SATURDAY, JULY 17, 2410 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI Rachel Griffin ran as fast as she could, which was pretty damn fast if she did say so herself, toward the edge of the roof. When one of her sneakered feet hit the tin flashing at the edge of the asphalt, she pushed off with all her strength, taking one more completely extraneous stride across the thin air beyond before straightening her body and spreading her arms in a swan dive. Below, pipes and cables spanned the alley between two buildings; Rachel fell between two of them, then caught a third, grabbing hold with both hands. She didn't try to stop herself falling; she was going too fast for that, and besides, she didn't -want- to stop falling, just fall in a slightly different direction. She let her momentum drive her through a half-turn around the pipe, then let go and arced back into the air. This carefully calculated move positioned her to catch an alley- spanning cable with the backs of her knees, which caused -another- half- flip and put her in position to grab another pipe, and by now she'd bled off enough speed that when she let go of -that-, gravity delivered her to the little pitched roof over the loading dock of the left-hand building with just enough momentum that she could hit the tin running without breaking a leg. Two strides, sliding downpitch the whole time, and she ran out of roof both in front of and beside her; a roll, a tumble, a slap of Chucks on pavement, and she was up and sprinting out of the alley into J Street - just in time to catch the No. 27 bus uptown to Beiwiru. "Hah!" she declared, flashing her bus pass at the card reader as she pelted up the bus's rear stairs without breaking stride. She had to put out a hand and catch the chrome upright next to the top of the stairs, or she'd have gone right over the top and out the other side into the street. Then, looking extremely pleased with herself, she half-bent with hands on knees and took a couple of seconds to catch her breath as the bus set off. In the seat next to the stairs, Alexandra Summers tripped a stopwatch and smirked. "Two seconds ahead," she said, and then added with a grin, "You are -out of your mind,- girl." "Yeah, well," Rachel replied, smirking. "That helps when you don't have superpowers." "It doesn't hurt if you -do,-" said Alex. "Anyway, got to stay in shape, don't I?" Rachel reasoned. "Never know when some kind of crazy situation will come along." "You could probably do that without throwing yourself off rooftops," Alex pointed out, "but hey, I'm not the boss of you. Just don't let the Professor find out." Rachel asked wryly, "What's he going to do, stop feeding me?" So saying, she glanced at her watch. "Speaking of which, coming up on dinnertime. You coming over today?" "Wish I could, but I have to be back by six. Scott's got something planned. We might be over for Professor Enigma, though." /* The BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Ben Foster "Doctor Who Opening Credits" _Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack, Series 4_ (2009) */ I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT PROJECT PHOENIX "The Eye of Harmony" Part 3 of a 3-part mini-series scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins pencils & inks by your visual cortex letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins editors: The Usual Suspects Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon (c) 2010 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited Saturday evening was almost always a big dinner occasion at the big brick house at the far end of Institute Road where Don and Kitty Griffin had made their home since moving to Tomodachi the previous year. The Griffins weren't exactly social butterflies, and they didn't throw parties just for the sake of throwing them, but their doors were always open to friends and they had quite a few of those. Many of them knew that Don liked to cook, and that he was good at it. Tonight the gathering was fairly small, but not so the laughter level in the dining room as the roast chicken disappeared. "No, listen, listen, you haven't heard the best bit yet," Rose Tyler declared, gesturing for quiet. "So there we are, right, I'm stuck to the wall with alien goop, and -he's- over at the far side of the room," she pointed to the Doctor, "detonator in one hand, force field projector in the other, and that's packing up any second, yeah? And he says," and here she adopted a startlingly accurate impression of the Doctor's "desperate plea" face, "'Listen to me, just stop, just STOP, I can HELP you, but you've got to let those people go! I can find you a home, some planet where you can live in peace, just leave them alone!' "So there's me glued to the wall thinking right, here we go again, and suddenly King Karanakanavetivatorian shuts off his lightning ray and says, 'Yeah, all right.' And the Doctor's like, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, you've forced me to - ... wait. What?'" The Griffins burst out laughing again, partly from the accuracy of Rose's Baffled Doctor Face and partly from the look of put-upon ruefulness on the Doctor's actual face. "So," Rose went on when her audience had recovered its breath, "we spent the next three weeks figuring out where and how to relocate the entire Vatoriovetinakanakarandan civilization, which wasn't half a lot of work, I can tell you." "Worth it, though," said the Doctor with a nostalgic smile. "Really quite pleasant people. Good tea, nice houses." "Is 'alien goop' a technical term?" Don asked. Rose grinned. "It is when you're stuck to a wall with about 20 pounds of it, mate," she replied. Pulling a face, she added, "Took me almost as long to get it out of my hair as it did to find them a new home planet." Kitty opened her mouth to add some follow-up comment, but before she got a chance, the room was stilled by the sudden intrusion of an unfamiliar electronic beeping sound through the open archway leading back to the kitchen. For a second, she thought it was the microwave, but it wasn't high-pitched enough for that. In fact, it sounded like nothing so much as old-timey Morse code, as might be heard in an old war movie, except the message wasn't complex enough. It was just repeating the same four short tones, over and over again, dit-dit-dit-dit, dit- dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit-dit. Don shared a surprised look with the Doctor, turned in his chair and looked into the kitchen, then got up and went to investigate. The others followed, and it was the work of only a few seconds to trace the sound to the Pepsi machine standing next to the fridge. Frowning thoughtfully, Don regarded it for a few moments. "Huh," he said, "I didn't know it could do that." He pointed to the little holographic display bar above the coin slot, which was now scrolling the blue-white letters PRIORITY ONE RETURN IMMEDIATELY rather than the more customary ENJOY AN ICE COLD PEPSI COLA. "A -priority- return, no less," he added. "So not only does Tobernel want to annoy me again, he wants to do so -right now-, if not sooner." He sighed. "At least we were mostly done eating. Right! Who wants to go to Gallifrey?" "Are you sure this is okay? Us coming along, I mean?" Rachel asked as Don started adjusting controls and preparing to set his TARDIS in motion. "It's not so much that I'm sure it's okay, as I'm sure I don't care if it isn't," Don replied, sounding unconcerned. He ran around to one of the console's other faces and twisted a knob, announcing in an exaggerated Battle of Britain radio voice, "Hello Doctor, hello Doctor, are you receiving me, over?" "Loud and clear," the Doctor replied. "Linking to your guidance system now. We'll follow you in." "That should make Tobernel happy," Kitty remarked wryly. "Not only does he get extra passengers, he gets two TARDISes for the price of one!" Don rounded the console to his original position and threw one of the big knife switches, causing the arcs of energy inside the crystal column of the Time Rotor to begin pulsating. "And we're off!" he declared. "It's a priority recall, so there'll already be a Veil Gate open for us. Should be a short, smooth fli - " He was interrupted as a heavy shock slammed through the TARDIS superstructure, almost throwing him to the floor before he shot out a hand and seized one of the grab bars ringing the console. Kitty grabbed onto his shoulder; Rachel dropped herself into one of the white leather chairs, which seemed like the most stable things in the room, as the TARDIS began to pitch like a boat through heavy chop and stability alarms sounded. Over in the Doctor's TARDIS, the ride was even rougher; sparks burst from one corner of the console and the control room lights flickered as the Doctor and Rose hung on for dear life, both of them scrambling to engage various secondary controls. "Rose! ROSE!" the Doctor cried over the sudden cacophony. "Where's my - " "On the couch behind you," Rose yelled back, pointing to where the Doctor had left his crescent wrench. "D'ya mind?" she added, applying most of her weight to keep a large lever from springing back to the top of its track. "I'm trying to keep this bloody compensator compensating." A moment later, the ride in Don's Type 66 got momentarily even rougher - and then, with a last, especially violent jolt, it stopped. A second later, in the sudden silence, came the the calm, elevator-like "ding!" of the materialization indicator. "First floor, hardware," Kitty said wryly. "Well," said Rachel, "it was short. One out of two's not bad." "Oi, Griffin, you call yourself a time pilot?" came Rose's voice from the comm console. "It's not my fault!" Don replied, clambering over to the status panel. "That was an interdiction beam. They can't override this helm, I changed the base codes ages ago, so someone used a brute-force intercept - dragged us off our planned landing site in the middle of the cycle." He shook his head. "Sheesh, Tobernel wasn't kidding when he said he didn't like me parking on the Quad. You guys okay?" "We've had worse," the Doctor chipped in. "Hit a hypertime eddy on approach to Barcelona Prime once, ended up landing upside down in a duck pond! That was exciting." "You think the Console Room's a mess -normally,-" Rose added. "See you outside." Don finished locking down the control board, glanced from one of his passengers to the other, and said, "Ready?" "Ready," Kitty replied with a firm nod. "As I'll ever be," Rachel said, then added with a trace of nervousness, "I don't have the fondest memories of this place." Hon, you have no idea, Don thought, but he only smiled and said, "It'll be fine. Just stay cool. Tobernel will probably be a jerk to you. Just ignore him. Don't let him rile you." She nodded. "I'm ready." "Okay. Let's see what's what, then." They stepped outside to find that the TARDIS - which had assumed the sleekest, most futuristic form any of them had ever seen it in, all chrome and Art Deco finials with the Pepsi logo surrounded by concentric-circle Gallifreyan script - stood in the center of a round white room with a domed ceiling. The room looked rather like the TARDIS's own control room, in fact, minus the console, furniture, and steel "landing legs" assembly, which made for a slightly recursive feel to stepping out into it. The familiarly unchanged blue box shape of the Doctor's TARDIS stood behind and a little to the right of the Pepsi machine. Rachel paused to regard Don's TARDIS, then turned to him with a little smile. "I like that it makes an effort," she observed wryly. Griffin returned the smile, patting the machine affectionately. A moment later the Doctor and Rose emerged from the blue TARDIS and joined them. "Bit plain for an arrival hall," the Doctor mused, hands in trouser pockets, looking around. "Certainly not the one at the Academy." He sniffed thoughtfully at the air. Don nodded. "Something about this I don't like," he said. "Actually, quite a few things." A door slid noiselessly open on the far side of the room and the elaborately robed, bald, portly figure of Lord Chancellor Tobernel entered, flanked by a pair of Chancellery Guardsmen. "Trokhaimartolgriffin," said Tobernel coolly. "Welcome home. I appreciate your answering the summons so quickly." He smiled, an expression that Griffin always found slightly unsettling on Tobernel. "And you brought your family with you, how nice." Then he noticed the other TARDIS and its crew; this drew first a surprised blink, then a look of annoyance that he quickly smoothed over into oily blandness. "Ah. Doctor. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me to find you involved in a situation that is none of your affair," he said. "That's me, sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong," the Doctor replied cheerfully. Tobernel ignored him and regarded Rose for a moment, as one might regard a rug that didn't really tie the room together. "And what have we here?" he asked the Doctor, still looking at her. "Another of your ornaments, I suppose." Rose smiled the particular smile that people who knew her understood spelled trouble and said sweetly, "Why, Doctor, for all you've told me about Lord Tobernel, you never mentioned what a -charmer- he was." "You know, Tobernel, if you'd wanted me to meet you somewhere other than the Academy, you could've just asked," Don said. "I mean, what you did instead was fantastically rude even for you." "I don't have time to fence with you, Trokhai," Tobernel snapped. "The situation is very serious. Come with me, all of you." Don glanced at the Doctor, who shrugged. The little group followed Tobernel and his guards out of the room and into a short hallway; a few paces later, this debouched into an enclosed walkway, its upper half a smooth semicircle of some transparent material, revealing the vista beyond to the whole group. Above arched the orange sky of Gallifrey with its two brilliant suns; below - far below - the streets and lower buildings of a tall city could be seen. The walkway extended from near the top of one of the highest spires to the side of a still taller one. Of the group following Tobernel, only Rose had never been to Gallifrey before, but Rachel - this one, anyway - had only seen the campus of the Prydon Academy, a much less built-up area. The two craned for better looks at the city below, realizing as they did so that the entire city was enclosed in a giant crystal sphere, like some kind of colossal snowglobe. Kitty, who had seen it before, just walked a little closer to Don, eyeing Tobernel even more warily than before. The Doctor was dawdling a little bit behind the rest of the group, looking around bemusedly with his hands in his pockets; Rose dropped back with him and asked quietly, "Is this the Citadel?" The Doctor's face had gone still, the dangerous kind of still, all the planes and angles a little sharper than usual, and his eyes glittered darkly as he nodded. "The heart of Tobernel's power as Lord Chancellor. He's at his most dangerous here. We have to be very, very careful." "I thought you were the president. Doesn't that mean you outrank him?" "Technically, yes. In practice, Tobernel isn't likely to let a little matter like that get in his way. Just be on your guard." Rose nodded, then smiled slightly and said half-jokingly, "Don't worry, I've got your back." "It's not -my- back I'm worried about," the Doctor replied. "It's his," he added, nodding toward Don. Then, his face taking on a lighter, speculative expression, he went on, "Rose... " "Mm?" "That coat you're wearing," said the Doctor. "Yes?" Rose adjusted one of the lapels of the garment in question, a battered, double-breasted black leather specimen. "I can't help but notice that it looks strangely familiar. Where did you get it?" "What, this old thing?" Rose asked nonchalantly. "Used to belong to this bloke I fancied once. Long time ago." She shrugged. "Wonder what ever 'appened to him." "Oh, I remember him," the Doctor said. "Stylish fella. It looks better on you, though. Particularly with that shirt." He smiled nostalgically. "So now you're Flag Girl -and- U-Boat Captain." Rose grinned, but said nothing, as they were apparently arriving at their destination. Tobernel led them to the Chancellor's chambers, near the top of the Citadel. Only when they were all seated on the circular couch in the middle of the main reception room did he speak again - and to everyone's surprise, it was to Rachel he addressed himself, speaking in an unnervingly pleasant manner: "How have you been, Miss Summers? Your retrieval from the Vortex must have been very traumatic. I trust Trokhaimartolgriffin and his lady have been treating you well." Rachel blinked. "Uh... very well, thank you," she replied, her instinctive dislike for the man warring with her impulse to be polite in such august company. "Are you happy with them?" "I... I couldn't be happier," she said. "I've even taken their name. It's easier that way. I've got some friends named Summers at school, and people kept thinking we were related... " And we kind of are, she didn't add, but that gets even more confusing. Tobernel nodded. "Good. I'm glad to hear it. Trokhai doesn't like me very much," he added confidentially, "and he probably won't believe me, but I only wanted the best for you. That's why I summoned him here when you first came to us. Because I knew he would look after you as well as anyone possibly could." "Uh... " Rachel glanced at Don, saw that he was just as confused as she was, and turned back to Tobernel. "... Thank you, Lord Tobernel." Tobernel's smile was startlingly sincere-looking. "You're quite welcome, child. It was my honor. You see, you're a very important young woman. Possibly the most important human... perhaps even the most important -person-... in history." Don leaned forward. "Okay, Tobernel, enough schmoozing. What do you want from me?" Tobernel turned a benignly puzzled look on him. "From -you-, Trokhai? I don't want anything from you. Not now. You've already done your part." Don tilted his head. "My part of -what?- See, this is where you tell me what's going on." Tobernel shook his head. "Oh, no, I don't think so," he said - and suddenly the guards were leaving their positions by the doors to flank the couches, their weapons drawn, and one of Tobernel's oddly delicate hands contained an ugly little snub-nosed staser pistol. "Telling you what I'm trying to do would be a waste of time," Tobernel went on pleasantly. "You wouldn't believe me anyway. Your prejudices run too deep. Better just to... circumvent you. And you too, Doctor," he added sharply, swinging the weapon to cover the other Time Lord. "What are you doing?!" Rachel demanded, but Tobernel turned his soothing smile back to her again. "Just be calm, Miss Griffin," he said. "No harm will come to anyone as long as no one does anything rash. Trokhai, the Doctor, and their companions will be detained while you and I take care of some very important business. Once it's complete, you'll all be free to go. There's no need for anyone to get hurt - least of all yourself. I give you my word as Lord Chancellor of Gallifrey." Kitty and Don made an instant's eye contact; on the other side of the couch, Rose and the Doctor did the same. Both men gave nearly identical nods. Without hesitation, Kitty drew a deep breath and then dropped straight through the couch and the floor below. Simultaneously, Rose's left hand flashed to a device strapped to the opposite wrist, there was a momentary shimmer of bluish-white light, and she was gone as well, leaving only the impression of her body on the red leather sofa cushion. "What - ?!" Tobernel blurted. Don and the Doctor gave each other satisfied little looks as they put up their hands. "Secure these two in the Vault," Tobernel snapped to the nearest guards; then, turning to another pair, he ordered, "Find the women and detain them here in the tower. Do -not- harm them unless they give you no choice. Is that understood?" The higher-ranking of the two guardsmen nodded. "As you wish, Lord Chancellor." "Well, he didn't order that they be shot on sight, that's encouraging," the Doctor mused out of the corner of his mouth as he and Don were relieved of their coats and hustled from the room. "Keep quiet," one of the guards barked. Three levels down, Kitty dropped through the ceiling into a branch corridor, applied a little bit of molecular drag halfway down to break her falling momentum, and dropped soundlessly to the floor, every sense alert for danger. An instant later, Rose materialized next to her. "Nice," Kitty said. "Same to you," Rose replied, grinning. "Vortex manipulator," she explained, indicating the bulky wristwatch-like device on her right arm. "Took it off a rogue Time Agent in the 51st century." "That's handy. Now what?" A voice issued from nowhere apparent, like a PA announcement but without the tinny speaker quality, declaring a Citadel-wide alert and giving brief descriptions of both women. Rose reached into an inside pocket of her battered black jacket, came up with a gleaming brass-and- chrome cylinder, and directed it at the controls of a nearby door, which beeped and opened immediately. "Now we hide and come up with a plan," she said. "Works for me," Kitty replied. "Ah, now this brings back memories," said the Doctor. "I used to get locked up a lot in the old days. Not in the Phoenix Vault, but still. All that time sitting around in dungeons and jail cells. Hasn't happened as much lately, for some reason, but still, here we are." "What the hell does that maniac want with Rachel?" Don wondered. "She's not a danger to anyone. Even her regular mutant powers haven't manifested, much less any link to the Force, Phoenix or otherwise. She's just an ordinary kid." "Mm. And yet he called her the most important person in history," the Doctor observed. "Not a phrase someone like Tobernel would use lightly." "Dammit. I have to get out of here." Don closed his eyes for a second, concentrating, then opened them again with a frustrated sound. "Armor recall matrix isn't responding." "That's how thorough the shielding in here is," the Doctor said, running a hand across the smooth white surface of one of the Vault's thick, featureless walls. "To be honest I'm just as happy. That's the last thing we need right now is you rampaging round the Citadel in your Cyberman costume." Don sighed and sat down on the bench/bunk in the center of the room. "Yeah, you're probably right. Okay. Calm. I'm calm. What's the plan?" "This cell was built to contain one of the most powerful cosmic entities in the universe," said the Doctor. "We'd be wasting our time trying to get out from the inside." He grinned. "But we've got two very good agents on the outside." "Yeah. If only they knew where we are." The Doctor's grin widened. "They do. Remember? Tobernel said it out loud." "Kitty and Rose had already left the room." "I know." The Doctor leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and crossed his ankles, his grin becoming a little bit of a smirk. "But Rose and me, we've got a... thing." Securely locked in what looked like a disused conference room, Kitty and Rose took stock of their situation. "Right," said Rose. "First order of business: identify assets. You go first. What've you got?" Kitty smiled and pinched one of the collar tabs of her long grey coat between thumb and forefinger. The fabric shimmered for an instant, turned a deep black, then began to change shape. The sleeves shrank snug against her arms, the tails raced up her legs and back, and faster than Rose's eye could follow, the garment had reconfigured itself into a close-fitting sort of tactical jacket-cum-web harness, bedecked with pouches where its coat form had had pockets and positioning a long, thin item that had been concealed within its folds at a neat diagonal across Kitty's back, ready to be drawn. Rose arched one dark eyebrow, feeling that it was her turn to say, "Nice." Kitty smiled. "Memory-programmed unstable molecules," she said. "One of Don's inventions. Now let me see," she went on, taking a quick inventory. "Smoke bombs... choking gas pellets... powdered salt... climbing hook... 150 feet of liquid rope... throwing irons... sword. Yup, I think that's everything." Rose blinked at her. "What are you, some kind of ninja or something?" she asked. "Yup," Kitty replied. "Fair enough," said Rose with an equable shrug. Digging into her jacket pockets, she started putting items of her own on the table. "And I've got... hmm. Packet of sweets... Detrebelian bus token... spoon... bit of string... mallet (that's for Sontarans)... a torch with a built-in telescopic magnet... another packet of sweets, blimey, must be the Doctor's, I can't stand jelly babies... laser screwdriver... and some gum." She reached into the inside pocket and took out a leather fold like a badge wallet. "And my trusty psychic paper, of course." Kitty gave her a speculative look. "Psychic paper." "Yeah. It shows people what you want them to see. Handy for sneaking into places. Never leave home without it!" She flipped it open and held it up, showing Kitty the rectangle of white paper beneath the transparent window on one side of the flap. "'We're in the Phoenix Vault,'" Kitty read. Then, looking around, she said, "No we're not, we're in a conference room." Rose looked puzzled. "What?" she asked. Then, turning it around, she read the message herself. "That's the Doctor's handwriting!" she declared delightedly. "So to speak. What's the Phoenix Vault?" Kitty started gathering up her ninja gear. "It's a prison cell," she said. "Designed to hold a friend of mine back in the day. Long story. I know where it is, though." Rose grinned. "In that case, what say we go stage a jailbreak, Mrs. Griffin?" "Capital idea, Professor Tyler," Kitty replied. Tobernel led Rachel through the corridors of the Citadel, flanked by two of his guardsmen. The building seemed curiously deserted, or at least Rachel thought it was curious; for all she knew, there was never anyone there and the whole structure was just for show, but that seemed unlikely in what was apparently the seat of government for the most advanced civilization in the universe. "You have a funny way of dealing with people," she observed. "I'm really fuzzy on how locking up Don and the Doctor, and sending your goons to hunt down Kitty and Rose, is supposed to make me want to help you." "It is as I told Trokhai," Tobernel replied, unconcerned. "His natural instinct, and the Doctor's, would be to hinder me, and I don't have time to convince them otherwise. They can both be quite stubborn." Rachel snorted. "So can I," she said. "And I'm not helping you unless you tell me what's going on." "Patience. Everything will be made clear." "You can start by telling me where you're taking me," Rachel said as they arrived at a set of heavy, ornate double doors. Tobernel smiled. "I can do better than that - I can show you. For you see, we've arrived." With that, he threw open the doors and bowed her through into a room so cavernous she at first thought they'd gone outside. It was so vast that it took Rachel's eye a few moments to realize that it was basically hemispherical, with a colossal domed roof. Its inner walls lined with what looked for all the world like opera boxes, all angled so that they faced the little platform on which they now stood. This was set into the inner wall at around where the Tropic of Cancer would've been on a globe. Below, a gleaming alloy floor stretched unbroken to the far walls. In the center of the room, the floor bulged upward into another, smaller dome, its top just about even with their platform. "Welcome to the Panopticon," Tobernel told her. His guards took up stations flanking the doors, which closed behind them, as the Chancellor guided the startled girl toward the edge of the platform. "This is the chamber of the High Council of Time Lords," Tobernel explained. "Where that august body meets to chart the course of our society." "Why are there so many seats?" Rachel asked. "There is a seat here for every Time Lord but one," said Tobernel. "We rarely all gather, but the Panopticon is prepared if ever the need arises. You see, it's more than just a meeting chamber. It's the spiritual heart and center of our entire civilization. The seat of our very power." He went to a small pedestal at the platform's edge and manipulated a control on it with the ornate signet ring he wore. /* John Williams "The Planet Krypton" _Superman: The Movie_ (1978) 0:00 - 1:20 */ A moment later, the seemingly featureless dome in the center of the floor divided in the center and began to part like the lids of a giant eye, silently opening to reveal... something. Utterly dark and yet shot through with streaks of intolerable light, swirling and yet immovably still, it hovered in the space above the circular opening in the floor, an impossible sphere of something that was neither matter nor energy, yet both. It seemed oddly small set against the vastness of the room that enclosed it, perhaps ten feet in diameter, but it had such an innate and terrible majesty that its size hardly mattered. Rachel found that she couldn't look directly at it; her perceptions, or maybe reality itself, seemed to bend slightly in its vicinity. "... What is that?" she asked when she'd found her voice again. "The Eye of Harmony," Tobernel said. "A captive singularity. The source of Gallifrey's energy. The engine that makes us Lords of Time. And - with your help - the key to our salvation." Rachel's blue eyes widened. "A black hole? You've got a BLACK HOLE under the floor of your senate chamber?!" "Has Trokhai told you nothing of our history?" Tobernel asked, aghast. Then, shaking his head, he said, "How utterly typical of him. But we mustn't get into that right now. Ironically, the situation is such that time is the one luxury I, the Lord Chancellor of Time, don't have." Rachel put up a hand, struggling to hang onto her self- possession in the face of a -leashed black hole- roiling away a few yards from where she was standing. "What do you mean, my help? What kind of help can you possibly need from ME when YOU'VE got THAT?" she asked, gesturing toward the Eye. "I'm nobody special." Tobernel put a hand on her shoulder and looked straight into her eyes, all his usual oily-politician veneer dropping away. "My dear girl, you're more special than you can possibly imagine. The time was, not so long ago, when the very mention of your name in this room could cause a near panic among the most powerful beings in history. And now - ironically - you'll save us all." The two Chancellery Guardsmen on duty outside the Phoenix Vault were surprised, to say the least, to see the two women all their colleagues were looking for come sauntering around the corner and down the corridor toward them, laughing and chatting as though they were old friends catching up after time apart. "... so Captain Jack says, 'Believe it or not, I'm not having any fun here. Can someone please cut me down?'" Kitty burst out laughing. "Oh, man, I can just see it. Did he do the puppy dog face?" "Yes!" Rose chortled. "Ha ha ha - oh!" Kitty stopped short, as if she'd just noticed the two baffled guards, when she was about a dozen yards away. "Hiya, fellas. Look, we're in kind of a hurry right now, and if you make us do this the hard way the Doctor will get all grumpy at us when we spring him and he sees you all bloody and unconscious." She gave them her winningest smile. "So can we make a deal?" The guardsmen glanced at each other, incredulous, and then - mindful of their orders to take the women alive - drew their shock wands. "Don't move!" "-I- think we can take that as a no," said Rose cheerfully. Two minutes later, when the Phoenix Vault's door opened, no one inside noticed. Resettling her jacket on her shoulders, Rose stood in the doorway and just looked for a few moments, until Kitty joined her; then the two glanced at each other and broke up giggling again. "Typical lads," Rose said, rolling her eyes. "Sleep through the best bit." "Saving it up for later," said Kitty, nodding sagely. "Mm-hmm," Rose agreed. "And now it's later." She stepped over the threshold, marched into the middle of the cell, and gave one of the Doctor's outstretched feet a gentle kick. "Oi! Wakey wakey! On your feet, Lord of Time." The Doctor opened his eyes and smiled lazily up at her. "Hullo, Rose!" he said delightedly. "I was just resting my eyes." Don sat up and got down from the bunk as Rose grabbed the Doctor's hand and levered him to his feet. "I don't suppose you guys happened across our coats on your way here," he said. "Hanging on a hook outside," said Kitty, pointing with her thumb. "That was considerate of our hosts," the Doctor observed. He stepped through the door, then stood for a moment regarding the two sprawled figures on the corridor floor for a moment before eyeing Rose dubiously. "We asked them nicely first," Rose told him before he could say anything. "They're young," Kitty added dryly. "They'll probably walk again." The Doctor, still trying (and mostly failing) to regard the two young women sternly, took one of the two trenchcoats from its hook without really looking at it. It wasn't until he realized that he could have used it as a tent that he looked down and saw that it was bottle- green. Looking to his left, he saw Don with one arm in the sleeve of a brown coat that was quite impossibly small for him and the other caught sort of halfway there, a pained look on his face. "Give me that," the Doctor said, laying hold of the brown coat's collar. "Ye gods," Don remarked as he and the Doctor tugged him out of his predicament. "Wouldn't fit a -rat.-" The Doctor gave him an odd look, but said nothing as he handed over Don's London Fog. "Question is, where to now?" Rose wondered. Don pulled on his coat and shrugged. "Search me. I've thought about it and thought about it for the past half-hour and I still can't figure out what Tobernel wants with Rachel. If he'd gotten tired of me not playing along and wanted to send her back where he got her, he could have done that from here, just by reversing the Time Scoop. We'd have woken up one morning and she'd have been gone. And then I'd have come here and ripped his lungs out. But that's probably neither here nor there." "There's a security substation on this level," the Doctor said. "Or at least there used to be." He led the way down the Vault corridor, around a corner, and through a door into a small control room. "Aha! Unmanned, just as I hoped. Everybody's out looking for you two," he added with a smirk for Rose and Kitty. He went to one of the panels and started messing with the holographic controls. "Now, if I can just keep being right for a few seconds more, we can use the Citadel's own security systems to lock onto Tobernel's location and... " Don grinned, catching on, and went to another control board. He reached into an inside pocket, frowned, and started patting his other pockets systematically. "Oh, sorry," said Rose. She took his laser screwdriver from her own inside pocket and tossed it to him. He glanced from her to the tool and back again. "When did you have time to - never mind." Shaking his head, he lasered one of the junction points at the bottom of the panel. "Everybody's always nicking this thing." "Would you like me to repeat your cue?" the Doctor asked pleasantly. "Please." "Right then." The Doctor cleared his throat and said in a theatrically overloud voice, "We can use the Citadel's own security systems to lock onto Tobernel's location and... " Don completed his work, threw a switch, and grinned. "... see what he's up to," he finished, and as he did, the holodisplay at the end of the room rezzed up a view of the room where Tobernel presently was. Rose leaned over to Kitty and murmured, "(They think they're so cool when they do that,)" but she was unable to keep the grin off her face, particularly when Kitty replied, "(Well, they're -right.-)" "That's the Panopticon. Why has he taken her to the Panopticon?" Don wondered. "We've got a bigger problem than -that,-" the Doctor replied, pointing. "Look!" Don blinked. "Oh -crap,- is that what I think it is?" The Doctor nodded, his expression set in what Rose instantly recognized as the Angry Doctor Face. "He's opened the Eye of Harmony," he said through his teeth. "Uh," said Kitty. "-The- Eye of Harmony? Power source for all Gallifrey? The one there's a portal to inside every TARDIS? Nearly destroyed the Earth once? -That- Eye of Harmony?" "That's the one," Don and the Doctor replied in an unwitting unison that would've been funny if the situation hadn't been so humorless. "If this is a black hole," asked Rachel thoughtfully (with a little practice she found that she could look at it for a few seconds at a time), "how come it isn't just... sucking up everything around it? I mean, even a relatively small one should have a -way- bigger Schwarzchild radius than this." Tobernel smiled, seeming genuinely delighted that she knew that. "No one alive today knows," he told her. At her startled glance, he went on, "Indeed, child. There are things that not even the Time Lords of today, with our civilization at the zenith of its power, know. The secrets of great Omega, the ancient creator of the Eye, are among them. It's said that not even Rassilon, the first Time Lord, knew how his friend and colleague had forged such a thing." He shook his head. "Your education has been sadly neglected. I had hoped that Trokhai would have told you all this before you returned to Gallifrey. It's not strictly necessary, but I would have liked you to understand better what you're being asked to save." "You keep saying that," Rachel said. "What are you talking about? How am I supposed to save Gallifrey? I don't even have superpowers." "That is an excellent question," the Doctor mused. Then, impulsively, he flicked a switch, pressed a button, and said, "You know, she has a point, my Lord Chancellor." Tobernel looked up sharply at the nearest wall-mounted security node as the voice echoed through the empty Panopticon; then he smiled grimly. "Ah. Doctor. You've escaped. Of course you have. Still, I concede that you're right. She does raise a fair point." Turning back to Rachel, he went on, "You don't remember this - strictly speaking, it didn't happen to you - but I once made an exhaustive study of your being. I investigated your makeup, your structure, your very essential -nature- on levels that would take me too long to explain. It's because of -that- I knew you would be needed." "Needed for -what?-" "To avert the future," Tobernel replied. Seeing that he had her undivided attention after that statement, he locked eyes with her and went on, "To prevent the war." Don and the Doctor glanced at each other; then Don thumbed the same button the Doctor had used and said, "What war? What are you talking about?" "You know, don't you, Trokhai?" Tobernel said, ignoring the question. "You know where Rachel really came from. That what I told you when I presented her to you was a lie." "Didn't take me that long to figure out," Don's voice replied from the security node. Tobernel nodded. "I didn't expect it would," he said. "Only just long enough. I knew, you see. Knew you wouldn't report me. Knew you wouldn't send her back to what her life would have become." "What's -that- supposed to mean?" Rachel asked. "He didn't tell you that either? Well, in this case I agree," Tobernel said. "Better not to know. You're so much better off where and when you are now." To all the observers' shock, he gave her what looked like a sincerely mournful look. "I'm so sorry it can't stay that way." Rachel put her hands to her head. "-Someone- had better start talking sense in the next few minutes," she said. "Forgive me. I was trying to explain, but people," Tobernel said with a venomous look at the security node, "keep interrupting me." By this time the Doctor had stopped listening; he was under one of the panels, half-buried in the internal components, diligently sonicking something and muttering to himself. "... deadlocked the entire Panopticon?!" he mumbled. "That's crazy... " Don waved him to shush, leaning intently toward the display as Tobernel gave Rachel a heavily edited rundown of what her life would have been if he hadn't plucked her from the tail end of her childhood with the Time Scoop. One fist thumped hard against his thigh, slowly, over and over, as the Chancellor glossed over most of the deepest horrors, but still told her more than he had ever intended for her to learn about the fate that (had? still?) awaited her. Rose looked up from her examination of one of the subsidiary panels. "If this means what I think it means, we're going to have company in a minute," she said. Kitty leaned out the door. "This hallway's the only way in here, yeah?" she asked. "Far as I know," the Doctor replied from a tangle of glowing tubes (or were they wires?). "You up for providing a little cover, Professor Tyler?" Rose grinned wickedly. "Always, Mrs. Griffin," she replied. They turned to go, pausing when Don called out, "Rose!" "What?" Don took out his laser screwdriver and tossed it back to her. "Keep it," he said. "I've got an idea for a -proton- screwdriver. But try not to kill anybody with it, huh?" He angled his head at the Doctor. "Gets grumpy." "Don't I know," Rose replied airily. "I'll see what I can do. C'mon, Kitty, let's leave the Time Lads to their machinations... " Rachel had suspected some of what Tobernel was telling her. Neither Don, nor Kitty, nor any of their friends from their native dimension had ever said anything about it. She might not be telepathic but she wasn't stupid, and it had been obvious from early days that they knew -something- about her, something that made them all very sad. Particularly the redheaded lady who'd come by a few times, and to whom Rachel had never been able to shake the utterly unfounded conviction she was related somehow. She had always kind of assumed that she was the product of some awkward liaison, though, or something equally benign and ignorable. To be told instead that she'd been removed from a timeline in which she'd eventually have become something akin to a divinity - and rather a tortured one - was a bit much to take in all at once, particularly when she'd already been having the strangest day of her life. Tears trickled down her face as she asked the elderly Time Lord, "Why are you telling me this now? Why rescue me from that and then tell me about it?" "Believe me, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't," Tobernel told her. "Despite what you might have heard about me, I'm not a cruel man. I take no pleasure in this. But you have to know. You have to understand your potential. To know the name of the legacy sleeping within you." "But -why?-" Rachel asked. "Because it's time. You were taken from your original destiny stream at exactly the right moment, when your potential was at its peak but had not yet begun to be spoiled. You've had several months of contentment and security with the Griffins, ensuring that your mind is as stable and resilient as it can be - to give you the best chance of surviving - of SUCCEEDING." "You -son of a -bitch,-" Don whispered. Then, banging his hand down on the talk button, he repeated it much more loudly, "You SON of a BITCH! You USED me to... to WHAT? What's all this FOR?" "Yes, Trokhai, I used you," Tobernel's holo said. "I had no choice. You were the best, the only, chance she had. I knew she'd be happy with you. Knew that you'd protect her. I used you to... " He smiled sadly as a turn of phrase occurred to him. "To incubate the phoenix's egg." Don stared, aghast - speechless. Rachel backed out from under Tobernel's paternal hand and gave him a rebellious look. "You've got the wrong girl at the wrong time," she told him. "You just told me yourself. I never grew up to be... that." "No," Tobernel agreed mildly. Then, a slightly sad smile creasing his broad face, he went on, "But you will." Run, screamed Rachel's instincts, but they were too late. Tobernel put out his hand again, almost like a clergyman offering a benediction, and something Rachel couldn't see lifted her from the platform and began lofting her backward in a gently curving arc... ... straight toward the Eye of Harmony. "NO!" Don screamed, reaching toward the holo as if that would somehow help. "GOT it!" the Doctor cried as something sparked. Then, scrambling out of the tangle of tubing, he darted to the door, leaned around the jamb, and bellowed up the hall, "ROSE! I'VE BROKEN THE DEADLOCK - _GO!_" "I'm on it!" Rose replied, sharing a glance and a nod with Kitty. The latter ducked a guardsman's - guardswoman's, technically - shock wand, phased through her body while grabbing her arm, and shoved her face-first into the wall, then threw down a smoke pellet to cover Rose's escape. With an instant's eye contact, the other young woman dodged a second guardsman's lunge, judo-threw him, then faded back into the blue smoke cloud. The guardsman sprang to his feet and rushed after her - - but she wasn't there, and he plowed heavily into the wall instead, knocking himself out cold. Tobernel was startled in the extreme to see Rose Tyler suddenly materialize out of thin air, accompanied by a puff of blue smoke, and seize Rachel around the waist with both arms. An instant later gravity asserted itself, and Rose's extra mass was enough to disrupt Tobernel's carefully calibrated pressor field, breaking Rachel free so that both women fell out of the beam. Fortunately, Rachel had not yet been over the Eye of Harmony, but it was still a long and bruising way down to the Panopticon floor. They rode out the landing as best they could, and neither broke anything, but both were stunned by the impact. "YES!" the Doctor cried, punching the air, his thin face breaking into a fierce grin. "Oh, YES, thatta GIRL!" He thumbed down the press-to-talk. "Ornament indeed! Eh? -Eh?-" Rose recovered her wits, made sure she still had hold of Rachel, and reached to her vortex manipulator... but nothing happened. "That's quite an interesting device you have there," said Tobernel as he emerged from the access stairway to the Panopticon underlevel. "Fifty-first-century Earth technology, unless I miss my guess. You're from a 24th-century colony, aren't you? How did you come by such a thing?" He noticed her pressing the buttons and shook his head. "You needn't bother. I've re-established the Panopticon deadlock." "Ohhh nonononono!" said the Doctor, his voice climbing an octave or so. Digging in a suitjacket pocket, he came up with a second sonic screwdriver, tossed it to Don, and said, "Get busy! We've got to get them out of there!" "But please accept my sincere admiration," Tobernel added, and Rose was surprised to realize that it didn't feel like he was being sarcastic. "That was most unexpected. You and the Doctor are quite a team." "We're just getting started, mate," Rose replied, giving up on the manipulator and getting to her feet instead. "C'mon, Rachel, up you get. You all right?" "Fine," Rachel replied, shaking her head. "Thanks." "So now what happens?" Rose asked. "Going to blast me and try again?" She gestured and Don's laser screwdriver appeared in her hand. "Funny thing about us humans. We don't go down without a fight." Tobernel smiled. "Such spirit," he said, and - Rose was beginning to find this slightly unnerving - he STILL didn't seem like he was mocking her. She'd been sardonically congratulated by more than one smirking baddie in her day, but this guy came off like he was genuinely complimenting her. It was more than a little weird. "I can see now why the Doctor's so drawn to your species," Tobernel went on. "You've all got such -fire- inside. So much that you can become -anything-. Even Time Lords!" He shook his head. "Incredible. I used to despise your kind. I thought the Doctor had -sullied- Gallifrey by bringing Trokhai here, by making one of -you- one of -us-. But I understand now. I've seen the truth. I really mean that, you are -all- incredible." He pointed at Rachel. "But I'm afraid only -that one- can do what has to be done now." "Why the change of heart?" Rose asked, eyeing him warily. "That's it, keep him talking," the Doctor muttered, crossing some more wires. "I'll give him this, that's never been difficult," Don said from the depths of his matching efforts on the other side of the room. The Doctor glanced briefly over his shoulder at his young colleague - it was a good sign that Don could find it in himself to quip at a time like this - and they shared a brief grin before getting back to work. "This is brilliant," he said, half to himself. "Just like old times," Don agreed. "Better. You got older and I got younger." The Doctor glanced over his shoulder again, then went back to it. "I think we're about the same relative age now. Makes all the difference." Kitty appeared in the doorway, looking a bit ruffled but unharmed. "I think they ran out of guards," she said. "And no, before you ask, nobody's dead out there. Though the Time Dentists may have to put in a little overtime on a couple of the bigger ones." "I think it was the realization that only a human being can save us," Tobernel said. "I didn't want to believe it at first, but eventually I had to. Accepting that put me in a position to re-evaluate a number of things." "You keep saying I'm going to save you. Save you from what?" Rachel asked. "Has Trokhai told you anything at all of Gallifrey?" Tobernel asked. "A few things. Basic stuff. Why?" "Do you know the great irony of the Lords of Time? That we are not lords of our own world's time at all?" At her baffled look, he explained, "We can travel to the past or the future, to the beginning or the end of time... but only somewhere else. Gallifrey is unique. There is only one of her in all the multiverse... and her own past and future are closed to us. Here - like your own people - we can walk only in the present. We can't even glimpse Gallifrey's future. "Except... I have." At that, Don and the Doctor both stopped working and turned toward the screen, looking startled. "What?" the Doctor blurted. As if he knew the Doctor had said that, Tobernel turned to the nearest security node and addressed it as if it were his fellow Time Lord. "When I told Trokhai I had discovered a method for recovering the lost from the Vortex, it wasn't entirely a lie. I -did- attempt to find such a solution. I failed in my aim... but in the process I... I -saw-. Through an opening my equations made in the universe. A fault in spacetime so profound it made the Untempered Schism seem like a crack in a child's bedroom wall. Do you understand? I saw the future. Gallifrey's future. That which not even Rassilon could see. I saw the future... and the future saw me." Tobernel paused, covering his face, overcome by emotion. It took him several seconds to get hold of himself. When he did, he lowered his hands, revealing a pale, drawn face with eyes that were sad and old and just the slightest bit mad. "It saw me," he repeated, "and it spoke to me. It said one word. It said... " The old Time Lord leaned toward the security node, his grave face filling the holodisplay back in the Vault substation, and spoke a single word in a low, empty, chilling voice: "Exterminate." The Doctor leaned into the display as if Tobernel were really there and repeated, "-What?-" Rose stared at him, her face full of dismay. Rachel looked from her to Tobernel and back. "What?" she said. "I don't get it." "The Daleks," said Rose. "Yes!" said Tobernel, pointing at her. "Oh, clever, clever girl. The Daleks. In your native era they're galactic citizens. Even figures of fun! But in your travels with the Doctor, you've seen what they -really- are, haven't you, Rose Tyler? And I - _I_ have seen what they BECOME. The scourge of the multiverse. Destroyers of Time itself." Rose shook her head. "Wait, no, hold on. How can the Daleks destroy -time?- Last time I saw them - the BAD Daleks - they were getting sucked into the nothingness between the spheres. And I nearly went with them. Not the best day of my life." "'The bad Daleks,' she says, as if there were any other kind. You of all people should know better than to be taken in by their pretentions to diplomacy." "Why? Do you know something? Does the Dalek Combine turn on the Federation?" Tobernel looked frustrated. "I have no direct knowledge of your native timeline's relative future. Nor any particular interest in it. I'm talking about the much bigger picture! The Daleks -always- turn to destruction. It's what they DO. It's what they ARE. A Dalek is nothing more than a distillation of hate and fear and destruction wrapped up in a polyalloy shell. They can -never- be anything but that. You should know! You've seen them. You've fought them." He shook his head. "I would have thought you would understand. But it doesn't matter. "They know, or will know, the secrets of time travel - thanks in large part to the Doctor's repeated failures to stop them," he went on, casting a sharp look at the security node. "We sent him once to prevent them ever from being in the first place, and he didn't have the stomach for it. Has he ever told you that? That he's -responsible- for the scourge they become?" "He's mentioned the mission," Rose replied evenly. "The Time Lords sent him to commit genocide and he decided against it." She put her head on one side with a sarcastically judicious look. "Hmm... yeah, have to say I'm having a hard time blaming him for that. And I say that as someone who tried to wipe out the Daleks herself once." "And yet it's as a direct result of it that we're here today!" Tobernel snapped. "Because of the Doctor - his failure, his CONTINUAL failures - they know of us. Of time travel. Of Gallifrey. And one day soon, they'll pierce the Veil and bring their eternal appetite for conquest to bear on this jewel of a world. The Time Lords will be forced to go to war, a war that spans all of time... and we will be destroyed. No one will survive. This I have seen with my own eyes. "But there's one way out. One other unique time vector. One creature in all the multiverse of whom, as with Gallifrey, there is only -one.-" He pointed at Rachel. "Her." The Doctor thumped the console with the heel of his fist. "WHAT?" Don put a hand to his forehead. "I -get- it," he moaned. Turning to the Doctor, he said, "Do you remember when Rose became a cosmic avatar?" The Doctor gave him the "that was a deeply stupid question" face. "Let me think, now, was that the incident that killed my previous body? Yes, I think it was! I may just have a dim recollection of that event." "You told me she did it by looking into the Heart of the TARDIS. Which is a tempered schism. Direct conduit through the Vortex to the Eye of Harmony." The Doctor nodded. "Yeees... ?" "It entered her consciousness and infused her body with energy. Godlike power in the form of a yellow-white, flamelike light. Vaporized the Daleks. Brought Jack Harkness back to life. All of it." Don grabbed at his hair. "God, I'm so -stupid,- I should have realized it right away. Jean didn't -reconnect- with it, she -made a copy- of it, using the imprint it left on me as a template. The original was still right where Rachel left it. -In the Vortex.-" The Doctor looked puzzled. "You've lost me, Don." "Don't you understand?" Don demanded. Reaching across the space between them, he grabbed the Doctor's shoulder, leaned down and stared him in the eye. "The Bad Wolf. The Phoenix. -They're the same thing.-" The Doctor blinked, his eyes going wide. "... Oh," he said. Rose raised the laser screwdriver, moving to put herself between Tobernel and Rachel. "You're -barking,- you are," she said. "Just stay back, now." "Hold on. Rose. Wait," Rachel said. Easing around her so she could see Tobernel again, the younger girl went on, "Let me see if I've got this straight. You did something to spacetime that gave you a look into the future, and you saw the Daleks destroying Gallifrey. And because there are no DCs of me either, you've got it in your head that only I can save you?" Tobernel smiled. "Not -only- because you are unique. But because of -how- you are unique. Because of the inheritance that lies sleeping inside you." "You think this 'Phoenix' thing that I would otherwise have grown up to be can help?" Tobernel nodded. Rachel pushed her way fully around Rose, despite her protests, and thrust her face belligerently into Tobernel's to demand, "THEN WHY DID YOU TRY TO THROW ME IN A BLACK HOLE, YOU IDIOT?" "(Fair point,)" Rose muttered, trying not to look too amused. "The Eye of Harmony is no ordinary black hole," Tobernel explained. "It is the heart of Gallifrey. Only by linking its power to your own can you do what must be done. Now that your genetic heritage has been primed by exposure to a TARDIS's energies, touching the Eye should awaken it." "At which point I'm not me any more. I'm this other Rachel from the future. Who, based on all I've heard, I think I'd really rather not be, if it's all the same to you." Tobernel nodded sadly. "I know. And I don't blame you. If it could be any other way I wouldn't ask it of you... but more than just Gallifrey's future is at stake. There are those, even among us, who would deny it, but the multiverse -needs- the Time Lords. Without us all would be chaos. Unmaking. All futures would be as lost and as fractured as the one that spawned you. That is what awaits -all life- if the Time War is allowed to happen." "You people tried to -kill me- once just for being what you want me to become now." "We were wrong. We need you now. -All creation- needs you." Rachel stared hard at him, wishing she hadn't lost, or never developed, her telepathy so that she could see if he was telling the truth. Failing that, she'd just have to do what any other human would do and rely on gut instinct. Seconds ticked by. Then: "What do I need to do?" "Rachel, NO!" Don's voice cried from the security node. Rachel turned toward the node. "I'm just doing what you've been teaching us, Don. Remember? Like you told Scott and Alex, Kitty P and Kyra, Fred and Lance. We should apply our gifts to the betterment of others. Well... this sounds like it fits that description pretty well." "You can't trust Tobernel," Don pleaded with the screen, wishing she could see his face. "If he's not lying he's insane." "Oh, I'm certainly insane, Trokhai," Tobernel agreed mildly. "I defy anyone to gaze into what I've seen and not be. But I know what I'm doing. And if there were any other way... but all this has been said." "This is my decision," Rachel said. "If I can help, then I'm going to." She smiled wryly. "Apparently it's my birthright." "You don't have to be a soldier," said Don miserably. "I wanted to protect you from that. My gift to you... for old times' sake." Kitty slipped up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. He touched it absently with his free hand. On the holoscreen, Rachel's smile changed from wry to warm. "Don't be sad, Don. I don't know how we were as a couple... but for a little while there, we were a heck of a daughter and dad." Then she turned to Tobernel. "Touch the Eye, huh?" "DON'T - " Don yelled. "Got it!" the Doctor declared. "Again! Rose - now!" Rose looked at Rachel, saw her defiant return look... and hesitated. "No," she said. "She's right, it's her choice. Not ours." "Rose, you don't know - " Don began, his voice plaintive, but Tobernel silenced him with a calm gesture. "When we resynchronize, this will all be over... and I'll face whatever consequences are necessary. You have my word." Then he made a more meaningful gesture and all communication ceased. "Dammit! He's desynced the Panopticon. Moved it a second or two sideways in time," Don snarled. "Uses up a lot more energy than a deadlock, but then he's standing there with the Eye of Harmony open, so what's it to him?" He slammed a fist against the console. "I can't let him do this. Can't let him turn her into a, a -weapon- again. She's been through enough!" "Come on," said the Doctor, thrashing his way free of the network of wires and tubes he'd managed to enmesh himself in while battling to unlock the Citadel. "We can probably get through with the TARDIS - " "Take too long." Don stepped away from the console and thrust out his arms to ensure the space around him was clear. "Stand back." Blue-green light surrounded him, sizzling and sparking, with a faint hint of grid lines within the glow. It moved and changed and flowed too quickly for the eye to pick up any distinct details, but there was an impression of fantastic underlying complexities being hidden beneath gleaming planes of armor as the light solidified into metal. "Okay," Griffin said, his voice rendered slightly tinny by the speaker in his helmet. He reached down and removed a small rectangular module from a compartment in his suit's plastron, popped the side plate off it, and started adjusting its internal components with a sonic screwdriver built into his left gauntlet's index finger. "I can hotwire my phase inducer to traverse the desync - for a couple of seconds, before the coil burns out," he said, mostly to himself. "That still leaves the -roof-, though. Don't know if I can punch a hole through that much ultrasteel fast enough." "Lucky you've got more than one phase inducer, then," Kitty remarked. He glanced at her, toggling his helmet's facebowl from mirror to transparent. "You better hang on tight," he said, grinning. The Doctor looked from one to the other as if he considered them both quite mad, then said, "Right. I'll... just run and get the TARDIS, then, shall I, and catch you up." "If my calculations are even a little bit out, this is going to be a no-way trip," Don warned as he finished modifying the inducer module. Kitty climbed nimbly up the back of the Griffin suit, using a series of cunningly designed hand- and footholds built into the armor surfaces. Briskly, with well-practiced motions, she secured one of her hands to a bracket inside the vertical armored flange on the suit's left pauldron, magnetized her bootsoles into niches atop the backpack, and thumped the top of the helmet with her free hand. "Good thing you went to private school, then," she said gaily. "Let's ride!" Don closed the phase module's cover, slotted it back into its bay, and blacked his facebowl again. "Hang on!" Rachel stood before the Eye of Harmony, her hand in Rose's. Off to the side, Tobernel stood watching - silent, patient, giving them space. In a corner of her mind, Rose chalked up a couple more points for him. The two women gazed silently into the seething blackness of the Eye for a few seconds that felt like hours; then Rachel turned to Rose, meeting her eyes. "I'm scared," she said, her voice low, almost matter-of-fact. "I don't blame you," Rose replied. She squeezed the younger girl's hand. "I'll be right here. If it goes wrong... you won't be alone." She gave a slightly wan smile. "It's not much, but it's the best I can do." Rachel's answering grin was a lot less wan as she replied, "I gather it's better than I got the first time around." Then, letting go of Rose's hand, she said, "Well... guess it's time to go to work. See you on the other side, Professor." So saying, she steeled herself, reached out, and touched the Eye. /* The Crystal Method "Trip Like I Do" _Vegas_ (1997) */ She wasn't sure what she was expecting it to feel like; if the "surface" of the Eye were its event horizon, "touching" it should lead to something wildly unpleasant which she could only sort of vaguely visualize. Instead, her fingertips encountered something cool and not- quite-there, somewhere between a forcefield and gelatin, and the blackness rippled like a pool of ink at her touch. Somewhere, a bell tolled, low and foreboding. The streaks of light in the depths of the Eye writhed, reacting like the glowing tendrils in a plasma lamp, and then began to flow out of the Eye like liquid fire - out of the Eye and into both of Rachel's. Rose drew back, gasping in horrified recognition, as she realized too late what Don had been trying to tell her. She turned furious eyes to Tobernel. "You bastard," she spat. "I know what this is now. It happened to me once." Tobernel nodded. "I know." "It'll -kill- her," Rose said, but Tobernel shook his head. "In another life she carried this power within her for -years,-" the elderly Time Lord said. "Only when she was lost to the Vortex did it assume the form in which you encountered it. She comes from a world in which ordinary humans sometimes have extraordinary genetic gifts... this is hers. The strength to live at one with a power that can shatter the souls of gods." He smiled. "That you survived your own encounter with it is nothing short of astonishing." "I nearly didn't," Rose replied. "I can still remember how much it hurt." "But think about it," Tobernel insisted. "You held the power for -minutes-. More than held it, you -tamed- it, WIELDED it - and you lived. You saw what short work just putting it back where you got it made of the Doctor." Rose shook her head, blinking away tears. She loved the Doctor in all his forms - at least all she had so far met - but seeing him, as she had first come to know him, "die" before her eyes was still too painful a memory to touch for long. Instead, she looked at Rachel, who still stood transfixed while the energy flowed into her, its flamelike light much brighter now. "So... Rachel isn't going to die?" she asked hesitantly. "Not at all," Tobernel said. "In fact, it could be argued that she'll be truly alive for the first time." Tobernel reached to a pocket on his robes, produced a large hunter-cased watch, and opened it. "Not long now... " Before Rose could ask him "until what", the domed ceiling of the Panopticon seemed to flex for an instant, bulging inward before disgorging a glittering metallic shape and then snapping back into its proper configuration. Don Griffin's powersuited figure tumbled through the air, out of control and trailing smoke, and then crashed to the floor a dozen or so yards away, sparks flying as he skidded to a halt with a high-pitched screech of metal on metal. The much smaller, darker form of Kitty Griffin separated from his armored bulk before impact, landing nimbly next to Rose. "That went well," she observed. Don lay where he'd come to rest for a moment, gently smoking; then his armor sparkled and disappeared, and he dragged himself to his feet and beat at a smoldering spot on one of his lapels, cursing. "I've had worse," he allowed, then ran to within a few feet of Rachel, his dismay evident. "Rachel? Honey? Can you hear me? If you hear me, come back. It's not too late." The frozen figure, almost completely obscured now by a nimbus of fiery yellow-white light, made no response. "... or maybe it is," Don muttered bleakly. He reached for her, trying to touch her shoulder, then yanked his hand back with a crackling tendril of fire behind it, stared in horror for a couple of seconds, and turned away, fury and frustration showing in every line of his body and face. Rose put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize until it was too late - " Don shook his head. "It's not your fault," he said, a trifle harshly. "Tobernel says it won't hurt her." "It shouldn't do her any -physical- harm," Kitty allowed. "Mentally - emotionally? I'm not so sure about that." Don turned to Tobernel, his eyes blazing. "If she's left scarred in any way by this, I'll hold you personally responsible, Vinzanthaxatobernel." Tobernel bowed his head gravely. "As will I, Trokhaimartol- griffin. As will I." Griffin might have replied, but for the sudden fiery shockwave that burst outward from the Eye as Rachel's metamorphosis reached its climax and sent them all sprawling. Blown off his feet, he came to rest against one of the columns supporting the Panopticon's upper ring above, face-down on the floor. It took him a few seconds to regain his wits and drag himself up again. Full of dread, he raised his eyes... ... and saw Rachel, but Rachel more as he -remembered- her, taller and older, her face marked with the radial black lines of a Hound's brands, clothed in fire and light - majestic and more than a little bit terrible. And yet, if he turned his head a little, she was also still the child - almost as if he were seeing one with one eye and the other with the other. "You wanted the Phoenix, my lord Tobernel?" she asked, her voice ever-so-slightly polyphonic - the voices of the child Rachel and the woman she might've become, blended into one. "Well... you've got her." Tobernel pulled himself to his feet, his face blank with awe. "Can you see what I have seen?" he asked quietly. "Yes," she replied. "Then you know what you must do." "Yes." "The Time War must be averted," Tobernel declared, his voice becoming stronger as he warmed to his subject. "The scourge of Skaro must be prevented from ever coming forth!" Drawing himself to his full height, he cried in a ringing voice, "Everywhere - in every time and place, on every plane of existence - THE DALEKS MUST BE EXTERMINATED!" Don tried to lodge some kind of protest, but his voice was lost in the roar of the flames as the Phoenix's wings spread wide above the Eye of Harmony. The disturbance in the Eye was felt all over Gallifrey and beyond. The Citadel went dark except for the brilliant spike of light pouring from its highest spire, through the transparent globe, and into the orange sky. Lights flickered in the Chapterhouses of the Academy, many miles distant from the capital, as the ground began to shake. At the Prydon Academy, one of Ace's classmates turned to her at the first tremor and asked, "What's going on?" "Search me, mate," Ace replied, grabbing hold of a doorway for support. "But I'll bet you three to one the Doctor's involved." It might've been debatable, had that bet actually come up for adjudication, whether the Doctor could really be said to be involved with this part, but that was mainly because his attention was mostly occupied at that moment with trying to keep his TARDIS from either catching fire or departing for the Big Bang and taking him with it. Next to it in the arrival hall, Don's simply shut down and went dark when the energy feed from the Eye began to go crazy, but the Doctor's was an earlier model, before those safeguards were developed, and that meant he had his hands full. Still, it was better than being a Dalek right now. SKARO DALEK COMBINE, HARTNELL SECTOR DIMENSION GCC 100/W In two thousand years of existence, the Supreme Dalek had seen many things, things most ordinary lifeforms couldn't even dream of. It had even managed to appreciate those that it had experienced within the last 1,200 or so. It was one of the cleverest, most adaptable Daleks in the Combine, which was why it was Supreme, and like most of its kind in that nation - as opposed to the ruthlessly, mechanistically militarized Dalek Empire - it was not entirely devoid of the finer sensibilities. But even the most stone-hearted Imperial monster would have found cause for awe in what was happening to the sky over Skaro today. "What does it mean?" asked one of the Supreme's praetorian guard, its own optic trained on the burning sky. The Supreme studied the sheets of flame dancing below the Homeworld's perpetual overcast for a few seconds longer, then turned to its guards. "Go to your homes," it ordered them. "Make your peace with the universe." Then, turning back to the window, it regarded the sky for a moment longer before adding, "This is the end of the Daleks." Back on Gallifrey, Rachel was beginning to hit her stride. It wouldn't have been quite accurate to say that it was all coming back to her, because she'd never had it before in the first place - except that she had somehow. She was standing at the convergence of what she was and what she would have been, or had once been about to be, or - verb tenses really failed at a moment like this, and she gave up trying to put it into words after a few seconds and just got on with it. Besides, when you could not only see but shape all of time and space from where you stood, a little thing like who exactly you were sort of vanished into insignificance, didn't it? And still there was that tiny voice insisting that this couldn't possibly be right, could it? Eradicating an entire sapient species? More than one, if you counted each multiversal variant separately? Unpicking the fabric of reality to remove all the strands of a particular color - that was basically what she was doing - and did -any- intelligence have the right to do that? But she'd seen what Tobernel had seen. The chaos, the destruction, the final terrible abyss. Donald Griffin gone, Romana gone, Rose and Ace and all the rest gone; the Doctor broken and alone, forced to the edge of a precipice even steeper than the one she stood on now, driven to a choice that was no choice at all; and Gallifrey falling, falling... No. Not this time. Hesitation had never been one of the Phoenix's virtues. Fire doesn't wait. She reached into all the might-have-beens and began to select those that would burn... ... and suddenly she was Rachel Griffin again, young, brash, unscarred. She was standing in a much smaller room than the Panopticon, its exact shape indistinct, the only light coming from a column of blue- green crystal in the center. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden darkness and realize that it was a TARDIS Console Room, though not either of the ones she had seen before. The was an acrid smell of smoke in the air; shadowy arcs of hanging cables drooped from the dim ceiling. Two men stood on opposite sides of the console, adjusting various controls. One of them noticed Rachel and said to the other, "She's here." The other looked up, then flipped another switch, causing dim emergency lights to come on in some of the recessed roundels lining the coppery-colored walls. "Good," he said. "Just like Edison said she'd be. Maybe we're not too late." Both men stepped away from the console, approaching her slowly, their manner unthreatening. She didn't recognize either of them. One was tall and gangly, and he was dressed a bit like old Mr. Tarquini, the history teacher at Beiwiru District High - tweed jacket, bow tie - but he was much younger than Mr. Tarquini, with thick dark hair. The other, the man who'd spoken first, was quite a lot shorter, in dress shirt and loosely knotted tie; he had close-cropped blond hair and a few days' growth of beard. They both looked as if they'd just come from crashing a car, their clothes rumpled and torn, faces smudged with dirt and soot. "Rachel?" said the tall one. "Listen carefully. We don't have a lot of time. You've got to stop what you're doing right now." "I can't do that," Rachel replied. "If I do, something terrible will happen." "No. Listen to me. Tobernel's vision was incomplete. He saw the outcome but not the cause. What he's asked you to do is -wrong.- Do you understand?" Rachel frowned. "No." The shorter man scowled. "Don't waste time talking," he snapped, pushing past his taller colleague. "Edison said the girl's a telepath. Just -show her-." So saying, and before the tall man could stop him, he seized the sides of her face in his hands and stared into her eyes. "Look," he snarled, the furious intensity in his own eyes blotting out the rest of the universe. "-Look at what you're about to do!-" Tobernel's vision again, war, chaos, and death, but now - as if time itself were cowed by the fury in the blond man's eyes - it unspooled in reverse, cause following effect, back beyond where Tobernel had seen it start. To Rachel's own fire, a million worlds in a hundred thousand universes burning... ... but not all. Not quite. And the survivors struggling from those ashes, knowing the authors of their near-eradication, swearing vengeance. Eternal vengeance. Literally. Tears ran down Rachel's face as the blond man released her and staggered back, exhausted, into the arms of his tall colleague. "I've already started," she whispered. "I don't know if I can stop it now." "You have to try," the tall man said. "I know it hurts. But you -have- to try." "I... I will." Rachel set her jaw, her fists clenching, and the flame flickered in her eyes again. "I will!" The shorter man smiled, the rage gone from his face now, as he steadied himself against the tall one's arm. "Good girl," he said. "Who are you?" she asked as the light began to suffuse her being and the Console Room to fade. "Just a couple of mirages," the tall man said with a smile. The shorter man grinned, just a touch evilly, and looked up at his colleague's face a moment before reality disintegrated altogether. "I've always loved you," he said. "What?!" the tall man replied, and then they were gone. Or, more correctly, they had never existed in the first place. Dragging back all that energy from where she'd dispatched it to every corner of the cosmos was not easy; in fact, it was just about the hardest thing Rachel had ever done. Harder, even, than retrieving Don's scattered nothingness from the Vortex, and -that- had been -impossible.- As such, that the achievement was accompanied by a tremendous explosion was, perhaps, a relatively minor glitch - although those trapped in the Panopticon with it might have begged to differ. Don's armor recall matrix barely won the race with Gallifrey's gravity to see which would arrive first - the suit or the upper levels of the Panopticon. Now he knelt, armored up (and still smoking slightly), in the center of a 12-foot circle of perfecly clear floor, with Kitty, Rose, and Tobernel huddled around him. Above them, a faintly flickering dome of blue light held back some enormous tonnage of rubble that would otherwise have crushed at least two of them to paste. It was Kitty, many years before, who had given Module 17B its more familiar, friendlier name. Of all the various plugins Griffin had invented for his armor, 17B was her favorite, for the simple reason that it had saved her life, and the lives of various people she cared about, more times than any other device in his not-inconsiderable arsenal. Now it had come through again. And as she had been the one to name it, it fell to her to smile at Tobernel and Rose and say, "Welcome to the Dome of Desperation!" Rose sat slowly up, shaking her head. "There's a familiar feeling," she groaned, putting a hand to her forehead. "Psychic feedback - " Don began. " - because I was touched by the Entity once before, yeah, I figured," she finished for him. "Can we get out of here?" "Hang on. I'm trying to scan, see if there's anything left intact out there... " The Dome flickered alarmingly, winking out long enough for the rubble to shift and some dust to filter down. "Uh-oh. I got a little problem here." Don prodded the manual controls on his right vambrace. "Lots of burnout in my armor command systems... must not have had the time desync exactly right. The Dome's not stable." "What was your first clue?" Kitty asked as some more dust descended. "Okay. Got it. The Eye's closed; there's a clear area near the base, about 20 yards to the southeast. Rose, can you take Tobernel and jump out there? Kitty and I will find our own way out." Rose flipped the cover of her vortex manipulator back. "Just about," she confirmed. "Power cells are nearly flat, but I think I'm still good for one short hop." Grabbing hold of Tobernel's shoulder with her free hand, she said cheerfully, "Hang on, Lord Chancellor," and they were gone. Don waited until his sensors confirmed their arrival in the cleare, then turned to Kitty. "Ready?" She took hold of his armored hand as best she could. "Ready." "Okay. Three. Two. One. -Power off.-" The wreckage finished collapsing with one last crash and cloud of dust. Kitty and Don emerged from the tangled mass a moment later, surfacing like divers walking up a beach. "... Wow," Kitty remarked, turning slowly to take in the view. The Panopticon looked like a stadium that had just been demolished, its dome shattered and fallen, the twisted remains of boxes and seats crushed by its pieces into unrecognizable heaps. The only structures that were still intact were the platform by the upper entrance and the reinforced dome of the Eye of Harmony. Not far from where they stood, a falling girder had punched a hole clean through the floor, a dozen yards or so from the Eye, and into the maintenance space below. Above, where the dome had arched almost impossibly high, there was only the transparent Citadel shield, and beyond it Gallifrey's orange sky. "Oh, -man,-" said Don, struggling unsuccessfully against an inappropriate urge to laugh. "The Castellan's gonna be -pissed.-" Tobernel sat with his back against a flat piece of rubble, his broad, fleshy face expressionless. Nearby, Rachel lay sprawled on her side, head resting on one outstretched arm. Rose knelt next to her, fingertips pressed to the side of her neck. She looked young again, as she had when they arrived, her face unscarred. Don dismissed his malfunctioning armor and went to her side, crouching next to Rose. "Rachel?" Rachel's eyelids flickered, then snapped open. "Huh!" she said, starting. Her eyes were clear and blue, but if Don looked more closely, he could see the flames dancing deep behind them. He cursed inwardly; he had hoped - if he were a praying man, he'd have prayed - that in either completing or rejecting Tobernel's mission, whichever she had done, she'd have released the Entity back to the void. But no such luck. She smiled at him in a way that was at once familiar and a little disturbing on the face of her teenage self. "Hey," she said. "Been a while." "Hey," he replied, a painful knot forming in the hollow of his throat. "Is it done?" Rachel got to her feet, dusting fruitlessly at her shirt. "Nah," she said. "No more Daleks, no more Dalek 207 movies. I couldn't do that to the universe." She smirked slightly. "I did leave 'em with something to think about, though." She looked around. "Whoo. Boy. Somebody did a number on -this- place." "Uh, yeah, that would've been you," Kitty put in. "So... okay, this is awkward, and probably not the place or the time, but what the hell. Are you the old model or the new one?" "Sort of both... I think. It's complicated." She looked down at herself. "Looks like I got to keep the 15-year-old body, though." Feeling at her face, she brightened and added, "And hey, no scars, that's a definite plus." "We should probably get out of here and figure this out later," Don said. "The Chancellery Guards are -not- going to be amused by what just went down in here. Doubly so if they realize there's still a Phoenix avatar on Gallifrey." At that, he seemed to realize that they hadn't heard from Tobernel in a while. Turning, he crouched next to the Chancellor. "Are you all right?" "I... " Tobernel coughed, moistened his lips, and said again, "I... saw. What she was shown. I nearly... -caused-... " He looked past Don at Rachel, who nodded soberly. "Who were those guys?" she asked. "The last survivors... of a war that never happened. Thanks to you," Tobernel replied. He stared, horror-struck, into the distance for a moment, then focused his eyes on hers again. "Thank you... for listening to them." Rachel cracked a wry smile. "The little one was very persuasive," she said. Tobernel actually managed a dry laugh at that. "Yes," he agreed. "He always... was." The old Chancellor blinked, gasping in sudden pain, and raised a hand to his chest. "What's the matter?" Don asked, but Tobernel only smiled a little. "I think all this excitement's been too much for these old hearts," he said. "You'd better go, Martol. I'll be fine. The process is beginning even now." With a mock touch of his old arrogance, he added, "I hardly need your help to regenerate." Don nodded. "Okay." He straightened up and turned to go, then turned back, arching an eyebrow. "You called me Martol." "Of course I did," Tobernel replied. "'Trokhai' is an insult." Don considered that, then laughed. "See you next time, Tobernel," he said. "We're just going to leave him?" Kitty asked as the four picked their way across the wreckage. "Sure," Don replied. "Nothing we can do, and if we're not scarce by the time the Guard get here - " At which point, as if summoned, a half-dozen Chancellery Guardsmen arrived by transmat beam, having bypassed the wrecked entrance level. "What in Omega's - " their lieutenant blurted, seeing the devastation. Turning to Griffin, his weapon drawn, he demanded, "What did you do?!" "What did -I- do?" Griffin replied indignantly, but before he could get any further with that, one of the others tried to place Rachel under arrest and got shoved halfway across the lower level for his trouble. "Get your hands off me," Rachel snapped, her eyes afire. "Code White! I say again CODE WHITE!" the Guard lieutenant cried into his com. "Cosmic Entity One detected! Reinforcements to the Panopticon at once!" "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second," said Don. "There's actually a very good explanation for all this - " "They've killed the Chancellor!" shouted another of the guards from Tobernel's side. "This is all going very wrong now," Kitty declared as she and Rose went back-to-back off to one side. "Don't worry, I've got a plan," Rose replied. "It's an old favorite. I learned it from the Doctor the very first time we met, and you'd be amazed how often it simply can't be improved on." "Great. Let's hear it." Rose grinned, dipped a hand into one of Kitty's tac-jacket pouches, and hurled the borrowed item to the floor. As a cloud of blue smoke enveloped them all, she shouted, "RUN!" "I like it," Kitty said, and then she grabbed Don's arm and dragged him along with her across the rubble, up to the entrance level, and through the closed doors into the hallway beyond. At the same instant, Rose darted the other way, seizing Rachel's wrist along the way. The redhead looked perfectly willing to make a fight of it, but she deferred to her elder's wisdom in the matter and let herself be pulled along. Only one Guardsman lay along this course, the one kneeling next to the fallen Chancellor. Hearing the explosion of the smoke bomb and the cries of alarm from his mates, he glanced up to see Rose and Rachel heading right for him. "Hold it right - " he began, raising his staser pistol. Beside him, Tobernel opened his eyes, met Rose's for just an instant, and then - so improbably she almost thought she'd imagined it - he winked... ... and erupted with the blazing orange brilliance of regeneration. Startled, the guard recoiled, shielding his eyes. When he looked again, the two women were gone. Above, Kitty and Don raced through corridors, dodging through walls and generally doing whatever they could to stay a step ahead of, or to the side of, the Guards. Confused and more than a little annoyed by all that had gone on, they were in no mood to listen to explanations. They had a few close scrapes and one close encounter, in which a lone Guard came out on the wrong end of Griffin's fist, before they finally reached the backup arrival hall where Tobernel had forced them to land. Don's TARDIS was still dark when they arrived, but a simple toggle of the master breaker soon put that right. He twirled a couple of knobs on the comm panel. "Doctor? Are you there?" The Doctor appeared on the main monitor, his face so black with soot he looked like he'd just come back from a commando raid. "Hello!" he said pleasantly. "I've got the fire out, thanks for asking. Where's Rose?" "Next on my agenda," Don replied, adjusting the panel. "Rose? Can you read me? Where are you?" "Some kind of maintenance level, I think," Rose replied. "That's what it looks like, anyway. It's funny, but wherever you go in time and space, a basement is a basement. Even on Gallifrey!" "Is Rachel with you?" "Yeah, she's right here." "Can you get back to the upper levels?" the Doctor asked. "I doubt it," said Rose. "We got down here through a hole in the floor. I don't even know where the stairs are. If there -are- stairs. And it won't take those guards long to figure out where we went." "All right. Find a place to hide and hold tight. I'll lock onto your VM and come get you." The Doctor began throwing switches, then jumped back as one of them sparked. "Gah!" "Maybe you'd better let me do the microjumping and you just get out of here," Don suggested. Rose skidded around a corner and banged through a door, hearing the sounds of pursuit from somewhere behind them. She knew she was at a distinct disadvantage here; she didn't know this place at all, and their pursuers presumably were quite familiar with it. Still, she admitted few equals, much less betters, in the very specialized field of running for her life, and Rachel was no slouch in that department either. They might just get away with it, if only they could get enough of a lead that - She came to a sudden halt and just stared for a moment. "-What,-" she said. The room she and Rachel had just entered was a dead end, and - apart from the Panopticon once Rachel was finished redecorating it - the only messy place she'd ever seen on Gallifrey. Only about 20 feet by 30, with a low ceiling and dim industrial lighting, it was full of... well... junk. At least that's what it looked like. Castoff scrap from the universe's most advanced civilization. She recognized a TARDIS control console over there, and that looked like part of a Chameleon Arch; the rest was just tangled light-piping, slabs of molecular circuitry, pieces of machined alloy. The only thing she was entirely sure of was that there was no way out but the way they'd come in. Which, to judge from the sound of things out in the hall, would lead them straight into the arms of their pursuers. She glanced at her vortex manipulator, but it had gone into sleep mode, too tapped out to do anything more than display the local date and time. It certainly wasn't going to get them out of here. Her mind racing, Rose scanned the detritus around her, looking for something, -anything- she might use to extricate herself and Rachel from their predicament, but she didn't even know what most of it -was-, and... ... wait. That shape in the corner. A tall, featureless white box, like an industrial freezer. Was that what she thought it was? Rushing toward it, she ran a hand across its surface. It was smooth, cool, vibrating faintly to the touch. Was there a handle? A depression? Any sort of - It opened. Beyond, darkness, broken only by a bluish-green column of dim light a dozen or so yards away. Rose grinned. "Jackpot," she said, and ushered Rachel inside, slamming the door behind her. Above, lamps flickered fitfully to life, casting intermittent pools of light into the room - not very -good- light, but enough to get by. Enough to show Rose that this was, indeed, exactly what she'd taken it for: a TARDIS Console Room. It was smaller than the Doctor's, and lacked the Victorian ironmongery and decorative stone arches, to say nothing of the bookshelves and comfortable furnishings that made it as much sitting room as control center. This room was starkly utilitarian - indeed, a bit grimy-looking - with a grated steel floor through which she could make out dim machinery spaces below. Cables hung from the upper casement of the Time Rotor, and the console itself looked like someone had refitted it with the leavings of a jumble sale. A half-dozen buttresses that looked faintly like they were made of coral held up the domed ceiling. Passing one of the buttresses as she walked up a gentle ramp from the door to the console, Rose glanced at it and saw a brass plaque which the TARDIS, reading her brain patterns, obligingly rendered into Standard for her: GALLIFREY HEAVY INDUSTRIES TYPE XXXVII TT CAPSULE She whistled. "Type 37, blimey. That's older than the Doctor's." Rachel looked around. "It looks it," she remarked. Looking at the feeble glow of the Time Rotor, Rose shivered slightly, not entirely from the chill in the Console Room's stale air. "Poor old thing. They must've just parked her down here when they didn't want her any more and left her to die... " "Do you know how to fly one of these things?" Rachel asked. Rose nodded. "Sure. I hope." She went to the console, took a moment to get her bearings, then flipped a few switches, consulted some readouts, and shook her head, making a sympathetic noise. "Tch, you've 'ad some cowboys in 'ere, love," she murmured to the console. "Can you get it to work?" Rachel asked. "I don't know. The Doctor's taught me a lot, but I'm no Time Lady," Rose admitted. "I think our main problem is just that she's about out of power. They probably closed the tap to the Eye when they decommissioned her, and I don't know how to open it again." "Power?" Rachel grinned, flames dancing in her eyes. "I think I can cover that if you point me in the right direction." "Downstairs," Rose said, pointing through the grated floor at the feebly glowing base of the Time Rotor column beneath the console. The sound of a fist hammering at the door echoed through the stillness of the console room. "Hurry! I'm guessing those guys have access to -something- that can force an old TARDIS door eventually." Rachel found one of the grated floor panels that swung upward, revealing a cramped little staircase down into the machinery area below. "What am I looking for down here?" she asked as she clambered down. "I'm not - oh. Never mind. This must be it here." She reached out toward the TARDIS's heart with her newly expanded consciousness, wincing at the unfamiliar strain, and then her eyes widened. "Oh my God. Rose! Rose, it's -alive!-" "That's good!" Rose called back. "Supposed to be! Give her all you've got, Rachel, that door's not going to hold them forever!" "Here goes nothing," Rachel murmured. Letting the power out was not actually all that hard - she'd felt like she was about ready to burst just holding it in ever since she'd dragged it all back from the far corners of time and space - but directing it was tough, like trying to aim a waterfall. The console room flooded with orange light, flamelike tongues of energy bursting up through the grating all around the console. Rose felt no heat and no pain, suffered no injury, despite the curious sight of what looked like fire roaring around her Dr Martens and up the legs of her jeans; tongue wedged in the corner of her mouth, she ignored the spectacle as best she could and concentrated on the rapidly reviving control board. "Right. Here we go. Hang on!" she called, not knowing whether Rachel could hear her. She set the coordinates as best she could with the console starting to vibrate, dashed around to the engineering panel and opened up the engines, rounded back to navigation and set the dampers and buffers, then ducked over to the helm and threw the master dematerializer. The Time Rotor flickered, glowed much more brightly, pulsed up and down once... and stopped with a dull thud and a low chiming alarm. "What?" Rose said. She ran around to diagnostics and consulted the master reading. "Plasmic shell instability, dematerialization aborted. -What?-" She blinked. "The chameleon circuit! Outer shell's in flux. Who am I talking to?" She shrugged and went back to engineering. "Never mind. I can fix that. Well, not fix it. Too unstable for that. But failing that... " She adjusted a couple of knobs, yanked open an access panel underneath, pulled out a handful of wires and connected them to others in a shower of sparks, then popped up and banged an elbow down on the console. There was another heavy mechanical thud from somewhere below, then another single grind of the Time Rotor. Outside, the guardsmen who were trying to force the door fell back as the antique TARDIS shivered, rippled, and then assumed the tall, pleasantly solid red shape of a 20th-century Glaswegian police box. Inside, Rose grinned at the green status light. "-Yes,-" she said with immense satisfaction. "The Professor is -in.-" She went back to the helm, threw the master lever again, then grinned even wider as the rotor began to pulse with a subtly different but instantly familiar wheezing rhythm. "So long, boys," she said, sketching a salute at the guardsmen on the monitor before they winked out. Then, stepping around to navigation, she double-checked the coordinates before popping over to engineering to make sure they had enough power to pierce the Veil and get back to their own dimension, then turned to the communications console. "Well, they can't have just -vanished,-" the Doctor insisted. "They've got to be -somewhere.- Run sensor diagnostics." "I'm telling you, there are no readings," Don replied from the comm screen. "It's almost as if they - " The screen suddenly divided diagonally, half for Don's face and half for Rose's. " - left in another TARDIS?" she finished. "Come on, slowpokes, we're halfway to the Veil over here. Last one back to Stately Griffin Manor buys drinks!" The Doctor blinked at her in amazement. "Where did you get another TARDIS?!" he demanded incredulously. Rose beamed. "Found it!" The Doctor stared at her for a second, then let out his biggest, warmest smile and replied, "I -love- you." "See you back in the real world, boys," Rose said, then signed off. Now that she wasn't so busy, she noticed that the fire had stopped rushing up through the floor. "We're clear!" she called. "Rachel? You okay down there?" No answer. "Rachel?" Rose repeated, crossing to the stairs. She went below, picking her way over cables and structural members, and found Rachel in a heap on the floor, one hand still pressed to the protective shroud covering the heart of the TARDIS, unconscious. SATURDAY, JULY 17, 2410 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI They all hit Stately Griffin Manor within five minutes of each other and less than half an hour after leaving, which was, if the three pilots did say so themselves, damned fine flying under the circumstances. The Doctor arrived first, Don and Kitty just a few moments later, and then they stood around under the tree out front and waited for Rose. The Doctor blinked at the sight of the red police box arriving, not far, as it happened, from the spot where Rose had reappeared back in May. Then, with a triumphant laugh, he turned a look of delighted disbelief to the Griffins. Don wore a similar expression; Kitty just grinned. A moment later, though, the smiles were banished as the doors opened and Rose emerged, carrying an unconscious Rachel in her arms. "She's all right," Rose assured the others as they gathered around with concerned expression. "Just asleep." At Don's continued look of worry, she smiled one of her thousand-watt smiles and told him, "Trust me, Don. I'm not licensed to practice medicine, but I do have a degree." "How many degrees do you have, anyway?" Kitty asked as she held the front door. "Five," Rose replied. "Though the one in pre-Contact exo- literature was an accident." "How do you get a degree by accident?" Rose shrugged as best she could given her burden and said, "Take a lot of lit classes for electives... " They took Rachel into the living room and settled her comfortably on the sofa. A few minutes later she stirred, then opened her eyes, blinking in the afternoon sunshine that spilled across the couch from the French doors. "Wuh," she said. "What happened? Did we get away?" Rose grinned and gave her a big hug. "We sure did, thanks to you. You were -brilliant.- That old TARDIS has probably never -been- so alive." Rachel looked around, then down at her hands. "She's welcome to it," she said. "That was... intense. Having that -presence- in my head." Rose nodded. "I remember." "Yeah... it remembered you too," Rachel told her. "I think that's why it was so willing to help us escape. Oh, there's that nice lady I helped save Earth from the Daleks. Hello!" She shook her head. "It was like being three people at once. Me me, old me, and... I dunno, -God.- I wouldn't want to live like that for long. I mean, it was -awesome-, but... I'm glad it's gone." Kitty blinked. "It's gone?" "Yeah." Rachel closed her eyes as if concentrating for a moment, then opened them and grinned, her expression youthful, uncomplicated - the look of the fresh-faced girl the Griffins had taken in seven months ago, not the world-weary woman they'd lost years before. "I got nothin'. Must've used it all up. Which, like I say, fine by me. I mean, I sort of vaguely remember being... other me... for a few minutes there? And I didn't like it very much. -And- she made you guys hella uncomfortable. So hey! Back to being plain old Rachel Griffin. Works for me!" She paused, a little awkwardly, most of the cheery jocularity falling away, and added, "Unless you think it'd be too... you know... weird. Having me around. Then, uh... I dunno, I could go live with Kyra at the Sisters of Mercy, I guess." Kitty smiled and held out both hands; Rachel took hold of them and stood up, then let herself be pulled into a hug, which Don joined a moment later. "This is where you live, Rachel," Kitty said quietly. "Welcome home." Rachel sniffled a little, then pulled herself together and rubbed her face with both hands once the Griffins turned her loose. "Thanks," she said. "I didn't understand before just what it meant for you guys to take me in. I do now. I don't remember -everything,- but... enough to know what this should mean to me." Then she grinned wickedly and added, "And I am -totally- tempted to screw with Scott's head a little. Does he know he's my dad?" "Sort of," Don said, smiling. "And I think Alex already gives him enough trouble without you piling on." "Aw," said Rachel mock-disappointedly. "You're no fun." She turned to the Doctor, who had stood by watching all this in silence with a happy little smile. "I begin to understand why you two try to stay away from that place. Does stuff like that happen every time you go home?" "Well," the Doctor said noncommittally. "Not -every- time," Don added unconvincingly. They glanced at each other. "Actually," the Doctor said. "Yeah, pretty much," Don admitted. Rachel laughed. "Well, if it's all the same to you, next time we all decide to take a TARDIS ride, let's go someplace quiet and peaceful. Pompeii, say." The Doctor shook his head. "I've been there, it's rubbish." Rachel yawned, stretching. "There must have been a lot of days when the volcano -wasn't- erupting. We could go to one of those." "Maybe when you're older," Kitty put in. "From what I've read, Pompeii was a town that needed a mature readers label." "You have no idea," Rose giggled. The Doctor just covered his face. The doorbell rang. "Saved by the bell," the Doctor declared. "I'll get it." He crossed into the vestibule and opened the front door, saying, "Sorry, we don't need any magazines today... " He trailed off at the sight of the man standing on the doorstep, his face taking on a look of surprised apprehension. Then he recovered his aplomb, if not his flippancy, and greeted the visitor as cordially as he could. "Master. What brings you by?" The Master's face lit up with what looked very like unfeigned delight, and before he could react, the Doctor found himself being thoroughly hugged. "Doctor!" the Master cried, slapping his fellow Time Lord on the back. "Thank you! I don't know how you did it, but I'm sure you were involved." The Doctor disengaged himself as gently as he could and backed away a little, surreptitiously patting his jacket to make sure his sonic screwdriver hadn't gone missing. "Thank me for what?" he asked dubiously. Taking the Doctor's wrists, the Master guided his old foe's hands to the sides of his own head. "Listen," he said. "Listen! What don't you hear?" At the Doctor's perplexed look, he let go of one wrist and grabbed his shoulder instead, looking him in the eyes. "The drums," the Master said. "They've stopped. They've -stopped!-" The Doctor still looked confused for a moment; then he blinked in astonishment, a broad smile springing onto his face. "Wha-hey!" he declared, clapping the Master's shoulder in turn. "That's excellent! 'Fraid I can't take credit for it, though, much as I'd love to," he added modestly. "Come in here and meet the person who's really responsible." Ushering the Master into the living room, the Doctor cheerfully presented him to the others - all of whom, apart from Rachel, had met him before under less than auspicious circumstances, and all of whom eyed him very warily as a result. "Rachel, I want you to meet an old... colleague of mine," he said. "Without even knowing it, you did a great thing for him today." Rachel blinked. She -knew- this man. Didn't she? Nearly- buzzcut blond hair, an inch or two shorter than Don, slim and neatly dressed in dark suit and tie... and those -eyes-, she'd seen those eyes somewhere before. But where? When? She chased it, as one chases a dream on waking, but like a dream it slipped away. And judging by the look on the blond man's face, the very same thing had just happened to him at the sight of her, too. He recovered a little bit faster, though, and while she was still giving him a stunned don't-I-know-you look, he was smiling and taking her hand. "When the Doctor says 'colleague' he actually means 'arch- enemy'," he said. "Very pleased to meet you. I am the Master... " Bowing low, he kissed the back of her hand and added, "... and your most humble servant." Kitty palmed her face and muttered to Rose, "(Wow. It's the Master's -cheesy- regeneration.)" "(Seriously,)" Rose replied. "Uh... hi. I'm Rachel Griffin," said Rachel, looking unsure whether she should take back her hand. Looking her in the eye, the Master dropped his breezily cheerful persona for an instant. He didn't say the next thing aloud, but Rachel heard his voice in her head, as clear as if he'd been speaking into her ear: "Thank you, Rachel Griffin. I don't remember what you did. From my perspective, maybe you never did it. But I woke up this morning to find that -everything had changed-... and one way or another, it's all down to you. And if you want anything - anything! - worlds to tremble, whole peoples to bow down in praise, a new pair of shoes - you have only to ask and the Master will make it happen." Then he winked at her baffled expression, let go of her hand, and turned to the others. "Now!" he said briskly. "I have messages for you from Gallifrey, my brother Time Lords. Doctor! Lady Romanadvoratrelundar begs leave to inform you that your destruction of the Panopticon has caused outrage in the Senate and it would be best if you were to stay away from Gallifrey for at least the next 10 cycles while she smooths things over." "-My- destruction of the Panopticon?" the Doctor demanded. "I wasn't even there!" "I only pass on the messages, I make no warranty as to their accuracy," the Master replied piously. "Martol, Castellan Andred asked me to tell -you- that if he sees your face in the Citadel at any point in that same span of time, he will see that you are transported to the Death Zone and there leave you to the tender mercies of Lady Leela." "Told you he'd be pissed," said Don philosophically to Kitty. "Oh! Right, also, you needn't worry any longer about the CIA dispatching Rachel back to where Tobernel got her. The Time Scoop's extraction logs seem to have been, er... erased. A side effect of the Eye of Harmony's odd behavior, I expect," the Master added with a look of innocent bafflement. "So I'm afraid she'll just have to live out her life in comfort and security here with you, Martol." He smiled his Prime Minister smile and added unconvincingly, "Sorry." "I think we'll cope," said Don with a smile. "And... thanks." "Hold on," the Doctor said. "You've been to Gallifrey and they not only let you leave, they sent you off with messages for us?" "It's not so much that they let me leave as they're smart enough to know they couldn't keep me. Besides, they know I'll be back. I've got -work- to do." The Master smiled. "Young Vinzanthaxatobernel is going to need a lot of guidance." Don arched an eyebrow. "Come again?" "His regeneration went a bit wrong," said the Master. "Proximity to the Entity. Or so the Physicians say; I think he did it on purpose. Regardless, he's about your young friend's age now," he went on, gesturing to Rachel. "Lost most of his memories, poor lad. He'll have to go back to the Academy, re-sit his exams. Can you imagine the horror? But he seems to be taking it in stride. Happier than he's been in centuries." The Master shrugged. "To each his own. Personally, I think he's a little sweet on your protege," he added to the Doctor. "At any rate, he's my penance now. Who better to look after one ex-madman than another? Besides - can you imagine the consequences for the universe if we left it all to Ace?" Rose let out an involuntary laugh at the thought. "She's quite annoyed with you for not calling her in, by the way," the Master added. "She pointed out - and quite rightly too - that she could hardly have made a bigger mess than you managed to make without her. Have you -seen- the Panopticon?" "I, wasn't, even, there!" the Doctor protested again. Still laughing, Rose took his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder. "He's winding you up," she said. The Doctor blinked, then grinned. "You're winding me up!" he declared, delighted. "That's brilliant!" "Speaking of Professor Tyler," the Master said, "the Castellan gave me a message for you as well. He says you're welcome to that old heap you stole if you can keep it working, but I'm to remind you that you are an unlicensed TT Capsule operator and he desires you to rectify that oversight at your earliest convenience. Since you are, ahem," he added with a wink that raised a bit of color in both her cheeks and the Doctor's, "-acquainted- with the Lord President, that shouldn't pose any great difficulty, should it?" "That'll simplify shooting the next season of Professor Enigma," Kitty pointed out. "Good timing, too," Rose agreed. "That old fiberglass prop was really getting a bit knackered." She eyed the Master. "Are you sticking around for the show?" "I wouldn't miss it!" the Master replied. He beamed and added, "I checked the Radio Times, this week's is - " He made a dramatic gesture. "'The Return of Dominus'! Dun dun DUN!" He shook his head. "I envy you, Doctor. -Your- TV self is -this- wonderful creature. Me? I get that shouty idiot Clarkson." "Jeremy is a very nice man," Rose insisted. "Not when he's playing me he isn't. I'll have to speak to the producers." The Master kept his exaggerated frowny face on for a moment longer, then grinned again. "Is dinner before or after the show?" He held up a large, gaily decorated paper bag that they could all have sworn he hadn't been carrying when he came in. "I brought korma." Rachel went upstairs to, as she put it, shower off that just- embodied-the-universe feeling, and just to grab a few moments for herself before the crowd arrived. Freshly showered, she wiped the steam off the upstairs bathroom mirror and regarded herself thoughtfully in the mirror for a few moments while she combed her damp red hair. The memory of what it had been like to embody the primal All, or whatever the hell the Phoenix was when it was at home, had all but faded away now, leaving only the vaguest conscious impressions. So had most of the thoughts and images that had bled in from her erased past, or alternate future, or whatever you wanted to call it. She still knew what Tobernel had -told- her about her other self's life, but she no longer -felt- it. She smiled at herself. Good. She preferred who she was. Plain old Rachel Griffin. Turning, she held up a hand and her green blouse flew to it from the hook on the inside of the door. As she caught it, her smile in the mirror turned just slightly sly. Well, maybe not -that- plain old. But she wouldn't tell the Griffins about that for a while. It'd just make them worry. And it wasn't like she was still plugged into the godhead or anything. Just a little telekinesis. How much trouble could -that- cause? She finished dressing, opened the door, and heard the laughter of her friends - her family - filtering up the stairwell from the living room. Scott's voice was in there, and Alex, and Kyra, too; Don and Rose, the Doctor and the Master; both Kittys; Logan and Jean. Full house tonight. She even heard the hearty laugh of Fred Dukes, and it made her grin. If Fred's here, I better hurry up if I want to score any of that korma, she thought, and trotted toward the stairs. /* The BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Ben Foster "Doctor Who Closing Credits" _Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack, Series 4_ (2009) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT PROJECT PHOENIX "The Eye of Harmony" Starring Rachel Griffin Alexandra Summers Rose Tyler The Doctor Donald E. Griffin Kitty Griffin Vinzanthaxatobernel Ace The Supreme Dalek J. Random Dalek The Master with the Chancellery Guard of Gallifrey Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins some dialogue suggested by Geoff Depew Chris "Slarti" Pinard Aided and abetted, as always, by The Usual Suspects PROJECT PHOENIX Vol. 1 No. 3 BACON COMICS GROUP 2410 E P U (colour) 2010