Jamie stared at the transmitter in wide-eyed shock for a moment before looking out of the window of the UNIT vehicle. He could clearly see Captain Yates climbing the Master's TARDIS's tree form, followed by Benton, ready to take over the watch again.
"Who is this really?" Jamie asked. "Ye're sounding uncannily like the captain, but ye cannae be—I can see him here with my own eyes!"
"McCrimmon… assure you… it's me!" the captain's voice crackled over the transmitter, fading in and out. "In Scotland… Three days… in the future!"
"How!?" Jamie asked.
"Doctor's… machine!"
"Eh? The Doctor's TARDIS is at UNIT Headquarters!"
"Call… Brigadier!" the other Yates pleaded. "Needs to bring… Doctor's TARDIS… to the tree!"
"How do I know this is nae a trap!?" Jamie countered. "It could be a ploy of the Master's to steal the Doctor's TARDIS!"
"McCrimmon… please…! …All is lost… otherwise! Not enough time… to stop the machine! Need more time to…"
Static filled the communications line. Even though had hadn't been convinced of the speaker's identity, Jamie still tried to contact him again. There was no reply this time; as Jamie looked up in vexation, he noticed that, amidst the rain outside, there was also sleet and snow falling from the sky, ruining any chances of getting back in touch with someone as far as Scotland.
"What now…?" the piper wondered, realizing that he would have to determine whether or not to take the (apparent) captain's plea to heart and call the Brigadier. With the weather getting worse by the minute, the window of getting in touch with the Brigadier might be closing. There wouldn't be time to ask for the Doctor's thoughts on the matter—or Yates, who was already up the tree. Jamie would have to make the decision himself—and quickly.
He shut his eyes, recalling a conversation he'd had with the Doctor shortly after he had started traveling with him—one of many, many conversations that they would have by the hearth in the Doctor's study…
"Doctor, how do ye know that ye're choosing the right side?" Jamie had asked. "Whenever we have t' deal with two sides fighting, and each of them are telling ye different things, who do ye know who t' believe?"
"There's no easy way to answer that," the Doctor had admitted. "But you learn to trust your intuition. After all, it was your intuition that told you to spare my life at Culloden, despite the fact that you had no way of knowing which side I was really on. Just use that same intuition in a confusing situation, and things will turn out alright."
Jamie snapped back to reality, exhaling as he picked up the transmitter again.
"UNIT Vehicle 59 to UNIT Headquarters," he said. "This is James Robert McCrimmon, civilian. I need t' speak t' Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart right away."
He repeated this a few times until the familiar voice of the Brigadier responded. The connection was poor, though not as bad as the connection with Yates had been. Still, Jamie knew he had to get the message through as soon as possible.
"McCrimmon? What's the latest?" the Brigadier was asking.
"I don' think there's been any progress on stopping the machine," he admitted. "But I think I've figured oot what was going on with Captain Yates's orders the night before last."
"Yes?"
"I cannae explain right now; I'll tell ye later," Jamie said. "Right now, I need ye to have the Doctor's TARDIS sent here, as soon as ye can."
"If he needs it that badly, I'll bring it there myself," the Brigadier vowed. "I should warn you, though, that it'll take me some time to travel in this weather—it's an hour's drive without this blasted weather added to the equation!"
"Aye, I know; we have one more day left, so ye can take a wee bit of time t' get here if ye need it. Be careful."
The Brigadier responded in the affirmative and the communication ended. Jamie sat there for a moment, praying that he had made the right decision. He then steeled himself as he stepped out of the UNIT vehicle, cursing as the cold precipitation mix struck him. He ran at top speed back to the Master's TARDIS, climbing up the trunk and entering through the doors, relieved at the warmth.
"Oh, Jamie!" the Doctor exclaimed.
The Doctor's arms were around him in an instant.
"Oh, you're so cold…" the Time Lord fussed, wrapping the piper in a blanket. "And you didn't come back here last night like I thought you were going to. I told you to stay out of that weather!"
"I was oot of it; I was in a UNIT vehicle all night, trying to contact the other vehicles," Jamie assured him. "I only was in the cold just now. It's snowing and icing along with the rain now."
"Si, we are aware of that," Salamander said. "The machine is going further out of control. And there is nothing we can do about it!" With a frustrated snarl, Salamander knocked a stack of calculations to the ground.
The Master was standing, quietly, but seemed to have admitted defeat, while Zoe looked crushed at having failed.
"Ye've given up?" Jamie asked.
"There's nothing we can do, Jamie," the Doctor said, unable to hide the despair in his eyes—a truly frightening look, and one that Jamie had never seen on the Doctor's face before. "We thought we had finally perfected the coding sequence that would have overridden the machine and shut it down. But when we tried to send the sequence to the machine… it never reached. The weather was interfering with the communications; it seems that the only way for it to work would be if we manually programmed the machine. But it's in Inverness, and we just couldn't reach it in time in this weather."
Salamander cursed again, staring from the Doctor to the Master.
"We have found the answer, but it is useless!" he said, glaring at the both of them. "You call yourselves 'Time Lords,' and yet we do not have enough time! You are not worthy of the title!"
"I already explained it to you," the Doctor said. "A single TARDIS doesn't have enough power to travel when the time vortex is in such a state!"
"It is true," the Master sighed, running a hand over his console. "I would not be able to move this one more than a few hours backwards in time."
"A single TARDIS…" Jamie repeated.
Something in his mind clicked. The weather machine was in Inverness—and the communications from the person claiming to be Captain Yates had been calling from somewhere in Scotland.
"Let me get one thing clear," Jamie said. "Ye have the final sequence ye need?"
"That's right," Zoe said. "All four of us have gone over this and have concluded that it is the proper sequence. But, as the Doctor said, we don't have the time to get to the machine. It would be a ten-hour drive normally, and in this weather, even longer."
"I spent the last couple of hours trying to assess whether or not we could get a helicopter or a small aeroplane in the air," Captain Yates added. He shook his head. "The weather won't allow for that, either. We can't communicate with anyone in Inverness—all communications are a mess, and the phone lines are down."
"And one TARDIS cannae travel there," Jamie said, remembering the plea that the other Yates had given him. "Aye, but, what aboot two TARDISes? Could ye combine the power of both of yer TARDISes and send us there?"
The Doctor gave Jamie a long look before exchanging a glance with the Master.
"If we drained all the reserve power from our TARDISes, do you think…?" the Doctor began.
The Master frowned.
"It wouldn't be enough to send us to where we need to be, and it will only work once," he said. "But it might buy us the time we need to get to Inverness."
"Then we do have one last chance!?" Victoria exclaimed.
"It would seem so," the Master admitted. "Very well, Mr. McCrimmon; I must conceded that you are not completely useless after all."
"Of course he isn't useless; he is brilliant!" the Doctor exclaimed, clinging to Jamie and practically dancing around the console room with him. "Oh, Jamie, I do wish you hadn't been out all night; you could have given us this brilliant idea sooner!"
"It's partly because I was oot all night that I thought of it," Jamie admitted.
"Is that so? You can tell me all about it later," the Doctor said. "Now, we just need to get my TARDIS…" He trailed off, his face falling. "Oh, dear—she's in London! And we shall need time to connect our TARDISes to get this to work…"
"She's on her way here," Jamie said, with a smile. "I spoke to the Brigadier just before I returned here."
"Oh. Oh, well done, Jamie!"
"I cannae take all the credit," the piper admitted. "Captain Yates told me that we needed yer TARDIS."
"What!?" the captain asked. "That is impossible! Benton, did I ever say anything about the Doctor's TARDIS?"
Benton shook his head, baffled.
"It was the other ye," Jamie said. "The three vehicles that left the night before last really were responding to yer orders—orders that ye gave them from Scotland, because ye're obviously coming with us when we connect the TARDISes. I heard ye this morning over the communications line, saying that we needed the Doctor's TARDIS. I had t' decide whether or not to believe it, but I did and told the Brigadier—and now I realize why ye were saying that we needed her."
"All the same, Jamie, you were the one who put everything together coherently," the Doctor said. "And you may very well have saved us all!"
"Don't celebrate too soon," the Master warned. "Once your TARDIS gets here, we shall have to coordinate everything just so. And even then, there is the matter of getting to Inverness in whatever time our little ploy gives us." He turned to Salamander. "We shall also require your vortex manipulator for extra power."
"Why!?" Salamander barked.
"Oh, I see why," the Doctor said. "We shall need to take a UNIT vehicle with us to travel the rest of the way—and we shall need to wire it to your vortex manipulator, and wire that to our TARDISes."
Salamander clutched at the device around his wrist; even though it was useful now, he had been banking on using it to make a quick escape once things had been corrected with the vortex. More than that, he felt very vulnerable without it, afraid of being stranded in the vortex without it, just as he had been before. It had been because of the manipulator that he had managed to escape the vortex the second time he had been sent there, after the fiasco at Neo Serenity.
"We are all doomed to die unless you hand that over," the Doctor pointed out. "Whether or not you can escape the vortex won't matter much, then, will it?"
Salamander didn't reply, but he seemed to silently concede.
"I must begin preparations," the Master said. He rolled his eyes as Yates and Benton took a step forward. "As I said, I cannot guarantee your safety if you choose to venture beyond this console room."
"I will keep an eye on him," the Doctor assured everyone. "Zoe, you've been working nonstop; I think you could use a rest before the Brigadier arrives. You too, Jamie—I don't think you got any sleep last night, did you?"
"No, but I want t' stay with ye," Jamie said, quickly, as Zoe immediately ran for a blanket and curled up against the wall.
"Very well, then," the Doctor said, with a smile.
The Master didn't look too thrilled with this, but seemed to decide that having Jamie around would be useful for the physical work they would have to do. He headed off down the corridor, with the Doctor and Jamie behind him.
Jamie ended up carrying a lot of heavy cables around the Master's TARDIS as the Master and the Doctor arranged the specific things and set the controls in ways that the piper wouldn't have been able to understand.
A commotion outside drew everyone's attention, brought about by a UNIT vehicle arriving—with the Doctor's TARDIS secured to its roof. The Brigadier was soon out of the vehicle, ordering the nearby UNIT personnel to bring the TARDIS down.
"Everything is finished here," the Master said. "You must prepare your TARDIS and whichever vehicle you've decided to take with us."
"Yes…" the Doctor sighed, casting a nervous glance at the cold precipitation outside.
"I'll keep ye warm, Doctor," Jamie said, clinging to him. He couldn't resist giving a triumphant smirk at the Master, who, like the Doctor, would be just as affected by the cold.
"Yes, thank you, Jamie. …I'd hate to wake Zoe up, but I think we shall be needing her for this."
"I'll wake her," Victoria offered. "You go on ahead."
"One moment," the Master said, pressing a button on the console. He then opened the doors, revealing that they were now on the same level as the ground. I've disabled the chameleon circuit; that will help with connecting the cables."
"Oh, very good," the Doctor said, and he then turned to Salamander. "And now…"
The former dictator scowled, but he handed over the vortex manipulator, and the Doctor and Jamie now returned to their TARDIS, and were followed by the Brigadier.
"McCrimmon said that you needed your machine."
"Yes, very much so," the Doctor said, shaking off the sluggishness brought about his quick foray into the cold. "We have the proper coding sequence needed to stop the machine, but it won't response to remote instruction. We need to get to Inverness, but there isn't enough time, and our TARDISes can't go that far. We're hoping to combine them to get us as far as we can, as well as far back as we can go, and then drive the rest of the way."
"And we need t' attach this to a UNIT vehicle," Jamie added, holding up the vortex manipulator.
"I see…" the Brigadier said. "Well, if you tell me what to do—"
"Doctor?" Zoe asked, arriving now. "Victoria said you needed my help."
"Oh, yes," the Doctor said. "I need you and the Brigadier to wire this to the engine of one of the UNIT vehicles. The Master will then give you a cable to attach to it, and Jamie and I will give you one from our TARDIS."
"Right," Zoe said, and she and the Brigadier left.
"I guess I need t' move some cables around here, too?" Jamie asked.
"We both shall," the Doctor assured him. He sighed. "Oh, it's noon already? We shall have to move quickly."
Despite moving quickly, it was a process that ended up taking much more time than they had wanted it to, in part due to the fact that the Doctor's TARDIS was an older model and needed far more work and manipulation than the Master's TARDIS had required. The humans ate as they worked, nervously checking watches and timepieces as they assembled a similar network of cables in the Doctor's TARDIS. Once they had finished organizing the cables they needed, Jamie took out the needed cables from the Doctor's TARDIS to meet the ones that Victoria was carrying from the Master's TARDIS.
"What are ye doing?" Jamie asked.
"Well, the Master can't be wandering around in this cold anymore than the Doctor can," she pointed out. "I offered to help, just like you."
Jamie wanted to say something, but bit his tongue; this wasn't the time. They both got to work, connecting the cables as Zoe ran back and forth, taking a cable from each of them and taking them back to the UNIT vehicle that the Brigadier had been using.
"Ye should go back inside," Jamie said to Victoria. "Ye'll catch yer death of cold oot here."
"I'm not a delicate flower, Jamie," she countered. "Contrary to what you think, I can take care of myself. And yes, that includes trusting the Master."
"I di'n say anything," Jamie stated. "I just don' want ye to get hurt."
"And I appreciate that," she said. She gave him a smile as they continued to work. "The Doctor was missing you last night. He seemed to keep waiting for you to come back."
"I'm nae surprised," Jamie said, smiling back.
"Neither am I," she said. "You two always were so close. I'm so glad to see that after all this time, that hasn't changed."
"Ye've changed a lot," Jamie said, before he could stop himself.
"Well, I started living in the 1960s, didn't I? If you'd settled down in a different time period, you might have changed to adapt to your new surroundings."
"…No," Jamie said, after thinking for a moment. "I've settled down in the TARDIS, and I havenae changed."
"…Says the Highlander who owns a pocket phone."
Jamie smirked in reply.
"Aye, so I've only changed a wee bit."
"That's true, I suppose," she admitted. "There; I think that's done it—"
"Brigadier!" Yates's voice suddenly exclaimed from within the Master's TARDIS. "The Master! He—"
"What is it!?" the Brigadier asked. "Has he tried anything!?"
"No, Sir—he seems ill!"
"No, no…" the Doctor said, now hobbling out of his TARDIS. "He's… he's not ill. He's the same as me. We need to divert all power for this to work, and that means the climate control has to be turn off. But we don't do well in the cold, you see…"
"Doctor!" Jamie chided, quickly wrapping the Time Lord in his arms. "Get back inside! Ye cannae risk falling into torpor now!"
"Just one moment, Jamie. Victoria?"
"Yes?"
"I need you to find some good, strong ropes and have everyone in the Master's TARDIS securely tie themselves to the central console. Brigadier, I need you to bring Zoe to my TARDIS so that we can do the same."
"Tie ourselves to the console?" the Brigadier queried. "You usually don't insist on such a thing."
"Yes, but in order to keep our TARDISes connected, we need to take off with the doors open—and Jamie and Victoria here can tell you all about what happens when you do that. So can Salamander, for that matter…"
Jamie now pulled the Doctor inside the TARDIS before he could slip any further into torpor.
"It's midnight; that means it's only six hours until the vortex explodes," Jamie said. "Doctor, is tying the ropes the only thing left t' do?"
"No…" the Doctor said, supporting himself against the console. "I need to program the coordinates, and it has to be at the precise moment that the Master programs his coordinates. Otherwise, it won't work…" The Doctor trailed off suddenly as his elbow slipped from the console.
"Doctor!" Jamie exclaimed. "Och, I'll go find that fur coat of yers—"
"No time—there's no time!" the Doctor moaned.
"Doctor!" Salamander fumed, now storming past Zoe and the Brigadier, who had been ready to enter the TARDIS themselves. "What is this I'm hearing about us taking off with the doors open!? That's exactly how—"
"Och, just tie yerself t' the console and shut up!" Jamie snarled, tossing Salamander a rope.
"Zoe!" Victoria called from the other TARDIS, a rope visible around her waist. "The Master is ready to program the coordinates, so you'd better get inside! I'm trying to keep him warm, but I don't think he can stay awake for much longer—we'll have to move quickly!"
"Are Benton and Yates secure?" the Brigadier asked.
"Yes," she assured him.
Salamander moved to return to the Master's TARDIS, but the Brigadier practically dragged him inside the Doctor's TARDIS.
"Don't bother with that now!" the Brigadier insisted.
"Jamie…" the Doctor said, as the piper tied the both of them to the console. "I do hope the knots in your ropes are better than the ones you tied back on Telos."
"After yer lessons, they'd better be," Jamie said. "Zoe, shall I tie yer rope, too?"
"I'll take care of Miss Heriot," the Brigadier assured him. "You help the Doctor with whatever he needs."
"Aye," Jamie said, taking note that the Doctor looked asleep on his feet already. "Och, Victoria, we need t' get started—I don' think the Doctor can stay on his feet much longer, either!"
"Right," she said, and relayed the coordinates that the Master was putting into his console.
"Did ye hear that, Doctor?" Jamie asked. "Doctor?!"
The Doctor had slumped against him.
"Oh, nae…!"
"Doctor!" Zoe cried.
"Wake him up!" the Brigadier ordered, as Salamander cursed.
"There's no time!" Jamie countered.
Clinging onto the Doctor with one arm, the piper set the coordinates himself, his hand on the lever as Victoria counted down.
Praying as he did so, Jamie threw the lever and then clung to the Doctor with both arms as the central column rose and fell—but too slowly.
At first, it didn't look as though they were going anywhere, and Jamie merely clung to the Doctor in despair. But then, the central column rose and fell with a slightly greater speed, and then, he heard the sound that he had been hoping to hear—
Vwoorp-vwoorp-vwoorp.
He could also hear the sound coming from outside; the Master's TARDIS was making the same noise as the same pace—a sign that they had coordinated the action perfectly. Whether or not the end result would be the one they wanted remained to be seen.
The darkness of the night outside gave way to an explosion of light and color—and a powerful sucking sensation that Jamie had felt once before. He still clung to the Doctor; the tension on the ropes securing them to the console was so great that the piper's midsection was in great discomfort.
He struggled to breathe; the very air itself seemed to be being pulled from his lungs by the suction of the vortex. Energy crackled loudly outside; the vortex was still building up the power that would lead to its explosion.
Jamie wasn't sure how long it went on for; light-headed from both his lack of sleep and lack of oxygen, the piper began to slip into unconsciousness with his arms still locked tightly around the Time Lord lying beside him.
Whether the Doctor was still slightly conscious or whether by reflex, the Time Lord's hand closed around the piper's wrist.
Jamie's last coherent thought before fully falling into consciousness was a fervent prayer that this would work, along with a silent message to the one beside him—
Whether this works or nae, Doctor… I'm glad to have been with ye all this time.