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Calmly, Roslyn Inyathi Forrester picked up the flenser.

‘Daniel,’ she said. ‘Stand up. Move away.’

Daniel’s fists stopped pounding. The woman in the silver suit sprang to her feet, made a lunge for the flenser...

Too late, of course. Roz the victim lined the blue dot up against the woman’s heart, and pushed the trigger-stud. The energy wave hit its target, stripping the plastic coating from the chest and working outwards, tearing away the suit, fibre by fibre. Roz’s finger stayed on the stud. The gun carefully removed the top few layers of the skin, then started untying the muscles and the sinews, gently pulling apart the nervous system.

Roslyn Sarah Forrester became a random stream of atoms in the darkness of the hold. Roz – the only Roz that existed, now – threw the gun away and looked at Daniel. He nodded solemnly.

‘I just saved your life again, didn’t I?’ he said.

‘Yup,’ said Roz.

‘Good.’

He took her hand, and they walked out of the darkness of the hold together.

‘Welcome back,’ said the Doctor.

Roz opened her eyes. In that first split-second, she thought she could see tiny particle-sized machines whirling around her head, shining miniscule flashlights in her face. The same feeling she got every time she woke up in the TARDIS, in fact. The TARDIS? That meant she was back...

... home?

She pulled herself to her feet. Daniel was standing beside her in the console room, and – thankfully – didn’t seem at all phased by the ship’s interior. Roz wondered what had happened to him. He was looking up to the scanner, where unlikely shadows were stalking the streets of Woodwicke. The Doctor was standing over the console, his fingers performing an elaborate ballet over a touchpad.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Roz demanded, pointing at Catcher.

‘AK,’ said Catcher, trying to sink into the corner.

‘Hmmm?’ The Doctor let his ballet continue. ‘Oh, don’t worry about Mr Catcher. He won’t give us any trouble.’

‘Ak. C1. CLEA!N CLEAN it. IT! Up,’ agreed Catcher.

‘Great. How did we get here?’ She glanced up at the scanner. ‘ "Here" being a suspect term, right now.’

‘I called the amaranth home. It took you a while to arrive, though. Been busy?’ Roz looked down at the amaranth, lying still in her pouch. Here in the TARDIS, it seemed quite content. ‘And for the moment, we’re still in Woodwicke.

Although "Woodwicke" is an even more suspect term. Are you familiar with catastrophe theory?’

‘Probably not. Is it important?’

‘An obsolete product of human scientific theory. Put simply, "things just blow up in your face". One event is enough to collapse an entire system. Amazing how easy it is to make everything fall apart.’

Roz indicated the screen. ‘Let me guess. Whoever’s controlling the gynoids is causing that, am I close?’

‘I could question your use of the word "controlling". But otherwise, a succinct and accurate assessment.’

‘And, presumably, we have to stop them.’

The Doctor paused, his fingers freezing in mid-pirouette.

‘We do,’ he said, but to Roz it sounded like he’d said ‘do we?’, like he wasn’t sure how he should be behaving any more.

His fingers began moving again. ‘Of course we do,’ he mumbled. ‘Responsibilities. History must be protected.

Everything must be put back in place. All in a day’s work for Time’s Champion.’

Roz felt herself flinch, and remembered the slave-ship.

Time’s Champion. Suddenly the idea didn’t seem reassuring, and even the Doctor had said it through gritted teeth.

‘Now,’ he announced, suddenly cheery. ‘If the trachoid crystal contrafibulations are in synchronic resonance with the referential difference index, then this should take us right to the heart of the trouble. And they don’t make sentences like that any more. Everybody ready?’

Then he looked up, and seemed to notice Daniel for the first time.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we –’

‘Is that Woodwicke?’ asked Daniel, pointing at the scanner.

The Doctor squinted at him. Roz got the impression that there was something about the boy he recognized. ‘Yes.

What’s left of it.’

Daniel smiled. It was the same grin he’d given