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When the Master opened his eyes, he was inside a phone booth. The air was stale, as if no one had breathed it for centuries. He pushed the glass door open with a sharp motion, stepping out into silence. The world outside was still, unnervingly so.
Where was he? Who had put him here? What was the last thing he remembered?
He frowned. The last memory was a blur of fury and light fighting the Doctor, losing, then fighting again. The Doctor’s voice echoing, “You’ve lost.” He had wanted the Doctor’s body, wanted to wear it, to become it and once again, he had failed. Worst of all, he could no longer regenerate. All his remaining artron energy had been burned away during his last metamorphosis first into the Doctor, then back again.
But then… where was this place? Who had brought him here? The last thing he remembered was killing the Doctor. After that nothing. Darkness.
He looked down at his hands, turned them over, touched his face. The long Rasputin beard was gone. He was wearing the same clothes from that final battle — the ones soaked in the echo of his own madness. He swallowed hard.
Could this be another of the Doctor’s tricks? He looked around. The walls were made of dark stone, smooth as glass. From a nearby window, he saw an endless sea stretching far below no land, no horizon, only water reflecting a colorless sky.
The Master stepped out of the booth and began to explore. The corridors were narrow and cold, humming faintly as if alive. He entered a room and froze.
Every wall was covered with portraits — all of them faces of the Doctor.
Some were familiar faces he’d fought, mocked, loved, and hated. Others he didn’t recognize, yet the moment he looked at them, he knew they were the Doctor. Every one of them carried that same impossible light behind the eyes.
He turned away, teeth gritted, and left the room. The corridor stretched endlessly before him, a labyrinth of repeating hallways. He chose one path and walked. Then another. Then another. Time dissolved he could have been walking for minutes or for centuries until at last, another door appeared.
He pushed it open.
Inside stood a child dark-haired, pale-skinned, with a calm, unblinking expression.
“Can you hear them?” the boy asked.
“What?” the Master frowned.
“The drums.”
The Master froze, a sudden chill cutting through him. He knew that face, that voice. It was himself, long ago. His own childhood face staring back.
“What are you doing here? Where am I?” the Master demanded.
“Do you hear them?” the child asked again.
“No,” the Master hissed. “Not anymore.”
“Listen,” said the child softly. “Just listen.”
And suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. There was no water, yet he was drowning. Fluid poured from his nose, his mouth, his ears choking him. He fell to his knees, gasping, clawing at his throat. The last thing he saw before collapsing was his child-self weeping over him.
Then darkness.
When the Master opened his eyes again, he was back in the phone booth.
He stumbled out, gasping, drenched in fear. He had died he remembered dying yet here he was again.
“Enough,” he snarled under his breath. “Enough of this game.”
He left the room, retracing his steps through the endless corridors, until he found the same chamber lined with the Doctor’s portraits.
“Doctor!” he shouted, voice echoing through the empty space. “If this is your idea of punishment, I swear, I’ll make you regret ever existing!”
But deep down, he knew. This wasn’t the Doctor’s doing.
He left the room again and wandered the corridors. At last, he opened another door.
Inside stood a man with a neatly trimmed goatee, smoking a cigarette composed, elegant, dangerous. The sight hit the Master like a punch of memory. He knew this face one of his old favorites, the gentleman devil he had once been, twice regenerated into.
“Can you hear them?” the goateed Master asked, voice calm and velvety.
“What difference does it make whether I hear them or not?” the Master snapped.
“The Doctor doesn’t hear them,” said the goateed version. “That’s what makes us special.”
“Nothing makes us special,” the Master spat.
“Poor thing,” the older version said with a mocking laugh.
The Master lunged, but before he could reach him, agony tore through his body. His organs shrank, bones twisted, and in moments, he collapsed dying in a scream.
When he awoke again, he was back in the phone booth.
Rage erupted. He kicked the glass, slammed the door open, shouting into the void.
“Whoever you are… come out and face me! You can’t play games with me!”
Silence.
He tore through the corridors again, back into the room of portraits, where he screamed obscenities at every face of the Doctor. His voice cracked. Then he turned and stormed into another passageway, choosing yet another door.
Inside waited a decaying skeleton in tattered clothes a rotting corpse that somehow still stood upright.
“Can you hear them?” the Decayed Master asked.
“I remember being you,” the Master said coldly. “And I pity you.”
“You should pity yourself,” said the the decayed Master. “I wanted to live. I had purpose. You don’t. You’re already dead.”
“You don’t know what I know,” the Master said through clenched teeth.
“Oh, we know everything,” came the rasping reply.
Pain shot through him, his flesh splitting, peeling, burning away. He screamed as his skin dissolved, muscles shredding into nothing.
When he opened his eyes again the booth. Always the booth.
He stumbled out, furious and trembling. He wrecked everything he could furniture, glass, the walls themselves, but nothing changed.
Again, the corridors. Again, the portraits. No clues. No exits. Only the same infernal maze.
He moved on, and in the next room, he was greeted by a feline purr.
A cat elegant, smug, and terrifyingly human in the eyes. The Master recognized it instantly: Tremas’ body, taken and reshaped into something half-beast.
“Can you hear them?” the cat purred.
“You,” the Master smirked. “My little pet. Why don’t you be a good cat and tell me the way out?”
The cat stopped grooming itself and looked up.
“There’s only one way out,” it said, voice low and cold. “Through your death.”
It leapt. Claws tore into him, fangs sank deep and the Master’s final scream echoed as the beast devoured him whole.
He awoke once more back in the booth.
He stumbled out, panting, remembering stories the Doctor had told long ago, back when he was Missy. The Doctor had spoken of Rassilon’s trap four and a half billion years spent dying over and over again, punching through a wall of diamond. But for the Doctor, every death had been forgotten the next time he awoke.
For the Master, it was different. He remembered every death.
The Doctor had found his way out. So would he. Someone had put him here, but who? The Time Lords were gone. Who else could have done this?
He found himself again in the portrait room. This time, he studied the unknown faces the ones he’d never met, never fought. Perhaps the answer was among them.
He left once more, through endless corridors, until another door appeared.
Inside waited a man in dark glasses, leather jacket gleaming, arrogance dripping from every move.
“Can you hear them?” asked the American Master.
“Nice glasses,” the Master said dryly.
“I can’t say the same about your outfit,” came the reply, smug as ever.
“This? Not my usual style,” the Master smirked. “More of a borrowed identity. I prefer purple. Classic lines. Flair.”
“Still stealing identities, then?” the American Master drawled. “Haven’t found yourself yet?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You steal names, faces, bodies. Do you even know who you are anymore?”
“Help me escape, and I’ll tell you,” said the Master.
“There’s no escape,” the American Master said. “This is the end of the line.”
And with that, he shed his human form, his body twisting into a serpent, which lunged and bit the Master’s throat.
The Master awoke again trembling, gasping. For the first time, he picked up the phone.
From the receiver came the sound of drums.
He froze. Slowly, he put it down, terrified and stumbled out again.
He went into the room filled with the Doctor’s pictures, tore every one of them down from the walls and ripped them apart.
He wandered again through the labyrinth. Each death left him weaker, but more determined. His fury was his only compass now. He would not die here.
Then, another door appeared heavy, rusted, humming faintly with the sound of a battlefield long forgotten. He opened it.
“Can you hear them?” asked the Master who was already there.
The voice and appearance seemed normal, but the Master immediately knew that the figure before him was an android.
“I think you’re the one I can use the most,” he said, striding forward. He pressed the android’s head down, forcing open a control panel and began making adjustments, trying to make the machine obey him.
But unexpectedly, the android seized him and hurled him out of the window. The Master screamed as he fell, expecting the familiar cold embrace of water, but instead, he crashed into the heart of the TARDIS, writhing in unbearable pain as he died.
And then he opened his eyes again. The pain still lingered, vivid and real. Trembling, he picked up the phone once more, pressing it to his ear. The drums were still there.
“Is anyone hearing me?” he asked.
The drumming on the other end grew louder deafening, maddening. The Master dropped the phone and ran outside. He needed to rest. He went into the adjacent room, the one filled with the Doctor’s photographs, and sat down. For a while, he stayed there, gathering his courage and trying to think of another way out. He began making a mental list of who could have done this to him. The Doctor’s name wasn’t even near the bottom.
At last, he took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts, and stood up. Before leaving, he looked at the photograph of the Doctor’s last incarnation he had seen alive the one with the golden hair and sighed.
He walked back to the endless corridors again. As always, he chose a different path, and followed it to another room. Inside, a bald Master in a suit was waiting for him.
“Can you hear the sounds?” the bald one asked.
“Baldness really doesn’t suit me, does it? Why has the Doctor never been bald? He always has that thick hair. And he’s usually taller than me,” the Master said with irritation.
“That doesn’t matter,” replied the bald Master.
“Then what does?” the Master asked.
“The voice. It’s calling to you,” said the bald Master.
“There is no voice!” the Master shouted. “It’s all lies …all one of Rassilon’s games!”
“Did the voices make us mad, or were we already this way?” the bald one asked.
“The voices, of course,” the Master replied without hesitation.
“Then who are we without them?”
“I don’t have time for your philosophical nonsense,” he snapped.
“Time is the only thing we have here,” the bald Master said calmly.
“Well, I don’t plan to stay here long. All this regeneration ever did was get stuck in one place,” the Master muttered angrily.
“Being stuck can be good. You get to think… to find yourself,” the bald one said.
“Or go even madder,” the Master shot back.
“Madness is part of us. Just like the Doctor,” the bald Master reminded him.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to tear that part out,” the Master said coldly.
“Is that why you took her body?” the bald Master laughed.
“I became her to destroy her,” the Master replied.
“We were never good liars,” the bald one said with a faint smile.
At that very moment, a surge of electricity coursed through the Master’s body. He convulsed violently, screaming in pain as the current consumed him and then, once again, he was dead.
He opened his eyes again, inside the phone booth. Slowly, he stepped out.
He went into the room filled with the Doctor’s pictures once more. He tore them down from the walls, shredded them and spat curses under his breath. Then, with a bitter laugh, he urinated on the ruined photos, grinding them beneath his heel until the colors bled into a dark smear of oil and dust.
When nothing was left intact, he turned and walked back into the corridor. The endless labyrinth awaited him again, twisting and shifting as he wandered through it, until he found himself standing before yet another door.
He opened it and stepped inside.
Smoke. Fire. The scent of burned flesh. And standing in the middle of the ruined landscape armor dented, eyes cold was the War Master.
For a heartbeat, the two simply stared at each other.
“Can you hear them?” the War Master asked.
“I am them,” the Master shot back.
“So,” the War Master said, his voice low and deliberate, “you’re the one who ended it all.”
The younger Master’s lips curled into a smirk. “I prefer to think of it as starting again.”
The War Master took a slow step forward, then another.
“I remember what you became. What we became. You killed the Doctor. Wore his face. Tried to be him.” His tone darkened. “How did that feel?”
“Liberating,” the Master sneered.
“Liar,” said the War Master calmly. “It broke you.”
“Don’t you dare lecture me,” the Master hissed. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to die a thousand times for nothing? You think I haven’t seen the Time Lords burn?”
“Oh, I saw them burn,” the War Master said quietly. “I lit the match.”
They stood there, mirror images fractured by centuries until the War Master raised his gun.
“This is mercy,” he said.
“Go to hell,” the Master spat.
“I’ve been there,” said the War Master and fired.
White light consumed everything.
When the Master opened his eyes again, he was back in the booth, but this time, the glass was cracked. A hairline fracture running across his reflection.
He stared at himself for a long time.
“You’re slipping,” he murmured.
He stepped out.
The corridors were changing now shifting, pulsing, as if the entire maze were breathing. He felt something watching him.
Without hesitation, he went straight to the room filled with the Doctor’s pictures, but this time, he didn’t even glance at them. Not a single look. He simply walked past, his face expressionless and stepped back into the corridor.
He opened the next door.
And there he was the perfect politician, the smile like a knife. The Saxon Master leaned casually against a desk, tapping his fingers to an invisible rhythm.
“Ah, there you are,” Saxon said cheerfully. “Took you long enough.”
The other Master’s eyes narrowed.
“What is this? Another of my ghosts?”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” Saxon replied. “I’m everyone’s ghost.”
“Can you hear them?” the Master asked, his voice trembling slightly this time.
Saxon smiled.
“All the time. I make them dance.” He tapped his temple with a grin. “The drums, the chaos, the thrill of the game. We used to love it.”
“I still do,” the Master said.
“No, you don’t,” Saxon whispered. “You just want it to stop. You want him to stop haunting you.”
“Shut up.”
“You want to destroy her and you can’t. You want to be her and you can’t. You hate her because she looks at you and sees someone worth saving. That’s what hurts the most, doesn’t it?”
“SHUT UP!”
“Poor. I pity you. Look what women have done to you,” said the Saxon Master, shaking his head. “But I can save you.”
He drew out his laser screwdriver and aimed it at him. The Master didn’t protest didn’t even move.
“What’s this? No begging? No running? You won’t even try to save yourself?” the Saxon Master asked.
“No,” the Master replied firmly.
“That’s why you’re going to die.”
The Saxon Master pressed the trigger, and in an instant, the Master’s body convulsed with pain until he died once again, screaming as the light burned through him.
When the Master awoke again in the booth, the crack had grown. Half his reflection was gone. Resting his head against the glass of the phone booth, he stayed there for a long time, unmoving, lost in the rhythm of his own breathing.
Then, slowly, he stepped out.
He went into the room filled with the Doctor’s pictures once more. Silent curses spilled through his mind as he glared at the walls, but he didn’t linger there either. Turning away in disgust, he walked back into the corridor of endless labyrinths and entered one of the rooms waiting in the dark.
Behind it waited her.
Missy.
She sat elegantly on a throne of wires and broken clocks, legs crossed, her cane glinting faintly in the dim light.
“Well, hello, handsome,” she said, voice dripping with poison and charm. “You’ve made quite the mess of yourself.”
“Of course it’s you,” he muttered.
“Who else?” She tilted her head. “Honestly, I expected you sooner. You’ve been dying in loops like an amateur.”
He clenched his fists.
“If you’re here to mock me…”
“Oh, sweetheart, I am you. Mocking is practically breathing and i have for you quetions. Can you hear them?”
The Master froze.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” she whispered. “To be free? To stop fighting the same war inside your own skull?”
“Freedom is an illusion.”
“Not if you choose it.”
“I don’t choose.” he laughed bitterly.
“You never do,” Missy said. “That’s your tragedy.”
Something in her eyes shifted, sorrow, maybe. For the first time, he saw pity in his own face, and it terrified him.
“Tell me how to get out,” he said.
Missy rose from her throne, walked up to him and gently touched his cheek.
“Oh, darling,” she murmured. “There is no way out. Not for you.”
And then she stabbed him in the back.
When he woke again the booth was shattered.
He went into the room where the Doctor’s pictures hung on the walls. Standing before them, he spoke to each one in turn as if every face were listening.
Some of the pictures he took down and kissed softly. Others he spat on. To a few, he raised his middle finger with a bitter grin.
When he was done, he turned away and walked back into the endless labyrinth, wandering until he came upon another door and opened it.
“Can you hear them?” came a voice softer this time, almost kind.
He turned.
She stood there in white serene, luminous, her expression the gentlest he had ever seen. Lumiat.
“You’re not real.” he recoiled instinctively.
“Neither are you,” she said quietly.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That you weren’t always this.” She took a step forward, her presence radiating warmth that burned him. “You were a child once. You dreamed. You believed in something.”
“I believed in him,” he spat. “And he destroyed me.”
“No,” she said softly. “You destroyed yourself, trying to destroy her.”
“Why are you here?”
“To show you mercy.”
“Mercy? From you?” he laughed.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Because no one else will.”
She reached out her hand. He hesitated, then took it.
Instantly, fire and light tore through him, burning every memory, every scream, every death. He saw them all — Delgado’s arrogance, Crispy’s desperation, Ainley’s theatrical vanity, Roberts’ smug grin, War’s guilt, Saxon’s mania, Missy’s redemption — all fragments of himself colliding and dissolving.
He fell to his knees, sobbing, the weight of a thousand lives crashing down on him.
This time, it was the pain, the sheer heartbreak that killed him. Both of his hearts simply couldn’t bear it any longer.
Master awoke once more inside the phone booth, yet something was profoundly wrong. The familiar phone was gone, vanished as if it had never existed. The glass walls had disappeared too. A choking, unbearable grief welled up inside him; he wanted to howl and weep, to rend the air with his anguish. This nightmare, he realized with a cold, sinking certainty, would never end.
He staggered forward and passed through the room where the Doctor’s pictures had hung, ignoring them entirely this time. Not a glance. Not a whisper. His gaze was fixed straight ahead as he returned to the endless corridor, stepping carefully into its labyrinthine paths, until he came upon a door. Bracing himself, he opened it and froze.
Before him stood a version of himself. But this time, it was truly him: the Master in the familiar, beloved violet coat, every fold and crease perfectly as he remembered it.
“I know you can’t hear the drums,” said the violet-clad Master, voice calm, measured, eyes like polished onyx.
“You…?” the Master whispered, heart pounding, as if staring into a mirror that moved and breathed.
“You never will. Nothing will ever be the same. You will never live again. You killed the Doctor… that is why you are here, and that is why you will die forever,” the violet Master said, his tone neither cruel nor gentle, but absolute.
Fear made the Master stumble back. He had never been more frightened of himself.
The violet Master pulled a small remote from his coat pocket. His fingers pressed a single button, aimed carefully at him and from nowhere, a sharp beam of searing light shot out, obliterating him in an instant.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in the phone booth. Exhaustion weighed on him like stone. His legs carried him back to the room of the Doctor’s pictures. He screamed. He cried. He pleaded. He cursed. And then, with a trembling fury, he tore the pictures from the walls.
He found the image of the woman Doctor he had once destroyed, pressed it to his chest and collapsed to the floor, clutching the paper and sobbing quietly, letting the pain wash through him without restraint.
He opened his eyes once more. The phone booth enclosed him like a cage, its glass walls reflecting his exhaustion back at him. Every breath felt heavy, as if the weight of countless deaths and endless corridors pressed down on his chest. Slowly, he stepped out and made his way to the room where the Doctor’s pictures were displayed.
The moment he entered, a torrent of emotion erupted. He screamed, cried, begged, cursed each sound echoing off the walls. Trembling, he tore the pictures from the walls. One by one, he laid them on the floor, until finally, he collapsed over the photograph of the last woman Doctor he had destroyed, clutching her image as though it could absorb some of his grief. Silent tears streamed down his face, and he stayed there, motionless, letting the world slip away for long, endless minutes.
Then footsteps. Crisp, deliberate, approaching. Someone was here. Someone he had never seen before.
“Are you the Doctor?” Master croaked, lying on the floor, raising his eyes to the stranger.
“Do I seem like a version of the Doctor to you?” the newcomer answered with a question, tilting their head, a faint, unsettling smile tugging at the corners of their lips.
“You’re the one who trapped me here? I will kill you!” Master sprang to his feet, eyes blazing, fury coiling around his every movement.
“Have you not done this a thousand times before?” the figure asked lightly, a smile dancing across their face, calm, almost taunting.
Then it hit him. Sudden, blinding clarity.
“You… you’re me. Future me.”
“Still don’t hear them, do you?” the new Master said, leaning slightly forward, voice smooth and teasing. “Still haven’t figured out the connection between those drumbeats and the Doctor?”
“These aren’t drumbeats,” Master whispered, a shiver running through him. “They’re… the Doctor’s heartbeats.”
“Well done,” the future self smiled. Calm. Confident. Unshakable.
“And I can hear it. I always hear it,” Master said, a small smile breaking through his exhaustion. Without hesitation, he bolted, charging down the corridor with every ounce of strength he had left, lungs burning, heart hammering. He reached the door at the end, flung it open and the world exploded into light.
He opened his eyes. The air was unfamiliar, vibrant with life, yet tinged with the faint metallic scent of machinery. He was a place that seemed unmistakably Earth, 21st century. Beside him on the floor, a golden tooth gleamed, half-buried in dust. And suddenly memory.
Every detail flooded back: the last battles with the Doctor, the moment Toymaker had offered salvation, the sting of defeat because he was wounded, the bitter taste of surrender. Every loss, every fleeting hope he remembered it all.
He drew a long, shuddering breath. He was free.
“Doctor…” Master murmured, a soft smile curving his lips. “I hear you. I hear your heartbeats.”
And truly, he could. He could hear the Doctor’s rhythm, steady and sure. The faint, familiar scent lingered in the air Doctor was near. Somewhere. Not far. Not lost.
A small, almost shy smile touched his lips.
“I’ve missed you, my darling. Have you missed me too?” he whispered to himself, voice low, almost tender.