DW -- Like Old Times: Part I
Title: Like Old Times
Part: 1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten, Koschei/Theta
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~7,900
Warnings: language, snark, mild violence, sexual situations, spoilers through DW S4
Summary: The Master breaks things in the TARDIS until the Doctor almost goes insane, then they end up in the Vivarium, and then all hell breaks loose. The Doctor is not liking any of this - and while he's at it, the dream-flashback-things really, really need to stop.
Author's Note: So… this little ditty was initially inspired by two very different but equally amazing fics - Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed, and Hard to Get. It actually kind of started out as my brain's way of reconciling them, and then, in May, it grew a plot and took off and refused to let me work on anything else until it was finished, so here we are. XD I also have to credit allchanges's vid Vom Selben Stern (subtitled in English) for talking me into this ship in the first place, and (of course!) eltea for doing the rest. :D If I had two hearts, I would give them both to her - this fic's beta-reader, cheerleader, and good-idea-suggester, not to mention the Theta to my Koschei for ten years now. (…and not in the cutesy-fangirl way; in the "Shit, I'm going to grow up to be a mass-murdering psycho" way.) ♥ ♥
LIKE OLD TIMES - PART I
“You’re a pathetic caretaker,” the Master announced. “I’m wasting away.”
“You could stand to waste a little faster,” the Doctor said without looking up. The TARDIS had ruptured a pipe and started spewing thick steam up through the floor, presumably in response to the nasty things the Master had been saying about her hospitality earlier, so he’d pried up a grate and was halfway into her entrails, attempting to repair the damage and soothe her pride. “You could also hand me the tape.”
He heard the Master pick it up-or pick up something from the multigalaxial mess that was the toolbox-but it didn’t make it to the Doctor’s hand. Instead, the Master flopped down on the grating next to him, dangerously close to his unprotected lower half. He glanced up, settling a reassuring palm on the TARDIS’s heated circuitry, but the Master was just lying there, his arms at his sides, at least for now.
“We were good, once,” the other Time Lord said. “When things were simple, and we were as simple as we’d ever be.”
The Doctor gingerly redirected a sparking wire, thinking it best not to encourage him.
“Back when we respected alien races for their culture, not their war machines. Back before either of us had committed genocide.”
“We were children,” the Doctor cut in, “and we’re not children now. Hand me the tape. It’s black and shiny and clearly tape-like; you can’t miss it.”
The Master heaved a deep sigh and folded his hands behind his head. “You remember,” he said. “You remember everything, no matter what you say. It’s the only thing about you that I never hate.”
The Doctor capitulated and hauled himself up out of the gap in the grating, brushing dust and particles off his front. He sat up fully and looked down at his ward-nightmare, who was lounging on the floor as if it could be remotely comfortable.
“You never hate my hair,” he remarked, getting to his feet and going to hunt for that damned tape.
The Master thought it over in detail, slinging one leg over the other at the knee.
“I hated it last time,” was the verdict.
“You didn’t meet me last time.”
“I saw pictures. It was awful.”
“It wasn’t awful; there just wasn’t much of it.”
The tape seemed to have evaporated. The Doctor wondered if the TARDIS had devoured it to spite him for keeping the Master around at all.
“It was disappointing,” the Master amended.
“What the hell have you done with the tape?” the Doctor asked.
There was a kcck-ing sound as the Master spread his arms, a black ribbon bowing between them.
“It’s a metaphor,” he said. “Some kind of excellent poetry about the things that bind the universe, and how they’re dark and a little shiny and very sticky, and when they stick to themselves, they make a giant knot-”
The Doctor snatched the tape out of his hands and swung down to attend to the pipe again. If he could seal the breakage well enough and then assuage the TARDIS’s bruised ego, she’d heal back up in due time.
“I would have thought you’d appreciate universe metaphors,” the Master said, swinging his arms up and down to make grate angels.
“I would have thought you’d have learned to shut up in nine centuries,” the Doctor muttered back.
“That’s a talent one has to be born with,” the Master informed him, “the first time.”
The first time didn’t mean much when you piled enough years on top of it.
The Doctor stroked the patched-up pipe with one fingertip, gently caressing its mended curve, and then heaved himself out of the hole again. The Master lay as if sunning himself, as if soaking in the TARDIS’s energy, like a cat atop a radiator.
“You’re not much for shutting up either,” the Master said. “You like to hear yourself talk, mostly just because you’re the only one who talks that way.”
With the turquoise light of the TARDIS casting shadows on his face, he looked like a child telling scary stories with a torch held underneath his chin.
And that was part of it; a lot of it; the Doctor been wrong before, or he’d been too absolute-they were ancient and venerable and refined, but they were children all the same. They acted like children, for all their power, and that was a disaster in motion. The Master simply took the things he wanted, and when he had everything he’d been after, he started grabbing other people’s things instead. He didn’t want planets, or populations, or anything until the Doctor did-he didn’t care about his toys until someone else showed interest. He hated listening; he loved games; he prodded at the ribs just to pass the time. He was petulant and excitable and prone to changing moods.
They both were.
The Doctor didn’t have much of a track record for maturity, though he liked to think the Master made him look a little better in comparison. But the similarity was there, was inescapable, was seething in their quick-beat, racing blood. They were cut from the same cloth, carved from the same block of stone, and the whole TARDIS hummed at having four hearts in her core.
The Doctor gathered himself to his feet, the soles of his trainers squealing on the grate just enough to make the Master cringe. He went to the console and laid his fingers over the keyboard, trying to let the warmth of the TARDIS reassure him, trying to feel like everything he’d known and been for eras hadn’t changed.
“Why are you so angry at me?” the Master asked.
The Doctor jammed a finger down on a button, and a readout of the ship’s functions scrolled across the screen. He scoured them for another breakage or another leak. “Might have something to do with the fact that you killed six hundred million innocent people and left the rest to die.”
The Master yawned. “Most of them probably weren’t as innocent as they’d have you believe,” he pointed out. “Besides, you brought them all back. We’re like a yo-yo. That’s another good universe metaph-”
“And yet you still managed to kill a dozen people in Downing Street and the President of the United States,” the Doctor cut in, chewing on his lip as he skipped to the next page. They still weren’t quite optimizing the flow of energy into her heart. Maybe there was a clog somewhere; he’d have to divert power along a few different detour routes and see which were efficient and which weren’t.
“They were politicians,” the Master sighed. When the Doctor glanced at him, he was still lying on the floor, though now he appeared to be trying to improvise a yo-yo from the tape. If anyone could do it, the Master could. “No one will miss them. People are always wishing politicians would drop dead anyway, especially American presidents. I’m practically their fairy godmother for that.”
The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. “That mental image will give me nightmares for at least a hundred years.”
“Good job I’ll be here to cuddle you when you wake up screaming.”
“There will be no cuddling from you or anyone, or you’ll find my screwdriver in an unpleasant place.”
“Is that a promise?” the Master asked.
The Doctor glared in response to his grin and focused on the readouts.
-
The Master had somehow made the faucet twist its neck around like something out of “Poltergeist,” and it was currently spraying cold water everywhere. The Doctor was battling both a temperamental sonic screwdriver and the very wet, very curious fellow Time Lord at his elbow.
“Harold Saxon,” the Master said, apparently apropos of nothing.
“Never existed,” the Doctor muttered, because if you didn’t humor him, he humored himself.
“But it’s a good, strong name, isn’t it?” the Master went on. The Doctor fiddled with the electron concentration setting, and the sink made a gurgling noise but didn’t relent. “That was fun. I liked Harold Saxon.”
“I liked Professor Yana,” the Doctor said. He was going to go for a wrench in a minute.
“You would,” the Master said.
Midway through wondering if he had a sonic wrench somewhere, the Doctor paused.
“Explain something to me,” he said.
The Master patted his arm. “Well, Doctor, when a man loves a woman-”
“If you’re so bloody brilliant,” the Doctor interrupted, “which you are, why do you keep breaking things?”
“I don’t break things.” The Master pouted, exaggeratedly. “Things break, and I happen to be in the room, or on the planet, or near them with a weapon, and you blame me, and I cry myself to sleep at night, unable to bear the stain of your ill will.”
The Doctor stopped without having mended the demonic plumbing. “Explain something else to me,” he said.
The Master attempted to flatten his extremely wet tie, looking at himself in the extremely wet mirror. “Much as I appreciate your acknowledgment of my superior intelligence, this explanation thing is getting a bit tedious.”
“Professor Yana,” the Doctor said. “He was kind, and brilliant, and completely selfless. He dedicated his life to the last chance, and he was going to die in his workshop so that the rocket could fly-to save everyone.” The Doctor had been kneeling on the linoleum in an ever-growing puddle, but now he forsook the incorrigible pipes and stood, watching the only other Time Lord alive. The Master looked back at him, eyes unrevealing. “But that was the Chameleon Arch. It can’t build a new person; it has to appropriate elements that were already there. Professor Yana is in you. Everything he did, you’re capable of.”
The Master met his gaze, unwavering, unmoved. “I’m capable of a lot of things,” he said. “As are you.”
The Doctor could hear himself breathing, could hear his pulses stuttering in his ears as both hearts skittered faster. They were like two glaciers now, built from a common source, frozen into behemoths. But they were shifting; they were always shifting, incrementally, and now that they had collided, perhaps they would meld. Perhaps they could cast off the topography, forget the ideological chasm between them, put aside the too-human standards for good and evil and focus in on a commonality that the universe had narrowed to just they two.
The faucet made a hideous noise and splattered water all over the Master’s face.
“Apparently,” he said, “fixing a sink is not among those things.”
The Doctor didn’t deign to reply as he settled in his puddle and fiddled with the screwdriver’s settings some more.
-
The Doctor was running out of things to repair. The Master’s talent for apparently inadvertent destruction of light fixtures, electronic devices, and anything that remotely resembled glass had settled to an average of about one broken thing every fourteen hours, and even the most complex fixes only took half that time. Relatively soon, the Doctor was going to have to find something else for them to do.
He was beginning to remember why domesticity had never agreed with him, which of course was a thought that wormed its way around the roots of the problem he’d shouldered now.
As a result of all of this sedentary behavior, he’d also been sleeping for considerable stretches. The pitfalls were numerous: first and foremost, any activity that left the Master unsupervised was extremely unwise; second, nowadays, the Doctor actually had time to dream. His dreams tended to develop alternate universes-to pursue what-ifs to their conclusions-and some of them were utopian, but most were not.
It was a nightmare that he had woken from today (“today” being relative, of course, because they were in the Vortex, which did not technically have a today, or a yesterday, or a tomorrow, but an indiscriminate “now”), and he was trying to shake it as he wandered down one of the halls, heading for one of the kitchens. He was hoping the TARDIS might see fit to supply him with some cake, and even if she still resented him for accidentally dropping the pressurized hammer into her workings when the Master had startled him approximately-yesterday, he knew she wouldn’t begrudge him dough to make biscuits. She cared for him too much to deny him comfort entirely. That was one of the things that made the trials worth it; that made things all right-he always had this place to come back to. He always had a haven that actively worked towards his happin-
A ceiling panel plummeted and smashed on the floor right before him, and he jumped half a meter and looked up just in time to see the Master’s cheerful face appear in the gap.
“What in the hell are you doing?” the Doctor demanded, hastily revising his previous conclusions about the improbability of simultaneous bicardiac arrest.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” the Master asked, glancing about himself interestedly.
“Climbing around in the ventilation, you lunat-”
“That’s exactly it,” the Master said. “Really, Doctor, you overanalyze everything.”
The Doctor gave him one last Oncoming Storm look and continued down the hall, pretending he didn’t tense just a little as he passed beneath the Master, who probably wouldn’t be above dropping eggs on his head.
But there were no projectiles yet, so he made it to the kitchen unscathed and began sorting out ingredients. He had a strange urge to put a mess into the oven and watch the right combination of time and heat turn it into something wonderful.
Sentimentality, he thought, had always been a weakness; so had the infuriating creature who broke through one of the panels of the kitchen’s ceiling four minutes later.
The Master clambered down onto one of the countertops, brushing plaster off of the old, wrinkled Oxford shirt he’d been wearing since they started out, and considered the Doctor, who might or might not have had a bit of flour on his nose.
“You know,” the Master said, “this is what you could have had. Way back. The first time.”
The problem was that you didn’t know better until the second time, and by then it was too late.
The Doctor busied himself with the sugar. “This time is the one we’ve got.”
He heard the Master sit down at the table and start tapping out his damnable drumbeat, presumably watching everything the Doctor did, waiting for him to turn around. The Master had always enjoyed forcing him to think about things he would rather have pushed away-which he called pragmatism, and which the Doctor called psychological sadism.
But the thing about regeneration was that it didn’t retroactively change your recollections. You had the leftover memories of another man, and you felt them as he had felt them; understood them as he had done. When the Doctor revisited the days when he had been Theta Sigma, every memory revolved around the bright-eyed, dark-haired young Time Lord who would become the Master, and the blazing, uncomplicated love was overwhelming.
But they hadn’t had this the first time, as it had turned out. Theta had been the beginnings of the Doctor, had been the foundation of all his instincts-Theta had run. He had felt intuitively that any feeling that strong had to be a lie, a trick, a trap. A cage.
It was hard to say who should have been asking for forgiveness now. It was all raw again when Theta rose in him, when the stupid, innocent, enviable boy he’d been tumbled to the forefront of his consciousness. Running, the first time, had been like being flayed alive. But he’d done it. And he hadn’t gone back.
Two fingers tapped four times. “What are you thinking about?” the Master asked, mockingly, because even now they could read each other so easily that he already knew.
The Doctor found a wooden spoon and started stirring. “I’m making a list of planets where it would be acceptable to keep you on a leash.”
“Kinky,” the Master said, sounding like he approved.
The Doctor snuck a few chocolate chips and didn’t respond. He was fairly certain there were only two sane reactions to his circumstances, and those were chocolate binges and suicide.
-
“Kosch-”
The walls of Koschei’s room were white, bright white, a white that clung to your eyelids when you closed them as he pushed you up against their hard blankness.
“What if your parents-”
“Get back early? They won’t. They’ll have more wine than they intend, and then they’ll stay later than they meant to. It’s what always happens. Besides-” His cool hand crept up Theta’s thigh. “I thought you got off to danger.”
A weak, high laugh bubbled out of him; Koschei’s mouth on his throat was too wet for coherency. “I-well, I mostly get off to you-”
He felt Koschei’s grin and scrabbled for the other boy’s dark hair, burying his hands in it, curling his fingers, holding tight. As he arched his back, his head slid against the wall, and he couldn’t help marveling at how smooth it was, how uniform; Koschei’s family was so high-class, and somehow that made it even better when they sprawled amongst the finery and rutted like a pair of animals-
Koschei’s teeth grazed the place his pulse beat in his neck, and he could barely breathe. The other boy’s voice hummed with just the faintest hint of hypnotic suggestion-they’d agreed not to play with each other like that, because it wasn’t fair, but Theta knew that Koschei didn’t even do it on purpose most times; it happened on its own when he wanted something so badly that he forgot.
“Say it.”
“Kosch-”
“Say it.”
“But I-”
“Theta.”
“I l… Ahh… I lo-”
The TARDIS slammed into something, and the force of the collision upended the entire room, pitching the Doctor out of the bed and onto the carpet.
That settled it: the sleeping would have to stop.
He was on his feet and scrambling towards the console room before he’d properly completed the thought.
The moment he’d careened into sight of the console, he discovered the problem. The problem was the Master, who was peering at the monitor and drumming his fingertips on the tarnished console rim.
“Hullo,” the Master said idly. “I think it’s safe out there.”
“You crashed my TARDIS,” the Doctor said flatly.
“Did n-”
“You crashed my TARDIS.”
“I did not,” the Master protested. “I called her a disobedient whore, and she crashed herself.”
The Doctor crossed to the console and started petting everything he could reach. It would take her a week to forgive him for this one.
“Where are we?” he asked, casting the Master a look that he hoped was more severe than resigned.
“I’m not sure,” the Master said, fiddling with a lever. “I was trying for a planet where you could keep me on a leash, but then this pathetic hunk of junk saw fit to sabotage m-ow!” He jerked his hand away from the spark of high-voltage electricity the TARDIS had spat at him.
“Don’t you dare kick her,” the Doctor warned as the Master tensed to do just that. “She’ll take us somewhere terrible.”
The Master dropped onto the jumpseat, all stained white shirt and momentous pout. “Can’t be any worse than staying cooped up in here.”
Still stroking the side of the console in a reassuring manner, the Doctor looked at the Master, and then he looked at the isomorphic deadlock seal he’d spent the entirety of their first day installing on the inside of the doors.
“Give me three hours,” he said.
The Master sighed exaggeratedly and stretched. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got pretty much eternity.”
“I’d noticed,” the Doctor said, and swept out of the room.
-
Three hours and ten minutes. Meh.
He returned to the console room to find that the Master had finally succeeded in making a yo-yo out of the black tape. The Doctor raised his own creation for scrutiny.
The Master blinked.
“Handcuffs,” he said.
“Not just ‘handcuffs,’” the Doctor explained; “handcuffs with an isomorphic deadlock seal, like the door.”
The Master was eyeing them as if they were made of snakes instead of steel. “I never should have taught you that trick.”
“Nope,” the Doctor said, flashing a grin.
Mutinously, the Master glared at the cuffs. “So they’ll only open for you. What happens if you die?”
The Doctor shrugged. “They’ll inject aspirin directly into your bloodstream, and you’ll die, too. Can’t have you wandering the universe without me.”
The Master’s fascinating golden-brown eyes widened and then narrowed. “You would never. You never kill if you can avoid it. Besides, why in the world would you keep a supply of poison in your own TARDIS?”
“I travel with a lot of women,” the Doctor said.
There was a pause.
“Human women,” the Doctor went on. “Who have a tendency to turn into headachy, cramp-ridden harpies once a month.”
The Master smirked. “More harpyish than usual, you mean.”
The Doctor snorted, opening the cuffs and then shutting them with a satisfying snap. “You’re just bitter that Martha tricked you.”
“You’re the one that called her a harpy,” the Master said.
“I wasn’t calling her a harpy,” the Doctor told him. “I was making a humorous generalization. I shouldn’t have expected you to follow the logic.”
“Clearly, you shouldn’t have,” the Master said.
There was a pause, and then the Master nodded to the shackles in the Doctor’s hands.
“Those are the only way I’m getting out of this ship, aren’t they?” he asked.
Wordlessly, the Doctor nodded, and the Master sighed and held out his right wrist.
“This is just getting kinkier by the minute,” he said as the Doctor locked them both in. “Do you have whipped cream?”
“No,” the Doctor said, “but I’m going to get a gag next time.”
-
The Doctor stepped out cautiously, tugging the Master behind him. “Where exactly did you crash us?” he asked.
“No idea,” the Master said. “I was trying to figure it out, but your miserable ship wouldn’t tell me a damn th-ow!”
The door had hit him on his way out. The Doctor had been waiting nine hundred years for that to happen.
“Don’t laugh!” the Master reprimanded, rubbing gingerly at his backside and giving the TARDIS a rather impressive death glare. “This is entirely your fault.”
“No,” the Doctor said, “it’s your fault, for being an unbelievably slow learner. Come on, take a guess-when and where do you think we are?”
“Do you always treat mastery of time and space like a game show?” the Master muttered, but he gave in and started to look around.
They were in a garden, by the looks of things-no, that wasn’t right; it was dense, lush greenery, too thick and tangled to be cultivated. They were in a jungle if they were anywhere, except…
The Doctor tilted his head back.
“Probably a protected rainforest of some kind,” the Master was remarking, examining the nearest vine. “Well-protected; things are growing extraordinarily well.” He kicked at the rich soil with one scuffed dress shoe, and then he jumped experimentally. “Stop the presses,” he said, interested now. “This is definitely a preserve; there’s metal under there. Knew it was too good to be-what are you staring at? I’m not massaging your neck later, I’ll tell you that.”
The Doctor pointed.
The Master glanced cursorily upward, making a face. “Did you leave your bird-watching guide in that pathetic pile of insubordination that you call a ship? Would you like me to fetch it f…” He paused, and then he looked up again. This time, he noticed that the sky was white.
Well. The “sky” was white-because it was actually a dome arching high above them, dotted with sun-simulating lights.
“We’re in a terrarium,” the Master concluded flatly. “Brilliant. I can cross that off my bucket list. Let’s go to New Vegas. No one will even care about the handcuffs there. We can play the same slot machine, and I’ll pretend to get drunk. It’ll be romantic.”
The Doctor took out his screwdriver and found the echolocation function. The south wall was the closest, so he swiveled on his heel and started towards it, dragging a reluctant Master behind him.
“Can’t we take the TARDIS? It could be miles.”
“Don’t whine. I don’t want us to land a spaceship on top of some endangered animal they’re trying to breed. We’re disturbing the ecosystem enough as it is.”
“You disturb me all the time, and no one cares.”
“That’s because you’re obnoxious.”
“So are people who stick bloody terrariums out where TARDISes with their own agendas are going to land.”
“It’s your own fault for speaking to her that way.”
“She’s a bloody ship!”
“You could stop using that word.”
“Bloody, bloody, bloody, you bloody fucking martyr-”
The Doctor rounded on him sharply. “If you’re going to be childish, I’m going to make a cell for you, deep in the TARDIS, and I’m going to seal it shut. We’ve got eternity, and you can spend it alone if you like.”
Their eyes met, and held, and the Master glared at his captor for a long, long moment before he dropped his challenging gaze.
“Right,” the Doctor said, more gently, and moved off again, pulling the Master along.
It wasn’t too far to the end of the enclosure, though it felt like longer than it was with the Master deliberately ignoring every single exotic tree or flower the Doctor pointed out.
The wall, when they reached it, was made of elegant steel, curving up over their heads-definitely a dome, then. Before the Master could make a sardonic comment about fruitlessness in a garden-yes, they knew each other far too well-the Doctor spotted a place where the steel transitioned smoothly into glass, presumably to make an observation window of some kind. Sure enough, as he hauled the Master through the last of the undergrowth, he saw that what looked to be an expansive command center lay on the other side. It boasted various panels dotted with all kinds of screens, lights, dials, and buttons, and the Doctor glimpsed a hallway in the back leading elsewhere. He also had an excellent view of a man dressed in a navy-blue boilersuit, who was dozing in the rolling chair in front of the broadest console.
Making a mental note to ensure that the Master didn’t immediately try to press all the buttons at once, the Doctor knocked demurely on the glass.
The man started awake, his head snapping up, and revealed himself to be humanoid, blond, and relatively young. He gaped at his pair of visitors in disbelief.
The Doctor attempted at a winsome smile.
The young man stood uncertainly and approached the glass, so the Doctor leaned in towards him.
“Hello,” he attempted, raising his voice in the hopes of being heard. “Can you tell me where we are?”
To the Master’s distaste, the young man swallowed and stared a bit more before he mustered his voice.
“How-how did you get in there?”
“Magic,” the Master muttered.
“Hush,” the Doctor told him. “We’re… a bit lost. More than a bit lost. Is there a way for us to get out, by any chance?”
The man stared at them just a little longer before he nodded uncertainly.
“There’s a maintenance entrance just… here, hang on.”
He disappeared past the edge of the glass, and the Doctor took the opportunity to get a good look at himself and his companion. He looked about the same as always, if perhaps a bit more harried, with a few grease smudges on his hands from putting the finishing touches on the isomorphic lock, and he was handcuffed to a man with a dour expression and a pair of mesmerizing tawny eyes. The Master had long since given up on his suit jacket and his tie, and the Doctor thought he could detect a few ice cream stains down the front of his untucked shirt, but there was still something strangely commanding about him. That had always been one of the Master’s many talents.
A hairline crack appeared in the steel wall, at first just a horizontal line of light a little ways above their heads, but it resolved itself into the approximate shape of a door, and then it swung open. The young man from the control room was beckoning nervously.
“I’m not sure how tight the airlock is,” he told them. “Can you hurry?”
Without further ado, the Doctor complied, dragging the Master into the newly-revealed corridor after him. The young operator pushed a large red button on the wall, and the door sealed behind them again.
“Now then,” he said, not entirely steadily, looking between the two of them. “Who exactly are you?”
“Oh,” the Doctor said, “we’re supposed to be here. We’re authorized. We’re extremely authorized. We’re…” He fought the psychic paper out of his pocket and flashed it at the bewildered young man, who only got more bewildered as he squinted at the imprint.
Then he went from squinting back to staring, his eyes wide and impressed.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re a bit early, but-well. The equipment’s all here; please make yourselves at home. I’ll just-I’ll fetch the Director, and he’ll be with you in a moment. Please press the call button if you need anything. I’ll be on my way, then-”
With an anxious ingratiating smile, he turned and fled down the hallway the Doctor had seen before.
The Doctor flipped the paper to look at it.
“Apparently we’re health inspectors with the absolute highest clearance from the government of… Poltiro? I’ve always wanted to go to Poltiro! D’you know what that means? That means-” He pulled them into the control room and gazed past the glass, appreciating it this time. “That means we’re in the Vivarium. Brilliant. It’s this project they’ve got, where they started out trying to replicate the earliest planetary conditions, just a big wash of organic compounds, and have been trying to accelerate its growth to see how their world must’ve been born. We must be well into it by now, if they’ve got insects; pity we tromped all over it, b-”
The Master sat down on the rolling chair and tried to fold his arms, leaving the Doctor extremely unbalanced as he pulled back.
“Have you heard that psychic paper is outlawed on J’keem?” the Master asked. “They made an official statute after that time we posed as an embassy from Yvraïl Three.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” the Doctor reminded him, sounding slightly more plaintive than he would have liked. “We couldn’t exactly tell them we were Time Lords cutting class because you’d just got your TARDIS.”
The Master smirked a little. “It was fine until you immediately struck up diplomatic conversation with the king.”
“They were turning away refugees by the thousands!” the Doctor protested. “I had to say something.”
“And then he started listening to you.”
“You’re just angry because I doodled all through Galactic Rhetoric, and you got top marks.”
“Which is how it went with every class, you miserable underachiever.”
They shared a long, goofy grin before they remembered that they were supposed to be bickering.
The Master cleared his throat. “If you see a Self-Destruct button,” he said, “do let me know.”
“They’d never make it that easy to destroy the Vivarium,” the Doctor informed him. “Billions of investors, thousands of scientists, and, by this point…” He ran his teeth over his tongue, slipping his glasses on to study the engraved plaque on the console. “This can’t be right. What date does that screen show?”
The Master drummed his fingers on the console. “Saturday, November twenty-first, four-thousand and four. And it’s a quarter after six in the morning; the Director’s going to come in his jammies.”
“You’d be surprised how many directors I’ve met in their jammies.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
The Doctor decided not to respond to that, focusing instead on the readings that scrolled across the nearest screen. “This is bizarre. It looks like everything’s in normal order, but they can’t possibly have promoted so much advancement in just a few hundred years…” He reached for the screwdriver, expecting that perhaps the real results were encrypted, only to receive a strong jerk on the handcuffs as the Master tried to spin himself in the chair. The Doctor gave him a dirty look-and then saw that the Master was watching a tall, broad-shouldered man in a nice suit stride down the hallway towards them. He pocketed the screwdriver again, slightly hastily, and flashed a smile, trying to look reputable.
The Director appeared to have come alone, though he was intimidating enough without backup. Offering a thin but inoffensive smile in response to the Doctor’s, he held out a hand to shake and then noticed the cuff preventing the Doctor from reciprocating straightaway.
“Is this some kind of… prisoner and convict arrangement?” he managed to ask.
“Yes,” the Master said, at the same moment the Doctor answered, “No!”
There was a brief silence, during which the Doctor determined that they had made a slightly unfavorable first impression, if the Director’s skeptical eyebrows were anything to go by.
Now that the Doctor thought about it, the rest of the man’s features were rather skeptical, too.
Sighing inwardly, the Doctor produced the psychic paper, which assuaged the skepticism at least for now.
“Ah,” the Director said, and apparently his eyebrows were just generally expressive, because they arced like dark parentheses. “I’ll give you the full tour, then, Mr. Smith, Mr. Saxon.”
The Master gave the Doctor a smug look, as if feeding suggestions into someone else’s psychic energy and solidifying a “good, strong name” was something to be proud of.
The Doctor frowned back and assumed he would get the message, because he would.
All fine suit and huge frame, the Director led them down a series of halls and thence out to a labyrinthine network of desks and cubicles, in and at which dozens of men and women leaned over telephones and computer screens, the low, humming harmony of progress all about them.
“This is primarily our fundraising branch,” the Director explained, sweeping one capacious hand. “You’re welcome to conduct interviews as you like; I’ll also introduce you to our head of human resources.”
“You’re charmingly transparent,” the Master declared. “In fact, I can’t imagine why anyone would waste his time poking around and irritating your extremely efficient employees. Smith, old chum, what exactly are we looking for?”
“Your manners,” the Doctor said. “Oh, I’m sorry; those are a myth.”
The Master grinned, and the Director cracked a thin smile.
“Right,” the Doctor said, suppressing a bit of a shiver at the juxtaposed titles. “I’m afraid that we’ll need a list of all your investors and an index of their contributions, preferably with your signature at the top. Formalities, you understand.”
“Of course,” the Director said. “Why don’t we stop by my office, and I’ll get you a ground plan and turn you loose?”
“Smith likes that part best,” the Master said contentedly, and the Doctor couldn’t argue with that.
-
The Doctor handed the Master their map and put his uncuffed hand in his pocket, toying with the screwdriver. “If you see any doors that say ‘Restricted’ or ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’ give me a yell.”
“For such a smarmy, uptight goody-two-shoes,” the Master remarked, “you seem to enjoy completely abandoning even the slightest pretense of abiding by the rules.”
“It’s for a greater cause,” the Doctor said.
“So illegal activity is acceptable on a small scale?” the Master inquired as the Doctor spotted an information panel on the wall and led them over to it, touching the screen to clear the default logo and considering the buttons. “That’s a slippery slope, Doctor. Where exactly do you draw the line? I know you’ve killed deliberately; I’ve kept track of the recent ones. So what’s the distinction? Your enemies die, and everybody else has your protection? Your opinion decides the fate of every living being? That sounds an awful lot like what I was doing from a different point of view.”
“You’re oversimplifying,” the Doctor said, taking out the screwdriver and applying it to the screen. “No, not even that-you’re overcomplicating. I don’t pick out who lives and dies. I try to save as many people as possible, and there are casualties. That’s all. Oh, hello.”
The screwdriver, of course, had done the trick-he’d slipped into the mainframe computer and brought up the list of investors. Another sonic setting and a tap of a button brought all of the detailed information about the businesses scrolling across the display.
Or, rather, the suspiciously vague information about them.
“That’s a front company,” the Doctor mused. “And that. And that. Question is, what are they actually doing?”
“Not protecting themselves, for one thing,” the Master said. “Who puts all the secret things in the computer? What do they think a pen’s for?”
“Is that how you did it?” the Doctor asked idly. “Took over the world by writing stuff out longhand? So if these aren’t really biological labs and universities, what are they paying for?”
“Do you usually save the universe by asking rhetorical questions of whoever’s in earshot?”
The Doctor gave him a black look. “Yes. I usually do.”
The Master looked back, wide-eyed and blinking. “Well, Doctor, I haven’t any idea. It can’t possibly be that you’re reaching to start with, because you like to meddle in important events on purpose.”
Judiciously, the Doctor elected to ignore him. “Obviously there’s a purpose here beyond ordinary research. We’ll have to see if we can dig up some background on these companies when we’re not in the middle of the building… speaking of which, we should talk to the scientists. Where are the laboratories?”
“Over the river and through the woods,” the Master said. “I’m not a global positioning system.”
“You’re useless,” the Doctor responded, snatching the map away. “They’re extremely close; are you being deliberately contrary, or are you incapable of interpreting simple cartography?”
“Yes,” the Master said.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and led the way to the lab wing, where he headed unhesitatingly through the door that read Development.
This was a proper laboratory, all long metal tables, microscopes, centrifuges, and test tubes. The Doctor felt a little geekier just walking in, and he couldn’t resist the urge to slip his glasses on. He pretended not to hear the Master snort in the process of choking back a laugh.
A few of the scientists glanced up from their work, and a very pretty Asian woman wearing a lab coat stepped forward to meet them.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” the Doctor told her, smiling brightly. “John Smith, health inspector. We’ve just got a few questions for you, if you’d be so kind.”
“For instance,” the Master purred, “do you have a boyfriend, and how committed are you to h-”
“The health agency is implementing a new partnership program,” the Doctor said. “One inspector who respects social conventions, one who doesn’t. Brilliant, isn’t it? Like ‘good cop, bad cop,’ except traumatizing and… well. Anyway, can I get your name?”
“And your phone number, and your home address?” the Master asked cheerfully.
The woman smiled, and the Doctor realized that the Master was probably employing his famous talent for hypnotic suggestion once again. The Doctor entertained the idea of deliberately infecting his traveling companion with Av’klarian strep throat and giving him a dry-erase board for communication.
On second thought, the Master with a dry-erase board sounded like a whole new category of horror.
“Kate Lee,” the scientist was saying. “As for the rest, you look like you’re already pretty occupied.” She nodded to the handcuffs, in the process of which she seemed to notice them more specifically than she had. “Where did you get those?” she asked, kneeling, before the Doctor could direct her attention elsewhere. “They’re amazing! How-”
“Government issue,” the Doctor interjected. “Partnership program. It’s really quite something. So tell me, Kate Lee, how long have you been working here for the Vivarium?”
“Coming up on three months,” Kate said, straightening with a slightly sheepish smile. “All of us are pretty new-the Vivarium has been very proactive about hiring young researchers, which is great for the economy.” She grinned. “Not to mention great for us. It’s a good job-intellectually stimulating, but not too demanding. Decent hours, too, and the supervisors are always very specific about what they want us working on.”
“What are you working on?” the Doctor asked. That was always the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?
“We do a lot of chemical research,” Kate told him, gesturing to one of the scientists bearing a micropipet over a petri dish. “At the moment, our larger task is to develop a compound that maximizes biological growth-and to concentrate it in an airborne form.”
“Airborne?” the Doctor prompted. “What, so that you can just channel it into the Vivarium, and everything grows at once?”
“We’re hoping it’ll speed up all the natural cycles,” Kate confirmed. “Everything dies faster, reproduces faster, evolves faster. Then we learn more. It’s hard to appreciate what you’re seeing when there are only a few life cycles in your own lifetime. If we can show people evolution in action, they’re going to have twice as much faith in the project.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Investors are skeptics.”
“Especially the ones that conceal their identities,” the Master put in, beaming when the Doctor sent him another dark look.
“Do they?” Kate asked. “I guess I can understand that-it’s a risky business venture, and not every company would want their involvement to be publicly known.”
“Fair enough,” the Doctor said. “So, Kate-you’re making aerosol life steroids-”
Kate grinned. “If you want to call it that.”
“More fun. That’s a lot to have accomplished in three months, isn’t it? Mind if I ask what your predecessors were working on?”
“We only got their data,” Kate told him. “We sort of inherited it from management when we came in. They’d made a water-based stimulant-fire up the enzymes, funnel in nutrients. We’ve actually adapted a lot of it for our version.”
“Why reinvent the wheel?” the Doctor agreed. “I think all that’s left to ask is… have you any idea where your predecessors went?”
Kate hesitated, and her smile was a bit more cautious this time. “I gather they’d sort of hit a wall,” she said. “Run out of ideas for how to take it further, you know.”
“And the higher-ups thought they’d bring in some new blood?” the Master asked sunnily.
Kate blinked. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Something like that.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Great, then. Thanks very much, Kate Lee.”
“Water-based, airborne,” the Master mused, grinning. “What comes next?”
“I’m not sure,” Kate answered, smiling tentatively.
“I didn’t think so,” the Master replied.
“Oh, come on,” the Doctor said, hauling him back out to the hall, leaving a startled Kate Lee and her three-month-old lab team behind.
“You don’t have to intimidate people on purpose,” the Doctor muttered as they moved on down the corridor, looking for other doors of interest.
“But I’m good at it,” the Master protested. “And I miss the benefits of uncontested world dictatorship. You do realize that you erased all of my hard-won accomplishments?”
“I gave you a blank slate,” the Doctor said, “instead of turning you in to the Judoon and leaving you to their mercy or lack thereof.”
“I should be thanking you on bended knee,” the Master remarked. “And doing your dishes, and rubbing your back, and buying you flowers-”
“What’s this?” the Doctor murmured, peeking into an open storeroom. “Look here, come on.”
“I’m attached to you; you don’t have to call me over. I’m not a dog.”
“Too bad,” the Doctor said. “You’d be right at home in this company.”
The right wall was composed entirely of stacked cages, their fronts lined with wire. Inside of the cages, chickens, pigs, and, in a few extremely large structures, small cows paced and stared out of their confines.
“What is this?” the Doctor asked again, drawing the screwdriver and scanning the strange menagerie. “Why would they…?”
“Maybe they need test subjects for their growth-hormone anthrax thing,” the Master suggested sardonically. “Maybe the employees prefer their food extremely fresh. Can we go? It smells terrible in here. Reminds me of Earth.”
“Lay off,” the Doctor snapped, finding another information screen and drawing up a list of inventory.
“You’re supposed to laugh,” the Master told him. “It’s Gallifreyan humor.”
“No, it’s just you.”
“Just me? It’s never just me. I am monumental.”
“Your ego is. Why do they need two dozen chickens when they’re trying to replicate evolution in the first place?”
“You’re such a cynic, Doctor. You always assume it’s foul play.”
The Doctor stared at him.
“Foul play?” the Master repeated hopefully. “Foul, fowl… you’re getting slow in your old age.”
A little bit more of the Doctor’s soul died.
He heard a creak, and, turning, discovered another man in a boilersuit, this one middle-aged and pushing a trolley cart loaded up with buckets and boxes, all of them sealed.
“Hullo,” he said, pushing back his cap. “Can I help you?”
“John Smith, health inspector,” the Doctor volunteered, flashing the psychic paper.
“Harold Saxon, sex machine,” the Master added.
The worker’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t comment. “Good to meet you. What can I do for you?”
“Tell me what they’re doing with the small farm you’ve got here, for starters,” the Doctor said.
The man rubbed at his forehead. “Couldn’t tell you that,” he said, which was about as much as the Doctor had expected. “Though I ought to tell you that it’s a quarter of six, and we’re about to shut down around here. I’m sure you can come back tomorrow.”
“Ah,” the Doctor said, exchanging a glance with the Master. “I suppose we will, then.”
It was one of the Doctor’s more anticlimactic exits, but there wasn’t much to be done for that.
“I refuse to break back in overnight,” the Master announced, more loudly than the Doctor would have liked, as they followed the signs towards the main doors. “If you try to make me, I’ll scream and alert all the night watchmen.”
“I’m sure there will be a decent hotel in the town,” the Doctor said as they stepped out into brisk air of the evening. “We can stay there tonight. Let me know if you see an automated teller machine.”
“You could just call it an ATM like everyone else.”
“I try to spell it out in the hopes that eventually people will stop adding the redundant ‘machine’ after the acronym.”
The Master pursed his lips. “The power of positive reinforcement never worked for me.”
“Noticed.”
“I favor the power of corporal punishment and demonstrative explosions.”
“Noticed that, too.”
“Look, an ATM machine!”
“You are disgusting.”
[PART II]
Part: 1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten, Koschei/Theta
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~7,900
Warnings: language, snark, mild violence, sexual situations, spoilers through DW S4
Summary: The Master breaks things in the TARDIS until the Doctor almost goes insane, then they end up in the Vivarium, and then all hell breaks loose. The Doctor is not liking any of this - and while he's at it, the dream-flashback-things really, really need to stop.
Author's Note: So… this little ditty was initially inspired by two very different but equally amazing fics - Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed, and Hard to Get. It actually kind of started out as my brain's way of reconciling them, and then, in May, it grew a plot and took off and refused to let me work on anything else until it was finished, so here we are. XD I also have to credit allchanges's vid Vom Selben Stern (subtitled in English) for talking me into this ship in the first place, and (of course!) eltea for doing the rest. :D If I had two hearts, I would give them both to her - this fic's beta-reader, cheerleader, and good-idea-suggester, not to mention the Theta to my Koschei for ten years now. (…and not in the cutesy-fangirl way; in the "Shit, I'm going to grow up to be a mass-murdering psycho" way.) ♥ ♥
LIKE OLD TIMES - PART I
“You’re a pathetic caretaker,” the Master announced. “I’m wasting away.”
“You could stand to waste a little faster,” the Doctor said without looking up. The TARDIS had ruptured a pipe and started spewing thick steam up through the floor, presumably in response to the nasty things the Master had been saying about her hospitality earlier, so he’d pried up a grate and was halfway into her entrails, attempting to repair the damage and soothe her pride. “You could also hand me the tape.”
He heard the Master pick it up-or pick up something from the multigalaxial mess that was the toolbox-but it didn’t make it to the Doctor’s hand. Instead, the Master flopped down on the grating next to him, dangerously close to his unprotected lower half. He glanced up, settling a reassuring palm on the TARDIS’s heated circuitry, but the Master was just lying there, his arms at his sides, at least for now.
“We were good, once,” the other Time Lord said. “When things were simple, and we were as simple as we’d ever be.”
The Doctor gingerly redirected a sparking wire, thinking it best not to encourage him.
“Back when we respected alien races for their culture, not their war machines. Back before either of us had committed genocide.”
“We were children,” the Doctor cut in, “and we’re not children now. Hand me the tape. It’s black and shiny and clearly tape-like; you can’t miss it.”
The Master heaved a deep sigh and folded his hands behind his head. “You remember,” he said. “You remember everything, no matter what you say. It’s the only thing about you that I never hate.”
The Doctor capitulated and hauled himself up out of the gap in the grating, brushing dust and particles off his front. He sat up fully and looked down at his ward-nightmare, who was lounging on the floor as if it could be remotely comfortable.
“You never hate my hair,” he remarked, getting to his feet and going to hunt for that damned tape.
The Master thought it over in detail, slinging one leg over the other at the knee.
“I hated it last time,” was the verdict.
“You didn’t meet me last time.”
“I saw pictures. It was awful.”
“It wasn’t awful; there just wasn’t much of it.”
The tape seemed to have evaporated. The Doctor wondered if the TARDIS had devoured it to spite him for keeping the Master around at all.
“It was disappointing,” the Master amended.
“What the hell have you done with the tape?” the Doctor asked.
There was a kcck-ing sound as the Master spread his arms, a black ribbon bowing between them.
“It’s a metaphor,” he said. “Some kind of excellent poetry about the things that bind the universe, and how they’re dark and a little shiny and very sticky, and when they stick to themselves, they make a giant knot-”
The Doctor snatched the tape out of his hands and swung down to attend to the pipe again. If he could seal the breakage well enough and then assuage the TARDIS’s bruised ego, she’d heal back up in due time.
“I would have thought you’d appreciate universe metaphors,” the Master said, swinging his arms up and down to make grate angels.
“I would have thought you’d have learned to shut up in nine centuries,” the Doctor muttered back.
“That’s a talent one has to be born with,” the Master informed him, “the first time.”
The first time didn’t mean much when you piled enough years on top of it.
The Doctor stroked the patched-up pipe with one fingertip, gently caressing its mended curve, and then heaved himself out of the hole again. The Master lay as if sunning himself, as if soaking in the TARDIS’s energy, like a cat atop a radiator.
“You’re not much for shutting up either,” the Master said. “You like to hear yourself talk, mostly just because you’re the only one who talks that way.”
With the turquoise light of the TARDIS casting shadows on his face, he looked like a child telling scary stories with a torch held underneath his chin.
And that was part of it; a lot of it; the Doctor been wrong before, or he’d been too absolute-they were ancient and venerable and refined, but they were children all the same. They acted like children, for all their power, and that was a disaster in motion. The Master simply took the things he wanted, and when he had everything he’d been after, he started grabbing other people’s things instead. He didn’t want planets, or populations, or anything until the Doctor did-he didn’t care about his toys until someone else showed interest. He hated listening; he loved games; he prodded at the ribs just to pass the time. He was petulant and excitable and prone to changing moods.
They both were.
The Doctor didn’t have much of a track record for maturity, though he liked to think the Master made him look a little better in comparison. But the similarity was there, was inescapable, was seething in their quick-beat, racing blood. They were cut from the same cloth, carved from the same block of stone, and the whole TARDIS hummed at having four hearts in her core.
The Doctor gathered himself to his feet, the soles of his trainers squealing on the grate just enough to make the Master cringe. He went to the console and laid his fingers over the keyboard, trying to let the warmth of the TARDIS reassure him, trying to feel like everything he’d known and been for eras hadn’t changed.
“Why are you so angry at me?” the Master asked.
The Doctor jammed a finger down on a button, and a readout of the ship’s functions scrolled across the screen. He scoured them for another breakage or another leak. “Might have something to do with the fact that you killed six hundred million innocent people and left the rest to die.”
The Master yawned. “Most of them probably weren’t as innocent as they’d have you believe,” he pointed out. “Besides, you brought them all back. We’re like a yo-yo. That’s another good universe metaph-”
“And yet you still managed to kill a dozen people in Downing Street and the President of the United States,” the Doctor cut in, chewing on his lip as he skipped to the next page. They still weren’t quite optimizing the flow of energy into her heart. Maybe there was a clog somewhere; he’d have to divert power along a few different detour routes and see which were efficient and which weren’t.
“They were politicians,” the Master sighed. When the Doctor glanced at him, he was still lying on the floor, though now he appeared to be trying to improvise a yo-yo from the tape. If anyone could do it, the Master could. “No one will miss them. People are always wishing politicians would drop dead anyway, especially American presidents. I’m practically their fairy godmother for that.”
The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. “That mental image will give me nightmares for at least a hundred years.”
“Good job I’ll be here to cuddle you when you wake up screaming.”
“There will be no cuddling from you or anyone, or you’ll find my screwdriver in an unpleasant place.”
“Is that a promise?” the Master asked.
The Doctor glared in response to his grin and focused on the readouts.
-
The Master had somehow made the faucet twist its neck around like something out of “Poltergeist,” and it was currently spraying cold water everywhere. The Doctor was battling both a temperamental sonic screwdriver and the very wet, very curious fellow Time Lord at his elbow.
“Harold Saxon,” the Master said, apparently apropos of nothing.
“Never existed,” the Doctor muttered, because if you didn’t humor him, he humored himself.
“But it’s a good, strong name, isn’t it?” the Master went on. The Doctor fiddled with the electron concentration setting, and the sink made a gurgling noise but didn’t relent. “That was fun. I liked Harold Saxon.”
“I liked Professor Yana,” the Doctor said. He was going to go for a wrench in a minute.
“You would,” the Master said.
Midway through wondering if he had a sonic wrench somewhere, the Doctor paused.
“Explain something to me,” he said.
The Master patted his arm. “Well, Doctor, when a man loves a woman-”
“If you’re so bloody brilliant,” the Doctor interrupted, “which you are, why do you keep breaking things?”
“I don’t break things.” The Master pouted, exaggeratedly. “Things break, and I happen to be in the room, or on the planet, or near them with a weapon, and you blame me, and I cry myself to sleep at night, unable to bear the stain of your ill will.”
The Doctor stopped without having mended the demonic plumbing. “Explain something else to me,” he said.
The Master attempted to flatten his extremely wet tie, looking at himself in the extremely wet mirror. “Much as I appreciate your acknowledgment of my superior intelligence, this explanation thing is getting a bit tedious.”
“Professor Yana,” the Doctor said. “He was kind, and brilliant, and completely selfless. He dedicated his life to the last chance, and he was going to die in his workshop so that the rocket could fly-to save everyone.” The Doctor had been kneeling on the linoleum in an ever-growing puddle, but now he forsook the incorrigible pipes and stood, watching the only other Time Lord alive. The Master looked back at him, eyes unrevealing. “But that was the Chameleon Arch. It can’t build a new person; it has to appropriate elements that were already there. Professor Yana is in you. Everything he did, you’re capable of.”
The Master met his gaze, unwavering, unmoved. “I’m capable of a lot of things,” he said. “As are you.”
The Doctor could hear himself breathing, could hear his pulses stuttering in his ears as both hearts skittered faster. They were like two glaciers now, built from a common source, frozen into behemoths. But they were shifting; they were always shifting, incrementally, and now that they had collided, perhaps they would meld. Perhaps they could cast off the topography, forget the ideological chasm between them, put aside the too-human standards for good and evil and focus in on a commonality that the universe had narrowed to just they two.
The faucet made a hideous noise and splattered water all over the Master’s face.
“Apparently,” he said, “fixing a sink is not among those things.”
The Doctor didn’t deign to reply as he settled in his puddle and fiddled with the screwdriver’s settings some more.
-
The Doctor was running out of things to repair. The Master’s talent for apparently inadvertent destruction of light fixtures, electronic devices, and anything that remotely resembled glass had settled to an average of about one broken thing every fourteen hours, and even the most complex fixes only took half that time. Relatively soon, the Doctor was going to have to find something else for them to do.
He was beginning to remember why domesticity had never agreed with him, which of course was a thought that wormed its way around the roots of the problem he’d shouldered now.
As a result of all of this sedentary behavior, he’d also been sleeping for considerable stretches. The pitfalls were numerous: first and foremost, any activity that left the Master unsupervised was extremely unwise; second, nowadays, the Doctor actually had time to dream. His dreams tended to develop alternate universes-to pursue what-ifs to their conclusions-and some of them were utopian, but most were not.
It was a nightmare that he had woken from today (“today” being relative, of course, because they were in the Vortex, which did not technically have a today, or a yesterday, or a tomorrow, but an indiscriminate “now”), and he was trying to shake it as he wandered down one of the halls, heading for one of the kitchens. He was hoping the TARDIS might see fit to supply him with some cake, and even if she still resented him for accidentally dropping the pressurized hammer into her workings when the Master had startled him approximately-yesterday, he knew she wouldn’t begrudge him dough to make biscuits. She cared for him too much to deny him comfort entirely. That was one of the things that made the trials worth it; that made things all right-he always had this place to come back to. He always had a haven that actively worked towards his happin-
A ceiling panel plummeted and smashed on the floor right before him, and he jumped half a meter and looked up just in time to see the Master’s cheerful face appear in the gap.
“What in the hell are you doing?” the Doctor demanded, hastily revising his previous conclusions about the improbability of simultaneous bicardiac arrest.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” the Master asked, glancing about himself interestedly.
“Climbing around in the ventilation, you lunat-”
“That’s exactly it,” the Master said. “Really, Doctor, you overanalyze everything.”
The Doctor gave him one last Oncoming Storm look and continued down the hall, pretending he didn’t tense just a little as he passed beneath the Master, who probably wouldn’t be above dropping eggs on his head.
But there were no projectiles yet, so he made it to the kitchen unscathed and began sorting out ingredients. He had a strange urge to put a mess into the oven and watch the right combination of time and heat turn it into something wonderful.
Sentimentality, he thought, had always been a weakness; so had the infuriating creature who broke through one of the panels of the kitchen’s ceiling four minutes later.
The Master clambered down onto one of the countertops, brushing plaster off of the old, wrinkled Oxford shirt he’d been wearing since they started out, and considered the Doctor, who might or might not have had a bit of flour on his nose.
“You know,” the Master said, “this is what you could have had. Way back. The first time.”
The problem was that you didn’t know better until the second time, and by then it was too late.
The Doctor busied himself with the sugar. “This time is the one we’ve got.”
He heard the Master sit down at the table and start tapping out his damnable drumbeat, presumably watching everything the Doctor did, waiting for him to turn around. The Master had always enjoyed forcing him to think about things he would rather have pushed away-which he called pragmatism, and which the Doctor called psychological sadism.
But the thing about regeneration was that it didn’t retroactively change your recollections. You had the leftover memories of another man, and you felt them as he had felt them; understood them as he had done. When the Doctor revisited the days when he had been Theta Sigma, every memory revolved around the bright-eyed, dark-haired young Time Lord who would become the Master, and the blazing, uncomplicated love was overwhelming.
But they hadn’t had this the first time, as it had turned out. Theta had been the beginnings of the Doctor, had been the foundation of all his instincts-Theta had run. He had felt intuitively that any feeling that strong had to be a lie, a trick, a trap. A cage.
It was hard to say who should have been asking for forgiveness now. It was all raw again when Theta rose in him, when the stupid, innocent, enviable boy he’d been tumbled to the forefront of his consciousness. Running, the first time, had been like being flayed alive. But he’d done it. And he hadn’t gone back.
Two fingers tapped four times. “What are you thinking about?” the Master asked, mockingly, because even now they could read each other so easily that he already knew.
The Doctor found a wooden spoon and started stirring. “I’m making a list of planets where it would be acceptable to keep you on a leash.”
“Kinky,” the Master said, sounding like he approved.
The Doctor snuck a few chocolate chips and didn’t respond. He was fairly certain there were only two sane reactions to his circumstances, and those were chocolate binges and suicide.
-
“Kosch-”
The walls of Koschei’s room were white, bright white, a white that clung to your eyelids when you closed them as he pushed you up against their hard blankness.
“What if your parents-”
“Get back early? They won’t. They’ll have more wine than they intend, and then they’ll stay later than they meant to. It’s what always happens. Besides-” His cool hand crept up Theta’s thigh. “I thought you got off to danger.”
A weak, high laugh bubbled out of him; Koschei’s mouth on his throat was too wet for coherency. “I-well, I mostly get off to you-”
He felt Koschei’s grin and scrabbled for the other boy’s dark hair, burying his hands in it, curling his fingers, holding tight. As he arched his back, his head slid against the wall, and he couldn’t help marveling at how smooth it was, how uniform; Koschei’s family was so high-class, and somehow that made it even better when they sprawled amongst the finery and rutted like a pair of animals-
Koschei’s teeth grazed the place his pulse beat in his neck, and he could barely breathe. The other boy’s voice hummed with just the faintest hint of hypnotic suggestion-they’d agreed not to play with each other like that, because it wasn’t fair, but Theta knew that Koschei didn’t even do it on purpose most times; it happened on its own when he wanted something so badly that he forgot.
“Say it.”
“Kosch-”
“Say it.”
“But I-”
“Theta.”
“I l… Ahh… I lo-”
The TARDIS slammed into something, and the force of the collision upended the entire room, pitching the Doctor out of the bed and onto the carpet.
That settled it: the sleeping would have to stop.
He was on his feet and scrambling towards the console room before he’d properly completed the thought.
The moment he’d careened into sight of the console, he discovered the problem. The problem was the Master, who was peering at the monitor and drumming his fingertips on the tarnished console rim.
“Hullo,” the Master said idly. “I think it’s safe out there.”
“You crashed my TARDIS,” the Doctor said flatly.
“Did n-”
“You crashed my TARDIS.”
“I did not,” the Master protested. “I called her a disobedient whore, and she crashed herself.”
The Doctor crossed to the console and started petting everything he could reach. It would take her a week to forgive him for this one.
“Where are we?” he asked, casting the Master a look that he hoped was more severe than resigned.
“I’m not sure,” the Master said, fiddling with a lever. “I was trying for a planet where you could keep me on a leash, but then this pathetic hunk of junk saw fit to sabotage m-ow!” He jerked his hand away from the spark of high-voltage electricity the TARDIS had spat at him.
“Don’t you dare kick her,” the Doctor warned as the Master tensed to do just that. “She’ll take us somewhere terrible.”
The Master dropped onto the jumpseat, all stained white shirt and momentous pout. “Can’t be any worse than staying cooped up in here.”
Still stroking the side of the console in a reassuring manner, the Doctor looked at the Master, and then he looked at the isomorphic deadlock seal he’d spent the entirety of their first day installing on the inside of the doors.
“Give me three hours,” he said.
The Master sighed exaggeratedly and stretched. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got pretty much eternity.”
“I’d noticed,” the Doctor said, and swept out of the room.
-
Three hours and ten minutes. Meh.
He returned to the console room to find that the Master had finally succeeded in making a yo-yo out of the black tape. The Doctor raised his own creation for scrutiny.
The Master blinked.
“Handcuffs,” he said.
“Not just ‘handcuffs,’” the Doctor explained; “handcuffs with an isomorphic deadlock seal, like the door.”
The Master was eyeing them as if they were made of snakes instead of steel. “I never should have taught you that trick.”
“Nope,” the Doctor said, flashing a grin.
Mutinously, the Master glared at the cuffs. “So they’ll only open for you. What happens if you die?”
The Doctor shrugged. “They’ll inject aspirin directly into your bloodstream, and you’ll die, too. Can’t have you wandering the universe without me.”
The Master’s fascinating golden-brown eyes widened and then narrowed. “You would never. You never kill if you can avoid it. Besides, why in the world would you keep a supply of poison in your own TARDIS?”
“I travel with a lot of women,” the Doctor said.
There was a pause.
“Human women,” the Doctor went on. “Who have a tendency to turn into headachy, cramp-ridden harpies once a month.”
The Master smirked. “More harpyish than usual, you mean.”
The Doctor snorted, opening the cuffs and then shutting them with a satisfying snap. “You’re just bitter that Martha tricked you.”
“You’re the one that called her a harpy,” the Master said.
“I wasn’t calling her a harpy,” the Doctor told him. “I was making a humorous generalization. I shouldn’t have expected you to follow the logic.”
“Clearly, you shouldn’t have,” the Master said.
There was a pause, and then the Master nodded to the shackles in the Doctor’s hands.
“Those are the only way I’m getting out of this ship, aren’t they?” he asked.
Wordlessly, the Doctor nodded, and the Master sighed and held out his right wrist.
“This is just getting kinkier by the minute,” he said as the Doctor locked them both in. “Do you have whipped cream?”
“No,” the Doctor said, “but I’m going to get a gag next time.”
-
The Doctor stepped out cautiously, tugging the Master behind him. “Where exactly did you crash us?” he asked.
“No idea,” the Master said. “I was trying to figure it out, but your miserable ship wouldn’t tell me a damn th-ow!”
The door had hit him on his way out. The Doctor had been waiting nine hundred years for that to happen.
“Don’t laugh!” the Master reprimanded, rubbing gingerly at his backside and giving the TARDIS a rather impressive death glare. “This is entirely your fault.”
“No,” the Doctor said, “it’s your fault, for being an unbelievably slow learner. Come on, take a guess-when and where do you think we are?”
“Do you always treat mastery of time and space like a game show?” the Master muttered, but he gave in and started to look around.
They were in a garden, by the looks of things-no, that wasn’t right; it was dense, lush greenery, too thick and tangled to be cultivated. They were in a jungle if they were anywhere, except…
The Doctor tilted his head back.
“Probably a protected rainforest of some kind,” the Master was remarking, examining the nearest vine. “Well-protected; things are growing extraordinarily well.” He kicked at the rich soil with one scuffed dress shoe, and then he jumped experimentally. “Stop the presses,” he said, interested now. “This is definitely a preserve; there’s metal under there. Knew it was too good to be-what are you staring at? I’m not massaging your neck later, I’ll tell you that.”
The Doctor pointed.
The Master glanced cursorily upward, making a face. “Did you leave your bird-watching guide in that pathetic pile of insubordination that you call a ship? Would you like me to fetch it f…” He paused, and then he looked up again. This time, he noticed that the sky was white.
Well. The “sky” was white-because it was actually a dome arching high above them, dotted with sun-simulating lights.
“We’re in a terrarium,” the Master concluded flatly. “Brilliant. I can cross that off my bucket list. Let’s go to New Vegas. No one will even care about the handcuffs there. We can play the same slot machine, and I’ll pretend to get drunk. It’ll be romantic.”
The Doctor took out his screwdriver and found the echolocation function. The south wall was the closest, so he swiveled on his heel and started towards it, dragging a reluctant Master behind him.
“Can’t we take the TARDIS? It could be miles.”
“Don’t whine. I don’t want us to land a spaceship on top of some endangered animal they’re trying to breed. We’re disturbing the ecosystem enough as it is.”
“You disturb me all the time, and no one cares.”
“That’s because you’re obnoxious.”
“So are people who stick bloody terrariums out where TARDISes with their own agendas are going to land.”
“It’s your own fault for speaking to her that way.”
“She’s a bloody ship!”
“You could stop using that word.”
“Bloody, bloody, bloody, you bloody fucking martyr-”
The Doctor rounded on him sharply. “If you’re going to be childish, I’m going to make a cell for you, deep in the TARDIS, and I’m going to seal it shut. We’ve got eternity, and you can spend it alone if you like.”
Their eyes met, and held, and the Master glared at his captor for a long, long moment before he dropped his challenging gaze.
“Right,” the Doctor said, more gently, and moved off again, pulling the Master along.
It wasn’t too far to the end of the enclosure, though it felt like longer than it was with the Master deliberately ignoring every single exotic tree or flower the Doctor pointed out.
The wall, when they reached it, was made of elegant steel, curving up over their heads-definitely a dome, then. Before the Master could make a sardonic comment about fruitlessness in a garden-yes, they knew each other far too well-the Doctor spotted a place where the steel transitioned smoothly into glass, presumably to make an observation window of some kind. Sure enough, as he hauled the Master through the last of the undergrowth, he saw that what looked to be an expansive command center lay on the other side. It boasted various panels dotted with all kinds of screens, lights, dials, and buttons, and the Doctor glimpsed a hallway in the back leading elsewhere. He also had an excellent view of a man dressed in a navy-blue boilersuit, who was dozing in the rolling chair in front of the broadest console.
Making a mental note to ensure that the Master didn’t immediately try to press all the buttons at once, the Doctor knocked demurely on the glass.
The man started awake, his head snapping up, and revealed himself to be humanoid, blond, and relatively young. He gaped at his pair of visitors in disbelief.
The Doctor attempted at a winsome smile.
The young man stood uncertainly and approached the glass, so the Doctor leaned in towards him.
“Hello,” he attempted, raising his voice in the hopes of being heard. “Can you tell me where we are?”
To the Master’s distaste, the young man swallowed and stared a bit more before he mustered his voice.
“How-how did you get in there?”
“Magic,” the Master muttered.
“Hush,” the Doctor told him. “We’re… a bit lost. More than a bit lost. Is there a way for us to get out, by any chance?”
The man stared at them just a little longer before he nodded uncertainly.
“There’s a maintenance entrance just… here, hang on.”
He disappeared past the edge of the glass, and the Doctor took the opportunity to get a good look at himself and his companion. He looked about the same as always, if perhaps a bit more harried, with a few grease smudges on his hands from putting the finishing touches on the isomorphic lock, and he was handcuffed to a man with a dour expression and a pair of mesmerizing tawny eyes. The Master had long since given up on his suit jacket and his tie, and the Doctor thought he could detect a few ice cream stains down the front of his untucked shirt, but there was still something strangely commanding about him. That had always been one of the Master’s many talents.
A hairline crack appeared in the steel wall, at first just a horizontal line of light a little ways above their heads, but it resolved itself into the approximate shape of a door, and then it swung open. The young man from the control room was beckoning nervously.
“I’m not sure how tight the airlock is,” he told them. “Can you hurry?”
Without further ado, the Doctor complied, dragging the Master into the newly-revealed corridor after him. The young operator pushed a large red button on the wall, and the door sealed behind them again.
“Now then,” he said, not entirely steadily, looking between the two of them. “Who exactly are you?”
“Oh,” the Doctor said, “we’re supposed to be here. We’re authorized. We’re extremely authorized. We’re…” He fought the psychic paper out of his pocket and flashed it at the bewildered young man, who only got more bewildered as he squinted at the imprint.
Then he went from squinting back to staring, his eyes wide and impressed.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re a bit early, but-well. The equipment’s all here; please make yourselves at home. I’ll just-I’ll fetch the Director, and he’ll be with you in a moment. Please press the call button if you need anything. I’ll be on my way, then-”
With an anxious ingratiating smile, he turned and fled down the hallway the Doctor had seen before.
The Doctor flipped the paper to look at it.
“Apparently we’re health inspectors with the absolute highest clearance from the government of… Poltiro? I’ve always wanted to go to Poltiro! D’you know what that means? That means-” He pulled them into the control room and gazed past the glass, appreciating it this time. “That means we’re in the Vivarium. Brilliant. It’s this project they’ve got, where they started out trying to replicate the earliest planetary conditions, just a big wash of organic compounds, and have been trying to accelerate its growth to see how their world must’ve been born. We must be well into it by now, if they’ve got insects; pity we tromped all over it, b-”
The Master sat down on the rolling chair and tried to fold his arms, leaving the Doctor extremely unbalanced as he pulled back.
“Have you heard that psychic paper is outlawed on J’keem?” the Master asked. “They made an official statute after that time we posed as an embassy from Yvraïl Three.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” the Doctor reminded him, sounding slightly more plaintive than he would have liked. “We couldn’t exactly tell them we were Time Lords cutting class because you’d just got your TARDIS.”
The Master smirked a little. “It was fine until you immediately struck up diplomatic conversation with the king.”
“They were turning away refugees by the thousands!” the Doctor protested. “I had to say something.”
“And then he started listening to you.”
“You’re just angry because I doodled all through Galactic Rhetoric, and you got top marks.”
“Which is how it went with every class, you miserable underachiever.”
They shared a long, goofy grin before they remembered that they were supposed to be bickering.
The Master cleared his throat. “If you see a Self-Destruct button,” he said, “do let me know.”
“They’d never make it that easy to destroy the Vivarium,” the Doctor informed him. “Billions of investors, thousands of scientists, and, by this point…” He ran his teeth over his tongue, slipping his glasses on to study the engraved plaque on the console. “This can’t be right. What date does that screen show?”
The Master drummed his fingers on the console. “Saturday, November twenty-first, four-thousand and four. And it’s a quarter after six in the morning; the Director’s going to come in his jammies.”
“You’d be surprised how many directors I’ve met in their jammies.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
The Doctor decided not to respond to that, focusing instead on the readings that scrolled across the nearest screen. “This is bizarre. It looks like everything’s in normal order, but they can’t possibly have promoted so much advancement in just a few hundred years…” He reached for the screwdriver, expecting that perhaps the real results were encrypted, only to receive a strong jerk on the handcuffs as the Master tried to spin himself in the chair. The Doctor gave him a dirty look-and then saw that the Master was watching a tall, broad-shouldered man in a nice suit stride down the hallway towards them. He pocketed the screwdriver again, slightly hastily, and flashed a smile, trying to look reputable.
The Director appeared to have come alone, though he was intimidating enough without backup. Offering a thin but inoffensive smile in response to the Doctor’s, he held out a hand to shake and then noticed the cuff preventing the Doctor from reciprocating straightaway.
“Is this some kind of… prisoner and convict arrangement?” he managed to ask.
“Yes,” the Master said, at the same moment the Doctor answered, “No!”
There was a brief silence, during which the Doctor determined that they had made a slightly unfavorable first impression, if the Director’s skeptical eyebrows were anything to go by.
Now that the Doctor thought about it, the rest of the man’s features were rather skeptical, too.
Sighing inwardly, the Doctor produced the psychic paper, which assuaged the skepticism at least for now.
“Ah,” the Director said, and apparently his eyebrows were just generally expressive, because they arced like dark parentheses. “I’ll give you the full tour, then, Mr. Smith, Mr. Saxon.”
The Master gave the Doctor a smug look, as if feeding suggestions into someone else’s psychic energy and solidifying a “good, strong name” was something to be proud of.
The Doctor frowned back and assumed he would get the message, because he would.
All fine suit and huge frame, the Director led them down a series of halls and thence out to a labyrinthine network of desks and cubicles, in and at which dozens of men and women leaned over telephones and computer screens, the low, humming harmony of progress all about them.
“This is primarily our fundraising branch,” the Director explained, sweeping one capacious hand. “You’re welcome to conduct interviews as you like; I’ll also introduce you to our head of human resources.”
“You’re charmingly transparent,” the Master declared. “In fact, I can’t imagine why anyone would waste his time poking around and irritating your extremely efficient employees. Smith, old chum, what exactly are we looking for?”
“Your manners,” the Doctor said. “Oh, I’m sorry; those are a myth.”
The Master grinned, and the Director cracked a thin smile.
“Right,” the Doctor said, suppressing a bit of a shiver at the juxtaposed titles. “I’m afraid that we’ll need a list of all your investors and an index of their contributions, preferably with your signature at the top. Formalities, you understand.”
“Of course,” the Director said. “Why don’t we stop by my office, and I’ll get you a ground plan and turn you loose?”
“Smith likes that part best,” the Master said contentedly, and the Doctor couldn’t argue with that.
-
The Doctor handed the Master their map and put his uncuffed hand in his pocket, toying with the screwdriver. “If you see any doors that say ‘Restricted’ or ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’ give me a yell.”
“For such a smarmy, uptight goody-two-shoes,” the Master remarked, “you seem to enjoy completely abandoning even the slightest pretense of abiding by the rules.”
“It’s for a greater cause,” the Doctor said.
“So illegal activity is acceptable on a small scale?” the Master inquired as the Doctor spotted an information panel on the wall and led them over to it, touching the screen to clear the default logo and considering the buttons. “That’s a slippery slope, Doctor. Where exactly do you draw the line? I know you’ve killed deliberately; I’ve kept track of the recent ones. So what’s the distinction? Your enemies die, and everybody else has your protection? Your opinion decides the fate of every living being? That sounds an awful lot like what I was doing from a different point of view.”
“You’re oversimplifying,” the Doctor said, taking out the screwdriver and applying it to the screen. “No, not even that-you’re overcomplicating. I don’t pick out who lives and dies. I try to save as many people as possible, and there are casualties. That’s all. Oh, hello.”
The screwdriver, of course, had done the trick-he’d slipped into the mainframe computer and brought up the list of investors. Another sonic setting and a tap of a button brought all of the detailed information about the businesses scrolling across the display.
Or, rather, the suspiciously vague information about them.
“That’s a front company,” the Doctor mused. “And that. And that. Question is, what are they actually doing?”
“Not protecting themselves, for one thing,” the Master said. “Who puts all the secret things in the computer? What do they think a pen’s for?”
“Is that how you did it?” the Doctor asked idly. “Took over the world by writing stuff out longhand? So if these aren’t really biological labs and universities, what are they paying for?”
“Do you usually save the universe by asking rhetorical questions of whoever’s in earshot?”
The Doctor gave him a black look. “Yes. I usually do.”
The Master looked back, wide-eyed and blinking. “Well, Doctor, I haven’t any idea. It can’t possibly be that you’re reaching to start with, because you like to meddle in important events on purpose.”
Judiciously, the Doctor elected to ignore him. “Obviously there’s a purpose here beyond ordinary research. We’ll have to see if we can dig up some background on these companies when we’re not in the middle of the building… speaking of which, we should talk to the scientists. Where are the laboratories?”
“Over the river and through the woods,” the Master said. “I’m not a global positioning system.”
“You’re useless,” the Doctor responded, snatching the map away. “They’re extremely close; are you being deliberately contrary, or are you incapable of interpreting simple cartography?”
“Yes,” the Master said.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and led the way to the lab wing, where he headed unhesitatingly through the door that read Development.
This was a proper laboratory, all long metal tables, microscopes, centrifuges, and test tubes. The Doctor felt a little geekier just walking in, and he couldn’t resist the urge to slip his glasses on. He pretended not to hear the Master snort in the process of choking back a laugh.
A few of the scientists glanced up from their work, and a very pretty Asian woman wearing a lab coat stepped forward to meet them.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” the Doctor told her, smiling brightly. “John Smith, health inspector. We’ve just got a few questions for you, if you’d be so kind.”
“For instance,” the Master purred, “do you have a boyfriend, and how committed are you to h-”
“The health agency is implementing a new partnership program,” the Doctor said. “One inspector who respects social conventions, one who doesn’t. Brilliant, isn’t it? Like ‘good cop, bad cop,’ except traumatizing and… well. Anyway, can I get your name?”
“And your phone number, and your home address?” the Master asked cheerfully.
The woman smiled, and the Doctor realized that the Master was probably employing his famous talent for hypnotic suggestion once again. The Doctor entertained the idea of deliberately infecting his traveling companion with Av’klarian strep throat and giving him a dry-erase board for communication.
On second thought, the Master with a dry-erase board sounded like a whole new category of horror.
“Kate Lee,” the scientist was saying. “As for the rest, you look like you’re already pretty occupied.” She nodded to the handcuffs, in the process of which she seemed to notice them more specifically than she had. “Where did you get those?” she asked, kneeling, before the Doctor could direct her attention elsewhere. “They’re amazing! How-”
“Government issue,” the Doctor interjected. “Partnership program. It’s really quite something. So tell me, Kate Lee, how long have you been working here for the Vivarium?”
“Coming up on three months,” Kate said, straightening with a slightly sheepish smile. “All of us are pretty new-the Vivarium has been very proactive about hiring young researchers, which is great for the economy.” She grinned. “Not to mention great for us. It’s a good job-intellectually stimulating, but not too demanding. Decent hours, too, and the supervisors are always very specific about what they want us working on.”
“What are you working on?” the Doctor asked. That was always the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?
“We do a lot of chemical research,” Kate told him, gesturing to one of the scientists bearing a micropipet over a petri dish. “At the moment, our larger task is to develop a compound that maximizes biological growth-and to concentrate it in an airborne form.”
“Airborne?” the Doctor prompted. “What, so that you can just channel it into the Vivarium, and everything grows at once?”
“We’re hoping it’ll speed up all the natural cycles,” Kate confirmed. “Everything dies faster, reproduces faster, evolves faster. Then we learn more. It’s hard to appreciate what you’re seeing when there are only a few life cycles in your own lifetime. If we can show people evolution in action, they’re going to have twice as much faith in the project.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Investors are skeptics.”
“Especially the ones that conceal their identities,” the Master put in, beaming when the Doctor sent him another dark look.
“Do they?” Kate asked. “I guess I can understand that-it’s a risky business venture, and not every company would want their involvement to be publicly known.”
“Fair enough,” the Doctor said. “So, Kate-you’re making aerosol life steroids-”
Kate grinned. “If you want to call it that.”
“More fun. That’s a lot to have accomplished in three months, isn’t it? Mind if I ask what your predecessors were working on?”
“We only got their data,” Kate told him. “We sort of inherited it from management when we came in. They’d made a water-based stimulant-fire up the enzymes, funnel in nutrients. We’ve actually adapted a lot of it for our version.”
“Why reinvent the wheel?” the Doctor agreed. “I think all that’s left to ask is… have you any idea where your predecessors went?”
Kate hesitated, and her smile was a bit more cautious this time. “I gather they’d sort of hit a wall,” she said. “Run out of ideas for how to take it further, you know.”
“And the higher-ups thought they’d bring in some new blood?” the Master asked sunnily.
Kate blinked. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Something like that.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Great, then. Thanks very much, Kate Lee.”
“Water-based, airborne,” the Master mused, grinning. “What comes next?”
“I’m not sure,” Kate answered, smiling tentatively.
“I didn’t think so,” the Master replied.
“Oh, come on,” the Doctor said, hauling him back out to the hall, leaving a startled Kate Lee and her three-month-old lab team behind.
“You don’t have to intimidate people on purpose,” the Doctor muttered as they moved on down the corridor, looking for other doors of interest.
“But I’m good at it,” the Master protested. “And I miss the benefits of uncontested world dictatorship. You do realize that you erased all of my hard-won accomplishments?”
“I gave you a blank slate,” the Doctor said, “instead of turning you in to the Judoon and leaving you to their mercy or lack thereof.”
“I should be thanking you on bended knee,” the Master remarked. “And doing your dishes, and rubbing your back, and buying you flowers-”
“What’s this?” the Doctor murmured, peeking into an open storeroom. “Look here, come on.”
“I’m attached to you; you don’t have to call me over. I’m not a dog.”
“Too bad,” the Doctor said. “You’d be right at home in this company.”
The right wall was composed entirely of stacked cages, their fronts lined with wire. Inside of the cages, chickens, pigs, and, in a few extremely large structures, small cows paced and stared out of their confines.
“What is this?” the Doctor asked again, drawing the screwdriver and scanning the strange menagerie. “Why would they…?”
“Maybe they need test subjects for their growth-hormone anthrax thing,” the Master suggested sardonically. “Maybe the employees prefer their food extremely fresh. Can we go? It smells terrible in here. Reminds me of Earth.”
“Lay off,” the Doctor snapped, finding another information screen and drawing up a list of inventory.
“You’re supposed to laugh,” the Master told him. “It’s Gallifreyan humor.”
“No, it’s just you.”
“Just me? It’s never just me. I am monumental.”
“Your ego is. Why do they need two dozen chickens when they’re trying to replicate evolution in the first place?”
“You’re such a cynic, Doctor. You always assume it’s foul play.”
The Doctor stared at him.
“Foul play?” the Master repeated hopefully. “Foul, fowl… you’re getting slow in your old age.”
A little bit more of the Doctor’s soul died.
He heard a creak, and, turning, discovered another man in a boilersuit, this one middle-aged and pushing a trolley cart loaded up with buckets and boxes, all of them sealed.
“Hullo,” he said, pushing back his cap. “Can I help you?”
“John Smith, health inspector,” the Doctor volunteered, flashing the psychic paper.
“Harold Saxon, sex machine,” the Master added.
The worker’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t comment. “Good to meet you. What can I do for you?”
“Tell me what they’re doing with the small farm you’ve got here, for starters,” the Doctor said.
The man rubbed at his forehead. “Couldn’t tell you that,” he said, which was about as much as the Doctor had expected. “Though I ought to tell you that it’s a quarter of six, and we’re about to shut down around here. I’m sure you can come back tomorrow.”
“Ah,” the Doctor said, exchanging a glance with the Master. “I suppose we will, then.”
It was one of the Doctor’s more anticlimactic exits, but there wasn’t much to be done for that.
“I refuse to break back in overnight,” the Master announced, more loudly than the Doctor would have liked, as they followed the signs towards the main doors. “If you try to make me, I’ll scream and alert all the night watchmen.”
“I’m sure there will be a decent hotel in the town,” the Doctor said as they stepped out into brisk air of the evening. “We can stay there tonight. Let me know if you see an automated teller machine.”
“You could just call it an ATM like everyone else.”
“I try to spell it out in the hopes that eventually people will stop adding the redundant ‘machine’ after the acronym.”
The Master pursed his lips. “The power of positive reinforcement never worked for me.”
“Noticed.”
“I favor the power of corporal punishment and demonstrative explosions.”
“Noticed that, too.”
“Look, an ATM machine!”
“You are disgusting.”
[PART II]