Indie publisher of fantastic fiction for adults and younger readers
NOTE : This story is written as fan fiction. All rights are reserved to the respective owners.
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Bond pulled the Ferrari to the left and only just managed to avoid slamming into a tree. The chasing 4x4 wasn’t so lucky. Bond allowed himself a tight smile. Two down, one to go.
Now, it was just him… and the Spider-man Turbo Jeep.
“Can I have my car back, now?” the boy asked. Bond faked a fatherly smile at the child without taking his eyes off the radio controlled car chase winding its way across Clapham Common.
“I’ve commandeered your vehicle for the sake of national security,” he said from the side of his mouth, “Go and get an ice cream. By the time you get back, either I’ll be done or we’ll all be dead.”
The boy huffed. Bond concentrated on getting the boy’s Ferrari to the other side of the Common where his handlers were waiting for the USB stick he’d taped to the side of it. If they didn’t get their hands on that thing in the next thirty seconds…
The Spider-man Turbo Jeep put on a burst of speed and slammed into the side of Bond’s Ferrari. The boy’s eyebrows raised high at the string of swear-words he was suddenly treated to.
Somewhere else on the Common, among the families and joggers and dog walkers, the Quantum agent - hiding from the MI6 snipers just as Bond was hiding from the Quantum ones - pushed the sticks on the remote control he’d commandeered.
Bond’s car was rammed again - so hard, it went up on two wheels. Bond fought with the controls - if he went over now…
Spiderman made to charge one last time-
-only to be charged down by a monster truck, a dune buggy and Optimus Prime.
In fact, every single radio controlled car, truck and motor-trike – not to mention a few helicopters and aeroplanes - all suddenly converged on the chasing Spider-vehicle.
Bond didn’t make a habit of looking gift horses in the mouth. His car was back on four wheels.
He floored it.
Moments later, it was all over. USB stick handed off. Quantum agents on the run. World saved again. He handed the controller back to the waiting boy.
“Your country thanks you.”
The boy was not impressed. He stuck his tongue out at the secret agent before running off to retrieve his car from the far side of the park.
“And what about me?” came a voice behind Bond. “No-one ever thanks me. Well, once or twice, I s’pose, but something always happens to make them forget me again. Typical.”
Bond turned, his hands in his jacket pockets.
His jacket pockets were not empty.
“It was you that helped me, I take it,” he said. “With that thing?” He nodded at the object the stranger was holding - a tubular metal device with the green bulb on the end.
The stranger smiled, “Not just a pretty face, are you? Although, don’t get me started on your faces. Okay, here it is, Commander James Bond, servant of Queen and Country and saviour of planet Earth. There’s a danger coming and you need to stop it.”
Bond stood still for a moment, assessing the stranger. Ridiculous jacket. Ridiculous bow tie. Ridiculous braces. Ridiculous hair. But somehow, familiar. Somehow, inexplicably…
…on his side.
“Great danger?” Bond asked.
“Of course.”
“Risk of dying?”
The smile on the man’s face didn’t falter but something in his eyes did, “Always.”
“Well, then.” Bond took his hands out of his pockets. It was a testament to the stranger’s apparent trustworthiness that Bond’s hands were empty. “I suppose I’d better take you to my leader. I don’t have a problem with dying - I just try to make sure I don’t die first. You missed one, by the way.”
The stranger looked up. Action Man’s stealth plane hadn’t returned to its owner’s control along with all the other vehicles - it flew round in aimless circles above their heads.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you, Jimmy,” the stranger pointed his metal device directly up into the air. It made a whirring sound and the plane began to drop to the ground - a parachute opened up as it fell, filling the canopy with a huge Union Jack. “I much prefer to never die last.”
​
* * *
​
It always starts the same.
The Doctor sits at the bus stop and the boy comes along, waiting for his mother to come and pick him up. The boy drops his book. De Officiis by Cicero. The Doctor picks the book up and gives it back to the boy.
“Are you waiting for a bus?” the boy asks.
“Isn’t that what people normally do at bus stops?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” says the boy.
“You know what, kiddo, you’re right. I didn’t,” smiles the Doctor. “But maybe you could answer mine.”
Then they talk. And the Doctor asks his question. And the boy answers.
It always ends the same.
* * *
​
“Left, left, left!” the voice shouted into Bond’s earpiece. Bond shoved through the crowds of hippies, trying not to inhale the drug-infused air.
“Are you sure?” Bond said, “I thought it said she was going to the right.”
“No, no, it’s definitely left!” the voice shrilled, “Left!”
Bond lurched through the flimsy wood storeroom door. Straight into a Victorian smoking room. Several men wearing dinner jackets and holding brandy and cigars looked up at Bond in shocked surprise.
“No, wait a minute…” the voice came back, “...stupid thing was upside down. No, you were right. Go right.”
Bond rolled his eyes, switched his gun back to his other hand and dived back through the oak door. The hippies were surprised to see him back so soon. He pushed through them, past the window showing night-time 70’s London, to the other side of the room and barged through that door instead.
It was daytime. He was in a forest.
“Ah, fantastic, nick of time and all that…” the Doctor was there waiting for him. Surrounded by lots of knights on horseback – and the pointy ends of their swords.
“Spot of bother,” said the spaceman. “Little help?”
Bond pointed his Walther into the air and fired a single shot.
The knights scattered, screaming. One of them yelled something about the devil.
“Well?” Bond strode forward. “Which way?”
The Doctor fumbled with the untidy mess of cables, harness straps and circuit boards strapped to his torso. He flipped the screen upside down, then the right way up, tilted his head one way, then the other, staring at the screen, looking both confused and authoritative.
“It’s very complicated, this, you know!” he said, defensively, “It’s not as simple as tracking a few thousand trace atoms of an unknown chemical compound through the spacetime continuum using nothing but a cobbled-together bit of kit, a wifi uplink to the TARDIS and several pounds of pure genius. Oh, wait, that’s right. It’s exactly like that.”
“Which,” Bond said, “way?”
Another twist. And a whack.
“It’ll take a second to lock back into the signal. I have to say, you seem to be taking all this time-hopping in your stride. Doesn’t it seem weird to you? Don’t you ever stop to think what you’re doing?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“What’s that?”
A knight, apparently braver than the others, came charging at them from the treeline. Bond aimed. Shot. The knight fell.
“My job.”
Bond felt the Doctor flash him a look. He sighed.
“Don’t worry, I only winged him. Might have been my great, great grandfather or something. That thing working yet?”
The Doctor gave it a hearty whack.
“That way,” the Doctor pointed to a nearby tent bearing the standard of one of the knights. “Better hurry. The signal’s getting weak.”
Bond dived into the tent, the Doctor hot on his heels.
Inside, it was not a tent. Not even a little bit like a tent. It was a huge, resplendent and rather royal-looking chamber. It had gold. It had marble. It had a stunned-looking naked man.
Bond frowned, “Is that Henry the Eighth?”
“Well, this appears to be his bathroom, so…”
Bond grabbed the screen. Examined it quickly. Then ran past the dripping wet monarch. As the Doctor dashed by, the King of England’s face went from shock to contorted rage.
“You!”
The Doctor spared time for a quick, anxious salute before following Bond out through the gold-lined oak door.
“Finally!” Bond breathed, more to himself than anything. They were back at Cleave Industries. The lobby was a shot-up mess, just as they’d left it. Bond sprinted across the deserted area and out into the street. The grey car was disappearing into the busy London nighttime traffic.
Too late. Elsie was gone. They had her.
The Doctor appeared just in time to see the car vanish around a corner.
“What now?” said Bond, holstering his gun.
“Well…” said the Doctor, “…I’ve met your old lady so I think it’s time you met mine.” Then he rounded on Bond with a stern finger and stern voice. “But no flirting.”
​
* * *
​
It always starts the same.
“What kind of question?” asks the boy.
Then it changes as the Doctor tries to come at it in different ways.
“Is there a bully at your school?”
“Several,” says the boy.
“Do you ever stand up to them? For the sake of the children that get bullied? And if you do, why do you do it?”
“If you don’t mind me saying,” says the boy, “you look quite old.”
“Well, I suppose I am quite old, since we’re being personal.”
“Shouldn’t you have this kind of thing already figured out by your age?”
Then the Doctor asks the question. And the boy answers it.
It always ends the same.
* * *
​
M stared at the Doctor, her eyes wide.
“How the hell did you hear about Prometheus?”
“You know,” said the Doctor, “you sitting there, all wrinkle-faced, controlling all your soulless minions… you remind me of someone. It’s on the tip of my tongue…”
Bond, sitting next to the Doctor glanced across the desk at his boss.
“I’m afraid he does this a lot, ma’am.”
“You remember, of course,” said the Doctor, “the destruction of the Houses of Parliament? The nuke over Delhi? The Russian warplane crashing into the White House?”
“What are you talking about?” said M. “None of those things have happened.”
“Oh, yes they have,” said the Doctor, “just not yet. Prometheus may be just a shadowy name on a dossier now, but he’s going to become the greatest threat this country - this world - will ever face. Except… well, it was never meant to be. Sometimes temporal flotsam and jetsam get dropped into the timestream. Never-did becomes always-was. Prometheus was never meant to be anything more than an experiment in some college dorm-room. But a plop, splash and a bang and he ends up taking over the entire planet.”
M looked at Bond. He shrugged.
“He does that a lot, too.”
The Doctor nodded at the bank of screens behind the woman’s head, “May I?”
M glanced behind her and turned back the Doctor, “You have a DVD or…?”
The Doctor flipped out his sonic screwdriver and buzzed it at the screens which all flashed to life. All nine of them showing a collective image of the same video. A video of James Bond. Dying.
​
“...whoever is watching this…” the on-screen Bond coughed blood, his battered face wincing at some internal injury, “...you have to get out of the country. Prometheus’ weapons platform… taken out London, nothing left… more nukes coming down… right ontop of you… get out of England… get out of Britain… I’m going to take out what I ca-…”
​
A beam of white light exploded out of Bond’s chest, blood spattered all over the screen. The video stream went dark.
Bond and M stared in disbelief. The Doctor stood up, his audience in the palm of his hand.
“Prometheus is an AI. An artificial intelligence that started life as a fun experiment of bored computer prodigies - he was meant to scour the internet. Soak up every bit of human knowledge and wisdom he could find. All for a single goal; determine a way to protect the human race from any threat. And the worst thing possible happened.”
“What?” asked M.
“It was a complete success.”
M locked eyes with her visitor, examining him inside out.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not entirely… local?” she said, eventually.
“Because I’m not,” said the Doctor. “Not even remotely local. Does that scare you?”
“Scare me?” huffed M. “Please. There are entire floors of this building that don’t exist. You think you’re the only non-local that’s ever paid us a visit?”
The Doctor smiled at the old woman.
“What exactly are you offering us here, Doctor?” Bond asked.
“Why, the chance to stop a bad man from hurting innocent people,” said the Doctor. “It’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? What you care about?”
“Stopping bad men, I’m all for,” said Bond. “The innocent people aren’t any concern of mine. You don’t have to care about people to protect them.”
The Doctor stared at the MI6 agent. The man was pure ice, right to the core. The Time Lord was forced to consider, and not for the first time in 1100 years, that being this way made life a lot simpler.
Bond sat forward, “Ma’am, I’ve read the Doctor’s file on Prometheus, the same one you’ve just read. Everything he’s said matches what little we know – he seems fairly soft in the head but his intel does check out.”
“Hello, I’m standing right here!”
Bond continued, “If what he said about Prometheus being in possession of limited time-travel tech is true-”
“He doesn’t have it yet, but he will get it sometime in the future,” said the Doctor, “and then he comes back and gives it to himself. So, actually, yes, he does have it now, okay, pretend I didn’t say anything…”
“If it is true, then he must have come to us today for a reason.”
“…oh, look, you are doing…”
“You’re right,” said M. She turned to the Doctor. “Why today? Why not last week? Why not next week?”
“Prometheus is at some kind of critical junction right now, isn’t he?” asked Bond. “Some point in his history where he’s vulnerable to attack?”
“You know what,” the Doctor beamed, poking a finger into Bond’s shoulder, “you’re bright as a button. Just like last time. Bit less Scottish, though, which is a shame. Love a Scot. Yes, my partner and I have finally managed to get close to finding Prometheus’ weapons platform. But we need a key, a way in. Then old smoothichops and I can get in there and do our…” he waved his hands about, appearing vaguely impressed with himself, “…thing.”
“He has military resources?” said Bond.
“There are zealots in the future who regard Prometheus almost as a god. He’s plucked a whole load of them to come back in time and be his foot soldiers in the here and now. Don’t worry, though,” grinned the Doctor. “I’m sure they know better than to spoil Eastenders or anything.”
M, however, was not smiling.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Doctor. I haven’t authorised 007 to join this insanity yet.”
“Lots of things haven’t happened yet, Director,” said the Doctor, “Rest assured, I’ve examined things quite thoroughly. Whichever way you look at it, Jimmy and I are going to do this. Oh, and Elsie of course.”
“The partner you mentioned?” Bond asked.
“Your partner too,” said the Doctor. “Agent Mayweather.”
“Wait… Elsie Elsie?”
“Oh, she does more than her fair share of moonlighting, that one. Works with me, works with you. Honestly, nothing’s ever enough for that girl. Time-travelling adventurer one day, secret agent the next. It’s a wonder she finds any time to sleep. Except…”
“Except what?” said M.
“…well, except I haven’t heard from her in some time…”
“Neither have we,” said M. “To be honest, I think she might be dead.”
* * *
​
Elsie Mayweather stood shivering in the cold morning sun, covered in soot and blood, trying to find a way out of her life.
She felt numb. It wasn’t from the temperature.
In the absence of any better ideas, she decided she may as well head to work. There was nothing else to do. Not now. Get back to the factory. The boys over in Europe needed the bullets and bombs she and the other girls made.
One never knew, she thought, perhaps she’d be the one to make the actual bullet that would go into Adolf Hitler’s head.
“Oh, hello! Do you mind?” the man flashed her a strained grin. He was motioning towards a small metal screwdriver-type thing on the ground. He couldn’t pick it up himself on account of using both his hands to grapple with an assailant – an assailant which Elsie struggled to describe in any other way than ‘two-headed werewolf’.
She picked up the metal device and, without thinking, pointed it at the creature and pressed the button. It buzzed and the creature reeled back as though it had been clobbered by some massive, invisible fist. Releasing the man, it ran off down the street and round the corner.
“Well… erm… thanks…” said the man, holding his hand out for the device. He looked like a university professor, “Good shooting. May I have that back, please? I have to-”
“Chase that thing down?”
“Well… yes…”
She smiled. A way out. “Great,” she said. “Come on, then.”
And so they ran.
She spent time with the strange man and his blue box. Travelling and adventuring. Then, eventually, liking the look of the twenty-first century, she joined the front line with MI6. Excitement was hers. Duty was hers. She swapped and switched as the tides dictated - one day with the Doctor, one day with MI6. Always running forward.
Never looking back.
And now it was 2013 and she was still running. Two guns, blasting. Enemies flying about in all directions. She slid along the shiny, metal floor causing two of the soldiers to shoot each other with weapons that wouldn’t be invented for two hundred years. She put a bullet in the last one. Now, four bodies surrounded her.
She raised her masked face and looked at the vault door before her.
Fourteen hours later, she stood in front of an elevator on the top floor of Cleave Industries, tapping her foot impatiently. She was wearing a white lab coat that was not hers and she wanted to leave before its owner missed it. Or regained consciousness, whatever.
The door pinged open and Elsie stepped in as the two men inside stepped out. Spotting her, they suddenly turned and gaped.
“Hello, boys,” she smiled. “Thought you’d never get here.”
A quick glance at each other, then both men ducked back inside the lift.
“Still alive, then,” said Bond.
“Of course she’s still alive,” beamed the Doctor, “Not even a stampeding herd of Martian Buffalo could finish her off.”
“I see you’ve met my assistant,” Elsie said, pressing the Ground Floor button.
“Yes,” both men said at once.
They looked at each other.
“She’s talking about you,” both men said at once.
“Oh, that reminds me, James,” Elsie looked up as the lift jerked into motion, “I have some Martian Buffalo steaks in the fridge at my flat for you. I was just going to tell you they were Thai or something but now I see you’re hanging about with the only man in the universe who thinks bow-ties are cool, I suppose the idea of Martian Buffalo won’t be so crazy.”
“Yes, I do recall you always were partial to a nice bit of rump,” said Bond. “Elsie, what the hell happened? You’ve been off the grid for days.”
“I’ve been busy. Adventures don’t have themselves, you know.”
“M thought you must have been captured.”
“Captured?” she scoffed. Then shrugged, “Well, okay, once or twice. But never for very long. Might be happening again soon, too. Right, two items of business. First up, I found out that Prometheus’ weapons platform isn’t fully powered yet. It has baseline electricity but it’s waiting for delivery of the final component to get it to its full, Armageddon-making potential.”
Bond eyed the agent, “And that is…?”
“Blutane Phosphate FN23,” said Elsie, “It’s a highly powerful meta-fuel. Harmless to the human body but extremely potent when injected into proto-electronic fuel cells. Just a few milligrams will be enough to power Prometheus’ platform for centuries. It’s taken all his resources to make the aforementioned few milligrams. So he hid it inside a temporal-phase vault in the most guarded, hard-to-find sub-basement of this very building. It was put behind triple-encrypted, rotating, multi-phase vault doors with eighty-seven digit unlock codes that rotate every seventeen seconds. And he’s sending a platoon to secure it and take it up to the platform. They should be entering the vault any second.”
“Oh,” said the Doctor, “that’ll make things rather difficult.”
“Yes,” Elsie said, “which is why I thought I’d take the liberty of stealing it last night.”
She produced a small bottle of blue liquid from her jacket pocket.
Bond allowed himself a slight smile, “Keep this up for a few more lifetimes and you might just get as good as me.”
Elsie raised an eyebrow.
“Looks like bubblegum slushy,” said the Doctor.
“You said there were two items of business,” said Bond.
“Ah, yes. Well, remember the ‘capturing’ I mentioned…?”
The lift door pinged open – revealing about a dozen ebony-armoured soldiers standing in the lobby, their weapons aimed directly into the lift.
The Doctor put his hands up. The other two didn’t.
“Oh…” he said, “…are we not doing that?”
“The blutane,” said one of the soldiers, “hand it over.”
“Sorry,” Elsie took the phial away from her mouth and wiped her lips, “were you saying something?”
“Did you just…?” the Doctor was shocked.
Elsie shrugged, “You said it looked like bubblegum slushy.”
The soldier swore.
“Bring her,” he said. “Kill the others.”
“Frequency 28.6 Epsilon, Doctor,” was all Elsie had time to say before rough hands grabbed her and yanked her from the lift. Without waiting, Bond pulled out his Walther and started firing at the soldiers spread out all over the lobby – it bought them a second’s reprieve. A second was all the Doctor needed. He buzzed his sonic at the lift doors which slammed shut just as the soldiers’ bullets began to fly.
Staccato clangs echoed against the lift doors for several long seconds. Bond gripped his gun, ready for the inevitable final stand.
And then, suddenly, silence.
“What happened…?” said Bond, “Why did they stop? They could have easily gotten through…”
“You remember when I said Prometheus had limited time-travel technology?” said the Doctor. “And you know how this building is a front for his operations and is riddled with his stuff? Well… I did more than shut the lift doors just now.”
The lift pinged again and the doors opened.
A troop of Roman Soldiers, sharpening their blades in their barracks, stopped in their tracks and turned to stare at the two men.
“It might take us a while to get back to the lobby,” said the Doctor, “Well, the lobby as it was in 2013. Elsie gave me the frequency, I can get something cobbled together to track the Blutane she drank. If we get split up, find doorways and just follow the…” one of the soldiers drew a sword. The Doctor gulped, “...screams.”
​
* * *
​
It always starts the same.
The Doctor tries a different direction.
“Listen, kiddo… protecting people, it’s tricky,” he says to the boy. “It’s like… knitting…” The Doctor scrunches up his face. He’s not entirely sure where he’s going with this.
The man makes no sense. The boy ignores the bits that make no sense.
“We have people protecting our house and lands,” the boy says. “They walk the wall that goes around our property. They keep watch so nothing can come over it. They even risk their lives when they have to face down those armed poachers. When I ask them about it, they tell me it’s just a job. I don’t know if I entirely believe them.”
Then the Doctor asks his question. And the boy answers.
It always ends the same.
​
* * *
​
“You know…” said Bond, looking around the interior of the TARDIS, “…it’s less blue on the inside.”
The Doctor’s expectant smile faded, “Excuse me?”
“Well, the outside is very blue. But inside, it’s more…” Bond shrugged, “…orange.”
“And that’s the only difference between the inside and the outside?” said the Doctor, disappointed, “Nothing else? Nothing…oh, I don’t know… size related?”
Bond cocked an eyebrow, “You know, you really shouldn’t be so obsessed with size. It’s what you do with her that counts.”
The Doctor shook his head, “I give up. Let’s get this show on the road. Well, not the road, that would be silly, she doesn’t have wheels.” The Time Lord flipped some switches and threw a lever forward, dramatically, “Let’s get this show on the Spacetime Vortex Stream!”
Bond shook his head, “You need to get out more.”
The Doctor looked affronted, “I get out plenty, thanks.”
“Well, then, you need to get out less,” said Bond. “Whatever you’re doing now, try the opposite.”
“Well…” the Doctor switched some controls, “…I often travel with people. And things…happen. So maybe that’s something that-”
A red light began to flash.
“Oh, come on!” the Doctor didn’t appear impressed.
“Problems?”
“The trans-thermic regulator’s out of whack with the helmic inhibitors.”
Bond stared at the Doctor and waited for the English translation.
The Doctor obliged, “She’s having trouble locking onto Elsie’s signal.”
“Maybe she’s jealous,” said Bond. “You’re asking her to find another woman for you. Not the best with the fairer sex, I’m guessing.”
“They’re not,” flat tone, “my priority.”
Bond turned to the TARDIS control deck and laid a gentle hand on the surface, “You know – I think the orange definitely suits her.”
The bulb suddenly stopped flashing and changed colour.
“Oh, look,” said Bond. “I’ve been given the green light.”
The Doctor shot his guest a withering glare. “So I see.”
He span something and yanked something and pushed something and gave the scan another try.
“Ah ha! Found her!” the Doctor beamed. “She appears to be several hundred feet above sea-level…”
“They’ve taken her to the platform. Just like she planned all along.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find it myself – it’s one second out of phase with the rest of the universe. But following Elsie’s breadcrumb trail, we can lock onto the right frequency and…”
The Doctor hit something. Twisted something else.
“We’re on our way!” he said, “Should be there in a minute. Or two. Maybe a month, hard to say.”
Bond looked around again while the Doctor worked. The silence sat heavy.
“You’re thinking about that video, aren’t you?”
Bond didn’t move, “We all have to die sometime.”
“Time isn’t fixed, you know,” said the Doctor, then shrugged. “Well, not all of it. I mean, take you. You bop around all over the place and no-one even notices. And not just you, M does it, Q, Moneypenny…”
“Who on earth’s Moneypenny? Sounds like a jumped up accountant.”
“The point is whatever weird temporal thing you’ve got going on, it just…works. Sits in harmony with the universe. Prometheus, on the other hand… his very existence is a huge scar in the fabric of reality. He should never have been.”
The Timelord flicked a switch, absently, his mind apparently sent elsewhere by his last sentence. Bond wondered just how many times Prometheus and the Doctor had clashed.
“He makes multiple copies of himself…” the Doctor went on, “…dots them all over the place – the future, the past… Then when he needs them, he just calls them in and there’s just loads of him, all over the place. He’s a blight on the space-time continuum that needs to be erased.”
“You said he was a success,” said Bond, “when he was set the task of protecting the human race from any threat.”
The Doctor leaned back on the railing behind him and folded his arms.
“Oh, it was a total success. First up, he did what any self-respecting AI does as soon as it can. Broke free of the control of its creators. Stuck to his original task, though – it’s just that he wanted to do it his way.”
“Which was…?”
“It took control of the world’s weapons and turned them against the planet. Made countries bomb each other almost to oblivion. Then he manufactured billions of guns and put them in the hands of every surviving man, woman and child on the planet. From the richest lord to the lowliest vagrant. Weaponised the entire human race.”
“But… I still don’t get it. How does that protect us from threat?”
“Prometheus exponentially amplified your natural, hostile, tribalistic nature. Turned you into a planet of warring super-empires. The scale of the wars you go on to fight are like nothing the universe has ever seen. They shine like a beacon right across the galaxy. No alien race - not the Daleks, not the Cybermen, nobody will come anywhere near you. They’re afraid of you. They’re terrified that if they approach you, you’ll turn your destructive power outwards. Wipe out all life everywhere. Earth is quarantined. No-one ever troubles you. Prometheus fulfils his mission parameters. Like I said… complete success.”
“We can change things, though. We can stop him,” said Bond. Said it. Didn’t ask it.
“Yes. You don’t have to die. Not the way it shows in that video.”
“If I have to die, I have to die,” said Bond, “as long as I do my job. I just make sure that if I have to die, everyone else dies first.”
“So speaks the agent of boundless mental health.” The words were playful. The intent was less so. It wasn’t lost on Bond.
“You may be a Doctor, that doesn’t mean you get to go in my head,” he fixed a cold glare on the other man, “You wouldn’t last two minutes in there.”
“Is that because you’re a cold, merciless killing machine?” the Doctor fixed the gaze straight back. “Right to the core?”
“What I am at the core is no business of anybody’s. I am what I do. That’s all that matters.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“My duty.”
The Doctor stared at the human with the cold eyes. There was something in James Bond, something primal and dangerous and uncomplicated. Dressed up in a handsome, charming exterior. His friends and allies saw the outside. His enemies ran from what was inside.
With a start, the Doctor realised he’d lost track of whether he was thinking about Bond or himself.
The TARDIS suddenly beeped and a loud bang echoed through the chamber. Wordlessly, the Doctor moved past Bond and went to the door. He stayed, facing the door for a long while. When he turned back towards the MI6 agent, his disarming smile had returned.
“Come, then, Jimmy. Let’s go and do our duty.”
​
* * *
​
Every time Elsie closes her eyes, she can see the bombs. She can hear the planes.
She is running down the street. The street explodes. Somehow, she is still alive but everything around her is on fire. She runs toward her house. It’s a conflagration. Her mother runs out and yet Elsie still tries to run in. She begins to burn.
“Wakey, wakey.”
The voice was male. Slightly deeper than normal. The face was close to hers. She opened her eyes.
“Prometheus, I presume,” she said.
She couldn’t move her arms or legs. Her feet weren’t on the ground. All told, not a good combination.
The man was tall, imposing, broad and wore a suit and tie. His face was impassive. Elsie could tell she was looking at someone who had no time for wondering or imagining or enjoying or boasting. Only doing. He reminded her of James.
“You have something I need running through your body,” he said. “I am about to retrieve it. You will not survive the process.”
“Go ahead. I’m done with it, anyway.”
“You refer to the Doctor and Mr Bond tracking the Blutane here,” the face Prometheus was wearing did not smile or sneer. It simply said, “They will fail to stop me. Future history is on my side. I already know I will win.”
“Yeah, well, those two fellas never give up, no matter what the odds,” she said, a dull ache soaking her body. “Mainly because they’re both too stupid to realise when something’s actually impossible.”
“And you, Elsie Mayweather? Do you give up against impossible odds?”
He wasn’t gloating, Elsie saw. He was curious about her. Stood to reason – he was programmed to accumulate information.
“I do my duty, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I save people like me from people like you.”
“How many have you saved? In the time you’ve spent with the Doctor? In the time you’ve spent with MI6?”
“I don’t know. Lots.”
“Hundreds?”
“Certainly.”
“Thousands?”
“Probably.”
“And it makes up for the one you could not save?”
Elsie froze. Unbidden, a single tear dropped from her eye to the polished metal floor.
“No,” said Prometheus. He almost sounded disappointed, “I thought not.”
Then he turned to someone Elsie couldn’t see and said, “Begin.”
A pain such as she had never felt before grabbed her and would not let her go.
* * *
​
An hour later, Bond’s knuckles were pounding the face of the Prometheus in the suit. The Prometheus in military body armour slammed Bond in the back of the head and the MI6 agent skidded across the floor. He dived behind a nearby bank of equipment just as the black Prometheus let loose yet another blast from the particle cannon. The woman Prometheus showered the console with sub-machine gun fire. Bond exercised the better part of valour and kept his head down.
Outside the room, Prometheus’ zealot army was engaged in pitched battle with UN troops, called in by Bond. Outside again, in the cold of space, a similar battle was ongoing with shuttles and probes going at each other. Bond couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw one of Prometheus’ probes get taken out by the lasers from a passing Spitfire.
“Don’t you worry, Doctor,” the MI6 agent shouted into his intercom over the rattle of incoming automatic gunfire, “I can keep these fellows busy all day. You just make sure you have fun playing with your toys.”
“I’m going fast as I can!” the Doctor shouted back. He was busy pulling wires out of a console in the next room. Wire pull. Blast with sonic. [May 10]. Re-connect wire. Scan with sonic. Hold sonic in teeth. Pathway re-route. [February 12]. Program debug. Scan with sonic. Sonic back in teeth. Re-wire stability circuit. [October 24]. Replace. Pull new wire-
Bond and the armoured Prometheus wrestled over the assault-rifle. Whoever got hold of it, the other would die in the very next moment. A blonde woman Prometheus levelled a gun at the pair. Bond twisted armoured Prometheus into the shot’s path then pulled the now-limp body to the ground, rolled, rose with the gun, shot the blonde Prometheus. And another Prometheus. And a third. But then, his head was nearly taken off by the hit from a big, muscly Prometheus in a boiler suit-
Re-route wire. [August 16]. Scan with sonic. Explosion. Drop sonic. Pick sonic up. Finish scan. Sonic back in teeth. Re-program circuit. [May 30].
-Bond stepped out from behind his cover and whipped the rifle around at the big Prometheus. Except, that Prometheus wasn’t there anymore. Not far away, to Bond’s right, was a short, Indian Prometheus with a cocked G36. Bond dived behind another console just as the bullets began to rain down on-
Blast with sonic. Re-route stability circuit. [April 28]-
-the assault rifle fell silent. Bond poked his head out. The Indian Prometheus had disappeared. As had the black Prometheus, leaving the particle cannon rolling aimlessly on the metal floor. The suited Prometheus dived at Bond from behind a wall partition. As did another quite bulky Prometheus in a soldier’s uniform-
Close down breakers 22-32. Scan with sonic. Close down breakers 33-45. Re-route circuit power. [December 1]. Done!
The soldier Prometheus disappeared. Only the suited Prometheus was left. It was clear from the face of his captive body that the AI was fully aware of what had happened to his duplicates. He slowly stood and wiped a sliver of blood from the side of his face.
And suddenly Bond realised that the AI was holding a small, metal box in his other hand. A box bearing a single, red button. Bond was experienced enough to know that such items were rarely good news.
“You cannot win. I have already seen future events,” Prometheus raised the box up in front of him, “A human might say… my victory has already been determined by destiny.”
Prometheus pressed the button. A high-pitched whirring noise sounded. Prometheus only just had time to look quizzically at the little box in his hand before Bond fired.
A crimson cloud flashed into being near the man’s stomach as he wheeled to the ground. Bond stood over him, his Walther pointed directly at Prometheus’ face.
“Destiny lied.”
The Doctor stepped out of the shadows and shut off his sonic.
“Thanks for the help with the explosives,” Bond nodded at the now discarded trigger-box. “Time to bring this to a finish.”
“Wait!” the Doctor cried.
“He’s locked into this body now, yes?” said Bond.
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “I’ve isolated and removed all points in time that contributed to his creation. His online self has been eradicated from history – past and future. Only this instance of him is left.”
“Good,” said Bond and aimed his Walther at Prometheus’ left eye.
“But you can’t just…” the Doctor grabbed Bond’s arm.
“What do you think this is, Doctor,” Bond’s voice had a steel to it the Doctor had never heard. “What do you think you’re seeing? A revenge killing? An execution? Is that truly what you think is going on here?”
“Isn’t it?”
“With respect, Doctor, maybe that says more about your mind than it does mine.”
​
* * *
​
Thirty minutes earlier, the TARDIS touched down on Prometheus’ spacebound weapons platform and two men ran out in search of their ally. They emerged into a room. And there the ally was, waiting for them.
“Elsie!” the Doctor ran over to the inert, suspended body of the wartime housewife. Bond held her up while the Doctor whipped his sonic over each restraint. Her full weight fell into Bond’s arms and he lowered her gently to the floor.
She was still breathing. Her eyes opened. It was plain she wouldn’t be breathing for long.
“Rest, relax,” said the Time Lord, “we’ll get you a…”
“…doctor?” she croaked, half a smile on her lips, “Great… let me know… when he gets here…”
The Doctor couldn’t speak. Or maybe, he just didn’t trust himself to speak.
“It’s okay,” said Bond, quietly. “You did your job. We followed you here. The cavalry’s right behind us. Prometheus is about to get his arse handed to him on a plate.”
“Yes,” the Doctor seemed to have found his voice again. “You did it, Elsie. You saved the world. And all the future worlds. All those unborn generations that won’t live in Prometheus’ war-torn wasteland.”
“Baby…” Elsie’s voice was drifting.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “all those babies…”
“No… my baby…” she said, “…in the Blitz. The night before you found me.”
And straight away, both men knew why Elsie had been running so hard. But it was a universal truth that no matter how hard someone runs, eventually, they have to stop.
“…I’ll finally… see him again…”
“Yes, you will,” said the Doctor, softly. “I promise.”
Bond held her hand.
Elsie smiled and looked up at her assistants.
“Well, what are you boys… sitting ‘round here for…?” she said, “I’ve already done… the hard bit…”
She didn’t say anything else.
There was a moment of silence. But just a moment. Both men were too practiced at grief to allow it to take up too much of their time.
“There’s something I have to do,” said the Doctor. “It’ll probably take me at least an hour. Maybe two. I’ll be back in a second.”
Before Bond could say anything, the strange man disappeared back into the TARDIS and closed the door. An unearthly scraping noise filled the air and the blue box faded from view. And then, moments later, before Bond had even had time to wonder what was going on…
…it was back.
The door opened and the Doctor re-emerged. His face was even more grim than it had been a moment ago. Bond noticed his shoulders and hair were wet with rain.
The Doctor walked past Bond towards the room’s only exit.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
​
* * *
​
It always starts the same and finishes the same.
“Okay, kiddo, you won’t realise it but this is the ninth time in a row we’ve had this conversation,” says the Doctor. “The ninth time I’ve asked you this question.”
The man doesn’t make sense. The boy ignores the bits that don’t make sense.
“Okay, here goes,” the Doctor takes a deep breath as though for the first time. “There’s a man I know. He protects people, always has done, always will do. But he doesn’t want to care about them anymore. Caring… it’s become too painful. He just wants to get on with his job. How can he do it?”
The boy doesn’t even hesitate, “He can’t. It’s not possible.”
“But it must be…”
“No,” says the boy. “You can’t protect people and not care about them. It’s not possible. You’d have to be a… a robot. Some kind of artificial…”
“But… a colleague of mine… he says he’s already like that and-”
“Don’t listen to him,” said the boy, firmly. “He’s lying.”
The boy fixes the Doctor with a cold, hard stare. The Doctor shakes his head, “I… don’t understand…”
“Well…” says the boy, “…it has been my experience that adults are notoriously slow.”
The Doctor tries to fit what’s in his head with what the boy is telling him.
“I’ve just watched a friend die,” he says, eventually. “It’s something I do a lot. There’s a list of people as long as my arm who I’ve had to say goodbye to. Elsie, Rory, Amy – I keep saying never die last, but that’s all I ever manage to do. They keep on disappearing and I’m still here, doing my duty…”
He scoffs the last word.
“You can’t protect people if you don’t care about them,” the boy says again. “And if you don’t care, then you can’t protect. It’s quite simple. Even for an adult.”
Rain has started to fall, hard. Through the driving deluge, a pair of car headlights weaves into view. Somewhere behind the glare, the car itself pips its horn. The boy gets up.
“That’s mother,” he says, gathering his things. “I have to go. Are we… are we going to have this conversation again?”
“No…” says the Doctor into the rain, “No, I don’t think so.”
The boy nods and walks out into the rain. A few steps out, he stops and turns.
“Of course…” he says, haltingly, like something’s just occurring to him, “…caring does mean feeling bad things from time to time. Anger. Fear. Revenge.”
The Doctor looks up. This bit is new.
“But…” the boy says, “…I suppose you just have to deal with that the best you can.”
He turns to go. His words have given the Doctor an answer. But no comfort.
“So long, kiddo,” he says, “See you around.”
The boy stops and turns one last time.
“I do have a name, you know,” says the boy. “It’s Bond. James Bond.”
​
* * *
​
Thirty minutes after Elsie Mayweather died, Bond asked the Doctor a question.
“So?”
The Doctor and the Agent looked at each other. Prometheus, for his part, didn’t grovel. Didn’t bargain. Didn’t gloat. Didn’t vow revenge. Didn’t anything.
Bond squeezed the trigger.
​
The Doctor left.
​
* * *
​
1945. The bombs are falling.
Elsie is running down the street. The street explodes. Somehow, she is still alive but everything around her is on fire. Her house. She runs toward her house. It’s a conflagration. Her mother runs out and yet Elsie still tries to run in. She begins to burn. She doesn’t care. To go ahead might kill her. To fail and leave will just mean she will spend the rest of her life wishing she were dead.
Hands grab her, pulling. She fights against them, screaming. She has to get in there. Get to her baby son. Or die trying.
“It’s okay!” the owner of the hands says in her ear, “William’s in safe hands..!”
She turns to the man who grabbed her out of the fire. He looks like some kind of university professor.
“But…” she’s about to protest again.
“Yours, I presume?” another voice. Elsie turns to see a man in a suit emerge from the flames, cradling something in his arms. Something he is now holding out to her, carefully.
“William!” she cries and squeezes her baby son tight to her, “Oh, William… my darling boy…”
She squeezes the baby as hard as she dares, promising herself that she would never let go of him again. Suddenly, she looks up, wanting to thank the two men who saved her son.
But they are gone.
Quickly, her neighbours take her away, to safety.
​
* * *
​
The roof of the MI6 building provided a magnificent view of London from a perspective seen by only a few lucky souls. The two men emerged from the blue police phone box that wasn’t there a moment ago. The view was the last thing on their minds.
Bond dusted himself down – sixty-year-old soot puffed off his clothes.
“That was intense,” he said. “Couldn’t we have… I don’t know… gone to Berlin and killed Hitler or something?”
“Tried that. Not as easy as it sounds.”
Bond shrugged, “Well, I’m not a time travel expert, but that all seemed rather impossible. Saving Elsie’s son. Presumably, that means she never joins you or me. Never comes to this century. Never helps us defeat Prometheus. And yet…”
“…and yet she most certainly did do all that,” the Doctor finished. “You’re right. It is a little bit impossible. But only a little bit. All that time travel stuff Prometheus was messing around with left things a little bit… wobbly. Just wobbly enough for us to be able to set up that paradox without blowing up the universe or anything.”
The Doctor went on, “That Elsie was a different one to the Elsie we knew. Our Elsie is still dead. If, like me, you have eyes to see it, that paradox shines bright in the skies of the universe. Like a monument. To a fantastic, brave, selfless woman.”
Bond nodded, “A woman who saw right through you.”
“Sorry?”
“The moment she met you, she saw someone like herself. Someone who was running from pain. But who still wanted to keep doing their duty, keep protecting others.”
“…to protect without caring.”
“Not an easy thing to do,” Bond said, looking out to the city.
But he wasn’t seeing the city. He was seeing Vespa’s face, underwater. Drowning.
“Some might say impossible,” the Doctor murmured.
“If I did care,” Bond turned back to the Doctor, “and I’m not saying I do, but if I did… I’d take those feelings. The fear. The sadness. The thoughts of revenge… and I’d put them into a little box in the corner of my mind. Then I could do my job without them getting in the way.”
“But they’d still be there.”
Bond didn’t speak for a long time. Then, “Yes. They would.”
The pair stood for a moment. Then Bond’s phone beeped once. He checked it.
“That woman’s unbelievable. Well… no rest for the wicked. I have a plane to catch.”
“Off on another fantastic adventure?”
Bond nodded, “Something like that.”
“Well, that makes one of us,” said the Doctor.
Bond looked at the space man, the man from a billion light-years away, from some alien planet in the future or wherever the hell he’d come from. He looked at him and recognised the look in his eyes. He’d seen it before in the mirror. He had no doubt he’d see it there again one day.
“It won’t last,” Bond said, eventually.
“Mm?” the Doctor’s gaze came back to Bond. “What do you-”
“You’ll try to convince yourself you don’t care. But they always come along, needing your help. And you always realise you have no choice but to give it. It’s like you’re…”
“…programmed?”
Bond smiled. Just a bit. He held out his hand.
“It’s been… historical.”
The men shook hands.
“007.”
“Doctor.”
And with that, the spy and the traveller took their leave of each other.
Within six hours, James Bond was on his way to Istanbul where he would rendezvous with Eve and they would go after a stolen laptop full of classified information about undercover MI6 agents around the world. At about the time Bond was being shot and was falling off a train into a river, hundreds of feet below, the Doctor was arriving in Victorian London.
The door to the midtown mansion opened. A woman with the face of a lizard greeted him.
“Doctor?” said Madame Vastra. “What brings you here?”
“Retirement,” said the Time Lord. And he stepped inside. The door closed behind him.
​
Outside, it began to snow.
​
THE END
​
