The Doctor sighed. He thought about this briefly, then smiled. 'We need a way to communicate with them...' He pointed to a steep path that ran up from the car park and along the edge of a steep precipice, a road several of the police cars had taken before the chaos began. 'This way,' he said. 'Hurry!'

They ran up the path and about halfway along it they encountered Captain Wallis. He was standing next to his car, watching the battle raging between the police and the projections.

'Where is is Fletcher?' Ben wondered. Fletcher?' Ben wondered.

'I don't know,' said the Doctor. 'Perhaps you could look for him while I have a word with Captain Wallis.'

Ben nodded, rolled up his sleeves and ran back down to the crowd, ready to fight his way through it until he found Fletcher.

Wounded bodies littered his path as he ran. He tried not to look, tried to avoid them, and hoped the detective wasn't among them.

Wallis watched the action below with satisfaction. He felt the Selyoids inside him buzzing with excitement, feeding off the crowd. This was a perfect moment that he knew he'd savour for the rest of his life. Then he sensed that the Selyoids were trying to tell him something. That there was still something not quite right. That a familiar presence was nearby.

Before he could listen to what the creatures had to say he felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun round to see a scruffy-looking man with a deadly serious look on his face.

'Stop this madness,' the Doctor ordered.

'What the hell are you doing here?'

'Look at that,' the Doctor said through gritted teeth, pointing to the chaos in front of them. 'Why are you letting your men be slaughtered? Why won't you stop this?'

Wallis turned round and smiled. 'It's a show of strength, Doctor. A display to convince the people down there that if they share in the Selyoid glory they'll be indestructible. They'll be so protected they won't need the LAPD.'

'And they won't need you,' the Doctor added.

Wallis laughed. 'No, but they'll get me. I'm one of the most important people in the Selyoid plan. I'm one of the Chosen...'

He gestured to the city skyline. '...And a large part of this will soon be mine.'

'Just think about what's going on,' the Doctor pleaded.

'Look down there. Your men, your colleagues, are killing each other in their fear and confusion.' He pointed to the megaphone lying on the driver's seat inside Wallis's car. 'You can stop this now. End the bloodshed. Call off your men.'

Wallis shook his head. 'We must let this play out,' he insisted. 'The public have to see the true strength of the Selyoids, have to realise the possibilities the new world will bring them.'

'But your men will all be killed,' the Doctor shouted.

'Innocent lives lost!'

Wallis shrugged. 'Their sacrifice is a noble one. If you were one of the Chosen, you'd understand. But you didn't embrace our doctrine. The Selyoids are the only way to beat Communism. Unity with order and inequality, universal happiness but not at the expense of the rich, of the good Americans.'

The Doctor looked around edgily, then suddenly pointed upwards. 'Oh my, what's that!' he shouted. Wallis glanced up and the Doctor threw his body weight into him, keeping his own balance but sending the policeman flying to the floor. As Wallis lay there the Doctor pulled out the megaphone, flicked a switch to turn it on and began to shout. The sound of his voice filled the air. 'Stop shooting!' he called. 'Stop fighting! They're just projections, they won't hurt you if you don't fight. You're the LAPD. You don't need to fight. Stop, please!'

Wallis pulled himself together sufficiently to stand up, then reached for his gun. He held it in the air and fired a shot. The Doctor stopped shouting and turned round slowly. Wallis slammed the gun against his chest, pointing it directly at the man's heart. One shot and the guy wouldn't be annoying anyone else again.

He pulled the trigger, but just before he did so he felt himself being ripped away from the Doctor, saw the world spin round and felt his gun arm fly away from its target, the bullet ricocheting off the side of the car as it was fired. And then he saw who had pulled him from his prey. A face from the past. A face from the grave. His own son.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

'Hello, Dad,' Chate said as he launched a powerful uppercut that connected to Wallis's chin with a sickening crack. The policeman's head smashed against the metal of the car roof.

Chate stood back and Wallis collapsed to the ground.

Turning to Polly, who had climbed up with him to the vantage point, Chate pointed to the Doctor. 'Make sure he's OK.' She nodded.

The Doctor dusted himself down. 'I'm fine, thank you.'

Chate looked down to see his father reaching for the gun that he'd dropped. Chate darted swiftly over to it and kicked the weapon away from his father's grasp.

Wallis stood up. 'I should have let them kill you,' he growled.

Chate looked into his eyes, at the Selyoid fire that burned within soulless sockets, and smiled. 'They almost did, but I saw the light.'

'Stop this,' the Doctor shouted. At first Chate thought he was shouting at the warring police, but then he realised the Doctor's voice didn't have the distorted interference of the megaphone. He realised the Doctor was talking to him.

'No more violence,' the Doctor insisted. 'No more fighting.'

'I'm sorry,' Chate said as he wrestled his father to the ground, 'but this is personal.'

Wallis flung an arm up, making contact with Chate's face.

Chate recoiled and the policeman used the moment to throw his son's weight away from him. Wallis scrabbled across the ground, across to the side of the path, next to the steep precipice. He looked around frantically for the gun, hoping it hadn't fallen over the edge, and was relieved to see it had been caught between two clumps of flowers. He grabbed it and swivelled around so that it was pointing directly at Chate's chest. The action froze, both parties breathing heavily, each trying to anticipate his opponent's next move.

Wallis stood up, his balance precarious. He clutched one hand to his bruised face, while the other held the gun.

Chate took a step forward.

'Don't move!' Wallis yelled.

'You wouldn't let De Sande kill me,' Chate said matter-of-factly. 'You won't kill me now.'

Wallis's eyes were filled with anger. He seemed to have an aura of hatred, but when it came down to it he didn't know if he could do it. And then his expression changed. He was listening.

Chate recognised what that meant. Somehow Chate could feel the Selyoids inside Wallis telling him to kill his son.

The expression on the old man's face was confused, unsure.

'You should have died in that fire,' Wallis said angrily. 'That would have been a sweet irony. Your mother, your father, you...

Three Chates, three arson victims.'

'Arson attack? My parents didn't die in an arson attack,'

Chate said. 'That fire that killed them started by accident. That's what you've always told me.' Confusion filled his mind and his speech faltered. 'Unless you were lying, in which case... why would you...? Oh God. Oh God, no. You!'

Wallis laughed.

'You killed them!' Chate shouted. 'You killed them, didn't you?'

'Your father was blackmailing me,' Wallis sneered. 'I needed him out of the way.'

Chate looked away. 'No, it's not possible. It's not possible!'

He stared at Wallis's finger tightening on the gun's trigger, and wondered how the man could have kept such a terrible secret hidden for so many years.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye he saw the precipice, saw the sheer drop deep below.

'Why?' was all he could whimper.

'I'm... not sorry,' Wallis said, a tear rolling down his cheek.

He fired the gun and Chate felt a burning bullet rip into his chest.

He collapsed to the ground and screamed in agony. He looked up and his eyes were blinded by a bright light.

Amazingly, he was able to get up, was able to stagger towards Wallis. He looked down and saw that the bright light was surging from the wound to his chest. But how could it? The Selyoids had left him, hadn't they?

He saw Wallis screaming, cowering as the light blinded him.

Saw his father shield his eyes and stagger back, back over the edge of the precipice.

Chate leapt forward and grabbed his father's arm. Wallis dangled precariously over the edge, desperately scrabbling at the earth to try to get a foothold, trying to get up. Gravity dragging him down.

Chate was in too much pain to lift his father up, but nevertheless he strained with all his strength to hold on to him.

'Climb up!' he urged. 'Climb up!'

He felt hands grab him from behind. Polly and the Doctor, doing their best to help pull the old man up. Their efforts were in vain. Gravity was too strong, Wallis was too heavy.

'I can't!' Wallis screamed, struggling violently, but the more he moved, the more Chate felt him slipping from his grasp.

His father's weight pulled Chate towards the edge, and he knew the laws of physics were against him. 'I can't hold on!' he cried.

He and Wallis made eye contact one more time, and in his father's eyes Chate saw the burning agony of the Selyoids inside him, desperately trying to change his physique, to make him stronger, but to no avail. But was there something else? Was that a hint of regret he could see?

He tried one more time to pull the old man up, but it was no use. His father slipped from his grasp and, with a final, mournful moan, crashed to the rocks far below.

Chate looked down into the darkness, tears in his eyes. No one could survive a fall like that, even someone sharing with the Selyoids.

He paused for several moments, trying to contemplate what had happened, then turned to face the Doctor and Polly.

'I am am sorry,' he said quietly. 'I am.' sorry,' he said quietly. 'I am.'

The police began to halt their attacks. Most of them did so through no choice of their own because they had run out of ammunition. But some stopped due to a genuine desire to test the truth of the Doctor's words or because they'd lost the will to fight. They stopped attacking the horses, the soldiers and the monsters. They let the projections wash over them, let the light clouds swirl around their vision. They stopped firing their guns, stopped beating the crowd and each other up and slowly, a little at a time, the violence stopped.

The battle between the various projections still raged overhead, but on the ground the two factions of humanity the LAPD and the civilian humans stood still, like shocked mourners at a funeral, barely saying a word.

Looking across at the dumbstruck masses Ben saw a bruised and battered Fletcher emerge from them, nursing a black eye.

'You OK, kid?' Fletcher asked as he hurried over to Ben, coughing dust out of his lungs.

Ben nodded, and pointed up the path that led along the precipice. 'Come on.' he said. 'Let's go and find the Doctor.'

Chate felt a warm hand clasp his shoulder. 'It's OK,' Polly said.

'You did your best.'

He turned over and winced as the pain in his chest hit him.

He looked down and saw the bullet fly out, expelled by the Selyoids as they worked on sealing and repairing his wound.

'These Selyoids seem to be instinctive creatures,' the Doctor told him, 'and if you die, they die. It doesn't matter that the ones in Wallis wanted you dead, there were some in you that must have refused to leave, that were more than happy to stay a part of you.'

Chate smiled. 'I can hear them talking to me. They're scared, confused. Trying to regroup and repair themselves.'

'They're healing your injury, it seems. You should be fine soon.'

Chate shook his head. 'I won't heal for a while yet.'

The Doctor held his hand out and Chate grabbed it. As the Doctor pulled him up, Chate was surprised at the little man's strength.

'Your father wasn't himself at the end, remember,' the Doctor said. 'The Selyoids drove him over the edge.' He glanced over the side of the precipice. 'Sorry.'

He placed a comforting arm on Chate's shoulder. 'You can't blame yourself.'

Chate shrugged. 'Can't I? Could I have tried harder? Was there a part of me that wanted him to fall? A part of me that let him go? Did I do the right thing?'

The Doctor's face was deadly serious, cold. Behind his eyes, Chate could see a deeply tortured soul, could see that he was perhaps more familiar with this sort of situation than his normal joviality implied. 'Never ask that question,' said the Doctor, 'it never helps.'

'You're lucky some of the Selyoids didn't want to leave you,'