"What are you doing?" demanded the Cult Team.

"As the official representative and supreme high-ruler of the BBC, I am treating the Doctor precisely in accordance with BBC instructions pertaining to him."

"You mean--" gasped Emily.

"Yes," sneered the DG, nodding to the executioner. "He's going to be axed!"

"But, you can't!"

The DG smiled broadly, in much the same way as a man-eating shark might. "Oh yes I can!"

"Oh no you can't!" snapped Emily, realising even as she said it how ludicrous this all was. An interruption came from an unlikely source:

"Oh come on, Emily, please don't start that," pleaded Glasses. "Don't fall into late-80s panto coding. Anything but that!"

"Ahem," ahemmed the Doctor from his position on the floor. "If I might make a suggestion..."

"No, you can make a corpse. Executioner!" The DG snapped his fingers, bringing the axeman to the fore. The axe swung up, round, back--

"Doctor," breathed Rashface desperately, "Remember part 1 of Masque of Mandragora."

The Doctor frowned. "Was that the one where the Kraals had set up a training-site on Oseidon?"

"No, Masque of Mandragora, not Android Invasion."

The axe had completed its rise---

"Masque of Mandragora," mused the Doctor idly, as if he had all the time in the world. "Masque of Mandragora, Mandragora... No, sorry, you'll have to jog my memory on that one."

Rashface sighed in exasperation. "Never mind - just run!" he snapped, grabbing the more bulky form of Beardy and charging into the axeman as he said it. The axeman was thrown back partly by the impact, partly by the surprise of finding the nerds had some fight in them. The delay was enough. Emily reached out and pulled the Doctor to his feet.

"Quickly!" she cried, "Through here! Hold them off guys!"

And with that she dragged the Doctor through a small door behind the Message Board machine.

The DG ground his teeth in fury at the frustration of his plans, indicating with a savage wave of the hand for the black-suited guards to follow the renegades. He loomed over the three remaining members of the Cult Team. "You geeks had better hope I catch him," he snarled, "because if that fool escapes then it'll be your necks going under the axe." He turned to leave, then spun back, his heels squeaking. He jabbed a finger at the machine. "And that thing - switch it off. It's over."

The Cult Team guys exchanged looks of horror....

...a look reflected bitterly on the face of the lost one, within the imaginary bowels of the machine's virtual interior. Across the synaptic reality barrier, he had heard all that had happened after the great Hand of Mod had pulled the Doctor into the beyond. Much of it had confused him, most of it had concerned him. But this last edict from the gritty voice that clearly ruled that other land, sent terror through his simulated heart. Real or not, once the machine was switched off, the Boards would die, the voices would be forever silenced... and he would simply cease to exist, he would lose even the grey in-between life he had now.

But he had met the Doctor.

He had read and seen and heard and absorbed the Doctor's many, many adventures, and in his time, before he became a lost one he had debated them endlessly. The spirit and enthusiasm and drive and heroism and fun of the Doctor had filled and inspired him.

But now he had actually met the Doctor.

And if the odds were stacked firmly against them, it was time to take action!

"Where exactly are we?" asked the Doctor, as Emily led him down yet another corridor.

"I told you," she said, "this it the BBCi offices."

"But, it's all corridors!"

"Not all," she protested, "there are some rooms off the corridors. But you see we're such fans of yours..."

The Doctor stopped in his tracks. "You mean all these corridors are an homage to me?!"

She beamed gloriously. "Precisely. After all, where would a good 4-parter be without some corridors to run up and down."

"You have a point I suppose..." conceded the Doctor graciously. And promptly disappeared.

"Doctor!!" Emily looked around trying to spy him, but he had quite literally disappeared.

He reappeared much to her (and his) relief a few moments later, but there was a severe look of worry on both faces by that time. "What happened?" asked Emily.

The Doctor slapped himself on the forehead again. And winced. Again. "I'm an idiot!"

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

"No, no, I really am this time," he insisted.

"Alright, have it your own way..."

"I only exist as a product of mass intelligence, concentrated and possibly magnified by your machine, yes?"

Emily nodded obligingly.

"Once outside of the machine, the effect is exponentially weakened, with each passing moment diminishing more and more until..."

She took the point. "Until you cease to exist." She gulped. "Again."

"Mm..." murmured the Doctor. "Not a pleasant prognosis."

"A universe without the Doctor," mumbled Emily, "scarcely bears thinking about..."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing, nothing." A moment of decision. "Then there's only one thing for it, Doctor, isn't there."

"Which is?"

"We'll just have to get you back into the machine!"

A laser-beam blasting the wall just above their heads interrupted the conversation. Turning, the pair saw the DG's guards approaching fast up the corridor.

"When I say run," began the Doctor.

"Way ahead of you, Doc'" called Emily, from twenty feet further along the corridor. The Doctor sprinted after her.

The lost one who had befriended the Doctor stood, arms raised, addressing apparently empty space. When he had told the Doctor that his kind tended to keep to themselves, it had been no exaggeration. He had not been able to find anyone, no matter how hard he looked, and in the end had decided to simply announce his intentions to the world at large and hope for an answer.

"I stand here desperately trying to remember the inspiring words of Alydon when he calls the Thals to arms during the original Dalek story. Whether we call it The Daleks or The Dead Planet or, if you must insist some of you, The Mutants, we surely can at least agree that they were right to fight the Daleks. And we too must now fight - if the Boards are deactivated even the life we have now will end. No further hope of system retrieval, no chance of a way out then. Who will stand with me?" Silence. "Who amongst the lost ones will help fight to save our world?" More silence. One last attempt: "Who will make me feel inferior by quoting Alydon's speech here and now verbatim?" There were shufflings in the gloom, murmurings, a flicker of hope...

"Now the way I have reasoned," whispered a figure emerging from the darkness, and not alone, "is this..."

The Doctor and Emily, hotly pursued by the guards, and even more hotly pursued by the laser beams, rounded a corner. There was a single door along this length of the corridor. Emily was about to run past it, but the Doctor grabbed at her sleeve, holding her back.

"They'll be on us in a minute," she panted. But the Doctor was pointing at the sign on the door. It said, simply, 'cyberspace'.

"What's this?" he asked.

Emily frowned. "Well, cyberspace is used as slang for the virtual environment within..." she paused "within the Boards..."

"Is it a back door then?"

"I didn't know there was another link into the Boards," she replied, "but then the three musketeers - er, the other members of the team, are always doing lots of really nerdy stuff that even I don't know about. And," she said with a grin, "it would be just like them. It's probably their little nod to that stupid 'door to the Matrix' thing in Trial."

The Doctor reached out to open the door. Emily pulled his hand back. "It might not be though," she added. "It could be something dangerous."

A laser bolt striking the wall just above their heads made their minds up. Emily flung the door open. "After you Doctor."

The escaping duo rushed through the door. The door slammed shut behind them!

"So you lost them?" muttered the DG through firmly clenched teeth.

His guards had returned empty-handed from their pursuit of the Doctor and the Cute-- sorry, Cult Girl. They were reporting their staggering lack of success to him now.

"Well, er," said one of them," they went through this door, but it locked behind them."

"I see," he whispered menacingly.

"Which, er, which door was it?" asked Glasses. A look of alarm had started to cross his face.

"It said 'cyberspace'" replied the second guard affably.

"Oh no." Glasses shoved his glasses back up his nose.

"What's wrong?" asked Beardy.

"Yes," smiled the DG, having the scent of a possible disaster for the Doctor and hoping to relish it, "Please share your alarm with the group."

"Well," stammered Glasses. "I expect they thought the door was a shortcut back into the virtual world - safety in the current situation, as it were."

Redface snapped his fingers, grinning. "I bet Em thought it was like the seventh door."

Glasses smiled momentarily. "Yeah, I bet you're right. Actually that would be quite cool..."

The DG interrupted: "So what is the door really? Something lingeringly fatal I hope?"

Glasses' smile disappeared. "It's just a pet project of mine - a different sort of artificial environment. A fictional world, populated with..." His voice tailed off in horror.

"With what?" insisted the DG.

Glasses told them.

It was dark on the other side of the door, but the Doctor knew instinctively that it was a quite different darkness to the gloom of the Boards.

"Where are we?" whispered Emily. "Are we back in the Boards?"

The Doctor shook his head, rather unhelpfully in the dark. "No," he amplified, "we're not. You know," he went on, "I have a very bad feeling about this..."

"Oh come on!" exclaimed Emily. "That's Star Wars, not Who!"

Suddenly the lights went on. For a moment they were both blinded. Then as their eyes became accustomed to it, they saw that they were surrounded. A ring of tall figures surrounded them, and there were clearly many more of them beyond the ring. They were all identical, six to seven feet tall, a dull grey in colour, with machinery attached to their chests, and handle-like protrusions on the sides of their mask-like faces. One of them stepped forwards, his handles a black, signifying leadership rank.

"Welcome," said the Cyberleader menacingly, "to Cyber Space!"