Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Sixty-Seven: New World Order

One moment, I am trapped with the others, screaming for our lives. The next, I am lying in an alley. The feeling is unpleasantly familiar.

I stumble away from the others and right into a wall. "Oh, Gods! Forgot the kick those things have to them."

"Time travel without a capsule, that's a killer," the Doctor rasps. He tweaks his neck. Even I hear the slight crack.

We step out onto a bustling street. "Still," Jack says with a slight wince as he adjusts to the sudden brightness of daylight, "at least we made it. Earth, twenty-first century by the looks of it. Talk about lucky."

"That wasn't luck. That was me."

Finding a bench, I lead the others over. The second we fall onto it, Martha's head falls on my shoulder. "You okay?" I quietly ask.

"Not the Futurekind's dinner. That's got to be something."

"S'pose."

Jack stretches his various aches and pains before joining us. "The moral is, if you're gonna get stuck at the end of the universe, get stuck with an ex-time agent and his vortex manipulator."

Tensing again, she sits up to speak to all of us. "But this Master bloke, he's got the Tardis. He could be anywhere in time and space."

The Doctor stares around us. I know the suspicion in his eyes. "He's here, isn't he?" I realise

"Yep."

"Who was he anyway? That voice at the end, that wasn't the Professor," she says.

"If the Master's a Time Lord, then he must have regenerated."

Looking at Jack, she frowns. "What does that mean?"

I am too tired to even begin to explain that one. Grimacing, I send him a pleading glance. "It means he's changed his face, voice, body — everything. A whole new man."

"Then how are we gonna find him?"

The Doctor tears his attention from something behind us, awkwardly twitching his nose. "I'll know him, the moment I see him. Time Lords always do."

Martha has the same look now. One of realisation. Dread. "But hold on... if he could be anyone..."

I follow her gaze to the posters and t-shirts and billboards all around us. They read the same phrase over and over, 'Saxon is your man'.

"We missed the election. But it can't be."

A television screen mounted on a lamppost seems to have attracted a lot of attention from the people around us. A few clap and cheer. Approaching, we see the news bulletin displayed on the screen. "Mr Saxon has returned from the palace and is greeting the crowds inside Saxon Headquarters."

The footage shifts to show a couple walking down the steps of a large reception, surrounded by security and the press. We don't even need to be Time Lords to see it. There is something in the man's eyes, an unnerving satisfaction I recognise from Yana's last moments.

"I said I knew that voice when he spoke inside the Tardis. I've heard that voice hundreds of times. I've seen him, we all have! That was the voice of Harold Saxon."

"That's him. He's Prime Minister. The Master is Prime Minister of Great Britain," the Doctor utters. His confusion doubles when he sees Saxon turn to the prim, pretty woman beside him, pulling her into a kiss. "The Master and his wife!"

An unusual silence falls over the whole street when he steps forwards, preparing to speak. "This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now is a Doctor."