by John 'Omega' Seavey (seav0004@maroon.tc.umn.edu)

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 The Doctor was a Time Lord, blessed with superior intellect, strength, reflexes, and a wide variety of other powers. Unfortunately, he still just missed catching Grace as she collapsed to the floor.

 "You know," he muttered to himself, "something will definitely have to be done about this." He pulled his coat off and put it under Grace's head for use as a pillow. "Well, this is certainly not anywhere near as bad as it could be...after all, Fenric is trapped in the Matrix, and all I have to deal with is recovering my TARDIS from a single human being. How hard could it possibly be?"

 Unbidden, phrases half-recollected leaped to mind. "Think back to your last regeneration, when you first encountered he great cosmetic magnate, Madame Givenchy." "Who do you think arranged for her to steal your DNA?" "I ensured that her trip in your time-travelling 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."

 "Givenchy...she's one of the wolves of Fenric. His last trick, his final gambit...to give one of his pawns control of my TARDIS, even though the rest of him is trapped in the Matrix. She thinks she has free will, but Fenric's desires will leave her with only one possible desire..."

 ***

 "This time, Doctor..." Ysabelle Givenchy whispered... "This time I truly shall destroy you. I will ensure that you never steal my precious youth, that you never interfere with all my schemes and plans, that you never existed at all! I will return to the past of Gallifrey itself, and destroy you before your birth! Your TARDIS will protect me...but nothing can possibly save you!"

 She caressed the controls of the TARDIS, running her fingers possessively over each button and switch.

 "Then I shall return to my home...then I shall have everything I desire..."

 ***

 The Doctor looked down at Grace. "There has to be something I can do...some way of stopping her, of saving you...I should have been more careful, Grace. I should have seen more, known more...I should never have let this happen to you, or to myself." He brushed aside a strand of her hair that had fallen into her face. "I should never have let you link up with...link up with my TARDIS. Link up with my TARDIS!!!!" He leapt to his feet. "Of course! Grace, I am an utter genius!"

 He looked around the TARDIS bays in a fit of frenzied energy. "Let me see...Type 64 had the particular locking sequence, didn't it?" Grabbing Grace by the ankles, he dragged her over to a TARDIS that was in the shape of a tank. "Hmph...never reset that one, I guess. Still, it must have looked very nice when visiting World War One." With a shrug, he lifted Grace up so that her head made contact with the hatch of the tank. The hatch slid open obediently.

 "Perfect," the Doctor said as he lowered Grace gently into the TARDIS. "You see," he said to Grace, or perhaps to no-one in particular, "Type 64s had a telepathic locking device, encoded to the operator and the operator only. But there were ways of shorting that device out. I do believe, however, that using a human brain linked to another TARDIS to make the TARDIS believe it was instructing itself to open had to be the most novel." He jumped lightly down into the TARDIS himself, barely avoiding Grace. Of course, he thought, he would probably have been granted the TARDIS, had he asked for it, but time was of the essence. He closed the doors and began to open up the main console.

 ***

 Twiggy and Moxie stared at the madwoman in the corner, occasionally twitching their noses and bobbing their ears to indicate their displeasure. They'd definitely detected streams of omni-dimensional particle resonance influencing this woman's mind--probably from an ante-universal being drawing off of the collective telepathic power of an entire race of beings. A particularly harsh twitch signified that this was that damned woman who kept trying to shave their butts and smear lipstick on them. Another one was an exclamation of frustration at the particular lack of carrots.

 ***

 "Grace?" said the Doctor anxiously.

 "Yezz?" came a muzzy voice from the floor.

 "Perfect," the Doctor replied. "I was hoping you'd recover somewhat when in a TARDIS, even if it wasn't the one you were accustomed to."

 "What happened?"

 "Ysabelle stole the TARDIS. We're giving pursuit."

 "Is that possible?"

 "Well, it is with your aid. Right now, your link with my TARDIS is very prominent. Also, very dangerous to you. I plan to rectify both problems in a very simple manner."

 "And that is?"

 "Well, right now it's a bit complex to elucidate. But suffice it to say that your part is very simple. Just concentrate on the TARDIS. Our TARDIS, that is. Focus as hard as you can on your link to it."

 Grace began to close her eyes, but realized that they weren't open. Sighing, she began to focus on the warm, comforting presence that was the TARDIS...that had become ever more a part of her...

 It took her several seconds to realize she was screaming.

 ***

 Ysabelle finally started from her reverie when she heard a wheezing, groaning noise from behind her. She spun around to see an antique tank materialize in the room behind her.

 "No..." she whispered. "No-one can reach me in here! No-one can rob me of my prize in here!"

 "I can," stated the Doctor calmly as he walked through the doors that led into the TARDIS sickbay. "I have to, Ysabelle. You can't be allowed to continue."

 "What have you done?"

 "I linked Grace with that TARDIS." He gestured to the tank. "Her mind got confused...so did the TARDISes. They tried to converge on the same navigational co-ordinates, and wound up colliding in the Vortex. I did a similar thing to the Master once." He smiled grimly. "Our two TARDISes are merged together, and for someone with the proper knowledge of infraspatial geometry, it's easy to slip from one to the other from any point of interface."

 "And so you've come to do what? Plead with me? Kill me? The first is ineffective, the latter beyond your pitiful morality. There is nothing you can do to stop me, Doctor. I will be free of you."

 "And of your life as well."

 "My life?"

 "Didn't you ever wonder why Fenric singled you out for such treatment? Why you were allowed to escape when Crispin wasn't? Why he didn't consume you when he had the chance?"

 "Not really, no. I was more concerned with escaping, than with wondering what quirks of chance helped me. I have no time for the caprices of luck, Doctor. The universe awaits me."

 The Doctor slammed his fist down on the console. "THERE IS NO LUCK! Fenric is using you to destroy me! With me dead--with me never having been born, there will have been no-one to imprison him in the Shadow Dimensions! He will never have been beaten back, and his chaos--and the chaos of all his kin, from before the universe began -- will never end! You will never have been born, time will never have existed, and this"--he gestured to indicate the TARDIS--"will offer no more protection than an umbrella does from going over Niagara Falls!"

 "You're lying..."

 "No, Ysabelle." He sighed. "You have back the youth you lost. You have all the secrets you took from me. You have everything you wanted. Let it end with that."

 Ysabelle snarled. Her eyes glowed a furious red as the last vestiges of her humanity were claimed by her true master. Her lips moved... but it was Fenric who spoke. "No, Doctor. It doesn't end there. Twice you have imprisoned me...twice have I escaped into one of my wolves. I will be rid of you at last!" And she lunged at the Doctor.

 The Doctor caught her slim frame effortlessly and twisted her into a joint lock. "So it comes down to this...two kings alone on the board. Stalemate."

 "Perhaps, Doctor. But sooner or later, one of us will tire. I care not for Ysabelle's life; I will drive her form far beyond the limits of safety. But you will evenutally lose your hold. We will return to the beginning of Gallifrey, and I will destroy you!"

 "No," Grace said calmly as she emerged from the second TARDIS.

 "Ah..." said the Doctor. "Feeling better?"

 "Yes," she said. "The link...it's there, but only a little...just a feeling, instead of--what it was."

 "I rather expected that. The TARDISes had to mostly sever the link in order to regain control of their own systems. The link with the second TARDIS, being much newer and weaker, is gone altogether. Simplicity itself, really."

 "And what do you plan to do about her?"

 "Ah. Well. There is one final remaining thing that needs setting right in the TARDIS..."

 * * * * *

 Fenric shouted to the empty room. "You can't do this, Doctor!" "I thought we went over this already," the Doctor said over the intercom. "I have to do this. You're a demented creature of pure, unmitigated evil, and for the sake of the universe, you must be caged for eternity. It'll take you a minute to work your way past the chalk circle, and that's all I need." He cut off the microphone and began pushing buttons.

 "Chalk circle?"

 "Fenric, like all the ante-universal beings, comes from a non-Euclidean dimension. To them, a circle is a much different thing than it is to you and me." The Doctor flipped a few switches. "There...that should do it."

 "Do what?"

 "Purge the anomalies from the Architectural Reconfiguration Program. Namely, the lab we appropriated from 20th century Earth back when all this started. It's jettisoned into the Vortex, and Fenric with it."

 "Then all we need to do is return to Gallifrey and settle things."

 The Doctor rolled his eyes ever so slightly. "Romana's perfectly capable of settling things on her own. She can return Stuart and Anna to their own times, we can set that other TARDIS to remote return to Gallifrey, and Dessia would probably quite happily put me on trial for the whole mess in any event."

 Grace looked at the Doctor skeptically. "And what exactly did go on with you and Dessia?"

 The Doctor spun around, and headed for the other TARDIS. "Well, I've got work to do."

 "That's not an answer, Doctor."

 "No, no it isn't, is it? Excuse me."

 "Doctor?"

 THE END...