We was making our way down through the Mill now, the Doctor checking every nook and cranny. ‘I was sitting there one day, still chained to the wall, when Edmund came smashing through the door. Steaming with that red stuff. But there was nothing I could do.’

The very image I’d seen burned into the poor fella’s eye! That had been the beginning of this whole strange saga. But how was it to end?

‘What is that stuff, though?’ I asked the Doctor.

‘Deadly poison,’ he said gravely. ‘And Mrs Gillyflower’s dipping her Pilgrims in a dilute form to protect them. Preserve them. Process didn’t work on me. Maybe because I’m not human. I ended up on the reject pile.’

‘Preserve them against what, though?’

‘Well, according to her, the coming Apocalypse!’

I thought back to the chapel and that queer congregation of true believers. ‘“When the End of Days is come and judgement rains down upon us all … ”’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No. What did you say?’

‘Something Mrs Gillyflower said. One of her sermons.’

The Doctor looked thoughtful at that and rubbed his chin.

‘Madam will come looking for me,’ I said at last. ‘We’d best get on.’

‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Gotta find Clara.’

‘But Doctor—!’

He’d already sprinted to the end of the corridor and had the door open.

‘Clara’s dead!’ I insisted. ‘Isn’t she?’

He paused on the threshold and glanced back at me.

‘It’s … complicated.’

*

EXTRACT FROM DATA CORE – 7900 – XVL COMMANDER STRAX

It was never easy battling the Rutans. What? I hear you say, they’re just big blobs of green slime like something you might find rolling from the filthy nasal hole of a Hu-man child, aren’t they? Well, yes and no. The Rutans, you see, have – and I hate to admit this – an advantage over we Sontarans. They can change their shape. Now I happen to think that the Sontaran shape is very pleasing. In fact, IT IS THE BEST SHAPE CONCEIVABLE throughout the universe. All universes. Even the little pocket ones where the laws of physics are suspended and strange things happen against a backdrop of black-and-white images of stately homes and topiary bushes. But the Rutans, via their damnable and useful ability to take on the shape of others, can blend in. This is a treacherous and cowardly thing to do. We were taught by General Oroxx that a warrior goes into battle clearly marked – if possible in bright blue armour – all guns blazing, hoping to take as many of the enemy with him before his own inevitable destruction. This was the creed I lived for. Until my disgrace.

But I shall not dwell on that.

For now, let me record that, on the fog-shrouded night in the pointless Earth conurbation of Bradford, I found myself disgraced again.

I was lost.