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all good things should have a bit of malice in them (game master cinematic universe, part 7) | read on ao3

“Sam,” came the tentative voice from a little way down the corridor, and the man in question paused, turning to look at his colleague with a smile. Brian seemed… not quite worried, exactly, but distracted. There was tension in the way he tucked a wisp of hair that had escaped its customary ponytail behind his ear, like he was trying to keep his hands busy while his brain searched for the right words.

“What’s up?”

“I know I’m being manipulated,” Brian said slowly, “but I thought I’d ask anyway. Is there any chance that you’d consider putting the dematerialisation circuit back in Other Sam’s ship? Just for one quick trip?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “No. Not for another few months of good behaviour, at least. Why do you ask?”

Brian sighed. The answer he’d received wasn’t unexpected, but it was a disappointment all the same. “No reason. Just… something silly, that’s all.”

“What did he say to you?” Sam asked, feeling a knot begin to form in his stomach.

“Honestly, it really wasn’t anything to be worried about,” Brian replied quickly. “It wasn’t a threat, or anything like that. It was just…”

He trailed off, looking almost wistful.

Sam frowned. The immediate spike of anxiety that had shot through him had dulled, fading to concern—a gentler emotion, but no more welcome. “Brian, what happened?”

“Well,” Brian started, taking a deep breath.

---

“I saw your episode of Very Important People,” a familiar voice had said behind him in an unfamiliar cadence, and Brian had nearly choked on his water.

“You watch the shows?” he asked in surprise, turning to look Other Sam in the face. The suit the Time Lord had chosen was a nice touch, he thought—the same cut and style as original Sam’s, but red-shifted to a sort of maroon-purple. “More evil,” indeed.

“Oh, you know,” Other Sam shrugged. “Always good to know a little more about who I’m working with. And you’re certainly an interesting one. You figured out the real time loop in Deja Vu before anyone else, did you know that? Well, of course you don’t, you—”

“Don’t remember,” Brian finished with him, allowing a touch of bitterness to intrude into his tone.

“Exactly,” Other Sam said, with a smile like a shark. “But I’ve been keeping an eye on you since then. You’re bright, for a human.”

“Gee, thanks,” Brian replied, letting the easy reach to sarcasm work to disguise the spark of genuine pride the words had kindled.

Other Sam didn’t look at all perturbed. “Take the compliment or don’t, your choice,” he said. “I’m just saying it because you seem to understand a few things better than the others. Like the perks of control.”

“Oh, hah, that was just a character, you know,” Brian blustered. “For the interview.”

“Of course,” Other Sam hummed in agreement. “Nothing at all like you, I take it?”

Brian nodded sharply.

“So you’re saying that if there was a way that I could get you those sorts of cybernetic enhancements, for real,” Other Sam said innocently, “you wouldn’t be interested?”

Try as he might, Brian couldn’t fully prevent the squeak that escaped him, and Other Sam grinned.

“Maybe not the claw,” he said, “you didn’t seem as dexterous as would be ideal with that one, but the rest of it? That’s more than possible, and in so many different ways. A quick hop to the future, or any number of planets… All I’d need is to be able to use my ship again.”

There it was, the real reason for the offer, and Brian felt the hopes that had been rising in him despite his better judgement suddenly fall flat. Sam had told him what had happened during the ill-fated Sam Says 4 recording, and had revealed as much as he was able to about Deja Vu. He couldn’t give this guy the key out of the imprisonment he’d only just been put in.

He steeled himself and shook his head. “Sorry.”

Other Sam had just sighed delicately. “Suit yourself. I just thought I’d mention it. How noble of you, playing by the rules.”

And then he’d walked off, seeming none too bothered by Brian’s refusal, which was a relief in and of itself. From what he’d heard, he was worried that saying no might put him in actual danger. But no, he’d met with no consequences. All in all, not the worst encounter he could have had with Other Sam, and when he left the building later that day, the confidence he’d made the right decision sat firm in his chest.

But… damn, Other Sam was good.

That evening, Brian couldn’t keep his mind from returning to that faint wisp of a thought. The memory of the euphoria he’d felt when he opened his eyes to see the almost cyborg version of himself in the mirror haunted him in fleeting bursts. And if he was completely honest with himself, the possibility of living in perfect homeostasis, being able to just create without having to stop and take care of the necessary functions of life, was really quite appealing.

Days passed, and as much as he tried to keep his focus on other things, his thoughts kept drifting back to that particular topic. When it was just a bit of prop work for an improvised interview, it was something he could enjoy for the time it lasted, then put down again. But knowing that it was a real possibility… Even as he tried to suppress the idea, it only grew more seductive.

And when just sitting passively with that concept had become too much to bear, genuine transhumanism dangling within sight but just out of reach, he’d gone to find the real Sam. Of course he’d say no. Still… there was always the chance he might say yes, however slim that was. And he wouldn’t know for sure until he asked.

---

The concern in Sam’s eyes was now mingled with sympathy, and as the recipient of that particular look, Brian felt something in his stomach clench.

“It’s fine,” he said hastily. “Don’t worry about it. Just something silly, like I said.”

Sam looked sad as he drew breath to respond.

“Brian, it’s not silly when it clearly brought you so much joy.”

The words were right, the voice was right, the tone was right. But something was still distinctly wrong, and the hair on the back of his neck started to rise. And half a second later, his brain caught up to what his instincts had already realised, because it struck him like a fist in the gut that he hadn’t seen Sam’s mouth move at all. In fact, Sam’s voice had come from the wrong direction entirely.

He whirled to see Other Sam standing at his back, smiling at him with a look that could have been mistaken for genuine support.

“All I want to do is help,” he continued, every fibre of his being radiating sincerity and gentle patience.

“Sure,” Sam replied with a roll of his eyes.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Other Sam said. “I like him. He's smart, and he could almost think like me. With the right prompting, of course.”

Sam tried to suppress the shudder that rolled through him, and nearly succeeded. “You know the deal was hands off the team.”

“Oh, boo,” Other Sam pouted. “I wouldn't have offered if he didn't want it.”

“He's right,” Brian interjected quietly.

“Brian—” Sam started, then paused. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. What's ‘it’, exactly? What's he offered you?”

“Avery Goodman,” Brian said, and Sam nodded in recognition. “All of that. But for real.”

Looking into Brian's face, Sam could see plain as day that trying to dissuade him would be of no use whatsoever. He knew Brian was a smart man, knew that he'd probably considered all the dangers to working with Other Sam, even on something small. But the naked want that shone in Brian's eyes like a beacon burned brightly enough to drown all of that out.

Rather than facing that immediately, he turned to his doppelganger. “It's only been a couple of months, man. You're still very much a flight risk.”

“I know,” Other Sam replied contritely, then cast his gaze around before finally meeting Sam's eyes hesitantly. “But I suppose… Well, we don't have to go offworld for it. I can do a significant number of those procedures myself, as it happens.”

The coyness was very much staged. The way his eyes had lit up before saying that last part, Sam wondered if that hadn't been his double's plan the whole time.

And implications aside, there were the practical details to consider. “Hang on. You're not doing surgery in my fucking studio!”

A shadow passed across the Master's face. “Not your studio. My TARDIS, and you'd do well to remember that.”

“I don't mind where it happens,” Brian piped up wistfully.

Other Sam placed a hand on his shoulder, the picture of magnanimity. “You see? The gentleman insists. And you've got nothing to be worried about,” he added, turning away from Sam to face Brian properly, and taking a step to propel them both in the direction of the console room. “I was very good at cyber conversion, and it's not something you forget in a hurry.”

“Who said I was worried?” Brian asked. His eyes had been shining since the word “cyber” had been mentioned.

Sam, on the other hand, had been struck by “conversion”, and the word had left a bad taste in his mouth. “Just wait a minute.”

He pulled out his phone, bringing up the contact he'd been given months before.

Hi Doctor, it's Sam. Quick question, is “cyber conversion” a good or bad thing?

“—were right about homeostasis, you won't need to eat, or sleep, or any of those mundane things,” he heard his double say quietly as he waited for a reply. “And there are other pesky things that the procedure takes care of as well—”

His phone pinged.

No way. Sam Reich from Dropout Sam?? Oh my god I'm a massive fan, I was so jealous when the Doctor said he'd met you without me!

Sam started to frown, confused, when another message appeared.

Sorry!! Not the Doctor, I'm Ruby, we travel together. I've passed your question on though, and he'll get back to you as soon as we’ve got out of this giant space snail thing. Long story!

“Are you ratting on me to the Doctor?” Sam's doppelganger asked with a hint of petulant disappointment. “Don't you trust me?”

A third message had popped up, and he opened it before responding.

Doctor says cyber conversion is no good very bad do not let him do it to anyone, read the clearly hastily-written text.

“No,” Sam replied. “And for good reason, by the sound of it.”

Other Sam just sighed.

“I was going to say no to the whole ‘getting rid of my emotions’ bit,” Brian added. “And as much as having an electric blaster arm would be incredibly cool, I don't want that to come at the cost of being stuck in a metal suit for the rest of my life.”

Sam blinked. “Yeah. Not agreeing to all that sounds like a good idea.”

His doppelganger rolled his eyes. “Humans. You people don't know what's good for you.”

“Seems like it's what's good for you, not him,” Sam pointed out.

“Same thing.”

“It’s really not,” Sam replied. “Look, Brian. What did you want out of this?”

Brian eagerly rattled off a few technical terms that Other Sam must have told him, which Sam tried fruitlessly to transcribe before giving up and asking him to repeat them into a voice memo.

What about these? he sent off to Ruby, with the memo attached.

Doctor says fine, fine, dubious but okay if your friend agrees to it, and only do that last one under supervision, came the reply.

Okay, I know one of those words means something in the brain, Sam typed out. Please don’t tell me supervision means I have to watch brain surgery. I don’t know anything about brain surgery. And I really don’t want to watch brain surgery. Or any kind of surgery, actually.

The Doctor will do it! We’re nearly out of the snail, just hang on for a mo!

“The Doctor says that, and only that, would be okay,” Sam said slowly. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, if he was being honest, but the shine in Brian’s eyes made it worthwhile.

“Really?” he asked, and Sam nodded.

Other Sam smiled. “Wonderful. We can certainly make that happen.”

“Yeah, yeah, hang on a second,” Sam cut in. “The Doctor said he'll supervise.”

This news was greeted with the look of scorn he expected. “Oh yeah? Is he going to show up? Not likely. He never returns to where he left his mess.”

“Ruby said he would,” Sam shrugged. “Don’t know the how and the why, but she was pretty confident.”

“Ruby?” Brian asked.

“Presumably the latest stray he’s picked up to show off to,” Sam’s doppelganger sniped, his tone heavy with disdain, before Sam himself could get a word in. “She’ll be young. English, probably, or at least British of some description. Ooh, and if she’s blonde, I get an extra point.”

“Couldn’t say,” Sam replied. “We’ve only texted.”

His double shrugged. “Just you wait. Anyway, Brian,” he said, the contempt dropping from his voice to be replaced by a honeyed gentleness. “Shall we get ready?”

He led Brian through the studio’s corridors, en route to an unremarkable door that was identical to, and somehow even less noticeable than, all the other doors along the way, Sam trailing behind them by a few steps.

He’d already seen inside the console room, back when his doppelganger was trying to make a good impression. Brian, however, had not, and much as Sam was worried by this entire turn of events, he still couldn’t wait to see the look on his friend’s face when he saw the TARDIS properly.

Brian, of course, did not disappoint.

His entire face lit up as Other Sam pushed the door open to reveal a wonderland of otherworldly technology, unrestrained by the confines of what, according to the expected laws of physics, should have been a cupboard-sized room. “No,” he breathed in disbelieving awe, then laughed, a noise of unrestrained, giddy delight. “Oh my god. Oh, my god.”

“Good, isn’t it?” Other Sam said, with no small amount of smugness.

“Good?” Brian repeated, turning in a slow circle to drink it all in. “Holy shit. It’s amazing, I love it!”

Despite his unease, Sam couldn’t help but smile as he watched the display of pure fascination. Even now, even though he was no longer a complete newcomer to the TARDIS, being inside the spacetime machine still felt like pure magic.

His doppelganger tolerated the marvelling for a short while longer, before impatience once again crept into his demeanour. “We’re here for a reason, aren’t we?” he prompted, a distinct bite to his tone. “This way.”

Brian nodded, sufficiently chastened, and with his friend at his side, followed Other Sam deeper into the ship.

“Here,” he announced after a moment. The room he gestured to was bright and sterile, set out like a futuristic operating theatre, and Brian felt his heart rate spike with anticipation as he crossed over the threshold.

“Should I…?” he asked, motioning to the table in the centre of the room, and Other Sam nodded.

Sam watched as his double set out a bewildering array of medical tools, some familiar, some very not, then paused, examining Brian closely.

“Well, you look ready, and I know I am,” Other Sam said. “So all we need now is for our… supervision… to arrive.”

As if on cue, Sam’s phone lit up with a Whatsapp call.

“Sam!” the Doctor exclaimed, clearly peering around what he was able to see of the room. “And you must be Brian, hello!”

“Hi,” Brian replied, slightly awkward from his prone position on the operating table.

“Sam, babes,” the Doctor started. “Would you be comfortable getting close? I need to be able to see what’s going on properly. Or—ooh, there’s a screen over there, if you just—”

“Fine,” Other Sam sighed, intercepting the request with bad grace and the flick of a switch.

From the other end of the call, Sam could hear the buzz of the Doctor’s sonic device, and with a squeal of feedback, the video call transferred itself onto the monitor that had just been turned on.

“There we go!” the Doctor grinned, his image blown up to fullscreen view. “Now I can see everything I need to, clear as a bell, and Sam’s got his phone back. And you all can meet Ruby!”

“Hiya,” came a cheerful voice from just offscreen, and a blonde girl—she couldn’t have been more than 20—popped her head into frame and waved. “He’s hijacked my phone, so I get to listen to live medical dramas while I try and get space snail goo off my favourite jacket.”

Sam’s doppelganger shot him a pointed look. “Told you,” he muttered with satisfaction.

Sam ignored him, instead focusing on the Doctor, who had taken back the call. “Brian, I just want to check before you get started on this. You know what these procedures are going to involve? And you fully consent?”

Brian nodded, utterly overwhelmed in the best possible way. “Y-yeah. I do. I consent.”

“Okay,” the Doctor said. “I promise I’ll be keeping a close eye on him through all of this, so nothing will happen outside the limits of what you’ve agreed to, yeah?”

“Okay,” Brian agreed with wide eyes, unable to keep the tremor of excitement out of his voice. It was happening. Oh, god, it was finally happening.

Through the screen, the Doctor and Other Sam shared a look that neither of the humans in the room could quite decipher. But it seemed like some silent agreement had been reached, which was the main thing.

Other Sam picked up something that looked like a scalpel of light, and smiled down at Brian. “Ready?”

“Fuck,” Brian breathed. “Yeah. Ready.”

The Master put down the scalpel and placed his hands on either side of Brian’s face, making direct and unblinking eye contact as he did so. After a second, Brian’s eyelids fluttered shut, and all the tension of consciousness drained from his body. He was out like a light, completely dead to the world.

Hypnotic anaesthesia achieved, the Master flashed a satisfied smirk at Sam, who felt something in his chest go tight. That’s what happened to him the day the Master revealed himself, he realised, a simple little psychic violation that looked so quick and easy, and the air suddenly felt too thick to breathe.

“I’ll wait outside,” he said, and fled to the corridor.

Phone in hand, he spent a while just scrolling through the usual selection of apps to distract himself, time getting sucked into those familiar black holes, before another text from Ruby popped up on the screen.

I think they’re nearly done!! But just while I’m thinking about it, and this is probably a really weird question so I’m really sorry, but is there an older woman who works at Dropout? English, late 60s, curly hair?

Sam frowned, opening his gallery and thumbing back through months of photos.

Like this? he texted back, attaching a picture from last year’s staff Christmas party. Third from the left at the back is Zan from costuming.

Oh my god. Yeah that’s her.

Sam frowned. Is that okay? I’ve never noticed anything weird about her, she’s actually really lovely.

It’s fine, I think, read the reply. It’s just we’ve been seeing a lot of this woman lately, or people who look identical to her. All in different places, all different, real people, but literally identical. And here she is again. Weird!! But probably nothing for you to be worried about.

That is weird, Sam started to type back, but was distracted by a thin seam of white light that grew wider and wider as the door to the control room opened, and Brian stepped out into the corridor.

That a transformation had occurred was undeniable. To Sam’s surprise, considering the surgery that his friend had undergone, Brian was remarkably unscarred, and the robot arm had been left out of whatever procedures had gone on in that room—but twin points of light peeked above the collar of his shirt, much like the red and yellow LEDs covered by the lab coat he had worn as part of his costume.

“You’re, uh, glowing,” Sam pointed out, realising as he said the words that he was echoing Vic.

“Oh!” Brian replied. “Hang on, let me turn that down—”

He made a face of intent concentration, and indeed, the lights dimmed and faded altogether. The brightness in his smile, however, didn’t diminish in the slightest.

“Isn’t it brilliant? I’ve got total control, all from up here.”

He tapped his temple, beaming once again as his finger made contact with not flesh, but metal. The most obvious aspect of Brian’s cyborg transformation was the implant that curled around his eye—a near match to the silicone patch that had been glued on for his Avery Goodman costume, but possessed of a certain unarguable realness.

Sam just shook his head, at a loss for words.

“I can hide that, too,” Brian assured him cheerfully. With another look of focus, the air above the metal shimmered and blurred, and in as much time as it took Sam to scratch the sudden itch at the back of his head, it had cleared to reveal smooth, unmarked skin.

“Wow,” was all Sam could say for a moment, before a smile slowly dawned across his face. “Brian… fuck, man. I’m happy for you, genuinely. And I can’t tell you how glad I am that it all worked out.”

Brian beamed.

---

At the console of his grounded TARDIS, lost in thoughts of stolen freedom and schemes that should have been, the Master felt a not unfamiliar sensation at the back of his mind. It was enough to dispel the unhelpful reminiscences, and he smiled, slow and vulpine.

“Do you think it’s bad we didn’t tell him you did this part of it?” he heard, Brian’s voice in his mind as clear as if the other man had been standing in the room with him. “I mean, the Doctor knows, so that’s enough, right?”

“Of course it’s enough,” the Master sent back. “And Sam will find out eventually. But until then, you and I can have some fun.”

—

missed an installment of the game master cinematic universe?

original idea by @ace-whovian-neuroscientist: x

art by @northernfireart concept: x scissor sisters sketch: x sam and his doppelganger: x escape the death beam: x

by @bloopdydooooo drawing collection: x

writing by me (!) part one (escape the greenroom): x part two (deja vu): x part three (sam says 4): x part four (you think you know someone): x part five (point and counterpoint): x part six (a selection of correspondence): x part seven (all good things should have a bit of malice in them): you are here!