'This is so bogus,' said Wil, distracting Jadi from the view out the car window.

 He could see Jadi rifling mentally through the details of their present situation and failing to deduce from context which of them Wil meant. 'Specify, please.'

 'The little guy promised he'd give us directions to this Smolny joint even if he wasn't willing to go there himself,' Wil reminded Jadi. 'Instead we're stuck on the lame duck express out of town, whence he's *now* promised to find us a ride back into town. I mean, he seems a pleasant enough guy, but he is a politician, and he even genuinely has his own literal skin to be worried about. It could be hours or days before we get back into town and can look for the Doctor.'

 Jadi gave Wil an appraising look with a touch of grudging admiration to it. 'Is this some backbone I see before me?'

 Wil shifted in the car seat uncomfortably. 'Yeah, well, maybe I'm learning, but I still have a whole lifetime of reactive instead of proactive behavior to unlearn. Maybe I know what needs to be fixed but I don't know what to do about it.'

 Jadi decided to give him a hint. 'What would the Doctor do?'

 Wil thought about that a moment, then asked the ex-government official seated next to him, 'Which direction is the Smolny Institute from here? How far?'

 The man pointed to about eight o'clock. 'That way, about a kilometer. Why?'

 Wil faced Jadi again. 'Ready when you are.'

 Jadi opened the door. He and Wil jumped from the moving automobile.

 Wil landed with a hard thud. Even as his brain restored normal working order he processed data indicating that Jadi had landed with a roll and was now already up on his feet. One more marked up for experience, Wil thought.

 'I think I'm done with this,' said Jadi, pulling off the woman's scarf Kerensky had given him for disguise.

 Wil's was dripping snow down his coat collar; he removed it. 'I'm keeping the coat though.'

 'Good idea.' Jadi jerked his head in the direction the official had indicated for them. 'Let's go.'

 The snow had stopped and the afternoon sun was out, so - though it didn't seem to warm them any - unlike the previous night they were able to keep themselves on course. Despite the winding through streets and alleys, they had covered less than a mile before they came on a scene that filled Wil with dread. There had been a battle in this street, and some time ago, because the corpses were partially covered with snow - some of it red-stained. 'Do you think -'

 'I'd be surprised if he wasn't involved somehow,' said Jadi. 'Let's look.'

 They split up and began looking over the bodies, each describing a sort of half-circle as if they were going around an invisible obstacle. In fact it was near the center of the group of bodies that Wil spotted the familiar frock coat. 'Here he is!' Wil shouted, dropping to his knees next to the prone form, in snow with just a little red splattered across it. He felt for a pulse for a moment, then jumped to his feet in agitation. 'He's dead.'

 'This projectile wound's several days healed,' said Jadi, kneeling in the snow on the Doctor's other side, examining the wound in the right shoulder by eye only. 'And it's only been hours since we saw him.'

 'He's dead,' said Wil. 'Dead as eight doorknobs.' He danced in place in a fidgety sort of way.

 Jadi looked up. 'From a shoulder wound?'

 'Is he breathing? Has he a pulse, let alone two? Is he talking? He's dead.'

 'It's gotta be a Time Lord healing trance. Aliens have those, I see'em all the time.'

 'What a delightful multiverse we live in,' came the Doctor's voice from the ground between them, as he shifted slowly onto his back. 'You wake up to an argument between a professional bounty hunter and a professional fool, and the fool is the cynical one.'

 'There,' said Jadi. 'He's talking.'

 'Wil's wrong again,' said Wil. 'No surprise.'

 'How are you?' As he spoke Jadi picked the Doctor up off the cold ground by his left arm.

 The Time Lord seemed weak, but alert. 'I've lost a lot of blood,' said the Doctor. 'And a lot of energy. This was far from the ideal environment for a healing trance, but I didn't have much of a choice. The bleeding had to be stopped, and Angela was diverted from binding the wound when Stalin came along.'

 'Angela?' said Jadi and Wil in unison. Wil was hovering around the Doctor's right side, unsure whether to risk hurting the arm by assisting Jadi in supporting him.

 'Which may have been his intention, since he's the one who shot me,' the Doctor continued. 'You know, I think that man doesn't like me. What is it about me that antagonizes megalomaniacs? You can tell me, I won't be hurt.'

 'Where's she gone?' Jadi asked.

 'Not sure,' said the Doctor. 'She arrived in the neighborhood with tsarists who were attacking the Institute - so she might have gone to ground with any of them who weren't wiped out. As I say, the Bolsheviks found me again just after she did - so Stalin may have taken her. And I heard more gunfire as I was going into the trance; Kerensky loyalists, almost certainly, as the tsarist uprising tonight was inconsequential enough that no histories I know mention it - so she could be with the loyalists.'

 'In other words,' said Jadi, 'she could be anywhere.'

 'Anywhere that's in the thick of things,' said Wil.

 'Then where do we look for her?' Jadi said, looking at Wil. It took the fool several moments to realize that Jadi was speaking to Wil rather than to the Doctor. For his part the Doctor was either too weak or too surprised to react to Jadi's deferral to Wil with anything but the same.

 'Well ...' said Wil. 'Doctor, who's going to win ... this?' He waved his hands around to indicate the city or the country or the historical event they were in.

 'The Bolsheviks,' said the Doctor. 'Vladimir Lenin. Within a few hours.'

 Wil nodded. 'Then we should get in good with them, because they'll be in the best position to help us find Angela.'

 'Makes sense,' said Jadi.

 The Doctor nodded. 'That way,' he pointed the direction his companions had already been heading. Wil led while Jadi assisted the Doctor in his attempt to walk.

 'I'm not taking you anywhere, miss,' the soldier said, 'beyond out of danger. Where's your family?'

 'I'm a traveller,' she told him, marvelling later at how much easier the story trips off the tongue when you're used to it. 'I've gotten separated from the rest of my party.'

 'You picked a poor time to visit. Where will your friends be?'

 Angela pondered that. The Doctor had told her the Bolsheviks would win this revolt. As a Time Lord he would probably want to steer clear of the major events of the day, to avoid accidental interference in history. Even if the Doctor was dead - which Angela regretted believing the more she listened to her gut - or if Jadi and Wil were still separated from him, they had known him longer and would know his preferences in this area as much as Angela did and do the same. Plus if the Doctor was still alive, the last person he'd want to see again now was the Bolshevik Stalin. 'They'll be as far from the Bolsheviks as they can get,' said Angela.

 The soldier squinted at her. 'You are American? British?'

 'American,' said Angela, hoping it made sense.

 The soldier nodded. 'Your country is our ally. Our *legitimate* government's ally. I am certain my officer will give you transport to the post where Kerensky has gone to drum up loyal troops.'

 'Sounds perfect,' said Angela.

 The Doctor had eaten several unidentifiable (at least to Wil) paper-wrapped food items that Wil and Jadi had discovered in their coat pockets (undoubtedly stowed there as part of Kerensky's escape plan), and eaten some snow for the water content, and seemed almost himself. By the time they reached the Smolny Institute he was leading the way like ususal.

 The Doctor pulled some papers from a pocket and waved them at the guards as he mounted the steps. 'Dispatch from the Winter Palace battle,' he said, and the three were waved through.

 The inside of the place was crowded, but somehow the first person Wil laid eyes on (in the same way, he imagined, other people looked at the Doctor before they saw Wil) was a balding man with a short beard. Next to him was another, heavier, mustached man, who spotted the Doctor the instant after the bearded man did.

 'Sorry to bother you again, Vladimir,' said the Doctor, 'but I wondered whether you've seen a friend of mine. She's missing, you see.' So the bald man was this Vladimir Lenin.

 'The spy!' shouted the mustached man. Wil could feel Jadi bristling in self-defense at the mere sight of this guy.

 'Oh, of course I'm a spy,' scoffed the Doctor. 'I'm brought to your headquarters and locked up against my will, I'm shot while trying not to escape, I'm left for dead in the snow, I show up here to ask for help and am shouted at - and you're the wronged party. "Man of Steel", indeed. Steel brains perhaps.'

 'Listen to his nonsense,' said Stalin to Lenin. 'He's trying to trick us with this story.'

 'It's not nonsense,' said Jadi. 'We really have a missing friend out there.'

 'I bet the reason Steel Man can't comprehend our story is lack of referents - he's never had any friends,' Wil suggested.

 'Steel Man,' snorted Jadi. 'I'd like to find out how steely he is, alone in the back alley.'

 'Test his mettle, eh?' said Wil. Stalin glared at them both, but with icy nerves refused to be baited.

 'Vladimir,' said the Doctor - the three of them had walked up to Lenin by now - 'I haven't any interest in your revolution. I just want to find my friend, and this is the best place for me to try.'

 'If you are not with me, Doctor, you're against me,' said Lenin. 'Trotsky, lock them up for now. They're a distraction.'

 At a nod from the guy Lenin had addressed, several armed men converged on the time travelers. When Wil saw that the Doctor and Jadi hadn't raised their hands he lowered his.

 'Vladimir,' the Doctor sighed, 'if I haven't already said it: you badly need a hobby.'

 To be continued...