Disclaimer: While the Master clearly owned that Dalek in one sense, I own nothing. In any sense.
Many thanks to the bunch of regular Master-supporters who seem to be building up here - Brownbug, iDestiny, TheMasterOfTime, Ilssii-Koschei and ShirouHokuto - for your total lack of sympathy for that poor Dalek! :D
It was a frustrating situation… Leaning against a desk, Addams restlessly fingered the teleport access tags in her pocket for the umpteenth time and exchanged a glance with Rossiter. Through the glass of the nuclear containment booth, he met her eyes helplessly. In a few hours, they would exchange places – she would enter the other booth, locking herself in, and he would be released to sit at the desk, ready to operate the Gate at the Daleks' command. With the guards and soldiers having made themselves scarce – "securing the grounds" or whatever they had said they were doing – it was now just the three of them in the hall: herself, Rossiter and Abigail. Well, four if she counted the off-gold plated lead Dalek which had remained behind while the two dark green ones went in search of this "Master", Harold Saxon.
At the far end of the hall, the Dalek had extended its plunger and was interfacing with their strange device that they had set up beside the Gate via a control panel welded into the metal framework. Clearly intended for Dalek use, the control panel consisted of little more than several glowing domes that fit snugly into the cup of the Dalek's plunger.
It was nearly midnight, and the two Daleks had been gone for almost an hour by now. Addams had hoped that the search would provide an opportunity for herself and Rossiter to make their escape, but with the soldiers gone and no-one to take Rossiter's place in the glass booth – not to mention the lead Dalek still supervising all activity in the mansion – it looked as though they were still stuck. With a groan of disgust, she viciously kicked a computer chair away and watched it roll smoothly across the buffed floor to bump against a desk on the other side of the hall.
Beside a marble pillar, half hidden in the shade it cast across the floor from the chandeliers that lined the walls, Abigail glanced up and her eyes locked onto the motion of the chair sliding towards her. Addams watched as, gaze fixed on the chair, a strange, indecipherable expression seemed to pass like a shadow across the human girl's face. Almost hopeful for a second, it faded into something more like confusion as the chair came to rest, spinning slowly to face her. There was a tense pause, Abigail tilting her head as though listening to something, and then Addams thought she heard her voice whisper,
"You're not mine." Addams raised her eyebrows and reluctantly pushed herself off the desk to cross the hall and retrieve the chair.
"Sorry – that's mine," she apologized, placing her hands on its back to wheel it back to her desk. As Abigail raised her head, the Vinvocci technician noticed – not for the first time – how red-rimmed and puffy her eyes appeared, how she seemed to start at every slight motion at the corner of her vision, how even when making eye contact with Addams, her attention remained on the computer chair. She tried to force her face into an encouraging smile, but somehow couldn't quite bring herself to it – what could she possibly have to be optimistic about now?
"Why don't you go to bed?" she said eventually. "We're just waiting – I'm sure you don't need to be here." To her disconcertion, Abigail's eyes widened and she looked almost alarmed.
"I can't do that," she replied with a shake of her head. "I have to-" She stopped, jerking her head around to the centre of the hall; Addams followed her gaze and saw with a shudder that a flicker of blue light had pierced the still air and was widening – the two Daleks were returning. The glow of the teleport expanded steadily, and biting her lip, Addams became aware of a sound that seemed to be ringing through it – almost like a whistle at first, so faintly it reached them; and then it grew rapidly to what she could almost imagine was a distant shriek that was rushing closer and closer, escalating in pitch and volume. Moments before it reached an unbearable intensity, Addams found herself acting purely on instinct, grabbing Abigail's arm and throwing herself to the ground, dragging both herself and the human behind the desk.
Not a fraction of a second too late, either. The teleport beam solidified in the centre of the hall into the forms of the two navy-green Daleks. Around one, the light died away and it moved quickly back; the other seemed, for a split second, to be encased in a blue-white aura that flared into a blinding flash, before there was a deafening explosion. Shielding themselves behind the desk, Addams and Abigail covered their heads with their arms. A wave of heat pulsed out along the floor; the crystal chandeliers shattered, plunging the hall into near-darkness; several panes of glass in the domed ceiling were blown out, splinters of glass raining down onto the tile mosaic; and in the nuclear containment booth, Rossiter fell back against the control panel in fright as splinters of shrapnel struck the unbreakable Vinvocci glass and fell harmlessly to the floor.
Silence filled the hall. Something fizzed, popped, clinked to the ground. A Dalek's voice was the first to be heard.
"Ensure the Progenitor is undamaged." Addams cautiously uncurled herself, ears ringing and heart racing. She drew a shaky breath and raised herself on her knees to peer over the top of the desk. In the centre of the hall, a faint wisp of smoke still trickling from it, was all that remained of one of the green Daleks. Its top had been blown wide open with such force that some of the razor blade-like shards of its casing had embedded themselves in the desks and wooden panelling of the walls. The inside, as far as she could tell, was a tangle of melted diodes and circuitry with scorched stumps of drip lines of a life support system – of the creature itself, there was little trace except what might have been a few charred scraps of flesh hanging limply over the side. She almost gagged, bile rising in her throat as a rancid smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils. Trying to take in as little air as possible, she climbed to her feet, hearing Abigail do the same behind her. The other two Daleks appeared to be occupied with examining their own technology, the "Progenitor", and were paying no heed to their violently disembowelled comrade.
"Sentimental bunch," she muttered sarcastically. A repetitive tapping broke through the numbness that the blast had left in her hearing – Rossiter in the glass booth, knocking on the door and gesticulating wildly. He had probably practically shed his spines, she thought. Eyes averted from the burned-out shell of the Dalek, she hurried over.
Abigail's eyes were wide, round as saucers, locked unflinchingly onto the mangled Dalek's remains. She felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, a prickle that became a shiver and ran the length of her spine, setting her whole body shivering.
He destroyed a Dalek…
Not only that, but they had returned without him again. Harold Saxon, the man who had mesmerized the entire planet, had evaded the Daleks twice…and now he had destroyed one of them.
Such power… The very thought of it sent a chill through her. It tugged at her, drawing her mind away from the stark void that her father's death had left inside her, nagging at her consciousness until it filled her with a resolute focus, replaying itself in her mind as her eyes lingered on the Dalek casing.
…such power…
They had to find him…
...
The faint blue glow given off by the sonic screwdriver reflected in the Doctor's dark eyes as he frowned in concentration, flicking through settings in rapid succession. Kneeling in the dust, he held the device out at arm's length in front of him, waving it through the air in figure-eights before bringing it close to his face and squinting in the darkness. His black spectacles were perched on top of his head, one lens cracked and the other completely shattered from his earlier fall. Over the high-pitched buzz, he failed to hear footsteps approaching behind him until the Master's voice at his back startled him into fumbling and dropping the screwdriver.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to track those Daleks," the Doctor replied without turning, picking up the screwdriver and brushing the soot off against the arm of his coat. "This is the spot they teleported from, so there should still be some residual spatial energy, which I should," he gritted his teeth intently, raising the screwdriver again, "be able to use to extrapolate coordinates. But it's too distorted by your-" In an instant, the Master was in front of him and had struck the sonic screwdriver from his hand, sending it spinning across the ground into the shadows.
"I can't let you do that, Doctor," he growled.
"But we've got to find-"
"I've escaped from them twice already, and now you want to give them a chance to make it third time lucky?" the Master interrupted. "Because I've no doubt you'll drag me along when you go running after them, or lead them straight back to me."
"You do realize, don't you, that they could have exterminated you on the spot?" The Doctor climbed to his feet, brushing the dust from his suit. "They were trying to get close enough to trap you in a chronon-loop – they want you alive. But why?" He sucked in air through his teeth with a hiss, and then shook his head in confusion and took a step towards where the sonic screwdriver had rolled. The Master beat him to it, pouncing on it and snatching it up before the Doctor had even spotted it. Their eyes met, and there was an interminable pause before the Doctor slowly and cautiously extended his hand as if facing an armed gunman.
"Give it back. I'm asking you for help."
"I'm not one of your gullible human pets," the Master snarled, lip curled in contempt. "You're not throwing me to the Daleks."
"You were threatening to hand me over to them a few hours ago," the Doctor reminded him. "Which I assume was a bluff, by the way." He regretted the last words as soon as they had left his mouth – he had hit a nerve, and the Master's expression hardened.
"Call this a bluff, then," he hissed. Tendrils of energy crackled to life around his hand, snaking between his fingers, and then with an extra push that sent his life force flashing through his skin, he clenched his fist around the sonic screwdriver, which exploded in a fizz of orange sparks. He threw it to the ground at the Doctor's feet and a satisfied smirk began to creep onto his face before the energy surged through him again and he winced. The Doctor let out a groan of frustration and viciously kicked the useless remains of the screwdriver across the ground.
"Don't you ever think?" he exclaimed.
"Oh, so says the one who was about to follow a Dalek home," the Master snorted. His life force was still glowing to the surface repeatedly; he shook his head as if to clear it and sat down against a concrete pipe.
"They won't give up, you know. That was…that was all we had left." The Doctor's voice faltered as he realized the extent of the words. He drew a deep breath, ran his hands through his hair and sat down opposite the Master on a stack of crumbling bricks. For some time, the two sat in silence, the Doctor straining his ears for any slight noise outside that might have indicated a returning Dalek. Then, the Master spoke, and his voice was soft, hesitant.
"Did you ever see the Cruciform?"
"No," the Doctor admitted. He had heard of it, though; the memories made him shiver. Technology that simulated the Time Lords' own empathic nature, the Cruciform had been an advanced weapon deployed when the Time War had first begun to accelerate in its escalation towards the unimaginable nightmare it would eventually become. Forcing the Daleks to feel true emotion for the first time, it was reasoned, would destroy them; it was a brutal resort that the Doctor had opposed from the start. The suffering it would have inflicted would be worse than anything they could physically subject the soulless creatures to.
"They knew I wouldn't hesitate to use it." The Master's voice lowered almost to a whisper. "But we were too late. It was taken, and the Daleks…" He had to swallow hard before continuing. "They…they turned it on me." The Doctor's breath caught in his throat and he shuddered. Every Time Lord had memories swept under the rug, moments of their lives when they had justified wrongs to themselves – and by that stage of the War, most of them had several lifetimes' worth. But for the Master…the Doctor was surprised it hadn't torn him apart.
"They were inside my head, Doctor," the Master continued, avoiding his gaze. "The Daleks…there were so many of them…and the Emperor… In my head…they…it hurt. It hurt, worse than the drums…"
"So you ran." The Doctor's voice was expressionless – a statement, a fact, without judgement or justification – and the Master nodded. His eyes were distant, pupils constricted with remembered terror; and then he seemed to mentally shake himself and focus once again on the Doctor.
"But not any more." He clenched his fists and a grin spread across his pale features.
"Don't be stupid. You won't survive doing that again, and you know it." The Master's smile faded and he bit his lip, averting his eyes.
"I have to eat…"
"I know." The Doctor nodded sympathetically. "Tomorrow. We'll figure something out tomorrow. Christmas Day, you know," he added as an afterthought. He tried to send the Master an encouraging smile, but the Master merely scowled, drawing his knees up to his chest, leaning his head back against the pipe and closing his eyes.
"Yes – good idea, get some sleep," said the Doctor. The Master opened his eyes to slits and glared at the Doctor.
"I'm conserving my energy," he snapped. The Doctor shrugged noncommittally.