Fic Update: Fission (7/?)

[happydalek]

I hate 'the holidays.'  I just got finished with finals, and I know I won't be able to relax until New Year's, and then it'll be a lousy two weeks to feel normal until spring semester starts up and I'll have to get right back to the slog of it all.  No rest for the chronically lazy procrastinators!  This 'holiday season' especially sucks because for the first time in four years I don't have a job, so I'm strapped for cash but still have to buy gifts for people because I'm too burnt out to make cute little cards or anything for people.  Argh! 

Anywho, follow the cut to find the next installment of my quirky little fic:

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The Master opened his eyes and stared blankly at the stream of numbers on the computer screen in front of him.  Something had broken his concentration.  The radio resting on top of the monitor crackled with a nearly unintelligible, tinny noise.  The Master reached for the radio, but tangled his hands in a net of wires.  Still bleary from spending so long hooked into the psytronic matrix of the computer program, he’d forgotten about the electrode cap on his head.  Irritably, he tried to pull it off.  “Aah!” he exclaimed painfully, remembering belatedly that the cap had inserted electronic pins into his skull for better signal conduction. 

 

“Sir?  Do you copy?” the voice on the radio crackled.

 

“Damn fools!” the Master growled, angry, sore and still not entirely awake.  He reached up behind him and found the release button for the cap.  He took a moment to prod his head gingerly, and grimaced when he saw spots of blood on his fingertips. 

 

“Sir?” the radio squawked.

 

The Master grabbed it.  “What do you want, Captain?” he barked, still fingering his abused scalp.

 

“I said we found the Doctor, sir.  He and a young woman were in that blue box, sir, just like you said.  And incredibly, sir, the Doctor is both alive and whole.  We’re bringing them to you now, sir.”

 

The Master nearly dropped the radio.  “What do you mean, he’s whole?  That’s impossible.”

 

“I know that, sir.  But it’s true.  It’s definitely the Doctor, and there’s not a scratch on him, sir.”

 

The Master turned to an adjacent computer screen and turned on the security feed.  He cycled the dial through dozens of cameras until he saw the security party disembarking from the lift onto his level.  He zoomed the focus in.  There was no mistake. It was the Doctor, all right, his hands manacled behind his back, strolling on his own two feet into the corridor, flanked by guards. 

 

“Very good, captain,” the Master mumbled into the radio.  Time Lords could regenerate in a variety of circumstances, but not when they’d been dismembered as catastrophically as the Doctor had been.  Had the Doctor rigged up a false camera feed and fooled the security system somehow?  Or worse, had the Time Lords gifted him with improved regenerative abilities that had allowed him to survive and keep his latest form?  Either way, it was a fortuitous fluke, as it meant the Master wouldn't have to suffer the electrode cap any longer.

 

o0o

 

"Where are we going?" he asked Nyssa, whispering.  The last time he'd asked a question, the guard at his back had poked him with a gun barrel and told him to be quiet.  Nyssa had been right; these people were definitely not his friends.

 

"To the Master," she murmured back.

 

"Oh.  I take it the Master is not a friend, either?"

 

Nyssa stared straight ahead, her expression grim.  "No, he's not."

 

He was confused.  He liked being friends with people.  Friendship had so many good things about it that he couldn't understand why anyone would choose not to be friends.  So far, nothing about these guards made him feel good, and now Nyssa was telling him there was someone else that wasn't his friend?  "Why?" he asked her.

 

"Because he kills people and destroy planets, and you don't approve of that."

 

With so much colour, shape and texture in the universe, he couldn't imagine what it would be like to have all that taken away.  Why would someone do that?  Even the guards who were being mean to him were interesting to look at, and he was amazed at how similar, yet different they all were in the ways they moved and spoke, and he was learning more about them in every moment.  Yes, he decided, even if one of these guards were taken away, the universe would be poorer for losing that little bit of uniqueness, and that would make him feel terrible.  Nyssa knew him well. 

 

"Too right," he agreed emphatically.     

 

"I told you to shut up!" the guard behind him growled.

 

"No, you told me to be quiet—ow!" he winced as the guard's gun barrel dug into the skin of his back. 

 

"And now I'm ordering you to shut up, Chatty," the guard answered.

 

He saw Nyssa look at him sympathetically.  But he was all right.  Pain didn't last, and it was worth it to learn more about these people.  For instance, he'd told that guard his name twice now, but the man still hadn't got it right.  Perhaps he had a memory problem as well.  And who knew what else he would discover about people when he finally got to meet the Master?

 

He walked with Nyssa to a door at the end of the corridor.  One of the guards—Captain, the others had called him—pressed a button on a panel outside the door.  "Sir?" the captain spoke into the grill, "We've arrived."

 

The door buzzed and slid open.  "Send them in, captain," a smooth voice commanded from within the room.

 

"Go on," the guard who couldn't remember names ordered, jabbing the Doctor in the back with his gun once more.  He obliged quickly, hopping over the threshold into a dim control centre.  The room was rather small, and the far wall was taken up with a massive computer bank (Nyssa had provided him with the correct terminology), covered in highly interesting arrangements of blinking lights and monitor screens.  In front of the computer was a tall, metallic chair, bolted to the floor, and facing the computer.  It was impossible to see if anyone was seated in it, although there was a mechanical arm attached to the top that was sprouting a mesh of wires and needles, like a giant robotic flower. 

 

He was enthralled with the place, staring at the intricate mass of circuitry atop the chair, and then trying to spot any pattern in the way the computer buttons flickered.  It was dizzying, in a good way, and he grinned broadly.  He leaned towards Nyssa.  "What a remarkable room!"

 

"Doctor," Nyssa chided softly.

 

"Come now, Nyssa.  Look at all the lights and colours.  That chair!  Aren't you impressed?"  He rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to engage her, but his enthusiasm dimmed to see Nyssa looking so grim and uncomfortable.  He dropped his hand.  "Well, I certainly am," he muttered.

 

"I'm pleased to hear that, Doctor.  After all this time, I was beginning to think you didn't want to confront me.  Certainly, throwing yourself into an unshielded hadronic force field is a rather severe means of avoidance," the smooth, male voice remarked in a vaguely playful tone.  "Wait outside, captain." 

 

"Yessir!" the guard behind them saluted and stepped out into the corridor, and the door slid shut.

 

"Hadronic force field?!" Nyssa repeated.

 

"What?" The Doctor eyed her, and was taken aback by the expression of shock on her pretty face as she stared back at him. 

 

The smooth voice laughed.  "Modesty, Doctor?  How unlike you!" 

 

The Doctor realized that the speaker must be seated in the chair, and thinking back to what Nyssa had told him earlier, he realized whom the speaker must be.  With a great feeling of satisfaction, he announced, "You must be the Master!"

 

The great metal chair swivelled to face him.  Seated on it was a man, similar to, but subtly different from all the other men he'd seen so far.  This man was clothed in dark black, with a high, silver-accented collar, and sported a ring of facial hair around his mouth.  The man's mouth and eyes crinkled with mischievous humour, and he glanced at Nyssa.  "Who else would I be?"

 

o0o

 

"That's very odd," the Doctor murmured, tapping at the keypad insistently.  Finally, the screen complied with his request, albeit it sluggishly.

 

"What?  Found a map, yet?"

 

"I've found the correct directory, yes, but it's taking a while to process.  Almost as if there's something else consuming the memory."

 

"Well, could you hurry it up?  You're getting heavier by the minute," Tegan huffed into the Doctor's ear.

 

"Let me see if I can locate what's slowing it down.  Might be able to shut it off, depending on what it is."

 

"Oh, not this again," Tegan grumbled, "Just be more careful this time."

 

The Doctor chose to ignore the barb and tapped at the keypad.  "Yes, it's one program, consuming almost half of the system's procedural memory.  That's enormous.  What could it be for?"  He tried to access the program, but was promptly locked out by a firewall.  Going back a step, he quickly manoeuvred around the firewall and turned it off.  Accessing the trouble program again, a password screen popped up. 

"Damn."

 

"Doctor?"

 

"Password.  What would the Master use as password?"

 

"'Evil'?  'Lunatic'?  'Killing'?" Tegan suggested.

 

"I'm trying to think like the Master, not about the Master, Tegan."

 

"Oh."

 

On a whim, the Doctor tried 'Rassilon.'  The screen returned with Invalid password.  He typed in "gallifrey" next, but that wasn't it either.  Then the screen changed again:  Three bad login attempts will precipitate automatic system lockout and trigger a security alert.  Try again, DOCTOR.

 

"Well, how paranoid is he, expecting you to try this?" Tegan exclaimed.

 

"You know," the Doctor mused aloud, "I think he is." 

 

He thought again of how the armed guards and dropping bulkheads had practically herded him and Tegan to the lift that brought them directly to the transmitter room.  It was also curious that the transmitter room had been completely unguarded, and none of the alarms had gone off until after the Doctor had shut the system down.  And now, here was this message, specifically programmed into the system for the Doctor's benefit.  It wasn't uncommon for the Master's plans to have holes, but not to this extent.  It was as if the Master wanted to be stopped.  He looked at the message again.  "Breadcrumbs," he murmured.

 

"Is that the password?" Tegan asked.

 

"No.  I mean that this message is a clue.  One in a series of clues, actually.  A trail of breadcrumbs, as it were."

 

"Oh, like Hansel and Gretel.  Leading them to the witch's house."

 

"Actually, Hansel and Gretel left themselves the trail of breadcrumbs to lead them back home.  And it wasn't a witch, per se.  They came upon the old woman's bread house by accident," the Doctor corrected her automatically.  He saw her reflection roll her eyes.  "But you have the right idea.  I think the Master intended for me to shut down his transmitter, and now he wants me to access this program.  Which means that the password must be something obvious.  Something only he and I would know."  Which, the Doctor reminded himself, didn't narrow the field very much, actually.

 

"Sounds like a trap to me."

 

"I suspect it's all been a trap, since the moment the TARDIS materialized on this base.  The real question is, what's it all for?" the Doctor said, staring at the warning message on the screen: Try again, DOCTOR.  He stared at the last word.  DOCTOR.  Something only he and the Master knew...

 

No, the Doctor thought, he wouldn't have, would he?  He poised his fingers over the keys and typed.  He pressed enter, and the program opened.

 

"You did it!  What was the password?" Tegan asked.

 

The Doctor barely heard her, as line after line of numbers and symbols scrolled by on the screen.  It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at, but he didn't want to believe it.  It boggled his mind just to think of how the Master could have got hold of it.  There was no doubt, though.  "Oh, no," he groaned, feeling sick with dread.

 

"What is that?  Math?"

 

Bless Tegan.  "It's Omega's Equation," the Doctor intoned, awed by the words coming out of his mouth.

 

"Omega?  You don't mean—?"

 

"Yes.  It was Omega's mathematical genius that allowed the creation of the Eye of Harmony.  Rassilon later decreed that it was too dangerous to allow such knowledge to exist and banned Omega's work from ever being studied or used again.  But somehow the Master's found it.  If he solves Omega's Equation, he'll have the means to create as many Eyes of Harmony as he'd like.  Unlimited power, and utter devastation for millions of worlds across countless galaxies." 

 

The Doctor couldn't find the words to do justice to the magnitude of the situation.  The Master had once before manipulated knowledge beyond his understanding and almost destroyed the universe.  Now he was poised to do it again.  Next to Omega's Equation, the Master's transmitter had been a drop in the ocean.