Chapter Text
Damnum Fit Injuria
1.
‘This,’ Voreline’s mother told her, ‘is the greatest honour our family could ever hope for. I’m so proud of you.’
She placed a wreath of white and blue flowers around Voreline’s shoulders and stood back, admiring her daughter with a warm smile. Voreline tried to return it, but only managed a tight-lipped grimace.
Her dress was uncomfortably tight, made of all sorts of strange tailoring that clung to the contours of her body rather than giving her room to move and breathe like the usual clothes she wore around the town. But this grey monstrosity she’d been wrapped in was the traditional costume for the Sending. She had no choice. And Mother looked close to tears when she checked her over for pins and stray threads.
Voreline had watched several of the older kids from the village go through this ritual and always laughed at them, never once thinking that one day, she would be sent off, too. She was part of one of the Staff Families, of course, she knew that. Aunt Darisha and Uncle Ellas had both gone off on their eighteenth birthdays. Mother had told stories about the ceremonies, how they garlanded both of them. How she, as the sister picked for Family Progression rather than Sending, had been envious of their adventure. Voreline wasn’t envious. She would’ve given anything not to go along that path.
‘It’s time,’ Mother said.
She put her hand gently against Voreline’s back and ushered her to the door. It was a tender gesture but Voreline couldn’t help but think her mother was anxious to get rid of her. Probably wanted to get it over with, she thought. It must be hard for her, too. She never expected to send her only daughter off. Voreline, like her mother, had been selected for Family Progression by the Town Council. She was supposed to marry Grey from down the road and have children, some of whom would be sent off and some would stay behind to keep the town’s bloodlines alive. But then her older sister, Raina, fell whilst mending the thatch and broke her neck. So, Voreline had to take her place.
Outside the cottage, it looked like the whole town had gathered to see her off. Voreline tried to take in all the faces, all the people lining the street, but there were too many of them. They cheered, waved little blue and white flags or ribbons. Some had woven ribbons into their hair or pinned them to their clothes. They’d put on makeup, reddened their cheeks and lined their eyes with kohl. They looked like dolls, standing there, smiling.
Voreline waved and their cheers grew louder. They’re glad it’s me and not them, Voreline thought, then quickly pushed that to the side. She should never have listened to Grey and her brother, Moran. Those things they’d told her were only stories. No one… no one got eaten after the Sending.
Voreline closed her eyes for a second, then widened her smile and started off down the road, to another volley of cheers and shouts from the townsfolk.
They sang a folk song as she followed the road through the town, headed towards the wall of mist that always covered the countryside. It was “Granalla was a-Sended”, a song Voreline always hated, about a girl who’d been chosen to be sent off and who skipped cheerily down the road but broke a shoe halfway. Disaster, until some kindly stranger offered to fix it for her. Then she stained her dress, tore her stockings, lost a comb from her hair, fell in mud, with a kindly stranger stepping in to fix things every time.
Basically, Granalla was an idiot and how she ever made it to the Stairs was a mystery. Did they think she was that stupid? Or had they just chosen something jaunty to try and make the day a little brighter, despite the grim, grey skies and heavy clouds. There were even a few rumbles of thunder coming through the mist, though they sounded far away for now.
The road wended through the last cottages and the well-wishers also thinned out, then, at last, disappeared entirely. Voreline had been thinking so much about the song and Grey’s stories and the thunder that she hadn’t even noticed when she crossed the official boundaries and left the town.
Now she was out in the wilderness, following the one road that led in and out of town. The mist made it impossible to see where it led. No one knew. No one had ever seen. The mist was always too thick. But there were stories.
Millennia ago, people had come to the town and spoken of a marvellous building, a castle, or a palace, that lay beyond the mist. That was when people from the building came to gather people from the town to go and serve them, or rather, serve the rich Lords who came and stayed there from time to time. But over time, according to Voreline’s schoolteacher anyway, those envoys stopped coming, but the town was still expected to select its best members to go up to the palace and serve the Lords.
Or feed them, according to Grey. Voreline shivered.
It was cold, she realised, and her grey dress, though it was made of a heavy material, did nothing to keep out the damp air. She walked through the mist, unable to see anything but the road at her feet and the few tufts of gorse and heather that lined its edges. It was paved in dark stone, the blocks worn smooth by millions of feet, so that they looked natural now, like pebbles in the dirt. But every so often, one had an arrow carved into it, pointing forward. There had been words there once. People said it once read, “To the palace” or “To the castle” or to whatever they believed was at the end of the road, but all that was left were a few scratches.
Voreline passed one of the arrows and nearly tripped over a stone as she looked down at it. Teach her to laugh at poor old Granalla! Maybe that’s what happened to her. But Voreline righted herself and didn’t break a shoe. Anyway, there was no one around here who would stop to help her. The song was definitely rubbish. There was no one out here at all. Just the mist. No one to save her.
Then, as if someone had grabbed it and pulled it apart, the mist ahead cleared. Voreline found herself looking at a set of white, stone steps that climbed up a near-vertical hill covered in thornbushes, brambles and holly. The Stairs.
They were only stairs, she thought, and yet they were more than that. She’d heard so many songs and stories about this place, that seeing it before her, she had to pause and convince herself it wasn’t a painting or an illustration in a book. For the first time, the full weight of it hit her. She was going to see what was at the top. Things only those sent off ever saw. She would go up those steps, like thousands of townspeople before her, heading up to goodness knew what, and, if she was like all the others who’d been picked for the Sending, she would never return.
She could try and run, she thought, glancing around. But to where? There was only the mist. For all she knew, there was nothing out there. No one had ever met someone from another town or another country, not since the Envoys stopped coming. Perhaps there was only the town and the palace, or castle or whatever was up there.
She looked up at the stairs. The top disappeared into the mist and cloud. There could be nothing up there. Perhaps people just climbed up and then fell off, and behind this hill, there was a pile of skeletons with garlands of long-dead flowers round their necks.
But what choice did she have? She couldn’t go back to the town. They’d never accept her if she shied away from her Sending. There was only the Stairs. There was only one direction to go in. As usual.
Taking a deep breath, Voreline hitched up her horrible grey skirt and started to climb.
The mist continued to swathe the landscape, save a few metres on either side of the Stairs. Voreline glanced at the bushes, frowning at the ribbons she saw fluttering in the cold wind. Just dropped by clumsy idiots like Granalla, she told herself. Even that one with the spot of dried blood on it.
And the bones she saw, lying on the patch of bare ground between a gorse bush and a clump of clover. The skull. Someone who tripped further up and fell. That was all. Same with the next skeleton she saw. And the next.
Voreline realised she was shaking and that she was not convincing herself of any of these things. The urge to run back down the stairs was like a person pounding their fists against her chest. Her feet, though, were acting of their own accord and she kept on climbing. She didn’t know how long she’d been walking. It felt like a few minutes and several days all at once.
And then, she was there. She was about to lift her foot to take the next step when she noticed there wasn’t one. Instead, the ground levelled out. Voreline stood on a gravel path. The mists around her lingered for a moment then dissipated, so that it seemed as if the building and its grounds blossomed in front of her. It was stranger than any of the stories. Not a castle. Perhaps a palace. It was white, with several stories, a cylindrical section jutting out at the front with a large door and a set of shallow, white steps. Trees trimmed into neat shapes grew out of patches of grass that had been cut unnaturally short, and two large bushes stood on either side of the big door.
Voreline approached, gazing upwards at the rows of windows. There was no sign of anyone. No, that wasn’t true. A man stood in the doorway. She only saw him as he stepped forward, peeling away from the black doors as if he’d been part of them. He wore a long coat with shiny, silver buttons in a row from his neck down to his ankles, polished black boots, and a tall, black hat.
She found, though, that she couldn’t focus on his face. Perhaps he didn’t have one. She’d try to look at it and find her attention suddenly elsewhere, on the light reflected by the shiny leather of his boots, the flowers on the bushes by the doors, or the pattern on his buttons, the letters GRH, all interlinked.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Voreline,’ said the figure without a face. His voice was deep and sonorous, like a funeral bell. ‘The Duty Manager is waiting for you. Welcome to the Grand Rivencrag Hotel.’
Solitaire leaned on the console and fought against tears until her shoulders shook, while the TARDIS’s engines pulsed around her. She felt the vibration of the ship’s systems and it brought a little comfort, though she was also too aware of the cold, smooth sphere in her hands. She clutched it tightly but at the same time, she was terrified of pressing too hard and cracking it. It looked so delicate, like a Christmas decoration. Such an innocent little thing and yet the sight of it made her feel like a chasm had opened beneath her.
‘I’ll sort this,’ she whispered. She had no idea if the Valeyard could hear her. She had no idea if he was even still alive, inside there. She only had the Doctor’s word for that and look what that was worth!
Ever since she’d asked the TARDIS to find her help and let the telepathic circuits set the co-ordinates for her, she’d run over that scene so many times. The little village on Earth was so lovely, bathed in warm sunshine and full of bright, animated conversation, right until the other TARDIS materialised and he came out. She knew now why the Valeyard had always been so reluctant to discuss the Doctor. The thought of him left a bad taste in Solitaire’s mouth.
‘An entire civilisation decimated, countless lives lost, a whole population enslaved, any of that ringing a bell?’
It wasn’t so much what the Doctor said that hit her like an arrow to the heart – that made no sense, no matter how many times she thought it over – it was the tone. He’d spoken with such hatred, such bile. Solitaire had seen people despise her or look down on her all her life, but she’d never seen anyone with such unbridled anger in their eyes.
Then there was the empty space on the other side of the console. She didn’t want to look. If she kept her attention fixed on the controls, she wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t there, dashing about, controlling the ship.
The one glimmer of hope she clung onto was that conversation she’d had with the Valeyard on the beach on New Amazonia, which seemed so long ago now. He’d been so keen to make sure she knew how to use the telepathic circuits. He’d known a lot of what was going to happen, after he tapped into the Doctor’s memories. Was it possible he’d known the Doctor would reappear in Italy and trap him like this? Had he told her about the telepathic circuits because he knew she’d need them now? When they’d spoken on New Amazonia, he’d told her to access the circuits and ask for somewhere “safe”, but on Earth, he’d told her to ask for somewhere “she could find help”.
It might be nothing. Just because he chose a few different words didn’t mean he had a plan. But then again, he usually did.
‘I hope, whatever you’re up to, if you’re up to anything at all, you know what you’re doing,’ Solitaire whispered to the sphere.
The TARDIS engines clunked and the pulsing light at the centre of the console faded away, dropping down like a fountain that had been switched off. The Valeyard had taught her how to check the scanners and she brought up the feed on the monitor. Atmosphere, radiation, everything was fine. Wherever they were, it was habitable. But had the TARDIS listened and taken her somewhere she could get help?
Only one way to find out, she supposed. She inhaled deeply, pulled herself up straight and tidied up her clothes, like she was about to go out into the public area of the Facility and smile at customers. With the sphere held gently but firmly in one hand, she opened the doors and headed outside.
The TARDIS had landed on a patch of lawn outside a grand building made of white stone that looked grey beneath the heavy clouds. A grey path curved away towards what looked like the main entrance and dozens of people wandered along it in both directions, some alone, focused on hand-held devices, while others were in groups who laughed and chatted.
Solitaire closed and locked the TARDIS doors, still clutching the sphere to her chest, and considered whether to try and stop one of them to ask for help. None of them looked like they could find a way to rescue someone from a pocket universe. None of the technology she glimpsed looked advanced enough to be of any use. Late twentieth or early twenty-first century, she thought. Maybe the TARDIS got it wrong. Maybe it had just taken her to somewhere safe, somewhere she was expected to live out her life. Without the Valeyard.
Not without a fight, she thought. If this wasn’t the place, she’d try again. And then again. And again. Until she found somewhere who could open up this damn thing and get him out.
‘Excuse me?’ said as voice behind her. Solitaire jumped a little in fright and turned around to face the speaker.
It was a young woman in her twenties, dressed in a striped top and a short, blue jacket. Her trousers were torn at the knees, but the rest of her clothes seemed clean and intact, so perhaps it was a fashion thing. Or she’d fallen recently. But she was smiling.
‘You look a bit lost, are you okay?’
No, Solitaire thought, I’m many things but not okay. ‘I’m sorry,’ was what she actually said. ‘This is going to sound a bit weird, but… what planet is this?’
The girl gave a look that, for all the world, said, “ah, right, you’re one of those,” and she gestured to Solitaire to follow her, already turning towards the building.
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a friend can probably sort you out.’
Solitaire stepped tentatively onto the grey path, where the girl was waiting for her, smiling warmly. This would be a waste of time, she thought, and yet just moving felt good. At least she was doing something, even if it was just ruling this place out.
By the time they reached the door, she and the girl were walking side by side, and Solitaire knew she was being studied, though not in a threatening way. The other woman was trying to work out who she was, what was wrong with her. Something made Solitaire instinctively like her.
‘It’s Earth, by the way,’ the girl said suddenly. ‘The planet.’
They were in a corridor then, lined with boards that had bits of paper pinned to them, and more people like the ones outside milled around, all seeming to have a purpose and a place to go. Solitaire looked at them more closely and realised she’d thought it might be Earth. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad. The Valeyard liked Earth, even if he said he didn’t. He was always talking about places there that she should see. Perhaps the TARDIS liked it too and so took her here to live. She supposed it wasn’t the worst place in the universe to end up, though if it was the early twenty-first century, she hoped it was after the 2020s. She really didn’t want to live through that.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the girl.
‘Solitaire,’ was all Solitaire was able to manage, but she was proud of herself for managing three syllables without bursting into tears.
‘Solitaire? Is that… if you don’t mind me asking, is that your, like, birth name or did you choose it for yourself?’
‘I chose it,’ Solitaire said. My real name, she thought, is Reject 4751. It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought of herself as that for so long now.
‘That’s brilliant,’ said the girl. ‘Did you get it from Live and Let Die?’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘Yeah, of course. Not from Earth. Sorry. It’s a movie. There’s a character called Solitaire in it. Jane Seymour. Brilliant film, by the way. It’s James Bond. He’s like, this spy character that’s really popular on this planet.’
‘I know,’ Solitaire said, suddenly grateful for the lifeline of a shared experience. ‘I’ve seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.’
‘Oh, my gosh, George Lazenby is so underrated. People always talk about Connery, but Lazenby nailed that part. Although, obviously, tragic as well. But, I mean, how can you not like something with Diana Rigg in?’
‘That’s what…’ Solitaire stopped herself. That’s what he had said, she thought. Almost word for word. She couldn’t help but smile. They’d found the small cinema in the TARDIS a few weeks earlier and, for someone who said the Doctor’s obsession with Earth was pathetic, the Valeyard turned out to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of that planet’s film and television output.
They reached a door made of deep, red wood. They’d passed several as they’d made their way through the corridors and stairwells within the building, but those had all had name plaques. This one was blank.
‘Right,’ said the woman, ‘I’ll take you in to meet my friend. Whatever’s wrong, whatever’s happened, he’ll help, I promise.’
Solitaire let out a short laugh. ‘I doubt he’ll be able to do much for me.’
‘You’d be surprised. He’s a bit weird, but seriously, he will help. Trust me.’
Weirdly, Solitaire did trust the woman. Up until her next sentence.
‘He’s called the Doctor. He does this stuff all the time.’
The girl went to open the door, but Solitaire stopped dead and stared. What was the TARDIS doing? Had the Doctor interfered with it? Had she accidentally let her anger at him influence the telepathic circuits?
‘I can’t,’ she said.
The girl looked nonplussed. ‘How d’you mean? It’s fine. He’s just in there. Look, my name’s Bill, right. Bill Potts. I’ve been to other planets. I’ve seen the Doctor do incredible things…’
‘So have I,’ Solitaire said darkly.
The girl, Bill, straightened. ‘You’ve met him?’
‘He’s the reason I’m in this mess.’
Bill smiled, but it was an odd smile, like the mind behind it was trying to work out what to do.
‘Just speak to him,’ she said. ‘Whatever’s up, I’m sure we can sort it out.’
She pushed the door open and went inside, leaving Solitaire in the corridor, feeling like the whole place had started to spin. There was nothing she could do out there, and part of her did want to see the Doctor again, if only to punch him.
So, she went into the room, which turned out to be an office, with stained glass windows and a heavy wooden desk surrounded by bookshelves. The Doctor’s blue TARDIS sat in the corner. There was no sign, however, of the Doctor himself. The woman had gone over to the desk, where a small, bald man in a red waistcoat was dusting a taxidermy owl, and an older man with a shock of white hair leaned back in a chair, idly picking out the melody of Bowie’s Life on Mars on an electric guitar. As Bill and Solitaire came in, the bald man glanced over his shoulder and scowled at them.
‘What you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Or have they moved Saturday? Does it come after Wednesday now? You Humans really need to stop messing with your calendars.’
‘I know it’s not Saturday,’ Bill said. ‘I was just on my way to work, but I met…’
Before she could finish, the man with the guitar stopped playing and stood up, his pale grey eyes fixed on Solitaire with a look so intense she shivered.
‘Solitaire,’ he said.
‘Right,’ said Bill, ‘yeah, she said you’d met.’
‘Met who?’ asked Solitaire.
‘Met whom,’ the little bald man called over.
‘Shut up, Nardole,’ said the white-haired man. ‘With the vocative comma and everything.’ He lifted the guitar strap off his shoulders and set the instrument down on a stand, then took a few hurried steps towards her, before he stopped, looked for a moment as if he was about to offer his hand, then changed his mind. Throughout it all, he never once looked away from Solitaire.
‘So,’ he said, and his gaze flicked momentarily down to the sphere in her hand, ‘this is where you ended up. I often wondered what happened to you. I take it Mel gave you that. You can’t trust anyone these days.’
‘I’ve never met you before,’ Solitaire said.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It was rather a long time ago, from my perspective. I’ve been through a few faces since then. At least the dress sense has improved, I hope.’
Then she remembered. The Valeyard had told her about regeneration, the Time Lords’ way of changing bodies when they were near death, how the Doctor had progressed from persona to persona. She glared at the man before her and tried to make him fit with the memory of that multicoloured coat and the yellow trousers.
This man was almost completely in black, dressed more like the Valeyard than the Doctor she’d known. He wore a velvet frock coat, with a red shirt beneath – the only splash of colour – and a black jumper with what looked like splatters of white paint on it.
‘You two know each other, then?’ asked the little man, whom the Doctor had called “Nardole”.
‘This is Solitaire,’ said the Doctor. ‘Friend of the Valeyard’s.’
Bill’s eyebrows raised. ‘The… what, he’s got friends now?’
‘You know him?’ Solitaire asked, turning to the girl.
‘Yeah, we met,’ Nardole answered instead, with a sneer in his voice. ‘Trying to blow up the whole universe, weren’t it?’
‘Something like that,’ said the Doctor, still staring directly at Solitaire. She felt like someone had turned a spotlight on her, cold almost feel the heat of it against her face. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Looks like it was a mistake,’ Solitaire said. ‘I asked the TARDIS to take me somewhere I could get help.’
‘And she brought you here?’ The Doctor folded his arms and stepped back.
Solitaire shrugged. ‘I must’ve done it wrong. Forget it. I’ll try again.’ She turned and headed for the door.
‘You’re trying to get him out?’ the Doctor said, just as she took hold of the handle.
‘Obviously,’ Solitaire replied.
When the Doctor didn’t say anything more, she turned around and saw that he was still watching her, but he’d moved back towards the middle of the office and was pacing about in an arc across the room.
‘I never understood you,’ he said. ‘Never could place you anywhere in the equation. It’s why I thought about you so much afterwards, because the Valeyard… you could argue he was just following his nature, doing what the High Council made him to do, gave him no other choice but to do, but you… you struck me as an honest, intelligent, principled young woman, who wanted to do the best for people, who put other people before herself.’
‘And?’
‘And, so, I could never understand what happened. How you could stand with him when he did those things…’
‘Because he didn’t do anything!’ Solitaire shouted. Annoyingly, she felt her eyes growing warm again. Not now, she thought. She didn’t want to look hysterical or upset. She wanted to look angry. ‘He didn’t do any of the things you said he did. He wouldn’t…’
‘He’s the Valeyard, Solitaire. That’s what he does, I’m afraid, however suave or charming he might appear...’
‘No,’ Solitaire shouted. ‘Didn’t you see that on New Amazonia? He saved your life, and that screechy friend of yours! And you betrayed him. Just because you didn’t like what he was, the part of you he represents. He didn’t do anything. You know he didn’t. You just needed a reason to get rid of him.’
‘That’s not true,’ the Doctor replied evenly.
He was so different to the blond, brusque man she’d met before. Perhaps he was older. Despite the obvious energy he showed when he moved around, he was as calm as the air just before a thunderstorm. ‘Solitaire, what I did, I did after a great amount of thought. If there had been any other way, I would’ve taken it, but he…’
‘But he didn’t do anything!’ Solitaire repeated. ‘We left you on New Amazonia and you want to know what we did? We helped people. We went all over the universe and we saved people. We rescued people from spaceships that were about to crash. We sorted out people whose minds had been messed up by alien stuff. We pulled people out of war zones. And then, we went to Italy to have a cup of coffee, only we ran into you instead. No genocide, no enslavement, nothing. You made it up and you know you did. You’re a liar and just shy of being a murderer!’
‘I saw what I saw,’ the Doctor insisted, in the tone of a severe father warning a child they were testing his patience, though he didn’t raise his voice or even appear angry. Then he frowned. ‘But… you…no, no, no, that’s not right. That’s not possible.’ He turned away and started pacing again.
‘What’s going on?’ Bill asked. ‘Doctor, what did you do?’
‘Imprisoned the Valeyard,’ he replied.
‘But you didn’t,’ said Bill. ‘You said he probably got back to the Matrix on Gallifrey.’
‘I know, but he found another body for himself, somehow, and took to wandering around the universe with our friend here. Only…’ He covered his mouth with his hands for a moment. ‘I met the Valeyard long before we went to Zenobia and the trial. After the trial.’
‘Following what you’re on about is a bit much at times, you know that?’ said Bill. ‘You mean, after the other you was at the trial. The blond one with the daft outfit…’
‘That’s the one I met,’ Solitaire said, automatically.
‘Right,’ said Bill, nodding. ‘So, like, that guy met him, but it was after we met him, even though the other you hadn’t met him since the trial?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, still looking thoughtful and worried.
‘I think my head needs rebooting,’ muttered Nardole.
‘But,’ the Doctor went on, ‘I met him later, too. When we went to Zenobia, I assumed the things I’d seen were earlier in the Valeyard’s timeline, but he said he’d come straight from Gallifrey and been imprisoned…’
‘Yeah, for ages before the trial, because you thought he’d already tried to kill you at the trial and that’s why you said he was dangerous, but then it turned out he hadn’t actually done the trial yet and that’s why you had to pretend to be him and keep everything running.’
‘Definitely rebooting,’ said Nardole.
‘But since then, I just assumed the things I’d seen him do earlier, when I was blond and shouty, and later, when I was short and Scottish, were later in the Valeyard’s timeline too, after he escaped from Gallifrey. I even wondered if I might’ve altered the timeline slightly by interfering with his data store. Then, in hindsight, I thought the one I met on New Amazonia must have been part of the altered timeline, where he’d kept a little bit of the positive data I transferred to him. I was never sure how much of that would actually be permanent. But…’ He sighed. ‘I think my head needs rebooting.’
‘Mine, too,’ said Solitaire. ‘I don’t care what you did or where you met him, I know the Valeyard wouldn’t do the stuff you said. He’s a good person.’
Nardole snorted. ‘Tell that to the universe he tried to blow up.’
‘In fairness, he did help stop that,’ said the Doctor.
‘Yeah, after it was pointed out to him what a stupid idea it was.’
‘Doesn’t matter. The point is, he helped. And on New Amazonia, he helped.’
‘I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him,’ Solitaire said.
‘I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘You told me.’
‘So, what’s wrong?’ Bill asked.
‘I think I’ve made a huge mistake,’ muttered the Doctor, turning away. He went over to the window and looked out, clasping his hands behind his back.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ said Solitaire.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think I’ve got my timelines mixed up. Whatever I saw, that version of the Valeyard, the one who was wreaking havoc, the one who nearly killed me, who caused me that other version of me, the one in the daft outfit, to regenerate, it must be in his future.’
With a frustrated sigh, he came back to her and held out his hand, obviously expecting Solitaire to hand over the sphere. Instinctively, she clutched it tighter.
‘I will help you,’ he said.
‘Why, suddenly?’ Solitaire asked.
The Doctor regarded her coolly. ‘Because I think I’ve locked him up before he’s actually committed the crime. I think I’ve created a paradox.’
Chapter 2: 2
Chapter Text
The Valeyard expected pain or a sensation of falling or some sort of mental or emotional impact to entering the pocket universe. Instead, one moment, he was standing in the square in Italy and the next, he was… wherever this was. It was impossible to tell. All he could see, so far, was mist. Oddly, he was sure he could smell roast beef and gravy on the wind, though perhaps that was just imagination, since the Doctor had interrupted his trip to Italy before he’d managed to get anything to eat, and he was hungry.
This was supposed to be a holiday retreat. Where were the palaces of meditation? Where were the temples of contemplative thoughts? Where were the amusement arcades and fish and chip shops?
‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Apparently, I’m here for all eternity, so it would be nice if there was at least a place to sit down!’
He put his hands on his hips and looked around, turning full circle, but it was like walking back into the Land of Fiction for the first time. He hoped it wasn’t the Land of Fiction. Would a Time Lord make a link to that realm inside his pocket universe, or even create another version of it? He could cope with a lot of things, but not unicorns or bloody Gulliver again. He’d never liked that book anyway.
Still, he’d waited a while now, and there’d been no white robots appearing out of the mist, no sudden transportation to a forest made of words, nothing. Just a wall of whiteness.
‘I’m supposed to be staying here,’ he called out. ‘Aren’t you meant to provide a place of refuge? Isn’t that your job? But, of course, you were made by the Time Lords. Of course, you don’t work! You’re nothing but a useless bauble! Can’t even rustle up a decent…’
Perhaps it was the rant, perhaps it was just time, but the mists ahead of him parted like a theatre curtain going up for act one. A building lay before him, beyond a stretch of neatly-kept lawn and topiary trees.
‘…Hotel,’ he finished, frowning.
Had it taken the image from somewhere in the Doctor’s memories? Because the building ahead of him was not a Time Lord retreat or even one of the old spa centres from Pre-Morbius Karn. It was a 1920s, Art Deco building from Earth, or from a culture very like Earth, plastered in white with a jet-black door and even a doorman in a long coat and top hat, standing in the shadows of the porch, probably keeping out of the drizzle that was soaking through the Valeyard’s coat at that moment.
As he approached, following the gravel path towards the door, his footsteps crunched loudly through the misty air, which had the feel of early morning about it, and yet also the anticipation of early evening, waiting for a dark night to come. He tried to think how long he’d been standing in the mist, and found he had no sense of it.
But, as he came closer, the doorman finally stepped out of the shadows and, hands behind his back, walked forward. At first, the Valeyard thought his face was hidden in the shadows of his coat collar or his top hat, but the nearer they came to each other, the more he realised he just couldn’t focus on the man’s face. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a face. There were obviously features there. The Valeyard had the impression of a handlebar moustache, then a goatee beard, then a clean-shaven chin. Bright blue eyes, then dark green, then so brown they were almost black. Dark skin, light skin, every possible shade. It wasn’t that he had no face, the Valeyard realised. He had every face, all at once.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ the doorman greeted him. ‘And may I say, how nice it is to see you again.’
The Valeyard let out one small snort of laughter under his breath and wondered how often the Doctor used this thing, imagining the Sixth version in his ridiculous outfit striding up and treating all the employees here with the disdain that no doubt all the Time Lords showed towards these constructs within the pocket universe. Probably called him, “My good man,” or something equally condescending.
‘Sorry,’ the Valeyard said. ‘Not the Doctor. I’m your new resident.’
Prisoner, his mind corrected, but he didn’t say it. What had happened to him wasn’t this poor, mathematical projection’s fault. The doorman fell silent for a moment, probably processing what he’d been told, then he straightened, and, despite his indistinct features, he managed to convey that he was smiling.
‘The Duty Manager is expecting you,’ he said. ‘Everything is prepared. I hope you enjoy your stay.’
He returned to the porch and held the door so the Valeyard could enter.
Well, the Valeyard thought, it appears to be this or nothing. An eternity spent in something that reminded him of the Grand in Brighton. He almost missed the confession dial he’d once been imprisoned inside. At least that had a bit of variety, a few monsters to fight.
He smiled, searched his pockets for money, found he had none, and so offered the doorman a packet of smoky bacon crisps in lieu of a tip. The doorman took the snack with an air of bemusement, but then resumed his upright, customer-facing persona.
‘Very kind, sir. Thank you.’
Later, the Valeyard thought, he would try and persuade the simulation to stop calling him, “Sir”. But later. First, he supposed, he would have to check in.
He came into a foyer that matched the exterior of the hotel in style and décor. Twenties, Art Deco, all geometric shapes and dark marble. A long reception desk stood directly ahead of him with a fan design of marble panels on the wall behind, a large, round clock with a black face and bronze numbers set into the centre. Not all bronze, the Valeyard noted. Twelve was in silver.
All around him, staff in crisp uniforms bustled about, carrying silver trays with drinks or pushing trolleys loaded with suitcases, even though there wasn’t another patron in sight. A set of sofas were gathered beneath a tall window to his left, a low table between them, but although there were drinks on coasters, there was no one sitting there. No one was using the rows of telephones inside their curved glass hoods meant to give the speaker privacy that occupied the corner to his right.
In the far-right corner, towards the back of the hotel, The Valeyard could see through a square opening to a bar area where a piano played… what was that? Something the Valeyard vaguely recognised but couldn’t quite place. A simple melody, embellished with trills and grace notes and with a slightly Eighties feel to it. A girl in a grey uniform stood polishing a glass with a white cloth, but no one occupied any of the stools on the other side of the bar, or the armchairs ranged around the area of orange and black carpet on which the piano stood.
The staff must be constructs as well, working on pre-programmed routines to make the place feel genuine. Just like the Doctor to add something like that, people to wait on him. Rassilon forbid he should fend for himself!
‘Ah, Doctor,’ said a woman in a white shirt and black waistcoat, who stood behind the reception desk, directly beneath the clock. ‘Welcome back to the Grand Rivencrag. I’m so pleased you’ve decided to visit us again.’
The Valeyard approached, giving a patient smile, though all he really wanted was this idiocy to stop so he could find a bed somewhere and lie down. He hadn’t realised how tired he was until he found himself approaching reception, then it was as if he’d been there for hours, the weight of a busy day bearing down on him, even though he had no memory of doing anything.
Time was odd in this place, he reasoned. He felt as if he’d only just arrived a second ago and had, at the same time, been there for decades already. Half his brain said the place was utterly familiar and he knew every chink in the marble, while the other half took it all in as new, and the two sensations battled each other, adding to his exhaustion.
‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not the Doctor. He’s just allowing me to use this place for a while. I’m…’
She glanced down for an instant, at something on the other side of the desk, hidden by the fact that her side was lower than the forest-green marble facing him, and when she looked up at him again, her expression was completely blank.
‘Your brain pattern presents a seventy-eight point nine per cent match to the data print on file for the Time Lord known as “The Doctor”,’ she said, her tone as bland as her face, like a robot reciting the results of a search. That’s more or less what it was, the Valeyard supposed. Whatever systems the Time Lords set up to control this universe, they must have a record of the Doctor from previous visits, and it sounded like they weren’t going to take any argument on the fact. Perhaps the Doctor had known this. Perhaps he thought it was funny, condemning him not only to a lifetime of imprisonment and boredom in this place, but making sure he’d always be referred to as “the Doctor”.
Then the woman’s smile was back. Her badge simply said “Reception”, which wasn’t helpful.
‘Would you like your usual room, Doctor?’ she asked.
The Valeyard shrugged. ‘I just want a room. I’m not fussy which one.’
‘Excellent.’
She went over to a rack of wooden pigeonholes that stood behind her, below the clock and the marble wall decoration. Every key was in its slot, the Valeyard noticed, except for 12A. That slot was empty. There were no other “A” numbers. One through to five hundred, which meant the hotel was probably dimensionally transcendental, since the building he’d seen from the outside couldn’t have held that many rooms.
“Reception” picked out the key for room 12 and returned to the desk. It was one of those old, satisfying hotel room keys, with a huge, brass fob to stop it being stolen or inadvertently left in a pocket on departure. Much nicer than bland little card things, the Valeyard thought as he took the key from her.
‘You’re on the first floor,’ said Reception. ‘The lifts are just over there…’ She pointed to the left, where, beyond the end of the reception desk, a little corridor led off to the back of the hotel, past a rank of elevators with half-moon dials to show which floor they were on. All were sitting at zero. ‘…Or there’s the stairs, just through the door beyond the lifts.’
‘Thank you,’ the Valeyard said. He searched his pockets again and found a seashell he’d picked up on the beach on the cyan moon of Varney-Paradisius-Grange-Four a few months back. It was purple and curly, and he’d liked the mathematics of it at the time, the golden ratio spiral it followed. So he handed it to Reception. She glanced down, flashed a tiny look of confusion, then smiled.
‘Have a pleasant stay, Doctor,’ she said.
The Valeyard moved off, or tried to. He turned to find his way blocked by a man in a black suit, whose badge read “Duty Manager”. His hair was black and slicked across his head with so much gel, it shined beneath the foyer lights like obsidian.
‘Doctor,’ he said, grinning. His teeth were straight out of an American dentist’s advert. ‘Wonderful to see you back again.’
‘Yes,’ said the Valeyard. He thought about trying to explain, but he didn’t have the energy, so he left it at that in the hope that the man would get the hint and go away. He didn’t.
‘May I say, how pleased we all are that you’ve decided to return to our humble hotel. And, if I might be so forward, the new body suits you very well, sir. I see you’ve opted for the male model this time. A bold choice, but you pull it off with grace and elegance, sir.’
‘Yes, it’s custom made,’ the Valeyard muttered. ‘If you’ll excuse me, though, I am very tired and…’
‘Yes, of course,’ said the Duty Manager. ‘Of course, Doctor. You’ll find everything as you like it. I’ve seen to that personally.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Valeyard. He didn’t bother looking for anything in his pockets for this man because he instinctively didn’t like him, but then wondered about that afterwards as he walked away. Was that rude? He was too tired to decide.
He headed off to find the stairs. Only the first floor. It didn’t warrant the lifts. And he didn’t really trust lifts in dimensionally transcendental buildings. For starters, as he walked past the rows of wooden doors, behind which, no doubt, were diamond-patterned gates that would fold back like a concertina to allow a person into the lift when it arrived, he glanced up at the dials and saw that each one displayed a different number of floors.
He found the stairwell behind a door that looked identical to the lifts but which was, helpfully, marked with a plaque that said, “Stairs”, and found a set of carpeted steps disappearing both upwards and downwards on the other side in a square spiral with polished teak banisters. The Valeyard stood for a moment, leaning on the newel post, and considered turning away for a moment, trying to find somewhere else. Could he really spend eternity in what looked like a mid-budget hotel in some seaside resort? But, he supposed, what choice did he have? For all he knew, it was this or sleeping outside in the mist and drizzle. So, he started to climb.
If the Doctor had managed to alter the appearance of this place – the Valeyard could not believe that its original designer and owner on Gallifrey wanted the English seaside as a holiday destination – then it stood to reason that the Valeyard could figure out its programming and change things to suit himself, eventually. But, for now, he just wanted to sleep. He was so tired. It made no sense. He hadn’t been exerting himself particularly prior to being sent to this universe. Or had he? What had he done since he got here? Half his brain said he’d stayed here, at the Grand Rivencrag Hotel – what sort of name was that anyway? – while the other half said he’d just got here.
The first-floor corridor was far too long for the building, so yes, the internal dimensions had been tampered with. A patterned carpet a little too reminiscent of the one in The Shining stretched off in both directions, past rows of identical doors and white-plastered walls. The occasional piece of artwork that was no doubt generic and uninteresting. The Valeyard followed the directions on a sign facing the stairwell door, which said rooms one to one hundred were to his right, and paused for a moment to examine the framed print between rooms Two and Four. It was Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. An odd choice for an hotel, certainly, and Saturn’s eyes seemed to follow the Valeyard as he moved off like something from an episode of Scooby Doo.
It was only as he reached his door and put the key into its lock that he realised he hadn’t seen room 12A as he’d passed, the only room whose key was not at reception. He checked on either side, but there was no sign of it. The rooms progressed as normal, ten and fourteen flanking his room and eleven and thirteen on the other side of the hallway, this hotel obviously ignoring the usual Earth superstition about the number thirteen. Perhaps it was a storeroom or just a glitch in the Doctor’s design. It wasn’t important. What was important was sleep. The Valeyard pushed open his door and headed into Room Twelve.
It was, as he’d expected, dull.
The layout could have been any hotel in any country in the twentieth or twenty-first century. The only point of interest was that it had a flatscreen television on top of the chest of drawers facing the bed, out of place amongst the 1920s décor. Another print hung on the wall above the bed. This one was Masks Still Life III by Emil Nolde. As disturbing as the Goya but this time with brighter colours. Whoever had chosen the artwork for the hotel evidently needed some therapy. But then again, that would be the Doctor, so the previous thought was a given.
The Valeyard tested the bed first by sitting on it, then by flopping down on his back. It felt comfortable enough. As he lay there, however, he felt odd. Something was wrong, out of place, and he couldn’t decide what it was at first. Something about the way his body felt. Then he glanced to one side and realised what it was.
Jumping up, he hurried over to the full-length mirror, which hung just to the side of the television and drawers. He stood staring at his own reflection, and tentatively reached up to pull at the lock of long hair that hung down to his shoulders. When he tugged it, his scalp hurt. It was definitely attached to him. He ran his hands through it and tried to get it to sit properly and frame his face. It had needed a bit of a trim before he’d come to the pocket universe, but this was ridiculous.
How long had he been here? Always, he thought, and no time at all. The temporal controls in this place needed adjusting. Something else he’d have to see to. Otherwise, he might wake up with a beard down to his ankles and toenails curling up to his knees. Or live his whole life in the flap of a butterfly’s wing and then have it reversed in just as quick an instant so he could go through it all again. Just like the Doctor to tinker with the thing and break its settings. The man was a menace.
It was only then that the brief conversations he’d had downstairs came back to him with a bit more clarity. He didn’t feel as tired in the room as he had done in reception, and now he mulled over what the Duty Manager had said. ‘I see you’ve opted for the male model this time.’ But, if the last Doctor who’d stayed here was female, how had the holiday pocket universe ended up in a cupboard in the Sixth Doctor’s TARDIS?
He thought he vaguely remembered finding the universe, or the Doctor did. There were a few bits and pieces about it in the Valeyard’s store of the Doctor’s experiences. He’d been practising searching through them with detachment, telling himself he was merely an onlooker and that the deaths, the disappointments and failures he thought he remembered hadn’t actually happened to him personally.
The Doctor had found the universe in a box at the back of a cupboard full of what Peri, at the time, labelled, “more junk”. It was after that business with the Salacan salesman and the Tranquelans, when he’d tried to use a holiday ball he’d been sold, only to discover it was just a bugging device.
He remembered… or the Doctor remembered, that the holiday balls had only been popular because some older Time Lords, himself included, remembered the old pocket universes that used to be around and missed them, and the holiday balls seemed a cheaper, less efficient way of doing the same thing but the best on offer, since no one made pocket universes for personal vacations and retreats any more. The stellar and temporal engineering involved was too complex to be worth the trouble, so only a handful of true, Gallifreyan “holiday balls”, if you wanted to call them that, were ever made.
He’d remembered that he’d spotted one while looking for something else and had gone to search for it, but after that, he’d evidently cheered up and so the following memories never made it into the Valeyard’s data store. But it was definitely the Doctor’s Sixth incarnation who’d been involved in that, the Valeyard was certain. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish which memories came from which regeneration and at times he had to use the companions as a guide, though people like Peri, Mel and Clara made that difficult sometimes.
So, how had the last Doctor these constructs had seen been female?
Unless…
The Valeyard went over to the wardrobe on a hunch. And he was right. He opened the door and found it fully stocked, evidently designed to predict the needs of the visitor, since it was impossible to bring actual luggage in with you. Before him on the rack hung a dark blue coat with silver buttons and an array of brightly coloured, high-necked blouses. The Valeyard took one out and went back to the mirror to see if it suited him, then decided the colours were garish and turned to put it back. Only, as he turned, he saw the blouse transform on its coat hanger. It became a plain, black, man’s shirt, the sort he wore with his other coat, the frock coat with the jet beading on the shoulders and lapels, that had been ruined on New Amazonia. A coat, he saw, that now hung in place of the blue one that had been there earlier.
So, he thought, perhaps this design wasn’t the fault of the Sixth Doctor after all. By the sounds of it, he’d never used it. It belonged to someone much, much earlier. No wonder it was a bit glitchy. It had to have been lying around for a very long time if it was hers.
Chapter 3: 3
Chapter Text
Voreline had no memory of coming to the staff rooms. She remembered speaking to the Doorman, though no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what he looked like, and then she had a vague sense of having spoken to someone in the foyer, a room grander even than the town hall, all black and green stone and gold glinting everywhere. A man with dark hair and very white teeth.
Then she was here, in this damp, far too hot room that smelled of laundry soap and overheated dust. There were rows of metal lockers against one wall and a wooden bench along the centre, so she supposed it was some sort of changing room, though she, herself, was already changed. Her ceremonial dress and flowers were gone and instead, she wore a crisp, grey uniform with an ankle-length skirt, white blouse and grey waistcoat. A little badge pinned to the waistcoat read, “Voreline”, and nothing else. She was holding a stack of neatly folded towels, though she had no idea where she’d got them or what she was supposed to do with them. Then, almost in the same thought, a number appeared in her mind. Twelve. And an image of a door.
It was there and gone again in a flash, but that it was significant and not just a bit of a daydream or half a memory was pressed into her brain. She supposed she ought to go to Room Twelve. Perhaps that’s where the towels were for. She’d waited for a long while, or, at least, she thought she had. She had the sensation of having been on her feet for ages but also a feeling of having just arrived a second ago, but besides the two people she’d spoken to, she had no memory of meeting any other people.
The feeling that she ought to be moving crept up on her, like an itch at the back of her head, on the inside of her skull, and so, she decided to go to Room Twelve, for want of any other orders or ideas.
She was out of the changing room and walking briskly along a dank, pipe-lined corridor with bare concrete block walls and scuffed wooden floors before she realised she knew the way, and yet she was sure she’d never gone up to the rooms before, had never been anywhere other than the foyer and the changing rooms.
At the end of the corridor, she found a lift, much plainer than the ones she, somehow, knew were upstairs and used by the guests. As soon as she pressed the call button, there was a thunk and a rattle on the other side of the door, which then opened out towards her so quickly, Voreline had to skip backwards to avoid being hit in the face. She struggled to keep hold of her towels, dreading the idea of them falling onto the dirty floor, then she she righted herself and looked up. A small, stout man sidled out of the lift, struggling with the weight of the metal gate that folded back. He wore a purple blazer trimmed in black, with the letters “GRH” embroidered in gold over the breast pocket.
‘Ah,’ he said, smiling at her once he was fully out of the lift. ‘You must be Voreline.’
He was an odd little man, with thin blond hair and narrow eyes, and his smile wasn’t at all friendly. There was something in the way he said her name, a kind of hunger that she instinctively didn’t like. In fact, she didn’t like anything about this man, even though she usually never liked to make a judgement on someone at first meeting. And, she thought, how had he known her name? But then hadn’t he always known it? Did she know him? It was all so confusing.
‘I know it’s difficult to understand,’ said the man, and Voreline straightened. Was he reading her thoughts?
‘Starting a new job, especially somewhere as prestigious as the Grand Rivencraig Hotel, it can be daunting.’
So that’s where she was. A hotel? She hadn’t heard the word before, but an image came into her mind, like the door earlier, of a large, grand building, all white and straight lines. A place like an inn or a hostelry, only bigger and more elegant.
‘But don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘I’ll make sure you settle in.’
‘Who are you?’ she asked. It felt like she had to drag her mind out of the grip of some strong glue before she was able to speak, but as soon as the words were out, a sort of relief washed over her, like the rush after a run in the early mist.
The little man cocked his head to one side, his smile faltering just ever so slightly.
‘I’m the Entertainment Manager,’ he said, and his tone was no longer friendly. It had an edge of steel to it that frightened Voreline, even though nothing he said was threatening in any way. ‘I make sure anyone who comes here, guests and staff, feel as comfortable as possible. You could say I make their dreams come true.’
Something moved just over his shoulder by the lift door. Voreline glanced that way but the thing had already gone. Then there was a loud scratch behind her, like the time a bird landed on the windowsill and clawed the glass. Rapid, skittering. She turned around so quickly, she dropped the towels. She saw something jump off the wall above her and come straight down towards her, had the sense of many limbs stretching out to form a star, but only for a split second, before it was on her face and everything went black.
There were towels neatly folded in her arms. Voreline blinked and saw the lift door, the corridor, the Entertainment Manager standing just beside her. Wasn’t she on her way to Room Twelve?
‘I’m glad to hear you’re settling in,’ said the Entertainment Manager. ‘We like everyone to be happy here.’
‘I’m sure I will be, sir,’ she heard herself say. Then she curtseyed and pulled open the door to get at the lift gate. By the time she’d hauled that open, the Entertainment Manager had gone.
The Valeyard stepped into the en-suite bathroom connected to his room and pulled the cord to turn on the light. A collection of cubist glass shapes hanging like fruit from a ceiling rose glowed brightly, and yet the light wasn’t quite enough to push all the way into the corners of the room, leaving it cold and dank. The steady drip drip of a leaking tap came from somewhere, but the Valeyard inspected both the sink and the free-standing clawfoot bath and found them to be sound.
The floor was tiled in checkerboard black and white, the walls in pure white, though the poor lighting made the ceramics seem grubbier than they were. A wooden stand held an array of towels against one wall, and there was a collection of bottles and soaps on a small table beside the sink. Then there was the bath. It was enormous, with a shower at its head and a ring of tubular steel around it to support the curtain, which was pale grey and wafted like every tourist’s idea of a ghost as the Valeyard came in.
Still, it was what one did, wasn’t it? Had a wash before going to sleep on sheets as crisp and white as the ones out there. And he felt the need for warm water against the knots in his back. It would help him sleep. It took a little more mental fortitude, however, before he could bring himself to close the door and undress in that room. Despite the little bits of ornamentation here and there, on the table and on the metal work on the bath and sink, there was something a little too clinical about the place for his liking.
He figured out the combination of taps and valves to get the shower working then stood back to let the water get warm. The hiss of the stream hitting the bath’s porcelain fought away the uneasy silence that had been there before. Perhaps he’d ask for a radio, if there wasn’t one there already. A bit of music to…
He turned to put his clothes on the table with the basket of toiletries and found a small music player sitting there now. Well, being constantly taken for the Doctor might not be so bad if it meant he could adjust his surroundings. He’d have to figure it out though, so that he didn’t create things out of every random thought. That could get quite dangerous.
He tapped the device and its display lit up in bright blue-green, telling him it was playing Evanescence, Lost in Paradise, and a second later, the song filled the bathroom. It made his hearts stop for an instant. The last time he’d heard this, Solitaire had been playing around with the media library in the TARDIS, picking this out of volumes of music from every planet and every era, then getting defensive when he called her an emo. After she got into the database and found out what an emo was, that is. At first, she’d thought he was calling her a bird. He smiled at the memory, then breathed deeply to get rid of it. Perhaps he should learn to view his own memories as a detached observer too.
By the time he actually climbed over the lip of the bath and let the water blast his back, the music had changed, anyway, to a pop song he vaguely recognised. Maybe one of the Doctor’s choices rather than his this time. It didn’t matter. He pulled the curtain, and it surrounded the bath with a swish like a sword being drawn from its scabbard.
Instantly, he felt uncomfortable. Being surrounded by the grey fabric, which rippled and moved as the steam rose, felt a little too enclosed, and he had the sudden impression there were things moving around on the other side of it. He did his best to ignore the feeling for a while and just concentrated on washing, but after a few minutes he gave up. He was clean enough. This place was weird and perhaps it was best if he just went to bed.
As he reached down for the tap, though, he saw movement in the corner of his eye, above him on the rail that ran around the bath for the curtain. The Valeyard froze then straightened very slowly, keeping his peripheral vision trained on that spot. The music had switched to a recording of Rolando Villazón singing E Lucevan Le Stele from Tosca, and was still on the first few bars, so was quiet enough for him to hear the rustle then the clink of the rings jostling one another. It didn’t sound very large, whatever it was, but it was definitely moving around the top of the curtain.
For a moment, he thought of mice, then remembered that the hotel was just a construct, most of its features the product of block transfer computation. Why would it have vermin? Unless the Doctor had been a stickler for detail. Alas, he didn’t know that incarnation well enough to say for sure.
The noise came again, further round the rail this time, right behind him now. He decided he wouldn’t do the obvious thing and spin around, because then he’d slip, probably grab the curtain to try and stop his fall, get wound up in it and present himself as a neatly wrapped bundle for the knife-wielding maniac with an Electra complex, or whatever happened to be on the other side. Instead, he moved slowly, carefully, keeping his feet on the cork mat inside the bath to be as steady as possible. Once he was facing the right way, he looked up towards the rail.
Something fell towards him. He glimpsed a brown body, as large as his head, and lots of long, jointed legs, but then the whole world was black.
The water gushed against the bath. Hadn’t he turned that off? For a while, the Valeyard just stared at the river twirling down the plug hole, then twisted the brass tap again until it stopped. The bathroom fell back into silence, save for that ghostly drip drip, even though none of the bath’s taps was leaking.
That was odd, though. What had happened to the music? And hadn’t he been doing something… a sound, something above him… The Valeyard turned quickly to look behind him at the curtain rail, but his foot slipped on the wet porcelain and he fell. He grabbed the curtain out of instinct, but then twisted and, somehow, by the time he hit the tiled floor, he’d managed to wrap himself in the shower curtain, which tore from its metal rings with a shriek. This might have been a mathematical projection, but it still hurt when he hit the floor, and he let out a few curses in various languages he knew, then struggled his way out of the curtain and managed to sit up.
‘Having a spot of trouble, are we, Doctor?’ asked a voice behind him, over by the bathroom door. The sound of it made the Valeyard’s blood turn cold. Clutching the curtain round himself, he managed to get to his feet and turned to face the intruder, who was standing by the door with a bath towel in one hand. He was dressed in a white shirt, black trousers and a purple blazer with black piping, the initials GRH embroidered in gold on the pocket.
‘What are you doing here?’ the Valeyard asked.
The intruder smiled. ‘I’m the Entertainment Manager. I’ve come to make sure you’re being well looked-after.’ He held out the towel, which the Valeyard, reluctantly, took and used to wipe the water from his face. That long hair was a nuisance and had plastered itself across his forehead, so he was glad to finally get it pushed away. Then he could get a proper look at the man and no, he hadn’t made a mistake.
‘The Entertainment Manager?’ the Valeyard said. ‘That’s a bit of a comedown, isn’t it?’
‘From what, sir?’
‘Last time we met, you were calling yourself The Dream Lord.’
The Dream Lord cocked his head to one side and looked thoughtful, his smile falling a little, but only for a moment. Then he was grinning again, standing with his hands behind his back like the attendant in a posh restroom.
‘Really? I don’t recall that, sir. Last time we met, I believe you were engaged in rather pressing work business and our exchanges were quite brief, however, so it is possible something slipped my memory. It has been an awfully long time since we’ve seen you here, Doctor. And, may I say, the new body suits you.’
He gave a leering look that made the Valeyard want to pull his shower curtain robe tighter around himself.
‘So, is this the dream then? Or are you going to present me with some other reality? Are the rules the same as last time?’ he asked.
The Dream Lord did that thing again, tilting his head as if he was listening to something. Or connecting to a central computer, the Valeyard thought. The receptionist had done the same thing. So had the Duty Manager.
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘As I said, Doctor, the last time you were here, I don’t recall your having needed my services, beyond those required for your work. Which rules are you referring to?’
It could all be a trick, the Valeyard thought. But then, when had it started? Back in Italy when the Doctor appeared? But he had the Doctor’s memory of that event. At least, he thought he did. He’d remembered the pocket universe and that last meeting with the Doctor back on New Amazonia, when he’d rummaged around the Doctor’s memories for anything useful. He just hadn’t known when it would happen. But having found the memory earlier didn’t mean the Dream Lord hadn’t used that somehow and tricked him into thinking he was stuck in this universe.
‘What were you doing to help with my work?’ he asked. Perhaps this was like finding an NPC in a game. You had to ask the right questions to get your quest.
‘Oh, very little,’ said the Dream Lord in that same, obsequious tone. ‘Nothing at all in the grand scale of things. I only did as you asked and made sure the guests were comfortable and connected to the system.’
‘But you work for the hotel?’
‘Of course, sir. I’m the Entertain…’
‘Entertainment Manager, yes you said. And you don’t want me to solve a puzzle or make some sort of choice between realities, that kind of thing?’
‘No, sir, though if you would like a puzzle, I’m sure I can engineer one suited to your intellect…’
‘No, thank you. I’d just like to sleep, actually.’
Was that why he was feeling tired? But no, what would be the point in revealing himself but not setting down a challenge? And the Valeyard’s instincts told him this wasn’t the same being he’d encountered… sorry, the Doctor had encountered in his TARDIS. That had been the result of a bit of psychic pollen he’d picked up, so maybe there was some distant memory of this “Entertainment Manager” left over from when he’d been that lost version of the Doctor.
‘Very well, sir. I wish you a very good night, then.’
‘Thank you,’ the Valeyard replied warily, but he watched as the Dream Lord withdrew, closing the room door quietly behind him.
After a short while, when nothing odd had happened, no alternate realities had appeared and no one else had apparated into his room, the Valeyard thought it safe enough to unwrap his shower curtain, which he draped over the lip of the bath. He replaced it with the towel then headed to the bedroom to search the chest of drawers. As he thought, he found pyjamas in the top drawers. No need to check if they were the right size. Once he was dressed, he went back to the bathroom to return the towel and found the shower curtain back on its rings as if nothing had happened.
He had the brief urge to turn rock star and trash the place, just to see if it would go back again instantly, but then decided he couldn’t be bothered. That had to be a bit of the Doctor’s Twelfth persona seeping through. It happened more often with him than with the others, probably because he’d interfered with the base code back on Zenobia station. The Valeyard wasn’t totally sure what the Doctor had done to him, only that he was sure if he picked up a guitar, he’d be able to play it, and that he now knew all lyrics to anything by David Bowie.
He’d just made it to the bed and turned on the lamp on the nightstand when there was a quiet rap at the door. At least this one knocked, he thought, then wandered over there. He squinted through the spyhole and found a fish-eye view of a girl, who was standing just outside and looking nervous. Intrigued, he opened the door and took in the non-distorted image of her. She was young, dressed in grey and held a pile of fresh towels.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. I just thought… I had the feeling you might need these? This is Room Twelve?’
‘It is,’ said the Valeyard. He stepped back to let her in and watched her as she bustled across to the bathroom, unfolded the towels and laid them on the rack. There was no sign, he noticed, of the ones that had been there earlier or of the one he’d dumped on the side of the bath. The other thing he noticed was that he could sense the girl’s mind, her whole aura and her impact in Time. He could see her past, present and future like ripples all around her, just as it was with other beings. Other living beings.
‘You’re not from here, are you?’ he asked, just as she was about to head out.
The girl stopped and looked up at him with large, blue eyes. She was afraid, he saw, though he also had the impression of targetless fear. She didn’t know what it was that frightened her. She just knew she was frightened.
‘No, sir, I’m from town,’ she said.
‘Town? Where’s that?’
‘It’s called Resort, sir. It’s just…’ She looked towards the window, though it was pitch black outside, not even any stars. Then she bit her lip. ‘I’m not sure exactly. It’s a short way from here, down below… I think.’
‘But people live there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m sorry…’ He glanced down at her name badge, expecting to see “Housekeeping” or something equally unhelpful, but hers actually did give her a proper name. ‘…Voreline, but would you mind if I…?’
He held out his hand and, although she looked confused, she offered her own. He pushed up the starched cuff of her blouse and felt her pulse. One single, steady heartbeat. Human. Or Humanoid at least.
‘Do you know where your people came from?’ he asked.
Voreline frowned. ‘Came from, sir?’
‘You don’t have to call me “sir”. I’m known as the Valeyard.’
‘I thought you were known as the Doctor, sir?’ she asked, then her frown deepened.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s… sorry, si…Valeyard, I just… I don’t know where I got that from or how I knew that. Since I came here, things keep just coming to my head.’
‘Since you came here? How long have you worked here?’
‘Only since this morning. Except…’
‘Except it feels like longer.’
She nodded. ‘But I’m sure it was only this morning. I remember the ceremony.’
‘Ceremony? Listen, do you want some tea? Coffee?’
She looked over at the little kettle and shook her head. ‘That’s for guests, sir…I mean…’
The Valeyard closed the room door and gestured to her to sit in one of the chairs by the little table, while he pressed the kettle’s on switch and poured some instant coffee into a mug for her.
‘What ceremony?’ he asked.
‘The selection. Each of the Feeder Families selects one of their children to be sent up once they’re eighteen. It wasn’t supposed to be me. My sister was chosen, but she died in an accident.’
‘Feeder families?’
‘They’re the oldest families in the town, the ones going right back to the beginning, when the first envoys came to Resort.’
‘These first envoys, did they wear robes and big funny collars?’
He handed her her coffee along with a plastic pot of milk and a couple of packets of sugar, and found her regarding him with wide eyes.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Oh, but of course, you’d know. You being a guest and all. You must see them here all the time.’
‘Not for a long while,’ said the Valeyard, ‘and I’m very glad of that. So, these envoys came to your town and, what? Asked you to start this ritual of sending people up to the hotel?’
‘Yes, sir. Only none of us knew it was a hotel. At least, no one’s ever said it was. Granted, I didn’t have as much training as my sister did with the lore-keepers, but I don’t think any of the old texts mentioned a hotel. Just how the ceremony was to be and how you should live if you were chosen. All about not drinking wine or eating too much fatty meat, taking your medicine regularly, making sure you were always strong and healthy.’
‘But where did your people come from in the first place? Do you have any legends? Any stories about the very first people?’
‘Oh, you mean like the stories the lore-keepers tell?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘They’re just stories. No one really believes them, nowadays. But they say the first people came here from another place, that they were all chosen themselves and brought here to serve the masters at the top of the stairs. That’s here, I suppose. They were chosen because of their skills or their strength, but the masters didn’t realise that we live much shorter lives than they do. So when the first servants started to grow old, they sent their envoys into Resort, to look for any of their children who’d grown up strong enough or clever enough. And they would come every ten years to check it was being done or to select someone. Then they stopped coming. No one, not even my great grandma, remembers ever seeing an envoy. Some people think they didn’t ever exist at all. But the town council thought it best to keep the selection going, because the envoys had always told them there’d be dire consequences if they didn’t obey.’
‘Sounds like them,’ the Valeyard muttered. So, the Timelords had basically used a time scoop or something like that to gather up a group of humans to breed here, just so they’d have someone to bring them fresh towels. He’d never been fond of his creators but in that moment, they disgusted him more than ever.
‘I can only apologise,’ he said.
‘Not your fault, sir,’ said Voreline.
‘Guilt by association. But no one else will have to come here to slave after these people. I give you my word.’
And how are you going to fulfil that? asked the voice inside his head, that horrible one that lurked right at the back, the one that liked to pluck failures at random to remind him of. Well, he thought, I don’t know. But at the very least, figuring out how will give me something to do.
‘I’d best be off, sir,’ said Voreline, getting up. ‘The Duty Manager will be… is looking for me, I think. I still don’t know how I know these things.’
‘Some sort of telepathic interface, I expect,’ said the Valeyard. ‘Let me look into it, and be careful. If my people built this place, it may have any number of nasty surprises lurking in it.’
‘Oh, you mean like 12A?’ she asked with a nervous laugh.
‘You mean room 12A? It isn’t there. I looked for it on the way here.’
‘No,’ she said, frowning again. ‘Sorry, sir, that just came into my head. Now it’s gone again.’
The Valeyard nodded. Of course, said the voice, she could be lying. She could be part of the Dream Lord’s setup. How was he supposed to tell if any of this was real?
He couldn’t, was the answer, and so he had no choice but to act as if it was real. And his instincts about Voreline were that she was honest. The founders of this place, however, he viewed in a less positive light.
Sleep, he thought, closing the curtains on the starless night, and then in the morning, he’d get to work.
This Doctor’s TARDIS was more like the Valeyard’s than the last version Solitaire had seen. It had split levels, one lined with bookcases, and low, moody lighting. The column rising out of the central console reached right up to the ceiling, where it met a set of steel discs covered in Gallifreyan writing. The Doctor strode in and started flicking switches, leaving Solitaire and Bill in his wake. The other one, Nardole, lingered by the door, scowling at them.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I have to remind you…’
‘Of my oath, I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘Snooze the reminder for now, Nardole. The fate of the cosmos might be at stake.’
‘That’s what you said the last time,’ Nardole replied. ‘You went to Glasgow for a deep friend pizza.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s called pizza crunch, and I had a craving. My body’s alien, remember? I need different minerals and vitamins…’
‘Unless the thing you needed was cholesterol, I doubt you found it in a battered bit of dough, cheese and tomato sauce. My point is…’
‘I know what your point is. Your point hasn’t changed. But the fact is, the Vault won’t be left unguarded, will it?’
‘How?’
‘Because you’ll be staying here to keep an eye on it.’
‘But sir…’
‘You just said, it’s important.’
‘Well, yes, but…’
The Doctor straightened, all humour gone from his grey eyes. ‘So is this, Nardole. I may have made a serious mistake and if I don’t correct it, time could unravel around us like a badly made scarf. Stay here, keep an eye on the Vault. If all goes well, we’ll be back in about five seconds, from your point of view.’
‘When does all ever go well?’ asked Bill, raising her eyebrows at him.
‘That’s a very pessimistic view. Anyway, it’s no concern of yours. Like I say, far as you’re concerned, I’ll reappear in a couple of seconds.’
Bill stood up straight now. ‘Whoa, no you don’t. I’m not staying here.’
‘This could be dangerous, Bill. It’s the Valeyard.’
Solitaire sighed and got ready to have this argument again, but Bill got in before she had the chance.
‘Solitaire says he’s not dangerous.’
The Doctor looked from one to the other, obviously thinking how to phrase something really insulting in a way that only sounded mildly insulting.
‘And anyway,’ Bill said, before he had the chance, ‘you said yourself, he had a soft spot for the people who’d travelled with you. So, he’s not going to do anything to me, is he? He didn’t kill me on Zenobia. He had the chance. He was literally holding a gun to me and he couldn’t do it. And you can’t go on your own. You don’t even know what’s in there.’
‘It’s a Time Lord resort,’ said the Doctor. ‘Whatever’s in there, it’s going to make an October caravan holiday in South Wales look exciting. All I have to do is find the Valeyard before he dies of boredom and bring him back here, then decide what to do about him.’
‘And what if it’s a big resort? We’ll find him quicker if there’s three of us.’
‘Three?’
The Doctor turned to Solitaire, his eyes wide, as if he’d only just realised she was there.
‘You’re not coming,’ he said.
‘Like hell I’m not,’ Solitaire retorted.
‘If it were you,’ said Bill, ‘and the Valeyard locked you in some space caravan, do you really think I’d be happy to sit at home and play Cluedo with Nardole?’
‘No, perhaps, not,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Besides, I’ve explained the rules to him five times, but he still forgets to put cards in the wallet at the start. Last time we played, the game went on for nineteen hours straight. Nearly ended in a real murder.’ He flicked a few more switches, with the air of a sulky teenager who’d been asked to do the washing up and couldn’t think of an excuse to get out of it. ‘Fine. But when we get there, wherever “there” turns out to be, you do as I say, all right? This is Time Lord technology. It can be tricky.’
‘You just said it was boring,’ Solitaire pointed out.
‘To the Valeyard or to me, yes. It might not be geared towards Humans. Just don’t touch anything.’
‘Fine,’ said Bill, raising her hands as if in surrender. ‘How are you going to get in there, anyway?’
The crystal sphere, throughout all this, had sat on a little stand on top of one of the console’s monitors. As he’d come in, the Doctor had plucked a crystal ball from one of the bookshelves, removed the stand from under it, then tucked the ball, which was almost identical to the Time Lord sphere, into the pocket of his velvet frock coat.
‘It has some sort of scrambling mechanism on the access route,’ the Doctor said, studying the controls beneath the sphere. ‘Possibly, it’s sensing that there’s a version of me, albeit the evil one, already inside there and it won’t let more than one of us in at any one time.’
‘From our point of view, you’re the evil one,’ Solitaire said. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she saw the Doctor straighten and stare right at her. She waited for him to go into a rant like the other one, but he didn’t look angry. He looked more… “hurt” was the best word she could think of.
‘But they always have a backdoor, these things,’ the Doctor said, after he’d managed to compose himself with a deep breath. ‘I’m just trying to lock onto it. Having a couple of Humans with me makes it more difficult. You might not be automatically transported into the pocket universe, so I’ll have to do some fairly extensive tweaking on the dematerialisation circuit. Might take a while. Why don’t the two of you go and watch a film or something. Only don’t start on that pile of Disney films that aren’t out yet. I want to watch those, and if you’ve seen it first, you’ll just spoil it.’
‘When do I spoil things?’ asked Bill. ‘Anyway, what is there to spoil? They’re Disney films. The good guys win. Ariel gets her voice back. Simba becomes king. Mirabel learns how she fits into the family and…’
‘Encanto doesn’t come out for another four years,’ said the Doctor, pointing an accusing finger. ‘You have been at that pile.’
‘Yeah, but you didn’t actually say not to watch it, not ‘til now…’
‘How many did you watch? Do you know how dangerous that is? Your knowledge of those films could change the course of history. If I wasn’t there…’
‘Has this got anything to do with anything?’ asked Solitaire.
The Doctor sank back, turning his attention to the controls, suitably chastised.
‘Well, if there’s anything you haven’t already seen from the next decade or so, go and watch it. I’ll let you know when these adjustments are done.’
Solitaire was ready to stand guard, but she felt a light tap on her arm and looked round to find Bill there, giving her an encouraging smile, the sort of expression you’d use when trying to coax a frightened animal out of its carrier and into a new home. Solitaire glanced over at the Doctor, the urge to stay there and keep an eye on him so strong, it welded her to the spot, but then she looked at the TARDIS controls, and thought how he could be doing anything - setting a bomb that would destroy them all, getting ready to take her back to Rohelian, flipping a few switches that would just erase her from existence - and she wouldn’t know anything about it until it was too late anyway. So, what was the use in standing vigil if she had no idea what he was doing?
With a sigh and one last glare towards the Doctor, she relented and let Bill guide her towards a set of stairs to one of the upper levels and then a doorway which led out of the console room.
Chapter 4: 4
Chapter Text
After a while – he had no idea if it was a few minutes or a few hours – the Valeyard realised sleep wasn’t going to come to him. The tiredness he’d felt earlier dissipated after he’d had a lie down and so he concluded that, perhaps, that was all he’d needed.
Willing the room to conjure him up a good book to read, he put on the bedside light and looked around. The room lay there, unchanged. Dull. Although no, not dull. At least, not so much as it was. Thin wisps of piano music drifted from somewhere in the far distance. He recognised the tune but couldn’t place it yet. Maybe the Doctor knew it. It was light and delicate, like a music box, different melodies intertwining like lovers at a dance. What the hell was that song?
The Valeyard sat up for a while, listening to it. It would fade away for a moment only to return a few seconds later, louder, as if the piano was just at the end of the hall. Then it would drift, until he thought it could be the piano in the foyer bar he was hearing. He got up and dressed quickly, scraped his hair back into a ponytail and headed out into the corridor.
The music did not suddenly grow louder as soon as he was out of the room. It kept its uneven volume and even seemed to come from different directions every time he tried to pin it down. Had to be part of the Dream Lord’s setup, the Valeyard thought.
He set off in search of the stairs, hoping they’d stayed in the same location and that the hotel didn’t reshuffle its rooms every night like the TARDIS. As he walked, he tried to listen to the other sounds of the hotel, only there were none. There were no footsteps or muffled voices behind any of the other doors. No distant clatter of a housekeeper’s cart. No mumble from a television or radio. Just that eerie piano refrain repeating as if on a loop. Whoever was playing it must have aching fingers by now. Although there probably wasn’t anyone playing. Just part of the system, part of the dream, the Valeyard thought. Block transfer computations mimicking life. Logopolis but in the style of a rubbish hotel. He noticed again, though, as he walked down the hall, that there was no Room 12A.
There was no sign of the door marked “stairs”, either, but he found the row of lifts in a little niche just off the main corridor. Wasn’t the stairwell just beside them? All he saw now were rooms, none of which opened when he tried the handle. The lift it was, then.
He pressed the call button and the dial above the door pinged at once. He was sure it had been on the fourteenth floor when he glanced at it a fraction of a second ago. But he heard the thunk and whine as the lift slowed then came to a stop in front of him, behind the door. He pulled it open and saw the little cubicle, lit by a yellow panel on the ceiling and lined with mirrors on its three sides. The concertina gate was heavy and took a great shove to open, but then he was inside, pulling the gate back and closing himself in. This, he kept thinking, felt like a bad idea. Then, there was the issue of which floor to select. Ground seemed a good place to start, as that’s where he’d seen the piano earlier, so he pushed “G”.
The lift lurched then started to descend. The Valeyard, trying to ignore his reflections in the three mirrors, stared straight ahead at the lift gate and the quick glimpses of other floors that passed by like frames of a film played too slowly through the projector.
At first, all he saw were corridors identical to his. It only occurred to him after the third or fourth one that the lifts were in a niche, and therefore he should not have this view of the corridor stretching out away from him. Then he passed a floor that contained a forest, and he saw a woman in an outfit made of animal skins sewn together, picking a large, white thorn from a tree. She slipped it into a pouch and turned to stare as the lift passed by, making eye contact for a fragment of a moment.
Next, the floor contained a room that looked remarkably like the Halls of Law on Gallifrey, the execution chamber in particular. He saw two men in the red and white uniform of the Chancellery Guard and between them, a girl in black trousers and a grey jumper. She turned to look at him with large eyes that made him shiver, and just as the lift sank down, away from them, he heard the whine of a staser blast and had to close his eyes for a second.
When he opened them again, the lift was passing ordinary corridors again. When that had been the case for several seconds and no other glimpses of the Doctor’s past appeared, he exhaled and relaxed a little.
Then, out the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He didn’t swirl around to confront it but continued to study it in his peripheral vision. One of the reflections in the mirror had changed position. While he’d stood completely still, one of the other Valeyards had turned to face him. That Valeyard was also dressed differently. Where he’d just shoved on his three-quarter velvet coat with the leather lapels, with a black shirt beneath, black trousers and knee-boots, the other one was in court robes, which rustled as he moved. His hair was short and slicked back, his face slightly more lined than the one the Valeyard knew he possessed at that moment, the Rohelian genetic engineers having kindly shaved a few years off when they created his body from his specifications and photo references. The Valeyard did his best to ignore the figure but could feel his stare.
The reflection on his other side then moved, too, turning like the other one to face him, while the Valeyard, the real Valeyard, kept his gaze fixed on the metal gate and slowly passing floors ahead of him. He could see though that this reflection was dressed in the robes of a Time Lord, though they were ragged and completely black. The high collar was made of thin, black metal, with sigils and symbols cut into it, and the face beneath the black cap was ever-changing, switching from one incarnation of the Doctor to another. He considered his current appearance a distinct improvement on that, his earliest form. He dreaded to think what the reflection directly behind him looked like.
And wasn’t this lift taking an awfully long time to get to the ground floor? It was still passing floor after floor and there was no dial inside to show where abouts he was. A twinge of panic clutched the Valeyard’s hearts. He’d thought this was a bad idea. There was no emergency stop button, either. Turning to the panel with the buttons, what’s more, meant he had to face the courtroom version of himself and he made the mistake of catching the reflection’s eye. Rather than show he was unnerved, the Valeyard straightened and squared up to his other self.
‘That outfit looks ridiculous,’ he said, ‘though I suppose I should be grateful you ditched the awful bloody hat.’
‘Your futile attempts at flippancy won’t save you,’ said the reflection. ‘You’ve already condemned yourself.’
‘Have I really? Sentenced in absentia, I suppose? I take it asking you to explain what’s going on here would be futile as well?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ said the reflection, darkly.
‘Whatever it is, I’ll tear it down, brick by brick if I have to,’ said the Valeyard.
‘You really believe that trying to emulate the Doctor, throwing away what you are, what you were made for, will save you from your inevitable fate?’
‘From the catharsis of spurious morality?’ the Valeyard said with a wry smile. His other self didn’t seem to find it funny. ‘You realise you don’t really exist? You’re just a bootstrap paradox created by the Doctor. I am the real you.’
The other Valeyard glowered at him for a second then started to laugh.
‘If that illusion sustains you,’ said a voice behind him. With the lift still travelling endlessly downward, now passing a floor that looked like Varos, then one that looked like Iceworld, another like Traken. The Valeyard turned to face the version of himself that had existed for centuries in the Matrix Cloisters, the Partition, though thankfully its face had settled now to a copy of his own. Every so often, however, the Valeyard caught the shadow of another face passing over it, the Fourth, the Sixth, the Thirteenth, the Sixteenth Doctor’s.
‘I am a living being,’ the Valeyard said. ‘For whatever reason, I have sentience and self-awareness. That means I decide who and what I am. Nothing else can define it. Not even the past. Not a pair of ghosts in silly outfits.’
‘You think I am your past?’ asked the Wraith-Valeyard.
‘Long in the past,’ said the Valeyard. ‘So much so, I can barely remember who you are.’
‘And yet you think of me every day, the idea that I am inside you, that I am you. I’ve simply gone from being trapped within a decrepit part of the Matrix to being trapped in that… form you’ve chosen for yourself.’
The Valeyard glanced down at his body and raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s wrong with it? I thought they did rather a good job, all told.’
‘Why do you crave to be like him?’ asked the Courtoom-Valeyard behind him. The Valeyard could see his reflection in the mirror, over the Wraith-Valeyard’s shoulder. This was like being at a very bad funfair.
‘I don’t crave to be like anybody,’ said the Valeyard. ‘I only crave to be, and that’s it.’
‘And yet you dress like him, you speak like him, you find yourself a human to drag around the universe and admire you, you throw yourself into other people’s problems with the compulsive need to help. Tell me, what does that description remind you of?’
The Valeyard sighed and turned to face the Courtroom one. ‘And what if I am, in some ways? To all intents and purposes, I am the Doctor, like it or not. And yes, there are so many aspects of his personality I abhor – the vanity, the arrogance, the way he can be blinkered by purpose, to the detriment of those around him – those are the things I despise, but what’s wrong with a little compassion? A little righteous fury in the face of evil? Why can’t I have those things?’
‘You know why,’ said the Wraith.
‘Righteous fury is all very well when one is, himself, righteous,’ said the Courtroom-Valeyard with a half-smile.
‘However much you try to convince yourself,’ said the Wraith, ‘you were formed of evil, and you remain evil, even if you clothe yourself in flesh and morals. And that evil will always find its way out.’
‘Always,’ confirmed the Courtroom-Valeyard.
‘I was formed of negative emotions,’ said the Valeyard, ‘not evil. Dark thoughts and impulses aren’t evil on their own. What makes them evil is whether one acts upon them. I choose not to.’
Both his reflections laughed at him.
Then the lift clunked to a halt. There was no door, so he could see through the gate to a cold, tiled corridor. It occurred to him then that there had been no doors over the lift entrance on any of the other floors either. Because the hotel wanted him to see each floor. Or whatever was using the hotel did.
‘Ground floor: perfumery, stationery and leather goods,’ the Valeyard muttered.
‘You really must curb these urges,’ said the Courtroom-Valeyard.
‘Shove it,’ said the Valeyard, and he hauled back the gate and stepped outside.
As he turned to close the gate again, he caught a glimpse of the final mirror and shuddered, but then the lift began its ascent with a whine of machinery and disappeared, leaving only darkness behind.
Solitaire did not want to watch films. All the way along the corridor, she listened to Bill’s attempts at conversation and gave monosyllabic responses, all the while thinking they should be doing something, not waiting around and certainly not trying to distract themselves, enjoy themselves even. It was wrong, while the Valeyard was in danger. And she couldn’t shake the idea that the Doctor had sent them off so he could meddle with the controls and betray her. He had no intention of helping the Valeyard, that was obvious. Even if they did get him out of this pocket universe, the Doctor would only want to imprison him somewhere else. So, Solitaire reasoned, she would have to do something about the Doctor. He was the reason the Valeyard was always in pain, the one who’d caused all the nightmares that plagued her friend. Perhaps if he were gone, things might improve.
For the moment, however, she was stuck with Bill and films, and so would just have to bide her time. It didn’t hurt to keep a low profile either, let the Doctor think she was some innocent, ineffectual girl who just ran about in the Valeyard’s shadow, swooning as he explained everything to her and saved the day. That way he wouldn’t be expecting anything from her when the time came.
It made her feel sick to think of it. She’d never killed anyone and had no idea if she would be able to do it, but she might not have a choice if the Doctor turned on them again. How did you even kill a Time Lord? They could regenerate themselves, couldn’t they? But did that work if they were disintegrated, or decapitated? Did they coalesce again out of atoms or grow a new head or… Solitaire closed her eyes and sat on the sofa Bill indicated. What was she thinking? This wasn’t her. She didn’t plot to murder people. What was happening to her?
This little TV room was so similar to the one in the TARDIS, Solitaire almost wept. How had it come to this? Sitting in a strange ship, seriously considering actual murder, albeit in self-defence, alone in the universe? She should be sweeping up the foyer on Rohelian or rebooting the advert drones.
‘So, you said you like fantasy, yeah?’ said Bill, picking up a remote control from the arm of the sofa. She switched on the enormous screen and started scrolling through lists of titles. ‘Have you seen… Oh, yeah, Lord of the Rings? The trilogy.’
‘Yeah,’ Solitaire said. ‘We watched those just before we went to New Amazonia. And the Hobbit ones.’
‘Extended editions, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right,’ said Bill thoughtfully, going back to the menu. She scrolled some more, squinting in concentration. Despite herself, Solitaire liked Bill. She seemed normal, straightforward. Solitaire trusted her instinctively, even though she kept telling herself not to. She worked with the Doctor. For all Solitaire knew, this “film” they were about to watch would be something programmed to wipe her brain clean or indoctrinate her into working for the Doctor, too.
‘Labyrinth!’ Bill said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Have you seen Labyrinth? 1986. Loads of puppets, David Bowie, in a pair of ridiculously tight trousers and the most eighties hair you’ve ever seen?’
Solitaire shook her head, having no idea what the other girl was talking about.
Bill smiled. ‘Right then, seriously, you will love this.’
Wherever he was, it was not the ground floor, the Valeyard assessed as he started down the corridor where he’d been led. The tiles here were ornamental, decorated in places with patterns reminiscent of some Middle Eastern art on Earth. Every so often down the hall were niches in the walls, where plants or small, Greco-Roman style statuettes stood, lit up in soft blues and purples. All the lighting was soft here, and the floor made of a sort of tightly packed, short-pile matting. The strong odour of chlorine on the air told him there was a swimming pool somewhere nearby, and that this was probably a sub-level of the hotel, a spa area or gym perhaps. The same all-pervading quiet that filled the upper floor was here, too, though there was a low hum like distant machinery. The piano music was gone.
Eventually he saw an archway right at the end of the corridor, where a giant aspidistra stood. Light spilled through onto the floor from some other room beyond, and the hum grew louder the nearer the Valeyard came to it. Then he passed through and came out onto the side of a large pool. He was standing on a trapezoid area that jutted out from the narrow walkway around the edges of the water, and a collection of plants, mostly palms and yucca, stood just to his right.
There were several other archways along the side of the pool and then, to his far right, was a life-size statue of a Time Lord in white marble, standing inside a niche with the Seal of Rassilon incorporated into the mosaic at the back. The whole pool was covered in small, mosaic tiles, and the ones at the bottom of the pool were placed randomly, different shades of blue all over the place, so that it looked like a pixelated photo.
The Valeyard walked carefully around the pool, aware that there were splashes of water here and there across the tiles. The last thing he wanted was to slip and end up in the water, fully clothed. The chlorine would ruin his coat. He kept his eyes on the water for any sign of something rising up out of it, a vague memory of Paradise Towers creeping out of the vault for a second, but everything remained completely still. Only the occasional bubble from the filters disturbed the surface of the water.
The place was obviously designed to look like some kind of sacred grotto in Ancient Greece or even Ancient Gallifrey for that matter, and perhaps that was why the Valeyard felt uneasy there. Or perhaps it was knowing he was being moved around this place like an avatar in a video game. So, where was the Dream Lord? Why hadn’t he given out his challenge yet? Or was the Valeyard supposed to work it out for himself?
The uncanny thing was that when he spoke to the Dream Lord in his room, he had no sense of talking to something other than the usual constructs that were all over the hotel. He had felt exactly the same, on a psychic level, as the Duty Manager and the Doorman. A creeping thought had began to form. The Valeyard wasn’t ready to give it proper consideration just yet, but it was possible that the Dream Lord he’d just met hadn’t encountered the Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor yet. It could be earlier in his timeline and if so, it could be possible that this was where the Dream Lord had started out, where he’d been created. But that would mean he’d have to escape somehow. Was it possible that, in order to get out of this universe, save the humans who’d been held captive here for however many generations, he’d have to allow this being to be set free too?
The Valeyard had reached the set of steps going down into the pool and paused to lean on the steel railing. Wandering aimlessly about this place wasn’t really achieving anything. He needed to think of a more concrete plan. There was always a way out of these resort universes. The Time Lords would’ve engineered a back door, as it were, for people to get out and all he had to do was find it and lead the Humans out that way. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but the ghosts in the lift mirrors had rattled him a little. He closed his eyes, trying to still all his thoughts.
When he looked up, he happened to glance towards the archways to his left, down the side of the pool, and through the furthest one, he caught a glimpse of something moving. He’d only seen it for a second, but the image burned onto his brain. He’d seen the eye stalk, the silver and blue paintwork, enough to tell him what it was and for him to know to keep out of sight. He watched as the Dalek passed the second archway. It hadn’t spotted him although it was swinging its eyestalk from side to side, searching for something. The Valeyard headed back towards the corridor he’d come from, but then heard the chilling voice from the far end of it.
“Seek, locate, destroy!”
The last word had sounded closer than the first two. The Dalek was coming towards him and, on the other side, the one behind the arches was getting nearer too. The Valeyard looked around for a hiding place, but the palms and yuccas were too small and threadbare to conceal him and there was no room behind the statue in the niche. Only one thing for it then. He stripped off his coat and tossed it behind the plants – he wasn’t going to ruin it – then timed his dive to coincide with the Dalek’s next exclamation, hoping it’s “Daleks are the supreme beings” would cover the sound of his hitting the water.
He held his breath and swam over to where the edge of the pool jutted out slightly and created a small area beneath it where he could be hidden from the anything going around the edge above. Although anything circling the pool on the opposite side would see him if it looked down. Hopefully, if the surface was still, the Daleks wouldn’t think to look in the water.
The chlorine stung his eyes, but he managed to open them and watch the opposite side of the pool. For the longest time, nothing happened. Maybe the Daleks turned around and went back the way they’d come. How long was he to wait before he decided they’d gone, and it was safe to resurface? He pushed slightly forward, risking a look above him, and there it was. He saw the gun and sucker arm, distorted by the water but directly above him. The Dalek was still looking around.
It couldn’t be real, he thought. The Doctor wouldn’t have brought real Daleks into this universe, would she? Though, how well did he really know that version of the Doctor? Her memories had been played around with, erased and rewritten so many times, that only a few fragments had leaked through into his data store.
Then he saw the second Dalek on the other side of the pool. If it looked down, he was done for. There was also the possibility that they’d shoot at the water just in case anything was hiding in there, in which case he’d also be done for. The water would conduct the energy from their weapons and in such a small space, it would probably be enough to kill him. He should’ve stolen the Doctor’s regenerations when he had the chance on New Amazonia, he thought with a dry laugh, not entirely serious. But then, he hadn’t known how quickly he might need a bit of artron energy at that point.
The Dalek opposite moved away, carrying on its search down the length of the pool no doubt. The Valeyard slipped out again and looked upwards, to find that the one above him had also gone. Slowly, the Valeyard raised himself, using the side of the pool to control his ascent, until his head broke the surface of the water, hopefully with very little sound. He looked around but found no trace of the Daleks anywhere. He waited, listening for them, but all he heard was the hum of the pool filters.
Once he was sure there was nothing about, he hauled himself out and onto the tiles, though it was an effort with the weight of his sodden clothes. Dripping, he stood up and glowered at the place. This hotel was starting to really get on his nerves.
‘Is the temperature of the pool not to your liking, Doctor?’ asked the Dream Lord, Entertainment Manager, or whoever he was, stepping out from behind the Valeyard, with no previous indication that he’d been there or footsteps to announce his arrival. He held out a large towel. The Valeyard glared at him but took the towel and dried his face. There wasn’t much point trying to dry his clothes. They were too… but no, when he looked down, he saw they were now dry. Of course they were. He sighed and returned the towel to the Dream Lord, who handed him his coat.
‘What do you want?’ the Valeyard asked. ‘Can we just cut straight to that and finish all this nonsense. I’m really not in the mood.’
‘Nonsense, sir?’ asked the Dream Lord.
‘The Daleks and the talking mirrors and everything else. What is it all for?’
The Dream Lord frowned.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m not sure I understand, but I can assure you, there are no Daleks at the Grand Rivencraig Hotel. The Duty Manager would never stand for it. Now, may I suggest the steam room? It is exactly as it was on your last visit and you seemed to find it relaxing back then…’
‘Yes, thank you. Solitaire’s made me sit through enough thriller films that I know not to go into a steam room. The door is locked from the outside, the heat turned up, the person inside is forced to frantically try and find a way out. Am I getting close?’
‘I’m sure I don’t understand, sir. Our steam room is maintained to the highest possible standard, as you know.’
‘I’d like to listen to some music,’ said the Valeyard on a hunch. ‘Piano music if possible. I heard some in the bar when I arrived.’
‘The bar, of course, sir!’ said the Dream Lord, smiling. ‘Ground floor, sir.’ He gestured towards the corridor that led to the lift.
‘I’d rather take the stairs. Where are they?’
‘Of course, sir,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘This way, sir.’
He bustled off through one of the archways. The Valeyard followed at a safe distance, still listening out for anything that sounded remotely Dalek-ish, but then found himself looking at an archway across a hall, with a set of white stairs rising away through it. The Dream Lord stood by the side of the stairs and smiled.
‘I hope you enjoy the music, Doctor. And if there is anything else we can do to entertain you here at the Grand Rivencraig, you only have to call.’
The Valeyard nodded, then started up the stairs. He didn’t like turning his back on the Dream Lord, but after a few steps he looked over his shoulder and saw that the other man had vanished again. So, as he climbed, the Valeyard went over their conversation, not so much the words but the way in which the Dream Lord had reacted to him. Every time they’d talked, he had the impression he was speaking to something without intelligence, a robot or a simulation, or most likely a block transfer computation with very little by way of extra features. It was an interface, almost, for the hotel, so that guests could tailor their experience. The Dream Lord had cheered up, as it were, when he was given an order, something that was within the scope of his usual programming. So where had the Daleks come from and what produced the ghosts in the lift?
Chapter 5: 5.
Notes:
Sincere apologies for the delay in posting. I was away in Canada for two weeks with no real time to write, and managed to contract some kind of illness there, which has lasted now for about four, five weeks, although I'm getting better. Sorry it's been so long.
Chapter Text
Solitaire didn’t want to admit that she’d enjoyed the film. She kept her expression as blank as possible, ignoring any twinge of positivity that appeared amongst the fog of sorrow and anger inside her. Perhaps that was why they’d suggested watching a movie. Perhaps there had been something subliminal in it to make her calm down, or maybe she was just losing a bit of her fire now she’d had time to wait and think.
As the minutes passed, however, a creeping anxiety tensed up her shoulders. Why was the Doctor taking so long? She couldn’t help but think he was planning something, a way to imprison her as well as the Valeyard perhaps. This version of the Doctor did seem different, she had to admit, but that could be an act. She thought of how weary the Valeyard was after New Amazonia, and how he refused to tell her what exactly had happened while she was off finding the vaccine on the mainland. She knew he’d been injured, perhaps even tortured, and that the Doctor was involved. Someone who could do those sorts of things couldn’t be trusted, no matter what face they’d chosen.
Beside her, Bill sighed and pressed something on the remote that switched the screen off, then she got up and frowned at the door.
‘What is he doing?’ she muttered. ‘Like, seriously, that’s been hours. Maybe… maybe we should just check he hasn’t got distracted. He can do that sometimes. One time, he said he was going down the road to get chips and ended up being abducted by a Kalirifian scout ship, sussing out whether to invade Earth. He beat them by challenging them to a game of Connect Four.’
‘You really like him?’ Solitaire asked, rising from the sofa. ‘You trust him?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bill with a shrug, as if there could be no other answer. ‘I mean, I know he can be a bit… eccentric, maybe, but I’ve seen him do so many things, honestly. He’s saved whole planets.’
‘So has the Valeyard,’ said Solitaire, ‘but that doesn’t seem to be taken into any account.’
‘Seriously?’ Bill replied. ‘Look, I know maybe we’re a bit…’ She sighed. ‘Last time we saw the Valeyard, he tried to destroy everything. Like, not the world, not the galaxy. The whole of reality. All right, the Doctor managed to talk him down, but he set us up, he set all of us up. Treated us like pieces in a game, just so he could mess things up. You’ve got to understand why we’re a bit… sceptical, maybe.’
‘Whatever he did before,’ said Solitaire, ‘he’s different now. I know he was…’ She thought back to Rohelian, and a moment in the corridors of the Facility when the Sontaran troops spread out through the building, the way he was ready to leave her there. She remembered the slap, the way her hand stung afterwards and how disappointed she’d felt, but how she’d hidden all that and headed off herself despite him.
‘I admit, he was a bit… He could be a bit self-centred. Made out he didn’t care about anyone. But he came back, after I thought he’d gone, when he’d had every opportunity to leave and let everyone die. He came back and he saved us. He saved me. And all that stuff the Doctor said, about this desert planet or whatever… none of that happened. I know. I’ve been with the Valeyard ever since Rohelian, and before that he was stuck in his TARDIS. He didn’t have a body, so how could he have done anything? And I know he won’t do those things in the future. I just know.’
Bill was obviously studying her, trying to work out whether to believe her, Solitaire thought.
‘You… really like him, don’t you?’ she asked.
Solitaire straightened, unsure for a moment how to answer. She felt herself redden.
‘He’s my friend,’ she said at last.
‘And the Doctor’s mine,’ said Bill. ‘I can vouch for him. Whatever he did, back when you last met him, he must’ve thought it was the right thing, even if he was wrong… if you know what I mean.’
Solitaire turned away. She didn’t know what to think any more and didn’t want to hear any more arguments, reasoned or otherwise. Her head was swimming with flashes of memory, stray thoughts and fears and she needed quiet, somewhere like the Valeyard’s study in the TARDIS, where she could make it all be still.
‘Um…’ Bill began. ‘Not meaning to be racist or nothing, but can I ask, are you from Earth? Or, like, Human, anyway? Not that it matters if you aren’t. I’m just wondering…’
Solitaire turned back to her and folded her arms, ready for the insults and ridicule normal Humans always gave. ‘I’m a GELF, if you must know.’
‘A what?’
‘You don’t have genetically engineered life-forms here?’ Then it hit her. The office had looked like the twentieth or twenty-first century, judging by the tech she’d seen so far, the Doctor’s stuff not included. Long before they’d developed cloning and gene printing to any great extent. So she sighed and tried to think how to explain in a way that didn’t make her sound like too much of a freak.
‘I was created at the genetic engineering facility on Rohelian Four,’ she said. ‘Made to order.’
Bill smiled, but it wasn’t mockery or laughter, more like bemusement. ‘What, they made you? Like, as a servant or something?’
‘Exactly,’ Solitaire said, though she hated the word “servant”. ‘I was supposed to be a governess for a businessman on the fifth planet, but after a couple of days, he decided I was too wilful and obviously faulty, so he sent me back.’
‘That… that’s just… Sorry, don’t mean to be rude or anything but that’s just wrong. They really make people in the future just to go and be a slave for somebody?’
‘There was growing opposition to it just before I left,’ Solitaire said, remembering the students who’d come to protest outside the Facility one day, though she’d got the impression they weren’t really concerned for the welfare of the GELFs inside, more just voicing their opinions on something that to them was an abstract concept. When Solitaire and a few of the other staff from the RepForce had gone out to speak to them, whilst the Stewards weren’t looking, the students had acted the same way the customers did, like they were afraid to get too close, like the GELFs had some disease that could be passed on by the slightest touch.
‘People wanted robots instead,’ Solitaire went on. ‘Factories in Kaldor City were making really good ones, apparently, and the Director of the Facility was worried we’d be out of business if people started ordering them. Not so much of a moral dilemma because robots are obviously not real, you know?’
‘So, what, after you got sent back… what were they…?’
‘I was fit and able to work so I was assigned to the Repurposed Workforce. Any jobs that needed doing that were beneath the Stewards or the Human employees, we were sent to deal with it. I worked reception a lot. Hated it.’
‘Well, yeah, you would,’ said Bill. ‘Customer service is bad enough at the best of times. You should hear some of the things I get in the canteen. But I’m so sorry.’
‘For what?’
Bill shrugged. ‘I don’t know. For Humans being crap even in the future, I guess.’
Solitaire looked away as a tear threatened to form. ‘I wonder sometimes what happened to the others. After… the Facility was destroyed during the Sontaran attack. Not by them, ironically. The Director blew the place up so the Shadow Proclamation wouldn’t find out he’d been authorising military work. We weren’t supposed to do cloned soldiers or anything like that.’
‘And the Valeyard was in the middle of that?’
‘He got everyone away from the place before it exploded. Nearly got himself killed in the process. In fact, he was ready to die. He was willing to give up his life just to let a bunch of strangers have a chance to escape. Does that sound like the sort of person who’s going to enslave an entire planet?’
Solitaire wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. ‘And me… the Director would never have let me live, not when I knew what he’d been up to. If I’d stayed in the system, I would’ve been dead in a couple of days. Some “accident” somewhere. But the Valeyard let me come with him. He said he’d been alone too long and wanted company. Listen, you have all this media… we have the same on the TARDIS, our TARDIS. After we left Earth and the time trap, he just landed the TARDIS on some asteroid with no atmosphere and no life-forms, and we watched animated films and ate junk food. And he knew all the words to the songs. Does that sound like a deranged tyrant?’
‘Animated films? You mean Disney films? You’re telling me the Doctor’s evil twin brother or whatever he is knows the words to Disney songs? Like, what film?’
Solitaire shrugged. ‘The one about the ice queen, and…’
‘Frozen? Seriously, you’re telling me the Valeyard knows all the words to Frozen?’ Bill started to laugh. ‘Sorry, that’s just funny.’
The laughter was contagious. Solitaire could feel it wanting to rise up in her too, but she pressed it back down, allowing herself only a slight smile. ‘He’s not evil.’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Bill said. ‘But seriously, I just have this image of him like we saw him at the trial but singing “Let It Go” and it’s just weird, sorry.’
‘Who’s singing “Let It Go”?’ asked the Doctor, appearing suddenly in the doorway. Solitaire jumped, wondering how he could move about the TARDIS so silently, then she remembered that the Valeyard did the same thing.
‘Nobody,’ said Bill. ‘You done?’
‘We’re ready to go. I’ve made the adjustments to the dimensional stabilisers and I should be able to get us in.’
‘Should?’
‘Hopefully,’ said the Doctor. He looked directly at Solitaire and the force of his gaze made her shiver, though she hid it. ‘And you’re coming with us?’
‘Of course,’ she replied.
The Doctor approached her slowly, looking at her a bit too much like John the Steward used to when he was about to give her a disciplinary note. ‘On New Amazonia, you seemed brave, honest… I need to know I wasn’t wrong, because if, for one moment, I suspect you might betray us and do anything that could harm Bill or me for that matter, I won’t hesitate to act, is that clear?’
‘All I want is to get my friend back,’ Solitaire said.
The Doctor stared for a while longer, then finally turned away. ‘Fine. Then let’s go rescue the Valeyard. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say.’
Voreline blinked and found herself in a kitchen, full of steam and heat and the smell of roasting meat and gravy. The walls were tiled in white, the floors grey concrete, and a huge range took up almost the whole of the far wall, pots on top of it bubbling away. A large, scarred wooden table stood in the centre and a host of vegetables lay on wooden boards, ready to be chopped. The room was big enough for a dozen people to work and not get in each other’s way, though, as far as Voraline could see, it was deserted.
She looked around, wondering how the place hadn’t gone on fire when it was left untended like this, but then the thought came into her head that she should work there. Like the idea of taking the towels upstairs, it didn’t feel like her thought, more like something that had been pressed into her mind. She found herself going to the table, picking up a knife and chopping the vegetables, before taking them over on their board to the range and dropping them into one of the pots, which contained boiling water. She stooped down and opened the oven to find a large bird roasting in there on a tray, surrounded by more vegetables. Another, small pot on the stove was full of bubbling gravy.
‘Ah, Voreline,’ said a voice behind her. She knew it was the Entertainment Manager this time even before she turned around and found him standing by the table, watching her, that same unnerving smile on his face. ‘Good to see you’re settling in.’
‘There was no one here,’ Voraline said, feeling like she’d been caught stealing. ‘I… I knew had to work…’
‘Don’t distress yourself,’ said the Entertainment Manager. ‘The Hotel has its ways. It may take some time to get used to them. It will tell you what you need to know and where you need to be.’
‘It’s the Hotel giving me these ideas?’
The Entertainment Manager cocked his head to one side as if in thought. ‘That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but I find it’s the best way to explain it to people. The main point, Voreline, is not to worry about it. The Hotel will ensure you’re in the right place at the right time. For example, I see the meal is ready. So you can plate it up and take it to room 12A.’
The number sent a jolt through Voraline’s nerves. ‘Room 12A?’
‘Yes. Is that a problem?’
‘No,’ she answered, then lowered her gaze instinctively and added, ‘sir.’
‘Good. The Duty Manager is expecting you. He’ll be there waiting. With the Proprietor, who I believe is very hungry.’
Voraline glanced over her shoulder at the table, where the food was now sitting on plates on a silver tray, everything all neatly laid out. When she turned again, the Entertainment Manager was gone.
For a moment, she just stood there in the silent kitchen. The steam and heat had dissipated, and a damp chill had crept into the air while she’d been talking, and she had the distinct impression that she should no longer be in the kitchen. The Hotel again, she thought. It must want her to get on with her work. So she lifted the tray and headed towards the door, somehow already knowing the quickest way to room 12A.
The music had started again, a wistful piano somewhere in the distance. The notes seemed to drift like dust motes across the stillness of the hotel. The Valeyard crossed the now empty foyer, listening for any signs of movement and, at the same time, trying to pinpoint the source of the music. He could see the bar and the grand piano there, but there was no one at the keyboard. No one at the bar or the reception desk either, and the phantom staff he’d seen earlier were gone.
Saving energy, perhaps? Or diverting it elsewhere. Something was going on in this hotel, something more than just a couple of Time Lords sneaking off for some R and R.
The Valeyard wandered over towards the sofas and chairs to the left of the main entrance, where he’d seen the waiters and attendants serving drinks to invisible patrons earlier. It was deserted like the rest of the foyer, but that gave him the chance to take a proper look at the place. The clock behind the reception desk ticked loudly, chopping away seconds, although when the Valeyard glanced over at it, it still had no hands. The music grew fainter, then died completely, ending halfway through a musical phrase.
There was a distinct feeling of being watched, but the Valeyard pushed that to the back of his mind and went deeper into the little lounge. A tall bookcase stood against the wall, a few metres along from the main entrance, and its shelves were crammed full of mismatched volumes. Exactly what you’d expect in a dingy, seaside hotel, the Valeyard mused. Books that had been borrowed, replaced, left behind.
He plucked one at random and found it to be Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. Not a book he remembered enjoying… or rather the Doctor hadn’t enjoyed it much. She’d found too many problems with the way it handled Time and couldn’t help being nitpicky. Relating the whole thing to Yaz as they sat together in a holding area, waiting to be interrogated. He couldn’t remember the planet or why they’d been arrested. Just the pang of guilt and sadness around the memory of Yaz, and that small moment together. The thought that there should be more of these memories, more little points in the Doctor’s time with her friends, but she just couldn’t remember. The invasions and disasters pushed the quieter moments aside.
As he returned the paperback to the shelf, he nudged another, slim book nearby. It toppled, bounced off the shelf’s edge and fell to the floor with a flat thud. The Valeyard reached down and retrieved it, turning it over to examine the cover. It was a worn, dog-eared school jotter, with a blue-grey cover turned fuzzy with age and use. Its pages were swollen with writing, yellowed and thumb-stained along the edges. On the cover, there were pre-printed lines and prompts to enter a name, class and subject. Written on the “name” line, in blue biro, was “The Doctor”.
Frowning and full of the nagging feeling that he was being manipulated into seeing whatever was in this book, the Valeyard thumbed through its pages.
For a moment, the writing was Gallifreyan, circular and moving but after a second it resolved itself into neat, English cursive script.
‘Day 5678-8,’ it read. ‘The Proprietor wants a record of this, so here goes. Of course, it falls to me. None of the rest of them could be bothered. I’m not sure how much of this he’ll see, how much I can say. Sod it, who cares if he reads this? I don’t like this. Granted, I can’t really think of many missions where I’ve leapt in with a happy grin, but this one… there’s something different about it. That thing… the thing they’re trying to create… It’s not going to end well. Every instinct I have says that thing is evil. But no one will listen. They go into their huddles, the Proprietor and the others who come and go here, and they whisper, and they plot, and all I’m given are the scraps from the table.’
It was only about halfway through this first paragraph that the Valeyard realised he could hear the words outside his head as well as in his mind, and he looked over his shoulder to find her standing there. The Doctor, the one who’d been forgotten, in her navy, double breasted jacket and loud, patterned blouse. She wore her glasses and considered him with a critical frown, although the Valeyard somehow knew she couldn’t see him. She was glaring through him, not at him.
‘They have us here to fetch and carry,’ she went on, shaking her head. She folded her arms and looked over at the reception desk, deep in thought. ‘That’s always how it is, I suppose. They’re in charge and we’re just lackeys, picked out of our lives to do their bidding. Bringing people here, that’s been my job so far. Finding candidates they’ve selected and using the time scoop to bring them first to the ship and then to this pocket universe. They’re given rooms in this hotel. Not that it really is a hotel. Then I never see them again. I don’t know what they do to them or how they connect to the creature in the basement, but I know it is connected and I know no good will come of it. They’ve turned a holiday retreat into a laboratory. Into a nightmare. Altered the block transfer constructs to work for them. I try to avoid them now. I know the Proprietor uses them to spy on us and on the candidates.’
She glanced to the side as if she’d heard something, though the only thing the Valeyard was aware of was the ticking of the clock.
‘Great,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘What does he want now?’
Then the image of her flickered and disappeared.
The Valeyard looked down at the book, but the pages were blank. Then, as he flicked through, looking for more text, the jotter disintegrated into flakes of paper then vanished completely.
Chapter 6: 6
Chapter Text
The Doctor led the way to the TARDIS control room then stood by the console, waiting as if he expected applause. Solitaire looked around for something to warrant that, and at first, didn’t see anything different on any of the levels of the room.
Then she spotted the door.
It was wood-panelled and dark blue, like the TARDIS exterior, and it had a narrow frame around it. She wracked her memory to try and figure out if it had been there earlier when they were in this room. She felt sure it hadn’t been. Glancing at Bill, she judged from the other girl’s expression that she was just as confused.
‘What is that?’ Bill asked, as if to confirm Solitaire’s suspicions. She pointed at the door then ventured closer to it.
‘Careful,’ said the Doctor.
As soon as Bill came within a metre of the door, a flash of light emanated from it, then shone around the edges of the door, leaking out through the frame. Solitaire walked over and circled the door. It stood where there had been a set of stairs up to the next level, but as she went around it, Solitaire saw that it was free standing. The stairs were still there, behind it. The door was just there, like a monolith.
‘Don’t get too close, not yet,’ said the Doctor. ‘I haven’t done this since I was at the Academy and the Deca and I decided to sneak into a pocket universe resort to skip grammar classes. We were doing past-regenerational neutral first-person pronouns in the pluperfect that day and none of us had done the homework. That door is linked to the pocket universe’s user interface. Think of it as a back door into the programming, bypassing the lock on the main scoop that would usually take people inside. I’m not sure how long it’ll last either. It’s drawing power from the heart of the TARDIS, but I’m not keen to test it out. Hopefully the Valeyard hasn’t wandered too far.’
He walked over to the door and, for want of any other instruction, Solitaire followed close behind him, not wanting to lose sight of him. She felt something brush her shoulder and glanced over to see Bill at her side.
‘Nardole!’ the Doctor shouted. He turned to look over at the TARDIS doors. The little man Solitaire had seen earlier in the office came in and wandered over to the console.
‘Still doing this, then?’ he asked with a sneer.
‘Still doing this,’ said the Doctor. ‘I need you to stay here and keep an eye on the energy levels. If that screen there starts to flash up warnings and turn red, you’ll need to get some kind of signal to me to tell us it’s time to leave.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Nardole. ‘Yeah, of course, I’ll just figure out how to send a message across the boundaries of a subordinate universe from its primary universe, all while also trying to keep an eye on your responsibilities and answering the phone.’
‘Stick the out-of-office on,’ said the Doctor. ‘Remember, soon as that screen turns red.’
‘Red, got it,’ muttered Nardole.
Taking a deep breath, the Doctor turned and reached out for the doorknob. The tension in his movements made Solitaire even more nervous.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s do this.’
He opened the door. The white light flooded out and blinded Solitaire. She saw the Doctor’s silhouette head into it and grabbed the back of his coat just before the light swallowed him, and instinctively took Bill’s hand to keep hold of her too.
The light lasted for what seemed like an age, with all three of them shambling slowly forward. Solitaire grew cold. A bitter wind blew around her ears until they burned. She closed her eyes against it, since she couldn’t see anyway, and wondered if the Doctor and Bill were feeling the same thing. It grew more difficult to walk forward, the wind pushing back against them, until Solitaire could barely move her legs.
Then the resistance was gone, as if someone had flipped a switch. Solitaire stumbled forward with a sudden burst of inertia and fell against the Doctor’s back. If he hadn’t been there, she would’ve landed on her face on the ground, but she grabbed him and stayed upright, and felt Bill take hold of her in return. The three of them stood, clinging to one another for a brief moment, then Solitaire snatched her hands back, hoping the Doctor hadn’t noticed her touching him.
The light was gone, and it took a second for her eyes to adjust and to wipe away the tears the wind had caused. Then she saw stone walls, dotted with lichen. They were in a narrow channel paved in rain-slicked flagstones, the walls on either side towering about nine or ten feet above them, beneath a white, completely overcast sky. The smell of rain was still fresh on the air and when Solitaire reached out and touched the walls, she found the stones smooth and slimy with moisture.
‘Where are we?’ Bill asked. ‘This is the pocket universe?’
‘I thought it was supposed to be a resort?’ said Solitaire. She looked back and forth but the channel and the walls extended as far as she could see in both directions, featureless and grey.
‘It is,’ said the Doctor, who was also inspecting his surroundings. He dragged his finger along one of the stones then licked it and grimaced.
‘Block transfer computation,’ he said.
‘Block what?’ asked Bill.
‘A type of mathematics,’ said the Doctor. ‘Developed and perfected by the Logopolitans, but the Time Lords used it too. It’s what creates the outer plasmic shell and the interior features of the TARDIS.’
‘How can maths create physical things?’ Bill asked.
‘Mathematics is the language of the universe,’ said the Doctor, almost reverently. ‘It’s a way of understanding the universe, and once you understand something, can read its base code, you can make changes. That’s what block transfer computation is. Using mathematics to alter spacetime at a quantum level.’
‘So, none of this is real?’ said Solitaire. She pressed her hand against the wall again and felt how solid it was, how damp and cold it was against her palm. She could even smell the moss growing in the seams between blocks.
‘Well, depends on how you define reality,’ the Doctor replied. ‘As far as you’re concerned, in your physical, three-dimensional universe, this environment is as real as the one we just left.’
‘Only it’s artificial,’ said Bill. ‘But… why would you make this? I thought these universes were meant to be for holidays. Who would want to come here?’
The Doctor didn’t answer. He was staring off down the channel and then started off without a warning. Bill and Solitaire exchanged glances then followed after him, having to jog to catch up.
‘How do you know we’re going the right way?’ Solitaire called to him.
‘It’s either choose a direction or stand still forever, and we don’t have forever.’ As if he’d suddenly had an idea or remembered something, he stopped and rummaged in his pockets.
‘What are you looking for?’ Bill asked.
‘Don’t suppose either of you have a stick of chalk?’
‘Yeah, carry it about all the time, in case I need to make a pavement drawing,’ said Bill, raising an eyebrow.
‘What’s chalk?’ Solitaire asked. ‘Isn’t that a type of stone?’
‘Never mind,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Should’ve brought Nardole… Either of you wear lipstick?’
‘Only when I’m going out,’ said Bill. ‘I haven’t even got decent pockets, Doctor, let alone anything helpful. Gotta start bringing a bag…’
‘Ah!’ the Doctor said finally, grinning. He drew out a small, golden tube from his pocket, pulled the cap off and twisted it to reveal the lipstick inside.
‘Do I wanna know why you’ve got that?’ Bill asked.
‘Belonged to River,’ said the Doctor. ‘She never had decent pockets either. There.’
He’d drawn a strange symbol on the wall in bright scarlet, a combination of letters in a language Solitaire didn’t recognise.
‘This way we know where the doorway is,’ said the Doctor. ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t touch it. Could be psychedelic lipstick. I’m never sure.’
With that, he turned and strode off again.
‘It’s not like we’ll get lost,’ said Bill. ‘There’s just one way, going on forever.’
‘This universe has finite dimensions,’ said the Doctor. ‘It can’t go on forever.’
‘Perhaps we should look for a talking worm,’ Solitaire said under her breath, smiling at the memory of the strange film she and Bill had watched.
‘I knew a talking worm once,’ said the Doctor. ‘Expert in psephology. Always in demand as a pundit at election times on his planet. Though, I doubt if we’ll find any here.’
‘She means it could be a labyrinth,’ said Bill. ‘Like the film, you know?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. He ran his hand along the wall. ‘Hidden entrances, you mean?’
‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’ Solitaire asked.
‘Everything’s a possibility,’ the Doctor replied. ‘But it’s more likely to be a maze.’
‘Aren’t they the same thing?’
‘A labyrinth has one path that wends its way towards the centre. Whereas this…’
The Doctor turned suddenly. Solitaire hadn’t spotted the corner in the channel and only saw it when the Doctor disappeared off to their left. The passageway between the walls turned a right angle, and then there was another path ahead with several other paths leading off either side of it and a T-shaped junction at the end. The stones were all identical, monotonous and damp, nothing to indicate which was the right way.
‘…This is a maze,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Multiple pathways, multiple choices. We could wander here for days and never find the Valeyard, or the way back.’ He paused and made another mark on the wall with the lipstick. ‘What I’d give now for a ball of string.’
‘So, what do we do?’ asked Bill. ‘You said we had a limited amount of energy. We can’t just blunder about and hope we hit the right path.’
‘There must be some sense to it,’ the Doctor muttered.
Solitaire wrapped her arms around herself. They were going to abandon the mission. She could feel it. They’d say it was too difficult and would want to go back to their own universe before they were all trapped here. In a way, she could understand it, but she hated the idea as well. They’d got this far. They’d found their way into the universe. It seemed such a waste to give up now. So unfair to have the possibility of success waved in front of her then snatched away.
The Doctor, though, was still examining each of the branching pathways, occasionally bringing out his version of the Valeyard’s sonic screwdriver, taking readings but never sharing what he’d learned. They were actually quite similar, Solitaire mused, the Doctor and Valeyard.
‘If this is all maths,’ said Bill, ‘kind of like a computer code in a video game sort of thing, only physical, not just digital, then isn’t there a way to get into the code and find the cheats? Like, a map of the place or something?’
The Doctor paused and stared at her.
‘That’s…that’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?’ Bill said, folding her arms.
‘And you keep asking me why I picked you out,’ the Doctor replied, then flashed a smile and carried on waving his screwdriver about.
‘It’ll take a while. It’s complicated code. Almost as if someone already tried to rewrite part of the infrastructure. This maze… it seems newer than the rest of the construct. A late addition. Maybe a security measure.’
‘It’s to keep people away from the Hotel,’ said a voice behind them.
The three of them turned, just as a man stepped out from one of the branching pathways, holding a long spear tipped with sharpened stone. His clothes were a mixture of styles and colours, as if he’d had to take whatever he could find or wore hand-me-downs, and his face was streaked with grime and sweat. He was tall, lean and dark, with piercing brown eyes that had a tinge of desperation about them. A moment later, a second man appeared behind him, also holding a spear and dressed similarly, though he was fair-haired and blue-eyed and looked a few years younger.
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Then that would seem to be a problem, since I imagine it’s the Hotel we need to get to.’
‘Why?’ demanded the dark-haired man.
‘We’re looking for someone we think is there. Why are you trying to get there?’
The men exchanged glances, then straightened, though they kept their grip tight on the spears.
‘How do you know we’re going there?’
‘You’re here,’ said the Doctor. ‘This place leads to the Hotel. If you’re supposed to be guarding the Hotel, I would’ve thought you’d be better equipped. That spear’s made out of a pair of dressmaking scissors.’ He nodded towards the blond man, who glanced down at his spear and frowned.
‘Why are you trying to get to the Hotel?’ the Doctor asked, his voice full of authority.
‘My sister was sent there,’ said the blond man. His friend glowered at him but then seemed to relent, his shoulders sagging. He lowered his spear and scratched his head.
‘We were promised to each other,’ he said, then sighed. ‘His sister and I. My name is Grey. This is Moran.’
The Doctor waved his sonic at the two then studied it. ‘Human.’
‘What else would we be?’ asked Grey.
‘Actually Human,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not constructs. What are you doing here?’
‘I told you…’
‘No, no, no, not here, not in this maze. Here in this place, this universe. How did you get here?’
‘Our ancestors were brought here,’ said Moran. ‘Centuries ago.’
The Doctor straightened. ‘Why?’
‘To serve the Lords at the Hotel,’ said Grey.
The Doctor’s jaw tightened. ‘I see. And your girlfriend, his sister’s been sent up there to serve the Lords?’
Grey nodded.
‘But there can’t be any Lords there. This resort universe sat in a cupboard in the TARDIS for about six centuries. No one’s used it.’
‘There haven’t been any envoys for years,’ said Moran. ‘They used to come to the town to select the candidates, but now the council has to do it.’
‘So, no one’s come to recruit your people for years and yet you still pack people off and send them to this hotel, with no idea what’s waiting for them there? Do any of them come back?’
Moran and Grey looked at each other again, then shook their heads.
‘Thought not,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well then, we all seem to be headed in the same direction. So do me a favour. Keep quiet and out of my way while I solve this thing.’
Voreline stared at the door to Room 12A. It looked like all the other doors in the corridor. Plain, polished teak with a brass number screwed to it and a brass lock plate. Nothing odd. And yet it was odd. She didn’t want to touch it and found it hard to go nearer than a metre, as if the door itself didn’t want her there and was pushing her back. Was the Hotel trying to tell her something? Or was it just instinct holding her back?
The thought of the Entertainment Manager appearing again to check on her spurred her on, however, and she raised her hand to knock on the door, but it opened before she had the chance. Unlike the other room doors in the hotel, 12A’s door did not swing inwards but slid into a housing inside the wall, revealing a dark room beyond. Voreline could make out a handrail and a stairwell heading downwards. It made no sense, but then this whole hotel made no sense. Why would its internal architecture be logical when nothing else was?
‘Hello?’ she called, taking one tentative step into the room. No one answered. She was expected to go down the stairs, she supposed, and crept towards them, holding the tray of food out in front of her like a shield.
‘Room service,’ she shouted. The phrase just popped into her head. Delivered by the Hotel, no doubt. Still no one answered, so she headed carefully down the stairs, having to hold the tray to one side to see where she was placing her feet.
The walls, floor, ceiling and stairs were all painted matt black, and although there were a few small, coloured lights here and there, set into the wall or into the steps, Voreline could only see for a few centimetres in front of her, so it took an age to reach the bottom of the stairs. That, and the fact that the stairs seemed to go on forever. She had to be headed right into the bowels of the Hotel. Into the basement, she thought with a sudden shiver, though she had no idea why the basement should fill her with trepidation.
As she reached the foot of the stairs, she found herself in a huge chamber with the same black walls and floors as the room above, only at the far end, the wall was made of glass or some other transparent material, and a bank of instruments sat in front of it, the blinking lights and glow from the monitors reflecting, ghost-like, on its surface. The space beyond the glass was also black, but there was a faint glow from somewhere that picked out a few details of the walls. It looked like stone, roughly hewn like the inside of a cave. Was there a cave beneath the Hotel?
Ranged along the wall to her left were a series of couches, surrounded by wires and instruments that were covered in cobwebs and dust. Each couch had its own shroud of web, beneath which lay a shape that, to Voreline, looked far too much like a body. Four of them in total, and one empty couch at the far end, near the glass wall.
A figure stalked around the couches, occasionally stooping to examine one of the body-shapes beneath the cobweb. The Duty Manager. His hair was shiny, looking like it had been painted on, and he wore a fixed grin that had very little warmth in it. Voreline realised she hadn’t actually seen the Duty Manager before. He was always just a threat looming somewhere down the corridor. And yet, she knew it was him. The knowledge was just there in her head again. She was starting to resent the Hotel randomly placing things in her brain and wondered if there was a way to shut it out.
Seated before the instruments was a second figure, whose back was turned to her, but she could see he was ancient, long white hair hanging down his back, and when he reached across to manipulate the controls, his hands were like old sticks draped in a thin layer of grey skin. He wore a dark grey robe, that may have been black velvet long, long ago, but it had stiffened and faded with age. Neither the old man nor the Duty Manager paid her any attention.
‘The Doctor is fully integrated,’ said the Duty Manager. ‘There should be no impediment to the transfer.’
‘There is an error,’ replied the old man. His voice was like tearing paper. ‘Perhaps this version of the Doctor has found a way to hinder the Collectors.’
‘How?’ asked the Duty Manager. ‘This version is from a later point in Time. He has no memories of the previous incarnation and her interference.’
‘Perhaps she left something behind, a way to protect herself,’ said the old man.
‘What shall I do, then?’ asked the Duty Manager.
The old man tapped a few controls, then let out a long, rasping sigh.
‘For now, all we can do is observe. Gather data until we can assess where the problem lies. But it must be done. This is too great an opportunity to miss. At last, we have the chance to end the experiment and be free of this place!’
The Duty Manager bowed and turned to leave. When he saw Voreline, his grin dropped into a scowl.
Voreline stood for a moment, frozen. Her own reflection appeared in the glass and she was shocked by how small and pale she looked, but shocked even more by the reflection of the figure by the controls. His face was gaunt, deep hollows in his cheeks and shadows beneath his sunken eyes. She couldn’t even guess how old he was. He looked like something long dead, but kept animated somehow.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. The silence in the room swallowed up her words.
The figure straightened, then very slowly swivelled his chair around until he was facing her. Two bright eyes shone at her from within the hollow sockets and wrinkled, shrivelled lips tightened at the sight of her.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘She is the latest server to join the staff here,’ said the Duty Manager. ‘From the town.’
‘Ah,’ said the old man, nodding. Voreline feared his head might come off entirely and bounce across the floor.
Voreline felt and heard the crockery rattling on the tray and realised her hands were shaking. She made an effort to steady herself and stand up tall. After all, she’d been ordered to come here.
‘I’ve brought your meal, sir,’ she said, and held the tray towards him.
The old man raised his head to look at the food, sniffed, then gave a dismissive gesture towards a flat area with no buttons or monitors just to his left. Voreline approached the bank of instruments and set the tray down gently, mindful of the controls and terrified of accidentally nudging one, but she managed to balance the dinner on the edge of that flat bit of console. All the while, she tried not to grimace at the musty, old dust smell that came from the old man, or perhaps it was just his robes.
Now she was closer, she could see cobwebs in his white hair and on his back. He ignored her throughout and continued to tap at the keyboards and screens in front of him. The Duty Manager, meanwhile, watched her every move. She could feel his gaze on her back.
‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’ Voreline asked. It felt like the sort of thing she should ask.
‘No, begone,’ said the man and waved his bony hand again.
‘I’m sure you have other duties to attend to,’ added the Duty Manager with a horrible smile.
Voreline swallowed, then curtseyed even though the old man wasn’t looking at her. As she turned to go, however, a flash of movement on the other side of the glass wall caught her eye and made her pause. She stared into the shadows, mindful of the old man and that she couldn’t outstay her welcome, but she wanted to see what it was, if only to prove that her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her.
Then she saw it again, the slightest shift in the shadows, as if part of the darkness had torn itself away and could move independently. She could just make out the shape of a high collar, that reminded her of the drawings of the Lords and envoys she’d seen in town. A figure in robes and a collar made of shadow. It swept around, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Then it stopped as if sensing her gaze. If it had a face, she couldn’t see it in the dark, but she was sure the figure was staring right at her and a lump of ice formed in her heart.
She stumbled as she turned to go, and it took all her strength to keep herself from running to the stairs. She had no idea what the thing was she’d just seen. She only knew that it was evil and that she wanted to be as far away from it as possible.
Chapter 7: 7.
Chapter Text
The Valeyard searched every book on the shelves but found no more remnants of his former self. Had the Doctor, the one he’d known for a while as Ruth Clayton, hidden the book there for him to find? Or was someone or something in the hotel toying with him? He still hadn’t ruled out the Dream Lord as an adversary in this, but his instincts said it was the Doctor who was laying clues and pathways this time, leading him through the maze.
He searched the reception desk, rifling the drawers on the staff side for anything interesting, but there were only papers, stationary and the usual sorts of things you would expect to find in a hotel. Nothing incriminating or strange. Then he remembered the receptionist who’d been there. She’d offered him “his usual room”, so the other Doctor must have stayed there too. Her clothes, or automatically generated versions of her clothes, were still in the wardrobe when he arrived. If she’d hidden things, it was a fairly good guess that she might have hidden something there.
As he turned to make for the stairs, however, the sight of the main entrance reminded him about the Doorman. Was he still at his post or had he deserted like the rest of them? Out of curiosity, the Valeyard headed out of the hotel. It wouldn’t hurt to see if there was a way out of this ridiculous place anyway, though he doubted he’d find one. Whatever was going on here, they seemed to want people to participate in it, victims to toy with, so they weren’t about to leave the back door open.
He stepped out onto the gravel drive and found the air as crisp and misty as when he’d arrived. It was hard to just the time of day, as the sun was hidden behind a sky full of thick, white clouds. There was no sign of the Doorman and no sign of movement amongst the topiary. The wind keened and the neatly trimmed leaves whispered, but there was no other sound. As the Valeyard turned to survey each direction, his footsteps made him flinch. They seemed so loud against the silence.
He tried following the path, hoping it might lead him to a convenient doorway, but all the way along, he found his eye drawn to the topiary bushes. The odd designs and strange geometry gave the constant impression of something having just darted out of sight, and he really wished the Doctor had never read The Shining. He even considered humming or whistling just to brighten the place up a little, but the silence shunned all attempts at flippancy.
Eventually, the low fog ahead parted and revealed a shallow set of steps made of bone-white stone. Rather than leading to a way out, however, he found himself headed to a lower garden, with several ornamental beds full of flowers that shivered in the wind. Although they were obviously designed to form patterns through their natural colours, the mist drained their vibrance until they seemed little better than tinted grey.
Straight ahead, the path carried on and eventually the mist dissipated enough to let the Valeyard see there was a chessboard ahead, one of those giant ones that were meant to encourage humans to collaborate and have fun whilst on coaching holidays. There was probably a shuffleboard somewhere, he thought with a shiver.
As he approached the board, though, he started to doubt his first assessment. The chess pieces, distributed about as if a game was in progress, were stone, dusted with lichen and moss, each one about seven feet high. It had to be ornamental. Perhaps it looked quaint when the garden was bathed in summer sunlight, but in this murk, the pieces loomed over the Valeyard as if they were about to topple and crush him. A flash of memory darted to the surface briefly, the Garden of Remembrance on Nekros and a massive marble tombstone hurtling downwards, but he pushed it aside.
The path continued beyond the chessboard, and so he started across it, placing each step tentatively and waiting for the checkerboard to start firing lasers or trigger a trap, but nothing happened. Just his footsteps rapping too loudly in the silence.
And then a grinding noise behind him. Heavy stone scraping against stone.
A sort of cold terror gripped the Valeyard that he didn’t remember experiencing before. He couldn’t move. He knew he should turn and see what was going on, but something stopped him. A pair of hands had gripped both of his hearts and held them captive, though they beat to get free.
This isn’t me, he thought. This is not my fear. It’s something else. He detached himself in the way he’d learned to step back and consider the Doctor’s memories or emotions if they emerged and realised the feeling at the back of his brain was stirring up a much older memory, and one of his own. It felt the same as when the Keeper or his minions transferred a chunk of information to him at once, something that had perhaps escaped the usual filter and got into the main database of the Matrix. Something was trying to upload this sense of fear into his brain.
Knowing that, he was able to push the terror away and managed to turn.
Nothing stirred. He studied the chess pieces and tried to see if any had moved. Hadn’t that knight been on King-four a moment ago? Now it was sitting on King’s-Bishop-Five.
The Valeyard shook his head. ‘Pathetic. If this is all you have at your disposal to unnerve me, this will prove to be a very short and unsatisfying contest.’
Another scraping noise behind him and slightly to his right. He turned to find one of the bishops right beside him. Then everything fell silent again. The Valeyard kept his eyes on the bishop and stepped slowly past, but another scrape sounded, and he turned to find the black king in his path. There were already a couple of rows of pawns making it difficult to pass, so the only way forward was to squeeze through.
He pushed between the bishop and the king, holding his breath to try and make himself as narrow as possible. He loathed the idea of touching the stone, and that alien fear was still lurking in the back of his mind, trying to coax him into a panic.
He registered the scarping sound just before he felt the pressure on his back and chest, and only then realised what was happening. Both pieces had moved closer, pinning him between them. The Valeyard cried out and instinctively pushed against the king. He waited for his ribs to crack, but the pieces froze again after moving only a few centimetres. Just enough to trap him. It was difficult to breathe and his attempts to wriggle free proved fruitless.
‘Oh, come on!’ he called out. ‘What’s the point of this?’
He pushed harder then punched the stone chess piece in frustration, before he exhaled deeply and leaned his head against it for a moment to collect his thoughts.
When he looked up again, another shiver rippled down his spine. He was no longer alone. Standing a few metres away, beyond one of the dreary flowerbeds, was a figure in grey coveralls. His overall appearance was humanoid, though the Valeyard couldn’t see his face. He was wearing something like a World War One gas mask, with a long tube extending like a snout from his mouth and coiling around to some device he wore like a rucksack. His eyes were hidden behind lifeless, insect-like goggles. He was standing completely still, a pair of rusted sheers held in both gloved hands, the blades open and threatening a lacklustre rosebush in front of him.
‘What? You’re going to kill me?’ the Valeyard called, though his voice was a little less confident this time. That fear was back, and it was harder to keep it at bay, because this time he was scared. ‘What’s the point in that? Why lure me around all these places and play these games if you’re just going to murder me here?’
The gardener took one creaking step towards the flowerbed. With total disregard for his charges, he trod on the flowers and walked straight forward. Although his face was hidden, the Valeyard felt the figure was staring at him unwaveringly. Then he paused again and stood as still as the chess pieces. The wind ruffled the peonies around him, and their petals shed like drops of blood onto the soil at his dusty-booted feet.
The Valeyard renewed his effort to get free. He had managed to shove himself a few centimetres back the way he had come and now he pushed hard against the stone king, his ribs and shoulders aching from the effort. His hands left small streaks of blood across the pale stone, but he was moving. In his peripheral vision, meanwhile, he saw the gardener take another step, trampling down more of the plants. A rose stem snapped like a broken bone.
A grumble of stone made the Valeyard turn his attention to the other side, and he spotted a pawn creeping towards him. The others looked closer now too, a few even straying from their squares to encircle him. He gave one final push and, ignoring the pain, tumbled out and hit the concrete chessboard with a thud that jarred right up into his shoulders and jerked his head so hard he was dizzy for a moment.
Then he remembered the danger he was in and chided himself for delaying. Constructs or not, these things could injure if not kill him. No time to hang about on the ground, Doc… Valeyard. Up and go, come on!
He scrabbled to his feet just as the White Queen joined the assault and moved closer, but they always halted for a second or two before moving again and they seemed bound to the rules of their own game, so he bolted between them as soon as they were still, and this time gave them no time to trap him. He raced out across the lawn and tried to head back to the hotel, but had no idea which direction to head in. The mist was growing thick again and all he could see were flowerbeds, no sign of the stairs he’d come down.
Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed that the gardener had also gone. Or, at least, he wasn’t in the flowerbed where the Valeyard had last seen him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t lurking around somewhere.
Completely lost, the Valeyard chose a direction at random and carried on at a brisk jog, though he was fairly confident that nothing was pursuing him any more. The hotel seemed to be intent on frightening rather than actually harming him, he reasoned, since the Daleks earlier hadn’t put much effort into searching for him. Their sensors should have picked him up and probably registered him as the Doctor, since everyone else around here thought that’s who he was, and yet they just blundered around, barely a metre away from him at one point.
Why, though? Was it the Dream Lord? Was that how he powered himself perhaps? From fear? Maybe that was why he presented people with these ridiculous choices, not to enjoy their suffering as they tried to find the truth but actually consuming that suffering. All supposition though. It could be that the Dream Lord was part of something bigger. He seemed little more than an NPC in a video game, working within defined parameters and confused by abstract responses. This version of him just didn’t feel like the End Level Boss. After all, the Valeyard thought with a wry smile, he should know.
Up ahead, he spotted something at last that wasn’t part of the same monotonous layout of flowerbeds. It was just a silhouette at first, through the mist, and impossible to identify from its shape, but as he got closer, it resolved into a fountain of blue-green copper with a broad marble basin. No water spouted from it but there was a stagnant pool, full of dead insects and leaves, in the basin. A few coins littering the bottom too. Why did Humans always do that?
Then he looked up and considered the statues holding the vessels that should have poured water into the bowl. He had only glanced at them until then and took in that they were anthropomorphic, but now he really looked at their faces. And recognised all of them. The names blossomed in his memory like wreckage bobbing to the surface after a shipwreck. Charlotte Pollard, Clara Oswald, Peri Brown, Sara Kingdom, C’rizz, Ace, Tegan, Adric… there were dozens of them, posed as if they were all pushing forward to empty their urns into the bowl, all dressed in strategically draped togas and robes. Their eyes were sightless but still conveyed expressions of terror and misery. The Valeyard circled the fountain, examining each of them in detail. He felt he should give equal attention to each person. Donna, Martha, Katarina, Lucie, Hex… The sight of every one stirred up some of the Doctor’s memories and it took all the Valeyard’s concentration to ignore them. He focused instead on the artistic style, the sculpture, and then he decided to just push the leaves around in the basin to see if there was anything more on the bottom of it, ignoring the faces, though he could still feel the pressure of their gaze on him.
‘I know you want me to remember these people,’ he said, pulling a tarnished brooch from the water. It had been Charley’s, he remembered, something that was passed down in her family and that she’d always wanted to give to her daughter. He closed his eyes and pushed the thoughts away, especially that one memory, of cutting through an amorphous creature’s flesh with that brooch so they could eat it, their only way of surviving in a universe that made no sense, where half the time they couldn’t see and were pursued by a creature composed entirely of sound. Where Charley had said she loved him, and he’d responded with such bile, such callousness. No, he hadn’t, he reminded himself. It was the Doctor. All of it was the Doctor. It was always the bloody Doctor. If it wasn’t for that ridiculous oaf, he wouldn’t even be in here!
Rage surged up from places he thought he’d left long behind him and it took a moment to suppress it. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, reminding himself of the danger to hand.
‘You’re aiming your tricks at the wrong person,’ the Valeyard said, keeping his voice as calm as he was able. He tossed the brooch into the basin with disgust. ‘This won’t work.’
The fountain gave a grumble and despite himself, the Valeyard jumped in fright. He stepped back, frowning at the thing. Black, viscous fluid spurted from somewhere in the centre of the cluster of figures and rained down on them, streaming down their faces before trickling into the basin, where it swirled as it mixed with the greenish water.
When, after a while, nothing more had happened, the Valeyard gave the fountain a sneer of disdain then picked a direction and headed off again in search of the hotel. Strange though the place was, it would be an improvement on the gardens.
Something had to have happened to this universe, he mused as he walked through the flower beds. Something had corrupted it from its original design. No one would willingly have built this nightmare as a place of retreat and relaxation. And, presumably, whatever happened had either grown within the bounds of this universe, amongst the Humans captured and made to serve, perhaps, or was introduced before the sphere was tucked away in the Doctor’s TARDIS.
The mist cleared in front of him and revealed a high wall, covered in crimson ivy. The path led right up to it, then turned a right angle and followed its course. In the middle of the last flowerbeds before the wall stood a pair of large trees, a species the Valeyard didn’t recognise. Their branches drooped under the weight of their bright orange leaves. They creaked in the breeze like the timbers of an old ship.
There was a carving on scraped into the dun-coloured cladding on the wall, the lines stark and white. Some kind of maze. The Valeyard idly started to trace possible paths to the centre. Then it struck him. The music he’d heard the piano playing throughout the hotel. He finally remembered what it was. Part of the soundtrack to the film, Labyrinth, the song played during the ballroom scene if he recalled correctly. So, what was that supposed to mean?
He walked closer and studied the maze in more detail. It was one of those where the paths led towards a large space in the centre. He tried to find a clue in it, something that might hint at what was behind all this, but saw nothing, so he started down the path alongside the wall.
Again, the mist obscured the way ahead, so that he was unable to see for more than a couple of metres, and there were more trees planted alongside the path, blocking his view even more. He had the unnerving feeling that he was being led into another trap, and yet nothing had happened for a few minutes now, no more gardeners or weird decorations. He did wonder if the map of the maze might be a map of the gardens, but he discarded that idea after a while, when the path followed a trail that was nothing like anything he remembered on the wall picture.
Then the path and the wall turned another right angle, and though it was beyond a veil of mist, the Valeyard could make out the shape of a building at the far end. After a few steps, he could make out that it was a greenhouse, though its panes were so thick with grime it was impossible to see inside.
The thought that he could run into the gardener again here did occur to him, but the Valeyard carried on forward anyway, since there had been nothing else of interest for ages. He tried the door and found it opened with only a little resistance, that might have been from its rusty hinges. There was no horror movie creak, but the interior would have made a good set for one. A series of trestle tables formed a miniature maze inside, with narrower stands around the walls, supporting row upon row of dead plants in ceramic pots. Other plants lay, equally dead, on the trestles, along with tools, trays of seeds, discarded, moth-eaten gloves and other paraphernalia. Each plant pot, the Valeyard noticed, was stamped with a motif, a tree within a circle.
Then a clatter behind him made him turn. He braced himself for the next assault, but
|saw nothing out of place.
He started down the aisle between some of the trestles, studying each one for clues, but all he saw was dirt and decay. On one, there was even the mummified corpse of a long-dead mouse. The back wall of the greenhouse was covered in wood panelling with hooks screwed in, on which hung sets of overalls like the one the gardener had been wearing, though these were covered in dust and cobwebs. The red ivy from the wall outside had found its way inside through a crack in the glass right in the corner and had grown in straggly lines, like dissected arteries, across the dark wood. The Valeyard tried pressing the panels to see if any hidden door popped out, but nothing happened. Grimacing at the slimy feel of the fabric, he searched the pockets of the overalls, but only came up with a pair of gloves and a very old and fluffy mint. What was the point of laying down puzzles if there weren’t any clues?
He ran his hand over the wall one last time to look for seams or hidden switches, then sighed and decided to give up. As he tried to turn, however, something tugged at his wrist. He looked back and found the ivy twisted around his hand, and it was growing tighter. He felt the circulation in his arm start to grow sluggish, but pulling at the plant did nothing to loosen it. He couldn’t prize it off or break the stem.
He turned around again so that his back was to the wall and saw the gardener. The figure had made no sound. He was just there, at the end of the aisle directly before the Valeyard. Blocking the way out, the Valeyard thought, but then again, he wasn’t going anywhere anyway until he could get rid of this ivy.
Keeping his back to the wall so he could watch the gardener, he reached over his head with his free hand to have another go at loosening the plant. The gardener didn’t move. He just stood there with his rusted shears like before.
Then, as The Valeyard continued to claw at the ivy, in the corner of his eye he caught a flash of red, just before the ivy snaked down and wound itself around his other wrist. He flailed, trying to shake it off, but it twisted around his wrist and tightened, until he was left with both hands bound above his head. He’d taken his attention away from the gardener for a moment during all this, and now as he looked back, he found the man a few steps closer, though motionless once more. The Valeyard sighed.
‘Enough of this,’ he called out. ‘If you’re going to kill me, do it. Surely we can dispense with the theatrics?’
‘What makes you think they want to kill you, Doctor?’ asked a voice to his right. Once more, the Valeyard felt a jolt of fright jar his bones. Though he’d heard nothing, now another figure stood right beside him.
‘Bill?’ he asked.
It certainly looked like Bill Potts. Couldn’t be her, though, he told himself. Not in this universe. So it had to be another construct, something they were using to taunt him. He supposed Bill was a good choice. Not only did he have the Doctor’s memories of the worst moments of their relationship, but he also had his own from his time in the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS and on Zenobia. Then he noticed she was holding her own set of garden shears.
‘If not kill me, then what?’ he asked her, since she seemed more talkative than the gardener.
‘We wanted you to feel what we felt,’ Bill said.
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘All of us, Doctor,’ said another voice, this time to his left. He wasn’t surprised to see another person there. He was getting used to sudden apparitions. This time it was Peri Brown, and at once the memory of having his hands around her throat came to mind, followed closely by the mental image of her strapped to a table, her skin covered in petrol-blue feathers. Then he saw her with her head shaved, speaking with another person’s voice, her mind completely wiped, and even though he knew that memory was false, and those events had never happened, he remembered the pain of witnessing it for the first time.
‘We wanted you to know what we went through,’ she said.
‘What we went through for you, Doctor,’ added a third voice.
The Valeyard looked straight ahead and, with a jolt, saw Clara Oswald coming towards him, arms folded. Of all the bloody people, it had to be her, didn’t it?
All three women stared at him with unconcealed disgust that made him shrink for a second, before one single thought pierced through all the guilt and grief.
This wasn’t real.
‘Whatever’s going on,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve got your algorithm wrong. I am not the Doctor. And Bill Potts at least, should know that.’
All three women paused, Bill mid-step towards him, and they shared the same blank expression as the staff and the Dream Lord had worn when something didn’t compute. Then a twitch of movement at the back of the greenhouse drew the Valeyard’s attention back to the gardener, in time to see him stalk towards the door, and when he looked back, the former companions were gone. He felt the ivy loosen and one sharp tug was enough to pull his hands down. Whatever the place had been about to do with him, it had evidently given up, withdrawing until it could reassess the situation. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
He gave his coat a tug to straighten it and dusted off the dead leaves and cobwebs that had attached themselves to the velvet and noticed that the heel of his hand stung as he did so. There were a few shallow grazes left over from his encounter with the stone chess pieces. So, he was right. These constructs could cause him actual harm. But he’d also been right about their working to some program, some pattern, that couldn’t cope with having caught the wrong fish in its net.
When he emerged again into the garden, he could see the hotel clearly through the fog, only a few hundred metres away. Having a few more pieces of the puzzle spurred him on, and he started back towards the building with a determined stride.
Chapter 8: 8
Chapter Text
The stairs in room 12A seemed far longer than they had going down. Voreline raced up, eager to get as much distance between her and the thing beyond that glass wall.
She could still hear the Duty Manager and the strange old man talking behind her, though their voices were distant, and she couldn’t make out any individual words.
Then, just as she spotted the door above her, an alarm sounded back down in the chamber, so loud and shrill, it hurt her ears. She froze and crouched down on the stairs, wanting to make herself as small as possible, then once the initial shock of it wore off, she straightened and started to listen to the panicked conversation down below. She still couldn’t make out their words, and so, although the idea terrified her, she crept back down a few steps until she could hear properly.
‘How can that be possible?’ the Duty Manager demanded. There was a quiver in his normally suave and controlled voice that betrayed his fear. ‘The Collectors…’
‘There is no Collector present,’ said the old man. ‘And the Doctor is in the outer zone.’
‘He can’t be,’ said the Duty Manager. ‘My staff would’ve…’
‘Summon him,’ the old man ordered. ‘The Doctor cannot be allowed to leave the resort, not when we are so close. And switch off that infernal noise.’
The alarm ceased and the silence that followed was like a weighted blanket. Voreline stayed tensed and ready to flee if the Duty Manager came her way.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the Entertainment Manager’s voice. He must have just appeared, Voreline thought, the way he seemed to do whenever she was at a loss for a job to pick up. Maybe he actually could appear and disappear at will. She’d thought he was just very quiet and sneaky. But she hadn’t seen another door in the chamber downstairs and so he had to have just appeared.
‘The Doctor has escaped,’ said the Duty Manager. He sounded more in control of himself.
‘Not possible,’ replied the Entertainment Manager.
‘My instruments do not lie!’ shrieked the old man. He sounded like he was on the brink of panic. ‘The Doctor is in the outer zone. The scanners have detected his brain pattern.’
‘We attempted to contact his Collector, but it is not present,’ said the Duty Manager.
‘Also not possible,’ the Entertainment Manager stated haughtily. ‘I oversaw the implantation myself. There is…’
‘Then he has found a way to remove it,’ said the old man. ‘You have failed.’
‘Proprietor, I…’
So, the old man was the Proprietor. Voreline had heard that title mentioned but hadn’t associated it with the withered figure downstairs. He was in control of the whole hotel?
‘He must be found and re-implanted,’ said the Proprietor.
‘If he has found a way to remove the Collector,’ the Duty Manager began, ‘then it is possible he has found a way to manipulate the system too. My staff may not…’
‘Then take one of the Humans,’ the old man ordered, ‘if we have any left. If what I have researched about the Doctor is true, he is more likely to respond to the threat of violence towards a living creature than a construct, so they may prove useful in persuading him to return.’
‘I will see to it myself,’ said the Entertainment Manager.
‘Do so,’ the old man snapped. ‘And this time, do it properly.’ I have given my lives to this experiment and I shall not falter now that the end is in sight. Do either of you comprehend how great a burden this is? No, of course not. Constructs. False beings. What do you know? Go, see if you can at least rectify your latest bluner!’
Voreline hadn’t seen any other humans in the hotel. She had been sure the Duty Manager, the Doorman and the Entertainment Manager were something else, and what the Proprietor said seemed to confirm that. They certainly weren’t from the town. But that mean, if they were looking for a human, they had to mean her.
She swallowed and hurried to the door, trying to remember if she’d seen anywhere in the hotel that could make a good hiding place. The door had no handle, but then she remembered it had slid open to let her in, so she looked around the walls for its controls.
‘Voreline, how fortunate.’
The Entertainment Manager had, yet again, managed to approach her without making a sound, and now he was standing a few steps below her, smiling. Voreline pulled herself up straight and bobbed a curtsey.
‘I was just trying to work out how to open the door, sir,’ she said. ‘I brought the Proprietor…’
‘I know what you were doing here,’ he said. ‘I sent you. But I have another task for you. Come with me.’
‘Where are we going, sir?’ she asked, although she already suspected the answer.
‘We are going to check on a small problem,’ the Entertainment Manager replied. ‘Something that threatens the stability of the Hotel. And that is something we cannot allow, can we?’
Voreline smiled. She hoped that was enough of an answer.
The Entertainment Manager then walked past her, and the door slid open as soon as he approached. Though she still wanted to run, Voreline didn’t dare try to resist. That was the thought the Hotel put into her head, that if she ran, she would be destroyed, and although the Entertainment Manager smiled at her as they headed out, she believed he was capable of such violence. It was there in his eyes.
They stepped through the door and Voreline expected the same, drab corridor she’d come along earlier, but instead, a cold wind blew against her face, bringing spots of rain. She blinked and saw they had emerged into a stone passageway, outside and exposed to the bleak weather. The walls were dark with moisture and looked worn away by time. The passage was narrow, with barely space for Voreline and the Entertainment Manager to walk side by side and seemed to go on forever.
‘Come,’ the Entertainment Manager barked, then he headed off.
The Doctor carried on through the maze, waving his sonic over the wall. Solitaire stayed back with the two men, Moran and Grey, behind her and Bill at her side, all of them watching and waiting for some kind of pronouncement.
The Doctor seemed to have been at it for ages and nothing was happening. Solitaire folded her arms and shivered. The place was getting colder, and the clouds overhead had turned darker, threatening rain. The whole atmosphere of the place, while never pleasant, had grown more oppressive, though Solitaire couldn’t put her finger on what it was. As if the stone walls had crept inwards a little and narrowed the passageway.
Then, just as she was about to ask if there was a point to all this, the Doctor stood back with a short exclamation of triumph.
‘Ha! There. Computers. Doesn’t matter what planet they’re from or how complicated they are, they’re still stupid. Give them the right answer, and they’ll show you all their secrets.’
A panel of glowing white light appeared on the wall in front of him, like a media screen, then it resolved itself into a pattern, a circle with a tree inside. Solitaire frowned. She’d seen that symbol before but couldn’t think where. Then the picture changed again, and this time showed a maze. It had to be a map of the place. The Doctor traced a line with his finger then stabbed a large space in the centre, where a blue square glowed brightly.
‘That must be it,’ he said.
‘The hotel?’ asked Moran.
‘Presumably. Only little blue square on the diagram, so it has to be something special. And so that’s where we need to go.’
He pulled a notebook from his pocket and flicked through its pages, most of which were full of maps and notes and numbers, until he found a blank spot, then he scribbled down a copy of the map.
‘This way,’ he said, studying what he’d written, then he marched off.
‘If the point of this maze is to keep people away from the hotel,’ Solitaire said, ‘won’t there be guards? Something to stop you blundering in the right direction accidentally.’
‘I was just thinking that,’ Bill said.
‘Distinct possibility,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s why I’m going first.’
He made for a turn in the passage about three metres down, but as he reached the corner, he stopped and started walking backwards. Solitaire stumbled and had to dart to the side to avoid bumping into him and felt Bill nudge into her as she tried to do an emergency stop as well.
Then Solitaire saw why the Doctor had changed his mind. A man stepped out of the passageway they’d been about to take and stood right ahead of them. He was small, with thin blond hair and a creepy smile, and was dressed a bit like the Promotional Assistants back on Rohelian, the ones who were paid to go about the foyer and the yard outside and advertise special offers to customers. He wore a purple blazer with the initials GRH embroidered on the pocket, over a white shirt and plain, black trousers. Whoever he was, though, the sight of him made the Doctor straighten and frown.
‘You,’ he said.
The little man cocked his head to one side but kept on smiling. ‘You’ve changed your appearance, Doctor. I do hope you didn’t have an accident whilst staying at the hotel.’
‘I’m not staying at your hotel,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m trying to get there at the moment, as it happens. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m the Entertainment Manager, Doctor, I told you. I’m here to ensure your stay at the Grand Rivencraig Hotel is as enjoyable as possible.’
‘Really? Because the last time I saw you, you were trying to mess with my mind by sticking me in two false realities, hoping I’d stay in one while my real self died. Is this the same game or have you found a new way to torture people?’
‘Torture? Not at all, Doctor. Not if you co-operate.’
‘Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? Everyone’s nice if you co-operate. Co-operation’s good! Helps everybody get along. Except the kind of co-operation you’re talking about isn’t really co-operation, is it? It’s submission.’
‘Doctor, who is he?’ Bill whispered.
‘Called himself the Dream Lord last time I saw him.’
‘You said that before,’ said the Dream Lord, or Entertainment Manager, or whoever he was. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you?’ The Doctor produced his sonic and waved it quickly at the Dream Lord, then his frown deepened as he studied the results. ‘Maybe you don’t. Maybe we’re earlier in your timeline. Otherwise, why would you be here? Last time, you managed to get into my head via a bit of psychic pollen. But you’re actually here, aren’t you? You’re a construct like everything else here. Part of this environment. So how do you get out?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Doctor,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘But speaking of getting out, you are aware that it isn’t possible, even if you were able to solve the labyrinth?’
‘It’s a maze, not a labyrinth,’ said the Doctor. ‘And we have a way of getting out, thank you. Getting out’s not the problem. We’d like to get in, please.’
The Dream Lord looked bemused. He stared at them for a long while as if he was trying to work it all out in his head. Whatever he’d expected from the Doctor, he wasn’t getting it. Then there was a scuff of footsteps in the passage behind him.
‘I don’t have to threaten you to make you return?’ the Dream Lord asked.
‘I can’t exactly return, can I?’ replied the Doctor. ‘Seeing as I’ve never been there.’
Again, the Dream Lord looked confused. Behind him, a girl in a drab grey uniform stepped out of the passage, hands clasped in front of her. She glanced at the Doctor and the Dream Lord, looking as if she couldn’t decide which one to be more frightened of.
‘Voreline!’ Moran shouted suddenly, right in Solitaire’s ear. She jumped in fright, then the two men were jostling past her, hurrying to get towards the girl. The Dream Lord’s expression hardened.
‘These are Humans from the town,’ he said. ‘They are not permitted here. Go back!’
‘That’s my sister!’ Moran yelled. ‘Voreline, come on!’
‘So, this was your plan, Doctor?’ asked the Dream Lord. ‘To lead a rebellion from the town?’
‘It’s two people,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not the biggest rebellion ever held, is it…’
Moran and Grey barged past him, shoving Bill out of the way too. She stumbled backwards towards the Dream Lord, who stepped out of the way and let her fall, but the girl, Voreline, bent to take her hand and help her up. The Dream Lord, meanwhile, placed himself in the centre of the passageway, glaring at the two men who now stood in front of him, pointing their homemade spears.
‘Let her go,’ Grey demanded.
‘Your people know the penalties for trespassing. Only those chosen to serve are permitted in the hotel.’
‘You’ve stolen our brothers and sisters for too long!’ Moran yelled. ‘Voreline will be the last, and we’re taking her home. If you try to stop me, I won’t hesitate to kill you.’
The Dream Lord laughed. ‘Kill me? You have no concept of who or what I am. Your pathetic little weapons won’t harm me. I, on the other hand, know your bodies are merely flesh and brittle bones. Easily destroyed.’
The walls on either side of them began to rumble and shake. Solitaire darted away, as the stones began to break free of their mortart and lean towards the passage. It was so narrow, the only way to run was back the way they’d come. Someone grabbed Solitaire’s arm just before the first blocks crashed down. A cloud of dust billowed up and the impact so great, it knocked her and her rescuer off their feet. When she managed to wipe the dust from her eyes, Solitaire saw it was the Doctor who’d saved her. Grey and Moran had managed to get far enough away too before the stones fell. There was no sign of the Dream Lord, Voreline or Bill. The blocks that had fallen now filled the passageway, cutting them off completely.
The Doctor picked himself up and stared at the pile of stones, and Solitaire could see from the pain in his eyes that he was thinking the same as her – what had happened to Bill?
The Valeyard wandered back into the foyer of the hotel, feeling sore and annoyed. The Doorman hadn’t returned to his post, so the system was still a bit taxed by whatever it was up to, he reasoned. Likewise, there were no staff present in the reception area. Since it was quiet and since he was exhausted from his ordeal in the gardens, the Valeyard collapsed into one of the armchairs in the lounge section and closed his eyes.
He tried to put it all together, weave all the threads into some kind of pattern. The hotel and all its staff had mistaken him for the Doctor. The Doctor had been here many, many centuries ago, in real-universe time, and had been witness to something shady happening, though irritatingly hadn’t said what it was. The hotel was now trying to throw the Doctor’s memories back at him, trying to frighten him or stir up negative emotions. Why? Something that fed on negative emotional energy perhaps. Maybe that’s what the experiments had been about. Maybe they’d left something behind, something that was now a bit hungry and recognised a brain print it had seen before, so was trying to find a snack. Maybe, maybe, maybe, he thought. He didn’t actually know anything.
Not for the first time, he felt as if the universe was bearing down on him. How did the Doctor do this all the time? How did he cope with the responsibility of solving every problem, saving everybody, making the right decisions? Well, the Doctor didn’t always make the right decisions, did they? Look at his current situation. The Doctor had stuck him in this nightmare for a crime he had no memory of committing. He hadn’t wiped out any civilisations or enslaved anyone. That was another thread in the tapestry and he didn’t know where it belonged yet.
What had the Doctor actually seen? Was he, the Valeyard, doomed to fail at this attempt at a quiet life, and would turn to evil? There was only one circumstance he could think of where he’d lose it to that extent, and he didn’t want to consider that as a possibility. There had to be another explanation. But that answer probably lay back in the real universe.
With a deep sigh, he got up and decided to go to the bar and see if there was any real alcohol there, when he heard the clatter of footsteps on the marble floor and turned to see two figures, hand in hand, racing down the corridor that passed the lifts. They emerged into the foyer and looked around, bewildered. Both were covered in pale grey dust, but the Valeyard recognised them all the same. The one in the lead was the girl he’d spoken to earlier, Voreline, but behind her… had to be another hallucination. Bill Potts again. Why her?
‘Voreline?’ the Valeyard said.
Voreline didn’t seem to have noticed him standing there and jumped in fright, but then exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath for a while and was relieved to be able to let it out. Bill, or the construct pretending to be Bill, let go of her hand and wandered forward, glaring at him.
‘So, you are actually here, then,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said the Valeyard. ‘Unlike some. Voreline, what’s going on?’
‘You two know each other?’ Bill asked.
‘We met,’ said Voreline. ‘He was kind to me. But we have to find somewhere to hide. The Entertainment Manager…’
‘The Entertainment Manager will deal with you later, Voreline,’ said the Dream Lord, appearing from nowhere behind the two women. No fake smile this time. He looked furious.
‘Now, whatever’s the matter?’ asked the Valeyard. ‘Plans not going well? Oh, dear.’
‘Our plans are progressing as…’ The Entertainment Manager began, then he gave the Valeyard a head-to-toe look and frowned deeply. ‘You’ve changed your appearance again.’
The Valeyard looked down at his clothes. He was wearing the same thing as he’d had on the last time they met.
‘Not that I’m aware of. A little tattered and bruised perhaps, but then I expect I have you to blame for that.’
‘How did you return?’ the Dream Lord asked.
‘Through the door,’ said the Valeyard. ‘I admit it was a bit of a trial getting back here, but I think your bunch of nightmares got fed up trying to harass me and let me through.’
The Dream Lord straightened. ‘And how did you remove the Collector?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I…’ The Dream Lord looked from Voreline to Bill to the Valeyard then took a step back. ‘I must consult with the Proprietor.’
With that, he disappeared.
‘What’s going on?’ Bill asked.
‘Off to ask the boss what to do, I expect,’ the Valeyard muttered. ‘You look like you’ve been in an earthquake.’
‘He told me to come with him,’ said Voreline. ‘He said I might be needed to persuade the Doctor to co-operate.’
‘You mean he intended to threaten you.’
‘I think so. But when we got there, I think he was confused… because you’d changed the way you look.’
‘I haven’t changed anything,’ said the Valeyard. ‘What do you mean he needed to persuade the Doctor? He didn’t bring you here to me. And why have you brought a construct of Bill with you? What’s that meant to achieve?’
‘Why are you calling me a construct?’ asked Bill. ‘And what d’you mean he didn’t bring her here to you. She said he was trying to persuade the Doctor. That’s who he brought her to, not you.’
The Valeyard frowned. Bill glowered back at him. Voreline looked, tired, scared and confused. This Bill wasn’t acting like the other one. Not as robotic. More like… Couldn’t be. How would she get there? Unless… Going to persuade the Doctor… The Valeyard’s mind reeled, a host of unfamiliar emotions flaring up, a mixture of surprise and delight mostly.
‘Are you…’ he began. ‘Bill?’
‘Yes. Flattered you remember me.’
‘How could I ever forget you?’ the Valeyard asked. ‘I could never… But you’re here. You’re really here. You’re not part of this place?’
‘No, why?’
‘Just… something I saw earlier. But you can see me? You know who I am?’
‘You hijacked the TARDIS with me and Nardole still in it, threatened to shoot me, and nearly blew up the whole universe. So, yeah, you sort of stick in my mind.’
‘You’re really here? You’re Bill Potts?’
The pleasure he felt at seeing her almost brought tears to his eyes and he let out a laugh, then rushed towards her, ready to embrace her, but she skipped back a few steps and held up her hands.
‘Oi, what the…?’ she said, scowling.
‘Ah,’ said the Valeyard. Yes, last time they’d met he had been less than friendly, he had to admit. ‘Yes, I suppose it’s not appropriate. I’m just very glad to see you. But how are you here?’
‘Glad to see me?’ Bill repeated. She studied him for a second, obviously considering whether to trust him or not. ‘I’m here with the Doctor, though he… I hope he’s still outside in the maze.’
‘Maze?’
‘Yeah, didn’t you know about it? There’s a big maze all around the hotel. We came in through some sort of back door the Doctor managed to open with his TARDIS, and we landed in this maze thing. Then your mate in the Butlins uniform turned up, said a lot of weird things that didn’t make sense, her brother and boyfriend decided to have a go at him, so he brought down the walls right in front of us. I was caught on this side and Voreline pulled me clear. I don’t know what happened to the Doctor and Solitaire and the others.’
‘Solitaire?’ The Valeyard straightened. The name sent a jolt through his nerves.
‘Yeah. Your mate, I take it. She turned up at St Luke’s asking for help to get into this crystal ball thing, so we came. But the door’s only going to stay open for a little while. So we have to get back to it quick.’
‘Might be easier said than done,’ said the Valeyard. ‘There’s something going on here, and they don’t seem keen on letting us leave.’
‘How do we get back to the maze?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the Valeyard. He looked to Voreline but she shook her head.
‘I didn’t even know there was a maze until just now. I’ve no idea how we got there. The Entertainment Manager just opened a door and we stepped through.’
‘He’s part of the infrastructure of this place, I think,’ the Valeyard said. ‘He can probably shift the internal dimensions about to suit himself. But he’s not in charge. There’s someone else…’
‘The Proprietor,’ said Voreline. ‘He and the Duty Manager are the ones who run things, I think.’
‘You’ve met them?’
Voreline nodded. ‘In room 12A. They have some sort of laboratory down there. And there’s… there’s a creature. I only caught a glimpse of it. Something they’re keeping behind a glass wall. It was… it was horrible. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was like all the unhappy memories and nightmares I’ve ever had had come together to form a figure.’
‘What’s a Collector?’ the Valeyard asked.
‘I don’t know, but I did hear them mention the Collectors when I was in 12A. They said something about you having removed yours.’
‘I haven’t removed anything,’ said the Valeyard.
‘But then they also said you’d escaped and got into the “outer zone”, which I take it is the maze, since that’s where the Entertainment Manager took me.’
Realisation hit the Valeyard like a cold draught.
‘Same brain pattern,’ he said. ‘They’re picking up the Doctor and I as the same person. It’s confusing their system. That’s why I asked you if you knew who I am, Bill. The last time I saw you, not that it actually was you, you thought I was the Doctor. So did all the others. It’s like a computer program. Computers are intensely stupid things. They can only work with the data they’re given, and this system’s been told that I’m the Doctor, based on my brain pattern. It can’t cope with anything that contradicts that. That’s why the Dream Lord and all the others look confused if you say something that doesn’t fit the pattern they’ve been given. But what’s it all for? This creature in the room that… where even is room 12A?’
‘Between rooms twelve and thirteen,’ said Voreline. ‘I’d never noticed it before, but the door was just there.’
‘Possibly only appears whenever they want someone to find it, but we can get around that.’
‘Does it really matter what they’re up to here?’ asked Bill. ‘I mean, I’m all for stopping the bad guys and everything but we really don’t have much time here.’
‘Did the Doctor say how long?’
‘No, but…’
‘Typical,’ said the Valeyard. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes, then he paced around the foyer for a few seconds, ordering his thoughts. ‘If he’s used the TARDIS to access the pocket universe’s coding, then he’s probably using the heart of the TARDIS as a power source.’
‘That’s what he said, yeah,’ Bill told him.
‘Then, taking into consideration that this construct may have defences that could be fighting against his attempts to keep the door open, and allowing for the quantum drift and exotic particle decay, I’d say we have about three or four hours. Long enough to have a look at room 12A, and if I’m right, we won’t be able to leave here until we’ve put a stop to whatever’s going on in there.’
The Valeyard turned and made for the corridor where the lifts were and the door to the stairwell, but then realised the other two weren’t following.
‘Are you coming?’ he called over to them.
Voreline hurried to his side but Bill hesitated, giving him a curious look.
‘You sound like him,’ she said. ‘The Doctor.’
‘I’m not the Doctor,’ the Valeyard told her. ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want to get to the bottom of all this, though.’
She finally came over and joined him and Voreline and they started for the stairs.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but it’s just… you seem different. More chill.’
‘Chill?’ The Valeyard laughed. ‘I can’t recall ever being labelled with that distinction before.’
‘You still talk like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus, though.’
‘Nothing wrong with having a large vocabulary.’
‘There is if nobody has a clue what you’re talking about.’
He laughed again. ‘True, I suppose. Maybe I should work on my slang. Be more “down with the kids”.’
‘No,’ Bill said quickly. ‘No, please, don’t do that.’
They fell into silence as they climbed the stairs, but the Valeyard kept an eye on Bill all the way. It was so strange to walk beside her. In his mind, she was his friend, someone who’s fate had made him furious and miserable and desolate, but only because she meant so much to him, or rather to the Doctor. To him, there was a connection, but nothing was reciprocated. She only knew him as the villain.
‘I am sorry,’ he said.
Bill gave him a strange expression, where her eyebrows seemed to frown but she was also smiling. ‘For what?’
‘Zenobia, and what happened in the TARDIS. Everything. I know you won’t believe me – I can’t expect you to believe me after everything I did – but I really am not that person any more.’
‘Is that…’ Bill began, and gestured vaguely towards his head. ‘Is that what the hair’s about? New hair, new you, sort of thing?’
The Valeyard had forgotten the hair thing and automatically reached up and ran his hand through the short ponytail. ‘This? No idea about that. Product of the hotel playing around with time, I suspect. Trying to unnerve me. Make me feel as if I’d been here forever.’
‘Time is strange here,’ said Voreline. ‘Hours pass like minutes. One moment it’s light outside, the next it’s dark…’
‘Time has no meaning in this place,’ said the Valeyard. ‘The whole thing is artificial. Think of it like the TARDIS. To all intents and purposes, this universe is the same as the TARDIS, all its interior dimensions and structures are created by pure mathematics, block transfer computation. The Time Lords created this place, so it’s perfectly feasible that time runs differently in this universe or is broken entirely. It’s possible you could walk through a door and come out the other side in your seventies.’
‘Oh, great,’ muttered Bill. ‘Where exactly are we going, by the way? We need to find the Doctor and Solitaire.’
‘And my brother and my betrothed,’ said Voreline. ‘Unless they were crushed by the stones.’
‘If they were with the Doctor, they stand a good chance of surviving,’ said the Valeyard, and the words felt so alien to him as he spoke them. It had to be Bill’s presence that was softening him, making him gloss over the Doctor’s flaws. If the two men were with the Doctor, there was every chance they’d die, sacrificed in one of plots or just innocent bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, just as something tried to kill the Doctor. He didn’t say any of that to the two women though. It wouldn’t be good for morale, he thought.
And Solitaire was with the Doctor. The Valeyard took a deep breath and prayed to any entity that was able to listen that she was safe. He’d tried to reconcile himself to the idea that he’d never see her again, and now the promise of their reunion burned inside him, so much so that he had to fight to ignore it and concentrate on the problem at hand.
‘If I’m right,’ he said, ‘we’re headed to the place where we’re most likely to find answers.’
‘Care to share it with us? Or are you going to be annoying like the Doctor and keep it all to yourself?’ Bill asked.
The Valeyard paused, just as he reached the corridor they wanted, and he smiled back at her.
‘We’re going to room 12A,’ he said.
He turned, ready to walk on, but Bill grabbed his arm. He stared down at her hand for a long time, still stunned by the fact it was real, and that he could feel the warmth of her touch through his sleeve. He placed his own hand over hers, hearts tightening as the memories of her fought to come to the front of his mind.
‘Solitaire did say you’d done good things,’ she said, then she looked up at him with a determined look in her eyes that burned right through him. ‘But if you’re leading us into a trap…’
‘I’m not,’ the Valeyard said. ‘I swear. I know I have no means of convincing you nor do you have any good reason to trust me, but I give you my word, for what it’s worth, that I will do everything in my power to get you, Voreline, the Doctor, Solitaire and every other Human trapped in this place to safety. The only malice I hold is for the people who’ve orchestrated this nightmare.’
Bill stared at him for a while, weighing up his answer, he imagined, then she nodded.
‘Fine. Let’s go then. We’re on the clock, remember, even if Time is a bit funny here.’
Chapter 9: 9.
Chapter Text
Solitaire stared at the pile of rubble blocking their path, still a little stunned by their encounter with the strange little man the Doctor had called “The Dream Lord”. She had that same feeling she sometimes got with the Valeyard, of being swept up in something she hadn’t been fully trained to deal with. The Doctor had spent a few minutes inspecting the rubble, waving his sonic screwdriver about, and now he was leading them off through the maze. He seemed sure of the path and didn’t hesitate as he contemplated each turn, but Solitaire still wanted him to stop so she could ask him what they were supposed to do. The two men from the town, meanwhile, trailed along behind, looking as bewildered as Solitaire felt.
Finally, after several minutes dashing through the stone passages in silence, the Doctor came to an abrupt halt and dropped down onto his haunches, frowning at a large slab on the ground.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘This should be it.’
‘This should be what?’ Solitaire demanded. ‘Do you even remember we’re still here?’
He looked up at her, wide-eyed and looking as if he had actually forgotten them.
‘A way into the infrastructure,’ he said, waving the screwdriver over the slab. The cracks around the stone began to glow with a faint purplish light, then the slab itself rippled as though it was made of water. After a second or so, it disappeared entirely, revealing a metal ladder leading downwards into pitch darkness.
‘Programmers always have to have ways back into the code,’ the Doctor explained as he started down the ladder. ‘Ways to get in to fix things, fiddle with things, without the users’ experiences being disturbed. With any luck, this’ll lead us right to this hotel.’
‘How long do you think we have left?’ Solitaire asked.
The Doctor paused and cocked his head to one side as if he was listening to something far off. ‘A couple of hours, maybe. So best not to hang around too long.’
Solitaire nodded, waited until he was far enough down the ladder, then followed.
She only knew she’d reached the bottom because she couldn’t hear the Doctor’s boots on the rungs any more and because her own foot suddenly found stone beneath it, but the place was in complete darkness. Then the Doctor’s screwdriver whirred, and its blue glow lit up a small globe within what looked like a long passageway. Unlike the maze above, it hadn’t been designed to look like stone. The walls were of some indistinct, featureless and dark-coloured material that was smooth to the touch. The Doctor, some distance ahead of her, wandered slowly around, inspecting the place.
Solitaire ventured closer, not wanting to be left in the darkness, while the two men made their way down the ladder behind her. Once they were all moving along the tunnel, she could feel them at her back, hear their breathing. They both sounded tense, terrified even, and their fear started to infect her as they progressed. Soon her chest was tight with panic, and she grew convinced there was something waiting for them just ahead, something awful.
‘Doctor,’ she said finally. ‘I… I can feel…’ She had no idea how to express what was going on in her head, or in her heart rather, this instinct that screamed at her to go back.
‘A feeling of dread and impending doom?’ the Doctor asked casually, looking back at her. The screwdriver’s light picked out all the contours of his face and gave him a macabre, skull-like appearance that didn’t help her anxiety at all.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘It is the Hotel,’ said Grey. ‘It’s evil pervades the land all around it.’
‘It’s a low-level psychic field,’ said the Doctor. ‘Designed to keep nosy people out, I imagine. Ignore it.’
‘How?’ Solitaire asked. ‘It’s an effort just to step forward. I keep feeling like I’m going to fall into an abyss or be mauled by something terrible just around the corner.’
‘Think of something that makes you happy,’ the Doctor called over his shoulder. ‘Remember a song you like, let it play in your head like an earworm. Anything like that should be enough to counter the effect. It’s not a very powerful field. Enough to scare the locals away, perhaps.’
Solitaire nodded, even though the Doctor wouldn’t see her, and tried to think of something. The Valeyard had let her play around with the TARDIS’s library of music and films, and she’d enjoyed going through the lists of songs from different eras, artists she knew about through her culture patches but hadn’t ever heard before. Still, it was the stupid song about DNA that used to play all the time in the foyer of the Facility that leapt to the fore and started playing in her head. She’d always hated that song, but it did the trick and pushed away the nameless fear that had been gnawing at her.
Unfortunately, as they progressed along the tunnel, a new fear sprang up to replace it and this one, Solitaire knew, was genuine. She had been trying not to think about the Valeyard too much, telling herself he would be fine, that this was supposed to be a resort and somewhere non-threatening where he’d probably just be lounging about, feeling sorry for himself, but the more she heard about this place, the more she saw of it, the stronger her concern grew. For all they knew, he was already dead, though she refused to consider that and shoved the thought quickly to the back of her mind whenever it arose.
What would happen to her if he was gone, though? Let the Doctor find her somewhere calm and serene and safe to live out the rest of her life? How was she supposed to do that when she’d been given a glimpse of how vast the universe was, and knew how many wonderful things were waiting out there? She could try and learn to fly the TARDIS, but the Valeyard had mentioned something about a sort of symbiosis between the ship and its pilot. Perhaps it wouldn’t even work if he was dead.
But he wouldn’t be, she told herself sternly. They had a few hours yet, the Doctor said. Time enough to get to this hotel and find him. And he was the Valeyard, after all. He’d seen off Sontarans and Angels and murderous trees. He could handle a creepy hotel, whatever might be lurking in it.
Ahead, the Doctor came to a halt and held up his hand. Solitaire and the two men stopped, and as soon as their footsteps ceased, the tunnel became so silent, Solitaire could feel it like a pressure in her ears.
Then something skittered across the ceiling, right above them. Solitaire gasped and looked up but could only see shadows, until the Doctor hurried over to her and held up his sonic. He waved it around, but there was nothing but the plain, grey roof of the tunnel.
‘What is it?’ Solitaire whispered.
The Doctor shook his head and continued to look around, moving the sonic’s light slowly. The sound came again, this time from the opposite direction. It sounded like legs, lots of legs, moving against the hard surface. Solitaire swallowed. She wasn’t particularly keen on bugs after her experiences on New Amazonia, and this one sounded very large.
Behind her, one of the men let out a cry. Solitaire turned and found only Grey standing beside her now. The Doctor dashed forward and shone the light down at the floor, where Moran was rubbing his head and groaning.
‘What happened?’
It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Solitaire couldn’t see any blood or injuries.
‘I don’t…’ Moran answered. He looked up at them, but his expression was vague. ‘How did I get down here?’
‘You cried out and then you…’ said the Doctor, but he cut off as Grey, who’d gone to Moran’s side, let out a yelp and staggered backwards, leaving the small globe of light.
‘Grey?’ the Doctor called. ‘What is it?’
Solitaire helped Moran to his feet and started towards the spot where Grey had disappeared, but just as the Doctor pushed past her to light the way, Grey stepped towards them, running his hand over the back of his head as if he’d just woken up.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I thought… I don’t know what happened.’
‘This isn’t a psychic field, is it?’ Solitaire asked.
‘I don’t think so, no,’ said the Doctor in a low voice. ‘This feels very real.’
He turned around, waving the sonic about again to inspect the walls and ceiling. Solitaire flinched as soon as the light was away from her, not wanting the shadows and whatever they concealed to close back in.
Something touched her shoulder and she jumped in fright, bumping into the Doctor, who stumbled back a few steps. For a moment, Solitaire was in total darkness, something skittering around her feet. She stamped blindly at it but didn’t feel anything crunch, then her toe connected with something. She kicked without thinking and heard a thud as something hit the wall nearby. Then the Doctor let out a cry of pain.
When she looked round, she could just make out his profile. He’d stopped and let his head rest against the wall, the sonic held loosely at his side. Then he inhaled sharply and straightened, shook his head and looked around, a blank expression crossing his features for a brief instant before he seemed to come to. Then he swung the sonic about, looking at the ceiling first, then the floor. Solitaire followed the light and gasped when the glow washed over something by the wall near her feet. It had to be the thing she’d kicked. It was like a spider, its body as big as her hand, with long, thin, segmented legs curled up over its centre.
‘Is that…’ she said, leaning as close as she dared to the thing. Although it looked dead, she imagined it leaping up at her, clamping itself around her face. She should never have let the Valeyard show her his sci-fi horror film collection.
‘I think I kicked it,’ she said.
The Doctor crouched and waved the sonic over it. The whirr it had been making changed pitch, then he studied the results. To Solitaire’s horror, he then poked the thing’s legs with the tip of the screwdriver. It didn’t respond. Maybe it was dead. But she’d only given it a light kick and it didn’t sound like it hit the wall that hard. Maybe it was playing dead.
‘What is that?’ asked Moran.
‘You’ve never seen these before?’ the Doctor replied. ‘They’re not native to this environment?’
Moran and Grey both shook their heads.
‘There are only the farm animals in the town,’ said Grey. ‘Livestock we rear. No animals exist in the wilderness.’
‘Then it must be connected to the hotel,’ said Solitaire, thinking aloud. ‘Why did you all scream?’
‘What?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Just before I felt this thing try to crawl on me, you all cried out as if something had got you too. Didn’t you feel one of these on your shoulder?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re sure each of us did it?’
Solitaire nodded towards Grey and Moran. ‘First those two then you. Don’t you remember?’
‘No,’ the Doctor muttered again. He reached down and prized the creature’s legs away from its body, then stared down at the tips of one of the limbs. ‘Some sort of claw-like structure at the end of each leg. Not unlike a spider. Only these have fibres woven into them, see? Possibly meant to work as an interface with a nervous system. It’s almost like an earlier evolutionary form of a dream crab.’
‘Dream crabs and a Dream Lord,’ Solitaire mused.
The Doctor stood up suddenly and waved his sonic over Moran’s head, looked at the results, then repeated the gesture with Grey, then Solitaire, then himself.
‘Ah,’ he said. Solitaire had heard that kind of “Ah” from the Valeyard and it never boded well.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Neural interface,’ said the Doctor. ‘Possibly intended originally as a way to interact with the architecture of the resort without having to input changes manually. You let one of these things inside your skull, it reads your thoughts on a specific subject and acts accordingly. You don’t like your room at the hotel, this thing recognises it and changes the décor.’
‘Wait,’ Solitaire said. ‘Inside your skull?’ The idea of one of those things being in her head turned her spine into ice.
‘They’re able to phase in and out of physical matter, thanks to their mathematical coding,’ said the Doctor. To demonstrate, he pressed the spider’s leg towards the wall and as Solitaire watched, it partly disappeared into the solid surface. ‘Probably can control it when they’re still functioning, but this one’s had a good knock to its head.’
‘We have those things in our heads?’ Moran asked, sounding as horrified as Solitaire felt.
‘We do,’ said the Doctor, then he turned to look directly at Solitaire. ‘She doesn’t. I wonder why that is.’
‘I kicked mine,’ said Solitaire.
‘We didn’t even get the chance to know it was there,’ said the Doctor. ‘Some kind of perception filter, but for some reason, it didn’t want to link up with your brain. Why is that?’
Solitaire shrugged. ‘Maybe because my brain’s artificial? Everything I know, apart from the last little while with the Valeyard, it’s come from neural patches and downloads at the Facility. I’m not real, remember.’
‘Real is a state of mind,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re as real as you want to be. But maybe so. Whatever the reason, you’re now the only one of us who can trust their judgement. It’s possible these things are benign, although nothing else around here seems to be, but it’s also possible they’re capable of manipulating our perception and our thoughts. So keep an eye on us, and if you think for one moment we’re acting strangely, run. Go back to the TARDIS, get Nardole. He’ll help.’
‘Do we have time for that?’ Solitaire asked.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t even come to it, but we have to be prepared.’
He headed off down the tunnel before Solitaire could argue. Giving the creature one last glower before the shadows consumed it, Solitaire followed after him.
How was she supposed to tell when they were behaving out of character when she’d only known them for a few hours?
Chapter 10: 10.
Chapter Text
As soon as the Valeyard emerged from the stairwell, he knew something wasn’t right. This corridor didn’t look the way it did before. There were no rows of identical doors, only one set of black double doors at the very far end, and the sickly yellow wallpaper had given way to dark green and gold stripes, the floor a stretch of black marble veined with silver. The pictures had changed too. Now there were a series of Hogarth prints showing grotesque caricatures of the eighteenth century’s underworld.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Bill wander past him, hands on hips as she stared at the walls and pictures, frowning, then Voreline was last to make it up the stairs.
‘This is different,’ she said.
‘So I see,’ the Valeyard replied.
‘What d’you mean it’s different?’ asked Bill.
‘The layout of the building’s changed. They know we’re trying to find them and they’re trying to keep us out.’
‘Then how do we get to them?’ Bill asked.
‘We have to be cleverer than they are,’ said the Valeyard.
He turned, thinking to go back to the stairs and try again, but the door they’d just passed through was no longer there. He drew out his sonic screwdriver and did a quick scan of the walls nearby, but the coding had settled and there was no sign of the original design. By the looks of it, the stairs had spat them out on the fourth floor, and the hotel had moved the stairs to the opposite side of the building.
‘You know where we are?’ Bill asked.
'I’ve never seen this part of the hotel before,’ Voreline answered.
‘There’s a way out,’ said the Valeyard. He pointed with his screwdriver at the double doors. ‘Looks like we have to go through there.’
He strode off, trying to look confident, though the feeling that he was being deliberately led somewhere nagged at him all the way. As he drew nearer, he was able to read the brass plaque on one of the doors.
‘What is a ballroom?’ Voreline asked.
‘A place for dancing,’ said Bill.
‘Or corporate functions. Intergalactic Hair Product Salesbeing of the Year Awards, that sort of thing,’ said the Valeyard.
He waved the sonic over the door handles and heard the lock tumblers click into place. He flung the doors open and stepped through.
He instantly braced for a fight at the sight of a figure directly ahead, then his brain caught up and realised it was just his own reflection. The walls around the room were mirrored, all except for the shorter wall to his left, where a clam shell shaped backdrop stood over a small dais, set up to hold a chamber orchestra or a band.
Although he hadn’t heard any movement or music as he’d approached the ballroom, as soon as he was inside, the Valeyard had the impression that a great noise had just been silenced. It was as if the last notes of a song were still hanging on the air, although the ballroom itself was deserted.
Its checkerboard floor was polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the light from several large chandeliers along the length of the room that glittered like diamonds. He couldn’t see any other way out, but the mirrors might conceal a doorway. He waved the sonic around to check but came up blank.
Bill must have heard him curse under his breath, as she was at his side in an instant.
‘What? What’s up now?’
‘I can’t find the door,’ said the Valeyard. ‘There has to be one. And if not, I might have to create my own, though that might take some time.’
He turned his attention to one of the mirrors and started a scan of its base code with the sonic, while keeping an eye on Bill and Voreline’s reflections at the same time.
‘We don’t have time,’ Bill said, putting her hands on her hips. ‘The Doctor said the power source he’s using to keep our door out of here open won’t last forever, and…’
‘I am aware,’ the Valeyard told her. ‘I’m going as fast as I can.’
He willed the sonic to hurry up, even though he knew it had to work through the calculations at its own rate. Block transfer computation wasn’t exactly something you could do with an abacus. Unless you were Adric, of course. The thought made the Valeyard smile, but then as he glanced up and looked in the mirror, he saw Voreline straighten. Her expression became blank, that way it had earlier when it seemed like she was in direct communication with the Hotel. Then he saw her wander off towards the musicians’ dais. He pretended not to notice, and Bill was too busy watching him have seen, but as he worked, he tracked Voreline’s progress.
She stepped up onto the dais and went directly to one of the seats, where she stooped for a moment and picked something up from the floor. The Valeyard continued to pretend he hadn’t seen anything and waved his sonic over another part of the mirror but made sure he still had a good view of Voreline. She straightened, a violin of all things in her hands, though she was holding it by the neck as if it were a frying pan. The Valeyard could guess what her orders from the Hotel were. It had led them all here, driving them like animals into the abattoir.
He waited until she was right behind him, her expression still placid, her eyes unseeing, and saw her raise the violin over her head, ready to bring it down hard – the thought of destroying an instrument in that way enraged him more than the fact the Hotel probably wanted him dead. Then just as Voreline swung the violin down, he turned, twisted out of the way and let her hit the mirror instead. The violin splintered, the neck breaking so that the body dangled in Voreline’s hand, held only by its strings.
Bill let out a curse and dived out of the way while Voreline just stood there, frozen.
‘What the hell’s she doing?’ Bill asked.
‘Waiting for further orders, I expect,’ said the Valeyard.
‘The Hotel’s controlling her?’
‘Someone is.’ He switched the sonic into scan mode and waved it over Voreline, but the results were just as he expected. ‘Neural link feeding into some sort of central control, but it works both ways. It’s feeding off her… off our thoughts and emotions but it can also exert control over some people. That would explain the Dalek.’
‘Dalek?’
‘I saw one earlier,’ the Valeyard said. ‘Or I thought I did. Stimulated responses, meant to trigger an emotion that can be siphoned off.’ Feeling a cold shiver grip him, he waved the sonic over his own skull then studied the results. The readings were the same as Voreline’s. Then he turned and repeated the move but with Bill.
‘Hey, what d’you think you’re doing?’ she protested, waving her hand to shoo him away, as if his hand and the sonic were insects buzzing round her head.
The Valeyard ignored her. ‘You don’t have one.’
‘Don’t have one what?’
‘Whatever it is that’s inside mine and Voreline’s heads. Some sort of creature perhaps? Or a bio-implant? Something that can form a link between our brains and the Hotel. I wonder if that’s what a Collector is. Collecting information, collecting emotional energy. It would seem to make sense.’
‘Why haven’t I got one?’ Bill asked.
‘I don’t know, but…’
Before he could finish, the room swelled with sudden music, a waltz that swept around them, and in an instant, they were surrounded by dancers. People in gowns and men dressed as if it were the eighteenth century swooped and pranced in a circle with the three of them at the centre. Each dancer wore a mask, a grotesque, monstrous face with a long snout or horns, each one different.
‘This is new,’ the Valeyard muttered.
Beside them, Voreline let the broken violin drop to the floor, then she started towards them. Instinctively, the Valeyard stepped forward, shielding Bill, but then the musicians on stage, also masked, brought their song to a hearty conclusion and the room dropped into silence. The dancers, as one, stopped and turned inwards, then they too started towards the Valeyard and Bill.
There was nowhere to go, no way out.
‘You’ve got a plan, right?’ Bill asked. ‘Like, right now, the Doctor would have a plan, so you’ve got to have a plan, too.’
‘I’m not the Doctor,’ the Valeyard said distractedly, watching the dancers edge closer. Then he stepped forward and looked up towards the chandeliers. ‘You wanted me for something! You’ve got some scheme, some purpose to all this nonsense! Well, whatever it is you want, I’m happy to help. If it’s a plan to destroy the universe, so be it! Never liked this universe anyway, and it certainly never liked me.’
‘What are you doing?’ Bill hissed.
‘I told you,’ the Valeyard replied. ‘I am not the Doctor.’ He returned to shouting at the unseen controllers of the Hotel, whom he knew were listening, probably in room 12A.
‘You want me, I’ll go willingly, but I have one condition!’
The dancers stopped and stood completely still in a circle around them. Voreline also halted, but she raised her head.
‘Name your condition, Doctor,’ she said.
‘That you let these people go. Both the girl you’re talking through and the one beside me. Both are to be allowed to leave this universe unharmed. Do we have agreement? Do we have a contract?’
The pause that followed seemed to last an aeon.
‘Very well,’ said one of the dancers, stepping forward, but even before he took off his mask, the Valeyard had recognised the Dream Lord from his voice. The little man now smiled, so smug the Valeyard wanted to punch him but he forced himself to stay calm. For Bill’s sake, if nothing else.
‘You always did have a weak spot for your companions, Doctor,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘First the dog and now this one.’
‘Yes, well, I’d rather die defending someone else than survive by stepping over that person’s corpse,’ said the Valeyard. He saw the incredulous look in Bill’s eyes, and it stung, but he reminded himself she hadn’t seen him since Zenobia. He had to accept that she’d still think badly of him. Probably always would. If she survived.
Two of the dancers stepped forward and took one of the Valeyard’s arms each.
‘Wait,’ Bill said.
‘Be quiet,’ the Valeyard snapped. All he needed was for her to do something brave now and put herself back into the firing line. ‘You need to get back to your… to your friend and get out of here while you still can. Take as many of the humans from Voreline’s town as you can, if you can. And please, although I have no right to ask a favour of you, please make sure that Solitaire is safe.’
‘But what…’
‘Just do as I say,’ the Valeyard said. Then before Bill could protest or, more likely, swear at him, he addressed the Dream Lord again. ‘Shall we get on with this? I’m not one for dancing.’
‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘There won’t be any where you’re going.’
The two dancers stepped back, he heard Bill call out, but then he was no longer in the ballroom. He was in a large, dimly lit chamber with a row of instruments alongside a glass wall that looked out onto some sort of cave. Rows of hospital-like beds ran along one wall, most covered in cobwebs, but the shape those webs formed was unmistakably corpse-like. The Dream Lord, now back in his purple blazer, was back at his side and he saw the Duty Manager with his saccharine smile a few feet away, watching them, but there was no sign of the two dancers.
Another figure was seated at the bank of controls. He wore a robe that, to the Valeyard, would not have looked out of place in the Panopticon on Gallifrey, although it was greasy with dust and fraying at the edges. Long, white hair hung down the figure’s back and when he finally spun his chair around to face them, his face was deeply lined and ancient.
‘A new face, Doctor?’ he asked.
‘Several,’ said the Valeyard with a shrug. ‘But you have me at a disadvantage.’
The old man chuckled. ‘Has it been so very long that you’ve forgotten us? But then again, it has been so very long.’
He glanced down at his skeletal hands and gave a wistful smile.
‘Whatever you’re up to,’ said the Valeyard, ‘I hope…’
‘The humans are of no interest to us now,’ said the old man. ‘Whether they live or die is their own affair. But you and I have unfinished business, Doctor. With you here, finally the experiment might be complete. At last, I might be free.’
‘What experiment?’ asked the Valeyard.
There was no one restraining him now, and neither the Dream Lord nor the Duty Manager made any move towards him, so he slowly approached the instruments, at the same time examining each panel. The technology was a bit of a mixture, but it was predominantly Gallifreyan. Although he recognised it, he had no idea what it was for.
‘You really don’t remember?’ asked the old man. ‘How many centuries is it since you were here? Since your… rebellion, shall we call it?’
‘Oh, several thousand,’ said the Valeyard with a smile. ‘One loses count after a while. But I’ve also had several attempts to erase or alter my memories in that time, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t recall our previous encounters. What is the purpose of the experiment?’
‘Defence,’ answered the Duty Manager. ‘A weapon that will serve…’
‘Be quiet,’ said the old man. ‘Wretched things. They were necessary for the running of this facility but why you insisted on this ridiculous building and its utterly ludicrous staff is beyond me. An Earth reference, you said. I never could understand your fixation with that planet.’
‘I find it rather charming, in places,’ said the Valeyard.
‘Well, it’s of no consequence. We must complete this project. It is the only way I…’ He let out a deep sigh. ‘It is the only way they will let me go.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘As you say, one loses count, but I would imagine it has been several thousand years. Beyond my natural lifespan, I know that.’
‘Last regeneration?’ the Valeyard asked.
The old man nodded. ‘But they plucked me from time at the moment of my death and have me reanimated like a puppet to keep this place running. I have no heartbeats, that’s the one thing that I miss. The feel of blood coursing through one’s veins. But now you’re here… now we can finally complete this experiment, I can rest.’
The Valeyard had made it right to the control panels and could now see through the glass wall into the cave. There was something moving around there. At first, he’d thought it was just shadows, but then the shadows moved, coalesced and formed into the shape of a figure, with the unmistakable outline of a Time Lord collar and robes. It moved closer, and the Valeyard imagined it was looking right at him, leering at him, although it had no face, only shadows.
‘We have waited so long, my friend,’ the old man said to it. ‘And we thought we would never reach this moment. It may not be exactly the same as the High Council’s attempt, but with luck, ours will be the superior model.’
‘Superior model of what?’ the Valeyard asked.
‘Centuries ago, the High Council ordered the Keeper of the Matrix to create a sub-file, hidden away in the Cloisters, a repository for those of your thoughts and emotions that were deemed too unsavoury to be included in the main database. Back then, the High Council still unofficially acknowledged that Division existed, and that your lifestyle, Doctor, might not be as calm as the average Gallifreyan’s. They were afraid your “adventures” and the scars they left on your psyche might affect the daily running of the Matrix so they pushed it all under the carpet, so to speak.
‘Somehow, that collection of data grew sentient and eventually escaped. You may not remember the research we carried out, the attempts I made when I was younger to recover it, but our masters came to the decision that if they could not bring the original creature back, then they could recreate the experiment and build a creature that would far surpass the High Council’s little experiment.’
The Valeyard felt like the world had stopped. ‘Division were trying to create…’
‘A new and improved copy,’ said the old man proudly, ‘of the creature the High Council are now referring to as “The Valeyard”.’
Chapter 11: 11
Chapter Text
The Valeyard and the thing beyond the glass watched each other closely.
‘The what?’ the Valeyard asked.
‘Exactly,’ said the old man. ‘Preposterous epithet, but apparently their creature escaped by merging itself with the body of a member of the Halls of Law, then it absconded with a TARDIS and, despite our best efforts, remains at large. Division decided it was foolish to continue to waste resources on it, especially as, by all accounts, it’s been corrupted by one of your later selves, Doctor, and fancies itself a bit of a hero now.’
The Valeyard raised an eyebrow. ‘Not exactly.’
‘What?’
‘I said, surely it can’t be?’
‘After an operative team led by Gat were almost annihilated by the creature on Planet Earth and even the team of Angels sent to capture it were unable to keep it contained, they thought it best to leave it to its own devices. Let it destroy itself quietly somewhere. But if the High Council could inadvertently create such a creature, could not we, Division, create a copy of our own from the same data in the Matrix? Of course, the information siphoned into the Partiton in the Matrix would be absent, but we were able to recreate it from the capture device itself. It retains a copy of all data it receives from Time Lords away from Gallifrey and sends a second copy to the Matrix for filing.
‘The capture device usually does nothing with its copy and it is frequently deleted to improve its operation, but we were lucky. We were able to retrieve the information before the Keeper of the Matrix could get rid of it and through that data, we have bred our own little Valeyard here. Although it is not complete. We were unable to reproduce the same level of consciousness the High Council’s version exhibited. Ours, to put it bluntly, is not as intelligent or as self-aware. It displays some movement, the odd reaction to stimulus, but its responses are that of an animal, blind instinct. It is missing a vital element.’
‘Why not set up a lightning conductor and see if that helps?’ the Valeyard suggested.
‘I take it that is another Earth reference,’ said the old man with a sneer.
An alarm sounded on one of the consoles. The Dream Lord strode over to it and studied one of the monitors.
‘The second trace,’ he said. ‘Proprietor, there is another scan trace appearing on the monitor.’
‘Has that fault not been rectified yet?’
‘I’m not sure it is a fault, sir,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘I think there is another incarnation of the Doctor present.’
‘That would be very interesting,’ said the old man, the Proprietor. ‘But it must be a fault. Send someone to deal with it. We must concentrate upon the project at hand.’
‘How do you intend to bring it to life?’ asked the Valeyard. He deliberately paid no attention to the talk of another Doctor in case his reaction confirmed it. Best they kept on thinking the other trace was just a mistake.
No one answered, and the Valeyard finally drew his gaze away from the creature to find the Dream Lord, Duty Manager and the old man smiling at him, nothing friendly in any of the expressions. He was reminded, at just the wrong moment, of a story he read once where a poor, blundering character finds himself in a restaurant full of cannibals and learns what his friend really meant by “having him for dinner”.
‘Did you think you would come back here and find us all dead, Doctor?’ asked the old man. ‘Did you think you would find the experiment here, ready for you to steal it or worse, liberate it? I’m so sorry to disappoint you. Your departure was an inconvenience from the project, but any inconvenience can be overcome. Sometimes it is simply a matter of waiting long enough.’
He gestured to the Duty Manager, who stepped forward with preternatural speed and grabbed the Valeyard’s arms. The grip was vice-like and the few martial arts moves he tried to break free came to naught. The Dream Lord chuckled.
‘You’re back in the system, Doctor,’ he said. ‘The Collector is in place. We can start again as if nothing had happened.’
‘Only it has happened,’ snapped the old man. ‘You two are no more than animated dolls. You don’t appreciate the passage of the centuries, but I have waited here for millennia! Because of you, Doctor! Because of your sudden flash of conscience. So, I would not expect the process to be quite so… painless this time.’
The Duty Manager was dragging him towards the one empty bed amongst all those covered in cobwebs and the Valeyard could guess what he intended, and what had happened to the poor souls rotting away in the other beds.
‘You think if you connect a living creature to this system, that mind can spark the creature into sentience?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been luring humans up here, supposedly to put them to work, but so you can test them and if they’re suitable, link them up to this thing? The people like Voreline, from her town, that’s what you bred them for?’
‘Originally, they were staff,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘Their initiative and imagination were useful in adapting those of us created by the resort, so that we could be more lifelike and therefore better able to serve the Time Lords who came here. But these humans were weak. Their minds were not able to bear the connection with the creature.’
‘The system drained them,’ said the old man. ‘Their brains were simply too feeble. The system had, after all, been designed to drain the energies of a Time Lord brain.’
The Valeyard tried not to imagine all the bodies under the cobweb shrouds, possibly just euthanised after their minds were emptied or burned out. The Duty Manager, meanwhile, forced him down on the bench and strapped him in, fitting a pewter-coloured helmet over his head, a thing that reminded the Valeyard of a chameleon arch.
‘I have no idea where in your timeline you are, Doctor,’ said the old man, ‘or how much of your lives Division allows you to recall, but in one of your incarnations, an unbearably idiotic one who insisted on flapping around in a ridiculously long scarf, connected himself to the Matrix when he attempted to have himself elected Lord President. We believe it was this connection that provided the spark to awaken the creature’s consciousness. If all goes well, it should only take that small connection to be established again to complete the experiment, then you may go on your way.’
‘If all goes well,’ the Valeyard repeated, scepticism heavy in his voice.
‘I do not deny, I cannot anticipate the outcome with any certainty.’
‘Wonderful.’
The jolt as the Collector in his head linked him to the system took the Valeyard’s breath away. He heard himself cry out, but then everything seemed suddenly far away. His mind was floating, the room and the Duty Manager and the Dream Lord all dissolved into darkness.
Then, a second later, he realised he was not alone.
Solitaire had lost all hope of ever seeing the Valeyard again. They had been walking along this same tunnel for what felt like hours and still there was no sign of any end to it, any doors or stairs, and the Doctor seemed happy enough to just go on that way, despite his earlier warnings about their limited time. The more she saw of him, the more she spotted the ghost of that earlier version she’d met on New Amazonia, the arrogant, pompous one in the stupid coat. She was convinced he hadn’t a clue what he was doing. Grey and Moran had started to throw sceptical glares his way too. Solitaire wondered how long it would be before one of them challenged the Doctor.
Just as she was thinking this, the Doctor stopped suddenly, forcing the rest of them to come to an abrupt halt.
‘What now?’ Solitaire asked, then winced when she heard how whiney her question came out.
‘Ssh,’ said the Doctor, holding up his hand. ‘Listen.’
‘To what…’
‘Listen!’
Solitaire sighed but strained her ears, though the tunnel had been absolutely silent save for the constant drip of water somewhere.
‘I don’t…’
‘Listen!’ the Doctor hissed.
Then she heard it. His ears must’ve been better than hers, but then it was there, a low rumble ahead
‘What is it?’ Grey asked.
The Doctor shook his head and held up his hand to tell them to stay back, while he edged forward through the dark, still holding his screwdriver out as a torch. The blue glow seemed only to thicken the shadows.
After shuffling another few metres, Solitaire realised there was a little more light now, though still not enough to see properly by. There was a brown quality to it that emphasised the dark stains on the wall, casting everything into sepia. They had come to a room, lined on one side by giant drums, presumably for laundry. The Facility on Rohelian had had similar machines down on the basement for cleaning uniforms.
The Doctor pressed a switch on the wall and a couple of strip lights flickered on the ceiling, but they were so covered in black fur and grime that only a sickening grey light leaked out. Only one of the machines was in operation, a red light blinking weakly on its control panel while the drum trundled round. Every few turns, something clanked inside it. The round, glass doors were too dirty to see inside, however. Pipes and conduits ran up the walls and water dripped in one of the corners, but all around, there was an impression of things scuttling out of sight, too quick for the eye.
‘Glamorous,’ Solitaire muttered.
‘At least we’re getting somewhere,’ said the Doctor. ‘Though I doubt the patrons of the hotel would be too pleased to see their sheets being washed in these.’
He wandered over and opened the door of one of the washing machines. A waft of mouldy, damp air washed out and Solitaire grimaced.
‘If this whole place is supposed to be a resort,’ she said, ‘why have something as crappy as this?’
‘I don’t think this place has catered to its guests in a long while,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s been something else going on here.’
He moved on to the next washer and opened its concave glass door, but at the same time, turned to talk to her again. Before he managed to speak, however, something in the drum of the machine let out a roar. The Doctor jumped back as something dark and dank threw itself towards him. One clawed paw covered in soaked black fur swiped at the Doctor’s face, but he managed to slam the door closed. A dull clang echoed from somewhere in the distance as if replying to the creature’s call.
‘This whole place has turned into a nightmare,’ the Doctor said. ‘Perhaps the system just broke down or perhaps…’
‘Someone changed it,’ Solitaire finished. ‘But why would you want somewhere that people were terrified?’
‘To collect their fear?’ The Doctor gestured towards his head. ‘Remember, some of us are wired in.’
‘But why?’
The Doctor’s expression was grim but even in the darkness, Solitaire could make out the glint in his eyes. He looked like a hunter who’d just caught the scent of his prey.
‘I have a suspicion,’ he said, ‘but I really hope I’m wrong. Come on. They’re ignoring us for now, but I doubt that’ll last long.’
Chapter 12: 12
Notes:
CW - mention of racial slurs and previous racial abuse, foster care
Chapter Text
You could not really call it a “landscape”. There was no horizon, no sky, no ground. Only a vague haze of royal blue and a hint that there might be walls or physical limits to this place somewhere far in the distance, where the shadows were a little thicker. Streaking through this blue nothingness were lines of pure white light, some twisting round each other like electrical cables, leading off in all directions.
Although the strip of glowing material he was standing on was only a few inches wide, the Valeyard found he could keep his balance fairly easily, so long as he didn’t look down at the white lines crossing underneath or up at those passing overhead. The couple of times he’d done that, his equilibrium had failed him, and he’d had to windmill his arms to keep from falling. He hadn’t dared move since.
The figure he’d sensed when he first became conscious of these new surroundings was just behind him. He could feel them, even though he hadn’t had the courage yet to try turning around on this narrow little strip to face them. They were standing a few feet away, he thought, but hadn’t attacked him or made any move against him. All they’d have to do here was give him a light prod and he’d topple over into oblivion and yet they’d stayed where they were.
‘It’s not exactly the most welcoming of places,’ said a familiar voice behind him, ‘but you get used to it.’
The Valeyard straightened then, with his arms out on either side of him for balance, he carefully stepped around so he was facing the other person. She stood exactly where he’d sensed her, regarding him over the top of her round tinted glasses with a faint smile on her lips. She was wearing one of the brightly coloured shirts he’d seen hanging in the wardrobe earlier. Not the one she’d been wearing whenever the Doctor glimpsed her during their thirteenth incarnation, but a similar, vibrant print, under the same double-breasted jacket and waistcoat.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re the new me.’ She gave him an appraising look from head to toe that had him instinctively straightening his collar.
‘Bit gothic,’ she concluded. ‘Would a bit of colour kill you?’
‘Black goes with everything,’ said the Valeyard.
‘Yeah, especially when everything is black. Like the posh voice though. Very BBC World Service.’
‘Pleasant though it is to catch up,’ the Valeyard said, ‘there is the small matter of Division and what they’re up to in this resort.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Wish I could help you.’
‘You’re saying you can’t?’ The Valeyard raised an eyebrow. ‘Or is it that you won’t?’
‘I’m not actually here. Surely you’ve worked that out by now?’
‘Well, I never know what to believe where you’re involved.’
The Doctor regarded him with a faint smile. ‘So we’ve met, then?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘I look forward to it. But I’m just a trace left in the system in case Division ever managed to find another version of me, someone who didn’t remember or who didn’t know.’
‘Both in my case,’ said the Valeyard. ‘Just how involved were you?’
The Doctor gave a shrug and took a few steps towards him. ‘Very, at the beginning. They told us they were trying to create a more stable version of the Matrix, but to do that, they needed the experiences of living Time Lords to feed into this model of the system and give it some data to work with. We had no idea what they were doing until it was too late, and three people lost their minds after being fed into this thing. I found out they were luring the humans up here from the town, people brought here to work as servants for the Time Lords back in the day. That was when I got sick of it.’
‘You ran?’
‘I tried to find a way to destroy the project, but the Proprietor controls the system and had fully integrated his mind into the block transfer structures of the place. He turned the resort into a death trap, filled it with monsters and walls that kept changing. It took us all our strength to get back into our own universe, and I still regret not being able to take the humans with me. But the only way out was to create a temporary bridge and we had limited power. It was only open for a matter of seconds.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head, her mouth set in a tight frown. ‘The best I could do was hide the sphere containing this universe in the TARDIS. I hoped one day I’d find a way to get back in and get everyone out, but in the meantime, at least the Dark Matrix was safe.’
‘The what?’ the Valeyard asked. The name pricked at something in his collection of memories.
‘That’s what the ones in charge called it,’ said the Doctor. ‘A bit melodramatic if you ask me. I trapped it here in this universe, which would stay hidden in my TARDIS until I could find a way to fix things. I take it…’ She gave him another unimpressed look over the top of her glasses. ‘…I didn’t do too well this time either.’
‘It’s complicated,’ said the Valeyard.
‘But you have a way out? You can get these people back to the real universe? They were born here, sure, but they’re bred like cattle, so they can be fed into this machine. Even though they knew that human brains couldn’t cope with the sort of treatment they were giving them, they kept on trying. I’ve no idea how many people died to make that thing beyond the glass.’
‘Well,’ said the Valeyard, ‘let’s make sure they don’t add to the tally. How do I get out of this?’
The Doctor glanced around. ‘They’re just warming up the system, scanning your mind. They’ll find the things you don’t want to see, your biggest fears, your greatest regrets, and they’ll throw them in your face.’
‘Marvellous.’
‘The more afraid you are, the more you react to these things, the more they’re able to siphon off. It’s those memories, the ones that tear at your heart, that leave you unable to breathe, because they’re either so frightening or so powerful, those are the ones they want. It’s the emotional impact they’re interested in. That’s what fuels the Dark Matrix.’
‘And they want to try and recreate the Frankenstein moment when my former self inadvertently created his own version of Mr Hyde, to mix a few gothic references.’
‘Is that what happened?’ The Doctor smiled. ‘They hadn’t figured that out before I left. How did I manage that?’
‘I’ve no idea. Something to do with being connected to the Matrix. They’re trying to do the same here, with me, but I doubt it’s going to work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I know something they don’t.’
‘And that is?’
The Valeyard smiled. ‘I’m not the Doctor.’
He enjoyed the look of confusion of the Doctor’s face.
‘But…’ she began.
‘Like I said, it’s complicated. Is there a way out of this place? I keep getting dizzy each time I look around.’
‘This way but be careful. I’ve seen people fall from these paths and what was left of them in the real world wasn’t pretty.’
‘Wonderful,’ muttered the Valeyard, then he followed the Doctor as they picked their way slowly along the bright, white line.
Bill didn’t want to let Voreline know it, but she was starting to panic. She swallowed, trying to mentally slow her heart down a bit, but she was losing hope of finding a way out of this place at all, let alone before the doorway back to her own universe closed. They kept on following corridors, opening doors, but it’d been ages since they’d left the ballroom and although it felt like they’d been wandering for hours, she’d found the ballroom doors back beside her again three times.
That guy had no intention of letting them go, she thought with growing anger. Then a twinge of guilt squeezed its way in. She’d just let that Dream Lord bloke take the Valeyard. Had it been the Doctor, she would’ve tried to stop it, would’ve tried to step in and save him, but she’d stood back and watched him go. So a large part of her kept thinking the right thing to do was to try and find him. That was, after all, what they’d come here for. So halfway through their endless wandering, Bill decided that rather than not being able to find the way to the exit, they weren’t able to find the way to the Valeyard instead.
She turned a corner and found another bland hotel passageway with a set of double doors at the end. The bloody ballroom again. Only, this time, one of the doors was slightly ajar. It hadn’t been like that the last time they passed it, had it?
She glanced at Voreline, who looked terrified and was wringing the apron of her uniform, then the two of them started towards the doors.
The plaque on the wall this time read “Dining Room”, although the area was, in every way, identical to the small foyer outside the ballroom.
‘That’s new,’ Bill remarked.
‘I’ve never been there,’ said Voreline. ‘Why do they have a dining room when there are no guests?’
‘Why do they have any of this when there aren’t any guests?’
Since there was no other way forward, Bill pushed the doors open and stepped inside. Like the ballroom, there was a sudden silence in the air, as if dozens of people had just frozen and gone quiet as she entered. Bill even thought she heard the chink of cutlery being laid down on a plate. The room, though, was completely still. Rows of tables with cream-coloured cloths sat laid out as if for a meal, fabric napkins folded into swans on each plate. Despite the banal appearance of the room, Bill felt her nerves prickle.
It reminded her a little too much of a hotel she’d stayed at on a coach trip arranged by one of her foster homes, when she and a dozen other kids were sent off to Llandudno for a week during the Easter holidays. It had been cold and damp and the hotel was full of bus parties of old people, who clustered around tables like these during the set mealtimes. Bill remembered, with a shudder, how she’d glanced over and watched as one old man removed his teeth so he could suck on his soup spoon. How an old lady had squinted at her from across the dining hall and then declared loudly that they must all be “borstal kids”.
‘Look,’ she’d said. ‘There’s even one of those…’ and she’d used one of the numerous racial slurs Bill heard throughout her life.
‘There’s a door over there,’ said Voreline. The sound of the other woman’s voice made Bill jump and she shut away the memory. It was just a dining room, she told herself. Though as they weaved their way past the tables, she kept expecting to glance round and find a pensioner glaring at her.
The door Voreline had spotted was on the far side, right in the corner, half hidden by a large velvet drape that had been swept off to one side and tied with a rope as thick as her arm. The soft carpet muffled their footsteps so that the place was deathly quiet as they passed through it, and Bill realised she wanted to speak and fill the silence but, at the same time, she was afraid to.
Then behind her came the unmistakable sound of cutlery being set down on a ceramic plate. Bill froze. Beside her, she sensed Voreline turning absolutely still at the same time. The other woman had heard it too.
She couldn’t bring herself to turn around. Stupid, she told herself. Whatever it was, she needed to deal with it. But she couldn’t shake off that childhood fear, the image of the old people huddled together, murmuring amongst themselves, throwing foul looks and even fouler words her way.
‘Borstal kids,’ she heard the old woman say in her mind. ‘Best make sure you don’t leave anything valuable in your rooms. Them lot’ll be in it like magpies. Ought to just lock ‘em up and leave ‘em there.’
The sound came again, quieter this time, as if the person had taken more care to replace their knife or fork after the meal. Bill could almost hear the figure behind her breathing, could hear the subtle swish of clothing as they moved. Her brain threw up the next bit of the memory. That moment when, during breakfast in that communal dining room, as she’d pulled apart the first croissant she’d ever seen and wondered what you were supposed to do with it, one of the old people had stomped in, stick battering against the floor, the sound only slightly muffled by the carpet. Then the old woman pointed the silver, hospital-issue cane at the table where Bill and the other kids were sitting.
‘One of them,’ she had screeched. ‘One of that lot! Little hooligans!’
She’d lost her brooch and had decided that one of the “borstal kids” had taken it.
‘Probably that Black one,’ the old woman snarled. ‘Maybe stealing’s normal back in Africa, but it ain’t here!’
Bill remembered trying to make herself so small she’d be invisible, while the assistant from the home who’d accompanied them tried to calm everything down. In the end, it turned out the woman had left the brooch on her coat, which she’d hung up in the wardrobe in her room. Her husband gave watery apologies, but the old woman never did, and she continued to glower at Bill at the next meal. As if somehow, Bill had stolen the brooch but had managed to replace it without being caught. It wasn’t even a pretty brooch. It was an ugly thing made from a baby deer’s foot. It grossed Bill out.
For the rest of the holiday, she felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Was that old woman behind her now? Did the hotel know about it? Would it use that memory to taunt her?
‘That’s kind of rude, you know,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Just standing there. I mean, I’m not one to easily take offence, but…’
The sound of it sent a rush of relief through Bill’s body, like someone had opened a floodgate. She spun around and saw the Doctor standing at one of the tables, playing with the napkin swan.
She was about to run up to him but then stopped short.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Are you real?’
‘How am I supposed to prove that?’ asked the Doctor. ‘I could say I was real, but how would you know I wasn’t just saying that to convince you that I’m real?’
Bill approached him tentatively then reached out and prodded his arm. She felt the velvet of his coat and the warmth of his body beneath. Then she grabbed him and hugged him.
‘You all right?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Fine,’ Bill answered through gritted teeth. ‘Just sick of this place.’
‘Moran!’ shouted Voreline suddenly. ‘Grey!’
Bill prised herself away from the Doctor and looked over her shoulder. Voreline hurried through the tables and ran straight to Grey, who gathered her up in an embrace. Moran put his arm around both of them, and they stood for a long time, like a single organism.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ Voreline said, through tears.
‘You think I’d let you go so easily?’ said Grey with a laugh, though a tear streaked his cheek too.
‘At least someone’s happy,’ Bill remarked.
‘That’s good, then,’ said Solitaire bitterly, stepping into the dining room. She glowered at Bill, at the Doctor, at Voreline, though her expression did soften a little when she saw the three of them hugging.
‘We found the Valeyard,’ Bill said, and she saw Solitaire’s eyes light up at once.
‘Where? Where is he?’
‘Yeah, well…’ Bill sighed. ‘That man, the Dream Lord, whatever you called him… He turned up and, well, the Valeyard said he’d go with him without a fuss if he let me, Voreline and all the people in the town leave this universe. I wanted to look for him, but this place… it just keeps changing. Five minutes in, and I’ve no idea where we are.’
The Doctor nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘Well, he had one good idea at least,’ he said. ‘Voreline, I think you should take these two and head back to your town if you can find the way. Get everyone rounded up and bring them to the maze, to the place where you first ran into us.’
‘But the corridors…’ Voreline said.
‘Several of you are connected to the Hotel,’ said the Doctor, raising his voice slightly, ‘and so the Hotel is able to hear me. Your agent promised to let these people go, so stop messing about. Let them out of here. Otherwise, you’ll have me to deal with.’
A few seconds passed and Bill saw the look of hope fading from Voreline and the two men’s faces, but then behind them came the sound of a door opening. They all turned to find the set of double doors Bill had used to enter the dining room were now ajar again, and instead of the bland hotel corridor beyond them, she could see a patch of gravel and the beginning of a set of stairs, which disappeared into a thick, white mist.
‘Well, at least you keep your word,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’ll work well for you when we finally meet. You three, on you go. Remember, everyone to the maze.’
Moran nodded, then he, Grey and Voreline made for the doors. Before she stepped through, Voreline paused on the threshold and smiled back at them.
‘Thank you,’ she said, then disappeared after the others. The doors swung shut and closed with a dull thud.
‘So we’re not getting out so easily,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘We’re not getting out anyway,’ Solitaire said. ‘At least, I’m not. You two can go back to the TARDIS if you want, but I’ve got to find the Valeyard.’
‘We’ll find him more quickly, and it’ll be a lot less dangerous with three of us,’ said the Doctor. He fixed his gaze on the door in the far corner. ‘I’m a bit fed up of this place myself, and I only just got here. Time to find out who’s behind the curtain, I think.’
He strode off towards the door. Solitaire and Bill exchanged glances, Solitaire’s expression softening slightly, losing a bit of that defensiveness, then the two of them went after the Doctor.
Chapter 13: 13
Chapter Text
At first, there was a bright light, but when it subsided, the Valeyard could see that he and the version of the Doctor he’d once known as Ruth Clayton were now on a beach. There was no sign of the sea. The tide had to be miles away, leaving flat, white sand that gleamed like a mirror beneath a film of moisture. Occasional stones and shells broke the perfect surface, as did fragments of stone columns and parts of fallen archways.
Bright red coral grew around the broken white marble and lay in broken chunks across the sand, looking a bit too much like the capillaries around a bone for the Valeyard’s liking. Despite there being nothing but haze on the horizon in all directions, he could hear the ocean somewhere in the distance, sighing as the waves rolled in.
He turned a full circle, taking in the landscape, and when he got back to where he’d started, he flinched in fright. Sticking out of the sand a few miles away was an enormous white marble face. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, but now it was staring at him with blank eyes and a gaping mouth. What made it all the more disturbing was that it kept changing, morphing from one face to another, and the Valeyard recognised most of them. He saw the Doctor’s various selves blend into one another, interspersed with ones that seemed vaguely familiar but otherwise unknown to him.
‘Creepy, isn’t it?’ asked the Doctor. She gave the statue a critical frown over the top of her glasses. ‘Is that supposed to be me? I mean, us?’
The Valeyard shrugged. ‘I don’t know much about art…’
‘But I know what I don’t like,’ the Doctor finished with a shudder.
‘So,’ the Valeyard began, ‘this is, I take it, some sort of pirated copy of the Matrix on Gallifrey?’
‘More or less. They tried to recreate the same operating systems and environment, but this version only contains a snapshot of their memories from the time that it was copied, enhanced a little by my input and that of the other members of the team and the humans they enslaved.’
‘Other members of the team?’
‘There were three of us initially assigned to this. The problem was that this system doesn’t have an APC net to connect it constantly to all the Time Lords wherever they happened to be, and they weren’t able to recreate one that would work with the limited power sources available in this pocket universe. Without the APC net to form that link between the brain and the computer, they needed the Collectors, and they don’t work well. Two of the team were conscripted to be implanted. One died outright, didn’t even try to regenerate. The other was left unable to speak or walk. At first, they thought it was the link itself that caused the issues but then they had successes. Me, for instance. And they realised it was the Dark Matrix. As soon as those people tried to connect to the system, it attacked them, tried to drive them insane with fear so it could leech off their emotions. Of course, then, the Proprietor realised that could work in his favour, make the creature stronger, so he brought in more humans and fed them to the machine.’
‘But does this work the same way as the Matrix?’ the Valeyard asked. ‘In terms of in here?’
‘If you mean “is it a load of unbridled chaos?” then yes, it does.’
‘Marvellous.’
The Valeyard wandered forward, headed roughly in the direction of the ever-changing face. Although the sand looked water-logged, it didn’t give under his feet, so that it was more like walking on glass.
‘You mentioned the power source,’ he began, but before the Doctor could answer, there was a hollow rattle somewhere behind them. The Valeyard turned and surveyed the jumble of ruins and coral. Nothing seemed to have stirred. Nothing was moving now, but it had been a very distinct clatter of something that sounded eerily like old bones.
Then a flash of red in the corner of his eye made him turn again and standing a few metres from them… no, standing was not the right word. That implied something with feet or legs. This was more hovering a few metres from them. A few fragments of that red coral had risen up and come together to create a shape, and though the thin, scarlet branches only formed a vague outline, it was clearly recognisable as a Time Lord’s formal robe and collar. Even though the face was only an empty space, with the beach visible behind, the Valeyard had the impression the thing was watching them.
‘It’s sensed us,’ said the Doctor.
‘Can it attack us?’
‘It’s in the System, the most powerful entity in here. Even if it doesn’t have proper sentience, it has a sort of instinct, and that instinct always seems to be to attack.’
‘But what can it…’
Again, the Valeyard was interrupted by the rattling sound behind him. Although he was loath to take his eyes off the coral creature, he turned his head to follow the sound. There were a couple of columns that had tumbled on top of each other, coral swathed around them, but as he watched, part of the coral broke away and skittered across the sand as if blown by a strong gust of wind, even though the air was completely still. It came to rest by another collection of coral, this one forming a shape that suggested a crab or a similar creature, with two branches raised above its head like claws.
More rattles from more directions, then the Valeyard and Doctor were surrounded by the coral crabs, which just appeared as if from nowhere. The Valeyard found himself edging closer to the Doctor, the two of them back-to-back as the creatures began to move on their stiff, coral legs. They came in brief, jerky bursts of movement, coming a few centimetres nearer then abruptly stopping again.
‘They’re toying with us,’ the Valeyard said under his breath.
‘Or herding us towards something,’ suggested the Doctor. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a blaster right now.’
‘Oh, you’ve changed,’ the Valeyard muttered with a smile. He was about to suggest she thought really hard and conjured one up when the crab creatures approached again, taking it in turns to move. The shape of the Time Lord, meanwhile, remained where it was, still watching them.
There was only one spot the creatures avoided, one safe path through them, and so it was obvious where they, or rather the instinct controlling them, wanted the Valeyard to go. With a sigh, he tapped the Doctor’s arm and started off towards the giant face.
At first, the crabs just watched them, pivoting and clacking their coral claws as the two figures picked their way carefully through the gap. Once he was free of the circle, the Valeyard quickened his pace and heard the crabs behind him clattering about. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that they’d closed ranks and were now making short, skittering advances across the sand.
‘I’m not sure if this is something you’ve become accustomed to yet,’ he said, ‘but I really think we ought to run!’
The Doctor didn’t give any argument. They dashed across the sand, the pack of coral creatures now hurtling after them with surprising speed. The Valeyard looked back briefly and was just in time to see one rush forward and smash into one of the broken columns, its coral scattering, shattered, across the beach.
Ahead, the face grew nearer, and its true size came became clearer. The bottom lip was at least ten metres above the ground, with a cluster of old ruins and coral below that they’d have to climb if they were to reach it. It didn’t look promising, but there were more coral crabs coming at them from other directions in - the Valeyard hated the pun - a pincer movement, forcing them towards the face.
When he reached the first bits of rubble, he threw himself at it and began to climb, trying hard to avoid the parts adorned with coral, though the stuff was everywhere. Once he was a couple of metres up, though, he paused and looked down. The crabs flung themselves as the broken columns and smashed into pieces, the sound like breaking china, until finally they were all gone.
The beach became suddenly very quiet. The coral Time Lord hadn’t moved and was still regarding them silently.
The Valeyard took a moment to catch his breath, his hands already raw from grabbing hold of the sea-roughened stone. Beside him, despite the fact she wasn’t real and was part of this environment, the Doctor’s forehead glistened with sweat.
‘What now?’ she asked.
‘You’re the local, you tell me.’
He looked upwards, craning to try and see the top of the face, but all he could see was a pair of large nostrils looming over them like train tunnels.
‘I am not going up there,’ said the Doctor, following his gaze.
‘I don’t see how we could. Through the mouth looks the most obvious way, though I find that just as unappealing.’
‘Perhaps if we waited it out…’ the Doctor began but broke off with a cry of disgust. Part of the coral that had been wrapped around the stones at her feet had snaked around her ankle. She kicked out, and the coral fractured, but another strand crept towards her from another stone higher up.
The Valeyard pulled his foot away just in time to avoid the same fate, but then felt something sharp as broken glass around his wrist. He let out a cry and found the coral wrapping itself around his arm. Where it met the bare skin below his cuff, the smaller branches had cut fine lines across his flesh and were digging in deeper. He tried to prise it away but couldn’t get hold of it without tearing his hand to shreds. Then he saw another branch of coral headed towards him, aiming for his throat.
The coral around his wrist shattered and the next minute, someone grabbed his hand. The Valeyard blinked and saw the Doctor standing over him on a ledge formed by the ruins, a rock in her hand still dusted with smashed coral.
‘You want to stay there and die? Come on!’
The Valeyard didn’t argue. He let her haul him up onto the ledge, and then they both began to scale the face’s chin, aiming for the corners of the mouth where they could reach the opening without a lip getting in the way. There was no coral on the face itself so once they were up there, they should, in theory, be safe.
The Valeyard felt the coral tugging at his trouser legs but kicked it away and didn’t pause to look back. He dragged himself up onto the lip itself and lay for a moment, breathless, his clothes torn, while the Doctor stood nearby, annoyingly immaculate.
He let out a groan and slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows.
‘I hate the bloody Matrix,’ he said.
The door behind the curtain opened onto a long, narrow room, about the width of a train carriage. It was lined on three sides with deep shelves and stacked full of suitcases, hat boxes, valises and other luggage. Solitaire stood by the Doctor’s side for a moment as the three of them, the Doctor, her and Bill, surveyed the place. Steamer trunks lay in a neat row along the floor, looking uncomfortably like the coffins used to store freshly engineered bodies back at the Facility. There was no other way out.
‘Well, this is something of an anti-climax,’ said the Doctor, then he turned to squeeze past Bill and Solitaire on his way back to the door, which had swung shut behind them. He pulled the handle, but the door stayed firmly in its frame. The Doctor gave it a few more vigorous tugs, but it still didn’t budge.
‘They’ve herded us in here,’ Solitaire hissed, thinking out loud. ‘They’re…’
‘They want something from us,’ said the Doctor, ‘but you said when the Dream Lord appeared before, he was only interested in the Valeyard?’
‘Yeah,’ Bill replied. ‘It was like he couldn’t care less what me and Voreline did. Oh, and he called him “Doctor”.’
‘Well, we don’t know what the Valeyard’s been telling people.’
‘Whatever’s going on here, it’s not his fault,’ Solitaire said, struggling to keep her voice calm. The room didn’t help her nerves. She hadn’t been keen on confined spaces, ever since she’d had to crawl beneath the wing of a Weeping Angel. Now the shelves and the suitcases seemed to be creeping in closer, narrowing the room even more, and in a place like this, that was possible, wasn’t it? Perhaps it would be like that film the Valeyard insisted she watched with the space knights and the princess. Perhaps the walls would just keep moving inwards until they were crushed.
‘Solitaire.’
She realised she’d closed her eyes and was holding her breath, but the Doctor’s voice brought her out of it. She found him and Bill regarding her with concern.
‘I just don’t like this place,’ she said, annoyed at having to explain herself and even more annoyed at having shown any weakness in front of them. ‘It’s too small.’
‘I’m not suggesting the Valeyard’s behind this,’ the Doctor went on. ‘I’m trying to work out what the people who are behind it want, and they seem to be particularly interested in him. But what for? And what’s it got to do with these Collector things? I feel like it’s right in front of me and I’m just not seeing it.’
‘Irritating, that feeling, isn’t it, Doctor?’ asked the Dream Lord.
Solitaire held back the gasp of fright that nearly escaped. The little man in his purple blazer had just appeared at the far end of the room with nothing at all to herald his arrival.
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor, ‘we could always skip all the boring, plodding stuff where I try to work out what your nefarious plan is, and you just tell me what it is.’
‘Better yet, Doctor,’ said the Dream Lord with a smile, which turned quickly into a scowl. ‘You can be part of it.’
On either side of the Dream Lord, the steamer trunks on the floor popped open. Their lids fell backwards, and figures unfolded from inside them. They each wore a uniform of the same purple fabric as the Dream Lord’s blazer, short jackets that only reached their hips and small, round hats on their heads at jaunty angles, all of it trimmed in gold. Solitaire thought she’d seen similar uniforms in some of the movies. Were they porters or lobby attendants, that sort of thing? The most disturbing thing about them, though, was that none of them had faces. Where there should have been one, there was only a mass of blue-black shadow.
‘If you’re planning a remake of Grand Budapest Hotel, I’m afraid I’ll have to say no,’ said the Doctor. ‘The original’s a classic. That bit with the…’
‘The Proprietor believed there was an error in our sensors,’ said the Dream Lord, unimpressed. ‘Perhaps this will convince him I was right. Take him.’
‘Don’t you bloody dare,’ warned Bill, aiming a punch at the little man, but in the next instant, he was gone, and Bill’s inertia carried her forward into a shelf full of neon sports bags. The figures without faces, however, were still there and had started to move towards the Doctor.
‘You said you wouldn’t harm the humans,’ the Doctor called out, and the porters stopped. ‘You made a deal with the Valeyard. If he came quietly, the humans could go free. I offer that same deal.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Bill said.
The Doctor ignored her and stepped towards the porters, who seemed to be sizing him up now.
‘Do we walk or do you have one of those brass trolley things. I’ve always wanted a go on one of those.’
Two porters on either side of him stepped forward and grabbed an arm each. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, just as Bill moved towards them, ready to fight. The look he gave her must have meant something, Solitaire thought, because Bill halted.
‘Walking it is, then,’ he said.
‘But…’ Bill shouted, then just as quickly as the Dream Lord had vanished, the Doctor and all the porters also disappeared.
Bill let out a growl and kicked one of the steamer trunks. ‘Why does he always do this? Why does he always have to try and…’
‘Be the big hero,’ Solitaire finished. ‘I know. I just wish we could follow them. Wherever they’re taking the Doctor, you can bet it’s the same place as they’ve taken the Valeyard.’
‘Yeah, not that keen to see what happens when those two get together in the same place again,’ said Bill. ‘Not that that’s gonna be a problem. There’s no way out of here.’
She pulled the door’s handle, but it remained firmly closed.
‘So much for letting us go,’ Solitaire muttered, though that brought the even worse idea that if they were keeping them in this room, what were they keeping them for?
Chapter 14: 14
Chapter Text
The Valeyard tried hard not to think of the tunnel as being the throat of the giant statue whose face they’d just climbed. He doubly tried not to think of it as the Doctor’s throat, especially not with an incarnation walking alongside him, albeit just a digital echo of one. He didn’t have to bother for long, though, as after a few steps, a doorway appeared ahead, picked out by a flickering orange light shining through from the other side. The way the light licked at the rocks and the wooden frame, it came from an open fire or candles. He glanced over at the Doctor, but it was too dark to make out her expression. The candlelight made the lenses of her glasses into amber circles that hid her eyes and gave her a slightly demonic appearance that the Valeyard could really have done without under the circumstances.
He knew the aches he felt were all illusion, as were the tears in his clothes and the cuts in his skin, but knowing they weren’t real didn’t make them go away, and so after a while, he paused just to let his legs rest for a second.
There had been no sign of any more murderous coral or of the creature. In fact, as soon as he and the Doctor stopped walking, the tunnel was deathly silent. Not even a drip of water somewhere to give it atmosphere. It was more like being in a mined-out asteroid. The air was warm and heavy, making the darkness feel like it was pushing in all around them.
‘If this is a version of the Matrix,’ he asked, considering the doorway ahead. ‘Even a small one, then where is it getting its power? This whole resort, come to think of it. Where’s its generators? How is it sustaining itself?’
‘It was designed to draw power from the same mechanisms that keep the universe encased in its bubble,’ said the Doctor.
‘Yes, I know these sorts of sphere were made that way, but this can’t possibly be using the same system. It’d be eating up a tremendous amount of power.’
‘It is,’ said the Doctor, raising an eyebrow. ‘Why do you think there’s nothing in this universe besides the hotel? This place once held a whole solar system, moons and planets each with a different environment to suit the user’s tastes. Now it’s one grubby hotel in the middle of nowhere.’
The Valeyard instinctively tried to feel the motion of the planet and the sense of Time passing through this part of the universe, then remembered that he wasn’t in the real world at that moment, when all he could feel was the mathematical framework of the Matrix. It reminded him, though, that once he was able to control that code at will and could rewrite the world around him with a single thought. He was out of practice.
‘But surely if they keep running this system, then, they’re risking a complete collapse?’ he asked.
‘The Proprietor’s been so obsessed with his own death and finishing the project, I don’t think he’s even noticed how far into the red the power levels really are. But there can’t be more than a few days’ worth of life in this place.’
‘Days? And you mention this now?’
‘I thought you were too busy trying to stay alive earlier. Telling you you might be dead in a week would’ve ruined your motivation.’
‘You underestimate my survival instinct, but if you’re right, this place could implode at any moment.’
‘Best not hang about, then,’ said the Doctor wryly.
With a sigh, the Valeyard braced himself for more pain then started towards the doorway. He reached it just before the Doctor and so stepped through first and instantly felt the change in the floor. Hard-packed earth and stone turned to old, grey boards that creaked beneath his weight.
Before him stretched a long corridor, the walls wood panelled but covered in scraps of faded, bottle green wallpaper that clung on like flakes of dead skin. Candles burned in brass holders along the wall, behind cracked glass globes. Still there was no sound besides the Doctor’s footsteps on the boards behind him.
Once he’d surveyed the new environment, the Valeyard stepped forward cautiously, trying to sense any changes in the code around him that might suggest another attack was looming. So far, at least, everything felt calm. He followed the corridor to its end, where it turned a right angle into another, identical stretch, only this one had a couple of open doorways further down.
The first of these led to an empty room in the same state of disrepair as the corridor. Its walls were the same dull wood with dying wallpaper and its floors were bare boards, the only furniture a single bent wood chair lying on its side over by a window that looked out onto absolute darkness.
‘I need somewhere where I can concentrate,’ the Valeyard said. ‘The only way I’m going to get out of here is if I can connect to the infrastructure of the Matrix, or what’s passing for it here. Learn to control it again.’
‘Again?’ asked the Doctor.
‘I need you to keep an eye out for any more tricks from our friend in room 12A,’ the Valeyard said. He couldn’t bring himself to think of it as “the Valeyard” or even “the other Valeyard”. Giving it a name made it real, and he still hadn’t processed what the Proprietor had said. ‘Give me some time to try and establish a link. Otherwise, we’ll just be running around in here until the universe collapses, and I for one don’t relish the idea of being the singularity of a super-massive black hole.’
‘Shut up and go away, in other words,’ said the Doctor.
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
The Valeyard flashed her a smile then sat cross-legged in the centre of the floor and closed his eyes. He heard and felt the boards groaning as the Doctor crossed to the door and went back out into the hall, but then he tried to blot all that out and focused on the structure of the world around him, not its apparent substance.
After a few minutes of trying to find his way into the control subroutines without alerting the Proprietor or anyone monitoring the system that he was doing so, he gave up with a sigh of disgust. The system was a mess, bodged from spare parts from all over Gallifrey and perhaps all over the universe. Its programming was completely different to the Matrix he was familiar with. He could see what they were trying to do, how the setup mimicked the workings of the actual Matrix, but it had to go to a lot of trouble and use a lot of code just to get that effect.
He half-expected the Doctor to be back in the room with him when he opened his eyes but found he was alone. The candles flickered. The floorboards grumbled a little as he got to his feet, but otherwise it was silent.
‘Doctor?’ he tried, but somehow he knew she wasn’t there.
Perhaps he was more in tune with this environment. Whatever the reason, he knew he was on his own, even before he went out into the corridor and looked all around, finding it empty in both directions. He decided to carry on down the hallway rather than going back the way he’d come initially, though any direction would’ve been as good a guess as the next. On his way, he passed another couple of doorways, but these all led to empty, abandoned rooms like the one he’d just been in.
‘Doctor!’
A board creaked at the far end of the hall, right where the candlelight failed to pierce the shadows. One of the flames flickered and made the darkness tremble, and the Valeyard was able to make out a shape, darker than everything else around it, as if someone had cut a hole in the fabric of space. A hole shaped like a Time Lord’s robes and collar.
Like its twin shaped from coral, this figure didn’t move, but the Valeyard could feel it watching and could almost sense its smile, an animal that’s got its hapless prey right where it wants it.
Had he sent the Doctor out to her death? No, she wasn’t really here. She couldn’t die, only that memory of her trapped in this system would be gone. The real Doctor would be off out in the real universe somewhere. He, on the other hand, was stuck.
There was no option but to go back the way he’d come, but that meant taking his eyes off the creature. He shuffled along as far as he could, feeling his way along the wall, but soon had to turn and get his bearings.
A loud hiss erupted behind him. The Valeyard looked back and, where the creature had been standing, now there was sand cascading into the corridor. Cracks formed in the ceiling and slivers of bright sunlight tumbled down, but the sand came with them, forming dunes against the wooden walls, getting closer. The Valeyard turned and ran as, with a roar, the last of the ceiling gave way and the sand poured in unhindered.
The floor and walls shook, and more spears of sunlight appeared ahead, threatening another sandfall to block his path. Then the ceiling splintered with a crack like gunfire. The sand cast up clouds of dust as it fell, and now there was nowhere to go. The corridor filled rapidly. The Valeyard looked around, hearts starting to race, as the sand piled in around him.
Then it hit him. If there was sunlight poking through, then perhaps there was fresh air up there. He grabbed the remains of one of the boards that formed the wall and managed to drag his foot up out of the sand. Stepping onto another broken board, he slowly climbed, spitting out dust every few seconds, his eyes watering.
He took hold of one of the few scraps of ceiling that was still intact and hauled himself up, and a second later, he was breathing easily. Sand continued to slip by him and down into the corridor, but his head and shoulders were above ground now and, with another push, he was able to crawl out and onto one of the dunes, where he collapsed and coughed, feeling like he’d swallowed half the Sahara.
The desert stretched for as far as he could see in all directions, turning hazy at the horizon, where it met a cloudless purple sky. He didn’t recognise the planet it was modelled on, if it wasn’t just a randomly generated landscape. A small, scorpion-like creature with a lurid pink exoskeleton scuttled over to him and reared its tail and vicious-looking sting. The Valeyard grabbed a rock and threw it as a warning shot. The creature turned and hurried away, disappearing behind a bigger rock.
He felt suddenly exhausted, and all his aches and pains returned with a vengeance, ignoring his reminders that they weren’t real, and his physical body had done nothing more stressful in the last few hours than lie on a bed. Equally, he was unable to convince himself that the two suns overhead were fake, and so the heat beat down against him, turning his skin sticky with sweat. He took off his coat and slung it over his shoulder, but that only went a little way towards cooling him down. He would have to find shelter soon if he didn’t want to collapse of heat stroke.
He chose a direction at random and started off, struggling to keep an even pace on the too-soft ground. All the time, he waited for the next assault, and thought to himself how grateful he was that he wasn’t the Doctor, and that his entry into the System hadn’t brought about the creature’s self-awakening, because if this was what it could do on just base instinct, he hated to think what it might accomplish with a bit of pre-meditation.
The Doctor found himself in a large, dark room that hummed with power, presumably from the bank of instruments glowing ominously at the far end. The blinking lights reflected against a glass wall, on the other side of which was a cragged, rocky cavern full of shadows. An old man sat at the control panels, long white hair flowing down his back, while a slick fellow in a suit stood beside him. The Dream Lord was still there, as were two of the faceless bellhops, who kept a tight grip on the Doctor’s arms.
‘I have isolated the rogue element,’ said the figure in the suit, his back still to the Doctor. ‘It should cause no further disruption.’
‘Where did it come from?’ demanded the old man in a voice like old skin.
‘Unknown, Proprietor.’ He stepped back from the controls and the air where he’d just been shimmered. The image of a woman appeared, flickering and transparent as if the projector generating it was on its last legs. She wore a double-breasted coat and a brightly coloured blouse. Quite a natty outfit, the Doctor thought, but before he could get a really good look at her, the image disappeared.
The old man, the Proprietor, let out a deep sigh. ‘I should have known we would not be done with her. Has the trace been deleted?’
‘Yes, Proprietor.’
‘Perhaps that is why the activation has not taken place yet,’ muttered the Proprietor.
‘Sir,’ said the Dream Lord, after clearing his throat.
The old man and the one in the suit turned to face them.
‘What is this?’ the Proprietor demanded.
‘I informed you of the second trace within the system,’ said the Dream Lord, oozing smugness from every pore. He turned and smiled at the Doctor.
The Proprietor stood up, something that obviously took a lot of effort. He glowered at the Doctor, a flash of anger bringing some life to his grey eyes.
‘Who is this person?’
‘The Doctor,’ said the Dream Lord. ‘The second one.’
‘Twelfth, actually,’ the Doctor corrected him, but he didn’t think anyone was listening.
He gestured to the bellhops, who released the Doctor then promptly vanished. The Doctor straightened his frock coat then took a few steps forward, having a proper look at the room. Now he spotted the benches against the wall to his left, some covered in what he first thought were shrouds, but on reflection decided were cobwebs. He could make out the shapes of bodies underneath, none of them moving. The only one clear of the webs was the one nearest the glass wall and lying on that was a man in a black suit with some kind of contraption on his head. Although he couldn’t see the man’s face, the Doctor guessed it was the Valeyard. The second trace, he thought.
‘Doctor,’ said the Proprietor. ‘I cannot say as I understand your logic in this. Surely you’re risking a great disruption in Time by coming here in concert with your other self?’
‘Believe me,’ said the Doctor, ‘He’s acting purely on his own agenda.’
‘Simply coincidence that the two of you arrive here at once?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ the Doctor replied.
He approached the controls, watching the man with the slicked back hair in case he tried to step forward and block the way, but he was expressionless, watching the Doctor’s movements with no more personality than a CCTV camera. Waiting for instructions from the old fella, the Doctor decided. He was able to get a proper look at the figure on the bed as he wandered past and confirmed that it was the Valeyard, then he took a moment to study the control panels.
‘Funny sort of setup you’ve got here,’ he remarked. ‘This looks like a databank.’
‘It is,’ said the Proprietor. ‘It has been my life’s work.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘A fairly long life, by the looks of it. This bit here… it looks like a sort of mash-up of a cerebral interface. You’re linking people up to this computer of yours. Unsuccessfully, judging by the number of corpses littering the place. You really should sack your housekeeping manager.’ He threw the last comment at the Dream Lord.
‘They were weak,’ said the Proprietor. ‘Their minds could not handle being connected to such a powerful system.’
‘Hence why you need Mr Hyde there,’ said the Doctor with a nod towards the Valeyard. ‘What is it for? What’s the nefarious plot? Because there’s always a nefarious plot, but this place screams it. Secret layer, creepy cave beyond the wall… what is in there, by the way?’
He went over and tapped the glass wall, then cupped his hand over his eyes to cut out the reflection. All he could see was a rocky tunnel stretching back into infinity, thick with shadows. Only then, something moved. A piece of the shadow broke away and headed towards him. At first it was only an amorphous shape but as it approached, it became more coherent and took on the outline of a Time Lord in robes and collar.
‘Hello, what are you then?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Sir,’ interjected the Dream Lord, ‘if I might be so bold… Since there has been little success so far with one incarnation of the Doctor, perhaps the addition of another…’
‘What are you keeping in there?’ the Doctor demanded. ‘Come on, Mr Mad Scientist, this is where you tell me your plan.’
‘No, Doctor,’ said the Proprietor. ‘This is where you become part of our plan. Connect him.’
Before he could turn around fully, the Doctor found the slick man and the Dream Lord on either side of him. Their grip was surprisingly strong. He struggled but only succeeded in hurting his arms.
Then the Dream Lord swept the cobweb sheet away from one of the benches and brushed the old bones beneath onto the floor. They fell with a hollow clatter, and the Doctor felt his ire rising even more. Those were somebody’s remains, not something to be tossed aside like brushing breadcrumbs off a kitchen table.
He had little time to worry about it, though, before the Dream Lord and his friend forced him down onto the bench. The strapped him down then withdrew to fiddle with the equipment on the wall above his head.
The Doctor risked a glance to his side. The Valeyard was either unconscious or dead. They’d put some kind of helmet on him, connected by coiling wires to the wall. Then the Dream Lord forced the Doctor to face forwards so they could attach an identical helmet to him.
‘Whatever you’re doing, you’re making a big mistake,’ he called out, but then his head was a ball of burning pain. His vision turned white and all he knew was how much it hurt. Then finally the pain subsided, and everything turned black. The last thing the Doctor thought was, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chapter 15: 15
Chapter Text
Solitaire kicked the door and let out a groan of disgust. She’d tried every version of lock-picking her neural patch had taught her, and none of them worked on the luggage room’s door. Every time she heard the tumblers click, it was as if the structure of the lock rearranged itself. A couple of times, she’d found the bent piece of wire she’d been using now stuck in the metal of the lock itself, as if it had been pushed through when the material was still molten.
‘This is useless,’ she said. ‘What do they want with us? Why keep us here?’
The other girl, Bill, had been going with the theory that if she shifted enough suitcases around, she’d find a door hidden behind them, even though she must’ve moved every bag in the room a dozen times now and all they’d found was grey breeze block. Neither of them had spoken in a while, so on hearing Solitaire’s voice, Bill paused and sighed.
‘It’s what’s going on out there that worries me,’ she said. ‘If they want the Valeyard and the Doctor for something, it can’t be good. One of them’s bad enough, but the two of them? It’s like they’re not bothered what happens to us. We’re just collateral damage.’
They lapsed back into silence, but only for a second or so. Then, right at the back of the room, something started rattling. At first it was just a high-pitched tinkling like the crystals of a chandelier clicking together, but very soon, other noises joined in, the thud of the leather steamer trunks juddering on the floor, the clink of locks and metal fixtures on the suitcases hitting the shelves and beneath it all, a low, growling rumble, all of it on a steady crescendo until Solitaire had to press her fingers against her ears to blot some of it out.
The room shook. A couple of lighter cases dropped from the shelves and split open. Then the walls and door began to glitch, becoming like the reflection in a broken mirror for a moment before resolving themselves. Each time it happened, Solitaire thought the “broken” version of the room was getting smaller, its back wall appearing nearer to Bill, and on an instinct, she grabbed the other woman’s hand and dragged her towards the door.
The room gave one last shudder then the earthquake or whatever it was stopped. The walls glitched one final time then settled. Only, when they regained their solidity, the back wall was at about two metres closer, across what had been the middle of the room seconds before.
‘Maybe they are going to do that Star Battles thing,’ Solitaire said under her breath.
‘You mean Star Wars? They better not,’ Bill replied.
They stood for a while, watching the new wall in case it moved, but it looked just like an ordinary wall, apart from where, on one side, it had split one of the steamer trunks right down the middle.
Behind them, something clicked. Both women jumped in fright and turned, but it was only the door opening. Maybe it had been unlocked by the vibrations, Solitaire thought, then Voreline poked her head gingerly around the door.
‘How did you open that?’ Bill asked.
‘It wasn’t locked,’ Voreline replied.
‘I thought you were going back to your village?’ Solitaire asked, though she was already heading past Voreline and out of the room before any of the walls moved or the door decided it wanted to be locked again.
‘I sent Gray and Moran,’ said Voreline. ‘It didn’t take three of us. I thought I could be of more use here.’
‘Well, I’m not gonna argue,’ said Bill. ‘We need to find the Doctor.’
‘And the Valeyard,’ Solitaire reminded her.
‘Yeah,’ Bill said, grimacing slightly. Perhaps she thought Solitaire didn’t see. ‘Him as well, I suppose.’
The Valeyard spotted what looked like ruins on the horizon and headed towards them, though he wasn’t sure if he’d make it there. It felt like every time he made some progress in convincing himself the desert wasn’t real, and the heat of the twin suns eased a little, someone else cranked up the dial. Now it was so hot, his throat burned with every breath. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his shirt clung to him like another layer of skin.
So far, though, he’d managed to cover a large amount of virtual ground without anything nasty trying to kill him. He was sure the creature from room 12A was still around, however. He could sense it in the coding, lurking just out of sight. Watching him and plotting its next move maybe, only that would imply some sort of logical thought.
He paused for a moment to rest his calf muscles, which were screaming from the effort of keeping his balance on the sand and reflected that there were occasions when wearing black was a disadvantage, but as he stood, hands on his knees, watching the droplets of sweat that fell from his fringe hit the sand with a barely audible hiss, he spotted a slight ripple just beneath the dune’s surface. Something snaked by at speed then disappeared deeper into the sand.
Here we go, he thought. Now what have you come up with?
He waited, listening, though all he could hear were his pulses in his ears. Maybe it was just a snake or a worm that existed in the environment this desert was based on. Perhaps best to reach those ruins sooner rather than later, though, where there might be something to use as a weapon, just in case. He straightened and started off again towards the shapes on the horizon, making sure to keep the rhythm of his steps erratic, again just in case.
The ruins crept closer, wavering as the hot air shimmered in front of them, though the Valeyard never seemed to cover the ground he expected to, as if someone kept moving the crumbling building further away, and all the while, the snake-things beneath the sand whipped around him, sometimes barely missing his feet.
He could see the building now. From a distance, it had looked like a handful of broken columns, like the ones on the beach earlier, but now he was closer, he saw that it was a cottage, white-walled and with a thatched roof, sitting incongruously beneath the purple sky. It would’ve looked more at home in a garden in some English village, covered in roses and ivy. Its windows were broken, and the door was gone, leaving a slab of uninviting darkness in the frame. Nothing moved near the building. It lay like the bones of an animal that had given up under the searing heat of the suns.
Another snake shot past his foot, and he stumbled to avoid it, lost his balance, and landed in the sand. The dune gave way beneath his weight, and he rolled a few metres downhill, cursing all the way until he managed to halt his progress. He got himself onto all fours and was about to attempt to stand when another snake shot by beneath the sand barely a hair’s breadth away from his hand. Again, he drew his hand away without thinking, then lost his balance a second time.
As he fell, the sand became alive with snakes. A few even broke the surface so he could see their metallic black scales. Each one was about two centimetres thick, but they moved like snapping elastic. Before he could pick a direction where he could avoid them, one coiled itself around his ankle. In the next instant, he was surrounded. The creatures slithered over him and pulled him down into the soft, white sand. He struggled and tried to claw his way out, but the snakes were tough, like they had a metal core. He was wrapped in a living mass of steel cables, and they were dragging him underground.
This isn’t real, he told himself. It was nothing but a computer construct, and he should be able to affect the code. He was born in a system like this, a system more complicated than this. All right, this one was a chimera of different technologies, but its operating protocols should be similar to the Matrix on Gallifrey.
He spat out a mouthful of sand and, instead of trying to fight the snakes, he let them pull him down, closed his eyes and felt the desert cover him completely. Only it wasn’t desert. It was just numbers, and numbers could be changed.
‘Come on,’ he urged himself mentally. ‘This is your world. You can shape it however you wish. Their puny attempts to copy the complexity of the Matrix were nothing. You can sweep them away with a single thought.’
He felt the code shift at last and finally felt like he had a grasp of its patterns and language. The weight of the sand disappeared, and he was no longer buried. The searing heat was gone, and the new temperature was ideal, so comfortable he didn’t notice it. He opened his eyes and saw a plain white ceiling above him, while his fingers brushed against rough carpet. He had done it. He’d managed to shift himself into another part of the construct. It wasn’t quite the victory getting out of the system completely would’ve been, but the Valeyard allowed himself a smile nonetheless. He hadn’t lost his touch. He just needed a bit more time to liaise with the system, get it on side.
Sitting up, he frowned at his new environs. He was sitting on the floor in the middle of an octagonal room with a high ceiling and a plaster cornice. The walls were plain white plaster but had been covered in paintings and framed biological specimens, like some mad Victorian’s study. Only the paintings were wrong.
One, to the Valeyard’s left, was a full-length portrait of a main in Tudor clothing, but he had no head. Above his lace ruff there was only a brain at the top of a spinal cord, and a pair of eyes at the end of pink optic nerves. The eyes were positioned where they ought to have been, had the figure been whole. Their irises were blue, and they seemed to follow the Valeyard wherever he went in the room.
On the next wall was a shallow glass case, two metres tall and about a metre wide. Pinned to the black velvet inside was a complete human nervous system, painstakingly removed from the body and laid out in the vague shape of a person. The nerves were bleached and pale, the colour of old linen. Only a slice of the brain had been included. He deliberately ignored the label in the bottom corner that declared it to have been the nervous system of a particular human, one he knew very well. He didn’t believe it and knew it was meant to rattle him. The fact that it did annoyed him even more.
All the other paintings and displays followed the same trend. There were two-headed baby goats in formaldehyde in a jar in one corner, a human spinal column pinned into an imitation of its proper shape inside another on the opposite side. What there wasn’t, anywhere in the room, was a door.
Once he’d checked all the paintings and walls for concealed exits, the Valeyard let out a curse and swept the jar containing the spine off its pedestal. It hit the floor and, annoyingly, didn’t shatter because the carpet deadened the impact. It rolled away and hit the skirting board of the opposite wall with a dull clunk.
The Valeyard lowered himself back to the floor and sat cross-legged with his head low. He felt suddenly more exhausted than ever and imagined himself as an empty cavern with only one small flame burning right at the centre, and that fire was fuelled by hatred of the Division, of the Doctor for putting him in this place, of the universe in general for being unfair. He closed his eyes and pictured how it would feel to annihilate them all, to be left with nothing but an empty void with no life, no changes and no Doctor. Part of him longed for the quiet that would bring.
It would take only a small effort to achieve it. Perhaps what the Doctor claimed he’d seen was true after all, all the atrocities he’d accused the Valeyard of. Perhaps he was fooling himself if he thought he could be anything other than the weapon of destruction he was created to be. Perhaps he should stop running and fulfil the destiny the Time Lords intended for him. Perhaps he should destroy it all.
‘Why not?’ asked a voice that came from all around him.
The Valeyard looked up slowly. So they were trying this trick again. It had been his own voice speaking. There was no other version of him standing in the room, but he did think the place had grown darker in the last few seconds.
‘Why not give in to what’s inevitable?’ asked the voice.
The Valeyard felt suddenly cold. Nothing, other than the trace of the Doctor, had spoken to him in this version of the Matrix before. The creature hadn’t uttered a sound. He hadn’t thought it capable of speech. But if it was talking now…
Two traces, the Valeyard thought. The other Doctor, Bill’s Doctor, the blithering idiot!
He rose, as around him, the room darkened even further until the light had the quality of a single, fading candle.
‘Why don’t we have a chat about it?’ he called out. ‘Compare strategies, iron out the wrinkles? Show yourself. Let’s destroy the universe together!’
The room and all its macabre decorations faded into complete darkness. The Valeyard found himself standing first of all in a void, just like he’d imagined, but then the environment reformed again. Slowly, a hilly landscape came into view, remaining dark even when a milky full moon appeared overhead. Long grass whispered in the breeze and brushed against the Valeyard’s ankles, and a few leafless trees clawed at the night air. White flowers with bell-shaped petals bowed and nodded in the wind, seeming to glow as they caught the moonlight. There was something a little funereal about them.
‘So,’ the Valeyard called out to the sky, ‘you’re alive now. You’ve taken that great leap into the land of sentient existence. Welcome to endless disappointment!’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ his own voice replied. It sounded like it came from the sky and boomed all around. ‘To be disappointed with one’s lot merely shows a lack of discipline. I have no such failing.’
‘Five minutes ago, you didn’t have any,’ said the Valeyard. ‘And I notice you’re still not showing yourself. That wouldn’t be fear, would it? Another failing.’
A rush of wind hit the Valeyard in the back so quickly and with such force that he barely had time to register what had happened before he was face down in the grass.
‘Imbecile,’ hissed the creature.
The Valeyard caught his breath. The grass smelled authentic, but he forced himself not to be distracted and pushed back off the ground. When he twisted round to stand, he stared upwards. The creature, in its tatty Time Lord robes though still without a face, loomed over him, at least three hundred metres high.
‘Bloody hell,’ the Valeyard muttered. ‘Good to see you’re not letting the idiosyncrasy of egotism influence your performance.’
‘Your words are like raindrops,’ said the creature. ‘They may come incessantly, but they have very little effect.’
‘Tell that to an umbrella,’ the Valeyard retorted, then realised that sounded far too much like a Doctor-ish reply and mentally scolded himself.
Slowly, the creature’s face began to coalesce, until the Valeyard was staring up at himself, only on a massive scale.
‘You know that face was second-hand to begin with?’ he called out. ‘Why don’t you pick a new one?’
‘Because it has no importance,’ replied the creature. ‘One face is as good as another. And once you’re destroyed, our resemblance will no longer be of consequence.’
The ground shook. The creature raised its arm. Luckily, its movements were sluggish because of its sheer size. The Valeyard had time to run before it brought down its fist. Showers of earth and uprooted flowers rained down into the crater left behind where the Valeyard had been standing, then the creature brought its arm back for a second attempt.
The Valeyard looked around for anything he could use as cover, but all he could see were misty hills and skeletal trees going on for miles, so he just sprinted blindly.
Another blow landed behind him, and the ground rippled, knocking him off his feet. He fell hard on his side and rolled a short way down the hill, stopping when he thudded into the root of a tree. He grabbed the root and used it to pull himself back to his feet, but as he turned, he saw the creature reaching down towards him, its hand open and ready to grab.
He was so busy watching the giant hand, he paid no attention to the ground and caught his foot on a boulder embedded in the grass. Pain shot up from the muscles in his ankle and, had this been real, he was sure a few ligaments would’ve torn. Being illusory didn’t stop it from aching, and he cried out as he fell back down into the dirt.
The hand was still coming. There was no way to get away from it now. Was this really how his existence would be snuffed out, after everything he’d been through? Squashed by a King Kong-sized version of himself?
At least it was different, he supposed.
Then someone grabbed his arm and hauled him out of the hand’s reach.
Chapter 16: 16
Chapter Text
The Valeyard tumbled down a hill, every thud sending jolts of pain through his already aching bones. Worse still, the enormous, lumbering version of the creature from room 12A was still headed towards him, its steps shaking the ground like explosions. And worst of all, the person who’d grabbed him and dragged him out of harm’s way was now hugging him as the two of them fell down a seemingly endless grassy slope.
They hit the bottom with a final, jarring blow and separated at last, the two of them flung to either side of a shallow ditch. The Valeyard groaned and lay for a moment, catching his breath and letting the pain subside, then he remembered the creature as the next footstep boomed through the earth. He looked up, just in time to see the huge Time Lord collar silhouetted against the full moon. The creature stopped, and even though the creature had neither a head nor a face, the Valeyard felt sure it was glowering down at him.
It let out a deep, malicious chuckle, and the Valeyard wondered if he’d ever laughed like that. He really hoped not. It was an overly menacing, “comic book villain” laugh. If the thing had had a face, it ought to have had a moustache to twirl.
‘You are like me,’ it said. There was a hint of curiosity in its voice, along with its obvious glee at causing chaos.
‘Perhaps once,’ the Valeyard retorted. ‘You’re an inferior pirate copy, I’m afraid.’
‘You call yourself…’ The creature paused as if searching its memory for the word. ‘…the Valeyard.’
‘I am the Valeyard. The original, you might say.’
‘You could have achieved so much.’
‘I still can, when I get out of here.’
The melodramatic evil laugh came again. The huge, high collar leaned slightly forward and the shadows where the head should have been shifted slightly, then slowly a face began to form. The Valeyard swallowed. He supposed he should be flattered, but it was incredibly disconcerting to see his own face sneering down at him from the sky.
‘You’ve an infinite number of faces to choose from,’ the Valeyard called upwards. ‘Why not show a little originality? Make the body your own. Don’t just copy the first person you speak to.’
‘This is my world, my creation,’ said the creature. ‘I can do with it as I please. The same applies to any living mind within it.’
‘Memory’s not too good, I see,’ the Valeyard called up to the silhouette. ‘You said yourself a moment ago – I am the same as you. If you can control this environment, so can I.’
He struggled to find the foothold he’d made earlier in the system code, sensing the creature doing the same. The code shifted, as did the world around him. It began to twist into another pattern, but the Valeyard fought back. He concentrated on the white flowers, and through them the landscape as a whole. That one small detail which fixed the image in his mind and let him focus on mathematics creating it. Every time the creature changed a one to a zero or vice versa, the Valeyard undid it. His head ached from the effort and as the tug-of-war continued, he felt as though his brain matter were being stretched like taffy and screamed, but when he opened his eyes, he was still in the ditch, still surrounded by the white flowers gleaming in the moonlight, swaying gently in the breeze.
Above him, the creature let out a little cry of disgust, but its voice was thinner. The effort of the struggle had taken its toll on the thing from 12A too.
‘You are of no consequence,’ it said.
‘In my experience,’ replied the Valeyard, ‘people only say that to those who make them really afraid.’
‘You are nothing,’ said the creature.
‘That too.’
The creature scoffed, and the Valeyard waited for another cliché villain remark or a fit of pique in which a few more craters would be punched out of the landscape, but instead, the creature stepped backwards and began to diminish, until it was as transparent as the wisps of cloud crossing the face of the moon. Then it disappeared entirely.
In all the excitement, the Valeyard had momentarily forgotten his rescuer, with whom he’d barrelled down the hillside, but now the other man got up with a groan and scratched his head through his mop of white hair.
‘Well,’ said the Doctor – Bill’s Doctor this time, ‘there’s something you don’t see every day.’
The Valeyard thought about replying in a way that would make it seem like the creature didn’t bother him, that he was calm and relaxed about the whole situation, but he looked at the Doctor and that little fire he’d nursed right in the pits of his hearts flared into an inferno.
‘You insufferable idiot!’
The Doctor had been waiting for agreement on his last comment, by his expression, but now his brow furrowed. ‘That’s an odd way of saying, “Thanks for saving me from the gigantic version of me that was trying to crush my skull”, but you’re welcome.’
‘Everything that is happening here is your fault!’ the Valeyard continued, unable to stop the anger flowing out of him now that he’d opened the floodgates. He launched himself at the Doctor, ready to tear him apart, but the other Time Lord was too quick, despite his apparent age, and darted to the side, letting the Valeyard stumble harmlessly into the trunk of one of the dead trees. It hurt but he didn’t care.
‘My fault?’ the Doctor asked, frowning in disbelief. ‘Look, if you’re talking about me, as in me a few me’s back, then…’
‘I’m talking about all of you! There is not one version of you, Doctor, who isn’t a complete imbecile.’
The Valeyard tried for another punch and missed again as the Doctor stepped out of the way, but this time he managed to catch the Doctor’s shoulder and pull him down to the ground too as he fell. The Doctor rolled aside just before the Valeyard managed to land a right hook and scrabbled up onto his knees, while the Valeyard found himself imitating his gigantic alter-ego and pounding his fist into the ground, only where the creature had made a crater, the Valeyard just cracked his knuckles off hard-packed earth.
‘You counting yourself in that?’ the Doctor retorted.
The Valeyard seethed, but he’d expelled a little of his rage and now let the purer, more concentrated anger fill him. He slowly rose and turned to face the Doctor with a look he hoped would chill him to the bone.
‘I am not you,’ he said.
‘Right, good, now we’ve got that out the way,’ said the Doctor, looking annoyed but otherwise unaffected. He stood up and brushed the dirt off his trousers. ‘Maybe we can get back to the slightly more pressing matter of getting out of here? My TARDIS can only keep the doorway open…’
‘I know, Bill told me,’ growled the Valeyard. ‘I must say, I am surprised you’re here.’
‘Wasn’t my first instinct,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘But your friend was quite persuasive.’
The Valeyard didn’t like the emphasis the Doctor put on “friend”, but there were too many other grievances swirling around in his head to let that distract him for long.
‘Persuaded you how? You can’t convince me you’re willing to admit a mistake.’
‘Not in terms of what I think of you,’ the Doctor stated, the flippancy suddenly gone from his manner. He stood a little taller, becoming the Doctor who had halted entire armies with a single word instead of the one pretending to be an idiot. ‘Solitaire insisted you hadn’t done the things I saw, at least not yet. I’m here to prevent a paradox, that’s it.’
‘And what if I never do those things? What if, by imprisoning me here, making sure I endure all of this, you’ve made me see the error of my ways? So I never go on to be the scourge of several galaxies, the tyrant, the…’
‘Murderer,’ the Doctor said. The word threw the Valeyard off his stride but only for a moment.
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Or more preposterous still, what if I never would have done those things in the first place? What if… and I accept this will possibly be at odds with your own propaganda… but what if you got it wrong?’
‘I saw you.’
‘Are you so sure of that? That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it, Doctor? When you set yourself up as judge, jury and executioner…’
‘Or prosecutor,’ the Doctor said with a hint of a smile. The Valeyard ignored him.
‘…You have to be absolutely certain that you are right.’
‘I saw you,’ the Doctor said again, louder. ‘I was there. I witnessed it first-hand. It’s hard to mistake someone’s identity when they’re your torturer! And what you did to Mel…’
‘What? What did I do to Mel? Go on, since you witnessed all of this, tell me what I’m supposed to have done.’
The Doctor hesitated. ‘It’s just a credit to her that, after everything you put her through, she still wouldn’t turn to your way of thinking. And all those people… there was no need to kill them. They were harmless. They…’
‘This is all entirely irrelevant,’ the Valeyard interrupted, ‘for the simple reason that I have no idea what you’re referring to. I was not there, on whatever planet you…’
‘Korahall, in the Elanor system.’
‘I have never heard of it, let alone been there.’
‘Then the only explanation is that you will. I found you at an earlier point in your timeline, and so it’s my mistake, but…’
‘Your mistake? Did you know what had happened to this place when you locked me in here? Was that your idea? Leave me to the mercy of this twisted…’
‘How could I know what was going on in here? I thought it was a holiday globe, a retreat for people to meditate in and do Venusian yoga or whatever the current fad is. How was I supposed to know the place had turned into… into whatever this is?’
‘The truth is, Doctor, you can stand there with your air of righteous indignation, be the self-appointed saviour of the universe and tell me what a monster I am, what an abomination I am, but everything I am, everything you hate about me, I inherited from you. What you cannot accept is that I have made the effort to move beyond those faults and better myself, to be more than just your darker half, or whatever you refer to me as. Not only have I not committed any of the crimes you accuse me of, I have done nothing but try to find time to reflect and find out who I am since I became free of the Matrix…’
The Doctor barked out a laugh.
‘You have done nothing since you got out of the Matrix? Are you… I’m sorry, I know this is a different universe, but I think one of us has definitely lost touch with reality here.’
‘What am I supposed to have done?’
‘Well, let’s just have a recap, shall we? Since leaving the Matrix, as you put it, so far as I’m aware, you hijacked a body, conspired with the High Council to have me murdered so you could steal a load of regeneration energy, and when that failed, hijacked my TARDIS, held two of my friends at gunpoint, dragged us all back in time to a point where everything we did might’ve caused a catastrophic paradox, and then, oh, yes, it’s coming back to me now, it turned out you’d planned the whole thing in order to cause a catastrophic paradox and destroy the entire universe. Now, stop me if I’m getting it wrong or if I missed anything!’
The Valeyard fought the urge to run his hand through his hair, refusing to show any signs of discomfort, although his ire was losing a bit of its impetus now and turning more to indignation.
‘I helped fix things,’ he said.
‘Oh, right, you helped fix it. Yes, “with an air of great chagrin”, as they say. And I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to the Time Lords having to collect up all the little pieces of Zenobia station that are now scattered across half the sector, thanks to you.’
‘I may have made mistakes,’ the Valeyard admitted, ‘but since then, I have done nothing, and I have helped people.’
The Doctor nodded. His grey eyes were burning with anger that reflected exactly the feelings still roiling in the Valeyard’s chest.
‘Oh, yes, I forgot,’ he said. ‘You’re the self-appointed saviour of the universe now. Your little friend told me that…’
‘Her name is Solitaire,’ the Valeyard snapped when the same sarcastic emphasis landed on “friend”.
‘Well, she seems to think very highly of you, the poor deluded soul. We had the full history of the exploits of the newly-reformed Valeyard back at the university. Rohelian Four, was it you rescued her from? Is that right?’
‘What of it?’
‘The genetic engineering facility?’
‘Yes.’
The Doctor shrugged and stroked his chin in mock-thoughtfulness. ‘The genetic engineering facility that, according to the TARDIS databanks, ended up scattered liberally across a twenty-mile radius…’
‘That was not my fault,’ the Valeyard snapped. ‘The facility’s director destroyed it to hide any evidence of what he’d been doing. And everyone inside that complex would be dead now if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘Yes, bravo, well done you. And what was it she said next, some housing estate in Derbyshire? Something about Weeping Angels?’
The Valeyard straightened. He had a suspicion of where this was headed and didn’t like it. ‘It was a trap. A faction of the Time Lords who thought I’d make a good weapon.’
‘Broadtree Mill estate,’ said the Doctor.
‘Yes. How did you…’
‘Which, according to the databanks, is now in bits across half of Derbyshire.’
The Doctor was staring at him now like a teacher who’d had enough and had all the evidence of his pupil’s miscreance laid out on his desk, ready to add weight to the charge.
‘Well, I…’ the Valeyard began, but faltered. That one had been deliberate. He had saved the one human living in the estate but had probably killed a couple of Division agents, so thought it best just to stay quiet. That story wouldn’t help his case much.
‘And then, where are we?’ the Doctor continued, on a roll now. ‘Oh, right, yeah, doesn’t that bring us nicely up to our eventful little meeting at Fangorn station on New Amazonia? Funny us turning up there at the same time, wasn’t it? Right when it came under attack, and you manipulated us repeatedly for days on end and…’
‘I did what I had to,’ said the Valeyard. ‘I was keeping you alive.’
‘Manipulated us repeatedly for days on end,’ the Doctor continued, picking up as if the Valeyard hadn’t interrupted, ‘and then, if I remember rightly, didn’t that building end up burning to the ground? Not quite the same as it blowing up, but near enough that we can start to see the pattern emerging.’
‘If that station had stayed standing, if there had been any hint that the terrorists were part of the Forest of Cheem, then the retribution by Earth’s colonies would have been appalling. And after that…’
He stopped short, remembering that after New Amazonia, Solitaire had persuaded him to trek across the galaxy, fixing a lot of the Doctor’s messes, something he could never tell the Doctor about.
‘After that what?’ sneered the Doctor.
‘Nothing. A few trips in the TARDIS, that’s all, before you ambushed me. And yes, perhaps, now and then, I have had to resort to drastic measures…’
‘Explosive, drastic measures,’ the Doctor interrupted.
‘Drastic measures,’ the Valeyard continued, ‘because the situation required it, but I have always done what I can to ensure a positive outcome…’
The Doctor chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Positive outcome…’
The Valeyard sighed. ‘All of this is wasting time.’
‘You started it!’
‘This system is drawing power from the fabric of the universe itself,’ the Valeyard said emphatically, ‘and there’s very little matter left for it to convert. This place could implode at any moment.’
‘Implode, not explode,’ said the Doctor. ‘Good to see you’re trying new things. Branching out. It’s always good to broaden your horizons. Speaking of which, is this a good time to maybe ask about the elephant in the room? Or rather, the giant Time Lord in the moonlit meadow who, by the way, I notice looked and sounded exactly like you.’
‘This resort was taken over by… a group of clandestine operatives from Gallifrey,’ the Valeyard said, stopping the word “Division” from slipping into the sentence just in time. Spoilers, he reminded himself. The Doctor had a while yet before he had to learn about them.
‘The CIA?’
‘If I meant the CIA, I’d use the term “CIA”.’
‘Does it count as contempt of court of you call the prosecuting council a smart-ar…’
‘These people,’ the Valeyard interrupted, ‘used this place to try and recreate the conditions through which I was created.’
That shut him up. The Doctor’s look of sarcastic anger faded and was replaced by one of genuine concern. The Valeyard could almost see the gears turning inside his head as he worked it out.
‘They’re making another you?’
‘Precisely, only with limited resources. They’ve cobbled together an approximation of the Matrix, only without the APC net.’
‘So they need these dream spider things to interface…’
‘And access the emotions and memories of their subjects, yes. They corrupted the original constructs made to run the resort, like the Dream Lord or Entertainment Manager or whatever he calls himself. I imagine he was designed to interpret the needs of the Time Lord using the retreat, tailor-make it to their specific requirements. They did have access to your memories, a copy of the data from the real Matrix, but they couldn’t recreate the lightning bolt moment and bring the thing to life. So they tried connecting others up, feeding it fear and pain, and it still didn’t work. Now they’re theorising that the spark came when you plugged yourself in to fight Chancellor Goth. They tried connecting me up, but as I keep saying, I am not you, so it didn’t work.’
The Doctor’s face sagged as the realisation hit him. ‘Only, now they’ve plugged me in…’
‘By George, he’s got it.’
The Doctor scowled. ‘How was I to know that… Are you quoting My Fair Lady at me? Mr “Shakespeare’s too whimsical for my dramatic idiom”? So, why does it look like you, if it’s just cobbled together…’
‘I don’t know,’ the Valeyard said wearily. ‘Perhaps it’s because I’ve been here a while. Perhaps it’s a bootstrap paradox, that it’s seen what you recall “the Valeyard” as looking like and sounding like and adopted it accordingly. Perhaps it’s just grown accustomed to my face. It’s not actually relevant. What is important is that it’s dangerous and it’s sapping energy.’
The Valeyard felt completely drained himself, suddenly exhausted, but he turned and started up the hill despite his aching body.
‘So, find a way to get us and all the humans out of here without Valeyard-zilla getting in the way,’ said the Doctor.
‘I think we can do better than that,’ the Valeyard replied without looking back. ‘We can get out of here, along with everyone else these people have dragged into their insane experiments, and we can deal with the creature once and for all. Make sure nothing from this universe can be a threat again.’
‘Oh, and how exactly do you propose we do that?’
The Valeyard sighed, paused and turned back to the Doctor.
‘How else?’ he asked. ‘We blow it up.’
Chapter 17: 17
Chapter Text
‘I am really starting to hate this place,’ Bill said, as she, Voreline and Solitaire emerged from the stairwell onto the second floor and found it was now an open cloister with a bleak landscape outside.
As Solitaire looked out through the arches between the crumbling sandstone columns, she wondered why there was no draught, since it looked stormy outside, and there was no glass to separate them from the cold outdoors, but it felt the same as being in the hotel corridor, slightly stuffy and smelling of lemon cleaning fluids.
Then, outside, the landscape flickered, glitching like a bad video feed, before settling back down. They had nearly reached the end when the whole cloister shuddered. The way ahead fractured like someone had torn it into strips and when the tremors subsided, there was a stone wall blocking the way.
‘Is it trying to mess with us or is it failing?’ Solitaire mused out loud.
‘It’s failing,’ said Voreline. ‘I can hear it in my head, it’s like a dozen voices all gibbering nonsense, and beneath it all, one long scream.’
‘Nice,’ said Bill quietly. She and Solitaire exchanged looks that Solitaire understood to be a little shared relief that neither of them had one of those spider things in their brain. What would happen to the likes of Voreline or the Valeyard and the Doctor for that matter if the hotel died? Would their connection just die too, or would it try to take its victims with it?
They turned to head back the way they’d come, but that, too, was blocked, only this time it was a rectangle of searing white light filling the width of the cloister. Solitaire realised she should feel nervous at the sight of it, but she was just tired. She found herself wishing the hotel would either kill her or let her go. She was fed up of its games. All she wanted was to see the Valeyard again, even just for a second.
‘It doesn’t go all the way,’ Bill said, leaning over to look around the side of the rectangle. ‘Maybe we can squeeze past it.’
‘You first,’ Solitaire muttered.
‘Is that Bill?’ called a voice from the centre of the light. Both Bill and Solitaire straightened, exchanged glances, then stared at the rectangle. Solitaire recognised the voice as belonging to the Doctor’s other friend, the little man who’d stayed behind.
‘Nardole?’ Bill cried out. ‘Nardole, where are you?’
‘In the TARDIS,’ the voice replied, speaking slowly and loudly like some of the customers used to do back at the Facility’s help desk. ‘You coming back any time soon?’
‘We need to find the Doctor,’ Bill said. She looked over at Solitaire and added, ‘and the Valeyard. Both of them are somewhere in this place but it keeps getting all weird and stopping us getting to them.’
‘It’s a block transfer structure,’ said Nardole. ‘Like the TARDIS interior. Maybe I can link the console to… if I put that one there and stick that to that… Might be a minute. Took me half an hour just to figure out how to move this doorway.’
‘Well, you need to move it back when we’re done,’ Bill said. ‘You’ve got company coming. Lot of people here that need to evacuate.’
‘Oh, lovely,’ said Nardole. ‘I’ll get the good biscuits out. Now… that one into there and make sure those are all in the negative before you turn that switch and…’
He trailed off, and they could hear him clattering about and muttering to himself.
‘What is it you want to find?’ he called out.
‘A room,’ Solitaire replied. ‘Room 12A’ She looked at Voreline, who nodded in confirmation.
‘The hotel’s trying to hide it from us,’ Bill said. ‘Plus the whole thing looks like it’s about to pack in any minute.’
‘Right,’ mumbled Nardole. ‘Hard to find anything specific ‘cause the code’s all jumbled and it’s got a lot going on, but I’ve tapped into the structure’s programming via the TARDIS console. Took a bit of doing. Lucky you’ve got someone with a more than decent grasp of block transfer computation on hand to…’
‘Nardole, can you find the room?’ Bill interrupted.
‘If it’s where they’re basing their operation,’ Solitaire said, ‘then it should be the point with the strongest energy readings. They must have equipment or something in there. Surely that’s something that could be detected?’
‘Yes, thank you. Already thought of that,’ Nardole replied, sounding very pleased with himself now. ‘Right, they’ve got a bit of intuitive programming that’s working to keep that area inaccessible, but I think I can get around it. Might not last very long. And speaking of which, did I mention this doorway’s not gonna hold up for much longer? The TARDIS isn’t happy. Connecting the two universes is draining her power faster than she can regenerate. It’s not going to hold forever.’
‘How long?’ Bill asked. ‘How long until you have to shut it down?’
‘About an hour,’ said Nardole after a long pause.
‘We’ll be there,’ Solitaire said.
From Nardole’s side of the doorway, an ominous bell began to toll. But at the same time, the cloister around them shifted and became the hotel corridor again. Solitaire looked around and spotted the door with its little bronze “12A” on the plaque.
‘Yeah,’ said Nardole. ‘Well, you’d better be. That’s the cloister bell going. Time’s running out.’
‘There!’ Solitaire said, tugging the sleeve of Bill’s jacket. Then she looked back at her and Voreline and an odd, cold feeling came over her. That only happened to her when she was about to do something very wrong.
‘You should go through,’ she told Bill and Voreline, nodding at the white light.
‘You what?’ Bill replied.
‘He just said, your TARDIS isn’t going to hold out much longer. You came here because I asked you to. I can’t be responsible for the two of you being stuck here forever or… or worse… So go now while there’s a chance.’
‘The Doctor’s still in there,’ said Bill, gesturing towards 12A. ‘I’m not going anywhere until he’s back with us. Would you go through there and leave the Valeyard?’
She had a point, and Solitaire couldn’t come up with a lie or a counter argument.
‘And I said I would help,’ said Voreline.
‘You have,’ said Bill. ‘But Solitaire’s right. You should go and help Nardole get ready for all the others turning up once your mates have gathered up the townsfolk.’
‘But…’
‘It’d help, really,’ Bill said. She gave Voreline an earnest look and eventually the other woman nodded.
‘Good luck,’ she said, then, after giving the light a wary look, she stepped through and disappeared.
‘Oh,’ they heard Nardole say. ‘Hello.’
‘She’s going to help you,’ Bill shouted. ‘We’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.’
‘You better!’ Nardole called back, then the rectangle of light shrank to a pinpoint before disappearing completely.
Solitaire found herself standing at Bill’s side in front of the door to 12A. They each exhaled, steeling themselves, then Solitaire reached out and turned the handle.
The Valeyard found a door standing incongruously in the middle of a patch of the white flowers, its pale blue paint making it stand out against the meadow in the moonlight. He didn’t wait for the Doctor to catch up and opened it. It was odd, but he both didn’t care what was on the other side and he was nervous about it, and his brain struggled to reconcile the two states of being so that, in the end, he was just a mix of emotions that made no sense.
His anger had dulled but was still there, though, making it impossible for him to turn and look at the Time Lord following him up the hill, even though he’d been aware of the Doctor talking to him for the past few minutes. He hadn’t been listening, his attention on the landscape around them, every sense waiting for the other version of himself to return.
So far it hadn’t. Perhaps he had weakened it slightly during their little tussle for control of the system. Or perhaps it was just licking its wounds and cooking up its next attack. Either way, keeping a lookout for its return was more important than anything the Doctor could possibly have to say.
The door led onto a walkway made of some sort of dark blue stone, scarred with circular patterns and lined by gothic columns and arches, everything dark and dagger sharp. The walkway was part of a series of paths that crossed above a void, the drop so far that the bottom was obscured in pale blue mist, but there were other levels below, paths criss-crossing beneath each other, but all at right angles. Some parts of the maze were barred by wrought iron gates with fearfully sharp spikes along the top. There was no sign of the other Valeyard, but there were so many paths, so many junctions and columns, the creature could’ve been hiding anywhere.
‘Lovely,’ said the Doctor, arriving at the Valeyard’s side. ‘Is this coming from your subconscious or mine?’
‘If my subconscious were fully in control of this environment, you’d be dead, Doctor,’ the Valeyard said.
‘I don’t doubt it. In fact, I’m surprised I’ve survived this long.’
‘As if the entire universe, I’m sure.’
The Doctor wandered around in a little circle, surveying the place. ‘No sign of…’
‘If you call him “Valeyard-zilla” again, I shan’t be responsible for my actions.’
The Valeyard followed the path a short way, looking up at the menacing pinnacles hanging down from some of the vaults and arches. This place looked like someone had taken a gothic cathedral and twisted it like a Rubik’s cube. Here and there were windows with ornate stained glass, most of them shattered, but that was the only colour in the place. The only sounds were their footsteps, but at least that should mean they’d hear anything approaching. Unless it just appeared out of nowhere, which was always a possibility in the Matrix.
‘You said you had a plan,’ the Doctor complained.
The Valeyard didn’t bother to turn round and carried on along the path. ‘I do, but I need to get out of here first and somehow get out of room 12A where, I don’t know about you, but I was in restraints and guarded by at least one of the Hotel’s minions. Then we need to find Bill, Solitaire, and anyone else who’s still stuck here and make sure everyone’s back in our own universe before we tip this one over the edge. So I may have overstated my readiness to implement the plan. And, in fact, “plan” might have been the wrong choice of word. “Vague idea of what to do” is more accurate.’
The Doctor didn’t reply. Since there was nothing to say which direction was best, the Valeyard picked one at random and followed the next path down to where it met another crossing at a right angle. The path leading to the right ended at a sheer wall, in the centre of which was a clock face, made of backlit panels of bone-yellow glass and heavy wrought iron, like the face of the Westminster clock in London, only larger. Both hands were stuck around the twelve.
It was only as he turned to head back the way he’d come that the Valeyard noticed the Doctor staring at him, eyes narrowed in a critical frown.
‘What?’ the Valeyard asked.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘You’re different.’
The Valeyard glanced down at his ruined suit, torn trousers and blood-stained shirt. It looked the same as a few minutes ago.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘You,’ said the Doctor. His expression turned thoughtful. ‘You don’t… You don’t seem like yourself.’
‘What you mean is I don’t match the version of me you remember,’ said the Valeyard. ‘It’s called change, Doctor. It’s inevitable. And in your case, vastly overdue.’
Behind them, the minute hand of the enormous clock juddered forward to the next notch in the circle. The sound cracked through the silence like thunder, then all fell still once again. Once the Valeyard’s hearts had slowed again, he carried on along the path, the Doctor matching his pace.
‘The girl, Solitaire,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Why take her with you? What’s that about?’
‘Is there some law against travelling in company?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor wearily, ‘but it’s not what I would’ve expected from you. It’s a bit too… “me”. I always thought you’d be like the Master. Keep to yourself. Roam around the universe, causing havoc for havoc’s sake.’
‘Then it would appear that - not, I might mention, for the first time in our acquaintance, Doctor - you were wrong.’
‘You still talk like you fall asleep reading Roget’s Thesaurus, mind you.’
‘And you still talk like a wittering imbecile,’ said the Valeyard. ‘Only I know you. Usually that’s a ruse to cover up what you’re really thinking. So out with it. What exactly bothers you about my travelling with Solitaire?’
‘If you’d asked me back when she turned up in my office, I would’ve said I was afraid for her safety… or her sanity.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’m trying to reconcile what I know about you with… with this.’ The Doctor gestured vaguely at the Valeyard. ‘With someone making jokes and talking about trying to rescue his friends… someone who has friends for that matter. This isn’t you. This isn’t the man who stood cackling in the Matrix at the thought of the end of the universe. This isn’t the one who set up a dozen schemes throughout space and time just to try and take over my body. This isn’t the person who caused me to regenerate, from fashion disaster to little Scottish chess master because the only way to stop you stealing my body and heading off into the sunset to live your life of crime was to dose myself so highly with radiation that there was no choice but to regenerate. This isn’t the man who stood on the balcony in the Blue and White City on Korahall and laughed while dozens of innocent people were put to death…’
The Valeyard stopped and turned to him. ‘The first one I’ll give you. The rest I know nothing about. And what are you talking about, “I caused you to regenerate”? You changed that time because you hit your head on the TARDIS console and gave yourself a subdural haematoma.’
Now the Doctor paused and the two of them stood on either side of the path, frowning at one another.
‘No, you came up with some scheme to try and commandeer my body, the same way you did on Gallifrey with that poor lawyer… By the way, I sorted him out…’
‘I know,’ said the Valeyard. ‘But why on earth, or any other planet for that matter, would I want your body. I have one of my own. Custom-made. I would’ve paid good money for it, if the Facility hadn’t been invaded by Sontarans then blown up.’
The Doctor stared.
‘Which, as I said,’ the Valeyard continued, ‘was not my fault. I like the way I am. And if I were going to steal one of your bodies, it certainly wouldn’t have been that one. Maybe the one after you. I would’ve said the eighth one but not after all the things he managed to put that body through.’
‘See, you’re bantering,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s not right. You don’t banter. You’re against banter. You’re the antithesis of banter.’
‘And you’re wittering again.’
He paused. Something had very nearly slipped out, a thought that had been nagging him ever since the Doctor had put him in this prison. It had been running constantly in the background for days now and wanted someone to hear about it. The Doctor spotted the hesitation and looked curious.
‘What?’ he asked.
The Valeyard sighed. ‘Just something that occurred to me.’
‘What?’
Who else would he tell, if not someone who was, technically speaking, himself?
‘I have a theory as to why your memory and mine are at odds with one another.’
‘Yeah, so have I,’ said the Doctor darkly.
‘It is a possibility I would really rather not turn out to be the right answer.’
‘And that is?’
The Valeyard steeled himself. ‘You said it yourself back on Zenobia. To all intents and purposes, I am a computer programme. This whole setup is designed to alter and augment beings like me. What if…’
The Doctor gave him a “go on” look.
‘What if something I do here, being connected to this system in order to destroy it, what if it results in the equivalent of a factory reset? Returns me to my default persona, the way I was before I escaped from the Matrix. If that happened, then I might be inclined to roam the universe causing havoc for havoc’s sake.’
‘Not the most likely explanation, though, is it?’ said the Doctor.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. I think the most likely explanation is either that you’re lying about having no memory of these things, or you’re just putting on this act of being amenable to lull me into a false sense of security so I’ll let you out of here, or… and it pains me to say it but this hits me as the most probable thing…’
‘We’re going to fail, and the creature escapes, and the very fact of our being here, interacting with our own timeline, is causing ripples back and forth…’
‘And it’s that creature that will massacre the people of Korahall,’ said the Doctor.
‘After massacring us, too, no doubt. I would’ve said at least you’re fine, because I can remember parts of your future, but if we’re altering history, then even you could be fair game. Would explain why he wanted a body. But I think it best to consider other alternatives as well. If they should alter my programming in any way…’
‘It’s not…’
‘If they should alter my programming in any way,’ the Valeyard began again, more forcefully, ‘then I shall ask you to do me the courtesy of destroying me. I don’t want to be the man you think I am. I don’t want to be responsible for hurting you or Mel or anyone else. If you even suspect that I am that creature, then you must destroy me.’
‘I…’
‘And in such circumstances,’ the Valeyard went on, ‘I would ask one other favour of you. Look after Solitaire. She can’t go home. I told you that once before. She knows the truth about the Facility and its owners wouldn’t allow her to live with that information in her head. Find her somewhere safe, that’s all I ask.’
‘Thing is,’ said the Doctor, ‘like I said, you are not the you I remember from Zenobia. Even the most sophisticated AI wouldn’t feel as real as you do. I don’t think you can consider yourself a computer programme any more. Not just a computer programme. I mean, if you think about it, we’re all just the product of a particular pattern of neurones shooting off electrical signals to process stimuli and turn them into ideas. We’re all programmes in a way, but there’s a difference between machines and the living. Machines don’t tend to care.’
‘You’re saying you consider me a real person?’ asked the Valeyard. He hoped his face didn’t show any of the emotions that had come unbidden at those words. He hadn’t realised, until that moment, how much he had wanted to hear someone say them.
‘Real pain in the neck, maybe,’ the Doctor replied, but the Valeyard could see from the look he gave, the faint smile that passed like a cloud across his lips, that he meant exactly what the Valeyard thought he meant.
‘Wonderful,’ the Valeyard said, trying for sarcasm and something casual. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a real boy.’
‘Right then, Pinocchio, but you’ll be a real dead boy if you don’t finalise the details of your “vague idea about what to do”.’
‘You could always help,’ said the Valeyard. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to be here for.’
‘That is a point,’ said the Doctor, as the two of them started walking again. ‘Why send your pal to me? What made you think I’d be the one to give in and come rescue you? Did you think I’d be the most easily manipulated?’
‘You’re not rescuing me,’ said the Valeyard. ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. You are merely aiding me in my escape.’
‘Our escape, since I’m stuck here as well, thanks to you. But why me?’
‘I didn’t send her to you,’ the Valeyard said. ‘I told her to use the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits to find help. I didn’t even think of you, truth be told. Perhaps the TARDIS took her there because we’re friends, I don’t know.’
The Doctor stopped abruptly and placed his palm against the Valeyard’s chest, blocking his path.
‘Eh, excuse me, I mean, I know we had a bit of a moment back there, but since when have we been friends?’
‘Well, we get on a bit better than any of your other incarnations,’ the Valeyard said. Then he smiled. ‘Except the next one.’
‘If there is a next one,’ muttered the Doctor.
‘Something I sincerely doubt,’ said the Valeyard’s voice, only it came from behind them, from the direction of the clock face.
Chapter 18: 18
Chapter Text
Bill picked her way carefully down the stairs, listening to the muffled conversation drifting up from the chamber. Three men, one sounding like the Dream Lord, one sounding very old, the other a bit smarmy.
‘Success!’ shouted the old man, his voice rasping and thin. Bill could see him now as she turned a corner in the stairwell, seated at a bank of blinking lights and switches facing a glass wall. His hair was long and white, straggling down his back, and he reached towards the controls with hands like spiders.
‘The program has been activated?’ asked the Dream Lord, sounding sceptical.
The old man looked up at the glass. ‘It is alive.’
Bill shivered. The old guy spoke with such reverence, a tremor in his voice.
They were nearly at the foot of the staircase, still within the shadows at the far end of the room, and the three men – the old one, the Dream Lord and an oily man in a suit – were all looking the other way, towards the cave. Solitaire threw Bill a glance and shrugged.
Bill leaned forward for a better look, moving slowly so as to stay silent. There were couches along one wall of the room, some covered in cobweb-shrouded lumps that looked eerily like corpses, and two had living occupants. At least, she hoped they were still alive.
The Doctor and the Valeyard both looked unconscious, connected to some strange equipment behind their couches by a spaghetti tangle of coloured wires. Surely they wouldn’t bother with all that circuitry if the two of them were dead? But if the other people on the benches had died and were just left there…
Could she and Solitaire take the three men if it came down to it? The old man looked like a strong draught would knock him over, but the Dream Lord and the other man were a different matter. The Doctor had said they weren’t human. Computer constructs. Bill thought of the Matrix, the film rather than the computer, and the image of the near-unstoppable Agent Smith came to her mind and refused to go away.
‘What do we do?’ Solitaire whispered. Bill barely heard her but still checked the three others to make sure they hadn’t noticed the question. They were still talking amongst themselves. Bill exhaled and covered her face with her hands for a second, trying to think.
‘We need a weapon,’ Solitaire said.
‘Like what?’ Bill looked back at the far end of the room. ‘No, we need to get down there, get the two of them out and get out of here.’
‘Without that lot seeing us?’
‘I didn’t say I’d worked out the whole plan.’
Solitaire’s jaw tightened, and she frowned in concentration. Bill could see the urge she was holding back, to just run in there. Bill understood it. She wanted to run to the Doctor too. Now they were so close, it was almost physically painful to stay motionless.
‘We need a distraction. I’ll keep them busy. You get the Doctor and the Valeyard.’
‘What if they’re unconscious?’ Bill asked. ‘I can’t carry the two of them. One at a push.’
‘Maybe we just have to hope.’
‘And what do you do once they see you? How do you get out?’
Solitaire looked crestfallen. ‘I didn’t say I’d worked out the whole plan.’
‘The creature is displaying autonomous, intelligent thought processes,’ said the old man proudly. ‘I must try and contact Division for instructions.’
‘With all due respect, sir,’ said the Dream Lord, ‘after all this time, do you really think there’ll be anyone to answer? Division forgot about this project long ago. We are simply another abandoned experiment, one of millions littering the universes.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the old man. ‘But they will still be there. Division is infinite. Someone will hear, and they will come when they hear what we have achieved. And at last, my exile may be rescinded. The prospect of oblivion may seem a strange aspiration, but I have longed for death these many, many centuries. Finally, the idea is temptingly close.’
‘And what of us?’ asked the Dream Lord.
‘What of you? You’re not real. You’re merely servants. Configurations of the system to aid my endeavours. You are unimportant. When I go, you will cease to exist.’
Even though she couldn’t see his face, Bill saw from the way the Dream Lord’s shoulders tensed that he wasn’t pleased at this. He and the guy in the suit exchanged a furtive little glance when the old man wasn’t looking. She had no idea what “Division” was, but it didn’t sound like their arriving would be a good thing either.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to rush them. Maybe bluff with something, or…’
She trailed off, staring at the glass wall. Beyond it, something had moved. She’d thought it just a shadow cast by the rock walls, but now she saw it had a shape, a figure in robes with a high collar, but no face. Just an empty skull cap. As it moved, it’s form shifted slightly, wisps of shadow drifting away from it. It approached the glass wall, slowly at first, then flew suddenly towards it and pounded against it with both fists. The three men all started, but the glass held, and the creature continued to seethe behind the wall.
‘That does not look good,’ Bill whispered.
The Valeyard and the Doctor turned around and looked towards the giant clock face at the end of the walkway. The figure who’d attacked them earlier, dressed like a Cloister Wraith, only with the Valeyard’s borrowed face, and life-sized this time, stood before it, glowering at them.
‘I need you to keep him busy,’ the Valeyard whispered.
‘What, read him a story?’ muttered the Doctor.
‘Funny. I think I can interface with the Matrix-style infrastructure and overload the system, but I need to concentrate, and I can’t do that if something’s trying to kill me.’
‘You can confer all you wish,’ said the other Valeyard, starting towards them, ‘but your feeble attempts to escape will only end in your annihilation. You are witness to the apotheosis of moral corruption. Your lives are as insignificant to me as these pathetic trappings.’
He waved a hand, indicating their surroundings. A loud rumble came from overhead. The Valeyard glanced up just as three of the gothic pinnaces started to shake then broke loose from the vaults they hung from. They crashed down onto the walkway and shattered in a cloud of dust and stone chips, one on either side of the other Valeyard, who didn’t even flinch.
The Doctor and the Valeyard both began to back away slowly without either suggesting it.
‘We’ll need to split up,’ the Valeyard said. ‘Lead him off. Buy me some time.’
‘How much time are we talking about?’
The Valeyard realised he actually had no idea, so plucked a figure out of nowhere. ‘About ten minutes. In the meantime, can I suggest we run?’
They turned and sprinted along the walkway. Pinnacles broke from the ceiling with thunderous crashes and smashed into the path. The walkway shuddered, throwing the Doctor off balance. He tumbled towards the edge of the path, headed towards the open archway and the drop beyond. The Valeyard lashed out a hand and grabbed the Doctor’s arm, then strained to pull the other Time Lord’s weight back from the edge. The Doctor teetered for a second, windmilled his free arm to steady himself, then staggered backwards, thudding into the Valeyard. He glanced over his shoulder, and his expression went through a progression of emotions – shock, anxiety, confusion and finally a sort of grudging gratitude – before he started running again.
They came to a junction where two walkways formed a crossroads. The Valeyard patted the Doctor’s arm and gestured down one path while he veered off down the opposite.
‘Ten minutes,’ the Doctor called.
‘Hopefully,’ the Valeyard muttered under his breath. If the Doctor heard, he didn’t comment.
The Doctor ran blindly down a walkway, aware that the Valeyard was no longer with him, or at least the chatty, somewhat-less-murdery one had gone. The other one was still striding towards him, its progress slow but steady and menacing despite the lack of haste. Another pinnacle broke away from the roof with an explosion of dust and grit, and the Doctor swerved to avoid the stone spear as it dropped onto the marble tiles and shattered them.
He risked pausing for a second to see if he could spot his Valeyard, but there was no sign of him. A nagging doubt remained in the corner of his mind, that the Valeyard had gone off to put some fiendish plot into action, but he told himself, no matter how difficult it was, he had to trust him for the moment. Trust his self-interest, perhaps.
The Valeyard who was dressed as a Wraith was maybe fifty metres away now. The look of malevolent glee in the creature’s eyes sent a chill down the Doctor’s spine. There was no doubting now that it was sentient, nor that it was utterly evil. Was that the Valeyard’s plan? Make a copy of himself? Make numerous copies of himself and spread out to conquer the universe? Last time they’d met, the Valeyard had wanted to destroy everything. Was it really feasible that he’d changed his mind? Maybe the whole idea was to lead him here so he would finally be destroyed. Maybe he was making himself a target, and maybe that was exactly what the Valeyard wanted.
But then, one of his biggest failings was hope. Always had been.
‘Your time is running out, Doctors,’ called the Valeyard still headed towards him. ‘Soon a new age will dawn, and with it an end to your insipid morality.’
They had come around full circle and the Valeyard stood in front of the clock face again, now only about twenty metres away. At least he was normal sized, the Doctor mused. Small mercies and all that. The robed figure raised both arms as if in worship, and the ground began to tremble. The Doctor grabbed the parapet beside him, then threw himself to the floor, just in time to avoid being skewered by the pinnacle that detached itself from the archway above him and shot straight down at him.
‘Let’s face it,’ he called out, ‘you’d be bored without me!’
‘No, Doctor, the universe is bored with you,’ the Valeyard replied. He was stalking closer, taking his time over each step, enjoying himself, like all good villains. You’d’ve thought he of all people would know to avoid gloating but no, apparently not. The Doctor, eerily reminded of their last encounter in the Matrix, stood his ground, even though the ground didn’t feel very steady. The tremors were still rippling through the blue stone beneath his feet, but he’d made sure to place himself where there was nothing sharp overhead, just in case. He put his hands in the pockets of his velvet frock coat and cocked his head to one side, regarding the Valeyard as he drew nearer.
‘You know, you could be the poster boy for an absolute waste of potential,’ he remarked. ‘You have all my experience, or nearly all of it, all my knowledge, you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, known the people I’ve known. You’ve been there lurking in the back of my subconscious everywhere I’ve been, every battle I’ve fought. You were there when we defeated the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Nestene Consciousness, the Zygons, the Master, Morbius, Sutekh, and all you can manage is to be a second-rate adversary? Where’s your sense of style? Where’s your elegance? Where’s your sophistication? “I will destroy you and all the universe”! You might as well be a Dalek for all the imagination that’s gone into that!’
‘Take care, Doctor,’ said the Valeyard. Less than ten metres away now. And where was the other one?
‘Why?’ the Doctor asked, showing none of the inner turmoil on his face. ‘You’re going to destroy me? What does it matter what I say to you? I could stand here and tell you all the ways you’ve messed up, all the things you’ve done wrong since you started all of this. I could tell you all the things you’re going to do wrong if you succeed and go out on your little rampage across the cosmos because they’ll be the same mistakes every tinpot dictator makes! And usually, I’d be happy to let you run off and make them because it means someone like me will be able to stop you. But it just makes me so disappointed. If I’m going to turn out to be evil, at least let me be competent!’
‘And what’s your advice, then, Doctor?’ asked the Valeyard. ‘After all, I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject of evil. Everything I am is inside you right now.’
‘My kidneys are inside me right now, and even they’d make better villains than you. Imagine that! You thwarted by a pair of disembodied kidneys! And they aren’t even a decent colour!’
‘One thing I have learned from you is to remove the need for idle prattle,’ said the Valeyard. ‘Its only purpose is to try and convince your enemy that you’re stupid so they’ll underestimate you. That cannot succeed between us, surely?’
The Doctor scratched his head.
‘Or it’s to distract you while he does that,’ he said, with a nod over the Valeyard’s shoulder.
He’d seen the other one move towards the clock once the robed figure was closer and wasn’t blocking his line of sight any more. Then he’d seen him come closer.
‘What…’ the robed Valeyard began, but then stared down at his own chest where the tip of an iron clock hand now protruded. The figure glitched, Matrix code visible in streams swirling around his body for a second before he reappeared. The clock hand glowed a bright cyan, then both it and its victim disappeared in a jagged storm of light patterns, geometric shapes bursting outwards then hitting the walls with a faint fizz.
For a moment, the two men stood in silence, staring at the spot where the figure had been.
‘That was…’ the Doctor began.
‘Satisfying,’ the Valeyard interrupted.
‘I was going to say, “not what I’d imagined when you said you’d take control of the environment here”. What happened? That plan didn’t work, so you thought, “to hell with it, let’s stab him”?’
‘Which would’ve done what, precisely?’ said the Valeyard in a haughty tone, which made it very clear he was about to announce he’d done something extremely clever, which in turn would make the Doctor look like an idiot. ‘I couldn’t hack the upper levels of the code in time, but I was able to load a virus into the structure of that clock hand, enough to destroy his avatar in here. He’ll still exist in the mainframe outside, but he won’t be able to interfere with us, not without programming himself a new interface.’
‘The mainframe which you still want to blow up, I imagine,’ said the Doctor.
‘Can you think of any other way to be absolutely sure that thing is destroyed? There’ll be some kind of user access in here. It shouldn’t take me too long to find it now I don’t have something trying to kill me every five minutes. From here, I can set the system to overload.’
‘It may have escaped your notice in all the fuss,’ said the Doctor, ‘but we are still in the system, and Bill and Solitaire are…’
‘It’s a slow process. We’ll have ample time to get away before it blows.’
‘I’ll direct you to what I just said to the other you. You’ve got my memories, my experiences, and in all of those lives, when has that ever actually worked?’
The Valeyard sighed. ‘If you’re so worried about time, then I suggest you come on!’
Bad idea, the Doctor thought. He was definitely filing all of this under “bad ideas”.
Chapter 19: 19
Chapter Text
The old man lurched towards the controls as one of the monitors on his bank of controls beeped. Bill watched, creeping slightly closer now everyone’s attention was firmly on the array of switches, but just as she reached the first of the couches with its gruesome occupant under the cobweb shroud, Solitaire grabbed her sleeve. The tug was enough to tell Bill to duck. She crouched behind the couch, Solitaire beside her.
Bill waited, listening, but all she could hear was the old man muttering to himself, his bony fingers tapping at keys. Then she saw what Solitaire had seen. The Dream Lord and the slimy guy in the suit had moved away, their steps furtive at first, as though they too were taking advantage of the old man’s distraction. Then they turned and walked side by side down the length of the room, heading for the stairs. Bill held her breath until they were both past. The shadows were thick enough to hide them from normal human beings, but these were something else. Could they sense a presence?
Just as she thought this, Bill glanced up and saw that the Dream Lord had paused right by the foot of the couch, only a few centimetres from her. He looked around as if listening for something, and Bill imagined his gaze like the searchlight in a prison. Then Solitaire grabbed her hand and squeezed. They waited. He was so close, he might even smell them.
The Dream Lord gave one final sneer at the room, then looked sharply behind him as the old man exclaimed in frustration, then he headed off to catch up with his colleague. Bill exhaled deeply and squeezed Solitaire’s hand in return.
Bill gave the two men time enough to get up the stairs before she glanced at Solitaire, saw agreement in the other woman’s eyes, and the two of them stood up, keeping their movements slow so as to stay silent.
The old man was still intent on the controls.
‘Not possible,’ Bill heard him say. ‘The imbeciles, what…’
He trailed off into mumbling again, but whatever was going on, he seemed busy. They might not get another chance like this. Bill hurried to the Doctor’s side and started pulling at the restraints, looking for a catch. Solitaire went to the Valeyard and was doing the same, so far as Bill could make out in the gloom.
The straps on the Doctor’s wrists and ankles were easy enough to detach, but then there were all the wires and cables sticking out all around his head. With the Doctor’s mass of white curls, it was hard to tell if they were just held by adhesive or actually piercing his skull, so didn’t want to pull anything. Instead, she felt around where the wires disappeared, gently probing at the Doctor’s scalp.
‘I would not recommend that action,’ croaked the old man.
Bill straightened, feeling suddenly cold. She turned and saw the man glowering at her with milky eyes and a sour expression. For a brief second, she thought he was trying to help her, warning her against pulling on a cord that would leave the Doctor with brain damage, but then she saw the sleek, futuristic pistol in his hand.
Solitaire stood up straight too, a wire in her hand. She let it drop to the floor and it slapped against the thin carpet. Bill, despite her resolve to look brave, flinched at the sound.
‘My attendants appear to have abandoned me,’ the old man said, ‘therefore I am forced to take matters into my own hands. I will not allow a couple of primitives to halt the experiment, not when we are so near to completion.’
The words, “Who do you think you’re calling ‘primitive’?” rose up but halted before they could leave Bill’s mouth. The old man raised his gun slowly. Maybe it would just stun them, Bill thought, knowing at the same time that that was unlikely.
An alarm sounded from the console. The old man glanced over his shoulder then exclaimed in disgust and irritation.
‘Over there,’ he said, waving the gun towards the corner between the Valeyard’s couch and the glass wall.
Bill and Solitaire shuffled over. Keeping the gun aimed with one hand, the old man turned his attention back to the controls.
‘And I might warn you,’ he said, ‘should you be thinking of attacking me, I may be old, but I still have perfect reflexes. You must ask yourself whether you think you could be quick enough.’
He threw them both a warning glower, then tapped at the console switches with his free hand.
At the end of a long stretch of walkway, the Doctor and the Valeyard came to a set of large metal doors, decorated with a collection of gothic arches with dagger-sharp points. The Doctor hesitated, picturing all manner of monsters, but the Valeyard stepped forward, took both handles, then threw the doors open. A second passed and nothing rushed out to attack them. So far, so good.
Beyond the doors, instead of the dizzying walkways, gargoyles and deadly stone pinnacles, there was a cobbled courtyard surrounded by dun-coloured, two-storey brick buildings lit by burning torches. Lights glowed in the windows, but nothing moved. A brick chimney loomed beyond the building opposite, and everything was littered with straw and mud, a few crates and an old cart beneath the walkway that ran around the outside of the buildings. The Doctor recognised it at once.
‘Really? Here of all places?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘I know this place,’ said the Valeyard. ‘It’s easier to find what I need.’
He strode off towards one of the buildings where a set of wooden steps led up to the upper floor, to a black door with a sign above the lintel that read “J. J. CHAMBERS”. Above it, picked out in colourful electric bulbs, a sign read, “The Fantasy Factory”.
A shiver went down the Doctor’s spine, and, for a second, he felt himself back in his previous incarnation, could almost imagine he’d glance down and see multiple colours in his coat. Though the room they came to was just an empty, slightly Dickensian office, stacked with ledgers and papers. No sign of the obnoxious little clerk who’d been there the last time the Doctor visited. The Valeyard ignored everything, walking straight to a door on the other side. The Doctor thought he should take some comfort from the other man’s confidence but couldn’t quite muster it. The feeling that this was all going to go horribly wrong was still there, and there was still a loud voice in his head, which sounded very like that earlier incarnation of his, telling him he was an idiot for trusting the Valeyard in the first place. There would be some betrayal here. The idea that the Valeyard might have changed his ways was just too preposterous to believe.
Then the Doctor’s current persona reasserted itself, and he reminded himself that the only way to be certain was to give the Valeyard a chance. Perhaps he’d be betrayed, but at least he would’ve tried. Giving up on his darker side altogether meant he accepted that darkness was part of him and couldn’t be altered. The Doctor didn’t want to believe that. Of course, he had his flaws and traits he wasn’t proud of, but everyone did. The question wasn’t how much darkness you had inside you but whether or not you gave in to those urges.
The Valeyard threw open another set of doors, and the silence of the stuffy little offices shattered. The clatter of machinery pounded the Doctor’s eardrums until they hurt, but the Valeyard seemed unaffected. He carried on past the heavy flywheel and pistons causing the din to a wooden door with “Danger” stencilled in big, black letters. Without hesitation, the Valeyard flung the door open.
Inside was a small cupboard, full of monitors covered in twirling Gallifreyan text, sharply incongruous with the Victorian surroundings. The Valeyard tapped a few screens, and the symbols danced. The Doctor tried to watch what he was doing and caught a few of the symbols, but the Valeyard worked too quickly. Maybe his knowledge of Matrix coding improves later in life, the Doctor thought.
‘This environment draws its energy from the universe itself,’ said the Valeyard. ‘It’s almost at breaking point as it is. I gather it was never meant to run for this long.’
‘So, you’re increasing the drain,’ the Doctor guessed.
‘Thousand-fold. We’ll have about thirty minutes, then this entire universe will collapse in on itself.’
‘Cutting it a bit fine,’ said the Doctor. ‘We still have to get out of here.’
‘In hand,’ said the Valeyard. He tapped a few more commands on the screen. ‘I’m going to send a pulse through the interlink into our brains. It should be enough to jar us out back to consciousness.’
‘And if you get the power levels wrong, you’ll burn out our brains.’
The Valeyard glanced over his shoulder. ‘Then you’d better hope I’ve got my sums right.’
‘This way!’ Voreline called, urging her people through square of white light framed by the high walls of labyrinth. The townsfolk came as quickly as they could, but despite her instructions to Grey and Moran, many of them had brought their belongings, and the heavy packs slowed them down. She supposed she could understand it. She’d felt the same pang when she was told to go to the Hotel, when she’d looked around her bedroom at the things she’d known since childhood. They were only objects, she’d told herself, and yet each one was imbued with history.
Then she spotted her mother’s face in the crowd, and relief washed over her. Her mother’s expression was the same as most of the others, an anxious frown, but her eyes widened as she caught sight of her daughter.
‘Everything will be well, Mother,’ Voreline told her. She put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and took one of the heavy bags the older woman was carrying. The weight jarred her arm, but she managed to heft it through to the strange room beyond the white door. The little man in the red waistcoat who’d greeted them when they first arrived through the doorway stood by the hexagonal console in the middle of the room, looking as anxious as everyone else. He gestured towards a set of stairs up to a balcony running around the room, where there was another doorway and a hint of corridor beyond.
‘On you go, down the hall, first on your left,’ he repeated robotically. Then he spotted Voreline and must have picked her out as the leader, because he headed straight for her. Voreline set her mother’s bag down and patted her back, nodding towards the line of people heading up the stairs.
‘It’s safe,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
She watched her mother go, then turned her attention to the little man.
‘You in charge?’ he asked.
‘My name is Voreline. I am not the town’s leader, but the Doctor sent me to bring our people here.’
‘How many more are there?’
Voreline glanced at the white doorway by the console and quickly calculated the number.
‘Perhaps a dozen,’ she said. ‘We are nearly all here.’
‘What about the Doctor?’ asked the man. ‘Where’s he?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Voreline admitted.
The little man glanced at the console. Something red was flashing on one of the screens.
‘Well, wherever he is, better hope he gets a shift on. This isn’t going to last much longer.’
Voreline nodded, then watched the last of her people filing in. For a second, as a densely grouped party of men came through, she thought she saw the Entertainment Manager amongst them, the one the Doctor called the Dream Lord, but it was only a glimpse, and when she looked more closely, she could not find him again.
Imagination, she told herself, then went back through the white doorway to make sure everyone was through.
‘Something wrong?’ Solitaire asked.
The old man at the console growled but didn’t answer.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a bug in your system.’
‘The power levels are…’ The old man looked up suddenly at the glass wall.
Instinctively, Solitaire followed his gaze. The creature in the high collar writhed and twisted as if it was in agony. A cacophony of alarms blared from the console. The old man shot his hand out to switches and monitors, but it seemed like he couldn’t manipulate the controls fast enough to stop the disaster that was building. Solitaire could easily guess who was causing the trouble. She glanced over at the Doctor and Valeyard, but they showed no signs of life.
The old man was still holding his pistol, and despite everything, his aim remained true. Rushing him might be a bad idea, but they couldn’t stay there forever. She glanced at Bill, but she was staring at the Doctor. Trying to figure out a way to get the two men out of there, Solitaire guessed. She hadn’t come up with a solution for that either.
‘No,’ the old man hissed. ‘It is losing cohesion!’
He punched the console and looked up at the creature, which let out a shrill cry that was only slightly muffled by the barrier. Flashes of light passed across its body like bolts of electricity, and now and then it would separate into fragments that only slowly drew back to form the whole, as if it was taking all the creature’s energy to pull each piece of itself back into place.
‘You did this!’ the old man hissed. ‘I would have completed the task! I would have been free!’
He stood up shakily and gripped the pistol with both hands. He was no longer distracted. ‘You will pay for this interference!’
‘What you blaming them for?’ said a loud, Scottish voice. Solitaire risked taking her eyes off the old man to look to her right, in time to see the Doctor tidying up his velvet frock coat and heading towards them. He placed himself between them and the old man and flashed a grin.
‘Exactly,’ added the Valeyard. The sound of his voice sent a rush of joy and relief through Solitaire’s body. She couldn’t help herself and smiled. The Valeyard came to the Doctor’s side, tidying his coat in almost exactly the same gesture as the Doctor’s. Standing there, she could finally imagine them as iterations of the same person. They had the same arrogant tilt to their heads, the same determined stance, and something about it made Solitaire feel suddenly safe.
‘Why not have it out with the real culprits?’ the Valeyard asked. ‘Sorry if we spoiled your little project.’
‘What have you done?’ the old man hissed.
‘It’s over,’ said the Doctor. ‘Your creature has been chased back into the little corner of your fake Matrix that you created for it. I imagine it’s got a few wounds to lick.’
‘And in a very short time,’ said the Valeyard, ‘it’s going to need a new pen. This nightmare has run its course, I’m afraid. But you have a choice. You can stay here and cling to your failed experiment, hope your masters take pity on you despite the fact they’ve left you here to rot for however many centuries. Or you can leave. We can find somewhere for you to live in peace, until you can find a way to reverse what they’ve done to you. It’s entirely up to you, though I know which one I’d recommend.’
As if to confirm this, the building shook. Solitaire grabbed onto Bill and the two of them stumbled to keep their balance. A few bits of masonry thudded down from the ceiling and parts of the wall began to flicker, the wallpaper changing.
‘This place is about it be destroyed,’ said the Valeyard, raising his voice as the hotel rumbled around him. ‘If you stay here, I have no idea what will become of you.’
‘I cannot die,’ said the old man. ‘They made sure of that.’
‘You won’t die naturally,’ said the Valeyard, ‘but I imagine being caught in the centre of an imploding universe might do the trick. But whatever you decide, we are leaving. There is a finite window in which we can offer you sanctuary. Will you come?’
‘This is my life!’ shouted the old man. ‘My work! I cannot leave! And neither, Doctors, will you…’
He raised the gun, and a loud crack boomed through the chamber. Solitaire flinched and closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, there was no body on the floor, no blood anywhere. It took her a second to realise it hadn’t been a gunshot. A large crack had appeared in the glass wall. The old man had turned to watch it as it sprouted branches. Lines jerked into existence across the smooth surface and the wall groaned. The next thing Solitaire knew, the Valeyard had taken her hand.
‘Run!’ he and the Doctor shouted at once.
They raced for the stairs as the first chunk of glass dropped from the top of the wall. The old man let out a wail, but it was cut short by the crash as the glass fell. Solitaire glanced over her shoulder once she was halfway up the staircase. The glass wall shattered, splinters flying outwards and showering the old man’s body. He said he couldn’t die. Was he alive, pinned under that foot-thick slab of glass, watching the other shards raining down on him? She shuddered. Just before the Valeyard tugged her hand and urged her to hurry, she thought she saw a shadow seeping out over the rubble and ruined control panel, but then she turned and ran.
Voreline stared along the channel of the labyrinth, hoping for a glimpse of movement at the far end, for a group of figures to come dashing round, but no one had appeared for several minutes. Worse, the stone walls were crumbling. She could hear the crashes all throughout the maze as blocks tumbled to the ground, felt the ground tremble, saw the clouds of dust kicked up as the place collapsed.
‘We’ve only got a couple of minutes left,’ shouted the little man, whose name, she tried to remember, was Nardole. ‘Where are they?’
‘No sign,’ Voreline called back through the white doorway. ‘I can go and see if they’re in the hotel. Perhaps they’re in trouble.’
‘Yeah, well, you better be quick about it.’
Voreline nodded, even though she didn’t think Nardole could see her, then she hurried back towards the Hotel.
The Valeyard tried to remember his way through the Hotel and wished Voreline was still around. Not that it would’ve helped, most likely, since the infrastructure of the place was breaking down. Walls flickered out of existence and reappeared elsewhere. Doors were suddenly upside down or in the ceiling. They’d passed through the ballroom three times so far. Then just when he thought he’d never find the way, they were in the foyer.
‘If we can get outside…’ he started to say, but then came to an abrupt halt.
The foyer was littered with debris, its furniture overturned. The crystal chandelier swung dangerously on its chain, dropping little daggers of quartz every few seconds. And standing in front of the doorway were two figures, the Duty Manager and Doorman. The Doorman’s face no longer changed but was just a mess of static. The Duty Manager leered at them, his hair glistening under the light of the chandelier.
‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ said the Duty Manager. ‘This area of the Hotel is out of bounds to guests.’
‘This area of the hotel isn’t going to exist in a few minutes,’ said the Doctor.
A large chunk of stone fell from the ceiling and crashed into the green marble floor, which cracked and flung up clouds of dust.
‘We would also like to remind you that guests are held responsible for any damage they might cause to Hotel property…’
The Duty Manager and Doorman advanced slowly. The Valeyard had no idea what sort of powers these constructs held, so backed away just in case they could cause actual harm.
‘What good is it going to do to keep us here?’ asked Solitaire. ‘The place is falling to bits…’
‘Yeah, actually, we’d like to make a complaint,’ said Bill.
‘Bill…’ the Doctor warned.
‘This place is a tip,’ Bill went on. ‘There’s no tea-making facilities in the rooms, and the view is terrible. The décor needs updating, and I didn’t like your sausages at breakfast. Two stars and a lousy review on Trip Advisor!’
The Duty Manager straightened and considered her. ‘You are not a guest of this Hotel.’
‘But I am,’ said the Valeyard, ‘and I say she’s right. Uncomfortable bed, the shower’s difficult to use, and there weren’t enough miniature things in the bathroom. What sort of a hotel doesn’t have decent miniature things in a bathroom? At the rate you’re charging per night, do you really think you can get away with these dated, unsatisfactory facilities? I think two stars is flattery.’
The Valeyard could see the Duty Manager’s programming wrestling with the dilemma. Then something hit the Doorman with a loud clang. The Valeyard caught a flash of silver, and the Doorman flickered and disappeared. The Duty Manager turned, but the silver object appeared again. This time, the Valeyard saw it was a silver serving tray. It swung round and clattered against the Duty Manager’s jaw. He twisted, starting to fall, then flickered and disappeared too, leaving Voreline standing there with the tray in both hands.
‘Nardole says there’s not much time,’ she told them.
The Valeyard wanted to ask her how she’d known an attack would work and mused whether the constructs had some built-in safety mechanism that displaced them if they were assaulted, but the Doctor, Bill and Solitaire were running again, following Voreline towards the back of the hotel. The Valeyard gave the foyer one last look, just as the chandelier chain finally snapped. He dived for the door as the whole lot swooped down, almost in slow motion, then shattered against the marble floor, flinging bits of crystal in all directions.
By the time they reached the maze, the Valeyard could tell the doorway the Doctor created was failing. It had narrowed until only a few centimetres of light were still visible and was creeping slowly inwards.
‘Come on!’ Nardole’s voice shouted through the light.
Ahead, the Doctor, Bill and Solitaire turned sideways and slipped through. At least Solitaire was safe, the Valeyard thought, then pushed a bit more speed out of his already aching legs. The doorway lost another few centimetres. It was barely a couple of hands’ widths now. Oh, well, he thought. Still better than being crushed between chess pieces. He breathed in, put his shoulder to the light and pushed himself through.
Chapter Text
Voreline tied the last knot, and the headdress was complete. The flowers in this new place were strange but beautiful, like the planet itself. Its skies were a deep pink with its sister planet looking like a chalk drawing with its striated surface and huge rings, just sitting there on the horizon. The trees were a deep shade of violet, as was most of the plant life here, but the flowers were every colour imaginable.
Voreline had woven them into the headdress in stripes of different colours. She looked down at her work and smiled, satisfied, before lifting the heavy creation over to the clearing where her mother sat.
Their new home, a small building made of stone walls covered in pale blue plaster, had a small garden attached which backed onto the clearing, with the purple forest spread out all around them as if to protect the cottage. Mother had already made a start on the garden. Of all the things she could have grabbed from their home in the Resort, she had taken seeds, and planted them in the little patch of earth. Neither Voreline nor her mother had any idea if the things they knew before would grow in this new soil, but there was no harm in trying.
‘Here, Mother,’ Voreline said.
Her mother looked up from her needlework and Voreline gently placed the flower crown on her head. Her mother stroked a few of the ribbons that hung down from it, then her brow furrowed.
‘You don’t think this is too much? We don’t want them to think we’re…’
‘They will think what they think, Mother,’ said Voreline. ‘We can only be who we are. We cannot control how others react.’
‘But they’ve been so kind, to let us live here…’
‘The Valeyard said their population was struggling,’ Voreline reminded her. ‘They need new people, and we are new people. Now come, we can show them how we once celebrated things.’
She tried again to tie the strings behind her mother’s head, but her mother took hold of her wrist.
‘We celebrated our children going to their deaths,’ she said, then removed the headdress, all the while still holding Voreline’s arm. ‘We worshipped people who thought absolutely nothing of us. I think it’s good we left that behind.’ Her mother looked away, and Voreline realised she was hiding tears.
‘Mother, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m so sorry, Voreline,’ Mother sobbed. ‘Sending you to that…’
Voreline crouched by her and took both her mother’s hands in hers. ‘It was not your fault, Mother. How were you to know? We were brought up for generations believing there was a new life at the top of those stairs. You only wanted the best for me. I know that.’
‘But I…’
‘No, Mother. I won’t have you blame yourself. Look, we have a new life. We escaped. We survived. We look ahead now.’
Her mother freed her hands and lifted the headdress off her lap. ‘Then why keep all these old traditions? What’s the point?’
‘It might have been false, but it’s who we were. We can’t hide that. We can only explain it to them and hope they understand. Hope they think we’re good people.’
Her mother nodded but didn’t put on the headdress. Voreline sighed. She understood her mother’s point. She just hadn’t decided yet whether she wanted to leave everything about her life before back in that other universe.
‘Voreline.’
She looked up and saw Grey and Moran making their way down the path. Their cottage was a little way outside the main village, surrounded by fields and forest. Not fog and mystery, Voreline thought.
‘Are you coming?’ Grey asked, holding out his hand. ‘They said there’d be dancing. Apparently, these people have a dance that’s sounds like the Trade Dance. I say we show them how it’s done, right?’
‘Go,’ said Mother. ‘Enjoy yourself. I have seeds to tend.’
Voreline thought of trying to persuade her again, but her mother had already gone back to stitching, her way of saying the conversation was over. So Voreline adjusted her own floral headdress and brushed down her gown before she took Grey’s hand and started off down the path.
‘Can’t get used to the air here,’ Moran remarked. ‘That smell…’
‘It’s like a candle that’s been snuffed,’ Voreline said.
‘Yeah. They said it wasn’t poisonous, but…’
‘It’s not poison,’ Voreline said. ‘The Valeyard and the Doctor wouldn’t have brought us here if there was danger.’
As she walked, the tune of “Granalla Was A-Sended” came to her head, and she hummed quietly to herself, thinking to herself once again that Granalla was an idiot, and secretly wondering if one day each of them would feature in a song, something that told their descendants how they came to be on this planet. So she started to sing the tune under her breath, but sang “Voreline was a-sended” and imposed her own name over daft Granalla’s.
They passed a farmstead, where a mixture of their people and the folk of this world were busy tilling a field. Music drifted across the dark soil from the festival in the centre of the village.
Voreline paused and looked towards the group of men. For an instant, she’d been sure one of them was watching her rather than talking to the others. And she had been sure it was the Entertainment Manager. The Dream Lord. When she looked again, though, she saw only a scrawny boy she knew from the township, leaning on his hoe while the older men talked.
Imagination, she told herself, then hurried to catch up with the others, ready to head to the dance.
A wave of noise swelled briefly outside the office as a crowd of students bustled by, released from a seminar further down the hall. Then a cosy quiet seeped back into the place as warm as the sunlight streaming through the large, cathedral-style windows on the far side. The Doctor sat at his desk, sipping his tea thoughtfully. To anyone watching, he would appear lost in contemplation, though in reality, he was watching the Valeyard, who stood by the windows, hands clasped behind his back.
‘And you found nothing?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’ve told you.’
The Valeyard sighed. The Doctor saw him sag slightly and lower his head.
‘Which doesn’t mean it didn’t escape,’ he added.
‘Has to be,’ the Valeyard muttered.
‘I think we can be reasonably certain,’ said the Doctor. He put too much emphasis on the “reasonably”, he thought. The Valeyard noticed too and flashed him a look. Was that anger or upset?
‘The question is,’ the Doctor continued, ‘what do we do about it if it is out there?’
‘I have an idea,’ said the Valeyard.
‘Care to share?’
‘No, not really. If it is out there, then it’s my problem.’ The Valeyard exhaled deeply and turned to face him. ‘Actually, the more pertinent question is what do you intend to do with me?’
The Doctor folded his arms and sat back in his chair. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
The Valeyard shrugged. ‘I doubt you’re content to allow me my freedom, therefore the question is, what will be? Death? Imprisonment?’
‘I think I’m all out of holiday globes,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘I do have a Vault handy, but that would mean you sharing with Missy, and I’m not sure I’d like where that would end up.’
‘I’m serious,’ said the Valeyard sharply. He stood, waiting for an answer. The Doctor really wished he’d thought of one in advance.
‘What would you do, if, hypothetically speaking, I let you go?’ he asked.
The Valeyard shrugged lightly. ‘Go after it. Be sure it does as little damage as possible.’
‘You can’t change what happened on Korahall. The only reason I went after you was because of what went on there, what you… what it did. If you try and stop it, you’ll create a paradox…’
‘I know,’ said the Valeyard, and gestured towards himself. ‘Time Lord, remember? Sort of. I might not be able to stop what happened there, but I may be able to mitigate it, and I can certainly make sure that creature doesn’t harm anyone else.’
The Doctor watched him for a second, wondering how to phrase the question that he really wanted to ask, but the Valeyard got there first.
‘I can assure you, I have no imminent plans to bring about your destruction or any other nefarious schemes, although I’m not sure how I can convince you of that. At the end of the day, Doctor, it is your decision. The ball, as you would say, is in your court.’
‘I see what you did there,’ the Doctor answered. ‘How do I know I’m not making the biggest mistake of my lives?’
‘How do you ever know that?’
‘True.’ The Doctor sighed and pretended to busy himself with some of the books on his desk so he could avoid eye contact. ‘Right then, well, if you’re going, you’d best be off.’
The Valeyard stepped up to the desk and offered his hand. ‘Goodbye, Doctor.’
The Doctor thought long and hard and then decided that actually, yes, he was ready for this. He stood up, shook the Valeyard’s hand, then turned away to busy himself with more books and avoid even more awkward eye contact. When he looked around again, the Valeyard was gone.
‘So, all of this is for learning?’ Solitaire asked.
Bill handed her a cardboard up with steam rising from its contents. ‘Pretty much.’
Solitaire looked up at the buildings around them then followed Bill to a bench near a patch of neatly-kept lawn. The liquid in the cup was sweet and thick. She forgot what Bill had called it, but it smelled vaguely of chocolate. Bill sipped from her own cup. The smell from that was unmistakably coffee. It seemed as though so long as humans existed, so did coffee, Solitaire thought, then she remembered the synthesised muck they’d had at the Facility and grimaced.
For a while, they just sat there in silence, watching the people go by on the criss-cross of paths, heading to the different parts of the university. There were signs everywhere for different departments, different things to learn. The scale of it made Solitaire both excited and jealous. She would’ve loved to have been a student. Imagine spending years of your life just learning things!
She had hoped heading out with Bill for a while would take her mind off things, but the nagging worry was still there. The Doctor and Valeyard had more or less thrown them out of the Doctor’s office, saying they “needed to discuss things”. But the last time the Doctor and Valeyard had confronted each other, it ended with the Valeyard imprisoned and her alone. She couldn’t bear that again.
‘Your Doctor,’ she said finally. ‘He’s so different to the one I knew.’
‘If I’m being totally honest,’ said Bill, ‘I still haven’t got my head around the whole regeneration thing. Every time we go somewhere, I just feel like I have to keep him safe, because who knows what the next one might be like if he does change. I like my version. I don’t care if the others were nice or brave or whatever. I like how he is now. My Doctor, like you say.’
Solitaire nodded.
‘I think he went through a lot,’ Bill went on. ‘Since the one you were talking about. He hasn’t said, but I always get the impression something happened to him not that long ago. Something that changed him. I think, maybe, changed him for the better, to be honest. It’s like he’s had some sort of initiation test, some kind of endurance thing, and he’s come out the other side knowing himself better. Does that make sense?’
‘It does,’ said Solitaire. She sipped her drink. The warmth of it was wonderful, keeping back the chilly air.
‘I think it’ll be fine,’ Bill said. Solitaire looked up at her, and Bill smiled. ‘In there, I mean. They looked like they were getting along.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Solitaire.
‘Still here?’ asked a voice off to their right. Both women looked around as Nardole made his way towards them, a white plastic bag full of heavy food containers in his hand.
‘Takeaway again?’ Bill asked.
‘Chinese today,’ said Nardole.
‘She eats better than I do,’ said Bill.
‘Who does?’ Solitaire asked.
Bill shook her head. ‘Long story. Do you know what’s going on in the office?’
‘How would I know?’ Nardole asked. ‘I’m exiled just as much as you two. Seems whatever he’s got to say to him, he doesn’t want anyone to hear.’
‘Yeah, but you’ve got your ways of finding out what’s going on in there,’ Bill said. ‘Come on. You’re telling me you don’t have a way of spying on him, making sure he doesn’t run off again?’
‘If I did,’ Nardole said, in a tone that he very much did, ‘then the information is privileged, and I would only use it if the Doctor or his oath were at risk. I certainly wouldn’t use it just to tell you he’s letting your Valeyard go.’
Solitaire straightened. ‘He’s let him go?’
Nardole glanced around him furtively. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Nah, but that does,’ said Bill. She pointed across the lawn.
The Valeyard strode towards them at a leisurely pace, his hair ruffled by the wind. Solitaire got to her feet, threw the nearly-empty cup into the little bin beside the bench, and hurried over to him. She hugged him tightly and only let go when she felt him trying to prise his way out of the embrace.
‘Not found somewhere to lock you up, then?’ Nardole asked.
‘Nardole, I will miss you,’ the Valeyard replied, smiling.
‘Can’t say as it’s mutual,’ Nardole muttered, glowering.
‘Well,’ the Valeyard said, looking at Bill. ‘I suppose this is goodbye.’
‘Suppose,’ said Bill. Her tone was guarded, but after a second, her expression softened.
‘It has been nice to see you both again,’ the Valeyard went on. ‘Perhaps one-sidedly, but pleasant nonetheless. Take care.’
The last sentence he also aimed specifically at Bill, Solitaire noticed. Then they started off across the lawn towards the mausoleum-TARDIS, which had collected a few posters on its side for concerts and society meetings. The Valeyard peeled one off with a look of disgust, scrunched it up and tossed it towards one of the litter bins.
The console room lit up as they entered, its stained glass glowing.
‘Yes, hello. Well done you,’ the Valeyard said. ‘See, I told you you could trust her to look after you.’
‘Much though I appreciated it,’ Solitaire replied. ‘I really hope it doesn’t happen again.’
The Valeyard pressed a few controls. The engines started with a wheeze, and the beam of light rose up from the centre of the console, pulsing at the ship took flight.
‘You think it escaped, don’t you?’ Solitaire asked, after watching him for a while.
‘Well, it’s either that or I’m about to turn very, very nasty. I choose to believe the former because I do not wish the latter to be true.’
‘If it did get out, what do we do? I mean, it doesn’t have a body like you do. We can’t just kill it.’
‘Oh, we can kill it,’ said the Valeyard, looking up. His expression had lost all traces of the geniality he’d shown back on Earth.
‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘If that abomination did manage to break out of the pocket universe before it imploded, I will find it and I will destroy it.’
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