All right folks - I finished the story today. I believe it will have thirteen chapters, and I will post the next two over the next week to ten days. Though I might be persuaded to write a fourteenth, if we feel it is needed. "Needed" would be a strong word, though. ;-)

I'm slightly nervous about this chapter because of the introduction of "Vertrou" energy. I'm afraid it will seem too weird, convenient, etc. Our friend Steven Moffat says that you can't add a piece to the chessboard in the last 1/3 of the game (presumably, otherwise, you wind up with a Deus Ex Machina effect). And I agree with that ethic of storytelling, even though his particular execution of it has not been perfect.

But I assure you that I have not added a piece… I've only named it, and now explained how it works (in my pseudo-science-babbly way). I swear, all the pieces for how this will get resolved have been there for quite some time... it was all part of the original-ish outline!

Hope you enjoy!

ELEVEN

Professor Docherty's base of operations (and current home) was in an abandoned warehouse. Well, really, at the ground level of what was once an up-and-coming tech company, in the lorry docking area.

So, an abandoned warehouse.

She could have moved up higher into the building, but people were absolutely terrified of higher ground these days. They were terrified of being above ground at all, especially in wide spaces – they knew they could be picked off for sport by the flying spheres. It was so sad, like the entire planet had gone on lockdown. She had seen it everywhere, in every country, every city she had been. And that was, indeed, saying something.

It would all be over soon; she was nearly at the end of her year. For better or for worse, they would only have to worry about The Master for another couple of days.

The only reason Martha and Tom were able to move about over ground in a dilapidated Jeep was, for some reason, the Master was allowing medics to hold licences to roam about, mostly unbothered. Martha actually wondered whether the Master had anything to do with it at all, or whether it was some of his ground-level flunkies making these decisions, not wanting to be completely heartless. Or to see disease spreading. Or possibly just to ensure that there was someone available should they, themselves, fall to injury.

Whatever the mechanism was that allowed it, it was a huge advantage. As soon as it had become official, medics started using it to transport contraband… and people who should not be roaming free. Martha Jones was hardly the only fugitive from the Master's regime… she was simply the most wanted, and best-known.

And, she was the only one not simply fleeing to save her own skin.

In fact, while darting through Jerusalem to a safe house, she learned from her guide, Avi, of a British fugitive named Andrew Hedges, aged 31, who had attempted to hack the Archangel Network. Their safe house had hosted him one week previously. Avi informed her that roughly half of the prisoners and fugitives on the planet currently were being incarcerated or hunted for hacking. However, Andrew Hedges was special. He was particularly brilliant, and he actually penetrated the network with some homemade equipment, and was able to click about Archangel within its own firewalls for a full ten seconds before he was discovered. Everyone else, the Master's tech had seen coming from miles off.

Martha sighed upon hearing this, because of course no-one could hack a network designed by a Time Lord, without detection. It was sentient!

And that was why she was doing what she was doing: because the Doctor had known that Archangel could think and feel.

Then, a couple months later, while driving with another medic across the veritable ghost towns of rural Senegal toward Dakar, she had learned of Andrew Hedges' capture. She was crestfallen at this news, even though she had never known him.

But in Dakar, there was a man called Oury, also a hacker, though he professed to be "intelligent enough" not to actually try and hack the Master. He had known a thing or two about Hedges through the "community of hackers," as he called it, even from before the Master took power, including about Hedges' parents. It was Oury, his wife, brother, and a friend of theirs who seemed completely unhinged, but absolutely brilliant, along with Martha, who hatched the plan. She was to use Andrew Hedges' mother, one Allison Docherty, to complete the last phase of the Doctor's instruction. She needed to let the Master find her, without his realising that she was laying a trail for him.

Martha had said directly to her, "Why I came to see you: know your enemy." And the Professor had flinched. But if she suspected what Martha was doing, she never completely let on.

Most of the visit with Docherty was designed as reconnaissance, to feel out the woman. Martha had to determine whether she would do, unprompted, what they thought she would do. What they needed her to do. Would she sell out Martha Jones, planet Earth's only hope, should she learn what she thought was the ultimate secret at the heart of Martha's plan for taking down the Master?

After an hour or two, Martha could see that the woman was pragmatic, but passionate and kind. She was also quite lonely. This told her that Docherty would do whatever was necessary to save her son. It made it hard to make her a pawn, but the fate of the world literally depended upon it.

And now, she and Tom were back in the Jeep, heading northwest toward Bexley.

Talking was difficult because it was an open top, but not impossible. She kept her sentences short and chose her words wisely.

But mostly what passed between her and Tom was something else. Something like flirtatious smiles.

If there was ever a season of her life when she did not have time to think about this sort of thing, it was now. Plus, she still considered her heart one-hundred-per-cent occupied (currently, by a man who was eighteen inches tall, and sapped dry of energy), and yet, here she was. Tom was undeniably gorgeous, capable, solicitous, clever, and it had been a long, long time since anyone had looked at her that way.

Plus, he was a doctor. That must mean they have a lot in common!

Perhaps when this was all over…

…what?

No, she couldn't think about that.

"Tom, I…"

And yet she was thinking about that. She was going to tell him what she had done to Professor Docherty, that the Time Lord-killing gun was not real, and that she was actually hoping to get captured in Bexley tonight, hopefully after she had had a chance to do her usual lecture with the folks she found there.

The gun was not real. But if it were, there was no way she would bring an efficient Time-Lord-killing device within a hundred yards of the Master, as long as the Doctor was anywhere nearby…

Which brought her thoughts back to the Doctor.

It felt completely wrong to be trying to cosy up to a new man, while the Doctor was still in peril.

Besides, it was a secret that could put Tom in danger… get him captured, tortured, killed. What would the Doctor say about that?

For that matter, what would Tom say about leading the Master straight to their hiding place?

No, best keep it to herself. She had walked the Earth alone thus far – she could finish the last two days of the trek alone.

When Tom died, she only had a few seconds to feel horror and remorse, before the Master began to speak again. She sorely wished she had told him of the plan then, so that he would not have come stumbling out of the house to rescue her, and got himself lasered to death.

The Master wouldn't have killed her. Not then. He wanted her on the Valiant, so he could humiliate her before ending her life, and let her family and the Doctor watch. That, she was certain, had always been his intent.

There were many, many moments later on when she thought about that afternoon with Tom, and watching him die… even when she was sitting beside Tom himself, alive and well, at the movies, at dinner… He had no clue that they once met in a lost time. After deciding that she could no longer travel with the Doctor without having both of his hearts and all of his truth, of course, she rang Tom. Later they got engaged, and she used that fact to drive the Doctor just a little mad. She had wanted to make him jealous, and she had succeeded.

And just before circumstances made it necessary to break off their engagement, Martha wondered whether that day, the afternoon they'd spent with Allison Docherty, made her conflate the idea of "Tom," and "ruse." "Tom," and "use." Because fond of him as she had been, she most definitely, ultimately, had used him.

Perhaps over that lost year, she had become a little bit callous about what people could do for her.

With Tom lying dead in the street, the Master had said, "Almost dawn, Martha. And planet Earth marches to war."

Then he had put her in the backseat of an SUV, and got in beside her. For the next forty-five minutes, as a UNIT officer drove them back into central London, he talked her ear off. Rather excitedly. This was a weird little slice of life, indeed. He talked a bit about time on the ship with her mum, dad, Tish, Jack, and the Doctor – apparently her dad and Jack were being kept separate from the others, but the Master never said why. He talked about his wife, Lucy, and her slow descent into madness, which he found absolutely delightful.

He also talked about his plans for launching rockets into the cosmos and putting Earth on the proverbial map, wreaking havoc and distruction… as if she hadn't known. As if she hadn't seen half a million of those rockets in her trek across this occupied planet.

Weirdly, he also talked about how he had recently acquired a professional aesthetician who massaged his shoulders daily, and gave him facials each week. Martha never responded to anything he said, she just shook her head.

Eventually, they reached some sort of office building, where the Master stood on a particular spot, waved at her, and said, "See you onstage!" and was transmatted back up to the Valiant. She was told to wait. Which she did for about twenty minutes before being told to stand on the same spot, and being transmatted up, herself.

She saw the Doctor again. Tiny and frail as he was, his plan was about to sweep the world. Her heart leapt.

The Master mocked her resolve, called her a child, forced her to her knees, tried to make her feel inferior to the Doctor's other companions, then wound himself up to kill her right in front of her family.

But she had laughed at him, and his gullibility. And his ridiculous, useless bluster.

The past year, all she had been through… his mere words could not hurt her. Because she had been digging deep. In 1913, she had learned that she did not need the Doctor to look at her in order to feel strong, because her love and loyalty sustained her. The same part of her had learned long ago that she did not need the Master's acquiescence, because what she had done was going to sustain her, along with her undying belief in the Doctor.

Getting caught, being here, getting mocked, it was all part of the plan, for the greater good.

When the hot black sludge dissipated, it was a huge relief – it had been terrifying.

But when it was all gone, there she was, in the control room of a ship.

"Well, this feels familiar," she muttered, looking around.

The idea had been for Martha to distract the Escappa while the Doctor looked for their ship, to try and mess up their jumped-up Sat-Nav, or whatever he called it. She thought there was a chance he was here somewhere…

But even if he wasn't, she was doing her bit – keeping the bad guy occupied. Getting captured, being taken somewhere, had always been a possibility. She'd walked straight into the trap on purpose, been caught and kidnapped, while the Doctor did, she hoped, something brilliant.

The console curved off to the right toward what looked to be a large window, and from the limited view that she had, she could tell they were hovering above London, though not that high. Not low enough that she and Kinsey could survive a drop, but not so high that they would lose consciousness or pressure should, say, someone throw a door open. But the TARDIS was out of commission at the moment with its Vortex Steam, so a daring mid-air escape was probably not on the cards.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" Kinsey Mund, beside her, sobbed. Tears streamed down her face as she, too, looked at her surroundings. She took in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said, "Thomas Cranmer, Matthew Parker, Edmund Grindal..."

She was naming the Protestant Archbishops of Canterbury, starting from King Henry VIII. She had once had to do the same thing... it must be a coping technique to stave off panic.

Martha realised that she was leaving yet another "accomplice" in the dark about the plan. Once upon a time, this had got Tom Milligan killed.

All Martha could do was give her a hug, and let the woman stifle cries with William Juxon and Gilbert Sheldon against her shoulder.

"It's all right," Martha said. "It's going to be all right, you'll see."

It was awkward, as Kinsey was about four inches taller than Martha. But as she became a little more crumpled with each Archbishop, it didn't really matter.

Martha could not say anything else to Kinsey because there was a large, black, drippy, gooey beast in the room. It was about seven feet tall, broad, and its stance reminded Martha of a rabbit sitting down. But the top half was very cockroach-like, except that its mandible seemed to be made of liquid. She could not discern what were limbs and what were stretches of black tar, frankly.

"So," it said. "Martha Jones, in the flesh."

The deep, smooth, crisp voice had gone. It now sounded exactly like a gooey thing ought to, especially if it had no lower jaw.

"Er, yeah," she said. "Wish I could say the same for you. I must say, I miss your old voice, too."

"Our form is considered beautiful," it argued "And our method for communicating in realms of lesser intelligence is a simple thought-to-speech mechanism that works remotely."

"I see. That's handy. Sort of like if your telephone could filter your voice and give you a cool accent."

"You, on the other hand, are talking far too much."

"I learnt from the best," she said with as much of a shrug as she could give, whilst Kinsey occupied one shoulder.

Kinsey now sniffled and took a step back from Martha. She looked at the alien with utter terror, and it gave a noise that sounded like "heh-heh," though not a genuine laugh.

"William Wake, John Potter," Kinsey whispered. She concentrated hard on her breathing.

"Oh, the fear in your eyes, Bougie Boca, is delicious," it said. "Almost as delicious as the faith in Martha's heart is ridiculous!"

Martha took her hand. "Don't listen," she said.

And now, as the Escappa spoke, she took another opportunity to look about. The exit was to the left, a round a kind of corner. She had no idea where it led, but it was good to keep in mind if they had to make a dash away from this cockroach-rabbit thing. The controls had labels in a different language, in symbols she did not recognise. With the TARDIS infirm, she supposed it could not be expected to give her long-distance translation, especially since she hadn't travelled with it for quite some time. It occurred to her then that the Escappa had been actually speaking English all along, which rather impressed her, in spite of herself.

There were three large screens on the wall behind where the alien was standing, all glowing red. Information in their language was blipping in and out, all totally unintelligible.

"We have been at odds with the Time Lords for millennia," said the alien. "And we have learned that they cannot love. Your love for him is misplaced, at best."

"Really? Are we doing this again?" asked Martha. Then, she said, "Fine. Say what you want to say." She spoke absently, trying to give the impression that she was ambivalent about what he was saying, and not casing the place.

"They are cold, methodical, cerebral. They do not live in their bodies, they live in their minds, because their bodies are ephemeral… in the blink of an eye, they can regenerate."

"Interesting theory."

"Their relationships are cerebral as well, and highly utilitarian. They partner in order to have offspring, they raise each offspring for eight years, hoping for glory in themselves, to pass on a legacy, and then they move on, rarely seeing their children again."

"I thought you said love was a plague, or something," Martha protested. "Shouldn't that sort of arrangement appeal to you?"

"The love of a Time Lord is a pestilence," it corrected. "Because it is ultimately counterfeit, intangible, and impermanent, just like their way of life. Everything about them is a pestilence!"

"Is that true?" Kinsey asked, having stopped crying, but still holding tightly to Martha's hand. "About their relationships being utilitarian?"

"Maybe," Martha shrugged. "Perhaps it was true back on Gallifrey. Perhaps it was true of a now-extinct species in general, with its bizarre ethics of oddly meddlesome non-meddling. But guess which one of them never fit in."

"Right! Oh yes! And guess which one of them has been put on trial multiple times," Kinsey chimed in. "Has been summarily punished by them, given up regenerations, exile, you name it."

Martha hadn't known any of this, but it didn't particularly surprise her. She looked at Kinsey and nodded her approval. "He's always been different from them, and he's the only one left. And you say what you like, I've been in his orbit, and I choose to have faith. And love."

Kinsey took a deep breath, stood up straight, and said, "Me, too. Well, not the love part, but I have faith in the Doctor. I know enough about him to realise that he's worth the believing-in. Hell, I've spent how many years believing, just going about it in the wrong way!"

The room they were in seemed to shake. Martha recognised it as the same sort of thrumming she'd felt in Kinsey's flat when the Escappa were genuinely laughing at her. The alien's head bobbed ungracefully… she supposed it's what passed for a good-natured chortle… except it was anything but good-natured.

"Believe all you like, ladies, but you're being held prisoner, and where is the Doctor now?" it asked.

And one of the red data screens behind the alien suddenly turned to blue. Blank blue, with a cursor.

Some characters in the Escappa's language came up on the screen, and after about three seconds, they transformed into, "Hello?"

Martha blinked. It was in English, but she almost couldn't see it… didn't want to believe it.

But she forced herself to look at it, and realised, this had to be the Doctor getting through! Who else could translate that way?

"I'm here," she said, without thinking. But she was able to smooth it out, as a response to the Escappa's previous question. "And that's all you need to know."

More letters came up on the screen, that morphed into English. "I can hear you!"

This phrase was a bit easier to see, as though her eyes were getting used to the strain.

Martha stole a look at Kinsey, and her eyes were now darting back and forth between the screen and the dripping black cockroach head. She was squinting, as though she wasn't quite sure it was there.

"Big bravado, Dr. Jones," the alien mocked. "But it's confidence that runs on such faith, such love, for a man who isn't even here. Isn't even coming to save you."

"If you're so sure he's not coming, then why hold us?" she asked. "Just let us go home and get on with our lives!"

"I've told you! Your love is a pestilence, and must be eradicated! Along with the plague of Time Lords themselves!" the thing said angrily, hissing.

"What is so plaguey about them?" she asked.

"Everything," it said emphatically. It was almost three different, clipped words. "Their bodies, their brains, their laws, even the Time Vortex itself is a filthy thing."

"Why?" she asked, never having thought of the Vortex as anything other than a concept. Tonight she had learnt that it had not only steam, but also... dirt?

"The Vortex confuses energy signatures with enough exposure. It drives some folks mad."

"Yeah, I've met some of those folks," she muttered.

"It soaks everything in, including energy signatures, and dilutes. It is not a pure avenue."

"Then how could they follow me?" came up on the screen. She no longer had any problem seeing it. She wondered why she had before…

"Now hang on," Martha said, asking the question on the Doctor's behalf. "You've been following the Doctor across time and space. Tell me you weren't using the Vortex yourselves."

"We use a system that encases energy signatures in Vertrou Globes, which keep them clean."

"What's a Vertrou Globe?" she wondered.

"They are protective shells," said the Escappa. "Our forebears fashioned them from the same source that causes wormholes and other phenomena that work in spite of the Vortex. Robust forces that allow for distillation and preservation of concentrated forms of energy signatures, which permits us to bypass the Time Vortex, and still find beings in time and space. Energy that refined cannot help but magnetise and work within the fabric of the Vertrou, so quickly that it fuses outside of the Vortex."

"So this Vertrou stuff repels the Vortex, am I hearing that right?"

"Right you are, Dr. Jones," said the alien. "Clever, for a human."

"And this is how you've been able to track anyone and everything you've fancied since… well, whenever."

"Indeed," it said. "Pity you don't have the same ability, isn't it? Doctor? Doctor? Where are you?"

And then the floor vibrated as it laughed.

Tonight, his whole being quaked with urgency, inside the confines of Martha's compact car. He sonicked the radio, and concentrated on his breathing, because it was starting to feel like he had turned another corner.

The two of them were on the precipice of something again, and she was in a house covered with black ooze.

He wanted her out of this debacle now.

He would not let her be taken again.

Task one was to reverse the function of the radio's antenna, so that it transmits, rather than receives, but when he thought about it, he realised he would need it to receive as well, in order to manipulate it. And so, he was able to open up communication between Martha's radio and anything else that was both transmitting and receiving.

Task two was send the Escappa's energy signature through the transmitter, so that it would lock onto the ship hovering above Fabian Road. It had no trouble doing that.

This was where the real finesse began.

He turned on the device that he had retrieved from the TARDIS, something that had been programmed with a bit of her essence inside. Namely, her perception filter, her translation circuits, a rudimentary communication application, and one of her sentient tracking devices. All the best of the TARDIS rolled into one little tool…

…but it had been an experimental tool, and only had droplets of power, and perhaps fifteen minutes of efficacity in it. He wasn't sure it would work.

The device found the signal between the radio and the ship, and the Doctor used it to transmit a "Hello?" just to see what would happen. If the ship's equipment was going to detect it, it would be now.

But the perception filter held true, except that he heard Martha's voice say, "I'm here." Then she said, with a completely different air, "And that's all you need to know."

She was covering for having answered his "Hello." She had seen it through the perception filter because she was on-alert, and on some level, looking for him. So now, she knew he was there, but she was not alone, and the fact that she could communicate with him…

"Damn it!" he hissed. This meant that she was in the ship now.

Hadn't he just promised himself he would not let her get away again?

He growled with frustration, sorely wishing she had not so chuffing easily tricked him into getting into the car, so she could lock him in and get a head start. This state of affairs made things so much harder, raised the stakes so much higher. For all intents and purposes, she wasn't even on the planet anymore, and he didn't have his TARDIS available… not fully, anyway.

He continued to try and remain calm as he replied, "I can hear you!" then listened to the Escappa mock her faith and hope, her trust in him, and love… blimey, he was tired of that. He was so sick of Martha being unheard and underestimated (though it did work to her advantage at times), and he was sick of things like faith and hope, and trust and love being underestimated.

And obviously, hearing it reminded him of a horrific time in their lives, and it made his guts churn. Tonight, it was even worse than before, because the more time that went on, the more fiercely he wanted to protect her, but the less she needed it. If anyone had proven their mettle, and capable of withstanding a little mocking, then it was Martha.

But he was a man in love, and bloody hated this side of it.

Then, he heard the Escappa grandstanding, and Martha helped him manipulate it into explaining its technology.

"Vertrou energy, I should've known!" he whispered. "Why didn't I know this?"

Wormholes do work in spite of the Vortex. Time is not linear, of course, but the Vortex governs whatever sense time does make, and Time Lords are tuned into that sense. Vertrou power is nonsensical, exists in patches throughout the universe, and whatever it is that the Vortex says about where you should end up within it, wormholes repel, and take you wherever they like.

It was a weird beauty, like oil and water.

Or at least, that's what a lot of folks thought. Throughout the universe, the relationship between the Vortex and Vertrou-based phenomena had been widely miscalculated.

But not by Time Lords. The Time Lords understood it. The Escappa had simply got lucky that their misinformation had led them to be able to wield it effectively, and relatively safely, at least for themselves.

Because, many had tried to mix oil and water, only to find that they just don't mix. Nothing much happens, except that oil particles become smaller and smaller… until they stop being agitated, then they simply meld back together, exactly the way they were. The water and the oil remain unchanged, in the end.

But no-one who had ever tried mixing the intangible essences of Vertrou energy and the Vortex had ever lived to tell the tale, which was why it was so commonly misunderstood. The Time Lords comprehended it inasmuch as they comprehended the Vortex. Theoretically, mathematically, at a nano-level… intrinsically.

Suffice it to say, the two substances do not remain unchanged, in the end, like oil and water.

The Doctor used his device to ask Martha another question, continually hoping that the perception filter would continue to work, and that the Escappa's technology (and their eyes) would continue to miss it. "How did you get on-board?"

It was mocking her again. "Doctor, Doctor, where are you?" and then a staticky rumble came through, which the Doctor could not identify.

Martha ploughed through the childish antics and said, "You know what I've been wondering? What is that black stuff that surrounded the house? The stuff that seeped in through the windows and nearly drowned us? It got all hot, and suddenly we were here? How does that work?"

Before the Escappa could even answer, he transmitted the message, "Heat-based transmat. Got it." Martha's clever "question" had told him everything he needed to know. Well, almost everything.

He heard the alien reply, "Well, it's quite versatile. In this case, it's being used rather like a surveillance system… except it monitors energy signatures so it can catalogue them for future use. It is not something that a human would understand, rest assured, Dr. Jones."

The Doctor asked, via his device, "Still fixed on Kinsey's flat?"

Then, to his shock, he heard another woman's voice. "Surveillance? So you're monitoring my flat? Are you still? First my blog, now my home?"

The Doctor's estimation of Kinsey Mund raised a bit with this tactic. She was getting involved, following Martha's lead, not letting his companion do all the work.

It was the first time it occurred to him that no blogger could know as much about him as she did, without learning a thing or two, and/or being awfully clever herself.

"Of course we're still monitoring it, Miss Boca," it said. "You never know when a Time Lord might happen into it."

He heard Martha shout, "But he won't, because he's not an idiot, is he?"

It was a message intended for him, he knew, but he had a plan.

He broke the connection, climbed out of the car, and ran, leaving his makeshift device behind. It had done its duty.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and will leave a review... what were/are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you!

Thank you for reading!