The search for the final room of the embassy had finally brought the Gallifreyans to a place unlike anything they had encountered before. As the gathered Lords and Ladies arrived, they dressed for the occasion, knowing that diplomacy would be essential when dealing with an ambassador who had been alone for centuries. Lord President Chronotis explained that the excavators had located what appeared to be a communication chamber, and with the Temporal Anchor still protecting them, there was little room for anything less than caution. Lady Roxy reminded everyone that they had no idea what sort of temperament they might encounter after so much time in isolation, while Lord Wilde agreed that diplomacy would be their greatest tool. Lord Serpentine, meanwhile, was already thinking about security.
When they crossed the threshold, the room itself seemed frozen in time. Dust covered the surfaces, yet there was no decay, no damage, and no evidence of a struggle. The furniture and objects remained exactly where they had been left, giving the unsettling impression that the room had not been abandoned so much as suspended within a moment that had never properly ended. Lord Wilde took in the architecture with fascination, while the others carefully settled around the table. Lord President Chronotis prepared the holographic equipment, and after some cautious button pushing, the projector activated.
The image that appeared was Theron Valek, the Last Ambassador. His hologram flickered before stabilizing, and he looked around the room as though he could see every person gathered there. His first words immediately established the gravity of their discovery. They had found him, and with that discovery came a question far more troubling than simply whether Gallifrey remembered the embassy. The question was whether they were prepared to remember why it had been erased. Theron then revealed that they would have only ten questions, each one to be directed through the current Lord President. Suddenly, every word mattered.
The first question established the purpose of the Temporal Anchor. Lord President Chronotis asked what it had originally been intended for, and Theron explained that it had never been designed simply to hold the embassy in place. It had been created to preserve a moment, keeping a place and everything within it outside the ordinary flow of time until a danger had passed. They had believed that danger would last only hours or perhaps days. They had been wrong. When the decision was made to remove the embassy, the Anchor became their only means of keeping it intact, and once activated it could not simply be switched off. Someone had to remain connected to it. That someone was Theron.
The revelation left the room quieter. Lady Roxy struggled with the realization that Theron had never intended to remain there for centuries, while Lord Wilde carefully recorded every word. Lord Skullgrin immediately focused on the obvious question: what had been dangerous enough to require such drastic measures? Lord Serpentine also wondered when the events had taken place, while Lord President Chronotis moved the group toward another important question: whether the Anchor had been created because Gallifrey knew about other timelines and was attempting to prevent a branching multiverse.
Theron’s answer only deepened the mystery. He confirmed that they knew other timelines existed and understood that certain fractures could have consequences far beyond a single world. But there was something chilling in his admission that they had believed they understood what they were containing. The implication was clear. Whatever they had discovered, they had never fully understood it themselves.
When asked directly about the danger, Theron became more guarded. It was not a weapon or an invading force. It was a temporal event, something that should never have happened but had happened regardless. Worse, it had begun spreading beyond its original point of origin. The Anchor had been necessary to contain it. Theron remained deliberately cautious about revealing more, wanting to understand what the present-day Gallifreyans intended to do with such knowledge. Even Lord Winters’ increasingly creative attempts to lighten the mood could not completely dispel the growing tension.
The fourth question finally produced a more direct answer. Theron explained that they had stopped the event from spreading, but they had not stopped it from existing. As long as the Anchor remained stable, the event remained contained, and that was precisely why Theron had remained connected to it for all these centuries. The group immediately began considering the implications. Lord Wilde emphasized the need to protect the Anchor, while Lady Roxy remembered the earlier readings showing that its temporal output had been fluctuating. That concern became the subject of another question.
When Lord President Chronotis asked whether the Anchor was stable, Theron gave them their first truly immediate warning. It was not as stable as it should be. The fluctuations did not necessarily mean that it was already failing, but they meant something had changed. Theron had been compensating for those changes, yet they were becoming more frequent. His final assessment was simple and unsettling: yes, it was bad.
The question of when the original events had occurred proved much harder to answer. Theron explained that time did not pass normally within the Anchor, making any simple date difficult to provide. The group briefly considered how to earn more of his trust and convince him that they were not seeking to exploit the technology. Lord Skullgrin suggested that their history of protecting lives and preserving Gallifrey might demonstrate their intentions, while Lord Wilde supported the idea. Eventually, the questioning returned to the danger itself.
Lord Skullgrin carefully explained that they were the present-day residents of this world, that they had protected their people from dangers before, and that they wanted to understand what they were facing. This time, Theron gave them considerably more. The danger was a temporal fracture, a piece of another possibility that had forced its way into their reality. They had contained it, but they had never truly understood what had come through. And if the Anchor was weakening, whatever remained on the other side might have noticed them.
That revelation changed the atmosphere completely. Lady Roxy quietly reacted to the possibility that something beyond the fracture might now be aware of them, while Lord Wilde recognized that they could potentially be standing at the beginning of something catastrophic. Lord Skullgrin noted that Theron was becoming more receptive to their questions, and the group pressed onward.
The next question attempted to determine the scale of the fracture. When Lord President Chronotis used the word incursion, Theron corrected the terminology. That was not what they had called it. If they meant how much of the fracture remained, however, the answer was difficult to measure. It had begun at a single point, and they had contained it before it could spread further. How much remained beyond their containment was something they had never discovered.
With only two questions remaining, the group knew they needed something concrete. Lord Skullgrin proposed asking for the location of the fracture, and the others agreed. They asked Theron to identify where it had taken place so they could continue the work he had begun and help preserve the realms.
This time, Theron looked toward the Anchor before answering. Its pulse had become noticeably uneven. The fluctuations were drawing closer together.
He could give them the location. But there was little time. The Anchor was beginning to fail.
Theron explained that he had maintained it for as long as he could, but he could no longer guarantee its stability. The coordinates could not safely be transmitted through the archive. Instead, he reached through the holographic connection and addressed Lord President Chronotis directly.
“Lord President… receive them.”
A pulse passed through the chamber, and the coordinates entered the President’s mind directly, accompanied by a fleeting image of the fracture’s location. Lord Wilde watched in awe, while Lord Skullgrin immediately recognized the urgency. If the Anchor was failing, they would need to act. Then Theron’s hologram began to destabilize.
He warned them that they had one final question and that they needed to word it carefully. Lady Roxy gathered herself and asked what they needed to do to ensure the containment held and prevent the fracture from reaching their world. Theron’s answer was the revelation that none of them had been prepared for.
They had already done something. By finding the room, uncovering the records, and speaking Theron’s name, they had remembered them. For centuries, the embassy had existed outside their history. Forgotten. Unseen. That forgetting had been part of the containment. But now the Gallifreyans had brought it back into memory, and what was remembered could once again become part of the timeline.
Theron warned them that restoring the embassy would restore more than a building. It would restore the history attached to it. And they had begun pulling on a thread that Gallifrey had spent centuries trying to bury. Then, with the hologram breaking apart around him, Theron left them with the question that would follow them long after his image disappeared.
“Now you must decide whether that history deserves to return.”
The hologram vanished. Silence filled the chamber.
For a moment, nobody seemed quite sure what to say. Lord Wilde realized aloud that simply remembering the forgotten embassy was connected to the weakening containment. Lord Winters wondered aloud whether their discovery had somehow increased the reality of the forgotten history, while Lady Roxy quietly recognized the possibility that finding the embassy had set them onto an entirely new path. Lord President Chronotis questioned why a former President had given them so much information if remembering it was itself part of the problem.
Perhaps, Lady Roxy suggested, this was exactly what they were supposed to do. Perhaps they were meant to fix it.
Lord Wilde agreed that perhaps they had been brought to this point for that very reason. Lord Skullgrin, meanwhile, reminded the President that they now had a location and a failing Anchor to contend with. The answers they had gathered would need to be studied carefully before anyone made a rash decision.
Eventually, the chamber began to empty. Lord Wilde prepared to take everything they had learned back to the Archives. Lord Skullgrin departed with a promise to remain available. Lord President Chronotis stood looking toward the now-silent projector, still trying to understand the message hidden within everything Theron had told them. Lady Roxy remained beside him, equally unsettled by what they had uncovered.
They had gone looking for the last ambassador. They found him. They found the truth behind the Anchor. They found the location of the fracture. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, they had remembered something Gallifrey had spent centuries trying to make everyone forget.
Whatever comes next, the clock is now ticking.