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They’d been walking for hours, but the city was no closer.
Yaz’s legs ached and her arms burned. Even the muscles of her abdomen were sore, exhausted from holding her torso steady in the shifting sands of Kairos. In the distance, she could see the city rising from the dunes. But it was hazy with dust and distance; it might as well have been a mirage. For all Yaz knew, maybe it was a mirage.
When she glanced back to check their progress, she saw nothing. She thought she might see a trickle of dark smoke from the crash site, but the sky was blank white. The outline of the small escape pod had been long since swallowed by the rolling dunes. Even their footprints vanished almost as soon as they were made; the stiff breeze swept a steady trickle of sand across the dunescape, filling any divots, neatly erasing any trace of their passing within minutes.
The Doctor, to Yaz’s irritation, seemed unbothered. She’d put up her hood to shade her face, but that was her only concession to the heat and the scorching sun. She moved like an automaton: slow and steady on the uphill; faster on the downhill, body tilted back for balance. Yaz had never hated the Doctor, but she came close there and then: scalp itching, lungs burning, arms wrapped uselessly around herself, stumbling forwards forwards forwards in the Doctor’s footprints as the wind and the sand steadily worked them clean.
She took another breath of scratchy desert air. Too deep – too much sand in her lungs. She broke down coughing, doubled-over, hands pressed to her chest.
“Yaz? Yaz!”
She glanced up to see that the Doctor, who had ranged a few meters ahead, had doubled back to check on her. She waved a hand vaguely as she worked up enough moisture in her mouth to speak.
“Fine,” she rasped. “I’m-” cough “-fine.”
The Doctor hovered over her but, when Yaz glanced up, she wasn’t looking at Yaz. Her gaze was fixed on the horizon.
“Good,” she said, distracted. “Cos we’ve got more walkin’ to do. That city’s still miles off.” As though Yaz didn’t really, really know that.
“Right,” Yaz muttered through clenched teeth. She straightened, breathing slowly to avoid another coughing fit. It was a struggle; the fine particulate matter of Kairos seemed to have pasted itself to every craggy millimeter of her throat and lungs. “Just keep walkin’, then?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Sometimes all you can do is go forwards.”
“We’re not even going in a straight line!” Yaz returned, frustrated. Every time they stumbled down into a valley between the dunes, the city winked out of view and they had to fumble, compass-less, until, minutes or hours later, they climbed another rise. Inevitably, they’d find that the city had edged sideways. Once, memorably, it had gotten almost entirely behind them. Somehow, in the sand, even circles felt like straight lines.
The Doctor shrugged, a casual, wavelike rise-and-fall of her shoulders. Her coat shifted with the movement. “Got a better idea?”
Obviously, Yaz didn’t. But the Doctor’s casual calm irked her nonetheless. She just shrugged and, when the Doctor turned to face front again, she tucked her arms around herself, like she could shut out the heat and the wind and the Doctor’s chilly indifference.
Once again, she focused on putting foot in front of foot in front of foot. It was hard, in the sand; it sucked her down and pulled her off balance. It forced her to use muscles she didn’t know she had just to stay upright. The gravity of Kairos was just a little lower than Earth – which, for the most part, was helpful. Yaz didn’t think she’d have been able to keep going if her own body weight hadn’t been just that bit lighter. But it also meant that the sand was lighter, and every little movement kicked up swirling eddies of it.
Technically, this whole thing was the Doctor’s fault. They’d been enjoying a space cruise – cocktails, swimming pools, utterly gorgeous close-up views of nebulas and collapsing stars – when the Doctor had sighted trouble. One thing led to another, and, quite suddenly, Yaz had found herself in an escape pod crashing down the nearest gravity well.
Graham and Ryan were still up there, somewhere. But the sonic had been lost out the airlock and even the Doctor’s voluminous pockets didn’t contain a mobile, apparently, so they were stuck trekking towards the closest sign of civilization: the distant city. It loomed large on the horizon and, early on, Yaz had allowed herself to hope that the walk wouldn’t be so long. But looks were deceiving, and the horizon had proven to be much farther away than she’d hoped.
And… days on this planet were long, the Doctor had said. They might walk on forever in this heat, foot in front of foot in front of-
Yaz devolved again into a fit of coughing.
The Doctor turned. “Alright, Yaz?”
The line of her spine was infuriatingly straight and Yaz wanted to tell her so. But all that came out was a hacking cough.
The Doctor darted back towards her, listing alarmingly on the downslope. “Yaz!”
Yaz tried to wave her off again. “’m fine,” she muttered. She cleared her throat. It didn’t help; the scratchiness seemed to be permanent.
The Doctor peered at her, bending closer. “You don’t sound fine,” she responded. The frank concern in her voice warmed Yaz, enough that she could push down her mounting discomfort to summon a small smile.
“Just the sand,” she said, straightening. The Doctor pulled back a little, giving her space.
“The sand.” The Doctor glanced around, then gave a rueful smile. “Love a beach day, me, but there’s a limit to everything…”
Yaz managed a small snort at that.
The Doctor put her fists on hips and tilted her head up the dune. The pale sun reflected the sand; if you squinted just right, the pale sand and pale sky seemed to fade into a single, bleached-white backdrop.
“Let’s just get to the top of the next hill,” the Doctor coaxed. “Then we’ll have a rest.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “But it helps to think of it like that, hm? One hill at a time.”
Yaz wasn’t sure that was true. For hours now it had been one hill after another. Step by sandy step; breath by gritty breath. But there was nothing else for it, so, after a brief respite, they started on again. Yaz set her teeth and girded her metaphorical loins and followed. Step after step after step after-
“What’s that?”
Midstep, the Doctor paused; Yaz almost pitched right into her. She saved herself just in time, sliding sideways, and scrambled the last inches to the top of the dune to see-
“A ship!”
The Doctor grinned.
Yaz could have cried at the scene before them. The ship was a rusted, hulking wreck, spread out over the floor of the valley. But it cast a long, cool shadow on the glittering sand. There, finally, was shade. If they were incredibly, insanely lucky, there might even be water.
Carefully, Yaz banked the rising hope in her chest.
“What’s a spaceship doin’ down there?” she asked. Months in the Doctor’s company had left her with a healthy respect for potentially suspicious objects.
“Same thing our escape pod is doin’ a few kilometers back,” the Doctor suggested, wry.
“Crashed?” Yaz studied the ship. Even from this height it looked old – dented and blasted shiny by the sand. But there was nothing obvious to indicate a crash; at least, not from this distance: no gaping holes or burned fuselage or scattered debris.
“Looks like it,” the Doctor said, hands on hips. She squinted from under her hood and, not for the first time, Yaz wondered what the Doctor could see that she couldn’t.
For lack of any better ideas, they headed towards the wreck, feet slipping in the slick sand. Near the bottom Yaz lost her footing altogether and went tumbling; she rolled several meters before she caught herself, fingers dragging uselessly at loose handfuls of sand.
The Doctor skidded after her. The wind tugged her hood off her hair as she moved.
“Alright Yaz?” she asked, a little breathless. She extended a hand down and Yaz took it, scowling. She was tired and hot and thirsty and sand had got everywhere…
But the Doctor’s palm was cool against Yaz’s. And the sight of her – mouth quirked in laughter, shirts askew, hood and hair blown back – lightened Yaz’s mood a little. Enough that she smiled and even kind of meant it when she said:
“Just in a rush to explore the mystery ship, I guess.”
The Doctor lit up at that. Yaz could see the exhaustion at the corners of her mouth and eyes – those hair-thin lines that appeared when she was under strain. But the smile was real, and so was the enthusiasm that roughened her voice when she said:
“Race you?”
It was a joke and Yaz knew it – the Doctor was having far less trouble in the sand than was Yaz, but it was still hard on her. Still, she knew an olive branch when she saw one, so she grinned and took off. For a moment it was glorious: sun and sand and the Doctor, arms pinwheeling beside her. When they passed into the shade it was like stepping into an air-conditioned room. The change was drastic and immediate – immediately, Yaz felt her overheated skin calm.
Close up, the metal shell of the ship gave off a wall of cool air. Now, Yaz could see damage she hadn’t noticed from a distance: it was scratched and dented all over. All exposed surfaces had been long-since scoured clean by the sand and wind, but rust bloomed in every crevice. There was, it turned out, a vast hole on the underside. The hull around it was a mess of crinkled metal, like it had been peeled back by the force of the ship’s collision with the surface. The gap edged just high enough up the side for Yaz to peek in, if she tilted sideways. Looking close, she could make out the sooty etching of burn marks around it. Whatever had happened here, it wasn’t pleasant.
Still, there was nothing obviously dangerous. It was just a shell, wrecked years ago by the look of things. So Yaz followed the Doctor inside.
The doors were stuck shut, and no amount of shoving would budge them. In the end, they had to crawl in through the hole in the hull. Once inside, it was even cooler, for which Yaz was profoundly grateful. The ship’s hull blocked the wind and sun and, for the first time in hours, she could breathe air that wasn’t saturated with grit. It had a remarkable effect on her mood. She glanced around, curiosity surfacing.
They’d emerged into some kind of engine room. It was dim, lit only by reflected sunlight from outside, and thick with cables, gears, metal shards of machinery. Though the ship’s hull blocked the wind, the sand had still made its way in. It had settled in drifts and piles all over the room. The equipment was coated in it, like sparkling dust.
“Oh, what’s this? Big, complicated machine?” The Doctor immediately grabbed hold of a tangle of wires. They came apart in her hand, scattering glinting fragments over the floor. Not in the least dissuaded, she dropped the remaining wires and reached for a lever. “Big, complicated machines have got me written all over them. Well, not actually. But give me time and a – oh!”
Yaz, who had leaned her head and shoulders out the nearest doorway to survey the hall, pulled herself back in. The Doctor had grabbed the lever in her typical overenthusiastic fashion. It must have pulled more easily than she’d expected, because she’d landed flat on her backside. Sandy dust rose up in tiny tornadoes around her.
Unbothered, the Doctor placed her palms on the floor and pushed herself up. “Can you flip the coaxial relays for me?” she asked, dusting off her coat.
“The… what?”
“Relays!” She was already occupied again, running her hands over a dusty pile of gears. “They’ll be red, or blue, or-”
Yaz pressed her lips together. “I don’t know what that is.”
“The – the relays.” The Doctor made a sharp gesture. “Come on Yaz, it’s not rocket science!”
Yaz leveled a look at her.
“Okay,” the Doctor admitted after a moment. “Okay, so it is rocket science. But who was it who managed to restart the phasing engines on that intergalactic freighter last week…?"
“… you?”
“Yes but you helped!” The Doctor beamed. She raised one hand to wipe the dust off her forehead. She must have put it in something, already, because it left a dark trail of grime behind.
Faced with the Doctor’s enthusiasm, Yaz couldn’t quite hold onto her irritation. She blew out a breath and grinned back.
The Doctor’s shoulders loosened. “If we can get the right circuits working,” she said, peering down into the dusty mechanics, “I can send a signal to Graham and Ryan. Get them to send a rescue, maybe.” She glanced up. “Anything’s safer than wanderin’ around out there.”
Yaz couldn’t really argue with that. The coolness was helping, and the lack of wind, but her throat was still scratchy with sand and her tongue swollen with thirst.
“I guess it’s too much to hope that the radio would still have power?” she asked. Her voice was raspy. Discreetly, she cleared her throat.
The Doctor ducked her head back into the machinery. “Ship’s been abandoned for – oh, years. Crashed a couple decades ago, give or take.”
“Really?” Yaz glanced around. “How’d’you know that?”
“Oh…” the Doctor gave a vague shrug, hands already in the wiring again. “With uptakes like these? And besides, gravity-pulse drivers were already retro, like, fifty years ago...”
Yaz rolled her eyes, but fondly. “I’m gonna have a look around, yeah?”
The Doctor waved her off, eyes fixed on a bundle of multicolored wires she’d yanked out of the system. A few loose gears had come out with them and one rolled a few inches before collapsing in the dust. “See if you can find a communications hub,” she called after Yaz.
Yaz waved back at her. But the spark of adventure had kindled: Yaz wanted to see the ship.
She passed though a corridor, sticking her head into a couple of rooms along the way. They were each in a similar state of disrepair. Any organics had mostly crumbled away, and she couldn’t really tell what any of the spaces had been used for. In one, she found the cracked remains of something that looked like plastic bowls, and was briefly heartened by the prospect of water reserves. But a cursory examination of the space turned up nothing. Either she couldn’t find the dispenser, or any liquids had dried up years ago.
Or, she reminded herself, maybe they didn’t need water. There was no way of knowing who or what had built this ship.
She pushed forwards, through a couple more rooms, until she hit something that looked like a control room. To her relief, it had recognizable computer monitors in the walls, as well as obvious buttons and keyboards. The TARDIS, lost somewhere in space, must be translating for her still, because the lettering on the systems appeared in good old Roman characters.
Quickly, Yaz located what she was pretty sure was the ship’s coms system, but immediately ran into a second problem: nothing was functioning. There was not a flicker of life from the lights or screens. The buttons, when she slapped them experimentally, did nothing. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise but it just underscored how stuck they were. Yaz’s anxiety reared back up, full-throated. Frustrated, she leveled a champion kick at the console wall.
“Ow!” she hissed, grabbing for her foot and feeling like an idiot.
“It doesn’t work like that, love.”
Yaz whirled. Behind her was… a woman? Yaz blinked to clear the sand from her eyes.
“Technically,” the woman went on, serene, “the Skora don’t even have feet. But you-” she aimed a disapproving look towards the ceiling “-couldn’t possibly be expected to know that.”
“The…”
“Skora, dear. Divergent nulpedal species. No legs, but five arms. And a fascinating number of nostrils.”
Yaz stared. She’d seen a lot of weird things with the Doctor, but this woman was utterly bizarre: wide purple skirts, neat pointed boots, dark hair pinned up. She was leaned up against the far wall, head tilted back against a viewscreen. Hands tucked primly behind her back; gaze fixed on the ceiling. She wrinkled her own nose, delicately, on the word nostrils.
“Who…” Yaz began, then changed her mind. “How…”
“Oh,” the woman pulled one hand out from behind her back long enough to give a dismissive wave. “Just go get him, would you?”
“… get who?”
“Yes, him.”
“Sorry… but what are you talking about?”
The woman sighed and, finally, dropped her gaze to Yaz’s face, executing a perfectly irritable eye-roll on the way. “You are testing what I assure you is my exceedingly minimal patience.”
Okay. Now Yaz was annoyed. She crossed her arms over her chest, planted her feet and raised her chin. “Who are you?” She pressed. Because the woman didn’t look like an alien, and she certainly didn’t look like a space traveler. In point of fact, she looked rather like a Victorian schoolteacher.
As if to punctuate this thought, the woman produced a parasol from behind her back. She placed it, point down, in front of her. Holding the handle in a prim, two-handed grip, she tilted her torso forwards, releasing another long, exasperated sigh.
Yaz started to wonder if she was having a hallucination.
“The Doctor,” she drawled, a trace of Scottish accent slipping through, “is around here somewhere. I can smell him.”
Yaz stared, mind racing. Sure, okay, weird Victorian women were probably always looking for the Doctor in alien spaceships…
In the end, she was saved from having to fetch the Doctor – sorry, but there’s a lady in the wrecked spaceship lookin’ for you, she’s got an umbrella… Yaz could imagine how that conversation would go – by the Doctor herself appearing around the doorway.
“Yaz!” She called, a hint of impatience in her voice. She had her eyes fixed on her hands, which were full of coloured wires. Her fingers were busy twisting them together. “Did you find the coms systems?”
“Not exactly,” Yaz hedged.
The Doctor glanced up-
-and froze. Midstep, mouth comically open. Her collection of wires tumbled from her fingers. They raised little funnels of sand where they hit the floor.
“I…” her mouth worked uselessly for a moment. “…you…”
“Oh, marvelous. You’re articulate, this time ‘round.” The woman in purple dropped her head back against the viewscreen with an audible crack.
The Doctor’s face morphed from shock to fury faster than Yaz could follow.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she snapped. Her shoulders hunched forwards. She tucked her coat back and slid her hands into her pockets. “Did you do this?” She yanked her hands immediately back out of her pockets to gesture at the shipwreck around them. “Stall the engines?” She asked snidely. “Murder the navigators?”
“So suspicious.” The woman in purple took a few, mincing steps off the wall. Her parasol swung from one hand.
The Doctor stood her ground. “You’ve earned a little suspicion, I think.”
“Sorry-” Yaz cut in. “Sorry but. Who is she?”
The Doctor and the woman in purple both looked her way. Surreptitiously, Yaz straightened her shoulders under their gazes.
“You can call me Missy,” the woman said with a gracious smile. She gave a little curtsy, pulling her skirt out with one hand and dipping gracefully.
The Doctor gave an inelegant snort. “Won’t you give that up?” she muttered.
“Give up my name?” Missy asked, tilting her head. “Why, Doctor…”
“Oh shut up.” The Doctor paced away a few steps. Yaz watched, nervous. The Doctor hadn’t even bothered to rescue her wiring from the floor. Her footsteps raised fine clouds of sand and dust, dirtying her work.
After a long, uncomfortable silence, Yaz voiced the obvious question. “Er. What are you, uh. Doing here?” A wrecked spaceship in the middle of the desert was a weird place to find anyone, nevermind someone dressed like Missy.
Missy shrugged. “Can’t a girl take a day trip to a nice desert wasteland?” she asked sweetly. A stray ringlet of dark hair fell across her cheek as she tilted her head.
“You always have a reason,” the Doctor responded, frank irritation in her voice.
“Alright,” she held her palms up. The parasol dangled from one. “You got me. Desert’s a bit rubbish actually. I’ve got notes.”
“Should’ve crashed somewhere nicer, then,” the Doctor snapped. She was flushed with heat; two minutes of conversation had managed to redden her more than the hours in the sun.
Again, Missy shrugged. A casual, exaggerated movement, like a cat stretching. “Heat of the moment. You say one wrong thing and they’re trying to toss you out the airlock… A girl just can’t catch a break these days.” She considered the Doctor, eyes scanning from her heavy-heeled boots to her yellow braces to her sweaty blonde hair. “But I suppose you know how it is.”
“Sure.” There was a nasty twist in the Doctor’s voice that Yaz had never heard before. But when she glanced aside, the Doctor’s face was blank; neutral. Hands in pockets, coat tucked back, head tilted casually. “And where are your metal friends today?”
“Ah.” Missy wrapped her fingers delicately around her parasol. “Now I wasn’t going to bring that up.”
Yaz shifted, uneasy despite herself. Missy hadn’t said anything threatening, really, but she made Yaz nervous. It was instinct; beyond articulation or explanation. All she knew was the itch at the back of her head telling her to get down, get out, now.
Nervously, she pushed it down. “Look-” Missy and the Doctor swiveled to look at her, the motion eerily identical. “We’re all stuck here, right? Maybe we can work together…”
“That’s right! Us girls” Missy’s voice slid Scottish again “have got to stick together.”
The Doctor rolled her eyes.
Yaz hesitated, glancing between them. Since the Doctor didn’t seem inclined to give a rousing speech on teamwork, Yaz figured it was up to her.
“You said you know who this ship belonged to, right?” she asked Missy. “Do you think you can help us get it working?”
“Why would I want to do that?” Missy grabbed her parasol in both hands, turning it parallel to the ground. A rain of sandy dust sprinkled from its folds.
Yaz made the obvious play. “Well, for starters, you’re as stuck as we are.”
“You know what they say about making assumptions.”
“Just – leave it, Yaz.” The Doctor half-turned towards the door. But Yaz wasn’t giving up so easily.
“If we can get the coms system working-”
“Yaz.” The Doctor’s tone was sharp, but Yaz ignored it.
“-we have these friends, they’re-”
“Yaz!”
Yaz glanced back at the Doctor, confused and a little irritated. “She could help," she said, trying not to frown. “We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?”
“I wouldn’t quite say that.” Missy gave a put-upon sort of sigh. Then she leveled her parasol at Yaz and shot her.
Out the corner, of her eye, Yaz was aware of the Doctor bursting into motion. The laser bolt whined by Yaz’s ear. It struck the wall with a tinny thwap just as Yaz, carried by the full weight of the Doctor, hit the wall beside it.
For a moment Yaz was frozen; stunned. She’d gotten a hand up just in time, saving her nose from a bloody crack, but her wrist was already throbbing from the force of the combined weight of her and the Doctor.
Behind them, Missy devolved into laughter.
Slowly, the Doctor peeled herself away from Yaz. Yaz glanced back too. Missy was doubled-over, one arm around her middle. She pointed ineffectually with her parasol, and Yaz flinched.
“Your face!” Missy gasped out between heaves of laughter. “You-”
“Very funny,” the Doctor muttered.
Yaz glanced cautiously around. There was a scorch mark on the wall, right by where she’d been standing. She touched two fingers to it. It was cold. No soot came off on her hand.
“But… ” Yaz stared at her hand. “I don’t…”
But the Doctor wasn’t listening. She was watching Missy.
Missy stepped right up to the Doctor, toes inches from the Doctor’s heavy boots. The Doctor was a little taller, just. Her blonde hair, dull with sand; her coat, damp with sweat. Cheeks red with heat and sunburn. At first glance, Missy was perfect; not a button out of place. Her skin pale and unburned. But now, Yaz noticed what she hadn’t at first: Missy’s skirts were smudged and ripped in places; her hair pulling out of its pins. Her prim, shiny black heels were streaked with red sand.
The Doctor reached out, palm out, fingers spread. Missy stood completely, perfectly still as the Doctor’s hand passed right through her chest.
“I should’ve felt it,” the Doctor murmured. “Straightaway, I should’ve…”
“You’re slipping,” Missy retorted. But she tilted her head as she said it; coy.
Yaz stared at them, shocked and fascinated, trying to understand. Her wrist throbbed from the impact against the wall. She slid her hand into her back pocket and tried to ignore it.
“How is that possible?” Yaz asked, voice low with the weight of confusion.
“She’s not here,” the Doctor explained. “Not really.”
“Am too!” Missy retorted, an irritable Scottish burr in her voice.
The Doctor almost smiled. “Alright,” she agreed. “She is here. Or. She was. Maybe… thirty, thirty-five years ago?”
“Thirty-seven.” Missy sniffed, primly, and settled herself back against the wall. Yaz half expected her to pass through it like a ghost. But she seemed solid. She neatened her skirts with one hand.
“Thirty-seven years ago,” the Doctor echoed. “The day of the wreck.”
Yaz tried to wrap her head around this.
The Doctor glanced at Missy. “This is a Delta-class trading vessel. Gravity-pulse drivers and, if I had to guess, a nuclear-warp engine core?”
Missy arched an eyebrow. The Doctor seemed to take that for an answer. She turned, pacing a few steps away, then back again, stirring up the sand at her feet. It floated oddly in Kairos’ light gravity.
“Meaning…?” Yaz prompted.
“Nuclear-warp engines,” the Doctor repeated. She turned to face Yaz, feet planted, hands up and fingers stretched wide. Eyes brightening with the enthusiasm of explanation. “When the ship crashed, see, it caused an explosion. Implosion.” She frowned, searching for the words. “Minor – relatively speaking – in the third dimension. But in the fourth…”
“The… fourth?”
“Time!” The Doctor grinned, bright as anything. “Keep up, Yaz!”
“Do keep up, Yaz,” echoed Missy from her corner.
The Doctor’s response was immediate. The enthusiasm blanked out of her face. She took a breath.
“Ignore her,” she muttered. “She isn’t here.”
“-but-”
The Doctor made a sharp, impatient gesture. “She was here. She’s not, now. It was the crash that did it. The damage to the nuclear-warp drive caused a tiny fracture in time. We’re seeing into the past. And she-” the Doctor hunched her shoulders a little more. Very deliberately, she did not look at Missy. “She’s seeing into the future.”
“Right. Okay.” Yaz stared at Missy. Her purple skirts looked entirely solid against the dull metal of the wall.
“The fracture opened a window” offered the Doctor. “But it’s unstable. And… temporary.”
“In other words,” Missy put in helpfully, “you won’t have to deal with me much longer.”
“Be thankful,” the Doctor muttered, turning away. Across the room, Missy’s face twisted for a split second before settling back into smooth amusement.
“So this…” Yaz crossed her arms across her chest. She was uncomfortably aware of the grit in her hair, in her mouth, in the creases of her knuckles. Her mouth was still so dry. “… this day, this conversation – it’s all already happened for her?”
“It is happening,” the Doctor corrected, “here and now. It’s just that now means something different, from her perspective.”
“And you may want to pay attention,” Missy said. She pushed off the wall and stepped forwards. From out the heavy folds of her skirts, she drew a small object.
The Doctor’s face paled. Yaz couldn’t tell why. The thing in Missy’s hand was flat and square-ish. It didn’t look like a weapon; it looked something like an old floppy disc.
“If I’m not mistaken…” Missy eyed them. “You’ve been walking awhile. Trying to make it to the Capital? I’m afraid it’s a long ways away.”
“Give that to me.”
“How?” Missy spun the disc in her long fingers. “We’re thirty-seven years out of synch, love.”
The Doctor huffed a bitter laugh, loud and surprisingly harsh in the silent wreck. “You planned this.” She whirled, coat flaring. “You knew this would happen. How long have you been waitin’ for me?”
“Oh, dear, no. I planned the crash. You are just a bonus.” She grinned; all teeth.
“What’s goin’ on?” Yaz asked, adrenaline spiking. “What is that?”
“This?” Missy spun the disc again. It teetered on the tips of her fingers. The Doctor drew a sharp breath. “Just the navigation disc.”
Yaz glanced at the Doctor for clarification. The Doctor’s eyes were fixed on Missy.
“The nav disc, yeah,” she managed, after a moment. “Identifies and translates coordinates. Basically, a map. A smart map. Tells you where you are, where you’re goin’…”
“… tells your friends where to find you …” Missy contemplated the disc.
Yaz’s brain was working overtime. After a long pause: “Can we contact Graham and Ryan without it?” she kept her voice low, but, across the room, a slow shark grin traced Missy’s face.
The Doctor glared at Missy a moment too long. Yaz’s heart sunk even before the Doctor spoke:
“No.” She pressed her lips together, like it was a concession even to admit what Missy obviously already knew. “No way to get the signal out without it.”
“Goes right in there, love.” Helpfully, Missy gestured to a slot in the console wall, right by Yaz’s head. Surprised, Yaz turned to look. There was clearly an opening for the disc, and right beside, it, that was probably an eject button…
“Don’t,” the Doctor warned, sharp.
Yaz paused, hand halfway to the button. “Why not?”
“Because it’s still happening.”
“But-”
“If you look now,” the Doctor hissed, “it sets the timeline.” Her eyes darted to the slot. It was impossible to tell if the nav disc was in there or not.
Like Schrodinger’s cat, Yaz thought. It took all her willpower to keep her hand from moving towards the console. If Missy had destroyed that disc, or taken it with her, that was it. They were dead. That city on the horizon – it was a pipe dream. It was too far; there was no way they could make it on foot.
But, as long as Yaz didn’t look, there was a chance.
Okay then.
She turned back. The Doctor and Missy faced one another from opposite sides of the room. The Doctor had her hands in pockets; Missy had the disc in one hand and her parasol in the other, tip resting against the floor. Even after Yaz had seen it in action, it was hard to think of the umbrella as a weapon.
“Where are you? I mean-”
“I know what you mean.” Missy paused. She spun the umbrella on its point. “You’re from my future. Shouldn’t you know?”
The Doctor shrugged. “More or less.” She watched Missy’s umbrella spin. “Less, I think.” Her voice dropped; Yaz couldn’t tell if she was talking to Missy, or to herself. “Less and less, each time we meet.”
Abruptly, Missy’s umbrella stopped spinning. She opened her mouth, but whatever she said was lost as, abruptly, she fizzed out of existence.
Before Yaz could draw breath to gasp, she was back. Suddenly solid and present; blinking in the dim light.
“Window’s closing,” murmured the Doctor.
Missy still had the nav disc in her hand. Yaz wondered what they could say to get her to leave it. The slot in the console wall burned at the back of her head; she itched to check it. Missy had done this thirty-seven years ago. All this was ancient history, but it sure didn’t feel that way.
“Almost out of time,” Missy murmured. “Almost rid of me. I’m sure you’re counting the seconds.”
“Counting the milliseconds,” the Doctor snapped.
Something sour tugged at the corner of Missy’s mouth. “It would almost be cruel of me to leave this,” she suggested, turning the disc in her fingers. “I know you like a challenge.”
“Oh,” the Doctor said. Her gaze was fixed on Missy’s hands, mesmerized by their movement. “I get enough of a challenge. Soon, now, I think.”
Missy glanced up at that. “Oh?”
The Doctor grinned, mirthless. “Spoilers.”
Missy balanced the disc in one hand. It teetered on her palm. Yaz had to stop herself from reaching for it.
“Out of synch,” Missy mused.
“Nothin’ new there.”
“Oh.” Missy tilted her head up. She was looking a little insubstantial around the edges, but her voice came through, clear as day: “You’re cross with me. Is this about your birthday present?”
“No.”
“Because it’s not my fault you’re ungrateful.” Missy gave the disc a little toss, catching it – barely – between thumb and forefinger. Yaz winced.
The Doctor pressed her lips together. “Just drop it,” she muttered. Then immediately looked like she regretted the words as Missy dangled the disc precariously out over the floor.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Tell. Me.”
“No.”
“Oh go on.” Missy tossed the disc playfully from hand to hand. The Doctor went pale. “Bend the rules of time and space just a teensy bit.”
“What if I did?” Somehow, suddenly, the Doctor seemed as insubstantial as Missy. Some emotion flashed across her face; indecipherable. Alien. Missy paused, catching the disc in one hand.
The Doctor tucked her hands behind her back. Her eyes were wide and white in the close dim of the wrecked ship. “If I told you what happens next… would it change anything? Would it all go differently? Would we make different choices?”
She stood perfectly still, but Yaz could see the tension in her shoulders. Behind her back, her fingers twisted together, going white and bloodless.
“Because I’ve been askin’ that question-” her breath had gone sharp and unsteady “-for a long while now and I don’t-” she broke off with a choked sound from somewhere deep in her throat.
Missy stood across the room; across a gulf of thirty-seven years. Her face had gone pale and she clutched the disk in white fingers, her grip so tight Yaz thought she might break it.
“Seeing the future,” the Doctor managed, after an endless, choking silence, “has never done us a whit of good.”
“That’s your problem, Doctor.” Missy tapped the point of her umbrella. “I’m not looking to do any good.”
For a split second, Yaz saw double: Missy in her purple skirts, and the bank of buttons and screens behind her. Then her vision resolved. Missy had gone.
The Doctor stared at the blank wall where she’d been, face creased into that unreadable expression. The seconds ticked by, but Missy did not reappear.
Yaz shifted on the balls of her feet. With Missy had gone some of the tension in the room. Into the space, the ache in Yaz’s thighs made itself known again. Her wrist throbbed, and her head was starting to ache from the sun and dehydration. She glanced at the gap in the console from which Missy had pulled the nav disc thirty-seven years ago. It was impossible to tell if it was in there or not.
“What are the chances?”
The Doctor huffed something between a laugh and a sigh. “Oh Yaz.” She made a helpless gesture with both hands. “I wish I knew.”
It had been decided thirty-seven years ago, and also right now, and Yaz didn’t understand how any of this worked, but the Doctor had been right, earlier: sometimes, you just had to go forwards.
Before the Doctor could react, Yaz reached out and hit the eject button. The mechanics ground, fighting through decades of grit and disrepair, and Yaz’s heart dropped, until-
-it slid out. Stained and dirty with time and dust and Missy’s fingerprints. But it was there, and that meant they had a chance.
The Doctor stared, mesmerized as Yaz very carefully pushed the disc back into its slot. The mechanism ground awkwardly into motion, tugging the disc back inside.
“That means we just have to get the power working,” Yaz pressed. “Right?”
The Doctor stared, paralyzed for a moment longer. Her eyes were thirty-seven years distant.
“Doctor-”
“Right!” She spun, clapped her palms together, and grinned, bright as anything. She snagged her dropped wiring project from the floor. “I’ll get the engines working if you sort those relays…”
She was already half out the door. But Yaz still had questions.
“Doctor,” she called. The Doctor froze, one foot in, one foot out of the room. “Who was she?”
“She’s… it’s… complicated.” The Doctor hesitated in the doorway. One hand came up to touch the back of her neck; fretful. “It’s – oh.” She sighed. “Today, she was a friend. Can’t that be enough?”
Yaz hesitated. She didn’t understand, not really. But the Doctor’s face was doing something queer and Yaz… well. She glanced at the slot that housed the nav disc. She wasn’t naïve; she knew they still had work to do. They’d need hard work and a bit of luck to get a message to Graham and Ryan, and a lot more luck still for the boys to get an entire space liner turned around and a rescue mission mounted.
And the sand… oh. That sand was everywhere. Inside Yaz’s collar, down the front of her shirt, caught in her socks and in the lines of her skin. Coating the wires in the Doctor’s hands. Trapped inside the mechanisms that held the nav disc. Even the Doctor had a fine crust of sand developing, caught in the sweat on her forehead and in the creases of her knuckles. Even Missy had had sand stuck to her pale hands. Yaz wondered what she’d done; where she’d gone. But her heeled footprints were long since lost to wind and time.
“Okay, different question.”
The Doctor looked apprehensive. Her fingers started to move, twisting wires together at random.
“Want to tell me what a relay is?” Yaz asked, just a hint of amused irritation in her voice.
The Doctor blinked. “Haven’t I?” she asked, astonished. Immediately, she dropped her wiring again. She headed back to Yaz, brushing sand off her forehead as she came. “Right,” she began, falling seamlessly into her best teacher voice. “If you take a look at these circuits here…”