'Yes I can,' Fitz said simply.
'The Doctor's not the man he was, remember? He's the man he will be.'
'He's still the Doctor, whatever they do to him.'
'Loyal to the last,' sighed Romana, but it was clearly of no consequence to her. Fitz found himself considering his stance. The whole planet seemed to be against the Doctor, and here he was denying all atrocities, acting for all the world like the Doctor's goodwill ambassador for the United He left you in the UN building and never came back. Let you live for hundreds of years as another man, knowing be could put you right in a few minutes.
'He's still the Doctor,' Fitz insisted quietly, more to himself than to anyone else. 'He'll still save the day, whatever it takes.'
Romana ignored him, apparently thinking the situation over. 'And with Faction Paradox actually working inside the Capitol ...' She kicked her feet against the floor. 'Compassion, come on, untie me. We have to get to the Council Chamber.'
'Maybe you do.' Compassion snapped through Romana's bonds and flung them against the fat wall. She crouched threateningly over Romana. 'But understand this. I'm not letting either you or the Faction control me, not ever.'
Romana smiled without warmth. 'As you're so fond of saying.'
'So I'm keeping out of this.' She turned to leave. 'Do what you want, I'm getting clear.'
Fitz was appalled. 'But Compassion, what about the Doctor?'
'There are hundreds of TARDISes on Gallifrey should he recover. He won't need me.'
'You know that's not the case,' said Romana quietly. 'You know that you disabled all the berthed time machines when the TARDISes pursued you. I don't know how.'
'Maybe I don't know myself,' said Compassion.
'So you'd be leaving the Doctor and me here to rot,' Fitz said, trying to look as helpless as possible.
'She's not leaving. She can't go anywhere,' Romana sneered. 'Not after what Nivet did to her.'
'I broke free of the Faction override,' said Compassion. She closed her eyes. It looked to Fitz as if she was meditating, but he knew she was examining some inner resource. 'I can certainly find a way to break free of ...' Compassion faltered,fell back against the wall. 'No,'
she said quietly. 'Oh no.'
Fitz swallowed hard. 'What is it, Compassion?'
'I think ...' She broke off, arched her back and opened her mouth as if she was screaming but someone had turned down the volume. The crystal in the chandeliers shattered.
'Tsunami,' she choked, her eyes grey like sea water. 'A shadow sweeping across space, so powerful ...'
"The War,' Romana breathed. 'It's beginning at last.'
Compassion staggered out of the room. Fitz and Romana swapped glances and ran after her.
The corridor outside was empty. Fitz could hear a familiar wheezing and groaning sound filtering around the nearest junction. By the time he had rushed around the corner, all he could see was Compassion's fading form, her back turned to them, arms outstretched as if in surprise or alarm.
Fitz slumped against the corridor wall, a wave of despair breaking over him. 'Bugger. She was right. She found a way to break free.'
Romana seemed to think carefully for a moment. 'Come on,' she called.
'Where are we going now?' Fitz called back, dolefully. He wished Compassion hadn't taken off like that; he'd feel a lot safer with somebody indestructible than with someone as flaky as Romana.
'The Council Chamber.' The President of Gallifrey was already pegging it down the corridor, hoisting up her black dress round her waist so she could run more quickly. Her legs offered Fitz the only incentive he could think of to keep up with her.
'And what are we going to do when we get there?' Fitz panted.
'I'll tell you,' said Romana, 'when I think of something.'
'You don't know me, do you, Doctor?'
Kreiner stared at the baffled face of the man he had dreamed of killing for so many centuries.
His hatred for the Doctor had sustained him, dragged his ancient consciousness through all the Faction had demanded of him. The idea that one day this Time Lord would be his to kill had haunted all that long, cold time in the vortex; caught between the pain of consciousness and the despair of his dreams, existing on and on, the Doctor was about the only thing that could make him feel anything at all.
And now he stood before him.
'Dust,' said the Doctor. 'I knew you on Dust. But I ... I can't remember ...'
Good, Doctor, thought Father Kreiner as he moved towards him, savouring every slow step.
Thank you. Give me no reason to show you mercy.
The fading sensors in his ancient armour told him the Time Lord woman was reaching for the staser on the ground, but Tarra destroyed the weapon in a moment with her disintegrator pistol.
On his chair, Greyjan tittered like a schoolchild.
'Everyone will remain quite still,' Tarra said.
Kreiner ignored her, closing in on the Doctor.
The runtish Timon's outrage had obviously got the better of him. 'Be gone from here, Faction scum,' he warned, puffing himself up and marching over. 'This is the Council Chamber of the High -'
He never finished the sentence. Kreiner turned and gripped Timon by the throat. A second later there was a brittle snap as Timon's head fell back at right angles to his neck. He tottered for a moment, mouth open as if about to comment on the gilt on the ceiling, before his body buckled and fell to the floor.
Kreiner watched the old head bounce into a corner, then he wiped his fingers on the tattered material of his cloak.
The guards looked first at each other in helpless alarm, then to Greyjan. 'Throw down your guns,' he said, his jollity suddenly gone. "There's nothing anyone can do now.'
'Thank you, Lord Greyjan,' Mother Tarra said sweetly.
'Why was that necessary?' the Doctor protested, angrily. 'He was an old man, he could do nothing to harm you.'
'You never can tell with Time Lords,' Kreiner said, still advancing, while the Doctor defiantly held his ground. 'You'd think they were good as gold and nice as pie. But then, one day ...'
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. 'I know you ...'
Kreiner nodded. 'Oh yes ...'
A technician at a console across the room started staring wildly around, clearly unsure who to report to. 'Scanners detect massive disturbance in the vortex.'
Kreiner turned on him. 'Silence! I'm not having anything spoil this moment.'
'Father Kreiner, you will be silent yourself,' Mother Tarra hissed. "The time has finally come.'
'Yes,' Kreiner agreed. 'My time.'
He turned back to the Doctor, and saw that all the defiance, the outrage, seemed to have vanished. He looked like a small boy placed in a confusing adult world beyond his understanding.
His voice was equally small as he stared fearfully at the bogeyman coming to get him: 'What did she call you?' He placed both hands to his temple as if suddenly in pain.
'Poor Doctor. Am I giving you a headache?' Kreiner said softly. Then he snarled. 'Do you remember what you gave me?'
The Doctor said nothing. Kreiner could feel his internal medical systems flushing his blood with tranquillisers, struggling to keep him calm as he reached out to the Time Lord and bellowed into his face.
'You gave me away!'
The Doctor recoiled from his outstretched hand, and stumbled backwards. Somewhere behind Kreiner, the technician shouted out, eyes wide with fear. 'Energy signature ... I've never seen anything like it. It's impossible to imagine, so powerful ...'
Mother Tarra was rubbing her hands together. "The opening strike,' she cooed softly.
'Full spectrum analysis impossible,' the technician continued. 'It's going to pass right through the transduction barriers.'
Kreiner's sensors indicated a charge building in the air. 'How long till impact?' someone yelled.
'The instruments are swamped; the technician shouted. 'Timing malfunction. Can't decipher any of these readings.'
'Soon,' Greyjan wailed, clutching the coronet, guards backing away from him as his hands started to smoke. The rubies inset on the metal band seemed to glow brighter and brighter.
"That's all you need to know, man, it's soon now.' He gave a short, mocking laugh.
'Retribution.'
Kreiner wanted to remain oblivious to the raised voices around him, to make the noises just part of the soundtrack playing in his head as he took the final steps towards the man who used to be the closest thing he had to a hero, ready to settle the score. He reached out again to grab the Doctor's neck, to haul him to his feet, to make him look and truly appreciate what he'd done. The Doctor's pained expression grew wider and brighter and closer all the time, so close now he couldn't start to take it in. I'll have his head, he thought, caught in this moment, mounted on a wall. I'll stare at it all day, every day, for ever and ever.
'Do you remember when it happened?' Kreiner snarled, his fist fastening round the Doctor's neck. 'Leaving me in Geneva, out of your hair while you went out with Sam as usual?'
The Doctor tried to shake his head. Kreiner knew on some level the action was signalling disbelief, shock, but his anger wanted him to see it as a denial, one more callous dismissal.
'I always thought you'd come back, you see?' Kreiner felt the words catching in his throat as if they were hooked there he had to spit them out. 'I trusted you. I always trusted you.'
'I ...' the Doctor's voice was barely audible to Kreiner over the sound of the valves and pumps pushing his blood faster and faster through his ancient body. 'I couldn't reach you ...'
'You liar,' Kreiner spat. 'You never thought what might have happened to the real me. You settled for some ... some lookalike, a homemade version. Suited you better, did it? Less rough edges? Another customised companion?'
Kreiner was dimly aware Tarra was yelling something at him, but he wasn't letting go of the Doctor now, not for her, not even for the bloody Grandfather. He wondered if a tear might fall out of one of those scrunched up eyes if he squeezed the throat just a little harder.
'So how do you feel, Doctor, now you know? Now you realise?' Squeeze hard. 'Like a dad who pushes his kid up to the post office in a pram then only remembers him when he's on the bus home?' Squeeze harder. 'Like a kid who gets a new dog, then finds his old one wasn't put down after all?'
No tears. When the Doctor's eyes snapped open they were too dull even to catch the light.
Mali looked on helplessly at the violence of the confrontation, her fingers still burning from the staser's destruction.
'You, guards,' the skullfaced woman instructed. 'Make sure the Doctor isn't killed.' Mali saw the guards look at each other, uncertain what to do. Then Tarra shot one of them dead, his smoking body vanishing even as they watched.
'Now, if you please,' Tarra said demurely, big white skull glistening.
Shaking, one of the guards moved over to where Kreiner had dropped the Doctor to the floor, keeping well clear, and another cautiously went to follow. Impartial observers, as all good Time Lords once had been.
Mali cursed. She'd suddenly realised that if the Doctor was killed, if the Edifice let go, the Faction's power would be broken.
'Poor Father Kreiner,' Tarra said sweetly. 'I do understand his need to ... purge his system.'
'Power still building,' Tragdorvigan shouted helplessly.
Tarra swung round to look directly into Mali's eyes, who couldn't help but shudder. 'Battle is commencing,' she said, 'and you have the honour of being the first to know ...' Tarra's jaws snapped shut with a crack. 'We're coming to get you.'
Kreiner threw the Doctor's body down like a doll to the shaking floor of the chamber. He glimpsed red figures in the periphery of his vision, spun round at his audience of guards and screamed at them to keep away.
They did.
'So tell me how, Doctor,' Kreiner bawled, bringing down the metal heel of his boot on the pale face beneath him. Blood leaked from the Doctor's nose, but still there was no sound, still no saltwater. 'Tell me how you are going to make this all right.' He kicked out again. 'Why won't you say anything? What are you thinking of? What? 'And again. 'Tell me what you're thinking!'
The Doctor's eyes flickered over him through puffy eyelids. He lay flat on the trembling ground, as if his body was too heavy to shift an inch.
'I'm so sorry, Fitz.'
Sorry?
He's laughing at you.
'I'm not Fitz,' Kreiner whispered as the room kept on shaking, his fist clenched steellike inside the heavy gauntlet. 'Not any more.And you're not getting away with it.'
Mali stared round the room, unblinking. The guards had fallen to their knees, or were curled up into balls. No one was watching out for the Doctor any longer as Kreiner raised his one good arm ready to strike. The technician was doing the same, but only to bang his fist against his useless controls. Greyjan was starting to shake, muttering, intoning a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers, hands still clamped over the coronet, the smell of singed hair and flesh a sharp tang in the air.
Mali started to cry. She had no idea now what to do, what was right or what was wrong she was aware only of the rising tension at the back of her head. A vestigial, animal instinct that fire was coming from the sky and they were all going to burn.
Kreiner felt a sudden blow against his crippled right side. Tarra must finally have decided enough was enough, and had swooped down on him like a bird of prey. She sank a handful of talons into the stump of his wizened arm and propelled him forward. With a yell of pain, Kreiner collided with the for wall. The tremors in the room increased, as though it was the force of his impact that was making all Gallifrey shake this way. Or the force of his anger.
A roar of power, low and distorted, began to fill the room.