It wasn’t a cold night, but neither was it the height of summer and, by the time they started walking down the carless, people-free Great West Road, it was nearly midnight.

Donna was with the Doctor. Wilf and Netty were with the Carnes boys.

Wilf tried to keep their flagging spirits up with tales of his exploits in the parachute regiment, like he’d done for Donna when she’d been their age, albeit on long car trips rather than painful hikes across scary cities.

‘Why don’t you let these people go home?’ the Doctor suggested, stopping suddenly. ‘Madam Delphi only wants me, I’m sure. Look, we’re in Chiswick. Let Donna take Wilf and Netty home. And let the boys head off, too.

Please?’

The Greek ignored him and kept going.

‘Not that Gramps or I would leave you for a moment,’

Donna hissed at him as she walked to catch the Doctor up, ‘but why do you think they do want all of us?’

The Doctor looked her in the eye. ‘Insurance,’ he said simply. ‘Threaten to hurt me, no use. Anyway, they need me alive for whatever reason. Threaten to kill you, it’s leverage. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Wilf said. ‘We chose to get involved with

all this. I’m proud to stand beside you, Doctor. So are my soldier boys here.’

The Carnes lads nodded, Lukas a little more enthusiastically than Joe, it had to be said.

The Doctor looked at Netty. She was starting to walk erratically, drifting towards the central reservation of bushes.

‘It’s the exhaustion,’ the Doctor said sadly as Wilf headed over to guide her back to the group. ‘Her mind’s going again like last night.’

‘Then why’d you bring her?’ Donna said a little more aggressively than she’d intended.

‘I didn’t expect to be walking,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Donna let herself drop back a couple of steps.

Something in the Doctor’s plan had gone wrong, and he was actually worried.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Suddenly a set of headlights flashed ahead of them and, as one, the Doctor’s group shielded their eyes. A small minibus screeched to a halt in front of them.

‘Hey,’ Donna yelled. ‘You gotta help us!’

The Doctor went to stop Donna, but it didn’t matter.

The minibus door opened and a woman called out.

‘Hop in, folks,’ she said in a cheery Irish accent.

‘Madam Delphi’s waiting.’

One by one, they piled in.

‘You couldn’t have come about three hours ago?’ Wilf grumbled as he helped a confused Netty up the steps into the vehicle.

The woman laughed. ‘I’m Caitlin and, on behalf of MorganTech, I apologise for your discomfort. But that’s nothing to what’s coming. And no, Madam Delphi believes exhausted prisoners are far more malleable than fit and able ones. The only reason I’m here is it’s nearly midnight. And time’s getting on. Hold tight!’

Caitlin did a U-turn and roared off down the A4, towards the Brentford business area known as the Golden Mile.

‘Here we are,’ Caitlin said, slowing down.

Ahead, Donna saw the Oracle Hotel loom out of the darkness, lights on in every window.

‘Ha!’ the Doctor laughed. ‘We’re going to see the Delphi at the Oracle. Very witty. Not.’

‘It’s midnight,’ Caitlin announced as she pushed the minibus doors open. ‘Today is now Monday. The universe will never be the same again.’

And she smiled.

And Donna shivered.

MONDAY

The Doctor, Donna, Wilf and their friends were led up to the penthouse suite by Caitlin, who kept her hand resting on the butt of a revolver tucked into the waistband of her trousers.

As the Irishwoman pushed the penthouse doors open, the Doctor marched in and glanced around. He began clapping slowly when he saw what was inside.

‘Madam Delphi, I presume?’ he said. ‘Of course.

You’re not a real person, are you? You’re a computer!

Well, I say a computer, more of an artificial intelligence, housing an ancient malevolence that should never really have been freed from its dimension. How are you, Mandragora? It’s been a few centuries.’

‘This… form is oh-so much more capable than a fleshy human body, Doctor,’ Madam Delphi said. ‘As a Time Lord, as someone who can stand so much more spatial and temporal trauma, your body is just what, if you’ll

excuse the excruciatingly bad pun, the Doctor ordered.’

The Doctor said nothing.

‘You’ve heard that one before, haven’t you?’ Madam Delphi asked.

The Doctor and Donna now stood at the front of their exhausted group, Wilf, Netty, Lukas and Joe hovering a few steps behind. Facing them, in a protective circle around the Madam Delphi computer, were Dara Morgan, Caitlin and the Mandragora converts who had walked them there.

‘Oh, hullo,’ said the Doctor, as if addressing a meeting of the WI. ‘This all looks very impressive. Nice room.

Nice hotel. Nice gesture.’ He pointed to where the old American lady had raised her arm in the now-recognisable Mandragoran position to fire a bolt of lethal Helix energy.

‘Although a bit unfriendly.’

‘I do apologise. You just can’t get the staff,’ the computer’s feminine voiced boomed out from speakers dotted around the room. ‘Welcome to my hotel. Can I recommend the gym? Great pool, I understand.’

‘What’s the bar like?’ Donna asked. ‘I mean, not exactly five-star without a good bar, is it?’

‘Ah, Donna Noble, welcome to you, as well. I think you’ll find we offer four bars, three restaurants and an à la carte room service 24/7.’ Madam Delphi then chuckled.

‘Gotta say, though, we aspire to a greater recognition than just five stars.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Well, I reckon you’re looking for about five million. What do you think, Donna?’

‘Gotta have good service to get five million stars,

Doctor. Do you remember that hotel on Cassius? That was a proper five-star hotel.’

‘Oh yes!’ the Doctor grinned at her. ‘And they understood customer relations, too. Remember when we had that little problem with the lizard?’

‘Do you get lizard problems in Brentford, Madam Delphi?’ Donna asked. ‘Cos if there’s lizard problems to be solved, I don’t think it’s that great a hotel.’

‘The Oracle is—’ started Dara Morgan, but Madam Delphi shushed him.

‘The Doctor and his sweet friend are just playing for time, Dara. Trying to figure out how to stop us, how to get out of the Oracle alive, how to “help” their precious planet Earth.’ Madam Delphi took a beat then continued, more silkily and thus slightly more menacingly. ‘But you really aren’t going to stop us, Doctor. I offer no guarantees about people getting out alive. And, from my perspective, helping Earth is precisely what we are doing.’

The Doctor walked towards the group, and they parted, almost reverently, so he was now looking straight at the screens of the computer.

‘Last time we had a chat, I sent you into the darkness, licking your wounds. Remember that?’

‘Of course.’ Madam Delphi’s sine waves pulsated ferociously. ‘I have waited so long for a chance to get to you personally. To make you pay.’

‘Oh, not the old revenge on the poor Time Lord schtick, Mandragora? I mean, you’re better than that. Go on, give us a better reason.’

Madam Delphi giggled. ‘It’s not the first time since

1492 that the Mandragora Helix has been to Earth, you know.’

‘Yup, that I do know. The Sacred Mountain of Xi’an, if I remember? Then there were the Orphans of the Future, all that white and crimson cowl stuff. Oh and the Mandrake nightclub stuff, now that was pretty good, I have to say. But each time, it’s just been a fragment of Helix energy, hasn’t it, a little sparkler sent out to test the waters. This time, we’ve got the whole bonfire. So why now? Why send me little psychic-paper messages to get me involved, to bring me here… ahhh… Yes, you wanted to get me here. This exact day, this exact time. Why?’

‘The stars are aligned,’ Dara Morgan said.