Faith led Celestia and the Master down into the basement where Reikon and Maxus were still busy pouring over the readings from the casket. Reikon turned as his wife entered the room. He looked momentarily surprised and then broke out into a huge grin.
“Celestia!” he beamed.
“Reikon,” said Celestia, throwing her arms around her husband and holding him tight. “It’s been so long.”
“Not as long as it was last time,” laughed Reikon.
“Rassilon save us,” said the Master, rolling his eyes.
“What’s he doing here?” asked Reikon, breaking away from his wife and pointing towards the man that had caused him so many problems.
“Relax, Reikon,” said Celestia, “he’s under my control.”
“Control!?” spluttered the Master.
“You should be locked away for life,” said Reikon, his face getting redder and redder.
“Reikon,” said Celestia, trying to calm him down, “its fine. Really it is. He doesn’t have a hold on me anymore. Lilly is back with the Doctor.”
“That’s not the point, Celestia,” he said. “He continually gets away with things and there are never any repercussions.”
“As touching as this reunion is,” said Maxus, his arms folded, “we need to focus on this thing here,” he said pointing to the container. “Did you say the Doctor sent you?”
“That’s right,” said Celestia.
“And you must by another of his cast-offs,” said the Master, stepping forward to look at the casket. He ran his fingers along the top of it. “Can you feel the power?”
“I think we all can,” said Celestia.
“What we need to know,” said Faith, walking forward to stand beside the master (she still didn’t trust him), “is how Roger Stark died.”
“Did you ask Mr. Osborne?” said Reikon.
“Yeah, and it wasn’t me, mate,” said Osborne, looking frustrated from the doorway.
“No,” said Reikon, shaking his head, “I don’t think it was.”
“But then you were the only Time Lord here,” said Faith.
“Are we sure about that?” said Osborne. “I mean what if it was someone else. Who knows how many rogue Time Lords are out there?”
“Surely your alarm systems would have been alerted like they were when myself and the Master arrived.”
“Alarm systems can be disabled,” said the Master, peering at the readings on the monitor.
“Okay, then, so what if we say it was another Time Lord. They obviously didn’t open the casket or merge with it. So what’s that all about?” said Faith.
“If we presume that this is all real,” said the Master, turning to face the blonde woman, “then the real host of this energy will have a psychic link to it. It’s possible that the energy could have controlled the host body without manifesting itself fully.”
“And we are still left with the frightening possibility that it could be any of us,” said Faith. “If the host has converted himself into Human form.”
Maxus sighed and sat down on a stool rubbing his eyes. “It’s been a long day.”
“There’s only one way of finding out who it is,” said Reikon, “and that’s by opening the casket.”
“Don’t be so absurd!” spat the Master.
“I hate to say it, but he’s right,” said Faith. “Surely the best course of action would be to send it back to where it came from.”
“Yes, I agree, Mrs. Crossland that the Void would be the best place for it.” Reikon looked down at the container. “But that’s not going to solve anything. One of us in this building is a killer.”
“You seem very eager to get it open,” said Osborne, gripping his plasma rifle a little tighter.
“Yes and obviously that means I’m the killer, doesn’t it?” said Reikon sarcastically.
“Well you’re not doing anything to make us trust you anymore,” said Osborne.
“Reikon, you’ve got to see how this looks,” said Faith.
Reikon laughed. “Unbelievable. You’re all so close-minded.”
“Well if you had told the Doctor that you had the damn casket in the first place then Roger Stark might still be alive,” said Celestia.
Reikon looked genuinely hurt by his wife’s comment. He walked over to her. “We all have made mistakes, Celestia. It was mistakes and misfortune that led to Caleb being killed.”
“By my daughter?” said Celestia. Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you not think I don’t think about him every single day?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. All I’m saying is that we all make mistakes.”
“Oh for goodness sake,” said the Master, stepping nearly between them. “We need to make a decision on what we do with this thing.”
Celestia and Reikon stood staring at each other for a good few seconds before the both of them broke away from each other.
“Do we open it or not?” asked the Master.
The memories were becoming blurred as the female was strapped down to the table in the laboratory. She didn’t seem to be making any kind of movement. She wasn’t putting up any form of resistance either. Her face was shrouded in darkness as the surgeons fixed a number of tubes to her body.
“This is horrible,” said Holly.
“Indeed it is,” said the Doctor.
“Can’t we stop it?”
“It’s a memory. We can’t do anything. It’s already happened,” he sighed.
“So let’s take a moment here,” said Lilly. “The Slayer – the First Time Lord – is actually a female. A woman, yeah?”
“At the moment, yes,” said the Doctor.
“At the moment?”
“Well just because she’s a female now it doesn’t mean that she remained a female. Time Lord and Time Lady genders are occasionally interchangeable.”
“What?!” spluttered Holly.
“I’ve been female before,” said the Doctor.
Holly and Lilly looked at each other wide-eyed.
“You learn something new every day,” said Lilly.
“So just because the Slayer is a female here it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s someone we know as female now.”
“Nope,” said the Doctor, shaking his head with his arms folded.
The image in front of them was starting to fade as the surgeons finished fixing the wires, cables and pipes to the woman’s body.
“Is it complete?” asked the lead surgeon.
The other two bowed their heads.
“Excellent. Then we shall begin.”
He walked over to a console and began tapping in keys on a pad. The machinery surrounding the lab began to hum with power, the room began to vibrate and the image in front of the Doctor, Holly and Lilly started rippling.
The surgeon leant towards a microphone. “This is Roth. Are we ready?”
“All is ready,” came a voice through a speaker.
“Then detonate.”
“What’s happening, Doctor?” asked Holly.
“The legends say that the Gallifreyans used blew up two time moons to open an aperture into the vortex. The vortex broke through and they drew the time energy via a staff – which they eventually named the Staff of Roth – cute, eh? – and channeled it into what I presume is this lab.”
There was a great surge of energy. The room was bathed in a blue light as electricity coursed through the pipes and wires. The woman on the table screamed in agony and writhed around as the power of the vortex hit her.
“Of course this was just the first experiment - the mistake.”
The woman broke free of her restraints and was lifted into the air by the power channeling through her. The surgeons backed away from her.
“SWITCH IT OFF!” screamed Roth.
“Later experiments,” said the Doctor, “would see the Gallifreyans take things slowly. As legend has taught us – you can’t just make a Time Lord.”
The vision was beginning to flicker and change. The woman’s face was shrouded in blue light, her hair flailing around wildly.
One of the surgeons ran forward and tried to hit the woman with a medical implement, but a blast of energy sent him flying back across the room.
“You have made a mistake,” came the voice of the woman from within the haze of blue light.
“I recognise that voice,” said the Doctor, his blood running cold.
The energy began to subside as the woman floated down towards the ground. The image was flickering and changing and growing darker and darker.
“Stay back, creature!” said Roth.
“You will pay for what you have done,” said the woman.
Holly and Lilly gasped as the woman’s face came into focus. She didn’t look much different, maybe a little younger and her hair a different colour, but there was no mistaking who it was.
“I don’t believe it,” said Lilly, her eyes filling with tears.
“I’m so sorry, Lilly, but the First Time Lord – or rather the First Time Lady – is your mother, Celestia.”
On earth Celestia could feel the power. She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling, but something was drawing her towards the container. She was feeling confused. She held up her hand and reached towards the top of the casket.
To be continued...
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