The Deal

They returned to the base, the Doctor frowning the entire time. "Why do they need consent?" he mumbled.

"Maybe they're like vampires," Bill said. "Can't come in unless they're invited."

"They're not vampires."

"The future we saw," Xiaolian asked. "Is it the war? Do we bring that future about?"

"That is a possible conclusion," Adelaide admitted.

Xiaolian shook her head. "No. I say, no." She turned to Ilya. "Friend, I will not fight you."

"We are just soldiers in the field."

"Are we too afraid to disobey?"

The colonel stepped forward. "I'm not." He shook Xiaolian's hand.

"Neither am I." Ilya shook Xiaolian's hand.

"This is amazing," Bill said.

"What do you think, Mr. President and Madame Secretary?" The colonel asked the Time Lords. "Did we just give peace a chance?"

"The clock," Adelaide said in answer, already knowing the truth without looking.

"I'm sorry?"

"Look at the clock."

Nardole did it for them. "It's still one minute to midnight."

Xiaolian frowned. "It made no difference. How could this make no difference?"

"You are not the ones responsible for the end of the world," Adelaide told them. "You were not the true problem."

"Then who is the problem?"

"Something is happening somewhere else," the Doctor said. "Somewhere in the world, in silence or in darkness, the world is ending right now. And we have to find out where."

"That is impossible," the colonel scoffed. "We can't search a whole planet in a few minutes."

The Doctor turned to Adelaide, and she crossed her arms. "The true possibilities can be found by following logical conclusion," she said. "They landed the pyramid in the middle of a military crisis. Showed us the end of your world. The effect? You assumed World War Three would happen. You assumed that they'd helpfully provided you the answer and then, once you'd solved the problem, you'd be able to wave them goodbye. As though it would be that simple." Bill's cheeks went a little red. "It was misdirection so blatant I'm shocked none of you rather clever people noticed."

"You didn't notice either," Bill pointed out.

"I noticed. No one listened." Adelaide let her arms fall back to her side. "Your world is filled with potential catastrophes. Other than war, what else could end the world? Broad categories first."

Nardole paused, thinking. "Bacteria."

Adelaide nodded at him. "Potential. Likely."

"New strain of flue?" Xiaolian guessed. "Plague?"

She shook her head. "Immunity is possible and plague is limited to creatures. This threat must kill all life on Earth." She paused. "But the idea presents a valid angle. It's a mistake. If it was something you meant to develop, you would be aware of the threat and it would be easy to find once we realized the threat wasn't war. If it was a mistake, it's more likely destruction would come before we found the source, and thus more likely that you would turn to the Monks for protection." She pulled her sonic out and pointed across the room to a nearby computer terminal.

Ilya's eyes widened. "What are you doing?"

"Though you shouldn't be directly aware of the threat, something with the potential to be that dangerous would, hopefully, already be on a watch list in some form. Still possible that it's not, but we should eliminate known potential dangers first." She moved the sonic's aim to a different terminal. "I'm setting all relevant documents for all of your access. We're going to have to attempt to brute force this."

When she looked to the Doctor, she found the Time Lord grinning.

|C-S|

While the humans and Adelaide searched through the documents, the Doctor, unable to help, sat to the side. The colonel walked up to him and, if Adelaide wasn't so focused, she may have scolded him for stopping his search. "Doctor, listen."

The Doctor turned his head towards the man. "What?"

"Isn't it worth at least considering doing the deal?"

"What deal?"

"All we have to do is consent."

The Doctor shrugged. "That's what the Secretary-General thought. They burned him."

"He was afraid. I'm not being afraid, I'm being smart."

"Yeah, you're not being smart. Adelaide is being smart." The Doctor sat up in his chair and flicked something on his glasses, transmitting to her own sonic. Thankfully, it successfully drew her attention. "Any new ideas?"

She looked thankful for the momentary reprise from staring at a screen. He knew that, though she didn't tend towards solving by speaking aloud, it had never hurt for them to bounce theories off of each other, particularly when she was having some difficulty. "An accident that can lead to irrevocable consequences...likely bacteria."

The Doctor nodded. They were looking too broad right now, they needed more of a focus. "I like bacteria. They can spread."

"And once they've breached containment, they cannot be contained again. Most life on Earth relies on air, water, and food."

"And beer," Nardole mumbled.

"Biochemical?" Adelaide offered. "New, fast, entirely human?"

Nardole nodded, returning to his computer. "Yes, ma'am."

"Doctor," the colonel tried again. "That world was dead a year from now. We should at least go in there and talk."

"There are about a hundred thousand biochemical trials going on right now," Nardole reported.

"Specifically GM bacteria."

"Er...six thousand?"

Adelaide drew in a sharp breath. "How many have reached stage two?"

"You cannot accept their offer," the Doctor told the human.

"Why not?" Ilya asked. That time, he was saved from a glare from Adelaide due to her focus on theories.

"Because whatever the price is, it's too high."

The colonel shook his head. "We'll work it out."

"Four hundred and twenty-eight."

"It's too many," Xiaolian said, "and we don't even know if you're right."

"She always is," the Doctor spoke quickly, not allowing Adelaide any chance to speak. "Adelaide is the clever one."

"And what proof do we have of that?" the colonel snapped.

"There's no time for proof," the Doctor said. "It's your planet. I can't just give it away."

The colonel crossed his arms. "You know what, sir? Finally, you've said something I agree with. It's our planet. Our choice."

"You can't make a deal with them," Adelaide told him. "You don't know what you're agreeing to. It would be an uninformed choice."

"All I know is I plan on living to fight another day. Right now, what we don't have is a whole lot of other days." The colonel looked to the other military leaders for support.

"Agreed," Xiaolian said.

"Also agreed."

Bill stood and moved towards the Time Lords. "Doctor, Adelaide, is it just possible that they're right?"

"It would be a solution," Adelaide admitted. "But that doesn't make it right."

"All these soldiers in the room and you two are the only ones still fighting," Bill said.

The Doctor tightened his jaw. "Would you make the deal? Even not knowing what's going to happen?"

"Those guys have modeled every event in human history to find our weak spot. Are you going to do the same in a couple of minutes?"

"Would you make the deal?"

Bill shook her head. "No. Not if I had a choice. But we don't, do we?"

"It's your world."

"Not anymore," the colonel said. He stepped away from the Time Lord. "Okay, back to the pyramid and negotiate our surrender." All representatives of the military walked away and left the room.

Bill watched them leave. "What are you going to do?"

The Doctor looked towards Adelaide before sighing. "Well for a start, I'm going to tell you the truth. I've been keeping a secret from you." He raised a hand to his glasses and froze, mouth falling open. Adelaide frowned at him.

"Doctor?" Bill asked, concerned.

"We can blind them." The Doctor turned to Adelaide. "That's how we do it. We blind them!" Adelaide's own eyes widened. She may be the clever one, but brute force had always been his specialty.

Overturn the chessboard.

"Blind who? The Monks?"

"Bill, go to the pyramid. Keep an eye on them all. Nardole, with me and Adelaide. To the TARDIS."

Nardole nodded, rushing toward where they'd left the TARDIS. "Yes, sir."

"Have you got a plan?"

Adelaide followed the Doctor out. "I'll call you," she told the human.

|C-S|

The Time Lords stood beside each other at the Doctor's TARDIS console, with Nardole opposite them. "This is a list of labs on UNIT's watch list," Adelaide told the humanoid. "There will be CCTV feeds to each of them sent to UNIT HQ. Can you hack them?"

Nardole looked slightly offended she didn't believe in him. "Course I can, I'm not just sexy. But there's four hundred and twenty-eight of them. We can't watch them all."

"Then it is good that we're to going to watch them. We're going to turn them off."

"What good would switching them off do?"

The Doctor pointed at Adelaide, looking proud. "If Adelaide is right, the Monks are only watching one of those labs. How would they do that?"

"Well, I suppose they'd just hack the cameras."

The Doctor nodded. "So switch 'em off."

Nardole did so with a few quick keys at the console. "Okay, so, we've blinded them. But whatever's happening is still happening."

"Yep."

"And the Monks are powerful. They can just turn the cameras back on."

Adelaide raised her eyebrows. "Yes, they can. But they are only watching one. So which lab just got its cameras turned back on?"

Nardole looked back to the screen and widened his eyes. "Oh, you genius!"

"Yes, she is," the Doctor said.

"To be fair, this was your idea," Adelaide told him, and the Time Lords smiled at each other.

|C-S|

When they landed in the lab, Adelaide was reminded of how much she liked proper labs. St Luke's had good labs, but nothing as proper as this.

The only person in the room, a young woman in a hazard suit, turned and jumped back in shock. "Oh, my God!"

"No, I'm the Doctor, but it's an easy mistake to make." The Doctor gestured at his face. "The eyebrows."

"How did you do that?" the woman looked at the TARDIS. "What is that thing?"

"It's Nardole," the Doctor said, assuming that was what the woman was referring to. "He's not my, or Adelaide's, fault." He turned to the humanoid. "Back to the TARDIS. This place is toxic."

"I'm not human."

"Oh, you're human enough." The Doctor waved a hand. "I got your lungs cheap."

Nardole groaned. "Oh, now he tells me."

"Park her close. Monitor us." The Doctor began to turn away but paused. "Oh, tidy up your room." Nardole just went back into the TARDIS.

Adelaide faced the scientist. "You have an issue?"

"Who the hell are you two?"

"We already introduced ourselves. Pay attention. Move on to the explanation of your problem." The Doctor looked shocked at Adelaide's rudeness, but there was no time for pausing.

They had to stop the end of the world.

|C-S|

Adelaide called Bill after the scientist had explained what had happened in this lab. She stepped to the side in order to update the human, taking advantage of the pause to recollect her ideas. "We found it. A lab on Yorkshire. Essentially, there was a misplaced decimal point that created a bacteria that turns any living thing it touches into what the Doctor has named 'gunk'."

"So why is it going to end the world?" the colonel asked, speaking through Bill's phone. "Has it been dispersed already?"

"At the moment, it is still in the lab. The Doctor and I should be able to contain it." She lowered the phone and turned back to the scientist and the Doctor. "Continue."

"We have an air filtration system to take toxins out of the air," Erica explained, showing them the system on a computer. "It runs a cycle every thirty minutes. It's going to pump the bacteria into the atmosphere."

"So switch it off."

"I can't."

The Doctor nodded. "Oh. Right, okay, when's the next cycle?"

"Twenty minutes."

The Doctor looked horrified. "What!"

Adelaide raised the phone again. "The venting system is automatic. This may take longer than previously thought." She didn't have to look at her phone to know the Doomsday clock moved again.

The Doctor began to pace. They'd swapped roles again – Adelaide had taken charge of theorizing and finding the threat, but now it was the Doctor's turn to lead in neutralizing it. "Think. Think, think, think, think..." he hit his forehead. "Stupid Doctor. Stupid, stupid, stupid..." he paused and looked to Adelaide, though he didn't seem aware that he was doing that. "Handsome Doctor. Adorable, highly intelligent, but still approachable Doctor." He grinned. "What's another way to destroy bacteria?" he turned to the side and grabbed a bundle of wires.

"Sterilization," the scientist said.

"And how do you sterilize something?"

"Put it in boiling water."

Adelaide eyed the wires. "Or..."

The scientist's eyes widened. "Put it in a flame."

The Doctor laughed. "She's got it. By George, she's got it!" He grabbed a thermos from a desk. "I'm not going to lie to you. This means that your insurance premiums are going to go through the roof. In fact, pretty much everything is going to go through the roof because I'm going to blow up the lab."

Adelaide looked around the space. "There will need to be a trigger..."

"But what are you going to blow it up with?" the scientist asked, before pausing. "The bacteria is making ethanol. The greenhouse and the lab are full of it!"

The Doctor glanced back at the scientist. "Seriously, what are you doing when this is all over?" he looked up at Adelaide. "Receiving applications for assistants?"

"Focus."

That made him laugh, briefly, before working on the bomb.

|C-S|

The Doctor held the bomb as the scientist tapped on the finishing touches. Adelaide pushed herself back from the computer, having spent time looking into the bacteria they were attempting to fight. "Is this going to work?" the scientist asked.

"Trust me. I pop it in there. Machine goes ping. Lab goes boom. World is saved. You develop a pretty intense crush on me." Erica stepped back. "Okay. Adelaide and you go through to the machine room. You're going to have to let me back in when I'm done." He stood. "How long before the vents kick in?"

"Four minutes." The scientist moved back, gesturing for Adelaide to follow her. The Time Lady did not like the idea of leaving the Doctor to explode the lab, especially when he was blind, but he had refused to allow Adelaide to be the one responsible. She'd tried to make him, very briefly, but the Doctor had refused to listen.

He was going to be fine. He kept saying he was going to be fine. Adelaide had to keep hearing it in order to believe it.

To distract herself further, she lifted up the phone to Bill again. "Adelaide, you still there?" Bill asked her.

"There is a way to stop the lab venting, so the Doctor is going to sterilize the building by blowing it up. Everything inside will be destroyed." She glanced over her shoulder and, though she saw the fact the TARDIS was gone, she did not properly register it.

"Including you two?"

"Hopefully not. But potentially."

"You're really going to let him do it?"

"Of course I am."

"Because they're still offering a deal, and I'm the only one left."

Adelaide's grip tightened on the phone. "Tell them no." But then she paused. "Clarify consent, Bill."

"What does consent mean?" Bill asked, speaking a little away from the phone.

"You must ask for our help, and want it, and know you will then be ours. Only then can the link be formed."

"What link?"

"Do you consent?"

The scientist took Adelaide's arm and pulled her through the airlock. She stepped to the side once they were through, attempting to remember everything she knew about the Monks.

"Can you hear me?" the scientist asked the Doctor, using an intercom.

"I don't even know your name."

The scientist smiled. "Erica."

"Did you always want to be a scientist, Erica?"

"Since I was about eight. Before that, I wanted to be a bus driver, because I liked how they waved at other bus drivers."

The Doctor placed his bomb and prepped the final wires, setting the timer. "Okay, I've given us two minutes."

Erica gestured for him. "Right, you need to get out of there."

He started the countdown and rushed into the first airlock with a grin. "Hello, I'm the Doctor, saving the world with my eyes shut."

There was a gasp from the phone on Bill's end. "Adelaide, the clock's going back. Have you done it?"

Adelaide turned back to the Time Lord. "Yes, he has."

The Time Lord was already celebrating. "I'm totally the President of Earth, and from now on, two planes! One for me and one for my glamorous assistant, Erica!"

"I thought she was going to be my assistant."

"Sorry, Adelaide, I'm taking her." He gestured towards Erica. "Say hello to the folks at home, Erica, and let me through the door. Bill, get the hell out of that pyramid!" he looked ready to laugh.

"I can't open it," Erica said, still smiling. "It's under emergency protocol. You need to use the combination lock. Set it to 3614."

At that moment, Adelaide felt the ground fall from out of her. She couldn't breathe. The world went silent. Something wined in the back of her mind. The phone dropped from her ear.

No. No, no, no, no...

She should have asked. Should have checked...

"Ah, you're going to have to guide me," the Doctor's voice cut through the shock.

"I can't see it from here," Erica said, only just managing to understand the issue. "You can see it, right?"

"How long have I got?"

"One minute forty. 3614." Erica gestured for the Doctor to hurry. "Come on."

"Adelaide, what's happening?" Bill asked, her voice seeming far too loud for someone speaking from a phone so far away. "You okay?"

Adelaide swallowed. Her throat was tight. "There's been a problem."

"What's the problem? Adelaide, talk to me."

"The Doctor needs to open the door." Adelaide was staring at the Doctor. Her feet didn't seem capable of moving. "He can't see the numbers."

"One minute twenty," Erica prompted.

"I don't understand the problem," Bill said.

"There is a combination lock. The Doctor can't see numbers."

He looked up towards her. "Adelaide! You need to do a visual on the lab. There's a camera in here. If you got into the TARDIS..."

"The TARDIS isn't here." Adelaide had seen it the moment she and Erica had moved through the airlock, but it hadn't stuck, it hadn't registered what that could mean. "I don't know where Nardole is, but he is not here."

The Doctor tapped the sonic glasses. "Nardole! Nardole? Nardole, can you hear me?"

"I don't understand the problem," Bill said. "Doctor, just open the door."

"I can't."

"Why can't you?"

"Because I'm blind. I'm sorry, I'm blind."

No, no, no, no, no...

"What...what do you mean, blind? What are you talking about?"

"I lied." He was still looking at Adelaide. "I've been blind since Chasm Forge. I didn't get my sight back. I've been lying to you. There's a combination lock with numbers, and I can't see them."

"You're an idiot," Bill said. "You are the stupidest idiot ever! And so are you, Adelaide! But I'm not going to let the Doctor die."

"No, you have to," the Doctor's voice hardened. He was forcing Adelaide to keep paying attention on him. "There's no choice. No-one else can help me now."

And Adelaide wished that wasn't true. She wished she could have done something. But once the Doctor had entered the airlock, she could not open the door from the outside and he could not go back through to allow her to help. He was trapped. He was going to die.

"The Monks," Bill breathed. "The Monks can help you."

"No!" the Time Lords said in unison. "Bill, no," Adelaide pulled the phone back to her ear. "Bill, don't do that."

"I'm sorry."

"A mistake was made. We have to face that. But please, Bill, do not ask the Monks for help." It hurt Adelaide to say that. She wanted nothing more than to beg the Monks to save the Doctor. And that terrified her.

It was visceral, everything she was feeling at that moment. Nothing rational. Everything she hated, all bundled into one terrifying mass. The Doctor was in danger. The Doctor was going to die. And despite everything Adelaide had ever thought about the Time Lord, despite every argument and disagreement, she wanted him to live.

And she knew that, at that moment, without a doubt, even after everything, she had never stopped loving him. But now she was going to lose him. She had to lose him. For good. She would lose him because she loved him.

"Bill, please, listen." Her voice was breaking and the Doctor didn't need to see her face to see her tears, as few as there were. "I don't know what consenting will allow them to do to you. You don't know what you're agreeing to." There was only silence. "Bill, do not make the deal. Please, do not do it." Still, silence.

Then, it was like the universe was moved slightly out from under Adelaide's feet and she stumbled, still staring at the Doctor.

In the airlock, slowly, the Doctor lowered his glasses and raised his hand. Adelaide watched his eyes focus and watched him look down and watched him do the code – so easy, now – and watched him step through and watched him come towards her and watched him take her hand.

"Bill, what have you done?"

There was an explosion, and the world went white, but Adelaide kept the Doctor's hand.

A/N: These two have a terrible habit of realizing how much they still love each other right when they're facing certain death.