The Doctor kicked the central console, then winced. "Ouch!" He turned to Buffy. "Elizabeth. Kick that."
"For the last time, I'm not kicking your time machine," said Buffy. "What's wrong?"
"The Daleks have set up a temporal smokescreen," the Doctor told her, slumping with his back against the railing. "Which means I can't trace them. They're about to destroy an entire planet, and I have no idea where or when!"
Buffy frowned. "Well, I don't know about outer space," she said, "but back in Sunnydale, when we're trying to find a vamp, we look at the police reports for — you know. Bite marks."
"Bite marks," the Doctor scoffed. Then he blinked. "Bite marks," he repeated, standing up a little straighter. His eyes lit up. "Bite marks!" he shouted, as he darted back over to the central console, madly adjusting the switches and levers.
He peered back at the monitor. Information zoomed across the screen, too fast for Buffy to read. The Doctor gave a triumphant, "Aha!", tapped a few things on the central console, threw a lever, and the TARDIS shook as the engines wheezed into life.
"What did you find?" Buffy shouted over the roar of the engines.
"Numerous police reports," the Doctor shouted back, "all coming from the 39th century. Planets drained of their life force, no apparent cause."
"Planets? Plural? As in more than one?" Buffy shouted.
The Doctor hesitated. "Possibly." He paused, then admitted, "Yes."
"How many?"
The TARDIS landed with a ping. The Doctor looked over at Buffy, and in an instant, Buffy knew he wouldn't answer. He'd never answer. Because she could tell from the sorrow in his face that the answer wasn't something she'd like.
So they'd been too late. All those planets had already been drained, and if they had just acted faster…
Hang on.
"This is a time machine!" Buffy said. "We could go back to these dates, and stop the Daleks before they start."
"We can't," said the Doctor.
"But we—"
"We're already a part of the series of events," said the Doctor. "We can't go back and change them. Not now. Those planets are gone." He stared at the monitor. "Nothing in the universe could bring them back."
Buffy felt the weight of those words flood over her, like a thousand tons of water crushing every bone in her body. She hugged her arms, and looked away. All those people, all those worlds — each one like Earth. And they'd been destroyed. Drained. A vampire attack on a planetary scale. Buffy shook herself. She couldn't think about this. She had to get herself together, and come up with a plan.
"We've got to figure out what the Daleks are using the energy to do," said Buffy. "Whatever it was, you said it was worse than this. If we want this to stop, we have to figure out where they are, what they're up to, and how to stop them."
The Doctor said nothing.
"Then, we can march right in," said Buffy, "and do something really, really smart that they're not expecting, and…" She realized that the Doctor wasn't paying any attention. He just stood, slouched over the console, his eyes staring, vacantly, ahead.
Buffy strode over to him, and snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. "Hello? Doctor? Wake up! Daleks to get rid of, remember?"
"I can't," the Doctor admitted.
"You… huh?"
He looked up at her. "Elizabeth, I can't stop them. By the time I find them, it's going to be too late. With the amount of life force they've gathered already… with this much energy…" He shook his head.
"But… you said you already found them," said Buffy. "In the 39th century."
"All across the universe in the 39th century!" the Doctor told her. He flipped a red-handled lever on the console, and the monitor flickered with a superimposed alien script. "These planets are spread out across the entire universe, over the entire century. Imagine, having to search the infinity of space that is the universe, and over a period of a hundred years! We would never find them, Elizabeth. We could look for the rest of our lives and never, ever find them."
"So, okay, then we go back to the scene of the crime," said Buffy. "Pick up clues."
"We're at the scene of the crime," said the Doctor.
He pressed a button at the bottom of the monitor, and swiveled it towards Buffy. There, on the screen, Buffy could see the burnt out husk of a dead planet.
"Melcarissa Majoria," said the Doctor. "Once known for having the best crepe suzettes in the cosmos. Now… gone." He glanced back at her. "Scene of the crime. And nothing. Not a clue. Not a trace. Nothing at all."
Buffy urged herself to think positive. She didn't know how to deal with outer-spacey things, but she knew how to deal with Sunnydale. So find the nearest comparable situation. Okay. These Daleks were smart, and they'd disappeared. Who was the smartest person she knew who liked to disappear? That was easy — the Doctor. So, when Buffy was looking for the Doctor around Sunnydale, because he'd run off without a trace, what did she do? She tried to figure out what his plan was, and used that to work out where he'd gone.
"What would the Daleks be using the life force energy to do?" Buffy asked. "If we work that out, maybe we can work out where they are."
The Doctor didn't answer her, just went back to the TARDIS central console, fiddling with some knobs. But Buffy could tell, from the way his shoulders slumped, that he'd already worked it out.
"It's bad, isn't it?" Buffy asked. "You've got your 'something worse' face on again."
"Life force energy can only be used for a limited number of things," the Doctor explained. "It can sustain certain parasitic life forms like vampires, in some cases it can imbue the essence of life into a corpse, and" — looking up at Buffy — "it can alter genetic code on a massive scale."
"Alter genetic code?" Buffy asked. "You don't think…?"
"The Daleks are weak," the Doctor told her. "They're desperate. And, at the moment, their numbers are small. Use the Fountain, and they can turn any species in the universe into Daleks. An instant army of any size." He shook his head. "No! No! No! But that doesn't make sense, either! Daleks are the supreme beings! They'd never sully their own genetic code by transforming one of an inferior species. The last time they did that, they went mad and tried to destroy the…"
The Doctor trailed off, staring at a blinking mauve light on the central console. Buffy noticed it, too.
"What's that mean?" Buffy asked him.
"They're signaling me," the Doctor said.
"Who? The Daleks?"
"Yes."
"That's great!" said Buffy. "Then you know where they are!"
"Because they want me to know where they are," said the Doctor. "They need me for something."
Buffy felt her heart sink. "Don't tell me," she said. "It's something worse."
"With the Daleks, it's always something worse," said the Doctor. He flipped a few switches, and then pulled a lever, and the TARDIS engines ground into life.
"Okay, so what are we going to do?" Buffy asked.
"I'm going to go onto their ship," the Doctor told her, "and let them capture me."
"What?" Buffy cried. "You said they wanted you for something bad! And you're not going to do something bad. Which means that you're going to say no, and then they're going to be all exterminatey and—"
"It's the only chance I have to stop them," said the Doctor. "If I let this go, if I don't respond to their signal, I might never be able to find them again."
"Yeah, but you don't have to turn yourself in!" Buffy said. "You could just land somewhere out of the way and then sneak around and—"
"The moment I set foot on that ship, they'll know," said the Doctor. "The Daleks want me. That means they'll be expecting me. Cameras and monitors and all sorts of sensors. They'll probably have a welcoming party to meet me wherever I land."
"Oh," said Buffy.
He spun around the console, in a sudden burst of energy. "Now, here's how this is going to work. I'm going to go out and face the Daleks, while you stay in the TARDIS and — no arguing! — keep out of trouble."
Buffy gave a small laugh. "Yeah, because that's going to happen," she said.
"The Daleks want me for something," the Doctor told her. "That means they'll keep me alive, at least for a while. But they don't need you. If you're with me when I leave the TARDIS, you're as good as dead."
"I'm not just going to stay in here twiddling my thumbs!" Buffy protested.
The Doctor came up to her, a smile dancing across his lips. "Of course not," he said, taking her hands in his and wrapping them around the sonic, "because I've got a job for you."
