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The Doctor just scowled. ‘This ends,’ he said. ‘This ends here. I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.’

– Really? Why?

There was an awkward pause.

– Ahh. Silence from Time’s Champion, silence from Fate’s Accomplice. No comment, says the Traveller from Beyond Time.

‘This ends,’ the Doctor repeated, and pressed a switch on the console. The screen went black, and the room was quiet again, except for the gentle hum of the ship’s life-force.

‘Doctor?’ said Catcher.

‘Hmmm?’

‘I haVE to aSk you some?thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘HoW did YYYou get OUT of the counCil mEEting-hALL?’

The Doctor scowled again.

‘Don’t ask awkward questions,’ he said.

Raphael crawled along haunted alleyways, the rain drumming alien tattoos against his skin. He’d tried looking for cover, but the storm kept washing the cover away. He looked down at his hand, and saw unimaginable things crawling under the skin, getting ready to break free of his flesh.

The room. Remember the lead-walled room. Watch the machine. Your name is Raphael. Forget any other name. Purge yourself of any other purpose. Purge me. Purge me; burn away the terrible absurdity that I am becoming. Oh, masters! I am impure. I am caillou.

The room. Lessons taught by Professor Hulot of Orléans.

Funny little red-haired man. Chief Scientific Advisor to the Shadow Directory, they called him, or Monsieur Songe-Creux, behind his back. Oh, Professor, I should have listened after all.

They move through dimensions of chance that you and I can never see, these monsters. How can any rational being stand against the caillou? How could we ever have thought to fight them?

The scalpel twisted in his arm. Please. Purge me. Give me sane and mortal flesh, not this parody of form. Let me wear a new shape...

The ground rippled around him, the earth lapping at his hands and at his knees as the irrational planet heard his prayers, and answered them. The mud of Hazelrow Avenue poured into the wound in his arm, stayed there, and hardened.

New bones and muscles were formed. The world gifted him with new substance and a new shape. Raphael’s wish came true.

Roslyn Sarah Forrester drew her flenser, and pointed the snout at Roslyn Inyathi Forrester. She switched on the laser targeting module. A tiny blue spot of light appeared on the victim’s chest, exactly where the heart was supposed to be.

‘Even I can’t miss like this,’ Roz the Adjudicator grinned.

Roz the victim looked down. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

‘Yes I would.’

‘Not you. Me.’ Roz the victim met her executioner’s gaze.

‘Back in my own time, back when I was you, I thought I was fair. One of the good cops.’

Roz the Adjudicator snorted. ‘You were part of the system.

What’s fair got to do with anything? Anyway, I seem to remember being pretty selective about who "fairness" applied to –’

‘Just shut up and shoot, okay?’

Roz the Adjudicator looked surprised. ‘You want me to kill you, all of a sudden?’

‘No. Look, I don’t believe in any of this heroics bullshit.

I’ve seen it a million times on simcord. The hero nobly gives his life away in the name of a greater good. Sod that. I want to live. Life is a greater good.’

‘Ahhhh. That’s sweet.’

‘Shut it. What I’m saying is, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be part of that self-sacrifice thing. But if you kill me now, at least I can say I tried. I wanted to live. I wanted to live.

And even when I died, I died a better death than you would’ve done.’

She closed her eyes. She didn’t have a blindfold.

‘Martyrdom is a happy ending,’ Roz the victim concluded, muttering it under her breath.

‘Fair enough,’ said Roz the Adjudicator. ‘Bye, then.’

– and there was the sudden, unexpected sound of fist against skull. Roz the victim opened her eyes, and there was a mass of flailing limbs on the floor in front of her. Roz the Adjudicator was down, the gun by her side. Daniel Tremayne was on top of her. Roz imagined him running out of the darkness of the hold, swinging his arms wildly, jumping onto the Adjudicator at – yep – precisely