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No more.
That was all he could hear in his head, pounding over and over in time with his footsteps.
No more.
He couldn’t remember much else. He certainly couldn’t remember how he got here, or how he got into the Time Vaults and back out again. There must have been guards. They must have tried to stop him.
Obviously, they failed.
He couldn’t remember how he got past them or what he did to them in the process. Probably nothing good, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it. It didn’t matter what happened to them anyway. Everyone here was going to burn.
No more.
The device he carried was smaller than he expected, given the immense power it was able to unleash. The last remaining weapon in the Omega Arsenal—the Moment, the eater of galaxies—was nothing more than a box.
And he’d just walked out with the damned thing.
How long had he been walking? He couldn’t remember that either. He couldn’t remember a lot of things, not since that terrible realisation that everything had to end and that he was the one who would have to end it.
No more.
This was far enough, he decided. There was no one in sight. No one who could stop him.
He paused briefly, feeling the last dying ember of what he might in another lifetime have called ‘hope,’ and wondered if someone would come at the last minute and pull him back from the brink. It had certainly happened enough times before.
But not this time.
No more.
He quashed that final spark inside of him, set the box down, and got to work.
Or tried to, at any rate—there wasn’t an obvious mechanism for activating it, just gears on each side that looked more ornamental than functional.
He shrugged. He had pushed his luck far enough in getting this weapon to begin with; something like a big red button would probably have been too much to ask for.
He heard a noise behind him. Footsteps.
“You’re too late,” he said quietly, not bothering to turn around. “There’s no way to stop this.”
“Really?” replied a female voice that he didn’t recognise. “Because from here it looks like you haven’t even started.”
“Get out,” he snapped. “Go enjoy your last few minutes somewhere else.”
“Well, you’re not lacking in confidence, that’s for sure,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Might take more than just a ‘few minutes’—need a hand?”
He turned and glared at what turned out to be a woman with jaw-length blonde hair, a long coat over a dark blue shirt, and a pair of cropped trousers held up by bright yellow braces. Her expression was one of open curiosity, not fear, which meant that she probably had no idea who he was.
She crouched down next to him. “You know the story about this, right?” she asked, indicating the box. “How the Time Lords never used it because it became sentient and got a conscience?”
“Not going to be a problem for me,” he said testily. “So save your breath.”
The woman frowned in confusion. “Breath?” Then her expression widened. “Oh! I forgot about breathing!” She took in a few exaggerated lungfuls of air. “Drat, I really meant to do better with this form, since I’ve had some practice now: I can carry on a conversation while only going forward in time, instead of backwards and forwards. I’ve even managed to keep from getting them mixed up, which is harder than you’d think.”
He had only been half-listening to her chatter, but something about it was… familiar. It was also incredibly odd, which was why he turned the words over in his head for a moment or two…
For a moment…
Oh. “You’re the interface?” he asked.
“Surprise!” she (it?) confirmed cheerfully. “Don’t feel bad that you didn’t figure it out right away—the last time I did this, I got the past and the future jumbled up, so I picked a face from the future on accident. But this time, it was on purpose.”
He looked away. “I don’t have a future,” he said coldly. “Not after today.”
No more.
“No more what?” the interface asked.
He sighed. Apparently it was telepathic.
“What good would I be if I wasn’t?” she replied, as though he had spoken out loud. “In fact, it’s hard to not hear all of that, hammering inside your head. No more! Over and over: no more, no more, no more. Beating away like drums.”
He flinched.
“So,” she continued, leaning into his field of vision. “No more what, Master?”
It all came back to him in a red-hot flash: the idle curiosity that caused him to explore the early history of the Time Lords in the Matrix, pushing past the thin veneer of the official story, and then his dawning horror at the truth hiding at the very core of everything he believed—
“No more lies,” the Master whispered through clenched teeth.
“And that’s the reason why you’re here?” the interface asked.
“Yes.”
“The reason why you took me out of the Vaults.”
“I need to make them pay,” he said.
“Who?”
“All of them. Everyone here. It all needs to burn.”
“Right,” she sighed. “Everyone. Including the vast majority of Time Lords who were just as deceived as you were?”
“If you’re trying to appeal to my better nature,” he snapped, “you’re going to be disappointed.” He didn’t want to think about it any more than he had to. He just wanted to ride the wave of that blood-red certainty he’d felt when the shock and horror receded. It was the only thing he had left to hold onto. Without that murderous rage, he would crumble.
“No need to worry,” the interface said. “I didn’t let you bring me all this way in order to debate the concept of collateral damage with you. I know you don’t care about that. It’s only…” She hesitated.
He knew the hesitation was intentional but he couldn’t help asking anyway: “What?”
“It’s a bit… basic, isn’t it? Burning down a planet. You could do that without my help.”
He snorted in derision. “Then what good are you?”
“I’m so glad you asked,” the interface replied, irritatingly smug. “Do you know what happened the last time someone activated me?”
“You talked him out of it.” He should have known that the Doctor didn’t have the guts to actually destroy Gallifrey, even if it would ensure that the Daleks were annihilated along with them.
He’d always acted so superior. Little did he know…
Well, soon the Doctor’s weakness wouldn’t matter anymore. Soon it would be all for nothing.
Sooner or later, Gallifrey had to burn.
“Oh, I see, you’re mad about the Doctor? It’s always the Doctor, isn't it? But no, I didn’t talk him out of it. I just showed him a few… alternate options. I’m a bit cross with the Time Lords too, you know. Calling me ‘the Galaxy Eater’ really misses all the possibilities. I can do… just about anything, really.” She pretended to sigh dramatically. “But sure, fine, big red button, here you go.”
As she spoke, a slot in the top of the box opened and a button appeared.
He hesitated.
Oh no.
He couldn’t hesitate. He had to do this. This was what had to happen—
Except…
“Curious, are you?” the interface asked with a knowing grin. “Good, I’d have been disappointed otherwise. You’re usually much more creative, and I can do things you’ve scarcely dreamed of. For example, any time-locked event? Piece of cake to unlock. When was the last time you had cake, by the way? I’m still not used to having a physical form, but I could really do with a slice.”
She was teasing him, taunting him, refusing to get to the point. “Any time-locked event?” he repeated.
“I am called ‘The Moment,’ aren’t I? I can reach out and touch all of them. For example…”
She extended a hand and the air rippled like a whirlpool.
“You can create time fissures,” he observed. That could be useful, he admitted to himself.
“Of course it’s useful,” she said, once again reading his thoughts, a habit that was growing increasingly aggravating. And once again, something about her nagged at him like an itch.
“Think of a moment in time,” she continued. “Any moment at all. Recite the great mantra of all time travellers: what if? What if you could change the past? What if the Laws of Time didn’t matter—”
“They don’t,” he said icily.
“They don’t,” she echoed in agreement. “And the smallest change can rewrite an entire universe.”
“I stomp on butterflies all the time,” he pointed out.
“Then take a look at this one,” the interface said, gesturing again. The fissure spun faster and faster, until the center parted and widened, revealing a location on the other side: a sand-coloured tower stark against a purple sky.
And at the foot of the tower, a child waited.
“There she is.” He expected the interface’s voice to be wistful, or at least a little soft, but instead she just sounded matter-of-fact and a little bored.
The lack of sentiment was comforting, enough that he didn’t mind that he was being obviously manipulated. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
The Timeless Child—the Doctor, long ago, the origin of regeneration and, from that spark, the entirety of Time Lord civilisation. His best enemy, his foe of millennia, the source of so much of his humiliation and rage—but right now, nothing more than a little girl.
“Exactly,” the interface said, “so why go all grr and murdery when you could get rid of the Time Lords in a much tidier way? You’re a time traveller, a time meddler, so let’s meddle! Tecteun’s ship is due to arrive in about ten minutes—what if there wasn’t an abandoned child here waiting for her?”
“So I should, what, snap her neck?” His tissue compression eliminator was in his pocket…
“Bit basic, but sure,” the interface shrugged, then pointed at a spot near the top of the tower. “But look up there. The wormhole she came through is still open. You could just pop her back in there, send her home—and poof! No more Time Lords, just a planet of Shobogans trying their best. And you… well, as the person who activated me, you’ll be unaffected. You’ll still regenerate. You could rule Gallifrey like a god if you felt like it. Take Rassilon’s place. No time travel, since there won’t be any TARDISes unless you figure out a way to build one from scratch, but space travel is always an option. Make Gallifrey into a mighty intergalactic empire, with you as the new Founding Father and god-emperor. Tempting, right?”
Of course it was tempting. A universe without the Doctor… he could scarcely imagine it. But what if? What if there was no Doctor to thwart his every scheme, no one at all who could stop him. What would he do?
What couldn’t he do?
“Some conscience you have,” he snarked as he tried to bring his thoughts into some kind of order. “Offering to set me loose on the universe without anyone to stop me.”
“I like a good story,” she replied. “Or how about this story: maybe someone else takes her. Instead of a life of experiments at the hands of a mad scientist, the Timeless Child travels through time and space with someone who knows her better than she knows herself. Someone who can show her every star in the universe—”
“Stop.” He wanted to laugh at it, wanted to dismiss it immediately, but the idea dug its nails into his chest and wouldn’t let go. It was madness, an absurdity—him in the company of any child, much less a version of the Doctor—
“Oh, not ready for that kind of responsibility?” the interface teased, and he fought the urge to lunge at her.
“I’m beginning to understand why the Time Lords never used you before the Doctor dragged you out of the Vaults,” he hissed. “You’re infuriating.”
“And they’re boring,” she countered. “Simple, straightforward requests that they could just do on their own. I never even bothered talking to them, so they made up a story about my devastating moral judgment rather than admit that they couldn’t get me to work.”
“My request is straightforward,” he pointed out.
“I’m not done showing you what I’m capable of. So you don’t want to help the Doctor, I see. I suppose I should have seen that coming. But what about helping the one person whose welfare you put above everyone else’s?”
Another time fissure opened in the air beside the first one, showing another child standing before another portal.
This portal: the Untempered Schism. A rift in space-time, leading directly into the Time Vortex itself. The Time Lords, in their usual deranged way of doing things, initiated children into the Academy by making them stare into it.
The child: himself. The worst day of his life, the day everything started to go wrong. The day the drums started inside his head, implanted as part of Rassilon’s plan to escape the end of the Time War.
The day he went mad.
His younger self was still in the queue of initiates, waiting his turn.
“All it would take would be a delay,” the interface said. “Let another child go first and take the burden instead. And then this child,” she gestured at his younger self, “grows up in peace. No headaches. No torment. No madness.”
He began to shiver. The crystallisation of every ‘what if’ in his life lay before him in the single image of a lonely little boy.
“Imagine that,” the interface went on. “No fleeing Gallifrey. No ruined relationships. No needless destruction just to quiet the rage for a fleeting second. The only thing he burns are logs in the fireplace and bonfires on holidays. The only things he cracks are smiles and jokes. Just a normal life, with every possibility open to him. Open to you.”
His throat was suddenly dry. “You said I won’t be affected as the person who activated you. There will just be another version of me walking around.”
She pretended to think about it. “Well, maybe I could let the causality bleed through, just a little, and give you those new memories. Think of it as a friendly bonus for taking a suggestion for once in your life.”
More manipulation. He hated this, hated how effective it was, hated how much he wanted it—wanted both of these outcomes: a universe where the Doctor would never stop him and a universe where he would never need to be stopped. A universe where the relationship that shaped his entire life never happened and a universe where that relationship wasn’t poisoned and destroyed.
He wanted it so badly his jaw ached. It was like feeling a strange sensation for one’s entire life and only now discovering that it was hunger.
“So what will it be?” the interface asked. “Power or peace? Change the universe or change your life?”
For a moment, he was tempted to choose both: to pull both children out of their time streams and run, letting the universe warp into an unrecognisable new form while they outran the paradoxes it would create, riding the waves of a chaotic maelstrom of time and space.
My kind of universe.
The Master took a deep breath.
“Neither,” he said.
“Why?”
He wasn’t sure. His skin was still crawling at the appeal of it, at the sheer audacity of the possibilities before him. But something else was lurking just beneath, waiting for him to tease it out.
“Your face. You said it’s from the future.” He examined her again, more closely. The same know-it-all smirk, same bossiness, same deranged fashion sense—
—the automatic ease he felt around her—
“You’re the Doctor's next regeneration.”
Her expression didn’t change. “This is the face that witnesses what you came here to do. But she doesn’t have to exist.”
One last attempt at manipulation. “You knew all along that I wouldn’t change my mind.”
“Yes. But you didn’t know. And now you know what you’re giving up in exchange for this. Now it has a cost, and you’ll always feel it.”
Damn her. “Well played,” he grudgingly admitted.
She grinned. “Thank you.”
“Now burn it.”
Both her grin and the portals vanished.
And soon, so did everything else.
Nothing left on Gallifrey: no life, no civilisation, no Time Lords.
No more lies.
No more.