Doctor Who and the End of Days (The Future Doctor Chronicles Part Three)

Chapter One

Rassilon drummed his fingers impatiently on the arms of his chair. Despite all he'd done to save them he'd decided to bring the Doctor back to Gallifrey so he could be held accountable for all his past and future misdeeds. The problem was it was proving far more difficult to track him down than he'd imagined. 

"Have you tried scanning the Earth timelines for anything out of the ordinary? He can't seem to resist meddling with that planet."  

"I'll do that now Lord President?" replied Montag. 

Rassilon was becoming completely obsessed with the Doctor thought Montag and unfortunately he'd dragged him into it. He couldn't refuse an order from the Lord President though so he'd had no choice but to comply. For weeks now all he'd done was search for any trace of the Doctor however small and insignificant. They'd stumbled upon the wrong incarnation of the man so many times he'd lost count.  

He swept his hand across the three dimensional screen and waited for it to go white before pressing a green button and speaking a command out loud. 

"Scan all Earth timelines for any mention of the Doctor, Agent Sylvester and a blue police box." 

The screen remained white but a status bar appeared in the centre and rapidly moved across as it scanned thousands of years of Earth history. At least he could be thankful for the power returning to normal he thought otherwise a search like the one he'd just instigated would have taken days.  

Within seconds the bar reached the end of the screen and two small pictures appeared. He tapped the first one and a newspaper article that bore the headline 'Police Box Dumped in Cathedral Cloister' appeared and below this was a photograph of it. It certainly looked very much like the Doctor's Tardis. 

"What does the article say?" asked Rassilon. 

"It basically says that when the Cathedral was opened up in the morning they found the Police Box in the cloister. They asked around to make sure a member of staff hadn't put it there and nobody knew anything about it. There were no signs of forced entry but whoever wrote the report is dismissing it as a student prank." 

"Typical of humans to come up with an easy solution to a problem so they don't have to find a detailed explanation." said Rassilon with a smile.  

With a flick of his wrist the screen returned to the two images. He tapped the second one and a video popped up and began to play. It showed a smartly dressed man standing in front of the police box. 

"What's this?" asked Rassilon not quite knowing what he was watching. 

"As far as I can tell Lord President it's a news report but it doesn't give us any new information. The reporter seems to treat the story in the same way as the writer of the article." 

"What way's that?" 

"In a light hearted and almost comical way." replied Montag as he turned to face Rassilon. 

To his surprise Rassilon suddenly leapt from his chair and stared intently at the screen. 

"Roll back the recording and pause it when I say so." asked Rassilon excitedly. 

Montag did as he was told and slowly rewound the recording. 

"There, stop it there." Rassilon pointed to the right hand edge of the screen "Enhance that area of the screen if you please." 

He double tapped the right side of the screen and knew in an instant that Rassilon had been right to get excited. Without a shadow of a doubt it was the Doctor. He was even wearing the same clothes as before.