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“I know you’re angry,” Belinda said.
“You don’t know anything,” Kid spat, hand still hovering.
Still hesitating.
“I have a friend,” Belinda said. “Down there, in the people you have in cryofreeze. His people were killed too. All of them, even the children.”
Belinda shuddered, remembering the planet they had travelled to, the emotionless Cybermen, their only goal to convert the entire universe into their identical, unfeeling, uniform ideal. How angry the Doctor had been, how much he had scared her with his threats.
How angry with some of his actions she had been.
He had told her then, about his people. How all of them had died, murdered by a man who had once been his friend, murdered after something supposedly done to him. How their bodies had been converted to Cybermen, ones with the Time Lords’ unique ability to regenerate.
It wasn’t impossible there were still echoes of his people somewhere in the stars, he’d said. But according to the Master they weren’t his people by birth, he had been found, but the memories were hidden, stolen, and he didn’t know if he wanted them or not.
There was something she had forgotten, just out of sight in the memory. A reason being a foundling meant something.
“I know how hurt he is,” Belinda said. “I know how angry he is, even though he tries to hide it behind a smile.”
Kid looked at her and Belinda looked past the anger, the hate, the determination, searching for the scared boy Cora had told her about.
The one still hesitating.
“I don’t know how you fix this,” Belinda said. “You deserve your anger. What has been done to you, the lies they say about your home. They look at you and they see what you are and they won’t look past that to see who you are. You don’t want to do this.”
“The Corporation burnt our home-”
“And those people you’re preparing to hurt aren’t the Corporation,” Belinda said. “Some of them will be. And some will be children.”
“She’s right,” Cora said. “This isn’t the answer.”
“What is?” Kid demanded. “Cutting part of ourselves away and hiding?”
He raised his hand and Wynn- Wynn his partner, Wynn the reason they were here and not frozen with everyone else- caught it.
He looked betrayed.
“This is the only way to save Hellia,” he said. “You know that.”
“She’s using us,” Wynn said. “We both know that too.”
“Who is?” Cora asked.
“The woman who gave us the Delta Wave,” Wynn said. “She said she could change Hellia’s fate, if we used it here. No one can do that.”
She pushed the box towards Cora, Cora who grabbed it and smashed it on the floor.
Kid slumped back.
Both Kid and Wynn were being taken away in handcuffs.
“This isn’t the end,” Kid said.
“No,” Cora agreed. “It’s not. You fight your way. I’ll fight mine.”
The door closed and Cora turned to Belinda.
Everyone else in the room was looking at her differently.
Belinda hugged her.
“The cryofreeze,” she said. She turned to Mike and Gary. “Do you know how to undo it?”
Gary nodded.
“I can try,” he said.
Belinda didn’t watched the end of the show. She heard Cora’s song, heard the applause, but not everyone had an easy time coming out of cryofreeze and whatever planet she was on, she was a nurse, she could help. She could at least be an extra pair of hands for Mike.
And she was waiting. They had woken up thousands of people.
She hadn’t seen the Doctor.
The audience were heading home. Everyone was heading home.
And she still hadn’t seen the Doctor.
“He has to be here,” Belinda said. The Tardis was still here, the Vindicator was still here, he couldn’t have left.
“We have one person unaccounted for, according to the system,” Nina said. She pulled up a security image.
“Mrs Flood?” Belinda asked. “That’s impossible, she’s my neighbour.”
“She’s my neighbour,” Ruby said.
Had Ruby been there the whole time? No, she’d been in cryofreeze too, with the Doctor, but if Ruby was here then where was-
Belinda blinked at the empty space next to her, so certain there was someone who should be standing there.
The Doctor, the Doctor was still missing-
“She can’t be here,” Belinda said. “She’s from Earth, like me.”
“Earth?” Gary asked. “That hasn’t existed for centuries.”
“What?” Belinda asked. “What happened?”
“No one knows,” Gary said. “They left traces, signals sent into space, this was built from one of them, but all of them stopped after the old Earth date 23rd May, 2025.”
“Belinda,” Ruby said. “The Doctor, he’s there, he’s in trouble, you have to help us-”
Belinda threw the Tardis doors open and put the Vindicator on the console.
She pressed her hands to it.
“I don’t know how to fly you,” she said. “I have to go home.”
The Tardis didn’t move.
“Please,” Belinda said. “They need us there.”
She slumped down, leaning against the console. She didn’t know how to fly the Tardis. She didn’t know how the Vindicators worked.
She didn’t know where the Doctor was, how Mrs Flood was there.
“I wish I was home,” Belinda said.
Ruby- Ruby, why did she keep forgetting Ruby- took her hands and kissed her forehead.
The Tardis whirred to life, and Ruby faded away again.
Cryofreeze was unpleasant. Had he been in cryofreeze before? Right now he couldn’t remember.
Ah.
The Doctor went to reach for the back of his head, to the Time Lord brain stem that didn’t do well in the cold. A cryofreeze wouldn’t have been designed for a being with a binary vascular system, he would have twice the amount to unfreeze, he-
His hand seemed slow.
The Doctor frowned.
He looked down at himself. He seemed to be lying on a chair that felt like it should be familiar but he didn't know where from, which seemed to be surrounded by some kind of force field.
If he could just get the sonic-
“Looking for this?” a strangely familiar woman asked.
She waved his sonic and put it right where he couldn’t reach.
“You took your time,” she said. “For a moment I thought you might be regenerating already.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Has it been that long?” she asked. “Well. Let’s see if trying your new trick jogs your memory.”
She glowed gold, a shimmering glow he recognised instantly, and a second woman split apart from her, this one younger, black hair already in a long plait, red clothes that seemed...
“Rani,” he said.
“You do still remember,” the new bigeneration said. “Good. Now, come along, Doctor. We have work to do.”