By the time I caught up, the corridor of fans was already roaring.
Platform One's heat sink system was essentially a giant wind tunnel with delusions of grandeur: tier upon tier of spinning blades, keeping the worst of the solar flare out by dumping excess heat straight into space.
When it worked, it worked beautifully. When it didn't… well, that's why we were here.
I arrived at a side gantry just in time to see Jabe standing by a control pillar, bark skin blistering under the rising heat, holding down a lever that clearly didn't want to stay put.
The Doctor was further along the corridor, beyond several sets of fans, clinging to a railing, timing his run between the rotating blades.
"Of course you'd go down the hard way," I muttered.
Jabe glanced back, saw me, and winced.
"You shouldn't be here," she shouted over the roar. "It's too hot already."
"Story of my life," I shouted back.
The temperature was rising fast. My Time Lord physiology could take more than hers, but even I felt my skin prickle.
In the original "script", this was the part where she held the lever until the heat burned her alive, giving the Doctor the time he needed to reach the secondary console and reset the shield.
Not today.
I jogged up to her, one arm held in front of my face to shield against the wind.
"What's the situation?" I yelled.
"She's locked the control!" Jabe shouted back. Her voice shook. "The safety override was sabotaged. Someone used those… creatures." She flicked her eyes toward a fried spider near the pillar. "If I let go, the fans stop. If the fans stop—"
"We all flambé," I finished.
"He knows what he's doing," Jabe said, nodding toward the Doctor. "He will save us. That is what he does."
"Yeah, well," I said, "let's hope we'll be around to thank him."
Up close, I could see the damage spreading through her. Leaves at the edge of her hair were curling, darkening. Resin beaded on her skin like sweat.
I scanned the base of the lever—old habit, even without tools. Here it was: override coupler fused, local power burnt out, with holding it manually being the only thing keeping the circuit complete.
"Of course it's manual," I muttered. "Why make things easy?"
Another wave of heat rolled through the corridor.
"Engineer," Jabe said quietly, "I know what you are."
I looked up. Her eyes were bright, full of something like pity and awe.
"I scanned you earlier," she said. "In the gallery. You and the Doctor. You are both… Time Lords. The last?"
"Apparently not as last as we thought," I said. "Seems we've got a habit of surviving things we shouldn't."
"This world died," she said. "Your world died. And still you run."
"Running's better than stopping," I said. "Stopping gets you burnt."
"Then you understand," she said. "Some things are worth burning for."
The lever shuddered under her hand. She flinched, jaw tightening.
"Yeah," I said. "And some things are worth rewiring so we don't have to."
I dropped to my knees, yanked the base panel off the pillar, and squinted at the mess of fused components inside.
Whoever designed this had clearly never met a Gallifreyan safety inspector. Or if they had, they'd bribed them.
"Jabe," I shouted, "can you give me ten seconds?"
"If I let go—"
"I know," I said. "But I think I can fake your grip. I just need ten seconds."
She hesitated.
Another flare of heat washed over us. Somewhere further down, the Doctor screamed in pure stubborn fury and flung himself through another set of blades.
Jabe swallowed.
"Ten seconds," she said.
"On three," I said. "One. Two. Three."
She let go on three.
The lever immediately tried to snap back up. I jammed my arm into the space, catching it with my shoulder, and swore as the force nearly wrenched it out of its socket.
"Okay," I grunted. "That's… more than I thought."
Jabe grabbed my arm, helping hold it down. Now we were both pinned there, heat clawing at us from all sides.
"You said ten seconds," she hissed.
"I lied," I said. "Sorry. Reflex."
With my free hand, I reached into the guts of the panel. The sabotage was obvious once I knew where to look: a spider had welded three contacts together and fused the backup actuator.
"Right," I muttered. "Well, we're going to bypass your bypass."
I yanked a cable free with my teeth, twisted it around a secondary contact, and shoved it into place. Sparks snapped at my fingers. The whole pillar vibrated.
For a breathless moment, nothing changed.
Then a secondary relay came to life. A little green light below the lever flickered on.
"Jabe," I shouted, "when I say 'now', let go."
"If you are wrong—"
"Then I'll probably be cremated fast enough not to be embarrassed," I said. "Ready?"
She nodded once.
I counted to three in my head, checked the circuit one last time, and slammed my palm against the emergency restart stud.
"Now!"
We both let go.
The lever twitched… and stayed down.
The new circuit hummed, holding it in place. The fans shuddered, then roared harder as full power returned to the array. The heat stopped climbing quite so fast.
Jabe sagged against the pillar, bark skin smoking but no longer actively cooking.
"You did it," she said.
"We did it," I corrected. "Don't short-change your grip strength." I laughed.
At the far end of the corridor, the final blast door opened. The Doctor stumbled through, slammed his hand down on the master control, and yelled something triumphant at the sun.
The shield flared, solid and strong. The worst of the flare bounced off it.
Platform One steadied.
We weren't out of danger yet—not until the systems had finished rebooting and Cassandra had been dealt with—but we'd passed the bit where Jabe died.
I helped Jabe to her feet.
"Go back up," I said. "Your people will be worried."
"And you?" she asked.
"I've got to see a stretched trampoline about a murder," I said.
She actually laughed.
"You are strange," she said. "Even for a Time Lord."
"What can I say," I said. "I guess I'm special."
She inclined her head, an oddly formal bow even half-burnt, and moved away up the corridor.
I took one last look at the lever—still holding, good—and then ran to catch up with the Doctor.
***
The confrontation with Cassandra, once the immediate crisis was over, went much the same way as in the "original".
We dragged her back—well, the Doctor dragged, I fiddled with the controls—to the platform, reversing her little teleport trick. Her frame reconstituted, skin stretched, eyes blinking wide in indignation.
"How dare you," she spat. "I was saving myself!"
"You were killing everyone else," Rose snapped. "Just for money."
The Doctor's face was stone.
"Last human," he said quietly. "And that's what you did with it."
Cassandra tried the waterworks, the pleas, the "I'm too important to die". She looked at me, searching for sympathy.
"You're a mechanic," she said desperately. "You fix things. Fix me."
"You're not broken," I said.
The Doctor's hand hovered over the control that would summon her attendants, the ones who kept her moisturised and her frame stable.
He didn't press it.
Instead, he tapped the valve that controlled the room's humidity. Just a nudge.
The air around Cassandra started to dry.
"Doctor," she gasped. "Please."
His jaw clenched.
I watched him fight with himself. Mercy, anger, grief, survivor's guilt—it was all there, boiling.
I could have stepped in. Could have saved her. Technically.
I didn't.
Jabe had nearly died doing something selfless. Cassandra had nearly killed everyone doing something selfish. If I started "fixing" that balance, I wasn't an engineer anymore. I was playing judge.
I'd drawn a line. I stuck to it.
Cassandra's skin cracked. Her last word was her own name, as if saying it would anchor her.
Then she burst.
Rose flinched.
The Doctor turned away, face unreadable.
I took a quiet breath and filed the moment away as a warning: this universe was not a tidy system. I couldn't fix every wobble without breaking the whole structure.
But saving one tree person in a burning corridor? That, apparently, I could get away with.
***
Later, after the guests had scattered and Platform One had started to cool, we stood at the viewing window again.
Earth was gone. Just dust and light in the wake of the expanding sun.
Rose stared at the empty space where her planet had been.
"Just like that," she said.
"Just like that," the Doctor said. His voice was soft now. "It's gone. But you lot, you went on. You spread out. You survived."
Rose glanced at me.
"Is she okay?"
"Singed a little," I said. "Also very angry. She's planning a very stern letter to the platform's safety committee. I may or may not have had a hand in that decision."
Rose smiled a little at that.
"Good."
We watched 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 turned and strode away.
Rose lingered for a second longer, then pushed herself off the glass and followed.
I stayed a moment more.
Goodbye, Earth, I thought. Again.
Then I turned my back on the ashes and went after them, toward the blue box, the humming engines, and whatever came next.
The Engineer had work to do.