* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Doctor abruptly vanished, whisked away to a different area of the Matrix.
Grace looked up. Most of the Matrix's bird-like defense systems had been deactivated by the Doctor's stun guns. The Doctor had bought her enough time to finish repairing the time vortex. She concentrated, and suddenly the landscape vanished, to be replaced by the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle she had been working on. She sat down, picked up a few white pieces, and began piecing them together. As she worked, she realized that all of the pieces were either white or black, and they fit together to form large squares. Large, alternating squares.
She was piecing together a chessboard.
***
The Doctor stood still. Moments before, he had been standing on a grassy hill under a cloudy sky; now he stood facing a damp, mossy stone wall, such as that in an underground crypt.
"Ahem," coughed a voice behind the Doctor, demanding his attention.
The Doctor turned to find -- Crispin.
But it wasn't the Crispin he remembered traveling with in the TARDIS. This Crispin was possessed. His eyes glowed a fiery red, and there was a hint of pure, menacing evil within.
"Ah, Fenric, I wondered how long it would take you to show yourself," the Doctor responded coolly. He dropped the stun guns, knowing he wouldn't need them anymore, and looked around unconcernedly. "Still obsessed with defeating me at the game of traps', eh?"
Crispin circled him warily. "The last time we met, I discovered the secret of your game, Doctor. It was simple." He continued to circle the Doctor, who rotated slowly to face him. "When you are faced with inevitable defeat, you turn your opponent's pawns against him."
"Yes. Ace gave you the idea. I saw you reconstructed her from your memories here in the Matrix as a kind of tribute. Very clever of you to use her against me."
"And your other friends as well. This human, Crispin,' for instance. Crispin *Sundvik*, Doctor."
"Ah yes. I figured he must have been descended from one of the cursed Vikings who came to settle at Maiden's Point. Just out of curiosity, how *did* you escape from Maiden's Point?" The Doctor continued to rotate as Crispin revolved around him.
"As it turned out, Ininger was a distant, distant descendant of the cursed humans, many millions of generations removed. As such, I was able to draw strength from him at the last second, and create a time storm for myself to escape. Ever since, I have been plotting your downfall, Doctor. When did you first realize you were entangled in the game of traps once again?" Crispin halted, staring the Doctor in the eye.
The Doctor faltered for a moment. "I suspected as much when I first saw the time storms in Clacktown. I was pretty positive when I examined the chronon-separator that Givenchy claimed to have built. It was much too advanced for Earth technology, and none of my race -- not even the Master or Mortimus -- would have been foolish enough to put such devastating technology in the hands of primitive humans. But what clinched it was when I saw the image of Ace. By the time you had created a projection of Dessia that claimed to be the Rani's first incarnation, I knew it was you manipulating events from behind the scenes."
Crisipin laughed. "Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I have been hounding you for much, much longer than that, Lord of Time. Think back to your last regeneration, when you first encountered the great cosmetic magnate, Madame Givenchy." He paused to let his words sink in to the Doctor's consciousness. "Who do you think arranged for her to steal your DNA?" The Doctor glared at Crispin, in a combination of anger and worry. "I ensured that her trip in your time-traveling capsule had no effect on her conscience. I even provided her with the means to destroy your precious time vortex.' All it took was the masterful placement of all the right pieces at all the right times."
The Doctor eyed him warily, not sure that he was going to like what was coming.
Crispin began to circle his prey once again. "And there's much more where that came from, Doctor. Who do you think ensured that your TARDIS materialized in the midst of a gang war in 1999 San Francisco and that your scanner showed the wrong picture outside? Who do you think enabled your arch-enemy, the Master, to survive his trial on Skaro and exist in a liquefied jelly state? And who do you think made sure that an incompetent Earth doctor operated on you, causing your regeneration into a less devious, more trusting incarnation who could see individual time streams more clearly, but not the big picture?!?!"
"No," whispered the Doctor, placing his hands to his head and falling against one of the dank, cold stone walls. His regeneration couldn't have been contrived. This was all wrong.
Crispin laughed. "Oh, it doesn't stop there, Doctor. Who allowed my peer, the Toymaker, to break his psychic bonds and play his unique game of traps with you? Who created the time storm during your quest for the Key to Time, the storm that forced Grace to form a psychic bond with your TARDIS? Who created the CVE between this universe and the parallel universe, the link that allowed the parallel Omega to integrate me into your Matrix, and to show you the lustier, chaotic side of your own nature? You are no longer the master of the game of traps, Doctor. Your entire incarnation has been a trap. Your pathetic powers pale before me, Time Lord," Crispin spat. The Doctor crumpled against the wall, defeated.
"But you ... What have you done it all for?" the Doctor whispered. "What do you have to gain by destroying the entire Time Vortex that holds the universe together?"
Crispin cackled an evil laugh, and the Doctor could see a fire light in his blackened eyes. "CHAOS, Doctor! The end of order and rationality! The end of all that is good in your eyes, the end of all your battles and plans, the end of everything you have ever fought for. The end of LIFE. The real game wasn't the game of chess with which you have hounded me over the aeons. The real game has been between the forces of order and chaos. And you have lost. The game is over, Time Lord. I emerge victorious."
As the Doctor blinked away the tears in his eyes, he could see Crispin step away to reveal a wooden table, with a game board and pieces on top. The Doctor stood up, resigned to his inevitable fate to play one last time. He walked over the table, a tear sliding down his cheek.
It was a chessboard. An ordinary chessboard. But the pieces were not ordinary pieces. At the white end of the board stood an image of the Doctor himself, garbed in white, with a golden crown upon his head. At the opposing end stood the image of Crispin, decked in black, holding a sickle in his right hand. Next to him stood the crowned figure of Ysabelle Givenchy, the black queen; Mortimus, the black bishop; and the Master and Rani, the black knights. Twin images of Givenchy's time cabinet stood in place of the black rooks, and a row of Chattermalian pawns stood ready to take to the battlefield. At the Doctor's end of the table, Romana stood in as the white queen; the Abbot as the white bishop; Dessia and Drax as the white knights; and the TARDIS in place of the white rooks. Pawns of Grace, Stuart, Anna, Ace, Benny, Andred, Merak, and Jadi Morok stood poised to fight as the Doctor's troops.
"This time we do not play by the rules of order, Time Lord." Crispin leaned over and placed his palms on the table, like a World War I general examining a map of Europe. After examining the pieces for a moment, he moved the figure of Givenchy straight through the row of pawns to the center of the board. He looked up at the Doctor. "This time, you must play *my* game."
***
In the Panopticon, a time storm appeared, depositing the suddenly once-again youthful form of Ysabelle Givenchy on the floor. She strode over to where Mortimus was trying eagerly to awake the unconscious Rani. Givenchy walked over to her and gave her a kick. The Rani stirred into miserable wakefulness. "It is time," Givenchy announced. In unison, they walked up the steps, over the Presidential platform, and straight through the wall.
***
Grace stood up, stretched, and looked down at what she had completed so far. She felt as if she had been working on this puzzle for eternity. The giant chessboard was about 50% complete. She hoped the Doctor was hanging in there, wherever he was. Whatever he was doing, she hadn't been bothered by any birds, rabbits, or companions from the Doctor's past since he vanished. He was probably busy keeping the bad guys occupied while she did all the dirty work. Oh well, it beat going to the opera with Brian. She looked down at the thousands, maybe millions of pieces still strewn around her and groaned to herself. Resignedly, she sat down and began work on the puzzle once again.
***
The Doctor stared in concentration at the board before him. Crispin had been moving his pieces around the board, apparently randomly, with no regard for the usual rules of how the pieces moved. He took care, though, not to put his pieces into danger, into places where the Doctor could capture them by the traditional rules of the game. This was unusual; he would have expected Crispin to trade pieces, to sacrifice his pawns to take the Doctors. This lack of bloodshed was quite unusual. It must have been part of Crispin's master plan, and this worried the Doctor. At long last, Crispin moved his queen into a position where the Doctor's queen was pinned in front of his king. The Doctor couldn't move his queen because he would be in check. He couldn't move his king without losing his queen. And no matter where he moved his queen, he would lose it. His only real option was to sacrifice his queen to take Crispin's queen.
"Can you do it, Doctor? Can you sacrifice your most powerful piece to prevent a shift in the balance of power?" Crispin stared the Doctor in the eyes, and laughed.
***
Givenchy strode through the wall into the Amplified Panotropic Computer room, startling Romana, Andred, and the Abbot, all of whom were frantically punching in instructions to regain control over the Matrix, in which the Doctor and Grace were trapped. Givenchy raised a blaster, and aimed it at the main console. Romana threw herself in front of it. "I can't let you destroy this," Romana declared.
"You have no choice," Givenchy replied coolly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Andred moving toward her, his staser pistol raised. He stopped suddenly as he felt the cold titanium of the Rani's biological transmogrifier in his back.
"It's your move," said Givenchy.
***
The Doctor moved his king out of the line of check. Crispin looked on in astonishment. "Doctor! I am surprised! Such a foolish mistake!" He reached out and took the Doctor's queen with his queen. "In chess, the queen is the most powerful piece in the game, not the king!"
The Doctor stared down at the board in broody silence. "I refuse to use my pieces for killing ... for destruction ... for chaos."
"Check."
***
With a blur of motion, Romana turned around and flipped several switches on the Matrix control console. Without hesitation, Givenchy shot her down. Romana collapsed to the floor. Givenchy strode over to the console, but found the way blocked by a defensive field. "Damn!" she shouted, turning to her companions. "She sacrificed herself to protect the Doctor! Come! We'll have to find another way to harm him." She led the Rani out over the dead bodies of Romana and Andred.
***
"You're running out of pieces, Doctor," Crispin gloated, removing the Abbot from the board. The Doctor's options were running slim. Crispin had taken control of several of the Doctor's pawns, and eliminated most of the other pieces from the board. All the Doctor had left was his king, a TARDIS rook, and his Grace pawn. "Your defeat is inevitable."
The Doctor studiously moved his king out of harm's way once again. "Tell me, what did you hope to achieve by forcing Grace to link with the TARDIS?"
Crispin studied the board. "Why, to remove her from the board, Doctor. She should have died instantly when her link was severed in the time storm, but somehow she pulled through. She should have died again when her personality imprint was downloaded into the Matrix in place of your TARDIS. And she should have died a third time when you activated your TARDIS. But somehow, she pulled through. No matter, though. The link is slowly killing her. She would have died anyway in a couple weeks from leaks in your TARDIS's telepathic circuits." Crispin thought for a while, then moved the Doctor's Ace pawn against his TARDIS. The Doctor frowned and moved his TARDIS out of danger.
"Grace, what have I done?" the Doctor murmured sadly to himself. Crispin made another apparently random move. It was almost as if Crispin was seeing a different board. The Doctor used the opportunity to advance his Grace pawn down the board.
***
The image of Ace projected from Fenric's mind prowled through the Capitol, searching for the Doctor's TARDIS. Every time she approached, its HADS caused it to dematerialize somewhere else for safety. But sooner or later she would find it, and when she did, she would turn its telepathic circuits up to full power and destroy Grace once and for all.
***
The puzzle was nearly done. There were only a few pieces left. But Grace could tell that something was wrong. There were still spaces for 4 pieces, but she only had 3 pieces left. She began to panic. She recounted the pieces, looked on top of the puzzle, and even looked underneath the puzzle for the missing piece. It wasn't there.
Grace took several deep breaths. This couldn't be happening. She couldn't have done all this work just to discover that the puzzle was missing a piece, right in the center. For all she knew, the time vortex might fall apart again without the missing piece. She sat down in despair and pounded her fists on the ground. Suddenly, an idea came to her. She lifted up one of her feet, and with a little help from her arms, swung the heel of her foot toward her. Sure enough, there was the missing piece, stuck to the bottom of her foot. "Duh!" she muttered to herself, and ran over to stick the missing piece in the center of the puzzle.
***
The Doctor moved his king out of harm's way once again. Crispin laughed. Suddenly, behind him, Stuart and Anna walked through the wall, like zombies, advancing on the Doctor. Crispin moved their counterpart white pawns on the board back towards the Doctor. "You have taught me well, Doctor," Crispin replied. "All those centuries of obsession ... and all I had to do was turn your pawns against you. Checkmate in two moves, Doctor!"
The Doctor leaned back in his chair casually, oblivious to the danger behind him. Crispin eyed his suspiciously. "Ah, it suddenly occurs to me that I forgot to teach you one of the rules of the game," the Doctor began. "You see, as a reward for moving one of your pawns down to the end of your opponent's side, you can convert it into any piece you choose." The Doctor smiled, eyeing the Grace pawn which was one row away from Crispin's end.
Crispin frowned and his eyes burned red as he glared at the Doctor. "What trickery is this?"
"No trickery," the Doctor replied, reaching out and picking up the Grace pawn at Crispin's end of the board. He twirled it around casually. "Check the Matrix databanks. After all, you control them." The Doctor whistled as he played with the pawn in his hand, caressing it gently.
Crispin stared off into space as he contacted the Matrix. "No. No! This can't be! You have lied to me! You haven't played by the rules!" Stuart and Anna came to an abrupt stop.
"Oh, yes I have," replied the Doctor casually as he stood up from his chair. "Just because I never made you *aware* of the rule doesn't mean I lied to you, or that the rule isn't valid. Life is like that, Fenric -- you don't always know its rules. But that doesn't mean they don't exist." He dropped the Grace pawn down in the last row. "Queen me."
"NO!" roared Crispin/Fenric as he stood up. At that moment, a shaft of light appeared, depositing Grace in the room.
"Doctor! I did it! I finished linking all of the time streams in the Matrix, and now the time vortex has repaired itself!" She ran over to the Doctor, who picked her up in his arms and hugged her.
"Which means we have control over the Matrix again. Oh, by the way, what was it you said, Fenric? The queen is the most powerful piece in the game?' Checkmate." Crispin looked down at the board, and saw that there was no move he could make, legal or illegal, that would result in saving his king, now that the Grace pawn had become a queen. He roared in anger, but the Doctor and Grace didn't wait around to finish listening to him. The Doctor grabbed Stuart and Anna, and together, the foursome jumped into the stream of light and abruptly vanished.
***
Outside, Romana and Andred began to stir, their minds now free from the consciousness-blocking field that Crispin/Fenric had projected. They nearly jumped as the Doctor, Grace, Stuart, and Anna came running out of the First Door to the Matrix in the wall behind them. "No time to explain," muttered the Doctor, running over to the console and typing in several quick commands. Romana and Grace looked over his shoulder curiously.
"So you've trapped it," Romana observed. The Doctor smiled and pressed a last button.
"That's it! The Evil From Before The Dawn of Time' is permanently trapped in the Matrix, broken down into its constituent psychological prints. I think you'll find it makes a rather nice computer chess program." He turned to the women and gave them his most charming smile.
"Where have the renegades gone?" Andred asked, dusting himself off.
"I think you'll find that they were never really here," the Doctor replied. "Fenric created physical representations of them from their mindprints in the Matrix, just as he did with Ace. You can tell they weren't real -- they weren't quite themselves when the timestream patterns in the Matrix began to get jumbled up. Dessia the first incarnation of the Rani ... really! Dessia was ratting on the Rani's experiments back when she was just a hall monitor. And the Rani never kissed quite like Dessia could ..."
"I'm pleased to hear it."
Everyone turned as Dessia -- the real Dessia -- came into the Matrix control room. Grace eyed her with a bit of jealousy.
"Feeling like your normal self again?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes. When my mind was released from the power in the Matrix, I heard what you did to save Gallifrey. Thank you. I guess you weren't to blame after all for the destabilization of the time vortex."
"Well, thank you," the Doctor accepted.
"Doctor?" inquired Anna, holding Stuart's hand tightly. "What happened to Crispin?"
The Doctor looked down at the young couple sadly. "I'm afraid he's no more. He was cursed with a specific genetic strand which made his body print compatible with the entity that took over his mind. It deleted his mind when he took over Crispin's body. I'm sorry." The young couple looked into each other's eyes sadly, and Stuart hugged Anna to him as a tear began to roll down his cheek.
"Well, what are you hanging around for, Andred?" Romana asked. "There's still a lot of cleaning up to be done. There are still some Chattermalians running around loose that need to be taken home before they bludgeon us all to death. The Abbot and Drax are still wandering around somewhere--"
"And there's still the matter of Professor Givenchy!" the Doctor exclaimed, grabbing Grace by the hand and dragging her out of the control room. "Quickly! We have to find her!"
***
Ysabelle Givenchy, restored by Fenric to her former youthfulness, ducked into a doorway as several of the Chancellory Guard approached. After they passed, she continued down the hallway, looking for the Doctor's TARDIS.
At last, she found what she was looking for. The door to her lab back on Earth, the backdoor interface to the unstable TARDIS/lab graft. She opened the door and made her way to the console room. With the knowledge Fenric had passed down to her through the Matrix, she would have no trouble piloting it, or indeed recreating any of the technological wonders the Time Lords had at their beck and call. She would soon have the ability to regenerate, and create her own empire on Earth, and maybe the galaxy. She entered the TARDIS, and made her way toward the console room.
***
The Doctor and Grace ran into the Panopticon, where they encountered a startled-looking maintenance worker and his droid. "Excuse me, have you seen a young Earthwoman -- about this high, pointy nose, wearing an excess of makeup, probably trying to kill you -- run by this way?"
The maintenance worker shook his head.
The Doctor was about to lead Grace off in another direction when the grinding sound of a TARDIS dematerialization grabbed their attention. They turned just in time to see the Doctor's blue police box TARDIS fade away into nothingness.
Grace collapsed to the floor as her link with the TARDIS was severed yet again.
To Be Concluded ...