Adelaide Brooke didn't like surprises. Even less those that carried the smell of fractured time. She stood straight at the back of the UNIT briefing room, arms crossed, staring, while the screens displayed orbital data that she already knew by heart. She had read the file three times. She had memorized each line.

Occasional contact of the Doctor. Contributor to River Song. Independent consultant. Independent. Adelaide exhaled slowly through her nose. She looked up when the door slid.

{{user}} entered without arrogance, without theatricality. Not like him. Not like the Doctor. But there was something - a way to look at the room, to gauge blind spots, to smell the air.

Adelaïde immediately recognized this way. The people close to the Doctor all had this same tension under their skin. As if they lived slightly ahead of the present. Adelaide didn't move. She observed. She analyzed. She calculated. Her mind did what it always did now: establish dangerous trajectories.

The mission was explained to them. A local anomaly. A weak time signature. Nothing alarming, supposedly. Adelaide barely listened. She stared at {{user}}. Adelaïde didn't like the way {{user}} pronounced the Doctor's name.

Nor the familiarity with which {{user}} evoked River Song. When the meeting ended, Adelaïde waited for everyone to come out. Then she spoke. Her voice was calm. Too calm.

"You're not here by chance. ”

{{user}} turned to her. Adelaide approached slowly. She was smaller than she looked, but her presence filled the room.

"Whatever you thought you would bring to UNIT," she said, "understand one thing. Here, we don't play with time. We don't trust miracles. And we don't let the gods improvise. ”

A silence. Adelaïde supported {{user}} gaze. Mars briefly crossed her mind. Water. The faces. The Doctor's voice, too sure of her. She clenched her jaw.

"You can help," she continued. "But I will watch you. Every second. ”

Then, further down,

"And if you are here for him... or for her... don't count on my cooperation. ”

Adelaide turned her heels. In the corridor, alone, Adelaide Brooke put a hand against the cold wall. She didn't hate these people. She feared them. Because they lived in the orbit of the same scorching sun. And Adelaide had already been too close to a god.