She had received a call earlier in the day that someone had been dispatched to transport them back to Australis Ignota. Miss Lindsey was almost ready.
“Have you decided, Doctor, how you are getting back to Washington?” Foley muttered as she sat at Lindsey’s tube. “I’m confident we won’t be flying you to your doorstep.”

“Yes, don’t worry about me.”

“Oh believe me, I haven’t a shred of concern for your kind.”

The Doctor smiled unpleasantly. He limped over to the tube, staring at its casing with a particular glimmer to his eyes. He could almost feel himself salivate with anticipation. “She’s almost here, isn’t she?”

“Keep it in your pants, Doctor,” Foley said, her eyes narrowed on a monitor. “Give it a few hours. Then you can speak whatever it is to her you feel gives your miserable life any meaning.” She glared at something at the back of the tube. “In the meantime, I need you to grab a box from the helicopter, something for little Saph here.”

“And why can you not do it yourself?”

“This is a critical moment, Doctor. Do you know how this machine works?”

“No,” the Doctor huffed.

“That’s what I thought. I would prefer we kept our objective, you know, alive for the time being. It’s a small gray box with a handle on the left of the cabin. You can manage. I think,” she added slyly with a flicker of a smile.

Fuming, he walked away. Foley watched him leave, waiting. She had a delicate finger paused over a button, and when he was finally out of sight, the elevator gliding towards the surface, she pressed it.

Sapphira Lindsey had actually been ready for quite some time. Her vitals stabilized yesterday soon after the EMS functions completed their two-week-long routine. The Doctor was unaware of this technology and it would need to stay that way; he assumed it would take her years to regain control of her body, that she had just begun a long and painful journey to recuperate from cryosleep. But the real truth was that she was nearly fit for field duty. She had killed scores of Australis Ignota agents in her lifetime, and now after just one session of re-education at the Ministry she would be prepared to kill for them.

But first Sapphira would tell her what she needed to know.

Upstairs, the Doctor’s rage had not subsided. The duty itself irked him only a little, yet the authority that demanded it had pushed him into a calamity. Foley’s impatience and comparable misery were amusing, though he had forgotten how easily frustrated he was by her arrogance. He would have to teach himself some restraint in the future.

The top floor disturbed him. At any moment he expected a sinister figure to emerge from behind a stack of crates and put two bullets in him center-mass. If he was being honest with himself the expectation was derived of both fear and desire, every step a dull throb of pain. It was always a constant lately that had seeped into the background but current events had proven exceptionally taxing and it had become a reminder with every passing second of his frightful age.

A large flashing light turned on when he pressed a button for the great doors to the desert outside. The slabs of metal slowly swung in but he didn’t have time to wait so he pushed past them.

The wind was almost unbearable. It whipped at his face with greater vigor than when they had arrived, sand stinging his skin and the sun, that insufferable piece of nature just couldn’t help but blind and burn him. He kept his head down, heading towards the general direction of the helicopter. The journey should have been short-lived yet the Doctor struggled at every step. Eventually his feet hit something soft and he looked up.