Archive of Our Own

This Master was not his Master. His Master was gone forever, obliterated in the inferno that had sparked the Doctor's twelfth regeneration. Still, he had always liked this particular incarnation, even if it wasn't a proper Gallifreyan body.

That same body was now pressing him against the doors of the TARDIS, causing the back of the Doctor's clothes to catch on the rough wooden exterior. The Master's mouth—warmer than a Gallifreyan's—covered his lips, while the Master's hot tongue traced fire behind his teeth. With his right hand, the Master crumpled the cloth of the black court robe in a fist, pulling the fabric tight around the Doctor's neck. With his left, he pinned the Doctor's wrist to the TARDIS wall.

The Doctor voiced no objection to this demanding treatment. Indeed, he verbalized nothing at all but little shuddering sighs. His actions, however, spoke whole sermons. The tilt of his head to better accept the Master's kiss, his free hand kneading the back of the Master's neck, and the eager arch of his back all screamed his enthusiasm.

Then an embarrassed cough, so self-conscious it practically hid itself back in a choke as soon as it was uttered, rattled in the air. It was enough of a distraction for the Doctor to remember himself again. Exercising his force of will, he pushed the Master away even as his lips kept moving invitingly under the Master's. At last they pulled apart with a soft, wet smack. The Doctor opened his eyes just in time to see the Master, his expression rigid, slowly turn to face the source of the interruption.

"Whatever it is you need to say, I hope for your sake it's very important," the Master growled at Mel.

Her cheeks were red and her gaze darted about the room, alighting on everything but the people with whom she shared a TARDIS. "A red warning light on the console started flashing. It seems quite insistent."

The Master scoffed. "You fool, that's just the vortex transference alert. My TARDIS will automatically deal with it." There was a long and awkward silence while the Master studied Mel like an exacting butler staring at an intractable stain. "Go away. Find yourself some beet juice or whatever awful thing it is you drink."

"I have to stay within the paradox bubble," Mel retorted with irritation, almost as frustrated by the situation as the Master was. The Doctor would have found it funny if he weren't caught in the middle of it all. "The Doctor said the TARDIS—"

"Yes, the dimensional folds might destabilize the bubble," the Master finished. "Might. I believe he's being overcautious, and since of the two of us I'm the one who passed his epidimensional maths exam, mine is the judgment which matters."

He returned his attention to the Doctor, keen to resume where they left off. The Doctor's good sense, however, was already active again after being temporarily short circuited by the Master's onslaught.

"If we're preparing to leave the vortex," the Doctor said, latching onto the excuse, "I need to change into a more appropriate costume." He slid out of the Master's embrace and fled to the safety of his own TARDIS, hand shaking as he fit the key to the lock. It wasn't the first time he'd had to retreat on some pretext or another when he felt close to succumbing to the Master's intentions. He could almost be grateful for Mel's presence, foiling the Master's amorous advances.

The two TARDISes were embraced in a dimensional recursive loop, each one nestled inside the other. The Master's TARDIS was even mimicking the form of the Doctor's, much to her pilot's dismay, rendering the two console rooms identical in nearly every way, down to the police box in the corner. But the dim lighting that the Doctor had learned to prefer set them apart, so that stepping from the Master's console room to his own felt a bit like walking from daytime to dusk. Once inside, the Doctor leaned back against the doors and slowly swiped his hand down his face.

This Master was not his Master, but as the Doctor spent more time in his company that small detail became increasingly unimportant.

He made his way to the wardrobe room, but once there he only pulled his robes closer about him. Even if he was alone, surrendering to the base desires of his body was still surrender. The Doctor would not concede defeat, no matter how well the Master played. His own pride aside, he simply couldn't trust the Master. He may be all kisses and affection now, but the Doctor knew that it could turn to pain and attempts at subjugation without warning.

He twisted the paradox ring around his finger. Such a hateful little trap the Master had created, and the Doctor couldn't take it off, not for one second. He was the centre of the paradox, and without the ring, space-time would try to slice him out of existence like cutting away an infection.

He spent five minutes reciting through the decimals of pi until his mind focused and his skin stopped tingling. Only then did he strip off his Gallifreyan robe and don a plain black suit, with each layer tightly buttoned. Thus dressed, he wandered back up to the console room and brushed his hands over the silent controls, delaying the inevitable. He avoided even looking at the corner where the Master's TARDIS perched. A cowardly part of him wished he could remain in his TARDIS forever and never again face the Master or the confusion he wrought. He sneered at himself for the thought. How like the Doctor that sentiment was. Just when he thought he'd scrubbed every bit of that old identity from his soul, some hitherto unnoticed fragment revealed itself.

The Master's gravelly voice slipped through the door, startling the Doctor. "My dear Doctor, if you're quite finished with your preparations, you may be interested to know that we've arrived at our destination."

The Doctor closed his eyes and bade his mind and body to be calm. He longed for his judiciary regalia and the physical and psychological armour it provided, but it was impractical for this sort of work. His suit, though lacking in character, was more sensible.

When the Doctor emerged, blinking in the brighter light, the Master slid a slow look down his form, taking in the change of clothes, approval shining in his eyes. Wrapping his arms around the Doctor's waist, he drew him away from the doorframe.

"A new world for you to see, Doctor," the Master said with a crooked smile. "That must please you."

"I thought we were here to work, not on holiday." He pulled the Master's arms away and slipped out of his embrace.

"Surely that's not a dedicated work ethic I'm seeing? However many regenerations you've gone through, you can't expect me to believe that you've changed that much. You're about as diligent and focused as a Kelerian magpie." The Master leaned casually on the console. "Fortunately, you'll have me here to keep you in hand."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "You've never been able to keep me anywhere I didn't want to be."

"Then I suppose I'll have to take steps to ensure that you want to be in my hands," the Master chuckled.

# # #

A soft, pleasant chime rang out an unmemorable melody. Mr. Gilfruct called out to the empty air, not bothering to look up from the budget reports he was reviewing.

"What is it, Miss Lilla?"

A high-resolution hologram of a young woman appeared before his desk, the short hair on top of her head ruffled as though she'd been running her fingers through it. "I'm sorry for the interruption, Mr. Gilfruct." He absently waved away her apology and she continued, "Captain Melis just chimed. He says that the security sensors picked up some disturbing alien visitors."

Mr. Gilfruct curbed a frustrated sigh. She was new at this job. Eventually she'd learn to take the initiative and deal with minor problems herself instead of bothering him every time an irregularity passed her screen. "Thousands of alien tourists visit each day. Sometimes we get one that's strange enough to rattle the sensors. There's nothing unusual about that." He pressed a finger to the surface of his holoscreen desk and called up the stock market data. His business was up another five points. He considered buying Minister Varn a luxury aero as a little thank you gift for passing those recent tax leniency laws.

"Yes, sir, I know. I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean...that's not what I meant."

This time Mr. Gilfruct did sigh. "Then say what you mean."

"The sensors identified one of them as Human, one is Trakenite—"

"Trakenite? Didn't they die out centuries ago?"

"Sir, the sensors say—"

"Never mind, it's not important." He wished only for her to get to the point and then leave him to his work.

"And one is a Time Lord, sir."

That pulled Mr. Gilfruct's attention away from his computer. He gazed at Miss Lilla for many seconds, half expecting her to realize that she'd misspoken and correct herself. She couldn't really mean Time Lord. But her face remained fixed in frown of worried sincerity that seemed to be her only expression. "Time Lord?" He brushed his left hand over the edge of his desk and an encyclopaedia entry on Time Lords appeared on his screen.

"That's what Captain Melis said, sir."

Mr. Gilfruct's eyes flicked across the information the computer had provided. He had heard of Time Lords the same way he'd heard of the Sirens of Sideris or the Dreaming Barrens—stories, travellers' tales. The encyclopaedia entry didn't help him much. It was pitifully short and gleaned mostly from legend and rumour. There were very few facts, and even those seemed contradictory more often than not. But what everyone agreed was that Time Lords were highly intelligent and technologically advanced, a race that gathered and treasured knowledge like other races treasured gold or gems or euchlor. They could be trouble.

Rubbing his hand over his jaw, he said, "Tell security to keep a discreet eye on them. If they're just tourists like the rest, fine. If they start poking about in places they shouldn't, I want to know immediately. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Miss Lilla nodded and her image winked out. Mr. Gilfruct returned his attention to the screen. Time Lord. He shook his head. Another thing the stories all agreed upon was that the Time Lords were extreme isolationists—but when they did take an interest in the affairs of the outside universe, they could crush empires with little more than a thought.

# # #

The Master opened the doors of the TARDIS to reveal dusk spreading over an alien city. A crown of golden light shone over the mountains in the distance, fading out into a soft cobalt sky. From horizon to horizon stretched a vibrant band—rings of dust reflecting the light of the sun. All around them high buildings with delicate spires glittered with shifting cool colours like the inside of an abalone shell. Aerocars darted here and there, stirring up wind currents with their passing.

"Welcome to Aureas, Mel, the political and economic centre of the United Caelumine Systems," the Doctor said, spreading his arms in a gesture encompassing the whole surroundings. "It's said to be the wealthiest planet in the galaxy, mostly on account of their export of refined euchlor. This system is the only place where it occurs naturally in high concentrations. It's in the dust, the oceans, in every living creature on the planet. All this wealth, of course, simply means that the rich are very rich indeed. The poor, the destitute, they still exist in great numbers, buried in the slums. There are people in those towers who can buy whole solar systems, and yet one mile away a family struggles to pay for food. Why? Because greed, my dear Mel, greed is universal."

"I'm not your companion anymore," she said pointedly. "So I don't know why you're treating me like one."

"My dear Miss Bush," the Master purred. "It wouldn't matter if you were a deaf Tirulian Tree Slug. The Doctor can't resist an excuse to listen to himself pontificate."

The Master twisted his mouth in a smug smile as the Doctor glared at him with narrowed eyes. It was always amusing to rile the Doctor. "You're trying to provoke me," the Doctor said, accusingly.

"Certainly not, Doctor. I'm succeeding in provoking you."

The Doctor sniffed in exasperation and glided across the square without another word, away from the Master's TARDIS and towards the nearest public computer terminal. On the one hand, it could be construed as a retreat. Point to the Master. On the other hand, it meant that the Master was forced to trail after the Doctor like a devoted pet. It was tempting to thwart the Doctor's subtle power play by refusing to follow, but the Master couldn't let the man wander off alone. Who knew what trouble the Doctor would get into if left unsupervised? He sauntered after his wayward collaborator.

"Dare I hope you have a plan, or are you simply making it up as you go along, as usual?" the Master asked as he came up behind the Doctor and peered over his shoulder at the terminal screen.

"The computer should have a record of all arrivals. After I hack into the system, I can verify whether Sabalom Glitz is indeed here. Once I've done that, I can track his movements by tracing where he purchased food and lodging. Even if he's using a false identity, I know his biosignature. His credit chip will be keyed to that." The Doctor brushed his fingers over the smooth control board. A stylized logo of a ringed planet and the words "Gilfruct Communications Co" flashed on the screen briefly before the Doctor cracked into its base programming and began to undermine the security codes.

Breaking into the transport logs was childishly easy. Sabalom Glitz had arrived one week ago. The economic transaction records had a more complicated security lock, but stood little chance against the Doctor's experience and intellect. Once inside the record system, he quickly located Glitz's files, but the code strings securing some of the nearby files caught and held his attention. They were too sophisticated for this time and place. Someone wanted to protect something and had paid a lot of money for off-world specialists to do it.

He entered a bypass code, but received an angry bleep and an "Access Denied" message across the screen. He tried getting in through a different route, but met with the same results. Snarling in frustration, he tried a third time. Again, nothing.

"What in Rassilon's name are you doing? Haven't you managed to find Glitz yet, or have you forgotten basic programming?" the Master asked.

"These aren't Glitz's records," the Doctor said as the computer gave another bleep and another "Access Denied." "These are something else. Something much better guarded and belonging to someone with a lot of money and a lot of power."

"Most certainly not Glitz, then. Leave it be; we have a mission to complete." He wrapped his fingers around the Doctor's shoulders and leaned into him, chest to back. "The sooner we settle our business here, the sooner we can move on to more pleasant matters." The Doctor ignored the innuendo and the warmth of the Master behind him, focused wholly on the puzzle before him. He was finally beginning to make progress. Then: "Access Denied." He fought down the urge to slam his hand into the screen.

"Oh, it wouldn't matter if you were on your honeymoon. The Doctor can't resist a good mystery," Mel piped in, mocking the Master's earlier words to her.

The Master tensed, his fingers digging into the Doctor's shoulders. He suppressed the urge to take out his Tissue Compression Eliminator and silence the girl for good. She was, unfortunately, correct. Once the Doctor's curiosity was piqued his attention would be nowhere else until he'd found what he was looking for. Sighing, he steered the Doctor aside. "Allow me."

The Doctor gritted his teeth but eventually yielded the field to the Master. The Master tracked down Glitz's records first. The Doctor shifted and fidgeted with impatience, but still, priorities were priorities.

"Sabalom Glitz appears to be temporarily residing at Xolvish's Tavern and Inn."

The Doctor scoffed. "I didn't need your help to discover that. I could have hacked those files easily."

"And yet you didn't," the Master replied. "Now, where were those other files, the ones that had you so fixated?"

The Doctor leaned over the Master's arm to point out the subfolder that had given him such trouble. As the Master got to work, his interest in the files, minimal at first, grew. The security was indeed impressive. The Doctor was correct; someone was going to great lengths to keep everyone out, which meant that the Master increasingly wanted in. The Master craved secrets like the Doctor craved mysteries. Secrets were powerful. The right secret in the right place could destroy worlds.

At last the file opened before his quantum sequence manipulations. The results were disappointing.

"Production lists?" Mel asked, confused. "Why hide that?"

"Why, indeed?" the Doctor muttered, still close against the Master's side. He peered at the open file. "Refined euchlor. Quite a lot of it." He tilted his head, calculating the numbers. "Refining euchlor is a long and difficult process. They can't possibly be producing that much of it; there aren't enough refineries in the city to do it."

"Undoubtedly some crooked executive is altering the records to make his company look more successful than it is," the Master said dismissively. Under other circumstances, he might have been able to use such knowledge to gain a foothold towards planetary domination, but he had more important concerns right now. He tucked the information away for possible future use. "If your curiosity is satisfied, perhaps now we can get what we came here for."

Turning, he found himself nose to nose with the Doctor. For once the Doctor's incarnation was close to his own height. The thought made him leer in satisfaction, which provoked a puzzled frown from the Doctor. His smiled widened into a sharp-toothed grin. After three days of being encouraged then rebuffed it was more than time for the Doctor to be off balance for a while. He placed a hand casually on the Doctor's arm, as if preparing to shift him out of his way, but made no other motion, letting the Doctor make the next move this time.

The Doctor's gaze flicked from the Master's eyes, only inches away, to the hand on his arm, then back again. "Xolvish's you said?" the Doctor said—a little unsteadily, the Master was pleased to note. The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back but not before the Master saw their trembling. Another point to the Master. He smirked. The Doctor wasn't the only one who could play that game.

The Master stepped away, once again putting space between himself and the Doctor and hoping that the Doctor was as dissatisfied and off-balance as he'd been making the Master feel. "In the Green district," the Master said in a businesslike tone, as if they hadn't shared a heavy, tense moment a few seconds ago. "The computer says there's a hoverrail station two streets over that will take us there."

The opulence of the district in which they'd landed was completely absent from the Green district. Wealth Aureas might have, but it clearly wasn't being siphoned to this part of the city. Old streets lights crackled and flickered, the road was rough and pitted, and the metal of the building exteriors was scratched and dirty. Xolvish's Tavern and Inn squatted on a corner not far from the nearby spaceship terminal. The roar of engines rattled the darkened windows as ships took off and landed.

The Doctor entered first, the Master and Mel trailing close behind. The ground floor was noisy and crowded, even though it was early in the evening yet. The ceiling was low and the room was dimly lit with a grey-purple light that gave the whole room a submerged air, as if it were deep underwater, in the pits of the ocean, where monsters lived and fed off one another. The air was thick with the bitter smoke of some local narcotic.

"Charming, isn't it?" the Master sneered.

The Doctor frowned in disgust. "It's a hair trap for society's cast-offs. Full of filth and rot." He sniffed. "Glitz fits right in."

"Have you spotted him yet?" the Master asked.

The Doctor scanned the dim-lit room. "No. He's not here, at least, not right now."

"Then if you'll excuse me, I'll go speak with the owner of this establishment and see if we can ascertain where our quarry has gone."

"He may have checked in under a pseudonym."

The Master rolled his eyes. "Yes, Doctor, I am well aware of how criminals operate." He slinked towards the bar, gracefully winding his way through the crowd. The Doctor watched him go, eyes tracing over his form.

Mel was afraid to interrupt his intense scrutiny as the Master vanished from sight, but she was rapidly becoming still more afraid of the way some of the clientele were staring at them. She stepped closer to the Doctor, half hiding behind him. She hated herself a little bit for relying on him for protection—it felt like betraying her Doctor's memory—but he acknowledged that he needed her alive. These hard-faced aliens had no such concern for her safety. "I don't think they want us here."

"They don't have the privilege of choice." Something that might have been a smile, if smiles were expressions of vicious disdain, cut across his face. "Come, Mel, let's meet the natives." Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her along with him further into the tavern to a table on the far side of the room around which two Aureans sat. Both were pale, lips tinged blue, and the edge of a bandage was visible from beneath the sleeve of one of them.

There were a few empty seats at the table. He led Mel to one, but she hesitated to sit, a worried frown on her brow. He grasped her shoulders and forced her into the chair, then claimed a second for himself. The two aliens glared silently. One of the Aureans slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. The silver handle of a weapon glinted from between his fingers.

The Doctor tisked. "Oh, you don't want to do that." His cold eyes never left the Aurean's face. After a few seconds, the Aurean brought his empty hand back out and placed it flat on the table.

"Better," the Doctor said. He smiled a rough facsimile of a friendly smile. "I have one question for you. If you answer it honestly and without hesitation, I will make it worth your while." He didn't say what he would do if they did not answer, but Mel could see the murderous potential only barely contained, like a tiger in a cardboard cage, in the spark in his eyes.

The two aliens shared a silent glance. The Aurean with the weapon in his pocket said, "Ask."

"I counted twenty-three people in this room who have been bandaged recently," he began. The other Aurean sharply sucked in air. The Doctor ignored it and pressed on. "My question is this: what clinic did you go to?"

The tension vanished and the confusion that replaced it was tangible. "That's...all you want to know?" the Aurean asked, his voice high with disbelief.

"That's all."

"Gilfruct Health Services City Hospital. Three blocks north."

"Thank you." The Doctor inclined his head in an exaggerated bow of gratitude.

"Now what about our payment?" The Aurean's hand slid back towards the weapon in his jacket pocket in a clear threat of what would happen if the Doctor wasn't forthcoming.

"Of course," the Doctor grinned. He looked around the room. "Ah, there's my partner now. He'll settle our accounts."

The Doctor rose to greet the Master, who arrived seconds later. "Making friends among the locals, Doctor?"

"Not precisely." He slid his arm around the Master's shoulders. "These gentlemen graciously assisted me in a little investigation and now they'd like their reward. Would you take care of them for me?" He whispered something in the Master's ear, nuzzling his neck briefly as he drew away. Mel turned away in discomfort and repulsion. It wasn't that she pitied either the Master or the Doctor, far from it. They were both thoroughly evil and deserved whatever they got. Still, the Doctor's shameless toying with someone's emotions made her heart ache for the man she once knew, while the hungry, possessive looks the Master gave the Doctor made her shudder with fear. They seemed barely two steps from defiling each other and enjoying it immensely.

The Master sighed. "How you managed all these centuries without me around to clean up your messes I'll never know." It was a little thing, though, and it would both make the Doctor happy and facilitate their exit. He leaned over the table and made eye contact with both Aureans in turn. Once a firm mental thorn was embedded in each of their minds he triggered the psychic suggestion. "I am the Master." The thorns unfurled and blossomed into tendrils that sank into their thoughts. "You never saw us." All their memories of the Doctor were sucked away.

"Done," he said. "Now let's leave before they return to their senses and wonder why they have an audience at their table."

"Thank you," the Doctor murmured, lightly brushing his lips against the Master's cheek. As they walked back towards the main door, he asked, "Did you locate Sabalom Glitz?"

The Master smirked. "The landlord informed me that Mr. Glitz returned to his room an hour ago. We can acquire him right now."

"Excellent."

A narrow staircase led them to the hallway where Glitz's room was located. Since the Master had insisted earlier that the subtle way was the way to proceed, the Doctor knocked politely and waited for a response.

"I still think we should just take him and not bother with all this silly obfuscation," the Doctor muttered. The Master hissed for silence but to no avail. "Your tendency to always overcomplicate things—"

The door creaked open, cutting short the Doctor's observations. Sabalom Glitz stood in the doorway—friendly, open, and welcoming to all appearances. He probably had a knife hidden behind his back. When he saw the Master, his smiled widened.

"Blimey! I wasn't expecting you to turn up here. If this is about getting more xeric acid I know a gentlemen—"

"Thank you, but no," the Master said, cutting off Glitz before he wasted any more time with his babble. "I have a business proposition for you."

"Well then, you'd better come in. Bring your friends. They're trustworthy, I hope?"

The Master stepped into Glitz's tiny, shabby room, wrapping his arm around the Doctor's back to draw him along. "This is my partner, the Doctor—"

"Doctor J. J. Chambers," the Doctor interrupted. He didn't wish to complicate things by giving Glitz any opportunity to connect him to the colourful Doctor whom he had met some months ago on Ravalox.

The Master kept the Doctor tucked protectively close to his side. Glitz was a fool, but he could be dangerous. Mel, meanwhile, leaned back against the closed door, keeping as far away from the unsavoury stranger as she could.

"So, you said something about a business proposition?" Glitz sat down on the edge of the bed and kicked his boots up on his travelling bag.

"We have a job for you," the Master said.

"You see, that's a shame. Because you're an old friend, and I'm always happy to help an old friend, but it just so happens that I've got a little business arrangement here that I can't up and leave. I'd be taking a serious financial loss if I did."

The Master wondered idly if Glitz really did have a prior job or if it was all part of his fee negotiation technique. "We can offer you fifty Aurean decas or one hundred and twenty strips of gold, whichever you prefer. Ten percent will be given to you now, the rest of the payment to be made after you complete your task."

Laughing, Glitz said. "If I go with you, I'll be dropping a real juicy opportunity I've got right here. That being so, I'm going to need fifty percent up front."

"You'll get fifteen and no more."

"I might be willing to go as low as thirty, if you throw in the girl as well." He gestured towards Mel.

The Doctor answered before the Master could respond. "The girl is mine."

Glitz glanced at the Master's arm still around the Doctor, then back to Mel, and raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Interesting relationship you two gentlemen must have."

The Master's patience was running thin. It would be considerably easier in the short term to simply hypnotise him, but alas, such psychic debris would interfere with their later plans for him. Glitz was necessary, even if the Doctor, with his careless, slipshod manner of planning, couldn't appreciate it. "We'll give you twenty-five percent, but you'll have to come to our ship to get it."

Glitz scratched his beard, making a show of considering the offer. But one could count on Glitz's greed if nothing else. That much money was not something a man like him would pass up. "I'll do it. Twenty-five now, the rest after. But," he raised a finger, "You have to pick up my tab here."

"Agreed." The Master smiled at Glitz's attempt at cunning. Undoubtedly, he'd been availing himself of the tavern's many and morally dubious services and had run up a considerable bill. The landlord, however, didn't need his brain kept intact and would be simple to deal with.

Sabalom Glitz packed up the few possessions he had with him and followed them out the door. The Doctor, Mel, and Glitz waited in the street while the Master settled with the landlord.

"You seem familiar," Glitz said to the Doctor. "Do I know you?"

Raising one disdainful eyebrow, the Doctor replied, "Certainly not."

"Maybe it was a 'Wanted' holo. You've got that kind of face, you know. Hardened criminal. You might want to try to do something about that, work on projecting a facade of charm, like. As it is, I imagine that the authorities only have to take one look at you to know you've been up to something."

Eying Glitz with a long, cool stare, the Doctor said in a hard and chilly voice, "I am the authority."

Taking a startled step back, Glitz's mouth flapped open and shut. Then he smiled uneasily and drawled, "Right, whatever you say, Doctor Chambers."

At last, the Master returned. The Doctor moved to his side. "To the TARDIS, my dear?" the Master asked.

"To the hospital," the Doctor countered.

The Master blinked. "The hospital? Why would we want to go there?"

"I have a theory I'd like to verify."

"Does this theory of yours have anything to do with the universe and the saving thereof?"

"There's something peculiar going on here, and I have to find out what."

"I've done enough pandering to your obsessive inquisitiveness for one day," the Master said, his mouth twisting in anger. "We're returning to the TARDIS."

"You can do whatever you wish," replied the Doctor, shifting his weight so he was leaning away from the Master, ready to step away. "I am going to the hospital."

"Why?" It was more an accusation than a question. The Doctor's cursed curiosity drove him always to wander, to disobey, to slip through the Master's fingers just when he thought he might hold him. The Master's voice grew increasingly biting as he continued. "Why do you need to find out? Will it help us save ourselves from universal destruction? Will it give you leverage over your enemies, authority over vast populations? Will going to this one backwards hospital on this one backwards planet make you powerful, feared, respected, or formidable? No? Then why?"

Surprised, the Doctor's eyes darted about. The words made sense but the question itself was impossible. It was like asking why he never fixed the TARDIS's chameleon circuit, or why his breath stopped when he saw that the Master was alive, or why he felt such a rush of satisfaction whenever he carried out his own vision of justice. Some things were so deep that they had no words. "It's a mystery," he tried to explain to the Master as best he could. "I need to understand it."

As the Doctor strode off, Mel commented to the Master offhandedly. "I bet you feel like you're married to Curious George right about now."

The Master wanted to snap her neck, but she was already following after the Doctor. And the satisfaction her death would bring would quickly fade if such a disturbance of the Doctor's paradox caused reality to collapse.

Glitz was watching him expectantly. Glitz was his paid minion and would go where the Master did. They could return to the TARDIS now, even leave the planet entirely, stranding the Doctor and his companion on this distant world. It would serve him right. The Doctor had already given the Master all the details he needed to defeat his vindictive past self and set the timelines straight; he didn't need the Doctor.

He snarled and trotted towards the corner around which the Doctor had just disappeared.

The hospital was not far. Looking up through the canyon created by the two story buildings on the narrow street, they could see its needle-like spire looming. The Doctor led the way, moving swiftly and silently, his eyes darting about to take in every detail of his surroundings. Aureas was turning out to be much more interesting than he'd first suspected.

Two blocks later they turned a corner to see the hospital laid out before them in all its incongruous glory. Where the buildings in the nearby neighbourhood were shabby and run down, the hospital was gleaming and bright, decorated with delicate fluting and high arches. Sparkling fountains ornamented the entrance. It was a work of art. A sign reading "Gilfruct Health Services City Hospital" was written in bold letters above the main doors.

"That's a hospital?" Mel said. "It looks more like a posh hotel."

"There are no public clinics on Aureas. All hospitals are privately owned," the Doctor explained. "Patients receive the care they can afford." He watched a luxury aerocar land near the entrance and a chauffeur get out and open the door for a pregnant woman and her husband. "Which makes it all the more interesting that the scoundrels who patronize Xolvish's are coming here."

"You're going to want to look inside, aren't you?" the Master asked. It wasn't really a question. He knew the Doctor well enough to recognize that tilt of the head and shine in his eyes. "Do you have a plan for getting in? Or haven't you thought that far ahead?"

"Well, I doubt Xolvish's finest are going in through the front door of such an excellent establishment as this. We'll find a back way."

The Master despaired of the Doctor's idea of planning. "And then?" he prodded.

"And then I'll improvise."

"Improvise." The Master spoke as if the very word offended him.

"As I don't know what to expect, I can hardly plan for it." With that less-than-reassuring comment, the Doctor veered away from the entrance and trotted over to the side of the massive building.

As the others followed, Glitz spoke up. "Just so you know, if I'm going to be party to a bit of breaking and entering, I expect to be paid for it."

"How much?" the Master asked, scorn rough in his voice. "Never mind," he continued, just as Glitz was opening his mouth to reply. "However much it is, we'll just add it to the final tally." It hardly mattered anyway, as Glitz would be forgetting all of this as soon as they got him to the TARDIS.

A few hundred yards later, the Doctor stopped in his tracks so suddenly that the Master almost ran into him. "There," the Doctor whispered. "There's our entrance." Farther down the exterior wall, an Aurean dressed in a tatty coat and sturdy trousers approached the building, opened a small door set into a niche and vanished into the hospital.

Hot on the trail and excited by the chase, the Doctor hurried over to the place where the Aurean had been not seconds ago. The door was steel, and sturdy enough that it would be difficult to break through by force. The key pad next to the door, however, meant that force would be unnecessary.

Kneeling on the ground, careless of the dirt that was accumulating on his trousers, the Doctor pried the panel off the keypad. It took him less than thirty seconds to rewire the computer inside so that the door unlocked with an audible click.

"Clean job with that," Glitz said in open admiration. "I'll say this for you, you're good at what you do."

The Doctor looked up, not at Glitz but at the Master, and grinned slyly. The Master licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. There was, he supposed, one good thing about the Doctor's incessant curiosity: uncovering the unknown always put the Doctor in a lively mood. The disadvantage, however, was that the Master now more than ever wanted to haul the Doctor back to the TARDIS, find a private room in which to hide away, and see if this time he could get the Doctor's stubborn control to break.

If the Doctor wanted to investigate this hospital then investigate he would, preferably quickly and with as few complications as possible, if the Master had anything to say in the matter. As he followed the Doctor inside, he let his hand rest on his TCE, ready to draw the weapon at the first sign of trouble.

The corridor revealed by the opened door was sterile and bright with a bluish light. Walls of brushed steel appeared to stretch on forever, punctuated now and then by solid, unmarked doors. The Doctor didn't pause at any of the doors; either he knew where he was going, or he was giving a convincing impression.

Mel trailed behind, shooting suspicious glances at Glitz, who seemed to be much too interested in her for her comfort. Meanwhile, the Doctor and the Master noticed little but each other, as was typical whenever the two of them were within twenty feet of one another. Before, when it was just her as a third wheel, there were awkward moments, but she was mostly content to be ignored. With Glitz joining the party, however, Mel was no longer able to simply keep her head down and stay quiet. Glitz was determined to interact with her, talk to her, no matter how she tried to rebuff him. Now he was nudging her with his elbow and tilting his head towards the Doctor and the Master, as if she was supposed to be in on some joke. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

"Takes all kinds, yeah?" he said to Mel.

"What?"

"The lovebirds up there." He inclined his head toward the Doctor and the Master. "Strange idea of a date. Although," he mused, "I suppose a hospital does have the advantage of having plenty of beds if the need, as they say, arises."

"Urgh, I really didn't need to hear that," Mel said vehemently, her nose scrunching. From further up the corridor, the Doctor was speaking to the Master.

"Do you smell it?" the Doctor turned to the Master for corroboration. The hospital was full of smells of all kinds—the sharp tang of medicines, the bitter salt of sweat and misery, and the sweet euchlor and iron smell of Aurean blood.

The Master threw the Doctor an irritable look. "I may have a Time Lord brain, but my nose is entirely Trakenite."

"Of course. I do apologize for reminding you of your physical inferiority."

"Physical inferiority, you say?" The Master stepped in front of the Doctor's path, blocking his way. "Some of my senses may be diminished, but I'll have you know that this body is more than a match for yours."

"Is it?" the Doctor purred.

Glitz spoke up before things got out of hand. "Time and a place, gents, a time and a place. Now, if you want some privacy I'd be more than happy to take the girl elsewhere and leave you two alone for a while." He linked his arm with Mel's. Mel unlinked and stepped away.

There was a pause in which the Master imagined that the Doctor might be considering the offer. But when he spoke he said, "Another time. We have other matters to attend to now."

He stepped past the Master and continued on his way. Once or twice they encountered other people in the corridors—patients, doctors, nurses—singly or in twos or threes. Each time the Aureans passed without comment, hardly sparing the quartet a first glance much less a second. It was only when they crossed through a busy waiting room towards a set of double doors that they were challenged.

"Excuse me, you can't go in there!" a nurse scurried forward and stepped between them and the doors.

The Master reached for his TCE, but before he could draw the weapon the Doctor stepped forward with confident, even aggressive posture.

"Young lady, don't you know who I am?" the Doctor said, his voice dripping with outrage. The nurse, who had taken an involuntary step back at the Doctor's approach, opened her mouth to reply, but the Doctor spoke over whatever she was about to say. "I'm Doctor J. J. Chambers, Assistant Deputy Chief Medical Superintendent of Gilfruct Health Services Incorporated. Mr. Gilfruct personally sent me."

The nurse rallied. "I never received a memo."

"Then check your memos again," the Doctor snarled in the nurse's face. "In the meantime, I refuse to waste my time out here twiddling my thumbs while you shuffle about your incompetent filing. I have work to do." The Doctor's voice dropped to a threatening whisper. "And if your worker cost efficiency isn't up to company standard, you won't like the report I'll write to Mr. Gilfruct." He narrowed his eyes. "You're not off to a good start."

The nurse pressed her lips together, gaze flickering uncertainly between the Doctor and the door. At last she decided that thwarting the Doctor wasn't worth risking her career.

"My apologies, Doctor Chambers," she said, all deferential courtesy. "You and your assistants can go right in."

"Thank you, Nurse," the Doctor said with only a touch of derision, inclining his head.

Once they were through the doors, the Master said, "Assistants?" His tone made it clear how much he disliked the idea.

The look the Doctor gave the Master was fondly amused. It was, Mel thought, a familiar expression, one that wouldn't have been out of place on her Doctor's face. The thought made her uncomfortable. The Doctor said, "You can be my colleague. How does Doctor Master sound?"

The Master face twisted in disgust. "It sounds terrible."

"Well, Master Doctor is worse. And makes no sense." The Doctor smiled brightly. "My name has to come first."

The Master was about to reply when the Doctor pressed his fingers against the Master's lips. "Hush," the Doctor breathed out. "We can argue about it later. It's investigation time now."

The playful voice shredded Mel's heart. When the Time Lord High Council had proposed giving her a time ring and sending her to the Valeyard, she'd accepted only because she had to see for herself whether there was anything of the Doctor left to be salvaged. Every time she thought she'd finally convinced herself that the Doctor was gone and that the man who had taken his place was irredeemable, that once the fabric of time was stabilized and the universe was safe she'd be able to carry out the second part of the High Council's plan without regret, a smile or a phrase or a quirk of his eyebrow would send all her doubts and hesitations crashing down upon her again.

Now, he was motioning her forward with one hand, like she was his co-conspirator, towards one of the open doors that lined the hallways. Mel crept up to him and directed her attention to where he pointed. Beds packed a broad room near to bursting and on each bed lay an Aurean, hooked up to a machine by cuffs on their wrists and neck. From each cuff spiralled a narrow tube filled with vermillion liquid.

"Just as I suspected," the Doctor whispered, his voice dark with self-satisfaction. "Euchlor, refined naturally in their bloodstream, probably more pure than even the mechanical refineries are capable of once it's separated out from the plasma and platelets."

"You think they're getting paid for their blood?" Mel asked.

"Precisely. But I think there's more besides. The account records we hacked into shows sums far too large to be explained away by some few donations from the desperate underclass." He shared a knowing glance with the Master.

"Well, it would be efficient," the Master replied to the Doctor's unspoken words.

"What?" Mel asked, troubled by their silent communication.

"You'll see soon enough," the Doctor said, leading her out of the room. They wandered the floor until he found a staircase, so little used that there was rust crusting the hinges deep in the cracks where the cleaners couldn't reach. After a quick glance to ensure that none of the hospital staff were nearby he opened the door and darted in.

"You're not going to make us climb up, are you?" Glitz asked, eying the stairs with anticipatory discomfort. "If so, might I recommend the lift? I saw one a few corridors back."

"Stairs would be good for you," Mel said. "You look like you could use the exercise."

The Doctor added, "The lifts controls are probably tied to the security system. Stairs are far better for covert reconnaissance."

"Sneaking," Mel translated.

"I know what covert reconnaissance is," Glitz replied snippily. Then he took a deep, fortifying breath and placed his foot on the first step up.

"Fortunately for you, we're going down," the Doctor said. "People always want to bury their secrets. It's instinctive. Whatever's hidden here, it will be underground."

The Doctor knew he was on the right track when, as they went deeper, the whisper of thousands of personal timelines converging in one spot and fading away in exponential decay grew steadily clearer to his senses. Once they got below the public floors the doors became harder to access, locked with increasingly complex codes, another sure sign that he was nearing the centre of his mystery. But as Glitz had observed earlier, the Doctor was very good with doors and locks. He'd been getting into places he didn't belong for well over a millennium and a half now and was quite proficient at it, although after stopping to rewire five doors in succession and working on a sixth, he was beginning to wish he still had his old sonic screwdriver to speed up the process.

When the last door opened, the sharp scent of blood was so overwhelming that even the Humans couldn't fail to notice it. The Doctor stepped through onto an industrial-mesh balcony overlooking a cavernous room that appeared part factory, part slaughterhouse.

Hundreds of Aureans, drugged into glazed-eyed placidity, were propped upright on a conveyer belt by metal clamps. The belt drew them across the factory floor until they were tilted in groups of ten over a vast funnel that led to a massive glass vat. Within the vat, a paddle churned the thick vermillion liquid to keep it from clotting too quickly. One factory robot pushed up the Aurean's heads with a bar under their chin and another came down like a giant comb with blades for teeth, slicing through either side of each Aurean's throat. The people were bled out, then carried away to a furnace to make room for the next ten.

Hundreds of Aureans killed each minute. The destitute, the undesired, the unproductive. Thousands of litres of blood collected. Dozens of kilograms of euchlor to be extracted and sold.

"This is what they were hiding," the Doctor hissed in satisfaction at a mystery unveiled.

Mel choked in horror at the hell laid out before her. It was like those pictures of concentration camps with corpses all heaped up in piles of pale flesh, a cold-blooded and methodical slaughter on such an enormous scale that the mind shied from facing it.

"You have to stop it." Her mind was numb, floating away from her body as if trying to escape from a reality where such thoughtless cruelty existed. "Please, stop it."

"My dear Miss Bush," the Master said. "We are not here to liberate the oppressed or bring salvation to the suffering or whatever else you may be imagining." He turned to the Doctor. "I trust your curiosity has been appeased?"

"Yes," he said in a flat voice.

"You can't just leave them here to die!" Mel cried in anguish. "Doctor!" She grabbed onto his sleeve.

He whirled on her, ripping his arm from her grasp. "Don't call me that," he spat out, his whole demeanour gone from cool detachment to incandescent fury in seconds. He seized her in a bruising grip and pushed her to the balcony overlooking the slaughter. "Look at them," he rasped in her ear. "Look. I can leave them to die and I will. Do you think saving a few wretched souls from death is any sort of benevolence? The universe is a cold, cruel place, Mel. Alive, they exist only to suffer and inflict suffering on others. They don't deserve mercy and I have none to give them."

He released her, practically throwing her away from him into the balcony rails. Tears ran down her cheeks as she slowly turned away from the whir of the machines and the dripping blood.

# # #

"Yes, Miss Lilla, what it is this time?"

"Mr. Gilfruct, sir, sorry to interrupt." She bobbed her head in a gesture that was one part deference, one part apology.

"Never apologize for bringing me important news." He quirked an eyebrow. "It is important, I hope?"

"Yes, sir. You asked to be told if the Time Lord and his companions did anything suspicious."

"And..." he prodded impatiently. Miss Lilla really was quite hopeless in her timidity.

"Captain Melis reports that they entered a hospital and were there for half an hour. He's investigating now, trying to find out where they went and what they saw, but he's requesting further orders, sir."

"Thank you, Miss Lilla. I'll take care of it from here."

Her image flickered and faded. A few seconds and key strokes later, the space that had been filled by Miss Lilla's dainty form was now displaying a tall, blond man in a black security uniform.

"Captain Melis, take two teams to the Time Lord's ship. Do what you whatever you need to in order to prevent their escape."

"Yes, sir," the captain replied with clipped, military precision.

"Try to capture them alive if possible. If not..." Mr. Gilfruct shrugged. "...put the bodies in stasis and we'll salvage what we can."

# # #

Mel was silent as she followed the Doctor through the streets back to the TARDIS. Glitz appeared to have already shrugged off the memory of the revolting thing that was buried under the hospital, regaling the Master with non-stop, trivial chatter. Mel hated him for that. Hated him, hated the Master—who hadn't even bothered to disguise his smirk when the Doctor refused to help those people—and hated the Doctor himself. She especially hated the Doctor. The Valeyard, she reminded herself. Thinking of him as the Valeyard instead of the Doctor made him easier to hate, and she wanted to hate him.

After his blazing rant at her in the hospital, the Doctor...the Valeyard had closed off, nothing behind his pale eyes but a blank wall. Her Doctor, for all his faults, would never be so heartless and detached from the suffering of others.

"Mel, you're sulking," he chided her gently, like a parody of a fond parent. "I can feel it."

"Am I not allowed to think my own thoughts anymore?" Angry as she was at the lack of privacy in her own brain, she was almost grateful that the Doctor had spoken. So long as she was busy arguing with him, she wasn't seeing the corpses, smelling the stench of blood and chemical sterilizers.

"By all means," the Doctor said, "think whatever you like. But if you're going to radiate waves of hysterical emotion in the presence of a telepathic species, don't expect your feelings to remain private."

"I suppose you think we should all be indifferent and dispassionate in the face of horror and suffering."

"It does simplify things."

"'Simplify things?'" she echoed. "Is that what happened to you? You decided that compassion was simply too much trouble?"

She never had a chance to find out what, if anything, the Doctor would have said in reply. As they ambled through the courtyard where the TARDIS was parked, armed Aureans stepped out from hiding, guns aimed squarely at the four of them. Mel immediately raised her hands in the universal gesture of "please don't kill me."

One of the Aureans, a tall man with blond hair and a face that Mel might have called handsome if she'd seen it under better circumstances called out, "You're under arrest. Come quietly or we'll shoot."

"Well, Mel," the Doctor said. "Would you like to use your compassion to find your way out of this situation? Perhaps disarm them with your overwhelming powers of empathy?"

Glitz spoke up, "I just want you to know that I only met these gentlemen an hour ago. So if they're wanted for any sort of criminal activity, it's got nothing to do with me. I'm a law abiding man, I am. Nothing but the utmost respect for justice and you fine gentlemen who enforce it."

A laser blast spattered on the wall six inches from Glitz's head. "Quiet," the blond man said. "Keep your hands where we can see them." Glitz's hands darted into the air.

The Master glanced at the rank insignia on the shoulder of the blond man's uniform. "Captain," he said in a honeyed voice. "No need for threats. We aren't so foolish as to think we can take on twelve men."

He turned to the Doctor, his eyebrows raised in expectation. After all, the Doctor had weapons turned on him nearly every time he stepped out of his TARDIS, and every time he was able to evade certain death. Undoubtedly, he had a clever escape plan.

The Doctor quirked one brow in return, waiting for the Master to act. After all, the Master caused conflict and chaos wherever he went, and every time he was able to slip away unharmed when his schemes backfired on him. Undoubtedly, he had a clever escape plan.

Both came to the realization that the other had no plan at precisely the same moment. The Master sighed. "How terribly inconvenient for you to run out of luck now instead of one of the times when I was holding you at weaponspoint," he muttered to the Doctor.

"Luck?" The Doctor bristled. "It wasn't luck that enabled me to defeat you, it was skill."

"Skill you seem to be lacking now," the Master retorted.

"On the contrary."

"You thought of a way to escape?" the Master lowered his voice further, barely moving his lips and trusting in the Doctor's Time Lord hearing.

"Yes."

"And?"

"It's quite simple, really." He paused. "Run!" he shouted, grabbing Mel by the wrist and yanking her towards the nearest alleyway. Flashes of blaster fire sizzled around them.

# # #

It took them ten minutes and twenty three seconds of running through alleys and byways to elude their pursuers. Mel felt like she'd been running much longer, but the Doctor assured her that his objective time sense was quite precise. At last the Doctor released his hold on Mel, who promptly rubbed the shoulder of the arm he'd been pulling. But even if he'd still been a sympathetic fool who cared about his companions' discomfort, a strained muscle would have been the least of the Doctor's worries.

The Master was nowhere in sight. He spun about, glancing here and there, hoping the Master would turn the corner any second, but there was nothing. Glitz was also gone, but that was of minimal importance. The plan could be altered to cope with losing Glitz, despite the Master's insistence that every facet of his carefully contrived plot served a crucial purpose. Losing the Master, however... Only the Master could fix the paradox permanently, and until he did the Doctor's existence depended on one little piece of hastily constructed technology. His right hand drifted over to his left to twist the paradox ring around his finger.

The Master could take care of himself. He always did. Except in the Doctor's past, the Master's future, when he couldn't, didn't, and was lost to the Doctor—more than dead. Death implied the possibility of regeneration, or in the Master's case, stolen bodies and resurrection. But the Master hadn't just died, he'd been obliterated.

"Doctor?" Mel's voice seemed distant, decades away.

Whole galaxies of mass compressed into a space the size of a cricket ball transformed into pure energy. The destruction of the micro-universe happened in an instant. An expanding flare engulfed whole systems before a gravitational well—created when the remains of the micro-universe collapsed—sucked back the cosmos-devouring heat. Then the black hole evaporated into elementary particles and it, too, was gone. The death the inferno brought was so swift that the civilizations it destroyed never had time to scream.

The Master was at the epicentre of the destruction. The small spark tucked away in the corner of the Doctor's mind, that thorny barb that was the Master's psychic imprint, was ripped away. He clapped his hands to his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could hold in that which had already vanished, a child clutching for a bird that had flown.

"Doctor!" Anne placed a worried hand on his shoulder.

The Doctor opened his eyes to meet her concerned gaze. She frowned at the bleak expression on his face. He shook his head slightly, unable to say what he knew: that the edges of the flare had escaped the event horizon and were still spreading. It was coming too fast and they weren't far enough away to escape it. Then the TARDIS exploded.

The force of the energy wave hitting them knocked out the gravity, lights, navigation, nearly every system. The Doctor fell hard against the console, rolling over it and spinning into the air, sparks burning his exposed skin. The TARDIS shields were failing, failed. The temperature rose rapidly. Anne screamed as her internal organs started to cook.

Her cries stopped a little before the Doctor's skin started to shrivel and crack. He curled around himself, still turning in the gravityless air and burning inside and out, as the TARDIS fell through space. Every cell was on fire.

"Doctor, we have to keep moving."

He didn't expect to wake. When he woke, he almost wished he hadn't. He was sprawled across the floor. Either the TARDIS gravity circuits were working again or... He cracked open his eyes. He was lying on the wall, not the floor, which meant that the gravity circuits were still down, but they'd crashed somewhere—some planet or moon—that exerted its own gravity.

His brain felt like it had been scraped with steel wool. The TARDIS moaning pitifully inside his mind wasn't helping.

"Shut up shut up shut up," he hissed. His voice was darker than he'd remembered it, and rough with smoke. He coughed.

There was no light by which to see. Even the sparks had died away. The Doctor rubbed the skin of his cheeks. The skin was cool, smooth, not burnt hot and stretched like leather. He trailed his hand up over his forehead to his hair. It was a bit shorter, and straight again.

His head hurt like fingernails on a chalkboard, with his skull as the fingernails scraping up grit and desiccating chalk dust, and the board gouged with ragged lines, and the ears split by the shriek all at once. No functional zero room; no functional anything. It would be ironic if he survived the destruction of a universe only to die from regeneration.

He laughed and didn't stop laughing until it turned into a thick, hacking cough that only ended when he spat out, not mucus, but a tendril of golden light.

"Doctor!"

Given that the TARDIS was too damaged to help stabilize his mind, the Doctor considered it a testament to his strength of will that he made it through his regeneration trauma with his sanity intact. There were a few moments when it was touch and go. The frenzy he'd descended into when he'd stumbled and fallen onto Anne's withered corpse, shaking it and scratching at it and tearing off strips of shrivelled flesh, was surely not one of his finer moments.

There was no way to know how long it took for the regeneration to stabilize. The TARDIS was nearly dead and all the chronometers were black. His own time senses were so twisted and warped during the ordeal that he at once thought it might have been two days or two months.

It hardly mattered how long it was. He was stranded. With the sensors down, defensive shield gone, and the air shield weakened, he couldn't even risk opening the doors, lest the vacuum of a dead world wait on the other side. He and his wounded TARDIS were trapped here until she was healed. If she could heal. It would not be fast. Fifty years, a hundred, the rest of his lifetime; it was difficult to guess how long he'd be waiting in the dark alone with his thoughts.

"Doctor!" Someone was pawing at his sleeve.

"Get away from me!" he snarled, jerking his arm away from Mel's grasping fingers. "And don't call me that."

"The guards are coming back this way. We need to go." She was staring at him. He wondered what sort of expression he had on his face to put that troubled one on hers. He wrapped up the memories that had risen like a corpse in a lake and buried them back down in the deep, secluded recesses of his mind. He was not powerless, he reminded himself. Not weak. Not a coward. The guards would spot them any second, but the Doctor was confident in his ability to improvise a solution if given just a little more time.

Mel flinched when the Doctor seized her hand, his skin cold against hers. Whatever strange unquiet that had come over him was gone, leaving his normal mien of detached disdain in its place. They ran again, with seeming no end or goal in mind. They turned another corner and another. After the third turn the Doctor began to laugh breathlessly. Mel seriously feared that he was going mad. Madder.

"There." He pointed to a small building up ahead that was marked with a symbol of four vertical wavy lines. He dragged her to the door and set to breaking the locking code. The door opened and he shuffled her inside just as their pursuers spotted them.

The room they entered was wide but not very deep. A line of metal columns whistling out a pitch so high it was only just within Human hearing range covered the far wall like an alien pipe organ. Once the door slid shut, he reprogrammed the lock. "That should hold them out just long enough."

"Long enough for what?" Mel asked. "I don't see how coming in here has done us any good."

"That, my dear Mel, is because you don't know that this is a power hub, and that these," the Doctor swept his arm towards the columns, "are energy transfer conductors. This room is therefore perfectly designed for a trap."

There was one other door in the room, to the left. He set to work on the lock with a single-minded intensity. Occasionally words flashed by on the interface and Mel was able to piece together what he was doing. "You're coordinating the locks on the two doors. You plan to lure them in here then trap them inside." He didn't answer but she knew she was right.

At last he finished his programming. His hand hovering over the controls, he spoke. "The second this door opens, get outside. I don't want you in my way. Understood?"

She nodded. He pushed the button and both sets of doors opened. She hurried out and turned to see the Doctor leap back to the centre of the room while the guards poured in through the other door, guns raised.

"Don't move!" one of the guards barked out. He looked no more than twenty years old, but he had a grim cast to his face and Mel didn't doubt the he could and would shoot, despite his youth. "Surrender now and we'll allow you to live."

The Doctor's mouth twisted in a vicious smile. "I don't believe I shall."

The guards fired. Half a dozen beams of light cut into the energy columns, missing the Doctor by bare inches when he dodged and fled towards the second door. As he rushed towards her, it occurred to Mel that she could push the locking button now, close both doors and seal the Doctor...the Valeyard inside. But the fleeting notion passed and then the Doctor was at her side, slamming his hand on the controls just as the energy columns burst in an explosion of green flames. The smell of ozone and burnt hair just reached her nose before the door sealed it away. The walls shuddered and cracked with the force of the blast.

All the lights in the neighbourhood flickered, dimmed and went out. After a few seconds of darkness, faint, red emergency street lights powered up.

The Doctor chuckled. "There. The problem is solved. The guards will no longer follow us, and, unless I miss my guess, their sensors will be down and their ability to track us severely curtailed." He brushed imaginary dust from his black lapel with smug satisfaction.

They walked in silence for a while, Mel trailing behind the Doctor. She knew she ought to feel guilty about the people the Doctor had just killed, people who may have had families and loved ones who would now never see them again. But after all the death she'd seen lately she couldn't find it in her to mourn for six people who would have killed her with hardly a second thought. She wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about desensitization to violence, or if she was just so grief-stricken that she'd stopped being able to process it anymore.

Then the Doctor stopped, turned to her, and spoke. "You were thinking of trapping me in the power hub with the guards." He did not present it as a question, although Mel didn't see how he could possibly have known.

She considered lying, but his penetrating gaze discouraged mendacity. Besides, there was nothing he could do to her that really mattered. She might hate him, but she didn't fear him. Not now. "Yes, I was."

"You should have," the Doctor said like a teacher correcting a wayward student. "After the explosion, you could have retrieved the paradox ring and used it to keep your own time fields stabilized, then vanish into the city where the Master wouldn't find you. The Master's own sense of self-preservation would guarantee that he'd follow through with the plan to stop my counterpart from destroying my sixth self and thereby mend space-time. The universe would be safe, you would be safe, and I would be dead. A perfect victory for you."

For all that a few minutes ago she'd thought she hated the Doctor enough to consider locking him in his own trap, she found to her own surprise that just hearing about the Doctor's hypothetical death made her stomach twist and roll. "I couldn't."

The Doctor leaned forward. "Why not?"

Mel frowned, considering the question. "You were protecting me."

"I was protecting myself," he said. "The guards made it quite clear that they'd kill me if they had a chance."

"But when you took my hand, told me to run, you were protecting me." She didn't know why she was so insistent, but it felt important.

"I assure you, it was merely because you're linked to the paradox through me. It's to my own benefit that I keep you close. Self-preservation, nothing more."

"Was that really all it was?" She peered into his eyes hoping to see a crack in the ice, anything to let her know that she'd made the right choice in letting this man live, but his expression revealed nothing. No fondness or care or concern. And yet... "During the trial you were furious at the Doctor for putting me in danger."

"I said what I needed to say to obtain the verdict I desired. I played a part."

"No. No that wasn't acting. It was too real."

"You don't think I can be an adept liar when I want to be?"

"I don't doubt it. But maybe you've become so good a liar that you don't even notice when you lie to yourself."

"Ah, Mel, always the optimist. If believing that I have some innate goodness left in me makes this situation easier for you, then by all means carry on. But be prepared for disappointment." He sauntered away.

Mel chased after the person who or might or might not still be the Doctor, who allowed innocent people to be bled dry for profit and smiled while setting fatal traps, but whose eyes shone with curiosity at the unknown, and who protected her from harm.

# # #

The Master was not usually one to obey other people's orders, but he was also too sensible a man to ignore the Doctor's command to run when the other option was facing down two dozen molecular disruption blasters. He veered left, keeping Glitz between himself and the guards as he darted through the alleyway.

He glanced over his shoulder as he turned a corner, and halted in his flight when only Glitz appeared. He'd thought the Doctor was right behind him. He grabbed Glitz and pushed him into the wall.

"Where is he? Where's the Doctor?" the Master shouted, digging his fingers into Glitz's shoulders and shaking the man.

Glitz grabbed the Master's wrists. "Steady on there, mate."

"'Steady on?'" His hands trembled with the urge to shift just a little bit higher and close around Glitz's neck.

Six guards turned the corner and spotted them. Concern over the Doctor's fate would have to wait. The guards were closing in on him, but he couldn't think, couldn't plan. There was no time. The Doctor was better at slap-dash, hastily constructed ideas. But the Doctor wasn't here, and for all he knew, the Doctor.... He cut the thought short. If he, with all his intelligence, had never been able to thwart the Doctor, surely these primitives couldn't kill him?

Still, the tightness in his throat didn't go away. No plan, no scheme, no escape, he ran. He kept his senses alert for the Doctor, half expecting to find him around this corner. Or this next one.

Glitz, who had been running alongside him, grabbed his arm and pulled him left. "This way," he gasped, breathless from exertion. The Master followed Glitz down a narrow street and from there through the front door of a row house. The interior was empty and filled with dust. "We can hide here. It's been abandoned for ages. Some of my business associates use it as neutral ground for negotiating."

The Master prowled about the room, his thoughts turning upon themselves, unable to focus. He tightened his hands into fists, but images kept spinning before his mind's eyes—possibilities, not for escape, but potential fates concerning the Doctor. Always in his head, the Doctor. The Doctor was his to hurt, kill, or save, and the thought of these lower creatures destroying what was his made his lips curl back in a snarl.

He pressed his hands against the frame of a boarded-up window and peering through the slats. The captain was pointing up and down the street, splitting up the patrol for a thorough search of the area. He needed a plan, and soon. He needed to focus, put aside the unknowable and concentrate on the here and now.

As he watched the captain begin to approach with two guards at his side, all the lights in the neighbourhood flickered and went out. The guards tensed like a pack of startled dogs, still and alert. A few seconds later, red emergency lighting glowed from the street lamps. The Master chuckled to himself. Clearly, the Doctor was alive and well. And the Master had an idea.

"Glitz, do you have a weapon?"

Glitz tossed him a puzzled glance. "Of course. My Mark Five Cellular Disintegrator." He pulled the small, deadly pistol from a hidden pocket inside his shirt. "I never leave home without this little darling." His tone shifted from fond to dubious. "But I'm not going to go up against six security officers all by my lonesome. I don't care what you pay. Can't spend money if you're dead, I always say."

"I'd never expect acts of bravery from you, Glitz. Give the disintegrator to me." The Master held out his gloved hand. "We don't need to kill all of them, just most of them. In fact, there's one in particular I'd like to keep very much alive."

The disintegrator, after painstaking modification by the Master, worked exactly as planned. When the security guards entered the dark room to search the building in which Glitz and the Master were hiding, they were blasted with a wide beam spray from Glitz's pistol--too dispersed to be fatal, but utterly incapacitating as the victims' nerve cells jittered and screamed. He picked off two of the guards with his TCE, leaving the captain writhing on the floor for a few more seconds until the disintegrator's battery, never designed for long bursts, melted.

The Master padded over to the captain and crouched down on his heels, waiting for him to stop spasming and return to coherency. It took longer than expected, but the Master was patient. When the captain had gathered himself together well enough to look up and take stock of his situation, the Master was ready.

"Captain," the Master said, dipping into the man's mind. "Melis, isn't it?"

"Who are you?" the captain asked, fear quivering in his voice.

"I am the Master." His mouth twisted in a smile. "And you will obey me."

Captain Melis frowned, but soon the furrows of distress smoothed and his face was serene. "I will," he said agreeably.

"That's a handy trick you've got there," Glitz said. "Now that he's all calm he'll be right easy to take care of." Glitz took out a sonic knife and reached for Melis' throat. But before he could strike, the Master pounced to his side and forced Glitz's arm down with a vicious grip.

"You fool! What do you think you're doing?"

"Getting rid of a fellow who wants to kill us," Glitz said, rather dismayed at the apparent need to state the obvious.

"After all the trouble I went through to catch him alive and place him under my control?" The Master tightened his fingers around Glitz's thick wrist, squeezing with a preternatural strength until Glitz winced and squirmed.

"If you wouldn't mind letting me have the use of my hand back…"

"Not until you understand that I am in command here. You are to do nothing unless I order you. Is that clear, Mr. Glitz?" The Master's voice was quiet and collected. It was the sort of voice Sabalom Glitz was well familiar with, having heard something much like it from the mouths of unrepentant murderers often enough. It was the sort of voice that brooked no discussion and heralded certain violence against anyone who dared disobey.

"I understand perfectly, sir," Glitz replied. Discretion being the better part of staying alive, and all that.

The Master dropped Glitz's arm and turned his attention back to Captain Melis, who had watched the whole exchange with blank indifference.

The Master loomed over him. "Now, Captain, let me tell you what you're going to do."

Once the captain acquired a pair of security uniforms for Glitz and the Master, they were able to move about freely. It grated that his uniform insignia marked him as a lower rank than the captain, but the names and faces of the higher ranking officers would be known. He consoled himself with the knowledge that although passersby might think him a mere sergeant, he would have the last laugh. With Captain Melis leading the way, they came to the central security operations station without incident.

It was a utilitarian government building, all grey brick and beige carpet. People flitted here and there around the room like bees around a hive. Their uniforms were black, like the guards', but they all wore the blue patch that marked them as operations personnel instead of security patrol. They saluted Captain Melis when he entered, but paid no attention to Glitz or the Master.

Captain Melis led them to one of the stations where a young man in thick glasses was sorting files on a computer terminal. The captain laid a friendly hand on the man's arm. "Fetch me a cup of coffee, will you? And one for yourself if you want."

"Sir?" The boy gave his commanding officer a puzzled look.

"Take your time. Have a breather. We'll be needing your terminal for a while anyway, so you might as well enjoy the break."

"Yes, sir!" The lad didn't need to be told twice. He closed the program he was working on and bounded up from his chair. He paused at the door and turned back to ask, "Oh, do you take cream or sugar, sir?"

"Cream, no sugar," Captain Melis replied. The boy left.

The Master settled himself into the vacant seat. Glitz hovered over one shoulder, the Captain stood close by the other. A few brushes over the smooth control panel and the security system program revealed itself. "Just as I thought. You have sensors that flag and scan all new arrivals. That will simplify things considerably."

"Yes," the Captain confirmed. "But when the Doctor blew the energy lines, he also shut down the sensor grid, the shields, the locks, everything. We have lights, limited communication, and just enough generator power to keep our computers from crashing completely. The privately-owned facilities are better off—they can afford better emergency generators—but the public infrastructure's old. The energy lines were supposed to have been replaced years ago with a node system that would keep just this sort of thing from happening, but the government's been broke for years. The city's whole system is dead."

"I find that 'dead' is not as conclusive a concept as people think." The Master gave a harsh chuckle and swept his fingers over the computer controls, rerouting and boosting power. "We don't need much, just enough to hear one double heart-beat amongst the sea of single pulses."

As soon as the Master finished his adjustments, a single dot of light flashed on the map grid.

"There he is," the Master whispered, staring at the bright pinprick on the vast, dark screen.

Captain Melis wasted no time. He commanded over the security communication line, "All available squads to Red Sector, Subsection Five to apprehend the Time Lord. He is presumed to be armed and is certainly dangerous so keep your weapons powered up."

"Tell them not to approach until you give the word," the Master prompted.

"All squads, do not approach the Time Lord until I give word. Repeat: Do not approach until word is given."

"Good," the Master smirked. It was almost too easy. Now to institute the final stage of his plan. He opened a line to the public communications port in Red Sector, Subsection Five. "Well Doctor, it's time to stop running."

There was a long silence, then, "Is that--" The Doctor began, his voice sharp with confusion.

"It is," the Master confirmed before the Doctor could say his name. Under normal circumstances, he relished hearing the Doctor say it, but here, surrounded by operations personnel and keen to keep his disguise intact, was not the time or place. "Even now, the loyal and valiant officers who protect this fair city are closing in on your position. You've run up quite a list of criminal offenses in your short time here. I suggest you surrender now."

"Surrender."

"Yes, surrender. Surrender and allow yourself to be brought to me." The Master waited, his mouth open in eager anticipation of the Doctor's words.

"Brought to you where?" The Doctor's voice was sharp with suspicion.

"Does it matter? You'll either let the guards escort you to me, or you'll be shot. The choice is yours. Come to me, or take your chances against an armed squad."

There was a long pause during which the Master could easily imagine the Doctor's eyes flashing with anger in that fetching way he had. At last, the Doctor replied. "It's not a choice and you know it."

Through the comm, the Master heard Miss Bush's strident voice cry out, "You can't!" He ignored her.

"Say it." The Master wasn't about to let this opportunity slide. He may never get another chance to hear the Doctor say these words.

"I…surrender."

The Master could almost see the Doctor's grimace. He smiled. "Yes?" he prodded, leaning closer to the speaker to better hear the response.

"To you."

"Very good, Doctor." He closed the communication line.

Fifteen minutes later, the Doctor and Miss Bush were brought in, handcuffed and at the mercy of the guards. Captain Melis turned to the Master and Glitz. "You two escort the prisoners to their cell."

The Master hurried to carry out the orders he had pre-arranged with the Captain. He took the Doctor by the arm and roughly pulled him towards the door. It was all he could do not to grin. Glitz took care of Miss Bush with somewhat greater chivalry.

Once they were away, the Doctor hissed, "You treacherous—"

"Don't be ridiculous," the Master curbed the Doctor's accusations before they could be given full voice. "What could these people possible offer me, my dear Doctor, that could be of greater interest to me than saving my own timeline?"

"It crossed my mind that you might have decided that I was unnecessary for your plans." He held up his cuffs hands. "That, consummate opportunist that you are, you'd take advantage of the situation."

The Master scowled. "Of the two of us, I think you'll find that I'm not the one with a history of going back on his word."

"Then you'll release me?" the Doctor asked, raising his hands a few inches higher in emphasis.

"Yes," the Master said sharply, taking the Doctor's hands into his own and keying in the combination that Captain Melis had given him. "Not that you deserve it." In truth, he would have liked to keep the Doctor in restraints a little longer, but gaining the Doctor's trust was too important right now for such petty, if pleasant, diversions.

The Doctor's chilly mien melted. "In that case, I must congratulate you on an innovative escape plan. Find our freedom by getting arrested. I don't believe I've ever tried it before."

"I do enjoy bringing new experiences to your life."

"Such as strangulation by sentient telephone cord, near death by parasite-induced terror, actual death by falling—"

"Yes, but think of how much duller your travels would have been were I not around."

"There were plenty of other monsters in the universe to keep me occupied."

"Monster?" The Master suddenly slammed the Doctor against the wall and pressed close, their faces bare inches apart. "Tell me, Doctor," he spat out the name, "am I a monster because I intervene in the development of lesser species, or because my intervention has, upon occasion, resulted in death? Either way, you're hypocrite if you call me a monster."

The Doctor breathed heavily, shocked by the unexpected violence and lightheaded from the surge of adrenaline. He barely heard the Master's words but the position they were in was so familiar—the Master hovering close, threatening, while his own mind buzzed with possibilities of escape—that the Doctor had to smile with a curious nostalgia. He rested his palm against the Master's chest, not pushing him away, just feeling his single, Trakenite heartbeat. "Weren't we escaping?"

The Master sniffed in scorn at the Doctor's unsurprising evasion and stepped away. "You are incontrovertibly the most infuriating man I know."

"Can you save the lovers' spat for a more convenient time?" Glitz said. "Sometime when we're far away from this planet, maybe?"

The Doctor gave Glitz a chill, narrowed eyed look. He was increasingly eager to reach the TARDIS. Not only had he experienced quite enough of this world, but he was greatly looking forward to springing their trap and silencing Glitz. Thanks to the Master's control of the security captain, they met with no patrols and no resistance as they crossed the city back to the wide courtyard where they'd left the TARDISes nestled together.

"Is this your ship?" Glitz asked. "Awfully small, isn't it? And blue?"

"My ship has been picking up bad habits from the Doctor's," the Master said with a resigned twist to his mouth.

"Bad habits?" The Doctor sniffed. "My TARDIS is perfectly genteel."

"Your TARDIS is one blown circuit away from thinking she's an actual Police Box."

Glitz shared a look with Mel that indicated that he thought that they were travelling with a couple of nutters, but couldn't see what else to do but tolerate them.

The Doctor continued his defence of his truest companion. "She may be a bit...dotty, but there's nothing wrong with that. Your TARDIS certainly doesn't seem to mind."

The Master reached for the door. "My TARDIS—" The instant he touched the handle, the world flashed white.

When the electric zap of the transmat faded and his retina nerves re-activated, the Doctor spun around to assess his new surroundings. What he saw made his teeth grind and his stomach clench.

Glitz summed up the situation with a succinct, "Oh, bugger."

Steel walls enclosed them on three sides and a buzzing, high energy force shield finished the holding cell.

# # #

Mr. Gilfruct, like most Aurean plutocrats, had a passion for novelty. When one had the money to buy anything, only the priceless held any appeal. As soon as the transmat alert started flashing, he knew he would have to see the prisoners. Then he and he alone would be able to boast to his business rivals over glasses of glittering vinargenta that he had seen a legendary Time Lord. It was a shame the prisoners had to be kept caged; captivity invariably diminished grandeur, and the viewing experience simply wouldn't be the same. But, alas, it was impractical to allow such dangerous aliens to roam free.

Mr. Gilfruct brushed one finger over the digital interface surface of his desk and the computer controls faded, replaced by an illusion of golden-grained wood. He rose, abandoning his profit reports and management memos. When he entered the antechamber, Miss Lilla rose from her chair, wobbling a little on her high heels.

"Mr. Gilfruct," she squeaked anxiously. If Mr. Gilfruct was leaving the office unscheduled—there were no board meetings listed on the planner, no business lunches, no ribbon cutting ceremonies—then she supposed she must have done something wrong, failed to anticipate all his needs and provide for them. She attempted to salvage the situation, and possibly her job. "May I assist you with something?"

He looked at her as if he'd only noticed her existence when she spoke. "Call the medical unit and tell them to send a haemoreceiver to the confinement unit on Lower Level Three." He paused, cocked his head, considering. "Come with me and bring the holovid recorder."

She snatched the recorder from one of her desk drawers and toddled after Mr. Gilfruct, cursing the "sexy secretary" shoes her sister had encouraged her to buy.

The corporate headquarters of Gilfruct Enterprises had nothing but the best in equipment and design. While most of the city had lost power, in this building there had been barely a flicker before the massive generators kicked in and the lift ride now to the lower levels was swift and silent. His security personnel stood to attention as Mr. Gilfruct entered the holding area. He motioned for Miss Lilla to turn on the holovid and follow him as he approached the cell.

There were four aliens, all aureanoid. "Which one of you is the Time Lord?" Mr. Gilfruct asked. To his eyes they were all just as disappointingly ordinary in person as they were in the security holoimage. Just three men and a woman.

There was a long silence as the prisoners shared wary glances. "And who, exactly, are you ,and why should we answer your questions?" the svelte man with a dark beard—identified in the security report with just the title "Master"—asked.

Upon closer examination, the Master at least had a forceful presence, as if his soul couldn't quite be contained by his body and overflowed the room. Perhaps he was the Time Lord. "I am Mr. Gilfruct of Gilfruct Enterprises, the person who owns this building, this cell, these guards, this city. So it would be better for you if you cooperated with me."

The Master said nothing, merely crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall with a smugly stubborn set to his mouth.

"If that's way it has to be," Mr. Gilfruct said. He motioned sharply and the guards stepped forward. "I'll order them to start shooting and see who regenerates. That should answer my question."

"Wait!" the man known as the Doctor spoke. He stood and stalked forward until he was only inches from the force shield that separated them. "You wanted a Time Lord." His lips twitched in an almost smile. "Here I am."

Mr. Gilfruct peered at the man. The experience was anti-climatic to say the least. There was no glowing golden light, no aura of wisdom or majesty, no mysteries of the cosmos shining from his face. Nothing but a weary, middle-aged man in a dismal black suit.

Mr. Gilfruct sneered. "Mightiest civilization in the universe indeed," he muttered to himself. He waved at Miss Lilla to turn off the holovid. There was nothing worth recording here.

The Time Lord quirked an eyebrow. "So dreadfully sorry I fail to live up to your expectations."

Mr. Gilfruct shook off his disappointment. "It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I can, with all sincerity, promise that my product comes from a genuine Time Lord. I pride myself in honesty in advertising."

"Product?" the Doctor asked warily.

Mr. Gilfruct ignored the implied question and turned to the Master. "And I'm guessing that you're the Trakenite, then," Gilfruct said. "The clothes," his hand waved in a gesture encompassing the Master's form, "resemble those depicted on a Trakenite crystal triptych that I have in my collection. It's centuries old. Was one of the last ever made, before the destruction of Traken. No one much cared about Trakenite art until it became impossible to get more of it. Funny, isn't it, how the annihilation of the species made their art all the more precious?"

"Only this body is Traken," the Master replied with a scowl. "My mind is pure Time Lord."

"Your body is all I want. You and your friend there," Mr. Gilfruct nodded towards the Doctor, "are about to become precious commodities.

"There are stories, folk tales, that Trakenite blood had restorative properties. Something about them absorbing the power of the Source of the Universe, or some nonsense like that. I don't believe a word of it myself but there are plenty of gullible people who would pay a small fortune to get their hands on some." He looked to the Time Lord. "And hundreds of governments across the galaxy would barter away their souls to get their hands on Time Lord DNA to turn over to their scientists. You'll be dismembered for samples."

As if on cue, the medical technicians entered, rolling in a medical bed between them with a haemoreceiver balanced on top. Mr. Gilfruct smiled sympathetically at them. "You have about two minutes to say good bye while the techs set up the equipment."

Glitz spoke out, "What about us? There's not much of a black market for Humans. I'd know if there was." He held up his finger as if an idea just occurred to him. "How about you give us a dash of retcon; we'd be more than happy to go away and forget all about this."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Glitz," Mr. Gilfruct said. And he really was. But business was business and compassion and profit just didn't mix. "You and Miss Bush are dangling threads. Dangling threads are sloppy, and I hate untidiness."

Mel's heart raced and her mouth was dry. "Doctor?" She looked to him, but his attention was fixed on Mr. Gilfruct.

Blood-tinted images spun in the Doctor's mind. His muscles trembled with the desire to act. Like Atropos severing the thread of fate, he could end Gilfruct's life without a hiccup in the time stream to mark his passing. The universe would be a better place for it.

"Ah, there it is," Mr. Gilfruct breathed in delight. "That's more like what I expected from a Time Lord."

"You wanted to see a legend?" the Doctor asked, voice tight and shaking with poorly suppressed fury. "You wanted to see an entity of cosmic power? The Destroyer of Worlds?"

Mr. Gilfruct craned his head forward in fascination. There was still no golden glowing light or aura of wisdom and majesty, but there was power in the Doctor's aspect, the dark look of a creature who could feel stars dying. "I wanted to have something that no one else could," Mr. Gilfruct said.

"You want too much," the Doctor said grimly.

One of the medical techs shuffled to Mr Gilfruct's side, casting nervous glances at the Doctor. "The equipment's ready, sir. We can start any time."

"Excellent." He signalled for the guards to approach, then turned to his prisoners. "I do apologize for the crudity, but this is simpler than trying to transport the lot of you secretly to a hospital. Fewer opportunities for escape as well. Guards, fetch..." Mr. Gilfruct's finger wavered between the Doctor and the Master, deciding which to process first. "That one." He pointed at the Master.

Four guards trained their blasters on the prisoners while two entered the cell, seized the Master's arms and dragged him out.

"Doctor!" the Master cried out. "You can't let them do this to me!"

The Master struggled and writhed in the guards' grasp until he was pushed down onto the medical table and strapped into place. One tech pushed up the Master's sleeves and placed the haemoabsorption cuffs over the veins in each arm while the other pressed buttons on the haemoreceiver.

Twisting the paradox ring around his finger, the Doctor watched as the Master's blood filled the twisting tube and dripped into a large vat. Slow exsanguination was not a pleasant way to die. And die he would, trapped in a Trakenite body incapable of regeneration. The Master would end here, now, not in a Dalek execution, or shot by a woman in red, or burned away by the energy of a collapsing micro-universe. One more paradox straining the seams of reality.

Mel's voice whispered from the Doctor's side. "What are we going to do?"

Could he change the outcome of the trial without the Master's help, defeat his other self?

"Doctor!" the Master cried out again, his face pale and beads of sweat glistening on his brow. His breath was quick and shallow.

He thought of six more lives, six stolen regenerations stretching out before him with yet another failure pressing on his hearts. This new death would be burned into his mind with all the others, with images of fire and blood and light all blended together in a ghastly soup. If he once more sat by and watched while the Master died, he feared there'd be nothing left of him but that black loathing that had spread like spilt ink through the core of his self. Already he could feel it slithering into his mind, choking his throat and greying his vision. In a few moments, he'd be a pitiful, mad shell unless he did something. So he did the only thing he could do, what he always did. He gathered all up all the hate and fury and disgust and fashioned it into a weapon against his enemies.

His uncertainty was gone.

"We're going to break out of this cell," the Doctor replied with a thin facade of calm over a raging storm. He removed his paradox ring, his gaze focused on the Master's face—dark beard and white, bloodless skin—to prevent panic from setting in as he felt the cracks of time cutting into his brain. Off his finger, the ring was no longer bound to his biodata, and although the bubble itself was still active the paradox was pressing closer. If he did this, if he destroyed the ring, his chances of survival would be slim. If he did nothing, however, his death and the death of the Master besides was certain. There was really no choice.

The Master, watching the Doctor's actions through half-lidded eyes, opened his mouth to speak but was too weak, drifting in and out of consciousness.

"I know what I'm doing," the Doctor muttered, even though he knew the Master couldn't hear him. He herded Mel and Glitz to the back of the cell, as far away from the force shield as the walls allowed. He tossed the ring back and forth between his hands, calculating the proper arc.

"What are you doing?" Mel asked.

"The ring produces a tremendous amount of energy, all channelled into maintaining the paradox bubble. If I can hit the shield with it at just the right spot, the resulting energy collision should detonate the ring and short circuit the shield," he murmured quietly enough that the guards couldn't hear over the hum of the machines. He cocked his head. "If I miss, it might blow a hole in the universe."

"What?" Mel squeaked.

Glitz spoke up. "I'm all for escaping, but I don't think I like the sound of this plan."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," the Doctor said, then drew his arm back and hurled the ring at the force shield.

The energy collision was as spectacular as he'd hoped. The four guards who were standing near the cell were caught up in the whiplash and screamed as their bodily fluids boiled within seconds. The massive discharge prickled every cell in the Doctor's body, but he and his companions were just far enough away to escape the deadly effects.

Space-time slowly started to bend and buckle around him. He had to act quickly before it folded inward. The blast had stunned the medical techs into frozen, animal fear. Deer in headlights, as the humans used to say. They didn't put up a fight when he shoved them away and reversed the direction of the blood flow. He watched the haemoreceiver slowly empty and the Master's colour return.

Mel had claimed a blaster from one of the dead guards, much to the Doctor's surprise. She aimed it squarely at Gilfruct, who was still blinking away temporary blindness from the flash of the force shield. The two remaining guards, seeing themselves outnumbered, ran for the door. Mr. Gilfruct screamed threats at them as they fled, but to no avail.

"Loyal help is so hard to purchase," the Doctor mocked. He'd unfastened the restraints and helped the Master to his feet, steadying him with a hand on his back when he swayed. Once he was sure the Master could stand on his own, he stalked to where Mr. Gilfruct stood. Mr. Gilfruct's posture was that of a man uncowed, a man who thought he was still in charge, so very different from the pretty girl behind him who was hunched over as though she could make herself invisible if only she could take up less physical space.

"Mr. Gilfruct of Gilfruct Enterprises," the Doctor sneered. He paced back and forth in front of the businessman, feigning a calm he didn't feel, pretending he had all the time in the universe when in fact time itself was closing in on him. "You are guilty of arrogance, callousness, and rampant greed. You create poverty among your fellow citizens and then you prey on their misfortune. You perpetuate a system that is exploitative and corrupt. A just universe would have seen you condemned years ago. On the whole, the universe isn't just. Across galaxies, innocents are condemned, women and men are raped, children are tortured, the good suffer and the wicked prosper. However," he took Mel's blaster. She let him take it without a hint of protest. "In this instance, I believe I'll give justice a little help."

The Doctor raised the blaster, although movement was becoming more difficult, more dangerous every second. He took aim, but his vision blurred. Time and sight collided as the impending approach of the twisted paradox made his senses bleed together.

The Doctor swayed. His shot missed Gilfruct and before he could get off another the blaster dropped from his trembling hand. The press of space-time forced a small gasp from him, and he curled in on himself as he felt his personal timeline stretch so thin and fragile that one wrong move could cause it to snap.

Mr. Gilfruct smiled and drew a sonic pistol. "So much for Time Lords." He aimed it squarely at the Doctor's head.

"Doctor!" Mel cried out. She flinched and closed her eyes when the high pitched scream of a weapon's energy discharge pierced the air. But instead of the sharp and quick noise of a blaster, this was a continuous hum. She opened her eyes to see the Doctor still alive, if not entirely well, and Gilfruct slowly shrinking—his cells collapsing and organs suffocating.

"Typical, Doctor, typical," the Master said. "You can't even carry out your own executions properly."

The medical technicians, like the guards, had run. The only Aurean in the room left alive was the girl who had entered with Gilfruct. She cowered in a corner holding a holovid recorder to her chest. The Master pointed the TCE at her.

Before he could fire, Mel grabbed his arm, spoiling his shot. "No!" she shouted. "Don't kill her!"

The Master shook her off. "How dare you command me," he snarled. He raised his weapon again.

"Let the girl be," Doctor hissed, wincing as the sound vibrations dispersed into the time steam. "Killing her's not worth the whinging you'd have to endure."

The Master was clever. The raise of his eyebrow showed that he'd noticed the Doctor's use of the second person singular "you" instead of the inclusive "we." He tucked his TCE away and let the girl run. She wasn't important; the Doctor was.

"Doctor, you fool," the Master said. There was no heat to the insult, only exasperation touched with regret.

The Doctor flashed him a bitter smile, then slowly folded himself to the ground. The currents of time were pressing against him and around him. His time-flow sense burned. It was like being trapped in the centre of time all over again, waiting for the end of reality. He crouched on the floor, arms over his head. It wouldn't do any good, the Doctor knew it wouldn't. Flesh and bone couldn't hold the driving current of space-time at bay more than it could keep the Niagara River from falling.

He flinched when the Master knelt by his side. Every action around him, every movement of air sent out ripples of cause and effect that were painfully distorted by the encroaching paradox.

The Doctor whispered, trying not to stir the air any more than he had to. "You have to get out. You have to escape. If you don't my other self will once again win the trial. He will go forth and commit the paradoxes that drive you to find me, whereupon I will come here and die again. I'll be caught in a loop, dying over and over until the stress on the overlapping timelines, frayed with each reiteration, fractures all of reality." His hands fluttered about the Master's face, afraid to touch lest that one motion snap him out of existence. "If I must die, I'd rather it be just the once."

The Master said nothing. Did nothing. The Doctor waited for him to go and also dreaded it. But the Master didn't leave. Instead, he took the Doctor's hand. The Doctor tried to draw away.

"The paradox—"

"Hush," the Master said.

He slipped a ring—his own paradox ring—on the Doctor's finger. The Doctor couldn't understand why. It wasn't at all like the Master to take such great risks with his life with so little benefit. "The paradox bubble created by the ring is all that prevents you from being erased from the timeline."

"You have a talent for stating the obvious." The Master's non-answer to the Doctor's unstated question made the Doctor purse his lips in frustration. "But unlike you, I should be safe enough provided I remain within the bubble, even if my biodata isn't tied directly to the ring. I am not the centre of the paradox. Space-time isn't turned against me."

"Still, to put yourself at risk, to bind yourself and make yourself vulnerable to another person...it seems an uncharacteristic action for man whose twin goals have always been immortality and power," the Doctor tried again to coax out an explanation.

"It is, isn't it?" The Master still held the Doctor's hand. At last, he chuckled. "Consider it a mystery. I hope it keeps you occupied for a while."

A slow smile spread across the Doctor's face, mirroring the Master's smirk. Then he wrapped his fingers around the Master's hand and with an exhortation of "To the TARDIS!" he led the Master away.

# # #

The guards who had fled had been just loyal enough to raise an alarm. It made their escape a little more frenetic than the Master preferred. When the Master's plans fell into shambles (as they so often did when the Doctor was around) he preferred to slink away while no one was watching. Undignified mad dashing through corridors was more the Doctor's style.

The Master and Glitz were still dressed in the black uniforms of the security personnel, which caused the guards they encountered to hesitate just long enough for the Master to eliminate them. Between the Doctor's earlier vandalism of the energy conductors and the Master's adjustments to the sensors, the security grid was unable to trace them. With Mr. Gilfruct and Captain Melis both out of commission, the chain of command was more like a tangled cord. Guards ran hither and thither without plan or purpose and were, for the most part, easy to evade.

When they came in sight of the TARDIS, Glitz rushed forward, eager to get to safety. Before he could touch the door, however, the Master shouted out, "Wait." Glitz paused with one arm outstretched. "The transmat may still be active. The Doctor and I went to a lot of trouble to collect you and you will not thwart us now with your stupidity."

"Now just a minute..." Glitz began. The Master shoved him roughly out of the way and scanned the TARDIS exterior, searching for the transmat activator. Once he found it and got to work dismantling it, the Doctor wandered off towards the nearby computer terminal. He considered calling him back, trying to prevent him from straying far, but he bit his lip to curb the impulse. He doubted it would do any good, and furthermore he didn't want the Doctor to know how hyper-aware of his movements the Master was.

Whatever the Doctor was doing, it didn't take him long. He was back at the Master's side after only a few minutes. Working together, they quickly deactivated the trap. Once they were all inside the TARDIS, the Master flipped the controls to initiate dematerialization. As far as he was concerned, they couldn't leave here soon enough.

The Doctor, unfortunately, had other plans. "Take us into orbit, eight hundred thousand kilometers above the surface," he said.

"What for?" the Master asked. "We got what we came for."

"Just do it!"

"No."

The Doctor shoved the Master away from the console and took control of the TARDIS. "During our escape, I sent all the controls to the planetary defence system to the TARDIS computer. I'm about to consign the entire planet to oblivion, but I need to be within transmitting range to do it."

The Master quirked a startled eyebrow at the Doctor's vengeful passion and said nothing.

"You can't," Mel screamed. "You'll kill all those innocent people!"

"Innocent?" The Doctor turned to her. His voice was a harsh, whispered rasp. "They're not innocent, not one of them. They were all complicit, all accomplices to cannibalism and greed. Guilty, every last one of them, and they deserve what they get." The Doctor was breathing heavily as if from exertion and his eyes were wide and burning with frenzy.

"We're in orbit now," the Master said, watching the Doctor with interest. The Doctor leapt around the console and typed in the commands.

"No!" Mel threw herself at the Doctor, grabbing his arm and pulling it away from the controls with all her slight strength. The Master could admire her tenacity, if not her intelligence. The Doctor easily threw her off him; she fell heavily to the floor. A few seconds later the transmission was sent. Two point six zettajoules of destructive energy turned upon Aureas.

The Doctor swept over to the view screen to bear witness as his sentence was carried out. The planet glowed red, like a ball of molten glass. Then it exploded into dust and fragments of rock blasted outward with a force that would send pieces beyond this solar system.

"Remarkable," the Doctor whispered, staring out at the expanding ring of glowing light that had been the planet Aureas.

"Yes," the Master concurred, watching the Doctor, whose pale eyes shone with painful wonder.

"How could you?" Mel whimpered.

The Doctor barely heard her, entranced by the burning rings. It looked just a little bit like a micro-universe exploding.

"If we're finished here, Doctor?" the Master asked.

"Yes," the Doctor replied absently. Only when the TARDIS groaned and wheezed into the vortex did the Doctor look away from the view screen.

The short-lived contentment that power and righteous anger brought him drained away, leaving him hollow and faded. He yearned for his prosecutor's robes; they gave him an identity on which his sense of purpose could hang. Button by careful button, he unfastened the black suit jacket and shrugged out of it. The lining was purple—a ridiculous colour. He tossed it on the floor and set to work on removing his tie, his trembling hands slipping on the grey silk.

The Master watched intently. His focus did not go unnoticed.

Glitz cleared his throat loudly, then spoke. "If you'll just get me the payment you promised, I'll give you two gentlemen your privacy." He held out his hand, waiting for money to be dropped into it.

The Master narrowed his eyes, stalked to Glitz, who took a few steps back in trepidation, and, pressing two fingers to Glitz's forehead, caused him to drop unconscious. "At last," he said with relief. "I've been wanting to do that for hours."

"I'll just go find him a room, shall I?" Mel said, keen to get away and avoid a similar fate.

"Don't bother," the Master replied. "We'll be altering his memories and putting him in a stasis transport soon enough."

"You're...you're not going to do that to me, are you?"

It was the Doctor who answered. "Not exactly."

Mel backed away towards the door. She knew there was no place to run, but she needed at least the possibility of escape, no matter how slight. "What do you mean by that?"

"We will need you to help the other Doctor at the trial," he said. "But not you. A different you."

Mel's nose crinkled in confusion. "What?"

The Doctor sighed. "Never mind. Go to your room and stay out of the way while we deal with Glitz. I promise you won't be given the same treatment so long as you behave." He waved her away wearily.

Once Mel left, the Master crouched at Glitz's side, placed his hands on Glitz' temples and began rewriting his memories into something more convenient. His experience of their adventures on Aureas was wiped away and replaced with a quieter scene of just the Master and Glitz negotiating in a dim corner of the tavern. Glitz would remember agreeing to speak on the Doctor's behalf about the events on Ravalox, using the trial as a distraction to get at the matrix. He would remember nothing of Mel or this older, crueller Doctor. When the Master finished, he rose and looked to the Doctor to ask for help hauling Glitz's heavy bulk into a stasis tube, but the Doctor's blank-eyed stare at the view screen halted his words.

"Tell me, have I always been a hypocrite?" The Doctor absently unbuttoned the top button of his waistcoat, then equally absently buttoned it again.

"Yes," the Master answered. "Although you don't usually admit it."

"When I put my sixth self on trial, I charged him with genocide. It was the first time he—I wiped out an entire race, but certainly not the last. Not by far," he added softly.

"After the first two or three the novelty wears off."

The Doctor was not willing to be distracted from his train of thought. "I also accused him of recklessly endangering his companions, of courting trouble through his combination of arrogance and thrill seeking. In short, there are few vices for which I excoriated him during that trial, which I did not display today."

The Master lifted his hands in a minimalist shrug. "It's hardly surprising that you know at least some of your own faults, although I would have added manipulative, unreliable, and capricious to the list." He tired of the Doctor's button-in/button-out fiddling and reached out to undo all four buttons, briskly pulling the waistcoat off.

"What would you have done, if it were you?"

"If it were just me, I would have left as soon as I had Glitz and avoided the whole mess." The Master peered at him. "Are you feeling...remorse?"

"Of course not!" the Doctor replied. "I only did what was just, didn't I?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

The Doctor forced out a single, harsh laugh. "You're the last person I would ask for advice on morality. You wouldn't recognize a good deed if it were standing right in front of you looking like Mother Teresa, wearing white and crowned with a saintly halo."

"That's not true. After all, I saved your life."

The Doctor cocked his head. "And?"

"I saved your life. Completely voluntarily and at no benefit to myself."

"I'm sure there was an ulterior motive somewhere," the Doctor replied.

"No ulterior motive. Although it would be polite for you to praise me for my altruism."

The Doctor's lip quirked up in a knowing half-smile. He stalked to the Master and, wrapping his arms around the Master's neck, leaned in to whisper in his ear. "You were magnificent, Master." He pressed a brief kiss to the right corner of the Master's lip. "Quick and decisive." The next kiss was longer and ended with a small lick. The Master held back a whimper. "Brilliant and ingenious." Cupping the Master's face in his hands, the Doctor gently pressed their foreheads together, so close that they shared both the air they breathed and the surface thoughts that skittered across their minds. "I owe you my life, my dear Master." If there was a touch of sarcasm in the tone, it was easy to ignore because the thoughts behind the words—desire and passion and genuine admiration—were anything but derisive.

The Doctor brought their lips together again, softly at first, then with rapidly increasing ferocity when the Master pulled him close and urged his mouth wider. Entwined, they staggered into the console, the Master pressing the Doctor backwards over it. The TARDIS lurched as a few of the vertical stabilizer controls were accidentally pushed. Neither paid the least bit of attention.

Usually, around this point in the proceedings, the Doctor would slip away under some thin pretext. So far the Doctor hadn't indicated any desire to leave, quite the contrary, but then his retreats often came when the Master least wanted or expected them. He broke the kiss, determined that he wouldn't be the one left wanting this time. The Doctor keened and clutched at him in a most satisfactory manner.

"Are there repairs to your TARDIS that you absolutely must see to right now?" the Master whispered in the Doctor's ear.

"What?"

"Or astronavigation charts that need updating?" the Master pressed a wet kiss on the Doctor's neck. "Or old data files that need sorting?"

The Doctor drew back just far enough to see the Master's face. He peered at the Master's expression, running his fingers over the mephistophelian beard. The Master had put his life in the Doctor's hands the instant he had placed his paradox ring on the Doctor's finger. Things changed.

"The TARDIS can do without me for a while," the Doctor said and slid his hand into the Master's sleek hair to pull him back into the kiss.