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Another glimpse, from the corner of his eye. Enrique was on the façade, lurking behind the pillars. The Doctor gestured for the creature to go one way, as he started to clamber over the rubble towards a doorway. The creature nodded, most of the heads moving in unison. The Doctor saw it get as far as the inner archways on the west side.

‘And I’m not just in Europe. America. China. Asia. Australia. I get about.’

The Doctor tried one archway and realised it led out into the forecourt beyond the façade. He tried another, found the right narrow doorway.

‘And the worst of it? I won’t even be aware of you. Won’t even know that my every move, my every moment is destroying you.’

He started running up the narrow spiral staircase. It was maybe ten feet across, if that. The inner side was a void, nothing but a low balustrade, maybe a foot high, eighteen inches. As he started around in near darkness, his footsteps scuffed the shallow steps, finding the dent where hundreds of feet had already worn at the stone. He continued to call out.

‘Is that what you want, Enrique?’

He leaned out of a niche, maybe fifty feet up, and saw the creature flowing up the other side. Not bothering with the stairs, it was extruding hand after hand, foot after foot. The changes were staccato, as if one of the figures on the front had been animated. Good, the creature was heading Enrique off, making him too afraid to flee from the Doctor in that direction. Running on he came to a flat area, a room. The first level, where Enrique was, somewhere on the walkway. The room had a hole and the Doctor glanced down it as he continued to talk.

‘To be caught endlessly running from us, in some spiral?’

He could see the stairwell, coiling around itself like a seashell. For a moment, he was caught by the beauty of it. Take away the subjectivity, would anyone appreciate the delicacy of that work? He wondered if Enrique could understand it.

‘And we’ll just keep on coming. Right now,’ the Doctor paused as he searched his memory, found the right doorway out of the room and on to the cloistered walkway. ‘Right now I’m in London. But here I am. Here and now. In Barcelona.’

He could see the creature had climbed to the other end of the balcony. Could see the terrified figure of Enrique, caught between them both. ‘I’m here, on this same building, this same stone wall. But I’m in Hangchow. And maybe there’s even a third or a fourth or a hundred and fifth of me. Maybe I’m all over this planet. In as many places as you could ever hope to flee from. Is that what you want?’

Enrique was screaming, his discordant voices wailing out of the walls and columns, folding in on itself and doppeling around the empty shell of the building. ‘Get out! Get out! Leave me be!’

‘I can offer you a way out, Enrique.’

‘Already. Have escape route planned. Will. Wipe. You. From history. No more. Subjects. No more. Contradictions. They shall not pass.’

The creature roared and advanced. ‘You take our words! You take our words and twist them! We want them back! Free us!’

‘See? Now you’ve got him – er, them – mad. You can’t even bear to look at them, can you? All those views that don’t fit with yours? All those versions you’ve tried to remove. But they keep coming back, keep wanting to be part of it all. It must rile you that you’ve freed all those people from the burden of doubt and they don’t like it.’

‘One. Truth. One. Right. Version.’

‘Never going to happen. But I can give you a way out. You have to trust me.’

‘No. Way. Out. Out. Out. Out.’

The Doctor pulled the paperback out of his pocket. He moved slowly, still edging forward. He saw the creature surge closer as well. The Doctor folded back the book and slowly peeled the cover off the spine, silently praising the TARDIS for even replicating the cheap binding.

‘There’s a way out. Right here. In my hand.’

‘No.’

‘Enrique. You believe in a rational world. Everything is logical, explicable. Causal. So if I say I can get you out, free you from your own prison, by sending