Jumping For The Stars

Chapter 30 - Playing Games to the Sound of Drums

Chapter 30

Playing Games to the Sound of Drums

Ailia cracked her neck, climbing up after meeting Lazarus, her now ripped and ruined dress pooling around her ankles, the woman ignoring the blood oozing onto the material.

Poor Amy had given her the dress as a graduating present eight monthes before Ailia actually had, the fifteen year old girl knowing that her sister wouldn't make it home from America even if there was a Christmas break. Ailia was outlawed.

She was free now, absolutely free, now all she had to do what find the Doctor.

---

A phone rang to her left, a red phone box lighting the way to her next destination, the super market.

"Darling," the Master's voice purred over the line, "Just what are you doing going out like that?"

"I've decided to take a walk and you should too, Darling," Ailia mocked, staring at a nearby security camera, "A nice long walk would do you fine, I'd think, especially if it were off a short peir."

"Not this again," the Master groaned, ever the dramatisit, "I thought we were over this."

"I wouldn't say so," Ailia watched another camera rove around, twisting to face her.

"Stop playing games, Darling, before you get hurt," the Master's voice echoed over the line.

"I couldn't stop," Ailia smiled sickly sweet into the camera, giving it a mocking salute, "I know how much you love playing them."

"I'll find you, Ailia," the Master said, suddenly serious.

"Molto bene," Ailia said into the phone, dropping it and walking out of the red booth, black vans racing to were she just stood.

She supposed that the super market would just have to wait, the girl thought to herself as she passed a vehicle.

The woman pressed a sticker onto the side of one of the van's black paneling, walking away, the shining black grin of a smiley face following after her.

Martha Jones and the Doctor were here and Ailia wasn't just going to let them visit London without visiting her first, no, that would be a sin.

---

Ailia visited one of her stashes of supplies, set up by the homeless she'd employed through the Master's system. Of course, the Master had stolen the idea from her, quite literally at that, pulling it into the open from the corners of her mind. If she couldn't beat him, then she'd have to do what she did best and be stubbornly resistant, and she was very good at that.

And it wasn't hard for the woman to stich herself up, she'd done it many times before without the Doctor and Martha, without the Master.

But she could hear the drums in her head, thrumming to the beat of four, da da da da, da da da da, that was because of the Master. His presense was overwhelming, stinking of things that Ailia couldn't name. Or rather shouldn't.

Timelord minds, it appeared, messed up her radar.

Luckily, though, after a fresh change of clothes and some much needed nourishment, the woman could use that to find the Doctor.

So, that's what she did, all while hiding away from the keen eye of the Master, guessing at his tricks, because she'd already used them. That's what you get when you keep going into somebody's mind, you get to think like them.

Ailia swung her feet as she sat in the window in Martha Jone's apartment, hearing the door open behind her.

"What have you got? Computer, laptop, anything?" Ailia could hear the Doctor ask Martha, then continuing to Jack, "Jack, who are you phoning? You can't tell anyone, we're here!"