Chapter Three
"Doctor, what's going on? Doctor, are you sure it's a good idea to bring him into the TARDIS?"
The Doctor was carrying the boy, still sleeping, through the console room and into the maze of rooms that occupied the rest of the ship. He hadn't said a word to Donna since declaring that the boy should be dead. Something was clearly enormously wrong here, but the Doctor was refusing to let Donna in. She could see tears in his eyes as he held the boy protectively, but he wasn't giving answers. He just carried the boy into one of the many bedrooms and laid him down in a bed long unused.
"Who is he?" Donna demanded.
"He travelled with me for a while. I thought I saw him killed." He crouched at the bedside and tucked the covers around the boy as a father might an ill son. "I thought he'd died because of me." He blinked back tears as he looked at the young face. "Watch over him," he said, "I've got to find out what the Master did to him."
Then he stood and headed out the door, no doubt moving back out into the lab.
Donna found a sit and looked round the room she was in. The Doctor had had many companions over the years and many of them went quickly when they left. The bedrooms of the TARDIS were therefore cluttered with bits of miscellanea that had been acquired during a stay and then left at the moment of departure.
Donna wondered if this had been the boy's room when he'd been here. Maybe he'd just brought him here because this one was convenient. Donna stood again and peered at the objects around. There were various books on a range of subjects and what looked like a box of chemistry equipment. Donna found a sketchbook with a few drawings of landscapes. Clearly the artist hadn't been one for drawing people. Donna flipped through, looking at alien worlds recorded in pencil. Then she put the book down and looked round for anything that would give her more of a clue about this boy.
She wanted to go after the Doctor and ask for more information, but the pain on his face had been almost frightening. No one should be able to hurt that much. Besides, someone had to watch over the kid. He hadn't looked entirely sane.
The boy stirred, then woke. His expression upon realising his surroundings was one of abject terror.
"It's alright," Donna said, "you're safe."
"No, no, no," the boy muttered, repeating the denial over and over. "No, no."
"You're in the TARDIS. You'll be OK now."
But the boy kept muttering, "No." He scrambled from the bed, standing on the opposite side from Donna. He was shaking all over, staring around like a cornered animal.
"No one's going to hurt you," Donna said. She tried to approach the boy, but he backed away, nearly stumbling over a box. So Donna stopped moving, hoping her stillness might do something to calm the kid.
"You're safe," Donna repeated.
"No," the boy shook his head. He was crying. "I'm not safe. I'm going to destroy the Doctor."
--
The Master had left him another message. Doctor found it almost immediately when he started looking for records of the work that had been done here. The screen lit up and the Master's former face sneered down at him.
"By now, you must have found my gift," the Master said. "You always did have such a fondness for these pathetic creatures, though in Adric's case I can almost understand why. Such a brilliant mind for one so young. It's almost a pity to break him." But the Master's face showed no sign of pity. Despite all that had happened between them, the Doctor had never hated him more than he did now.
"How is he still alive?" the Doctor demanded. But the face on the screen was just an echo of a man now dead. It couldn't answer him.
The Doctor had seen Adric die. He'd watched the freighter explode and known that there had been no way for Adric to get off and no possible chance of anyone surviving. He'd known with utter certainty that he'd brought about the boy's death. Yet here he was, alive.
"This trap has been set up to activate the moment I die and I have no way of knowing how long a time that is. Perhaps it's a few years. Perhaps centuries. Perhaps longer."
It had been more than half a lifetime ago that the Doctor had lost Adric, and for a Time Lord, that was a very long time. It was half a dozen human lifetimes, yet the boy looked no older than when the Doctor had shaken his hand and accepted the badge that had destroyed the Cyberleader.
The badge!
The boy here had still been wearing the badge. The Doctor knew that was gone; he'd crushed it beneath his own fingers. Whoever the boy on the TARDIS was, he wasn't the same person the Doctor had left a prisoner of the Cybermen aboard the freighter.
"See what I have done to your precious companion, Doctor. See how I destroyed the boy you knew."
The Master's face faded from the screen, replaced by diagrams and images. The Doctor wanted to turn away in disgust, but instead he watched as the Master showed him the torture he had put Adric through for so long. He felt almost physically sick at the thought of it. And the boy had known through it all that there was no hope of rescue. He'd known that the Doctor believed him dead.
Tears filled his eyes as he silently begged Adric's forgiveness.