"1963!" The Doctor reflected, guiding the TARDIS towards their destination. "Such a good year!"
"1963…" El repeated curiously. "You said that was when you and Susan went to live on Earth?"
"Correctomundo!" The Doctor replied. "But that isn't the only thing! The Beatles! One of the world's first great pop rock sensations across the world! The genre was just in its infancy at that point, and then they came on the scene, helping to popularize it around the globe. They weren't just a band; they were the world's first superstars!"
El, leaning on the railing, smiled and giggled, the Doctor's enthusiasm for the subject permeating the very air.
"And it's not just the Beatles." The Doctor continued. "Sean Connery as James Bond! The Kinks, the Rolling Stones… Mary Quant, John Steed, and Cathy Gale!" The TARDIS settled, and the Doctor ran over to the door, looking at El adventurously, as his hand rested on the wood. "Right now, London isn't just the coolest place on Earth, but the entire galaxy."
El smiled in return, as the Doctor opened the door, poking his head out. His excitement quickly turned to horror, as he took sight of the city before them.
Nelson's Column was destroyed, the head of the great monument lying on its side in a crater. Trafalgar Square looked like a warzone, the ground having been split open in some parts, cars overturned, buildings reduced to rubble…
And out in the distance, extended the rest of London, looking much the same, as a blood red sky, polluted from all the smoke and fire, loomed overhead.
"No…" The Doctor breathed as El stepped out after him, shutting the TARDIS door. "Impossible."
"Is this…" El anxiously considered, looking around. "Did we get it wrong?" She trusted that the Doctor knew what he was talking about, and this didn't look like the coolest place in the galaxy, so that left the other option.
"There's no mistake." The Doctor gulped, looking around. "This is 1963."
"But…" El searched. "How?"
"Something with the power to alter time has done this…" The Doctor considered, looking around. The remnants of a battle long over were scattered around, sandbag blockades, the skeletons of soldiers… the place was devoid of life. "Something on a massive scale…"
The Doctor looked down at the old newspaper on the ground. "World Ends. Aliens invade… world in a state of terror…" He read. The picture was completely smudged by water damage, so that proved useless.
"Dad." El tapped the Doctor on his arm. "Look." She pointed.
Across the way was a woman, looking like she had seen better days, running across the square. She ran over to a dynamite igniter, placing her hands on the bar.
"HUMAN!" One of the alien creatures screeched, coming out of the woodwork. "HALT!"
"No…" The Doctor breathed. The Earth destroyed, them coming back… It was his worst nightmare come true. "Get down." He pulled El down as he crouched, looking ahead.
"THE LAST SURVIVOR OF EARTH WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" The red armored cyborg screeched, taking aim at the woman. "EXTERMINATE!"
The Daleks were back.
"EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek proclaimed.
The woman pressed down the activator, and the dynamite it was connected to exploded, right at the base of the Dalek.
The Dalek screamed, rolling back, as the woman took off. She ran across the square and pulled up the grate covering a manhole to the underground, jumping inside, before the Dalek's vision could return.
El turned to the Doctor. "We have to talk to her."
"We do…" The Doctor agreed, biting his lip as he looked around. "Stay close to me at all times, and if you have to talk, whisper."
El nodded and allowed the Doctor to take the lead.
"Going down that manhole might be a bad idea…" The Doctor posited, leading the way around the cracks in the ground. He looked to the destroyed Nelson's Column, and the taxi at the base of the statue. The Time Lord's eyes followed the direction it was pointing in towards the nearby underground entrance. "Bingo." He turned to the girl. "Want to do something about those boards?"
El nodded and raised her hand. Her eyes narrowed, and she jerked her arm back, the boards splintering into a thousand pieces.
"Good work." The Doctor complimented. Checking the area first to make sure the Dalek had resumed its patrol elsewhere, he took El's hand, moving to the underground entrance.
"You said Beatles…" El recalled with a grimace as they went down into the underground. "Should've known you meant bugs."
"Well, it's either this, or the Daleks." The Doctor glanced at her. "And they're more… heavy metal." The two came to the bottom of the stairs, into a small hallway. "The platform's just up ahead." The Doctor reported, sonicing through the gate. "That woman we saw must be around here somewhere…"
"Don't move!" The unfamiliar voice suddenly snarled, raising a pipe like a baseball bat.
"Ah. Speak of the Devil and he shall appear as the old saying goes." The Doctor tugged his bow tie. "I'm the Doctor, this is my daughter El. Don't worry, we're here to help you."
The dark-skinned woman's eyes narrowed dangerously, as she kept the pipe raised. "How can I trust you?"
El scowled. "Do I look like a Dalek? Do I have a telescope coming out of my head?"
"Sarcasm, that's sarcasm, I haven't been teaching you sarcasm…" The Doctor muttered. "Anyway," He turned to the woman, "My daughter here is right. We're not Daleks, miss…?"
"Sylvia." The woman introduced herself.
"Sylvia," The Doctor pointed, "What happened? How long have the Daleks been here?"
"What do you mean?" Sylvia incredulously asked. "How can't you know!? They overran the Earth, the whole planet!"
"We're travelers." El shrugged.
"Yes, we've been a bit out of the loop as it were." The Doctor agreed. "Now, tell us, Sylvia, what happened?"
"…They came out of the sky." Sylvia began, staring blankly into space. "Like they tore a crack in it… thousands and thousands of Daleks, maybe millions… so many they blotted out the sun." She shook herself out of it and looked back to the Doctor.
"How did you survive?" The Doctor inquired.
"The Daleks went for the militaries first." Sylvia answered. "The ordinary people tried to use that time to scatter but… as far as I know, I'm the last one left."
El raised an eyebrow. "Just you?"
"I may not be a soldier, but I'm clever." Sylvia replied. "Clever's just about the only thing you can fight them with. And, it's easier now… most of the Daleks went back to wherever they came from. The only ones left here now are to find me."
"The last survivor of Earth…" The Doctor recalled. "That Dalek on the surface called you that."
"Well, it was wrong, wasn't it?" Sylvia looked between the two. "There's you two. Maybe that means there are other survivors somewhere else."
"But, the Daleks can't do this!" The Doctor worriedly stated. "They've never had the power to change history like this, not even during the Time War!"
Sylvia looked incredulously at the Doctor. "What are you talking about?"
"Listen to me, Sylvia, this?" The Doctor gestured around. "Was never supposed to happen. The Daleks never invaded Earth in 1963. I have to find out whatever they did to make this happen and fix it."
Sylvia let out an exasperated sigh, shaking her head. "Look, it isn't safe to stay here. If you want to keep alive, you have to keep moving." Her head turned to the far end of the tunnel. "Let me look on ahead. These tunnels are slaughtering grounds."
Something crumbled at the other end, and the three's heads snapped in that direction.
"What was that?" El asked, standing close by the Doctor.
A Dalek effortlessly hovered over a pile of rubble, touching down on the other side.
"Things just got more dangerous!" The Doctor grabbed El's hand, jumping off the platform behind a barricade, hiding from the Dalek's view, as Sylvia sprinted down the tracks, into the tunnel. "Looks like Sylvia's made it… We're going to have to sneak behind that Dalek."
"Let me-" El began, trying to stand.
The Doctor yanked her back down. "The Daleks are purpose-designed to kill Time Lords, and our psychic powers were next to none. You won't be able to put a dent in it. Stay down, follow me, be quiet… We're going to have to try and sneak past. Hold on…"
The Doctor closed his eyes. For an organism unused to the way Time Lords perceived the world, the best way to describe what the Doctor was experiencing was a view of the area from over his own head. Disorienting to most three-dimensional organisms, but not for the Doctor.
Not even having to look over the barricade, the Doctor waited for the Dalek to move past.
"Okay, come on…" The Doctor whispered to El, keeping his eyes closed but still able to see perfectly, as he took her hand, and followed closely behind the Dalek. It was doing a sweep with simple visual scans only, child's play to hide from.
Following the Dalek down the tracks, the Doctor and El hid behind another barricade. The Dalek finally turned around again, and proceeded back, exiting the Doctors field of view.
The Time Lord's eyes popped back open. "Come on." He took El's hand, leading her the rest of the way to where Sylvia was hiding.
"Stop." Sylvia held her hand in front of the Doctor. "The track is electrified." She stated, pointing to the rails which were sparking from contact with dripping water from the roof of the tunnel.
The Doctor huffed, rolling his eyes, as he went to the power junction just on the adjacent wall. Quickly sonicing the junction box, he began pulling out the wires haphazardly, the lights dimming slightly, as the sparking tracks died. "Go, go, go." He hurried.
Sylvia took the lead down the tunnel first, sprinting into a nearby access door at the end. The edges of the doorframe were lined with dynamite, and El and the Doctor took great care not to accidentally knock it off as they proceeded through.
"Up you go first, El." The Doctor guided her.
The girl pushed up the manhole cover with her mind and proceeded to climb out first.
"I just need to set this trap…" Sylvia bit her lip, as she connected up a tripwire.
"Hurry." The Doctor ordered.
So absorbed the woman was in setting her trap, she'd failed to notice the mechanical whirring, and the shadow falling on the wall, as the Dalek came into their section of the tunnel.
"Sylvia!" The Doctor shouted in alarm.
The Dalek pivoted around entirely, looking down at Sylvia. "EXTERMINATE!"
"Run, Doctor!" Sylvia screamed, tripping the wire herself.
"No!" The Doctor shouted, as the Dalek fired upon the woman.
The woman's skeleton glowed through her body, as she fell to the ground, dead.
The fuses of the TNT began nearing the end, as the Doctor scrambled up the ladder, placing the cover back on the manhole.
El looked anxiously at the Doctor as the Time Lord stood upon it, and the ground shuddered as the explosion below hopefully destroyed the Dalek.
"They…" El swallowed. "Killed her."
The Doctor sighed, looking at El. "We have to get back to the TARDIS.
In the short time the two had been underground, the Daleks had changed their patrol patterns. Climbing over an overturned cab in one of the pits, the Doctor gingerly led El through a formation of Daleks, weaving through them at just the right times as not to be spotted.
Finally making it back to the ship, the Doctor kicked the door open, and ushered El inside first, hurrying in after her, and taking off immediately after.
The Doctor set the TARDIS into temporal orbit, moving the ship into the time vortex but not out of the current time zone, and set to work.
He had to find out where the Daleks had come from. Only then might he be able to figure out how they'd been able to change history so severely, and how to reverse it. Sylvia had mentioned millions of Daleks, just appearing out of the sky… That many Daleks all moving at once, all to the same place in time, it'd create an enormous wake. One that the Doctor should be able to track back to the point of origin.
As the Doctor worked, however, he didn't notice as El began to sweat, clutching her head in pain, as she flopped back into one of the seats.
"Dad…" El groaned.
The Doctor whipped around to her, concerned. "El?"
The girl coughed, like a cigarette smoker.
The Doctor looked her over. "Don't worry, El, it's fine… You're going to be fine."
El stopped coughing, and looked up, the pain suddenly having vanished. "Dad… what was that?"
The Doctor didn't offer her a straight answer as he turned back to the scanner. "Don't worry, El, if I can find the time and place from where the Daleks have done this, I can fix it."
"But… I don't get it." El spoke up. "If everybody on Earth was killed in 1963… why am I still here?"
"…The TARDIS is protecting you." The Doctor answered. "But it won't last forever." He turned back, as the scanner finally spat out a result. "Oh, of course… where else would it be?"
"What is it?" El looked up.
"Skaro." The Doctor gravely answered. "The homeworld of the Daleks."
The TARDIS rematerialized in a moderately-sized storeroom, the Doctor and El stepping out into the sheening metal room.
El jumped, as she caught sight of the Dalek dome on a container.
"It's alright." The Doctor knocked on the empty dome. "Nobody's home." The Time Lord glanced over to the nearby window, and stood up, walking over. "Looks like they've been rebuilding this place too…" He commented.
Out into the distance, into a landscape perpetually covered in an orange mist, like the entire place was forever blazing, was a city, filled with buildings that almost resembled the Daleks themselves, rounded cones, cylinders, and spires, with a heavy emphasis on spheres on the sides.
"Rebuilding?" El repeated. "You've been here before?"
The Doctor nodded solemnly. "Kalaann… the City of the Daleks. I came here once, a long, long time ago, with Susan… But now…" The Doctor looked around. "The Daleks have rebuilt the place."
Thunder rumbled outside, as droplets of liquid pelted the window.
"Did I mention, a nuclear war went down here thousands of years ago, it constantly rains, and the rain is pure sulfuric acid?"
El blinked. "Not a nice place."
"No, definitely not." The Doctor agreed. "Come on. We need to find the source of the Daleks' time manipulation and put things back on their proper course." He turned to the abandoned dome. "Let me just grab the security sensor out of this…" The Doctor said, pulling the dome apart with the sonic screwdriver. "The Daleks have beefed up their security so anything without a Dalek security sensor can't access their doors." He explained.
El suddenly coughed doubling over. "Dad, I don't…" She said, as her entire body began to flicker transparently. "Dad!?"
"Hold on, El, just hold on…" The Doctor replied, as El solidified again.
"What was that?" The girl fearfully asked, looking to the Doctor.
"Time is finally catching up with you." The Doctor informed sadly. "I told you… the TARDIS couldn't protect you forever… There should be enough spare parts around here to build you a chronon blocker. That should counteract the effects long enough for me to fix the problem."
"Okay." El nodded.
"Stay here and save your strength." The Doctor ordered, moving toward the door. "I'll be back in a tick."
"Wait, you don't-"
"I said around here." The Doctor glanced back to her. "I didn't mean the storeroom. We're near the Daleks' production facility. They'll have the materials I need. Wait here."
"What about the Daleks?" El asked.
"Don't worry…" The Doctor replied. "I'll be fine. You stay."
El nodded, as the Doctor stepped out of the storeroom, leaving her on her own.
