Angel gasped, eyes wide. Her eyes lost focus. Her mind went over her memories of Jack. She certainly hadn't inherited his dark hair or cleft chin. The only thing she could attribute to him as far as looks was her blue eyes.
She thought of his reference of knowing her, of meeting her in the past. Did he already know? She took off running to where said man was locked up. The Master had the good graces to leave her be.
Jack had been standing there for so long. When he saw someone approaching him he expected a maid by her female shape. Recognition dawned in him not a moment later. It was Angie. Then he realized she was running to him. God, he hoped she wasn't trying to break him free. The Master would start to punish her too. He waited for her to reach him, not wanting to get the attention of his guards.
"Jack," she whispered hoarsely while catching her breath. "He's finally told me." His brows knitted together.
"Who told you what?" He whispered back.
Angel decided she should explain further. "The Master said he would tell me who my father is if I had another child with him." Jack stiffened at the news. It made sense to him now why she warned him not to tell her.
"If you had known, would you still be having his kid?" He wanted to confirm his suspicions.
"Of course not!" She angrily whispered with her brows scrunched together.
"That's probably why future-you told me not to tell past-you." He gave her a one sided smile. The moment felt too bittersweet for anything more. "Before you ask, I don't know who your mom is. Before I met the Doc, I was a time agent. I had about 2 years of my memory wiped. It's the only clue I have about how you came to be." Angel let out a heavy sigh.
"Damn! The more information I get, the more questions I have! Is there nothing about me that is straightforward?"
"You're my beautiful daughter," Jack said with a smile, hoping to cheer her up.
Heat rose to her cheeks, along with a smile. "What am I supposed to call you now, Father? Father Jack?" That last one drew a chuckle out of him.
"God, no! Dad will do. I'm definitely not a priest."
Angel continued to visit Jack everyday over the next several months. Every morning she would give the Master whatever attention it was he wished for, leaving only after he disappeared down the hall. As her belly grew her sprints turned into more of a waddle down the corridors of the Valiant.
The father and daughter duo confided completely in one another. While he didn't know her real name, he told her about his and his past. He shared his thoughts about her eyes, her doughy cheeks and lips. She didn't have many life experiences to speak of before the Doctor found her, so she told him about the two or so months she spent in 1913. They spoke to each other so much that Angel developed a bit of an American accent too. She adored Jack and enjoyed having something to connect back to him.
On Earth, Martha Jones snuck back onto the shores of Britain under the cover of night. She asked the name of the man who met her with a lantern.
"Tom Milligan. No need to ask who you are, the famous Martha Jones. How long since you were last in Britain?"
"365 days. It's been a long year." Tom asked Martha about the plan. "This Professor Docherty, I need to see her. Can you get me there?"
"She works in a repair shed, Nuclear Plant Seven. I can get you inside. What's this all for? What's so important about her?"
"Sorry. The more you know, the more you're at risk."
"There's a lot of people depending on you. You're a bit of a legend."
"And what does the legend say?
"That you sailed the Atlantic, walked across America, that you were the only person to get out of Japan alive. Martha Jones, they say, she's gonna save the world. A bit late for that."
The Master got ready for the day with a child-like excitement. But his Angel just sat in her chair and stared blank-faced at the sky. She rubbed her expanded belly that would soon give birth to their baby. He approached his lover and rubbed her shoulders. "What's wrong?" He whispered into her ear.
She let out a sigh. "I was just wondering about our daughter, Audrey. Did you ever find out who it was? The woman who took her?"
"You know I didn't. And you know there's nothing we can do about it. She's gone. It's time we moved on," he insisted. He reached down to feel the little one growing. He smiled when he felt the little shapes. A big round head. A long foot. A little fist. He gave Angel a quick peck on the cheek before leaving the room with a bounce to his step. "I'm sending hair and makeup to you. I want you to be glorious on camera."
His first stop was to go rub the stink of his successes in the good Doctor's face. He wheeled the now elderly man to a window. "It's ready to rise, Doctor. The new Time Lord Empire. It's good, isn't it? Isn't it, good? Anything?" He waved into the Doctor's face. "No? Anything" A dozen Toclafane floated around outside above the clouds. "Oh, but they broke your heart, didn't they, those Toclafane? Ever since you worked out what they really are. They say Martha Jones has come back home. Now why would she do that?"
"Leave her alone," the Doctor struggled to say through his gravelly voice.
"But you said something to her, didn't you? On the day I took control. What did you tell her?"
"I have one thing to say to you." The master raised his brows. "You know what it is."
"Oh, no you don't!"
"Valiant now entering Zone One airspace. Citizens, rejoice!" A voice spoke on the ship's intercom.
The Master shoved the Doctor's wheelchair, not caring that he would collide with a wall. "Come on, people! What are we doing?" He said with a few claps. "Launch day in 24 hours!"
While the Master was looking away, the Doctor signaled to Francine with three fingers resting on his leg. She continued walking and headed in the direction of her ex-husband Clive who was cleaning in the maintenance corridor. She made the three-fingered signal to him. He passed on the signal to his daughter, Tish, when she walked past with a tray of food. She continued to her task of feeding the restrained Captain Jack.
"Morning, Tish. Ah! Smell that sea air! Makes me long for good old British fish and chips. Hahahaha. And what do I get? Cold mashed swede. Some hotel. Last time I book over the internet." Tish shoved a spoonful into his mouth and showed him the three-fingered signal. Jack winked in response.
"All over the Earth, those things," Martha commented as she and Tom trekked through the rough terrain to their destination. A giant statue of the Master stood, looking out over the distance. "He's even carved himself into Mount Rushmore."
"Best to keep down," Tom instructed. The two crawled up to the peak of the rubble. "Here we go. The entire South Coast of England converted into shipyards. They bring in slave labor every morning, break up cars, houses, anything, just for the metal, building the fleet out of scrap."
"You should see Russia. That's Shipyard Number One. All the way from the Black Sea to the Bering Strait, there's 100,000 rockets getting ready for war."
"War? With who?"
"The rest of the universe. I've been out there, Tom, in space, before all this happened, and there's 1,000 different civilisations all around us with no idea of what's happening here. The Master can build weapons big enough to devastate them all."
'You've been in space?"
"Problem with that?"
"No! No, just… Wow."
"Anything else I should know?"
"I've met Shakespeare."
They hushed and Martha looked away when they heard the whirring of Toclafane spheres approaching.
"Identify, little man," the first sphere demanded.
"I've got a license! Thomas Milligan, Peripatetic Medical Squad. I'm allowed to travel. I was just checking for…"
"Soon the rockets will fly! And everyone will need medicine! You'll be so busy!" The spheres laughed and left them.
"But… they didn't see you," Tom said, confused.
Martha held up her key-turned-perception filter. "How do you think I traveled the world? The Master set up Archangel, that mobile phone network, 15 satellites around the planet. But really it's transmitting this low-level psychic field. That's how everyone got hypnotized into thinking he was Harold Saxon."
"Saxon! Feels like years ago."
"But the key's tuned in to the same frequency. Makes me sort of, not invisible, just unnotable."
"Well, I can see you."
"That's 'cause you wanted to," Martha said with a little more directness than needed in the moment.
"Yeah, I suppose I did." Tom looked down and smiled.
"Is there a Mrs. Milligan?"
"No. No. What about you?"
"There used to be someone." Martha thought about that first time meeting the Doctor, and the kiss he gave her. Then she remembered the last time she saw him. How aged he was, and how much she had to help him steady himself. He was so changed. "Long time ago. Come on, I've got to find this Docherty woman."
"Well, we'll have to wait till the next work shift. What time is it now?"
"It's nearly 3:00."
Right at 15:00 Jack groaned loudly as he used every fiber of strength within him to strip the screws that secured his chains. He managed to get away from the guard just in time. He used a metal pipe he managed to dislodge to whack an electrical line in the corridor. Sparks flew out. Clive, at the ready, threw his mop water into the sparks creating a wall of steam for cover. Alarms started blaring throughout the ship.
"Condition red! Repeat, condition red!
Francine threw the Master's jacket to the Doctor. He pulled the laser screwdriver out of his pocket. The Master stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the Doctor.
"Oh, I see."
"I told you. I have one thing to say," the Doctor said, pointing the screwdriver at him. The Master burst into laughter.
Angel suspected the Master's excitement was not a good sign. She walked the long way to the ship's main room, taking the maintenance corridor. Suddenly she was dragged to stand behind a squadron of the Master's men. She looked up to see where there guns were aiming. It was her father, Jack!
He stood in the corridor, guns pointing at his face. "Oh, here we go again." He held out his arms, ready to take all of the bullets. Angel knew that logically he would be ok, but the sight of her father's death still shook her to the core. The men went to recapture Jack while he was still dead.
Angel just stood and watched, hoping he wouldn't suffer any further for this. One of the men escorted her to the Master. He nodded his head in the direction of her usual black leather lounge chair.
"Isomorphic controls," the Master informed the Doctor. He yanked the screwdriver from his hands and swung, hitting the elderly Doctor's face. The old man stumbled to the floor. "Which means they only work for me. Like this." He pointed the laser screwdriver at Francine and shot her. "Say sorry!"
"Sorry, sorry! Sorry!" Francine said through her gunts of pain.
"Mum!" Tish yelled, rushing to her.
"Didn't you learn anything from the blessed St. Martha?"
Lucy ran to grab her husband's suit jacket and put it back on him. She was dressed in a slinky red silk-satin dress. Her long blonde hair was expertly styled.
Angel watched the scene from a firmly cushioned chair. Her hair had been dyed back to its red-gold and her curls had returned. The stylist pinned her hair up. She wore a black off the shoulder v-necked dress with an empire waist to emphasize her pregnant belly.
"Siding with the Doctor is a very dangerous thing to do. Take them away." The guard coaxed the women away from the room.
"Okay, got ya." The Master said, pulling the Doctor into a chair. "There you go, gramps. Oh! Do you know… I remember the days when the Doctor, oh that famous Doctor, was waging a Time War, battling Sea Devils and Axons. He sealed the rift at the Medusa Cascade single-handed! And look at him now. Stealing screwdrivers. How did he ever come to this? Oh, yeah! Me!" He ended with a chuckle.
Angel thought about how many times the Doctor got himself into a pickle. He seemed to always find a way out. The Master's words didn't ring true for her.
"I just need you to listen."
"No. It's my turn. Revenge! Best served hot! And this time it's a message for Miss Jones." Angel's blood ran cold at the threat. She decided to stay with Jack for now. She definitely did NOT support that notion.
Martha and Tom snuck into the repair shed. "Professor Docherty?"
"Busy."
"They sent word ahead. I'm Tom Milligan. This is Martha Jones."
"She can be the Queen of Sheba for all I care, I'm still busy."
"Televisions don't work any more," Martha said after seeing the woman trying to fix one.
"Oh, God, I miss Countdown. Never been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. What's the plural for Des? Desii? Deseen? But we've been told there's gonna be a transmission. From the man himself! There!"
"My people! Salutations. On this, the eve of war. Lovely woman. But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there, stories of a child walking the Earth, giving you hope. But I ask you, how much hope has this man got?" The camera panned to the aged Doctor planted in his chair. "Say hello, Gandalf. Except he's not that old, but he's an alien with a much greater lifespan than you stunted little apes. What if it showed? What if I suspend your capacity to regenerate? All 900 years of you life, Doctor, what if we could see them?"
The Master inflicted his damage to answer his own question. "Older and older and older." The Doctor writhed in agony. "Down you go Doctor." The Doctor's body was shrinking. "Down, down. Down the years." He finally finished. "Doctor?" The Doctor's body was the size of an infant, but with wrinkled old skin. "Received and understood, Miss Jones?"
Tom gave Martha his apology. But Martha just smiled. "The Doctor's still alive."
"Obviously, the Archangel network would seem to be the Master's greatest weakness. 15 satellites all around the Earth, still transmitting. That's why there's so little resistance. It's broadcasting a telepathic signal that keep people scared," the Professor said.
"We could just take them out," Tom suggested.
"We could. 15 ground-to-air missiles. You got any on you? Besides, any military action, the Toclafane descend."
"They're not called Toclafane. That's a name the Master made up."
"What are they, then?"
"Well, that's why I came to find you. Know your enemy," Martha said, staring the professor straight in the eyes. "I've got this." She held up a purple disc. "No one's been able to look at a sphere close up. They can't even be damaged. Except once. A lightning strike in South Africa brought one of them down. Just by chance. I've got the reading on this."
"Oh!" The professor grunted as she banged on the computer monitor. "Whoever thought we'd miss Bill Gates?"
"So is that why you traveled the world? To find a disc?" Tom asked Martha.
"No, just got lucky."
"I heard stories that you walked the Earth to find a way to build a weapon." The professor's suggestion brought the memory of her task to mind. "There! A current of 58.5 kiloamperes transfer a charge of 510 megajoules precisely."
"Can you recreate that?" Tom asked.
"I think so. Easily, yes." Professor Docherty smiled, finally capable of achieving a request without trouble.
"Right then, Dr. Milligan. We're gonna get us a sphere," Martha said with a smile.
Tom shot off a gun to alert a sphere, then ran to lead it into their trap. "He's coming! You ready?" Martha yelled to the professor.
"You do your job, I'll do mine!"
"NOW!" Electricity arced, hitting the shere.
The professor smiled at her success. The sphere dropped. "That's only half the job. Let's find out what's inside."
"Tomorrow they launch," the Master said to the Doctor as he and Lucy walked into the room where the Doctor was kept. His tiny body sat in a birdcage. "We're opening up a rift in the Braccatolian space. Won't see us coming. Kind of scary."
"Then stop."
"Once the empire is established and there's a new Gallifrey in the heavens, maybe then it stops. The drumming. The never-ending drumbeat. Ever since I was a child, I looked into the Vortex. That's when it chose me. The drumming, the call to war. Can't you hear it? Listen, it's there now, right now. Tell me you can hear it, Doctor."
The small ancient Doctor grabbed the bars with his tiny hands. "It's only you."
"Good."
A sphere came to speak to the Master. "Tomorrow, the war! Tomorrow we rise, never to fall!"
"You see? I'm doing it for them. You should be grateful. After all, you love them. So very, very much."
"There's some sort of magnetic clamp. Hold on, I'll just trip the…" The sphere cracked with an electric professor slowly opened the four segments. "Oh, my God!" Martha and Tom looked over her shoulder to see a human head hooked up to a variety of wires. They jumped, startled by the power suddenly returning to the sphere. The head's eyes flew open. "It's alive!"
The eyes looked over at Martha. "Martha. Martha Jones."
"It knows you," Tom said, perplexed.
"Sweet, kind Martha Jones. You helped us to fly."
"What do you mean?"
"You led us to salvation."
"Who are you?"
"The skies are made of diamonds."
"No." Martha couldn't believe it. It was too horrible. "You can't be him." She remember the little boy at the end of the universe telling her that same thing.
"We share each other's memories. You sent him to Utopia."
"Oh, my God!"
"What's it talking about? What's it mean?" Tom asked.
"What are they?" The professor asked.
"Martha. Martha, tell us. What are they?"
"They're us. They're humans. The human race from the future."
Martha explained herself to Tom and Professor Docherty. "I'd sort of worked it out, with the paradox machine, because the Doctor said, on the day before the Master came to power, he said, 'When he was stealing the TARDIS, the only thing I could do was use the coordinates. I locked them permanently. He could only travel between the year 100 Trillion and the last place the TARDIS landed. Which is right here, right now.' The Master had the TARDIS, this time machine. But the only other place he could go was the end of the universe, so he found Utopia."
"But then the Master came with his wonderful time machine to bring us back home," the head said to its three-human audience.
"The Utopia project was the last hope. Trying to find a way to escape the end of everything," Martha told Tom and Docherty.
"There was no solution. No diamonds. Just the dark and the cold," the head said.
"But that's a paradox. If you're the future of the human race, and you've come back to murder your ancestors, you should cancel yourselves out. You shouldn't exist," the professor poked holes in the head's story.
"And that's the paradox machine," Martha made the connection.
"What about us? We're the same species. Why do you kill so many of us?" Tom asked the head of the future-human.
"Because it's fun!" The head manically laughed. Tom didn't hesitate to shoot it.
"I took Lucy to Utopia. A Time Lord and his human companion. I took her to see the stars. Isn't that right, sweetheart?" Lucy looked over to the Doctor.
"Trillions of year into the future. To the end of the universe."
"Tell him what you saw."
"Dying. Everything whole of creation was falling apart. And I thought, 'There's no point. No point to anything. Not ever.'"
"And it's all your fault," the Master blamed the Doctor.
"You should have seen it, Doctor. Furnaces. Burning. The last of humanity screaming at the dark," the Master said to the Doctor.
"All that human invention that had sustained them across the eons, it all turned inward. They cannibalized themselves," the Master said.
"We made ourselves so pretty," the sphere floating by the Master added.
"Regressing into children, but it didn't work. The universe was collapsing around them," the Master continued.
"My masterpiece, Doctor. A living TARDIS, strong enough to hold the paradox in place, allowing the past and the future to collide in infinite majesty."
"But you're changin history. Not just Earth, the entire universe," the Doctor argued.
"I'm a Time Lord. I have that right."
"But even then… why come all this way just to destroy?"
"We come backwards in time all to build a brand-new empire lasting 100 trillion years!" The sphere said.
"With me as their Master. Time Lord and humans combined. Haven't you always dreamt of that, Doctor?"
"Human race. Greatest monsters of them all. Night, then." The Master wrapped his arm around Lucy and walked her out of the room, waving the sphere to follow.
"I think it's time we had the truth, Miss Jones. Legend says you traveled the world to find a way of killing the Master. Tell us, is it true?"
"Just before I escapes, the Doctor told me… The Doctor and the Master they've been coming to Earth for years. And they've been watched. There's UNIT and Torchwood, all studying Time Lords in secret. And they made this, the ultimate defense."
"All you need is to get close, I can shoot the Master dead with this," Tom held up his pistol.
"Actually, you can put that down now, thank you very much," Docherty said.
"Point is, it's not so easy to kill a Time Lord. They can regenerate, literally bring themselves back to life."
"Ah, the Master's immortal! Wonderful!"
"Except for this. Four chemicals slotted into the gun. Inject him, kills a Time Lord permanently."
"Four chemicals, you've only got three."
"Still need the last one, 'Cause the components of this gun were kept safe, scattered across the world, and I found them. San Diego, Beijing, Budapest and London."
"Then where is it?"
"There's an old UNIT base in North London. I've found the access codes. Tom, you've got to get me there."
"We can't get across London in the dark. It's full of wild dogs, we'll be eaten alive. We can wait till morning then go with the medical convoy."
"You can spend the night here, if you like," Docherty offered.
"No, we can get halfway, stay at the slave quarters in Bexley. Professor, thank you."
"Oh, and you. Good luck."
"Thanks," Martha said, giving the older woman a kiss on the cheek.
"Martha. Could you do it? Could you actually kill him?""
"Got no choice."
"You might be many things, but you don't look like a killer to me." Martha looked hard at the woman before walking out of the shop.
Martha and Tom headed to Bexley. He knocked on the door of the slave quarters. "Let me in, it's Milligan." The two slipped inside to severely overcrowded hallway.
"Did you bring food?" A woman at the door asked.
"Couldn't get any. And I'm starving," Tom said.
"All we've got is water."
"Sorry," Martha said, brushing past everyone.
"It's cheaper than building barracks. Pack them in, 100 in each house, ferry them off to the shipyards every morning," Tom explained.
"Are you Martha Jones?" A young man asked.
"Yeah, that's me."
"Can you do it? Can you kill him? They said you can kill the Master. Can you? Tell us you can do it. Please, tell us you can do it."
"Who is the Master?" Suddenly lots of voices added their own questions at the same time.
"Come on, just leave her alone. She's exhausted."
"No, it's all right. They want me to talk and I will. "
Back at the repair shop, Professor Docherty opened a panel and whispered, "Access Priority One. This is Professor Alison Docherty."
"State your intent."
"First of all, I need to know about my son."
"State your intent."
"Is my son still alive?"
"State your intent."
The woman took a deep breath. "I have some information for the Master. Concerning Martha Jones."
"I traveled across the world. From the ruins of New York to the Fusion Mills of China, right across the Radiation Pits of Europe. And everywhere I went I saw people just like you, living as slaves. But if Martha Jones became a legend, then that's wrong, because my name isn't important. There someone else. The man who sent me out there. The man who told me to walk the Earth. And his name is the Doctor. He has saved your lives so many times and you never even knew he was there. He never stops, he never stays, he never asks to be thanked. But I've seen him. I know him. I love him. And I know what he can do."
"It's him! It's him! My God, it's him! It's the Master! He's here!"
"But he never comes to Earth! He never walks upon the ground," the mouthy young man argued once again.
"Hide her!" People covered Martha with their jackets. She laid down on the stairs.
"He walks among us, our Lord and Master."
"Martha! Martha Jones!" The Master yelled from the street with lots of armed henchmen. He raised the pitch of his voice to a squeak, "I can see you." Back to normal, "Out you come, little girl. Come and meet your Master. "Anybody? Nobody? No? Nothing? Positions!" Several guns cocked at once. "I'll give the order unless you surrender. Ask yourself, 'What would the Doctor do?'"
Martha took off the perception filter and left the house. "Oh, yes! Oh, very well done! Good girl! He trained you well." Martha walked forward slowly. "Bag. Give me the bag." Martha took a step to come closer. "No, stay there, just throw it." Martha took the bag off her back and threw it. The Master lasered it immediately.
"And now, good companion, your work is done." The Master raised his screwdriver to shoot her, but before he could Tom ran out to shoot him. But he didn't have a chance. The Master killed him before he could pull the trigger. He laughed at the pathetic attempt. Martha looked at him with a straight face.
"But you, when you die, the Doctor should be witness, hmm?" He inhaled deeply. "Almost dawn, Martha, and planet Earth marches to war."