Rose, still glowing from the discovery of her baby's movements, realized she had left her sonic gun down in the basement of Torchwood Tower. Mickey had offered to go with her to retrieve it; Rose was glad – this building gave her an odd feeling.
"Do you want to feel it, Mickey?" Rose said after a brief lull in the conversation.
"What?" Mickey looked up, surprise. "I- I guess so. What do I do, just put my hand on your stomach?"
Rose laughed. "Here." She placed his hand just below her navel, where her half-time lord baby had been beating his feet against the walls of her womb.
Mickey pulled his hand back. "Whoa. There's really a baby in there," staring at Rose's rounded stomach. Rose chuckled and nodded. "So," Mickey said hesitantly, "you and the Doctor, yeah?"
"I thought we've had this conversation already, Mickey." Rose rubbed her belly. "I love him. I'm sorry – just – you and me, we were never right together." She gave Mickey an apologetic look.
"Yeah, I know. But seeing you carrying his baby –" Mickey shook his head. "It's a little much to handle."
He paused, letting a few silent minutes pass as they walked together. "I guess, if you're having his child, then I'm glad you're going back to him."
"Yeah," Rose agreed. "But we've still got the Daleks to deal with. Let's not get ahead of ourselves – we still need to work out a plan."
They reached the door that Rose had blasted open. They heard the robotic voice of the broken Dalek: "Exterminate! Must exterminate!"
Walking through the door, they were met with a strange sight: a girl, perhaps a few years younger than Rose, was sitting cross-legged in front of the Dalek cage, speaking to the Dalek.
"No, mate, not exterminate. You're a good Dalek now," she said, reaching in to pat the Dalek.
"No!" she shouted, startling the girl. "He'll use your DNA to fix himself!" She didn't make it in time, though – the girl had already touched the Dalek.
"'Ello, there!" said the girl cheerfully. "I see you've met my friend DLK021!" The girl didn't look at all concerned by Rose's warning. Seeing Rose's expression, the girl reassured her. "No, he won't. I've broken that part of him, too."
"Too? You mean you did this to him?" Mickey looked at the young girl. She couldn't have been older than 15. How could she have possibly disabled the Dalek?
"You're wondering how I did it, aren't you?" the girl asked Mickey. Dumbfounded, Mickey simply nodded. This girl was a genius, and apparently a mind reader. She continued. "It was all luck, really. I was visiting Mum at work – she works down here in the supply room." She pointed over her shoulder toward the direction of wing Rose and Mickey had explored earlier. "Uses a great big megaphone to give commands to the workers to bring supplies. But, it was on the fritz, making a great deal of loud noises – you know, feedback and such. So Mum sent me up to Floor 2 to get it fixed."
Rose stared at the girl sitting in front of the Dalek. The girl didn't seem to be phased by the two strangers who had walked in on her Dalek therapy session, and continued on. "I ran into this little guy," she motioned to the Dalek, "in the stairwell on my way back down to Mum. The repairman wasn't in, so I was going to Mum back her broken megaphone. Anyway, I guess they had kept one of the Daleks behind to experiment on, you know, last time the Daleks came to Earth. Turns out, he killed his keeper and escaped. That's where I found him."
Again reaching out to pat the Dalek, she continued her tale. "It yelled at me – 'EXTERMINATE!" The girl giggled as she mimicked the Dalek's voice. "I froze up, and accidentally turned on the megaphone. For some reason, the sound made him go bonkers! His top half started spinning around, and he seemed to be stuck where he was standing! I took the chance to use these," the girl held up a menacing pair of bolt cutters that Rose hadn't noticed before, "to clip off his shooty arm and his sucky arm. Then, once he was harmless, I took out the part of him that helps him fix himself. He was stupid enough to tell me about it!" She gave the Dalek a condescending tickle. "I told him he could have his arms back when he learned to be a good Dalek."
Rose chuckled. "I'm not sure if that'll ever happen."
Mickey didn't appear amused; rather, he seemed to be lost in thought. "Sound. Sound is all it takes to get rid of these things?"
"Yep!" The girl beamed. "Wanna see?" She held up a megaphone, and Rose could have sworn she heard the Dalek gasps. "I still keep it around, you know, for if he's being bad."
Rose nodded, and the girl pressed a button on the megaphone. The frequency rang out, high pitched and unpleasant. Rose and Mickey covered their ears as the Dalek screamed, then started spinning and making incoherent sounds. The girl smiled again as she turned off the megaphone. The Dalek was sitting motionless in his cell.
"Mickey, you know what this means, right?" Rose turned to her friend. "All we need is that megaphone, and we – we can defeat the Daleks!"
Mickey laughed. "You know what else it means? We were outsmarted by a fifteen year old girl."
"Fourteen!" the girl corrected.
"Sorry, fourteen," Mickey said. "Hey, if you're fourteen, where is your mum, anyway? Isn't she concerned that you're out in the middle of the night?
"Oh, my mum? She's dead," the girl said nonchalantly. "The Dalek had made his way through the basement by the time I got back down here."
Rose, uneasy at the girl's casualness regarding her mother's death, turned to Mickey. "We really ought to go find the others." Mickey nodded in agreement, and they left the strange little girl behind.
Mickey and Rose found Jackie, Pete, and Jake by the air vent they had scrambled in through.
"We've figured it out!" Rose announced, hoisting herself into the vent with Jake's help. "We know how to defeat the Daleks in the void ship!"
"Really?" Jackie sounded skeptical. "How exactly are you going to do that?"
"Sound," Mickey said. "We found a girl. She broke one of the Daleks – a broken megaphone gave off feedback at a frequency that stuns the Daleks. Then she removed its arms. Without those, it's harmless!"
Jackie looked at him, wide-eyed. "You mean to say it's that simple? Just play a sound for them, and they break?" She wasn't sure she believed him.
"Well, it's the best we've got to go on right now," Mickey replied. He had seen it with his own eyes, and if not for that, he wouldn't have believed it either.
"Where is this girl, anyway?" Jackie asked. If she could defeat Daleks, she wanted to meet her. "Why didn't you bring her with you?
"She's in the basement talking to the broken Dalek. She's convinced she can reform him," Mickey explained with a laugh.
Rose changed the subject. "So when should we do it, then? Tomorrow?" Rose had a grin on her face, and was massaging her bulging abdomen.
"Rose…" Mickey said softly. "We've still got planning to do. We've got the Genesis Arc to deal with, you know."
