At any moment, you could destroy
the entire species who killed our people, and yet...
Well, here we stand...
In a school.
You shouldn't avenge genocide with genocide.
That's what the Doctor said.
Oh, the Doctor.
It isn't your decision, Quill.
No, but detention is.
Hey! Hey!
You've all got an hour's detention, and I've got things to do.
You're sworn to protect me.
And that's why I'm locking you in, Prince.
So you won't come to any harm.
What are you going to do?
Quill, hey! Hey!
- Ready? - Is that what you're wearing?
Is that what you are?
They'll stay in the classroom?
I don't want them trying to solve any "mysteries", while we're away.
Oh, they're such Goody Two-shoes,
they'd probably stay in there without a key or a teacher.
Now, come on, are we leaving or aren't we?
Are you really so eager?
The chances of you surviving this are...
I'll either end today dead or with this thing out of my skull.
Are you entirely sure about that?
The Arn knows your thoughts, yes?
- Yeah... - Then, it knows you want it out.
And, surely, the only reason it hasn't killed you already
is that you yourself don't believe that this will work.
What are you getting at?
At some point today, should everything go according to plan,
there will come a moment when you start to believe.
And when that happens...
There will be no going back.
You really will either end today dead or with your freedom.
Then, let's begin.
I wish to be free.
And who, I wonder, is Quill when she's free?
I am war itself.
What exactly are we waiting for?
Ah, here he is.
You're late.
The Governors keep alien prisoners?
Does UNIT know about this?
Remarkable.
Who is this person?
Quill, Ballon. Ballon, Quill.
That's all either of you need to know for now.
Stay out of my way.
You stay out of mine.
What's that?
Very old technology, which I confess
we don't fully understand.
It's quite unstable...
Liable to kill us all at any moment.
Is that why they sent you?
Expendable?
Three. Two. One.
Ah!
I know. Me, too.
There'll be a period of adjustment...
Oh, what the hell just happened?
A kind of atomic fuzzing.
Makes us quite nearly not exist in the traditional sense.
But it can take one to the most extraordinary places.
- Gosh! - Right.
Well, if you ever do something like that again without warning me,
I will pluck the eyelids from your screaming face.
An interesting company we make.
We didn't get "fuzzed" atomically to the Peak District, did we?
Because, you know, there are trains for that!
Oh, my, no.
Okay.
I'll just ask.
Where are we, oh, wise Head Teacher and mistress of nauseating space travel?
Some place wonderful.
Shh, they're near.
Who?
I can't hear anything.
She said you were meant to be a soldier.
Now, we're flying a little blind here,
but our best zoological thinking is that you need to talk about your childhood.
- Zoolo... What? - What are your first memories?
Quickly. It feeds on those.
- We think it'll come hunting. - What the f...
- What is your first memory? Now! - Shedding your Quills!
- Suckling in the nest? - I can sense them moving away.
Now, soldier, now!
The death of our mother!
Well, birth is the last thing that a Quill does, right?
She gives birth to her litter and dies.
And then her body...
- You eat it, don't you? - God!
- For nourishment. - Yes, yes! A contemptible tradition.
And medically unnecessary in modern times.
But there are archaic cultural pressures...
That's enough.
They're coming.
- That's it? - It's stronger than it looks.
Well, what was all the... That's the size of a kitten.
Are kittens dangerous?
Only if you insult their worshippers online.
- Are we safe? - Are you kidding me?
- We're safe. It's dead. - Enough!
Where are we, who is this little Lord Growls-A-Lot
and why are we all so bothered that he just killed a kitten?
No...
Oh, yes.
- That is impossible. - Indeed.
We are in the Birthing Grounds of the Arn.
We need the pheromones of a fresh specimen
to calm the one in your head enough for the procedure.
What procedure?
No.
No, the Arn are a grown life form.
They're genetically modified. They don't live in some forest...
Those are the facts that everyone knows to be true.
But it's not, apparently, what the Arn believe.
"What the Arn believe?"
All right.
This, as best we can tell, is a metaphysical engine.
Metaphysics? Metaphysics aren't real.
- It's just thought... - Thought, yes.
Everything in the universe is conserved.
Everything.
Even belief.
Get millions of creatures believing something
strongly enough for long enough
and even space responds.
You are quite right that the Arn weren't exactly wild creatures...
But parts of them were.
And they dream like us, of what comes after.
I'm sorry, are you actually saying that we are stood in Arn heaven?
- Don't be ridiculous. - Good, because that...
We're in the idea of it.
The belief itself making it so.
You are absolutely in...
It just moved.
That's the first time it's ever moved without hurting.
You see? It believes.
Oh, my...
How many times have you travelled on this device?
Headmistress...
- Headmistress... - This is my first actual time.
Though, we've run several simulations.
- Your first? - Your first?
I've been fully briefed. I know what I'm doing...
Okay, so, basically, we're in the hands of a learner driver?
You're in the hands of the only one of us
who's done the research on how to stay alive while using it.
I mean, this is like a geek vomited.
The Governors study the tears in space and time at Coal Hill.
There are those who think that the tears aren't accidental.
That they were placed there. To provide. For those who will listen.
Coal Hill provides. It always provides.
And what do you get out of this then?
My freedom.
And who is Ballon, when he is free, I wonder?
Some kind of hunter, I reckon?
Oh, no, no, my dear. He's your surgeon.
You can't get an Arn out through surgery.
You can if the surgeon is a shape-shifter.
That's the theory, anyway.
Shape-shifter, eh? I've heard of you on Earth.
- Yeah, you're a Zygote. - I am a Lorr.
Who was posing as a Zygon.
One shape-shifter posing as another, eh? That's meta.
It's also a fine way to hide.
- Zygons are protected on Earth. - So what did you do?
You are on this trip as well, Quill.
What did you do?
I am a victim of circumstance.
As am I.
Yes, I'm sure the families of the people you both murdered
would be happy to consider themselves a "circumstance."
No one was supposed to die.
Remember what I promised you.
Ask yourself what would being unfrozen mean to you?
Everything-
But why...
No! This isn't real.
Does no one listen to the posh any more?
No, it is not real, but yes, we are really here.
Oh, God! Where?
This is Lorr ap Thriss.
Lorr hell, more or less.
Isn't it amazing?
Surprisingly quiet for a hell.
An awful, awful quiet.
We are creatures that flow.
We live in the constant flow.
And this is the opposite of flowing.
A punishment I already suffer!
You said the second step was the retrieval of the key...
No!
This seems cruel. Even for you.
His hands need to shift to get into your brain.
For that, I need a key to unlock them.
But it is impossible to reverse the freezing of a shape-shifter...
Except in an impossible place.
So what's this key, then?
It's the blood of our god.
What? We're supposed to get the blood of a god?
- That's the theory... - Oh, you just say theory again.
I dare you.
Get up!
You'll have to do it alone.
- There is a special knife... - Whoa, no!
No, no, I can't use knives, remember? That is the whole point of this trip.
Oh. Oh, dear. That was an oversight.
What can I do?
Soldier! Tell me what I need to do.
Listen to me, listen to me.
In Quill, we called this the First Fear.
This is the one you always go back to, the one you can't face.
And everyone has it, everyone. Even Quill.
- In Lorr, we call it cowardice... - No, that is not true.
A soldier without fear is useless, inefficient.
They win battles, but they lose wars.
How can we overcome it?
Hopefully, quickly.
Yeah, we'll need that.
Come on!
Ha! Oh, why isn't evil ever short?
Hold the knife out.
Hold it out.
I will be your arm, soldier.
Reliquary degradation seems at least 40% faster than originally theorised.
Request further information from the Chair...
This won't look good on the report.
- How? - It thought we were already statues.
So is that how you Lorr see the rest of us then?
That we're pretty much already dead?
Yes.
Now we can unfreeze your hands.
It's, um...
Been too long, since I fought side by side with an actual soldier.
Yes, for me, too.
All right!
Yes, sure, you're welcome. Ah!
It hurt.
You're starting to believe this might work.
Which means this really is your last chance to turn back.
From here on, there is only death or freedom.
An unfree life isn't a life.
So, come on, where to next?
You wouldn't believe me.
Would you just stop doing that?
I don't know how long we are going to last...
- What? - Why? How far is where we're going?
You have to check your notes?
- How did you even get picked for this? - I volunteered.
I had to fight to convince the Governors that we should continue at all.
No one else is all that committed to saving you, Quill.
Is that such a surprise?
No, not really.
Now, if you’ll just let me read my notes...
The Arn sits on your mid-brain.
Yet, I will still need to see the pathway there.
And as all Quill brains were destroyed on Rhodia,
and you're using yours at the moment...
Where are you going to find a Quill brain?
No. Our afterlife myth...
That died out like a thousand years ago.
Let us hope not, or this will be a very short trip.
Ah!
Damn it!
So, where is this exactly?
Well, our information isn't omniscient,
- but if our theory... - Oh, for...
If you say "theory" again I swear to this guy's God!
...is correct,
this is where the Quill Goddess is about to be born.
So this is your heaven?
Oh, right.
Well, excuse me, statue boy,
but we only believed in all this
before we realised that the only thing out there protecting us was us.
No goddess in a Quill nest looking out for our best interest.
It's so sad you think that's what belief is.
Yes.
And do I really need to do to you two what I did to those very nice people
who no longer come to my front door?
What's happening?
Oh...
Okay, so this is a Quill nest.
This is the first Quill nest, allegedly.
The Quill Goddess is supposed to...
Emerge from the underworld...
Where she has been trapped.
Isn't that correct?
And she rises with...
"Fury and venom," according to the text we have.
Oh, how exciting!
Yeah, I'm beginning to think
you don't know as much about my people as you think you do.
Well...
Get to it.
Hey!
You don't deserve my belief!
Do you know how oppressed Quill have been for centuries?
We died. And died again.
And where were you?
I should rip your head off for even daring to exist!
Do it. I was a soldier.
And you weren't there to stop them from taking that from me!
And where am I now, hey?
What? What are you say...
No! No, stop!
No, stop!
No!
I think she was about to speak to me!
I could have been the first Quill ever to...
Would you really want to hear what your god would say?
As a matter of fact, yeah, yes...
If it meant that you would have to believe in her?
If it meant that you would have to worship her?
That you would have to change everything you think about yourself,
about your universe?
You believe.
But I always have. It is part of who I am.
Your self is already formed.
Yeah, well, we didn't decapitate your god did we? No.
We just took a blood sample.
If she is right, if this is a metaphysical place...
Your goddess will rise again.
She will always be born.
All gods are.
I thought, perhaps, she was your First Fear.
I thought, perhaps, you needed the arm of a fellow soldier.
Why don't you just use that blood to unfreeze yourself?
There's not nearly enough.
- I don't see why you... - Well, we...
We start in the nest. We end in the nest. It's...
It's our way.
But this isn't even your real goddess.
Yeah, well, that wasn't your real devil, but you were still petrified of it.
Because it could still freeze me forever in one shape.
It's a fate worse than your death.
A fate you're in now.
I was caught as I shifted.
I am neither one thing nor the other.
Their punishment was doubly unjust.
You killed people.
Look, my planet was attacked by an enemy we could not hope to fight.
I lost everything.
The Lorr I loved.
The rest of my family scattered.
We intended to meet on Earth, to seek sanctuary there together...
But when I arrived,
I found neither them,
nor any form of welcome.
They have a poet on Earth and she says,
"No one leaves home, unless home is the mouth of a shark."
I did not mean for anyone to die.
I had just arrived.
I was starving.
It was the home of a family.
When they caught me, "Monster," they said.
"Freak," they said.
They beat me.
They would have beaten me to death...
- So you killed them. - I did not mean to.
I had heard of UNIT, all arriving refugees do.
I thought I'd be arrested, but the Governors got to me first.
And ruined me.
But now they're setting you free?
If I can get that thing out of your head without your death.
Sounds cheering.
I, um, lost the Quill I loved.
He was killed in the destruction of your planet?
No.
No, he was killed in the war with my enemies.
He died in the same battle that they arrested me.
They took him from me.
Then took my will.
And do you know what they did next? The worst thing they did?
Made me used to it.
I shout my power.
I shout my toughness and my danger... But I am shouting it to children.
It's like they just...
They just amputated the central part of who I was.
Who I am.
You are frozen, too...
I'm sorry.
I don't want your pity.
I do not offer you pity...
I offer you shared sorrow.
What a soldier would ask next is...
How do I make them pay?
Yeah, and that is part of my problem.
They're gone... All of them.
Without being made to pay for their crime.
All but one.
You okay?
No.
No, I don't think I am.
I think I just started to believe that this might work.
- What happened? You got his head? - Her head. And, yes.
What's wrong?
It's the Arn. It's fighting her.
Then we're out of time.
Oh, good. My own personal hell.
Look... No, this isn't appropriate.
It's not sterile, it's not antiseptic!
But it is a place I can control.
I suggest you get started quickly.
Oh, you're not staying... To watch me die?
The mission didn't go as planned. I'll have to explain...
Ah, yes, the mysterious Governors.
There are bigger things in the universe than this life.
Hidden things we can't even imagine.
And if a place can be created from belief,
if a goddess can...
Then what else might you be able to make.
If you just believe hard enough?
Try not to die.
You are...
Intriguing.
The pheromones of an Arn, the blood of my god...
And a Quill brain.
It works.
"In theory."
- I will shift my finger to avoid nerves. - Mmm?
There will be some pain as the Arn comes out.
How much pain?
Would you turn back now if you knew?
No.
This will be horrible.
I've found the Arn.
You have to be very still.
It's releasing.
Here it comes.
Ah! No.
Get it out! Get it out!
Quill, Quill, look at me. Look at me.
- I'm about to do a sacred thing. - Oh, great, just do it quick!
Ah!
How can I still see?
How do I still have my eye? I...
The blood of my "devil", as you call him,
allowed me to manipulate your flesh.
Though, you are scarred.
Oh, yeah.
Well...
What good is a soldier without a scar?
Quill celebrate victory in battle in a certain way...
All species say that.
All are lying.
It has been too long, since I was close to someone.
Don't worry about it, the last person I kissed was a robot.
It's made me coarse.
Unshifting, like this form I wear.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do wear forms, you and I, don't we?
All I want is to be free.
I want that, too.
A place you recognise, perhaps?
No, where are we? Where's the school gone?
You were never there, I'm afraid.
A hologram.
We had to come to here, but the chances of you reacting badly were rather high.
This is the closest to Rhodian soil we could find.
Increased the survival chances of the surgery by nearly 4%.
We're in the Cabinet of Souls.
We're in a cabinet?
Oh, yes, it's way bigger on the inside.
And so beautiful.
- Wish I hadn't had to leave. - What?
Another hologram, I'm afraid.
The reliquary really is dying.
I had to come home or there was a chance I would never get back.
Though, I did send you back a present.
Go ahead. Open it.
"A Quill needs her gun."
Uh-uh. Not yet, I'm afraid.
You have a mighty dilemma facing you... Both of you.
EverUpwardReach calculated an 85% chance only one of you would survive the trip.
You've already beaten some pretty long odds,
but, unfortunately, that ends now.
Despite my arguing, the Governors have voted.
There's only enough energy in the reliquary
for one of you to return.
If it's any comfort, the decision, at least, is yours.
What, you're leaving one of us here to die?
You're breaking your word.
So we're supposed to what?
Agree to die so the other lives?
It's not what I wanted, I assure you.
In another life, you and I could have been great friends, Miss Quill.
Oh, I'd rather swim in my own vomit.
Regardless, the little we know of both your species
suggests a fight to the death.
But again, up to you.
I just saved her life.
I will not now take it.
Ditto.
There's something else I need to tell you.
It turns out there is another Lorr on Earth.
- Your niece. - My nei...
She's alive?
No. This is a lie.
I never sensed another Lorr.
I have been assured that she is alive and well.
And waiting for you. If you return.
No.
We will not fight each other.
You will never be free unless you do.
Never return from this living death.
Never see your family again.
And you...
A Quill with the greatest weapon her people ever made.
Enough to force a certain Prince to wipe the Shadow Kin
from the grinning, smirking face of the universe.
You say you are war itself. Now you actually can be.
I have been told to say that the gun is set for open firing.
But don't delay.
Time passes differently here.
You may awake tomorrow and find you are already old.
Don't.
I have been imprisoned for too long.
- Yes, so have I. - And my family...
Look, if that's even true...
Is that not a risk you would take yourself?
It's a risk I would take for a fellow soldier.
- We just fought side by side... - I know.
You have no loyalty on the battlefield...
I know.
But if a soldier isn't fighting for the safety of his family...
...why does he fight at all?
I'm sorry.
That's a sorrow I share.
Stop!
Stop.
So you really believe she's gonna set you free.
I have to take the chance.
Look away.
I will not.
Do it.
Forgive me.
Oh, 1 do.
No!
She did this, she set the gun.
Ah, now you've come.
You come to see me grieve.
"Time passes differently here."
How much of my life am I losing?
You just keep taking.
Is that all you ever did?
Well, I fought you.
And I will still fight you.
Because you know what?
I am free.
And you are not the last.
There is one of you still living.
Show me a way out.
I suffered in your home world.
And I have suffered in your heaven.
But I will suffer no more.
No more!
Because I...
I am war itself!
Charlie?
Please!
You can't even handle detention right.
- How can... How can you... - No mood to talk.
I'm... I'm gone!
- Aren't you gonna go after him? - No.
But if that rock was making us angry...
You'll understand when you get a boyfriend.
And there it is.
Why do we rely on other people?
How could you fire a gun?
You do not want to talk to me after the day I've had.
Day?
You've only been gone 45 minutes.
Eh?
It seemed like a lifetime.
What happened to your eye?
And your hair?
And how can you fire a gun?
I just saved you, didn't I?
- Isn't that my punishment? - But...
Yeah, well, consider it my last favour, Prince.
" Last?"
It's...
It's the Arn.
I'm no longer your slave, Prince.
I have my free will back
and I have my gun.
And things...
Yeah, things are gonna change around here.
No.
No, it can't be.
Huh.
Look at you in your little circle.
Pretending to be heroes and never expecting to pay a price.
And you will keep paying till you're lost yourselves.
And the war begins again.
Today.
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll January 2017
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll Follow my releases on www.Addic7ed.com