The thin form of his future self leered at him. 'You will never be forgiven, Doctor,' said Grandfather Paradox. 'Never. Not now.'
The Doctor pushed once more against the skeletal limb pinning him down.
'Trying to leg it?' The Grandfather chuckled mirthlessly, and looked at him with the dispassionate interest of a surgeon at an autopsy. 'Why are you not ours? Your body was riddled with the Faction virus I sensed it in the Council Chamber.'
'You sensed it because you are attuned to the infected timeline trying to overprint itself on to the original,' the Doctor shouted up at the distorted image.
Grandfather Paradox scowled. 'You're lying!'
'He's not, you know.' The ghostly image of the dust Doctor stood, hands on hips, in the middle of the control room.
Suddenly the great leg came away in the Doctor's hands, crumbling like soft rock. There was a thud outside as the enormous spider crashed to the ground. Which of the apparitions had disposed of the creature he couldn't tell.
The Grandfather drifted smoothly over to confront the ghostly dust Doctor across the console.
'What would you know about it.you young fool?'
'Perhaps I'm older than you think,' said the wraith haughtily. 'I never died on Dust. I should never have been there. I should never have been infected.' He patted his chest soundlessly.
"This body died on Earth. The TARDIS knew and she gave up her existence to try to save me. She's been siphoning off energies from the bottle universe to hold both my fates in the balance, here at the nexus point.'
'I am your fate.' The Grandfather glared down, eyes burning with malevolence. "The game is played out, Doctor, and I hold all the cards.'
'Perhaps we could have a whist drive.' The Doctor got warily to his feet and retreated over to the side of the dust Doctor, who turned to him.
'It seems to me there are three directions this little tournament could move in,' the dust Doctor said, scratching the back of his illusory neck.
'Oh really,' the Grandfather said. His boots thudded as he walked slowly and calmly around the console.
'One: you can run. Leave the universe to it. What can you do to save Gallifrey now?'
The Doctor was backing away slowly under the Grandfather's advance, eyes locked into his malevolent stare. 'Two?'
'Surrender to this thirdrate god in the machine here.' The dust Doctor nodded towards the Grandfather. 'Beg him to change his mind, to spare Gallifrey, to temper his visions for his Paradox hordes overrunning all space and time. Perhaps there's a chance.'
The Doctor and the Grandfather were circling each other now, looking for an opening, the projection of the whitehaired man a surreal referee in the middle. Three of them together, snapshots of a single life. No escape: how could you run from yourself?
'I like the sound of option two, Doctor,' said Grandfather Paradox, moving a little closer.
'What about it? Are you ready to beg me?'
The projection of the dust Doctor seemed to swallow hard. 'Or three ...'
A look of alarm suddenly clouded the Grandfather's face. "That's enough!' he snarled, and sliced his arm through the projection. The image of the valiant, defiant, younger Doctor dissolved into motes of dust.
The Grandfather smiled his lopsided, evil grin. 'On your knees, Doctor. We both know it's the only viable option.'
The Doctor stared at where his earlier self had been standing. The atmosphere in the room had changed, dropped several degrees in an instant. His glands had risen in his neck, were throbbing under his arms. His cheeks and lips were bursting out in spiteful ulcers, little pinprick pains trying to jab him over the edge, to where the Grandfather's sick future would be waiting.
'You heard him,' the Doctor whispered as the Grandfather moved nearer. 'There's a third option.'
'What could that mad fool know? Come on, beg me to save Gallifrey. To suffer your silly friends to live. Gallifrey's last uprising has been crushed. Go on. I'm a god, you can trust in me.'
'Like Father Kreiner trusted in you?'
'Worship me, Doctor. Oh, I know it's a little narcissistic ... But one day you'll see it from my point of view.' Again, the dry cackle. 'You will, you know.'
The Doctor continued to back away towards the console, trying to think, his clouded brain buzzing as if it was filled with wasps. 'I will never become you! There has to be another way ...'
He closed his eyes, gripped the controls, tried to reestablish the psychic link to hear what his earlier self had been about to say. The tiniest essence of life force was all the Grandfather hadn't managed to strip away with his psychic blast. The one strand binding the grinding dimensions of the Edifice together.
There was a loud snapping noise from one of the ancient bone control panels and the Doctor's eyes opened wide. A cloud of mould spores flew from the misshapen mushroom of the console as a dull brass lever sprang up.
Concentric rings hooped round the spike of the lever, forming a symbol like a target.
The Doctor started to shake his head in horror, to mouth silent words in disbelief. But as he turned to recoil, he found the Grandfather was upon him His pale shining face rushed to meet his own, and his hooked hand grasped for his throat.
Chapter Fortyfour.
Ended
'You'll never reach that lever, Doctor,' hissed the Grandfather.
'I don't want to,' the Doctor muttered, as the bony fingers closed more tightly round his swollen neck. 'If I do, I lose everything I hold dear.'
The Grandfather tried to pull the Doctor away from the gleaming brass spike. 'So why even try?'
'Because I'm not you. Because I'm the Doctor.'
'You are a fool.'
Dark spots clouded the Doctor's vision. He felt a roaring pressure in his ears. 'You'll kill me,' he gasped.
'What's one more paradox now?' the Grandfather spat into his face. 'I can survive anything.'
The Doctor grabbed hold of the Grandfather's stump and squeezed as hard as he could. He saw his own aged and pitted face grimace in pain, and knew he had to try harder. He clutched at the lever, almost touching it. The Grandfather tugged him away, just as the Doctor had hoped. His numb fingers scrabbled for one of the metal stabiliser cubes, and freed it from its housing. Somehow he managed to secure it between two fingers and started pounding the bare flesh of the stump with his fist.
Still the Grandfather held him fast. In desperation, he swung up both legs and kicked as hard as he could into Grandfather Paradox's stomach.
The Grandfather let go and fell backwards. The Doctor landed heavily on the cracked ivory floor.
Immediately, the Grandfather recovered and swooped through the air, his cloak never moving, wrapped protectively round him like a chrysalis. The Doctor imagined with a chill this was only the first of many cadaverous forms peeping out. He rolled desperately out of the way, felt a rush of cold air pass his hot face.Then he turned to find Grandfather Paradox blocking his way to the console.
'It's hopeless, Doctor,' the Grandfather said. 'I have only to wait and you will be mine.'
The Doctor looked up at him, wiped a streak of blood from his mouth. 'You're right. It is hopeless. You're really not my type.'
An almighty lurch shook the Edifice. Hot blue sparks flew from the console, and a nonsensical gabbling of whispered voices rose in the room like a tide. 'Listen to me, Grandfather!' The Doctor spoke slowly and gravely. He held up one hand like an Earthly man of God warding off the evil before him, and approached the console from the rear. "The Edifice is losing form. It's grown to this colossal size by mapping its external dimensions on to those of its interior. It's as big inside and out ... but the dimensional interfaces are fatigued, wearing thin.' The Doctor showed the stabiliser cube in his other hand, and smiled.
'Now I've removed this, it won't take so much to bring the whole thing tumbling down.'
The Grandfather gestured to the curved brass handle. "The device is useless, it can't focus fire now. It's just a relic of the ancient times of conflict.'
'You've helped bring those times upon us again,' the Doctor said. 'No one knows that better than the core of this good, tired old TARDIS of mine.'
The Edifice pitched again, and its floor became a steep gradient. The Grandfather reached out with his missing arm to support himself, and fell with an angry shout. The Doctor tumbled forward too, hurting himself against the edge of the console. He staggered round to the lever but the Grandfather seized him by the leg. Before he lost his balance, the Doctor plucked but the Grandfather seized him by the leg. Before he lost his balance, the Doctor plucked one more of the stabilisers from its housing. At once the gabbling voices grew louder. The lighting dipped, and the Doctor crashed down to the filthy floor.
'Let me go,' he gasped, kicking and punching the Grandfather. 'You wanted the power of the Edifice, you're going to get it.'
'You're bluffing.'
'No.'
Grandfather Paradox smashed his head down against the Doctor's own. There was the dull smack of bone on bone. The Doctor wasn't sure whether his head was spinning or the Edifice had actually begun to turn on some precarious axis. He gathered all his strength into one punch, and his fist smashed into the Grandfather's cheek. Soundlessly the Grandfather fell backwards, and the Doctor staggered back to his feet.
'Just one bolt fired will drain off the last of the binding energy holding the Edifice together,'
he yelled. "The internal dimensions will collapse down to something the size of this stabiliser.'
The Grandfather stared back at him. 'Gallifrey, Kasterborous ... this entire sector of space will be torn apart, destroyed.'
The Doctor nodded, eyes welling with tears. 'For ever,' he said firmly. 'But your entire fleet will perish along with it.'
'You will die too.'
'Just as well, I think; the Doctor said, gritting his teeth. 'I'd never be able to live with the memory anyway.'
'You will destroy all Gallifrey wipe out millions of lives.'
'I never thought I'd admit to choosing the lesser of two evils.'
He seized the branching brass device on the console, but again, the Grandfather flew over to grapple with him. With the Edifice tipping at such an angle now, the Doctor couldn't get clear. He tried to duck, but Grandfather Paradox held his right arm, twisted it painfully behind his back.
'Give in to me,' the cold voice hissed. 'You know you can't bring yourself to do this.'
'I must!' The Doctor gasped. The words ground out of him: 'I will be sparing my people a war that will dehumanise them to the point of becoming monsters. I will be saving them from whatever living nightmares the Faction's technology can inflict upon them.'
The Grandfather's voice rose in fury. 'And yourself?'
'I don't know which way this TARDIS will jump,' the Doctor whispered. 'Nor which timeline will be set in stone. But at least that's what it will be. Stone, not bone.'
'I will ensure that the Faction's reality is chosen,' hissed Grandfather Paradox in his ear.
'You will never destroy the Faction. All of space and all of time is riddled with us.'
The Edifice lurched the other way, and the two men tumbled away from the console. The Doctor struggled to be free, but his arm was held tight.
He went suddenly limp in the Grandfather's grip.
'Riddled?' he gasped, shaking sweat from his eyes, pain pricking all over his weary body. His voice hardened. 'I'll give you a riddle. I've been thinking of a paradox an extraspecial one, just for you.
That missing arm of yours, the stuff of your legend.'
The Grandfather scowled down at him. 'I removed it myself. To defy the Time Lords branding me their prisoner.'
'No, you didn't.' The Doctor threw his head back, to stare defiantly into the burning gaze of his own future one last time. A focus point. His own target.
The Grandfather held one of his arms fast. The Doctor suddenly reached out with his free hand.
'You cut off your own arm because you used it ...'
The Doctor gripped the trigger mechanism. The Grandfather couldn't stop him, his one hand locked round the Doctor's other wrist. The voices chanted louder and louder.
'... to do ...' to do ...'
The Doctor twisted down with all his strength, the myriad voices cheering him on, joining him in unison to scream the final word.
'... this.' this.'
The whispers stopped abruptly. The Grandfather seemed to scream with the voice of the millions still caught below on Gallifrey. The Doctor hung on to the vibrating bulk of the ancient console, and pressed his face against the hard bone surface as if for comfort.
The Grandfather howled his despair to the universe.
The Doctor had spent his life moving on from place to place, trying to keep the pages turning, never to reach the end of the story. Finally, there was nowhere to run.
Why could he hear footsteps?
The sound of the Grandfather's anger tore Kristeva's mind apart. He spun around the Shadow Parliament, heard excitement turning to disbelief, then to terror. The figures on the benches were in uproar, struggling around in panic. One of them burst into flame, and like a torch, set light to everything and everyone he touched.
'We're too strong!' Kristeva shouted at them. 'Too strong to burn down now!' He struggled to the empty Speaker's chair, reached for the heavy gavel resting on the mottled bone lectern.
He had to bring order. Order. He screamed the word, brought down the hammer, but it shattered to dust. Kristeva stared at it in horror. He'd gone too far. This parliament knew he was a false Speaker, that the Grandfather was gone once more. And Kristeva presumed to stand in his place?
The air was suddenly thick with huge, dark birds, tearing at him, pushing him from the podium. Kristeva fell forward, smacking into the hard, wet floor. He saw reflections of the spreading fire in the water, panicking feet stamping over his wornout body, slipping and sliding in the gloom.
He forced himself up through sheer effort of will, pressure in his head rising higher and higher. His blood felt as if it was boiling in his skull, then it burst out in jets through his eyes, poured from his mouth.
He blundered into someone else, felt spindly limbs snap trying to push his dying body away.