Angle of Reflection

The Devil went down to Georgia.

—Charlie Daniels

The Master had always gone on about the sound only he could hear, the forever-approaching drumbeat. Martha felt jealous; her mentalness didn't come with a soundtrack.

The problem with being crazy, or rather with being locked up for it, was the boredom. Lately she had taken to thinking of boredom as a substance, a definite thing that she saw coming out of the walls or on the food. She didn't actually see it, of course; she pretended to herself that she did to give herself something to do. It was better than the early days, when she'd been suffocated by the image of boredom as a great white paper on which her memories bled through in splashes more vivid than the originals. Frankly, she didn't think she'd been mad at all before she'd wound up in here.

It was all Tom Milligan's fault, though she'd mostly moved past dwelling on the irony of that.

Martha leant her head against the fluorescent lamp on the night stand and tried to pretend that the bulb's hum was the TARDIS. Of course, she'd got here in the first place because she had no talent for pretending. But it meant that she felt the vibration out in the corridor against her temple through the lamp, jerking her head up an instant before it became sound. Her eyes fixed on the door.

Footsteps. Unhurried. Two sets, one lighter than the other. They were just outside, and all the knowledge of a year of running telegraphed straight to her gut that they were headed for her room.

She scrambled out of bed and managed to get a dressing gown over her pyjamas just as the latch clicked. The orderly who swung her door open barely glanced inside. "Here you are, Miss."

"Thank you," said a woman's voice. "Return to your post. Remain there and destroy the security records for this evening. Please leave your fingerprints on them."

"Very good, Miss." The orderly nodded to Martha and moved away down the hall. The woman to whom he'd spoken stepped into the door's rectangle of light.

Lucy Saxon wore a tailored suit, tan, more businesslike than what she had used to favor but also more beautiful. She also wore gloves, which suited her so well as to seem natural. "It's been a long time since we saw each other, Martha Jones," she said.

It was a formality, but Martha asked anyway. "What are you?"

"I am the Master," said Lucy, her heels tapping on the floor, "and you, my sweet girl..." She stepped closer, tilting Martha's face gently between gloved palms. The cool metal of a ring touched her cheek. "You will test me, try me, tempt me, and sting me, and I shall break you."

Martha considered. "Okay. How long is it going to take?"

"I've no idea. I do admire your enthusiasm, though."

"You're not insane anymore," said Martha flatly.

"Spot on."

"Were you ever insane?"

He arched a pale, impeccable eyebrow. "You're really not in any position to be casting aspersions, are you, Martha?"

"Don't. Remember? I can out-talk you. Just tell me: Did you kill my planet in your right mind?"

The Master inclined Lucy's head gracefully. "No."

Martha shut her eyes and let the wall take her weight. She could bear that, maybe: spending weeks with him, perhaps months—or, which was liable to be a shorter time if she didn't get away, the rest of her life—knowing at least that murdering the world was not a rational act. The question had bothered her.

"I'll do it in my right mind next time."

Martha opened her eyes.

He stepped back, looking about the tiny room as though it were honestly the most fascinating thing he'd seen all day. For the first time, Martha noticed that the knicknacks her family had brought looked more pathetic than bare walls would have. He stepped over to the night stand and cupped his fingers over the lamp's fluorescent bulb for a moment, as if it would warm his hands. "What did you do to get sent in for 'observation,' by the bye?" he tossed over his shoulder. "We both know you're not that crazy." Martha just stood there woodenly, and he used Lucy's face to look amused. "Won't say? Well, now I have to know."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"You seem boringly resigned to the whole thing."

She stared at him. "Why would I argue with a whaling ship?"

He looked delighted. "A sense of humor and everything! You should have gone crazy sooner, it's like you're a real person."

Martha flinched. "How, exactly, do you just stop being insane, anyway?" she ground out. "Is that like being a lapsed Catholic?"

The Master had a delicate, charming smile nowadays, a curve of warm pink against pale skin. "Oh, stop it, Martha. Do you really want me to bore you with all that?"

"It's sort of a matter of interest."

His fingers slipped up to cover his smile. "Fair point. As with so many things, I'm indebted to Lucy. She really is crazy, you see. Or was. It was extraordinary: Utopia broke her so thoroughly that it emptied her, and the shock of running up against a mind like that woke me to myself. Dropping into that insanity cured me of mine; Lucy is insane enough for the both of us."

"I liked you better crazy," Martha said bitterly.

His eyebrows lifted. "Do you know, I believe you did enjoy yourself."

"Don't you dare."

"Harrumph," he said, tapping at the plastic face of the cockeyed wall clock before moving on to the row of miscellany on the shelf over the dresser. "The only other person I've ever met who liked the sound of his own voice that much is the Doctor. Speaking of whom, how much have you told him about that year you didn't enjoy at all? I had a pretty good view, but he was otherwise engaged."

"Shut up."

He twisted away from his inspection. "Oh, for heaven's sake, could you say it like you mean it? Throw me a bone here." He looked at her as if she were a difficult schoolgirl. "So few things really get through to you, it's really frustrating. Martha Jones, the gee-whiz kid, walking around the universe like the whole thing's a science expo arranged for your benefit. Even the Doctor."

The wallpaper buckled under Martha's nails. "You. You've got to be kidding me. You treated my planet like it was a game—"

"I take the world quite seriously," he said sharply. "I take the whole cosmic order seriously. How to take things seriously may even be something I teach you."

She didn't believe him. He would never do her that much of a favor.

"While we're on the subject, or just off its coast, let's try again: How did you come to be here? Go on, have a gossip. You know I'll get it out of you eventually."

Her head snapped up. "You won't."

He stepped in so swiftly that Martha stumbled back into the wall. Lucy's head tilted, a quick, birdlike motion. "Really?"

Excitement was rolling off him just under Lucy's perfume. He pinned her with a look that she had always thought of as uniquely the Doctor's, until all she could feel was him thinking and how thin her pyjamas were. "Why not, Martha? Suppose I said I would torture you. Would you spend all of your energy holding out against me over something so very small?"

Her mind was a Rube Goldberg machine. It wasn't her fear that was making her head pound, it was that she couldn't find the door it had come from. Lines looked straight, but weren't. The lamp beside her seemed unnaturally loud. There was something, something she needed to understand and it felt so close, but her mind had gone all curly. She couldn't catch it. He knew what it was; he was looking in her eyes and watching her try to locate it, while that stupid wall clock tapped out second after second behind him.

"Well?" he asked. "Would you?"

"I haven't got anything better to do."

"Certainly you have. You have your escape to plan, your sanity to regain, and the Doctor to save. Besides, look at all you've done. Have you no secrets more precious than that? No, Martha. You need more substantial weapons. Or should I say tools; that's the word the Doctor would use, very PC."

Lucy—the Master—stepped forward and leant in, eyelids fluttering as he brought his face in close to her neck. She—he—inhaled, and though something in Martha's viscera turned to ice, she felt every warm curl of his breath against her throat as he slowly let it out again. "Mmmmm. Institutional soap," he murmured. "So clean. And soft. So different from when we last saw each other, with all the blackened nails and raw sores and taut sinew you earned in that year he took away from you."

"I took it away from me," said Martha fiercely, trying not to feel it as a warm, gloved palm ghosted over her shoulder. "I took it away from everyone." She looked right at him. "Especially you."

He went quite still. "You see, Martha?" he said quietly. "It really is like riding a bicycle." The rigidity went out of him all at once; he eased himself back until just his fingertips rested on the wall on either side of her. "After a whole year of thinking about each other every day, searching for traces of each other in every word and footprint, it's so unsatisfying to simply stop. It's a pity you went and dumped the Doctor when you did, actually; you finally had something in common."

"That year is over, Saxon."

"How can it be over? It never happened."

To be angry with him for what he had done was too big a thing, so she chose to be angry with him for his obtuseness. "It's done, then. Don't you get it? I've spent forever afraid of you and carried on anyway—"

"Yes, with nice, comforting instructions from the Doctor to keep you warm at night."

Martha actually laughed in his face. It went much better than the last time she'd tried. "Do you have any idea how rubbish the Doctor is at instructions? You can't think he told me everything. There wasn't time, and you know it."

"Oh, my." His eyes widened. "He didn't—Tokyo...? I see. Just a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Yours, not his... you must be so proud," he breathed.

Too late she saw her misstep. She was always too late, with him. "You did that."

"Yes, but you know why."

"It doesn't matter why!"

"It matters to you, Martha."

His voice had changed: It cut through the loops and spirals in her thought to make her vision crystalize on his face, and something was terribly wrong that he was able to do that. His eyes were on hers—no. His eyes were in hers. Utopia was looking into her. "You know something," she said dizzily. "You know something I don't."

His voice was lightly mocking. "I know a lot of things you don't."

Martha wanted to be terrified; she wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be as terrified right then as she knew she ought to be. That she couldn't was so much more awful than terror. "What are you going to do to me?" she whispered.

"Perhaps I mean to do to you what the Doctor had in store for me, and just keep you. Perhaps I want your memories. Perhaps I want you for the fun of it. Perhaps I fancy myself as a mentor. Perhaps I intend to secure someone's loyalty, real, essential loyalty, and perhaps I think that you'll just about do."

"And the answer is no. Never, Saxon." The arm of the lamp was digging into her back, trapped between her and the wall. "I know what I've done, and I remember what I believe. Do you really think you can just remake me?"

He pulled back with her jaw cupped in his hand and looked at her seriously. "Already done, Martha."

Cold blossomed in her stomach. What frightened her about it most was that it was not new.

The Master tilted his head. "Complete this analogy, please," he said thoughtfully. "Spiral is to paisley as pattern is to...?"

Martha swallowed to wet her mouth enough to talk. "Control."

He nodded. "Good. Just checking things are still in order. We'll sort out your medication soon, and that will make things easier for both of us. By the way, as regards that thing I want to know: I could look it up in your medical records before we leave. I will tell you from the outset, however, that I won't. I will not interview your acquaintances or consult a temporal scan. I won't use a mind probe, either; that's just undignified for everyone. But I would very much like you to tell me, Martha Jones, what happened for you to get here."

"If that's your plan, why are you telling me?"

"Because now you won't be able to stop thinking about it."

The Master laced his fingers together. "I'll make a bet with you, Martha Jones," he said, and she managed to hate him just enough to keep listening. He really was a whaling ship. "I bet that before we're done, you will do something just to please me. You will thank me for something in your heart. And you will tell me how you came to be in this place."

Martha thought about it, and then she smiled. "I bet that you can't regenerate in that body."

His own smile vanished. "Be careful, Martha. I didn't need to last time."

Abruptly he stepped back from her and consulted his watch. "Time to go, I think," he said, pursing doll-like lips and glancing about the room. Slowly, Martha pushed away from the wall. "Gather up whatever you'd like to take with you; I assume that you have a few things? The shrinks usually encourage it. Gives the patients something to think of as theirs."

Martha had been reaching for her diary, but she jerked her hand away and left it. Without looking at him, she yanked her pillow out of its case and started throwing essential clothing inside.

"Do you know why I originally singled out Lucy?" said the Master conversationally while Martha got her shoes on. "I noticed her because she looked like President Romana; have you met Romana? No, I don't suppose you would have. And he won't have told you about her."

Martha ignored this. "You don't have a TARDIS anymore," she said, yanking her shoelaces tight. "A little unimpressive, isn't it? So what are we going to do, go backpacking?" She had a pretty good idea, she thought, of what the answer was: Use her as bait, steal the Doctor's TARDIS. That sequence probably had its own chapter in the Take Over the Universe Manual.

"We," said the Master, straightening his cuffs and touching up his hair, "oh—I like the sound of that. We, Martha, are going to look up a Time Agent who happens to be in the area, steal his vortex manipulator, and take a quick trip forward to the origins of the Time Agency."

He'd finally caught her off balance. "We are?"

"I think so, yes."

"And then?"

"And then we are going to create it."

Martha slowly lowered her impromptu knapsack to the floor. "And why, exactly, are you taking me with you?"

Lucy—the Master—smiled. "Haven't you noticed? I like them crazy. So does the Doctor, actually."