The Master's Game (Doctor Who)

Poisoned

That was the last part. Only a few screws needed to be tighten up and...

"Yes, it works!" She held the device up so the Master could inspect it. "But don't touch the strings."

He crouched down to her, inspecting the thing. It was a small round socket with multiple metal arms and other metal extensions. And emitting from those came two strings of light that faded very quickly and were spiraling each other.

"Amazing, right? I've never seen it like that!"

"No reason to be so childish. It's just light."

"Hey! As if you wouldn't act childish all the time! Let me have some fun. And besides..." She took it back from his hands. "... it's not just light. It only emits some. But the strings are actually pure opposing energy. See? They are eternally spiraling, but are too different." She smiled. "Kinda like two people dancing around each other. Never able to stop, never able to look away... and never able to ever touch, cause they would just cease to exist."

"Your head is weird." His eyebrows raised.

"Huh, why now?"

"It spins a fairy tale out of some lights... Is that device of any use at least?"

Roka had given up on the chemistry part and opted to try out different ideas that, favorably, wouldn't destroy the whole planet. Why the Master let her do it in the end was unknown to her. Maybe it was to test her, maybe he just wanted to see her struggle and fail.

"Uhm... well... not so much. Before you mourn, we just need the right catalyst..." She looked at him and grinned. "And then... Boom!"

"Alright, I start to like it."

"Well, it's not a very visible explosion though. It's more of a... err... How to put it... In theory it should internally shutter the structure of all surrounding matter with the same frequency. A chain reaction of energy blasting through the surface of whatever I tune it into. More or less just dematerializing it."

"You know what? I'm actually... almost impressed."

"Ha! Told ya, I'm good!"

"Almost... we don't have a catalyst. So it's just another useless idea."

"Maybe, but since you're so much smarter than I..." She put a batch of papers in his hands. "...you can surely find something compatible. Here are the requirements."

"How do you even know of that?" He flipped through the pages and looked actually a bit impressed. "This isn't stuff the Doctor would teach a human. You clearly got some knowledge you shouldn't have."

Roka laughed. "That's the advantage if you're invisible. No one can stop you from spending decades reading through the coolest library in the universe."

"Decades...?" He lay down the batch of papers and stared interestedly at Roka. "That doesn't match with your age."

Roka gulped. She shouldn't have said that.

"I... err... was quite young when he..." But a mean grin had already spread on the Master's face. He knew she was lying. And it was no problem for him to just read it from her mind if he wanted. "Uhm... alright, but I don't quite understand it myself... It seems my glitch was somehow threatening to the TARDIS, so the automatic defense system... froze me in time."

"Now that is interesting." And without a warning he lay a finger on her forehead and closed his eyes for a few seconds. His grin got wider. "Very... very... interesting. You're not lying. I can't feel your time stream moving." The Master grabbed her collar, dragging her into a standing position. "Now I'm really eager to find out if you still can get hurt."