And he smiled, but not in relief or in welcome. The cold sneer of a smile looked so wrong on his face, so out of place that the image affected Fitz far more than any of the carnage he'd witnessed this day.

The Doctor snarled and reached out his arm just as his evil twin had done, but Fitz rolled away just in time. 'He's turned!' he yelled, scrambling to his feet. 'The Doctor's on their side.'

Fitz heard a shriek of triumph greet his warning. Tarra was back on her feet again. Her mates clearly wouldn't be far behind.

The Doctor beckoned Fitz closer with a crooked finger, the smile never leaving his lips.

'Oh, Doctor,' Fitz whispered, backing fearfully away. 'Oh sweet Jesus, what are any of us going to do now?'

Romana answered the question for him as appositely as she could with a commanding yell.

'Run!'

'We should destroy them for their impudence,' Mathara croaked from the wet floor. Kristeva helped her to stand.

'As a show of strength,' Tarra remarked, 'it was feeble. There's nothing they can do to really harm us.'

'The Grandfather,' Kreiner said, dragging himself up to stand beside Tarra. 'He's vanished.

What happened?'

'Our presence is not yet fully stable,' Tarra answered. "The power surge disrupted the projection, that is all. He will return to us.' She hissed, and rubbed her dainty hands together.

'While the Doctor shall join us for the first time at last.'

She glided across the room, through the halfformed benches of the Shadow Parliament and the great shadows of the agitated ravens, to stand by the side of the stillsmiling Doctor. Tarra watched him blinking slowly, gazing around him in wonder like a newborn taking in his surroundings for the very first time.

He smiled. 'I've got some catching up to do.'

Chapter Forty.

Slaughterhouse

'Where are we going now?' Fitz wailed. First Compassion had walked out on him, now the Doctor had gone bad. Why the hell was he bothering? Why didn't he just curl up and die now rather than prolong the agony?

Then he thought of the hundreds he'd seen die, and told himself perhaps he should stop being such a whingeing bastard.

He found he was running alongside the pretty woman. 'I'm Fitz,' he said. 'What was that clever thing you did in there?'

'Mali.'

'Is that the art of conjuring blue sparks into water?'

'No, that was just me discharging a power pack. My name is Mali.'

'Pleased to meet you.' He considered. 'But discharge is such a horrible word, isn't it.'

Romana signalled they should stop running. 'We caught them off guard. We won't be so lucky a second time.'

'Lucky?' snorted Fitz. "That fiasco had number thirteen written all over it in black magic marker.'

Everyone looked at him a bit oddly, so he shut up, half listening while Mali explained the way the Faction had let themselves into the Matrix.

'Was that what Tarra was up to when she was sniffing out Greyjan's brains?' he asked.

'She might have been carrying out some groundwork, I suppose,' Mali conceded.

'A Faction presence inside the Matrix,' Romana muttered. 'Fourdimensional mitochondria.'

Fitz sighed. 'Duh. Of course. How did I miss it?'

'It's like what's happened to the Doctor,' Romana snapped impatiently. 'Just as his host cells have been invaded by Faction microbes, so the Matrix is being overrun by the Faction. They corrupt the cells, forcing them to work in symbiosis with the Paradox virus. Take up permanent residence.'

'So there's no cure for the Doctor?'

Romana looked very clear about the deal in her own mind. 'None.'

'And the Matrix?' asked Mali.

'I won't let the Faction take it. I won't allow them that power.' She put her hands on her hips; we're cooking now, thought Fitz. 'If we have to, we'll destroy the Matrix ourselves.'

A collective gasp went up from Mali and the guards; Fitz got the impression Romana was advocating pulling down heaven and building a car park in its place.

'If we're going to survive, we've got to adapt,' Romana insisted. There was an almost fanatical gleam in her eyes that reminded Fitz of JinMing and his fellow inmates in the Red Army. 'And if that means fashioning a new world for ourselves, so be it.'

'What are your orders, Madam President?' Mali asked meekly.

'We have to access the Slaughterhouse, before they get their hands on that too.'

Fitz noticed an absence of deafening applause for the idea. 'Slaughterhouse?' he said uneasily. 'Doesn't sound like a very Time Lord name.'

'To be honest,' Romana said as she strode off, 'it isn't a very Time Lord room.'

'Where are we going?' Fitz called, resolving not to follow her entirely without question.

Romana didn't look back. 'My TARDIS. It's berthed in its own cradle. It may have escaped the worst of the damage.'

'But even if it did, the Type 102 disabled -'

'Well, we'll just have to get it working, Combat Elite Mali. There's no other option.'

'Can't we just walk it?' Fitz wondered. 'I don't think my legs have dropped off quite yet.'

Romana looked to be on the point of losing her rag, swishing to a stop and turning on him.

Why was he always on the receiving end of Time Lord aggro? 'No, Fitz, we can't just "walk it". Only my TARDIS has the necessary access codes to gain entrance to the Slaughterhouse.

The objects held there are so destructive they have to be stored in a stabilised time eddy hundreds of kilometres underground.'

'T'riffic,' said Fitz, and they all tramped on in silence to the Presidential wing.

Romana's Presidential TARDIS was still intact in its tiny alcove. From the outside it resembled a clear glass cube; you could actually see right through it as though it was empty.

Very classy, decided Fitz. Once inside, Mali was soon flat on her back under its console, trying to get enough juice through to it to manage the short hop into the bowels of the planet.

The interior was equally tasteful, bright and minimalist, but instead of the outside world, there were walls a whiter shade of pale. But given the choice, Fitz decided he would plump for the justtherightsideofplump Compassion model. Sucker for punishment that he was.

Romana sat up in the command seat, raised on a circular dais, staring into space. Fitz wondered how he'd be feeling if it was his world tying in tatters around him. Guiltily, he decided it was a bit like when the papers reported earthquakes in BongoBongo Land or wherever. It didn't realty mean much unless they were your people.

'I think it should function now,' Mali said, wriggling out from the console. Fitz hurried over to help her up before one of the guards could get in there. She ignored his outstretched hand and got up by herself.

Romana nodded to her newly designated driver, a scrawnylooking kid called Ryssal, who looked like the mutant offspring of Tommy Steele and Ken Dodd: he had the goofiest teeth Fitz had ever seen.

'Mali's got the magic touch,' Ryssal lisped appreciatively. 'She's really something, isn't she?'

'You can spray that again,' Fitz replied, wiping his face, and Ryssal, clearly used to being mocked, laughed goodnaturedly. He gingerly activated some controls. A small bulb lit up blue but nothing else happened.

'Shame you don't have the magic touch yourself, isn't it?' Fitz said genially.

'Some would say he did, Fitz,' said Mali, smiling warmly at Ryssal, who blushed.

'Let me off,' Fitz muttered sourty. 'I'm suddenly feeling sick. I don't want to go.'

Only when Romana opened the doors did he realise they had already arrived.

Fitz was the last one out into the Slaughterhouse .While the others gathered dutifully around Romana, Fitz stared about him. He realised Romana hadn't been kidding about its not being a typical Gallifreyan room. There was no ornate finery, no ostentatious decoration here. The walls, floor and ceiling were all a clinical white, brilliant like virgin snow on a sunny day, and made him feel just as cold. The brilliance made judging the exact size of the place tricky, but he reckoned the Albert Hall was a fair comparison. Oddly, his Cuban heels didn't echo as he walked over to join the others. He cleared his throat, and again the sound didn't cany. It was as if the air had been deadened. The whole place had the feel of a morgue, but instead of corpses, sinisterlooking equipment lay stacked in neat rows for as far as he could see.

Fitz's breath came out in steam as he walked shivering over to the others. 'Not paid the gas bill?' he asked, rubbing his arms through his shirtsleeves.

'We haven't got long,' Romana told her little band, ignoring him. 'The Faction will be consolidating their stronghold. We can't let them complete that process.'

'What do these things do?' Fitz asked, gesturing to the pile of alien devices before them.

'Apart from giving me the willies, that is.'

"They destroy things,' Romana said simply.

'Anything in particular?'

'Everything in particular.'

Fitz sighed. 'Fab.'

Romana set off to browse, looking the weird machinery up and down critically in the same way most birds scanned clothes racks for something in their size. 'We didn't know who the Enemy were going to be,' she said, 'so we had to be sure we would be able to hit back at them with something. We know that they will employ agents, but not what form those agents will take.'

Fitz nodded. 'So you covered all bases. The weapons are homemade, are they?'

'Some.' She hefted a squat, metal box that doubtless did something incredibly nasty. 'Many I selected personally from war worlds the universe over.'

Take this War pretty seriously, don't you?' Fitz murmured.

'It threatens my planet and my people,' Romana said, that odd glint back in her eye.

'Everything I know and care about.'

Like that wellknown triangular Panopticon and its three mighty statues, thought Fitz sourly.

He started to shiver.

'I won't let filth like Faction Paradox destroy Gallifrey,' Romana added, her voice almost lost in the white immensity of the Slaughterhouse.

'One wrong button pressed round here,' said Fitz, 'and you could do the job yourself.'

Romana was scowling at him.

'Sorry,' said Fitz. 'Did I say that aloud?'

Under Romana's direction, they tooled up and made their way back to the glass cube, which glittered in the harsh light like a giant diamond. Fitz felt ten tons heavier with what looked like a miniature bazooka, sleek and shiny, hanging round his neck. Romana had been vague about its exact function, but he understood that it fired concentrated bursts of highspeed protons which had a fairly unpleasant effect on anyone who got in thenway. Nice.

He felt a bit guilty even holding it. Just as long as no one nicked it off him and pointed it his way, he thought, sighing. The Doctor would never use a gun well, mostly never.

What would he be using now?

'Many of these weapons haven't been tested, Madam President,' Mali said, as Ryssal once again smoothly steered Romana's TARDIS back to the Capitol.

'That,' Romana pointed out, 'is exactly what we're going to do with them now.'

'In a battle situation?' Mali's face offered polite surprise, but her voice was too harsh, disbelieving for the expression to be sincere. 'I am a trained soldier, Madam President ...'

Romana sucked her cheeks in. 'With very limited field experience.'

Miaow, thought Fitz. But Mali was too angry to be fazed.

'Enough field experience to know you are sending us on a suicide mission.'

'I am your President, Combat Elite Mali!' Romana roared. 'You will do as I say!'

Oh dear, thought Fitz. Pulling rank after only one comeback. Not a good sign.