Chapter Three: Gallifreyan Justice

            The golden Seal of Rassilon embedded into the crimson armor of the Gallifreyan soldiers became indecipherable in Al-Lee’s blurred, blood-drenched vision. Her capture in the Citadel resulted in a punishment of torture at the hands of a female soldier whose name she learned to be “Tetrana.” She was nearly equaled to Al-Lee’s five-foot-nine height, possibly slightly taller. Her armor was designed to suit her busty, burly frame and to intimidate anyone who dared challenge her.

            Alongside her more timid comrade, Marcis, she subjected Al-Lee to physical abuse for an hour and a half. Her arms suspended inside the dark chamber, Al-Lee had no other choice but to be Tetrana’s punching bag – battering, bruising, and blooding the defenseless woman.

            Eventually, Tetrana grew exhausted.

            “You want to get a few shots in?” She asked Marcis.

            The entire time he watched on shamefully, not so much as obliging to his fellow soldier’s invitation. “Why are we doing this to her? The General never sanctioned this!”

            “It was her dirt-people that brought the deaths of several lives in the Time War,” Tetrana spoke with a vindictive tongue. “They could’ve helped us defeat the Daleks, but they instead hid like cowards!”

            “We…did…fight back…,” Al-Lee huffed, spitting blood between breaths. “We lost lives…too…My son…My little boy…My brave husband…he fought for us…and I fought with him…We were the only ones who did fight back…but the Daleks overpowered us.”

            Her defending remarks earned her another series of excruciating lefts and rights from Tetrana. “Your husband and son can burn for all I care,” the Gallifreyan soldier cursed. “The Time Lords lost much more than you people!”

            The relentlessness continued with more intensity and ferocity than before.

            Marcis couldn’t bear to observe it any longer; he turned his head in disgust.

            In doing so, he discovered there to have been another observer of the horrendous scene: the young girl they found with the outsider – the one identified to be the teenage counterpart of the Gladiator’s original incarnation.

            Her eyes flooded with tears of repugnance, and her mouth gaped open.

            “What’re you doing to her?!” She screamed.

            Tetrana stopped for a mere second to look back at the young woman, who supposedly got lost finding her way around the Citadel, and then returned to her onslaught on Al-Lee.

            Marcis wanted desperately to speak up that moment; explain to the young girl that it was all a misunderstanding.

            She ran off before he could have the chance, undoubtedly going to call for help.

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            “This situation only proves it’s more crucial now than ever to find the Doctor and enlist in his help!”

            “Oh, suuuuure! Make it that much easier to lure him into a trap!”

            With Jane at his side, Neas bickered back and forth with the General for what felt like hours since the discovery of Zoe Curtsinger in the Citadel. The presence of the teenaged version of his original incarnation, “Candace,” out of his personal timeline quickly turned into the topic of interest.

            But the General still found a way of twisting it back to their first debate.

            “You are extremely pigheaded in this male regeneration, Gladiator,” the General barked. “Your ego makes you unable to accept what’s happening!”

            “Can I suggest something?” Jane stepped in.

            “What is this human even doing here?!” The General roared louder over Neas’s tattooed companion. “Guards! Remove this woman from the council room immediately!”

            “My friend has just as much right to be here as I do,” Neas preserved.

            “Funny,” the General said. “The last time we entrusted a Time Lord’s welcome of an Earth inhabitant, I ended up being shot by the Doctor!”

            Ugh, this again, Neas thought in exasperation.

            Rapid approaching footsteps reverberating through the outside hall drew attention towards the doorway, just as Zoe manifested, out of breath and tears streaming from her eyes. “They’re torturing my friend,” she cried.

            “Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Jane instructed her. “Who’s torturing who?”

            “Two people – a man and a woman,” Zoe informed. “They’re beating the life out of her, and she can’t fight back!”

            Enraged, Neas ordered his past self, “Show us!”

            Zoe did as he requested, leading him, Jane, the General, and a small group of soldiers to the torture chamber where they caught the soldiers in question right in the act. It was unfortunate for the General to have recognized the one that was caught literally red-handed, the prisoner’s blood caked all over her fists.

            “Lieutenant Tetrana,” she thundered. “What in the name of Rassilon do you think you’re doing?!”

            While the General disciplined her lieutenant, Neas rushed to the aid of the outsider, whose name he learned earlier to be “Al-Lee.” She wheezed with every breath she took, a clear sign that her nose had been broken. Thankfully, she still had all her teeth, even if some were a little loose in her mouth.

            The sight of this bloodied, battered, and defenseless woman made him want to rip off Tetrana’s arms and legs and beat the General with them. “Is this the new idea for Gallifreyan justice?” he sneered to her.

            “These kinds of acts were abolished when the Time War ended and Rassilon was banished from the planet,” the General appealed.

            “Then you need to a tighter grip on your soldiers, starting with this one,” Neas bellowed, gesturing directly to Tetrana.

            As Jane stood and watched this discomforting tableau, old painful memories surged across her mind, not unlike the times when her previous life as Remi Kruger randomly flashed. These memories were more recent. They were of her torture at the hands of the C.I.A.

            The days she spent repeatedly water-boarded, electrocuted, and beaten more ruthlessly than Al-Lee at a black site in Oregon – every single day for three straight months.

            Her recollection of it all made her snap right there and then.

            Moving at agility and speed quicker than even a Time Lord’s sense of reaction, she attacked Tetrana, Marcis, and the other Time Lord soldiers that put up resistance.

            “Restrain her!” The General commanded in panic.

            With the other Time Lords distracted, Neas seized the advantage he had in getting himself, Al-Lee, Zoe, and Jane off Gallifrey. In the confusion, he set Al-Lee free and darted out of the room with the three women, straight back to his T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Regrettably, the General was one step ahead.

            She cornered them at the Type-Z model, holding them at gunpoint.

            It did nothing to deter Neas’s resolve. “I’m going to find my father and return Zoe to her proper place in time, one way or another,” he declared.

            “And if it involves going to the Doctor for help, what will you do then?”

            “That’s up to me to determine.”

            Without hesitation or pause, he entered his T.A.R.D.I.S. with Al-Lee, Zoe, and Jane. The General boldly refused to fire her gun, instead permitting the Gladiator and his companions to depart Gallifrey and set off on their new quest.