by Sean Corcoran

'Can't we ever, just once, visit a planet that isn't a dead ringer for a quarry, Doctor?' Carlos Martinez huffed, watching his breath billow out in front of his face. He surveyed the grim landscape around him, pulling his suit coat even tighter around him as the wind blew through him. The TARDIS had parked itself in the middle of a flat but desolate plateau which sloped away relatively gently down the side of the mountain. On the far side of the TARDIS, the ground just stopped. Carlos could imagine just the kind of sheer cliff face that was probably lurking just out of view.

Failing to get a response to his question, he turned to look back at the familiar shape of the TARDIS. To his concern, he found that, aside from the Police Box, he seemed to be alone on the plateau. He grumbled to himself as he started walking back towards the ship. Always let the Doctor go first, that was the smart thing to do. 'Doctor?' he called out again.

'Over here.' It had come from around the other side of the TARDIS. Carlos walked around to find the Doctor looking out across a jagged, rocky valley. His expression was inscrutable, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his brown fedora. The Doctor seemed unaffected by the cold but, then again, it seemed to Carlos that the cold air didn't so much blow through him as blow around him. His clothes were much better suited to the weather than Carlos' thin suit was; the Doctor had on both his long fur-lined brown coat and a dark red sweater. A white-spotted blue bow tie hung neatly around his neck, and he was completely oblivious to the fact that it didn't match the sweater at all. He was tapping his black walking stick absentmindedly on the hard rock.

Carlos went to join him on the edge of the plateau, noting with some small satisfaction that he'd quite accurately envisioned the cliff face. As a matter of fact, it even had the courtesy to end in a deep valley full of razor-sharp rock outcroppings. That was an embellishment he hadn't thought of. He stepped warily back from the edge. 'Do you see anything?'

The Doctor stood silent for a long moment, not seeming to hear. Instead, it seemed that his senses were reaching out far beyond the plateau, far beyond the valley, listening and watching for any sign of what they were looking for. Finally, he turned away from the cliff, his heavy coat flapping in the harsh wind. 'There's no sign of life here, aside from a bit of grass and some shrubs.' He kicked at the ground in agitation, stubbing his toe on a rock jutting out of the ground.

'But didn't you say that all the disruptions we've seen lead here?' Carlos was struggling to understand what was going on. That was something that seemed to happen often since he had started travelling with the Doctor. Thankfully, the Doctor always seemed happy enough to answer his questions. Carlos got the feeling he just enjoyed lecturing to people.

'Yes, Agatho. The planet at the dead centre of the Miltiades Cluster.' The Doctor walked away from the edge, passing the TARDIS and heading down the slope. 'Come on, Carlos. There's got to be something here. Some answers.'

The Doctor had come to Agatho looking for answers. Several days earlier, the TARDIS had found herself on one of the outer worlds of the Miltiades Cluster, a remote group of stars far from the important parts of the galaxy and containing a total of just a dozen inhabitable planets. In the entire Cluster, there were only a few hundred million people living on eleven of those twelve planets, and the Doctor had found temporal disturbances, intentional ones, on all of them. He had tracked them across each world until he had discovered the Eclipse. According to the inhabitants of each planet, a group of five travellers calling themselves the Eclipse had arrived under mysterious circumstances. They had proceeded to cause significant alterations to the natural timelines of the Cluster, because each disturbance rippled forward in time across the whole region, affecting all of the other worlds in the area.

The Doctor had found a pattern. With instincts only a Time Lord could possess, the Doctor had realized that all of the disturbances, the ripples in time, were forming patterns of interference that all led back to one central point, the planet called Agatho. The Doctor also realized that the only people who were capable of creating such elegant and calculated disturbances must be Time Lords themselves. So Carlos found himself being dragged halfway across a nearly empty sector of space to the single planet in the Cluster totally devoid of intelligent life. He was certain that they were alone on that world. At least, up until the point that they met Callistus.

They had been walking down along a narrow ridge, heading toward what the Doctor hoped would be an open plain, when the man had stepped out in front of them. Carlos had no idea where he had come from; he had simply stepped out of the deep shadows cast by the rocks around them.

'Hello, Doctor,' the new arrival said, smiling. 'I'm glad to see that you're in good health.' There was a suppressed urgency about him, and a sense of age that defied his apparently youthful appearance. He was short, with close-cropped fair hair, and was wearing a long cloak made of a rough material that was a blue so deep it was almost black. It had a hood, but it hung unused behind the man's back.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, staring at him suspiciously. 'I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. Have we met before?'

'Oh yes,' the other answered, distantly. He pulled his thoughts back to the present. 'But that was long ago, and I'm quite sure you wouldn't remember. Suffice it to say that we have a home in common,' he told the Doctor solemnly. 'My name's Callistus.'

The Doctor eyed him warily. 'Huh,' he grunted, 'A Time Lord, then? And how did you come to be here, in such a desolate place as this? Is the High Council planning on transforming this into some glorious new Time Lord resort? A lovely place for a nice little weekend getaway for every Gallifreyan and his forty-some cousins?'

Unexpectedly, Callistus smiled broadly at the Doctor's reaction. 'You always did enjoy giving people a hard time...' He trailed off, and the smile disappeared. Carlos got the distinct feeling from his expression that Callistus had said something he shouldn't have. The Doctor didn't seem to notice, though. 'The High Council detected the disturbances to the timeline in the Cluster. They sent me here to try and discover the reason behind it, and to stop it if I can,' Callistus continued.

'And what have you found?' The Doctor had seemingly become entirely engrossed with the handle of his walking stick, and had tossed out the question as if he were asking about the weather. Callistus was also trying to put on an air of nonchalance, but he wasn't nearly as good at the act as the Doctor was.

'It seems to be just another plot by the agents of the Celestial Intervention Agency,' Callistus shrugged. This visibly grabbed the Doctor's attention, and there was a glimmer of satisfaction hiding somewhere deep within Callistus' eyes.

The Doctor recovered himself, but the act was gone. It was down to business, his earlier mistrust of Callistus put aside, but not forgotten. 'The CIA? What are they up to now?'

'From what I've been able to find out, they discovered some ancient prophecy dating all the way back to before the Dark Times. Whatever it said, it was enough to scare the Agency into openly interfering with the history of every planet in the immediate area.'

'That's definitely not like the CIA that I know. They've always preferred somewhat more subtle interference. And,' he added, uncomfortably, 'whenever more direct action was required, they always seemed to find someone else to do their work for them.' The Doctor tapped his stick against his chin as he thought. 'What does an old Gallifreyan prophecy have to do with a region of space as remote as the Miltiades Cluster?' he asked, to no one in particular. 'It's nowhere near the majority of galactic civilization in this time period. No one in the rest of the galaxy cares about the Cluster.'

Callistus nodded in agreement. 'That's exactly the reason the CIA came here. They've been making plans to leave Gallifrey entirely -- relocate themselves to the Cluster. An advance party was sent to make preparations for the rest of the Agency. They've been calling themselves --'

'The Eclipse,' Carlos completed. The Doctor gave him an encouraging grin, happy to see that he was following along, but Callistus barely even seemed to notice that he had spoken.

The Doctor said, 'If the Agency is disrupting the flow of time-space throughout the entire Cluster, they're planning on doing much more than just finding new residence.' He focused on Callistus' eyes, peering down into them as if he could dig out the answers he needed from within the Time Lord's brain. 'This planet appears to be the focal point of their entire operation. Are they here? Now?'

Callistus averted his eyes from the Doctor's penetrating gaze, turning away to look further along the ridge. 'Let me show you something.'

As they crossed the rocky plain, Carlos became aware that there was something wrong. He didn't feel as though he were about to be placed in terrible danger (a feeling that he had been experiencing far too often as of late), but rather as if there were something... misplaced. He was still trying to figure out exactly what was bugging him even as they walked through the empty streets of the deserted town in the middle of the plain. The old village was centred in a depression, the ground sloping up into the mountains around it in a nearly perfect circle. It looked as though the town was heavier than the ground below could handle and that it was pushing itself towards the centre of the planet.

It could have been a ghost town out of one of those old movies about the American West, those cheesy 'Spaghetti Westerns' of the 1960s. All that was missing was the windblown tumbleweed, but given the distinct dearth of plant life on Agatho, their absence wasn't much of a surprise. The buildings were (or rather had been) wooden, but most of them had been reduced to battered wood planks and a couple of doors that were just barely hanging to their frames.

The three of them stopped in the middle of what Carlos imagined was probably the town square. Callistus stayed near the Doctor's side, his eyes darting around the square suspiciously, and Carlos wandered a short distance away to one of the piles of timber. Bending down, he tried to lift up a broken board, but curiously it seemed to be frozen to the ground. The Doctor turned to watch Carlos thoughtfully as he tugged at the lumber. 'Do you notice anything unusual about this town?'

Carlos shrugged, giving up his struggle with the board and turning back to the Doctor. 'It's empty. There aren't any Eclipse, or any Time Lords, or anything else at all.' Not exactly the most exciting thing you could find on a dead planet. It certainly didn't come anywhere close to the beautiful cities they had seen on the other planets in the Cluster. 'If it wasn't for the doors, you wouldn't even be able to tell that this had ever been anything more than a pile of broken wood. There's not much here.'

'There's quite a bit here, actually,' the Doctor replied, swinging his arms wide to encompass the whole of the town around him. Callistus ducked neatly to avoid being hit in the head by the Doctor's stick. Carlos thought he heard the Time Lord mumble something about how 'the old man always used to do that,' but he wasn't sure.

'At least, there's significantly more than you would expect from a planet that has never been inhabited,' the Doctor continued. His voice was loud enough that it should have echoed around the remaining buildings and the rock walls behind them, but the sound just died in the air, as if the town were sucking it up. He lowered his voice, turning to look at Callistus. 'It's not hard to figure out that this is the work of the Agency, but why would they go to the trouble of creating such primitive structures? Especially seeing as they were so easily worn down by Agatho's environment...' He walked over to the board Carlos had been pulling at, stabbing at it harshly with the end of his walking stick. It resolutely refused to splinter. '...But are now apparently quite solid.'

'That's not all. Come over here.' Callistus motioned towards the nearest of the intact doors. It stood closed in it's frame, but most of the surrounding wall was gone, scattered in a pile on the ground. A rusted light fixture hung crookedly from the top of the frame, directly above the small number '3' that was painted onto the door itself. Walking over to stand directly in front of the entrance, Callistus placed his hand on the chipped paneling, motioning for the Doctor to do the same.

'Oh my,' the Doctor said as soon as his hand made contact with the wood. 'This isn't good at all.' He turned around to take in the town again, seeing it in a whole new light. 'The Agency didn't just build a town, they built a ghost town.'

'What?' Carlos wasn't following what the Doctor meant. 'Why would anyone want to build a town like this?'

The Doctor turned to look at him. 'Don't you see?' he said. 'I can't believe I didn't feel it sooner. This town doesn't exist!'

Carlos closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'What do you mean? I know there's not much left, but this was obviously a town at some point.'

'No, it wasn't. I wouldn't imagine that all of this has been here for more than, oh, a few days at most,' the Doctor told him. 'Here, feel this.' He took Carlos by the arm, put his hand against the door. It felt curiously warm in the cold air, and it was vibrating slightly. 'Doesn't that feel at all familiar to you?'

The wood was rough under Carlos' hand, the paint chips catching on his fingertips but not peeling away. It was still vibrating, and if he listened carefully he thought he could almost hear it humming...

The realization struck Carlos like lightning. 'It's a TARDIS! That's right, isn't it?'

The Doctor beamed proudly at him. 'Exactly. This door, this whole town, is an extension of a TARDIS chameleon circuit. That's why everything seems frozen, immovable. None of it's real.' He looked around him again, wrinkling his nose in disapproval. 'And I think that the CIA needs to watch fewer Westerns in the future.' He turned to Callistus, only to find that he had started to wander toward the nearest intact doorway. 'Oh no, not another one,' the Doctor moaned. Callistus turned back to him and nodded solemnly.

'The one you're standing by is number three,' he told the Doctor, indicating the number on the door frame. 'And this one,' he continued, pointing to his own, 'is number two.'

Carlos ran towards another door, opposite the direction Callistus had taken, and peered up at the number beneath the lamp. A lamp, he noted, that was identical to the lamps attached to every other frame. 'This is number four!' he read off, then began running towards the final structure that stood around the square. The Doctor had walked out into the middle of the clearing and was making motions with his walking stick, measuring out the distance between the doors. Carlos hurried up to him, making sure to stop before he would be in the way of the Doctor's stick. 'The last one's number five,' he told him.

The Doctor whirled his stick about in a circle, pointing at each disguised TARDIS in turn. 'Five, four, three, two...' he stopped, his stick pointing towards a relatively empty corner of the square. 'But where's number one?'

Carlos noticed that the wind had suddenly stopped blowing. A moment later he realized that, for some reason, he could still hear it, and it seemed to be getting louder. As he watched, a flashing beacon of light materialized in midair directly ahead of where the Doctor was pointing his stick, and he knew that he wasn't hearing the wind. The beacon resolved itself into an old-fashioned light bulb, which was then surrounded by a rusted-out lamp housing. As the new TARDIS materialized, the rushing sound grew even louder, sounding not so much like someone wheezing or groaning, but rather more like someone trying to catch their breath.

A frame and a wooden door popped into existence below the light bulb, accompanied by a resounding thud. The Doctor could just make out the '1' painted on the chipped paneling. The entrance opened a moment later, and a figure stepped out. His hair was red, and he had a small beard growing around his mouth. He was wearing a suit not unlike Carlos', but the man's was completely black. His shirt had a high collar, and he didn't have on a tie. 'I desperately need to have a long talk with their tailor,' the Doctor mumbled to himself. Carlos heard all the other doors opening around them, and four other men stepped out to join the first. The Doctor glanced discretely at TARDIS number two, but Callistus had disappeared. No matter; he had more immediate concerns than the whereabouts of a High Council operative.

'Zosimus,' the Doctor pronounced. 'the Agency let you out to play again, did it? I see that you still have all the same friends.' He gestured at the four other CIA agents that had clustered around him and Carlos. Vitalian, Clement, Sabinian, and Agapetus. Those were their names, the Doctor remembered. They were hard to forget after last time.

Zosimus glared back at the Doctor, a tight and unfriendly smile forming on his lips. 'I hope you're not still sore about the last time we met, Doctor. I was acting directly on orders from the High Council, you know.'

'Sore?' the Doctor exclaimed. 'You ambushed me, ransacked my TARDIS, and dragged me back to Gallifrey in shackles - shackles, for Rassilon's sake - all so you could get your hands on a single bottle!'

'It is a very special bottle, Doctor. But then, you know that. You know what's inside. That's why you stole it in the first place.' Zosimus shot the Doctor a malicious grin.

The Doctor shrunk back as if he'd been struck. He was suddenly on edge, nervous, worried. Carlos had never seen him like that. 'We won't get into that,' he said quietly.

Zosimus' grin grew wider. 'Are you sure you don't want to? I'm willing to bet that your friend here would be interested to know what happened to his two predecessors during your little trip to Sphinx space.' He put on an expression of mock disappointment. 'But I suppose we really don't have time for that, do we? The Ascension has already begun.'

As quickly as it had gone, the Doctor's strength was back. 'What do you mean?'

In response, Zosimus pointed skyward. 'Eclipse,' he said simply. The Doctor looked up.

Agatho's sun was disappearing.

A patch of black was spreading out from the centre of the disc of light, feeding greedily on the energy in the star. After just a few moments, the black had consumed the entire sun, creating a globe of pure and intense darkness, darker than anything the Doctor had ever seen. As he looked, he could tell that there was nothing within the void. Anything it touched just simply ceased to exist. At least, as far as the universe at large was concerned.

Without the light of the sun, the sky was pitched into night, the stars shining brightly. But the darkness wasn't stopping at the edge of the sun; it continued to grow, blocking out the pinpoints of light in the night sky. Horrified, the Doctor finally realized what Zosimus' intentions were.

'So that's what you've been planning, then.' The Doctor began to walk forward, slowly closing the gap between himself and the CIA agent. 'That's why you've been toying with the timelines of a dozen worlds. By making slight alterations to the history of each world in the Cluster, you could create a localized temporal instability. The Cluster's remote enough that your meddling wouldn't have affected the rest of the galaxy at large.'

Zosimus began to back up, matching the Doctor's pace step by step.

The Doctor continued, 'Thanks to you, the whole Cluster's future is undetermined. Without a future of its own, you can give it any future you want. You've connected your TARDISes to block-transfer engines, haven't you? You're going to use them to rebuild this part of the universe following your own grand design.'

'Not just rebuild, Doctor,' Zosimus said. He stopped backing away. 'Remove.'

The Doctor stopped as well. 'What?'

'We've decided to leave this universe entirely. Together, our TARDISes and their block-transfer engines will elevate this star group out of reality, into a place where only thoughts exist. Conceptual space, if you will.' The evil grin graced Zosimus' face once more. 'Do you know why we made the decision to do this? We discovered the future of the Time Lords. And do you know what that future is?' The Doctor said nothing. 'War, Doctor. In five years, maybe six, all of Gallifrey will be at war. And the enemy is something more terrible than anyone could have imagined.'

'You really ought to try to get to know them better before you say rude things like that.'

Turning to look behind him, the Doctor saw that Callistus had reappeared. The agents were parting to make way for him. Even Carlos could tell that there was recognition and even a touch of fear in their eyes. Callistus, small as he was, had an imposing presence, and the other Time Lords didn't dare get in his way.

'You,' Zosimus declared in quiet rage.

Callistus' cold smile was enough to send a chill through Zosimus, which was quite an achievement in the rapidly cooling air. 'Hello, Zosimus. I'm sorry I wasn't able to catch up with you sooner.'

Smugly glancing at Zosimus, the Doctor said, 'I'm afraid it seems the High Council doesn't approve of your little plan.'

Zosimus snorted incredulously. 'The High Council? Is that who he told you he worked for? Try again.' Before he had a chance to continue, he happened to glance up at the rapidly darkening sky. The eclipse had almost completely filled the sky now, and he could see the aurora in the upper atmosphere that meant it was about to reach the planet.

Callistus had also noticed. 'Doctor, you must get back to your TARDIS,' he said urgently. 'You heard what he said. The Agency is planning to remove the entire Cluster into conceptual space. If you're still on Agatho when the eclipse reaches the surface, you'll become just another idea in the CIA's new world.'

'But we can't led them do this,' the Doctor pleaded. 'There are millions of people in the Cluster. All of them will die!'

From the open doorway of his TARDIS, Zosimus called back, 'You can't stop it now. The entire Agency are in the Cluster by now, waiting in their TARDISes. The Celestine Ascension has begun. Nothing can halt the process.' Even as he disappeared within his ship, Zosimus was still displaying his less-than-winning smile.

The Doctor felt a hand on his arm. He looked up to see Carlos standing next to him, shaking from the cold and from fear. 'Please, Doctor,' he said quietly. 'I don't want to spend the rest of eternity in a world that they're going to create. Let's get back to the TARDIS.'

The Doctor looked around himself, his eyes desperately tracking from the Agency TARDISes to Carlos and Callistus. He turned his head skyward to look at the stars and planets, imagining each of the people who's hopes and dreams were about to be destroyed forever, but all he could see was the darkness. The eclipse. He turned back to Carlos.

'All right,' he said quietly. 'Let's go.'

The three time travellers raced back up the ridge to the plateau where the Doctor's TARDIS was waiting. Taking the key from around his neck, the Doctor unlocked the ship. Carlos didn't waste any time in shooting through to the safety of the console room. As he stood on the threshold, the Doctor looked back at Callistus, looking with newfound curiosity at his strange blue cloak. 'Why did you disappear back there? You could have helped me stop Zosimus. We could have saved millions of people!'

Callistus just shook his head. 'I knew I'd be recognized. Besides, I wasn't here to stop him anyway. I wasn't sent to save millions of lives. Just one.'

The Doctor stared at him. 'Me?' He gave a short, hard laugh. 'That makes it quite obvious that you don't work for the High Council, so who do you work for? Who are you?'

Callistus told him. 'Callistusalfiliusanilungbarrowmas,' he said. And then he stepped back into the tall black rectangle of shadow that had appeared behind him, and was gone.

Reeling from the revelation, the Doctor stepped into the TARDIS. Just as it finished pushing itself out of space and time, the eclipse reached the surface of Agatho. There was nothing but darkness.

The TARDIS made her way through the space-time vortex, putting herself as far as she possibly could from the darkness that had once been the Miltiades Cluster. In the console room, the Doctor leaned heavily on the console as he turned on the scanner to watch the Agency's eclipse consume the rest of the stars in the Cluster. After a few seconds more, there was nothing left; the void had collapsed back in on itself, taking the stars and planets and millions of dead people with it into conceptual space. Carlos had collapsed in the black wooden rocking chair nearby, not wanting to see.

'He said we shared a common home,' the Doctor murmured to himself, 'but I didn't realize he was being quite so specific.' He turned the scanner off, pulled off his coat, and went to the hat stand to hang it up.

Opening his eyes, Carlos turned in the rocker. 'What did you say?'

The Doctor walked across the room to stand in front of his friend. He put on a brilliant smile that almost but didn't quite reach his eyes. 'How would you fancy a trip to Abbadon?'

He was hiding something, Carlos knew, but he saw the haunted look in the Doctor's eyes and decided not to try and find out what right now. Instead, he shrugged. 'I've never been there.'

'Splendid! You'll just love it, I know you will. Lovely planet, lots of green gardens and purple streams. It'll take us a while to get there,' he continued enthusiastically as he set the co-ordinates, 'So why don't you go and get yourself something to eat from the kitchens. I'm going to rummage through the library for a bit.'

Carlos smiled and said, 'Okay, whatever you say, Doctor.' Hoping that it wouldn't take him too terribly long to find where the TARDIS was hiding the kitchens today, he wandered off down the corridors.

As Carlos left, the Doctor sagged against the console, visibly exhausted. The smile was gone from his face and from his eyes. He set the coordinates for Abbadon absentmindedly, then set off down the dark corridors towards the TARDIS library. With Carlos in the kitchens, the Doctor had a moment by himself, to reflect on what he had just witnessed, and what it might mean for the future.

The Doctor was alone with his thoughts.