"How could you?" A woman shouted as she stomped across an ornate office.
"Tecteun? Whatever are you talking about?" The man sitting a large, marble desk asked as he looked up. He had sandy hair and a soft face, with cold, steely blue eyes.
"You know what I'm talking about!" The woman roared angrily, as she slapped a pad on the desk.
The man looked down at the pad. He took a deep, nasal breath. "You must understand the times we are in. The fall of the Pythia, the disappearance of Omega, and now deep space reconnaissance are reporting a darkening force on the edges of reality consuming worlds…it's a very trying time. The people need the reassurance that their leaders have the ingenuity and capacity to-"
"You stole my research!" The woman shouted into the man's face. "Or rather you stole the credit! 'Rassilon brings you the ability to live forever'!?"
"You do work for me. Whatever you discover; I bring to the people…" The man said quietly as looked into the rage of the woman. He leaned back. "And you have found the most mira-"
"Stop!" The Master walked into the scene from beyond one of the walls as it shimmered and the two people in the room froze. He shook his head and looked up to nothing. "No, no, this isn't it. Why was this bound up with my search for the Doctor? I don't understand. Bring us forward, give me the first record of this 'timeless child' being directly referenced to the Doctor…"
The scene around the man wavered, broke apart and then reformed in a new scene. The man and the woman from before were in the scene as was a new woman.
"You can't do this!" The woman, from before, said; tears were forming in the corner of her eyes.
"It is necessary; the child is not of Gallifrey." The man said, insistently. "People are starting to ask questions. It cannot be killed…trust me we've tried. With disastrous results…"
"She is terrified of you!" Tecteun snapped.
"And is more than capable of defending herself." The man said quietly. "She killed two guard officers, in a fit of pique. If she ever fully realizes her power, she could bring Gallifrey to its knees. She is dangerous!"
"She is my child! MINE!" Tecteun returned. "I found her, I cared for her…."
"You tortured her until she gave up her secrets, and then you pretended it never happened and have lied about her nature to her ever since!" The man retorted. "Whatever do you think the child will do to you should it ever realize what you have done to it, what it actually is? When its confused mind stops looking to you as its parent and starts considering the pain you put it through, what do you think it will do? And when it's done with you it will turn on the rest of us. Since we cannot find a means of destroying it, the only option is to put it in a vault, lock it deep into the heart of the Death Zone, put a tower on its tomb and chain it to the ground…never to be freed."
"NO! You can't! That would be worse than killing her! To leave a poor child, trapped, alone in the dark in the wilds…I will not allow it!" Tecteun shouted. "Let me take her away, I'll take a chronoscaphe and go, anywhere, to the farthest reaches of the universe, to the end of time, or the beginning, I'll find another portal and go to another reality, please, just don't lock her away…"
"I cannot trust you…" the man said sternly. "You already have tried to subvert me by building in this ridiculous limit to the newest upgrades to your regeneration techniques. How can I trust you out in the wilds? If you find the child's real parentage you could bring them back, to overthrow me, the Time Lords…"
"I wouldn't!" Tecteun retorted.
"If – I may." The second woman in the scene spoke finally. She was covered in the white paint of the Pythian order. In long elegant robes, her hair shorn to her scalp. "I think I may be able to find a means of alleviating this problem, and maybe a few others."
"Director, I will yield to you the floor…" The man said looking to the woman behind the desk.
"Gallifrey has long tried to interfere with the workings of the universe, since the construction of the Panopticon, since the creation of the Eye of Harmony, since the revelations of regeneration." The woman continued. "However, our successes have been mixed. The war with the vampires became a victory only after centuries of destruction. Our attempts to uplift the people of Minyos were, less than successful. And whilst we have had some diplomatic success with various other temporal powers, we are still, subject to the whims of reality. And I think, Lord Rassilon, can attest to a level of distaste among the coterie of the Time Lords for further such interventions…"
"Yes, already the High Council works against me trying to force Gallifrey into some form of hermitage, cut free our colonies from Kassinar to Karn." Rassilon growled. "They do not understand that for Gallifrey to be safe it must act upon the universe, before the universe acts upon us!"
"As such it may be prudent to have, a division of sorts, a small collection of Time Lords who work for the betterment of Gallifrey and the universe, outside the normal operational channels, beyond the reach of the High Council's meddling, fully in accordance with our illustrious founder." The woman stated calmly as she lightly bowed her head towards Rassilon.
"How does this affect my child?" Tecteun asked.
"Thank you, finally!" The Master growled, rolling his eyes, from his unseen point of view in the back of the room.
"The child is not a Time Lord." The director said quietly. "As such it could reasonably be considered outside the context of Time Lord law."
"She thinks she is a Time Lord though!" Tecteun returned.
"What it thinks is immaterial, it's what it is, that matters." The director returned. "The child can work within the gray areas of 'plausible deniability'. An agent of Gallifrey, not of Gallifrey."
"If the child learns it is not of Gallifrey it will precipitate its further discoveries of its powers!" Rassilon snorted.
"Then the child will be allowed its delusions. And the moment it starts thinking it's not a Time Lord, or the illusion starts to fail, we'll simply reset the child's memory." The director said quietly. She turned to Tecteun. "Your child can always be yours, always be precisely what you want it to be. And we will have the perfect, plausibly deniable agent to work for us." The director smiled quietly to herself. "The child can truly cure all our maladies, internally through the miracle of regeneration and externally through the Division…"
"It has become the doctor of Gallifrey…" Rassilon said with a smile.
Tecteun looked up. "The one who will make us all bett-"
"Bullshit!" The Master shouted loudly, as the scene dispersed in an angry slashing motion of the Master's hand. "All these years, all these centuries, these battles, these debates…" The Master crouched down holding his head. "To think…I bothered to even listen to him. To even try to stand with him….and he's, he's….an alien creature!" The Master shook his head violently. "No, no, no, no, no…worst than that…he flows through my veins!" The Master looked up and shuddered. "I wanted to show him that he was just like me, but he's not like me, he never was like me, all that time running through the streets it was all a lie! I wanted to be like him, but I can't be, none of us can be! He's just a product of Gallifrey's intelligence agency, just a creation from our thieving scrounging ancestry. He professes kindness and mercy; he can afford it because he can't even DIE!" The Master stood up suddenly, and spun around looking up into the chambers of the matrix. He squinted slightly, imagining the great citadel of the Time Lords hiding in the darkness above him, and he started to laugh. "We are monsters, what I was…was what we are in truth, in the dark, unwitnessed…only fighting for reward, without hope of redemption. We aren't dusty senators hiding in the dark, we're savage, manipulators, aggressively taking what's ours from those who can't fight back…and he wanted to save us!" The Master frowned. "Save us? The ones that stole from him his power? The ones that built an endless empire on the back of his torment and he wants to save us….the sanctimony of it…." A thought cut across his mind, the frown slowly morphed into a maniacal smile. "He thinks he's won, he thinks Gallifrey is safe and in his debt…" The Master's eyes narrowed. "Not anymore…the fools still think I'm 'The Minister of Chance', gave me access to the inner workings of Gallifrey's defense grid, and matrix…oh I said I'd bring fun back to the dead end of the universe…it's time to keep that promise…"