The tentacles on my wife's head quivered as I stared into her big cyclopean third eye. I shuddered. "What did they do to you!"

Her tentacles curled like a spider before a flame, her lip pursing like she intended to cry. "You don't like it?"

I cringed.

I felt bad for hurting her feelings, but then again, I didn't know whose feelings they were. The woman I knew and married only spoke in grunts. Either way, I decided it best to approach with love. Maybe she could help me escape.

A tear rolled down her cheek. "Eve, they ruined your lovely face! They stuck...(I wanted to say crap) things through your skull! That's not okay!"

A tear rolled out of her big eye. "I...know. But they said it was for the betterment of the Dalek race and the galaxy."

"Mostly the Dalek race," a voice muttered from the other cell.

Tears dripped out of all three eyes. "Robtert, do you think I'm ugly?"

"Um..." Not a very easy thing to answer when you're staring at a cyclops eye.

Her lips trembled. She looked ready to sob. It made me want to cry.

"I ain't a looker. Who am I to judge?"

The large eye narrowed as it bore down on me. "You...still love me?"

I touched my scars.

She laughed and touched her own. "Yes, I am your wife."

That made me smile.

"You put yourself down too much. I think you look cute."

Yes, a bizarre monstrosity like that could make me blush. I came close, reached up and touched the dangling tentacles on her head.

Our lips met, and we kissed.

Eve's mouth tasted like boiled cabbage, that chipotle sauce they have at Taco Bell, and something medicinal. Also, she seemed to have two additional tongues, but I kinda liked it.

"Ugh!" cried the voice in the peanut gallery. "Are you sure you aren't the Doctor?"

I broke away from Eve, staring at the woman who claimed she wasn't on ER. "Is it reversible? This...(again, I didn't want to offend my wife) condition?"

Riversong shrugged. "They don't call it an experiment if they know how to reverse it."

Eve put a hand on my shoulder. "Dear husband. You should be pleased. For the first time, we can finally speak the same language!"

"At what price?"

"My whole village was killed by velociraptors, and my mother was knocked off a cliff by a sabretooth tiger. You are all I have now." She clutched my hand. "Come with me."

So that's what those things were. I frowned at the robots, refusing to move. "Where are we going."

"To processing, of course!" Her tone sounded like someone discussing Disneyland.

I didn't budge. "No."

"Why?" she pouted. "Don't you love me?"

I swallowed. "I don't want that shit stuck in my brain."

Her expression was desperate. Pleading. Tears poured down her face. "But don't you see? We'd both be ideal! There would be no more loathing or disgust! We'd be the same!"

I swallowed. I wanted to say `What disgust,' since I warmed up to her new look a little, but I definitely hated the whole concept of what they did to her. "Eve, baby, just because I like your breasts doesn't mean I want to wear a pair of my own!"

She giggled for a moment, then got serious. "We have to purify the galaxy, Robert. You have to accept treatment 9856 for the good of all. Only when all lifeforms accept 9856 will there be perfect peace and an end to all war!"

"The Arayan Brotherhood uses similar reasoning. And it doesn't make the world any better."

She blinked for a minute, like she didn't understand, but then answered intelligently. "Those individuals have a substandard intelligence, virtually identical to the primitive ape brain I once had."

I stepped back from her. "Eve. You're scaring me."

She shrugged. "I'm sorry, honey, it wasn't my intention. I only wanted you to understand the situation. With superior Dalek intelligences, we will have harmony. Sophistication. Unification of purpose. All the defects of humanity will be eliminated. We will have no more retarded persons, no more Alzheimers cases, no more overweight depressed individuals. Only one single evolutionarily superior race."

I could only stare at her in horror. This Dalek thing had taken over my wife's body. I couldn't consider her the same woman anymore. I listened to her in numb silence.

"Your harmony is the homogenization of the entire universe!" Riversong shouted.

"That's just the beginning. When all other species have been eliminated, we will have only completed a third of our ultimate goal. It's not so bad."

"Your sophistication brings death! And you're only unified in the slaughter of millions of intelligent beings!"

Eve scowled. "She's lying!"

I grabbed her hands. "Tell me. Is she wrong? What exactly are they going to do, then?"

My wife's lip trembled, tears rolling down her face. "I...I don't know. I'm so confused."

"Is your `primitive ape brain' actually gone, then?"

"Um..." She bit her lip, glancing back and forth. Instead of answering, she simply touched her finger to her mouth.

I raised an eyebrow, but she only tugged my hand. "Please, husband. Come with me. Let us both be unified in the great Dalek society!"

"No!" I shouted.

"Husband, if you do not come with me, you will never see me again."

I swallowed. "So be it."

She started crying. "Don't you love me? Doesn't our marriage mean anything to you?"

I felt this was going to be the end. "Can't we work something else out? I want to be by your side, without having to put a thing in my brain."

"I'm sorry, we can't coexist like that. We must be unified in substance and purpose. Come with me."

When I pulled my hand free, she yanked my hair and pulled me close, wrapping her arms around me as she pressed her lips seductively to my ear. "If you want to escape, act like you've changed your mind."

She pulled away.

"On...second thought," I stammered. "I really don't want to lose you...brain surgery can't be all bad, can it?"

Eve grinned. "No."

"What!" Riversong shouted. "Are you daft! Have you no brains to remove to begin with? She'll destroy everything that makes you you, and you're going to let her?"

I smirked. "Isn't that the definition of marriage? Besides, I don't want to be apart from her. What can I do?" I pantomimed zipping my lips. "Thanks for all the information."

"Yeah," the woman mumbled weakly. "Good luck." She stuck her face up to the bars. "And if you don't get caught doing something stupid, tell the governor I've been a good little girl." She winked as she said this, which I took to mean `Launch a rescue attempt.'

I could only sigh and wonder if I'd even be able to save myself.

Eve led me through the throng of Daleks, and down through the maze of tunnels.

A disturbing thought occurred to me. Riversong knew everything about the TARDIS, and Daleks. I knew nothing. I shuddered, my stomach seeming to sink below my knees as the inescapable conclusion assembled itself in my mind: I had to save Riversong. This information I could communicate with no one, for I trusted neither Eve nor the Daleks, but I, would have to go back or would forever be trapped in Dalek Land.

A concrete corridor opened into large plexiglass windows overlooking row upon row of incubator machines containing one eyed squid things.

Humidity fogged the dirty white-yellow windows so bad that nothing else could be discerned, save for the outlines of dark machinery lowering more and more of those things into vacant incubators. It oddly reminded me of the baby wing at a hospital.

As I stared at the things, Eve wrapped her arm around my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought of one of those deformed babies being ours.

"This is where they take the Superior Ones after they're born!" Eve sounded excited. "These lifeforms are what go inside the Dalek machine shells."

"You think our child will look like one of those?"

She gasped. "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Still unsure about our relationship, I ate my words. "Yeah. Super." I feigned a smile, beginning to doubt she'd prevent my brain from being removed.

The Daleks barked something. Eve tugged my arm. "C'mon."

Past the incubators lay machines dropping chemicals into test tubes, machines pouring the chemicals into steel eggs, machines sticking the eggs inside glowing cabinet things.

A door opened on the left side of the hallway, and I got led into a room full of people strapped to tables, wire cages encasing their bodies. These people could only scream as machines dropped down from the ceiling, depositing squirming tentacled eel things onto their faces. These monsters split in two pieces, one crawling up the victim's nose, the other larger part wiggling into their mouth, nearly gagging them in the process. After being invaded, the victims seemed to calm down and breathe normally, but their bodies still frequently spasmed.

Others further along had swelling blisters on the sides of their shaved heads, and, as I watched tentacles exploded from the blisters, giant eyes opening and glancing around wildly from their foreheads.

Eve opened an empty cage, patting the steel table like it were our honeymoon bed.

"Eve," I stammered. "I trusted you!"

Her tentacles curled up against her scalp, features turning grave. "Then don't stop now. Lay down! Quickly!"

I didn't obey. "I don't want to be one of those."

She made the safety gesture.

Realizing that we'd had this conversation before under different circumstances, I swallowed, touching my scar.

She nodded, a tear rolling out of her largest eye.

I meekly climbed up on the table, knowing full well it might be the last time I'd exist as a person.