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

by Cour M.

  “You mean it?”

  “Every word.”

  They both leaned into each other and kissed. A short distance away, Martha had overheard most of what they had spoken of.

  Chapter 18

  Complications Laid Flat

  Martha walked around the cafeteria, checking with who needed the most emergency assistance. Once they had some food, she lined them up and took them to the medical room in the TARDIS. She checked their heartbeats, looking for signs of any internal organ damage, and only had to worry about saving some of them from sore throats, ear infections, and a few were suffering from fever. Once she prescribed for them the correct medicine, she then arranged for them all to go to the showers outside of the pool so that they could bathe themselves. While this occurred, she and Satsuki collected all their clothes and took them to the laundry room, where the TARDIS would wash and dry them in a matter of half an hour.

  Once she had placed them all into the washer and pressed them on, she leaned back and breathed in deeply to steady herself. She jumped back when she saw that Ten was standing in the doorway.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to shock you.”

  “It’s fine,” Martha rushed out, “how are things looking in the stratosphere? Is the battle still going on?”

  “Yes, but we shall leave that to the Shadow Proclamation. Once they stop the fighting, and arrange a peaceful meeting between the armies, we shall present the clockwork droids to them. The Howards re-programmed the droids into confessing their true intent and the part they played in this all.”

  “Then all is safe now?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Yes, for the moment,” Martha laughed, “how are you though?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. I mean, I hate not wearing my regular clothes though.”

  Martha looked him up and down. Since they had their great escape from the prison, Ten had to sport a pair of jeans and a regular fitted t-shirt.

  “You look even more human now than ever,” Martha observed.

  “And I feel like it. And, how are you?”

  “Doctor, I think I might be tired.”

  “Rest now. I will look after everything.”

  “But I forgot. We still haven’t gotten your consul unit back from the Halls of Justice.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll worry about that. Rest, Martha.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ten bowed his head to her and began to walk out.

  “Doctor,” Martha urged, getting up the nerve.

  “Yes?”

  She drummed her hand against her thigh, nervous. Yet, Daphne had been correct. Being a coward never helped anything.

  “Doctor, I never wanted you to feel like you owed me anything.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yes, but what I mean is… well, I didn’t want you to feel as if you had to love me because I saved you so much.”

  Ten looked down at his feet, placing his hands in his pockets.

  “And if it caused a wedge between us, it was not what I wanted. I just really wanted you to see me as an equal, and for you to open up to me. I wanted us to get along so very well. I wanted us to work. And I didn’t want to always be living under someone else’s shadow.”

  “I know.”

  “I just feel that it’s better that you should know me. I suppose that a part of me will always care for you. I am not stone, and it cannot be helped. But I just want you to see me for who I was, and not for who I wasn’t. That is all. And I don’t want anything to come between us. Not pain, or misunderstandings. You don’t owe me your emotions, or anything. And I don’t want you to think you do. I just want to get along with you, and for you to be happy to see me.”

  “Right,” Ten replied simply.

  Martha was disappointed that he didn’t say more than that.

  “Right,” she answered simply. “Great. Well, um… thanks.”

  Martha turned and began to walk back to the medical room.

  “Martha?” Ten called behind her. She turned and saw him running up to her. When he reached her, he wrapped his arms around her and they hugged. “I don’t know what to say yet,” he admitted, “but this is all that I’ve got now.”

  “It’s fine,” she sighed happily as they embraced one another, “No, really, I’m fine with this.”

  He continued to hold her as they stood there.

  “I admit,” he confessed, “I always love a hug.”

  “Do you?” She laughed, “I never noticed.”

  They remained there, in the hall, with Ten hanging onto Martha, and Martha letting it continue.

  They both could only suppose that it was the comfort in understanding each other. They both were bound to each other. And they both secretly knew, unfortunately, that they had no choice in the matter.

  “We really should let go now, shouldn’t we?” Ten asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  But neither of them let go for a few more minutes as Ten kissed her forehead.

  ⌨

  Meanwhile, in the outer space surrounding Mecrellas, the battle between the planet and its misinformed foes was still being waged, and spaceships were being shot down, when suddenly a huge armada appeared from all sides.

  The Shadow Proclamation, headed up by the Chief Justice, had come to put an end to things.

  Chapter 19

  The End of Another Age

  Within the Halls of Justice, General Vander was pacing back and forth. There was nothing ever so humiliating as defeat on all sides, and despite it all, he could not view himself as lucky. Yes, a day earlier, the Shadow Proclamation had arrived to end the war, and it had saved many of his countryman’s lives, but once the Doctors had presented the clockwork droids as evidence, and they all confessed that they had kidnapped the people on the trans-mats to start a war, General Vander knew he was going to be blamed for it all. After all, he had been the one who would not listen to the Doctors when they had presented him with evidence.

  What was even more painful was that Mecrellas had been thwarted again. The Imitation Games would once more be disbanded, and their society would suffer for it.

  He was interrupted when a subordinate entered.

  “Sir?”

  “Let me guess. The Doctors have arrived.”

  “Just one this time.”

  “Which one?”

  “The taller one.”

  “I’m surprised it’s not the other one.”

  “The other Doctor has travelled back to Jupiter 6. He wants to personally oversee the disbanding of the penitentiary and the safe passage of the prisoners himself.”

  “Even our prisons are being undone,” he sneered, “what will become of this cursed planet? And all because of one man.”

  “No, not one man,” came Ten’s voice from the doorway, “but one Timelord—and many friends.”

  “If you come for your broken consul unit,” General Vander said over his shoulder, “it’s being released for your pleasure now and will be driven to your TARDIS.”

  “You know perfectly well that I come for more than that.”

  “Doctor,” General Vander greeted. “Forgive me if I am not happy to see you.”

  “I suspected that you wouldn’t be.”

  “Well, you and your younger self got all that you wanted: the dissembling of the window-bridges, an end to the games, and an utter destruction of our society.”

  “No, not an utter destruction, but only the end of another age,” Ten assured him, “and the beginning of a new one. You don’t need this type of life. You don’t need to destroy your lower classes for the sake of imitating history that is not your own.”

  “The games were the chief part of our economy. You have broken us.”

  “No, I merely forced you to change and turn the page. Find more professions to give your people, end the caste system, give your lower classes rights, offer fair trials, and change. Yes, there it is, Governor; that word that you fear so much. And until you all embrace it, your world
will always be crumbling.”

  “Where will we put our prisoners now?”

  “First you must determine if they all have the right to be a prisoner. And then you continue on. Or don’t. And force me to come back again.”

  “Of course, you will.”

  “Yes, I will. And that’s not a threat, General. It’s a promise.”

  Ten nodded his head and left.

  “Or maybe it is a threat,” he said on his way out, “think on it as you will.”

  ⌨

  Meanwhile, back at the Eastern State Penitentiary, Martha, Satsuki and the Judoon were heading up the evacuation of the prisoners to a facility in Draconis where they would all be given an appeal and their cases would be reopened and examined under the Shadow Proclamation’s unbiased gaze.

  “I can’t believe I’m walking alongside Judoon now,” Martha remarked as she and Satsuki walked alongside them. “There was a time where I was in a hospital where everyone almost suffocated to death because of them.” Martha turned to the nearest Judoon that was cataloging the criminals. “Jo-to-ro-lo-ra-pa-pa-pa-do. Wo-lo-lo-ro-ro-ga-po-pa-po.”

  “No-lo-go-do,” the Judoon replied in its native tongue.

  “What did you both say to each other?” Satsuki asked.

  “I asked him what were his thoughts on using plasma cores to remove a building from its planet without permission. He replied that he had no comment on the matter. I think.”

  ⌨

  When entering the prison, Eight made his way to the isolation chute, and with the assistance of the Howards, he lowered himself down it with a rope, with a blanket in his backpack, and with a torchlight.

  As he re-entered the labyrinth that was under the prison, he wasted no time in hoping the wolf would come to him.

  “Wolf!” He cried, running through the maze, “I’ve come back! Wolf! I’ve come back.”

  As he turned a corner, the illumination from his torchlight eventually fell on the massive silhouette of a creature in the background of an archway. When seeing her, Eight could tell by the way her shoulders were arched and how the hair on her back was pricked up, that she had returned to full wolf.

  “I’ve come back,” Eight announced, “and I refuse to leave.”

  The werewolf howled out and then began to run after him. Prepared for that outcome, Eight ran away until he found a doorway that was too small. He stood there and waited. The werewolf saw him, and ran to the spot that he was standing. However, due to its size, it hit the doorway and got caught in it.

  “Thank goodness you always fall for that.” Seizing the opportunity, Eight removed the glasses from his pocket and began to dangle them in front of her face, chanting all the while. Eventually, the werewolf was mesmerized and began to fall under his influence.

  “What is your name?” Eight asked.

  The werewolf only whimpered.

  “What is your name? Focus. You weren’t always what you are now. What were you once? And you can begin by remembering your name. Focus, and control it! We all are beasts, you see, and we all can contain it, if we try. Try! And will the chance! What is your name?”

  The werewolf moaned.

  “What is your name?!” Eight demanded.

  “I am…”

  “Go on! I am here and I am not ever leaving you. What is your name!”

  “Vera!”

  Eight breathed out a sigh of relief.

  “I am… Vera.”

  “And what do you really look like, Vera? Picture it, in your mind. You are a Terusian werewolf. You can change yourself back, if you will it. You all have that power. It’s just that no one ever taught you how. So, teach yourself. What did you look like? Focus on that. And bring yourself back out of the darkness.”

  The werewolf, Vera, closed her eyes. She roared out in frustration.

  “Focus. See yourself for what you were!”

  She roared out again, beat her chest, and then suddenly, her form began to shift. Her fur shrunk down into human skin, her figure transformed from large and muscular, to thin and fit as her feminine figure emerged. She had long dark hair, against her light brown Terusian skin. With her strength spent from exhaustion at transforming, she fell to her knees.

  “It’s fine, I’m here,” Eight assured her, removing the blanket from his shoulder-bag. He placed it around her form tightly, for her modesty. She closed her arms around it and then at last, she looked up at him. Her face was smooth, her features pleasant. Terusians, like Timelords, were humanoids, and therefore she appeared as he did, except that there were markings along her neck. This was expected, and it was equivalent to Earth’s version of Arabic. After all, Terusians were the ancestors of the Saudi Arabians. When she finally looked up at him, the blue that was around the edge of her black pupils glowed in the dark. “You came back,” she whispered.

  “I promised you that I would,” Eight smiled.

  “For so long, it was all so dark. And I was so alone.”

  Eight stood up and offered her his hand.

  “Come, it’s time you left this place.”

  She took it and together, hand in hand, they went back to the isolation chute and they were raised out of the labyrinth.

  Eight warned her about the power of the light, but it was too much for her. When she was brought to the first level of the prison, she had to close her eyes from the power of the illumination. Eight removed some sunglasses from his pocket and placed them on her face, so that she could adjust. Once she put them on, still covered with the blanket, she rushed to the window and looked out at the brightness of Jupiter and its moons.

  “It’s the universe,” she spoke, “or part of it. I forgot what it looked like.”

  “Satsuki!” Eight called out to her, “do me a favor and clothe her. There is one last person that I have to see.”

  ⌨

  Eight was informed that Captain Gilmore was not in his office, but rather, was in a chamber that faced the west of the planet. When he arrived at the room, he saw Captain Gilmore sitting in a chair that faced a sliding door of glass.

  “This chamber was once called ‘The place of the last walk’,” Captain Gilmore explained, not looking at Eight. When hearing the footsteps of the Doctor, Captain Gilmore knew who it was and needed no image to prove it. “And I bet you wonder why.”

  Eight did not answer.

  “Never mind, I shall tell you anyway,” Captain Gilmore continued, “there was a time that this prison also staged executions. Yet we didn’t have any laws back then where you had to bury the prisoner afterwards, so we invented the last walk. There are no oxygen barriers around this part of the building. Therefore, when the sentence was death, we opened these sliding doors and watched the prisoner walk out of it and see the gas from the planet swallow him up and burn him alive.”

  “And you watched this?”

  “Yes, I did. I was one of the first people to witness the very first execution. And I was present to see the last one as well.”

  “Her name is Vera,” Eight announced. “The woman that you kept down in your labyrinth.”

  “The beast below. It was a woman the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you expect me to care.”

  “No, I don’t. I only wish that you did.”

  “You couldn’t do it, could you? You couldn’t just lose here.”

  “And that’s the pain of this all for you, isn’t it? It’s not that I won. It’s that you lost. It’s that you fai—”

  “Don’t speak!” He cried, standing up suddenly, “shut up!”

  Eight took in his suddenly rash manner, and knew where the conversation was headed. Captain Gilmore stood up and walked to the sliding doors.

  “It kills you inside, doesn’t it?” Eight continued, “and you can’t hear me say the word; the word that frightens you so much. That is why you chose to work here, and why you couldn’t work anywhere else. This is a prison that is not just to keep some things in, but also to keep other things out. This is the plac
e to keep out humiliation, embarrassment and bad memories of times long past where you suffered a disappointment. But what it does keep in, are many innocent people who fell from grace, like you did once. Like you were innocent once, and then something went wrong, and you lived long enough to see all your ideals fall away one by one.”

  “Doctor!” Captain Gilmore hissed, turning back to him, “I don’t care what you do and what you take away from me, but this is my prison! And this is my kingdom!”

  “Your kingdom is falling apart! And you along with it!”

  “Then I shall fall!”

  Eight began to slowly get closer to him, seeing that Captain Gilmore had turned into a wounded beast who felt that it was being cornered.

  “You didn’t want to listen,” Eight continued, “Because you knew what I was going to say. And it is yes, you failed.” Captain Gilmore’s eyes narrowed. “But I forgive you.”

  The Captain’s eyes turned from slits to being filled with rage.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Eight replied, “my forgiveness hurts, doesn’t it? It kills you, because it means that your loss was fully complete. You were once a good man. It’s clear. And then everything that you dreamed about never came true. All of your hopes fell apart. And rather than just forgive yourself, you became the very thing that you despised. You became another hero that turned into the villain.”

  “But there’s more to it than that,” Captain Gilmore smirked, “I was a good man. I wanted to help my society. And I could have. If it had not been for you Timelords. If it had not been for your failings—where you refused to help.”

  “What did we do?” Eight asked, “tell me, what did we do?”

  Captain Gilmore smiled, satisfied.

  “I shall never tell you, Doctor. And you will spend so many years not knowing the answer. One of the oldest answers in the universe. And it will make you secretly weep. And I did win at the very last.”