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"I don't know."

"Then give us just one sign of hope," he said. "Just one!"

"Here we go again," she muttered. "You've forgotten where you came from, right?"

"The Gods brought us to this place . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you all this once already — in your Future. The Doctor'll probably kill me if he finds out, but you have to know."

She paused, apparently unsure of what to say.

"Tell them, Ace," said the old man quietly.

"You're from Gallifrey," she said and waited for the lightning bolt.

Step after step. It was as much as Vael could do to keep the Doctor in sight. The downward spiral of the stairs at this speed was dizzying. Below him, the Watch Tower loomed nearer. In its tangled fortress of iron, the Process was waiting. And all the time, the Sphinx eye in his head was demanding and accusing. He set his thoughts against it, lurching helplessly down the endless steps. Trying to veer away from the edge.

The eye was screaming at him, but he dared not listen.

"Vael!" it shrieked. "Listen to me. Answer the riddles!"

He attempted a blast of defiance, but his will was weakening. "I am myself. An Individual!"

Step after step on the stairs.

"I have chosen you, Vael. Listen to me. You are my successor!"

Step after step after step on the twisting stairs and the eye that stares has steeped his mind and he cannot stop as he steps from the steps on the steep stepped stairs

The darkness opened beneath him. His legs buckled. He fell.

The Doctor shrugged wearily and scooped up Vael's unconscious body from the stairs. It was light and wasted. Drained, like everything else that came into contact with the Process.

He was almost level with the top pinnacle of the Watch Tower. The fractured chimes of the bells clanked out. In answer, the great booming echo thundered through the world. A new baleful light fell from directly overhead. By leaning out from the edge of the stair, he could just see the newborn full moon as it began its journey across the empty sky centre of the sphere.

Whole sections of the city were collapsing under the pressure of the contracting world. The events the older Process had set in motion were unstoppable. The Beginning was coming to meet them.

"I am her successor," Vael muttered in a semiconscious delirium. "I am an Individual."

"You're a freak," said the Doctor. "I know how you feel." He put off the chance to look into Vael's helpless mind, for fear of what might be lurking there. Instead, he set off down the steps with his burden.

He set his thoughts to the recovery of his ship and the fight he might have to regain its control. From SARDIT back to TARDIS. But no matter how he concentrated, unwanted ideas continued to clutter his mind. Fragments of knowledge of the Old Time. Morsels he had gleaned from history books or lectures at Academy. The cult of the Individuals, the barbaric regime of the Mythic line, the matronymic dynasties — real families with real children. And white sand imported for the Games from Mirphak 2 because it showed up the blood better.

And sometimes more than certainty that details were wrong in the histories, and that race memory served him better than the biased and doctored speculations of archaeologists.

Down the stairs he came to he knew not what.

"There you are at last," he called to the group of guards who were climbing the stairs to meet him. "Tell the Process that I'm ready to see it now."

Clawed hands seized him and carried him down the spiral.

Out of the gate of the Tower lurched the Process.

"You took your time," called the Doctor, aware even before he started that his sarcasm would be wasted. He caught the rotting stench that came off the brute as it cartwheeled closer.

"Wilby, you are trapped. The Future, where is it?"

"Coming soon," said the Doctor. "In the meanwhile, you're in trouble."

The Process lifted its head to stare at the new moon's slow descent from the southern zenith. The arrowhead frame of stairways rising from around the Tower marked out its direct collision course with them.

The monster