Please Don't Murder Me...
The Doctor:
As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower, always coming. You will run. It will walk. You will rest. It will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long. You will sit too still or sleep too deep, and when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over.
I was alone, so very alone. I came out of the teleporter, and looked around, seeing some sand on the ground, before looking around, seeing my twins not here. I'd find them, I would find my children. "If you think because she is dead, I am weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, my wife, and separating me from my children, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So, for your own sake, understand this. I am the Doctor. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop."
So I cautiously left the room, following the anticlockwise corridor that was curved, as well as deep square windows cut into them, admitting small amounts of light. I leant out of one, finding I was in a tall tower. "The equipment in that room is consistent with an augmented ultra long-range teleport. So, I'm not more than a single light year from where I was, and I'm in the same time zone, but there's no sign of my children." I looked out of another opening at the sky, before going back, clockwise.
"When the sun sets, I'll be able to establish an exact position by the stars. Then you'll have a choice. Come out, show yourself, or keep on hiding. Clara and Seraphina said I shouldn't take revenge. You should know, I don't always listen, not even to her."
I kept moving, later finding a spade with soil on it, leaning on the inside wall. What was the point in that being there? "Oh, what's this? Well, are you gardeners? I hate gardening! What sort of a person has a power complex about flowers? It's dictatorship for inadequates. Or to put it another way, it's dictatorship. Come on! Chop, chop! The Doctor will see you now! Show me what you've got! I just watched my best friend die in agony, then held my wife as she died the same, before my kids were teleported away from me. My day can't get any worse. Let's see what we can do about yours!"
Looking out of the nearest opening at the wall across the courtyard, I saw a pale, grey figure, standing in a veil through narrow slit openings, and backed away and checked the view on the nearest screen. The hunchbacked figure turned away from the slit and moved along the corridor. According to the screens, the being moved slowly, as if it was dragging a leg. Each step was a thump, and they got closer. I wafted away a fly, then retreated from the approaching sound, running down yet another narrow corridor to a wooden door, but it was locked. And the being was at the other end of the bridge. "I know you. I've seen you before."
Putting my hands on the door, I started begging. "I used to know a trick, back when I was young and telepathic." Well, I still was, just no where near as much as Sarah Jane. "Clearly, you can't make an actual psychic link with a door, for one very obvious reason. They're notoriously cross. I mean, imagine life as a door. People keep pushing past you. All of that knocking, but it's never for you. And you get locked up every night, so if you're just a little bit nice." And then the door unlocked. "See, Phina? Still got it."
But there was just a solid wall behind, and the creature was nearly here. "But I. Er, I can't actually see a way out of this I've finally run out of corridor. There's a life summed up. Oh, now this is new. I'm scared. I just realised that I'm actually scared of dying." And it stopped dead with a clang, four fingered hands outstretched, ready to rip away my life, to send me to be with my wife. Would that really be so bad?
"Something I said? What did I say?" Even it's attendant flies were frozen in the air and I flicked one away. "Why did you stop?"
There was a loud cracking and rumbling of cogs and I looked out of an opening to see sections of the walls rotating in opposite directions with the uppermost faster than the lower ones, like the upper section of the TARDIS time rotor did nowadays. The obstructing wall moved aside and I rans into the revealed room. The cogs stopped, and I tested the springs on the bed, as it was a similar bedroom to mine a Phi's only without the fairy lights or my guitar.
I picked up one of the sunflowers, Seraphim's favourite from the vase, sniffing it before looking up at a portrait overhanging the fireplace, the paint and varnish old and cracked and peeling, and of course, it was my Seraphina, our twins as such perfect babies, and Clara Oswin Oswalds. There was a jewellers eyeglass, conveniently place next to it, so I examined it. "Old. Very old. Possibly very, very old." And then a fly landed between the twins, and I faced the veil.
"When I was a very little boy, there was an old lady who died." I told it, popping my cheek. "They covered her in veils, but it was a hot, sunny day, and the flies came. It gave me nightmares for years, a nightmare I only ever told my wife. So, who's been stealing my nightmares?" The petals started to fall from the sunflower as I plucked them. "What am I here for? You've known about me for a very long time, right? So why get me and not Phi? She's the powerful one." I put the eyeglass back, before dodging around him, testing his vision. "So, what is it? Is it a trap? Is it a prison? No! Is it a torture chamber? Am I right? Somebody really should know better. Anyone who can put all of this together and steal my bad dreams, they should know better.
"The secrets I have? The visions she never let me tell anyone else? No chance. No telling, not me." I ducked under its arms, grabbing a wooden stool to fend it off. "I told you I was scared of dying. And I wasn't lying either. Advantage, me!" Then I chucked it through the window, and the wind was blowing furiously. "Because you won't see this coming!"
Then I dove through the broken window, and burst into the TARDIS, running to the console and pushed away the scanner. I was falling, I knew I was falling. "Sorry I'm late, Loves. Jumped out of a window. Certain death. Don't you want to know how I survived? Go on. Ask me!" There was silence for a moment. "No, of course I had to jump! The first rule of being interrogated is that you are the only irreplaceable person in the torture chamber. The room is yours, so work it. If they're going to threaten you with death, show them who's boss. Die faster. And you've seen me do that more often than most. Isn't that right, my Phina? Rule one of dying, don't. Rule two, slow down." I looked at the figures with their backs to me, my Phi, holding our toddler twins.
"You've got the rest of your life. The faster you think, the slower it will pass. Concentrate. Assume you're going to survive. Always assume that. Imagine you've already survived. There's a storm room in your mind. Lock the door and think. This is my storm room. I always imagine that I'm back in my TARDIS, showing off, telling you how I escaped, making you laugh, your sweet laugh that always set the twins off. That's what I'm doing right now. I am falling, Seraphina. I'm dying. And I am going to explain to you how I survived. I can't wait to hear what I say. I'm nothing without an audience. One hope. Salt.
"Thought I smelled it earlier. When I broke the window, I was sure. Salty air. This castle is standing in the sea. Diving into water from a great height is no guarantee of survival. I need to know exactly how far I'm going to fall, and how fast, just like when I broke the ice. Why do you think I threw the stool? Fall time to impact seven seconds. The wind resistance of the stool, the atmospheric density, the strength of the local gravity. Am I spoiling the magic for the twins, love? I work at this stuff, you know? Should hit the water in about point zero two seconds. The chances of remaining conscious are-"
And then everything went dark in the TARDIS, before it lit up again, roundel layer by roundel layer, and I heard the smooth yet scratchy sound of someone writing of the blackboard, and saw my wife's beautiful sloping, curling, cursive, calligraphic handwriting, asking me a question in electric blue and gold chalk. "Question 1. What is this place?"
"Can't I just sleep?"
But she kept writing. "Question 2. What did you say that made the creature stop?"
Oh, Phina... "Do I have to know everything? That's your job..."
"How are you going to-"
"Seraphim, I can't always-"
But in bright, brilliant gold, the word Win?? was written with several underlines, alternating the colours that made her who she was. Blue and gold.
Then sunlight filtered back in to reveal that the sea bed was covered in long, humanoid skulls, and I swam up, fully conscious once more, and climbed out to see the castle had a central tower with 4 spokes coming off it on two levels, connecting to the outer circular wall. Like a cog wheel.
I walked up a staircase to a room with a roaring log fire, while dripping wet, before I found all new clothes waiting in front of it on a clothes horse to the side slightly. Identical to my own. I warmed myself next to the fire, before comparing my cuff buttons with that of the dry velvet jacket, and changed into the dry clothes. After a small pause, I left my wet clothes exactly how the dry ones were, leaving the Doc Martens stood up in front of the fire.
From there, I walked into the great hall, finding a dining set for one in the middle, and after that it was a storeroom with a hexagon shaped hole in the flagstones, chalked arrows pointing towards it all around, and I gingerly touched the sand at the bottom. "It keeps coming, my Phina. Wherever I go, it follows. Why? Why does it do that?"
The blackboard was unforgiving in my mind. "Wrong question."
"Always the teacher, though you could teach me any day. What's the right question, then?"
"Not why. What?"
"It's following me. Wherever I go, it's tracking me. Slowly though. Scary lurching. Scary. These screens, everywhere. It's showing me exactly where it is all the time, how far it's got, how near. Because it's trying to scare me. Putting its breath on my neck. That's the point. That's what it's doing. This is theatre. It's all about fear. Working hypothesis. I'm in a fully automated haunted house. A mechanical maze." The copper pan that was hanging up rattled. "It's a killer puzzle box designed to scare me to death, and I'm trapped inside it." I laughed to myself a little. "Must be Christmas."
A pair of heavy doors opened somewhere, and I walked out into a dark corridor, hearing water dripping further along, and I found myself walking through a creaky door into the gardens. The trees and shrubs looked nearly dead in the near permanent shade of the tiny inner courtyard. The door slammed shut behind me, making me jump, my hearts thudding in my chest. A bell was ringing somewhere and the garden was laid out with a cogwheel design to the paths. At the centre was an empty round bed with a recently dug rectangle in the middle, like a screwdriver slot. I felt the quality of the worked soil, then saw a clean spade leaning against the wall.
"Another spade?" I questioned the silence in the air around me, like there was someone real who could reply. "Someone wants me to dig. What do you think, Seraphina? Is someone trying to give me a hint? What would you do?"
The writing was just as dear and familiar. "Same as you."
"Yes. Yes, of course you would." I sighed, grabbing the spade. "Which, let's be honest, is what killed you, in the end. So, someone is trying to tell me that there's something important buried in this garden. That's almost the first thing they tried to tell me. Could be a trick. Could be one of my predecessors. Because I'm not the first prisoner here, am I! All those skulls! Wonder where they all went wrong. Building this height, creature that slow, so what? An hour."
I started to excavate the dug soil, getting lost in time until on the flies buzzed to my face, and rant to check the screen inside. The view was a piece of wood with flies on it, so when I opened the door, I wasn't surprised that the Veil was there, ready to screech at me. I slammed the door shut, trapping the creatures hands until they were withdrawn, and shoved the spade under the handle and dug the blade into the gravel.
"Physics of a triangle. You lose." I told it, breathing hard as the door stopped shaking, the Veil leaving. "So? It can set traps. That's okay. I'm good at traps." Nervously, I checked the view on the screen. The storeroom with it's hexagon in the middle of the floor. "So, where are you off to? Only one way in and one way out. Well, seeing as you're going."
Taking the spade back I jumped into the hole once more, digging again until night fell and crickets chirped. I was about four for down, shattered, so paused to check the dark sky so high above me. "No, no. That's not right."
My spade hit something, and it sounded like a stone, and I used my hands from there, clearing away the soil to read something on there. I Am In 12. And then the flies were back as I grabbed it, but I fell backwards as the Veil reached for me.
And I was back in the TARDIS. "Well, that was another close one. Or it will have been, once I've been and gone and got myself out of it. So, how am I going to do that? Come on, mother and teacher, ask me questions!"
The back of the woman moved aside with the two kids to show what she wrote. "Tell no lies." I remembered when I told a truth, Candour, just like, just like. No. Stop. "Question 2. What did you say that made the creature stop?"
"The truth, yes, Candour." I agreed. "But not any old truth, Seraphina, twins. This whole place is designed to terrify me. I'm being interrogated. It's not just truth it wants. That's not enough. It's confession. I have to tell truths I've never told before. That's the only thing that stops it. You see, the problem is, my family, there are truths that I can never tell. Not for anything, because you made me swear, and that promise on blood is all I have left. But I'm scared and I'm alone. Alone, and very, very scared." I sighed, sitting on the steps to the gallery.
"I confess." I was suddenly back in the garden. "I didn't leave Gallifrey with Seraphina because I was bored! That was a lie! It's always been a lie!" It paused. "Not enough? You want more? I was scared! I ran because I was scared for the future I was promised to protect! Is that what you want me to say? Is that true enough for you?"
The Veil withdrew its hand and the castle rumbles. I climbed out of the grave to see the various floors rotating in opposite directions again, before running inside them, through to the wall on the outside of the castle, and looked out across the endless sea.
It's funny, the day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead. This is how my world works, Twins. I tick off the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown. If I draw the creature to one extreme of the castle, and I run to the other extreme, I can earn myself a maximum of eighty two minutes. Eighty two minutes to eat, sleep and work. My work is finding Room 12. The castle wants me to. It's luring me. The numbering is a bit confused, as if the rooms are all jumbled up. Maybe they move around. I saw the whole castle move, when I made the creature stop.
Every room, if I leave it long enough, reverts to its condition at the moment I arrive. It tidies up after itself. Automated room service. I think this whole place is inside a closed energy loop, constantly recycling. Or maybe I'm in Hell? That's okay. I'm not scared of Hell. It's just Heaven for bad people. But how long will I have to be here? Forever?
It's always coming. Always closer. The countdown never stops. But the countdown to what?
There are two events in everybody's life that nobody remembers. Two moments experienced by every living thing, yet no one remembers anything about them. Nobody remembers being born and nobody remembers dying. Is that why we always stare into the eye sockets of a skull? Because we're asking, what was it like? Does it hurt? Are you still scared? There's something I'm missing, Seraphina, Twins, and I think it's something terrible.
It's a trap, Clara, just like you were, from Missy. A lure and a trap.
"I'm following breadcrumbs laid out for me." I sighed to the skull as I watched the night sky, so high and far above me, calling to me like the wind calls to the sea. "This is somebody's game, and I can't stop playing. A game everybody else has lost. I know how to move that wall, Seraphina, so long as I don't run out of confessions. But what I really want to know is." Flies were buzzing now. "Who's been playing about with the stars? They're all in the wrong places, for this time zone, anyway. I know I didn't time travel to get here. I can feel time travel, I lived with the Sentinel for over 1000 years. If I didn't know better, I'd say I've travelled seven thousand years into the future. But I do know better. So who moved the stars?"
The Veil reached its hand to either side of my face, and I knew just what to say to stop it. "The Hybrid." The creature paused, and I turned to face it. "Long before the Time War, the Time Lords knew it was coming, like a storm on the wind. There were many prophecies and stories, legends before the fact, all told to me by my future wife, the Greatest Sentinel and Priestess, Seraphina. One of them was about a creature called the Hybrid. Half Dalek, half Time Lord, the ultimate warrior. But whose side would it be on? Would it bring peace or destruction? Was it real, or a fantasy? I confess, I know the Hybrid is real. I know where it is, and what it is. I confess, I'm afraid."
It left, and the castle reconfigured, and the rumbling sent the skull into the water, and I ran down the stairs to go right through where masonry had previously blocked my path, slapping fingers on my palm to count the seconds as they passed. The Veil was coming.
I put on the sonic glasses, and scanned as I went, but took them off again when I reached a wall of smooth, icy crystal on the far end, with just one word carved into the perfectly prismed surface.
Home.
But the word disappeared after a few moments and a dark rectangular shape could just be made out through the crystal. "Of course. The last square on the board. What else would it be? The TARDIS, the twins safe and sound inside. One confession away." I put the glasses on once more, looking at the crystal. "Azbantium. Four hundred times harder than diamond. Twenty feet thick. The way out."
Bird...
I was in the TARDIS again, my wife still stood looking at the board with our children, now adults, lost somewhere out there. "That's when I remember! Always then. Always then. Always exactly then! I can't keep doing this, Seraphina! I can't! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else's turn?" I screamed, so, so lost without her, without her soft, lyrical voice to guide me. I needed her, why did I have to lose her when I fought so hard, for so long just to have her in the first place.
"How are you going to win??" The board asked with 7 underlines, still in the bright colours.
"Can't I just lose? Just this once?" I pleaded, feeling my hearts shatter as I hid under the time rotor assembly, like a child hiding from a nightmare that would never end. I couldn't face life without her. "Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid. You know, you told me, you told me for a reason..."
I was sat on the ground, in a channel part way through the Azbantium, the Veil arriving in the room, before coming back to the TARDIS. "I can't keep doing this. I can't! I can't always do this! It's not fair! Seraphina, it's just not fair! Why can't I just lose? Why can't I just lose and be with you?!"
"No!"
"But I can remember, my wife. You don't understand, I can remember it all. Every time. And you'll still be gone, the one person who'd know my pain, who would always be there, through all of time and space. Whatever I do, you still won't be there with me."
I sat down again, unable to hold back the tears of grief as I let the heartsbreak start to take over me, until I heard her voice, one last time. "Asa, my sweet darling Angel Dove, Asa, you are not the only person who ever lost someone. It's the story of everybody. Get over it. Beat it. Break free." Her hand touched my cheek lightly. "Doctor, it's time. Get up, off your scrawny arse, and win! Win for our twins, our daughters, and our granddaughter."
And then I stood once more to face the Veil as it entered the room. "Hello again. No more confessions, sorry. But I will tell you the truth." I started punching the wall, crying out in pain. "The Hybrid is a very dangerous secret. A very, very dangerous secret I was entrusted with and it needs to be kept on my blood oath!" Another punch, another cry of pain. "So I'm telling you nothing. Nothing at all. Instead, I'm going to do something far worse." And again. "Argh! I'm going to get out of here, and find whoever put me here in the first place, and whatever they're trying to do, I'm going to stop it!" And again. "Argh!"
Doubling over in pain, I kept fighting it. "But it might take me a little while, so do you want me to tell you a story?" Another punch. "Argh! The Brothers Grimm, lovely fellas. They're on my darts team." Again. "Argh! According to them, there's this emperor and he asks this shepherd's boy, how many seconds in eternity?"
The Veil's scaly hands closed across my eyes and I screamed, then fell to the ground. Silence reigned.
People always get it wrong with Time Lords. We take forever to die. Even if we're too injured to regenerate, every cell in our bodies keeps trying. Dying properly can take days. That's why we like to die among our own kind. They know not to bury us early.
I think, in my current condition, it'll take me about a day and a half to reach the top of the tower. I think. If I'm lucky, I have a day and a half.
I have to do this, Seraphina, Arcadia, Sarah Jane and Clara. It's the only way. I have to be strong. I should have known from the very beginning. Of course. The portrait of you all, the creature from my own nightmares. This place is my own bespoke torture chamber, intended for me only. And all those skulls in the water. How could there be other prisoners in my Hell? The answer, of course, is there never were any other prisoners. And the stars, they weren't in the wrong place, and I haven't time travelled.
I've just been here a very, very long time. Every room resets. Remember I told you that? Every room reverts to its original condition. Logically, the teleporter should do the same. Teleporter. Fancy word. Just like 3D printers, really, except they break down living matter and information, and transmit it. All you have to do is add energy. The room has reset, returned to its original condition when I arrived. That means there's a copy of me still in the hard drive. Me, exactly as I was, when I first got here, seven thousand years ago. All I have to find is some energy.
And all you need for energy is something to burn.
How long can I keep doing this, my family? Burning the old me, to make a new one?
And over and over again I did, I burn myself. I went through my own hell, over and over again, not that I would ever remember doing it more than once. I just worked out that all the skulls were mine, and to break the cycle, I would have to repeat in again and again.
Until the crystal shattered.
"And the shepherd's boy says, there's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it!" I cried, punching through the crystal. "Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain." I punched once more. "Argh! And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed!" And I punched it again. "Argh! You must think that's a hell of a long time, personally, I think that's a hell of a-" I charged the remaining layer at the end of the 20ft tunnel. "Aaargh!
The Azbantium finally gave way, bright light flooding in and the Veil exploded, cogwheels and shrouds falling to the floor. "Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird."
I walked out of the portal made of the hole, and found myself on a dry planet with a bright golden sky, the colour of my Phi's eyes. The portal closed, and a small round metal object fell to the ground, and I picked up my confession dial, showing a miniature of the castle surrounded by blue, blue water, the blue of her hair. Brass cogwheels filled the space, and small boy ran towards me.
"Go to the city. Find somebody important. Tell them I'm back. Tell them, I know what they did, and I'm on my way. And if they ask you who I am, tell them I came the long way round, just by myself." I told him, and he ran towards a tall, metallic city with a towering Citadel in it's heart, a tall tower at the top, where my Princess used to wait for me. Where she would no longer wait for anyone but me to join her. "You can probably still hear me, so just between ourselves, you've got the prophecy wrong. The Hybrid is not half Dalek. Nothing is half Dalek. The Daleks would never allow that. The Hybrid destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins-" I put on my sonic glasses, feeling all my compassion dry up as I watched the child run.
"Is me."