Doctor Who: The Chronicles of the Last Great Time War

by Multiverse Learner 101

This story speaks of the adventures and misadventures of The War Doctor and the impact of The Last Great Time War throughout every single fictional franchise.

11. Episode 11 - Engines of War: Moldox

This story/episode is based on: Engines of War (novel)

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Doctor Who/Faction Paradox, Terminator Franchise, Shinza Bansho Franchise, Star Wars Franchise

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Episode 11 - Engines of War: Moldox

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It had been three days since she'd last seen a Dalek. Three days since she'd notched another kill into the barrel of her gun. It was too long. She was starting to feel twitchy. What were they up to?

The Dalek patrols had been sporadic of late, as though they were no longer bothering with the outlying ruins. They were massing in the city, corralling any surviving humans they found and shepherding them there, too. Their plans had changed. Something new was happening.

Maybe she'd have to think about moving again. And just when she was starting to get comfortable, too. Cinder lay on her belly in the dust and the dirt, perfectly still, surveying the road below the shallow escarpment. She'd heard that a Dalek patrol was coming this way, but that had been over an hour ago.

Had one of the other resistance cells taken them out already? That seemed unlikely. If they had, she'd be aware of it by now. A message would have buzzed over the comm-link. No, the likelihood was that the Daleks had encountered another group of survivors and were processing them for enslavement, or else 'EXTERMINATING' them – or, as she preferred to call it, murdering them on the spot. Cinder clutched her weapon just a little harder, feeling a spark of anger at the thought. If they did come this way…

She brushed her fringe from her eyes. She had a bright shock of auburn hair, cut in a ragged mop around her shoulders. It was this that had originally earned her the name 'Cinder'. Well, that and the fact she'd been found in the still-burning ruins of her homestead, the only thing left alive after the Daleks had passed through.

It seemed so long ago now, when the planet had burned. When they had all burned. Cinder had watched as every one of the worlds in the Spiral had burst into candescence, lighting up the sky above Moldox; a twisting helix of flaming orbs, a whorl of newly christened stars.

She'd been a child, then, little more than a scrap of a thing. Yet even at that early age she had known what the fire in the skies heralded for her and her kind: the Daleks had come. All hope was lost. Moldox had fallen soon after, and life – if you could even call it that – had never been the same again.

Her family died in the first days of the invasion, incinerated by a Dalek patrol as they tried to flee for cover. Cinder survived by hiding in an overturned metal dustbin, peering out through a tiny rust hole at the carnage going on all around her, scared to so much as breathe. It took almost a year before she felt safe enough to even make another sound.

Days later, confused and traumatised, she'd been found wandering amongst the wreckage of her former homestead and was taken in by a roaming band of resistance fighters. This was not, however, an act of kindness on the part of her fellow humans, but simply a means to an end: they needed a child amongst their ranks to help set traps for the Daleks, to sneak and scurry into the small places where the Daleks couldn't follow. She'd spent the next fourteen years learning how to fight, how to eke out an existence in the ruins, and growing angrier at every passing day.

Everything she'd done since – everything – had been fuelled by that burning fury; that desire for revenge.

She knew the years of living hand to mouth had not served her well – she was thin, despite being muscular; her skin was pale and perpetually streaked in dirt, and whenever she found the time to look in a broken mirror or shattered pane of glass, all she saw staring back at her was the pain and regret in her dark, olive eyes. This, however, was her life now: surviving day to day by scavenging food, and hunting Daleks whenever the opportunity arose.

All the while, out in the universe, the war between the Time Lords and their allies and the Daleks and their allies rolled on regardless, tearing up all of time and space in its wake.

Cinder had heard it said that in simple, linear terms, the war had been going on for over four hundred years. This, of course, was an untruth, or at least an irrelevance; the temporal war zones had permeated so far and so deep into the very structure of the universe that the conflict had – quite literally – been raging for eternity. There was no epoch that remained unscathed, uncontested, no history that had not been rewritten.

To many it had come to be known, perhaps ironically, as the Great Time War. To Cinder, it was simply HELL.

She shifted her weight from one elbow to the other, all the time keeping her eyes on the cracked asphalt road, watching for signs; waiting. They would come soon, she was sure of it. Earlier that day she'd destroyed another of their transponders, and the patrol that the others had spotted must have been despatched to investigate. The Daleks were nothing if not predictable.

She scanned the row of jagged, broken buildings lining the opposite side of the road, looking for Finch. It was his turn to draw the Dalek fire while she took them out from behind. She couldn't see him amongst the ruins. Good. That meant he was keeping his head down. She'd hate it if anything happened to him. He was one of the good ones. She might even go as far as calling him a friend.

The fronts of the shattered buildings all along the roadside were blackened and splintered; the result of both the Dalek energy rays and the incendiary bombs used by the human defence forces as they'd tried to hold the invaders at bay. Ultimately, they'd failed in the face of overwhelming odds and an unflinching, uncaring enemy. The Daleks were utterly relentless, and within days the entire planet had been reduced to a smouldering ruin.

Cinder could barely remember a time before the Daleks had come to Moldox. She had vague, impressionistic memories of gleaming spires and sprawling cities, of wild forests and skies overflowing with scudding transport ships. Here, in the Tantalus Spiral, humans had achieved their zenith, colonising a vast corkscrew of worlds surrounding an immense, ghostly structure in space – the Tantalus Eye. It glared down at her now, balefully studying the events unfolding below.

It must have borne witness to some horrors in the last decade and a half, she considered. Moldox had once been majestic, but now it was nothing but a dying world, miserably clinging on to the last vestiges of life.

There was a noise from the road below. Cinder pressed herself even deeper into the dirt and scrabbled forward a few inches, peering over the lip of the escarpment in order to see a little further along the road. The strap of her backpack was digging uncomfortably into her shoulder, but she ignored it.

The Daleks were finally coming, just as she'd anticipated. Her pulse quickened. She squinted, trying to discern their numbers. She could make out five distinct shapes, although her heart sank as they drew closer, and her view of them resolved.

Only one of them was a Dalek, hovering at the back of the small group as if herding the others on.

Its bronze casing glinted in the waning afternoon sun, and its eyestalk swivelled from side to side, surveying the path ahead.

The rest of them were Kaled mutants, Daleks of a kind, but twisted into new, disturbing forms by Time Lord interference. These were Skaro Degradations, the result of Time Lord efforts to reengineer Dalek history, to toy with the evolution of their origin species, probably in an attempt to sidestep the development of the Dalek race altogether. The results had been catastrophic, however, and in every permutation of reality, in every single possibility, the Daleks had asserted themselves.

They were not to be stopped. Whichever way Cinder looked at it, it seemed the universe wanted the Daleks.

Many of these Degradations were unstable – unpredictable – which, to Cinder's mind, made them even more dangerous than the Daleks. And now they were being pressed into service here on Moldox.

Cinder readied her weapon – an energy gun ripped from the broken casing of a dying Dalek and lashed up to a power pack – and fought the urge to flee. It was too late now. They were committed.

She only hoped none of the Degradations was carrying a weapon they hadn't faced before.

As the patrol drew closer, Cinder got a proper look at them. Two of the Degradations were near identical and of a kind she had seen many times before: a humanoid torso in a reinforced glass chamber, suspended beneath a normal Dalek head and eyestalk. Three elongated panels on black metal arms flanked this central column to the sides and rear. The panels were peppered with the same half-globe sensors as the standard Dalek casing, and from each side jutted energy weapons mounted on narrow sponsons.

The limbless torsos inside the glass chambers twitched nervously as the monstrous things glided along, propelling themselves through the air on plumes of blue light. Finch had dubbed these ones 'Gliders'.

The others, however, were like nothing she had seen before. One of them was egg-shaped and mounted on a set of three spider-like limbs, scuttling along the road like a massive, terrifying insect.

Once again, its casing was dotted with the same, familiar half-globes, although in this instance they were coal black and embedded into panels of a deep, metallic red. The eyestalk was fatter, too, and from its body bristled four matching gun emplacements.

The final mutant appeared to be almost identical to a normal Dalek, except that its middle section – which typically housed the manipulator arm and gun – had been replaced by a revolving turret, upon which was mounted a single, massive energy cannon.

Cinder tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. There was no way she could risk allowing that cannon to get off a shot. The results would be devastating, and Finch would have next to no chance of getting clear. That one had to be her first target.

She sensed movement in the ruins, and a quick glance told her that Finch was already on the move, dashing from cover to cover to draw the Dalek's attention. The Dalek sensed it, too, and its eyestalk swivelled in Finch's direction.

'CEASE! SHOW YOURSELF! SURRENDER AND YOU WILL NOT BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED.' The Dalek's harsh, metallic rasp sent a shiver down Cinder's spine as it echoed along the otherwise empty road. She watched for Finch, trying to discern him in the ruins, to anticipate his next move. There was no chance he'd obey the Dalek's order – even if it wasn't lying, extermination had to be a better alternative to being enslaved by these monsters.

There! She saw him move again, near to the remains of a burnt-out homestead, and the Dalek swivelled, letting off three short, successive blasts with its weapon. The high-pitched wail of the energy discharge was near deafening. There was a flash of intense white light, followed by the crump of an explosion, and the remains of a damaged wall toppled into a heap, close to where Finch had been hiding only seconds before. Smoke curled lazily from the ruins in the still air.

'SEEK. LOCATE. DESTROY!' ordered the Dalek. 'FIND THE HUMAN AND EX-TER-MIN-ATE.'

'WE OBEY,' chorused the Degradations in their warbling, synthetic voices. The two Gliders rose up on spears of light, while the others fanned out, covering the ruins with their weapons.

The patrol had separated, and Cinder saw her chance. She pushed herself up onto her knees, hefting the Dalek weapon to her shoulder and sighting along the length of the notched barrel. She drew a bead on the head of the Degradation with the cannon, took a deep breath, and fired.

The weapon issued a short, powerful blast of energy, and the force of its discharge almost sent her reeling. She kept her shoulder locked in position, steadying herself. The air filled with the stench of burning ozone.

Her aim was true, and the energy beam lanced across the mutant's bronze carapace, scoring a deep, black furrow and detonating one of its radiation valves. It did not, however, have the desired effect of causing its head to explode in spectacular fashion, instead eliciting an altogether more unwelcome response.

'UNDER ATTACK! UNDER ATTACK!' bellowed the Degradation, rotating its head a full 180 degrees to scan the top of the escarpment. 'HUMAN FEMALE ARMED WITH DALEK NEUTRALISER. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!'

Panicked, Cinder glanced at the gun in her hands. What had gone wrong? She'd never known a Dalek to survive an energy blast from one of its own weapons. Did this new kind of mutant have specially reinforced armour? Whatever the case, all she'd succeeded in doing was broadcasting her own location.

She had to act quickly, take out the leader. She twisted, raising the gun and closing her left eye, drawing a line of sight on the Dalek as it shifted its own bulk around, preparing to return fire. She squeezed the makeshift trigger and the weapon spat another bolt of searing energy.

The shot found its mark, striking the Dalek just beneath the eyestalk. The casing detonated with a satisfying crack, rupturing the sensor grilles and spilling the biomass of the dead Kaled inside. Flames licked at the edges of the ragged wound as green flesh bubbled and popped, oozing out with a grotesque hiss.

Cinder didn't have time to celebrate, however, as the egg-shaped Degradation opened fire in response. Its four weapons barked in quick succession, like chattering artillery guns, churning up the impacted loam along the top of the escarpment. She threw herself backwards, rolling for cover, but it was too late – the impact had destabilised the ground, and the edge of the escarpment collapsed in a crashing landslide of mud and soil.

Cinder felt the world give way beneath her. She screamed, clutching on to her gun for all she was worth, as she tumbled head over heels towards the assembled Degradations below.

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OP Song:

Mother - YU-NO: Kono Yo no Hate de Koi o Utau Shoujo(Opening 2 Full w/ Lyrics & Subs in English)[4K]

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Insert Song: Start

Star Wars: Siege of Mandalore Theme | EPIC VERSION

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High above Moldox, a blue box folded into reality, sliding effortlessly out of the Time Vortex. Accompanied with it are hundreds of ARC-170 star fighters and X-Wing Class star fighters. All space-time craft were on stand-by for further orders.

It seemed incongruous, here on the outer edges of the Tantalus Spiral, a relic from ancient Earth that had fallen through time and space, only to appear here, its domed light blinking wildly as it returned to corporeal form. If sound had carried in space, its appearance would have been accompanied by a laboured, grating wheeze, but instead, there was only silence.

The arrival of this anachronistic object did not, however, go unnoticed, and the appearance of the TARDIS and the other space-time fighters flashed up warning sigils on a thousand Dalek control panels. Dalek war saucers stirred into action, gliding through the void to adopt combat formations, lights stuttering as they powered up to full readiness.

Inside the TARDIS, The Doctor – or rather, the Time Lord who had, before now, lived many lives under that name – rotated a dial and stepped back from the console. He folded his hands behind his back, and waited.

Accompanied with him was a man in his thirties, who wears a green military uniform, with the tag name 'CONNOR' written on the left side of his shirt, with five stars denoting his rank as a General of the Army along with a red Double Helix symbol that denotes the shape of DNA that is on both of his shoulders.

This is John Connor.

General of the Tech-Com Resistance.

Companion to the Time Lord known as the Doctor.

Around them, the roundels on the walls glowed with a faint luminescence, causing the craggy lines of his face to be picked out in shadow: the map of a hundred years or more, worn thin through conflict and weariness.

The central column burred gently as it rose and fell, as if the machine was somehow breathing, in and out, in and out. The thought was comforting. It meant he was not alone. He sighed, and glanced up at the star field being projected through the de-opaqued ceiling of the console room.

Above them sat the ethereal form of the Tantalus Eye.

The Eye was an anomaly, a vast fold in space-time; an impossible structure that had no right to exist, and yet, nevertheless, did. How it had formed, whether it was natural or engineered – no one had ever been able to discern. All that the Doctor knew was that it predated the meta-era of the Time Lords, in the sense of the meta-era of rationality as far as any given meta-history of the Whoniverse Multiverse Clusters were concerned, and that Omega, the great engineer, in those first, halcyon meta-days of the Time Lord Diaspora, had written of the Eye and its many obtuse secrets – secrets that it still held to this day.

From this far out, on the edge of the Spiral, it had the appearance of an immense, gaseous body, a swirling human eye, encircled by a helix of inhabited worlds. It was pricked with the fading light of dying giants and the kernels of new, hungry stars, freshly reborn in an endless cycle of death of and resurrection; celestial bodies trapped within its event horizon and the influence of its temporal murmurations.

To the Doctor, it was utterly breathtaking. He had come here often in his other lives – particularly his fourth and his eighth, those of a more romantic persuasion – although now those days were like distant memories, dreams that had happened to somebody else. Now, there was nothing but the War. It had consumed him, remade him into something new. A Warrior.

Just like the Doctor, the War had changed the Tantalus Spiral, too. Once a peaceful haven, it was now blighted by the Dalek occupation. It had become a war zone, like much of the universe – a staging post from which the Daleks could continue their crusade to populate eternity with their progenitors and wage their ceaseless campaign against the Time Lords and their allies along with giving profound benefits to their allies among the Axis.

That was why the Doctor had come to the Spiral – the Daleks were massing here, and he needed to get a measure of their strength.

There was one simple and effective way to do just that.

The Doctor and John were both narrowing their eyes as they spot their archenemies from the view screen.

'Right then,' The Doctor growled. 'Come and get us.'

Above the TARDIS, the Dalek war saucers began to converge. They were not yet in range for their energy weapons, but the Doctor knew that at any moment he could expect a barrage. He stepped forward and took the controls once again.

'Wait for it,' he mumbled to himself. 'Wait for just the right moment…'

He flicked a switch and opened the communication channel. A hundred or more Dalek voices were chanting in a riotous cacophony. Their words were barely discernible, but he knew very well what they were saying: 'EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!' Even now, the sound of it made his skin crawl.

They were getting closer. Still, the Doctor and John waited.

The lead saucer finally moved within range, scudding overhead.

'Now, everyone! Evasive maneuvers!' bellowed the Doctor at the top of his lungs, cranking a lever forward and gripping the edges of the console so that his knuckles turned white with the strain.

The TARDIS shot straight up like a rocket. It caught the war saucers completely unaware, colliding with its dome-encrusted belly and ripping through at an immense velocity, erupting through the top of the ship and spinning off, twisting on its axis.

The other star fighters begin to evade with grace as ordered as they all begin to open fire on their targets, shooting with blank pinpoint accuracy, in accordance with the role of distraction tactics.

The electrics inside the saucer fizzed and popped, visible through the ragged hole. It listed, spinning out of control, its weapons blazing indiscriminately. One energy beam took out a neighbouring war saucer, while the damaged ship itself went spinning into another, which proved too slow to take evasive action.

On his monitors, the Doctor watched the shells of damaged Daleks drifting away motionless into the void as the ships themselves burned up.

'That's done it, old girl,' he said, manipulating the controls once again to swing the TARDIS out of the path of another energy weapon. The Dalek war saucers shifted like a flock of birds, swooping after him, their cannons spitting death all around him. 'That's right,' he said. 'Everyone, follow me…'

Like the pilot of a stunt aeroplane – which he'd made a point of watching with the Brigadier, back in his UNIT days on Earth – the Doctor ducked and weaved the TARDIS, left, right, up, down, looping across the void, leading the Daleks on a merry chase, but always staying one step ahead of their guns.

All the while, the baleful glare of the Eye regarded them impassively.

'Right, isn't it about time…' The Doctor broke off, grinning as he looked towards John who was sporting a grin in turn, as a hundred or more Battle TARDISes phased out of the Vortex behind the Dalek war fleet. 'Now we've got you,' he crowed, rotating a handle and dipping the TARDIS, bringing it back around on itself so that he could zip underneath the oncoming wave of Dalek saucers to join his comrades.

Weapons transmuted from the outer skin of the Battle TARDISes – plain, white lozenges with an outer shell of living metal that could morph into shields, or any number of predetermined gun emplacements. The TARDISes scattered, shooting off in a hundred different directions in continous point blank range as the Daleks attempted to reverse their course, coming about to face the enemy who had so easily outflanked them.

Time torpedoes launched in a wave, a score of them finding their mark and freezing their targets, trapping them in a temporal holding pattern, a locked second from which the saucers could not escape. The Dalek war ships bloomed into silent balls of flame as the Time Lords followed up with a volley of explosive rounds.

The Daleks weren't backing down, however, and as the Doctor's TARDIS burst through the surface of another saucer, sending it spinning toward one of the planets below, they managed to set loose their own first volley, detonating TARDISes with every strike.

The Doctor watched as the dying time ships blossomed, their interior dimensions folding out into reality, unfurling like violent flowers to swell to their true size before burning up in the vacuum. His fingers danced across the controls and the TARDIS danced away, just as the Dalek ships spat a second volley.

'Phase!' he bellowed over the communications rig, and the Time Lords did as he commanded, their TARDISes blinking suddenly out of existence. They appeared again a moment later, having leapt two seconds into the future to avoid the crackling beams of the Dalek weapons, which faded away harmlessly into space.

Their return volley was far more effective, detonating countless Dalek saucers.

'RETREAT! RETREAT!' The chorus of Dalek voices, now diminished but still audible in the background, had changed. They were attempting to regroup, pulling back toward the Eye and using the wreckage of their fallen brethren as cover.

'We've got them on the run, Doctor!' called a satisfied female voice over the comm-link.

'Stay with them!' he replied. 'Odd Ball, now is the time to press the advantage.'

"Copy, Blue Leader." Commander Odd Ball replied.

The Time Lords and the STARS clone pilots, now outnumbering the Dalek war vessels two-to-one, did precisely that, surging forward, some going high, others going low, trapping the retreating Daleks between them.

The time torpedoes did their work, stuttering the Dalek retreat, and within seconds, space above the Tantalus Eye was filled with the wreckage of the remaining Dalek war fleet.

'Well done, Doctor,' said the woman on the comm-link. She sounded jubilant. This was Captain Preda, Commander of the Fifth Time Lord Battle Fleet. 'We led them on a merry dance indeed.'

'Don't count your victories too soon, Captain Preda,' replied John, his tone grim.

'John is right, Preda. I'm not sure it's over yet. There could be more of them, lurking in the shadow of those planets.' said the Doctor, with the same grim tone.

'Then let's take a look,' said Preda. The comm-link buzzed off, and the Battle TARDISes, assembling themselves into a spearhead formation, slid closer toward the Tantalus Eye.

Warily, the Doctor fell in behind them, keeping an eye on his monitors.

The Doctor and John both looked at each other with grim expressions.

"Something's not right about this, Doctor."

"I would agree with you, John. This seemed far too easy."

The ambush came without warning. There was no alarm, no indication that anything was awry, that they'd triggered some sort of trap. One second there was nothing, the next an armada of Dalek stealth ships had blinked out of the Vortex.

The Doctor had seen these ships only a handful of times before – sleek, ovoid vessels of the purest black, devoid of the usual winking lights that typically marked a Dalek saucer, and twice as dangerous. They were a recent and unwelcome development. They were said to sit in the Time Vortex like spiders at the heart of a web, detecting the vibrations of passing TARDISes. Only then would they make themselves known, shimmering into existence to catch the Time Lords unaware.

It was elegant and deadly and – the Doctor and John both realised – Preda and her fleet had just been caught in their web.

The Time Lords had no time to react. Not a single one was able to dematerialise before the Dalek weapons cracked them open like tin cans, spilling their insides into the cold vacuum of space.

"Everyone! Evasive Maneuvers!" said the Doctor in full haste.

Every star fighter immediately complied as they all begin to take sudden evasive action, with them managing to evade the Dalek stealth ships.

The Doctor roared, slamming his fists into the controls and sending the TARDIS spinning sideways in an evasive action that saved his and John's life. Nevertheless, the TARDIS caught a glancing blow on her right flank and was sent into a wild spin. With the stabilisers unable to compensate, the Doctor and John both slammed to the floor, rolling off the central dais as the ship juddered.

The TARDIS, out of control, hurtled headlong toward one of the planets below.

The TARDIS plunged through the planet's upper atmosphere like a dropped stone, tumbling end over end, leaving a rippling trail of black smoke in its wake.

Inside, the Doctor and John both clung to the metal rail that ran around the edges of the central dais. The engines were screeching and stuttering as the ship tried to right herself, but the trajectory was too sharp, and they were falling too fast.

The ceiling was still showing a projection of the view from outside, but now it was nothing but a disorientating jumble of images: snapshots of a bruised, purple sky; sweeping continents encrusted with bristling ruins; flames licking angrily at the edges of the ship's outer shell.

With a gargantuan effort, the Doctor and John both released their grip on the railing and lurched over to the console, catching hold of a hooped cable in an effort to stop themselves from being sent sprawling to the floor. They tugged on it for support, but to the Doctor's consternation it came away in his hand, one end decoupling from its housing and causing him to swing out wildly, windmilling his other arm until the ship tipped forward again and he could grab hold of a nearby lever.

He steadied himself as best he could, rocking with the motion of the tumbling ship. 'Right, let's see if this works…' he said, tossing away the loose end of the cable and jabbing at a series of buttons and switches on the control panel.

Its engines screaming in protest, the TARDIS made a juddering attempt to dematerialise. Outside, visible through the transparent ceiling, the world seemed to fade away to nonexistence, replaced by the swirling hues of the Time Vortex.

Just as the Doctor and John were both about to issue a heartfelt sigh of relief, however, the view stuttered as if it were just out of reach, and returned to flickering images of the desolate, spoiled world beneath him, seen only in snatches as the ground seemed to rush up to meet the falling TARDIS.

He hammered at the controls furiously, to no avail. Even the central column had now ceased its ponderous rise and fall, as if the TARDIS herself had anticipated what would come next and was withdrawing into herself, shutting down her vital systems.

'I'm sorry, John, old girl,' said the Doctor in a tone of apology towards John and the TARDIS, hanging on to the console for all he was worth. 'I think we're in for a bit of a bumpy landing…'

'Oh, dear God.' John thought as he couldn't help but grimaced as he too was hanging on to the console for dear life.

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Insert Song: End:

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Her mouth was full of soil, her left cheek was smarting and she was pretty sure she'd broken at least one of her ribs. She couldn't remember where she was, what she'd been doing. Comforting blackness offered to consume her. She welcomed it. Sleep. Sleep was what she needed. Sleep would –

'LOCATE THE OTHER HU-MAN.' The rasping, metallic sound of a Degradation stirred her to wakefulness. Of course! The escarpment. The landslide. The Degradations. Only a few seconds could have passed. She remained rigid and still. Did they think she was dead?

She was partially covered by the loose soil. She could feel it weighing down on her legs. That was good – at least she could still feel her legs. The mud must have cushioned her fall. She shifted her foot, ever so slightly, and felt the heaped earth give way. She'd be able to break free, then. She wasn't buried too deep.

She was still clutching the stolen Dalek weapon. It felt smooth and cold against her palm, and hummed with power. Not only that, but she had the element of surprise. They weren't expecting her to suddenly start shooting again. And by the sound of it, they hadn't found Finch. They hadn't –

'Cinder!' Finch's worried cry echoed from the ruins. Cinder wanted to scream in frustration. What was he doing! He'd give away his position, make himself an easy target.

Well, she supposed he'd forced her hand…

With a gasp, Cinder heaved herself up out of the heaped earth, twisting as she rose, spitting soil.

She didn't have time to take stock of what the Degradations were doing. She saw one of the Gliders, hovering a few metres off the ground with its back to her, and took aim, releasing two shots. Still turning, she got the other Glider in her sights and squeezed off another two shots.

They detonated into bright balls of flame, one after the other, showering the ground with burning debris, and Cinder dived for cover, rolling behind the shell of the Dalek she had taken out from above. There would still two Degradations to contend with, and she didn't much fancy her chances against the cannon.

'Cinder!'

She scrambled to her feet to see the tall, broad silhouette of Finch up ahead, bursting from behind a broken wall and rushing out into the road. He was wearing dirty black coveralls and carrying an old-fashioned machine gun, with which he rained down shells on the remaining Dalek creatures as he ran.

The bullets pinged ineffectually off their armour, but his plan – if indeed it was a plan – had worked, and he'd distracted them long enough for Cinder to take cover.

'Cinder – get to safety, now!' he bellowed. He sprayed the Degradations with another burst of

useless ammunition, then turned and ran.

'ERADICATE!' burred the Dalek with the cannon, rotating its mid-section to track him as he ran.

'Finch!' cried Cinder. 'No!'

The cannon fired, emitting a pulse of eerie, ruby-coloured light. It struck Finch in the back and seemed to engulf him entirely, encircling his body, whispering around him as if looking for a way in.

He stopped running, twisting around in obvious agony and thrashing as if trying to free himself of the beam's deadly embrace. There was no escape.

He opened his mouth to scream, and the stream of light rushed in through the orifice, pouring into his body, choking him. He clutched at his throat with both hands, scrabbling for breath.

As she watched, tears pricking her eyes, Finch's flesh began to glow, taking on the same odd, pinkish hue as the light. He seemed to disintegrate before her, fading out of existence, as if the light inside of him was pushing out and expanding, dissolving him from within.

In less than a few seconds, there was nothing left of him whatsoever, aside from a faint wisp of slowly fading light.

Crouching behind the burned-out Dalek, Cinder felt an odd sensation. She knew she'd just witnessed something horrific, but, for some reason, she couldn't quite understand what. Her memory seemed suddenly fuzzy, confused.

She had the unsettling notion there was something she couldn't remember, scratching away at the back of her mind. She could have sworn the Degradations had just exterminated someone, maybe even someone she knew, but she couldn't imagine who it could have been. After all, she'd planned this ambush alone, with no help. Hadn't she?

Nevertheless, she couldn't deny the overwhelming feeling of hollowness, as if she was experiencing the absence of an emotion akin to grief. She didn't have time to dwell on it, however, as even now the two remaining Degradations were moving, turning towards her…

She glanced behind her, looking for somewhere to run. There was nowhere but the ruins on the other side of the road, and she didn't much fancy her chances in the open. Then again, the wrecked shell of a Dalek wasn't going to provide much in the way of a shield for very long, either.

Cinder glanced up at a high-pitched whistling sound from overhead, her mouth falling open in slack-jawed awe. Something was falling from the sky – a large, blue box, with illuminated window panels and a flashing lamp on top. It was coming in at quite a speed, glowing white hot around the edges, and leaving a long, dark smear in the sky to mark its passing. Whatever it was, it was clearly out of control, and it was going to make landfall any second…

'EVADE! EVADE!' The egg-shaped Degradation turned and skittered toward the ruins, its spider-like limbs clawing at the broken ground for purchase.

Cinder cringed, dropping to her knees and burying her face in the crooks of her arms. There was little else to do. The roar of the falling box had grown to such intensity that it was all she could hear.

There was no time to run, to seek cover. It was coming down, and it was coming down now.

It impacted with a tremendous crunch, sending up a spew of displaced earth that bowled Cinder, and the shell of the dead Dalek she'd been cowering behind, at least two metres into the air. She landed on her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs, just as the box – which had rebounded from the edge of the escarpment and was sent careening into the road – crashed for a second time, this time causing a colossal bang. For the second time that day, she was doused in a spray of loose soil and debris.

The blue box screeched across the asphalt, rending what appeared to be wood, until it struck the remains of a brick wall and came to a sudden, jarring halt.

Cinder took a deep breath and opened her eyes. The first thing that struck her was the fact that she was still alive. The second was the eerie silence that had settled over proceedings. The only sound was the hiss of the scorched box melting the asphalt on the road surface where it had come to rest.

She had no idea how a box made of wood could have survived the violence of re-entry into the planet's atmosphere.

Cinder picked herself up, dusting shards of Dalek casing and dirt from her clothes. She gasped for breath, forcing air back down into her lungs. Her ears were ringing. She staggered forward a few steps, but then thought better of it, deciding she'd have to wait until her head stopped spinning.

She tried to get her bearings.

The entire scene was a mess. The initial impact had blown a crater in the side of the escarpment, the force from which had rippled out, crumpling the surface of the road and churning up an area the size of a house.

The shell of the Dalek was lying on its side about three metres away, still rocking gently with the motion of the impact.

Smoke curled from where the blue box had finally come to rest, lying on its side. A hatch was open in the top, but she couldn't quite see inside. The lights were still glowing softly in the windows, although the lamp on top had gone out. She wondered if that was the distress beacon or homing device.

It appeared the box had inadvertently saved her life, too – half of a Dalek casing – presumably belonging to the cannon-bearing Degradation – still stood upright beside the overturned box, but the top half was nowhere to be seen. It seemed the box had decapitated the ponderous thing before it had had chance to move out of the way.

Of the squat, spider-like mutant, there was no sign.

Cinder crept forward, peering into the box. All she could see was a pall of thick smoke and the impression of some bright, internal lighting. She thought about calling out, to see if there was anyone still alive inside, but was worried about attracting attention. And besides, she had no idea who – or what – might be in there. No, she'd just get a little bit closer and take a look inside…

She froze at the sound of a man spluttering, with the sound of another man groaning. It had come from inside the box. So – the occupants were still alive.

Quickly, she cast around for her gun. It was jutting out of the damp earth close by, and she hastily dug it out with her hands, getting thick, grimy clay wedged beneath her broken fingernails. She yanked it free, trailing cables, then dusted it off and checked it over.

The light on the power pack had dimmed and turned red, indicating that all of the stored energy had been discharged. Clearly, it had been damaged in the explosion. She cursed beneath her breath. Still, whoever it was who'd come down in that blue box didn't have to know that. The weapon would still make an effective deterrent.

Brandishing it like a shield, she advanced slowly on the box, wary of any sudden signs of movement that might indicate hostilities. Was it an escape capsule? It certainly didn't look very big, and the way it had fallen from the sky suggested it had been ejected from an orbital craft. The edges of the box were still glowing from its abrasive entry into the atmosphere, and a dark, sooty streak across its outer casing indicated that it had taken a glancing strike from an energy weapon. Had a Dalek war saucer shot down the ship? She wondered if the occupant of the escape pod might even be human. But why were the words 'POLICE BOX' written on the side in big, bold letters? Nothing that was happening seemed to make any sense.

One of the men gave another cough, louder this time. Cinder sensed movement. She stopped walking and thrust the barrel of her gun in the direction of the box, just in time to see a head emerge from the open hatch.

With a loud huff, one of the man threw his arms over the sides of the box and hauled himself up, so that his head and shoulders were poking over the rim, with another man doing the same in turn.

Cinder glared at him, unsure what to say or do.

One of them was was an older man, with a craggy, careworn face and startling green-brown eyes. His hair was silvery grey and brushed up into a tuft at the front, and he wore a bushy white beard and moustache. He appeared to be wearing a battered leather coat and a herringbone patterned scarf.

He frowned at her, looking perplexed as he looked towards the other man with the military uniform who was sporting the same look as he was.

The old man and the other man then looked back towards her with scrunched eyebrows.

'Well?' the old man said, as if waiting for the answer to an unasked question.

'Well, what?' she replied, jiggling her gun to ensure that he'd seen it.

He raised both eyebrows as if taken aback by her insolence. 'Oh, so waving a gun at us is the best thing to do in the circumstances, is it?'

'Well…' Cinder thought for a moment, confused. 'Look, you're the ones who's just fallen out of the sky!'

'And just as well that we did,' he said. 'I'd argue that our timing is impeccable.'

'What are you talking about?' said Cinder, failing to quell her exasperation.

'Look at you,' he said. 'Clearly in need of our help.'

Cinder felt a surge of indignation. 'Oh, really?' She shook her head at the sheer arrogance of the man. 'I need your help?'

'I should say so,' replied the old man.

'And what makes you say that?' asked Cinder. She was growing tired of this irritating newcomer and his ridiculous posturing.

The man made a gesture that might have been a shrug, if it hadn't been for the fact he was hanging on to the edge of his box with both arms, with the other man just shaking his head in dismay. Come to think of it, the position did appear a little odd, given how shallow the box actually was.

The old man sighed. 'If you don't want to end up getting yourself exterminated, then I suggest you get a move on and hop inside.

'What?' she said. 'You want me to get in that box with you two?' She pulled her best 'not in your lifetime, mister' expression.

'Ma'am, we don't want you to do anything,' said the other man, 'but unless you're as stupid as you look, you'll do as he says. Trust me, I should know.'

Cinder had to fight the urge to pull the trigger on her gun in the hope that there was enough residual charge in the power pack to blast them into tomorrow. 'Right,' she said. 'You're all on your own.' She turned to walk away.

'NOW!' bellowed the old man. There was a sense of urgency in his voice that hadn't been there before, an edge to it that made her suddenly decide to pay attention.

'EX-TER-MIN-ATE!'

Cinder twisted on the spot to see the spider-thing emerging from the ruins on her right. She cursed, loudly. She'd been so intent on her argument with the man in the box that she hadn't been paying attention. She should have known better. She pointed her gun at the Degradation and squeezed the trigger, but as she'd expected, nothing happened. The power had completely drained.

Cinder was quickly running out of options. She could stay out here and attempt to fight off a Degradation with a gun that would prove about as useful as a wooden club, try to make a run for it and expose herself to being shot in the back, or dive into a small blue box with an old man who had just fallen out of the sky.

'Out of the frying pan, into the fire,' she muttered. As the Degradation came clambering over the remains of a wall, dislodging a flurry of loose bricks, she backed up, took a run-up and leapt into the open hatch of the escape pod. She brought her knees up to her chest as she jumped, preparing to fall into a crouch as she landed inside the shallow box.

'Incoming!' she screamed, to give the men the chance to take cover before she landed on them.

She crashed down on her backside, slamming painfully into what felt like metal floor plates, and rolled to her left, putting a hand out to stop herself. With her other she still gripped the Dalek weapon close to her chest.

The momentum carried her over onto her side, and she ended up with her face pressed against cool metal, which seemed to thrum gently with the vibration of an idling engine.

Something didn't feel right.

She'd screwed her eyes shut during her fall. She opened them, expecting to see the old man and other man pressed up against her in the confined space, taking cover from the Degradation outside. Instead, the sight of a large, circular room greeted her.

She sat up, clutching the gun to her chest.

The room was utterly incongruous with what she'd expected. The walls were aglow with a series of odd, round impressions – sunken lights, perhaps – and rough stone pillars arched overhead to support the roof.

A raised dais housed what looked like a control panel, of sorts – although the controls in question appeared to be patched up and cobbled together from scavenged components that had been made tofit. Nests of cables drooped from the ceiling.

The whole place had a higgledy-piggledy sort of feel to it, like it was constantly being made over by an inveterate tinkerer, or mended by someone who was never able to get the right parts. It was the control room of a ship. She supposed she could have knocked herself out during her leap into the escape pod and had only just come round, hours later, in a different place. But try as she might to convince herself, she didn't believe that for a moment.

The old man whose head and shoulders she had seen sticking up out of the box was now standing by the control panel alongside the other man, with the old man attempting to adjust the picture on a small computer screen. They had their backs to her, but they were definitely the same men – they were wearing their respective clothes, with the old man wearing the same brown jacket and his hair was the same silvery grey while the other man was wearing a green military shirt, with five stars on the shoulder, and brown hair.

She glanced behind her. Bizarrely, she was sitting with her back to the hatch. She studied it for a moment, assessing the size and shape of the opening. She supposed, on reflection, it was technically more of a door, but it looked about right. It was definitely the hatch she had jumped through.

'It's… it's…' she stammered.

The old man stopped what he was doing and looked over at her. 'Bigger on the inside. Yes, I know. Let's get that bit over and done with quickly, shall we?' he said.

'It's the right way up,' finished Cinder. 'The box was on its side, and now I'm the right way up.'

'Oh. Right. Hmmm. I wasn't expecting that one,' he said. 'Yes, I suppose it is. That'll be the relative dimensional stabilisers. Stops you from, well… falling over.' He looked down at her and raised an ironic eyebrow. 'The inside can be orientated differently to the outside.' He waved his hand, as if explaining away a miracle as nothing but sleight of hand.

'And it's bigger,' said Cinder.

The man laughed. 'And there we are. That's the one I was expecting.'

'Which means…' Cinder's expression darkened. 'Is this a TARDIS?'

'It is,' said the man. He returned his attention to the console and began examining the readouts on the computer screen. It looked antiquated and a little decrepit. He tapped at the keypad, as if trying to get something to work.

Cinder peered over his shoulder to see what he was looking at, but all she could see on the screen was a mass of unfamiliar pictograms, scrolling and shifting about in an apparently random dance.

'Blast it!' he barked suddenly in response to something he'd read, and Cinder started, her finger brushing the trigger of her gun.

'If this is a TARDIS,' she said, 'then that means you're a—'

'Time Lord,' he said, interrupting. 'Yes, that's right. Him on the other hand,' the old man was now pointing towards the other man. 'is human. Just like you.'

Cinder then sported a surprised and shocked expression on her face.

"Wait what?!" She said as she turns towards the man who was simply looking at her with a serious expression.

"He's right, ma'am. I'm human."

"B-B-But why are you with him?" She said in a perplexed tone, wondering on how was he even still alive.

"That's a long story ma'am. One that we may not have the time to tell as there are still Daleks trying to hammer in on the TARDIS doors.'

'They're not Daleks,' she countered. 'I'd already dealt with the Dalek. Those were mutants. Degradations.'

'A Dalek is a Dalek,' the old man said while shrugging his arms as he works on the console, 'whatever their form and from whichever epoch or permutation of reality they originate.'

'Is that true of Time Lords, too?' asked Cinder, the sarcasm dripping from her voice.

'Sadly, I believe it is,' he replied in a sad tone.

'But, you are a Time Lord?' she said, waving the gun to ensure he hadn't forgotten about it. He wasn't looking. He'd returned to tinkering with the object in his hand – a thin, metal cylinder with a glowing end, which made an infuriating buzzing sound every time he pressed a button on it.

'Yes,' he said, drawing out the word, as if indicating his impatience. He held the device up to his ear and pressed the button, listening intently to the sound. Then, frowning as if frustrated with the thing, he banged it repeatedly against his palm.

'Then where are your skull cap and robes?' said Cinder. 'You don't look much like a Time Lord.'

"Yes, Doctor. She has a point." said the other man in good humor as he looks towards the old man. "You never seemed to look like the other Time Lords. Ren would tend to notice that as well and so would the rest of the Senators and Politicians of the TPA."

'And as I've told you, Ren, and the others before, John. There are always certain exceptions to every rule,' he replied. He raised his device to his ear again, listened to the sound, and then, apparently satisfied, slipped the device into a leather hoop on the empty ammo belt he was wearing and dusted his hands.

'What is that thing? A weapon?' she said.

He offered her an impatient look. 'No. It's a screwdriver. Now, why don't you put down that gun?

You're upsetting the old girl.' He patted the TARDIS console fondly. 'And to be perfectly frank, you're upsetting me.'

The other man was simply rolling his eyes out while subtly smiling in reminiscence of the many times when the old man would pat the TARDIS very affectionately when no one seems to be looking.

Cinder ignored the last part of his jibe. 'You mean, more than you've just upset her by crashing her into a planet?' she retorted. She lowered the barrel of the gun all the same, although she refused to relinquish her grip on it entirely.

'There, now,' said the Time Lord. 'Doesn't that feel better?'

Cinder gave an exasperated sigh. 'Look, what are you all doing here, on Moldox?'

'Ah, so that's what this dreadful-looking planet is called, is it? Moldox.' He said the word like he was trying it on for size, then shook his head, as if deciding it wasn't for him. 'More to the point, what were you doing out there, facing off against those Daleks?'

'An ambush,' she said.

The Time Lord gave her an approving look. 'An ambush?' he echoed. 'Just you, your friend and a single, salvaged Dalek energy weapon. I'm impressed.' He looked momentarily forlorn. 'I'm sorry I couldn't save him.'

Cinder looked at him, confused. 'My friend? I was alone.'

The Time Lord and John both frowned.

'The TARDIS picked up two human life signs in the crash zone. One of them disappeared just after a massive energy discharge from one of the Daleks. I'd assumed you were together.' said the old man.

Again, that strange itch at the back of her mind, as if there was something she should be able to remember, but couldn't. 'I…' She hesitated. 'I don't think so,' she said.

The Time Lord nodded, but it was clear he was troubled by her answer. So is the other man who seems to sport a grave expression on his face.

'Well, you might as well make yourself at home for a minute or two,' the old man said, doing a lap of the console, making adjustments to the controls.

'I'm just going to get her started up again.' He grabbed a lever with a worn wooden handle and pulled it towards him. The tall glass chamber at the centre of the console flickered briefly with bright, white light, and the nest of tubes at its heart began to rise up inside the column. But then the light dimmed, and there was a deep, unsettling groaning sound from beneath the floor.

"Well, sh**" the other man said in an exasperated tone.

'Damn it!' said the Time Lord, striking his fist angrily against the control panel. 'She's out of action. She's going to need some time to heal before I can take her off-world again.'

'Off-world?' said Cinder. A sudden, unbidden thought had entered her head. Was this it? Was this the chance of escape she'd been looking for? Could she hitch a ride off the planet with this eccentric old Time Lord and surprisingly enough another human? The thought was appealing. She'd toyed with the notion of leaving Moldox hundreds of times over the years, but the opportunity had never presented itself. Could this be it? Her chance for a fresh start, some place where the war was nothing but a distant memory, a fairy story told to the young to encourage their good behaviour. Places like that had to exist somewhere out in the cosmos.

'Well, it's not as if we're in a particular rush,' she said, finally getting to her feet. She propped the gun against the metal railing, but made sure to remain within grabbing distance of it. It wouldn't really do her much good in a tight spot – at least until she found another power pack – but if things got ugly,

it was all she had.

'We?' said the Time Lord.

'You said you were going to take me somewhere safe,' said Cinder. 'And I can assure you, Moldox is not safe. It's difficult enough avoiding the Dalek patrols. I'd rather die than let them take me prisoner.'

'Prisoner?' said the other man. 'That's not like the Daleks. Not unless they've got plans for this planet. What happens to the people they've taken?'

Cinder shrugged. 'All I know is that they're taken to the cities. That's what the patrols are for – to round people up. They only exterminate you if you try to run or fight back.'

'Are they sinking shafts into the ground? Digging out mines?' the other man questioned.

Cinder shrugged. She had no idea.

'I think you'd better show me,' said the Time Lord.

Cinder's heart sank. 'What about the Daleks?' She realised the hammering at the door had ceased.

Perhaps the Degradation had given up and scuttled off to report. Nevertheless, she rather avoid going back out there to find out.

'We can cross that bridge when we come to it,' he said. 'What's the nearest city?'

'Andor,' she said. 'About ten miles from here.'

'You know the way?'

Cinder nodded. 'It's dangerous,' she said. 'There're thousands of them there. There's stories… about the mutants, and the new weapons they're developing.'

'That's what we're afraid of,' said the Time Lord as he and the other man both looked towards each other in grave concern. He took one last look at the monitor, and then started toward the door, with the other man following alongside him. 'Come on. There's no time like the present.'

'If I do this,' she said, still standing by the console, 'if I take you both to Andor and show you the Daleks, then you'll take me away from here in your TARDIS, to somewhere safe?' Her voice cracked as she said the words. She jammed her hands into her pockets so he wouldn't see she was trembling.

'Yes,' he said. 'I will. I promise.'

'How do I know I can trust you?'

His eyes met hers, before he turned and walked through the door. 'You don't,' he called behind him.

The other man was just giving a sympathetic look towards the woman.

'Don't worry about it too much. He always tend to act like the grumpy old man to everyone sometimes.'

'I heard that, John.' said the Time Lord in a loud voice.

The other man was smiling as he continued.

'Come on, let's get a move on. The sooner the better.'

Thinking that she didn't have anything else left to lose, Cinder grabbed her gun as she and the other man both ran after him.

---

Before the Daleks had come, Jocelyn Harris had been the governor of the planet Moldox, along with the four outlying human settlements on the planet's moons. She'd been good at her job, too: the colony had flourished under her dutiful eye. Birth rates were up, the construction programme continued at a steady pace and the terraforming process had proved relatively smooth, with only one memorable malfunction causing a single, harsh winter.

Jocelyn had taken pride in her work. The people of Moldox, who had re-elected her three times in succession, had celebrated her as the herald of a new age. And to repay them for their unwavering faith, she had betrayed them all to the Daleks.

She hadn't done it out of a desire for power, or because of any sort of devotion to a higher cause.

They were the sorts of thing that drove most defectors, in her limited experience. No, what she'd done had been motivated by cowardice, and in Jocelyn's own opinion, that made her the very worst sort of defector. She had done it to save her own skin. When the Daleks had swarmed over Moldox, stripping the planet bare and culling the population, she had agreed to become their human mouthpiece, their puppet, their plaything. All to make sure that she lived.

Over the years, she'd tried to tell herself that she'd had no choice, that surely it was better if she worked against the Daleks from the inside, inveigling herself into their plans, warning her people on the ground. Only she'd always been just that little bit too afraid to act, to pass any of the information on to the resistance, worried that the Daleks would find out what she was up to. Their retribution would be swift and effective, and that would be an end to it all. She knew that, whatever happened, one thing was certain: she was eminently replaceable.

She wondered what the Daleks had in mind for her today. Two of the dreadful, brass-coloured tin cans had come to her room – a cell by any other name – and demanded she leave with them immediately. As usual, there was no attempt at niceties, no explanation – just the simple command that she was required in the audience chamber.

She rose from behind her desk, setting down her data tablet, and did as she was told. The artificial gravity on the Dalek command station was weak, despite its size. The Daleks, she'd learned, had no real need of it – they could magnetise themselves to the metal floors to avoid floating away, and even if they did, they had propulsors that would enable them to fly. The gravity, then, was a simple concession to the prisoners they held onboard the station, and as such, they weren't particularly given to expending power to ensure it was set at a comfortable level.

As such, Jocelyn found herself bouncing along behind the Daleks, taking exaggerated strides as she tried to keep up.

The audience chamber was less than five hundred metres from her cell, and during the many years she'd been held on the station, she'd visited it innumerable times.

Today, it seemed, the Eternity Circle was in full session. All five of them were here, resting upon their raised pedestals, glaring down at her as she loped into the large, hexagonal chamber.

She'd never quite been able to establish the function of these particular Daleks, or what set them apart from their more lowly kin. Save for their colouring, of course. They were identical in size and shape to the two guards that had brought her from her cell, but where the standard Dalek casings were decorated with burnished bronze and gold, the five members of the Eternity Circle were a deep, metallic blue, with domed heads of polished silver and matching silver sense globes spotting their lower halves.

All Jocelyn knew was that they'd been charged by the Dalek Emperor with fashioning new weapons to deploy against the Time Lords, some of which they had been testing on the people of Moldox and the other worlds of the Tantalus Spiral. She knew this because she'd had to file the reports.

To Jocelyn, they were nightmare creatures; demons encased in blue shells. These were the monsters responsible for what had happened to her beloved planet, her home – and her children.

'WAIT,' barked one of the Dalek guards. Its voice was like nails being driven into her skull. She stopped walking. She was standing in the centre of the chamber, looking up at the five blue Daleks.

They seemed to regard her with menace, but none of them spoke.

The guards retreated, sliding back soundlessly into two recesses by the door. She decided to remain silent until she was prompted to speak.

High above her, a holographic screen flickered to life, tinting a patch of the air a bright, hazy blue.

Its appearance was accompanied by a smell that reminded her of fresh ozone.

'REPORT,' boomed the low, grating voice of the Dalek Prime Emperor. Jocelyn glanced up in surprise. The ominous image of its massive, unblinking eye was projected on the screen, but the voice seemed to emanate from all around her, filling the chamber. She sensed the bass rumble of it in her gut, and felt her hackles rise.

'THE WEAPON APPROACHES COMPLETION,' said the Dalek on the far-left pedestal, drawing out the words in its rasping monotone. 'Soon the Eradicator will be ready.'

'EXCELLENT,' replied the Emperor. 'WE STAND ON THE EVE OF GALLIFREY'S DESTRUCTION THROUGHOUT THE MULTIVERSE.' A pause. 'WHAT OF THE PROGENITORS?'

'TWELVE OF THE SEVETEEN META-EPOCHS IDENTIFIED HAVE NOW BEEN SEEDED WITH DALEK PROGENITORS,' replied another of the Eternity Circle. 'THE TIME LORD FORCES IN THIS UNIVERSE ARE SPREAD THIN. THE WAR IS FOUGHT ON MULTIPLE SPACE-TIME BATTLEFRONTS.'

'AS IT WAS PROSCRIBED,' said the Emperor. 'WHAT PROGRESS HAD BEEN MADE ON DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW PARADIGM?'

'TESTING ON THE PLANET MOLDOX IS ALMOST COMPLETE,' replied the Dalek on the central pedestal, its radiation valves flashing as it spoke. 'DATA SUGGESTS THE NEW TEMPORAL WEAPON PARADIGM IS ALMOST READY FOR DISTRIBUTION THROUGH THE TIME-SPACE CONTINUUM.'

'SHOW ME,' purred the Emperor.

'I OBEY,' replied the Dalek. Its head swivelled in Jocelyn's direction. 'JOCELYN HARRIS. YOU HAVE SERVED THE DALEKS WELL,' it said.

'I've tried,' she stammered, unsure precisely where this was going.

'YOUR BETRAYAL OF YOUR OWN KIND SHOWS ONLY THAT YOU CANNOT BE TRUSTED,' continued the Dalek. 'YOU WILL BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED.'

'No!' she screamed. 'No! I'll do anything. Tell me what I have to do to prove myself to you.' She started backing away towards the door, but she knew there was nowhere to run. She was on a Dalek command station, orbiting a vast space-time anomaly. Any reprieve would be temporary. It wouldn't stop her from trying, though.

She turned around, intending to bolt for the door, but cried out in frustration at the sight of a Dalek silhouette in the doorway, blocking her path. As she watched, trying frantically to figure out what to do, the new Dalek glided slowly into view.

It was different from the others. The same bronze and gold patterning, the same height and general appearance, but the midsection had been replaced, so that instead of the usual arm and gun stick, there was an enormous black cannon mounted on a ball socket.

She backed away, lurching in the low gravity.

The Dalek edged towards her, levelling its cannon. 'ERADICATE! ERADICATE!' Wisps of ruby-coloured energy began to gather around the nozzle of its weapon.

'No! Please!' screamed Jocelyn, raising her hands to cover her face as the cannon spat a stream of light at her.

The last thing she saw was the eye of the Dalek Emperor glaring down at her from the screen above with maleficent intent.

---

'Careful. It might still be out here,' said Cinder, crouching by the TARDIS and scanning the ruins for any sign of the Degradation. 'That one was armed with four energy weapons.'

'I'm sure it's scuttled off to warn its friends by now,' said the Time Lord. 'They won't like the fact I'm here very much at all.'

Cinder stared at him. She'd heard that Time Lords were famously arrogant, but this was different.

He didn't seem as if he were being boastful. In fact, if anything, he'd delivered that last comment with a weary inevitability that suggested he didn't really want to be here. She was warming to him, although, for now, she'd have to remain cautious. He was difficult to decipher, and she had no idea whether she could trust him or not. Him being with another human seemed to have eased her up a bit. She just hoped he wasn't going to make any trouble if she did manage to get him into Andor. A quick look, and then back here to the ship. That was her plan. If they were swift, they could return by morning.

The old man had his screwdriver in his hand again. She watched as he raised it up over his head and pressed the button. He moved his arm back and forth in a sweeping motion, listening to the sound it made, before shrugging, and then tucking it away into his ammo belt again.

Cinder walked over to stand beside them. She glanced around her, still feeling a little too exposed in the gully. 'I'm Cinder, by the way,' she said. She offered John her hand.

"John. John Connor." the other man introduced himself as he begins to shake her hand in a firm grip.

The Time Lord only nodded in silence.

Cinder sighed. 'Usually when someone tells you their name, the polite thing to do is respond by telling them yours.'

'Is it?' said the Time Lord, a little bluntly. They lapsed into silence for a moment.

'Well, your companion seems to have the proper manners as he did introduced himself first.' said Cinder.

'What sort of name is "Cinder" anyway?' the Time Lord said, deftly changing the subject.

'It's the only name I have, these days,' she said. 'I used to have another, a long time ago, before the Daleks came. But after they killed my family and left me to die inside a rusty old dustbin, I left that life behind. The people who found me named me "Cinder", on account of my hair.' She reached up and tousled her mess of orange locks.

The other man, now known to her as John Connor, could only give her a sympathetic and empathetic look of understanding. Something that she subtly noticed. It would appear that this other man seemed to be more than meets the eye. His military markings on his shoulders would say so if she were to observe closely enough.

The Time Lord regarded her thoughtfully. 'I understand,' he said. 'I used to have a name, too, but I can barely recall the last time I used it.'

'Why?' she said. 'Was it terribly embarrassing?'

The Time Lord cast her a sidelong glance. 'It was a name that stood for something. I'm no longer worthy of it.'

'Isn't that for others to judge, Doctor?' said John in a concerned tone.

'Perhaps, John' he replied in a sad tone.

'Tell me,' she said. 'Tell me what it was.'

He seemed to think about it for a moment. 'The Doctor,' he said. 'I used to be called the Doctor.'

He turned and trudged off down the road, his head bowed.

'Well, Time Lord who used to be called the Doctor,' she called after him. 'You're going the wrong way.'

---

The temperature had dropped with the fading light as the afternoon slowly turned to dusk. Thankfully, Cinder's compact backpack had not been damaged during her fall from the escarpment, and she was able to wrap herself in the warm, hand-knitted jumper she carried with her for the purpose.

Night never fell entirely on Moldox. The light from the Tantalus Eye kept the planet enshrouded in an eerie twilight. Cinder had never known any different, of course, and the thought of utter darkness, impenetrable black, filled her with dread. In her experience, the darkness harboured the monsters. At least on Moldox, you could see them coming.

They had taken a path through the ruins rather than keep to the roads. It meant scrabbling over broken lintels and walls and taking a more circuitous route, but it was harder for the Daleks to move about in the ruins, and if they took to the air they were easier to spot.

They'd seen only one further patrol as they'd trudged the first five miles through a landscape of broken habitation domes and civic buildings: two Daleks and two Gliders, skimming over the rooftops, looking for signs of life below. The Doctor and John had pulled Cinder into a temporary shelter in the archway of a shattered doorway as they'd passed overhead. They'd waited there for a further ten minutes, just to ensure the patrol was not doubling back.

She'd told the Doctor and John they had a quick stop-off to make en route, and they were approaching it now – the last known location of the rebel camp. It was a motley assortment of tents, lash-ups and temporary structures built from the debris of fallen buildings. From above, it was designed to look like any other waste-strewn field, but from down here it resembled the encampment of a marching army, nestled amongst the splintered structures that had once formed a square or recreational park.

Around thirty men, women and children, all dressed in scavenged rags, milled around cleaning weapons, cooking food and tending to each other's wounds. This was the only family that Cinder had known since the age of 7. This was the sum total of the human resistance movement, and, as far as she knew, the last of the free people of Moldox – the ones who had chosen to fight back against the Daleks and had been strong enough and light enough on their feet to survive.

'What is this place?' said the Doctor. 'I thought you were taking us to Andor.'

'And I am. This is the stop I told you about. I need to collect some things.' said Cinder.

'This is where you live?' asked John.

Cinder shook her head. 'Not for more than a couple of days. We have to keep moving if we want to stay ahead of the Daleks. But yes, this is it. This is my life. These are my people.'

The Doctor said nothing, but simply stood, regarding the place with his old, watery eyes.

John was just looking towards him with concerned eyes as he begins to pat the Doctor from the right shoulder.

The Doctor turned towards him, sporting a look of gratitude for his second son.

Cinder couldn't help but notice the look between the Doctor and John.

It would seemed to her that they had a lot of history together.

She couldn't help but remain silent out of respect for but a moment before eventually continuing to speak again.

'Come on, you two' said Cinder. 'I don't want to be here any longer than necessary. I just need to throw a couple of things into my backpack.'

She led him through the makeshift hamlet, drawing open stares from the people they passed.

'Don't mind them,' said Cinder, her voice low. 'It's rare enough we find another living human to join our little gang. Imagine what they'd think if they knew you were a Time Lord?' She grinned, deciding not to add that they would probably lynch the Doctor, given the opportunity.

'If that were to be the case, they'll have to go through me and a whole bunch of others first before they could begin to manage to get him.' said John in a tone of utter seriousness.

Cinder became very alarmed at that grave statement. It would appear that the Time Lord known as the Doctor has many countless friends in high places. As she was pondering deeply on the grave statement, a familiar voice begins to be heard.

'Cinder!'

'Damn it!' She recognised the voice.

She kept her head down. Coyne was the last person she needed to run into now. She'd hoped to slip away without having to see him, without facing the guilt of leaving him here – of leaving them all here – while she ran away with a stranger in a blue box alongside another human. What she was doing wasn't brave. She knew that deep down, but she'd grown so tired of the ceaseless running, of scratching out an existence amongst the ruins and constantly watching over her shoulder for Daleks. She'd never wanted to be a warrior, but the role had been thrust upon her by circumstance, and now, finally, this was her opportunity to escape, to do something different with her life. She knew if she saw Finch that the debt she owed him risked pulling her back in.

'Cinder! Who are your two friends?'

With a sigh, she turned to see Coyne making a beeline for them from around the other side of his tent. 'Hello, Coyne,' she said.

He was lean and muscular, around 40 years of age and was one of the leaders of their small troupe.

He was also the veteran of numerous encounters with the Daleks, as testified by the deep purple scar across the left side of his face, where a glancing energy beam had incinerated his ear and chewed up the flesh of his cheek.

It had been Coyne who had plucked her from the dustbin in the burning ruins of her homestead, and Coyne who had taught her how to survive, how to fight.

'Aren't you going to introduce us?' he said, with a wary look at the Doctor and John.

'This is…' She hesitated. 'This is—'

'John Smith,' said the Doctor, extending his hand. ' This fellow right beside me is John Connor.'

Coyne was raising an eyebrow at the mention of the same first name.

'Well, John Smith, John Connor,' said Coyne, looking the Doctor and John up and down with a bemused and perplexed look. 'What's up with the same name?

'It's just a coincidence, sir. It was my parent's who named me John.' said John in a clarifying tone.

'Where have you lot been hiding?' asked Coyne.

'Anywhere the Daleks can't find us,' said the Doctor, with a thin smile. 'Moving about from place to place, never staying still for very long.' He glanced at Cinder, and she could definitely tell that this wasn't a lie.

'We found Cinder here trying to singlehandedly take down a Dalek patrol,' said John, 'and we decided to drop in and help her out a bit.'

Coyne laughed amiably. 'Yes, that sounds like Cinder.' He put a protective arm around her shoulder. 'But why didn't you take anyone with you? You know the rules. It's not safe to go out there alone.'

'I wasn't alone,' she replied. 'I had John Smith and John Connor here, didn't I?'

Coyne rolled his eyes. 'You know precisely what I mean, Cinder,' he said. 'Look, I bet you could both do with something to eat. Come on, the stew's almost ready.'

Cinder glanced apologetically at the Doctor. 'Well, we…'

'That sounds like a marvellous idea,' said the Doctor as he was looking towards John. 'Wouldn't you agree, John?'

'Certainly, Doctor.' said John with a smile on his face.

---

The stew was a thick broth made from vegetables and herbs, but it was hot and welcome, and Cinder gulped it down, enjoying the rare sensation of a full belly.

It was now what passed for night on Moldox, and the strange, ethereal light of the Eye rippled across the sky, an aurora of yellow, pink and blue striations. It bubbled like the surface of some unfathomable lake, like a colourful oil painting being smeared across the sky.

The Doctor and John, who'd been deep in conversation with Coyne for the last half an hour gleaning details about the Dalek occupation force, came to sit down beside her on an overturned drum. They followed her gaze, looking up at the sky.

'Beautiful, isn't it?' she said.

'Do you know what they are?' the Doctor replied.

She shook her head.

'Time winds.' He took a long swig from a metal mug of tea. 'Temporal radiation from the Eye. What you're seeing up there is a billion years of history, a glimpse into the night sky of the ancient past and the furthest reaches of the future. The radiation causes anomalies, glitches in space-time. It's a window right through to another time, only the world on the other side is shifting in constant flux. And yes, you're right – it is rather beautiful.'

Cinder glanced up at it again, this time with new eyes. 'All that time, all those years of peace. Now there's only the War.'

'The universe is full of wonders, Cinder. The things I've seen… the glass moons of Socho, the Red Veil of the Eastern Parabola, the sky beaches of Altros. There are things out there that would make you weep with joy.' the Doctor was watching her intently.

'Moldox was like that once,' she said. 'Before your war. Before the Daleks came. The skies used to be filled with transport ships, bringing in new and exotic people every day. The cities heaved with life. People were happy. Out on the plains they erected pleasure palaces that overlooked the Barian Sea, with its golden water and beaches formed from grains of ice. They built towers that seemed to reach almost all the way up to the Eye itself, and machines that looked and thought like men. It was an empire to behold. Now it lies in ruins.'

She shuffled the dirt around with the edge of her shoe. 'All those other places you mentioned, those wondrous worlds – you're people are going to destroy them all, aren't they? Every last corner of the universe. By the time you've finished there's going to be nothing left.'

The Doctor and John frowned.

'Not if we can help it,' said the Doctor. 'That's why we're here, Cinder. That's what we're trying to stop, why I need to see what the Daleks are doing here on Moldox.'

She nodded. Could she really trust this man – this Time Lord? There was something about him, something different. Spending time in his company, she felt herself starting to believe, for the first time in years, that there might be a way out of this mess they'd found themselves in; that there might be hope. It was an unfamiliar emotion, and she wasn't yet ready to embrace it. Him being along another human that seemed very close to him was making her easily trust him now by every second that seemed to pass.

'Did you get what you came for?' John said, after a moment. The question pulled her right back to the here and now.

'Yes,' she said, indicating her backpack, which she'd dumped on her bunk a few metres away beneath a canvas awning. 'Just a few mementoes. Things I didn't want to leave behind.' She held up her arm, showing them the bracelet encircling her wrist. It was nothing, really, just a hoop of twisted copper wires, burnished with age. It had been made for her by her brother, all those many years ago, and she'd held on to it ever since. She wouldn't leave Moldox without it. It was all she had left of him, save for her memories.

'We understand,' said the Doctor. He frowned, catching sight of something. 'Tell me, whose is that bunk over there, beside yours?'

Cinder glanced at the other makeshift cot, only a metre or two from her own. It seemed oddly familiar. 'I don't…' She hesitated. 'I feel as if I should know, but I don't,' she said. 'It's the strangest feeling. Like something's missing.'

The Doctor nodded, his expression grave. 'Well, it's nothing to worry about now. It's time to drink up and go and find out what the Daleks are up to at Andor.'

Cinder placed her beaker down and swept up her backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. All she really wanted to do now was sleep, but she'd made a promise to the Doctor, and he in turn had made a promise to her. She was going to see this through, one way or another.

---

'Shhh!'

'We didn't say anything!' said the Doctor.

'No, your feet,' hissed Cinder. 'On the gravel. Walk on the mud instead.'

'Hmm...' John couldn't help but softly laugh.

The Doctor looked at her as if she were mad. 'But then my boots would get filthy,' he said. 'It'll get all over the TARDIS. Who's going to clear it up? You?'

Cinder rolled her eyes. 'Yes, if I must. Just do it. It's better to have muddy boots than to be lying in a ditch with a hole in your chest. We're nearly there. The place will be swarming with Daleks.'

The Doctor tutted dramatically, but did as she said and stepped up onto the verge, abandoning the gravel path.

John was just sporting a smile on his face, shaking his head as he continued to walk on to the mud.

They were standing on the outskirts of Andor, just beyond the boundary of the city walls. The walls themselves had been largely torn down during the years of Dalek occupation, and now formed heaps of rubble and broken slabs. It looked disturbingly like a painting she'd seen as a child in one of her picture books, of a citadel from old Earth, sitting on a craggy outcrop above the ocean.

The net result was that any approach to the city would prove hazardous and, more troubling, exposed.

It was clear to see that Andor had once been spectacular, a jewel at the heart of the colony. What had begun in the early days of the human occupation as a rag-tag collection of functional architecture – hab-blocs, basic schools and boxy civic halls – had, over the years, evolved into a picturesque metropolis.

Buildings from a myriad of original Earth cultures stood shoulder-to-shoulder, here – churches, skyscrapers, theatres and mosques – and the thin bands of aerial walkways crisscrossed the sky.

Many of them were now broken, splintered during the shelling. The buildings were largely abandoned, too, with any survivors like Cinder, left to fend for themselves in the outlying ruins whilst the Daleks had taken up residence in the city.

Cinder beckoned the Doctor and John over to where she was crouching inside the shell of a homestead, peering over a tumbledown wall. Creeping ivy clung to the brickwork, running rampant, the only thing left alive in this forsaken place.

Ducking down so to stay out of sight, the Doctor crept over to crouch beside her. 'Over there,' she said, pointing to a large breach in the city walls. 'Can you see those domes?' The Doctor and John both nodded.

'Those are the Dalek buildings. They've co-opted an old school, adapting it and adding to it. We think it's their base of operations.'

'What about the people?' said John. 'The ones they're bringing here to the city. Where are they?'

Cinder shrugged. 'No one knows. They're taken into those domes for "processing" and never seen again. In the early days we used to speculate about what was happening to them in there, but after a while everyone stopped talking about it. I think we all just assumed they were dead. I've never heard of anyone making it out alive.'

'Then that's where we need to go,' said the Doctor.

Cinder shook her head. 'Oh no, that's not what we agreed. You said you needed to take a look. You've seen it now. It's time to head back to your TARDIS and get as far away from here as possible.'

'Cinder, We need to see what they're doing to those people. If the Daleks are simply killing them, why are they going to the effort of rounding them up and leading them here? Why not just exterminate them on sight? That's the Daleks' modus operandi, isn't it? They're not exactly known for their mercy.' He stroked his beard thoughtfully. 'They're up to something, and I want to get to the bottom of what it is.'

Cinder kicked out at a rock in frustration. It bounced away across the gravel path, striking the opposing wall. Deep down, though, she'd always assumed that this was going to happen.

'You can wait here, if you like,' said John. 'We won't be gone long.'

'I can't let you both go in there alone,' she said. 'Especially unarmed.' What she was thinking, however, was: if the Daleks find you sneaking about, I have no chance of figuring out how to operate their ship. And besides – despite all of that, she was starting to like them.

She heard a dull, mechanical whirr from around ten metres away, and hurriedly ducked back behind the wall. The Doctor and John had clearly heard it too, as they did the same. He peered over the top of the wall, his eyes gleaming.

'What was that?' she whispered. 'Can you see anything?'

'Over there,' said the Doctor, inclining his head. 'They're coming this way.'

Cinder twisted, peeking through a hole in the wall. Through the bushy ivy, she could see a long line of humans, around fifteen or twenty of them, being marched toward the city gates. They looked exhausted, pale and close to death. They were flanked by at least five Daleks, two of which were hovering, one on either side of the line, scanning the surrounding ruins for any signs of resistance.

She dipped her head as an eyestalk swivelled in her direction. She held her breath, waiting for the bark of a Dalek voice, or the blast of an energy weapon. Thankfully, none came. It seemed the Daleks were preoccupied with transporting their prisoners.

Four, five minutes passed, with neither Cinder nor John nor the Doctor daring to move or speak. Then came the sounds of the city gates creaking open, the distant squawk of two Daleks exchanging orders and the wail of a human finally succumbing to fear or fatigue. Cinder wanted to stick her fingers in her ears and drown it all out.

The Daleks rasped more orders at their prisoners, and a minute or two later the gates closed again behind them. Cinder slowly exhaled, for what felt like the first time in hours.

'They've gone,' said the Doctor, taking a quick look. 'We should move quickly, see if we can find a way to sneak in behind them.'

He stood, offering her his hand, and as she took it she froze in horror at the sight of the glowing tip of a Dalek eyestalk, peering over the wall at them.

'INTRU-DER! ALERT! ALERT!'

Only its head and eyestalk were visible, its manipulator arm and weapon hidden behind the ruined wall.

'ELEVATE! ELEVATE!'

'Come on!' John wrenched her up from where she was crouched. 'Run!'

'No!' she yelled, twisting out of his grip. Her weapon was slung over her shoulder and a makeshift leather strap, and she swung it around, sliding it into her hands and searching for the trigger.

The Dalek was rising steadily into the air. 'EXTERMINA—'

There was a tremendous explosion as a lance of energy burst from the end of Cinder's gun, taking off the Dalek's head and sending the remaining shell spinning to the floor. It crashed into the side of a nearby building and bounced across the ground, finally coming to rest a few metres from them. Steam curled from the crater where its head had been.

The Doctor and John both stared at her.

'I thought that thing had run out of power,' John said, surprised but clearly relieved.

'I picked up a new power pack at the camp,' she said, with a grin. 'Thought it might come in handy.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Well, you've certainly given them something to talk about. They'll be on us in moments. Come on, while we've got a distraction. Now's our chance to get inside.'

'Really?' said Cinder. 'You two really want to go in there?'

'I thought we'd been through this,' said John.

'Just checking,' said Cinder. 'Because it is about the worst plan I've ever heard.'

A chorus of Dalek voices rose in the distance, coming from behind the city walls.

'I don't see that we have much choice,' replied the Doctor. He started off, his boots crunching in the gravel. 'Come on. This way.'

As the Daleks converged on the spot where they'd been standing just a few moments before, the Doctor, John, and Cinder made a mad, panicked dash for the city walls.

The Doctor led the way, keeping to the muddy verge – somewhat ironically, Cinder noted – and sticking close to the walls of the abandoned homesteads, hiding in the shadows.

Behind them, she heard a Dalek issuing a tirade of instructions to its vile kin. 'SEEK. LOCATE. EXTERMINATE!'

This was utter, unadulterated madness. She'd never done anything quite so reckless in her entire life. She was certain there was only one way this way going to end… and yet, it was exhilarating, too.

For the first time in as long as she could remember she had a purpose other than simply destroying as many Daleks as she could before she died. She had something to live for. Which, she supposed, was also ironic, given that she was charging headlong into enemy territory, where the most likely outcome was the bolt of an energy weapon between her shoulder blades.

The Doctor had reached the foot of the wall and was scrabbling up onto a heap of rubble, aiming for a narrow crevice through which he could gain entrance to the city proper. He was unexpectedly athletic for an old, curmudgeonly man – spritely, even – as he hauled himself up, not even bothering to glance back to see if the Daleks had spotted them.

John followed soon after, climbing up the wall with ease, also not even bothering to glance back to see if the Daleks ha spotted them.

'Wait for me!' she hissed as she followed suit, scrabbling up behind him. It was a daunting climb, but she had little choice. It was this or the Daleks.

The Daleks had now found their dead comrade and were fanning out, combing the ruins in search of the perpetrator. Cinder realised they didn't have much time before they were spotted. She reached up, catching hold of a ledge, but her fingers slipped on the smooth granite and she swung out, dangling by one hand. She stifled a cry of alarm, which came out as an unseemly grunt.

The cold, sharp lip bit into her remaining hand, and she felt her grip loosening. She reached up, trying again, but without the momentum she couldn't quite get a hold. She was going to slide back down, back to the rocks below where, no doubt, the Daleks would find her, if she wasn't dashed upon the rocks first. She looked down, trying to assess the distance. Her vision swam.

Two hands suddenly grasped her own. She looked up to see the Doctor and John peering down at her, holding her by the wrist.

'Hurry up,' the Doctor whispered. 'Places to go, people to see.'

He dragged her up onto the ledge.

'You're all enjoying this, aren't you?' she said, a touch of accusation in her voice.

John grinned. 'Aren't you?'

Cinder shrugged, but gave an impish smile. 'Maybe,' she replied, noncommittally.

The crevice in the wall seemed far bigger from up here than it had from below. She'd anticipated having to wriggle through sideways, but in fact it was big enough that they could easily walk through side by side. As they did, Cinder realised the Doctor still had hold of her hand. She didn't know if it was more for his comfort than her own, but she didn't mind either way.

There was a drop of around twenty feet on the other side of the wall, into what looked like soft, sticky mud. Beyond that was a small patch of wasteland, which terminated in a line of abandoned human structures. As far as she could tell there were no Daleks to observe them. Evidently, her quick reactions out there in the ruins had proved a rather successful distraction.

'You first,' said Cinder, glancing at the Doctor. 'It was your idea.'

'Oh, together, surely?' he said as he looked back and forth towards Cinder and John.

'Together." said John.

Cinder sighed resignedly. 'Very well.' She peered over the edge again, considering the wisdom of this next move, but decided she wasn't about to start being sensible now. It was far too late for that.

'On the count of one, two—'

The Doctor jumped, still holding her hand, and she was forced to leap after him, with John leaping on his own. They all landed on their feet, and, with a synchronous movement that would have been funny if it hadn't been for the circumstances, fell to their knees in the wet, cloying mud.

'Urgh,' said Cinder, letting go of the Doctor's hand and getting to her feet. 'My leggings are soaked through.' She helped the Doctor up.

'Don't worry, Cinder,' John said. 'I'm sure there'll be something similar in one of the TARDIS's wardrobes.'

She raised an eyebrow towards the Doctor. 'Fond of women's clothes, is he?'

'Yes,' the Doctor said, indicating his muddy trousers. 'Clearly, I have a penchant.'

She laughed, covering her mouth with her hands.

'Right,' he said, pointing at the sombre-looking buildings up ahead. They were very much abandoned, shrouded in darkness, with broken windows and plants poking inquisitively through holes in the roofs. 'I think it was this way.'

'No,' said Cinder. 'I've studied maps of this place. If you want to get closer to the Dalek domes we should follow the wall round this way for a while. Then we can cut across, keeping to the shadows. They shouldn't be expecting anyone to approach from that direction.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Aren't you glad you came along? I know I am. What about you, John?'

'I'm glad as well Doctor.' said John with a grin.

They were untroubled by Daleks as they crept through the empty streets of the city, passing long abandoned homesteads and shop fronts in which, years later, goods still stood on display in the windows, now slowly turning to mulch and mould.

The threat of the Daleks was an ever-brooding presence, however, depressing Cinder's earlier good humour. She could hear their rasping, tinny voices, barking indiscriminate commands at one another as they combed the ruins, searching for whomever had destroyed one of their patrols.

Cinder had no idea how they were going to get out of this. Scrabbling back up the wall was no option – it was far too high. They would need to find an alternative route out of the city – preferably one that wasn't being guarded by Daleks.

That, however, was for later. Right now, she needed to concentrate on getting them to the Dalek base without triggering any warning systems or bringing down the wrath of a patrol.

She stopped at the corner of an intersection, putting a hand on the Doctor's chest to hold him back, and peered around. At the end of a long, narrow street she could see the curve of one of the Dalek domes, its outer surface stippled with familiar globes. Before that, however, was a single Dalek, standing with its back to them, its eyestalk swivelling from side to side, as if keeping watch.

She pulled back. 'Dalek,' she whispered.

'Now I wasn't expecting to find one of those here,' whispered the Doctor.

Cinder punched him gently on the shoulder. 'Seriously, what are we going to do? If I fire my weapon this close to the dome, they'll hear it. There'll be swarms of them on us in moments.'

The Doctor and John stuck their head around the corner, with the Doctor assessing the situation for himself.

'We could just ask it nicely?' the Doctor said. 'Tell it we're lost and that we want to go back to our cells in the camp. It's as good a way as any of getting inside.'

Cinder looked at him as if he were mad. 'My liberty is more important to me than getting inside that dome,' she said. 'And my life. I have my limits.'

'Well, in that case, let's go round.' said John.

They backtracked until they found a gap between two rows of houses, forming a narrow alleyway.

Quietly, they traversed the length of it, their feet sloshing in the unwholesome effluvia that ran in a constant stream from the overflowing drains.

'Come on you two, in here,' said the Doctor, pulling Cinder and John into the doorway of an empty house. It looked relatively intact – a standard-issue, prefabricated habitation bloc, built for a family. He tried the door, but it was locked.

Cinder watched as he removed his screwdriver from its hoop in the ammo belt he wore slung across his chest, and tinkered for a minute with the settings. He held the tip of it to the lock and pressed the button. The end of it lit up, and it emitted an electronic warble. Seconds later, she heard the lock mechanism slide open.

'What did you do?' she asked.

'Agitated a few molecules,' he whispered, tapping the end of his nose. 'Let's go inside.' He led Cinder and John into the building.

It was dark inside, without the flickering glow of the Tantalus Eye and the radiation storms still raging overhead. What light there was seeped in through the gaps between the lichen that was growing over the downstairs windowpanes, just about allowing her to see once her eyes had adjusted to the gloom.

She swallowed. She felt as if her heart were in her mouth. The room they'd entered was laid out as if the family who had once occupied it had simply upped and left; had got up and walked out, with every intention of returning later to pick up where they'd left off. Children's toys were strewn across the carpet. An empty glass rested on a side table. A picture frame on the wall still projected the holographic resemblance of a man and a woman, clutched in a happy embrace.

Cinder felt the weight of guilt upon her shoulders, of immense sadness. How had she survived all this time, while the Daleks had taken these people and their families? What right did she have to still be alive? How had she been allowed to live on while her mother, father and brother had been exterminated?

Her entire life up until this point had been about eradicating those memories, those insidious, guiltridden thoughts; about burying them in violence and revenge, turning them into the burning hatred of the Daleks that now festered at the very core of her being.

She'd never once thought of trying to rescue anyone, of trying to change things. It had always seemed so futile, so far beyond her means. And so she had settled for taking pot shots at passing Dalek patrols, or hunting them in the ruins of her former home, counting each death as a victory.

Then the Doctor and John had come along, tumbling out of the sky in the Doctor's magical box, and in a few short hours had forced her to face up to this, to recognise that perhaps there were things that could be done, that nothing was quite as impossible as it might seem. There were different ways of fighting back. She wasn't quite sure what he intended to do with the information he gleaned here on Moldox, but she knew it wasn't simply for his own gratification. He was getting involved, because he wanted to help, wanted to make it all stop.

She could see now that all she'd been doing was screaming into the wind. Those victories she'd notched up on the barrel of her gun had been hollow, every one of them. She hadn't changed anything, hadn't really made a difference. She'd wasted so much time.

Yet something in her had known there was still time to make a difference. She'd followed the Doctor here, a Time Lord she barely knew, along with another fellow human named John, and now, standing in the remnants of Andor, she realised he might prove to be her salvation. This wasn't simply about helping her to run away from her old life. It was about showing her how to change it for herself. What was more, she thought he knew that, too. She looked round for him and realised he'd already moved on, deeper into the house. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and followed after him.

Cinder found him in one of the children's bedrooms on the second floor, standing by the window, the brightly coloured curtains pulled aside so that he might look out upon the Dalek base. She joined him there.

From this distance the Dalek structures didn't appear quite as sophisticated as she'd imagined. In fact, they looked rather lashed together, with narrow metal causeways erupting from the flank of each dome to puncture its neighbour. There were five domes in total, forming a loose circle around a central courtyard. They were large and seemingly identical, disc-shaped with a raised central turret, and decorated with the same bronze and gold patterning as the Daleks themselves.

The base had an economical, practical layout that had little or nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with function. The whole place had a temporary, transitory feel to it, despite the fact it had been in situ for well over a decade.

'What are they?' said Cinder.

'Spacecraft,' said John in a grave tone. 'Dalek war vessels. They haven't co-opted the old school, so much as levelled it and landed their war saucers on top of it. They've erected walkways between the warships, but they're only temporary structures. The whole base could be disbanded at any moment. They're clearly not intending to stay on Moldox.'

'Then what are they doing here?' asked Cinder. She'd always supposed the occupation was about the Daleks wanting control of the planet. She'd never even considered that there might be another, less permanent purpose.

'That's a question I'm very keen to know the answer to,' said the Doctor.

Cinder thought she saw a sign of movement in the courtyard and leaned forward, until her nose was almost touching the dirty glass of the window. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see what was going on. There was definitely movement – people, in fact – a group of humans being shepherded out into the paved area that had once been a children's playground.

Floodlights blared suddenly, causing her to wince as everything was brought into sudden, sharp relief. Three Daleks were jostling the human prisoners – around ten of them, both male and female – making them form into a long line, standing shoulder to shoulder. Cinder could hear nothing from this distance, but she could imagine the threats being issued by the metal monsters in order to force the humans to comply.

The Doctor and John put their hands on the sill, peering out, watching with interest.

Why were they forming a line?

'Oh, no!' said Cinder, with sudden realisation. 'They're going to execute them!'

'Perhaps,' said the Doctor, his voice a low growl. 'But again, why do it like this? Why go to all the trouble of taking them prisoner, leading them here half-starved, only to line them up in the courtyard to shoot them down. There has to be more to it.'

'Something tells me that I think we're about to find out soon enough, Doctor.' said John, his tone full of grim.

Cinder didn't really want to watch, fearful of what she might see, but nevertheless she was transfixed, unable to tear her gaze away. As she watched, the three Daleks backed away, two of them disappearing from view, while another moved forward into focus.

This one had a slightly different, yet familiar outline. 'That's like the one I saw during the ambush,' said Cinder. 'The one you decapitated when you crashed. It's one of the mutants, a Degradation.'

It was precisely like the monstrous thing she had encountered earlier that day, the size and shape of a standard Dalek, save for the fact its midsection had been replaced by a fat, black cannon.

'That's no ordinary Degradation,' said the Doctor. 'That's different. That's something new.'

The Dalek swivelled to face the sorry-looking line of human prisoners. One of the other Daleks hove into view, and Cinder could tell it was speaking by virtue of the flashing lights on its domed head.

In response, the cannon-wielding Dalek powered up its weapon. An aura of intense, ruby-coloured light flickered to life at the end of the barrel. There was a sudden, massive discharge as the weapon spat a stream of pink light, which engulfed four of the people, warping around them as they screamed and tried to back away.

The remaining prisoners staggered out of the way, clearly terrified as they looked on upon their own likely fate.

The four victims writhed in obvious agony, as the pink light appeared to seep into their bodies, pouring into their open mouths, their eyes, permeating through their skin. Then, as if their flesh were simply unable to contain so much raw energy, they blossomed, their forms dissolving, the pink light flickering brightly before dispersing and fading away, like wisps of trailing smoke.

Cinder staggered back from the window feeling nauseous. She put her hand to her brow. She could tell that something was badly wrong, put she couldn't put her finger on what it was. She stared at the Doctor, put her hand on his arm as if to steady herself.

'What just happened?' she said. 'I know something awful has just happened, but what was it?'

She glanced back at the courtyard, where the Daleks were surveying the six prisoners they had brought out into the courtyard a few minutes earlier.

The Doctor and John both stepped away from the window, with the Doctor taking hold of Cinder's forearm, led her away too.

'It's a temporal weapon,' he said. 'A dematerialisation gun. The Daleks have developed a new template, a new paradigm, which has the power to eradicate a person from history.'

'How can you tell?' said Cinder. 'How do you know just by looking at it?'

The Doctor and John both narrowed their eyes.

'Didn't you see it? Didn't you see what it just did to those four people?' asked John.

Cinder shook herself free from his grip. She went back to the window. No, there were six people there, just as there had been before. 'Four people?' she said. 'There are six of them down there.'

Even as she said it, though, she knew something was awry. She could feel it, nagging away at her. She was missing something. Couldn't she even trust her own mind any more?

'It's the weapon, Cinder. That's what's doing it,' said the Doctor. 'That cannon – it can erase a person's timeline from history, removing every trace of them, as if they never even existed. It's what happened to your friend, out there in the ruins, the person whose bunk was next to your own at the camp, the one you can't quite remember. Your mind is struggling to comprehend it. You know there's something wrong, something missing. The memories are still there, buried inside your head, but they no longer add up, they no longer relate to a person you've known or seen, because reality has warped around you.'

Cinder shook her head, as if trying to clear it. She didn't understand. A weapon that not only killed someone, but rewrote history as if they'd never even been born? It was the most awful thing she'd ever heard. The sheer violence of it – to not only take a life, but to undo every action, every thought, every emotion ever enacted or experienced by that person… it had to be the most evil device ever conceived. She wiped tears from her eyes, remembering the grief, if not the people.

'I'm sorry,' said the Doctor. 'I truly am. But that trip in the TARDIS is going to have to wait a little longer. If the Daleks are able to disseminate this weapon, then the War is all but lost.' He stepped towards her, put his arms around her and pulled her close, hugging her to his chest. 'I'm going to stop them doing this to anyone else.'

Sniffing back her tears, Cinder pushed the Doctor away. She fixed him with a defiant stare. Her resolve hardened. 'I'm in,' she said. 'Whatever it takes, I'll help you stop them.'

The Doctor gave a grim smile. 'That's my girl,' he said.

---

'How are we going to get in?' said Cinder.

They'd left the house, emerging onto the still, empty street outside. The Dalek domes loomed large and foreboding at the next intersection. Cinder was trying to work out the best plan for getting inside.

'I always find at times like these,' said the Doctor, 'that the best recourse is to use the front door.'

'The front door? You can't seriously mean that you're just going to walk on up there and try the handle?' said Cinder. She couldn't tell if he was naive, confident, or just dangerously reckless. Nor did she know if the doors on Dalek space vessels even had handles.

'Precisely,' replied the Doctor. 'It usually does the trick.' He strode off in the direction of the dome.

Exasperated, Cinder rushed after him. 'You find yourself in these sorts of situations often, do you?' she asked.

'More than you'd care to know,' said the Doctor, with a heavy sigh. His eyes looked rheumy and tired.

John could only look at the Doctor with sympathy as he knew exactly what he is talking about.

She wondered how old he really was. He certainly looked old, but she had no idea how long a Time Lord could actually survive. She'd heard tell that they were immortal, that they couldn't be killed, but also that they could change their faces at will, become someone different and new. She didn't know if any of that were true. For all she knew, the Doctor was as mortal as she was, and just as susceptible to the blast of a Dalek energy weapon.

'But what about the Daleks?' she said. 'You've seen what they can do. That new weapon, the dematerialisation gun – what if they come at you with one of those?'

'The Daleks are as arrogant as the Time Lords,' said the Doctor. 'Perhaps worse. That's the beauty of a plan like this. They won't be expecting anyone to simply roll up and invite themselves in.'

'I'd hardly call it a plan,' muttered Cinder. She clutched her gun a little tighter. When she'd said she was in on this escapade, she'd expected him have a bit more of an idea about exactly how they were going to go about it.

At the end of the street she glanced left, ready to make a run for it, but the Dalek they'd seen earlier had moved on. She checked in the other direction, looking along the street.

The city was arranged in a basic grid pattern, designed to a plan the colonists had brought with them from Earth. They'd arrived with a certain amount of prefabricated materials in their hold, and these had formed the basis of the very first buildings – those, and the skin of the ship that had brought them here. As the colony had developed and they'd learned to manufacture, to harvest the local wood and mine for minerals and metals, the buildings had grown more sophisticated, but still they had followed the plan from Earth. Month after month, year after year, the colony had grown, soon forgetting it was a colony at all and becoming a home.

People had flourished here, and in time they had spread across the other planets of the Spiral. Moldox, however, had been the first, the origin of human life in this sector. Now, billions of those people were dead, possibly erased entirely from history, whilst billions more were enslaved to the Daleks.

The Doctor was right. They would stop this happening to anyone else. They had to. It was time to stop doubting him. If brazenly walking up to the saucer and strolling in through the nearest entry point was going to be the best way into the Dalek base, then she would follow him. There was something about the Doctor – something that inspired her to trust him.

They crossed the intersection and continued down the filthy street, until they were standing in the shadow of the nearest saucer. It was immense, towering over her, and she could see here, from ground level, that it sat upon three domes that sprouted from its base. Beneath it was the rubble of one of the old school buildings. The ablative armour that formed the outer skin of the ship was pitted and covered in verdigris. None of the lights appeared to be functional. Creeping vines had begun to make inroads, curling up from below like willowy green fingers, clutching at the alien interloper. It looked as abandoned as the human buildings that surrounded it.

They edged forward, glancing from side to side. High above, on one of the gantries, a Dalek and two Degradations – the squat, egg-shaped variety with the spider legs – were crossing from one saucer to another. The Doctor and John didn't appear to have spotted them. Cinder grabbed their respective arms and dragged them into the shadows beneath the belly of the ship. She jabbed her gun silently in the direction of the Daleks and they nodded in understanding. They waited for a moment until the Daleks had passed.

'There should be a ramp on this side, if I'm not mistaken,' said the Doctor, fiddling with the knot of his scarf. He moved on, following the rim of the saucer around until they were close to the edge of the central courtyard, but still largely hidden by the shadows.

The Daleks appeared to have finished their weapon testing, and the remaining humans – six of them, she counted, relieved – were being herded back into the saucer on the other side.

It seemed incomprehensible to Cinder that this site, this old children's playground, could have become such a place of death. The faded markings of hopscotch squares and painted circles on the ground seemed incongruous, wrong. She was filled with a sharp feeling of disquiet. It was almost as if the Daleks had chosen this location in order to mock their human captives, to remind them of happier times, now lost to them for ever.

'MOVE, OR YOU WILL BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED,' said one of the Daleks, shoving a prisoner in the back with its manipulator arm. The man staggered forward, but didn't acknowledge the Dalek, didn't even cry out. The fight had clearly gone out of him, and he shuffled onto the boarding ramp, his head bowed.

This was a man waiting to die, Cinder realised. They all were. Every one of those prisoners, men and women – they knew it was only a matter of time, and in some ways, they'd probably begun to look forward to it. To crave it, even. At least death would be a release from the torment inflicted upon them by their captors. Anything else was just an extension of their agony.

She watched the final stragglers of the small party mount the ramp and disappear into the other ship.

'Right,' whispered the Doctor, touching the top of her arm to get her attention. 'This is our chance. There's a ramp just around here.' He indicated by waving his thumb. 'Slowly and quietly, and stay by our side.'

Cautiously, they crossed the courtyard and ascended the ramp. Cinder kept her weapon slung at her hip, her finger close to the trigger. She could hardly believe what she was doing. If Coyne could see her now…

Side by side, the two of them stepped into the yawning maw of the Dalek ship.

Inside, the walls were comprised of a series of crystalline archways patterned with small roundels, and through which lurid colours – yellows, greens, ochres and purples – pulsed like blood pounding through a network of arteries and veins.

A wide passageway appeared to run around the circumference of the ship, offering them the choice of going left or right. Cinder's heart was hammering in her chest, expecting a Dalek to round one of the bends at any moment. For now, though, they seemed to be alone.

'Well, that was easier than I thought,' she whispered.

'Getting in is the easy bit,' replied John. 'It's getting out that's usually the problem.'

'Oh, thanks for that,' she muttered. She realised her hands were trembling as she tried to hold her gun level. 'So, what now?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'We take a look around. Each of these domes will be given over to a specific purpose. Let's find out which of them we're in.'

Staying close to the wall, they followed the passage as it snaked around to the left, peering ahead for any sign of oncoming Daleks. Sheer luck had got this far, Cinder was sure, and she was convinced they would find themselves surrounded at any moment. Surely the Daleks must have monitoring systems aboard their ships?

After a while the passage branched to the right, splitting into a number of narrow tunnels that appeared to lead deeper into the ship. The Doctor – who seemed to be arbitrarily deciding which way to go – led her down one of these smaller, tributary corridors with a wave of his hand.

Here, there was a row of panels in the wall resembling doors; large metal sheets inset into archways. They didn't appear to have any controls. Or, Cinder considered, any handles. Well, that answered that question, at least.

'Are these cells?' asked Cinder. 'Might there be prisoners inside?'

'Possibly,' said John. 'It's hard to tell from out here, although I imagine they're keeping them all together on the other war saucer, or in some of the buildings nearby.'

'We should check,' she said. 'How do I open the door?'

'Walk towards it. They're motion activated,' the Doctor replied.

Cinder crept towards the door, but nothing happened.

'No, not like that,' said the Doctor. 'Walk at it with purpose, like a Dalek.' He strode forward confidently, puffing out his chest. There was a click and a mechanical whirr, and a second later the door whooshed open, sliding up into the roof.

The room revealed beyond was a relatively large chamber, filled with all manner of bizarre equipment and technological ephemera. The stench that wafted out, however, was almost enough to cause her to keel over and vomit. Immediately, she wished she'd kept on walking.

The Doctor stepped inside, then John followed, then Cinder followed, wrinkling her nose at the smell. It was foul, like rancid, rotting meat. Something inside the room was very wrong indeed.

Five glass structures stood against the rear wall. They were transparent, but shaped in the archetypal form of a Dalek, complete with a glass manipulator arm and weapon.

Cinder hefted her gun, expecting them to swing into action at any moment. She backed up, glancing from side to side.

John held out his hand, reassuring her. 'They're not living Daleks,' he said. 'At least not yet. Take another look.'

Still a little unsure, she crept closer. Through the glass walls of the casing she could see the organic matter inside, a heaving, glutinous mass of flesh and tubing, steadily inflating and deflating like a sticky, diseased lung.

The room was some sort of incubation chamber.

This in itself was enough to cause another involuntary gag, but it was when she looked at the second of the incubation chambers that she realised the true extent of the horror. In this one, the organic component still had a human face.

It had once been a woman, but now, if there was anything left behind the darting, yellow eyes, it was only madness. The head had mutated, becoming hairless, misshapen. The flesh had blistered and bubbled, caked in gnarled tumours. The woman's limbs had been removed, and cables extruded from her chest, wiring her into the incubation housing.

Cinder staggered back, looking away, unable to process exactly what she was seeing. It was simultaneously the most disgusting and most pitiful thing she'd ever seen.

'This is what they're doing here?' she said. 'Experimenting on the prisoners?'

'Turning them into Daleks,' said John, his voice grim.

'Turning humans into Daleks?' echoed Cinder, unable to adequately display her disgust.

'Yes, it rather seems they're not quite as concerned with racial purity as they used to be,' said the Doctor. 'Funny how ideals go out the window when your back's against the wall.'

'But why? What could they possibly have to gain?'

'They're making foot soldiers,' John said in a grim tone. 'Cannon fodder. They're dousing people in radiation so that their cells mutate into forms resembling the mutant Kaleds. Once they've altered them physiologically, they'll remove all of the emotion, effectively lobotomising them, and re-house them in normal Dalek casings. They'll take orders as well as any other Dalek, and if they're destroyed, well – at least they weren't a real Dalek.'

'It's obscene,' said Cinder.

The Doctor and John both nodded.

'It's just the tip of the iceberg,' the Doctor said.

Cinder looked around the room. Besides the five incubators there was little else worthy of note: a bubbling vat containing something that looked disgustingly like melting flesh, and a web work of trailing cables hooked up to the incubators, that disappeared into the ceiling and walls. Clearly, it was these that carried the power and nutrients needed to keep the human mutants alive during their transition.

She glanced at the Doctor and John, a question in her eyes. They nodded in understanding, and crossed to the door to keep watch.

Cinder dropped her gun, allowing it to swing loose on its shoulder strap, and grabbed a bundle of wires in both hands. She yanked down on them hard, using all of her weight to try to tear them free of their ceiling mounts. On the third attempt at least half of them sheared, ripping loose, horrible black fluid spraying in gouts from the frayed ends like blood spurting from a fresh wound. Cinder dropped the frayed ends to the floor. She continued like this for a few moments, ripping all of the cables out of their sockets, allowing her anger to burn brightly and violently in her chest.

When she was finished, she crouched down before the incubator housing the once-woman, and stared into the thing's eyes. Its pupils fixed on her, but the look was vacant, disturbing. 'Find peace,' said Cinder. She got to her feet and walked over to the Doctor and John. They were still waiting just inside the doorway, keeping watch for Daleks.

'Let's see what else they've got here,' the Doctor said. He stepped from the room and immediately leapt back, catching both John and Cinder in the chest with his arm and almost bowling her over. 'Daleks,' he whispered.

They fell back, one on each side of the open doorway, pressing flat against the wall as three Daleks slid past. They moved almost silently, their eyestalks swivelling, their manipulator arms twitching as if feeling the air for disturbance.

Cinder held her breath, waiting for them to pass, assuming at any minute one of them would note that something was wrong in the incubation chamber and turn to investigate.

Thankfully, they didn't appear to be paying attention, and trundled on, heading deeper into the ship.

She waited for the Doctor to indicate the all-clear before she allowed herself to exhale. 'Do they live aboard these things?' she said, when she was sure they would not be overheard. 'The saucers, I mean. Is this their home?'

'In as much as a Dalek does live,' said John. 'They don't sleep, eat, or drink. They don't have a concept of friendship, companionship. They're single-minded, relentless in their pursuit of their end goal – to eradicate all life in the cosmos save for their own.'

'Yeah, I pretty much got that, John,' said Cinder, with a crooked smile.

They moved on, continuing their circuit of the ship.

'The flight deck is at the heart of the ship,' said the Doctor. 'That's where most of the Daleks will be. I'm far more interested in what's going on elsewhere.'

He walked towards another door, which slid open as he approached.

The contents of this room were just as disturbing – and, Cinder noted, just as foul smelling – as those of the last. Here, experiments were clearly being carried out on the Degradations.

The casing of a Glider lay in pieces on the floor, while the torso had been removed from inside the glass chamber and was splayed open on a metal slab. It looked as if the Daleks had been carrying out an autopsy investigation, and had simply abandoned it part way through. Excised organs sat in metal bowls, slowly turning putrid, and the uncovered carcass was drying out and beginning to rot.

Components from other unusual-looking Daleks were strewn about the room: an elongated eyestalk, the bottom half of a travel unit in which all of the sensor globes were transparent and flickered with an exotic blue light, a golden head dome with four radiation valves.

'Is it true,' said Cinder, covering her mouth and refusing to look at the corpse, 'that these are the result of Time Lord experiments, attempts to re-engineer Dalek history and evolution?'

The Doctor and John both shared a knowing look, then they both turned back to Cinder.

The Doctor shrugged. 'There's some truth in that,' he said, 'of course there is, but only inasmuch as it gave the Daleks an idea, a means of experimenting on and adapting themselves. They've taken it to far greater extremes than the Time Lords ever did.'

'You mean they're doing this to themselves?' said Cinder. The very idea of it appalled her.

The Doctor nodded. 'A Dalek eugenics programme,' he said. 'Dipping into as many alternative realities as they can find and tampering with their own DNA, trying to nurture the perfect killing machine to deploy against the Time Lords.'

'You must be quite the fearsome enemy,' said Cinder, 'to inspire that.'

The Doctor looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

'Yeah, you could say that again.' John thought very grimly as he knew how exactly right Cinder is.

'We're not going to find what we're looking for here,' the Doctor said. 'I think it's time we checked one of the other saucers. These are just experimental laboratories.'

Cinder wanted to ask him exactly what he was looking for, but before she had the chance he'd set off again, disappearing out into the passage, with John following him soon after.

'Come on, let's keep moving.' said John as he begins to walk towards the Doctor.

Her questions would have to wait – trying to engage in conversation as they crept around the ship only risked bringing the Daleks down on top of them. She hurried to catch up.

They continued with their reconnaissance around the outer passages of the ship, until they happened upon an access ramp leading to the upper level. They hurried up it, spurred on by the sound of muffled Dalek voices, echoing through a doorway behind them.

The upper tier of the vessel appeared very much the same as the one below, although they found themselves facing a large, open hatchway as they emerged from the top of the ramp. Here, the metal walkway jutted from the hole, neatly spanning the open space to the opposing saucer.

It was makeshift; it looked as if it had been lashed up in nearly as much of a hurry as the temporary buildings that had served as her home for so long. It didn't look particularly safe – there were no handrails or lips, just a smooth band of metal, about four metres wide, stretched between the two vessels for the Daleks to glide over. Unlike a Dalek, however, if Cinder fell, she wouldn't be able to fire a quick burst from her thrusters to stabilise herself or fly away.

She inched to the opening and peered down, while the Doctor and John checked there were no Daleks coming from the other directions. It was quite a drop. Below them, the courtyard now appeared to be empty, the prisoners and the Daleks having returned to one of the other saucers.

'It doesn't look particularly safe,' hissed Cinder, as the Doctor and John joined her at the foot of the metal bridge.

'You'll be fine,' said the Doctor, in what sounded like an attempt to reassure her. He didn't, however, sound particularly sure himself. He tapped the metal gantry with the edge of his boot, and then lurched out, trying it with his weight. 'See, fine,' he said. He set off in the direction of the other ship. John followed soon after.

Feeling rather too exposed, and decidedly unsafe, Cinder followed him across the bridge, trying not to look down. If she focused on the Doctor's back, and hurried, then it wasn't quite so bad…

Too late, they realised that in the eerie stillness of the base their footfalls sounded like gunshots, ringing out against the metal plating with every step.

Halfway across, the Doctor stopped for a moment, looking back towards John and Cinder.

'We better hurry,' he whispered. 'Any minute now, one of them is bound to come investigating. We're not being terribly inconspicuous.'

Cinder gave him her best 'you don't say' look and carried on, simultaneously trying to walk faster while making sure she remained upright on the polished metal surface. She almost went over on her backside as she reached the point where the bridge bowed, leading down into the other Dalek ship, and wheeled her arms frantically, trying to keep her balance. Her gun swung loose on its shoulder strap and caught in the crook of her elbow, threatening to slip free and over the edge.

'Hang on!' said John. He reached for her, fumbled for a moment, and then finally managed to get hold of her arm. He waited for a moment, still clinging onto her, as she regained her footing and hitched her gun strap back up onto her shoulder, and then guided her to safety, bundling her through the hatchway. She was glad to have her feet back on solid ground, even if it was onboard a Dalek ship.

'Where are they all?' she said a moment later, once she had her breath back.

'There'll be fewer here than you think,' said John. 'They'll have other bases elsewhere on the planet, similar to this one, and patrols out in the ruins like the ones you've encountered before. Most of them will have moved on, though, deploying to the other space-time battlefronts, or joining their attack fleets up there near the Eye.'

'I just assumed there'd be a whole army of them,' said Cinder. 'Thousands and thousands of them. I mean, look what they've done to this place. Look at the devastation they've wrought. And yet here we are, sneaking around their base, and we've hardly seen sign of them.'

'This is what they do,' said the Doctor, 'Move in, destroy, and move out. They've no interest in the planet itself. I think I'm starting to realise that it's more to do with Moldox's proximity to the Eye. I think that's why they're here.'

'What do you mean?' said Cinder.

'That temporal radiation I talked about,' said the Doctor, 'the thing that causes the aurora in the sky?'

Cinder nodded.

'It leaks from the Eye, a constant discharge. The Eye is an anomaly, a structure that shouldn't exist. It's a wrinkle in space-time: a hole, if you will, between universes. Those temporal weapons, the dematerialisation guns, I think they're being powered by it. The Daleks have found a way to harness the radiation and bend it to their will.'

Cinder looked up involuntarily, as if searching for the Eye. All she saw, however, was the inside of the Dalek saucer. 'What about the prisoners, then?' she said. 'Why keep them here?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Biological matter they can use to construct new, mutant Daleks, or fodder to test their experimental weapons. That's all, I'm afraid.'

The sheer callousness of it was staggering to Cinder. To have such blatant disregard for life – it seemed anathema to her. 'And this is what they'll be doing on all those other planets in the Spiral?'

'Probably,' said John, 'or they'll have sunk mines and enslaved people to dig, harvesting minerals and precious metals for their war effort. They don't have a great deal of imagination, unless it's to do with killing people.'

'No, they really don't, John. I would know that better than anyone.' the Doctor said as he smoothed down the front of his waistcoat. 'Come on, there'll be plenty of time to talk later.'

The interior of the second saucer looked much the same as the first: identical almost, except for the fact there was a series of doors facing them almost immediately as they went in.

'I want to find one of their computer terminals,' said the Doctor. 'Let's try in…' he waggled his finger back and forth as if counting out 'eenie, meenie, miney, mo', '…here.' He strolled purposely towards one of the doors and, just as before, it slid open to accommodate him.

This one opened into a large chamber from which a series of other doors stemmed off into adjoining rooms. It appeared to be a laboratory, with a bank of nine monitors set into the far wall, all of which were displaying complex sequences of numbers, animated to form twisting double helixes against a faint green background.

Two tables were laid out with an array of vicious-looking surgical tools and equipment, although thankfully, thought Cinder, this time none of them bore the remains of a Dalek experiment.

'Watch the door,' said the Doctor. He crossed to the bank of screens and began tapping on the glass, calling up strange-looking sigils and dragging them around to create unusual patterns. It looked like utter gobbledegook to Cinder, but she supposed it must have meant something to the Doctor.

'Can you read that?' she said.

'A little,' replied the Doctor, but he was distracted, paying attention to the data scrolling before his eyes. Now schematics were blinking across the screens, wireframes that appeared to describe a building or other massive construction. She wondered if they were maps of the saucer or the base.

Cinder and John waited just inside the doorway, holding the gun across her chest so that she was able to cover the passageway outside, as well as the entrance to the ship. Her heart was still juddering, and her palms were slick with sweat. Despite the bravado, she was feeling somewhat terrified, and the initial surge of adrenalin was beginning to wear off.

'Hey,' John called out.

Cinder turned around to face John.

'Everything going to be fine. Don't worry. This isn't exactly the first time me and the Doctor have been sneaking into secret Dalek facilities so I've been through exactly as you been through. Even now I'm still scared even though I may not look like it but the Doctor would sometimes say, 'Fear is a superpower'.' John begins to shrug his shoulders. 'Yeah, I know it's seems a little corney and cliche but you have to admit, it's actually very comforting advice in the midst of a terrifyingly grim situation.'

Cinder was curious about what John had said as it seems that the Doctor and John had a lot of history of infiltrating Dalek facilities and was just about to ask when the Doctor suddenly spoke.

'It's worse than I thought,' said the Doctor, suddenly. She and John begin to glanced over their shoulder in order to see what was wrong, but he still had his back to them, reading from the screens. 'They're cloning Dalek mutants here, and through there,' he looked over his shoulder to see if she were paying attention, pointing to one of the doors, 'that's a hatchery. They're breeding Daleks so that they can put their new paradigm into full production.'

'The ones with the cannons?' John asked in an alarming tone.

'Yes,' confirmed the Doctor. 'But it gets worse. They're building something else, too.'

'What?' hissed Cinder.

'A planet killer,' said the Doctor. 'A mega-weapon. They're planning to turn the Tantalus Eye itself into one, massive energy cannon, and fire it at Gallifrey. All versions of Gallifrey in every single permutation of reality.'

'Wait, what?!' said John in a tone of shock and dread.

'What does that mean?' asked Cinder.

'The end of everything,' growled the Doctor. 'They'll erase Gallifrey entirely, remove it from existence, rewrite meta-history as if the Time Lords never existed. They'll condemn the universe, then our own multiverse cluster territories, then every other multiverse cluster in connection to our own, then overrun everything, then they would set their sights on our allies among the Temporal Powers Alliance (TPA).' For the first time since arriving at the Dalek base, the Doctor actually looked worried and so was John who was sporting a grim expression.

'What do we do, Doctor?' asked John.

'We can start by giving them something else to worry about,' said the Doctor. He returned to playing with the icons on the monitor screens, and one of the door panels on her right slid open to reveal a small antechamber.

She swung around, half expecting to see a Dalek emerge from the doorway, but there was nothing there. She backed up, keeping her gun pointed at the main door, until she could take a glance inside the newly revealed room.

Clear vats filled with pale blue fluid lined benches on both sides the room. Inside, ugly green creatures about the size of a human head, with a single, pale eye, fat worm-like tentacles and sharp hooked claws, were suspended in the bubbling fluid. There were hundreds of them. Just the sight of them made Cinder want to gag, let alone the acidic stench that assaulted her nostrils with every intake of breath.

'What are they?' she said, the disgust evident in her voice.

'Kaled mutants,' replied John, coming to stand beside her. 'Clones, at a fairly late stage of development. These will soon be ready to be placed inside Dalek casings.'

'That's what's inside a Dalek,' said Cinder, peering a little closer. 'No wonder they have image problems.'

"You might say so.' The Doctor said as he begins to step into the room and began fumbling with a metal grille on the floor.

'What are you doing?' she said.

'Something I should have done a long time ago,' he replied. He thumbed a lever and removed a small access panel by his feet, revealing a nest of coloured cables beneath. He grabbed a fistful and yanked them loose, sorting through until he found the one he was after.

'Ah, that's the one,' he said.

'What is it?'

'Coolant pipe,' he replied, tugging at it violently until it tore, shearing apart in his hands. Pale grey vapour began to seep from the ragged ends, condensing in the warm air and spattering across the floor. He cast the ruined piping away. Somewhere else in the saucer an alarm began to blare; an insistent warble, echoing around the empty corridors.

'You're killing them,' she said. There was no accusation in her voice. It was a statement of fact.

She could already see the mutants beginning to squirm in their tanks, growing uncomfortable as the temperature of the water began to increase. 'They're going to overheat, boil alive in those vats.'

The Doctor fixed her with a hard stare. 'I've been here before,' he said. For the first time, his voice sounded old, weary with the weight of centuries or perhaps that of entire millenniums. 'I've faced this in the past, and I didn't act in time. If I'd only had the guts to do what was necessary back then, things might be very different now. But I'm a different man now. I don't live by the same ideals. I have a job to do, and this time, I have no such qualms.'

Despite the coldness of his words, Cinder could tell he didn't really believe this. He was trying to convince himself as much as convince her.

'Are you sure?' she said.

He nodded. 'Leave them.' He left the room, marching directly toward one of the other doors. It slid open, revealing another small antechamber. This one appeared to be a store cupboard, holding a variety of Dalek components: manipulator arms, sensor globes, energy weapons. The Doctor approached a rack housing a row of broad, black cannons, just like the ones fitted to the new Daleks.

He grabbed one, hefting it, testing its weight. He turned it over in his hands, checking the power pack, and then nodded at Cinder and John, clearly satisfied. 'Time to go,' he said.

---

Insert Song: Start

Dies irae - Animation OST: Krieg

---

The alarm was still blaring, and as they stepped out into the corridor, Cinder fell back in terror at the sight of a Dalek no more than a couple of metres away, heading directly for them.

'STOP! INTRUDER! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!'

'Not if I can help it,' said the Doctor from behind Cinder. She and John threw themselves against the wall of the ship as the Doctor depressed the trigger on the cannon, blasting the Dalek with a dose of temporal radiation. The Dalek screeched in fury, backing away, but the crackling pink light from the gun seemed to form a cocoon around it, warping and weaving as it tried to find a way in.

'EXPUNGE! EXPUNGE!' shrieked the Dalek.

Something was wrong. The weapon wasn't behaving in the way he'd expected, having observed it being used against the human prisoners. Instead of seeping inside of the Dalek, eating it away from within, the light began to disperse in shimmering wisps, dissolving into the air, until a moment later, it had faded entirely, and the Dalek remained before them.

The Doctor lowered the cannon. 'They've made themselves immune to it,' he said.

The Dalek fired its energy weapon and the Doctor dived to the floor, cracking his shoulder off the wall and rebounding, landing on his knees. The energy beam missed him by a whisper, scorching a long, black line into the wall.

'They're not immune to this,' Cinder said, raising her gun and squeezing the trigger. A bolt of white energy lanced through the Dalek's sensor mesh, cracking its armour plating and bursting out through the back of its head, showering the corridor in fragments of Dalekanium and biological matter. Its eyestalk dimmed and stilled.

'Now we've done it,' said John. 'Now we've really got their attention.'

Cinder could hear the chant of Dalek voices coming from deep within the ship. They were stirring, summoned by the alarm and the blast of the energy weapons.

'A simple "thank you" would have sufficed,' she said, helping him up. 'But let's just say I was returning the favour.'

The Doctor and John both grinned. The sound of the Dalek voices was growing closer.

'Let's go,' the Doctor said. 'Now!'

They charged out of the ship onto the gantry by which they'd boarded. They were ten metres up, at least, and below them Daleks were swarming out of the other saucers. There was no way they could jump without doing themselves an injury, and if they did, they'd never be able to get away in time.

'Back to the other ship,' cried the Doctor, grabbing Cinder by the upper arm and charging up the slope.

'EXTERMINATE!' An energy bolt zipped past them, close enough to scorch the back of the Doctor's jacket. They charged across the walkway towards the other ship.

Ahead of them a Dalek emerged from the open hatchway, but Cinder didn't hesitate. She squeezed off another shot and watched the Dalek explode, the momentum carrying its casing back into the mouth of the ship.

Daleks were taking to the air now, screeching a chorus of threats as they unleashed shot after shot, but the Doctor and Cinder ran on regardless, sliding haphazardly into the other saucer. Somehow, they'd managed to make it across the bridge without getting shot. It didn't seem like much of a consolation.

With a shove, the Doctor sent the remains of the dead Dalek trundling into the path of another two that were coming down the corridor toward them, and led the charge in the opposite direction, circling around the ship to head back the way they had come, down to the lower level and past the human hatchery.

They burst out into the courtyard to see a least ten Daleks heading straight for them. Cinder knew she couldn't take them all before they brought her down, and the cannon still being clutched by the Doctor would prove utterly ineffective.

They were all here, all the various types of Dalek and Degradation she had seen before: standard ones in bronze and gold, Gliders, Spiders, Temporal Weapons. There were new ones, too, versions she'd never encountered on patrol: black ones; silver ones with blue domes; another of the purest white, like a pale ghost – each of them as deadly as the others.

She levelled her gun at the oncoming tide, resolved that she would take at least half of them down with her.

'The walkway!' bellowed the Doctor. Cinder and John both glanced up. There were three Daleks coming over the gantry above.

She swung the barrel of her gun round and fired three consecutive shots – not at the Daleks themselves, but at the metal gantry on which they stood. The metal twisted and buckled, causing the Daleks to wobble uncontrollably, and a fourth shot split the walkway in two, sending them crashing down on top of the Daleks beneath. At least five of them were sent spinning off across the courtyard, their weapons blasting indiscriminately, whilst two more were incapacitated, sent sprawling, their domed heads caved in by the impact from above.

It wouldn't stop them for long, but it was enough of a distraction for the Doctor, John, and Cinder to get out of the line of fire.

'Head for the city wall,' said the Doctor. 'I'll lead them off.' He started off in the opposite direction.

'What about the prisoners?' called Cinder. Surely they couldn't abandon them now?

The Doctor and John both hesitated, stopping in their tracks.

The Doctor looked pained, as if trying to decide whether to risk it.

'Damn it!' the Doctor barked. 'John, you and Cinder hold them off.'

'Right.' John nodded in assent as he begins to bring out his advanced Desert Eagle staser pistol from his bigger on the inside pocket, to which surprised Cinder considerably as she briefly wondered on how a gun with that large of a size like that would fit in that man's pocket.

The Doctor turned around, charging diagonally across the courtyard towards the ship, where earlier they'd seen the Daleks shepherding the human prisoners.

Cinder and John were now running after him, as he charged up the ramp, turning to face the three remaining Daleks who were rounding on her.

'Come on, then!' she screamed as she and John both raised their weapons at the Daleks. 'Come and get us, you stupid metal cans!'

Just as Cinder was about to empty the remains of energy pack into the Daleks, there was a terrific explosion from inside one of the saucers. She felt the vibration of it as a rumble beneath her feet, rattling her bones.

A plume of flame and dark, oily smoke erupted from the top of its dome, and the Daleks swivelled in the opposite direction, barking commands. She realised it must have been the hatchery which the Doctor had rigged to overload, finally reaching critical mass.

She and John took their chance and brought their weapons up, loosing off three shots, blowing the domes off the remaining Daleks while they tried to decide what to do.

Yet more Daleks were arriving on the scene, however, and she and John both knew that they only had seconds before they'd be overwhelmed.

'Doctor!' she bellowed, just as a swarm of people came hurtling down the ramp behind her, spilling out into the old playground. There were scores of them, and she realised they must have been crammed into cells on board the ship.

She heard the Doctor calling to them from the top of the ramp. 'Go on! Run for your lives! Fight back! Now's your chance.' The freed prisoners responded with gusto, rounding on the Daleks. Even with no weapons they were finding ways to disable them, tipping them over by sheer weight of numbers.

Daleks swarmed in from above, firing indiscriminately into the crowd, but the prisoners were now in full rebellion and not about to be dissuaded.

'It's really quite impressive, what a handful of humans can achieve when they put their minds to it.'

Cinder turned to find the Doctor was at her side. In one hand he still held the cannon, while in the other he clutched his sonic screwdriver, which he'd clearly used to open the locks on the cells.

'Now, Cinder, John. It's time to run,' he said. 'Make for the main gates. We'll find a way through.'

Exhilarated to see her people overwhelming the Daleks, Cinder did as the Doctor said as she and John fell back. They ran, side by side, ducking into one of the side streets and braving a dash for the main gates.

With the insurgency raging at the main base, the gates themselves – as clearly the Doctor had anticipated – were unattended. Cinder didn't bother to find a way to unlock them, however, and blasted at the old wooden doors with the Dalek gun, punching a hole big enough for them to scramble through.

Within moments, the Doctor, John, and Cinder had disappeared once more into the ruins. Behind them, the orange glow of the burning Dalek base lit up the sky above Andor.

They didn't stop until they reached the TARDIS.

---

Insert Song: End

---

Exhausted, out of breath, they stumbled to the lip of the crater caused by the Doctor's earlier unorthodox landing. The remains of the dead Daleks still lay in the road, cold and unmoving.

The TARDIS was perhaps the most welcome sight Cinder could have imagined, this funny blue box, lying on its side in the mud. To her, it represented safety, a chance to get away, to leave the War behind. But now it also represented something else – liberation. The day the Doctor and John both fell out of the sky and made her look differently at the world, at what was possible. And now, although she knew it was only a mote in the eye of the War, the tiniest of victories, she'd helped to liberate some of her people. Gratefully, Cinder hopped inside of the TARDIS, this time preparing herself for the odd shift in alignment between the outer and inner dimensions. Nevertheless, disorientated, she still staggered to one side like a drunk, forced to catch hold of the metal rail to steady herself.

The Doctor closed the door behind them, and she sank to her knees, flinging her gun on the floor and wrapping her arms around herself. She felt tears welling up, tears of relief, but she fought them down, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

She noticed the Doctor still had the Dalek cannon in his hands. 'Why did you bring that?' she said. 'You know it won't work against the Daleks.'

The Doctor glanced down at the gun, and then tossed it on the floor, where it clattered loudly before coming to rest. 'I need to take it to Senate,' he said. 'I need to show them what we're all truly up against.'

Cinder gaped at him. 'But we had a deal,' she said. 'I thought you were going to take me away from all this, from the War?'

The Doctor nodded. 'I will. I promise. I'll take you somewhere safe. But first I nad John would have to visit the Senate of the Temporal Powers Alliance (TPA). What the Daleks are doing here – it could mean the end of the War. Worse, the end of the universe. Even more worse, the end of our multiverse. If they're able to deploy that weapon there won't be anywhere safe, in any corner of reality.'

'Then I'm coming with you both,' said Cinder defiantly. 'You're all not leaving me here.'

The Doctor and John looked at her for a second.

All of their eyes met as they all stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Finally, the Doctor nodded, breaking the silence of the moment. 'All right,' he said. 'You can come, John.' he turned towards John. 'You would be in charge of her until further notice as her commanding officer until then.'

John nodded. "Of course, Doctor.'

Cinder grinned.

The Doctor begins to head towards the console, with John and Cinder heading towards him as they all begin to stand beside him, making contact with Commander Odd Ball and the rest of Clone Flight Squad Seven in the Inter-Dimensional Space-Time (IDST) Communications Channel.

'Odd Ball, this is Blue Leader. Do you copy?'

"I copy Blue Leader.' Odd Ball said in the comm-channel. 'It's good to see you and General Connor are both alright.'

'Thank you, Odd Ball. I want you and the boys to prepare to meet up with us back at the TPA Fleet if you're all not too busy dodging Dalek stealth ships or anything.'

'Acknowledge, sir. We've already managed to deal with the Dalek stealth ships. We're heading there now. ETA, 100 meta-seconds.'

'Thank you, Commander.'

After the conversation, the Doctor begins to press many assortment of levers, dials and flashing buttons.

'So, aren't you going to show me how this thing works?' asked Cinder in good humor.

The Doctor stops for a moment as he and John both looks towards her with a humorous smile.

'Don't push your luck,' said the Doctor, as he hit the dematerialisation switch.

Vworp Vworp Vworp

---

'REPORT!'

The Dalek slid effortlessly into the hexagonal chamber of the Eternity Circle, its head rotating as its eyestalk peered at each of its five masters in turn. 'DALEK OPERATIONS ON MOLDOX HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED,' it said. 'THE TEMPORARY BADE IN THE CITY OF ANDOR HAS BEEN DESTROYED.'

'EXPLAIN,' barked the blue and silver Dalek on the central plinth.

'A HUMAN REBELLION,' said the Dalek. 'THE PRISONERS ESCAPED AND DESTROYED THE HATCHERIES.'

'WHAT OF THE PROGENITOR?'

'RENDERED INOPERABLE. THE CLONES ARE UNVIABLE,' said the Dalek.

'UNIMPORTANT,' purred another of the blue and gold Daleks on the plinths. 'TESTING IS COMPLETE. THE TEMPLATE FOR THE NEW PARADIGM CAN BE DISSEMINATED. TRANSMIT INSTRUCTIONS TO THE OTHER PROGENITORS IN THE TANTALUS SPIRAL. ORDER THEM TO BEGIN PRODUCTION IMMEDIATELY.'

'I OBEY.'

'DID THE HUMANS HAVE TIME LORD ASSISTANCE?' asked the Dalek on the central plinth.

'YES,' replied the bronze and gold Dalek. 'TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE BASE INDICATED THE PRESENCE OF THE PREDATOR ON MOLDOX. WE HAVE CONFIRMED THE ENERGY SIGNATURES OF HIS TARDIS.'

'EXCELLENT. THE PLAN NEARS COMPLETION.' The blue and silver Dalek made a sound that might almost have been a chuckle. 'SOON, THE PREDATOR WILL LEAD THE DALEKS TO THEIR ULTIMATE VICTORY. SOON, HE WILL BE OURS.'

---

ED Song:

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU NO Ending 2 Full

---

Characters:

The War Doctor - A: John Hurt

General John Connor - A: Michael Edwards

Cinder

Commander Oddball (STARS) - A: Temuera Morrison

Clone Flight Squad Seven Clone Pilots (STARS) - Temuera Morrison

The Daleks - A: Nicholas Briggs

The Dalek Prime Emperor - A: Nicholas Briggs

The Eternity Circle - A: Nicholas Briggs

---

Author Notes:

TPA - Temporal Powers Alliance

Dictionary Terms:

DNA - Deoxyribonucleic acid