Chapter 26

Lima, Peru

June 2009

The Doctor jumped from the couch the moment the screams hit his ears. Immediately identifying the source of the terrified cries, he rushed up the stairs and into Glad's bedroom. Seeing her kicking at her covers, her cries rending his hearts, he hurried to her side. "Glad! Wake up!" he ordered gently, taking her shoulders and shaking her slightly. Not getting a response as her screams continued, he sat as close as possible to her, pulling her into his arms and rocking her, one hand caressing her face as his eyes showed concentration. "Wake up, Glad," he repeated. "It's just a nightmare. It's okay. It's okay."

Alistair and Doris arrived a few seconds later. Doris looked sadly at the sight in front of her. "The poor child's having another nightmare."

"It's okay. It's okay," the Doctor continued to assure Glad. "It was just a nightmare. You're okay." Even as he spoke, he felt her hands pushing him away. Turning his head, he noticed her wide eyes accompanying her hyperventilation, indicating that his ministrations had woken her just as he had hoped.

She shook her head, hard. "No! It was too real to be a nightmare! Too real!" She started crying. "I'm afraid."

"You don't have to be afraid. I'm right here," he said gently, opening his arms to her. He wanted her to come into them willing, especially since she had pushed him away so adamantly and she was so clearly terrified.

Glad flung herself into the Doctor's arms, hugging him tightly. She sobbed into his shoulder for several minutes while the Time Lord gently rubbed her back. Raising his head as she cried in his arms, the Doctor looked towards Alistair and Doris.

"Doris, would you be kind and make some tea? Alistair, would you... help her?"

The two immediately got the not so subtle hint, leaving the room with only the Doctor and his companion. After a couple of minutes, the girl stopped crying but still clung to the Gallifreyan as if he were a life raft.

"Do you... do you think he hurt her? Hurt Grace?" she questioned between hiccups.

He blinked slightly at the name. Perhaps the nightmare was about an old friend of hers from Camelot. "Whom are you talking about, sweetheart? Who's Grace? And who do you think hurt her?"

"I don't know who Grace is other than she's a physician," Glad said. "She just wanted to help people but he took her and others. It felt like he was hurting them."

The Time Lord slowly got to his knees so that her face was just above his. "This is part of your nightmare?"

She nodded. "Yes. A woman physician. She was only taking care of people and he took her. Made her watch horrible things."

Seeing her become distressed again, he brushed her hair from her face. "Easy. It's okay. Just tell me about your nightmare."

Glad took a deep breath. "There's a man who rules everything and he's not afraid to destroy anything to show people lessons. He has another that he talks with, but I don't know what he looks like. I only hear the voice but it's... evil. There were other people he took too. This one woman, named Sarah... Well, he killed her little boy before taking her and putting her in a cage. She didn't say much. Her eyes looked dead."

"You said he took people. What sort of people? Do you know why he took them?" The Doctor looked into Glad's eyes, his own time sense telling him that there was something definitely wrong, that Glad's nightmare was far more than the simple imaginations of a teenage girl.

She shrugged. "There was a man named Al. When the man took him he was wearing... um... hard to explain. Closest thing I could say to describe them is they were court clothes."

"Like a jester?" the Doctor questioned, getting an odd feeling about the description. He needed Sam in the room to confirm something. "Can you hold onto the nightmare, Glad? I need to do something."

She hesitated but then nodded. A second later, the Doctor went to the door, calling down to ask if someone could retrieve Sam. About five minutes later, Doris came upstairs, helping Sam to his destination.

"I'll bring up tea in a couple of minutes," Doris assured before leaving again.

Thanking Doris for her efforts, the Doctor turned to Sam to explain why he had him fetched. "Glad had a nightmare, claims that she dreamed of a man who was hurting people, specifically two females named Grace and Sarah. She also said this man took someone called Al. The description she gave of his clothing was that he dressed like a court jester."

"A jester? Colorful then?" Sam asked, intrigued by this turn of events.

Glad nodded. "Yeah. They were nice clothes. The shirt looked so soft and it was blue with gold squiggles."

"What did the man do to him?" Sam asked, frowned as he sat on the bed.

"He put him in a smaller cage than Sarah. He couldn't even stand up in it and he couldn't lie down. The evil voice just asked him, 'Doesn't this feel like home?' He was so afraid of being in that cage, more afraid than when the evil man took him."

Sam's eyes showed surprise and anger at the same time. "How could she know that and how could someone do something so horrendous to him? That would be torture to him, pure and simple."

The Doctor turned his eyes towards Sam upon hearing his words. "She's talking about Albert, isn't she," he stated more than asked.

Sam nodded. "He was a POW in Vietnam. They kept him in a tiger cage for years."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," came the heartfelt response. Turning again to Glad, the Gallifreyan squeezed her hands gently. "I need to know exactly what you saw, sweetheart. Tell me everything. Absolutely everything."

She continued to tell him the vision she'd seen. Finally she finished with, "And there was this one woman. Her name was Ace. He tied her up and taunted her that her precious 'professor' wouldn't save her."

The Time Lord abruptly released Glad's hands at the sound of the name, dropping his stature so that he was sitting with his long legs reaching out. "Ace..." he whispered. He swallowed tightly, closing his eyes.

"Who's Ace?" Sam questioned, seeing the pained expression on the Gallifreyan's face.

"One of my friends," the Gallifreyan replied softly. "I was grooming her to be a Time Lord. But, of course, humans can't become Time Lords, I discovered. I also discovered that in my zeal to try to make her better, I pushed her away." He gave a small smile. "She always called me 'Professor', despite how many times I told her not to."

Glad looked at the Doctor, sadly. "See, I don't think this was just a dream."

"No. You're right. It isn't just a dream. It isn't a nightmare either. This is... bad. This is very, very bad."

Sam nodded in agreement. "Yeah." He took a breath. "You think this has anything to do with the people that had Alistair kidnapped?"

"I'm not certain. But there's one way I can find out." He scrambled to his feet and looked upon his ward. "Galadriel. You told me what you know about your dream. I want to be able to actually see it, if I may."

She looked at him, confused. "How?"

"Link my mind to yours. The next time you have it - and you will have it again, I have no doubt - I will dream it with you." The Doctor cupped her chin with his hand. "And I'm so sorry. But it will likely be worse next time."

Her eyes grew wide. "Worse?"

"Well, I hope you don't have any more dreams like that tonight, Glad," Sam told her gently. "Once in a night sounds like more than enough."

"I agree," the Doctor put in. "Once in a night is definitely more than enough." Even as he spoke, Doris returned with a mug of tea for the girl. "Thank you," he said with appreciation, waiting until Glad was resituated on her bed before touching Doris' shoulder. "Would you keep watch over her for a few minutes? I'm going to escort Sam back to the TARDIS." Leaving Glad in capable hands, he gently took Sam's arm and guided him out of the room. "Some of the names she said... they were my friends," he confided as he helped Sam down the stairs. "Jo Grant Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Tegan Jovanka, Ace, Grace Holloway... What do they have in common other than me?" The Doctor looked at the Leaper. "The other names she gave. I'm betting they were your friends."

Sam nodded. "They are. Either that or people I've helped. The man with Down Syndrome, Jimmy, was one of them."

"I had a feeling." He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to allow Sam to gain his strength again. "A glimpse into a possible future... A future where people who are personally important to you and me are taken and tortured in some way or another. What's the connection? What do they have in common other than us? There's got to be a connection. And I'm not seeing it."

"Well, there is Occam's razor. The least complicated answer is we are the connection."

"That's blatantly obvious. Don't bother giving me answers I've already figured out, thank you very much," the Gallifreyan grumbled as they continued again towards the time ship. "But why them? Why those people?"

Sam looked away, ignoring the Doctor's outburst. "Because we care about them." He paused. "How do you know her dream will be worse next time?"

"Because Glad is clairvoyant. Happens all the time with clairvoyants. The dreams get stronger and stronger until they become reality or time shifts so that they never come to pass." He shook his head. "I should have seen it before. It's one of the reasons why I was drawn to her, now that I realize it. I could sense her psychic abilities."

"We've got to stop her dream from coming true."

"Problem is... we don't know the whole picture. Which is why I want to link my mind to hers. A clearer picture of what will happen would do a world of good, especially if we learn who the mysterious evil man and his friend, the disembodied voice, are. Which again brings up the question of why they would be interested in our friends." Before Sam could reiterate his previous observation, the Doctor continued. "I'm not talking about a connection between us and our friends but rather our friends and their tormentors. There's obviously a connection there or they wouldn't have been so specific in their selections. Especially with me."

Sam thought about that one. "I'm not sure. They'd have to know they meant something to us."

"Why not all of my previous companions and friends, then? There are still plenty of them still alive in this century. Barbara, Ian, Liz, Harry... So, why Jo, Sarah Jane, Tegan, Grace and Ace?"

"Maybe Glad just didn't say all the names." The leaper tilted his head. "Or maybe they only knew about the one's she dreamt about."

The Doctor froze just in front of the TARDIS, his head shooting up at Sam's words. "Aw, Samuel! You're brilliant! That's it! Someone knows them and knows that hurting them would hurt me!"

"But who would know about the ones I know? Al and Tom I get. If someone looks at my background, they'd know about them." The two men stepped into the TARDIS before continuing. "But, Jimmy?" A moment later, the blood drained from Sam's face, showing that he had a terrifying revelation.

The Doctor, seeing the sudden change in Sam's visage, took him by the arm again and walked him over to the Captain's chair to sit down. "What is it?" he asked, concern playing his features.

Sam dropped into the chair. In an almost whispered voice, he responded to the question. "Lothos." His forehead creased. "I know why I haven't leapt."

"You think you haven't leapt yet because of this Lothos, because you need to stop Glad's nightmare from becoming a reality," the Doctor supposed. "I still don't entirely believe that you are being sent around time to change history. But neither can we allow whatever Glad sees as the possible future from happening."

A shake of the leaper's head showed that he didn't agree. "That's part of it but not all of it." At the look on the Time Lord's face, he continued, "Don't you see? I've never leapt in this early. This is literally the longest leap I've ever had. We're here to work together. Lothos wouldn't have known anything about you or your companions. You hadn't even heard of him until just a few days ago. There's something else and somehow, you're involved in fixing time on this leap too."

The alien folded his arms. "I agree." He pondered for a moment. "A man and a voice... Well, I don't know any mysterious disembodied voices. Well, none that still exist. And I don't know any enemies alive who would know of my friends, specifically the ones Glad named." He exhaled slowly. "Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice."

"Back to that?" The younger man said, smiling. He grew more serious. "I don't think a vorpal sword will help us this time."

The latter gave him a half-smile. "Again, agreed. I seriously doubt that we are dealing with a renegade Dragon." He took a slow breath. "The only person whom I knew who would have actually known every one of the people Glad mentioned is dead."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. He was a fellow Time Lord. And I'm the last of them."

Sam tossed an idea out. "Could he have hidden himself?"

"Last time I saw him, he fell into the Eye of Harmony. I doubt even he could have survived that. Unless..." He shook his head. "Nah, they wouldn't have. Would they?"

"What? Whom are you talking about?"

"During the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords pulled every resource they could to fight the Daleks. If he survived the Eye of Harmony, it is possible that the Time Lords resurrected him to fight the War. But then again, if he were still alive, I would know. A Time Lord always knows when there is another around."

The leaper considered that. "Would there be any way for him to mask himself?"

"Well, he could make himself human, though I can't see him ever doing that. If there is one species he despises the most, it's humans." He didn't even notice that he had used the present tense in talking about his unnamed rival.

"We can't discount any possibility,"

"If he were human, he probably wouldn't even know himself. A Chameleon Arch would have given him a history to integrate himself into society. Not exactly the kind to go hunting down friends of an old classmate..." His eyes glazed for a moment. "There's another possibility I just realized. A telepathic dampening field. And if that is the case..." He stopped his pacing suddenly. "Sam... we're in trouble. More trouble than you know."

"Tell me."

There was silence for a long moment before the Doctor continued. "He calls himself the Master. As I said, he's a fellow Time Lord. We were classmates a long time ago. We were actually friends at one time. But something happened. He changed. Some say he had been slowly going mad ever since he first looked into the Time Vortex. Whatever happened, he became dangerous, obsessed with becoming the ruler of the universe. Problem is he's brilliant. A genius. Almost surpasses me."

Sam nodded gravely, listening to what the Gallifreyan was telling him. "The Time Vortex. Was that the reason you closed the door when I opened it?" Sam asked, remembering the swirling pattern he'd been fixed on when he'd opened the door to the TARDIS on the first trip away from the Cybermen. He remembered the strange sensation he felt, fixated on the unusual sight before it was cut off from his vision.

"Partly. The human mind, even one as brilliant as yours, cannot cope with the intensity of the vortex. If I hadn't closed those doors, you would have eventually gone insane. The other reason was that the TARDIS' shields could only handle so much. If the door had remained open for very much longer, the TARDIS would have depressurized and sent us both into the vortex. We would have both died instantly."

"Thanks for closing it, then," the leaper said with a half wry grin.

"You're welcome. I much prefer my companions to be both alive and sane," the Doctor teased slightly.

Alistair knocked before walking into the TARDIS, catching the last of the Doctor's words. "Well, from what I've seen, that isn't always a given." The smile on his face gave away that he was ribbing his old friend but not unkindly. Having gotten the Time Lord's attention, he told him, "Doris has gotten Glad to sleep again. It took quite awhile, but she did finally give in to her exhaustion."

The Doctor nodded slightly at his words. "Good. Thank you, Alistair." He gave him a gentle smile. "Hopefully she sleeps through the rest of the night but, just in case, I'm going to stay up. You go on back to bed."

"Doctor..." he started.

Sam spoke up. "Is Doris asleep?"

The Brigadier nodded. "Yes. She went back to bed about five minutes ago."

"We'll have to wait until tomorrow then." The leaper let out a yawn, his body betraying that he still needed to heal. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I know we don't have much time."

"Yes. And I need you to be in full health. Go on to bed. I'll keep you informed."

The Brigadier watched as Sam agreed and headed towards his room, the former calling a 'sleep well' to him. Once the leaper was out of the room, the retired military man looked at his friend of many years. "This dream the girl had. There's something to it I gather from your expression?"

"Two words, Alistair. The Master."

"Haven't heard that name in a couple of decades," Alistair commented, obvious concern on his face. "Mind telling me the details?"

He shook his head slightly. "Tomorrow. Still need to work it out first and I can't do that without more data. You get some sleep."

"Right, then," came the quiet response. "Try to follow your own advice, Doctor. If the world has to face the Master again, we need you not to be sleep deprived."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at his words. "Any chance you are going to get any sleep after my little pronouncement?"

The military man gave his friend an intense look. "Not bloody likely."