Chapter Text
...:zero:.
Her needle broke skin directly above the young specimen's clavicle, where the inferior aetheric artery tied a constrictor knot around the supra-jugular vena cava. Ordinarily, the tedious task of drawing blood would be left to a junior assistant; but too few of their number had the stomach for this kind of work, and those who still lived were needed elsewhere, on the front timelines. The Rani was as alone as she'd ever been during her exile.
(And thank goodness for that small favor. At least this way the Rani could be certain that her work would not be bungled by frivolous octogenarians.)
The Rani filled her syringe with fresh arterial fluid, and enjoyed the satisfaction of a job well done. She supposed that she found this menial activity calming. Outside the transduction barriers, beyond the concrete walls of her lab, the flow of time roiled and eddied, churned by passing Meanwhiles until it no longer knew its proper course. The Rani's mind could not stop shivering. She was glad of any excuse to concentrate on her hands.
The Rani finished and withdrew, allowing the specimen's skin to heal over. Regeneration was already beginning to set it. The Rani removed the blanket that covered her specimen's shattered legs, and sat down to take notes on the manner in which the flesh knit. She could have amputated the limbs to speed things up, had she been so inclined, but she was a scientist, not a doctor. Coddling these soldiers was not going to advance anyone's knowledge of Gallifreyan biology.
Minutes passed. Blood dried. Bones slid back into place with a squishy squelch-crack. The Rani was considering leaving to check on her other specimens -- most of whom were pacing off their post-regeneration mania -- when the young Time Lady woke with an audible grunt.
Lovely. The child was pushing herself into the corner of the bed. She appeared to be in the early stages of working herself into hysteria. It was a predictable reaction to waking up in a strange laboratory after getting caught in a Dalek raid, and as such, it was nothing that the Rani needed to record. The Rani decided to nip it in the bud before the yelling started.
"Cadet Ataraxia of the Arcalian Fleet, I welcome you to the medical facilities of Miasimia Goria," the Rani said, reading awkwardly from the mental script she'd developed for these situations. All those long, proud centuries of refusing to cultivate a bedside manner were proving problematic, now that her peace of mind depended on keeping wounded youngsters off her back.
"Be assured that you are relatively secure here," the Rani continued. "This complex lies within the allied temporal-spatial territory of the Could-Have-Been King. The crew of your TARDIS dropped you off here after your lower half was crushed by a fallen support beam." She called up the relevant section of the girl's file. "You've been classified as Subject Four-Beta for the purposes of my medical database. I am the Rani. I will be personally supervising your regeneration process."
"They what? They sent me to the R-" Subject Four-Beta bit back whatever it was that she'd been about to say. "I mean. Yes. Yes, of course, milady."
The Rani arched an eyebrow. Subject Four-Beta shifted an inch backwards. Perhaps this one possessed some small measure of native intelligence. What a marvel; there was hope for their species yet.
"Initial physical recovery is proceeding as normal. Do you have any ongoing adverse reactions to report? Any physiological outliers I should be aware of?"
"I don't know," Subject Four-Beta said. "I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. I've only read books. This is my first regeneration."
Subject Four-Beta ran bony fingers through her thin, silvering hair. Hm. That must be a nervous compulsion of some sort. Hardly efficient behavior for a TARDIS pilot. Something ought to be done.
The young woman hugged her arms to her chest, and looked the Rani square in the eye. She had mustered every scrap of her courage in an attempt to keep from collapsing. It made her seem fragile, and a little pathetic.
"Will it hurt, Lady Rani?"
The Rani planted her hands on her hips. "Don't be melodramatic, Subject Four-Beta. There is no reason for the process to hurt, so long as you don't botch things up. I'm only here to keep an eye out for egregious incompetence on the part of undergraduates."
"Understood." Subject Four-Beta slid her gaze to the floor. "If the crew of my TARDIS is here, then I'd- um- I'd like to speak with Captain Pyrrho. Before I change."
"The Lord President has decreed that TARDISes must not stay docked here." Not since that weasel of a Master buggered off to parts unknown. "Your captain will be back to pick you up in forty-eight hours, present subjective time, when your new regeneration has settled."
"Ah."
The Rani drew another blood sample and set the lab's surveillance systems to notify her once Subject Four-Beta's artron saturation reached gold critical. The regeneration proceeded without incident and, in a matter of moments, the pale and nervous specimen was replaced by a rotund woman with a healthy flush. Subject Four-Beta immediately started scrawling explicit love letters to her commanding officer all over the walls. The Rani took advantage of Subject Four-Beta's distraction to conduct a discreet mental probe of her hormone-addled psyche.
Twenty minutes after the Rani finished her case notes, the building exploded.
+++
...:cycle one:.
Like any good researcher, the Rani was accustomed to gathering facts and distilling them into reasonable hypotheses. She'd done it in the ivory towers of academia. She'd done it in the squalid depths of exile. She'd done it since the day she was born; the day they brought her before the Untempered Schism, and showed her the impossible dimensions of life, and set her mind to grasping so desperately for an explanation that it had never, ever stopped. A little thing like getting killed in an explosion was hardly enough to turn her from reason at this point. It wasn't as though this was her first experience with agonizing death.
So. Facts.
The Rani had felt her lungs sear to cinders from the inside-out.
The Rani was now sitting at her data entry console, in spite of the aforementioned searing.
The Rani's skin remained a rich mahogany, scored into numbness by the scars of her great failure, and when she checked her reflection in the console screen, she could see that her nose retained its prominent hook.
Given those facts, the Rani felt confident in hypothesizing that she'd been caught by some sort of temporal recurrence loop. She'd died and returned to life without undergoing regeneration. What other explanation could there be? If this were a hallucination, or a construct her biodata had conjured to keep her sane within the Matrix, then surely her heartsbeat would not have sped into a compound meter, and she would not be suffering the weight of nausea in her belly. The Rani understood the physical cues relating to emotional distress, right down to their individual triggering neurons. She would not wish such inconvenient reactions upon herself.
The Rani's fingertips skittered unsteadily across the across the data entry board, searching for the diagnostic systems. Muscle-memory served her well, and soon enough, she was staring at a diagram of the laboratory's transduction barriers. Nothing in the readings struck the Rani as out-of-the-ordinary. A few power spikes showed here and there, commensurate with great temporal stress, but for the moment, her defences were holding as steady as ever. It should take the better part of a billion years to wear away the boundaries of her compound.
As the Time War dragged on, the Rani had come to depend on the notion that death was her only way out of this prison. Now she was denied even that grim certainty.
The Rani moved her hand to the door frame to steady herself. Hysterical laughter was not helping. Hysterical laughter was not helping at all, and she ought to push it down, close it off, translate it into harsh words for her specimens. Only there wasn't really a point, was there? Damnable recurrence loop. The whole of space-time was falling into anarchy, but it only made her cage that much stronger, and--
The Rani was rescued from her descent into panic by the hollow, insistent noise that wheezed in from the hallway.
Her work. Yes, there was work to be done. A TARDIS was arriving.
The Rani stood and took a pair of deep breaths. Then she squared her shoulders, tied her hair back, and strode off to the landing foyer. TARDISes weren't the only creatures that took care to announce their entrance; her boot-heels beat a regimental march against the smooth tiled floor.
Alas, ill fortune was not yet done with the Rani, and she was disappointed to find that none of her visitors had disembarked early enough to be properly intimidated by her approach. The ship growing out of the Rani's flooring wore the form of a brushed-steel coat stand. A pair of fresh red laboratory robes draped were on the upper pegs.
"Well?" She snapped at the furniture. "Get on with it. I don't know where you think you are, but I'm not going to brew tea and fetch biscuits."
Nothing like a good annoyance to help her center herself. Attend to the angry scientist, children, and pay no mind to the sweat pooled at the nape of her neck.
The Rani knew from previous experience that watching the TARDIS' doors open would be disorienting, but she did so anyway. The crisp gold hems of the laboratory robes floated up and out, extending into fourth-dimensional geometries, until a bright portal resolved itself between their asymmetric folds. A dashing young officer stood silhouetted in the threshold. His subordinates, flanking, had their energy weapons raised and pointed at her head.
"Captain."
"Milady." The boy saluted -- a human affectation, which had come into fashion after the Doctor joined the ranks of command. "Captain Pyrrho, Second Wing of the Arcalian Fleet. We're here from the Merkava front. I have a patient for you."
Well, obviously.
"I would presume so," the Rani said. She wheeled a gurney over, from its resting-place near the south wall. "Do you feel anything odd, Captain? A misalignment of your instincts? A disturbance in your seventh sense?"
"I-- No?" Captain Pyrrho blinked, taken aback. He stepped out of his TARDIS -- my, my, breaking regulations already! what were Academy standards coming to -- to stiffly inspect the gurney's stability. It gave him an excuse to lean in close to her, and lower his voice. "How did you know, Lady Rani? Am I that easy to read?" The Rani took that to be a rhetorical question. "Don't tell the cadets I said so, but I think the thing that attacked might not have been Dalek in origin."
"Our ally, His Concurrent Majesty?"
"I can't say. It's hard to keep hold of my thoughts, out here." Captain Pyrrho cleared his throat, then stepped back and away. "What I wouldn't give to be behind a transduction barrier like you are. We can barely keep our ship upright with space-time in this state."
The Rani nodded. Another fact for her collection: not all of the Time Lords caught in this recurrence loop were aware of what was happening. Indeed, it was quite possible that the Rani, shielded and sheltered, was the only one whose senses were still sharp enough to pick up on the problem.
Fat lot of good that did her.
A keening sort of noise rattled out from the depths of the TARDIS. Captain Pyrrho affected a constipated look that might have been noble concern. The Rani's hearts settled in her chest, and cold purpose overcame her fevered thoughts.
Yes, of course. The good it did her. She should have realized. What did it matter if this prison was likely to become her grave? She had this one research subject, for as many trials as she liked, and no council oversight to stop her.
Oh, the things the Rani could learn.
The Rani tightened her grip on the gurney's metal handles.
"Give her to me," she said.
Captain Pyrrho had the nerve to puff up his chest. As though this were a good time to show off for his little friends! Hah. Nobility was not among the native instincts of their species. This Captain Pyrrho was as scared and lost as the rest of them, compensating for his lack of spine with a giant starched collar. "This isn't really a field hospice, is it? It can't be. I'm not stupid. With all due respect, your reputation does precede you, Lady Rani. There's no reason to drop Cadet Ataraxia off here. She'd be fine if we kept her on board, and put her in our zero room."
The Rani balled her hands into fists, testing the sharpness of her manicure against the fleshy parts of her palms.
"Give her to me," the Rani repeated. "You have your orders from the High Council."
"My Lord Doctor has told his subordinates in the Prydonian Fleet that they should make excuses not to drop personnel here."
"I've been informed." By Captain Pyrrho himself, during their first encounter. Not that the Rani hadn't already deduced as much.
"Cadet Ataraxia is a good subordinate. If you-"
Oh, for fuck's sake. The Rani advanced on Captain Pyrrho until he'd retreated all the way back into his TARDIS. She didn't touch him. She didn't have to. Stupid, sniveling, idiot boy, who still thought that the breath of a renegade could poison him, and that an elder's disapproval might very well stop his hearts. If he'd had any real intention of opposing her, then he wouldn't have told her his sorry little doubts.
"You are dismissed, Captain!"
The TARDIS crew accepted the Rani's gurney, and loaded Subject Four-Beta onto it without complaint. She ought to have shouted instructions, she supposed, but her mind was already elsewhere, plotting a preliminary testing regimen.
She'd already failed once, and that was once too often. It wasn't going to happen again.
+++
...:cycle nineteen:.
The Rani held a mug of hot Orion chai in both her hands. She didn't dare drink it -- the beverage was as viscous as motor-oil, and highly toxic to artron-based life-forms -- but that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy its vapours. Its acid-slick smell burned the fog away from her senses, and choked the area of her brain that controlled fatigue into a temporary shut-down.
Ah, sweet clarity. This was the last half-litre of Orion chai in the galaxy. It was even better than the last time she'd brewed it, nine hours previous. The Rani's quality of life had markedly improved since the onset of the recurrence loop. There was a routine now, and an experimental process. All extraneous specimens were locked up and out of her way. Turbulence in the outside world was no longer relevant. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
The Rani had a place of her own, naturally, so she set down the chai, and walked over to Subject Four-Beta's side. When she saw the girl's lashes flutter, she slid into her usual greeting without preamble.
"Cadet Ataraxia of the Arcalian Fleet, I welcome you to the medical facilities of Miasimia Goria. Be assured that you are relatively secure here. This complex lies within the allied temporal-spatial territory of the Could-Have-Been King."
The Rani made a show of scribbling on her data-pad. There was no need to started a file, since all records created within the recurrence loop were unmade when time re-set itself, but she didn't need Subject Four-Beta catching onto that. Introducing a new psychological irritant would compromise the Rani's results for this cycle.
"The crew of your TARDIS dropped you off here after your lower half was crushed by a fallen support beam," the Rani continued. You've been classified as Subject Four-Beta for the purposes of my medical database. I am the Rani. I will be personally supervising your regeneration process."
"They what? They sent me to the R-" Subject Four-Beta swallowed. "I mean. Yes. Yes, of course, milady." Her gaze slid to her left wrist. "M- may I inquire as to why I am still strapped down?"
"You may, but I won't answer."
The Rani moved to the head of the bed, and placed her fingertips on Subject Four-Beta's temples. Her nails pressed little half-moons into the skin above the girl's eyebrows.
"But-" Subject Four-Beta tugged at her bonds.
"Hush," the Rani said. The smile on her face was genuine, which was probably why the Subject started shaking. "You're afraid to regenerate, aren't you? There's nothing to worry about. I'll be with you the entire time."
And with that, she sunk her talons deep into the young Time Lady's mind. Past the gauzy outer film of surface memory -- the smell of fresh grass, the weight Captain Pyrrho's hand on her shoulder, raw lightning striking her down and then oh lords oh lords the pain her legs -- towards the well of possibilities at her core.
Tsk. So much screaming. The Rani had never been good at understanding other people and their tedious emotional hang-ups. She made a mental note to use a gag next time. She grew weary of all this gibbering on about skulls.