Air thick around them, it felt like it was choking them as their throats tightened, the only saving grace being the air from their oxygen masks, yet they felt the intensity worsen as the machine became dead set chasing them throughout the universe towards the dead zone.
Like a shark, the machine hunted them relentlessly, the TARDIS warning how it tries capturing them in its artificial gravity.
Thwarting its grasp proved difficult, but the TARDIS remains triumphant, however it only served to incite the machine further.
Seeing it on the monitors above the console as he mains it, Paul saw the energy readings the machine outputs due to the flaw worsening.
The way it looks, it became life or death for the machine wanting the copious energy produced by the bomb to the point of doing everything it can to maximize its ability to chase after the TARDIS.
Orsolya warned Paul how the Master refused to fix the flaw as means of control, but Paul reckons the Master never put thought into what his machine would do if he allowed the flaw to worsen as it did.
Perhaps he might've come to the realization he needed to fix the flaw if he didn't want to incur the wrath of the machine once it inevitably turns on him, but this being the Master, it's hard knowing what he would do in this situation.
Would he simply destroy the machine?
Being a Time Lord with forbidden knowledge, the Master easily could traverse the worlds on his own accord.
Suppose Paul will never get those answers, maybe it'd be best if he didn't.
Fully concentrated, the machine attempts overwhelming the TARDIS to stop it, causing violent trembles as the TARDIS kept itself balanced.
Violently, the machine continues its attempts overwhelming the TARDIS, desperation in the air as it chases for what it saw as the only thing keeping it alive.
Thrown to the side by a violent shake, Paul's helped up by Taylor as she struggles keeping her footing while the TARDIS shakes around them.
The smell of burning metal catches their attention as Taylor rushes to put out fires that started inside from the strain the machine put on the TARDIS.
His hands firm on the console, Paul pushes buttons, flips switches, his angel eyes darting and he worked to keep them floating through space.
Relentless, the machine wasn't through with them, changing tactics as they're near the dead zone, but it hadn't figured out what they're doing as it continues to act on instincts.
Feeling the heat on his coattail, Paul struggles shouting out to Taylor, but she insists that she's fine and handling the fires that periodically sprout from corners.
"This is it, this is the last time," Paul exhales sharply as he tells himself how this will be the end of everything that befallen them.
Accepting the chances he and Taylor will die stopping the machine, Paul painfully sucks air through his teeth as the TARDIS broke through the dead zone, and the machine not far behind.
Having controlled the fires the best she can, Taylor rushes back to help him ready the bomb.
Unable to speak outwardly as the smoke hurt his lungs, Paul speaks to Taylor through telepathy.
"Grace, no matter what happens..." Paul trails.
Helping him move the bomb towards the door, Taylor responds with, "Skipping that dinner was the best decision in my life and I'd do it, again!"
In their own ways, the couple declare their unyielding love for one another, and Paul braves going near the door as the TARDIS jerks around.
Nearly flung against the wall, Taylor held onto the railing of the bomb tightly as her legs buckle underneath her trying to keep herself upright.
His coattail flapping wildly, Paul exhales as he counts down to opening the door.
Around them the heat intensifies, but they couldn't leave the bomb's side, not yet, and once Paul reaches the end of the countdown, he commands the TARDIS to open the door.
Unable to hold his breath, Paul waits, but nothing happens, the TARDIS door isn't opening, and his angel eyes dart to the console.
The screens lit up, their contents warping as the TARDIS unable to properly list off the warnings.
"Damn it!" Paul curses as he's forced to try and manually open the door.
Using the railings to propel him forward, Paul tightly grips the bars as they begun burning his flesh from the intense heat.
Nearing the door, Paul reaches out touching the handle.
It felt like the surface of the sun; his body defensively forces his hand away from the handle as it twitches from the pain of the burns that covered the palm.
The pain wasn't there initially, the adrenaline rush did more than enough dulling it, but Paul felt the pain slowly emerging through, and it worsens as he's forced to try again.
"Come on!" Paul struggles.
His hand wrapped around the handle, he grips it tightly, the pain shooting up through his body, but his fingers slowly slipped away from the handle.
Forcing herself forward, Taylor aids Paul as she uses her hand to help.
The pain is immediate, but Taylor didn't care, and the moment the door flew open, her hand repels itself with Paul's as they see the machine outside the TARDIS with its door open.
The heat was unfathomable, the machine's console room engulfed in what looked like hellfire.
Unsure whether it was the trick of the mind, Paul saw arms amid the hellfire, contorted faces in pain, some staring at him and Taylor as if they're begging for help.
Or damning them.
Victims of the Master?
Or victims of the machine?
Undoing the restraints, Paul and Taylor worked to push the bomb towards the entrance.
The heat is enough to start burning Paul's long coat that he quickly discards it as Taylor yanks off her as it started smoldering.
"You!" Paul heard a strained posh man say as he turns his head to witness the machine's avatar standing inside the TARDIS.
Imposing, the avatar of the machine had a red aura around him as he seethes at Paul with his eyes illuminating like yellow discs.
Firmly grasping the railings of the bomb, Paul shouts, "It's over!"
The heat intensifies as the avatar grew incensed with Paul, more when he saw Taylor.
Gripping her hand tightly, Paul leers at the avatar as he continues staring at Taylor.
"Identity confirmed," the avatar says as he starts advancing towards them with intent on abducting Taylor.
Raising her voice, Taylor begs for the TARDIS' help, but there was only silence, and Paul grips her tightly as he held out his Sonic Screwdriver towards the advancing avatar.
Pushing down on the button, Paul sees the Sonic Screwdriver power on, but the light wavers.
"Release the child," the avatar demands.
Shouting at him, Taylor retorts, "I'm not the Master!"
Insulted, the avatar states in a monotonous voice, "Mission: recover the child, begin the process. Everything else irrelevant."
Even though the fault worsened to critical, the machine is determined to follow the Master's orders.
"He left you this way!" Paul argues how the Master's treatment of the machine should've turned it against him. "You've no name!"
Standing off against the avatar, Paul saw it glitching, in spurts the image of the man in a black suit contorts, and as it does, he says, "I will rend your flesh, child of time!"
His arm outstretched, the determined avatar was positioned to grab Paul, prepared to do only God knows what, but stopped as a low voice echoes throughout the burning TARDIS.
"We'll…see…aboutthat…!"
Freezing in place, the avatar inhumanely growls as it was unable to touch Paul, around them the air changes and cools.
Stepping out of a blinding sliver of light, Straxus appears as he tugs on his red tie, and the fire made his illuminating blue eyes appear purple.
"You!" The machine snaps at him.
Staring at him, Straxus retorts how the machine was no better with how the Master rendered it near death to keep it from turning on him.
Abused and neglected, the machine developed a horrible habit, as Straxus calls it.
"I will destroy you all!" The avatar snarls.
Seeing the bomb behind Paul and Taylor, the avatar smirks, as it forcibly moves its arm towards it, intending on using the bomb against them.
Straxus then said with cold determination, "You… will…not…survive."
A flick of the wrist, the avatar disappears without laying a hand on Paul or the bomb.
Seeing Straxus before them, Paul commends the clone for making a dramatic appearance, and the astute Straxus informs him how he was always aware of what transpires.
"Paul!" Taylor draws his attention as the gravity started shifting, the machine attempting to suck them through the door as she gripped the railing.
Determined to swallow Paul in the inferno inside it, the machine attacks the TARDIS enough to weaken it for the ability of disabling the gravity shield.
If they went through with the plan of sending the bomb through the opened doorway, they wouldn't be able to close the TARDIS's door.
Remaining calm as the couple struggles, Straxus calmly turns his head towards the opened doorway as the inferno grew brighter.
In the old tongue, Straxus whispers something, and as he did, he flicks his wrist again.
Pulled away from the bomb by unseen forces, Paul and Taylor felt the air around them change yet again, no longer did they feel the gravity pulling them out of the TARDIS or the unforgiving heat.
"My…soror…." Straxus grew forlorn as he turns toward Taylor.
Staring at him, Taylor meekly responds, "What… what is it…?"
His forlorn briefly turning to joy, Straxus warmly tells Taylor how she and Orsolya are free from their burdens of being the Master's creations.
No longer will they worry or fear that the Master will come around, having evaded his demise somehow, to take away their newfound happiness.
They are truly free, that's all he wanted.
That's why he went through the efforts to start the war with the Master ever since he found out about their existences.
Many will damn him for what he did, causing events to transpire that resulted in countless deaths, but Straxus saw it as a means to an end.
Twisting and turning, Straxus created the perfect storm that resulted in the Master's final death at the hands of his former headmaster and the men he resented.
Now, to finally seal the Master's memories for good, Straxus will cause one more event to occur.
"Consider… yourdebt… repaid…Mister… Smith," Straxus grew forlorn once again as he began pushing the bomb forward while the couple watch onward.
Unable to break free from the grip of the unseen force, Taylor begs for Straxus to reconsider his decision, but the clone only smiles at her, before he continues pushing the bomb until it was at the threshold.
For a brief moment, Straxus stops pushing the bomb, as he then asks Paul for forgiveness.
"I…only… didit… forthem," Straxus explains.
Emotions running through his vein, Paul tells Straxus, "I forgive you… and thank you…"
With Paul's forgiveness, Straxus made the final push, and sent himself and the bomb through the threshold inside the gaping maul of the Master's machine.
In an instant the TARDIS's door closes shut, the fires went out, the air returning to normal, and only silence.
The monitors above the console sprung to life causing Paul to rush to see the contents filling the screens as the TARDIS escaped the dead zone with seconds to spare.
Confirming several times, the TARDIS alleviated Paul's fears.
The Master's machine has finally met its end.
Coupled with the dead zone collapsing and the bomb, it couldn't escape its fate, and Straxus ensured this by using his genetic material to force it to stay and be destroyed.
"It's over… it's finally over!" Paul exhales sharply.
Yanking off her breathing mask as streams of tears ran down her cheeks, Taylor bitterly calls out to Straxus, expecting him to reappear after pulling another trick of his, but he never responded.
In a cruel way, her heart knew that he was dead.
Rejoining her side as he tenderly checks her burnt palm, Paul cautions her as he sees welts pushing through the reddened skin, as he did, he admits to her, "I really thought he was just another manifestation of a cruel man pretending to pull one on me. In the end, I was wrong."
After hearing countless stories about the Master's cruelty and proneness for trickery, his ruthlessness to achieve his goals, Paul expected no different from Straxus, but here he was mourning him.
A clone of the Master, no less.
Gingerly holding her hand, Paul pulled Taylor close to him as they mourned Straxus.
Their mourning lasted but a few minutes when the TARDIS door opened on its own, allowing Hammond to hurry in with fervor as he calls out to Paul and Taylor.
Once his eyes lay on them, Hammond let out a sigh of relief as he calms down.
Noticing the mournful looks, Hammond instantly realized what happened, and gave his condolences to Taylor.
"My uncle never trusted him, always believed him a scion for the Master, but… in the end… he was wrong," Hammond frowns.
When told where the TARDIS landed, Paul and Taylor follow Hammond out into a field filled with wheat and a blue sky above.
Waiting for them was a different version of the TARDIS, the door opens, and Dorothy hurries out with news.
"Professor! The TARDIS is saying there's… like hundreds and… and… thousands of new universes that just… sprung out of nowhere!" Dorothy frantically waves her hand.
Amazed, Hammond remarks he never thought he'd live to see such an event, before Taylor tells him that it was likely Straxus's doing.
"Our dear brother really outdid himself," a voice calls out from Hammond's TARDIS as Orsolya steps out as she tagged along with Hammond and Dorothy to see what became of Paul and Taylor.
Seeing them alive, injured, but not another set of the machine's victims, Orsolya exhales, and jolts when Taylor suddenly hugs her tightly.
Still foreign to her, Orsolya was confused as Taylor hugs her out of both grief and relief, before she slowly came around to the notion as she reciprocated the hug.
"What now, professor?" Dorothy asks Hammond.
Looking up at the skies above and seeing dots that are either planets or stars, Hammond responds with, "As I've taught you, my dear student, we've much work to do!"
With the abundance of new universes, Hammond summarizes that they have new adventures ahead of them.
Something Paul agrees with before Hammond prods him to take it easy and relax for a while.
"You might've gotten out of this by the skin of your teeth, nephew, but don't expect it easier going forward," Hammond wags his finger at him.
Forced to agree with his beloved uncle, Paul admits he and Taylor deserve a break.
Going through the motions of surprising his mother and father with their survival, his aunt, uncle, and cousin near dripping in tears, Paul felt weight lift off himself.
The Master, undoubtedly, is no more, and though Straxus gave his life to ensure it, it is Paul's belief he wouldn't want anything different.
No longer fearing the machine, Taylor went back to working at the museum part-time once again.
Orsolya promises to come around and visit her baby sister periodically, provided she had free time from her commitments.
Around him, Paul felt the air different, and instead of being afraid, he was energetic.
Indeed, there will be more threats over the horizon, as is expected, but Paul knows they are not the worse ones he faced.
With Taylor at his side, he's more than willing to fight the good fight, as the Doctor should.
Since the birth of the new universes, expectedly, there's more people joining the ranks as the Doctor, of all walks of life, all wanting to do good.
There's been questions whether Paul will hang up his messenger bag for the last time and he has given it some thoughts.
Although it's inevitable that he will no longer be the Doctor, Paul wasn't afraid of it.
It's part of the process, the story that never ends.
Those who come after him and Taylor will have their own adventures, their own stories, and so on.
"Ready?" Taylor ran a hand through her platinum blonde hair with strands of red.
Smiling, Paul remarks, "Ready as I'll ever be!"
THE FINAL END
With a heavy heart, this is it, this is the last chapter of the Doctor Who trilogy.
After years of working on it, it's finally over.
Will I come back to do more in the near future, I'll keep my options open, but for now, I think I need a break from Doctor Who. I've been writing this for so long, Capaldi was the Doctor at the time I started. Here we are now.
That said, with love, thanks for reading my insanely driven stories.