Twelve
'2012'
aka - Dalek (Part One)
When the Doctor had explained a mere minute ago that something was messing with the Tardis as he flew it, Ella had expected to step out into a warfield or into danger. Instead they landed in an underground museum in North America in 2012. The place was dark and kind of creepy and Ella was just about to suggest going somewhere else when the Doctor flicked a switch and a dull light spread through the area. The museum before them was massive...and very eerily quiet. It was like they were the only ones down here. Ella felt a little queasy.
"Blimey," Rose exclaimed, looking around. "It's a great big museum."
"An alien museum. Someone's got a hobby," The Doctor remarked, leading the way forward in the seemingly endless museum that stretched out around them. "They must've spent a fortune on this...chunks of meteorite, moon dust," The Doctor pointed out at a wheel shaped object concealed by the glass. "That's the milometer from the Roswell Spaceship."
Rose pointed out at part of the display to their left. Inside the display box a big green familiar clawed arm was strung up, seemingly waving at them. "That's a bit of Slitheen. That's a Slitheen arm, it's been stuffed."
"Ohh look at you!" Crowed the Doctor, making his way towards a metal head with bars stretching out the side of its face and four gun barrels protruding out from its forehead.
Ella followed after him, watching as the almost fond look passed over his face. "What is it?" She asked as Rose continued to look at the Slitheen arm in wonder.
"An old friend of mine...well, enemy," The Doctor said. "The stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit. I'm getting old."
"Is that where the signal's coming from?" Rose asked, catching up to the two.
"No. It's stone dead. The signal's alive. Something's reaching out, calling for help."
"But there's no one here," Ella said, pointing out the obvious and then peering down the corridor just to make sure that they were very much alone.
The Doctor was silent as he reached out a hand and tapped on the glass in front of him. A siren sprung to life, echoing off the glass panes that covered every exhibit in this very large room. Ella jumped at the noise, the queasy feeling in her stomach only intensifying when soldiers began to spring out from every direction dressed from head to toe in riot gear and wielding massive guns. She doesn't think that she will ever get used to being greeted like that even though the Doctor looked less than surprised as though he was expecting it.
"Well," Ella said as the soldiers circled them, some dropping to their knees to get a better angle up at them. "Guess I was wrong," That comment earned a chagrined smile from the Doctor while he straightened up the collar of his leather jacket.
Rose turned to them. "If someone's collecting aliens, that makes you Exhibit A," She said in a whisper.
It was then when Ella had expected to be shoved into some type of holding cell and guarded like a prisoner for hours on end until the Doctor managed to sort everything out and they could leave. Instead, one of the soldiers reached down to his radio and said that there were visitors - something the Doctor managed a grin at - and they were whisked away down some bland brick corridor, guns poised at their backs like they were some deadly criminals.
They were met in this dark, drab hallway by a tall suited woman. She didn't say a word to them, but her eyes were calculating and observing as she led them into the room to their left.
The room they walked into was anything but drab. Furnished to the nines with cowhide carpeting, large desktop computers balanced on a rounded crystal table and some questionable art, it was clear that the man sitting behind the desk had more than enough money. He barely spared them a glance as they walked in, instead inspecting a shell shaped device that one of his workers had brought into him.
"This is the last," The young British man said, delicately lifting it from it's holding box and handing it over to the balding man. "Paid $800,000 for it."
"What does it do?" The man behind the desk asked, sounding almost bored and careless when examining it. For something that cost that much money you'd think they'd be handling it with such delicacy.
The other man cleared his throat, pointing down to the device shakily. "W-well you see the tubes on the side...must be to channel something. I think maybe fuel -"
"I really wouldn't hold it like that," The Doctor instructed next and the concentration the man had broken as he finally looked over to examine them.
The business woman next to them narrowed her eyes at the Doctor, her voice stern and full of malice when she spoke to them for the very first time. "Shut it."
"Really though, it's wrong," He insisted despite the womans' biting words.
"Is it dangerous?" The British man inquired, also looking over at the three.
"No," The Doctor said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Looks silly," He took a half step forward then, arm stretched out to take the thing from the man, only to have the soldiers behind them raise their guns and point them directly at his back. He froze and Ella's heart squeezed, a shiver of fear running through her body as a tense moment passed.
Finally, the man in the chair waved a finger at the guards and they stepped down, guns lowered by their side once again. The man leant forward, eyes pinned to the Doctor as though challenging him to try and do something stupid and stood from his chair to hand over the artefact.
The Doctor grabbed it and only had to look at it for a split second before hovering his fingers over the metal. "You just need to be," He started, running his fingers along the artefact until it let out a high pitched vibrant noise. "Delicate."
Another music note rang through the air when he shifted his grasp. It was an instrument, not some fuel channel. Ella wondered how long it would've taken them to figure it out, if ever.
"It's a musical instrument," The American man breathed out in wonder.
The Doctor nodded with a smile. "And it's a long way from home," He announced only to have the instrument snatched from his hands.
"Here, let me."
The sound that filled the air next was far from the melodic tune the Doctor played just seconds before. It pierced her ears and made her cringe. The man looked impatient and slightly irritated that he couldn't get the thing to work but the Doctor's calm voice schooled him through it.
"I did say delicately. It reacts to the smallest fingerprint. Needs precision," It took the man a few goes, but the rippling, uneven tune he was playing evened out into a soft melody. "Very good," Complimented the Doctor. "Quite the expert."
"As are you," The man drolled in his deep American timbre. His grin was slightly menacing as his grip loosened on the instrument and he barely waited for the tune to fizzle out before he had tossed the object across the room as though it meant nothing to him at all. "Who exactly are you?" He asked, tucking his hands into his pocket and puffing up his chest, seemingly not at all deterred by the way the soft smile slipped from the Doctor's face.
Ella could see the hardened gaze the Doctor had on this man from the corner of her eyes. It was clear that he didn't appreciate the way the man threw the ancient alien artefact across the room with no regard for it at all. Any building respect that the Doctor had for the man had vanished into thin air.
"I'm the Doctor, and who are you?"
"Like you don't know," The man shot back, expression slightly incredulous at the question.
God he really did think he was something special, Ella thought and she had to squash the urge to roll her eyes at him. Not that she should be surprised, he did have one ugly portrait of himself framed and hanging behind him.
"We're hidden away with the most valuable collection of extra terrestrial artefacts in the world and you just stumbled in by mistake," He continued, his voice taking on a sing song lull to it, clearly mocking them.
"Pretty much sums me up, yeah," The Doctor answered with a grin.
The man walked around the side of his desk to get a closer look at them, shouldering past his employee roughly. "Question is, how did you get in? Fifty three floors down with your little cat burglar accomplices," His eyes raked over both Ella and Rose so obviously checking them out. "Quite a collector yourself...they're rather pretty."
Ella fixed him with a glare, ready to open her mouth and blurt out something offensive about his appearance before Rose cut in. "I'm gonna smack you in a minute if you keep going."
The man didn't seem at all fazed, looking over at the Doctor like he was talking about a pet and not a person. "She's English too!" He turned to Ella, eyes lingering on the v-shaped shirt she had picked out from the Tardis wardrobe. "What about you sweetheart? You following the theme?"
The glare that Ella had for him only intensified by that awful pet name and she resisted the urge to slap him. "I'm not a sweetheart," She said coldly, her voice holding no room for arguments.
That led to the man letting out a whooping laugh, clapping his hands together. "Hey Little Lord Fauntleroy, got you a couple girlfriends to choose from."
The man in question shuffled awkwardly, deliberately not making any eye contact with either of them as a blush of embarrassment rose in his cheeks, instead looking at the Doctor. "This is Mr Henry van Statten."
"And who's he when he's at home?" Rose asked.
"Mr van Statten owns the internet."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid," She said with a hint of impatience. "No one owns the internet."
Van Statten just smiled over at them with his impossibly white teeth, his cheeks curling and flattening in perfect symmetry that there's literally no way that he could look the way that he does without some type of cosmetic surgery. "And let's just keep the whole world thinking that way, right, kids?" He said in a condescending manner.
The Doctor had no time for it. "So you're an expert in everything, except the things in your museum. Anything you don't understand you lock up."
"And you claim greater knowledge," He shot back cockily, chest puffed out with arrogance.
"I don't need to make claims. I know how good I am," Said the Doctor with pure confidence.
"And yet I captured you," Van Statten said with a slight roll of his eyes. "Right next to the Cage. What were you doing down there?"
"You tell me."
"The Cage contains my one living specimen."
"And what's that?"
"Like you don't know," Van Statten shot back.
"Show me," The Doctor ordered coolly.
"You wanna see it?"
There was a slight pause between the two's bickering where they continued to observe one another, sizing each other up quite obviously.
"Blimey," Rose said. "You can smell the testosterone."
Van Statten didn't pay her any mind, which seemed to be a running theme between him and women as he looked directly over the Doctor's shoulder to the stern woman that had led them in earlier. "Goddard," He called. "Inform the Cage we're heading down," Goddard nodded and moved out of the room as the boss turned to his other employee. "You, English, look after the girls. Go and canoodle or spoon or whatever it is you British do. And you, Doctor with no name, come and see my pet."
It was the Doctor's sheer curiosity of what could possibly be alive in the museum that led him to following after Van Statten, listening with no interest as he bragged and bragged and bragged about all of his famous and expensive museum pieces.
Soldiers and scientists littered the rooms they walked through, whatever this man was guarding was important enough to hire extra staff to stand around looking important, though as much as Van Statten clearly wanted, it didn't intimidate the Doctor. 'The one living specimen' Van Statten had proclaimed with that smug little smirk of his, the same one he had harboured when talking down to Rose and Ella. Something about this man just didn't sit right with the Doctor, and if he came to find out that the alien he had shoved fifty three floors underground in a cage was completely and utterly innocent there would be hell to pay. He didn't care who was watching.
He hung back a bit as Van Statten talked away, ducking between guards with guns and staying in line with the serious woman the Doctor could only expect was Van Statten's personal assistant of some description. But he listened, there was nothing in the entire walk from Van Stattens' office to wherever he was being led to that the Doctor hadn't heard and stored away in his memory.
"We've tried everything," Van Statten stopped in front of a vaulted door, and a simple security pin was all that was needed to gain access to the room beyond. Primitive technology for a man who had spent billions on collecting some of the finest alien technology if you asked him. "The creature has shielded itself, but there's definite signs of life inside."
"Inside? Inside what?" The Doctor asked, confusion swimming in his eyes and hitching the crinkles in his brow high.
Van Statten didn't answer, instead watching as one of his workers dressed in a bright orange hazmat suit approached. "Welcome back Sir. I've had to take the power down, the Metaltron is resting."
The Doctor cocked his head. "Metaltron?"
A smile rested on Van Statten's lips. "Thought of it myself. Good, isn't it? Although I'd much prefer to find out its real name."
What, so you can make a name tag for it and pawn it off to millions for a hefty profit? The Doctor thought, trying his hardest to figure out what type of alien could justify the stupid name 'Metaltron' but none sprung to mind.
"Here," The man in the hazmat suit called, stepping forward and holding out a pair of gloves towards the Doctor. "You better put these on. The last guy that touched it...burst into flames," There was an itch of a smile inching onto his face. He found the situation funny. The Doctor forced an uncomfortable smile onto his face.
"I won't touch it then," He shrugged.
"Go on, Doctor," Van Statten said after a moment's silence. "Impress me."
He levelled the man with a look and then brushed past the small group that had congregated at the door of the Cage. He could feel their eyes on him as he went but wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of looking back for a reaction. The distress call that had pulled the Tardis off course was strong enough and skilled enough to get his attention and the Doctor wanted to help.
The door closed shut and locked behind him like he had expected, shrouding the room in darkness. It took him a second to blink and adjust to the change and for a bit he wondered what he should be looking for.
A table of torture equipment sat off to his right, and the mere sight of it had twisted his stomach into knots. He would have to be pretty ignorant to not expect that treatment from those people, but the confirmation of it didn't sit well with him. The fact that he had willingly brought Ella and Rose here and left them with that dorky pretty boy like it was no big deal. He was getting too comfortable.
"Look," The Doctor called out into the silence, turning on his heel to peer into the darkness. A piercing blue light emanated from the area that he didn't pay too much mind to. "I'm sorry about this. Mr. Van Statten might think he's clever, but never mind him. I've come to help. I'm the Doctor."
It took a second but from the distance a metallic voice replied, setting a chill right to the Doctor's bones.
"Doc...tor."
His hearts pounded dangerously in his chest, eyes wide like dinner plates. He must've heard wrong, surely he was wrong because there's no way this is right. It's just…"Impossible," He breathed.
On either side of the blue light of its eye, two luminescent cones lit up when it spoke again, robotic voice gaining confidence. "The Doctor?" It questioned.
And then, as if to make the moment any worse, the lights turned on. A Dalek. He was in a room with a Dalek and he was powerless. The Dalek tried to move forward but the chains strapped around its middle prevented it from doing so, but that wouldn't be able to stop it from killing him dead on the spot.
"Exterminate! Exterminate!" It cried.
The Doctor lunged at the door even though he knew deep down that he could still be killed at any moment, the door opening might not be able to save him. "Let me out!" He tried, voice so desperate that it cracked in his throat. His fists whacked at the solid steel door to no avail, Van Statten had sealed him in there for good.
"Exterminate!" The Doctor writhed against the door, trying with all his power to open it, the longer he stayed in that position the bigger target he was. The Dalek continued to talk, prompting the Doctor to turn around and face it. The Daleks were never ones for dragging out murdering people "You are an enemy of the Daleks. You must be destroyed."
The weapon that extended out from its body like an arm flicked in its spot but it was futile in attempts to injure. No blue light sprung from it, and no pain flooded through the Doctor's body. His hearts were pounding mercilessly but apart from that he was unharmed. The Daleks' weapon was shot. It was just a useless lump of metal now.
A grin flooded the Doctor's face, wide and stretching, relieved that he finally had the upper hand in the situation. "It's not working," He watched as the Dalek's eye stalk fell to look at its gun, and the blue in its eye shrunk as though pained and defeated. The Doctor laughed, the sound rumbling from deep within his chest as he began to roam the room.
"Fantastic! Oh fantastic," And then the facade broke, and stood before the Dalek, the Doctor was just an angry, powerful old soldier with a menacing glint in his eyes. "Powerless. Look at you. The great space dustbin. How does it feel?"
"Keep back!" The Dalek threatened, straining against its chains as it tried to retreat to no avail.
The Doctor took the opportunity to advance, and he ran until he was poised directly in front of its eye stalk, bending slightly so he could look it right in the eye. "What for? What are you gonna do to me," The scowl on the Doctor's face was deadly, a promise of what he was going to do to it.
They had destroyed his life, forced his hand to obliterate his entire planet and anyone he held dear within it and they had to pay. No Dalek was going to roam the universe if he could help it.
"If you can't kill then what are you good for, Dalek?" He spat the last word out, baring his teeth dangerously in the face of the monster. It's eye moved and followed him around the room as he paced in his fury. "What's the point of you? You're nothing. What the hell are you here for?"
"I am waiting for orders," It said almost reluctantly.
He came to a stop in front of the thing once more. "What does that mean?"
"I am a soldier, I was bred to receive orders."
"Well you're never gonna get any. Not ever," He said, not having a problem with breaking the news to it.
"I demand orders!"
"They're never gonna come. Your race is dead. You all burnt. All of you. Ten million ships on fire. The entire Dalek race wiped out in one second."
"You lie!" The Dalek cried.
"I watched it happen," He said with a shake of his head. "I made it happen," He declared after that.
"You destroyed us?"
The Doctor wavered, his entire body shaking as the anger coursed hotly through his veins. He wanted to kill it right then and there, wanted to drag it out and make it suffer for everything its species made him do, for all of the pain and the nightmares and the never ending loneliness he was now subjected to as a result.
And then he turned around. There was a tinge of regret, guilt now powering through his body. Is that who he wanted to be? Hadn't he left that behind with his past regeneration?
"I had no choice," He said slowly, voice low and defensive and haunted, so desperately trying to keep his cool.
"And what of the Time Lords?" It goaded and it felt like he was being stabbed all over again at the reminder of his lost race...spoken by his enemy no less.
"Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the last great Time War...everyone lost."
"And the coward survived."
The Doctor's lips twisted bitterly as he began to mock. "Oh...and I caught your little signal. 'Help me'. Poor little thing," And then the frown fell back into place. "But there's nobody coming because there's nobody left."
"I am alone in the universe."
"Yep," He answered with a tiny little smile, one that was quickly wiped off at the Daleks' next biting words.
"So are you. We are the same."
The Doctor spun around. The anger was back, the mere suggestion of being similar to a Dalek burnt him up inside and that was evident in the way he yelled his dismissal. "We're not the same! I'm not…" He stopped himself and then used his words to try and lure the thing into a trap. "No wait, maybe we are. You're right. Yeah, okay. You've got a point. 'Cause I know what to do. I know what should happen. I know what you deserve...Exterminate."
With a grin, the Doctor reached for the powerboard and pulled a lever. Electricity shot around the room, torturing the Dalek. The Doctor just watched it, wondering if he should accept how happy the sound of its pitiless screams were and if they should bring such comfort to him.
"Have...p-pity!" It pleaded.
Electricity danced around the room, illuminating the powerful look on his face. "Why should I? You never did," He leant over the board again, ready to adjust the power, raise the voltage and watch the Dalek burn like it deserved.
He was grabbed before he could do so, two soldiers trying to lift him away from the controls. He struggled against them, not giving up without a fight, not when he was so close to getting his justice…
The intercom crackled through the speakers overhead and Van Stattens' whiny American lilt flooded the room, pleading to be recognised by the burning beast of a Dalek.
"I saved your life. Now talk to me. God dammit, talk to me!"
"You've got to destroy it," The Doctor cried against his captors.
If he wasn't going to get to see it die he had to at least know that it was going to get killed. A monster like that can't be riled up the way it just was and not want to murder everything in its path with a vengence. That's not how they worked.
But he was pulled from the room before he could see what would happen to it.
Adam, the man that was tasked with babysitting them, was very pretty but so, so dull, Rose decided. He'd led them to his office, an odd little cupboard space filled to the brim with alien junk, and had proceeded to rattle around like an old man. The Doctor made learning fun, and pulled out every stop to make sure that both herself and Ella understood everything that came out of his mouth. He was charismatic and charming and Adam was just bland and boring.
He didn't even have the confidence to hold a proper conversation without trailing off after about a minute of pointless chattering, Rose wondered if he even had the capacity to flirt with a girl at all. She'd been waiting, batting her eyes and smiling to no avail.
Adam would rather talk about some piece of a spaceship, though Rose would bet that the Doctor would be able to tell her what it really was with just a glance at the lump of metal. And she'd also bet that it isn't a piece of a spaceship but she wasn't going to tell Adam that.
"The thing is," Adam began again, launching into another one of his alien speeches with excitement, Rose had to stop herself from rolling her eyes, just wishing that he would stop with all that and pull the moves. "It's all true. Everything the United Nations tries to keep quiet. Spacecraft, aliens, visitors to Earth. They really exist."
Rose shared a look with Ella who had hung back by the door of the cramped office, looking more uninterested than Rose was. "That's amazing," She said, trying to force some interest into her voice for his sake.
"I know it sounds incredible but I honestly believe the whole universe is just teeming with life," He said, attaching onto her fake enthusiasm and using it as energy to source his rant. He adopted this puppy dog expression when talking about something he enjoyed and that was a little endearing to her.
"I'm gobsmacked, yeah," Rose said, fiddling with her earring to distract herself.
"What do you do again?" Ella called from her position by the door. She didn't look over at the man, instead scanning some of the posters that littered the walls. "Sit here...and guess what it is you bought and then stuff it away down here for what...cataloguing?"
Adam floundered a bit, the excitable smile had slipped from his lips. "It's the best job in the world," He defended weakly.
"Imagine if you could get out there," Rose said with a little glint in her eyes while thinking about all the possible places they could go to. "Travel amongst the stars and see it for real."
"Yeah," Adam agreed softly. The glint of wonderment was visible in his eyes too and for the first time in the half hour they'd been stuck with him it felt like she was getting somewhere. "I'd give anything. I don't think it's ever gonna happen. Not in our lifetimes."
"Oh you never know," Rose said looking back over at Ella, the two sharing a knowing glance. "What about all those people that talk about seeing inside of spaceships and things, talked to aliens?"
"I think they're nutters," He spoke freely for the first time since they'd met.
Alright, Rose thought, I can work with that.
"Yeah me too," Rose proclaimed with a laugh, tugging at her earring again and raising her eyebrows over at Ella in defiance at the incredulous look that painted her face at Rose's obvious flirting.
The ice was broken then as Adam and Rose shared a laugh. Maybe this guy was actually capable of holding a slightly flirty conversation after all.
"So how'd you end up here?"
"Van Statten has agents all over the world looking for geniuses to recruit."
"Oh right," Rose teased. "You're a genius."
Adam cracked a smile, playing the game with her, just as obvious with his flirting. "Sorry but yeah. I can't help it, I was born clever. When I was eight, I logged onto the US defence system. Nearly caused World War Three."
"What, and that's funny is it?" Ella butted in and it was clear to Rose that she was not happy in being the third wheel. If her mate Shireen was here Rose could just imagine her proclaiming to get a room in a shitty high pitched American accent. Instead, Ella looked a little like a petulant child, just short of stomping her feet and throwing a tantrum.
Adam, understanding that Ella would be a tough egg to crack, turned all his attention to Rose and raised his eyebrows like her friend had just asked the easiest question ever. "You should've been there. Just to see them running about. Fantastic!"
She couldn't help but smile at the geeky grin adorning his face. "You sound like the Doctor," albeit a younger, less smart but much more attractive version of the Doctor.
The man paused. "Are you and him…?" He questioned, flinging his hands about to indicate a relationship without even having to utter the word, as though the thought pained him.
"No we're just friends," She answered honestly. There'd never been a single moment since meeting the Doctor where she'd thought that something could happen between them, she didn't even think the man was capable of having relationships in a romantic sense.
Adam hesitated and then, as though he felt the need to say something to Ella, went ahead and stuck his foot in his mouth. "What about you?"
It was then that Ella almost dropped one of the artefacts that she was weighing in her hands and levelled Adam with a look that was so annoyed and incredulous that for a second Rose thought she was going to reach across the cramped space and punch him in the face...or lob the alien metal at him. Then she raised a single eyebrow as though to say 'are you actually kidding me?' and turned from him, trading the artefact for another on the table closest to her.
Adam swallowed and sent Rose a slightly embarrassed smile which Rose returned. "Uh, but that's good that you're not…" He trailed off, clearly testing the waters between them.
Rose leaned forward to regard Adam closely. She grinned up at him under her eyelashes. "Why's that good?" She asked coyly, leaning into the flirting.
"Just is," He answered simply.
Rose sucked in a breath, feeling just slightly flustered and hoping to God that Adam couldn't see the pink flush that was creeping up her chest to her face. "So...wouldn't you rather be downstairs? I mean you've got these bits of metal and stuff, but Mr. Van Statten's got a living creature down there."
"Yeah. Well I did ask, but he keeps it to himself," At Roses' nod of acceptance, Adam did relent and keep on with his flirting. "Although...if you're a genius it doesn't take long to patch through on the comms system."
Something heavy and large clanged against the metal table in the corner of the room making Rose and Ella jump and look away from each other and over to the sound. Ella had dropped a big rock of an artefact that she was studying and was dusting her hands off on the pair of bootlegged denim washed jeans that she'd donned from the Tardis' wardrobe as she made her way over to them. Her eyes were lit up with interest for the first time since they were led into the office. Rose grinned.
"Well that sounds like fun...finally," Ella declared with a clap of her hands, and then raised both her eyebrows at the hesitation that spread over Adam's face. "What're you waiting for?"
He spared an almost desperate glance at Rose and then scuttled off to the computer. While Rose was slightly annoyed that their flirting was cut short it was quite amusing to see Ella act in that way, finding it funny that she was so quick to dismiss the very attractive man for the opportunity to see some alien. Forget about Adam reminding her of the Doctor, sometimes Ella was like a female version of the Doctor.
While Adam was concentrating on typing a whole bunch of codes into the computer system, Ella leant over close to Rose and began to whisper.
"Rose Tyler, we're in a museum in the year 2012 waiting for the Doctor to come back from seeing an alien display...and you're over here flirting?" Rose couldn't help but grin at her friends incredulous words and her shoulders shook with silent laughter when Ella's eyes managed to light up even more once Adam spun the screen to show some CCTV footage. "You have amazing timing," She complimented, patting her on the shoulder as she slipped past to get a better look.
Adam cleared his throat as they crowded around the computer screen. "It doesn't do much, the alien. It's weird, it's kind of useless," He scrunched his face up. "It's just like this great big pepperpot."
On the screen, a man dressed in a bright orange hazmat suit had his back to the camera, holding something seemingly heavy in his arms and advancing towards the 'pepperpot' that was chained in its spot. Rose narrowed her eyes, watching intently as the man began to drill at the alien, a metallic high-pitched wail screaming from the thing.
"It's being tortured!" Rose exclaimed in horror, looking away from the screen and over at Ella. The brunette looked like she saw a ghost, her face so ashen and pale that she was beginning to look like one too. Rose looked over at Adam instead. "Where's the Doctor?" He was supposed to be down there!
"I don't know," He said smally, seemingly shrinking in on himself.
"Take us down there," Rose told him.
The man began to flounder under the pressure, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water and Rose had to take some pity on him. It seemed that Ella didn't.
"Now!" She snapped, already making her way to the door and not leaving Adam much room to disagree. Rose followed after her.
Pain shot through the Doctor, a rippling electrical current that soaked into his bones. He gritted and grinded his teeth together to try his hardest not to scream, an almost impossible task given how much pain he's in. It took him everything not to curse every single human in this museum out...Mr. Henry Van Statten on the top of his list.
He told them of the threat of the Dalek once he had cooled down a little. A mutated race with the only emotion being hatred, one of the most dangerous creatures in the universe and the man had seen right through that. Once he caught the words that the Dalek wasn't the only live alien in the museum the Doctor could practically see the dollar signs grow in his eyes.
Shirtless and strapped up to a gene-reading machine, the Doctor turned into the next test subject for Van Statten. He should've seen it coming. The stupid ape wanted nothing but money, and cared for nothing else either.
"Two hearts. A binary vascular system," Van Statten crowed as he looked at the test results on the screen in front of him. He rubbed his hands together happily. "Oh I am so gonna patent this."
"So that's your secret," Said the Doctor through gritted teeth, glaring hotly at the man in front of him. "You don't just collect this stuff, you scavenge it."
"This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries. All it took was the right mind to use it properly. Oh the advances I've made from alien junk. You have no idea, Doctor. Broadband? Roswell," Van Statten moved closer towards him. "Just last year my scientists cultivated bacteria from the Russian Crater, and do you know what we found? The cure for the common cold. Kept it strictly within the laboratory, of course. No need to get people excited. Why sell one cure when I can sell a thousand palliatives?"
"Do you know what a Dalek is, Van Statten?" The Doctor cut in, eager to change the subject back to the important things and away from the ego fix the man was eagerly looking for. The smug little smile that had wormed its way onto his face fell as he looked at the Doctor. "A Dalek is honest. It does what it was born to do, for the survival of its species. That creature in your dungeon is better than you."
Van Statten looked over at him with a truly cold gaze. "In that case I will be true to myself and continue," He began to walk back over to the machine.
The Doctor shot forward, straining against the shackles he found himself in and tried to reason with the greedy man before him, hoping that it would work.
"Listen to me. That thing downstairs is going to kill every last one of us."
"Nothing can escape the Cage," He flicked the switch and another beam of electricity shot through the Doctor, but it didn't stop him from continuing to plead.
"But it's woken up! It knows I'm here. It's gonna get out! Van Statten, I swear, no one on this base is safe. No one on this planet."
Van Statten rolled his eyes and pulled the switch again.
It seemed Adam had more authority than Ella had first assumed as he had managed to get them down to the Cage to see the tortured alien with a simple pass and led them into the room.
Ella froze in front of the alien, fear scratching at every part of her body in a way that she hadn't experienced before. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, she was paralysed. Did Rose feel the same way too, or was it just her?
"Don't get too close," Adam warned from behind them, but that didn't stop Rose from continuing to edge forward.
Maybe Ella would've joined her if she had function of her legs...or maybe she would bolt from the room. The air felt wrong, tightening her chest with every shallow breath she sucked in. She shouldn't be this scared of a restrained metal alien. She'd faced off with zombies and killer mannequins and a bitchy flap of skin...there shouldn't be any different now. And this alien was tortured right before her very eyes...but yet she couldn't bring herself to feel pity.
Rose had brought herself up by this massive blue stalk that stuck out of the middle top part of the metal alien, she presumed it was its eye, and looked straight into it. "Hello? Are you in pain? My name's Rose Tyler. My friend can help. He's called the Doctor. What's your name?"
"Yes," It spoke metallically.
"What?"
It's eye stalk lifted to view Rose, and Ella's heart pounded loudly against her chest at the action. "I am in pain. They torture me," Its voice almost sounded sad. "But still they fear me. Do you fear me?"
"No," Rose answered after a small moment of hesitation.
Ella still wanted to run far, far away. She couldn't even move her head, feet still rooted to the ground.
"I am dying," It proclaimed with the same sad tone it had adopted.
Rose shook her head. "No, we can help," She insisted, looking over her shoulder to Ella for confirmation and if the girl noticed the state she was in she was too distracted to say anything, focused solely on the thing in front of them.
"I welcome death. But I am glad that before I die, I met a human who was not afraid."
Sadness overtook Rose's soft features. "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"My race is dead. I shall die alone."
The blonde didn't hesitate to reach a hand out towards the metal cage of an alien, despite the protest that it drew from Adam behind them. Her hand stroked at the cold metal of the things face, the only part of it that wasn't covered in chains. Ella jumped at the burning hiss that followed the interaction, and Rose yanked her hand away from the creature, a golden handprint scorched onto its face.
Ella's breath caught in her throat as the thing began to gain energy, any semblance of sadness that it had harboured had disappeared in that instant.
"Genetic material extrapolated. Initiate cellular reconstruction!" It crowed.
Rose backed away from the thing, cradling her hand to her chest as she ran into Adam, planting herself firmly next to Ella. The intense desire to run was burning in Ella but she was still stuck in her spot watching as the chains that held the alien in place bent and snapped. And then it was free.
"What the hell have you done?" The man in the hazmat suit yelled after he ran into the room wielding a gun. He came to stand in front of him and Ella felt a semblance of the protection that he offered.
And then the alien rose a stick that had something that looked like a plunger stuck on the end of it up. It might not have looked like the most threatening thing in the world to some, but it was scary enough to draw the breath from Ella's lungs.
It didn't seem to alarm the worker, who leant forward and began to mock it. "What ya gonna do? Sucker me to death?"
The plunger strove forward and planted itself over the man's mouth, moulding around his nose and mouth and suffocating him. The weapons constricted, closing in closer and closer until the spine chilling sound of bones and skull crushing under the weight filled the air, the agonising screams of the man lessening as the life was sucked out of him.
Ella still would've been rooted to her spot if it hadn't been for Rose's tight grip on her arm yanking her out of the door after her. The deadlock bolt slid into place, trapping the monster in its cage along with the man who it just murdered. The fact that it was behind a coded door stuck in its cage should comfort her, but nothing seemed to quiet the pounding of her heart or the way the blood rushed to her ears. She couldn't stop freaking out and was getting nauseous watching Rose pace from the position that Ella had taken up on the floor. She lowered her head onto her knees and tried to keep her breathing even.
A television mounted on the wall above their heads sprung to life as the Doctor and Van Statten moved in front of it. Ella lifted her head up from in between her knees for a split second to regard the Doctor before she lowered it again.
"You've got to keep it in that cell!" The Doctor ordered seriously, his voice wavering slightly over the speaker.
She wished he was down there with them, would feel slightly safer knowing that they were facing the problem together and not over a screen.
"Doctor it's all my fault," Rose said guiltily, the pattering sound of her feet hitting the concrete as she paced stopping so she could regard the Doctor properly. Ella stayed still in her spot, not having the strength to get up. The air was too thin for her to take in.
One of the soldiers ventured forwards. "I've sealed the compartment," He said. "It can't get out. That lock's got a billion combinations."
"A Dalek is a genius. It can calculate a thousand billion combinations in one second flat."
Ella scuttled up from her seated position at that revelation, keeping clear from the door and standing close to Rose, the only source of comfort for her in the room. The girl clutched at her hand, equally scared, and Ella found it within her to squeeze her hand. Soldiers moved in front of them, shielding them from view of the door but Ella was doubtful they'd be able to do anything to stop this monster from trying to kill them. If the Doctor was scared of it then that was never a good sign.
The door opened and the Dalek stood still by the entryway as the soldiers opened fire. Bullets pinged off its tough metal exterior but otherwise didn't make a dent or slow it down. The Dalek began to move closer towards them, not at all impacted by the rain of bullets it was under. The shooting didn't stop, however, when Van Statten called out over the speaker for them to stop firing.
It was the Doctors desperate voice that sprung them into action, moving out of the room as quickly as possible.
"Ella, Rose, get out of there!"
One of the soldiers led the way, herding Ella, Rose and Adam away from the Dalek, her gun raised and ready to face any danger that may come their way.
A/N: Hey guys, hope you enjoy this update. Just a little note to let you know that I'm also going to be posting this story on Wattpad under the same name and description. If you didn't know already this site wouldn't update new chapters for over a week which is really annoying so I figured I'd post it on another site also just in case this happens again.
Thanks for reading!