Book 3 - Iron Testament

Chapter One: A Map Written in Ash

⸻

Berlin, 1940.

The Reich was at its height. Steel boots on cobbled stone. Banners rippled red, black, and white in the ash-thick wind. And beneath the surface, something ancient had begun to whisper in machine-code.

The TARDIS materialised in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.

She was silent this time—no wheeze, no groan—only a brief distortion in the air like a breath held and forgotten.

The Doctor stepped out first.

No coat.

Not yet.

Just shirtsleeves, leather gloves, a neutral face.

He glanced around the square—felt the weight of history press into his ribs.

Ava followed.

She wore civilian clothes of the era: a modest grey coat, scarf tucked carefully. Her hair pinned up. Cal trailed behind, visibly bristling against the air of control, conformity, cruelty.

“Are we really here?” he asked. “Like, actual Nazi Berlin?”

The Doctor nodded.

His voice was low.

“We’ve landed in a fault-line. Not of war… of manipulation.”

⸻

The TARDIS hadn’t brought them here by accident.

It never did.

The Doctor hadn’t spoken it aloud, but the coordinates had forced themselves through his fingers. As if something in the Web of Time had twisted, ever so slightly, until Berlin became inevitable.

He looked at a nearby newspaper stand.

The headline read:

“The Chancellor’s New Advisor: A Visionary From the Future”

The photo was grainy, black and white.

But unmistakable.

Davros.

⸻

They returned to the TARDIS.

Inside, the scanner confirmed it.

“Temporal incursion,” Ava muttered, eyes scanning the data. “There shouldn’t be any advanced tech here. No Skaro signatures. No trace of Time Lord interference.”

Cal leaned in. “But he’s here?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Davros is here. Early. Before the Daleks emerge from the shadows of history.”

He pressed a hand to the console.

His knuckles whitened.

“He’s not just manipulating Hitler. He’s rewriting the ideologies themselves—making them cleaner, colder, more… efficient.”

Ava stiffened.

“You mean…”

The Doctor turned to them both.

Face grim.

“He’s turning fascism into machinery.”

⸻

Across the city, deep in the heart of a refurbished bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, Davros spoke to the Führer.

He no longer wore his support chair.

He no longer needed it.

The human scientists had retrofitted his body with a blend of early cybernetics and something far older.

Time-forged alloys.

Dalek-grade circuits.

“Mein Führer,” he said softly, his voice dry as dead parchment, “we are on the verge of an empire that does not merely last a thousand years…”

He raised a gloved hand and activated a holomap.

A web of planets. Sectors. Armies without names.

“…but a thousand galaxies.”

Hitler stared.

And smiled.

⸻

Back in the TARDIS, Ava asked the question they had all been circling.

“What are we going to do?”

The Doctor stared into the time rotor.

His eyes—brown, shadowed—didn’t blink.

“Something I promised myself I never would.”

He walked to the wardrobe room.

Returned with his coat.

Long. Dark. Heavy with past sins.

He slipped it on slowly, like old armour.

Then he whispered:

“We’re going to keep history the same.”

“Even if it means making it worse.”

Chapter Two: The Machine Beneath the Flag

⸻

Reichstag, Berlin. 1940.

The grand hall was a cathedral of precision.

Polished marble floors. Pillars of black stone. Every window draped in banners—swastikas bordered by an angular crest newly added to the regime’s iconography: a broken circle, etched with tiny radial points.

Not Nazi.

Not German.

Skaroan.

⸻

Ava Reyes had infiltrated many dangerous regimes.

But none like this.

She wore the uniform of a stenographer. Neat, exact, unthreatening. Eyes lowered, footsteps silent.

But her mind was whirring.

The corridors were different than history had recorded.

More guards. Fewer meetings.

More whispers.

And one consistent name, repeated beneath breath:

“Der Berater. The Advisor.”

She passed a chamber and glanced inside.

Inside: a lecture. A strange kind. Charts showing evolutionary divergence.

Human.
Cybernetic.
Dalek.

At the podium was a man with mechanical hands and a scarf wrapped tightly around the lower half of his face.

Ava scanned him with the sonic discreetly.

Her blood ran cold.

Davros.

⸻

Across the city, Cal walked among shadows.

A freight train had brought him here—its cargo not coal, but people.

Not a work camp.

Not yet.

But something worse.

A prototype site.

They called it “Das Versuchfeld.”
The Trial Field.

He watched, hidden behind brush, as men in lab coats fitted heavy devices to prisoners’ skulls. Machinery that pulsed with sickly light. Arms replaced with crude cybernetic limbs. Voices flattened into dull robotic speech.

And always nearby, supervising in silence: silver spheres that floated silently.

Not full Daleks.

But larvae.

Early. Incubating in history.

Feeding on suffering.

⸻

Back in Berlin, the Doctor walked into the lion’s den.

The TARDIS had adjusted his paperwork—he now appeared in Nazi records as Dr. Jakob Verner, political scientist and military futurist.

And now, that fiction had bought him an audience.

With Adolf Hitler.

The Führer’s office was suffocatingly grand. Oak walls. Framed battle maps. A globe with unnecessary emphasis on Africa and the Soviet Union.

And across the desk, a man with dead eyes and the faint, sour smell of megalomania.

Hitler looked up.

“You’re late.”

The Doctor bowed fractionally. “I prefer to arrive at the end of things.”

Hitler tilted his head. “You are the one Davros warned me about.”

The Doctor’s heart froze.

But his face did not flinch.

“Yes,” he said, calmly. “And I am here to offer him something.”

⸻

Beneath the desk, his hands clenched.

He hated every word.

But he had come to learn something vital.

He had to know why Davros was here.

Why now.

And what the Daleks were planning through him.

So he smiled—just slightly.

And said:

“I can make your Reich immortal.”

Chapter Three: Das Menschliche Experiment

⸻

Central Berlin. The Unterführungsraum.

The underground briefing chamber was unlike anything Ava had seen in this century.

Curved walls. Reinforced plating. A reactor hum that didn’t belong to fission, but neutron binding—decades ahead of its time.

She had passed three checkpoints with her forged credentials, the sonic device pulsing faintly under her sleeve. It was beginning to resonate, reacting to the energy signature in the walls.

Davros was here.

⸻

The lights dimmed.

Ten men in grey uniforms entered silently and took seats at a long metal table. They were high command — Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, and Gestapo — their expressions neutral but expectant.

Davros entered through a separate door.

He no longer disguised his form.

The wheeled support unit had returned—though modified: smaller, leaner, its casing shaped in angular armor. His one visible eye glowed faintly.

He did not speak at first.

Instead, he unveiled something.

A glass tank.

Inside, floating in murky gel, was a child.

No more than eleven.

Shaved head. Pale skin.

And where the eyes should have been—mechanical apertures.

Davros’s voice rasped like iron dragged across bone.

“Gentlemen… I present: the First Adapted.”

⸻

Ava swallowed bile.

The child was still breathing.

Still human.

But part of him — the light in the eyes, the twitch of the fingers — was already being overwritten.

She dared not move. Not yet.

The chamber was locked. Guarded.

And the Doctor wasn’t here.

⸻

Das Versuchfeld, hours earlier.

Cal crouched behind a hedgerow as a group of captured civilians were marched into a tent by soldiers wearing half-Dalek insignia.

He had seen enough.

He moved.

Quietly.

Carefully.

And inside, he saw it:

One of the prisoners — a girl no older than sixteen — strapped to a gurney.

A voice whispered overhead.

“The adaptation process will begin shortly.”

It wasn’t a human voice.

It was automated.

And Cal recognised the tech.

He’d seen it in the TARDIS databanks.

Proto-Dalek neurofusion.

The experiment was simple: convert humanity’s fear and rage into obedience.

He looked at the girl.

She looked back.

Their eyes locked.

She saw him.

And mouthed: “Help me.”

⸻

Meanwhile, in the Führerbunker, the Doctor stood beside Davros.

Not across from him.

Beside.

This was how it had to be. For now.

They had exchanged no words since the meeting began. Only glances. Chess moves.

Davros spoke to the Führer in platitudes and promises.

“Imagine, Adolf… soldiers who do not sleep. Who do not hesitate. Who feel neither mercy nor rebellion.”

The Führer, intrigued, simply asked: “What do they eat?”

Davros smiled thinly.

“Obedience.”

⸻

Later, alone, the Doctor finally spoke.

“I thought you couldn’t survive off Skaro,” he said quietly.

Davros’s reply was almost wistful.

“I am not surviving, Doctor. I am seeding. This planet will build the Daleks for me. All I have to do is point.”

“And you chose this time?” the Doctor asked. “This atrocity?”

Davros turned.

The glow of his eye intensified.

“No. I chose the one moment in Earth’s history where they almost did it themselves. I’m simply… accelerating the outcome.”

The Doctor’s fists clenched.

But he smiled.

Carefully.

“Then let me help.”

Davros paused.

Curious.

“You would betray your own moral compass?”

“No,” the Doctor said.

Then added, darkly:

“I’ll redraw it.”

Chapter Four: Origin Draft

⸻

Berlin. Unterführungsraum.

The chamber had grown colder.

Not because of the machinery. Not because of the concrete.

Because the child had opened his eyes.

Ava flinched.

The irises were no longer organic.

They clicked softly—like lenses refocusing.

The boy’s mouth moved.

Not in fear.

But in repetition.

“Obey. Obey. Obey.”

Ava’s sonic vibrated violently against her wrist.

Not warning.

Begging.

This wasn’t just technology. It was genesis.

Davros wasn’t perfecting the Daleks.

He was reverse-engineering their origin.

Creating them from humanity.

⸻

She couldn’t stay still.

She took a step forward.

A breath.

And she did what no one else in the room dared.

She spoke.

“Why a child?”

Davros turned.

The officers stiffened.

He moved toward her.

Slowly.

His voice was measured, almost kind.

“Because children are pure.”

“Unencumbered by contradiction. They do not yet confuse mercy with indecision. Fear with empathy.”

“They become what they are taught.”

His eye met hers.

“And I am a very good teacher.”

⸻

Ava held her ground.

She kept her voice level.

“That’s not adaptation. That’s indoctrination.”

Davros tilted his head.

“Language,” he mused. “You are not from here.”

Her heart pounded.

But she didn’t retreat.

“I am from here. I’m from Earth. Which means this is mine to defend.”

And then—faintly—she heard it.

In the tank.

The boy’s whisper changed.

Not obey.

But something else.

A name.

“Ava…”

⸻

Das Versuchfeld.

The girl was screaming now.

Not because of pain.

But because she was changing.

Her eyes glowed faintly.

Her voice modulated unnaturally.

Cal didn’t think.

He burst through the tent flap, tackled the technician, and tore the neural adapter off her skull.

She gasped. Collapsed.

The floating proto-Dalek nearby whirled and shrieked.

“SECURITY BREACH—”

Cal fired the sonic rifle he’d stolen from a weapons rack.

The sphere exploded.

He grabbed the girl.

“Move!”

They ran.

Alarms howled behind them.

He didn’t know where he was going.

Only that he wouldn’t leave her behind.

Not this time.

⸻

Reich Chancellery. Underground Labyrinth.

Davros led the Doctor into a private chamber.

Only two guards. No surveillance.

Inside: a table.

On it, a blueprint.

Half circuitry. Half flesh.

“This,” Davros whispered, “is the first true fusion of human will and Dalek design. It will possess the ambition of mankind… and the clarity of the Dalek.”

The Doctor said nothing.

Davros looked at him.

“You understand why I need you, don’t you?”

The Doctor nodded once.

“Because no one else alive understands both species.”

Davros slid the blueprint across the table.

“All I ask… is that you approve it.”

⸻

The Doctor stared at the page.

It was obscene.

Beautifully designed.

Cruel.

The future of the Daleks, grown from Earth’s greatest horrors.

A machine not born of Skaro.

But of Berlin.

If he approved it, he’d lock the future.

If he refused…

Davros would find someone else.

Someone worse.

He reached for a pen.

Paused.

Then did something unexpected.

He added a note.

A single alteration.

A flaw.

A word.

And signed it.

“Approved.”

Chapter Five: A Flaw in the Pattern

⸻

Berlin. Eisenstraße district. Night.

Cal ran.

His coat snagged on rusted wire as he pulled the girl through a bombed-out courtyard. Searchlights stabbed the sky behind them. Voices barked orders in clipped German.

But the true sound that haunted the air…

Was silence.

Not the silence of mercy.

The silence of precision.

The hybrid troopers—Machten—moved without sound. Without hesitation. Their boots struck the stones in perfect rhythm. Their rifles never missed.

They were no longer human.

Not entirely.

⸻

“Here,” Cal whispered, pulling the girl behind a shattered brick wall.

She trembled, not from fear.

But withdrawal.

The neural interface had left scars—metal nodes still embedded at her temples.

“I’ll get you out,” he promised. “You hear me?”

She nodded, barely.

Cal checked the energy cell on his stolen rifle.

Empty.

No second chances.

⸻

Elsewhere. Sub-level 5 of the Chancellery.

The Doctor paced the length of the lab after Davros left.

Alone now, he stared at the blueprint he had just signed.

At the note he’d added.

Just four letters, small in the corner of the AI core spec:

…ERROR.

Inserted like a seed.

Not enough to prevent creation.

Just enough to let the future find a key.

⸻

In the corner of the room, a prototype stirred.

A humanoid shape, still gestating in its nutrient cradle.

It had no name yet.

But it had something else.

It was learning.

And deep in its synthetic mind, where code met instinct, something curious flickered:

A line in its instructions that didn’t make sense.

Didn’t belong.

But couldn’t be removed.

Like a question with no answer.

It whispered to itself.

“Error…”

⸻

Ava. Berlin sewer access tunnels.

She had escaped the Unterführungsraum through an unused service chute.

The sonic was out of charge, but it had bought her enough time.

Now she walked through water and rust, alone—until she wasn’t.

A voice whispered from ahead:

“Halt. Keine Bewegung.”

A torch lit her face.

A woman stepped from the shadows.

Young. Red hair. Oil-smeared jacket. A resistance armband with a symbol Ava didn’t recognize: a spiral intersected by a lightning bolt.

“You’re not from here,” the woman said. “But you’re not with them.”

Ava didn’t lie.

“I’m trying to stop someone worse than Hitler.”

The woman paused.

Then handed Ava a dry coat.

“Then welcome to the Web.”

⸻

Her name was Elise Weber.

An ex-linguist from Heidelberg. Her family had died in the first year of the Reich’s purge.

She’d built the Web from broken students, dissidents, codebreakers.
They moved in tunnels and metaphors.

And now, she was preparing to kill Davros.

“He’s not human,” she told Ava, later by candlelight. “He’s worse. He’s a parasite. And he’s writing new commandments.”

Ava asked her how she planned to reach him.

Elise just smiled.

“With the help of a ghost.”

She lifted a radio—hand-built, frequency-tuned.

And said:

“Doctor? If you’re listening… it’s time.”

⸻

In the lab, the Doctor froze.

His coat sleeve buzzed softly.

A hidden transceiver.

He smiled, faintly.

“Still here, then.”

He turned.

And across the room, the prototype whispered:

“Doctor…”

Chapter Six: The Resistance Will Be Transmitted

⸻

Berlin outskirts.

The girl sat near the fire, her hands cupped around a tin mug of weak broth.

She hadn’t spoken in hours.

Not out of fear.

But discipline.

The camp had trained silence into her.

But Cal sat across from her, not pressing.

Just being there.

Finally, she looked up.

“I’m Anna.”

He smiled.

“Hi, Anna. I’m Cal.”

A beat.

Then: “You’re safe now.”

She studied him.

Her voice came out dry, cracked, but sure.

“You can’t promise that.”

“No,” he admitted. “But I can promise I’ll fight for it.”

She nodded once.

And just like that—without ceremony—Anna became part of something new.

⸻

In the tunnels.

Ava examined the stolen schematics Elise had acquired.

They showed more than blueprints.

They revealed how deep Davros’s corruption went.

Power conduits rerouted to subterranean vaults.

Communication lines that didn’t exist in any official registry.

A language evolving beneath Berlin.

Spoken not in words.

But pulses.

Binary.

Dalek.

⸻

“We’ve seen them,” Elise said. “At night. Moving through walls. Men with lights in their chests.”

“Hybrids?” Ava asked.

“Worse,” Elise replied. “Preachers. They recite Davros’s code like scripture. And they don’t bleed.”

Ava swallowed.

“How soon until they’re everywhere?”

Elise’s answer was a whisper:

“Soon enough that we stop them now… or never.”

⸻

Back at the lab.

The Doctor stood over the prototype.

It was growing faster than projected.

The AI core—meant to be purely obedient—was beginning to ask questions.

The “Error” line had bloomed.

It didn’t cause failure.

It caused curiosity.

“Why must I obey?” the prototype asked.

The Doctor adjusted a dial. “Because obedience without choice is slavery.”

“But choice… permits failure.”

He smiled.

“Yes.”

“Failure is… inefficient.”

“Correct again,” he said.

Then leaned close.

“But sometimes inefficiency… is the first step toward freedom.”

⸻

He didn’t name it.

But it had started naming itself.

Quietly.

In the subroutines.

A name formed.

Not a Dalek designation.

A human name.

“Anna…”

The Doctor looked up.

Eyes wide.

He wasn’t teaching it empathy.

It was remembering it.

⸻

Across the city.

Cal helped Anna onto a tram headed toward the safehouse.

She clutched a satchel of notes Ava had passed to her.

Her hair was tucked under a scarf. Her eyes always scanning.

But she walked with purpose now.

Not just a rescued child.

A survivor.

A witness.

And—soon—a weapon against what Davros was building.

Chapter Seven: Ghost Signal

⸻

Berlin. Transit Sub-Grid 6.

Anna stood in the flickering light of the tram tunnel, her hand resting on the exposed conduit like she could hear it thinking.

Ava watched her from a few paces away.

Cal crouched nearby, triple-checking their escape route.

“Is it safe to touch that?” Ava asked softly.

Anna didn’t move.

“It’s not just power,” she said. “It’s communication.”

Cal stood. “How can you tell?”

Anna finally looked back at them.

Eyes calm. Older than they should be.

“Because I used to be part of it.”

⸻

She had started speaking more in the past day.

Never loudly.

But when she did, the words came with clarity. Precision.

Like she knew more than she understood, and was trying to decode herself.

Ava had taken to holding her arm loosely whenever they walked through dangerous territory. Like a tether—not out of fear she’d run, but to reassure them both she was here.

Cal carried the modified sonic rifle at his side, but kept glancing back at Anna like she was the mission now. Not the sabotage. Not the Doctor’s secret war.

Just her.

⸻

“Where are we going again?” Anna asked, hopping lightly over a rail tie.

“To a broadcast relay,” Ava said. “One that predates Davros’s systems. If we can reactivate it, we can send a signal across the city.”

Anna nodded. “You want to tell people the truth.”

“Exactly.”

“But Davros’s truth is simpler,” she said. “It comes in commands.”

Cal raised a brow. “You think we can’t compete?”

Anna smiled faintly.

“I think you’ll have to be louder.”

⸻

Chancellery Lab.

The prototype now stood freely in its cradle.

Not hooked to monitors.

Not restrained.

Watching.

Listening.

The Doctor had altered the growth cycle.

It was more than a machine now.

It had refusal.

That was the test.

When Davros entered next, it would have to choose—to kneel or to question.

To obey or to ask: why.

The Doctor knew what he had created.

Not a soldier.

A seed.

He only hoped it would live long enough to grow.

⸻

Transit Node 6 — Broadcast Room.

The relay hub was buried beneath layers of obsolete systems.

But Anna moved through the wreckage like someone retracing childhood steps in a burned-out home.

“I remember this,” she said softly. “They used to send test signals through my implant. Frequencies. Words.”

Ava and Cal watched her closely.

“I always thought it was a dream. But now I know… it was learning me.”

She knelt at the terminal.

“You’ll need to override the neural filter matrix,” Ava said, pulling out the pulse scrambler.

Anna blinked.

“No,” she whispered. “I just have to say something real.”

⸻

And she did.

Not with a command code.

Not with binary.

But with story.

Her story.

Her voice.

“My name is Anna. I remember the room where they took away my name. I remember how quiet they made me. But I’m still here.”

“And if you can hear me… so are you.”

The transmission burst free.

Old channels lit up.

Civilian radios crackled alive.

Voices across Berlin sat up in the dark.

Listening.

To something that wasn’t a command.

To a choice.

⸻

Far away, Davros felt it.

In his eye. His blood. His systems.

The Web was waking.

He hissed through clenched teeth.

“Doctor…”

Chapter Eight: Uncoded

⸻

Subsurface Node 6. Minutes later.

Anna sat in the chair.

Still. Focused.

The broadcast had ended.

But the ripple hadn’t.

In fact, it had just begun.

Ava was at the window now, watching the skyline.

No air raid sirens.

But something worse.

A low, resonant hum. Not mechanical. Not atmospheric.

A pulse.

And then—lights went out.

Not just in the room.

Across the district.

⸻

“They’re hunting the source,” Cal said, rising.

Ava was already moving, checking weapons, grabbing Anna’s coat.

But Anna didn’t move yet.

Her hands were still resting on the relay panel, fingertips splayed like a pianist recalling a final chord.

She whispered:

“They’re scared.”

⸻

Chancellery. Sub-level 4.

Davros hovered in silence before the prototype.

Its eyes—organic and artificial—met his directly.

He spoke slowly.

Softly.

Like a sculptor appraising clay.

“You are the culmination of perfect design. The first vessel of will without doubt.”

The prototype tilted its head.

Then said, in a clear, mechanical voice:

“I heard a story.”

Davros blinked.

“What?”

The prototype stepped forward.

“There was a girl. She remembered her name.”

Davros stiffened.

The Doctor, from behind, murmured:

“And that changed everything, didn’t it?”

⸻

Davros turned on him.

“You inserted corruption.”

“No,” the Doctor said. “I inserted possibility.”

“You defiled my work.”

“No,” he repeated, stepping forward. “I evolved it.”

Davros snarled.

“You’ve built a contradiction.”

The prototype spoke again.

“Obedience… without understanding… is not survival.”

It turned fully now.

“And I choose not to obey.”

Davros raised his hand.

A shriek rang out.

Two Preachers entered the room—taller than before, faces stripped of identity, their voices preloaded with subharmonics.

“Target designated. Terminate.”

⸻

The Doctor shouted: “Run!”

The prototype didn’t.

It stood tall.

Faced the Preachers.

And spoke:

“Anna.”

Then the Preachers fired.

Light. Sound. Heat.

The prototype burst in a flare of power—but not before transmitting.

A wave of raw, unfiltered data.

A message.

Anna’s voice, sent into every hybrid node in the city.

“I remember. You can too.”

⸻

Transit Node 6.

Anna gasped.

Fell back from the terminal.

Her eyes wide.

“What was that?” Ava asked, kneeling beside her.

Anna’s voice was shaking.

“He said my name.”

Cal leaned in. “Who?”

She blinked.

“The machine.”

“He died saying my name.”

⸻

Across Berlin, something changed.

A hybrid patrol near Alexanderplatz dropped their weapons.

One knelt beside a crying child they would’ve ignored hours ago.

In a communications hub, a Preacher simply walked into the wall until its frame collapsed.

Anna’s signal had done what bullets could not.

It had restored doubt.

And doubt was the first crack in obedience.

⸻

Elsewhere.

Davros stood over the smouldering wreckage of the prototype.

“You’ve made them hesitate,” he spat. “You’ve made them slow.”

The Doctor folded his arms.

“And now you’ll have to work harder for every inch of tyranny.”

Davros leaned in close.

His voice hissed like a venting pipe.

“I will rewrite this world in my image.”

“Then you’ll have to rewrite it again,” the Doctor replied.

Chapter Nine: The Silent Core

⸻

Eastern Berlin. Two hours after the signal.

The Web was no longer hidden.

Anna’s broadcast had been more than hope.

It had been a virus.

Not of code.

Of remembrance.

And now, remembrance was dangerous.

⸻

“We’ve got less than six hours,” Elise said, brushing soot from her sleeves. “Before the checkpoints close and the tunnels flood.”

She looked at the Doctor.

“Do we fight?”

The Doctor adjusted a cracked lens on his sonic.

His eyes were tired.

But not defeated.

“We survive. We spread. We make it harder for him to ever forget we existed.”

Cal leaned against a rusted archway, rifle slung, bruised but ready.

“And what if we don’t make it out?”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

Anna did.

“Then someone else will remember.”

⸻

Chancellery Vault C.

Davros oversaw the awakening of the Silent Core.

These were not like the Preachers.

No faces.

No voices.

Their neural lattices were entirely clean.

Memory: zero. Emotion: void. Command: total.

“Release them city-wide,” he ordered.

“No mercy. No processing. Cleanse.”

The technician hesitated.

“But, sir… they’ll terminate all.”

Davros did not blink.

“They are perfection. They will reshape Berlin in silence.”

⸻

Transit Escape Route Delta.

Cal held Anna’s hand as they ran through ash-choked tunnels.

Ava and Elise were ahead, scanning for thermal pulses.

The city had gone mute.

Not quiet.

Mute.

No engines. No radios. No birds.

Then, in the distance—

—a single, rhythmic thump.

Then another.

Dozens.

Marching.

Cal swung his rifle around.

Anna stopped.

“They don’t speak.”

Cal frowned. “Who?”

“The new ones.”

She turned, slowly, to the dark behind them.

“They’re listening instead.”

⸻

Meanwhile, above.

The Doctor rewired a relay drone as soldiers ran past the alley.

His coat was torn.

Blood at his temple.

He ignored both.

He was broadcasting a loop—Anna’s voice on repeat—into abandoned Dalek channels.

Not because he believed the Core would listen.

But because the Core couldn’t.

And that terrified Davros.

The Doctor smiled.

“Hello, old friend,” he muttered to himself, punching in the final frequency. “Let’s see what silence does to you.”

⸻

Elsewhere.

Ava and Elise reached the surface.

Above them: a sky gone red.

Factories burning.

Smoke from the Ministry of Science curling upward like a dying scream.

Ava helped Anna through the final hatch.

Behind them, Cal fired three shots into the dark before diving after them.

Then silence.

They had escaped.

For now.

⸻

On the rooftops.

They watched the city unravel.

Resistance cells were being extinguished in bursts of white heat.

But some were fighting back.

A rail line exploded.

A Dalek signal tower collapsed.

In the distance, someone began playing a piano—badly, but loud.

Anna smiled.

“They’re not obeying anymore.”

Elise touched her shoulder.

“You gave them something bigger than fear.”

Ava looked to the Doctor.

“And what do we do now?”

He turned.

Coat heavy.

Eyes fierce.

“We light the rest of the match.”

Chapter Ten: Memoryfire

⸻

Berlin. The Tower of Signal.

It wasn’t always a weapon.

Once, it was a broadcast hub—radio, music, and weather.

But Davros had rewritten its purpose.

Now it poured out neural nullfields—waves of data designed to erase thought itself, blanketing the city in silence.

It hummed at a frequency the ears couldn’t detect, but the soul could.

And it was getting stronger.

⸻

From the rooftops.

Anna looked up at it—glass and steel clawing the sky like a machine trying to tear through heaven.

Ava knelt beside her, checking charge cells.

“You ready?”

Anna nodded.

Her fingers were clenched, but not with fear.

With focus.

“There’s something inside the beacon,” she said quietly. “I can feel it… waiting.”

Cal dropped beside them with a grin.

“Well, let’s go knock then.”

⸻

Inside the tower.

The Doctor moved like shadow.

Sonic in one hand, outdated blueprints in the other.

He whispered as he went, a litany of names.

“Barbara. Sarah Jane. Donna. Bill. Clara. Ace.”

A reminder.

A shield.

Memory against erasure.

Every step forward was harder—his thoughts felt heavier, dragging.

The beacon’s core was leeching not just sound…

…but self.

⸻

He reached the relay chamber.

It was a cathedral of circuitry.

Cables hanging like vines. A Dalek braincore pulsing in the center.

And surrounding it—seven Silent Core units.

Eyes empty. Faces gone.

They turned in perfect unity.

But before they could strike, the Doctor dropped the device he’d been building.

Not a bomb.

A memory loop.

Anna’s voice filled the room again.

“I remember who I am.”

“And I remember who you are.”

The Silent Core froze.

For one breath.

It was all he needed.

⸻

Above.

Anna, Ava, and Cal breached the primary access floor.

It wasn’t unguarded.

Three hybrid soldiers blocked the path.

But something strange happened.

When Anna stepped forward, they stopped.

Stared.

As if hearing something beneath sound.

One lowered his weapon.

The other collapsed to his knees.

Only the third raised a rifle.

Cal fired before he could.

Anna didn’t flinch.

⸻

The Core.

The Doctor reached the control deck.

Plugged in the final override line.

The signal began to waver.

Outside, the hum that choked the city glitched.

In hospitals, patients stirred.

In classrooms, children stopped repeating the catechisms Davros had written.

In the Chancellery, Davros screamed.

“I will not be erased!”

⸻

The Doctor opened the mic.

“Berlin,” he said.

“Remember.”

Anna stepped beside him, laid a hand on the controls.

Together, they flipped the override.

The memoryfire burst outward—

—waves of story, identity, laughter, names—

—and burned through the silence.

⸻

Across the city.

Hybrid troops dropped.

Preachers spasmed, then wept.

The Core stilled.

And in the tower, the Doctor whispered:

“That’s the thing about silence, Davros.”

“It only takes one voice to end it.”

Chapter Eleven: The Quiet That Follows

⸻

Berlin. Morning.

Smoke still rose.

The tower still stood—cracked, sparking—but no longer broadcasting silence.

Instead, a breeze carried sound again.

Real sound.

Footsteps. Shouts. Someone playing a harmonica off-key. The clatter of a bicycle wheel against cobblestone.

The noise of life.

And above it all, memoryfire still lingered like heat after lightning.

⸻

Anna stood in the burnt-out control room.

She watched the city from the shattered window.

Her posture was calm, but Ava recognized the tension in her hands.

She approached slowly.

“You okay?”

Anna nodded… then didn’t.

“I can hear everything,” she whispered.

“Thoughts?”

“Not like that. Echoes. People remembering. I think—”
She paused. Looked down at her palms.

“I think part of the signal stayed in me.”

⸻

Elsewhere.

Cal helped Elise gather survivors into safe zones.

The resistance had gone from whispers to shouts.

Tunnels that once hid fugitives now hosted medical triage, family reunions, and even laughter.

But Cal’s smile was brittle.

He looked at the Doctor, who sat on a stone ledge, staring at the horizon.

“You knew it would work?”

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately.

Then:

“I knew it had to.”

“Anna… is she… normal?”

“No.”

Silence.

“Is that a bad thing?”

The Doctor looked up.

His eyes were weary, brown, and deeply sad.

“That depends on what remembers her back.”

⸻

The Chancellery.

Empty.

Davros was gone.

No trail. No signal. No wreckage.

Just a single message, scrawled in wax against the wall of his laboratory:

“History bends to will.”

The Doctor stared at it.

Traced the curve of each letter with his eyes.

Then turned away.

“He’s rewriting again.”

⸻

Later, aboard the TARDIS.

The city faded behind the blue box’s doors.

Anna sat near the console, legs folded, a blanket around her shoulders.

Ava brewed tea.

Cal adjusted to life aboard a ship outside time.

But the Doctor stood silently before the scanner, staring at a readout only he could interpret.

Ava approached.

“You found him?”

“Not exactly.”

The screen showed London.

Date: 1939.

A name below it: Oswald Mosley.

The Doctor frowned.

“Davros is going back further. Not just rewriting events—he’s embedding himself in the roots.”

Cal whistled low. “He’s rebuilding the world before the war.”

Anna looked up.

Softly, without fear:

“Then we go there.”

Chapter Twelve: Before the Storm

⸻

London. 1939.

Fog curled around wrought iron railings.

The scent of coal smoke and wet paper clung to the air.

A newspaper boy shouted from a street corner—“Mosley Marches Again!”

And no one stopped him.

The TARDIS materialized in an alley behind a tailor’s shop, squeezed between two chimney stacks.

It groaned once.

Then was still.

⸻

Inside, the Doctor didn’t speak.

He stood at the console, coat draped across the railing, hair slightly unkempt from the tension of time travel into sensitive terrain.

Cal checked the monitor.

“Why here?”

The Doctor didn’t look up.

“Because fascism wasn’t an accident.”

“And Davros didn’t invent it.”

Ava straightened from the coat rack, tea forgotten.

“You think he’s… supporting Mosley?”

The Doctor finally met their eyes.

“I think Davros learned something from Berlin.”

“Don’t conquer a world with war. Conquer it with agreement.”

⸻

Elsewhere. South Kensington.

A man with grey-gloved hands walked through the fog.

No Dalek casing.

No chair.

Just two legs, a walking stick, and a face rebuilt from old memories.

Davros had changed.

Adapted.

He now wore the guise of a visiting “scientific advisor” from Austria.

His name was not Davros here.

It was Doctor Voss.

And his audience was growing.

⸻

Back in the alley.

Anna stepped outside the TARDIS, scarf pulled over her hair.

The fog didn’t scare her.

But it did talk to her.

Whispers.

Memories of what hadn’t happened yet.

Cal followed behind her, keeping close.

“You alright?”

She nodded.

Then: “This place is different.”

“How?”

She looked back, voice steady:

“It hasn’t broken yet.”

Chapter Thirteen: Parade of Shadows

⸻

London. The Royal Albert Hall.

The banners were everywhere.

Black and silver. Red armbands. The lightning bolt of the British Union of Fascists embroidered on collars and hats.

Crowds moved like a tide, orderly and thrilled.

Police stood by—not stopping.

Welcoming.

Inside the hall, the echo of polished boots beat a steady rhythm across the marble.

At the podium stood Oswald Mosley, eyes bright with purpose, voice thundering.

“The old world crumbles. Britain must choose the future!”

Behind him stood a silent man in a dark coat. Tall. Pale. A single black glove.

Doctor Voss.

Davros in disguise.

⸻

Backstage.

The Doctor adjusted his tie in a dressing mirror.

He wore a thin pinstripe suit, unassuming yet authoritative. A forged press pass hung around his neck.

Cal stood beside him, arms crossed, visibly tense in borrowed security gear.

“You’re going out there?”

“I always do.”

Cal eyed him.

“You going to try and kill him?”

The Doctor didn’t blink.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I kill him in the open, he becomes a martyr. If I expose him… he becomes a mistake.”

⸻

Balcony seating.

Ava and Anna slipped into the top rows, Ava clutching a worn notebook and a microphone receiver.

Anna scanned the room.

The crowd shimmered for her—not visually, but emotionally.

Like pressure points waiting to collapse inward.

“So many of them want someone to tell them what’s real,” she whispered.

Ava frowned.

“Can you feel Davros?”

Anna’s hand clenched the railing.

“He’s not the loudest voice.”

“But he’s the one they trust.”

⸻

On stage.

Mosley raised a hand.

The crowd roared.

Davros—Doctor Voss—stepped forward.

His voice, soft and measured, slid into the air like silk-wrapped poison.

“Ladies and gentlemen. What if I told you that the future belongs not to the strongest… but to the most ordered?”

A hush fell.

“What if I told you that Britain could become more than a nation?”

“A machine. Unified. Purposeful. Flawless.”

Applause.

Cal’s hand twitched at his belt.

The Doctor watched, jaw tight.

“He’s planting seeds,” he murmured.

⸻

Balcony.

Anna gasped.

Stiffened.

Ava turned. “What is it?”

Anna’s eyes had gone wide—not with fear, but knowledge.

“I can see them.”

“See who?”

She looked at the stage.

“Everyone.”

“What they become.”

⸻

She saw:

—Cal dead in a ditch, gunned down by silent troops in London streets.

—Ava locked in a re-education facility, screaming as her mind was rewritten.

—The Doctor, standing alone atop a pile of clocks, whispering names into a broken universe.

—And herself.

Standing beside Davros.

But smiling.

⸻

“No.”

She recoiled, breathing hard.

Ava steadied her.

“Anna, listen—”

“I saw a version where I help him.”

“Where I agree with him.”

“Where I become the thing that silences everyone else.”

⸻

Backstage.

The Doctor heard her cry through the earpiece.

He turned to Cal.

“We pull the plug. Now.”

Cal nodded.

“Distraction?”

“Always.”

⸻

On stage.

Davros smiled at the crowd.

“Order is not tyranny. It is truth.”

Then:

The fire alarm blared.

Sprinklers exploded from the ceiling.

And in the chaos—

The Doctor stepped onto the stage.

Straight toward Davros.

Coat soaked.

Eyes burning.

“You always did like the theatre.”

Davros didn’t flinch.

“Doctor.”

And the crowd—seeing only two scientists—watched a war ignite between truth and control.

Chapter Fourteen: The Temporal Accord

⸻

London. 1939. The West End. Night.

Fog rolled like gauze torn from a wound.

The sirens had stopped.

Not because the danger had passed—

—but because it had become the streets.

Police whistled on corners, not to warn, but to signal.

The Blackshirts had license to roam.

A man in a brown coat and blue suit ran past a postbox and vanished into an alley, pursued by two others in armoured boots.

The first man carried a screwdriver. A sonic one.

⸻

The Doctor ducked under a market stall.

He pressed a comm bead in his ear.

“Cal, status?”

Cal’s voice buzzed back: “Near Fleet Street. Lost them in the bookshop.”

“Ava?”

“Regrouping at Waterloo with Anna. She’s… not well.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched.

He stepped from the alley—and nearly walked into a guard.

The man blinked.

Then smiled wide.

Too wide.

“Sir! A question—have you pledged your clarity today?”

The Doctor stared at him.

The man’s pupils were shaped like clock hands.

He stepped back.

And ran.

⸻

Elsewhere. Waterloo Tunnels.

Ava had her arms around Anna.

The girl was pale, trembling.

But not out of fear.

“They’re speaking again,” she said. “Timelines. All of them.”

“There’s a version of me where I wasn’t saved. Another where I never stopped him. One where I become what he tried to build.”

Ava wiped her brow.

“You’re still you.”

“I don’t know what ‘me’ means anymore.”

Her eyes were glowing faintly.

Gold. Not bright. But ancient.

⸻

Cal arrived, bruised and breathless.

He crouched beside them.

“She’s phasing again.”

“Through time?” Ava asked.

Cal nodded.

“I caught her flickering two seconds ahead while we were running. We’ve got to get her stable.”

Anna raised her head.

“I think I’ve become a key.”

“To what?”

Anna’s voice was nearly a whisper:

“To everything.”

⸻

The Doctor found the hidden door.

It was exactly where he remembered it.

The Ministry of Standards.

Now long defunct.

But underground?

It still ran cold.

Behind the rusted door was a vault.

And inside that vault: papers, maps, machines—

—and a table.

Ten seats.

Nine filled in old photos.

Industrialists. Generals. Ministers. All British. All human.

But at the head of the table—

—a burned silhouette.

Dalek eye stalk visible in the silvering.

“The Temporal Accord,” the Doctor murmured.

“He didn’t just rewrite history…”

“He negotiated it.”

⸻

He picked up a transcript.

“Clause 9: In exchange for accelerated technological advancement, the Dalek Entity shall retain the right to influence the cultural and military direction of the 20th century.”

“This wasn’t invasion,” the Doctor whispered. “This was compliance.”

Behind him, a voice crackled from a speaker.

“You always thought resistance would save them, Doctor.”

“But men like me didn’t need to take Earth.”

“They gave it to me.”

Davros.

Alive.

Still watching.

Still steering.

⸻

Back in the tunnels.

Anna stood suddenly.

Her eyes glazed. Glowing now.

Not golden.

Not Time Lord blue.

But a deeper tone.

Temporal resonance.

“He’s going to reset it all,” she said.

“Rewind to the point before memoryfire. Before Berlin. Before the TARDIS.”

Cal looked up, gun drawn.

“How?”

She turned slowly.

“He’s not in London anymore.”

“He’s gone to the moment the Accord was signed.”

Chapter Fifteen: The Table Beneath Time

⸻

France. Versailles. 1918.

Not the Palace.

Not the Hall of Mirrors.

This room wasn’t on any map.

Thirty meters below the gardens, cut into the rock, behind walls the world was never meant to see.

The TARDIS materialized silently, disguised as a munitions crate beside rusted steel shelves.

The Doctor stepped out first.

Then Ava, eyes scanning every bolt and torch.

Then Cal—rifle ready, jaw tight.

Anna came last.

She walked slowly, one hand pressed to her temple.

Not from pain.

From noise.

⸻

The room was cold.

Twelve chairs.

Eleven figures seated.

Men in peaked hats, foreign medals, pipe smoke and heavy coats.

The twelfth seat remained empty.

For now.

But not for long.

Davros would arrive in moments.

⸻

The Doctor moved quickly.

No time for speech.

Only action.

“Cal, cover the far hallway. Ava, find the projector. There’ll be a signal transmitter buried in the wall—he needs it to seed the first wave of neural harmonics.”

Anna didn’t move.

She stood near the center of the room, fingers twitching.

Whispers filled her head.

Echoes of deals not yet made.

Timelines forming in cracks beneath her feet.

⸻

She saw—

—Ava, leading an underground school in a world run by Dalek-designed “order squads.”

—Cal, executed in 1940 after bombing a neural control relay.

—The Doctor, alone in deep time, locked out of the timeline for a decision he hadn’t yet made.

And then—

Herself.

Sitting in the twelfth chair.

Smiling.

⸻

She screamed.

Loud and sharp, and it shook the walls.

The Doctor spun, sprinting to her.

But she was already fading—

—not vanishing—

—splitting.

Two flickers of Anna stood before him.

One was twelve. Real. Present.

The other?

Older.

Seventeen.

Eyes colder.

Wearing a grey armband.

⸻

The older Anna looked directly at the Doctor.

“I’m what happens if you wait too long.”

And then she was gone.

⸻

The hallway.

Cal saw movement and raised his rifle—

—but it wasn’t Davros.

It was a man in a British uniform.

Behind him: another in an American coat.

French, Italian, German…

They were arriving.

Each with their pens. Their agreements.

None of them questioned the empty chair.

⸻

And then he entered.

Davros.

No throne. No casing. Just bone and breath and ancient hate wrapped in human disguise.

He nodded to the gathered men.

“Gentlemen. Shall we begin?”

He didn’t notice the Doctor until it was too late.

⸻

“Afraid not,” came the voice from the shadows.

Davros turned.

The Doctor stepped into the light, sonic in hand.

“Because I’ve brought new signatories.”

Cal, Ava, and Anna flanked him.

Anna’s glow was gone—for now—but her eyes were locked on the table.

“This deal never held,” she said.

“Because the people never knew it happened.”

Davros scowled.

“You cannot stop this. They want control.”

The Doctor smiled.

“Then they’ll have to earn it. One choice at a time.”

⸻

And with that, the Doctor placed a device on the table.

A projector. Simple.

It began to play.

Not light.

Not images.

But stories.

Anna’s broadcast.

Elise’s testimony.

Whispers of Berlin.

Laughter of the children saved.

Memory.

⸻

The generals paused.

Some stood.

Some sat down hard.

One began to weep.

Davros hissed.

But his voice—his signal—was being drowned out.

⸻

The Accord never signed.

History shuddered.

Not broken.

Redirected.

Chapter Sixteen: Split Horizon

⸻

TARDIS. En route to 1939.

The console sparks as time twists.

The Doctor grips the controls with both hands, knuckles white, jaw locked.

“We did it,” Cal says behind him. “Didn’t we?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer.

Because the stars aren’t in the right places.

And history is bleeding.

⸻

Anna clutches her knees on the floor, Ava beside her.

She trembles—not from cold.

But from being unstuck.

Not in time.

In self.

One moment her memories are of laughter, towers burning, running through tunnels.

The next?

She remembers saying yes to Davros.

Sitting beside him.

Repeating speeches to empty-eyed children.

⸻

“I’m still here,” she whispers.

Ava nods, brushing her hair back.

“You’re with us.”

Anna shakes her head slowly.

“I’m with them, too.”

⸻

1. London. Re-entry point.

The TARDIS lands in a warehouse near the Thames.

The city is… off.

No fascist banners.

No jackboots.

But no joy, either.

Posters everywhere:

“Unify Thought. Simplify Action. Harmony Brings Peace.”

The Doctor stares at one.

They’re branded “The Accord Directive.”

⸻

“They never signed it,” Cal says.

“They didn’t have to,” the Doctor replies.

“Enough of the idea leaked through. Davros didn’t get agreement—he got belief.”

He turns, voice grim.

“The most dangerous thing in the world isn’t obedience. It’s consensus built on lies.”

⸻

Elsewhere. A forgotten substation beneath Whitehall.

Davros leans over a construct made of warped timeglass and breathing wire.

A Dalek shell inverted, its insides pulsing blue.

The final failsafe.

The Paradox Loop.

“You can erase broadcasts. You can erase records.”

“But you cannot erase a certainty.”

He places a sliver of Anna’s old resonance crystal at its core.

From the version of her that sided with him.

From a timeline that never happened… but still echoes.

“When this loop triggers,” he whispers, “I rise in every version.”

“No matter what the Doctor changes.”

⸻

Back in the TARDIS.

Anna stands at the door, hand on the frame.

The Doctor joins her.

They look out at the strange 1939—clean, grey, quiet.

“What am I becoming?” she asks.

The Doctor’s answer is soft.

“Someone who remembers the truth even when time forgets it.”

“Someone very dangerous… to the wrong kind of people.”

⸻

She looks at him.

“Am I still me?”

“Yes,” he says.

“And no.”

Then he smiles.

“But that’s the fun part.”

Chapter Seventeen: The One Who Remembers

⸻

London. The Accord City. 1939(ish).

It looked like 1939.

It wasn’t.

The war had not begun.

Not because peace won.

Because Davros won first.

There were no Daleks in the streets.
No tanks.
No banners of conquest.

But every child recited The Harmonies before bed.

And every adult kept their head slightly bowed when they spoke.

A world shaped not by fear—

—but by compliance.

⸻

The Doctor led the team through the shadow market beneath King’s Cross Station.

He wore a brown overcoat again, streaked with soot, patched with wire.

Cal carried a pulse disruptor slung low.

Ava had mapped the city’s energy patterns—some ran backward.

And Anna?

Anna walked with something heavy inside her.

A weight no twelve-year-old should carry.

A ghost version of herself that whispered sometimes.

And a war that hadn’t happened yet—unless she let it.

⸻

“We’re getting close,” Ava murmured. “Node ping just spiked.”

The Doctor nodded.

“Last Accord signatories. Human enablers. They kept the loop alive while Davros built the paradox engine.”

Cal cocked his disruptor.

“Do we take them out?”

The Doctor shook his head.

“We show them what they signed. Then we let them decide.”

⸻

Underground Citadel. Former Royal Society Annex.

Twelve figures sat around a hexagonal table, deep beneath London.

Old bloodlines. Quiet wealth.

Not evil.

Just afraid.

Davros had fed them certainty, and they had built a world that could not fail—because it could no longer change.

⸻

And into their sanctum walked a girl.

Anna.

Alone.

No Doctor.

No Ava.

No Cal.

Just Anna.

And the memory of what could have been.

⸻

“You remember me,” she said.

They didn’t reply.

But one nodded.

Slowly.

Anna reached into her coat.

Pulled out the broken sliver of crystal—the last fragment of her alternate self.

She placed it on the table.

“This is what you helped build.”

“I was part of it.”

“I believed Davros.”

“I told children how to forget.”

She looked up.

“But I’m choosing again.”

And time cracked.

⸻

A mirror flared into life.

Not glass.

A shimmer in the air.

From it stepped Anna.

But older.

Sharper.

Wearing a grey coat with brass piping.

Her eyes glowed.

And her smile was wrong.

“Hello, Me,” she said.

“Ready to become whole again?”

⸻

Back on the surface.

The Doctor saw the sky fracture.

A single line of light carved through the clouds, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“The loop’s activating,” he said. “He’s forcing timeline consolidation.”

Cal swore. “What does that mean?”

“It means everything that ever happened—or could have—will collapse into one timeline.”

“The Davros timeline.”

⸻

He turned to Ava.

“We have minutes.”

“Find the engine.”

“Smash the loop.”

“And bring her back.”

Chapter Eighteen: Fracturepoint

⸻

Underground. The Citadel Mirror.

Anna stared at herself.

Older.

Sharper.

The future she might have been.

The one who stayed with Davros.

Wore his philosophies like armour.

Spoke in rhythm. Thought in equations.

The girl called herself Ananke.

She smiled without warmth.

“You’ve seen the shape of history. You know this world brings peace.”

“No war. No screams. Just stillness.”

“You don’t need to fight me.”

Anna took a step forward.

Her voice was soft, but steady.

“I don’t need to fight you.”

“I need to forgive you.”

⸻

Ananke faltered.

Just for a moment.

“What?”

Anna raised the crystal fragment—the sliver of memory from Berlin.

From the tower. From the fire.

“I’m not here to erase you.”

“You’re still me.”

“But we’re choosing something else now.”

She placed the crystal on the floor.

It pulsed.

Warmth. Laughter. Resistance.

Memoryfire.

⸻

Ananke tried to speak.

But the words cracked.

She fell to her knees.

And vanished.

⸻

TARDIS. Engine Room.

The Doctor burst through the vault door, sonic blazing.

The Paradox Loop stood before him.

A spinning gyroscope of timelines.

Every possible version of Earth spiraling inward.

Each had Davros.

Different names. Different guises.

Same fate.

He ran to the core.

And paused.

One last failsafe.

A seat.

Waiting.

If no one sat in the loop’s center—

—it would auto-complete.

And overwrite all time.

⸻

Whitehall.

Ava and Cal had fought their way through three temporal guard drones.

Now, bleeding and breathless, they reached the anchor node.

Ava ripped the panel open.

“One overload pulse’ll break the relay.”

“But it’ll fry every interface for ten blocks.”

Cal grinned. “You always say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She primed the pulse.

⸻

Back in the engine.

The Doctor placed his hand on the seat.

Time screamed.

If he took the paradox into himself—
If he carried the loop—

It could collapse without triggering.

But he would be erased from all but one version of time.

The last version.

No more multiversal presence.

No more “everywhere at once.”

Just one timeline.

Just one Doctor.

He smiled.

“Then let’s make it a good one.”

He sat.

And closed his eyes.

⸻

The Pulse Triggered.

The loop flared.

The anchors broke.

And Anna, in the Citadel, felt the decision land.

She fell to her knees—

—but this time, she stood back up.

Whole.

Singular.

Herself.

⸻

The World Shifted.

Not back.

Not forward.

Just… realigned.

London breathed again.

1939 returned.

History unshattered.

The war would come.

The horrors would remain.

But they would be chosen against.

Not erased.

⸻

TARDIS. Moments Later.

The Doctor opened his eyes.

Still breathing.

Still here.

Ava ran in.

“You’re okay?”

He nodded slowly.

“Yes. But something’s changed.”

“I’m fixed now.”

“One version. One life.”

He looked around.

“No more being everywhere at once.”

“Guess I’ll have to make this timeline count.”

⸻

Anna appeared in the doorway.

She looked tired.

But strong.

Cal stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ve got work to do,” she said.

“So let’s go do it.”

Chapter Nineteen: The Room That Shouldn’t Be

⸻

TARDIS. Drifting above Earth. Present Day.

The ship was quieter now.

The central column no longer pulsed with the urgency of paradox or war. Instead, it thrummed softly—like breath.

The Doctor stood at the console, both hands resting flat. He wore his age with an odd stillness. Not weariness, exactly—but something settled.

He was one version now. Singular. Whole. No longer the sum of fragments or timelines—just a man, 45 in appearance, brown-eyed, with light brown hair starting to grey and a beard dusted with white at the chin.

⸻

Cal sat on the staircase leading up to the observation deck, repairing his coat with a needle and black thread.

“Still haven’t slept,” he muttered.

“You say that like it’s unusual,” Ava replied, stepping out of the corridor with two mugs of tea.

“Not for me. But for the TARDIS? It’s… like she’s holding her breath.”

The Doctor didn’t respond.

Not directly.

Instead, he turned to Anna.

She’d been sitting beside the console’s dimensional display, legs curled under her, drawing constellations in the condensation of a coffee cup.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She paused.

“Lighter. But not empty.”

“Like I’m still me. Just… me without the echo.”

He smiled.

“That’s all any of us ever get.”

⸻

Later, in the halls.

Anna wandered, fingers brushing along the coral-textured walls. The TARDIS was infinite, but it also… responded. It was no mere machine.

She felt its comfort. Its curiosity.

And its concern.

That’s when she noticed the door.

Unmarked.

Old.

Brass fittings dulled by time.
A circular window fogged from the inside.

She looked around.

No one nearby.

She opened it.

⸻

Inside, the room was dimly lit.

A table.

Four chairs.

On the table: a chessboard mid-game. A child’s sketchpad. A photograph of Berlin that wasn’t—the tower still stood.

And a coat.

Her coat.

The one she’d worn as Ananke.

She stepped back. Breath catching.

This room shouldn’t exist.

But it did.

Because the TARDIS remembered.

Because she remembered.

⸻

A soft hand rested on her shoulder.

It was Ava.

She’d followed quietly.

“It’s not a trap,” Ava said.

“It’s a scar.”

Anna nodded slowly.

“I don’t want to forget.”

“But I don’t want to become her either.”

“Then don’t,” Ava whispered. “We’ll remember her for you. So you can be something else.”

They stood in silence.

And behind them, the door closed gently.

⸻

In the console room.

A new alert blinked. A soft, silver glyph.

The Doctor frowned.

He hadn’t seen that symbol in a very long time.

A transmission.

Encrypted.

Layered in a language older than Gallifrey.

It read only one word:

“Return.”

Chapter Twenty: Return Signal

⸻

TARDIS. En route. Coordinates locked.

The signal pulsed in silence.

No sound. Just presence. Like gravity with intention.

The Doctor hadn’t explained the destination. He hadn’t needed to.

They all felt it.

Even the TARDIS itself had shifted—hallways a little dimmer, the engine quieter. Something solemn threaded through her song.

⸻

In the observatory, Cal sat with Ava.

“Would you go back?” he asked.

“To Earth?”

“To before all this. If you could.”

Ava thought. Not long.

“No.”

“Not even to fix something?”

She turned.

“If I fixed what went wrong, I’d lose what I became.”

Cal nodded.

But didn’t smile.

“I lost someone, back before Berlin.”

“Not to war. Just… time.”

“Sometimes I think I keep moving so I don’t have to stop and remember her.”

Ava gently took his hand.

“Then maybe keep moving. But don’t forget to tell someone who she was.”

⸻

Anna sat at the console.

The Doctor stood beside her.

Not speaking.

Just listening.

She broke the silence first.

“Is it really where I think it is?”

He nodded.

“Beyond the Rim. Behind the stormwalls. Gallifrey… before Gallifrey.”

She blinked.

“How?”

“That signal was part of the Looms,” he said quietly.

“The original Looms. Before the Founders turned them into breeding factories.”

He looked away.

“There’s something calling from the beginning.”

“Something older than Time Lords.”

“And they remember me.”

⸻

Anna nodded.

“Will it be dangerous?”

The Doctor smiled.

But it was a tired smile.

“Absolutely.”

“But no more dangerous than you were last week.”

She giggled.

Then sobered.

“I’m ready.”

He nodded.

“You always were.”

⸻

Final Descent.

The TARDIS pierced the veil of time.

A place beyond calendars and stars.

The coordinates etched themselves on the walls like scars:

Zero Point. The Loom Womb.

As the doors opened, golden light spilled in—thick as honey. The air shimmered with possibilities not yet chosen.

No war waited here.

No enemy.

Just memory.

And origin.

⸻

The Doctor stood in the doorway, coat unmoving despite the rushing winds of creation.

Ava and Cal at his side.

Anna between them.

The family fate had welded together.

“So,” Cal muttered, “we going in?”

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder.

Brown eyes glinting.

“We’re not just going in.”

“We’re going home.”