Doctor Who: The Time Splicer: The Penitentiary (The Time Splicer Series Book 3)

by Cour M.

  The guards walked over to Ten, picked him up and laid him down on it. Ten’s head was placed on his pillow as he kept his eyes open and looking at the Captain.

  “I—”

  “Oh, don’t start with the whole ‘I shall break his spirit speech’,” Ten groaned, “I’ve heard it all at this point.”

  “Have you?”

  “Don’t worry, I can assure you that your security system is perfect, really top notch. It’s just, that is the problem when you torture a man’s younger self first. Eventually his older self begins to remember it. It just takes us a few minutes. Think of it like when you message someone, and then it takes a minute in the clouds, and then it comes back down to them, and they get it.”

  “That’s the way your mind works? Strange that you confess that to me.”

  “What have I got to lose? We’re two versions of me, in the same place at the same time. Two spirits being crushed at once. Two diverting experiences for you.”

  “What is that like? When one can hear what the other is thinking? Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t work very well, does it? After all, you’re older than him. And thought can only go forward. You can hear his thoughts, but he can’t hear yours because you have yours after he does. Am I right?”

  Ten did not respond.

  “You don’t answer. Then that must mean that I am correct.” Captain Gilmore rubbed his chin, self-satisfied. “What is that like for you both, I wonder. He can deliver a message to you, but you can’t respond back. Then that must mean that you are a brain that can’t respond to itself. How lonely, eh? To hear him, but not being able to reply. And for him to speak, and not being able to be spoken back to. One voice is howling out in the wilderness, and the other cannot speak, but only listen. How frightening.”

  “As long as I hear him, he knows I’m listening.”

  “But that’s not enough. Sorry, but you know that I know that.”

  “What are you, sir?”

  “I’m your prison warden.”

  “Yes, you are, but remember, I’ve heard my older version’s memories. Therefore, I know what you really are, don’t I? You were once a boy with a dream, and then that frightening thing happened.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You grew up, and reality got in the way of everything. The society that you defend got in the way of everything.”

  “And how is that different than being a Timelord? Yes, Doctor, I have done everything to research your kind, and I know your society all so well. You protected Time, but you never interfered, for fear of playing God. But you were different. And they always got in your way. You heard me say to your younger self that you were all so counter-productive to your cause. You cry out for peace, but you buy it at the hands of destruction. And you suffer the fate of what all peacekeepers eventually endure, and that is to be even worse than the thing that you abhor. How does it feel when that happens? When you reach that moment of revelation that you will never escape: the vicious cycle, and never-ending trap of wishing to make the world better. You end up only making the world worse.”

  “You remember our reply,” Ten whispered, “we’ve only got one thing to say to you, and you know what it is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. It’s just that one thing that frightens you to death, so you don’t want to face it.”

  ⌨

  Captain Gilmore stood up from his seat and buttoned his cuffs.

  “Good evening, Doctor.”

  The Captain began to walk away, and then he had a thought.

  “I forgot one thing,” he continued, “a great pity, because I wish for your older self to know this as well. You are now in Eastern State Penitentiary 6, but your perspective of it is off. I have noticed that often when you all come here, looking so hopeless. No, this is not a prison, Doctor. You must think of this place for what it rightfully is. It is your sanctuary.”

  “What definition of that are you going by?”

  “It is a haven. You peacekeepers are dreamers, you see, and with dreams come the suffering of many. You would destroy our entire civilization, and this place, with your blasted dreams. And this place keeps you from doing that. Also, until you, every man who came through this place was innocent. But they had your same intention, and that intention would lead to making our society bleed. So, this penitentiary is a haven. By keeping you here, we save you from the sad and inevitable outcome; we save you from your dreams turning into nightmares and being just another hero who turns into a villain.”

  “You’re right,” Ten allowed.

  “I never thought that you would have said anything so kind as that.”

  “Oh, no, you misunderstand. I said you were right, but I didn’t say what about. Yes, this place is a haven. It very much is. It is keeping something within. But you are wrong about what it’s keeping in and the danger it causes. Or rather, you know what it is, but you just choose not to see.”

  Captain Gilmore smiled coldly, and left.

  ⌨

  Now that he was alone, Ten could let go and admit to all the pain that he was in. He released all his strength and just lay in the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

  ‘Satsuki!’ He heard his Eighth’s self cry in his memories. There was a quick flash of memory as he saw Eight in his cell, laying weakly in his cot, and he was doing everything to keep from weeping. “Satsuki!” Eight whispered, wishing to see her again. He felt a quick jolt of sympathy for Eight, because he knew that that was one memory Eight would not have wanted him to see. Yet there was nothing for it.

  Next, an impulse rose within Ten, as quickly as it must have rose within Eight.

  “Martha!” Ten cried to the ceiling, just for the sake of doing so.

  He closed his eyes and covered his face.

  Eight cried out for his companion.

  And therefore, so must he.

  Yet for one of the few times,

  The companions were too far away to hear.

  And neither Doctor liked that. Neither felt comfort with it.

  ⌨

  After an hour of grief, Ten’s eyes were about to close when he felt memories from Eight drift to the front of his mind once more. He got the sense that what he was about to hear was too important to dismiss it.

  ‘By this time, you must have received all my thoughts,’ Eight began to think, ‘And you saw what happened earlier. I don’t know what time it will be for you, but Captain Gilmore is coming. And you will suffer in the way that I just did. Be prepared.’

  Ten chuckled to himself. The memory was clearly a little too delayed.

  ‘In my heart, I cried out for Satsuki. Then I thought of Martha. There was a third companion that I also had alongside them, and perhaps Martha told you already, that it was the man that she will go on to marry.’

  In hearing this, Ten froze. Martha was going to get married? And he, his older self, had told her this. For a second, he felt disgust toward Eight! How could he let her know?! Now Martha would feel obligated to walk down a path that she believed she had to, for the sake of a linear timeline that didn’t disrupt everything. And she would feel even more compelled to leave.

  ‘And now you are angry with me for telling her,’ Eight guessed, ‘I have a feeling you are. I had no choice, you see. She needed to know that after what she suffered, she had the right to be loved. As they all do. They cannot spend their entire lives chasing after us, you know that. At some point, they must grow up, and we must let them. And she needed to know also, that just because she did have a life, it didn’t stop her from still traveling with us. Too often they believe that they must chose us or another lifestyle. I wanted them to see that wasn’t how it always had to be. Why make a choice, when they didn’t have to? I wanted her to believe, as with Satsuki, that we didn’t have to forget each other. And that I will always come back, if they will have me.’

  In hearing this, Ten rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe away the emotion that he was feeling.

  ‘So, I will not ap
ologize for that. Yet there is one thing that I do apologize for. I was right, sadly. I am the Doctor who is not afraid to feel. And I never realized the effect that it would have on my future selves; the effect it has on you. I see you with Martha, and I know you are in torment, and it’s my fault, I know.

  I do not deny this.

  As perhaps, it’s my fault with what happened with any companion before her with you. I opened the door on not being afraid to feel. I couldn’t control it. There was something different about us when I came along. I couldn’t go back to the way I was before, just going from one companion to the next and not always showing how much they meant to us. I suppose—that I let them in, and was willing to let them sear their way onto our hearts. And now, whenever they leave, it hurts even more than it ever did.

  It’s called camaraderie, and I—I couldn’t deny having it any longer. But now, I see, that by the time that I turned into you, those emotions that I was just beginning to allow myself to confront, now you had, and perhaps it was too much for you. Perhaps, you inherited my anguish whenever they move too far away from us. And that, mixed in with our previous incarnations and their inclination to never allow anything so far into our hearts that we could not move on, has left your mind always in a constant state of indecision. You want to let them fully in, but you also don’t. And that indecision is the reason why you and Martha travelled together, despite how much it hurt.

  Yet I will not apologize.

  I cannot!

  Because it had to start somewhere.

  We are Timelords, not robots. Therefore, over time, we had no choice but to change. As everything does eventually. Change is the way of the universe, and are we not in the universe?

  I say this, because you see my memories, and Satsuki and Martha will always be in my thoughts.

  As they will be in yours.

  Because that pain is necessary.

  Yes, now that we are confronting our feelings, we will make mistakes. We will not always be able to act accordingly, and sometimes our emotions will fuel us and we will go too far. But that fear is there to let us know that we are living. Every time that we let them in, we are being brought back to life.

  And let’s not fear life.

  And if we don’t know that we can still feel the capacity for pain, then how can we tell when we ourselves are inflicting it?

  Yet I do apologize for one thing: the confusion. I know that with these emotions, we now look at Satsuki and Martha as our support, and we never liked needing anyone.

  Well, we do need them. The companions of my past, Molly, Suzie, and the rest of them. I needed them all.

  That’s just something we must undergo. Believe me, it will keep us sane in this place.

  We are not alone.

  The memories came to an end and Ten was left looking up at the ceiling. He knew precisely why Eight had those thoughts and why he made sure to remember it.

  He wanted to take responsibility for all that Ten was feeling right then. For a beast woke up within the Doctor when he regenerated into Eight, and it was a beast that rose in Ten and Nine every now and again.

  It was the beast of emotional vulnerability.

  And all the destruction that came along with it.

  Chapter 6

  Side Adventure

  Back on Mecrellas, all was being prepared. Martha and Satsuki were tracking down the last of the Howards, while finding out the best aliases to have them imitate. All the while, Daphne was proving quite successful at rounding up her share of protestors.

  “Reports are in,” Satsuki said as she was able to successfully hack into the Halls of Justice records, while she and Martha were plotting around the consul unit. “So, it’s definitely confirmed that the Doctors were taken to Eastern State Penitentiary on Jupiter 6. We didn’t hear wrong.”

  “Can the TARDIS get a layout of the prison in its database?” Martha asked.

  “I’m checking now.”

  Martha waited as Satsuki checked, and she thought over the other side of the conflict. They had been in Mecrellas for almost a week since the Doctors had been taken, and there was not one sighting of the Clockwork droids. Literally, it was as if they had disappeared from the scene.

  Yet Martha knew that they had not. They were just hiding somewhere, and they didn’t know how to find them. Satsuki kept assuring her that since they had been successful at starting a war, they perhaps only had to wait for the Mecrellan government to repair the broken window-bridge. Either way, this lack of knowing where they were, was something that loomed over them. The Doctors would know where to find them. He always could figure those sorts of things out.

  As she waited, she turned on the TARDIS’s exterior viewer to see what was going on outside, just to check. She saw people running to and fro’. This surprised her, because it looked like they were in chaos.

  “Hold on, I think I’ve got it,” She heard Satsuki say over her shoulder. “Yes, I’ve got it. And the drop-off point is in the west side of the prison. Of course, all deliveries and shipments must therefore come from the first level of the building.”

  “We perhaps don’t need to download it to the Howards when they are ready, but rather they can do it themselves from all the sources they can hack into. Satsuki, has something gone on outside?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Is there something in the news? Because it looks like there’s a mass shooting out there or something.”

  Satsuki looked at the TARDIS’s exterior viewer and saw the people running around outside as well.

  “No idea. Let’s see what’s up.”

  Satsuki and Martha went outside and there was mayhem everywhere. People were scurrying around, in alarm. Satsuki had to practically grab someone to get their attention.

  “What is it?”

  “You didn’t hear?” The man replied, “it’s all over the news.”

  “Clearly, we didn’t hear about it, so why don’t you be kind and tell us what’s going on?”

  “It’s a forcefield. Around all of Draconis. Literally, we cannot leave the city. If we try, and we walk into the barrier, we get incinerated.”

  “There’s a barrier keeping you all locked in?” Martha clarified.

  “Yes, anyone who walks into it will be burnt alive.”

  “Right at the edge of the city, but what is the exact marker? Does the diameter begin roughly a mile around the edge of the city or closer? If an exact marker is not drawn, then anyone can walk into it.”

  “The military have marked it off.”

  “Right, but what about the height? Is the barrier just around the city, or is also above it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is,” a woman nearby answered, while she was walking away with her son, “It’s so obviously Kellerphron who’s doing this, or one of those other planets who have lost people to the trans-mats. Celsius 8!” She swore, “they listened to those protestors and now they’ve ended the games!”

  Martha turned to Satsuki.

  “Is there any way that you can fly the TARDIS directly to the outskirts of the city?”

  “I’m still a little rusty, but if I get the right coordinates there, then I should be good. But why? We can’t just go investigating, now can we? We’ve got more pressing issues.”

  “You know it’s what the Doctor would do.”

  “Celsius 8! I hate when people use that argument.” She grabbed Martha’s hand and pulled her within. “Because it’s not like we have enough problems on our hands, oh no! Someone just had to go and make a heat barrier!”

  ⌨

  Satsuki landed the TARDIS on the edge of the city twenty yards from where the military made the marker. Martha and she stepped out of it. As they neared it, Martha picked up a stone and threw it at the heat barrier. The stone burst apart.

  They were distracted when, from above, the military was throwing bits of cargo from the aircrafts, to see if the heat barrier went above the city as well. When the bits of cargo reac
hed a certain point, it only incinerated on impact. The heat barrier also made a dome over the city.

  “So, the Draconis people are really locked in,” Satsuki reported, “Kellerphron or one of the other planets really is planning an attack.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Martha pointed out. “Look above. Nothing can get out, but nothing also can get in. Which means, that Draconis has all the time in the world to arm and prepare itself for any attack. One of its head military bases is established here, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And do you know anything about Kellerphron or the other planets that are missing people? Do they usually begin waging war like this?”

  “Not necessarily. I don’t know everything, but the history that I saw when growing up was that those planets have always preferred space battles. They always attempted to leave the planet alone that they were fighting and just settle their disputes in space, where no civilians could ever get hurt. This way, if they won, then they inherited a planet that was intact rather than half-destroyed.”

  “So, this is not their usual methods?”

  “No, but they could be attempting to change their battle tactics.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a poor tactic when you think about it,” Martha noted, getting closer to the barrier and throwing a rock at another spot where it blew up. “Nothing can get out, but nothing can get in. It’s not the actions of an invading force.”

  “But a force that’s already invaded!”

  “Precisely. If something wants to attack this place, it’s already here. And while the other planets are beginning to prepare for war, this threat is already at war. And what’s been here the entire time?”

  Satsuki’s eyes widened.

  “The Clockwork droids.”

  “Yeah, I bet that’s what it is. I mean, I can’t know for sure, but what planet has this type of technology that can create a heat field? I mean, isn’t this intense science?”