The day began with a risk none of us wanted to take, but all of us understood.
With the rogue black TARDIS still refusing clarity – and with Lady Chronotis far too valuable to endanger again – the Lord President authorized a desperate compromise: a Loom-born clone, engineered as a biodata probe rather than a person. In a hastily assembled cloning facility, Lord Conundrum confirmed the clone’s stability, and the chamber doors finally opened.
Roxy Mk.2 emerged with eerie precision – upright, compliant, and emotionally blank. The Lord President tested her responses with a sonic probe; she did not flinch, only identified the tool and waited for further instruction. It was unsettling, but effective. And in the faint humor and tight smiles shared between observers, one truth held steady: at least the real Roxy remained safe – watching through the camera feed in Cody’s glasses, present without being exposed.
The group moved the clone into the repair bay under careful escort. Everyone braced for the familiar violence of the unknown – another snatch into the void, another sigil burned into the world. But this time something different happened.
Before anyone spoke, the black TARDIS reacted – lights flaring, a low hum crawling through the bay like a living warning. The clone stiffened, eyes flickering as if her systems were being tuned to an alien frequency. Then contact came.
Not a message. A riddle.
Fragmented phrases spilled through the clone in a flat, broken cadence:
- “Seven… bound.”
- “Two… freed.”
- “Seals… break… when watched.”
- “They follow… what was left… behind.”
No explanation. No comfort. Just the shape of an answer that refused to be held.
With the transmission ending unresolved, attention turned to the only place that could make sense of such things: the Matrix. Under Lady Mayfair’s guidance, the group relocated to the Matrix access chamber. The Investigator volunteered – placing his consciousness into the Matrix itself – while Mayfair held his pattern steady using the Key. What they found was chilling: the Matrix resisted. It rerouted paths. It treated the Investigator as an intruder – as though it believed he was “the Pilot.”
And then the pieces snapped into alignment.
The sigils – our so-called seals – were not merely warnings or coordinates. They were containment anchors, a ledger of victims and a mechanism of restraint. Something had been held back. Something bound. And the rogue TARDIS, rather than causing the threat… may have been trying to protect Vorlaxion from it.
The moment the Investigator was pulled safely out of the Matrix, the Cloister Bells began to ring.
The group rushed back to the repair bay – just in time to witness the final turn of the knife.
The clone received one last, clearer transmission:
“MY PILOT HAS LEFT YOUR WORLD — IT IS SAFE FOR NOW.”
And then, without spectacle, without farewell, the black TARDIS dematerialized.
In its wake the air shifted – as if Gallifrey itself had exhaled. The immediate menace was gone. The seals vanished. The city did not fall.
But safety came with a cost.
Reports began flooding in: four individuals reappeared across the Citadel, as if released from whatever temporal captivity had held them. Yet one remained missing – one anchor still unaccounted for, one thread still tangled somewhere beyond reach.
In the aftermath, the Lord President ordered the clone removed for deactivation, the immediate crisis apparently contained. But questions lingered like smoke in the halls:
Who was the Pilot?
What was being contained?
And if the TARDIS has fled to the coordinates the seals once marked… what is waiting there now?
For now, Vorlaxion is safe.
But the danger did not end.
It simply moved on.