The One True Free Life (24/26)
Title: The One True Free Life (24/26)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
Donna and Pete continued to peek cautiously over the stern, expecting a police boat to overtake them at any moment, but Rose and the Doctor stood brazenly together behind the wheel, the wind blowing about every third word of their conversation back to their passengers. And every third of those words, Donna didn't really understand, until he eased up on the throttle as they approached Victoria Embankment and he began to give a standard-issue Thames river tour.
"On your right, you will see the Houses of Parliament with the famous clock tower. You know, most people think the whole tower is called Big Ben, but really that's just the bell."
Donna looked over to Pete and whispered, "Houses of Parliament? What's he on about, it hasn't been called that for a hundred years."
"And on your left, the London Eye, the world's largest Ferris wheel. Well, I say largest Ferris wheel, really it's the world's largest cantilevered Ferris wheel. But let's not split hairs."
He carefully pulled the vessel alongside a pier full of tour boats, one of which was disembarking, depositing a number of smartly-dressed passengers from an after-dinner cruise on to the Embankment.
“And won’t the owner of this baby--” he patted the side of their boat as he tied it up, “have a story to tell his mates tomorrow? ‘I say chaps, it was the strangest thing! Someone took her out for a joyride to Westminster! Left her just as they found her though!’”
“That is odd, old bean!” Rose replied, in a frankly terrible posh accent. The Doctor just made a face and moved to mingle himself with the disembarking passengers, though he looked completely out of place with his unkempt hair and beard, and by-now quite filthy clothes. Donna and Pete followed behind, with Donna peppering Pete with sotto voce questions about the Doctor’s provenance-none of which he gave a straight answer to.
“And you’re okay with this, your daughter and an alien?” Donna curled a lip in vague disgust.
“You may understand once you get to know him. And her,” was Pete’s only cryptic reply. Donna shuddered and shook her head vehemently.
The Doctor set a brisk pace, holding Rose’s hand and periodically looking around for signs of pursuit. After about a block, Donna caught up to them and began to breathlessly accost him with questions.
“What makes you so sure we’re in the right place?”
“I saw it in the picture. The view out the office window narrows down the location, and given what we know about the special relationship between Liberty Systems and the Secretary of Education, I’d say it wouldn’t take a genius-which I am, by the way-to deduct that it was Vincent Heths’ office, and the man in the photograph was Heths himself. I’m a bit new around here, so I haven’t a clue what he looks like, but I can tell by the look on your face that I’m not wrong.”
“Don’t get a big head,” Rose laughed. “Well, bigger.”
“And you reckon we’re just going to be able waltz on in to a government office at ten o’clock at night in order to smash a magical paperweight?” Donna made it clear that this was a purely rhetorical question.
The Doctor stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned on her, causing her to stop and in turn for Pete to nearly run her over from behind. Rose stood to the side and searched the Doctor’s face for signs that she should intervene.
“See that window, right over there? The one with the light on?” He pointed to a rather grand old building across the street. “The man on the other side of that window has a lot to answer for, to me personally not least of all. If you, or he, or anyone else thinks that I’m going to just politely send him a letter and ask him to say he’s sorry, you’re about to be proven very wrong. So you,” he looked at Donna but then cast his gaze on to Pete and Rose as well, who blanched and took a half step back, “all of you, can either help me, or get out of my way.”
Donna pursed her lips and folded her arms over her chest, returning his hard stare. “I don’t know where you came from or who you are, but on this planet, you do not just swan in to secure buildings and harass government ministers. So, have you got a plan, or haven’t you? Because if not, I suggest you form one.”
Rose’s mouth dropped open and Pete looked at the Doctor, then back at Donna, as if watching a tennis match.
“What she means, Doctor, is-“ Rose began, but Donna’s wagging finger cut her off.
“What I mean is what I said. I’m not about to get myself killed, so either Mr. Genius here tells me how we’re going to get in and get out without that happening, or I go home and eat some crisps in front of the telly.”
The Doctor open and shut his mouth several times before replying. “Right,” he said in a small voice. “Good points. Well done, Donna.” He cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “I reckon what we need is some sort of distraction, so I can slip in the window without being noticed. Are you ladies up for that?”
“What sort of distraction?” Rose asked warily.
“I dunno. Be creative.”
Rose cast a glance to Donna who began to unbutton the top buttons of her blouse with a smirk on her face. “You look an absolute fright, but fortunately most men aren’t picky.”
The Doctor’s posture became very stiff suddenly and his eyebrows began to creep skyward as Rose too tarted herself up to the best of her abilities.
“Oh relax, Doctor,” Donna chided. “You can play at alpha male later.”
He licked his lips slowly and tried not to look for too long at Donna’s not inconsiderable cleavage. “Pete, what say us blokes get to work on some breaking and entering? I’ll need you to be a look-out if you don’t mind.”
The Doctor tried to not think of what Rose and Donna were getting up to by way of distracting the armed guards who watched over the security cameras. Instead he concentrated on surveiling the target window from a darkened doorway across the street and whispering a set of plans to Pete, who nodded and got out his mobile as the Doctor loped across the street and up to a service entrance around the corner.
There was a frosted glass window there that was slightly open. Probably a restroom, the Doctor thought, the window open to let in the fresh late summer air. It was easy enough to raise it some more and hoist himself up to crawl through, though he was far from graceful about it, landing on a sink before rolling off on to the hard tiled floor with a barely suppressed string of curse words on his lips.
The hallways of the old government building were carpeted in a rather garish red, muffling his footfalls as he jogged down the corridors in the direction of the office he'd fingered from outside as his target. The building was dark and silent, but security cameras were placed rather conspicuously at the junctions of each intersecting hallway, and the Doctor hoped that whatever Rose and Donna were doing, it was one hell of a show.
The nameplate outside of Vincent Heths' office identified him as Secretary of Education, as well as listing his personal assistant and chief of staff. Light came through the slightly ajar door, which the Doctor pushed open to enter a well-appointed anteroom with some sofas and a couple of other offices adjoining on either side. The source of the light, however, was from Heths' office itself, and the door was wide open, revealing an old-fashioned heavy oak desk, walls lined with floor-to-ceiling book cases and several wing-backed chairs.
The Doctor's eyes scanned the room starting with the desk, searching for the object he'd seen in the photograph. It wasn't there however, and his eyes moved to the book case closest the window, which was enclosed by handsome leaded glass doors and contained several art objects that from a distance could be mistaken for pieces of alien technology. He had to move closer, open the doors and really take a good look back in to the depths of the case, and when he did so, he caught a bluish glint in a corner at eye level.
There it was. Round, and subtly glowing with blue veins that spread over it like a roadmap, mounted in a metal base that changed colour depending on the angle at which it was viewed. He took it out carefully and placed it on the desk, feeling inexplicably drawn to it, wanting to touch it and feeling it hum in his mind like a lullaby.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Vincent Heths stepped in to the office from the anteroom and began to casually approach the Doctor, his hands jingling a bit of change in his pocket.
The Doctor started and placed his hand protectively over the object, causing him to involuntarily cry out when he actually touched the glowing orb.
"That is interesting," Heths continued. "I get no effect at all when I touch it."
The Doctor, recovering, grasped it by its base and began to move away. "This ends now," he said menacingly.
Heths just tutted and stopped his advance. "You don't know what you're doing. That represents the best hope we have as a nation, as a species really, for moving on."
"Moving on from what? Is abducting innocent people, killing your own scientists when they disagree, is that how you move on? Sounds like business as usual for the human race to me." The Doctor glanced out the window furtively, but it was too bright inside and too dark outside to make anything out.
"You don't understand at all," Heths said sadly and shook his head. "It's been five years and still our children are traumatised, our adolescents act out, adults are consumed with grief and fear. And we've discovered how to take all of that away, relieve people of all of that pain."
"Then you're no better than the man who started it all. Lumic wanted to remove emotion from the human race as well."
Heths put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. "Now, that's a bit unfair, Doctor. You're called the Doctor, am I right? You're really quite off the mark here. It's just the negative emotions, the terrible memories of suffering and loss, that's what I want to free people from. Imagine that, everyone happy. And you could have been a part of it."
"And sacrifice my own life." The Doctor gave a bitter laugh and began to search the room for items heavy enough to smash the object with. "Ta, but no thank you."
"For the greater good, though. Sometimes those with extraordinary abilities are called upon to make extraordinary sacrifices. It would have been painless."
"That's not what I remember."
"We could have made it so for you, had you cooperated." Heths returned his hands to his pockets, keeping his posture non-threatening. "If you would have told us your name, we could have applied this very same technology to make it painless for you. Phoenix only works when the subject says his or her name along with the recitation, you see."
The Doctor became incredulous that this man was even trying to justify his actions, and he felt an anger unlike anything he'd ever felt before rise within him. He was supposed to be settling in to his new home, his new life, making leisurely love to the woman he'd spent so long pining for, making new friends and experiencing the one adventure he'd always wanted to undertake but could never even hope for. He'd had such a tantalizing taste of it only to have it snatched from him so quickly, the people he cared about hurt in the process.
"Who are you to even say what everyone else should be feeling? It's disgusting!" He raised his voice as much as he dare without risking bringing every guard in the building from their post in to the office.
Heths remained calm in the face of his fury, and the Doctor wondered if perhaps he'd lost his touch in the transition from full Time Lord to part-human.
"Doesn't everyone want to be free?" Heths asked quietly, and it sounded like a genuine query.
"This," the Doctor gestured to the object in his hand, "is not freedom. It's just amnesia!"
"There are different types of freedom. Some people would rather be happy and forget than remember and suffer."
"You can't force people to be happy. They have to make that choice on their own," he said darkly, partly to himself.
"Oh, I think that I can," Heths replied, with more menace in his voice than previously, signalling that he was growing impatient with the tête-à-tête, which meant that he had another option available to him that he just hadn't used yet. The Doctor wondered what, and kept his eyes on the other man's hands.
"So why did you need me, then, eh? If you're so all-powerful that you can presume to make these sorts of choices for an entire country."
Heths chuckled and smirked crookedly. "We don't need you, but you would solve a problem we've run in to. Permanent storage, you see. We were only ever able to work out this technology in so far as removing the negative thoughts and memories, but they ultimately have no where to go and they return to their owners eventually, unless the Phoenix recitations are kept up with regularly."
"So you thought you'd just use my head as a hard drive?"
"Think of what you'd be giving people, though!" He extended a hand towards the Doctor and advanced another few steps. "Just put that down and we can talk some more about your concerns. Here, we can just have a chat, and if you still aren't convinced, you'll be free to go. You have my word as a gentleman."
Suddenly, the door to the anteroom and then the office burst open and Rose and Donna came running in, shouting for the Doctor and gasping for breath. They slammed the door behind them and began tossing anything that was not nailed down in front of it.
In the moment of confusion, Heths closed the final couple of steps between himself and the Doctor, and it was only at the last second that the Doctor was able to snatch his hand away and prevent Heths from laying his own hands on the object. That had the effect, however, of sending it sailing across the room, landing with a loud clunk directly in the centre and skittering part-way under a chair. All four occupants of the office stared at it, and then at each other. The door began to shudder and the sounds of men yelling and of radios crackling came from the other side. Rose and Donna hurled themselves up against the door, pushing the various ineffectual objects they'd thrown against it out of the way to better brace themselves.
"As it turns out," Donna panted in between attempts to gain better purchase on the carpeted floor, "not all of the security staff play for our side."
(To Chapter 25)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
Donna and Pete continued to peek cautiously over the stern, expecting a police boat to overtake them at any moment, but Rose and the Doctor stood brazenly together behind the wheel, the wind blowing about every third word of their conversation back to their passengers. And every third of those words, Donna didn't really understand, until he eased up on the throttle as they approached Victoria Embankment and he began to give a standard-issue Thames river tour.
"On your right, you will see the Houses of Parliament with the famous clock tower. You know, most people think the whole tower is called Big Ben, but really that's just the bell."
Donna looked over to Pete and whispered, "Houses of Parliament? What's he on about, it hasn't been called that for a hundred years."
"And on your left, the London Eye, the world's largest Ferris wheel. Well, I say largest Ferris wheel, really it's the world's largest cantilevered Ferris wheel. But let's not split hairs."
He carefully pulled the vessel alongside a pier full of tour boats, one of which was disembarking, depositing a number of smartly-dressed passengers from an after-dinner cruise on to the Embankment.
“And won’t the owner of this baby--” he patted the side of their boat as he tied it up, “have a story to tell his mates tomorrow? ‘I say chaps, it was the strangest thing! Someone took her out for a joyride to Westminster! Left her just as they found her though!’”
“That is odd, old bean!” Rose replied, in a frankly terrible posh accent. The Doctor just made a face and moved to mingle himself with the disembarking passengers, though he looked completely out of place with his unkempt hair and beard, and by-now quite filthy clothes. Donna and Pete followed behind, with Donna peppering Pete with sotto voce questions about the Doctor’s provenance-none of which he gave a straight answer to.
“And you’re okay with this, your daughter and an alien?” Donna curled a lip in vague disgust.
“You may understand once you get to know him. And her,” was Pete’s only cryptic reply. Donna shuddered and shook her head vehemently.
The Doctor set a brisk pace, holding Rose’s hand and periodically looking around for signs of pursuit. After about a block, Donna caught up to them and began to breathlessly accost him with questions.
“What makes you so sure we’re in the right place?”
“I saw it in the picture. The view out the office window narrows down the location, and given what we know about the special relationship between Liberty Systems and the Secretary of Education, I’d say it wouldn’t take a genius-which I am, by the way-to deduct that it was Vincent Heths’ office, and the man in the photograph was Heths himself. I’m a bit new around here, so I haven’t a clue what he looks like, but I can tell by the look on your face that I’m not wrong.”
“Don’t get a big head,” Rose laughed. “Well, bigger.”
“And you reckon we’re just going to be able waltz on in to a government office at ten o’clock at night in order to smash a magical paperweight?” Donna made it clear that this was a purely rhetorical question.
The Doctor stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned on her, causing her to stop and in turn for Pete to nearly run her over from behind. Rose stood to the side and searched the Doctor’s face for signs that she should intervene.
“See that window, right over there? The one with the light on?” He pointed to a rather grand old building across the street. “The man on the other side of that window has a lot to answer for, to me personally not least of all. If you, or he, or anyone else thinks that I’m going to just politely send him a letter and ask him to say he’s sorry, you’re about to be proven very wrong. So you,” he looked at Donna but then cast his gaze on to Pete and Rose as well, who blanched and took a half step back, “all of you, can either help me, or get out of my way.”
Donna pursed her lips and folded her arms over her chest, returning his hard stare. “I don’t know where you came from or who you are, but on this planet, you do not just swan in to secure buildings and harass government ministers. So, have you got a plan, or haven’t you? Because if not, I suggest you form one.”
Rose’s mouth dropped open and Pete looked at the Doctor, then back at Donna, as if watching a tennis match.
“What she means, Doctor, is-“ Rose began, but Donna’s wagging finger cut her off.
“What I mean is what I said. I’m not about to get myself killed, so either Mr. Genius here tells me how we’re going to get in and get out without that happening, or I go home and eat some crisps in front of the telly.”
The Doctor open and shut his mouth several times before replying. “Right,” he said in a small voice. “Good points. Well done, Donna.” He cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “I reckon what we need is some sort of distraction, so I can slip in the window without being noticed. Are you ladies up for that?”
“What sort of distraction?” Rose asked warily.
“I dunno. Be creative.”
Rose cast a glance to Donna who began to unbutton the top buttons of her blouse with a smirk on her face. “You look an absolute fright, but fortunately most men aren’t picky.”
The Doctor’s posture became very stiff suddenly and his eyebrows began to creep skyward as Rose too tarted herself up to the best of her abilities.
“Oh relax, Doctor,” Donna chided. “You can play at alpha male later.”
He licked his lips slowly and tried not to look for too long at Donna’s not inconsiderable cleavage. “Pete, what say us blokes get to work on some breaking and entering? I’ll need you to be a look-out if you don’t mind.”
The Doctor tried to not think of what Rose and Donna were getting up to by way of distracting the armed guards who watched over the security cameras. Instead he concentrated on surveiling the target window from a darkened doorway across the street and whispering a set of plans to Pete, who nodded and got out his mobile as the Doctor loped across the street and up to a service entrance around the corner.
There was a frosted glass window there that was slightly open. Probably a restroom, the Doctor thought, the window open to let in the fresh late summer air. It was easy enough to raise it some more and hoist himself up to crawl through, though he was far from graceful about it, landing on a sink before rolling off on to the hard tiled floor with a barely suppressed string of curse words on his lips.
The hallways of the old government building were carpeted in a rather garish red, muffling his footfalls as he jogged down the corridors in the direction of the office he'd fingered from outside as his target. The building was dark and silent, but security cameras were placed rather conspicuously at the junctions of each intersecting hallway, and the Doctor hoped that whatever Rose and Donna were doing, it was one hell of a show.
The nameplate outside of Vincent Heths' office identified him as Secretary of Education, as well as listing his personal assistant and chief of staff. Light came through the slightly ajar door, which the Doctor pushed open to enter a well-appointed anteroom with some sofas and a couple of other offices adjoining on either side. The source of the light, however, was from Heths' office itself, and the door was wide open, revealing an old-fashioned heavy oak desk, walls lined with floor-to-ceiling book cases and several wing-backed chairs.
The Doctor's eyes scanned the room starting with the desk, searching for the object he'd seen in the photograph. It wasn't there however, and his eyes moved to the book case closest the window, which was enclosed by handsome leaded glass doors and contained several art objects that from a distance could be mistaken for pieces of alien technology. He had to move closer, open the doors and really take a good look back in to the depths of the case, and when he did so, he caught a bluish glint in a corner at eye level.
There it was. Round, and subtly glowing with blue veins that spread over it like a roadmap, mounted in a metal base that changed colour depending on the angle at which it was viewed. He took it out carefully and placed it on the desk, feeling inexplicably drawn to it, wanting to touch it and feeling it hum in his mind like a lullaby.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Vincent Heths stepped in to the office from the anteroom and began to casually approach the Doctor, his hands jingling a bit of change in his pocket.
The Doctor started and placed his hand protectively over the object, causing him to involuntarily cry out when he actually touched the glowing orb.
"That is interesting," Heths continued. "I get no effect at all when I touch it."
The Doctor, recovering, grasped it by its base and began to move away. "This ends now," he said menacingly.
Heths just tutted and stopped his advance. "You don't know what you're doing. That represents the best hope we have as a nation, as a species really, for moving on."
"Moving on from what? Is abducting innocent people, killing your own scientists when they disagree, is that how you move on? Sounds like business as usual for the human race to me." The Doctor glanced out the window furtively, but it was too bright inside and too dark outside to make anything out.
"You don't understand at all," Heths said sadly and shook his head. "It's been five years and still our children are traumatised, our adolescents act out, adults are consumed with grief and fear. And we've discovered how to take all of that away, relieve people of all of that pain."
"Then you're no better than the man who started it all. Lumic wanted to remove emotion from the human race as well."
Heths put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. "Now, that's a bit unfair, Doctor. You're called the Doctor, am I right? You're really quite off the mark here. It's just the negative emotions, the terrible memories of suffering and loss, that's what I want to free people from. Imagine that, everyone happy. And you could have been a part of it."
"And sacrifice my own life." The Doctor gave a bitter laugh and began to search the room for items heavy enough to smash the object with. "Ta, but no thank you."
"For the greater good, though. Sometimes those with extraordinary abilities are called upon to make extraordinary sacrifices. It would have been painless."
"That's not what I remember."
"We could have made it so for you, had you cooperated." Heths returned his hands to his pockets, keeping his posture non-threatening. "If you would have told us your name, we could have applied this very same technology to make it painless for you. Phoenix only works when the subject says his or her name along with the recitation, you see."
The Doctor became incredulous that this man was even trying to justify his actions, and he felt an anger unlike anything he'd ever felt before rise within him. He was supposed to be settling in to his new home, his new life, making leisurely love to the woman he'd spent so long pining for, making new friends and experiencing the one adventure he'd always wanted to undertake but could never even hope for. He'd had such a tantalizing taste of it only to have it snatched from him so quickly, the people he cared about hurt in the process.
"Who are you to even say what everyone else should be feeling? It's disgusting!" He raised his voice as much as he dare without risking bringing every guard in the building from their post in to the office.
Heths remained calm in the face of his fury, and the Doctor wondered if perhaps he'd lost his touch in the transition from full Time Lord to part-human.
"Doesn't everyone want to be free?" Heths asked quietly, and it sounded like a genuine query.
"This," the Doctor gestured to the object in his hand, "is not freedom. It's just amnesia!"
"There are different types of freedom. Some people would rather be happy and forget than remember and suffer."
"You can't force people to be happy. They have to make that choice on their own," he said darkly, partly to himself.
"Oh, I think that I can," Heths replied, with more menace in his voice than previously, signalling that he was growing impatient with the tête-à-tête, which meant that he had another option available to him that he just hadn't used yet. The Doctor wondered what, and kept his eyes on the other man's hands.
"So why did you need me, then, eh? If you're so all-powerful that you can presume to make these sorts of choices for an entire country."
Heths chuckled and smirked crookedly. "We don't need you, but you would solve a problem we've run in to. Permanent storage, you see. We were only ever able to work out this technology in so far as removing the negative thoughts and memories, but they ultimately have no where to go and they return to their owners eventually, unless the Phoenix recitations are kept up with regularly."
"So you thought you'd just use my head as a hard drive?"
"Think of what you'd be giving people, though!" He extended a hand towards the Doctor and advanced another few steps. "Just put that down and we can talk some more about your concerns. Here, we can just have a chat, and if you still aren't convinced, you'll be free to go. You have my word as a gentleman."
Suddenly, the door to the anteroom and then the office burst open and Rose and Donna came running in, shouting for the Doctor and gasping for breath. They slammed the door behind them and began tossing anything that was not nailed down in front of it.
In the moment of confusion, Heths closed the final couple of steps between himself and the Doctor, and it was only at the last second that the Doctor was able to snatch his hand away and prevent Heths from laying his own hands on the object. That had the effect, however, of sending it sailing across the room, landing with a loud clunk directly in the centre and skittering part-way under a chair. All four occupants of the office stared at it, and then at each other. The door began to shudder and the sounds of men yelling and of radios crackling came from the other side. Rose and Donna hurled themselves up against the door, pushing the various ineffectual objects they'd thrown against it out of the way to better brace themselves.
"As it turns out," Donna panted in between attempts to gain better purchase on the carpeted floor, "not all of the security staff play for our side."
(To Chapter 25)