Author's Note: Thank you so much to my sole reviewer, Push to Shove, I'm so grateful that you're still reading, it means so much to me! *big hug* I know I am beyond slack, but I am determined to finish this one! This chapter is for you xxx

Chapter 11

The watch felt warm in his hand, the metal like silk, sensuous and somehow supple. Suddenly, he couldn't pull his eyes away from it, couldn't bear to lose sight of the intricate circular patterns engraved so deeply into the bronze-coloured case. In the background, he could hear the computer intoning the countdown, each second bringing the culmination of his life's work closer and closer. Chantho was hovering like a giant moth behind him, her uncertainty and concern almost palpable. Yet none of it seemed to matter, not any more, not in comparison to the newly-discovered siren call of the watch. It whispered to him – beautiful, seductive words that had no meaning to him, yet held him like a fly in amber.

"Regeneration... TARDIS... regeneration."

Transfixed, he brushed his fingers gently over the raised surface of the mysterious engravings, like a blind man reading a hidden message written in Braille.

"Chan – Yana, won't you please take some rest – tho?" his assistant ventured, in an anxious attempt to snap him out of his reverie.

He ignored her, unaware that she was even there. There was a male voice seeping out of the watch now, authoritative and commanding, compelling in its sheer arrogance.

The drums, the drums, the drums. The never-ending drumbeat. Open me, you human fool. Open the light and summon me and receive my majesty.

The hydrostatic pressure tank containing the Doctor's severed hand began bubbling madly, like a pot left on the stove for too long. The Professor moved across to it, his body as rigid as if he was walking in his sleep, his eyes fixed on the hand drifting back and forth in the swirling columns of bubbles.

Destroy him! And you will give your power to me!

Hesitantly, seeming to sense something was very wrong, Chantho followed him. "Chan – Professor, please, you are not well – tho."

Behind them, the countdown continued. "Thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten..."

Down in the radiation control chamber, the Doctor was still fighting to keep the footprint impellor from imploding. The closer they came to the launch, the harder it was for him to keep everything stabilised. The vibrations had increased to the point where the room was literally shuddering, and the rising heat was becoming almost unbearable.

"If he wanted to escape the Time War, this is the perfect place to hide," Jack said, using brute strength to wrestle down a lever, setting the last of the launch controls in place. "The end of the universe."

"Six, five, four..."

"Think of what the Face of Boe said," Martha added breathlessly. "His dying words... He said, 'YOU ARE NOT ALONE.'"

"Three... two... one..."

YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE. Even as the Doctor's hands prepared to tighten on the launch key, the words rattled around inside his head with a dull kind of horror. An acronym. Of course it was, just as it had been so many times before. It had been there all along, in the Professor's name, and he had missed it.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE... YANA.

"Zero."

Time was up. The launch key turned under his hand, and inside the silo, the mighty engines ignited with a tumultuous roar. As the Doctor had predicted, the gravity pulse stamped down, and the rocket was thrust upwards in a blaze of glory, catapulted into the stars and the vast realms beyond, carrying the last of humanity with it, heading for Utopia.

Up in the laboratory, at the very instant when everything the human Professor Yana had worked for became reality - the very moment when the elderly man should have been rejoicing at his long-awaited success and at the prospect of finally being able to rest - he stood with the TARDIS at his back, and opened the fob watch.

And that was the moment when everything changed forever.

Tejana felt it happen. Looking back, she would always liken it to the moment when the Titanic struck the iceberg. The moment when Time herself shifted, and when the future of so many people would be rewritten, her own most of all.

She was nearly back to the laboratory when she felt the roar and the shudder of the rocket launch. If she hadn't been in so much pain, she would have let loose a whoop of triumph and given a little victory dance. They had done it, against all the odds. A combination of the Professor's dedication, the Doctor's genius, Jack's immortality, and a lot of hard work, and now those people on the rocket would have their dreams come true. There could be no better feeling than the shaft of pure joy and relief that coursed through her veins at the realisation.

The bunker had no windows to the outside, so she couldn't watch the ship blazing a path to the heavens. She had never been very religious, giving no homage to her childhood gods of Gallifrey, or anywhere else since then. Nevertheless, thinking anxiously of the Shafekane family, of little Creet, of brave Lieutenant Atillo, and all the other desperate refugees on board, she paused briefly and said a small prayer to the Other that her navigational matrix would prove accurate enough to get them where they needed to go. Bright and beautiful Utopia, the paradise at the end of the universe, the ultimate incarnation of human hope.

Oddly, as she prayed, an answering ripple seemed to course through the psychic link. At first, she thought it must be the Doctor, emerging at last from the chamber beneath the rocket, his duty done. She was about to reach out to him, when she hesitated in confusion. Something was wrong. She knew the Doctor's psychic signature as well as she knew her own. Whatever was disturbing the link, it wasn't her father. It was faint, barely even registering. If she hadn't been listening for the Doctor, she might never have heard it.

"Some sort of glitch," she murmured. "Caused by the stet radiation. Has to be."

Because the only other alternative was impossible. Another Time Lord mind within the link, one with enough shielding expertise to be almost invisible? No, she and the Doctor were the last, had been the last ever since the end of the Time War. They were stuck here at the very end of the universe, light years away from anywhere. There was no-one else, could be no-one else.

"An echo, nothing more," she told herself firmly.

And yet, as logical as her arguments were, she couldn't deny the cold shiver that traced up her spine. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder, she began limping rapidly along the corridor, a sudden, inexplicable urgency in her step.

Standing at the instrument console, charting the progress of the rocket, Chantho saw the Professor open the watch, but she was completely unprepared for what happened next. Golden light poured from the timepiece in a brilliant, blinding deluge, enveloping the Professor in a glowing halo. Behind him, Chantho was forced to raise her arm to protect her eyes. The room seemed to echo with mad laughter, a male voice the Malmooth had never heard before. Mocking and insane, the sound filled her with terror.

"Chan – Professor – tho?"

Slowly, very slowly, he turned to face her. He looked the same, his white hair, his craggy, time-worn features, his neatly-tied black cravat. All except for his eyes. Frightened, Chantho stared at them, unable to look away. Where once they had been gentle and good-humoured, now they were cold and full of mockery, as if he hated everything about her.

Without acknowledging her at all, he moved across to the surveillance monitor and flicked it on. On the screen, Chantho could see the control room outside the radiation chamber, where the Doctor, Jack and Martha were still gathered. Chantho could hear the Doctor shouting down the phone to Atillo, bawling as loudly as he could, to make himself heard over the roar of the rocket.

"Lieutenant! Have you achieved velocity? Have you done it? LIEUTENANT! HAVE YOU DONE IT?"

There was a brief pause filled with crackling static, before Atillo's voice could be faintly heard in reply. "Affirmative. We'll see you in Utopia."

"Good luck!" the Doctor snapped, before slamming the phone down and whirling back to his companions, strain written across his face. "We need to find Tejana! NOW!"

Even as he spoke, he was already breaking into a run, heading for the door, clearly intent on wasting no time. Martha and Jack followed behind him.

Professor Yana gave a contemptuous snort. "Utopia!" Reaching out, he tugged a small lever on the console beside him. Immediately, down in the control room, the heavy steel door slammed shut in the Doctor's face.

"Get it open!" the Time Lord screamed to Jack, kicking futilely at the door. "GET IT OPEN!"

Jack dived on a nearby security keypad, while the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, buzzing it up and down the unyielding steel, looking for a way to force it open.

Alarmed by their evident urgency, bordering on panic, Chantho looked pleadingly at the Professor. "Chan – but you've locked them in – tho."

The Professor gave her what could only be described as a smirk. Chantho swallowed hard, her mandibles twitching in distress. She had never seen anything like that expression on his face before. Even when he was irritable, or tired, or not feeling well, he'd always been such a genial employer, a gentleman with such a kind and old-fashioned manner. After her own people had died, he'd become the closest thing to family she had left. She had no idea who she was looking at now, but it wasn't her Professor.

Crossing to a different set of controls, he threw up another lever. "Not to worry, my dear. As one door closes, another must open."

Disbelief coursed through her as she realised that he had just switched off the power to the main gate, defences they had fought to maintain for decades. "Chan – you must stop – tho!"

He ignored her completely. Moving from instrument bank to instrument bank, he methodically shut down each and every one of the bunker's defence systems.

"Chan – but you've lowered all our defences! The Futurekind will get in – tho!" she cried, despairingly.

Still, he disregarded her, as if she was nothing, simply going about his destructive work, as if she wasn't even there. Tears brimmed in her big eyes. She didn't know what had happened to him. He'd been working so hard, with so little rest. Perhaps he'd had some kind of fit, a stroke or a nervous breakdown. Surely he was ill. He couldn't possibly know what he was doing. But how could she stop him, if he wouldn't listen?

Before she could come to a decision, the door was flung open, and Tejana stumbled into the room. She looked terrible. Her clothes were torn and blackened with soot and she was badly out of breath, as if she'd been running. Her shoulder was heavily bandaged, the stained white cotton already showing signs of blood seeping through from the wound beneath.

"Professor," she gasped, as she slumped against the door frame, clutching at it to keep herself upright. "Professor, there's something wrong. There's alarms going off everywhere. The main defence system has shut down!"

"Has it, indeed?" he chuckled. "How very perceptive of you, my dear Tejana."

She raised her head in surprise, every muscle in her body instinctively stiffening as she registered the coldness in his tone when he said her name. "Professor? Are you all right?"

"Chan – he did it," Chantho said in a horrified whisper. "He shut down the defences, all of them. There's nothing to stop the Futurekind now. I think he's gone mad – tho."

"Not mad," he retorted, his voice like a whiplash. "Quite the opposite, you stupid insect. Did you never think, in all those years standing beside me, to ask about that watch? Never? Did you never think, not ever, that you could set me free?"

"Watch?" Tejana queried sharply. "What watch?"

Chantho whimpered, the loathing in his eyes cutting at her like a knife. She couldn't make herself believe it. The man she had respected, the man she had loved in her own way, calling her "insect", as if she was something filthy, something worthy only of disgust. "Chan – I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – tho."

"You with your 'chan' and your 'tho', driving me insane!" He was advancing on her now, driving her backwards with the sheer menace of his presence, until she hit a wall and could go no further. Slowly, she slid to the floor, staring up at him in stunned hurt and fear.

"Leave her alone!" Tejana snarled. Somehow, the Time Lady had managed to pull herself upright. Moving more quickly than Chantho would have thought possible for someone so obviously injured, she lunged into the room and she placed herself squarely between them. Still cowering in shock, Chantho saw that the other girl's slender fingers were now wrapped around a heavy wrench that had been left lying on one of the workbenches. "I'm warning you, stay back! I'm only going to ask you one more time, Professor, what watch?"

"Don't call me Professor!" he spat, glaring at her, Chantho momentarily forgotten. "The Professor was nothing more than an invention! So perfect that I forgot who I am!"

"So who are you, then?" Tejana demanded, raising the wrench threateningly in front of her, defiant even though it was obvious she could barely keep her feet. "Go on, surprise me, since you seem to think I should care!"

"Oh, you're going to care, all right!" He laughed, a dark, ugly sound, as he looked deeply into her eyes. "Do I have to spell it out for you, little girl? You tried to read me earlier, didn't you? Look again!"