Feb. 11th, 2009 05:37 pm
Forever Tomorrow: Chapter 11
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clocketpatchI've realised that I forgot to post the next installment up here. This whole lj thing is a bit beyond me in some way. Anyway, the next chapter is coming along, and should be posted reasonably soon. Thanks again to my patient betas Bewarethespork and Ann_blue who both have devoted so much time and enthusiasm to this saga.
Chapter 11: In Madness
The Doctor, Benton and Jack wander, delving ever deeper into the heart of the beast. The darkly reflective walls of the Master’s TARDIS seem to throb with a burning heartbeat. There is a faint pattern of circles etched into their mirrored surface; “roundels”, Jack says. “Like the deeper parts of your TARDIS. Doesn’t feel like your TARDIS though.”
“She’s not like my TARDIS,” the Doctor says, and does not elaborate. Benton understands why. It’s difficult to sustain conversation in this place, and, in any case, the differences between this place and the Doctor's ship are pretty damn obvious.
There is a muffled kind of silence, an impossible-to-ignore roar, which is distinctly unfriendly. It sets Benton’s teeth on edge almost as much as the shifting corridors. Every now and again the group reaches a dead end, forcing them to fallback and retrace their steps. Every now and again a door, not seen before, slams shut behind them to block retreat, or opens to reveal a new path. Benton feels like a rat in a maze being shunted from place to place.
Slip, click.
That is the sound it makes when a new door slides open.
Slip, click.
And a treacherous noise of a panel behind them slamming shut, forcing the trio down yet another new course. The colour scheme changes with each redirection. The walls in this corridor are dull indigo. The floor resembles linoleum tiling and reminds Benton of the barracks he trained at when he first joined the service.
The sound of their footsteps is muffled. It is not the usual clack, clack, Benton would expect of army boots on tile (if he expected anything of this mad house, and he doesn’t). The silence is brooding, and Benton feels like there’s something in the air that’s trying to get into his skull.
"Is Martha okay?" Jack asks, suddenly.
"I don't know," says the Doctor, and Jack looks ready to murder someone. "She isn't here. Either she was out of range of the snatch or —"
"Or what?" interrupts Jack. “I know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch.”
Benton doesn’t know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch, but he’s not stupid, and he has some vivid ideas (which he tries to suppress) of what being caught in the middle of a time rift might do to a person. He remembers the TOMTIT experiments, and what it felt like to be de-aged.
"I built some protections and fail-safes into the tracker," the Doctor says. "As long as it remains intact, it should protect her from most destructive time distortions, whether from the anomaly or from sloppy technology. Failing that, I gave her a personal shielding device."
"So she's safe?" says Jack.
"She's where we left her," says the Doctor. "And she is a very clever and resourceful young woman."
That she is, thinks Benton, noting how the Doctor skirted the question. Benton fears for Martha’s safety, but he has confidence in her. If half of what he’s heard about her is true, then she is an amazing woman, and she certainly does have spunk. He rubs at his arm ruefully where she bit him. In his experience, any woman associated with the Doctor has amazing force of character.
“Frankly, sir,” says Benton, “I think it’s us we should be more worried about. If we’re in the Master’s lair so to speak, and she’s still free outside, then I think she’s a good sight better off than us.”
“Unless the lion is out hunting,” says Jack.
Benton rubs at his bite bandage again. “The lion might get more than he bargained for if he tries to tackle Ms. Jones.”
Jack grins at the comment.
“Indeed,” says the Doctor.
They continue walking.
Slip, click. Another door. Another passage. This one is paler, starting grey and fading to white as they walk. The floor sparkles like polished granite.
Slip, click.
The trio step from the white hall into a rounded room with a central pillar. This column is white, lumpy, and dotted with pink flashing lights. This is the middle of the maze. Beside the pillar stands a gangly man with a slight paunch to his jowls and bugging blue eyes. His face is shaven — recently, and not very well if the little nicks across his chin and upper lip are any indication. There’s a whole patch of not-quite-ginger stubble he’s missed on the right side. The man wears an immaculate, tailored black suit, and, though the body is different, the Master requires no introduction.
He claps, slowly, a sardonic congratulations to the clever little lab rats who found the cheese. A wire birdcage sits by his foot, imprisoning a shrivelled, pitiful form.
"Doctor!" shouts Jack, rushing towards the cage, heedless of the danger. The Master stops clapping, pulls out a sleek, black gun, and shoots.
Jack falls.
"That was unnecessary," says the Doctor.
"But fun," says the Master, brushing at a spatter of brain and bone fragments over his left breast pocket. Benton’s hand again unconsciously migrates to his empty holster, even as he realises that the gun the Master fired is his own. The Master blows imaginary steam off the tip of the weapon and then levels it at Benton.
“I wonder how you will react when I shoot a friend of yours who doesn’t bounce back?” The Master giggles insanely at his comment. Benton stiffens, but refuses to back down.
“I warn you…” the Doctor says, his voice falling to an even more dangerous rumble. It is like the shifting of the earth before a quake.
“Or what?” the Master asks, still giggling like a lunatic. Benton’s momentary fear is replaced with irritation as the Master flips his gun around his finger almost playfully, before levelling it at Benton’s chest. Benton is glad that Ms. Jones is not present, even if her present whereabouts are a mystery. Spunk she might have, but Benton would hate to see her get shot down by the Master.
“You’ll get your come-uppance,” Benton says to the Master, with as much force as he can muster, and then smiles, because he knows it’s true. He’s on the right side, and the Doctor always wins. And then, he’ll see Ms. Jones again, and worry again about having the wrong words and a daft look.
“Is that so Sergeant?” asks the Master, rhetorically, because a moment later the gun goes off, Benton falls back from the impact, and the Doctor is at his side before the shot’s echo has faded.
“I’m fine,” says Benton, from between gritted teeth, as he clutches the wound on his arm. It’s only a graze, Benton thinks, not fatal, and it probably won’t leave lasting damage. He’s had worse.
“What was the point of that?” rages the Doctor. The Doctor doesn’t look at the Master as he speaks: all of his attention is being spent on putting pressure on Benton’s wound. Benton doesn’t understand all the fuss. “I’m fine” he tries to say again, but his lips are dry. He’s feeling strangely faint, which doesn’t make sense, it’s only a little scratch…
The Master shrugs, then whirls and fires the gun again, shooting down Jack who was just in the process of being reborn.
“I demand that you stop this!” says the Doctor.
“I demand that you stop this,” the Master mocks, pulling a fake pout. “Oh please DO come off it already. You don’t seem to get the big picture, but then, you never did. Let me put it bluntly: You. Cannot. Reason. With. Me. I’ve flipped my lid, gone round the bend, or something. Always a danger when you pass your limit on regeneration. Anyway, I’ve gotten past those petty survival instincts which held me back in the past. Now I’m on to greater things.”
“Such as?” the Doctor asks.
“Wholesale destruction,” the Master says, licking his lips.
“The dimensional anomaly?” the Doctor asks.
“Yes, well, it’s my past self who cooked that one up. I just lent a helping hand. Otherwise, he would have got himself cooked. He’s at the end of his natural regeneration cycle you know? Woooweee, that was an unpleasant few centuries that followed, nearly drove me mad.”
“He’s what?’ the Doctor asks, and his voice is — there’s too much there. Benton can’t decipher it — anger, fear, reproach, betrayal… it doesn’t process properly. Everything is getting muggy. Benton thinks that he wants to get up and clock the Master. Teach him a lesson.
Instead, he passes out.
*
my time is coming,
closer now
idiot Lords of Time, i will feed, i will live, i will rule
no one will be my master, and i will be confined no more,
i feel the time,
the waves of it, i must have more
do you feel me sergeant? little creature, feeble little thing,
will you feed me with your blood?
i am coming
fear me
*
“And what makes you think I would ever help you?” Martha says to the Master. She gets up on her own, not taking his offered hand. The thought of touching the Master makes her feel a bit sick. “After all you did to me? To my family?”
He regards her for a moment before answering, and when he does his voice is smooth and dismissive, as if he were a favourite uncle apologising for not being able to take her out to brunch, rather than a homicidal maniac explaining away a year of hell.
“My dear, from my perspective said events have not yet transpired. Therefore, there is no reason for you to be hostile.”
“I’m not your dear, and there is every reason for me to be hostile,” Martha says.
“Perhaps.” He plays with his hands, fingers curling around each other. “However, as you do not wish for the universe to combust perhaps you would be so kind as to listen to what I have to say.”
“How can I trust you?” Martha asks.
“Very well,” the Master says. He shrugs out of his suit jack, handing the item of clothing to a reluctant Martha. Then he grasps the hem of his shirt and pulls it up to reveal a long, red welt. “That,” he says, “occurred three days ago. I do not believe I would have survived if it had not been for the timely interruptions of my future self.” He pulls down his shirt quickly, covering the wound.
“I had a plan,” he goes on, “a scheme of sorts, to gain power, to annoy the dear Doctor. Life is so tedious without these little distractions you understand?”
“It hasn’t been three days,” says Martha, doing maths in her head. “I’ve been out for most of it, but it hasn’t been three days.”
“Time is in flux,” says the Master. “Backwards is forwards, and little rips are forming across the countryside. I’ve no doubt he slipped through one, and in doing so bought himself a bit more time. There is a creature Ms. Jones. It lives within the void itself. It is timeless, and shapeless, and powerful. I thought it would help me with a little problem I have, but I seem to be growing foolish in my old age. The man who rescued me claimed to be my future self. He told me that he had come back to this juncture to aid me in achieving my immortality. Like a fool, I believed him.”
“And what is that supposed to mean,” Martha says, “except that you’ve as good as admitted that you’re responsible for this whole mess?”
“He is not me,” the Master says with conviction. “I wished for life. What evil do you see in that? I am old, and tired. A harmless dotard looking for a second chance.” He stares at Martha, his eyes burrowing into hers. She feels the tendrils of his mind reaching out to grab at her.
“Stop it,” she says, hating how small her voice sounds.
“That man is a creature born out of zombie DNA. He is unstable, and unpredictable. He saved me only to keep the creature I summoned within this universe. He wants to create a paradox.”
“There’s already a great big paradox going on, in case you haven’t noticed,” says Martha.
“He wants to kill a Time Lord. He wants to destroy the universe.”
“How does killing a Time Lord destroy the… oh,” Martha trails off. Her mind is filled with paradoxes: humans from the end of the universe that never happened, that might have been, but weren’t, and Time Wars, and Daleks, and Carrionites who would have, but didn’t, but still might kill Shakespeare. And how would all of that change history. Martha isn’t sure where all of these thoughts are coming from. They are her own memories (or, at least most of them are, she thinks), but the ways they are twisting and conecting are alien. She sees and understands the nexus points when she doesn’t quite know what a nexus point is. She sees stars folding in on themselves and orange skies burning.
She thinks it must have something to do with the velvet-voiced, deboiner old man in front of her. His brow is crinkled. His eyes are locked with Martha’s and she cannot turn away.
“The Doctor is, I hate to admit, a very influential man in certain circles of the cosmos,” the Master says, adding a verbal explanation to the images painting their pictures of maybe's and might-not-be's Martha’s mind. “To hold two incarnations of the same individual at different parts in his life within one timeframe is a paradox in itself, and very unstable. The limitation effect does not apply to Time Lords, but the creature can still feed off the run-off. Kill the Doctor in his younger incarnation and the results — I ask you again Ms. Jones. Will you help me?”
Martha thinks she must have been hypnotised, because she says yes.
TBC
“She’s not like my TARDIS,” the Doctor says, and does not elaborate. Benton understands why. It’s difficult to sustain conversation in this place, and, in any case, the differences between this place and the Doctor's ship are pretty damn obvious.
There is a muffled kind of silence, an impossible-to-ignore roar, which is distinctly unfriendly. It sets Benton’s teeth on edge almost as much as the shifting corridors. Every now and again the group reaches a dead end, forcing them to fallback and retrace their steps. Every now and again a door, not seen before, slams shut behind them to block retreat, or opens to reveal a new path. Benton feels like a rat in a maze being shunted from place to place.
Slip, click.
That is the sound it makes when a new door slides open.
Slip, click.
And a treacherous noise of a panel behind them slamming shut, forcing the trio down yet another new course. The colour scheme changes with each redirection. The walls in this corridor are dull indigo. The floor resembles linoleum tiling and reminds Benton of the barracks he trained at when he first joined the service.
The sound of their footsteps is muffled. It is not the usual clack, clack, Benton would expect of army boots on tile (if he expected anything of this mad house, and he doesn’t). The silence is brooding, and Benton feels like there’s something in the air that’s trying to get into his skull.
"Is Martha okay?" Jack asks, suddenly.
"I don't know," says the Doctor, and Jack looks ready to murder someone. "She isn't here. Either she was out of range of the snatch or —"
"Or what?" interrupts Jack. “I know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch.”
Benton doesn’t know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch, but he’s not stupid, and he has some vivid ideas (which he tries to suppress) of what being caught in the middle of a time rift might do to a person. He remembers the TOMTIT experiments, and what it felt like to be de-aged.
"I built some protections and fail-safes into the tracker," the Doctor says. "As long as it remains intact, it should protect her from most destructive time distortions, whether from the anomaly or from sloppy technology. Failing that, I gave her a personal shielding device."
"So she's safe?" says Jack.
"She's where we left her," says the Doctor. "And she is a very clever and resourceful young woman."
That she is, thinks Benton, noting how the Doctor skirted the question. Benton fears for Martha’s safety, but he has confidence in her. If half of what he’s heard about her is true, then she is an amazing woman, and she certainly does have spunk. He rubs at his arm ruefully where she bit him. In his experience, any woman associated with the Doctor has amazing force of character.
“Frankly, sir,” says Benton, “I think it’s us we should be more worried about. If we’re in the Master’s lair so to speak, and she’s still free outside, then I think she’s a good sight better off than us.”
“Unless the lion is out hunting,” says Jack.
Benton rubs at his bite bandage again. “The lion might get more than he bargained for if he tries to tackle Ms. Jones.”
Jack grins at the comment.
“Indeed,” says the Doctor.
They continue walking.
Slip, click. Another door. Another passage. This one is paler, starting grey and fading to white as they walk. The floor sparkles like polished granite.
Slip, click.
The trio step from the white hall into a rounded room with a central pillar. This column is white, lumpy, and dotted with pink flashing lights. This is the middle of the maze. Beside the pillar stands a gangly man with a slight paunch to his jowls and bugging blue eyes. His face is shaven — recently, and not very well if the little nicks across his chin and upper lip are any indication. There’s a whole patch of not-quite-ginger stubble he’s missed on the right side. The man wears an immaculate, tailored black suit, and, though the body is different, the Master requires no introduction.
He claps, slowly, a sardonic congratulations to the clever little lab rats who found the cheese. A wire birdcage sits by his foot, imprisoning a shrivelled, pitiful form.
"Doctor!" shouts Jack, rushing towards the cage, heedless of the danger. The Master stops clapping, pulls out a sleek, black gun, and shoots.
Jack falls.
"That was unnecessary," says the Doctor.
"But fun," says the Master, brushing at a spatter of brain and bone fragments over his left breast pocket. Benton’s hand again unconsciously migrates to his empty holster, even as he realises that the gun the Master fired is his own. The Master blows imaginary steam off the tip of the weapon and then levels it at Benton.
“I wonder how you will react when I shoot a friend of yours who doesn’t bounce back?” The Master giggles insanely at his comment. Benton stiffens, but refuses to back down.
“I warn you…” the Doctor says, his voice falling to an even more dangerous rumble. It is like the shifting of the earth before a quake.
“Or what?” the Master asks, still giggling like a lunatic. Benton’s momentary fear is replaced with irritation as the Master flips his gun around his finger almost playfully, before levelling it at Benton’s chest. Benton is glad that Ms. Jones is not present, even if her present whereabouts are a mystery. Spunk she might have, but Benton would hate to see her get shot down by the Master.
“You’ll get your come-uppance,” Benton says to the Master, with as much force as he can muster, and then smiles, because he knows it’s true. He’s on the right side, and the Doctor always wins. And then, he’ll see Ms. Jones again, and worry again about having the wrong words and a daft look.
“Is that so Sergeant?” asks the Master, rhetorically, because a moment later the gun goes off, Benton falls back from the impact, and the Doctor is at his side before the shot’s echo has faded.
“I’m fine,” says Benton, from between gritted teeth, as he clutches the wound on his arm. It’s only a graze, Benton thinks, not fatal, and it probably won’t leave lasting damage. He’s had worse.
“What was the point of that?” rages the Doctor. The Doctor doesn’t look at the Master as he speaks: all of his attention is being spent on putting pressure on Benton’s wound. Benton doesn’t understand all the fuss. “I’m fine” he tries to say again, but his lips are dry. He’s feeling strangely faint, which doesn’t make sense, it’s only a little scratch…
The Master shrugs, then whirls and fires the gun again, shooting down Jack who was just in the process of being reborn.
“I demand that you stop this!” says the Doctor.
“I demand that you stop this,” the Master mocks, pulling a fake pout. “Oh please DO come off it already. You don’t seem to get the big picture, but then, you never did. Let me put it bluntly: You. Cannot. Reason. With. Me. I’ve flipped my lid, gone round the bend, or something. Always a danger when you pass your limit on regeneration. Anyway, I’ve gotten past those petty survival instincts which held me back in the past. Now I’m on to greater things.”
“Such as?” the Doctor asks.
“Wholesale destruction,” the Master says, licking his lips.
“The dimensional anomaly?” the Doctor asks.
“Yes, well, it’s my past self who cooked that one up. I just lent a helping hand. Otherwise, he would have got himself cooked. He’s at the end of his natural regeneration cycle you know? Woooweee, that was an unpleasant few centuries that followed, nearly drove me mad.”
“He’s what?’ the Doctor asks, and his voice is — there’s too much there. Benton can’t decipher it — anger, fear, reproach, betrayal… it doesn’t process properly. Everything is getting muggy. Benton thinks that he wants to get up and clock the Master. Teach him a lesson.
Instead, he passes out.
*
my time is coming,
closer now
idiot Lords of Time, i will feed, i will live, i will rule
no one will be my master, and i will be confined no more,
i feel the time,
the waves of it, i must have more
do you feel me sergeant? little creature, feeble little thing,
will you feed me with your blood?
i am coming
fear me
*
“And what makes you think I would ever help you?” Martha says to the Master. She gets up on her own, not taking his offered hand. The thought of touching the Master makes her feel a bit sick. “After all you did to me? To my family?”
He regards her for a moment before answering, and when he does his voice is smooth and dismissive, as if he were a favourite uncle apologising for not being able to take her out to brunch, rather than a homicidal maniac explaining away a year of hell.
“My dear, from my perspective said events have not yet transpired. Therefore, there is no reason for you to be hostile.”
“I’m not your dear, and there is every reason for me to be hostile,” Martha says.
“Perhaps.” He plays with his hands, fingers curling around each other. “However, as you do not wish for the universe to combust perhaps you would be so kind as to listen to what I have to say.”
“How can I trust you?” Martha asks.
“Very well,” the Master says. He shrugs out of his suit jack, handing the item of clothing to a reluctant Martha. Then he grasps the hem of his shirt and pulls it up to reveal a long, red welt. “That,” he says, “occurred three days ago. I do not believe I would have survived if it had not been for the timely interruptions of my future self.” He pulls down his shirt quickly, covering the wound.
“I had a plan,” he goes on, “a scheme of sorts, to gain power, to annoy the dear Doctor. Life is so tedious without these little distractions you understand?”
“It hasn’t been three days,” says Martha, doing maths in her head. “I’ve been out for most of it, but it hasn’t been three days.”
“Time is in flux,” says the Master. “Backwards is forwards, and little rips are forming across the countryside. I’ve no doubt he slipped through one, and in doing so bought himself a bit more time. There is a creature Ms. Jones. It lives within the void itself. It is timeless, and shapeless, and powerful. I thought it would help me with a little problem I have, but I seem to be growing foolish in my old age. The man who rescued me claimed to be my future self. He told me that he had come back to this juncture to aid me in achieving my immortality. Like a fool, I believed him.”
“And what is that supposed to mean,” Martha says, “except that you’ve as good as admitted that you’re responsible for this whole mess?”
“He is not me,” the Master says with conviction. “I wished for life. What evil do you see in that? I am old, and tired. A harmless dotard looking for a second chance.” He stares at Martha, his eyes burrowing into hers. She feels the tendrils of his mind reaching out to grab at her.
“Stop it,” she says, hating how small her voice sounds.
“That man is a creature born out of zombie DNA. He is unstable, and unpredictable. He saved me only to keep the creature I summoned within this universe. He wants to create a paradox.”
“There’s already a great big paradox going on, in case you haven’t noticed,” says Martha.
“He wants to kill a Time Lord. He wants to destroy the universe.”
“How does killing a Time Lord destroy the… oh,” Martha trails off. Her mind is filled with paradoxes: humans from the end of the universe that never happened, that might have been, but weren’t, and Time Wars, and Daleks, and Carrionites who would have, but didn’t, but still might kill Shakespeare. And how would all of that change history. Martha isn’t sure where all of these thoughts are coming from. They are her own memories (or, at least most of them are, she thinks), but the ways they are twisting and conecting are alien. She sees and understands the nexus points when she doesn’t quite know what a nexus point is. She sees stars folding in on themselves and orange skies burning.
She thinks it must have something to do with the velvet-voiced, deboiner old man in front of her. His brow is crinkled. His eyes are locked with Martha’s and she cannot turn away.
“The Doctor is, I hate to admit, a very influential man in certain circles of the cosmos,” the Master says, adding a verbal explanation to the images painting their pictures of maybe's and might-not-be's Martha’s mind. “To hold two incarnations of the same individual at different parts in his life within one timeframe is a paradox in itself, and very unstable. The limitation effect does not apply to Time Lords, but the creature can still feed off the run-off. Kill the Doctor in his younger incarnation and the results — I ask you again Ms. Jones. Will you help me?”
Martha thinks she must have been hypnotised, because she says yes.
TBC
