The ZED was sitting on one of her crates. On the ground in front of her lay Julia's sedaderm. Beside it lay the remains of Julia's gear, which she had hidden earlier by the fire.

Twice, Julia had tried to pass out. The ZED wouldn't let her.

"What technology enabled you to retrieve the boy?" the ZED asked for the 20th time. The question was the same every time, asked in exactly the same way. It was the equivalent of water torture.

Julia didn't fall for it. She grit her teeth and concentrated on the pain in her leg. The pain which crawled towards her stomach.

The waiting was awful.

She heard the ZED get up, and braced for another kick. But it didn't come. She opened her eyes.

The ZED was facing away from her, up the mountainside. She picked up her gun and said simply, "Don't run off. I'll be back as quickly as I can."

Julia had thought she couldn't feel any worse. She was wrong. The horror which stabbed through her was ten times worse than the pain of the bullet and her aching body. The fools! she thought. I'm not worth rescuing! No!

The tiny woman was gone like a ghost, up the mountainside.

I have to do something! Julia thought. No pain in the universe matters. Not now!

Trembling – with the effort, or with the realization of what she had to do, she wasn't sure which – Julia pulled out her knife.

It was so odd. In medical school, someone had actually asked her, "If you were in a tight spot, and had to operate on yourself – without anesthetic – could you do it?" And laughing like a young fool, she'd said, "Not no, but hell no!"

It wouldn't be the first time she'd been wrong.

She cut away the front of her pants leg.

Sobbing slightly, bracing herself for what was about to happen, she gingerly felt along her own leg, feeling for the bullet, realizing she didn't even have the luxury of getting it over with quickly.

Do it! she thought. Now!

She sliced open her own leg.

She reared her head back and screamed.

 

The ZED heard the scream. She turned to look back briefly, then continued on.

The Doctor heard the scream. His body shook with the force of it, his eyes squinting in thought and compassion.

Devon, Danziger, and Alonzo dimly heard the scream from far down the slope. "Julia!" Alonzo cried. He sprinted downhill. Devon was close behind.

"Wait – dammit!" Danziger exclaimed. He ran after them, practically leaping down the mountainside. He turned sideways and rolled, taking them both off their feet. Everyone sprawled.

"Quiet!" he hissed, sitting up before either of them could say a word. "This isn't the way to help anyone!" He grabbed Alonzo by the shirt front. "I know you love her, man, but this isn't the way to help her!"

Alonzo just sat, breathing hard, then finally nodded his head. He squeezed his eyes shut in agony as Julia screamed again. Danziger, too, grimaced at the anguished cry. He turned to Devon--

And saw her running down the mountainside, heading for Julia.

"Dammit, Adair!" Danziger spat quietly, shaking his head.

He watched her go. His heart said to run after her. His head said to wait right where he was.

He sighed. Then he turned to Alonzo. "We're going. But we're going slowly and carefully, no matter what. Got it?"

Alonzo just nodded.

 

The ZED had stopped, considering. She had heard the commotion farther up the hill, when Danziger had tackled Devon and Alonzo, and she was puzzled. It had to be a diversion of some sort. She was obviously meant to follow one party while another retrieved the physician. However, since more people would die to accomplish this, the ZED didn't know what to make of it. Her logic told her there must be some complicated plan going on here, all the parts of which she didn't yet see.

Therefore, she would do the unexpected. Keep the enemy guessing.

She climbed a tree. She could take them all out with worm bullets if she wanted to, but she didn't. If possible, she wanted to find out more about this strange technology before doing anything, or she couldn't fight it.

She waited.

 

Julia had her jacket around her leg, soaking blood. Crying, she reached inside, feeling her own muscles, trying to get slippery, numb fingers around a bullet which was still burrowing forward.

The pain had actually receded. Just like noise can't sound any louder once it reaches a certain volume, even if it still rises, so had the pain reached a crescendo, and actually backed off into a kind of dreamy, throbbing numbness. Her head spun.

Then she noticed something hovering in front of her eyes. She squinted, and it swam into focus briefly. It was a bullet. A crazy, delirious smile crept onto her face. The bullet was being held by a bloody hand. Was it hers? She followed the arm to her shoulder. It was indeed.

She tightened her jacket around her leg, feeling the pain shoot up her body and keep her awake, just a moment longer. After binding the wound, she lay back, resting, despite herself. The bullet lay on her chest.

Don't pass out, she thought, don't-

She passed out, twitching and groaning into a nightmare world.

Awake again. Coming and going. How long? She checked her watch. She hadn't been out more than a few minutes, possibly a few seconds. Bless the Council and their training, she thought, and laughed a little at the irony. She felt blackness overtake her again.

She fought it off. Just one more thing, she thought. There'll be all the time for rest in just a few minutes. Please, just let me do this one last thing...

She barely had the energy to roll over, much less throw a bullet more than six inches. Making sure she kept hold of the bullet, she slowly dragged herself around the smoldering fire, wincing as her leg protested. Hauling herself inch by inch over to the ZED's crates, she picked up her sedaderm. Her face fell, and she almost gave in to despair.

The vial was cracked. The sleeping draught was gone, spilled away.

Moments passed, then she dragged her eyes back to the crates. One was locked, but the one the ZED had opened earlier was not. She feebly worked a hand beneath the lid, grabbed the lip of the crate, and pulled. Nothing happened. She took a few deep, slow breaths, then pulled harder, grunting slightly. The crate fell forward. Objects inside rattled around.

Julia rested a few moments. She couldn't afford to, as the bullet was about ten minutes from detonation, but she had to. Then she rummaged through the crate, more by feel than by sight since the lid wouldn't prop open, and found what she was looking for: a small box of sedaderm vials. There were a few other supplies in the crate, but Julia couldn't find any more vials beyond the one box.

She dragged it out to lay next to her hip. She pulled each vial out and squinted at it in the dying firelight. As she expected, none were sedatives, for a ZED would have no need of any. They were designed to help a ZED have more energy and feel less pain.

She rested a few moments, breathing hard, then did the only remaining thing she could think of. She laid the bullet on her chest, picked up one of the ZED's vials, uncapped it, and poured out its contents.

Her hands trembling with the effort, her fingers stiff and bloody, she gingerly picked up the bullet and tried to drop it into the vial. She was shaking so hard, she missed twice, dropping it. Crying in frustration, she finally got it in. It fit – barely. She fell back, resting.

She felt around for the vial's cap, found it, capped the vial, felt around for her sedaderm, panicked when she couldn't find it, finally found it, and snapped the vial into place.

The sedaderm was designed to inject any sort of substance into the human body, and the pressure could be adjusted accordingly. At most, the sedaderm could actually inject marrow or a healer vaccine into a person's bone.

She set the sedaderm to maximum now, and let the pressure build inside. She gazed up the mountainside, puzzled as to why she couldn't hear anything. She hoped this was good. Maybe the ZED had been drawn away by a diversion. Maybe...

The mountainside was becoming lighter, lit by the moons rising over the mountain's crest. She couldn't see anyone up there. She nodded, assured that Devon and Danziger wouldn't be so stupid as to commit suicide by going one on one with a ZED. Alonzo? He might, the big lunk. She smiled briefly at the thought.

Grunting, screaming inside with the effort, she rolled onto her shoulder so she could raise her head. She held her knife in one hand and the sedaderm in the other, with the vial pointing up the mountainside. Stop shaking! she thought. Stop it! You only have time for one shot at this. Now do what you have to do!

Breathing in and gritting her teeth, she flashed the knife down and snapped off the vial's tip.

And the bullet shot up the mountainside, away from her.

She fell back, relieved.

The ZED would never go near a hostage who was about to blow up. But if Julia could bring the ZED back towards herself, she still had a chance. Because when the bullet exploded, it would create a landslide, and landslides covered considerably more ground than explosions did. And maybe – just maybe – if she could lure the ZED back, Julia could catch her in a landslide created by her own bullet.

Even if that landslide took herself, as well.

 

The Doctor walked on through the trees. He glanced at his pocket watch, worried. Time was running short for Julia, and the ZED had not appeared. What had gone wrong?

He stopped to think, and lowered the sonic screwdriver as his arm was starting to ache. He scanned the mountainside below him, now becoming lit by the two moons rising over the mountain's crest. Nothing moved.

As he turned to looked above him, the ZED dropped out of the trees behind him and flipped him onto his back. He landed with a yell, and the sonic screwdriver bounced out of his hand.

As quick as lightning, the koba threw a thorn straight at the ZED's face.

And as quick as lightning, the ZED snatched it out of the air, two inches in front of her cheek. She held it there perfectly, poised between thumb and finger.

The Doctor's hearts raced.

The koba didn't do anything else. The Doctor looked at it, and realized the animal was going on pure instinct. Probably no koba in history had ever had to throw more than one thorn. It had used its weapon; now it was patiently waiting for the ZED to fall. It didn't know that wasn't going to happen.

The ZED placed one foot on the Doctor's chest and aimed her gun straight down. "Do you have any statement to make before you are killed?"

The Doctor picked a flower and slid it into the gun's barrel.

"That plant will not stop a bullet," the ZED said.

"I'm not trying to stop a bullet. I'm trying to stop you."

"If you wish to live, tell me about the blue box."

"What's your name? I'll tell you all about the blue box, and how to make one yourself, if you can just tell me your name."

Silence.

"It doesn't even occur to you to make up a name, does it?" the Doctor asked. "A person would have, you know. A real person, one who thinks for herself instead of living an automated death, enslaved to another. What's your name? What did you do before you became a ZED? Were you a bank robber? A terrorist? Or maybe you just spoke out once too often against the wrong person, for the right reasons, and someone thought it would be ironic to turn you into this twisted travesty I see before me. Maybe you were a nice schoolteacher, a mother, a wife, a florist, maybe you were anything! Anything at all. Tell me," the Doctor whispered, his voice soft, a sigh like the warm breeze, "who were you before you became a ZED? What did you do? Whom did you love? Tell me. What was your name?"

The ZED didn't move. Not a muscle, not a blink, not a quiver.

But her eyes moved. Somehow, although they didn't budge, they moved, shifted focus, and for a second, the ZED wasn't seeing the Doctor. She was seeing something else, something...

"Final statement recorded," she said. "Death to take place immediately due to the fact that I already have a hostage."

"ZED unit!" Julia called from down the mountainside.

The ZED paused.

"ZED unit, if you can hear me, please come quickly!" Julia yelled. "I'll tell you everything! Please! I don't want to die!"

Julia was looking up the slope in desperation, hoping she'd timed it right. What if she was off by a few minutes either way?

"Julia!" a voice hissed.

She turned. "Devon?"

And there was Devon Adair running into the camp.

"Julia, come on, we've got to get you out of here!"

"No, Devon! Go! Run now! As fast as you can!"

 

The ZED stood poised over the Doctor, finger on the trigger, but looking intently in the direction of Julia's voice. Slowly, the Doctor stretched out his hand for his sonic screwdriver, lying inches beyond his fingertips.

The ZED's enhanced hearing caught the sound: the beeping made by the worm bullet before detonation. But the sound was wrong, somehow. She tilted her head, listening. Yes, that was it – it came from a different direction than the hostage's voice.

In that moment, she knew she had lost her hostage. Reilly had told her not to underestimate Eden Advance.

"I need a new hostage." She shifted her aim to the Doctor's right thigh. "Prepare yourself."

The Doctor snatched his sonic screwdriver and pulled the cylinder down hard. Sound waves split the air.

The circuitry around the ZED's right eye burst in a shower of sparks. She dropped her gun and clutched her face.

Then the bullet exploded.

And the mountainside began to move.

Devon and Julia looked up in horror.

Danziger and Alonzo watched in shock as the orange blossom split the night, a mere fifty yards below them. They shielded their eyes, then watched the land below the explosion start to slide away.

"Julia..." Alonzo breathed.

"Mom!" Uly yelled, and ran out of the TARDIS.

The koba, head whirling in alarm, zipped up a tall tree as high as it could go.

The ZED took one look at the roaring wall of dirt, trees, and shrubbery bearing down on her, and she was gone, sprinting with superhuman speed to the side to get out of its path.

The Doctor, shaking his head to clear his ears of the blast, looked up just in time to see the mountainside wash over him like a breaking wave. He tumbled helplessly along in a swirling, choking darkness, buried deeper each second.

The tree holding the koba was felled, and down it went, the koba yelling the whole way down. But it was so tall that by the time it hit the ground, the worst had passed, and the little animal landed on top of the rubble, sliding downhill, scared but unharmed.

Devon and Julia, however, were dead center in its path. They yelled and clutched each other desperately as 500 tons of rubble slammed into them and swept them away.