“Syme—”

“No.” The Doctor was in her face. There was a Rage within that began to burn. He had always believed his life was leading to a singular moment of crowning achievement and he would be damned if this foreigner would take that from him. He was seething; he wanted to scream. “You will not have this from me. Sapphira is mine. My prize! Your people may use her when they do but now… now she is for me!”

“Here’s something you need to understand about our agreement, traitor.” Foley matched his harsh stare. “We have allowed you to believe you mean something in this operation as a courtesy, given your record with Ignota. A gimp’s revenge matters little to me and my people. You are nothing, and you have been nothing. My personal distaste for you aside, you are replaceable. You are expendable. Myles would have suited our needs. He was a malleable, drooling idiot. His corpse would find home in the Wastes and we’d have our prize. But instead we have you. We have a desperate fool writhing for gratification and I would sooner swallow cyanide than grant you your perversions.”

“I was promised—!”

“You were promised nothing. She is not for you to kill, or otherwise maim.” She brushed past the Doctor. “Believe me, once we are done with her she will have been through far worse than what you could accomplish here.”

She was lying. The Doctor knew it. She believed him a complete dimwit, smirking as she stepped away from Sapphira. They were going to use her, somehow. But she would live. And there was not a single chance he could bear the thought of that.

No. Not a single chance.

It didn’t happen exactly the way he imagined it. He Felt red-hot and flushed yet there was a switch somewhere he had never been entirely aware of that seemed to blind him, numb him of everything but to one primitive goal. Sapphira, off somewhere to his right—the helpless witness, but a master observing the feral pupil of another, lesser teacher—watched the Doctor lurch forward. His normal hobble carried at one time a deflated, yet half-heartedly renewed vigor. Over a century ago, working on Project Immunity, the man carried what could be described as confidence. Determination. Authority. There was a sliver of that man mixed into the present, though the driving force was something else entirely: it was every ounce of energy his aged body could muster, pushing him forward, closer and closer to Foley, all sound gone, the hums and echoes, his surroundings crumbling away, nothing in this split-second reality except Cera Foley, Syme, and the knife that plunged into the back of her neck.

It was a six-inch dagger of shining, half-serrated steel. Her spinal cord was split on the first thrust. Her body went immediately limp and, in retrospect after the event, he would realize it was all that was required. She was a corpse on the concrete, killed cleanly, efficiently, and—in an unfortunate fury—painlessly. But the Doctor was not driven by efficiency. He pulled the knife out like a whisper, trailing blood in an arc that danced through the air before sticking to the computer monitors behind him, and thrust again. He discovered the carotid artery with an effortless glancing cut and allowed a pulsing, dying spray of crimson to coat the floor and his neatly pressed trousers. The third and fourth stabs produced less spectacular results, yet he kept going, the knife locked in both hands, kneeling in a pool of blood and gnashing wildly at dead flesh. Time was no longer a constant measure. He didn’t even remember stopping the thrusts to saw at his work, but the next thing his consciousness registered was the separated head of his victim in his hands.

He stared, dumbfounded. The pale hair he held in his hands was stained with blood, as was his coat, his shoes, his face. He tasted it on his lips. It had solemnly swept over the steps down to the rest of the chamber, pooling in every direction, a melancholy red painted over a gloomy grey floor. The Doctor gaped at his surroundings and then back at the decapitated head for another long moment before dropping it with a wet, sticky flop. He shuffled back, turning to Sapphira, wide-eyed.