The Zalaxal Infiltration--Chapter Seven

MIA 11:7 The Zalaxal Infiltration
"From here to Maternity"
by Renton Patrick

 "EXTERMINATE!" The serrated barrel of the Dalek's gun eased into focus like a bad film. Ace screamed. She wasn't entirely comfortable with that, even now.

 The Doctor wiped his frameless pebble pince nez spectacles before reaching out to the Dalek. After a brief moment the alien apparatus collapsed into a silent pile.

 "Handy things, off switches."

 "That thing was a Dalek, wasn't it? And what do you mean, 'off switch?'"

 The Doctor snorted. "You hardly think the Master is going to tamper with Dalek technology without installing safety devices, do you?"

 "So who's this Master bloke, then?"

 The Doctor harrumphed and straightened his opera cloak. Ace wasn't sure where he'd gotten that.

 "Is it really you, Professor?"

 "Provided of course that I am the real Doctor, and I'm not even sure of that myself, then yes. At the very least it's possibly me."

 "What?" Ace pulled her hair back and tried to scrape some imaginary gum off the sole of her left boot. "So you're what the next one's going to be like?"

 "Regeneration isn't carved in stone. Think of it as a tapestry, being woven as the universe unfolds. There are millions of threads from which to choose, but only one is ultimately used."

 Ace was getting a headache. The Doctor looked at her sideways and pushed himself up with a cane. Ace wasn't sure where he had gotten that, either.

 "Suffice to say that if I'm not me, then I might regenerate into someone else, when the time comes."

 Ace looked at him cross-eyed.

 "Come on - we've got to find help."

 

The Master stood next to the empty hatstand. He'd been in the Doctor's TARDIS before, of course. But each time he was surprised by the starkness of the primary console room. Take this hatstand, for instance. White, like the walls. No hat. No coat. Bland. He looked across at the Doctor. Short, in this generation. Silly accent. Nice dress sense. There was something in those steely eyes that he'd never seen before. Zalaxal? Or something else, something worse? The Doctor's face was inscrutable in the glow of the console instrument lights, and for a moment the Master experienced a feeling he couldn't articulate.

 He'd come back after a few moments, when it became obvious that nothing was going to happen in the console room. But he'd seen those eyes, staring balefully through the TARDIS doors.

 "Now what?"

 "We're trapped, Koschei."

 The Master lunged forward, his face quaking in front of the Doctor's own. "Koschei is dead, Doctor! As dead as-"

 "Alright! I get your point." The Doctor took off his hat and flung it across the room. "I had to try, just to see."

 "So what do we do now?"

 The Doctor brooded, and for a strange moment the Master realized that he didn't even know what House had loomed his adversary. There was so much he didn't know. Finally, the Doctor's face collapsed. "We wait," he sighed.

 

Candaules eased back on his stool and waited for Rodan to finish pacing the room. He was only third generation; he had time to wait. If he was going to die when the transduction barriers crushed the Capitol, then he'd die like a Time Lord. He wondered briefly if the ephemeral Gallifreyans were better off dying once - would his class suffer death until the final generation? He wasn't worried, of course; the thought was academic. Everything dies - even the universe. Perhaps after the big crunch, when the atoms of the universe shrunk into singularity, the last iota of energy would trigger a second big bang. Perhaps there would be another Candaules in some future universe. Can a Time Lord truly be conquered by time?

 Candaules was a Definitive Physicist, though the college system of Gallifrey was so arcane and labyrinthine that he wasn't exactly sure where his tenure lay.

 "Are you sure it would work?" Rodan had finally stopped pacing.

 "I don't see why not. Dimensions are relative, after all." Candaules scratched his nose thoughtfully. "If it doesn't work, we're going to die anyway. No point getting worked up about it."

 "Couldn't we just dematerialize the Eye of Harmony itself?"

 "No no no no no. No. Far easier to dematerialize Gallifrey, I think, and much more feasible."

 Rodan started pacing again.

 

The basic problem with the Looms of Gallifrey is their reliance on biotechnology. Cybertechnology, though in itself a wondrous fusion between man and machine, inevitably brings with it unforseen problems. Air traffic control, for instance, is a real bitch when your computer's got the flu. So when Zalaxal impregnated KDX Loom 125 through a momentary pinhole from his prison in the spacetime vortex, no one could really be blamed for not having installed an adequate defensive strategy. 
"You look like Richard Griffiths," Ace pointed out blandly. She was tired of walking aimlessly through the new TARDIS, and more put out still to notice that the Doctor wasn't getting winded. They had tried the front door, logically enough, but it wouldn't open. "Or Mother."

 The Doctor blinked.

 "Not my mother of course. The Avengers."

 The Doctor tutted and carried on. Ace didn't like this new Doctor much; not a patch on the real McCoy. Rude and arrogant, for starters. Hmm, not too different then.

 "What bothers me is the motivation," the Doctor said.

 

"What bothers me is the motivation," the Doctor said.

 "What?" The Master looked up from where he was sitting on a rusting Parisian park bench. He briefly wondered how the Doctor had gotten it.

 "Motivation," the Doctor sighed, rolling his hat up and down his right arm. "Yet another Evil From the Dawn of Time. Frankly they're just tiresome," he paused, "or at least I'm sure they will be."

 The Doctor strolled over and sat down on the bench, placing the remains of his umbrella between them in some small act of defiance. "What motivation could Zalaxal possibly have for doing whatever it is he's doing? Madness? Boredom? Spite? Vengeance? The problem with beings like Zalaxal is that they ultimately just don't make any sense."

 "I think there's more going on here than that." The Master told the Doctor about the eyes. "Ah," the Doctor replied. "I have no idea what that means, actually."

 

Hands. Many hands. And feet - several feet. A number of heads. Zalaxal beamed with pregnant anticipation from within the lattice of the loom as it wove his escape several times over. Soon, Zalaxal would no longer exist as an individual. When the loom had completed its pattern a species of Zalaxa would emerge from on Gallifrey itself.

 

The landing chime tried to sound from within the melted husk of the TARDIS console, but all that emerged was a pathetic ping. With some effort the left door opened inward. The right door just moaned ineffectually and strained against a broken hinge.

 The two Gallifreyans looked sideways across the threshold from their bench.

 "You first," they chorused politely.

 

The Doctor fell against the wall, wheezing.

 "Ace," he sputtered. His mustache had blood in it.

 "Doctor!" Ace threw down her Walkman and scrambled to his side. "What's going on?" The Doctor gazed blankly ahead, his grey eyes curiously dull.

 Ace noticed that his massive chest wasn't moving. It wasn't doing much of anything, what with the blood and the bullet holes. Ace was painfully aware of tinny pop music issuing from the headphones on the floor. She jumped sideways and glanced forward.

 The man was roughly six feet tall and looked to Ace as though he poured cement into his breakfast cereal. She noticed empty shells around his feet. Smoke in the air. The click of a clip snapping into place.

 The man grinned. His teeth and tongue were black. His eyes were black.And the hole in the muzzle yards from Ace's face was black.

 To be continued...

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