By the time I caught up, the fan corridor was already howling. Platform One's heat sink wasn't just big—it was ridiculous. Row after row of spinning blades, all trying to shove the Sun's rage back into space. Sometimes, it worked like a dream. Other times? That's why we were here.
I reached a side gantry just as Jabe dug in by a control pillar, her bark skin blistering from the heat, both hands locked around a lever that really didn't want to stay down. The Doctor was already halfway down the corridor, past a wall of fans, hanging onto a railing, timing his run to dodge the blades.
"Of course you'd pick the hard way," I muttered.
Jabe glanced back, leaves at her temples rustling, her bark creaking as she turned. She spotted me.
"You shouldn't be here!" she yelled over the roar. "It's already too hot!"
"Story of my life!" I yelled back.
It was getting worse by the second. I could take more than she could—Time Lord perks—but even I felt my skin prickling. I knew exactly how this scene played out. I'd seen it in someone else's memories, like déjà vu turned up to eleven. Jabe would hold that lever until the heat killed her. The Doctor would make it to the console. The station would survive. That's how it went. That's how it always went, at least in Jonathan's timeline.
But not this time. Not if I could help it. I wasn't letting this day end with Jabe's name on the Doctor's guilt list.
I jogged over, shielding my face from the wind.
"What's the situation?" I called out.
"She's locked the control!" Jabe shouted, her voice trembling. "The safety override's been sabotaged. Someone used those… creatures." Her eyes flicked down at a fried spider by the pillar. "If I let go, the fans stop. If the fans stop—"
"We all flambé," I said.
"He knows what he's doing," she said, nodding toward the Doctor. "He'll save us. That's what he does."
"Yeah, let's hope we're around to thank him," I shot back.
Up close, I could see her bark splitting, resin bubbling up like sweat, leaves curling and crisping at the edges.
I checked the lever's base out of habit. No tools, just instinct. There it was: override coupler fused, local power fried, and the only thing keeping the circuit alive was Jabe's grip.
"Of course it's manual," I muttered. "Why make anything easy?"
Another wave of heat slammed down the corridor.
"Engineer," Jabe said softly. "I know what you are."
I looked up. Her eyes were bright with something between pity and awe.
"I scanned you. Back in the gallery. You and the Doctor. You're both… Time Lords. The last?"
"One more than he thought," I said. "We're annoyingly hard to wipe out."
"This world died," she said. "Your world died. And still you run."
"Running beats stopping," I said. "Stopping gets you burnt."
She nodded. "Then you understand. Some things are worth burning for."
The lever trembled. She flinched, jaw tightening, cracks spreading at the edges.
"Yeah," I said. "And some things are worth rewiring so we don't have to."
I dropped to my knees, yanked the panel off the pillar, and peered inside. What a mess. Whoever designed this had never met a Gallifreyan safety inspector. Or maybe they just slipped them a bribe.
"Jabe!" I shouted. "Can you give me ten seconds?"
"If I let go—"
"I know. I think I can fake your grip. Just ten seconds."
She hesitated. Another blast of heat rolled over us. Down the corridor, the Doctor screamed—pure stubbornness—and hurled himself through another set of blades.
Jabe swallowed. "Ten seconds."
"On three. One, two, three."
She let go. The lever instantly tried to spring up. I jammed my arm in, caught it with my shoulder, and swore as the force nearly yanked my arm out of its socket.
"Okay," I grunted. "That's… more than I thought."
Jabe grabbed my arm to help hold it down. Now we were both stuck there, heat clawing at us from every direction.
"You said ten seconds," she hissed.
"I lied. Sorry. Reflex."
With my free hand, I reached into the guts of the panel. The sabotage stood out now—one spider had welded three contacts together and melted the backup actuator.
"Right," I muttered. "We're bypassing your bypass."
I grabbed a cable in my teeth, twisted it around a backup contact, and jammed it home. Sparks nipped at my fingers. The whole pillar shook under my hands.
For a second, nothing. Just the smell of hot metal, breath caught in my chest.
Then a relay clicked to life. A tiny green light blinked on below the lever.
"Jabe," I yelled, "when I say 'now,' let go."
"If you're wrong—"
"Then I'll probably be cremated before I have time to blush," I shot back. "Ready?"
She nodded, tight and steady.
I counted to three, double-checked the connections, and slammed my palm down on the emergency restart.
"Now!"
We both let go.
The lever jerked—then held.
Then the relay clicked fully online. The tiny green light steadied. The circuit thrummed, locking the lever in place. The fans hiccuped, then roared as the array sucked in full power again. The heat stopped spiking.
Jabe slumped against the pillar, bark skin smoking but not charring anymore.
"You did it," she breathed.
"We did it," I said. "Don't downplay your grip." I actually laughed—couldn't help it.
At the end of the corridor, the last blast door slid open. The Doctor stumbled through, slapped his hand on the master control, and yelled something wild at the sun.
The shield snapped up, bright and solid. The worst of the flare bounced right off.
Platform One steadied.
We weren't safe yet—systems still had to reboot, and Cassandra was still out there—but we'd made it past the part where Jabe died.
I helped her up.
"Go back up," I told her. "Your people are probably panicking."
"And you?" she asked.
"I've got a stretched trampoline to interrogate about a murder."
She actually laughed, smoky bark shoulders shaking.
"You're strange," she said. "Even for a Time Lord."
"What can I say." I grinned, head spinning from the heat and relief. "I stand out."
She touched my shoulder, her hand still smoldering a little. Just once—a thank you, or maybe just a nod to the fact that we both decided not to die.
Then she gave this odd, formal little bow, half-burned but proud, and headed up the corridor.
I glanced at the lever—still holding—then took off down the hall to catch up with the Doctor.
***
The showdown with Cassandra, once the immediate chaos faded, went pretty much as you'd expect.
We dragged her back—well, the Doctor dragged, I messed with the controls—onto the platform, yanking her back from wherever she'd teleported. Her frame reformed, skin tight as a drum, eyes darting everywhere in outrage.
"How dare you," she snapped. "I was saving myself!"
"You were killing everyone else," Rose said, sharp as glass. "All for money."
The Doctor's face was stone.
"Last human," he said, just above a whisper. "And that's what you did with it."
Cassandra tried everything—the tears, the begging, the "I'm too important to die." She looked at me, desperate.
"You're a mechanic," she pleaded. "Fix me."
"You're not broken," I told her.
The Doctor hovered over the button that'd call her attendants. The ones who kept her skin moist, her frame tight.
He didn't press it.
Instead, he nudged the humidity valve. Just a bit.
The air around Cassandra started to dry.
"Doctor," she gasped. "Please."
His jaw locked.
I watched him wrestle with it—mercy, anger, loss, survivor's guilt—everything tangled up at once.
I could have stepped in. Saved her. Technically.
My hand twitched toward the humidity controls—old habit. Fix the problem. That's what I do.
But I stopped.
Jabe had nearly died just to hold a lever, buying everyone else a chance to live. Cassandra? She'd killed the staff, sabotaged the station, left hundreds to burn—all for insurance money and spite.
If I "fixed" this, what exactly was I fixing? The murderer? Or just my own discomfort at watching it play out?
I'm not a judge. I'm not a Time Lord, not in the grand, council-and-robes sense. I'm an engineer. I fix machines, not people's morality.
My hand dropped to my side.
Rose noticed. Her eyes darted to me, questioning, but she didn't say anything. The Doctor's jaw clenched, but he kept his eyes on Cassandra.
The air kept drying out.
I'd drawn my line. Now I had to stand by it. Turns out, that's not a comfortable place to be.
Cassandra's skin cracked. Her last word was her own name, as if saying it might save her.
Then she burst.
Rose flinched, wrapping her arms around herself, staring at the spot where Cassandra had been. Her face had gone pale, eyes huge.
"She was…" Rose started, then trailed off. "I mean, she killed people, but—"
"It's different when you watch it happen," I said, quiet.
Rose nodded, eyes fixed forward. The Doctor had already turned away, his face locked down, somewhere else inside his head.
I took a quiet breath and filed everything away. A warning, really: the Universe wasn't a tidy circuit. I couldn't fix every wobble without snapping something important.
But saving one tree person in a burning corridor? That, apparently, I could get away with.
***
Later, after the crowd scattered and Platform One started to cool, we found ourselves back at the viewing window.
Earth was gone. Nothing left but dust and light trailing through the wake of the sun.
Rose stared at the empty space where her planet had been.
"Just like that," she said.
"Just like that," the Doctor echoed, his voice soft. "It's gone. But you lot—you carried on. You spread out. You survived."
Rose shot me a look. "Jabe—is she okay?"
"Singed a bit," I said. "Furious, though. She's drafting a very stern letter to the platform's safety committee. I might've encouraged her."
Rose managed a small smile.
"Good."
We stood there, watching the sun for a while.
Eventually, the Doctor straightened.
"Right then," he said. "One apocalypse is enough for a Saturday. Back to the box."
He strode off.
Rose hung back for a second, then pushed off the glass and followed.
I waited a little longer.
Goodbye, Earth, I thought. Again.
Then I turned away from the ashes and followed them—toward the blue box, the humming engines, and whatever came next.
I could already feel the TARDIS humming at the edge of my perception, a little happier than before. One crisis down. One person saved who shouldn't have been.
The Engineer had work to do.