Author's Note: Hello, everyone! How have we been? This is the last chapter! Did you all enjoy the series?
Being the last chapter, I simply must thank each and every one of you who read, enjoyed, voted, commented or mailed me during the course of the series. It was fantastic to get such a positive response from you all, and I might not have finished the story without such kind readers. Thanks, folks!
Two people in particular deserve special mention: My editor, and the love of my life, my dearest Isabel, who would take me to task over any grammatical errors, plot holes or Doctor Who continuity errors that showed up with ruthless efficiency. Also in need of high praise is the insanely talented Allyourbase, a writer that I can't recommend forcefully enough to you folks. It's been a real pleasure getting to know this fellow over the course of the series, and without his input it would probably only be half the series it is.
Anyway, enough pontificating. One more thing, before I go; there will be more to come. I ain't done with Sander, Mara or Amy just yet. In the coming weeks, I shall be posting a pair of epilogue chapters, one devoted to Amy, Rory and the Doctor, and the other to Sander and Mara. But those are just to round out the story and lay the groundwork for the REAL thing; sequel series, folks. Entitled Doctor Who: Panic Moon, it'll have all the old characters returning, plus a few newbies to keep things interesting. I hope you'll all follow over to this new thing, because I'm rather enamored with it myself. Oh, and finally; special kudos to anyone who recognizes the Doctor Who reference in the Panic Moon subtitle. If you do get it, comment about it, maybe? That'd be cool.
Enjoy!
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She stood by the door, staring at the polished, sterile metal. She didn't want to open it, but it wasn't like she could just stand out here forever.
The intercom system droned endlessly in the background, updating the staff on the day to day goings on of the Sierra station. After a while, one tended to tune it out automatically; being informed was all well and good, but the status of the freight corridors wasn't entirely relevant to the medical personnel, now was it?
She shook her head. That had wasted a few seconds, but she was a doctor. She had a job to do, even if her patient was a little creepy.
He had come in with a truly insane level of damage; she was surprised that he had survived at all, let alone making it all the way here without help. The guy had some willpower, to be sure, but the way he'd stared out at her on the operating table, his one functional eye devoid of emotion... She'd never been more relieved to see anesthesia working.
The Sierra Complex tried to keep these transitional periods as brief as possible, but there was only so much the doctors here could do; especially when the patient was... well, shattered. It would have taken time to grow cloned implants, but this fool had demanded mechanical implants, ostensibly to get back on his feet faster. Even so, it had practically come to blows explaining to him that engineering the hardware and software would take time anyway.
Any man who is prepared to enter into a physical confrontation with extreme blood loss and a missing hand, leg and eye clearly had nothing else to lose...
She sighed and keyed the door open. As usual, he was sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the floor with his laptop console open and his free hand tapping away. He looked up as she entered the room, only momentarily, and she clucked her tongue; he was meant to be wearing his eye bandages until the replacement was ready. He never did, though; he just kept his ruined eye closed while the other flipped from incredibly depressed to intensely angry, seemingly from moment to moment. His eye flicked back to the glowing screen in front of him, his hand resumed his typing.
Her resolve lapsed for a moment and she stared; usually people had other things on their mind when facing such dramatic surgery, but this person had buried himself in whatever work he was doing from the moment he had woken up. Add to that, nobody seemed to know who he was, even though he was receiving the best possible care they could give him; priority level zero. It was like the administrator was purposely hiding the mystery man's identity, though she couldn't fathom why. He seemed somehow familiar, but...
He didn't even stop typing as she busied herself with checking his vitals, blood pressure and the like. His wounds were fairly minor, aside from the fact that his bones seemed to have been liquefied from within. Cases like this come around so rarely that there wasn't a standard procedure for them; his flesh, skin, veins and nerves had all been cut away from the ruined bones and preserved in cold storage, awaiting the robotic framework that would support them. But aside from all that, he had been stabilized several days ago; he was just awaiting the manufacturing personnel.
Safe in the knowledge that her patient wasn't about to die, she chanced a peek at his screen, just to see what it was that had absorbed this wreck of a man so completely, to the point where he no longer ate or slept without being forced to. A series of archival files from some ancient government agency- Torchwood or something- that she didn't recognize flitted across his screen, filled with a series of images of disparate men. Many of them had ridiculous hair, but there wasn't anything particularly compelling about them... Besides, he was scrolling through the text too fast for her to read. She could barely believe that he himself could read it.
His expression grew hollow, then dark, then fiery almost to the point of apoplexy. He stopped typing, the screen freezing on an image of a man in a black leather jacket. His free hand gripped the side of his wheelchair, so hard the metal began to squeak. His breath began to growl in his throat.
She had seen him like this once before, and there was no talking to him in this state, even if she was inclined to talk to him as it were. Something in those files just... Set him off, occasionally. Like flipping a switch from immeasurable grief to infinite, terrible wrath. He-
... He had begun muttering something under his breath, seemingly no longer aware of her presence. She leaned in a little closer to hear it; just one word, repeated over and over, faster and faster. Until the air completely left his lungs and he was repeating it on sheer willpower with a choking, near-silent voice. His good eye welled with angry tears, seeming to shift to reflect some obsidian well of black, infinite hatred. She took a step back.
Just one word: Doctor.
'Are you okay?' She ventured uneasily. He couldn't possibly be talking to her, could he? 'Do you need anything?'
He didn't move, didn't so much as acknowledge her presence. His hand had wrenched a deep dent in the side of the chair. Inexorably, his left eye opened, the empty socket providing a ghastly counterpoint to the terrifying fury burning like a sun in his right eye. She was having a hard time deciding which eye was the worst view.
With a rattling, terrifying scream that filled the room like a physical impact, he threw the laptop across the room, slamming it against the wall hard enough to shatter it utterly. He breathed hard, each breath coming out as a deep growl that spoke of the wrath of a violent god. That spoke of fire.
He spoke then, in the barely restrained voice of a true berserker, '
I'll kill him!'
He roared from the very depths of his soul.
Quickly, quietly, she slipped out of the room, her hands shaking as she supported herself against the wall. Holy hell...
The question was no longer "who was he?" The question was now "what had happened to him?"
Actually, the question was now "how fast can I transfer him to another doctor?"
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Mara laughed as she pulled away from Sander's kiss. He followed her, senses enflamed and desperate to remain in physical contact with her after Amy's extended teasing. He was still aching, and one foot tapped incessantly on the cool metal floor.
'Uh-uh, Hackett,' Mara said, slightly unsteadily. She was ashamed to admit it, but she had come reasonably close to a swoon when he kissed her. 'I gave you a choice. I need you to answer, out loud, if you please. You can either fuck Amy, or... eh heh, please
me
some other way. Choose.'
