Grace Holloway stared, appalled, at the man in front of her, and swallowed
in a suddenly-dry throat.
   "Y-you're supposed to be dead!" she blurted out.
   With a snort of annoyance, the Master let go of her arms, shoving her 
away.  She stumbled back against the counter and stood, watching him 
warily as she rubbed her arms where he had gripped her.
   "I swear, all one has to do is panic you primitives, and you lose all power 
of coherent thought," he commented, disgusted.
   He blocked her way out of the dining niche.  She stood there, and felt the 
shock and fear thawing, transmuting into something new.  Anger.
   He pulled out a chair from the other side of the dining table and sat 
down.  Indicating the chair opposite him, he said, "Have a seat, Doctor."
   She stood, now glaring at him.  "Go to hell!  You come into my 
house, and you-you-"
   "Sit!" he snapped.
   She abruptly found herself sitting in the chair he'd indicated, and stared 
at him, afraid again.
   He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and sat at ease, glancing 
idly around at the walls and the bric-a-brac.  His glance flickered over to 
the clock on the wall nearby.
   Despite the accumulated shocks of the evening, Grace's mind was beginning 
to thaw out.  "Why are you doing this?" she asked carefully, her voice low.
   He looked at her sharply, a dissecting glance that made her feel acutely 
uncomfortable.  She resisted the urge to squirm in her seat.
   "I have just destroyed your future," the renegade Time Lord told her, simply.  
He smiled at her coldly.
   She sat, numb.  Well, he had certainly done that, all right.
   "You made quite a name for yourself, Doctor."  He laughed.  "Or, rather, 
you were going to.  I saw that it would take relatively little interference to 
shift your future in quite a different direction."  He waved a hand.  "It's all 
gone.  All the promise, all the good deeds.  All the accomplishments."
   There was really only one question to ask.
   "Why?"
   He eyed her again, sharply.  "For interfering, Doctor."  He smiled, 
thin-lipped.  "I don't like people who interfere with my plans."
   So.  She had no real idea what antagonisms formed the history of the 
Doctor's and Master's enmity (curious, the similarity of the two titles).  Just 
a long-standing rivalry, of no meaning to anyone but the combatants 
themselves.
   And the victims of the fall-out of their battles.
   Still...
   "Yes, I interfered," she said.  "And I'd do it again."
   The Master looked at her, tilting his head.  Despite the discomfit of his 
gaze, she looked steadily back.
   He gave a short chuckle, shaking his head.  "Where does he find you all?" 
he asked, bemused.
   Grace frowned.  "What are you talking about?"
   "His loyal pets.  Willing to follow him, and obey his various whims.  In 
some cases, to die for him."  He laughed abruptly at the look that involuntarily 
crossed Grace's face.
   "Oh, come now, Doctor - did you really think you were anything more 
to him?
   She sat, uncertain.
   "You were a tool, to be used, and sacrificed if necessary, against me."
   But she really hadn't gotten such an impression from the Doctor, even for 
the short time she'd been with him.  She'd felt like a partner, thrust with him 
suddenly into the middle of a crazy adventure.  Rushing around, scarcely time 
to catch a breath...
   It had been something.  Despite her predicament, she smiled slightly, 
momentarily lost in reminiscence.
   Across the table, the Master's eyes narrowed.  He looked to the clock.
   Grace jumped, jolted out of her reverie, as her captor's chair scraped back.  
He stood up and stretched his intertwined hands luxuriously, then motioned 
peremptorily with a hand.  "Up," he commanded.
   Her eyes narrowed.  "I am not a dog," she snapped.
   He smirked.  "As you say.  But when I say get up--" here he strode quickly 
around the table and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her out of her seat - 
"you will get up."
   Grace grimaced as he hauled her inexorably by the arm out of the kitchen 
and down the hallway to the bedroom.  She stumbled away, fetching up 
against the side of the bed and flinching instinctively away from Brian's 
outflung left arm, as the Master let go of her.
   The Master smiled at her then as he removed a small bottle from a pocket.  
"Desperate to escape your horrible deed, you are about to attempt to overdose 
on sleeping pills, Doctor Holloway," he explained, lightly.  "Luckily, or 
should I say, unluckily in your case, you won't succeed.  Still, it should be 
the clincher, in the eyes of the Prosecution, wouldn't you say?"
   "Why-?" she blurted out, confused.
   "Why don't I just kill you?  I already did that once."
   She stared at him.
   "No," he continued, in good humor, "no such easy way out for you, this 
time.  You will spend a very long life in prison, reviled as a murderer.  
That is the only destiny left for you."  His voice dropped sinisterly.  
"I will personally guarantee it."
   He twisted at the top of the bottle and frowned momentarily.  He appeared 
to be having trouble opening it.  Grace decided to try for some information, 
anything to distract him.
   "Why Brian?" she asked, though she already knew.
   "Do you know what you are, 'Doctor'?" the Master inquired, looking up.  
"You're a first-degree murderer.  Ah, I can see the newspaper headlines 
now:  'No Angel of Mercy'.  Oh, and my favorite:  'Deadly Doctor'.  He 
chuckled.  "In time, even those closest to you came to doubt you.  You see, 
the evidence against you was so conclusive."  He shook his head in 
mock sadness.
   Grace stared back at him, unnerved by his switch of tenses.  As if he'd 
already seen the future.  As if it were a fait accompli....
   The Master glared at the bottle and squeezed.  The top popped off, and 
he poured a liberal pile of pills onto his palm, then stepped toward her.  
"Come on, Doctor - time to take your medicine."
   Grace glanced wildly around.  Reaching over, she grabbed the vase on her 
bedside table and yanked the flowers out of it.
   The Master paused, one eyebrow raised.
   She held the vase protectively before her in both hands.  "You didn't think 
I was going to swallow all those dry, did you?"
   Then she tossed the water in his face.
   As he stumbled back, she flung the vase at him as well, then made a break 
for the doorway.
   She almost made it.
   Grace let out a involuntary shriek as she was seized from behind and twisted 
around.  Grabbing her by her shoulders, the Master glared directly into her 
eyes.  She stared back, unable to look away, unable to move, unable to think...
   A handful of pills was carefully poured in her mouth.  The hand then 
grabbed her jaw, holding her mouth closed.  "Swallow," the hands' owner 
commanded her in quiet but deadly earnest.  Her throat automatically convulsed.
   "Good girl."
   She stood, staring dully ahead.  He gazed at her for a few more moments, 
then, tiring of the game, twitched his head toward the bed.  "Go to sleep, 
Grace," he said, softly.  "Mrs. Trattorio next door has heard a noise, you see.  
The stage must be properly set for the authorities when they arrive."  He gave 
her a gentle shove between her shoulder blades in the proper direction.
   She stumbled towards the bed-


-you get in my house?" Grace hissed, jumping out of bed and looking around 
for an impromptu weapon.  Part of her mind noted that the clock on her bedside 
table read 2:05 am.
   The blond man in black standing in her bedroom doorway ignored her question.  
He had frozen abruptly, a strange expression on his face.
   "Oh, yes; he's here," he stated, suddenly, smiling fiercely.  "I can feel 
it - he just cut that timeline.  Well, all of this has achieved its purpose, 
after all."  He started toward her.
   "Purpose?  What purpose?  What the hell are you talking about?!"  Grace 
backed up rapidly until she ran out of room.
   She stared at the stranger, the fear momentarily paralyzing her.  Then she 
willed herself to move, to do something - and couldn't.
   Worse than a nightmare, or else one she couldn't wake up from-
   The man stared at her, smiling cruelly.  "You've quite the short memory, 
Doctor Holloway.  Perhaps this will jog it."  He glared directly at her 
as his eyes narrowed-
   -and a cascade of images flashed through her mind, and she remembered 
the impossible-
   Grace Holloway screamed for the second (or was it the third?  or fourth?) 
time that night.
   She sagged in the Master's grip, her dazed mind spinning with memories 
of what had been, what could have been, what might be - The murder had 
happened - No, it hadn't happened - It had been erased as if it had never 
been - Or was it about to happen - The Doctor's doing - The Doctor had 
left weeks ago - No, he was here now-
   "You killed Brian," she exclaimed hoarsely, for sanity's sake focusing on 
the present, "but now it hasn't happened-"  How can I remember something 
that never happened?!  "It's the Doctor, isn't it?  Somehow he fixed it-"
   So great was her relief that her mouth twisted in a grim but triumphant 
smile.  "He fixed it!!"
   That declaration appeared to annoy the Master.  Grace abruptly found 
herself twisted around with her arms bent at an extremely awkward angle 
up behind her back.
   "Doctor Holloway," the Master told her calmly, "the game has only just 
begun.  Tampering with your future was a message that I knew the Doctor 
would be unlikely to miss, or ignore.  As I expected, he has come here 
to find out exactly what happened, to try to restore your original destiny."  
He snorted in contempt.  "He's always been sentimental in that way."
   "Oh, I see," she gasped.  "First, he was just using me, but now he's 
come here just to help me.  Why don't you get your story straig - agh!"
   The Master pushed Grace before him in a merciless grip back through her 
house.  She stumbled along, her mind awhirl.
   He'd done all this just to get the Doctor's attention.  "Then what is it 
you-"  She paused, her heart sinking.  "Look," she suggested, "this time 
when you two go fight it out, just leave me out of it, okay?"
   The Master paused in the kitchen area, looking around suspiciously.  Grace 
saw nothing unusual.  Wondering if he were distracted enough for her to 
break free, she twisted frantically.
   Not even deigning to display anger, the Master yanked with practiced, casual 
cruelty, and she gasped as a jolt of red-hot pain tore through her shoulder.
   He leaned close to her ear.  "Doctor Holloway, it would take very little 
more to permanently dislocate your arm," he told her with extreme 
reasonableness.  "Do.  Not.  Push.  Me."
   She blinked back tears of pain as he pushed her ahead of him down the 
stairs and towards a tall Shaker entertainment cabinet in the corner.  It certainly 
hadn't been there when she'd come home earlier that evening.
   The renegade reached forward and placed his palm on one of the cabinet 
doors, then pushed it open.  He and Grace passed through the opening, and 
the door swung shut behind them.
   Soon after, the room echoed to the roar of well-tuned time engines, as the 
cabinet faded away and disappeared.


Lafeyette Park, February 13, 2:00 a.m.


A man stood, peering nervously through the chill San Franciscan night air.  
He was of medium height, had tousled brown shoulder-length hair, and was 
unusually dressed in understatedly-elegant nineteenth century clothing.
   Prowling along the edge of the park opposite the night-dimmed line of condos 
he was watching, he glanced once again at the scrap of newspaper he held in 
one hand.
   "Come on," he muttered in frustration, looking up again.  "I know you're 
out there!"
   Somewhere nearby, a man was making his way towards his own murder.
   The Doctor absently rubbed his right-hand thumb.  By the pricking of my 
thumb, something wicked this way comes.  Would come.  Had come.  
Whatever.  Evil was definitely abroad tonight.
   There was only one person he could think of immediately who should know 
about his acquaintence with Grace, who would have any reason to strike at 
him through her...
   What he wasn't sure of was whether the Master - assuming he was indeed 
the culprit - was setting these twisted events in motion personally, or whether 
he had, as so often before, sent mind-controlled henchmen in to do the dirty 
work.
   In any case, that his long-time nemesis should stoop to such vindictive 
plotting was very troubling.
   A sudden noise caught his attention.  Peering cautiously around a tree, he 
saw a lone man making his way across the park towards the condos.
   Glancing once more at the photo in the newspaper clipping, the Doctor 
compared it to the approaching man.  Yes, it was Brian Dempster, Grace's 
ex-boyfriend and soon-to-be ex-everything - unless he could stop him.
   Stuffing the clipping into a coat pocket, the Time Lord stepped resolutely 
out from the shelter of the grove of trees.
   "Brian," he called, not too loudly.
   The man's head jerked up, and he glared with blood-shot eyes at the 
incongruous figure standing before him.
   "Who the hell are you?  What do you want?" he demanded truculently.
   The Doctor peered carefully at the agitated man in front of him, trying to 
assess his mental state.  "Just to talk to you," he said cautiously.
   "Got no time," the man proclaimed.  "Got to go see Grace."  He swerved 
around the Doctor and strode on, directly towards her condo.
   Damn - the man was either obsessed, or under the power of suggestion.  
Either way, this was likely to get ugly...
   He strode up behind Brian, and latched a hand onto his left shoulder-
   Brian whirled around, angrily flinging the Doctor's restraining hand off.
   "Listen to me.  Do not go to Grace's house.  You'll be kill-"
   Not the best choice of words of warning, he realized a second later, as Brian, 
not even letting him finish, swung out a fist at him, his face screwing up in 
fury.
   "I knew it," the tow-headed man snarled, advancing upon the Doctor.  
"You're her new guy, aren't you?  Well, I'm going to go see her, and you 
can't stop-"  Too angry to finish a coherent sentance, he attacked.





To be continued...








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