Right in front of them, there was a man sitting in the office's only chair. He appeared to be middle-aged, with narrow eyes and high cheek bones defining the features of his face. A top hat sat on his head and a heavy black coat lined with fur cloaked most of his figure. Both of his gloved hands were resting on a walking cane before him; perfectly calm, despite the chaos surrounding him. Though the combination of his clothes was not necessarily hinting at any century in particular, the top hat caused Sarah to wonder whether he might have bought it in the 19th century.
While Harry and Benton pushed themselves past her and the Doctor into the safety of the office, the stranger eyed the four intruders with a haughty glare, but offered no greetings of any kind.
"Who are you?", Sarah spat out, since no one else dared to say something. Though she was not exactly sure why, the man's appearance reminded her of the fleeting glimpse she had caught of the culprit who attacked the Doctor so many weeks ago. Could it be that he, the warehouse owner, and the one behind all of this chaos, were all the same person?
"Does it really matter who I am?", responded the man and finally rose to his feet before them.
She noticed that the communication controls were sitting right behind him, on top of a cabinet, not too far away from them. They had to get there soon, because Harry and Benton would not be able to hold the reflections off for long. Their enemies were still on their way up the stairs, and the medical officer was prepared to paralyse them again using the screwdriver's unpleasant sound, but if only one of the reflections would make it past the UNIT members, they would be trapped. The office was a dead end.
Worried that the man would try to stall for time, Sarah attempted to take a quick step forwards, but the Doctor held out an arm to stop her from acting too rashly. With a brief, stern glance he signalled her that the real danger might, in fact, be standing in front of them.
"You have won again, haven't you? And it's all because of that meddling, impossible girl who saved your Royal Navy friend...", the stranger continued to ramble.
Harry turned his head at the mentioning of his former employer. "...Are you talking of Clara?", he wondered for but a moment, before Sarah pointed him back towards the reflections.
"Keep watch!", she reminded him, afraid to lose their rearguard because of Harry being so easily distractable.
However, the stranger paid no mind to the medical officer and continued by addressing the Doctor directly. "He warned me of your companions, you know? Your old friend, the Master."
"Are you in league with him?", the Doctor demanded to know instantly.
The man's face remained without a smirk, or any other trace of emotion. He appeared to be almost inhumanly indifferent about everything. Even his eyes barely moved around the room, as though he was hardly aware of the humans' presence. "Not as much as you might think, Doctor. The scheme was his. I merely helped with the realization. He is in a desperate state, as you know, and should not be wasting his precious time playing games with you and the humans."
The words of the stranger just confirmed the suspicion Sarah has had about the Master's whereabouts already: He had wanted to condemn the Doctor – and the population of Earth, too, perhaps – but instead of coming back to finish the job, he had left instantly to find a solution to his own miserable state. To their misfortune, however, this mysterious man before them had involved himself in the events…
"The Cobalttonis' invasion machine, which he brought to this planet, might be a powerful weapon in itself, but it needs some guidance to function properly.", he finished his brief explanation.
Sarah noticed the Doctor narrowing his eyes in suspicion. "And why would you provide this guidance? Just who are you, and why do you hold a grudge against us?"
"You, Doctor, have defeated me in the past.", answered the stranger, but hesitated for a moment in an odd way, as though he had to figure out why the Doctor failed to recognize him. "Of course, I inhabited a different body back then."
As Sarah became aware that this person before her was possessed by a malicious alien intelligence, the danger which the Doctor had pointed out to her earlier seemed very real all of a sudden.
"I am willing to admit that I did not expect to encounter so many of your friends. In fact, your companions always appear to be my downfall.", the strange alien concluded from his own history.
"Well, maybe you should try to confront me on a different planet next time!", the Doctor said with delight, opening his arms as if to present the humans which surrounded him. "Everyone on this world is a friend of mine, and in return for their hospitality, I protect them from dangers such as yourself, and the Master, and any other kind of megalomaniac out there." Since the stranger did not reply, the Time Lord lowered his gaze and glared at him in an unexpected, suddenly threatening way. The smile on his face seemed a little mad, if not dangerous now. "Which is why I highly suggest for you to step aside."
Despite the, perhaps, empty threat, the other man showed no sign of resistance. "I will, Doctor. My time here has already passed, anyway.", he mysteriously explained. "Until we meet again."
Sarah gasped, slightly shocked, as the man's figure suddenly burned away like paper. If she didn't know better, she could have sworn he had been hollow on the inside! With a sizzling noise, the entirety of his body vanished before them, leaving only a small business card which Sarah spotted floating to the floor. She managed to catch a glimpse of the initials "G.I.", before even the card was consumed by the strange, otherworldly fire. In the end, not even a trail of ashes was left to attest that the man had ever existed.
Unlike his female assistant, the Doctor was hardly impressed by the vanishing act. "Hm! I don't think he really belonged here. Perhaps he attempted to change history, and failed.", he thought out loud.
Sarah scratched her head, feeling rather unsatisfied to be left without proper answers, not to mention still perplexed at the stranger's way of leaving a conversation. "This leaves so many questions...", she wondered quietly.
"So many questions the future is bound to answer.", the Doctor assured her with a quick smile, before he finally strode past the office table and the empty chair, towards the communication system. Sarah got a foreboding feeling when she saw him turn a knob on the device to full volume. "Now, Harry, I'm going to need my sonic screwdriver back!"
The reflections had advanced quite far on the staircase already, and so the medical officer looked far from happy to be left without a proper means of defence. He opened his mouth, maybe he thought of voicing his worries for a moment, but then decided to trust the Doctor's knowledge and skill. "Here, Doctor!", he called to the Time Lord and stretched out the hand which was holding the tool.
Sarah quickly stepped in to pass the screwdriver from one hand to the other, in order to keep the medical officer from having to throw the object across the room. Without another moment's hesitation, Harry and Benton then attempted to put the unhinged door back into position to make sure that there was at least something between them and the violent reflections.
"Cover your ears, everyone!", the former professor instructed them as he placed his near magical tool right above the office's microphone. Next, he pressed a button on the communication device to start the transmission to the loudspeakers in the hall.
By the time the whirring noise rang out once more, Sarah held her hands already firmly pressed onto her ears. Even so, the noise was numbing her senses, and resonating in her stomach and lungs in an unpleasant way. Internally, she counted each second that passed, hoping for the tool to have achieved its effect soon. In contrast to herself and the UNIT officers, the Doctor appeared to be barely affected by the noise. He grimaced a little bit, but kept going steadily.
It was 28 seconds, before there was a reaction to the Doctor's plan. But what kind of reaction it was! A crashing and splintering echoed throughout the warehouse, louder than anything Sarah had ever heard, as all of the mirrors shattered into a thousand fragments at the same time. She could not help but duck instinctively, and just about noticed how Harry dove for safety as well. The defensive reflex came just at the right time, because a shower of tiny glass shards grazed her right arm and shoulder. The office's windows, too, had given in to the sonic vibrations.
And then, everything was over as quickly as it had happened. When the young woman opened the eyes she had held shut tightly, she discovered Harry kneeling on the floor next to her. He offered a hand while he, himself, was rising back to his feet and a sigh of relief escaped her as she carefully beat the dust off of her clothes. The shards had been too light to leave scratches on her hands and sleeves.
Meanwhile, the Doctor walked up to them, neither shaken by the loud noise nor touched by any stray piece of glass. He looked out at the hall outside of the office to see the extent of the damage he had caused, and his companions joined him once they had recovered from their light shock.
The warehouse below was a mess. As though a big box full of glitter had exploded right in the middle of it, the shimmering shards of mirror fragments were covering the warehouse floor and reflecting the light of the brightly lit ceiling lamps into every direction. Thankfully, the UNIT soldiers and former victims had escaped the range of the flying shards before anyone had gotten a fragment stuck in their eye.
And, amidst the mess sat, as usual, the blue police box, completely unharmed.
"That's a lot of bad luck for you, Doctor…!", mumbled Sarah as she stared out over the dozens of empty metal and wood frames. Each of them a seven years of misfortune, or so went the saying...
But the Time Lord turned to her with a proud smile on his face. "At least now I'll live long enough to see the curse wear off!"