Fic: There Was a Master in a Game (5/25)
Title: There Was a Master in a Game
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week's guest stars include Lynda Moss, K-9, and Jack Harkness.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four
Chapter Five: Diagonal Left
Lynda Moss woke with a start, and for a frightening thirty seconds, couldn’t remember where she was.
There was a whirring from the corner of her bedroom, and Lynda let out the breath she’d been holding as everything came back to her.
“Mistress?” asked the high-pitched mechanical voice. “Are you well? Your heart-rate has increased and you have woken quite suddenly.”
“Yes, K-9,” said Lynda, and she flopped back down on her bed. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just a nightmare.”
“Do you require assistance returning to sleep? I could prepare an infusion of hot milk, Mistress. Or perhaps play a lullaby, if you wish.”
“No, K-9, go back to your recharge cycle. I have to review the dream first, or I’ll go right back into it.”
“Understood, Mistress. Sleep well, Mistress.”
The little tin dog went straight back into his recharge cycle, his head lowering back to the ground, and his lights dimming to their darkest setting. Lynda folded her hands above her chest, and tried to remember the dream that had woken her so suddenly.
She’d been…on a rooftop. In London, but it was one of those things in dreams where you understood yourself to be in one place, even though it didn’t look remotely familiar. Lynda’s London was full of skyscrapers, skyways, and satellite dishes. There wasn’t a river for miles.
But that’s what stuck with Lynda the most about the dream. The river, snaking below her like a glistening necklace. It’d been gorgeous in her dream, the sunlight sparkling on the imagined waves. Lynda even thought she might have been able to smell it.
But…dreams didn’t have scents, so it must have been imagined. And anyway, that’s not what had woken her. There’d been this…man. An odd one, with hair that looked like it’d been cropped with pinking shears and not washed in a month or more. Homeless, maybe. He looked the part. And he’d said something that startled her, but now Lynda couldn’t remember what, exactly.
That was how dreams went, anyway. Once awake, they were never quite as frightening as they’d been asleep. Lynda closed her eyes, and slept dreamless until morning.
*
Coffee was already brewing when Lynda and K-9 arrived at the agency. K-9 rolled straight to his corner, ticking merrily away as he started to plug into the computer relays that connected the office with the main networks. Lynda dropped her jacket and purse at her desk, and flicked her laptop open, thinking to check her messages before succumbing to the aromas from the kitchenette. A quick glance at the steadily increasing number indicating how many messages waited for her (“107?!?”) convinced Lynda that coffee couldn’t wait.
“Hello, gorgeous,” said her partner as soon as she popped into the tiny closet they’d converted into a kitchenette, complete with coffee pot, replicator, and, because her partner was old-fashioned, a fridge.
“Don’t say it like you mean it,” replied Lynda, and dug in the cupboard for her mug.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I came in early. First person here makes the coffee, so I hope you don’t mind my version.”
Having found her mug, Lynda eyed the pot warily. “What do you mean - version?”
“It’s a bit…thick.”
“Is it sludge?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well,” said Lynda, pouring herself a cup and thinking she might water it down just a little, “there’s nothing a whole lot of sugar and milk can’t fix. And maybe a chocolate bar.”
Jack Harkness grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from his pocket with a flourish.
“Excellent, breakfast,” said Lynda, and snatched the bar out of his hand on her way out of the kitchenette. “What’s first on the list today?”
“What, no thanks?”
“I haven’t tasted the coffee yet.”
Jack crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, waiting. Lynda took a sip. It took every ounce of willpower she’d ever need for the next twenty years to swallow.
“So,” said Jack, as if he hadn’t noticed the face she’d almost managed not to make, “I’m guessing you’ll have a message you’ll want to hear on your laptop.”
Lynda found her voice, but it was a close thing. “Oh?”
“Well, he was my first message of the day. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth.”
“Who was second?” asked Lynda dryly as she sat at her computer. The coffee cup sat on the far side of the desk.
The voice on the message was young. Well, young-ish, Lynda thought, someone who couldn’t have been much older than herself, but probably had seen a great deal more of life. He sounded tired, and frantic, a bit like he’d been awake for a thousand years and was in desperate need of sleep, but had half a dozen things left to do before he could take a breath. Lynda had opened a notebook, ready to scratch a few notes down, but found her pencil simply hovering over the paper, unable to determine what was actually necessary to record.
“I know this is a very sudden thing, and you probably don’t have an inkling of what I’m talking about, which is a good thing, mind you, it means he hasn’t caught up with you yet, and that’s fine, that’s just fine, that’s perfect, really, except that if he has caught up, I’m very sorry for that, but I have a message for the two of you, and it’s very important that you receive it in the manner in which I’m giving it, which is to say that I’m absolutely certain you’re going to twist this in a method I didn’t intend. Well, he didn’t intend. Except nothing’s really working out the way he had hoped, he’s taking matters into his own hands in a way no one anticipated. I’m sure you’re doing the same - actually, I’m just about positive of it, and I’m sure the end result is marvelous, don’t get me wrong, you’re all doing a bang-up job of it, and I couldn’t be more pleased, I don’t think he’ll have a clue what’s going on, which would be very gratifying if you would only stop to-“
The message cut off. Lynda stared at the laptop.
“What on earth was that?”
“More like, who,” said Jack. He had taken up residence on the credenza behind Lynda. “You did notice how he didn’t identify himself?”
“And he left you three other messages?”
“More than three, all exactly the same, a stream-of-consciousness tirade that basically ends with how clever he is and how inventive we are and how it’s very important that we remain so.”
“Okay,” said Lynda slowly. “So…we’re supposed to do what with that, exactly?”
“We’re a detective agency, Lynda,” said Jack. “I think we’re meant to detect.”
“Great,” said Lynda. “Detect what? A madman on the message lines?”
“For a start,” said Jack. He glanced into the corner. “K-9, can you trace those calls?”
“Affirmative, Master,” said K-9, and set to work.
Lynda gave an abrupt shiver, and reached to wrap her fingers around the hot mug of coffee. Jack raised his eyebrows.
“Cold?”
“No,” said Lynda defensively.
“You shivered.”
“Reflex,” said Lynda. “Are you going to sit there and stare at the back of my head all morning?”
“Not if you turn around,” replied Jack. “And you still haven’t said thank you for the coffee.”
“Noticed, did you?” countered Lynda. She spun her chair around; Jack grinned at her. “Sorry. I had an odd dream last night.”
“Was I in it?”
Lynda frowned. “I…I don’t think so. I was in London. But it wasn’t London. At least, I didn’t recognize it. And there was a river.”
“London used to have a river,” said Jack, and took a sip of his coffee.
“What? You’re kidding. How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you ever read a history book?” asked Jack. “The Thames was a tidal river, and dumped into what used to be the Channel between here and France. You know, where Europa is now. It zig-zagged right through London. Dried up about a thousand years ago, but I think there’s some tributaries under the ground somewhere. That’s why London’s here, you know - it was built here because of the river.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Lynda before she could stop herself.
Jack studied his cup. They’d known each other for three years running now, but Lynda still didn’t know very much about Jack Harkness. He’d found her about six months after she had won the Big Brother contest, with a proposal to start a detective agency. It didn’t matter that Lynda didn’t know anything about investigating anything - it was her notoriety that Jack wanted initially, and the sweet innocence that would allow clients to feel as though they could trust her.
It worked. The detective agency was massively successful, and their clients still saw Lynda as the sweet, innocent girl they’d voted for on the Big Brother house, so they tended to spill more information than they’d initially intended. It never occurred to them that Lynda had bypassed sweet and innocent and moved onto thoughtful and perceptive. Jack wasn’t the only person holding his weight as a detective.
Whether or not Jack still wanted Lynda only for her notoriety was up for discussion. Or not, Lynda thought wryly.
Lynda didn’t wait for an answer to her question. Jack was enormously private. If he had a thing for studying London’s ancient history, that was his business. She spun her chair back to her laptop and began clicking on the various messages.
“Mistress,” said K-9. “I have located the origin of the telephone messages you requested.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” said Jack. He sounded perfectly normal. Lynda wondered if she’d been imagining his discomfort.
“They originated from 76 Totter’s Lane, Shoreditch.”
“That’s it?” Lynda frowned. “What level?”
“There is no level, Mistress,” said K-9.
“There has to be a level,” protested Lynda.
“There is no level, Mistress.”
“What if it’s on the surface?” asked Jack. “If it’s an old enough address, it wouldn’t have a level.”
Lynda frowned. “I’ve never even heard of addresses that old before.”
“First time for everything,” said Jack. He hopped off the credenza. “What are you waiting for? Haven’t you ever wanted to go down to the surface?”
A flash of the remembered dream, the river winding its way through London. A river that according to Jack once existed but hadn’t in centuries. And yet, Lynda had seen it in her dream.
“Sure,” she said, “let’s go.”
*
The trip down to the surface took some time. It wasn’t that it was difficult to go - it was only that no one ever really went. This might have been because public transport didn’t really offer many direct routes. Or perhaps there were no direct routes because no one wanted to go to the surface that often. Either way, getting to Totter’s Lane involved transferring between two hoppers and half a dozen lifts or escalators.
“I’ve been to the surface, you know,” said Lynda on the third escalator, just to break the silence. Jack hadn’t said anything since they’d left the office, and Lynda had been so lost in her own thoughts, it took her half an hour to realize that Jack had fallen silent beside her. A quick glance showed that he’d been lost in his own thoughts, a half frown on his face.
“Have you?” he asked, only half paying attention.
“One of those stupid things you do in school to pretend you’re an adult,” explained Lynda. “Didn’t you?”
“No,” said Jack shortly. “I did…other things.”
“Oh.” Lynda was dying of curiosity, but after that morning, she wasn’t going to ask.
He seemed to wake up then, and turned his gaze squarely on her. “I like history.”
Lynda blinked. “Okay.”
“How I know about London. I read a lot of history.”
“Sure, fine,” said Lynda, and in order not to meet his eyes, she busied herself by looking in her shoulder bag.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me anything about yourself, that’s fine,” said Lynda, blinking quickly. “It’s not like we’re anything but business partners. I don’t have to know all your deep dark secrets or what stupid things you did as a teenager in order to have a purely business relationship with you.”
“Purely business….” echoed Jack.
“Exactly,” said Lynda as the escalator brought her to the next landing. She hopped off and started marching to the lift on the far side of the platform. “If you don’t mind-“
She was wrenched back as Jack grabbed her hand, and stumbled against him.
“Not the lift-“ he’d started to say, but the words caught in his throat when Lynda fell against his chest. He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.
Lynda’s heart hammered in her chest; Jack himself might have been able to feel it. She’d never had such a good look at Jack’s face before, and it struck her then how human he looked. The way his cheeks were flushed, and his breathing caught in his throat. The way his eyes were wide, looking at her.
Which was an odd thought - of course Jack was human. What else could Jack be?
But there was something else…something wrong. “It healed,” said Lynda, reaching up to his cheek.
“Huh?”
“The cut on your cheek, when that client with the ring punched you. It healed. Perfectly. I thought for sure you’d have a scar.”
Jack reached up and touched his cheek; Lynda only moved her hand in time. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it did. Lynda-“
She didn’t wait for it. She almost didn’t want to hear what he was going to say; her heart was pounding too hard for her to hear anything properly. “We have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, and followed.
Chapter Six
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week's guest stars include Lynda Moss, K-9, and Jack Harkness.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four
Chapter Five: Diagonal Left
Lynda Moss woke with a start, and for a frightening thirty seconds, couldn’t remember where she was.
There was a whirring from the corner of her bedroom, and Lynda let out the breath she’d been holding as everything came back to her.
“Mistress?” asked the high-pitched mechanical voice. “Are you well? Your heart-rate has increased and you have woken quite suddenly.”
“Yes, K-9,” said Lynda, and she flopped back down on her bed. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just a nightmare.”
“Do you require assistance returning to sleep? I could prepare an infusion of hot milk, Mistress. Or perhaps play a lullaby, if you wish.”
“No, K-9, go back to your recharge cycle. I have to review the dream first, or I’ll go right back into it.”
“Understood, Mistress. Sleep well, Mistress.”
The little tin dog went straight back into his recharge cycle, his head lowering back to the ground, and his lights dimming to their darkest setting. Lynda folded her hands above her chest, and tried to remember the dream that had woken her so suddenly.
She’d been…on a rooftop. In London, but it was one of those things in dreams where you understood yourself to be in one place, even though it didn’t look remotely familiar. Lynda’s London was full of skyscrapers, skyways, and satellite dishes. There wasn’t a river for miles.
But that’s what stuck with Lynda the most about the dream. The river, snaking below her like a glistening necklace. It’d been gorgeous in her dream, the sunlight sparkling on the imagined waves. Lynda even thought she might have been able to smell it.
But…dreams didn’t have scents, so it must have been imagined. And anyway, that’s not what had woken her. There’d been this…man. An odd one, with hair that looked like it’d been cropped with pinking shears and not washed in a month or more. Homeless, maybe. He looked the part. And he’d said something that startled her, but now Lynda couldn’t remember what, exactly.
That was how dreams went, anyway. Once awake, they were never quite as frightening as they’d been asleep. Lynda closed her eyes, and slept dreamless until morning.
*
Coffee was already brewing when Lynda and K-9 arrived at the agency. K-9 rolled straight to his corner, ticking merrily away as he started to plug into the computer relays that connected the office with the main networks. Lynda dropped her jacket and purse at her desk, and flicked her laptop open, thinking to check her messages before succumbing to the aromas from the kitchenette. A quick glance at the steadily increasing number indicating how many messages waited for her (“107?!?”) convinced Lynda that coffee couldn’t wait.
“Hello, gorgeous,” said her partner as soon as she popped into the tiny closet they’d converted into a kitchenette, complete with coffee pot, replicator, and, because her partner was old-fashioned, a fridge.
“Don’t say it like you mean it,” replied Lynda, and dug in the cupboard for her mug.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I came in early. First person here makes the coffee, so I hope you don’t mind my version.”
Having found her mug, Lynda eyed the pot warily. “What do you mean - version?”
“It’s a bit…thick.”
“Is it sludge?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well,” said Lynda, pouring herself a cup and thinking she might water it down just a little, “there’s nothing a whole lot of sugar and milk can’t fix. And maybe a chocolate bar.”
Jack Harkness grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from his pocket with a flourish.
“Excellent, breakfast,” said Lynda, and snatched the bar out of his hand on her way out of the kitchenette. “What’s first on the list today?”
“What, no thanks?”
“I haven’t tasted the coffee yet.”
Jack crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, waiting. Lynda took a sip. It took every ounce of willpower she’d ever need for the next twenty years to swallow.
“So,” said Jack, as if he hadn’t noticed the face she’d almost managed not to make, “I’m guessing you’ll have a message you’ll want to hear on your laptop.”
Lynda found her voice, but it was a close thing. “Oh?”
“Well, he was my first message of the day. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth.”
“Who was second?” asked Lynda dryly as she sat at her computer. The coffee cup sat on the far side of the desk.
The voice on the message was young. Well, young-ish, Lynda thought, someone who couldn’t have been much older than herself, but probably had seen a great deal more of life. He sounded tired, and frantic, a bit like he’d been awake for a thousand years and was in desperate need of sleep, but had half a dozen things left to do before he could take a breath. Lynda had opened a notebook, ready to scratch a few notes down, but found her pencil simply hovering over the paper, unable to determine what was actually necessary to record.
“I know this is a very sudden thing, and you probably don’t have an inkling of what I’m talking about, which is a good thing, mind you, it means he hasn’t caught up with you yet, and that’s fine, that’s just fine, that’s perfect, really, except that if he has caught up, I’m very sorry for that, but I have a message for the two of you, and it’s very important that you receive it in the manner in which I’m giving it, which is to say that I’m absolutely certain you’re going to twist this in a method I didn’t intend. Well, he didn’t intend. Except nothing’s really working out the way he had hoped, he’s taking matters into his own hands in a way no one anticipated. I’m sure you’re doing the same - actually, I’m just about positive of it, and I’m sure the end result is marvelous, don’t get me wrong, you’re all doing a bang-up job of it, and I couldn’t be more pleased, I don’t think he’ll have a clue what’s going on, which would be very gratifying if you would only stop to-“
The message cut off. Lynda stared at the laptop.
“What on earth was that?”
“More like, who,” said Jack. He had taken up residence on the credenza behind Lynda. “You did notice how he didn’t identify himself?”
“And he left you three other messages?”
“More than three, all exactly the same, a stream-of-consciousness tirade that basically ends with how clever he is and how inventive we are and how it’s very important that we remain so.”
“Okay,” said Lynda slowly. “So…we’re supposed to do what with that, exactly?”
“We’re a detective agency, Lynda,” said Jack. “I think we’re meant to detect.”
“Great,” said Lynda. “Detect what? A madman on the message lines?”
“For a start,” said Jack. He glanced into the corner. “K-9, can you trace those calls?”
“Affirmative, Master,” said K-9, and set to work.
Lynda gave an abrupt shiver, and reached to wrap her fingers around the hot mug of coffee. Jack raised his eyebrows.
“Cold?”
“No,” said Lynda defensively.
“You shivered.”
“Reflex,” said Lynda. “Are you going to sit there and stare at the back of my head all morning?”
“Not if you turn around,” replied Jack. “And you still haven’t said thank you for the coffee.”
“Noticed, did you?” countered Lynda. She spun her chair around; Jack grinned at her. “Sorry. I had an odd dream last night.”
“Was I in it?”
Lynda frowned. “I…I don’t think so. I was in London. But it wasn’t London. At least, I didn’t recognize it. And there was a river.”
“London used to have a river,” said Jack, and took a sip of his coffee.
“What? You’re kidding. How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you ever read a history book?” asked Jack. “The Thames was a tidal river, and dumped into what used to be the Channel between here and France. You know, where Europa is now. It zig-zagged right through London. Dried up about a thousand years ago, but I think there’s some tributaries under the ground somewhere. That’s why London’s here, you know - it was built here because of the river.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Lynda before she could stop herself.
Jack studied his cup. They’d known each other for three years running now, but Lynda still didn’t know very much about Jack Harkness. He’d found her about six months after she had won the Big Brother contest, with a proposal to start a detective agency. It didn’t matter that Lynda didn’t know anything about investigating anything - it was her notoriety that Jack wanted initially, and the sweet innocence that would allow clients to feel as though they could trust her.
It worked. The detective agency was massively successful, and their clients still saw Lynda as the sweet, innocent girl they’d voted for on the Big Brother house, so they tended to spill more information than they’d initially intended. It never occurred to them that Lynda had bypassed sweet and innocent and moved onto thoughtful and perceptive. Jack wasn’t the only person holding his weight as a detective.
Whether or not Jack still wanted Lynda only for her notoriety was up for discussion. Or not, Lynda thought wryly.
Lynda didn’t wait for an answer to her question. Jack was enormously private. If he had a thing for studying London’s ancient history, that was his business. She spun her chair back to her laptop and began clicking on the various messages.
“Mistress,” said K-9. “I have located the origin of the telephone messages you requested.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” said Jack. He sounded perfectly normal. Lynda wondered if she’d been imagining his discomfort.
“They originated from 76 Totter’s Lane, Shoreditch.”
“That’s it?” Lynda frowned. “What level?”
“There is no level, Mistress,” said K-9.
“There has to be a level,” protested Lynda.
“There is no level, Mistress.”
“What if it’s on the surface?” asked Jack. “If it’s an old enough address, it wouldn’t have a level.”
Lynda frowned. “I’ve never even heard of addresses that old before.”
“First time for everything,” said Jack. He hopped off the credenza. “What are you waiting for? Haven’t you ever wanted to go down to the surface?”
A flash of the remembered dream, the river winding its way through London. A river that according to Jack once existed but hadn’t in centuries. And yet, Lynda had seen it in her dream.
“Sure,” she said, “let’s go.”
*
The trip down to the surface took some time. It wasn’t that it was difficult to go - it was only that no one ever really went. This might have been because public transport didn’t really offer many direct routes. Or perhaps there were no direct routes because no one wanted to go to the surface that often. Either way, getting to Totter’s Lane involved transferring between two hoppers and half a dozen lifts or escalators.
“I’ve been to the surface, you know,” said Lynda on the third escalator, just to break the silence. Jack hadn’t said anything since they’d left the office, and Lynda had been so lost in her own thoughts, it took her half an hour to realize that Jack had fallen silent beside her. A quick glance showed that he’d been lost in his own thoughts, a half frown on his face.
“Have you?” he asked, only half paying attention.
“One of those stupid things you do in school to pretend you’re an adult,” explained Lynda. “Didn’t you?”
“No,” said Jack shortly. “I did…other things.”
“Oh.” Lynda was dying of curiosity, but after that morning, she wasn’t going to ask.
He seemed to wake up then, and turned his gaze squarely on her. “I like history.”
Lynda blinked. “Okay.”
“How I know about London. I read a lot of history.”
“Sure, fine,” said Lynda, and in order not to meet his eyes, she busied herself by looking in her shoulder bag.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Look, if you don’t want to tell me anything about yourself, that’s fine,” said Lynda, blinking quickly. “It’s not like we’re anything but business partners. I don’t have to know all your deep dark secrets or what stupid things you did as a teenager in order to have a purely business relationship with you.”
“Purely business….” echoed Jack.
“Exactly,” said Lynda as the escalator brought her to the next landing. She hopped off and started marching to the lift on the far side of the platform. “If you don’t mind-“
She was wrenched back as Jack grabbed her hand, and stumbled against him.
“Not the lift-“ he’d started to say, but the words caught in his throat when Lynda fell against his chest. He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.
Lynda’s heart hammered in her chest; Jack himself might have been able to feel it. She’d never had such a good look at Jack’s face before, and it struck her then how human he looked. The way his cheeks were flushed, and his breathing caught in his throat. The way his eyes were wide, looking at her.
Which was an odd thought - of course Jack was human. What else could Jack be?
But there was something else…something wrong. “It healed,” said Lynda, reaching up to his cheek.
“Huh?”
“The cut on your cheek, when that client with the ring punched you. It healed. Perfectly. I thought for sure you’d have a scar.”
Jack reached up and touched his cheek; Lynda only moved her hand in time. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it did. Lynda-“
She didn’t wait for it. She almost didn’t want to hear what he was going to say; her heart was pounding too hard for her to hear anything properly. “We have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, and followed.
Chapter Six