Trigger Warning

‘Do you really think you can hold me that easily?’ the Doctor asked. It was always good to seem in control, no matter how much he was worried that he was going to be stuck here for good.

‘Quickly! Doctor! Down here!’ It was Amy’s voice. He took the steps three at a time, heading towards the place her voice had come from: the front door.

‘Doctor!’

‘I’m here.’ He rattled the door. It was locked. He pulled out his screwdriver, and soniced the door handle.

There was a clunk and the door flew open: the sudden daylight was blinding. The Doctor saw, with delight, his friend, and a familiar big blue police box. He was not certain which to hug first.

‘Why didn’t you go inside?’ he asked Amy, as he opened the TARDIS door.

‘Can’t find the key. Must have dropped it while they were chasing me. Where are we going now?’

‘Somewhere safe. Well, safer.’ He closed the door. ‘Got any suggestions?’

Amy stopped at the bottom of the control room stairs and looked around at the gleaming coppery world, at the glass pillar that ran through the TARDIS controls, at the doors.

‘Amazing, isn’t she?’ said the Doctor. ‘I never get tired of looking at the old girl.’

‘Yes, the old girl,’ said Amy. ‘I think we should go to the very dawn of time, Doctor. As early as we can go. They won’t be able to find us there, and we can work out what to do next.’ She was looking over the Doctor’s shoulder at the console, watching his hands move, as if she was determined not to forget anything he did. The TARDIS was no longer in 1984.

‘The dawn of time? Very clever, Amy Pond. That’s somewhere we’ve never gone before. Somewhere we shouldn’t be able to go. It’s a good thing I’ve got this.’ He held up the squiggly whatsit, then attached it to the TARDIS console, using alligator clips and what looked like a piece of string.

‘There,’ he said proudly. ‘Look at that.’

‘Yes,’ said Amy. ‘We’ve escaped the Kin’s trap.’

The TARDIS engines began to groan, and the whole room began to judder and shake.

‘What’s that noise?’

‘We’re heading for somewhere the TARDIS isn’t designed to go. Somewhere I wouldn’t dare go without the squiggly whatsit giving us a boost and a time bubble. The noise is the engines complaining. It’s like going up a steep hill in an old car. It may take us a few more minutes to get there. Still, you’ll like it when we arrive: the dawn of time. Excellent suggestion.’

‘I’m sure I will like it,’ said Amy, with a smile. ‘It must have felt so good to escape the Kin’s prison, Doctor.’

‘That’s the funny thing,’ said the Doctor. ‘You ask me about escaping the Kin’s prison. That house. And I mean, I did escape, just by sonicing a doorknob, which was a bit convenient. But what if the trap wasn’t the house? What if the Kin didn’t want a Time Lord to torture and kill? What if they wanted something much more important. What if they wanted a TARDIS?’

‘Why would the Kin want a TARDIS?’ asked Amy.

The Doctor looked at Amy. He looked at her with clear eyes, unclouded by hate or by illusion. ‘The Kin can’t travel very far through time. Not easily. And doing what they do is slow, and it takes an effort. The Kin would have to travel back and forward in time fifteen million times just to populate London.

‘What if the Kin had all of Time and Space to move through? What if it went back to the very beginning of the Universe, and began its existence there? It would be able to populate everything. There would be no intelligent beings in the whole of the SpaceTime Continuum that wasn’t the Kin. One entity would fill the Universe, leaving no room for anything else. Can you imagine it?’

Amy licked her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes I can.’

‘All you’d need would be to get into a TARDIS, and have a Time Lord at the controls, and the Universe would be your playground.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Amy, and she was smiling broadly, now. ‘It will be.’

‘We’re almost there,’ said the Doctor. ‘The dawn of time. Please. Tell me that Amy’s safe, wherever she is.’

‘Why ever would I tell you that?’ asked the Kin in the Amy Pond mask. ‘It’s not true.’

VII

Amy could hear the Doctor running down the stairs. She heard a voice that sounded strangely familiar calling to him, and then she heard a sound that filled her chest with despair: the diminishing vworp vworp of a TARDIS as it leaves.

The door opened, at that moment, and she walked out into the downstairs hall.

‘He’s run out on you,’ said a deep voice. ‘How does it feel to be abandoned?’

‘The Doctor doesn’t abandon his friends,’ said Amy to the thing in the shadows.

‘He does. He obviously did in this case. You can wait as long as you want to, he’ll never come back,’ said the thing, as it stepped out of the darkness, and into the half-light.

It was huge. Its shape was humanoid, but also somehow animal (Lupine, thought Amy Pond, as she took a step backwards, away from the thing). It had a mask on, an unconvincing wooden mask, that seemed like it was meant to represent an angry dog, or perhaps a wolf.