Notes: the reference to the alternate universe that Jamie saw as a result of the Great Intelligence's interference (along with his meeting one of Clara's echoes) occurs in the last three chapters of "Those Who Help Us Most to Grow," my Jamie drabble series.
Salamander's reaction to falling out of the tree was one of pure rage. He threw a furious glance at the upper branches.
"Estupido-!" he began, but froze as he remembered why he had been cast outside in the first place.
Sure enough, the Doctor—along with the others—were quickly exiting the UNIT vehicle and heading towards him. Salamander considered running, but even he knew it was useless; the Scotsman could both outspeed and outdistance him.
They had him surrounded in moments; he recognized them all and was slightly surprised to see Victoria back with them again. Nevertheless, as Zoe forced Salamander's arm behind his back, causing him to double over from the sharp pain, and as Jamie held his knife out at him, Salamander soon found himself preoccupied with other concerns.
"So…" the Doctor said. "We meet again. Considering that this torrent is the exact opposite of the drought that occurred on Neo Serenity the last time we met, I should have realized that it was you sooner!"
"Si, and it seems you have the advantage over me. What do you intend to do now, huh?" Salamander inquired.
"That will be entirely dependent on how helpful you decide to be," the Doctor said, calmly. He cast a glance at the giant tree, suppressing a frown as he turned back to Salamander. "Though I think it fair to warn you that I shall probably far more forgiving than my companions here, who remember you quite well."
To prove his point, Zoe tightened the pressure on his arm as Jamie stepped closer with the knife; even Victoria cracked her knuckles.
"So… you are here for revenge," Salamander concluded.
"Not quite," the Doctor said. "But we do demand some answers as to what is going here!"
"Where is there to explain?" Salamander returned. "I ended up here with the vortex manipulator, I recreated my weather machine, and I decided to use it in order to get some money from UNIT."
"You also requested that they send me," the Doctor reminded him. "And here I am. But I don't think it ended up quite the way you expected."
"And how would you know what I expected?" Salamander queried.
The Doctor frowned.
"Don't play games with me," he said, in a warning tone. "You've learned much since our last encounter. You know what I really am."
"Si," Salamander hissed. "Time Lord. I have learned much about you. It explains how you came across this Jacobite rebel." He threw a glance at Jamie, who glared right back at him. Salamander then turned back to face the Doctor. "I also know that you are supposed to be dead—revived with a different face!"
"Oh, believe me, Salamander, that white-haired string bean would have ended this already with a brief round of Venusian aikido," the Doctor said. "I can do the same, except that won't answer our questions."
"Aye, and it won' stop this rain!" Jamie said.
It hadn't taken sixty seconds for them to be soaked already, and the wind was making things very uncomfortable indeed.
"You're our prisoner now," Victoria said. "So you might as well put a stop to this storm!"
"Believe me, Señorita Waterfield, there is nothing I would like more," Salamander said. "However, I have found that the storm is now unable to be controlled. It no longer receives remote instructions from my iPad."
"Well then, shut the machine off manually!" Zoe exclaimed. "Even a child would have suggested that!"
"Si, and I would have done that—had the machine not been hundreds of miles away, just outside of Inverness!" Salamander retorted.
Jamie's eyes suddenly sparked in anger, suddenly forgetting that they needed Salamander in one piece to turn off the rain.
"Inverness!?" he exclaimed, now touching the blade of his knife to Salamander's throat. "Ye left that accursed machine in my homeland!?"
"It was determined to be the best location to leave it, near the old Bronze Age remains," Salamander said, hastily. "We… I wanted it away from prying eyes."
"And who was the other person to determine this?" the Doctor inquired.
"They are of no consequence," Salamander insisted.
"Aye, there'll be consequences—for ye and for this other fellow for sullying the ground of Scotland with yer machine!" Jamie snarled.
"Jamie—" the Doctor began.
"Och, don' pretend ye wouldnae be upset if Salamander put up that contraption on Gallifrey!" Jamie exclaimed.
"As if I would even go there," Salamander muttered. "I have seen enough of you to last a lifetime."
"And yet, you insisted I come here," the Doctor reminded him. "Something tells me that you're not the one in charge of things this time around. Your contact seems to be giving all of the orders—as well as giving you information about me."
Salamander scowled, glaring at the Doctor.
"Who is your contact?" the Doctor asked again.
The scientist remained quiet, continuing to glare daggers at the alien being who resembled him.
"I'll bet it was the Daleks," Jamie said, with a knowing look to the Doctor. "They know all aboot ye, and who ye are."
"Oh, no; them again?" Victoria asked, suppressing a shudder.
"No, no; don't you worry," the Doctor assured her. "The Daleks put no value on human life; they'd have done away with Salamander the moment they'd laid their eyestalks on him. It couldn't have been them."
"And it couldn't have been the Cybermen, either," Zoe concluded. "They'd have converted him immediately."
"Will you all shut up?" Salamander hissed. "You are trying to get me to talk by driving me mad, huh? It is working! I do not know my contact's true name; I only know him as Señor Maestro."
The Doctor arched an eyebrow as the companions exchanged baffled glances.
"…An orchestra leader?" Victoria asked.
"Maybe it's metaphorical," Jamie said. "Aye, he's controlling the weather like those people control the orchestra."
"That doesn't make any sense," Zoe said. "Then again, neither does the weather machine suddenly going out of control, so what do I know…?"
"Oh, no," Victoria said, suddenly realizing something. "What if it's some poor orchestra leader who's been taken over by the Great Intelligence?"
Jamie paled.
"What!?" he exclaimed.
"Well, think about it!" Victoria said. "It can take over anyone, and it knows all about the Doctor and it hates him so much…"
"Aye, but… the Intelligence should be stopped by now! I know it did make copies of itself, but I met this lassie named Clara, and she said that she'd made copies of herself to stop the copies of the Intelligence, but… Och, what if she missed one? What if the Intelligence is trying t' take over the Doctor's mind again?"
"Well, we can't let it—whatever it is!" Zoe insisted.
A flash of memory from another timeline crossed Jamie's consciousness—a memory of a Doctor corrupted by the Intelligence. Jamie had been struggling to keep the images from that alternate world banished from his mind—a world that he had ended up creating out of desperation to stop the Intelligence, only to find out that doing so had made things worse.
Jamie cast a horrified look towards the Doctor, who gave him a nod, as though to reassure him that the alternate reality he had seen would not come to pass in this one.
"Perhaps we'd better hear this story from the beginning," the Doctor said, turning back to Salamander.
"I will say nothing else!" Salamander insisted; for a moment, his gaze flickered to the giant tree behind them, a look of fright on his face.
"Aye, ye will!" Jamie insisted, holding the knife back up to Salamander's throat. "Ye're our prisoner now; ye'll do what we tell ye!"
"I think we've had quite enough of this!" the Brigadier's voice roared over the rain. He, Benton, Yates, and several other men were approaching him. "Doctor, I believe we've given you enough time!"
"Well, I could use a little more!" the Doctor countered.
"We can, at least, get out of this downpour!" the Brigadier called. "Bring him back to one of our vehicles; you can continue questioning him for another fifteen minutes, and then we'll take over!"
"That's almost nothing!" the Doctor protested, as Zoe and Jamie forced Salamander towards the UNIT vehicles. "I need an hour, at the least!"
"A half-hour!" the Brigadier conceded.
"Forty-five minutes!"
"Oh, very well!" the Brigadier said, with an exasperated wave of his hand. "I'll have the men search for his partner in the meantime!"
"Buena suerte…" Salamander muttered.
"Just what does that mean?" Jamie asked, hearing him.
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Look, you can make this easier on yourself by cooperating with us," Victoria said, as Jamie and Zoe continued to lead him back. "We may not be as nasty as your man Benik was, but I'm sure the Brigadier might give you a lighter sentence if tell us everything!"
"A lighter sentence…" Salamander scoffed, as they got into one of the larger UNIT vans that the Brigadier had requisitioned. "What is the difference, huh? This Brigadier of yours will give me eighty years of imprisonment instead of a life sentence? At my age, it makes no difference."
"Never mind about the Brigadier," the Doctor said, as he caught up to them. "He can sentence you to a lifetime in a prison. I can sentence you to a lifetime in the time vortex. And with no vortex manipulator to save you now, there's no telling where the vortex will spit you out—if it does at all."
Salamander did look horrified at the thought.
"After the incident on Neo Serenity, I used the vortex manipulator to escape the vortex," he said. "I first attempted to return to 2018, to see if there was anything left for me to salvage. There was nothing."
"It's your own fault," Victoria chided him. "You were doing so much good for everyone, and then you had to get greedy!"
"Spare me the morality speech, huh? I left 2018 soon after that and wandered around aimlessly for a while. Eventually, I arrived here. It was my original intent to find and eliminate the parents of Giles Kent—if he was already born, then Giles Kent himself."
"Oh, you fool," the Doctor muttered. "That would have caused a dangerous paradox—it could have torn at the fabric of space and time itself!"
"Exactly what Señor Maestro told me," Salamander said. "He found me before I could do anything with my plan and advised me against it. He spoke like you—and I even accused him of being hand in glove with you. The moment I mentioned you, though, he took an interest in me."
"And that was when the idea of using your weather machine to pester UNIT and draw me out came about?" the Doctor asked.
"Si. Maestro told me you had changed—that you were sentenced to exile, which was only recently lifted."
Jamie swore.
"Doctor, it's nae fair!" he exclaimed. "Here ye are, doing whatever it is they tell ye t' do for the Celestial Intervention Agency, and they're just going t' use ye until ye're of no use t' them and then they'll make ye change and exile ye anyway!"
"That may be, but it was certainly worth it to see you three again; I have no regrets," the Doctor insisted. "Now, then, Salamander—just who is Maestro?"
"I don't know," Salamander insisted. "He tells me nothing about himself, though he goes on and on about you. And there is nothing more I can tell you about him or anything; we set the machine up in the Highlands and came here to draw you out."
"Where is he?" the Doctor asked. He was met with silence, prompting him to realize something. "This Maestro… you're afraid of him, aren't you?"
Salamander scowled.
"He reminds me too much of you," he muttered. "By my choice, I would not trust him or work with him, but I was desperate for revenge against you."
"Evidently, so was he," Zoe said. "But if we got the two of you together, you would be able to stop the machine, wouldn't you?"
"We would have to figure out the proper coding sequence to regain control, but, si, we could. I could, perhaps, figure it out on my own, but it would take weeks."
"We don't have weeks," the Doctor said. "I'm not even sure that we have more than a few days at the rate that the storm is spreading."
"Then what can we do?" Jamie asked.
"The only thing we can do," the Doctor said. "We must find Maestro and work together to stop this storm."