DAY 6,574

The Collector

The purple jewel in his collection sat at the highest point atop a podium made of an old and cleaned up nuclear waste barrel. There it was, beautiful, in all of its plush glory, amidst the rainbow-coloured array of Beanie Babies. The Shadow observed them proudly, his hands – not that he technically had hands – on his hips – not that he technically had hips – the mass of plush toys crating a vibrant and soft crush in the hollowed-out cave of the asteroid he called home. It drifted aimlessly in a wide and messy orbit around a nearby star in a very desolate area of space, the perfect dead zone to hide out from the Shadow Proclamation. He'd been living there for a fair few years without anybody undesirable finding him.

Until that day, apparently. He heard a clatter behind him with his one-million separate and microscopic ears – which were not quite 'ears' in the same way those macro organisms thought of them – and hushed voices. In response, he turned off the light coming from his old oil lamp set decidedly far away from the Beanie Babies and allowed himself to melt into the darkness.

Mickey

Jack and Rose had made one contribution each to the search and that was all anybody was going to be allowed to do. Jack had provided the vortex manipulator, Rose had provided the coordinates after a few minutes of attempting to strongarm the time vortex into doing her bidding. The only creature who would do something so heinous as kidnap Matilda, their little girl, from inside their house on her eighteenth birthday was the Shadow. The Shadow would do anything for money. What he used the money he accumulated for was a mystery, but he was more embroiled in the universe's vast criminal empires than even Jenny and River were.

But they were both almost fifty and the unstable teleportation of a vortex manipulator didn't get any more pleasant with age, just rougher and rougher – like hangovers. It was also made worse by the fact they appeared in pitch darkness and the freezing cold and he hit his foot on something; it wasn't exactly helping the fact he was losing his mind with worry about Mattie, or that they were trying to be discreet and sneak around.

Martha made a ball of flame in the palm of her hand and held it aloft in order to illuminate their surroundings and warm them up a bit. Mickey still didn't necessarily understand long and complicated twenty-something-digit space coordinates, so was surprised to find them in what looked like a cave. But it was a very weird-looking and porous cave, the walls having a strange greenish sheen to them as they shone in Martha's fire. He stayed very close to her side (and the warmth.)

"I think we're inside a meteor," Mickey said.

"Can you live inside meteors?"

"We're still breathing," he pointed out. They weren't wearing spacesuits, though he wished he was because at least they were climate controlled – it was very cold in outer space. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself. It hadn't even been half an hour since Mattie was taken by unknown assailants, seemingly snatched out of reality itself. "What if he's out? What will we do then? Wait? We can't wait, we have to find her."

"We will find her," Martha told him firmly, "We will. And this is the best place to start. She could even be in this space-caves somewhere." Mickey hoped she was right.

There were all kinds of bizarre amenities crammed into the 'rooms' of what certainly was an asteroid. These rooms were all strange shapes, very circular, and he suspected they had been carved out with controlled explosives of some kind rather than drilled or dug. The rocky, crooked ground rose and fell, and he tripped more than once. The very first room they landed in was full of high-tech weaponry and tools. It must be where the Shadow did maintenance on his deadly arsenal and advanced suit. Mickey debated maybe picking up one of the guns but wasn't sure he needed to when his wife could blow things up with her mind. Fire would definitely kill Vashta Nerada.

"Can you smell that?" Martha asked as they crept through the funny-shaped caves.

"Smells like meat. He's a carnivorous swarm, it's probably just food. It's cold enough not to need a fridge." Already he was wishing that he didn't have to see the Shadow's pantry, however, that wish was not going to come true because it was the next room they came across. And yes, it was just a large, hollowed-out meteor shell absolutely full of meat. An enormous quantity of dripping, raw, predominantly alien meat, as well as what he thought was an entire, skinned cow. He desperately hoped nothing in there was human. A lot of it was yellow. He had never seen yellow meat before and certainly didn't fancy it – perhaps it came from some kind of insect. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand and tried to hide his gagging. The only way forward was through the makeshift meat-locker.

"It's not that bad," said Martha, "Whenever we go to the butcher's and you see all the raw meat there you're practically drooling. That farm shop had a whole freezer of frozen rabbits and you were like, 'Why don't we have rabbit for dinner?' and then Mattie cried because we had that pet rabbit a while ago."

"Yeah – well – this is different. At least those ones were frozen and in bags, not just… eurgh…" The floor was wet with meat drippings and blood. "He better know something after all this."

"The Shadow knows everything," Martha assured him. She had calmed down now that they were actually doing something – and that people had stopped telling her to calm down. Mickey certainly valued his life enough not to tell her that.

A light was extinguished from within the passage beyond, creating a looming darkness ahead. The Shadow could easily traverse pitch darkness without ever being seen, the creature was made of darkness.

"What if he eats us?" Mickey hissed.

"He won't eat us. If he eats us he knows Rose will come after him and make him cease to exist. She's literally a god."

"A god who couldn't stop Mattie from vanishing. Maybe I don't have as much faith in her as I used to."

"Just stay close to me, we'll be fine. He doesn't need to kill us with all this meat in here, anyway."

"I hope you're right…"

They continued their advance through the low-ceilinged asteroid caves, Mickey only now wondering where the atmosphere and gravity was coming from that was keeping them alive, Martha using both her hands to create as much light as possible to force the Shadow to keep its distance. But if he was out of the suit, Mickey worried, he could be anywhere, a hive mind spread across all of the walls, bearing down on them in the heavy emptiness of space. At least they were out of the meat room now.

But if Mickey thought the meat room was bad, nothing could have prepared him for what appeared to be the third and final space in the tiny cave network: it was the Shadow's trophy room. His eyes were first drawn to a myriad of artefacts and precious objects. Jewels, diamonds, relics – and at least half of the room was overflowing with a mountain of neatly arranged Beanie Babies, organised in the colours of the rainbow with a purple bear at the front. There was a large, golden container adorned with wings and inscriptions on the opposite side with an unlit oil lamp sitting on top of it.

"How many of these things are there?" Martha wondered, enthralled by the Beanie Babies, stepping towards them.

A hand grabbed her wrist as she approached, stopping her from going any closer. Seemingly from nowhere the Shadow had appeared, stepping out of the darkness and existing as a living silhouette.

"Don't take an open flame anywhere near those," he warned with his metallic, synthesised voice. It was the only time Mickey had heard the Shadow display an emotion vocally aside from sarcasm or mild-annoyance; he had previously assumed that the swarm just weren't capable of advanced feelings, but maybe it was just that deadpan. Now, though, the Shadow was worried. Clearly the heat of the fireball in Martha's hand wasn't doing anything to his suit, either. "I've only just completed my collection." He had no eyes or features, but still managed to conjure up an expression which bored dangerously into Martha.

"Fine," she said coldly, stepping away from him as he let go of her hand, "Thought you'd be hiding since you put the light out."

"Until I realised Kaboom was in here with all my treasures."

"Don't call me 'Kaboom'," Martha said. It was a stupid name Jack had tried to give her decades ago; god knew how the Shadow had found out about it.

"Kaboom and Techno Boy. To what do I owe the pleasure?" The Shadow retrieved the oil lamp and re-lit it, which was when Mickey finally realised what the golden object beneath actually was.

"Is that-? Is that the Ark of the Covenant?" he gawked. Martha elbowed him.

"Is that really what's most important right now?" she snapped at him.

"But-"

"Yes, it is," said the Shadow.

"The real one?"

"Very real."

"The one God put the 10 Commandments inside of?"

"Oh. No, this is the original prop from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's much more valuable than any religious knick-knack. I keep my work contracts and receipts in there."

"What do you need receipts for?" Martha questioned.

"For my taxes, obviously."

"…Right…"

"What do you want?" the Shadow asked them pointedly.

"I think you know what we want," said Martha.

"Honestly, people come to me for all kinds of reasons. Assassinations, bounty hunting, sometimes fetish play – although, I always turn down the last one so if that's what you're after I'll have to point you in another direction. Someone paid me half a million credits to get them a packet of Szechuan sauce. I still have a few spare if that's what you want."

"Our daughter is missing," Martha said. The Shadow didn't speak. "Do you know something about that? You're the primo, master-kidnapper of the universe."

"I see. You think I have absolutely no loyalty."

"Quite frankly, no. You just care about money to… what? Buy Beanie Babies?" Martha stepped towards the collection of plushies again.

"Don't go near those," the Shadow warned suddenly, "You're volatile. I don't trust volatile, emotional pyromaniacs around highly flammable teddy-bears. I have not kidnapped your daughter."

"Why should we believe you?"

"Why would I do it?" he asked.

"Money, obviously," said Mickey.

"And have you two coming after me? All the Doctors? The Bad Wolf, the remnants of the Gutkeled Brood, the Lightning Girl? It's hardly worth the risk. Hundreds of people have come to me to try and get me to snatch that girl over the years, you know, and I've never bitten."

"Maybe this time the price was right," said Martha, slowly advancing towards the toys.

"Don't," the Shadow continued.

"Maybe that's how you got this fancy purple one," she said, reaching out towards it.

"Do not touch that, Jones. I have not sold out your child for any of the Babies, so leave them – no!" She picked up the purple bear, aiming her other hand, aflame, right at it. She could vaporise that thing in a second, Mickey knew. "You put that down right now, that's Princess the Bear."

"Princess?" Mickey frowned.

"She was made for the Princess Diana of Wales Memorial Foundation, in 1997. That's the especially rare Indonesian version, in this century that's worth millions of credits. It's like trying to sell the Mona Lisa."

"Then I guess I'm threatening to set fire to the Mona Lisa," Martha threatened, "If you know anything at all about what's happened to my little girl-"

"I don't!"

"I will burn this teddy-"

"DON'T!"

"The pellets will be melted all over this floor-"

"She was the people's princess, Jones – how could you do something like this!? It's treason. High treason. I could have you beheaded."

"Tell me what you know."

"I don't know anything!" the Shadow pleaded, reaching out his arms in the dim hope that Princess the Bear might come to life and leap towards him to safety. Martha lit flames in the palm of her hand. Mickey was debating telling her to cool it a bit considering how stressed the Shadow was getting at the prospect of Princess the Bear being destroyed. "How many times have I saved your life!? I've saved you from the Slitheen, from the Time Lord Xenomorph, I've rescued everybody on your ship one time or another. And I try my best to warn people away from trying to hurt Matilda."

"You're going to have to do better than that," Martha continued, "You must know something."

"Fine! I know where the Master is! Just put Princess down, please." Could sentient swarms of space-piranhas cry? It sounded like the Shadow was on the brink. Martha didn't put Princess down, but she did extinguish the flames in her other hand.

"The Master has something to do with this?"

"I don't know. But she's got a history of kidnapping members of your family as part of an elaborate flirting game with the Doctor."

"…He's got a point," Mickey said, "Clara was saying earlier that Missy kept ringing her."

"She's more than reckless enough to kidnap Matilda," the Shadow continued, "Probably did it for a joke." Martha was finally convinced that the Shadow had not had anything to do with Mattie's vanishing. She put Princess the Bear back down on the podium at the centre of the collection, unharmed. "There's nothing in the universe worth the trouble of having you chase me down, and especially not kidnapping a child. I do have a moral code. And you're the only ones capable of finding me out here on this wasteoid – the Shadow Proclamation haven't managed to do it yet."

"And you know where she is?" Martha persisted.

"I have reports of where she's been recently," he said, "She's very reckless, leaves a trail, not unlike your Doctors."

"Time Lords are all idiots, what do you expect?" Martha said.

"I'll give you the best information I have. I'll put out my own feelers, search as well – just don't destroy any of my things."

"It's a good deal," said Mickey. The Shadow was notoriously good at finding things.

"Fine, fine, do whatever – just tell us how to find the Master, and we'll be on our way, alright? And don't think we won't come back if you're lying."