Chapter Ten

Rowland Montgomery's hands were bathed in blood. He lost his grip on the Doctor and the dying man fell to the clear glass floor.

Clear glass floor.

The soldier froze. He had seen many things in his life – strange things. Before coming to America he had served on a slave ship, traveling to the darkest heart of Africa. He had witnessed voodoo rituals in Barbados and seen men walking who were supposed to be dead. But never, in the deepest throes of a night terror, could he have imagined –

This.

"Gods bodkins!" he breathed. He was already trembling, but what he saw nearly unmanned him and set him to shaking as surely as if the earth were rolling underneath his feet.

Unexpectedly, he felt fingers grip his wrist. Looking down, Montgomery saw the dying man – no, the dying alien had mustered enough strength to reach up and catch his hand. "It's...bigger on...the...inside," the Doctor breathed.

"Where are we? What...is this place?" He recognized nothing. The room was gigantic, full of strange lights and unnatural sounds, with walls that resembled most the tentacles of a great orange squid. It seemed to be filled with objects he had no ken of. On a screen above a large table, with a column with green glass globes behind it, there was a moving picture of the city outside the warehouse. He gasped and asked, "Am I in Hell?"

The alien laughed – a short rasping sound. And then blood ran from the corner of his lips. "My...ship. Have...you been...a sailor...Rowland?"

"Yes, but..."

"I...sail...the stars."

For a moment he was distracted by the possibility. He had sailed so many strange places, he could see it. A tall masted ship riding the waves of a jet black sea, each twinkling spark of light a new, more exotic destination. Then he shook himself. "That's not possible."

"It is...was...for me." The Doctor fell silent, and for a moment Rowland wondered if he was gone. But then the alien roused. His eyelids fluttered and a tear ran down one cheek. "Too short..." he breathed. "Too...short this time... Tardis is...keeping...me alive...but can't..." A sudden shiver shook him. His body arched and he sucked in a great breath of air, and then bit out the words, "Need to tell her...save you..." before he fell silent.

"Feeling a bit under the weather, are we?" a droll voice asked.

Montgomery had always known those he was dealing with were...different. Like so many times before, he had blinded himself to what he could not understand – or did not want to understand – in order to achieve the ends he desired. He knew Madame Strangewayes. She was a strong woman, a merchant who competed in the world of men. But he had known just as certainly that the woman he was dealing with both was, and wasn't her.

Just like the man towering over him now was and wasn't the Doctor.

"Good God! Have you no feelings? He's dying."

The man...alien...creature tilted its head in imitation of the original. For a moment, something passed through its eyes, a sort of sadness coupled with –what? "Yes. I suppose he is," he remarked casually. "Pity."

"Pity?" Montgomery turned his eyes down to look at the alien...the man he still touched. The Doctor's skin was covered with bloody stripes as if he had been flogged. But where before those stripes had moved and shifted as if alive, now they were eerily still. The soldier moved his hand to the Doctor's chest, searching for his heart to see if it was still beating. He found it and it was. But to his everlasting shock, he found a second heart on the other side, barely holding on. His gaze jumped to the creature looming over both of them. "Two hearts?"

"Binary system. I'm sure you've heard of them. Twin stars. Twin hearts." The duplicate Doctor crouched beside them. He reached out but stopped just short of touching his doppleganger, almost as if fearing the old legends where such contact brought death to be true. "The Tardis has slowed the progress of the Bluhdoul virus. Still, he doesn't have long."

"Slowed it? The ship? How is that possible? You mean, they are connected in some way?"

"Sym-bi-osis. Big word, I know. The time ship's life force is joined with the Time Lord's." The duplicate gnawed his lip for a moment, and then he added softly, "As is mine."

"What do you mean? Who..." Montgomery glanced around the Doctor's star 'ship'. He swallowed, not sure he wanted to know the answer. "What areyou?"

The duplicate Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a curious metal device that glowed green at the end. He pointed it at his chest and it chirped. Then, as if Rowland could understand what it showed, he held it out to him. "A copy. A counterfeit fashioned of fear and desperation, cobbled together from polymers and run by software." He paused and then added with a deprecating smile. "If you prick me, I do not bleed."

The last part Montgomery recognized as a Shakespearean quote. The other might as well have been gibberish. "Are you saying you are like a clockwork toy? That you are not...alive."

The duplicate snapped the odd device shut. "Spot on, Monty."

The soldier hesitated, grappling with that, but his anger soon outweighed his shock. "If I understand you, you are telling me that this man's life force is connected to you somehow, and that – in a way – you are like a leech, draining it away from him. Good God! Weak as he is, he has none to spare! Give it back!"

There it was again, that flicker in those light green eyes. Was it...could it be compassion? Could a mechanism know such a thing?

"I would die," it said at last.

"But you just told me you are not alive!"

The false Doctor held his gaze. "Not as you are. Not as he is. Still, I live. And I do not want to die."

Montgomery shifted his hand so it lay on top of the Doctor's. His skin was almost too hot to touch. The fever was rising at an alarming pace. "Neither does he. And if you ask me which of you has a right to live, you know what I would say. What any man would say."

"Not him," the duplicate countered as he rose to his feet. "He would give his life for mine, even though I am not truly alive."

The soldier remained silent for several heartbeats. Then he shifted, and removing his uniform coat covered the dying man's exposed flesh. The fever had peaked and the Doctor begun to convulse. "Then the better man dies." He pressed his hands into the fabric of the blue and buff coat, seeking to hold him down. "And you will never be him."

The duplicate Doctor had turned away from him. His shoulders were slumped, and where his hands gripped the strange table in the center of the star ship, all of the color had drained from the knuckles. When he turned round, there were tears in his eyes. "Very persuasive. You missed your calling, Monty. Should have tried the legal profession. Maybe you can take it up when you get back."

Montgomery's gaze dropped to his own hands where they gripped the Doctor's shoulders. The trails of blood lining his wrists, unlike those on the Doctor's body, were moving. He had known for some time that he had the virus. And that, for some reason, it was rampaging through him with a course unparalleled. He shook his head. "I won't be going back." He nodded toward his hands. "It's all right. I deserve it."

"Well, I don't," the duplicate sniffed. "But that's when it counts most, isn't it? That's what it means to be real or alive? To...sacrifice...yourself for the good of others?"

"It's something I thought I understood, but now know I didn't. I've learned too late," Montgomery sighed. "There is nothing I can do for anyone. I have brought destruction on my people, and my world."

"What if it's not too late?"

The soldier frowned. "What?"

"Are you game to find out?"

"What are you thinking?"

"Monty, old fellow," the duplicate said, pointing the strange glowing device at him and then checking it, "you have the blood of a Time Lord in your veins. The Bluhdouls have carried it with them. That's why the virus is consuming you. Just like him. I, however, am wrought of the essence of his soul and while I can't take ill..." He slapped his free hand on the odd table. "This old girl is struggling desperately to save him." The false Doctor's gaze dropped to his doppelganger who lay in a pool of blood on the glass floor. "What's say we give her all the help we can? What's say you and I make the connection."

Like a mad man, the duplicate moved about the room, flipping switches and twirling levers until a strange thrumming sound filled the air and the central column on the table, with its green glass globes, began to move up and down. He flipped another switch and it stopped jarringly, and a bright light began to spill from a crack that had opened underneath it on the floor. Hopping over the dying man's body, the false Doctor knelt beside his twin. He hesitated and then, for just a moment, closed his eyes and touched the dying man's forehead. Then he removed his bow tie, undid it, and used the thin band of fabric to bind the true Doctor's hand to the table so it was fully exposed to the light.

Hopping back, the duplicate took a position between Montgomery and the table and then thrust out his hand. "Take the Doctor's other hand and then take mine," he ordered.

Montgomery hesitated. Most likely this would be his end. But then, perhaps Providence would forgive him his other sins if he helped to save this man. The soldier obeyed, gripping the Doctor's hand and then taking that of the duplicate, which was as cold as the other was hot.

"I'm ready," he said.

The duplicate Doctor grinned like a lunatic and then thrust the hand holding the device with the green glowing tip at its end into the center of the light as he shouted.

"Geronimo!"

For a moment the room was deathly still. Montgomery could hear his heart beating. He heard the Time Lord's as well – both of them.

And surprisingly, a fourth.

And then they were one.

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Jeremy Larkin groaned. He shifted and sat up. Gingerly. Every ounce of him hurt. But what was worse, everything – but especially his face and his exposed skin – felt scorched as if he had spent the day working under a very hot sun. Ignoring it, he turned and peered around at his surroundings. He couldn't see very well, but he thought he was back in the warehouse where he and Amy Pond had been held earlier. The place stank of fish and was very, very dark.

And very, very quiet. Other than him, he wasn't sure anyone was alive.

Amy Pond lay beside him. The redhead was quite still, but to his relief when he touched her she shifted slightly, moaned, and fell quiet again. She'd been burnt like him, but she'd be all right.

He wasn't so sure about himself.

Since the arrival of the attractive girl with orange-red hair and her companion, the Doctor, things had been...well, strange to say the least. Jeremy raised a hand to his jaw and, taking hold of it, carefully shifted it from side to side. They had been outside the inn with River and the Doctor. The older woman had said something about the Doctor not being the Doctor. Then she had tossed something to Amy, and Amy had knocked him cold.

Henry and Isak would certainly never learn of that!

Jeremy frowned, feeling shame. "Henry," he breathed.

In all of this he had lost track of his friends. He wasn't even certain where Isak was. Henry was recovering, but was he well? And then there was Lafayette. Was the general still alive? And what of Amy's curious friend, the Doctor? And Madame Rivierre?

Almost as if in answer to his question he heard a woman curse, and then a loud clang as something heavy forcefully hit the floor. Jeremy glanced from side to side before moving, but found nothing. No henchmen running to see what it was. No woman in green. It was almost as if their captors had never existed. As he hesitated he heard another curse, and then someone began to sob.

The warehouse was nearly pitch black. Whatever light pulsed through it before had vanished. A pair of windows set high in one wall allowed twin beams of moonlight to stream in, but they did little to illuminate the floor, or the room he crossed. Jeremy stopped as his foot encountered something odd. He knelt and checked it, but could determine only that it was a pile of cloth and some sort of substance that had the consistency of icing growing hard. As he knelt there, considering what it could be, the room was filled with a curious noise. It reminded him of the sound of the old woman who had lived next to them when he was a child. His father had insisted they visit her every day as she lay dying. She had been very old and labored hard to breathe, gasping and wheezing in such a way that it had frightened the small boy he was.

Whatever this was, it frightened the man he had become.

"No! No!"

The woman no longer cursed but shouted. Jeremy rose and followed the sound of her voice. As he did, the room was momentarily flooded by a pale blue white light. It blinded him at first, but then by that light he could see the speaker. She stood with her arms extended out before her as if she had just released a hold, or was reaching out for something.

But there was nothing there.

"No," she said again. "God, no..."

As he approached her Jeremy looked for the source of the light. If it had been midsummer he would have suspected lightning, but through the windows he could see that snow still fell. It was only as he reached her side that he realized the sound had stopped as well. The warehouse was dark again, and completely quiet.

When he turned to face her, he was not surprised to find that it was, "Madame Rivierre? River?"

Her face was ghostly pale in the moonlight. She looked like a mother struck with grief by tragic news. Tears streamed down her cheeks, which were burnt much as his by some unseen sun. She drew a breath as he watched and then shuddered. She glanced at the broken rake on the floor, and then back to him. "I couldn't get in. Couldn't stop him." A moment later she pronounced, "He's gone."

Jeremy reached out to touch her arm. "Who?" he asked. "Who is gone?"

She didn't react at first, but then slowly stirred and turned to look at him. "The best man I've ever known."

"You speak of the Doctor?"

Her chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. It took her a moment, but at last she nodded.

Jeremy looked at the empty floor before them, and then turned to look behind. "I see no body. How do you know he is dead?"

"I had..." She glanced at him. "I had a premonition. Do you believe that people can see the future, Jeremy?"

He did not want to offend her. "I believe we make our own futures, River. That our path is ordained, but not controlled."

"So one cannot see what is to come until it comes?" Her smile was shallow, sad. "In a way that's true. I saw him die before. I just saw it again."

He recognized her condition. She was distracted – in a state of mind that some might have called 'mad'. It was common with females, who were the more excitable sex. It was obvious she had suffered some great loss – a loss so great her mind could not contain it. The room they were in was black as pitch. Who knew what secrets lurked in its corners, and whether or not a body lay concealed in those shadows? Not he. There was no way to know until first light.

"River," he said, taking her by the arm, "we should go."

She jerked free and snarled, "No! Never."

"There is nothing more to do here. You need to rest. By tomorrow's light we will be able to search and may be – "

"Then you go!" she snapped. "I'm not...I can't leave." Again she sucked in air and a stifled cry. "Not yet."

Jeremy did not want to leave her, for fear she might harm herself. She needed something to hang onto, something to care about – some reason to go on. But what? And then he had it.

"River, I need your help with Amy."

For a moment she said nothing. Then she drew another breath. Her eyes closed, and when she opened them, some of her earlier fire had returned. "Dear God, he would have my head if he knew I forgot about Amy." She turned toward him. "Where is she? Is she all right?"

"She is unconscious. But her skin, like mine, like yours, seems to be scalded."

River made a face. "Yes, well, that was me. So sorry. But it seems to have done the trick. Madame Strangewayes and her...little family will no longer trouble us."

"You? How could you..."

"What did I do?" She frowned, and then her eyes widened. "Steam. I found a way to release a burst of steam into the warehouse. Frightened them away." River glanced at him. "Terribly clever of me, wasn't it?"

"Steam? But how did you – "

The frown deepened. "Didn't your mother teach you it's not nice to question Providence? Now you go back to where you left Amy like a good boy. Gather her up and take her outside, and I will come in a minute."

Instantly suspicious that she intended to do no such thing, he asked, "Why not come now?"

"One last look," River replied. "One time walking around the room. If I find nothing, then I will know you are right."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Of course she knew she would find nothing. The Doctor wasn't anywhere in the room, or in the warehouse. Or in the universe.

And the whole damn thing was practically useless without him.

How many times had she threatened that, if he died, she'd kill him? How many times had she told him she hated him? How many times had she believed him dead, only to have him come waltzing back into the room – literally – to prove her wrong.

"Please," River breathed as tears streaked her face. "Prove me wrong."

As usual, when it came to life with the Doctor – even with a dead Doctor – there was no time to grieve. Amy Pond needed rescuing and, though he would never admit it, so did Jeremy Larkin. The rebel leader looked a bit like an overdone lobster. The burst of heat the Tardis had given off had registered on her mediscanner as two hundred and twenty three degrees Fahrenheit. Hot enough to melt polymer people and to make everyone else look like they'd gone to the beach and forgotten their sunscreen. For several weeks.

River glanced again at the spot where the Tardis had dematerialized. She had no hope, but held onto the ghost of it. The Doctor had deliberately entered the time ship. He had been smiling as the doors closed. Of course he was a man and an idiot, but he was an idiotic man who somehow, most of the time, well, almost always knew what he was about.

She had to set aside her fear and trust that this was one of those times.

For now she had to concentrate on helping the two humans in her charge, and then on tracking down the Nestene Consciousness. Just because she had defeated the Autons, that didn't mean their masters were not still here, regrouping and making alternative plans. And then, after she stopped the gestalt creature, she had the simple task of finding a cure for the Bluhdoul plague and the ailing Marquis without the benefit of a corpse.

No one could say she didn't like a challenge.

River crossed the room quickly. It took her only a moment to locate Jeremy Larkin by the sounds he was making as he tried to coax Amy Pond back to consciousness. The older woman halted and watched him as he worked. Amy was non-responsive. Jeremy assumed she was ill or sleeping, but River feared it was something more. She feared the Doctor's latest, and perhaps last companion, was still being controlled by the Nestene. Since they were dormant for the moment, and in hiding, so was she.

"I thought I told you to take her outside."

He frowned up at her. "I can't get her to wake."

"Can you carry her?" she asked him.

Jeremy's scowl was fit for a young boy facing an angry mother. "I can. But where would I take her?"

River fished in her pocket and then handed him the psychic paper. He glanced at it and tucked it into his boot. "Show that to any coach driver you can find outside the inn," she said. "There's more than enough there to hire a fast coach to Fishkill. Take her to Dr. Cochran. See what can be done."

"You sound as if you do not intend to accompany us."

There was disapproval in his tone. River's lips curled with chagrin. "You believe I am not to be trusted."

"Madame, no. It is just – "

"That I am female and as such particularly subject to hysteria, and quite incapable of looking out for myself. You are afraid that if you leave me I will disintegrate into tears and fall apart, and maybe throw myself off the end of the pier. Isn't that right?"

"Well, I..."

She stepped right up to him and met his gaze. "Jeremy, I love that man and if he is dead... If he is dead, then I am all that stands between the universe and its destruction. I have no intention of letting that happen, or of letting his legacy go gently into that dark night. And what is more," River felt her jaw tighten, "what is more, I will not rest until that plastic parasite called the Nestene Consciousness has been beaten, broken down, and turned into something fit only for a child to bounce!" She tossed her hair back and drew a breath. "Is that understood, Captain Larkin?"

The look in the young man's eyes told her he thought she was hopelessly mad. That was good. When they packed up and left, Jeremy had to go back to the eighteenth century and stay there for the rest of his life. Let him remain ignorant. War was a big enough thing to go bump in the night.

He rose with Amy Pond in his arms and turned, leaving without another word.

River watched him go and then closed her eyes. She turned and looked at the space the Tardis had occupied. Another tear fell as she turned away with the whisper, "I'm sorry, my love..."

It was then she heard the sound of its return.

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Inside the Tardis a lone figure moved.

It stumbled over to the bloody corpse on the floor and raised one of the dead man's half-devoured hands. Its own shaking, it made certain the sonic screwdriver was clutched just so in the claw-like fingers and then backed away, almost as if unable to bear the sight.

The stairs were too much to take, and so it gingerly lowered its long frame into one of the darkened stairwells just off the main room as it had done before.

And waited for a repetition of the pathetic scene.

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She had to open the doors.

Though she had no key, she knew the secret 'code'. River raised one shaking hand and snapped her fingers. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the doors to the time ship slowly groaned outwards, almost as if they were nearly past their strength. Almost as if the Tardis herself were dying.

Drawing a deep breath in and then letting it out, she closed her eyes and steeled herself, knowing what she would find, but hoping against hope it was not to be. She had thought he was dead on the Byzantium and there he had been behind her, grinning like a Chesire cat. She had seen him half-dead, sealed in the Pandorica, ready to sacrifice himself to save the universe, and then turned to find him leaning on the Tardis door, rescuing her from a never ending loop in time. This man – this Lord of Time was magic.

He couldn't be dead.

But he was.

She didn't want to go in. When the cleric of the deceased Father Octavian had taken her to this same moment – in another time and place – he had held her in a viselike grip and kept her from entering the ship. As now, she had plainly seen the long, lanky figure with traces of brown hair laying in a pool of its own blood on the Tardis' floor. The Bluhdouls had done so thorough a job that there was little left except a trace of dark brown fabric on the legs and those ridiculous ankle-high boots. Haltingly, River entered the Tardis and managed to keep her composure until she saw the sonic clutched in one bloody, bony hand.

Then she fell to her knees and let out a cry to trouble the heavens.

Five minutes later she rose, threw a switch, and left the Tardis and the future it had promised behind.

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The doors to the Tardis moved slowly inwards, sealing the hidden figure off from the world. Once they had closed, he shifted painfully and left the darkened stairwell with its other bedraggled occupant behind. Walking slowly, his long lanky form crossed the room, pausing for a moment to reflect on the corpse lying on its floor, and then the man moved to the center console and flipped a switch, reorienting the outside viewer to the inside of the warehouse.

Doctor River Song was standing in the open doorway of the warehouse. Beyond her the man could see the world of the eighteenth century dock town waking. It was still dark, but the lamplighters were out extinguishing the street lamps, and already wagons loaded with fish and other goods headed for the ships harbored there were rolling along the cobblestone streets. River's sacque gown was nearly ruined. Her finely coifed hair resembled more than anything else the nest of a distracted mouse. Any powder or paint she had worn was long gone.

She was beautiful.

"I know you are here," she said loudly. "And I will be back. Mark my word, no matter where you go in time or space, I will find you, and when I do..." She stopped to draw a bracing breath. "And when I do, I promise I will destroy you. I will not stop until the Nestene Consciousness has been wiped from the face of the universe. Until the first and the last of your species are dead, until even that name has no meaning!"

Beautiful, and a bit bloodthirsty.

"Well, now, we can't have that. Can we?" the man sniffed and remarked to himself.

He watched her turn and exit the warehouse, and then reached for a switch close by. The blue sleeve caught him off-guard, and for a moment he paused, remembering. Then with a snort, he threw it and the big blue box began to wheeze and grind, and then faded into non-existence.

One more stop before the end