summary: Waking up as a dalek, Noah Miller toes the line between good and evil. Hatred can be a strong motivator for any species, and Noah finds out she isn't as immune to the emotion as she hoped.
Disclaimer: it's a thing. A thing in progress, respect the thing. or don't, I'm not your mother. I don't own Doctor who but boy if I did, that would be something.
Darkness. Like the ebb and flow of sleep.
Processing 87% complete… detecting no anomalies. Function perimeter set.
It was hazy, with a sort of fuzziness that left a tingling sort of aftertaste everywhere. Her tongue was numb, like she couldn't taste and she couldn't feel. Her arms were heavy like iron, to thick to move or even twitch.
Internalizing temperatures at 100%
Bloody hell, did she get hit in the head or something? What was that voice? What type of headache is this? Ow, dang it. It felt like her head is tearing in two.
Initializing internal systems Drive 5%...
The orange glow of the light piece seem to flicker on as Noah came to. She would have groaned had her mouth been working, but she didn't so much as wake up slowly as she just seem to be awake, consciousness coming back in layers like a dream. She didn't have to blink, which was weird, but not as strange as the room she found himself in. it was dark and metallic. Alien. Large organic structures lining the walls, and machines she'd never seen before but somehow knew the names of went in both directions down the walls.
"READY TO COMPLY!"
What?
Noah's eye piece shifted to stare at the grey dalek standing in front of her. She stared at it for an agonizingly quiet moment in shock. Her vision was colored orange, everything twisted and wrong.
The two daleks stared at one another.
And It was certainly there. Noah couldn't miss it. It was huge and hulking, scorch marks and dents in it's metal armor stating it had already seen battle and it's blue light staring at him. Noah's would have jerked, but the numbness in her head still kept her fuzzy as battle plans popped up inside of her head, and she quickly shifted internal temperatures to heat herself up. It came easy, natural. She streamed fifty thousand new data core networking lines in from the hive network and she squinted. Hundreds of Thousands of tactics at once that she never knew before were suddenly at her fingertips- tentacles? And it was rather… exhilarating.
"YES." Noah finally said, the sound deep and robotic. That was her voice, whoa. She hesitated before continuing. "READY TO COMPLY." yes, she was ready... why wouldn't she be? All this knowledge in her head now, all of these plans. If only the headache would stop. All these numbers in her eyes flashed over each other. Noah blinks inside her metal dome as the other dalek turns, moving down the hallway. Did it want her to follow? Of course, yeah that made sense.
She was made to follow orders. Why was she questioning that? Why was she not able to think more clearly?
She didn't really hesitate, just kind of moved forward, already knowing how to move the armor. It was one of the most high tech pieces of machinery built by a genius- and Dalek tech was very easy for her to understand. Noah quickly makes a check list of all her systems as she trailed behind the older dalek.
This was… something. Who just wakes up as a dalek? God, her head felt so dazed. She was dizzy, preoccupied with every little thought she couldn't even think straight. It felt like someone had taken a shovel and scooped out her brain leaving nothing but a sloppy mess behind.
Processing 89% complete….
There it was again, was that the computer? Some sort of nasty dalek hive mind integrating with her own? She caught sight of herself in the reflected surface of the ship's panels as they turned a corner. She looked like any other dalek. The glow of her eye piece was eerie. She was tall, hulking metal shape and dark grey. Her metal looked untouched. Good.
Wait, why was that good?
She was… she was a dalek. One moment something that wasn't even real, was now very much reality. These weren't television show props- she wasn't driving around inside it. She was it. She was an alien squid inside of a death machine. A real live dalek. She woke up and was now one of the universe's worst nightmares? What happened to her body, to her humanity?
Processing 90% complete….
The fuzziness is still there, still in the back of his mind, like a fire in her blood.
Wasn't being a dalek a bad thing? She looked around again, turning in a circle. No. Yes, yes it is bad. Wait. No this was the most exciting thing to ever happen to her. The most terrifying- but she felt no fear. She was a dalek after all. But that wasn't like her. She was afraid of cats- she remembered that. Nothing was going the way Noah understood as a person. Why was it so hard to think about these things?
This is bad isn't it. It was like it was too foreign to think outside of certain parameters. Like her brain couldn't do it anymore.
What was happening to her?
The two daleks continued until they went through a set of doors and into what looks like an atrium. Noah knew it was the second flight deck from the data packet. The large golden room was the hub of the spaceship. She knew everything about the ship she was on from the information streamed through the database, and suddenly just like the military tactics the schematics for flying every delak made vessel in the empire were at her fingertips.
She is surprised to be on a ship full of daleks. She shouldn't be, where else would a delak wake up to be? Clearly she is on a delak made vessel so there were going to be other daleks, but as she rolls by dozens in formation, others hovering, some moving around, she can't stop his eye piece moving around as she shifts.
Suddenly a large screen appears on the wall, showing a planet. It was level five planet on a federation of planets, it was purple, with no planetary defense system. And suddenly orders were given through the hive mind and Noah knew what to do. What they were going to do.
Exterminate.
The order made her shiver. Her gun wiggled as he felt the need to shoot something.
She followed behind his squad leader as they made it to the rest of the group waiting to be teleported down to the planet, the other five daleks already in formation and shouting in excitement, even as her own heart was beating fast. She's all but hovering in place. The mantra rang through her blood, through her very cells as they teleported in a flash of white light, the room changing into what looked like a normal street corner.
Except people were screaming, running. Cars were on fire. Explosions rang out as the daleks around him advanced, the cries of "Exterminate!" accompanied with beams of lasers striking true. People- inferior life forms her sensors indicated, were falling to the ground, others continued to run.
Noah moved forward, her entire being singing. It felt like it was rejoicing! She couldn't stop her heart from beating too quickly, it was like an addiction. She continued forward, past the wrecked cars and burned out buildings, until life signs drew her to a house on the left.
She entered through the front, breaking the doorway off the hinges with a resounding bang. The house was dark and quiet, dust settling on the ground and the doors are all closed, locked. She moves slowly to the room all the way in the back. The simple lock on the doors is blown off the hinges without delaying her movement as she enters the room and looks down.
As she rolls into the room, her eyepiece turning to the left.
The family is huddled in a corner, pushed all the way into the smallest corner. A father and mother still in their work clothes, rumbled and torn and three children clinging to them. The five of them are hugging each other close. Their skin is red and their ears are furred, and their hair is a dark brown coat that is braided in intricate ways, their clothes covered in smoke and debris. Their home is a wreck, and there is only terror on their faces.
Noah stares at them.
Processing 97% complete...
She... hates the color of their skin. Weirdly the feeling tingles, the hatred. It grows with each passing second. It's everything- she can even taste it! It's too real. It's too alien. It makes waking up real. She hates the way their clothes are a fashion she's never seen before. She hates how different their home is compared to everything she's used to. She hates the weird alien language she sees scrawled on things. She hates the fact they are looking at her like that. She hates… she hates…
She just hated everything.
Turning her eye socket towards the cupboards behind them, just big enough for them to fit in she rolls closer to the family.
"HIDE!" The order echoes through the house, screams and laser shoots echoing from outside.
They don't move, too frozen and too terrified to listen the first time. And Noah knows they didn't have time.
"YOU WILL GET IN THE CUPBOARD! YOU WILL HIDE!"
They scurry back against the wall when the door is ripped opened by an unforeseen force, screaming as the windows shatter and Noah curses in code. Quickly she hacks the Hive Mind, redirecting her squadron to another street corner. They are just outside the house, two daleks about to approach but she quickly belays their orders. she could do that. why would she? No, she was going to do this. She just needed to redirect fire power and one more thing! Waiting, times like knives on her casing she waits in that house until her team moves out, shouts of extermination going further down the street, and then Noah turns back to the family.
"YOU WILL OBEY! YOU WILL HIDE!" They finally seem to move, the father dragging the kids across the floor to the hiding spot as the mother sobs away, and they tuck their bodies into the space as Noah fires off a shot, making them scream. Their begging in an alien tongue, crying for alien gods. But she doesn't stop. She shoots away, "Exterminate!" She shouts over the hive radio, leaving scorch marks all over the room, at least five shots to account for all the occupants, she shatters the floors and burns the walls. She leaves broken furniture and damaged housing, and then using thermal dampings she lowers the temperature of the surrounding area to mimic that of a corpse. If anyone were to check this house they wouldn't find anyone alive.
Good. Good, that was good. Damn it this headache was making it impossible to think! But she had to! She had to keep thinking!
Noah turns, her eye socket scanning the room one last time, seeing one of the children peering out of the cupboard. They are staring at her, terrified purple eyes locking with her eye socket as they stare at each other souls. Noah can't keep the eye contact for long, turning she leaves the room the same way she came.
She has to do something. the whole world is burning. She might not be human anymore, and these people might not be human, and god dammit it her humanity might not even be there anymore. But...
Processing 100% complete…
But she has to do something.
Initializing Battle plans sequences commencing…
That could work. It was a shotty idea, one of the worst ones she'd had yet and would most likely end up with her dying very soon, but it could work.
With that Noah teleported back to the ship.