Ten seconds.

Oswin huddled against the door, her knees drawn up protectively to her chin and her hands massaging her temples. She spoke into her journal log out of habit, her voice strained.

"If everyone would just leave me alone, I could be fine again. There's a lot of talking in my head. In ten seconds, the planet is going to explode. Not too worried about that. I keep hearing words. Dream. It's just a dream, Oswin. Eggs. Dalek. Eggs... Dream... Dalek, you're a Dalek. Eggs... Stir... Men...

"What absolute rubbish.

"I am human... I'm human, but I have a Dalek body now, and a Dalek understanding of Dalek technology to go with it.

"Time is counting down. I have nine seconds to get my bearings, devise a plan to escape and enact that escape plan. Good thing I've just realized I'm wired to think in measurements of nanoseconds.

"I can sift through my options faster than the naked eye could read or even detect them on the computer screen in front of me, ruling out the long shots and. Eggs. Calculating the probability of success based on real-time detection of the progress of the planet's destruction by the ships. The Doctor and his cute companions escaped through the teleport, but. Stir. But that's too far away for me to reach in time. There are no teleports closer to my location. Men. My Dalek casing is able to fly, but it is much too slow to get me out of the danger zone. I would be. Ate. Consumed by the fireball before I got a mile off the ground.

"Maybe I should try to fly anyway, just to see how far I could get before I died. After all, according to the files I deleted, the Doctor's modus operandi is to run, and that seems to be working for him. Moving as far away as possible from the danger sounds logical, but a feeling tells me it's a bad idea. Eggs.

"Stir. No, eggs, no, no, I need to stir think clearly... Men. Ate.

"Five seconds. It's just a dream, Dalek. You've been making souffles in your sleep."

Oswin blinked.

"In my sleep, dreaming! I've been doing all this in my head! The meals, the clothes, and most importantly, the hacking. The part of me that is human, the part of Oswin that is left, is the mind. The rest is just Dalek hardware, and the Dalek hive mind, trying to get in and weed me out. The hive mind has been trying to make me into a full Dalek, that's why they try to break in every night. This place is a dream, or more accurately, a mind fortress, keeping the human in and the Dalek out. So who says the fortress has to be built into this particular Dalek's mind? If thoughts and memories and hatred can go freely from one Dalek to another, never diminishing no matter how many of them die, what's to stop me from riding away from here like a bubble of thought, like a Dalek dream?

"I am human..

"That's why the Daleks really wanted to destroy this place. They felt me in them, a nagging presence in the back of their mind, something foreign. They thought they could chain me up to rot in a loony bin and I'd go away, but that didn't work so they decided to try something more permanent. News flash: also not going to work, Daleks! Oswin is out of here!"

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINAAAAATE! the agitation of the thoughts outside was tangible. Oswin's room shook to the foundations.

It was a matter of a half second for Oswin to tear open her boarded-up psyche. She threw wide the door to the Dalek hive-mind that had been clamoring to get in and exterminate her. The human mind, a girl dressed in red, towered over the Dalek mind, looking down on its head. One glance and the Dalek consciousness retracted its eye stalk in terror and turned tail and scooted. Oswin latched onto it, the Dalek pulling her mind along like a husky pulling a sled. "mush, you freaky pack of tin cans," Oswin laughed.

Earlier she had felt the Daleks forgetting "the Predator" -the Doctor. Now she concentrated on that same direct line to their collective consciousness. Through the mind of this fabricated Dalek they had tried to turn her into, she had a direct connection to all of them. Any port in a storm; however, Oswin had an idea which port she preferred, and as long as she still had time, she was going to try to locate it.

She landed in a palace. It seemed real, just as her small fortified room had, but it was huge and opulent.

"So this is the Dalek Emperor," she whispered to herself.