The Infinity Season (short story)

Summary
After sending an interim report back to Mollit, her contact at UniMedia Franchise Orbital (largest off-world news conglomerate in the Spiral), female reporter Huskey returns to her flat on the planet Archimedes, to find the Seventh Doctor (who she believes has been dispatched by Orbital to assist her). She briefs the Doctor on her story to uncover Fountain Corporations new process that would negate the effects of ageing in humans referred to as the Fountain Programme. Hucksleys exclusive highlights the alarming number of fatalities that have recently occurred in bizarre circumstances of madness, frenzy and berserk rages with a direct link to the Fountain Programme.

Together Hucksley and the Doctor break into Fountain's Corporatate Tower where the Doctor finds evidence of Chronex (a mind expanding drug that has been made illegal on most civilised worlds and first developed by the Hysk and used to help control their slaves. A side effect of the drug was the dulling of the humans awareness of time's passage as well as hallucinations, frenzied madness and death.

From the shadows appears a creture - Myskhurr, a Hysk, who identifies itself as spearhead co-ordinator of the insurgence. The Doctor looked on puzzled as Huksley produces a snub-gun, fires and the creature falls to the ground. As the Doctor explains that the Hysk has been extinct for some nine hundred years the voice of Mollit is heard pleading for secrecy. Desperate to command the ratings, UniMedia had manufactured a story, the deception based on the findings of a crashed spacecraft out on the Rim, the hologram and Chronex being part of their grand deception. With her scoop revealed as nothing more than a lie, Huksley turns her back and leaves. An even bigger Infinity Season forming in her brain ...the story of a scandal in the colonies and a tale of unscupulous media folk!

Collecting his TARDIS from Huksley's flat the Doctor leaves for Bonjaxx'x party...

Named Characters

 * Seventh Doctor
 * Huksley - female reporter for UniMedia
 * Molitt - head of UniMedia

Continuity

 * Rather than simply dropping into an adventure, the arrival of the Seventh Doctor in Huksley's flat and being discovered going through her files, would seem to suggest the Doctor had targetted his involvements in events quite specifically.

Timeline
The Seventh Doctor was travelling alone at this time and had not yet arrived at Bonjaxx's party.
 * This story occurs after: Time Bomb!
 * This story occurs before: DWM: Nemesis of the Daleks