The Third Encounter
PART IV
by John Seavey
Mel looked at the tall stranger with the lean body and the long, delicate fingers. "How--" her voice cracked nervously--"how do I know you're the Doctor?"
He smiled gregariously. "Well, last time you simply checked my pulse. You know, the double pulse of a Time Lord? Of course, Dorothée always hit me under the collarbone, but I think this will work just as well, with less all-around pain." He slowly reached out, offering his wrist to her.
She took it tentatively, feeling once again the strange thrumming sensation, like holding a hummingbird's wing. "It's a double pulse, alright," she said. She looked at him suspiciously. "But even if you are the Doctor, why should I trust you? You forced me to leave the TARDIS with a dodgy con artist, you stuck me in the middle of nowhere--" she was acutely aware that she'd already said all this to the fake Doctor, but that didn't matter now-- "I wound up being 'rescued' by one of your enemies! You're a manipulative, deceitful, murdering villain, and--"
"Mel," said the Doctor, "I'm afraid that the last time we met, I wasn't totally honest with you."
"You're telling me!"
"No, what I means is--before the whole mess started with Jason, I recieved a message from my future self. It's a habit I've tried hard to break, but it's rather difficult to avoid doing."
"Why?" she asked, curious despite herself.
"Because," he said wryly, "you recieve the message before you've made the decision to send it. And once you've recieved it, you have to send it; otherwise, you create a rather nasty paradox."
"So what was the message?" asked Mel.
"That I was going to be seeing you soon--and when I did, I had to do everything I could to destroy your trust and faith in me. That it was very important to make you wary of me."
Mel's face lit up. "Then none of what you said was true?"
"Some of it was," he said reluctantly. "But presented with a different slant, distorted in ways to make it sound worse than it was."
"I see," said Mel coldly. "So when Benny said that you blew up those seven planets--that just 'sounded worse than it was'?"
"I didn't do it," said the Doctor. It sounded bad, even to him. "It was an ancient Gallifreyan warlord--he destroyed them to prevent the escape of an extradimensional conqueror called Yssgaroth."
"You could have stopped him." Mel's voice was harsh, accusatory.
"No, I could not!" thundered the Doctor. "The destruction of the Seven Planets was a matter of recorded history! I could no more alter that than I could prevent the Holocaust! The consequences would be..." he softened, "...catastrophic." He sighed. "There are some things even a Time Lord cannot change, Mel."
Mel looked at him for a long while. Eventually, she nodded. "You know," she said, "that it will take you a long time to regain that trust."
The Doctor said, "I understand. I can start by finding out what you're doing crouched down in a back alley, with claw marks all along your right arm."
"There was an imposter, Doctor. He looked just like you--the old you, I mean...but then he changed. Transformed into a hideous thing, with horrible eyes that--they made you helpless...it chased me, nearly caught up with me once or twice, which is how I got this." She looked down at the scratches in her arm, and gasped in dismay.
Each one had turned a solid black, and dark streaks were beginning to run their way up her arm.
"Doctor," she squeaked, "I think I've been poisoned!" She stood up, and a wave of dizziness prompted her to sit right back down again.
"Don't panic," the Doctor said calmly, "the first thing we'll do is--" A snarl from the other end of the alley cut him off. As he turned, he saw it.
It had shed all traces of the Seventh Doctor's form, transforming into a huge, hideous gargoyle with dark skin and wings and darker eyes that the Doctor instinctively avoided. Acidic drool dripped from its fangs to pit the pavement, and its claws were wet with venom.
"A Soul Eater," the Doctor gasped, his face ashen.
"I find my prey at last," it hissed. "And with the Doctor, Time's Champion no longer. My master has waited long for this, Ephemeral. You are without protection--and now you shall die!" It sprang, claws outstretched, directly at the Doctor.