Gemini roused from a state of almost-sleep to the sound of voices behind her. She didn’t open her eyes and didn’t move, but when she focused on their voices, she could hear what they were saying. One was Reynolds, but the other was foreign.
“The power is all there,” Reynolds spoke.
“I know; but she will not release it,” the deep voice replied.
“She will. She will never be able to outlast it. The longer her higher consciousness waits, the stronger it will become.”
The deeper voice cleared his throat. “Of all the Time Lords that have existed, I’m still confused as to why you chose this half-ling.”
“You do remember which Time Lord merged with her, don’t you, General?”
The general huffed. “I can’t quite forget the name Rovenna with you around.”
There was a pause in the conversation as Reynolds froze in place. His expression, however, never shifted from its neutral demeanor.
“Almost every other metacrisis known to us has failed in a matter of hours; it’s only a matter of time before this one fails, too. If we break her down too far, she’ll lose access to that higher consciousness and be nothing more than a human with a Time Lord-shaped void in her brain.”
Her eyes instinctively flew open, but she quickly shut them back and pretended to be shifting slightly in her sleep. The conversation had grown quiet, and she began to fear that they knew she wasn’t really sleeping.
“I just hope you know what you are doing here.”
“I do, sir. I have a plan that I’m working on with bio-med. As long as her allies don’t try to storm the facility, we’ll have her power under our control very soon.”
“I’m trusting you on this one,” General Bishop concluded after a moment. “And I’m trusting you to leave your emotions out of it.”
She squinted open her eyes to see one of the two shadows start away with heavy footsteps. Only Reynolds’ shadow remained, and it slowly bent up onto the opposite wall as he stepped closer to the steel bars of Gemini’s cell.
A half-grin had spread upon his lips as he wrapped his fingers around the bars. “Trust can be misplaced,” he murmured, the grin widening. “You know it well, don’t you, Rovenna?”
Gemini flinched as her higher consciousness flared.
“After all, you had your trust in me just as I had my trust in you,” he continued. “I trusted you to stay with me, and you broke my trust.”
She gasped, the heat of a Time Lord’s anger taking over her weakened form. Before she knew it, her own mind sunk into darkness.
His teeth were bared as he leaned his head between the bars. “I could do nothing more than to sever my agreement with you.”
The woman pushed up from the ground and whipped her head toward the bars with a glint of yellow light in her eyes. “Your agreement??” She spouted. “That’s what you’re calling the love we had??”
He let out a laugh. “There you are, my Rovenna.”
“I am not yours!!” She cried through clenched teeth with her hair strewn across her glasses.
“You may be right,” Reynolds’ voice remained smooth despite his cynical expression. “You were going to be mine, but you chose to run and hide when things got rough. What does that say about your conscience?”
Her eyes narrowed. “At least I have a conscience.”
“Ooh,” Reynolds stepped back with a hand on his chest, mocking an injury. “You know, I had finally discovered where you went after you left me. Nineteenth century Baltimore... I should have known,” he shook his head and began to wring his hands together. “But, right when I found you, you disappeared. In fact, you had me stumped. I thought perhaps you’d died.”
“Little did you know, I had simply taken away your favorite part of me,” her lips curled.
Reynolds’ expression slipped. “Whatever you need to tell yourself,” he sneered. “Giving up your body was your biggest mistake.”
“Is that right?”
He pressed against the bars. “Do you truly believe you’re safe within the confines of a human mind?”
“You’d be surprised how strong this human is,” Rovenna rose to her feet, shifting the weight of her feet to a wide stance. “I’d love to show you first hand,” she completed the ensemble with clenched fists.
“Don’t tempt me,” his sneer again pulled to a sinister grin. “You may not have the same shape, but I can get used to those curves.”
“You’re ridiculous!” She spat in disgust. “And you’ve done all this just to get back at me??”
“It was the only way to find you, my dear. And look,” he opened his hands, “it worked!”
Rovenna darted toward the bars. “And tell me, my dear,” she mocked him with his own words, “what do you hope to accomplish? Do you think you can somehow regain what we had?”
“I need your power back on ORBIT’s side!”
“My power; yes,” her eyes narrowed to slits. “You bloody liar!”
“You’re the liar here!” Reynolds shouted angrily. “Telling me you would always...” he frowned, “care for me...”
“When did I stop caring? When, Keith??”
“When you ran away from the force! We were... I was counting on you!”
“No—finish that—we were what?” Rovenna straightened her posture. “We were a couple? We were in love?? Oh, but that’s right; that was just our ‘agreement.’“
“You’re wrong!” Reynolds approached her. “I loved you more than anyone in the universe!”
“Even if that were true, in the presence of anyone else, I was just there to warm your bed.”
“Don’t you dare say that!!” Now it was Reynolds’ turn to fly at Rovenna, but he struck the bars and found himself unable to reach her when she stepped away.
“Oh, but don’t deny it, whatever you do!” The Time Lord waved her hands in mock exasperation. “I was with you long enough to learn the truth; that every word you uttered was a lie—a lie to get me to fall for you, a lie to make me think you cared—a lie to get me under your control.”
Reynolds clenched his fists as his shoulders pressed against the bars. “You are going much too far, my dear.”
“And yet, you still won’t deny it,” she stepped into his face with only the width of the bars between them. “Listen, human, I could have handled being exploited because I was Gallifreyan. I could have handled the other operatives turning against me because of what they thought was going on. But I could no longer handle your games, Keith! I was tired of your lies!! So I left, thinking everything would be better that way. But no... You convince ORBIT to capture a metacrisis with me in it just to get your revenge!!”
Reynolds’s arm shot through the bars and grabbed Rovenna’s neck.
She managed to smile despite her struggles to breathe. “You’re going to kill her at this rate,” her voice strained though his grasp.
“No.” Reynolds offered coldly. “I’m going to kill you.”
“You’d kill me,” she gasped for air, “after all we’ve been through?”
His lips were inches from hers. “If I can’t have you, no one will.”
He threw her backwards into the cell. She fell hard, scarcely turning to her side to catch herself on her elbow to save her head from striking the cold, metal ground. She heaved in a breath and went limp, her eyes shut tight against the pain stinging through her limbs and the soreness of her neck.
Reynolds remained against the bars, watching through unmoving eyes.
Gemini winced and immediately began to clutch at her neck. At once, her eyes flew open. She didn’t remember hurting her neck.
Her breath caught in her throat when she found herself in Reynolds’ shadow. Her eyes turned to him in quiet fear.
The lieutenant recognized Gemini’s befuddled expression as a cue Rovenna had retreated back into her mind. He offered one last smirk before turning and walking away.
- - -
Gemini gasped awake as she was tugged out of the white military cot in the corner of her cell. She was pulled to her feet and held up by her arms, which only required two of the five operatives to do. After countless days of being worn down from every angle—lacking good food and sleep and gaining physical and mental turmoil in their place—she no longer had the strength or will to fight back.
All the while, she kept hoping for relief; hoping for rescue. The Doctor was out there, and he would find her. He would step in just in time like he always did.
But as she was led down the hall into a small viewing room, she was met with the steely gazes of Reynolds and Bishop. They stood beside a wide window that looked into a cold, sterile room with a large silver sphere on a pole in the center.
Her heels began to dig into the metal floor. ‘Just in time’ was looking dangerously close.
Noticing her hesitance, a third operative began to shove her forward from behind. She dropped her weight when she found herself pointed toward the heavy door that separated the two rooms. All five had to jump in this time as she used the rest of her strength to stretch and squeeze her way out of their grasp.
“No!” She shouted, but to no avail.
Gemini was forced through the door and thrown to the ground. She spun on her knees, but the door uttered a heavy clank as it was sealed shut.
Her breathing quickened. Her eyes darted to the window, but she was unable to see through to the other side.
She gasped as a great whirring started up behind her. The sound was rising from the sphere in the middle of the room.
She looked down as hairs on her arm were beginning to stand. The brown locks on her head were puffing outward. She took in a shaky breath and looked in horror at the silver sphere. The tiniest of sparks were beginning to pop across its surface.
There was no escape.
In weakness and extreme fear, her human mind retreated as Rovenna was forced to take control of her ailing frame.
“Reynolds!!” She leapt to her feet and began pounding on the glass. “You’re insane if you think—” She yelped as she was struck in the back with a loud pop.
Her knees buckled and she flopped to the floor as another bolt shot from the sphere and struck her outstretched arm. Another popped and danced through her leg. She cried out and writhed against the onslaught for what seemed like ages. When the bolts finally ceased, a patchwork of burn marks were etched across her skin. Golden energy began seeping from her mouth as she huffed and gasped painfully.
“This had better work,” Reynolds muttered under his breath, watching the woman’s form grow still through the thick glass.
Throwing her head back, her body burst with energy, filling the room with the explosion.
Reynolds had scarcely allowed the embers of the Time Lord’s regeneration to fade when he unlatched the heavy door and rushed inside. He flipped the woman onto her back and pressed his fingers against her neck. He felt a single rapid heartbeat. His face scowling, he turned to look curiously into the woman’s half-opened eyes.
“...Try again, cad,” escaped her lips.
The look of utter shock and disgust upon Reynolds’ face drew a weak smile across hers.
“Report, Lieutenant?” Bishop remained on the other side of the door.
“Procedure 1C was unsuccessful,” he muttered through his teeth.
Bishop gestured to the group of men with a deliberate flick of his fingers. “Bring her to the lab for testing.”
“No,” Reynolds stood, stopping the men from entering the room. “Tell McGregor we must run Procedure 2A.”
The man’s voice was inaudible from the other room. Moments later, a man in a lab coat appeared beside the general. “Lieutenant, with all due respect—”
“As I predicted, Procedure 1C didn’t work.” Reynolds remained firm. “Run Procedure 2A.”
“But I need to see how her body responded—for all we know, her second heart—”
“General,” Reynolds ignored McGregor’s protests, “we don’t have much time or energy left in our metacrisis here. Simulations of Procedure 2A hold a 99% success rate, and we’ve got to run it now while her body is weak.” He glared at the scientist. “1C was a very... conservative first approach. 2A is much more direct.”
McGregor looked to the general in protest, but Bishop’s eyes remained narrow as he looked at the ailing woman on the floor beside Reynolds.
“If 2A fails, how many more chances do we have?” He asked without moving.
The scientist frowned. “Considering she survives, two; but that’s only going off my guess that she experienced a full regeneration cycle just now. Without testing her current status—”
“You may proceed with Procedure 2A.” Bishop turned and left the doorway to resume his place beside the window.
McGregor could do nothing more than to comply, and he silently exited the room to gather additional equipment.
Alone in the chamber, Reynolds bent down to Rovenna. “Goodbye, my love.” He whispered into her ear.
The woman’s dazed eyes refocused. “What’s that’s supposed to mean?”
A sinister smile stretched his lips as he stepped back.
McGregor passed Reynolds in the doorway. He knelt beside the woman and slipped his hand beneath the singed collar of the woman’s shirt.
“Get—your hands—off me!” Rovenna attempted to move. She paused when the scientist quickly rose to his feet and darted back through the door. With another heavy clank, she was sealed inside.
Rising to a seated position, Rovenna glanced toward the silver sphere as it began to whir back to life.
“What, they’re going to try something stronger? Something more potent?” Her sneer flickered when she could feel a crackling on her chest. Her face fell when she felt a metal disc firmly taped over her heart.
Her body shuddered in terror as her eyes flew toward the sparking sphere. They were going straight to the source.
“Doct—”
Her cries were cut short when a bolt shot directly into her heart.
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Chapter Notes