"So, say that again?"
"I want you to build a secret compartment on the army ship. Here's the blueprint for it, and I will supply you with the ship."
"If someone finds out, I will be fired. With a lot of pain."
"Yeah, except I know for a fact that you don't. You manage to win the lottery and get to live in a mansion with a lovely wife and five kids. You see, I'm a time traveller."
"There's no lottery!" The builder smashed down on a table, half drunk.
"Oh, come on, pudding brain. I told you, I am a time traveller. You'll be the first one to win it!"
"No… you're bonkers. I'm leaving." He tipsily stood up from the bar stool.
"Wait, wait, wait. What if I told you your mate, Konig, is going to get a promotion?"
"Konig?! I hate that bastard!"
"Yes, yes, I know that. But if you do as I say in this blueprint, you will be the one getting a promotion. Konig, on the other hand, will be fired for building the wrong thing in the wrong place. My blueprint actually corrects some of the misprints in your original design, for example the central power column…."
"Deal. Anything to get him fired." The builder spat on his hand and offered him a handshake to symbolise the agreement.
"Sorry, I have a uh, hand disease… very infectious. Let's say we did the… spitty thing, uh, verbally." The Doctor said. "Thank you though. Thank you so much. Enjoy your promotion and your wife and your five kids."
He made his way back to the TARDIS to find little Tia, half crying.
"You!" The Doctor said in shock.
"Doctor? Why are you here?!" She instantly stopped crying. Good, he couldn't stand kids crying.
"No, you just stole my question!" The Doctor said pointing. "You can't just teleport here without permission! I'm not a taxi service, you know!"
Tia's crying changed to a laugh. "Your eyebrows are hilarious."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. At least she wasn't crying.
"What's outside?" Tia asked as she approached a door, completely forgetting about what she had witnessed.
The Doctor realised he was just in a pub, which is not really a good place for a toddler (or was she an infant? No idea. She was some kind of a small pudding brain).
"Nothing useful. I just told a little friend to build a safe place for you and Clara in the future." He pressed a button on the console. "Timey wimey thing."
"What about we go for a trip? Kids like trips right?" He changed the topic as he pressed random buttons.
"Yeah!"
The TARDIS landed on the newly finished starship. He grabbed onto the vortex manipulator and teleported to a corridor with Tia.
"Now, you'll probably come here when you are older. So take notes or something."
He pressed on the switch and the secret doors hissed open.
"Cool!" She ran inside. She had been here just before, but everything then had looked weathered down. This time, everything was sparkling new. She ran into her room, trying out the new chalkboard.
"Careful not to cut yourself. The effects would be… disastrous." The Doctor muttered as she disappeared into one of the rooms. In the thin book back in the TARDIS library, he had found a biography of Tia. He knew that she was a child of a successful experiment and despite her brilliance, her feat would be overshadowed by the one drop of her blood, which would kill hundreds and thousands of people.
"Look, Doctor!" Tia popped out of nowhere and dragged him into a room in the spaceship.
"I've already memorised it!" Tia said, proudly showing him the set of equations. "My older self told me to memorise the equation… I think I managed to do it!"
The Doctor froze. That was the equation for the antitoxin. The key to solving the time loop that had been set around Clara and the Doctor.
"Oh, Tia, you are brilliant." He kissed Tia on her forehead. But when he looked at the equation again, he realised the mistakes.
"But that's not right. Clara's past showed that the antitoxin had a solid body. These equations are only theories of what could be possible." The Doctor talked to himself, trying to correct the equations but to no avail. He reached for the fob watch– except he couldn't find it.
The mention of 'Clara' brought the memories of her dying back into Tia.
"No, where is it?!" He looked all around. "No, no, no, no!" Then an image flashed through his mind. Clara had hugged him in the infirmary. He realised that she was the one who had taken the watch! That was double bad news. Very, extremely bad news. The fob watch originated from the sisterhood of Karn – a watch used to keep track of how much life the Time Lords had before their regeneration. The Doctor had programmed it so that it would show the amount of life that Clara had left.
"Doctor?" Tia tugged on his suit. Her eyes were all of a sudden filled with tears. "Can you help me with a problem?" Tia couldn't bear the information her older-self had given her. That she was a killer.
"What is it?" He was startled at Tia's teary eyes.
"My older self told me that I am going to kill lots and lots of people including you and Clara in the future. I don't want to kill you… I don't want to kill anyone." She sniffled. "And before I was sent here, I saw your friend, Clara, dying."
oOoOoOoOoO
BANG
Tia had just been shot with a bullet from a soldier. A lucky shot. The time ticked by slowly as she reached the ground. She saw Clara's face, seeming to grow paler with every passing second.
"I'm sorry." Tia managed to utter as she hit the ground, facing Clara. She was bleeding out, slowly dying in agony.
Clara slowly opened her eyes. "I know." She whispered as she took off her life support with great difficulty. She placed it on Tia.
"No, Clara, what the hell are you doing?! You will DIE!" Tia felt the wound stitching itself up. At that moment, the flashing SOS lights stopped. They were finally connected to the TARDIS.
"Hello?" A familiar Scottish accent sounded from the other side of the connection.
"Doctor!" Tia hugged Clara's body in her arms. "You have to hurry." The bullets were still pelting down. Tia was surprised that they haven't been hit by any more. 'So much for secret rooms' She sighed. Why was her life plagued with bad luck?! The soldiers were probably trying to get into the ship, and judging by the occasional bullets, they were nearly there.
"Who is this?" Her trail of though dispersed as the angry Scottish voice questioned.
"It's Tia. I can't talk any longer. Clara's dying. Find us at space time coordinates 7:82-3492-35-9." She quickly read the coordinates written on the life support watch.
As soon as she hung up, she realised they were already on board the Doctor's machine.