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‘You could teach me?’ the Doctor asked.

‘For the right price.’ He turned his attention to Anji. ‘Are you ready?’

Anji nodded.

‘Lower the screen,’ he told Dee.

Dee touched a control and a shutter slid smoothly over the window.

‘Hang on,’ the Doctor said, ‘I thought I was here to watch this demonstration. I can’t very well do that with a metal wall in the way.’

‘You can still hear us, though?’ he heard Anji ask.

‘I can.’

‘The time energies need to be carefully contained,’ Baskerville explained.

‘I see,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully.

* * *

Anji looked around the room. ‘I still don’t see the time machine.’

‘That’s because we’re in Brussels.’

The whole room was gone.

The sky was grey, it was just as cold as Anji remembered.

‘I didn’t even… I mean, that was so smooth.’

Baskerville smiled. ‘Your phone is beeping,’ he told her.

It was finding a network. ‘Excuse me,’ she told Baskerville. He nodded, looking a little irritated.

Anji had never enjoyed sending text messages. She’d had an email account since university, SMS was an absurd backward step from that. She tapped away at the phone, trying to get the right letters up – she was out of practice, and hadn’t realised what a knack was needed. It took her a full minute to select the right message and send it to Dave.

MESSAGE SENT.

Only then did she look around.

‘It’s just like I remember it. There’s meant to be a statue,’ she told Baskerville. ‘A little boy… it was over there.’

‘It still is,’ Baskerville said, pointing it out.

A dark bronze statue, less than two feet tall. Anji frowned. ‘Wait, it wasn’t there before. It was…’ she turned through one hundred and eighty degrees, feeling disorientated. ‘There.’

A dark bronze statue, less than two feet tall. Anji frowned. ‘How can it…?’

Baskerville hurried to her side. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he reassured her. ‘The time transfer process has made you a little dizzy. It’s déjà vu, that’s all. You need to concentrate. The statue is over there, just where it should be.’

‘Yes… yes.’ Anji nodded. That made sense. ‘We can walk around?’

‘Of course. Do whatever you need to do to satisfy yourself that the process is genuine.’

Now she was here, now she’d sent the message, Anji wasn’t sure what else she could do. She couldn’t think of anything to do the first time she’d come here. She wondered whether she should try to track herself down. After all, her earlier self wouldn’t be that far away.

‘You’ve been here before?’ Baskerville asked.

‘Yes…’ The dizziness came back.

She saw herself standing in front of the Mannikin Pis, with Dave.

‘I’m really not sure Brussels was quite the right choice to be a wild and spontaneous thing,’ her earlier self said. It was odd – everyone always said that you didn’t look or sound like you thought you did. Anji was a little disappointed to see she was exactly the same as she’d always pictured herself. A little smarter dressed, perhaps.

‘Are you all right?’ Baskerville asked.

‘You tell me,’ she said. That voice sounded distant and unfamiliar.

‘Malady, concentrate.’

‘I’m Malady,’ she said, reminding herself. She mustn’t forget her assignment.

‘You are Malady Chang.’

Of course she was. Why was he telling her?

‘Take a deep breath,’ Baskerville suggested. ‘Look at the skyline. What do you see?’

‘That Atom thing.’

‘The Atomium,’ Baskerville said. ‘Take a good look. Concentrate on that. Steel spheres, connected with thick metal tubes.’

She saw it. It really was quite striking, she had to admit it. There were escalators and stairs in those tubes. Yes. Anji stared at it. The solidity of it was reassuring. It looked faintly ridiculous, of course – it had been built to represent the future in a generation before she’d been born. It looked like a relic from an abandoned future.

‘I half expect Thunderbird Three to launch out of the middle of it,’ she laughed.

‘Thunderbird Three?’ Baskerville asked, puzzled.

Anji felt dizzy. Ever since she’d arrived, she’d felt disorientated.

‘I need to sit down,’ she told Baskerville.

‘Are you