The following morning a cheerful Christine came to talk to the Doctor. The dejected Joe had been put to bed at last.
"Where's Vic?" asked Christine to the young woman to the time traveller once the latter had explained the previous night's events.
"The country," the Doctor replied. "He needs some rest, poor dear. Now, I need you to investigate a yard on the river near Wapping. Rumours tell of secretive constructions going on there. Or at least, that's what my irregular contacts tell me."
"What are you going to do?"
"Calculations, my dear girl, calculations."
"Are you from the theatre?"
"I beg your pardon?" asked the bemused Doctor.
Christine grinned but didn't say anything. The Doctor went to update her parking ticket.
"Your car's quite strange!" teased the girl.
Christine slipped into the warehouse at Wapping later that day, the Doctor having bribed her with Terra Alphan chocolates and the latest Beach Boys LP. The drilling potency of the Nuclei were being tested. The machines slid effortlessly across the ground like boxy hovercrafts. Each device whirred shrilly and monotonously like a siren of white heat death.
Admiral Sangster espied the intruder. Joe went to fetch Christine on the factory floor and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"You must join us," he said. "The Nuclei will guide our progress. Cell is the master."
Joe was now under the control of the machines, at least in part. The robots' whines were getting louder and louder.
"Have you gone mad?! What are you doing?" Christine protested as she tussled with her possessed boyfriend. He frenetically grasped at her arms and elbows.
Sir Anselm Ashby quaffed his glass of Merlot and paid attention to his friend the Time Lady.
"Don't go to the police. No, never do that. We must investigate on our own," advised the Doctor, waving her pretty hands for emphasis. "The force behind all this is uncommonly powerful. We must be perspicacious but also forceful when the need arises."
Sir Anselm nodded, absorbing the strange woman's information with confidence. He trusted her. After all, she had saved his life twice before, during the Thurso incident. Not to mention, noted Anselm with an internal smile, for all her eccentricities she really is uncommonly beautiful. Something of Bardot about her. Her teeth are perfect. Wife number three?
The Doctor continued, incognisant of the mental images she was conjuring: "I've been in scrapes like this before. I'm trying to remember…" She tapped the side of her head. "We must be the serpent 'neath the flower. Yes, that's it!"
"We all must work toward the victory of this great cause," proclaimed Joe to the terrified Christine as she tried to flee the warehouse. "Cell has given us our next, most glorious mission."
Joe's voice was filled with the cruel and arrogant clarity of a fundamentalist preacher, but he didn't seem to be chasing his girlfriend with much enthusiasm. The young man's body seemed somewhat dazed and reluctant to follow the fanatical instructions, however lucid his speech. Was he fighting the programming, Christine wondered.
On the makeshift factory floor Professor Fredericks commanded the machines to take over every local centre of human habitation and amenity.
"London will be taken over by the machines of salvation," expounded Joe as he hammered in attachments to the Nuclei boxes with threatening thuds. "Soon, all of humanity will be under their control." Christine made a dash for the exit, hot blood and adrenaline pumping inside her. Nausea was creeping in, too.
Sangster was also in the building, speechifying as if he were an extremist demagogue. The secretary tried to force open the peeling wooden door of the warehouse. Multiple chisels were needed. Joe kept talking. Sangster kept raving.
The Doctor stopped playing makruk with herself and made to leave. She was going to seek out Christine. Then, the very girl returned, bruised, shaken and crying.
"Doll! What's happened to you?" The Doctor was aghast at the young woman's distress.
"It's these machines. They're hypnotising, killer machines! They're controlling him! It's all so loopy but that's what happened!" The Doctor hugged the poor girl.
"She has escaped," said Joe, his eyes athwart.
Admiral Sangster demanded the young man to go to Cell for 'decommissioning'.
"It's impossible!" Sir Anselm declaimed.
"Go to the police, please!" pleaded Christine.
"The attack is at one o'clock tomorrow, yes?" The Doctor was thinking methodically.
"Yes, that's what I heard them say!"
"I shall handle this in my own way," announced Sir Anselm and immediately dropped a line to the Home Office.
"Code Two-Fox. Nova. Very urgent. Killer machines, I've been told. Suppressing free will. Very dangerous." The Doctor held her tongue and made Christine a cup of tea.
Soldiers were deployed on London's streets. The respected Major Browning, the officer in charge, spoke to Sir Anselm, who had now donned his old uniform.
"This could be dangerous," advised Sir Anselm, recalling a supposedly relevant escapade in the North Pennines five years previously. The soldiers prepared to storm the riverside warehouse. Browning bade good luck to his men and his soldiers slid open the door.
Admiral Sangster enjoined the Nuclei to crush and destroy. Within seconds a phalange of forklift-sized machines advanced on the platoon, screeching dreadfully. Boxes and crates flew everywhere as more and more Nuclei burst into the fray. Bullets rebounded. The machines shot a choking dust at the infantrymen followed by their own bullets and missiles. Several brave men slumped to floor, spattered in blood. Others suffered cuts and burns to their faces and chests.
All vision, save the infrared of the Nuclei, was obscured in a chemical mist. Admiral Sangster seemed unaffected, so deep in the mind control was he. Many hand to hand tussles took place between the army and the possessed workers. Soon, the injured platoon was forced to retreat, taking a handful of incapacitated workers with them. Throughout it all the incessant drone of the machines of war cut the air. Admiral Sangster continued to give bloodthirsty orders even as his voice strained. One Nucleus followed the troop across the docklands. It lit fires as it came, attempting to trap the servicemen with smoke.
Sir Anselm implored the machine to stop, knowing that its aluminium hide could not withstand the bazooka he held shakily in his hands. Nevertheless, the machine still advanced with defiant siren screams. Then, the machinery of every weapon froze before the Nucleus. The soldiers fell back from the menacing tank.
Only the Doctor stood in the machine's way with a straight posture and an imperious glare aflame in her azure globes. Madwoman.