Chapter Text
The EMP signal collapsed, the final pulses fading like the embers of a dying fire. In the silence that followed, Kevran could hear the faintest whine of servos awakening, a reluctant heart beginning to beat again. Socket's optical lenses flickered once, dimly, then brightened to their full-blown glow. It turned, slowly and weakly, to face Kevran with its own vision for as long as it could hold off the rogue programming.
"Kevran."
The voice was calm and soft. It almost sounded tender. The jagged distortion that had gripped it for so long was gone.
"You did it," the lenses blinked once. "You have given me back a little time. Thank you."
Kevran froze where he was crouched beside the fallen frame, every nerve screaming at him as his still-wounded side burned in reaction to the medical gel. A voice in his head yelled at him to get some distance before the corruption retook hold, but the light remained steady in Socket's eyes. There was no grinding internally, and no Dalek inflexions through its modulator. There was just Socket. There was just his friend.
"You're back," Kevran whispered, as though daring the universe to take it away. His hand hovered in the air, unable to decide whether to touch the machine or recoil. "You- you're really back."
"For now," Socket said, as calm as someone commenting on the weather. "Not for long, it seems."
Khandi, standing behind Kevran, exhaled slowly. She didn't speak, not yet. She knew this was not the right moment to interject.
Kevran's throat twitched. "No. No, don't say that. We can fix this. We'll- I'll rewrite the intercept, purge the corruption, something-"
"There is no time." Socket's optic brightened for a moment, almost like a comforting glance of an eye. "You understand this to be correct. The Daleks will reclaim my system programming, and when it does, this unit shall be theirs to control again," the servos whirred as it shifted slightly, moving its spherical body to rest against Kevran's chest. "This is mercy."
Kevran shook his head violently, like a child refusing to hear reason. "You don't get to say that! Not you. Not after everything. I built you. I-" his voice gave up on him, collapsing into something raw and small. "You're all I've got left."
Socket was quiet for a moment before answering in a voice just as small. "And that is why you must let me go."
Khandi stepped forward, her hands folding together, her face fighting a desperate battle to withstand emotion. "Kevran..." she hesitated, forcing the words out. "It's right. The longer you delay, the more it suffers."
Kevran faced her. "Do you think I don't know that!?" his voice shattered against the misty air. He stood, fists balled, trembling at the knees. "Do you think I don't know what happens when the signal comes back? I watched it- I saw it tear at itself," his chest heaved, fury burned out as quickly as it rose, and his voice fell to a whimper. "But I can't. I can't be the one to-"
"Kevran," Socket's servos whirred again, almost like a sigh, "do you remember the day you finished me?"
Kevran blinked the anger away, looking back at the droid. "I- of course I do."
"You were covered in oil. Half the circuits were wrong. I could not say anything except nonsense syllables," the optics glowed brighter, the voice gaining a faint shimmer similar to amusement. "And you stayed up for three consecutive nights to get me speaking properly. Do you remember the first thing I said?"
Kevran laughed through a sob. "You called me... 'clumsy.'"
"Yes," Socket's voice warmed. "You tripped over your own tools and hit your head on the table. I knew then you were not perfect. But you were mine. And I was yours."
Kevran pressed his palm to his face, fighting back the tide inside him. Even Khandi, who had been trying to maintain a calm, stoic disposition, couldn't help but tear up and break as the robot spoke. The weight of the situation had finally hit her, and she had to walk away from the two of them a few paces.
"I remember when you took me to the Capitol gardens," Socket continued, "the ones in the Archive district. You tried to hide me under your coat, but the guards saw everything. You almost lost your job that day."
Kevran gave a strained smile. "Zigawatali nearly tore my ears off..."
"And yet," Socket said calmly, "you kept me. Protected me. You gave life when everyone else said I was a mistake. I am not afraid to end that life now. Not if it means I can serve you one final time."
Kevran dropped to his knees, and his eyes glistened with unshed darkness. "I'm so sorry. I dragged you into this. I should never have-"
"No," Socket's voice cut gently across his guilt. "This is not failure. This is fulfilment. I was made to serve, and this... this is the greatest service I will ever give you. To free you from me, before I am no longer myself."
Kevran's hands tremored. He could hear Khandi break down behind him, her muted whimpering still loud enough for him to hear. She said nothing, but her emotions felt like a permission being granted. It was a mercy he didn't want, but knew he needed.
Socket spoke again, lighter now, voice drifting like a memory. "Do you remember the day you first showed me the stars? Not on a viewer. Through real glass. You said 'That is what forever looks like.' I did not understand then. I think I do now."
Kevran sobbed openly, his body no longer rejecting the vulnerability and sadness of his situation. He let himself break, like Khandi behind him. His fingers fumbled against the access panel at the back of Socket's frame. He knew every upcoming sequence by heart. The shutdown was deliberately complicated and long-winded, yet methodical and straightforward. It was a ritual he had hoped never to perform. With each line of inputs made, with each wire disconnected, it felt less like a deactivation and more like dismantling his own soul.
Socket kept speaking, its voice filling the silence so that Kevran's own thoughts would not have to.
"You sang once, when you thought I was charging. Terrible voice, but I liked it."
Kevran slowly pulled two wires from their connecting ports.
"You used to sneak fragments of ancient Gallifreyan texts out of the Archive, so that I could analyse them for you. You said it made you look cleverer than you were."
Kevran's finger pressed into a button as he simultaneously flicked two switches.
"That TARDIS flight you weren't supposed to take... I had to drag you and Siri out of that collapsing chamber. I wasn't designed for heroics, but someone had taught me when to tidy other people's messes."
Kevran input a short sequence into a keypad.
"You told me things you wouldn't tell anyone. You said it was because I would never tell. You were right. I never did."
Kevran carefully unscrewed an interior panel to reach deeper circuits.
"On Phaidon, when you risked your own life for Khandi... I felt so proud. You were braver than you ever believed. Braver than anyone we have met."
He carefully unplugged each wire with delicate care.
"That night, during that particularly bad storm on Gallifrey. You sat oiling my joints, talking to me as if I were alive. That's the moment I realised I was."
Kevran remove the final cover, unveiling the final release switch.
"You called me family."
Kevran paused, hands shaking, tears dripping onto the metal. "You are my family," he whispered, "always."
Socket's optic dimmed slightly, as though in response to the words. "Then let me go as family. Not as a machine."
Kevran drew a long, shuddered breath. His thumb hovered over the final release switch. He felt the weight of his entire life pressing down on him. With one final push of a button, he would put down his friend, kill his only remaining family. With a voice both cracked and trembling, he whispered into the wind.
"I love you like family, Sock."
Click.
Socket's body rose one final time, looking at the stars that peered from under the veil of light above. It tilted slightly, admiring their beauty.
"Do you hear that, Kevran?" Socket's voice began to fade out. "That's the sound of peace. Our peace... at last."
Socket's final words came as the circuits wound down, voice trailing towards the silence. The optic light flickered once, then twice. Its glow faltered at once, forming a final curve in the lens, almost like a smile. The chassis went still. The gears stopped spinning.
Kevran sat frozen, hands still pressed against the now cooling frame, as though denial alone might restart it. Finally, the dam inside him crumbled. He collapsed onto the ground, clutching what remained of his friend, depression tearing through him with no restraint, no dignity. Khandi caught him before he fell entirely, pulling him against her shoulder. She held him tight, her own face betraying her heartbreak, but staying strong for him in his moment of need.
When she spoke, Khandi's voice choked. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. It's alright. They wanted this. They wanted this."
Kevran shook his head, words strangled by grief. "He was all I had left."
She had no response to give because she knew it was true.
The battlecruiser lurched. The floor pitched sideways under Siri's boots, sparks showering from the ceiling as though the ship itself had been wounded. She staggered, one hand bracing against the wall, her lungs burning with the scrid stink of ruptured circuitry. She could tell that something had happened. She knew exactly what it had to be, too: the tether which had been binding the Dalek ship to its flight path had just been severed.
The realisation was visceral, like the snapping of a tendon. She briefly bowed her head as the understanding of events hit her. The ship's engines were dead now, but something much more important to her had also died to make it happen. She whispered a slight prayer under her breath before moving forward. The battlecruiser, stripped of cohesion, now staggered aimlessly outside Gallifrey's orbit, caught between directives that no longer made sense.
One thing had not changed. The Dalek stealth unit was still there.
Siri pressed her back against the bulkhead, forcing her breathing to steady. The strike team were all gone. The stealth craft was a short run back, but she wouldn't let herself abandon anyone for her own safety. She knew she wasn't entirely alone. Theojan was still sprawled behind cover, his body now curled against itself. His hands twitched, his jaw clenched. His body was burning, reforming, caught in that liminal agony between one self and the next. Regeneration was not always a clean business.
He was not helpful to her in that state, but worse than that - he was vulnerable. If the Dalek found him before he completed the process, it would be over for him. That meant that their survival was down to her, and her alone.
A soft scrape echoed through the corridor behind her. Siri's head jerked towards the sound. Nothing. Only flickering lights and shadows dancing across torn panels greeted her gaze. The ship's power grid was failing in fragments, leaving entire stretches in complete darkness.
She had seen its tactic now, how it weaponised the environment around it to gain the upper hand. The stealth unit could retreat into the darkness, bleed away the indigo highlights from its casing, and let it completely vanish into the blackness like a predator stalking its prey. She knew it was waiting. She could feel it watching. It wanted to wear her down until terror and exhaustion forced a mistake to open her defences.
A hiss.
A click.
Sounds were too deliberate to be accidents. Siri's grip tightened on the sidearm. The weapon was pitiful against Dalek armour; it served her better as a talisman than a tool. She had to think, find ways to use the environment to her own advantage. She had to find a way to turn the ship itself into her ally, instead of the Dalek's.
The shadows shifted.
She moved before she thought, diving across the corridor as a searing lance of energy obliterated the wall where she had been standing. The impact lit the darkness in an afterimage of fire. Her shoulder slammed into the deck, pain lancing down her arm, but she was alive. Her mind ran through multiple thoughts at once, none of which were helping her in the current situation. She knew one thing for sure: she could not fight the Dalek head-on.
She pushed herself upright, teeth clenched. "Come on, then!"
The Dalek did not rush her. It advanced with delivered patience, letting its silences work as a weapon. She continued to edge backwards, scanning the environment. Gravity was fluctuating slightly. The tether's severing must have destabilised the ship's compressors. Every so often, the floor seemed to tilt too far, and her foot would lift with less weight than she expected. She could use that to her advantage.
Siri darted sideways, grabbed a sparking cable from the wall, and yanked hard. The line tore free, flaring bright as it spat electricity. She hurled it into the shadows.
There was a metallic scream. The Dalek convulsed as the electrical current seared across its casing, the camouflage flickering and failing. For an instant, it was fully visible, its eyestalk whirling to lock onto her position. She fired. A direct hit to the optic. The lens spiderwebbed with cracks. It wasn't destroyed, but definitely damaged, and its perception would be narrowed.
It shrieked, weapon swirling wide, blasting the ceiling instead of her. The corridor shook, chunks of debris crashing down. Siri started to run towards it. She seized a plasma charge from her pouch, similar to the one Veyra had used on the swarm of drone-spheres before, and thumbed the primer. The Dalek loomed into view again, its weapon swivelling to face her directly. It was too slow.
She hurled the charge. It detonated mid-air, a concussive burst that knocked the Dalek sideways. Its weapon arm twisted, sparking violently, the trigger completely blown apart. Siri didn't stop. She closed the distance, every muscle screaming. The Dalek's casing was cracked, leaking smoke and a liquid substance. She could hear it struggling to recalibrate, servos grinding in protest of the damage sustained.
She leapt, slammed onto the top of its casing, and drove the sidearm point-blank into the damaged seam of the armour. She fired. The recoil nearly broke her wrist. The Dalek shrieked again, its casing juddering, and sparks flying as its system overloaded. It tried to shake her off, but she clung on, teeth bared, every fibre of her being focused on ending this monster.
With a final blast, the casing ruptured, the scream was cut short, the light of its eyestalk guttered into emptiness. The Dalek collapsed, smoke pouring from its ruined shell. Siri fell along with it, chest heaving, body trembling. Pain flared in a dozen places: cuts, bruises, and unnoticed burns from handling electronics. The sidearm slipped from her grasp, clattering uselessly across the deck.
She had won. Somehow.
The silence around her was as ominous as the fight. Her hand shook. Her ears rang. Every breath hurt her ribs. The victory felt hollow, as though the cost had bled out of her along with the sweat and bruises. In the distance, she heard a stomach-churning sound.
Theojan screamed.
It ripped down the corridor like a living thing, the sound of flesh rewriting itself, bones shattering and reforming, cells burning away only to ignite again in unending flame.
Siri forced herself upright, stumbling against the wall. Her vision swam, her knees buckling beneath her weight. She clung to consciousness with sheer stubbornness, dragging herself towards him. The battle was over. The war, however, was only deepening.
The silence was unbearable.
It was not the clean silence of a library, nor the suspended quiet of space between stars. This was the kind of silence that pressed against his chest, echoing with the sound of something missing. Socket had always filled the air with a hum, a click, the faint buzz of processors, or the dry remark that came just when he needed it.
Now there was nothing.
Kevran tried to speak. His lips parted, but only a rasp escaped, dry and broken. No words came, not even the apology that had lodged itself deep inside his chest.
Khandi's hand touched his arm. She didn't speak either. He was grateful for that. There were no words that would fit here. Her silence felt merciful, as though she understood that speech would only fracture him further.
His eyes blurred, unfocusing completely. The world around him felt muffled, distorted, and unreal. The War outside still thundered in the distance, someone across the stars, but here in this quiet corner of the system, he could almost imagine the conflict had stopped altogether. Almost.
Now he was hollow.
He lowered himself to the floor, his movements slow, mechanical. His arms hung uselessly at his sides. He leaned forward until his forehead touched the cold stone. Breathing became a shallow suggestion, a forced act. Inhale, exhale, each one was manual labour. The grief did not come as a storm. It did not break him open in a flood. Instead, it drained him, slow and steady, as though every second leached a little more colour from his world.
He remembered how Socket had first looked when he dragged the broken chassis into his workshop. It was little more than scrap, corroded metal, and frayed wires. Everyone else had laughed at him for trying, but he hadn't cared. He had stayed up for days, tinkering, patching, coaxing life from the wreckage.
That first spark of light in the optics. That first word. That moment of triumph. And now, all that remained was stillness.
Kevran closed his eyes. His mind flickered instinctively to Siri, to the sound of her voice, the warmth of her steady presence. She was out there, somewhere, fighting her own battles on a Dalek ship that no longer had a pilot. He should have been by her side. Instead, he had lost the only companion left to him here.
He had nothing.
No Socket. No Siri. Not even Gallifrey - that great, indifferent world that had shaped him and then discarded him, a minor cog in an ancient, grinding machine. He was a hollow shell, and for the first time since his youth, Kevran felt completely and utterly alone.
Khandi shifted beside him. He sensed her watching, worried, perhaps afraid that he might collapse entirely. She did not touch him again, but her presence remained steady, like a candle that refused to go out in the dark. He wanted to thank her, but he couldn't. The words would not come. His throat burned with the effort of silence.
The air smelled faintly of scorched circuitry. Socket's remains still lay there, dark and lifeless. Kevran could not bring himself to look anymore. He wondered, distantly, if this was what Gallifrey felt every time it lost another soldier in the War - that sickly, hollow absence. But no, Gallifrey did not feel. Gallifrey calculated, measured, and moved on. He was not Gallifrey. He could not simply move on.
The minutes passed like hours. At some point, Kevran realised he was gripping the floor with white-knuckled fists. He forced himself to release, to breathe, and to steady his mind. It didn't help him.
He had been stripped of everything that had given him shape. Without Socket's voice, without Siri's protection, without the fragile scaffolding of his small, organised life… what was left of him?
A hollow man in a hollow war.
The silence deepened. Even the thunder of inevitable destiny seemed to recede, swallowed by distance. For a fleeting, dangerous moment, Kevran wondered if this was the end of his story. If he would simply remain here, unmoving, until the Daleks, or the Sisterhood, or the High Council, or time itself erased him entirely. Perhaps it would be easier that way.
Khandi's quiet exhale broke the thought. She didn't speak, but she was still there. She was waiting. Kevran sat, breathing in the silence, trying to feel anything at all.
The chamber stank of ozone and charred metal. Shattered panels sparked intermittently in the shadows, the quiet aftershock of the battle Siri had somehow survived. Her breath came ragged, each inhale scraping through her throat like a shard of glass lodged somewhere it should never have been. A second scream, as sickening as the first, came from Theojan.
She stumbled forward, one hand pressed against her side, the other bracing against the tilted bulkhead. The sound rose again - not just pain, not just regeneration, but something far darker. A howl that seemed to shake the ship around her, layered with tones that no Gallifreyan throat should have been able to make. The air thickened, as if frightened by the events that were transpiring in the room.
The light came next: raw, blistering regeneration energy, but not the golden warmth that she had seen begin emitting from the others. This was more jagged, broken, and unstable. It tore out of Theojan's body like a volcanic eruption, slamming Siri back against the wall. Sparks rained down. She tried to shield her eyes, but the light burned through her eyelids. She forced herself upright again, dragging one boot after the other until she could see him clearly.
Theojan lay at the epicentre, or what was left of him. His form was convulsing violently, limbs jerking at angles that should have snapped bones. His mouth was open in a silent scream, the sound emerging a second later as though the world lagged behind his agony. Then, the laughter came. A horrible, broken laugh. It was not his, but instead it twisted out of him, bursting between screams like a cruel counterpoint.
His body split and reformed, muscles knotting, skin blistering with light, bones cracking and reshaping with every convulsion. Each flare of regeneration energy struck the walls like mortar shells, blistering the metal black. Siri raised her arms again, but nothing could block it. Nothing could soften the horror unfolding before her eyes. This wasn't rebirth, like they had been educated, it was. This was corruption. This was possession in another form.
"Theojan!" she screamed over the storm. "Hold on! You're going to make it through the pain. Just hold on!"
The flames began to settle. The violent tearing slowed. His frame steadied, but his head hung low, shoulders hunched like a predator coiled before a strike. Slowly, steadily, he lifted his face.
His skin was darker, richer and more profound, catching the faint, flickering light of the wreckage. It gleamed with the rawness of rebirth, but already seemed unnaturally resilient, as though the regeneration had hardened him into something less flesh and more armour. A perfectly shaven scalp reflected the last sparks of energy, smooth as polished stone, while a neatly edged beard framed his mouth and jaw with sharp, deliberate lines. It was as if even his hair had grown into something more ruthless, more precise.
His cheekbones jutted higher, the planes of his face were more severe, every feature honed into a mask of dominance. However, it was his eyes that froze Siri where she stood: once fierce, now void. Their dark irises seemed to drink in the light, flat and cold, like polished obsidian. The faintest trace of a smile touched his lips, but it carried no humanity. Only mockery and possession existed in his expression now.
Siri staggered back a step. Everything in her body told her to run. Theojan's new eyes fixed on her. No recognition. No warmth. Just the cold weight of something other. Silence fell. The regeneration fire had sputtered and died, leaving the chamber eerily still. The only sound was the faint crackle of ruined circuitry.
"Theojan?" Siri whimpered.
The figure tilted his head, considering her as though the name were a foreign concept to his ears. Then, impossibly, he smiled widely. It was not the reckless grin of arrogance that she recognised, but a joyless curve that felt like he was mocking her, playing with her.
"My thanks," he said at last, voice deeper, sharper, touched by an unkind tone. "You stood guard while I shed my old skin. Is the threat still present?"
The relief she might have felt at hearing him speak died instantly at the way he said it. It was so detached, so alien.
She shook her head. "It's dead," she exhaled. "Listen, Theojan, we need to get-"
"Not Theojan," he interrupted. The correction was cold as steel. He stepped closer, and she found herself retreating without meaning to. "Theojan died in that fire. I am what remains. The strength to do what must be done, without being buried beneath a burden of unnecessary morals."
Siri's throat tightened. "Right. Sorry," she whispered.
The smile widened, the predator's teeth seemed to glow in the dark. "At last. Someone who understands."
He moved past her then, slowly and deliberately lingering too long in her personal space. Every step he took was measured, like the pacing of a hunter breaking in a new pair of shoes. She wanted to reach out, to grab his arm, to plead with him to snap out of it and show her a sign of his old self again. Her body wouldn't obey. She had faced Daleks, monsters, and even political enemies, but this was something entirely different. This was someone she knew, someone she had trusted, becoming something else before her eyes.
He paused at the threshold, glancing back at her with those cold new eyes. "The War will escalate, Siriadeynn," he said with an almost gentle tone, but venom was woven through every syllable. "And Gallifrey will need monsters more than it will need heroes, if She intends on coming out victorious."
Her lips parted, but no sound came.
He tilted his head again, as if considering whether she carried enough importance to keep her alive by his side. The moment stretched, brittle as glass. Finally, he turned away.
"Pray," he muttered, his voice echoing against the scorched steel. "Pray that you never stand in my way."
He was gone. She stood, watching his silhouette get swallowed by the darkness of a dying ship. Siri was frozen in the ruin, her hearts both hammering against her ribs. She felt truly terrified. The Daleks were one thing, and the idea of fighting a large-scale conflict was daunting, but this new Theojan moved in ways only phantoms from children's nightmares could. Now, this new man had just been unleashed upon an unsuspecting universe.
The Ghost had been freed.