"All right, Prof!" The Doctor went striding into Bracewell's workshop, loudly announcing his presence to the man. The Daleks had used human co-conspirators before, Bracewell was likely the latest in a long line. "The PM's been filling me in, amazing things," He remarked, picking up a spanner, "These Ironsides of yours. You must be very proud." He discarded the metal tool, picking up a file.
"Just doing my part." Bracewell humbly replied, as the Doctor planted himself in a nearby chair.
"How'd you come up with the idea?" The Doctor asked, flicking through the documents.
"Well, how does a muse of invention come to anyone?" Bracewell asked in response.
The Doctor clamped the folder shut, throwing it on the nearby desk. "But you get a lot of these clever ideas, do you?"
"Well, ideas just seem to teem from my head." Bracewell answered, smiling excitedly, like only an inventor excited about his work could. "Wonderful things! Let me… let me show you!" He walked over to the desk. "Some musings on hypersonic flight." He passed off to the approaching Time Lord.
"Hypersonic?" El asked.
"Faster-than-sound." The Doctor answered.
"Gravity bubbles that can sustain life outside the terrestrial atmosphere!" Bracewell also passed over. "Came to me in the bath!"
An Ironside loomed at the far end of the room, looking at them all.
El winced. "Hate baths."
"And, are these your ideas, or theirs?" The Doctor asked.
Bracewell shrugged that off with a laugh. "Oh, no, no, no, no. These robots are entirely under my control, Doctor." He explained, as the Ironside approached, a teacup on a tray balanced on its sucker-arm. "Thank you," He offered the ironside, taking the tea. "As you can see, the perfect servant," He took a sip, "As well as the perfect warrior."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you're up to, professor, but whatever they've promised you, you cannot trust them. Call them what you like." The Doctor poked the man in the sternum. "The Daleks are death."
"Yes, Doctor!" Churchill agreed, storming loudly into the room, the other Ironside on his heel. "Death to our enemies! Death to the forces of darkness, and death to the Third Reich!"
"Yes, Winston, and death to everyone else, too!" The Doctor retorted.
"WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?" The Ironside asked.
The Doctor, square at the end of his patience, knocked the tray out of the Ironside's arm, startling everybody. "Stop this!" The Doctor yelled at the machine. "Why are you here!? What do you want!?"
The Ironside looked up and down in confusion. "WE SEEK ONLY TO HELP YOU."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "To do what?"
"TO WIN THE WAR."
"And which war is that, then?" The Doctor asked. "The war against the Nazis, or your war, the war against all life in the universe that isn't Dalek?"
"…I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I AM YOUR SOL-DIER."
"Oh, yeah?" The Doctor pointed, seething and shaking. "Okay. Okay…" He grabbed a large spanner leaning against the wall, hefting it in his hands. "Okay, soldier… defend yourself!" He spat, swinging, and banging the tool against the metal plating of the Ironside.
"What the devil!?" Bracewell bellowed.
"YOU DO NOT REQUIRE TEA?"
"Stop him!" Bracewell shouted, as the Doctor swung again. "Prime Minister, please!"
"Doctor, what the devil?" Churchill demanded. "These machines are precious!"
The Doctor swung again. "Come on!" He yelled. "Fight back! You want to, don't you!?" He grabbed the eyestalk, forcing it to look at him. "You know you want to!"
El stood there, in shock. She'd seen the Doctor get angry with the people on the Starship UK because of the Star Whale, but this?
This was an entirely different kind of scary.
"I must protest!" Bracewell insisted.
"What are you waiting for!?" The Doctor demanded of the Ironside. "You hate me, look!" He tauntingly pounded his chest. "You hate me! You want to kill me!" He swung again. "KILL ME!" He roared, shouting into the eyestalk.
"Doctor…" El tried to grab him.
"PLEASE DESIST FROM STRIKING ME." The Ironside requested. "I AM YOUR SOL-DIER."
"YOU! ARE! MY! ENEMY!" The Doctor screamed back, punctuating each word with a swing of the spanner. "And I am yours!" He stood there, seething. "You are everything I despise… The worst thing, in all of creation. I've defeated you time and time again, I've defeated you. I sent you back into the void. I saved the whole of reality from you! I am the Doctor… and you are the Daleks!" He named, kicking the automaton, sending it rolling back into the desk.
Churchill, Bracewell, and El looked on, confused, fearful.
The Ironside's eyestalk turned around, focusing on the Doctor. "…CORRECT!" It slid back to the center of the room, focusing on its counterpart by the entryway. "REVIEW TESTIMONY!"
"I am the Doctor…" The Doctor's statement was replayed aloud. "and you are the Daleks!"
"Testimony?" The Doctor looked between the two Daleks. "What testimony!?"
"TRANSMITTING TESTIMONY NOW."
"Transmit what," The Doctor demanded. "Where?"
The Daleks did not respond. "TESTIMONY ACCEPTED!"
"Marines!" Churchill bellowed. "Marines! Get in here!" He ordered.
The Dalek by the door turned, as two British Marines came sprinting in. One of the poor men was stood right by the Dalek and the Dalek shoved its sucker-arm right into his face. The man screamed, as his skull cracked and was crushed under the force of the suction.
The other Dalek fired its beam weapon, the other Marine's skeleton glowing through as he screamed, and collapsed to the ground, before he could even fire a shot.
"Stop it!" Bracewell shouted, grabbing the Daleks' attention. "Stop it, please! What are you doing!? You are my Ironsides!"
"WE ARE THE DALEKS!"
"But I created you!" Bracewell insisted.
"NO." The Dalek replied, shooting at Bracewell.
The man's hand was blown off, and everyone in the room gasped, as it began to spark, wires and metal framing becoming exposed.
Bracewell was an android.
"WE CREATED YOU." The Dalek proclaimed, as Bracewell stared down at his hand, shaking in his boots. "VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY!" The Daleks chanted, before disappearing in flashes of light.
Churchill looked to the Doctor for an explanation.
"Doctor…" El looked up at him, shaking. "What happened?"
"I wanted to know what they wanted…" The Doctor answered, staring ahead. "What their plan was." He shook his head. "Their plan was me." He glanced at El, suddenly breaking off into a sprint.
"Doctor!" El shouted, watching as the Doctor charged back through the corridors of the cabinet war rooms.
"Testimony accepted?" The Doctor muttered, taking large strides back towards the TARDIS.
"You were right." El said, standing behind the Time Lord as he unlocked the ship. "What now? Chase them?"
"I do, yeah." The Doctor replied, pushing the door open.
"No!"
The Doctor turned to her. "El, listen-"
"Stayed behind when you went to the bad place, not staying behind now!"
"El, listen to me," The Doctor bent down slightly, to look her in the eye. "The Daleks are evil, the single most evil creatures in all the universe. They don't take prisoners, and they will not hesitate to harm a child. Now, I'll be fine if something happened, but if something happened to you…" He looked down, swallowing, before standing back straight. "Winston," He pointed, "Watch my kid."
"Of course, Doctor." Churchill replied.
The Time Lord nodded, and the two watched as he went back into the TARDIS, the box disappearing in a pulsating light, the storeroom it had landed in becoming entirely empty.
"…what do we do now?" El asked, staring at the spot where the TARDIS had just been.
"KBO, of course." Churchill answered.
El looked at him inquisitively.
"Keep Buggering On!"
The Doctor pulled back a lever, darting to the other side of the console, where the monitor was hanging. The Time Lord flicked the switch, activating the screen, and looked as the readouts came back.
There was something hiding behind the moon. Something massive…
A Dalek starship.
"Bingo!" The Doctor snapped his fingers in satisfaction, throwing the controls to take the TARDIS on board.
"Prime Minister!" Breen, the lady from before, came running in, holding a sheet of paper.
Churchill turned away from where he was helping El get sat down with a cup of tea (they were going to make an Englishman out of her yet!), to the woman. "Yes?"
"Signal from RDF, sir." She explained, handing it over. "Unidentified object. Hanging in the sky, Captain Childers says. We can't get a fix, though. Too high up."
Churchill frowned. "What do you think, Miss El?" He turned to the girl. "The Doctor is in trouble, and now we know where he is!"
El gasped in realization. "It's a spaceship! He'll be on it!"
Churchill pointed proudly. "Exactly!"
"How about that cuppa now, then?" The Doctor asked, walking straight into the heart of the Dalek vessel.
The entire place looked beaten, battered. It had been repaired, yes, but the room he was in now looked more human-like in construction, rather than Dalek.
They had been there for a long while, probably had to repair the place with materials of Earth origin.
"IT IS THE DOCTOR!" The bronze colored Dalek announced, the three of them turning around. "EXTERMINATE!"
"Whoa, whoa! I wouldn't, if I were you!" The Doctor quickly reached into his pocket, pulling out a circular, pale beige object, a red splotch in the middle. "TARDIS self-destruct. You know what that means, my ship goes, all of you go with it."
"YOU WOULD NOT USE SUCH A DEVICE!" The Dalek still in Ironside getup on the far right tried to call the Doctor's bluff.
"Try me." The Doctor retorted. The Dalek, also still disguised, began moving forward. "Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! No scans, no nothing!" He protested, stopping the Dalek in its tracks. "Or I destroy us all in an instant. TARDIS bang-bang, Daleks boom!" The Dalek moved back, and the Doctor smiled tauntingly. "Good boy."
The Doctor began walking around, further examining his surroundings. "This ship's pretty beaten up…" He began, walking behind the Dalek console. "Running on empty, I'd say, like you. When we last met, you were at the end of your rope, finished." The Medusa Cascade…
The Daleks had returned in force, the strength of an empire, and sought to end all reality. They had almost succeeded, too. The Doctor stopped them, but at a terrible cost…
But evidently, there was a group that survived. They always survived.
"ONE SHIP SURVIVED." The lead Dalek confirmed.
"And you fell through time, yes, yes." The Doctor nodded. "Crippled… but alive."
"WE DETECTED A TRACE." The Dalek explained. "ONE OF THE PROGENITOR DEVICES."
The Doctor tilted his head. "Progenitor? And what's that when it's at home?"
"IT IS OUR PAST." The Dalek on the far right stated. "AND OUR FUTURE."
"That's deep." The Doctor granted. "I will give that to you, that is deep for a Dalek. What does it mean though?"
"IT CONTAINS PURE DALEK DNA." The leader explained. "THOUSANDS WERE CREATED, SCATTERED ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. ALL WERE LOST. SAVE ONE."
"Okay," The Doctor held up a finger, "There's still one thing, I don't get though. If you've got the Progenitor, why build Bracewell?"
"IT WAS… NECESSARY."
"But why?" The Doctor pressed. He glanced, eyebrows furrowed, until suddenly… "I get it." He smiled. "I get it! Oho!" He laughed. "This is rich!" He pointed. "Your group of Daleks, from the Cascade... It didn't recognize you as 'pure' Dalek."
"A SOLUTION WAS DEVISED."
"Yes, yes, yes." The Doctor huffed. "A testimony, my testimony. So you, set up a trap." He began pacing, "The Progenitor would recognize the authority of the Daleks' greatest enemy, my authority." One of the Daleks moved over to the console, interfacing to it with its manipulator arm. "No, no, no! What are you doing?" He demanded, flashing the TARDIS self-destruct.
"LEAVE NOW." The Lead Dalek demanded. "OR THE CITY DIES IN FLAMES!"
The Doctor scoffed. "Who are you kidding? This ship is a wreck! You don't have the power to destroy London."
"WATCH," The Dalek ordered, "AS THE HUMANS DESTROY THEMSELVES!"
The Doctor inhaled sharply. World War II, dead in the middle of the London blitz…
London would light up, becoming a massive target for the Nazis.
"The generators won't switch off!" The man standing over by the switch reported, horrified.
"The lights are on all over London, Prime Minister!"
"I don't understand," El looked over to Churchill, "What's so bad about the lights?"
"You see, young lady," Churchill replied, "The Nazis prefer to make their bombing runs at night. But, by turning off every light in the city, we deny them the target!"
"But the lights are on now…" El recognized, looking back at the map. "It's the… Dah-leks."
"The Germans can see every inch of the city, we're sitting ducks! Get those lights out," He turned to an officer at the other side, "before the Germans get here!"
El stood, looking around at the busy room. The mix of fear coming off of all the people was thick enough for even a non-psychic to sense… but El could feel each person's like it was her own, and over the course of her life, she didn't think she'd felt such strong fear from any other person before.
"Thousands will die if we don't get those lights out now!" Churchill shouted.
"German bombers, sighted over the channel, sir." Breen reported, looking to the Prime Minister. "ETA ten minutes, sir."
Churchill drew a breath. "Here they come…" He pushed off the map. "Get a message to Mister Atlee! War Cabinet meeting at 0300 hours! …if we're all still here."
"We have to do something." El looked up at the Prime Minister.
Churchill shook his head. "None of our weapons are a match for theirs."
El frowned. There had to be something. The Daleks were hiding for a month, the people in the bunker had to have picked up something from them. Weapons, defenses, the Daleks had to have left-
Oh.
"Oh!" El shouted aloud., turning to Churchill. "Bracewell!"
"Turn those lights off." The Doctor growled. "Turn those lights off, now. Turn them off, or I swear, I will use the TARDIS self-destruct!"
"STALEMATE, DOCTOR." The Dalek replied. "LEAVE US, AND RETURN TO EARTH."
"Oh, that's it?" He rhetorically asked. "That's your great plan? Leave?"
"EXTINCTION IS NOT AN OPTION." The Dalek on the far right answered. "WE WILL RETURN TO OUR OWN TIME."
"No, no, no!" The Doctor spat. "I won't let you escape again, I won't!"
An electrical zapping echoed throughout the room, and the Doctor looked, to the large, cylindrical chamber behind the Daleks.
A slow, mechanical beating began to sound, speeding up. A Dalek heartbeat.
"WE HAVE SUCCEEDED!"
"DNA RECONSTRUCTION IS COMPLETE!"
"BEHOLD, DOCTOR," The Lead Dalek spoke, as it and its subordinates moved out of the way of chamber. "THE NEW DALEK PARADIGM!"
The chamber began to glow a hellish red, as the door carved into it slid open, smoke billowing out as it sparked.
A Dalek, different to the others, emerged. It was larger, more rounded, standing tall. The eyestalk appeared to be more organic, and the Dalek itself looked to be more streamlined. It was colored a gunmetal grey and slid to a stop in front of the Doctor.
The Doctor fought budding horror, as more Daleks like it emerged from the chamber, all identical in build, but colored differently. One was a maroon, another a deep blue, the third a shining gold, and the last an almost black color.
"THE PROGENITOR HAS FULFILLED OUR NEW DESTINY!" The old Dalek proclaimed. "BEHOLD, THE RESTORATION OF THE DALEKS!"
"THE RESURRECTION OF THE MASTER RACE!"