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"Never heard of him," she heard her voice saying. And she never forgave herself for it.

She thought she heard thunder somewhere in the distance.

Amnoni stepped forward, laying a restraining hand on Pekkary's arm. "We don't know you, but you spoke of the Pilot. If you know where the child is, then for pity's sake tell us."

"If you mean Shonnzi, I wouldn't call him a kid," Ace said.

"So you have seen him."

"Yeah, you could say that. In another part of the city." Immediately the others were turning to each other, looks of relief uncurling on their faces.

"I told you he'd be around somewhere," laughed Reogus. "That's three treazants you owe me, Pekkary."

Their laughter sounded out of place, like a disco in a graveyard. Ace turned away, her thoughts racing. All she had done was cross a stream. She'd come to this City from the same City in the future, just by crossing a stream. And when she looked across this bank, there was another City beyond another stream.

She remembered Pekkary's story:

'A great City where Time flows strangely and is fed by many tributaries and people meet their memories.'

So was the next City in the past or the future? If she kept going would she eventually reach a point in time where she would find the Doctor?

Overhead a red star was winking like the light on a plane wing.

"Where is he now?" Pekkary was saying. "Is he safe?"

"Who? Shonnzi?" She shrugged. "I don't know. The guards were chasing us. We got split up. He can look after himself." She studied them hard, forcing herself to accept that they were the same people she'd spoken to before. Only then, they had looked like their own grandparents.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

Pekkary sighed. "Since the Beginning."

"The Beginning!" she mocked. "Wow. How long's that then?"

"In the Beginning, when the Process created the world and destroyed the evil Doctor."

Ace bit her lip and went cold. "What do you mean, destroyed?"

Amnoni pointed down the ridge. "We witnessed their battle. Just down there on the banks of the stream. The evil Doctor was vanquished and cast down."

"Down where?" demanded Ace. "When?"

"Before the Process enslaved us," Amnoni said. "When we were still Chronauts. Before we were betrayed by Vael."

Ace's heart sank. There were no answers, just more questions. Like leaping from one stepping stone to the next, one City to the next. How far did you have to keep going?

"Who's Vael?" she said and saw the hatred on the Phazels' faces.

Vael Voryunsti Sheverell ran away across the dusty plain. The Chronauts saw him pause close to the stream and then switch directions, following its course into the rising distance.

"What's he playing at?" exclaimed Amnoni. "He's going the wrong way!"

But they still waited. The shock of the crash robbed them of initiative or suspicion. Time was counted in the clanking of the millwheel. The stream's looking-glass surface was unbroken. There was no further sign of the Doctor.

Buried in their minds, desperately groping for the strings of each other's lost thoughts, they never noticed the line of figures crossing the stones from the far bank. Six angular creatures with bulbous red heads swathed in multiple eyes.

Whips cracked and they were surrounded.

Below them, another massive shape arched its way across the stream. Beside it came a figure they knew and would hate for ever.

Vael swaggered in the service of his new master.

Captain Pekkary stood slowly up, but the bite of a whip knocked him to the ground before the approaching monster.

The Process stopped to survey its prisoners and their insect-headed overseers. It moved its massive head to observe Vael as he stepped forward as its emissary.

"You have a new God," he announced. "Behold the Process who has delivered you from the clutches of evil. On this day, the Process has vanquished the tyrant known as the Doctor, the one who sought to trap your molten souls. The Doctor is overthrown and destroyed. You have seen it.