Arthur had seen destruction for the last 900 years. He had seen many cities, countries, and planets that got ruined by war. The lifeless body that got scattered around, the buildings that barely stand still, the smoke and ashes that fill the air ruthlessly.
Yet, he never sees this type of destruction.
Not even Gallifrey, for instance.
Quietly he walked around the burnished Gallifreyan landscape. From afar, he can see the remnants of the burned out citadel. The familiar iconography that the Doctor once showed to him is only just recognizable. To think that not once, but twice Gallifrey got destroyed…irony is such a weird thing to witness.
As he keeps walking, he finally reaches inside the Citadel. There's some blood in the wall and air. Many stuff that he doesn't recognise also scatter alongs.
Then, the black-haired man entered a ruined chamber. There's a massive hole in the incredibly high ceiling. Still, there's small light visible up above, illuminating the centre of the room. He sneezes with dust and rubble all over the floor.
"Ah! The Citadel, the heart of Gallifrey!" He heard the Master stating as he and the Doctor entered. "Recognise the old place? I was thinking I might knock through there, put a wet room there, screening room there—"
"Sunny?!" The Doctor yelped, shocked and horrified to find her son in here.
"Aaand you just ruined the moment."
"Shut up, fool," Arthur grumbled as the Doctor hugged him.
She takes a good look at him. "Where were you? I was worried you didn't jump here like you said."
"I did?"
She blinks. "Wait…where were you?"
"Well," he scratched his back. He's not comfortable telling this Doctor about the last encounter he had. But still… "I'm just with Rose and a younger version of you. The one with big ears."
The Doctor frowns before gasping. She knows this Arthur way more than any version of him, since she met this one after the war. So, the fact that he just met her younger self with a North accent and Rose…meant that he just encountered a very angry, bitter Doctor who had suspicions on a stranger that claimed to know the Doctor and Rose. "Nooo…please tell me you did not just go to Platform One."
"I…don't," he lied.
Silently, the Doctor cursed in very foul words of Gallifreyan language. Ooh, how she hated the person she used to be after the Time War. She really wished she could smack that jerk to apologise.
"If I may talk again," the Master insisted, then continued his blabbering. "The Panopticon. Well, what's left, which, er...which isn't much. We had some fun there, didn't we, hey? Graduated. Assassinated presidents. The best of times! But I thought here would be a fitting place to end this." They hear a bingle noise. "Oh. Oop. Excuse me. Check my notifications." He checks something from a small device before grinning. "Oh, goodie! The Cybermen are here, at the Boundary. Better extend the hand of friendship. Breaker 1-2 calling all Cybes."
"What?" Arthur glances at the Doctor. "Cybermen? Again?"
She winces. She can guess that Arthur had just recently dealt with the Cybermen before regenerating. "It's complicated," she simply answered.
Then, a hologram of a rusty cybermen with half humanoid face can be seen. "Hello, Cybercarrier," the Master greeted. "Ooo, you look rough. Or is that a choice? Don't mean to conversion-shame you."
"Who are you?" it demanded.
"You may call me Master. I want you to think of me as your new best friend. Now, the Boundary between worlds, this beautiful anomalous fluke? Come through it. Join me."
Arthur frowns. "I can't hack it," he whispered.
"Same with my screwdriver," the Doctor mentioned at the sonic screwdriver she had in her pocket that she silently scans.
"Why would we join you?" the rusty cybermen asked.
"Because I have a planet going spare right here. The planet formerly known as Gallifrey," the Master replied.
"You do not bring them here!" Arthur snapped, his retinas flickering with the golden Vortex.
The Doctor steps in front of the black-haired man before adding, "This is between you and me. Don't you dare bring the Cybermen into our home."
Quickly the master takes out his tissue compression eliminator, narrowing his eyes to them. "Don't heckle, you two. I can always decide to cut you short."
"Do it," Arthur dared him.
"Oh, I will, you brat. I promise I'll roll you out, like the red carpet. It's red because it's drenched in the blood of our people," he grins, then talks to the cybermen. "I've sent you the navigation patterns. Come right to the hearts. Do what so many of your predecessors fantasised about. Land your ship in the ruins of Gallifrey. On the way through, you should send a death squadron. Do you call it a death squadron?" He pondered. "A deletion squad. No, a recruitment patrol. A human juicing party. To eliminate the three humans left alive on that planet. They're weak. It shouldn't take much. See you in a bit."
As the communication ended, the Doctor quickly asks, "Why would you give Gallifrey to the Cybermen?"
"Resource," Arthur mumbled. But what kind of resources, he's not sure. And he didn't like it one bit, considering the Master's involvement.
"You're about to have much bigger things to think about," the Master commented. "I told you two before that everything you knew was a lie. Well, now you get to face the truth, with me at your side."
"Do you really think I'm going to believe anything that comes out of your mouth?" The Doctor snarled, remembering the last time she tried to show them what's the right thing to do. And the result? They're both too stubborn to see the better light. Even Missy, who claimed that she will be better, just sprouted more lies. So yeah, she won't trust her former best friend.
Ignoring her question, the Master gestures around the room. "Do you remember this place, Doctor? Next to the Panopticon, the Chamber of the Matrix, the Repository of all Time Lord knowledge. A data bank of every Time Lord consciousness, living and dead. Every experience and every memory. The lived history of our race. I...I destroyed a lot of things, but not this trove of secrets. This is what started it all. I was just playing, hacking the system. I got lost in there. And then I found everything."
"Found what?" Arthur demanded, trying to figure out his game.
"Truth and reconciliation time, Explorer. Well, maybe not your reconciliation, but your mother. Eh…actually, it's really not reconciliation. But time you two saw the truth for yourself."
He should have figured it out before. Still, Arthur gets caught in the Master's trap as he uses a device and a column of glowing rings surrounds both him and the Doctor. "Paralysis field? Cheap trick. But very much…you."
"Whatever you want with me, fine!" The Doctor said. "But save my friends. Leave my son alone. Don't let the Cybermen take them. If the history between us means anything to you—"
"I do believe you're appealing to my better nature," the Master admitted. "And we both know I don't have one. I'm not going to help them, and neither are you. And the history between us does mean something. It's the rage and pain in my hearts. I'm sending you two deep into the Matrix to understand the truth of Gallifrey and of the Time Lords. Brace yourself. This is going to hurt."
Before Arthur could say something, his eyes went shut…
▪︎▪︎▪︎
He finds himself and the Doctor in a grey space.
"Welcome, Doctor, Explorer. Are you two suffering comfortably? Then I'll begin." The Master's face suddenly appeared in front of them. And then, the entire space went dark as the Master began. "Once upon a time...No. Once upon several times, before the Time Lords, before everything we know, there was an explorer. Her name was Tecteun, from a little-regarded, sparsely populated planet called Gallifrey."
Arthur gasps as a woman enters a big spaceship and sets its course to some planets.
"Tecteun was the first of Gallifrey's indigenous race, the Shobogans, to develop space travel. Dangerous, unsophisticated space travel. She took risks to explore the worlds and galaxies beyond her home. And it was on one of these distant, deserted worlds on the far edge of another galaxy she found something... impossible."
The scene melts, showing a new one. There's a large monument, where a giant gateway opens above the monument. Below it, a girl, looking around, seems lost. Tecteun just watches from afar.
"A gateway. A boundary into another unknown dimension or universe. Tecteun glimpsed the infinite through that gateway. And beneath the monument, she found...a child. Abandoned. Alone. Thrown through, seemingly, from the other unknown realm. Tecteun had a choice to make. Abandon or save the child?"
Tecteun slowly makes her way to get closer to the child, inviting the child to come inside her spaceship and they travel across the planets.
"She chose to rescue the foundling and adopt this refugee from another realm as her own. Together they explored the universe. The child grew older, and finally Tecteun returned to Gallifrey with her new child."
The scene shows a private lab, where Tecteun takes a small sample of blood from the child. She boops the child's nose playfully. The child smiles at her before she examines the blood.
"Like any parent, Tecteun wanted to understand her child. She searched for clues as to the child's identity. Where she might be from, what species she could be. But the child would not yield any secrets Tecteun could understand. The child remained a mystery, until playing with a friend, like any other child, there was an accident."
The child plays with a boy around her age. The boy suddenly wants to grab the child's plane toy. They both argue against each other, which leads the child to fall off a cliff. Arthur closes his eyes as the child's body landed heavily on the shore below. He only opens his eyes as Tecteun hurriedly runs to the child, kneeling at the child's body."
"A catastrophe...for Tecteun, for the child she'd saved, now lost to her. Or so she thought."
Both Arthur and the Doctor can only widen their eyes as the child suddenly glows golden. Tecteun also watched in amazement as the child regenerated in front of her.
"The child regenerated. The first regeneration of any person on the planet of Gallifrey," the Master stated as Tecteun takes the child back to her spaceship. In hurry, she checks the child's condition before taking the blood.
"Now, having seen her adopted child regenerate her body, Tecteun, a scientist and explorer, had a new landscape to explore. She dedicated her life to studying her child. Detailed every fragment of genetic material. It took her years. Several of the child's regenerations."
Arthur grimaces as he watches the poor child go into several regenerations. Even the Doctor just watches in shock as she grips her son's hand. Just the notion that Tecteun had put the child into many near-death experiences sick both of them further.
"Tecteun grew older. Her desire to understand became an obsession. She worked tirelessly, endlessly, furiously. She had to crack this code to understand regeneration. And finally, she did. And to prove herself right, she took the ultimate risk. Tested the theory on herself. Put her own life on the line. Spliced into herself the genetic ability to regenerate. I didn't know any of this. Did you know any of this?" The Master asked them momentarily.
"How could I?" Arthur whispered while witnessing Tecteun change. He had some ideas who the Timeless Child is, based on the Veil and the Trickster's comments, but he never thought the child went through this.
"The planet of Gallifrey evolved," the Master continued, showing the growth of Gallifrey. "Shobogans grew in knowledge and ability. They built themselves the Citadel. They discovered the ability to travel through Time as well as space. With Tecteun, they became a self-appointed ruling elite." Inside the citadel, Tecteun walked to join two other Time Lords. Arthur quickly knows one of them as Rassilon. "And Tecteun proposed that they gene-splice the ability to regenerate into future generations of Citadel dwellers. It would become the genetic inheritance of them and their descendants. But he would restrict the regenerative process to a maximum of twelve times. The Timeless Child became the base genetic code for all Gallifreyans within the Citadel. The civilisation which renamed themselves, with characteristic pomposity, Time Lords. The foundling had become the founder." The scenery disappears, leaving the empty space surrounding them. The Master turns around, walks a bit. "The rest, as they say, is history."
"What happened to the child?" the Doctor asked.
The mad Time Lord glances, then laughs.
"What? What's so funny? What happened to the child?"
"Oh Doctor, really? Haven't you worked this out yet? Even your son knows it."
The Doctor turns to Arthur. "Sunny?"
Arthur sighs, looking down. "The child is you," he revealed.
"You are the Timeless Child," the Master confirmed
The Doctor struggles for breath and reality starts to warp. "No. No, I'm not."
"Mum?" Arthur called, holding her to keep her from panicking.
"You always have been," the Master insisted.
"I can't be."
And before Arthur could help her, the world of the Matrix is rumbling and rushing in on them now, before everything went black.
▪︎▪︎▪︎
"If you have been inside my head, then you know what I've seen. The suffering. Every moment in time and space is burning. It must end, and I intend to end it the only way I can."
"They're all dead."
"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old and I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all 6 billion of the people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"
"Your father is a man with a long and dangerous past. And you, Arthur Jonas, have the potential to become exactly as the Doctor, maybe even more dangerous with the Time Vortex you had. Both of your futures are infinitely more terrifying."
"It's funny, the day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead."
"I've lived longer, seen more, loved more and lost more."
"Sunny!"
Arthur gasped, quickly sitting up as himself in some vast green landscape. The Doctor's kneeling beside him, checking his head and hearts.
"What a touching scene," the Master sneered from behind. The Doctor shields Arthur as she stands in front, not letting the Master dare to get closer to him. "Is it hurting, Doctor? I hope it's hurting, because it really hurt me."
"It's all lies. None of this is the truth," the Doctor argued.
"It's true," Arthur gulps. "All of that, Doctor…it's true."
"No. No, I know my life. I know...I know who I am."
"No, you don't. You never have. Your life has been hidden from you. Our founding parents wanted a noble creation myth for the Time Lords. Born To Rule," the Master insisted.
"I remember my home. I remember growing up. I remember you and me at the Academy together. I remember escaping Gallifrey, taking Susan with me. I remember being into the war, before and after!"
"That happened. It just wasn't your first life."
"Why would they lie?!" She yelled as Arthur quickly stood up, lost, unable to ease his mother. "Why would they do that?"
"I wish it wasn't true, but it is. You know what I find the most infuriating? You always behaved like you were different, like you were...like you were special. And you were." The Master glared at Arthur. "Who else can have a child with a Time Vortex in their body? Nobody except the original. You can see...you can see why I'm angry. A little piece of you is in me. All I am is somehow because of you, and believe me when I say, I cannot bear that."
"That's your reason?" Arthur snarled. "That's why you massacred the entire Time Lords?"
"You speak as if they never deserved it."
"During the last day of the Time War? Yeah, they deserved it! But not all of them. And you KNOW it."
The Master didn't say anything, merely watching.
"Show me the rest," the Doctor demanded.
"I'm not sure you can cope with much—"
He gets thrown away as a large fire circling them. "Show us," Arthur orders.
The Master chuckles darkly. Not bad either. This kid can be as scary as his own mother. Clearly the Doctor's child. "All right. But I'm not sure it's going to make you happy," he said and snaps his finger, showing them a scene from a private room in Citadel. One Time Lady sits on a chair, speaking to both Time Lord. One's clearly Tecteun after regenerated, another's the child.
"The policy of the Time Lords is clear," she explained. "Strict non-intervention in other worlds and times. However, policy and reality sometimes diverge. There are times when it is necessary to intervene. That is the purpose of The Division. The tests we set you. These results are the best I've ever seen."
"Those images. Ireland. I've seen them in my head," the Doctor mumbled as the scene briefly changes into a garda post office from 20th century in Ireland. "What are they?"
"Shhh," the Master shushed her. "She's talking."
"The Division does not exist," she continued. "The Division does not have operatives. We are not even here. Do you understand? I propose…"
The scene suddenly vanishes.
Arthur narrows his eyes at him. "What have you done?"
"Not me," the Master confessed. "That was done long before I got here. Everything from here is redacted, blocked out, all but erased. There was something here. A lot of stuff, seemingly, but now it all just looks like this. I've tried everything, everything, to decode it, but it's...it's unrecoverable, beyond even my brilliance. And it's not often I say that."
"I can tell. How much was lost?"
"Impossible to tell. It took up a lot of space in the Matrix, though. There is one final trace. Those glitches of Ireland your mother keep seeing. Those images, they were buried deep in the Matrix. Tecteun put a visual filter over it so that no one who watched it would find it remarkable. I transmitted them into each of your mind as you tracked the Cybermen. Maybe this is the last gift of a parent. A clue. Or an apology. You can decide. Did Tecteun leave these images for you to decode one day?"
▪︎▪︎▪︎
Arthur and the Doctor find themself in an old police office room. They see two men, strapping an older man into a chair with some wires attaches to his head.
"We have to get rid of everything, I'm afraid," the men with normal outfits decided.
"Thank you for your service. We're sorry you won't remember it," the other men with high-ranking police uniform said before turning on a machine. The older man screams in pain.
The Doctor looks at the inscription on the carriage clock. For Services To The Division.
"The Chameleon Arch," Arthur mumbled, then his forehead started twitching in pain as the scene suddenly morphed into the interior of the Tardis.
"Nonono," the Doctor muttered, worried, then looking at her son. This Arthur is still the younger version. He has yet to face the Family. He mustn't know! "Don't look. Please don't look."
But it's all meaningless as the man finds himself watching the 10th Doctor screaming in pain, holding a headset. Both Martha and Delaney can only watch in horror from the other side of the Tardis.
"What did they do to you, Doctor? How many lives have you had?" The Master asked before says, "Wake up!"
"Hark how the bells. Sweet silver bells. All seem to say. Throw cares away. Christmas is here. Bringing good cheer. To young and old. Meek and the bold..."
▪︎▪︎▪︎
Arthur opens his eyes, gripping his chest as he slowly get his focus back. Not far, he saw the Doctor also waking up, gasping, while the Master simply watched. "I know you're both broken, but it's all over now," he remarked.
"What do you mean?" The Doctor asked.
"When I said I killed everyone here...I did keep the bodies, just...just cold enough in case they'd be useful. I thought...I thought maybe some good can come out of all of this. Your adopted mother isn't the only one who can experiment. I mean, what if...a new race could be created?"
Oh no. By the name of the universe, he didn't... "This is insanity, even by your standard," Arthur whispered.
"I mean, come on! Time Lord organics with the ability to regenerate and self-repair in Cyber armour. Invincible! A perfect army, right? Right? Oh, come in, my pretties," he said as many cybermen wearing Time Lord collar style helmets and cloaks entered. "Yeah! Doosh, doosh, doosh. Line up. Attention! Yeah, that's it. Well, let's test it out." He glances at one cybermen. "Shoot him," he ordered, but the cybermen seemed unsure. "Shoot him!"
The indicated Cyberman shoots the other one.
"Good dog! All dead. Er...wait. Could it be?"
The fallen Cyberman regenerates. Arthur starts to get ill. Dealing with normal cybermen is hard enough. Now he, the Doctor, and the rest need to deal with a cybermen that can regenerate?!
"Yes, it could!" The Master revealed. "Behold your new CyberMasters, Doctor. All born from you, but led by me. How does that feel? Huh? Not even your precious Explorer can handle it. Now, no time to lose. Don't move. Oh, that's right, you two can't. Can you feel a new era dawning, Doctor? For Gallifrey!"
All cybermen quickly repeat. "For Gallifrey!"
"For the Time Lords."
"For the Time Lords!"
"For the end of the universe itself!"
"For the end of the universe itself!"
"You won't get away with this," Arthur snapped.
"Oh, you will," he smirks. "Sweet dreams."
▪︎▪︎▪︎
They find themself in the Matrix again.
"Not again!" The Doctor scoffed as she looked around. "Sunny, any hint?"
The boy shook his head. "Too tired to use the Vortex. And the Master seems to put some sort of block security around my mind so I can't use the algorithm. I can't even access the Matrix itself." He briefly looks at the Doctor, who looks above as if hoping to find a solution to their problem. "Did you blame me?"
"What?"
"Platform One. Did you blame me at the time? Is that why you didn't bring me to the Tardis?"
The Doctor shrugs. "It's been many centuries, Sunny. I can't remember it all."
"Is that so?"
"Yep. Now, can you try reprogramming the Matrix itself?"
"I can try," Arthur commented, using his telepathic ability to change the access code of the Matrix. "It's vast, the code. Much more vast than any supercomputer."
"The Matrix not only stores the Time Lord's memories, they also show you a glimpse of the future. A myth, most of the time. But most of them are complete rubbish. You can't trust them completely."
"Is that supposed to cheer me up?"
"I was intended to make you a bit jealous."
Arthur snorts. "How very original."
She smiles, then bowed down. Her eyes slowly get teary. "I wasn't a good person," she shared. "I thought I destroyed Gallifrey for good. Left me all by myself. Distrust anyone. Be cruel and cowardly. Never give a damn about people's opinions."
"I can tell."
"One thing you need to know, Sunny. That man you met? He's…he's trying to figure out himself. And he did that very harshly," she sighs, finally looking at him. "I'm not asking you to forgive him, to be patient with him. I'm asking you to be brave for yourself, everytime you meet him. Treat him like a stranger. Promise me, Sunny."
"You're asking the impossible," Arthur pointed out, his eyes catching a familiar person behind the Doctor.
"Most of our family are impossible," the Doctor added, frowning, curious as to why Arthur seems to focus behind her. But, she got her answers very soon. "Oh, great. What are you doing here?" The Doctor asked Ruth Clayton…AKA, the Fugitive Doctor. "Or are you the Matrix playing more games with me?"
"Don't ask me, I'm as lost as you are in here," she states as Arthur takes a closer step to them. "Maybe…you just summoned me."
"Where do you fit into all this? Were you me all that time ago? Were all my memories of you erased? Did they force me back into becoming a child?" She grips Arthur's hand, needing his presence more than ever. "How many more of me are out there?"
"I don't have those answers. But say I did…would they even help?"
"They would," Arthur answered confidently. "They're the Doctor."
"Not all of them can be the Doctor, kiddo."
The 13th Doctor laughs. "So, this means I'm not who I thought I was."
"Because your memories aren't compatible with what you learnt today?" the Fugitive Doctor concluded.
"Yes."
"Have you ever been limited by who you were before?"
The 13th Doctor paused. "Ah. Now, that does sound like me talking," she pointed out before sighing heavily. "I'm so tired."
"The Matrix, barely functional, is sapping all the energy out of us," Arthur remarked, coughing. "Of course that jerk would have trapped us here."
"No time to be tired. Still work to do out there. Lives at stake. Armies being born. People need the Doctor," the Fugitive Doctor reminded them.
"I don't know how to stop The Master," the Doctor admitted after looking at her past self.
"Course you do. You had Sunny. You two can do anything. Besides…there's still that one question that's nagging at you, the one thing he said that you didn't understand."
"I don't follow," Arthur said.
"Get out of here, you two. I know this place has blown your mind. Maybe you should return the compliment."
With that, she vanishes. Great.
"No, wait! Are you still there?" The Doctor called. "Of course she's still there. If you were me, you're buried within me, buried within him…"
Arthur cut in. "What did she say?"
"Return the compliment?"
"No. About blowing our minds?"
The Doctor gasped. "Yes! Of course! All this history…all these lies…it's too much stimulus, Sunny! It might work. I've fought the Matrix before, denied its reality, I can do it again. Maybe. Well, you know what they say, Doctor, nothing ventured, nothing blown."
"That's not the words," Arthur argued.
"Eh, tiny mistakes, no biggie," she insisted. "Ready?"
"No."
"Have a blast of this, Matrix."
They both quickly think of any old memories. All the adventures, all their companions, all their moments together, be it grief, sadness, happiness, anger, loss, confusion, fear…and so much more.
Arthur briefly hears a loud static before everything went black.
▪︎▪︎▪︎
Voices. Many voices. Calling to her.
Slowly she opens her eyes. Hazily, she sees Yaz, checking her pulse. Then, she sees Ryan, kneeling beside Yaz. "My fam," she whispered, and then remembered something else. "Sunny. Sunny!"
"I'm here!" Arthur replied from behind. The Doctor turns back, seeing Graham helping Arthur to sit up first. "Ouch," he grumbled, looking at four new people in the chamber. "Okay, let me guess…Ko Sharmus, Yedlarmi, Ethan, aaand Ravio?"
"He's good," Ko Sharmus commented before Arthur tries to stands up.
"That's my Sunny," the Doctor smiles. "All right, then. Off we go." She grumbles as she stands up, tehn stops. "No, there's something I'm missing. The Master is creating a new race of Cybermen using Time Lord bodies. An endlessly regenerating army. I have to stop him. Fast. You shouldn't be here. No humans on Gallifrey."
"They have explosives," Arthur remarked.
"And a plan," Ryan added.
"A Cybership's parked up in the middle of your hometown. It's ripe for blowing up," Graham chimed in.
"We're going to strategically place bombs around the ship," Ravio mentioned. "Including some close enough to the core."
"But it won't achieve everything," Arthur sadly informed. "We need something more…explosive."
"We need more!" The Doctor said. "But there isn't anything more. The Master's seen to that. The Master's seen to everything.'
Yasmin frowns. "Are you all right, Doctor?"
"That's what's been bugging me. That's the thing that he said to me."
"What thing who said?" Ethan asked.
"The half-converted Cyberman. 'The death of everything is within me.' That's what he said. Oh, what did it mean?"
"There is a myth around him," Ravio recalled.
"The Death Particle," Yedlarmi shared.
"The legend is…he, it, whatever, has a Particle in a tiny chamber inside its chest. It will take out all organic life on a planet."
"That's grim," Ryan commented.
"But we can use it," Arthur pointed out.
"A timer on an explosive to activate the Particle!" The Doctor agreed before looking at the rest. "And a clear evacuation plan."
"Only if you've got a way to get us off this planet before it hits," Ko Sharmus noted.
"You all good to set those explosives? I'll deal with the rest. Meet in the corridor below the carrier. Go on, then." As the rest of humans walk out, the Doctor looks at her companions. "Now, I need to get a fix on The Master."
"CyberCarrier," Arthur remarked. "He…left something in there."
▪︎▪︎▪︎
"There!" Arthur points at a shrunken Cyberman. The Doctor quickly scans it.
"The Master? He did that?" Ryan asked.
"But the Death Particle is still in it."
"Just smaller than before," the Doctor added. "If The Master did this, what happened to the Cyberium?" She gasps, wincing.
"Mum?" Arthur called.
"You and me, Matrix Chamber. No one else. One last time," she talked to herself before glancing at Arthur. "I need to get you all off Gallifrey.
"Run!" Yasmin suddenly shouted as they all ran out of the ship, into a corridor of the citadel when their surroundings hurled around.
"Thanks for the warning," Graham remarked to Ko Sharmus.
"You're still alive, aren't you?" The older man shrugs.
Arthur puts some password to open the new Tardis. "Everyone, through here!"
"Come on," Graham noted to everyone as they all entered, leaving Arthur to enter last. He gasped, clutching his shirt as the Doctor navigated the console. This isn't good, his body isn't rested enough after the regeneration. He's too exhausted.
Faintly, he hears the Doctor ask, "Any explosives left?"
"One," Ko Sharmus replied. "Emergencies only."
"Timer?"
"Hand detonation only."
"Yeah. Course. I'll take it."
"So come on, Doc, what are you thinking?" Graham asked.
"Mum," Arthur raspily called. "Don't."
She quickly run to him, letting him lay down on the wall. "I had to, Sunny. There's one option left."
"I can't leave you again."
"You'll see me again."
"How?" He cried. He hasn't met any future Doctors after her. This isn't like with the 12th Doctor. He can't be sure if he'll see her again.
"I just know," she insisted, brushing his cheek gently before glancing at others. "I have to use the Death Particle on Gallifrey. On my home. On the Master…and his new breed of Cybermen."
Ryan looks uncertain. "You sure you wanna do that?"
"I'm sure I don't want to do that, but there's no alternative. If the Master and the Cybermen get off this planet, they'll be unstoppable. I started this with Shelley and the Cyberium, now I have to finish it. Alone."
"What?" Yaz repeated.
"Take Sunny to the Zero Room. He can heal himself much better in that room. The Tardis will show you the room as she takes you back to Earth. All of you. You can settle in the 21st century."
"You're not serious," Ravio denoted.
"She's 100% serious," Arthur remarked.
"What about you?" Ryan asked. "You detonate that thing, you'll die too."
"That's the way it has to be. And I would do that in a heartbeat for this universe," she stated. "For you…my fam. And for my child."
Yasmin ran to the Doctor, holding her by gripping her hand. "We're not letting you go. You're not doing this."
"Get off me, Yaz!" The Doctor snapped, forcing her hand free. "Please."
"Yaz, come on," Ryan called, knowing the Doctor is serious.
Arthur slowly stands up, still leaning on the wall. "Mum—"
She kisses his forehead. "Live great lives," she whispered, looking at the rest one last time before walking away.
"Stay here," Ko Sharmus said before he walked away.
"Don't!" Ravio disagreed.
"Wait!" Arthur shouted, trying to stop him, but he's too tired to do it as the man left the Tardis in a hurry before they moved. He coughs more as pain sensation appears again.
Graham and Yasmin quickly hold him. "Zero Room, right?" Graham recalled as they brought Arthur inside the Tardis.
"Yeah," he said before his eyes closed.