agreed, while not entirely agreeing.

"I can imagine. I must admit, I would love to meet the Doctor one day as well. See what drives him, what motivates him, try to understand him."

"Do you think you could?"

"I could try. From what I've heard, he's seen a lot of the devil in his life. Many of us have, he's not alone in that respect."

She shook her head. "No. When I first started travelling with him, when I was human, I thought I understood him as well. I thought it was just that he'd seen the devil and had been scarred by it – having to wipe out the rest of his species and all."

"And you were wrong?"

"No. I was right. I usually am," she added with a smile, "but I was wrong about what the devil he'd seen actually was."

He paused before continuing, not entirely sure whether he wanted to know the answer to his next question.

"Have you looked into the eyes of the devil, Amy Pond?"

"Yes," she replied simply, with a definite finality to her tone. "I have."

She didn't say what she'd seen.

Late afternoon, and the dreariness of city planning was starting to wear on Stanley Blood. He didn't exactly regret it, not at all, but designing a municipal pool was not enlightening work at the best of times. And now was not the best of times – for the first time in goodness' knew how long, crime and violence had come to Earthsphere, shattering the peace he had strove to create, the peace he thought was unbreakable.

A hospital attacked. Three dead, ten injured, a hell of a lot of people scared out of their wits. That the three dead were two of the assailants and a patient with a chronic heart condition who had had a heart attack didn't quite matter. People had died. On his watch. It just seemed so... senseless. Why attack a working hospital? What good would that do?

To make matters worse, it had been the hospital run by his brother. Sure, they'd not spoken in years but Iverson was still his brother.

But it wasn't his place to interfere. He wasn't a ruler, just a planner. He had built Earthsphere, but he didn't control it. No one did. This place was beyond control.

What he was hoping for, then, was a distraction.

"Stanley! Hello!"

He looked up and saw one. "Doctor. Where the devil have you been?" The Time Lord was flanked by a rather apprehensive looking young man, who rather looked as if he was having second thoughts about the whole affair. They were in such a rush that they almost knocked over one of the technicians, who was busy working on one of the data feeds on the wall.

They'd first gone to the hospital from which Amy had fled, to see if there were any clues. But apart from confirmation that she'd been there with Kate, there was nothing of use there at all. So the Doctor had decided to drop in on a friend.

"Up and around. Sorry to hear about the hospital, by the way, but maybe I can help you find the culprit."

That got his attention. He stood up, swimming pool plans forgotten. Just because he wasn't supposed to help protect his own world didn't mean he wouldn't when the opportunity arose. And this was definitely an opportunity. "Do you have any names?"

"Not quite," the Doctor lied, preferring not to divulge that piece of information to Stanley yet. "But I do have an idea. First though, I need some information."

"On what?"

"The equaliser field."

He frowned. "What about it?"

"It detected me straight away, I'm aware of that. But has it detected anyone else?"

"An equaliser field isn't designed to-"

"It does. Or, at least, this one does. How else did you spot my psychic signature? Wasn't exactly advertising."

"If you say so."

"Hang on," Michael interjected, not liking his own lack of understanding. "This equaliser field – you're talking about power, right? Thought to electricity. That kind of stuff, the stuff we learn in college."

"That's the idea. But if someone were to piggyback a monitor, or detector of some kind..."

"What, you're saying that you could trace really strong psychics by their thoughts, because it'd cause a power surge? That what you're saying?"

The Doctor was impressed. "Not bad, Mikey. Not bad at all." He turned back to Stanley. "So have you seen anything else strange over the past few days?"

Stanley pursed his lips pensively. "As a matter of fact, I have." He closed the swimming pool plans on the giant table-screen before him and keyed in a password on number-pad, bringing up a long multi-entry list of numbers before him. He beckoned the other two around to see.

"This is a record of any unusual power spikes in the equaliser field in the past two weeks," he told them. "First column is location and time," he said, pointing to the first column of numbers, "second is strength measured in the category units of psychic strength, and third is source type."

"Source type...?" Michael asked.

"Whether it came from a human, Time Lord, whatever. They all leave different signatures depending on what kind of brain broadcast the thought."

"I'm guessing that's me," the Doctor remarked, pointing to one entry just over a week ago. It had a strength of just over five-and-a-half and was marked 'Time Lord'.

"Yes. In fact, all these are you," Stanley told him, pointing to a plethora of entries of similar strength, all of which were marked Time Lord.

"Are you sure?"

"Unless you hid another Time Lord in my house, I'm sure."

"Fair enough." Amy certainly wasn't nearby, he'd know precisely where she was otherwise. "Did you grab any other Time Lord signals?"

"Other than from you, no. I thought you were the last of your kind?" Stanley shot him a quizzical glance.

"It's complicated," the Doctor replied. No need to say anything about Amy he didn't need to. Not yet, anyway.

"Hmm. Well, the answer is no, we didn't. All the Time Lord signals that we've ever detected have been from you."

The Doctor exhaled a sigh of relief. Perhaps she's hiding herself so effectively that she'll be impossible to track. Not ideal, but definitely an improvement.

"But..."

He caught his breath. That was the last word he wanted to hear.

"But what?" His voice was light, delicate, but a rather nasty ball had suddenly deposited itself in his stomach. But rarely led to anything good.

"But we did find something strange a few days ago. At the hospital which got attacked today, actually. At first we thought it was a system error, it was so obviously impossible... but now I'm not so sure." He scrolled the list down to the very end. "Here. The last entry is a six-plus, so a category seven spike, lasting 20 seconds. Even that was difficult to believe in itself, there are no category sevens that I'm aware of, but then we looked at the source and simply decided it was obviously a bug." He eyed the Time Lord carefully. "But since you seem to be looking for something big, I guess it isn't. Is this what you were expecting?"

The Doctor's eyes were as wide as dinner-plates, fixed on the entry... and the nature of the source.

Human.

"No," he said quietly. "It most certainly wasn't."

Kate awoke to one of the most seductive, alluring scents she'd ever smelled. It took her a moment to sift through the various airs wafting up her nose. Geez. Clearly, someone was making one hell of a breakfast.

She clambered out of bed, morning grogginess chased away by the promise of copious amounts of good food waiting outside. She changed into a loose T-shirt, woollen sweater and knee-length skirt before following her nose to the kitchen. She wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve such a treat, but she made a mental note to thank the man later.

However, upon reaching the kitchen, she found that the middle-aged man wasn't the one making her breakfast at all.

"Hi Katherine," Amy greeted her chirpily as she turned a panful of sausages over. "I made you breakfast. Bacon, eggs, fresh bread, sausages, tomatoes – the works."

"Oh. Thanks," Kate replied a little stiffly as she sat herself at the table, eyeing the Time Lady nervously. Thankfully, Amy seemed to neither have her sword nor be in the mood to use one. Swell.

Amy piled the food onto a wide plate and slid it in front of Kate, taking a seat opposite her. "There you are. Go on, eat up."

"Yeah, sure." Kate hesitated. Is she really going to just pretend that we can... no, I don't think so. Right. "Listen, Amy, about yesterday evening..."

Amy's warm smile vanished, as did the light in her eyes. "What about it?"

"Well, I mean... if you want me to stay away, then..."

Unexpectedly, the redhead leaned across and gripped Kate's hand in her slender fingers. "Katherine. Listen to me. I'm not joking when I say that what I did yesterday is one of the worst things I've ever done in my life. And trust me, there's competition."

Kate frowned. "What, even against shooting someone in the face?"

"I did that because I had to. Ten billion people would have died if I hadn't. Yeah, OK, I'm not exactly proud of it, but... but what I did yesterday, in the virtual world... that was just wrong, on every level. I'm sorry, Kate. I'm so, so sorry."

Amy still hadn't let go of the blonde's hands. Kate's liquid-hazel eyes searched Amy's vivid emerald, finding nothing but deep, anguished sorrow and a chilling, horrible emptiness far within her pupils. There were blotches of colour and thin streaks running down Amy's cheeks – clearly, she'd spent most of last night crying her life out.

Despite herself, Kate felt a wave of sympathy wash through her. She knew that what had happened yesterday was only a fraction of a torment afflicting her friend's brilliant mind. She was well aware of all the walls, barriers and defence mechanisms Amy had built over the last few years, but she knew they were almost all gone, all shattered, now. She took her other hand and wrapped it around her friend's, entwining their fingers.

"Don't be. You're my friend, you don't need to apologise to me."

Amy smiled gratefully. "Mutual." She extricated her fingers and leaned back in her chair, the old enigmatic flicker in her eyes once again. "Now eat up, I'm not warming it again if it goes cold."

Kate simply rolled her eyes.

They spoke no further at breakfast about the events of the previous evening. Kate was by no means forgetting it, and she remained wary. Amy on the other-hand had moved on in double-quick time, and by mid-morning was acting as if nothing had happened between them. Kate didn't let this go on for long before calling her out on it.

"Time Lord brain," Amy replied simply. "It works quicker, compartmentalises better."

Kate snorted. "Those psychiatrists would have a field day with you now."

It was probably not the smartest thing to say, because Amy's smile instantly became decidedly fixed, and her eyes averted downwards. "Yeah, perhaps," she mumbled, before looking back up again. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten and I'm definitely not pretending it didn't happen. But we all do dumb things to the people important to us occasionally. Now come on." She tossed a headset over to Kate and put on her own. "Time to get cracking."

Seven and a half seconds.

That was all. From posing the question to figuring out the answer.

Why was unclear. Why was unimportant. How was the important question. And the question was simple. How could a human produce a category seven psychic burst? Only Amy could do that, only Amy's mind was capable of those feats. The only way a human could produce that sort of signal was if part of Amy's mind had lodged itself inside...

Oh.

Seven and a half seconds, and he had his answer.

Amy and Katherine were mind-linked. Or, more accurately, Amy had deposited part of her consciousness into Kate's mind, forging a link between the two brains. Why on earth she would do so, he had no clue. Amy had implied that she had put her resentment of the blonde behind her, but even so... perhaps it was an accident, she'd meant to place it somewhere else, in an external memory storage of some kind, and something had gone wrong. As it often did if you started chopping up your consciousness into little pieces.

But, again, why was unimportant right now. What was important was the fact that Amy had created a beacon, a piece of her own mind that was, for all intents and purposes, unshielded. Hence the spike – when the mind-link was created, a flood of memories would have poured themselves into Kate's mind. A transfer of consciousness wasn't something that happened quietly. Not when a consciousness of the complexity of Amy Pond's was involved.

So that explained the spike. Which in turn explained how they'd been detected. And explained why Amy had feared that she was being tracked by her thoughts... obviously she knew about the mind-link as well or at the very least suspected.

It also meant that there was no way they could hide. Amy's mind was already deeply unstable – it had improved in recent months as she recovered from the overload, but this wouldn't help. Soon, thoughts, memories and emotions would start leaking into the part of Amy that had been placed inside Kate, and that part of Amy, having nowhere to place those thoughts – as it was stuck in a human mind – would simply broadcast them to the world.

Hopefully Kate is prepared for Amy's dreams, because she's going to get a lot of them now.

"Doctor? Something wrong?" Stanley asked, eyeing the Time Lord nervously. The Doctor turned to fix his cool gaze on the man.

"I have someone," he began slowly, "who is more important to me than you could possibly imagine. She is in terrible danger, and I need to save her. I don't require that you help me, but if you do, it will change your life, and change everything you know about this world. Because nothing here is as it seems."

Change everything you know about this world. The words reverberated around Stanley's head, as a distant, long-buried memory surface once more.

He'd just been a young combat engineer with a history degree back then, but already sick of war, sick of death, sick of destruction. He'd been drinking when a man in a suit had come up to him and made a scarcely believable offer.

"We know you're tired of war," the man had told him, "So we want to give you the opportunity to bring peace."

"I don't know if I can trust you. What kind of peace are you talking about?" He'd asked, both suspicious and intrigued.

"A paradise."

He'd been given blueprints and sent on his way to rally support, spread the word, get resources. It had taken years and years, and more than a little surreptitious backing from the shadowy, unknown group who had suggested it to him in the first place, most of it beyond his knowledge, but he'd got there.

He'd done it. Earthsphere had been built around an aging brown dwarf star. A place free from violence and harm. A place where you literally thought of what you wanted and it happened. A true paradise. Except for one thing...

The repticore. Their dirty little secret. How they'd got here, why they'd got here, no one knew. Once or twice he'd tried to contact the organisation that had originally sponsored the plan, but had gotten naught but silence in reply. He'd had to remove all the forests because of them, lest they turn into a rampant infestation, save for one. Even he couldn't touch that one.

And now... now the species he'd spent so long studying in his youth had come, and its last surviving member was telling him that his initial suspicions, which he'd long discarded, may have been correct.

He gazed at the Time Lord's piercing blue eyes and responded in a firm, clear tone.

"What do you need me to do?"

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