'I think it's time,' said her voice from all around him, 'for you to see what you're really facing.'

'No,' he said. He started to struggle. 'No!'

It was no use. She was projecting the images directly into his mind through the console's feeble telepathic connection. Images he had tried to avoid for so long.

Images of the future. Of Gallifrey's future.

'I cannot see this.'

'Obviously that's not true,' Compassion said.

'I mean I must not see this.'

'I disagree.'

The history and events and sensations coursed through his mind like a swollen river.

Memories that had not yet established themselves in his mind. Frightful images of an Enemy first strike on Gallifrey, boiling away the three oceans and levelling the great mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere until the planet burned and roiled and became a cinder.

Now the Time Lord fleet was travelling back in time to raze the Enemy battleworlds before the first strike, an ambitious move that ensured that Gallifrey was not destroyed in the first strike because there was no first strike. And a move that contravened all that the Time Lords had held dear for billennia.

The Enemy's counterattack eliminated the Time Lord fleet by detonating starkillers in the systems in which the raw materials for the fleet would one day be mined. No matter that the systems were inhabited. Collateral damage. Only to be expected.

The Doctor howled in desperation and helplessness. 'Stop it. You must not show me this. I won't believe it.' He screwed his eyes up tight in a futile attempt to stem the torrent of mental images and emotions. 'How can you know this, Compassion?'

Her voice carried across the narrative: "The Edifice is affecting the structure of spacetime, which makes it a nexus point for past and future events along the causal pathways.'

And still the Future War rolled on through the Doctor's mind. Strikes and counterstrikes.

Victories won and overturned, retaliation by anarchitecture and revision and paradox.

Territories established, lost, and ultimately eliminated before they had ever existed. An allconsuming War of chaos and denial.

Despite the Doctor's impotent struggle to disconnect himself from the experiential download, he was forced to face the future of his own race. He watched, disbelieving, as the Time Lords of Gallifrey sought out weapons of mass destruction from their own future; became creatures of war; turned their own race into nightmare beings which regenerated until they were monsters designed purely for combat.

They evolved into the thing they were fighting. After generations of the War, it was no longer possible to tell them apart from their Enemy.

The Doctor's hands pulled away suddenly from the bone console, and he staggered backwards a few steps. He couldn't tell how long the whole experience had taken. It had seemed so vivid, so undeniable at the time, but now it was fading like a horrific nightmare.

And that was saying something, he thought, as he considered the gruesome sight of the Edifice's interior once more.

'So, Doctor,' Compassion said quietly. 'Who can you save? And who will you allow to die?

Don't lecture me on my responsibilities until you face up to your own.'

The Doctor was about to answer her, but something seized him abruptly from behind. For a wild moment, he wondered whether the spiders had finally overcome their reticence and were about to devour him. Then he saw it was a young man with a lick of lightbrown hair felling awkwardly over his frightened eyes. He had stumbled into the console room and, terrified by the sight of the spiders clustered either side of the exit, had seized the Doctor as the first thing to hide behind.

'Hello, who are you?' began the Doctor in a reassuring tone. Or as reassuring as you can be when faced with a group of slavering monster arachnids.

'Ressadriand well, never mind who I am,' gabbled the newcomer feverishly. 'What's going on? You're in charge here, aren't you? I want to go home ..."

He was dragging the Doctor around the twisted bone console and back towards the exit again.

The spiders edged along the outside of the room, allowing them to go.

The creatures saw their opportunity. The Doctor was no longer between them and Compassion. Like a pack of ungainly hounds in pursuit of a trapped fox, they sprang for her.

Compassion reacted immediately. To the Doctor's frustration and dismay, she simply dematerialised before his eyes, and was gone.

Fourth Interlude Under glass His eyes are going glassy, reflecting back the handscrawled words and their impenetrable meaning, no longer taking them in.

He walks to a glass table and places the heavy book back down. The dust at his feet is disturbed again; past the book, under the glass, the motes loop and whirl. The image forms the bottle from the book in his mind.

That an entity could have such mastery over biosystems that it could create a viable universe from a section of the vortex seems unthinkable. He realises it is perhaps out of kindness or pity the Time Lords sought to obscure the origins of this War. Ever since that first attack, the Enemy has been deemed the only threat, the only foe; they have their forces of course, their agents spread throughout the universe, just as the Time Lords do, and all must be fought. But now to learn of this being with the power to create universes within universes to learn too that it should be a creature from Gallifrey, and not even a Time Lord ...

The entity took the name I.M. Foreman. I Am For Man. It took the form of a world, a biosystem Foreman's World. It tested its powers in a myriad ways, but its finest work was the bottle. He pictures it now as perhaps Foreman's World had intended, a simple construction in three dimensions, galaxies spinning under its mottled surface. A romantic image intended to diffuse the raw power involved in its creation, the terrifying energies locking it all in place.

Staring down at the glass table top, he can imagine glimpses of the bottle's other dimensions framing and reframing the universe of dust, in so many dark planes. No one in that bottle universe could know they were copies, conjured from the vortex by a playful Creator. Just as he can never know how much of his own existence has been rigged by the architects of the War.

He would do anything to change things.

There are many pages to go in the book. He is nervous that time is passing. Soon the library will open again as the three suns drag themselves from the sea. He must be gone from here.

He will be missed.

The story winds on through the blueblack veins of the characters on the page. The thick glass of the windows grudgingly allows the first light of dawn into the old chamber.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Source bottle

Kellen had been shocked into silence. Fitz could see the young Time Lord considering what Tana had told him. He was trying to make sense of it all, thought Fitz. Kellen was too terrified to flee. Too much under Tarra's spell.

Now Tarra adopted a brisk tone. 'So. Greyjan is recovering from his own rebirth. We must prepare him for the Reaffirmation Ceremony.' She patted Kellen on the head like an obedient puppy. 'Your practical joke will be going ahead as planned.'

'Greyjan?' rumbled Father Kreiner. With a mechanical groan and a leathery creak,he made his way over to Tarra. 'I thought the Celestis chose to control the dead, not the Faction.'

Tarra's face twisted into the parody of a smile. 'Father Kreiner, the Celestis are themselves long dead. It pleases the Faction to use their technology.'

Kreiner nodded slowly, perhaps afraid that his ancient head might roll off his shoulders. 'I have been away for too long.'

'Trapped in the spacetime vortex,' said Tana. 'Imprisoned in a bottle universe.'

Kreiner laughed at this. 'Yes, they thought they had trapped me in a Klein bottle. In a threedimensional universe that would have bound me for ever. But they made the mistake of casting the bottle into the vortex. It was only a matter of time before you found me. So,' he snapped, his manner suddenly ugly, 'what kept you? Did you want me to rot there for another millennium?'

Tarra was not fazed by his sudden mood swing. 'You can afford to be patient, Father Kreiner.

We of the Faction were merely biding our time. We knew that the Time Lord High Council had stolen that absurd Klein bottle, thinking that they could use it as a bolt hole in the future War. They thought it would be a stronghold from which to elude their future Enemy if they had to. And where safer to hide it than the spacetime vortex, the domain that they believe they control so absolutely?' She was smiling, a rapt look on her face as she considered the effects of this action. 'Who knows what that mistake has done to spacetime? What it continues to do?'

Father Kreiner stumped across the room towards Fitz. His ancient legs creaked with the effort, but if Fitz had any initial hopes that the Faction monster was enfeebled by his thousands of years lost in the vortex, they were soon dashed. Kreiner kicked out at the slumped coven members who were in his path, and the bodies almost flew aside at the impact.

Kreiner stood before him, and raised his one leathery arm to take Fitz's chin in his gloved hand. 'Was I ever this young?' mused Kreiner, twisting Fitz's head to one side to get a proper look. 'Was I ever this naive? Or this frightened?'

Fitz decided to treat these as rhetorical questions. He could feel the grip tightening on his chin, hear the little motor devices in Kreiner's arm and fingers whining as the pressure grew.

He winced a little, but said nothing.

'You know, I can kill you now. Don't think that I can't.'

Fitz could hear Tana chuckling, a throaty satisfied sound that filled the dark room.

'Yes,' continued Kreiner. "That sounds like a splendid paradox, doesn't it? I kill my ancestor, but I survive.' The pressure on Fitz's chin seemed to reach a peak, and then Kreiner just stopped squeezing and pushed him aside.

Fitz gasped as the blood returned to his face, and he clutched at his chin.

'But you're not my ancestor, are you?' hissed Kreiner. 'You're an ersatz version of me, created by the Remote over many years. First on Ordiflca, and then on Anathema. Lifeless biomass, given history and meaning by the remembrance tanks. You're a fake. You're a fiction. Truth is, boy, I am the person the Doctor first met, first took from Earth in the TARDIS.' He closed his eyes, and the lids fluttered as though he were searching deep in his memory. 'I was the young man who went to China with Mao's army. I wept at the sound of the T'hiili Queen's song. I saw the double sunrise on Cherantrin V It was me who travelled with him and ... . Samantha? Yes, with him and Sam to Vega Station ...'

There was a long pause. Fitz couldn't think what to say to all this. Couldn't admit it might be true. Couldn't speak.

Kreiner's eyes snapped open again. The Faction monster said, 'I am the real Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner'

'And I claim my five pounds.' He'd found his voice at last. Don't let this crinkly old sod see you're rattled, Fitzie. "The Doctor reminded me of what I really am. Being me is more than just existing in a continuous line for ever, you know. You can't be me any more. Not even if you live for another four thousand years. You could never be Frank Sinatra, like I was on Drebnar. You could never be Fitz Fortune, or Simon Templar, or Alphonse Lebleu. Because you've forgotten what it ever meant to be the real Fitz Kreiner.' He gulped, watching for the Faction man's reaction. 'Ersatz? I don't think so. I'm more Fitz Kreiner than you'll ever be, you sad, forgotten nobody. Don't think you can manipulate me like the other poor fools: He nodded at the few remaining coven members, sprawled around them.

He thought that Father Kreiner was going to explode at this point. Instead, a guttural laugh bubbled up and burst out of the Faction man's skeletal face. Somehow, that was more unnerving.

Eventually, Father Kreiner said, "The Doctor certainly must have thought I was nobody. The same Doctor who you speak of with such affection. He abandoned me, you know. Left me to rot on Earth, left me to the Faction. How convenient, then, to have you another version of me that he could shape as he wished, that he could control.' He gestured around him at the fallen coven members. "That he could manipulate, like these poor fools.'

Kreiner stepped up close to him now, and Fitz could smell the stench of his ancient breath, icy on his face. Fitz felt the cold seep into him, filling him with dread and despair. As a kid, he'd dreamed of living to a ripe old age. Well, be careful what you wish for, Fitzie: it may come true.

'I'll tell you why I won't kill you, little fake. Because I want you to learn for yourself about your friend the Doctor. How he knows he can just leave people, give up on them, because there's always an easy replacement. Ask him about Susan ask him how he can call himself a grandfather after abandoning her on Earth. She was the first, the first of so many ... And when you've learned all that, then ask yourself whether everything you believe hasn't been a lie. I've lived thousands of years knowing that. Now it's your turn, young Mr Kreiner.' He hissed a dismissive sound at Fitz, and stumped off into the room. "There are many things that my biosystems have erased from my memory over the long, long years I have served the Faction. But I haven't forgotten what it meant to be Fitz Kreiner. Not for a single moment.'

Fitz watched him go, letting his words sink in. He recalled how the Doctor had refused to discuss the events surrounding Fitz's return from the Faction all those years previously. And he knew how the Doctor had made it a personal project to humanise Compassion and look what had happened to her: the result had been quite the opposite. He could scarcely credit what he was thinking. Could it be true?

Maybe Father Kreiner was right.

The cold feeling of dread was still with him in every cell of his being.

He saw that Tarra was watching him closely, her eyes bright within the savage mask of bone.

'You can understand now our instinct for revenge on the Doctor. Until we realised that, after all, he was one of us all along. That was the most delicious paradox of all.'

Fitz shook his head. Though he knew, deep down, that he believed it now himself. He was going to get away from them the next chance he got. But for the first time in ages, he didn't know where he would run to.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

Mother of invention

Nivet landed heavily on the invisible floor for the fifth time. He cursed in such a long stream of obscene language that even a combat soldier like Mali was shocked.

'Don't just throw yourself around this place, Combat Elite, he snarled at her as he grasped desperately for purchase on the nearby console. 'Try to remember what the Doctor did earlier to stabilise the internal dimensions of this TARDIS.

'You're supposed to be the expert technician,' she shouted above the roar of the TARDIS engines. Stars and planets whirled and spun around them, with the only focal point being the central, sixsided console that bucked and reared like a wild animal. 'What is this thing trying to do?'

'She -' Nivet caught himself as the TARDIS lurched again. 'It has dematerialised from the Edifice, and now it's trying to escape into the spacetime vortex.'

Mali staggered to her feet, and clutched at the console. 'You can't let it do that. This Type 102 has to be returned to Gallifrey.'

Nivet climbed his way up the console to a standing position. He spotted the control panel he was looking for, worked his way around to it, and operating the system that he'd seen the Doctor using earlier.

The rollercoaster ride ended abruptly, and they were no longer thrown about the room. But the scanner which enveloped them on all sides, continued to display a disorientating, sickening view of the outside world as the TARDIS twisted crazily through it.

At last Nivet identified the scanner control, and the lurching, nauseating display faded to be replaced by the sombre, if battered, decorations of the TARDIS walls.

'Have we landed?' asked Mali, the relief evident in her voice.

'No.' Nivet continued to examine the console. 'It's still trying to escape.'

'Very inventive,' said Compassion's voice from above them. 'I'm quite impressed.'

Nivet looked up at Compassion's face on the scanner. 'Thank you. Now that I've decoupled the external and internal mapping, and switched off the scanner, I can concentrate on getting you back to Gallifrey.'

Compassion's voice was honeyed. 'You don't really want to take me back there, surely?

We've a whole universe to explore. A bright young man like you 'Enough.' Nivet smiled, smoothing his battered blond curls back into place and surveying the controls again. "This is my job. Yours is to be the mother of our future TARDISes. I don't really want to prevent that.'

'Where are you taking us?' Mali asked.

Nivet finished his adjustments of the controls. "The TARDIS berthing cradles.'

Above him, he saw Compassion's smiling face change until it was glowering at him furiously. Then the scanner image faded away.

Within a few minutes, the sound of materialisation filled the room. Perhaps he was being fanciful, thought Nivet, but was it more strained, perhaps less willing, than he would have expected? How strange for him to attribute feelings to a machine like that.