They obeyed, gathering their papers and filing out through the double doors beyond. The aged ones were a little slower, shuffling around like lost lambs.

The Doctor turned around to face Sapphira and frowned when he noticed the mayhem on the floor he had spawned. “And someone clean this mess up!” All of the younger, spryer men and women had already left, abandoning their elders to their sluggish pace, so a hunched woman with stormy gray hair began to slowly pick the instruments from the floor.

His disgust was quite visibly outlined in his sagging face: it appeared as though it were an expression he was quite familiar with.

For just a second or two, Sapphira was able to find some semblance of clarity in the silence. The Doctor stood grimacing, the woman quietly tinkered on the floor, and the rest of the world was still. How had she ended up in this position at the whim of a man long corrupted, a man she had thought she ended, a man who by all intents and purposes was the antithesis of her objective?

Project Glass. It had been three years since she had last seen the Doctor, laboring for a solution to her questions. Growing into her emotions in secret had been considerably painful. Each day was a new encounter, a new Feeling, and a greater chance of discovery. Beforehand, every day had been sameness, an amalgamation of work, sleep, and food. Nothing was unique, and the most terrifying thing was that—as she remembered it—everything was uniform. And now that she had finally come to her senses… it was all painfully irrelevant.

She thought she had found the answer. Maybe she could find resolution in hitting fast forward. Maybe she could finally rest, so to speak, after volunteering for the experimental cryonics project. One hundred years was a long jump. Hopefully… it yielded the answer.

“Miss Lindsey!” The Doctor picked up a tired yet exuberant tone. He limped to the side of her cryochamber and fiddled with the controls.

The machine buzzed. She began to tilt forward, slowly, until she had been leaned at a nearly forty-five degree angle. Her body was held in position by several thick straps, though her head was unsupported and it drooped down so all she could see was the floor. He continued to speak. “How wonderful! Wonderful to finally speak with you again.”

“Why?” Sapphira tried to say. It was somewhat muffled but the Doctor understood.

“Why, you ask? Well, imagine my surprise when, after all you had done for me, you had gone and locked yourself away from time itself! You had done so much, Miss Lindsey.” He seized her shaved head and forced her eyes inches from his, which were wide with enmity. The delight in his voice was overcome by a furious hatred, and he seethed through his teeth, enunciating his words painfully slow. “Your thanks is long overdue.”