The doctor raced up the steps, Felix trying to keep up behind him.

"But what did you do the muder machine?" He called, marvelling how his life had gotten to the point where he would say such a thing.

"I fed it my screwdriver."

"Your what?" Felix asked.

"My screwdriver."

Felix pictured the shiny grey tube with the LED one the end that he'd seen the doctor using. "Do you know what a screwdriver is?"

"This is different," the doctor explained, "this is a sonic screwdriver."

"Oh: that's what we call an orange juice and kahlua."

They reached the top of the stairs, where the killbot took up most of the corridor. Felix had imagined they would have to tread lightly around it, but the doctor merely pushed it out of his way. When it was Felix's turn, he too found it surprisingly light. He joined the doctor standing in the middle of the auditorium; he was gazing around at the interior, obviously looking for something.

"But why didn't you do that earlier?" Felix questioned. "Down the robot, I mean."

The doctor didn't look at him as he spoke, "Because I hadn't realised."

"Realised what?"

"That this was all a construct. A puppet theatre. A planned, staged production with terrible choreography and an extremely dislikeable leading man." Felix looked hurt, so the doctor added, "Not you. The person who's been making all this stuff happen. They put an EMP field around my screwdriver, short circuited it. But that meant that when I gave it to the robot, it couldn't function."

"But this isn't a theatre- I mean, that improv group meets here on Saturdays, but it's just the club. Nothing important happens here."

"Look around," the doctor instructed. "What do you see?"

Felix took a very cursory glance- he already knew the inside of this building far too well. "Just the club," he answered.

"Do you see a fire exit?" The doctor asked.

"No." This had struck him as a little odd at the beginning, but he'd just been so happy to have his stage back at all that he hadn't thought about it.

"And yet everything smells like ash."

Felix sniffed the air. "Does it? I think you might be having a stroke."

The doctor sighed, "Humans are so limited." And so that confirmed it- what Felix had been beginning to suspect- this 'doctor' wasn't human. "You can only smell in either the past or the future, never both." Felix managed to process this sentence without reeling, but it took some doing. The doctor continued "Was there a fire here recetly?"

Felix nodded.

"What was the cause?"

"They don't know- they couldn't find any evidence."

"Hmm." Then suddenly the doctor ran over and licked one of the walls- actually pressed his tongue against it. Given what Felix had seen going on in this room, it was not a course of action he could condone.

The doctor smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a couple of times and then pronounced "Four months. This building is four months and...three days old."

"Exactly." Felix confirmed, this time allowing a little surprise into his voice.

"So you had a fire, what, six months ago?"

"Five."

"Even better. Big fire. Big, big fire. Big blaze. Burns the place down, right to the ground. And now, six months later, we're back, here in Birmingham, brand new building, all the trimmings: great big totally anachronistic oak door, completely empty and yet powered up walk-in freezer, bazoonium shelving so you're more likely to knock it over and a murderous robot from beyond the stars. Tell me, what's wrong with that picture- apart from everything?"

Felix boggled, trying to take it all in at once, "Um."

And then the doctor leaned in close and whispered "What British construction job has ever taken only one month?"

Felix's jaw dropped- how had he not noticed that? It would've made great material for a set.

"And you, funny boy," Felix really did not care for this nickname, "you've got a ring that helps keep you in shape. Literally. Where did you get it?"

"I was given it."

The doctor's eyebrow cocked, "At birth?"

"No. Seven months ago." He was beginning to see more coincidences popping up.

"Who gave it to you?"

"My boyfriend- ex."

"He was an alien?"

"Yes; Birovian."

The doctor's face lit up with glee and he seemed to momentarily forget his anger, "You dated a Birovian?"

Felix gritted his teeth- he had had this conversation too many times in the last few years. "Yes."

The doctor nodded and tried to hide his smile, "Like 'em pointy, do we?"

Felix didn't answer, settling for crossing his arms and making a face like thunder.

"Hey, I'm not here to judge." But the doctor couldn't quite let it go. "What did you do about the poison?"

"I knew where to...prod and where not to."

The doctor seemed to accept this as a fair answer. "You should put that in your stand up routine." And he couldn't help but add, "Lovely shade of blue, the Birovians."

"Doctor, you were ramping up to something about a conspiracy?"

"Oh, yes, right. So, club burns down a month after you're given a magic ring that prevents anyone from changing your form- seems rather convenient."

Felix's stomach leapt into his chest. "Do you think Narrath knew about the fire?"

The doctor shrugged. "He might have done. Or maybe you were just lucky." He froze and suddenly seemed to be addressing only himself, not Felix. "Lucky. LUCKY!" He jumped up and punched the air, half in glee, half in anger. "Of course! That girl who went on before you-"

"Miranda."

"Have you ever noticed she smells like fire?"

Felix said simply "She smokes."

"No, I didn't say she smelt like smoke. She smells like fire." He looked around at the club again. "That's because she's still burning."

"What?"

"She was in the club, right? When it went up?"

Again, Felix found himself nodding mutely. How could the doctor have known that?

"Well, I'm sad to say that, in some respects, she still is."

"What?" Felix found himself clutching the sides of his head, trying to keep all this new information in.

"She's been transposed. Badly. Someone cut her out of the fire, snip snip snip, and then pasted her, splat, into the present without even bothering to line up the edges." The doctor shook his head sadly, "it's just shoddy."

"Someone cut her out of time?"

"Well, not literally, of course. Well, yes, sort of literally actually. Well- look, 'cut' has a lot of meanings, alright?" He started pivoting on his foot again, clearly looking for the final clue.

Felix could barely bring himself to ask "Was it- was it Narrath who did that?"

The doctor shook his head. "A Birovian couldn't do that. They're not Time Active."

"What?"

The doctor turned to him, looking like a man staring down a rabid wolf. "The ring...take it off."

Felix really wanted to object. He hadn't taken the ring off since Narrath gave it to him; the same day he'd left. It felt like, if he removed it now, it would mean that his boyfriend was never coming back. It would mean that it was all over and that he'd wasted three years of his life on someone who didn't love him the same way he loved them. It meant that it wasn't going to be forever. The doctor was watching him, sadly, and a small voice in Felix's head said that of course it wasn't going to be forever. And he needed to be okay with that.

He slipped off the ring.

The blast of heat nearly suffocated him. The smoke battered his eyes like a swarm of bees and the roar of the flames was awful. He was in the club- the old club- and it was on fire. Very, very on fire.

He was going to die.

The doctor watced Felix disappear in a flash of yellow energy that left a rapidly fading outline and, in his place, the young woman he'd watched on the stage earlier.

Miranda blinked twice and looked around. "Where- where am I? What's happened?"

The doctor smiled and then turned his head up and adressed the ceiling. "Oh, that was good. That was so good. You almost got 'im. But now I'm involved, and you've made me angry. And you never, ever want to make an angry doctor wait. So, show yourself...Trickster."