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Cris sat on the bed and watched her, clutching the pillow to his chest. ‘Any luck yet?’ he asked.

‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘No, not really. It’s slow work. Not many of the big computers are talking to one another. We’re really ten years too early for this.’

Cris nodded distractedly. The Blue was curling up his spine in sticky ripples. All these years he had been hiding away from it, buried in the crowds in Mexico. And now they’d followed him here. How’d they known he’d be here? What was significant about this particular day?

‘I came up here for a holiday,’ he said. ‘They said I ought to have a holiday. I’ve been stuck in this room ever since I got here.’

Benny turned away from her computer. ‘Agoraphobia,’ she said.

‘I can’t go to work any more,’ he said. ‘I can’t even go shopping. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ His eyes watered over again. ‘Look at me, I’m just a bambino.’

Maybe they’d come here because today was the day he died.

Professor Summerfield was watching him, doing her best to look sympathetic. Suddenly there was a tremendous knot in his chest. ‘I’m just going to get a glass of water,’ he said.

* * *

The Doctor’s wanderings had reached their inevitable destination. He stood at the mouth of an alley, almost invisible in the shadows. Ace was perhaps fifty feet away from him, watching him watching.

When she was a little girl she had seen a charity thing at the shops, a great plastic parabolic dish with a container under it. You let a coin go at the rim of the dish and it rolled all over the place in repeated curving patterns. But no matter where it started from, the coin always ended up in the centre, falling through the little hole into the container.

The limo pulled up outside the apartment building. Ace looked at her watch. Dead on time.

The passengers were silhouettes, anonymous in the warm night. She got out first. He followed, carrying something. Groceries, maybe.

The Doctor was going to try and stop it. That’s why he was here, that’s what had drawn him here. He was going to try and get in the way. She’d have to run – tackle him, get him down –

Just as they were going through the gate, a voice said, ‘Mr Lennon?’ John turned at the sound of his name.

The Doctor did not move.

There were five shots and a scream.

A great wave of Blue crashed down over everything, blowing away from the sound of the gunfire. The walls of the alley channelled it like a firestorm, pushing the Time Lord back as though it were something physical. Ace felt it rip through her, nauseating, boiling cold.

She was in time to catch the Doctor as he fell. She felt ice inside her flesh as his fingers slid through her shoulders, desperate for a grip on reality. The feathers in his hair curled and blossomed, and he sizzled with energy, neon lines tracing the movements of his limbs, Huitzilin’s power spiralling outward from the human sacrifice.

It hadn’t been the Doctor’s idea to come here after all. Huitzilin had dragged him here, dragged him here to the human sacrifice.

‘No,’ said Ace. ‘Don’t you dare!’

She slapped the Doctor’s face, as hard as she could. He twisted his head round to look at her, and she felt Huitzilin’s gaze squirming in her guts. She cried out, ‘You’re not him, you’re not him!’

Was this it? She didn’t have a weapon, what would she do?

‘Sing for me,’ said Huitzilin.

‘I will not!’ shouted the Doctor.

She raised her hand to strike him once more, but the silent storm was beginning to calm. The crackling light faded into a nimbus and finally back into darkness. Streaks and spots danced in front of her eyes.

There were sirens, now, no louder than the sound of poor Yoko screaming and screaming Jesus. What was the point of saving Lennon in sixty‐nine when this was going to happen to him?

‘Consider,’ said the Doctor hoarsely, ‘the ice‐cream cone.’

He leaned his head on her shoulder, his hair soaked through with sweat. She wrapped her arms around him, listening, not sure if she were taking in the words.

‘The ice‐cream