The metal box did a sickening flip, thundering to the floor with a bone crunching clang. Vials shattered, spraying oatmeal glop all over the place.

Fortunately for us, the place where the vent had crashed allowed us enough space to crawl out, and we found ourselves inside the foggy room with the squid incubators.

Indeed as humid as it had looked on the exterior, the temperature a womb-like ninety seven or ninety eight degrees that made you feel drowsy.

The incubators stood bolted to modular aluminum shelving units like you see in electronics labs, and tentacled jellyfish-like creatures pulsated inside their devices, swelling and shrinking as if breathing.

Although some appeared to be in calm slumber, our entrance had not gone unnoticed. Hundreds of cyclops eyes opened, glaring at us with a wild fury, tiny tentacles flapping against the sides of their incubators with the sound of meat slapping together.

One by one wailed in alarm.

Riversong's mouth fell open in horror. She began hyperventilating.

"Calm yourself." Eve set down the gun, tossing me my shirt.

With no hesitation whatsoever, my woman said "shh" put her hand on a wailer like a little girl with a fever.

To my astonishment, it worked, and she silenced the others in similar fashion. I could only stare open mouthed at her actions, again realizing that she wasn't my wife anymore.

As she calmed a creature at the end of the row, a tall white machine rolled in front of the aisle. A Dalek. I shouted, but to no avail.

Eve paid it no mind, crooning and smiling as she caressed a wiggling thing in an incubator.

The white robot carried a creatures in a pair of mechanical hands, as if preparing to drop it onto one of the nearby racks. It pointed its eyestalk at her, not moving or saying a word.

Ignoring it, Eve continued soothing the creatures.

Although unarmed, the robot could have sounded an alert across the whole complex and gotten us killed if it wanted to. Instead, it turned its dome, gently depositing its payload into an incubator.

The Dalek rolled away with seeming confidence, like it were pleased with the new candy striper.

Little Riversong whimpered in fright. "She's mental!"

I twisted my lip. "This makes me nervous too, but can we go with `The enemy of my enemy is my friend' for the moment?"

She gave a hesitant nod.

"They're so beautiful," Eve purred as she calmed another. The room had fallen quiet, the voices of the screamers fading, the cyclops eyes falling into heavy lidded slumber. Riversong kept gawking at Eve.

"Can we please get out of here?" I hissed.

Seeming to be sorry to leave, Eve sighed, pointing to a gray door a couple rows down from the one the white Dalek had gone through.

After Eve cuddled a few more `babies', we reached it, squeezing down an impossibly narrow corridor choked with tangled wires. How these clunky robots could go in to repair such things was unclear, except if Eve had been made for this purpose.

As if in answer to my presupposition, Eve reached into the mess, yanking this and that cord out like she knew what each one did. The lights grew dim, and I heard robotic screaming.

Alarmed, Riversong practically stepped on my feet trying to stay close to us.

No, it wasn't the `babies.'

We turned a corner, and I found myself in Dalek Central.

The place looked like the war room from some movie, big computerized displays showing a minute to minute readout of...something on topographic maps, scores of computer interfaces occupying every inch of wall space in this rounded drum-like room. A lot of the equipment had been rendered inoperative thanks to Eve's meddling, but a few remained flickering brightly in the semi darkness.

Not an empty room. Two gold Daleks stood poised over the machinery.

A third left its console to scream at us.

Terrified, Riversong ducked into an alcove, watching with bulging eyes.

I thought my wife would run or open fire, but she didn't.

Instead she firmly stood her ground before the robot with her hands on her hips. "Dalek 9161236! Stand down!"

The machine screamed at us some more, but Eve acted unafraid, repeating herself three times in a calm, even tone.

It should have blasted her, but instead the robot shut up, bowing its eyestalk in submission.

As I stood gawking in stunned silence, my wife boldly seated herself in a command chair like she belonged there. A metal antenna popped out of her neck. "This is the Dalek Queen! All units return to your post!" She gave me an apologetic smile as the Daleks, shockingly, obeyed.

Riversong crept out from hiding, eyes nervously darting back and forth. I didn't blame her for being scared.

"You?" I stammered. "Queen?"

Eve shrugged. "Does this please you?"

I swallowed. "For the time being, yes."

She grinned. "Good. Because I am very pleased to have you as my king."

I approached the throne, leaning close to her ear. "How long can we safely keep up this charade with no one noticing?"

"Always and forever!" Her calm frightened me. "It was for this purpose I was made. The Daleks have become destabilized after the loss of Unit 464656 and need new leadership."

I stepped back a bit, staring like she'd become possessed by the devil. "Why you?"

"Only I survived treatment with my personality still intact. I had the strength of will, the determination, and the physical strength of an Amazon. The ideal specimen of what a Dalek human hybrid should be."

I shuddered, slumping against a wall.

"This displeases you."

"Eve," I whispered. "I don't like it here. I don't want to live here. I want to go home."

Riversong clamped her hand around my arm, silently agreeing by huddling close.

"I have no home," Eve said quietly. "But I feel a sense of belonging here." She straightened in her chair. "And you can too if you try. We can live here together. Start our family. We have already adopted a daughter." She smiled lovingly at Riversong.

"I don't want to live here!" the girl nearly screamed.

The Daleks seemed about to train their laser cannons on her for a quick barbecue.

"What upsets you, dear? Name your problem and I swear I will do my best to fix it."

"You can't." The girl's breathing became shallow. She paced the room like a caged animal. The eyestalks of the robots followed her as she circled the throne. "Mom and dad hated the Daleks! They did so much evil in the world and here you are snuggling up to them like it's no big deal! Well it is a big deal!"

Eve sighed. "Dear, do you remember the Doctor? How he nearly wiped all the Daleks out of existence with explosives, but changed his mind? Do you remember any of the stories at all? Riversong, honey, he loved the Daleks. He just acted like he didn't."

The girl burst into tears. "I'm so confused!"

Eve held out her arms, and, being just a scared little girl, Riversong ran to her, accepting her embrace, weeping on my wife's shoulder.

"The last thing the Doctor wanted to do was eliminate our species. He just didn't know we were capable of love."

"Then what about the Time War?" Riversong muttered.

"Did you ever notice the look of anguish on the man's face? So much sadness, on account of the hurt he did to us. He didn't want to. He really didn't. Just like I really didn't want to kill Dalek 875456 or 4654564 or even 4545469."

Riversong cried again. "It's like you know him. But you can't know him. You were just born yesterday."

Eve patted her back. "I've studied the recordings. The Time War hurt him a lot."

The girl calmed down, staring at the robots. "They're not going to kill us, are they?"

"No dear," Eve cooed. "After all, they're family. 777845 and 678979 really aren't so bad once you get to know them."

All three eyestalks pointed to the floor. Could the mere mention of their names in a positive light stir up buried emotions in these mechanical mutants? Were they crying inside? Praying? I couldn't tell. Their eyestalks raised again, fixing on their alleged queen.

"Can you contact the TARDIS?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I could, but what then?"

"Well, you could tell it to come back so I can go home!"

A steely edge crept into her voice. "We are home, honey."

"No we're not."

"Honey, let's not fight."

"I'm not fighting. I'm making a request to leave. Please. Call the TARDIS."

She pushed a button on her chair. "Unit 7016123. Come in."

Static answered her.

"Unit 7016123. Respond." She shrugged. "I don't know what 7016123 is doing."

She tried again. "7016123. This is the queen. Respond."

Long pause.

"I ACKNOWLEDGE NO QUEEN!" a voice barked.

The eyestalks of the Daleks at the consoles turned to us expectantly.

"Unit 7016123. You will be disciplined," Eve said with a commanding voice.

The static returned.

We got left unharmed. Apparently 7016123 hadn't been that high in their hierarchy.

"I'm hungry," said Riversong. "All I had were those test tubes of stuff."

"I'm sorry, that's our main source of nourishment at this compound. Other food supplies at this location have largely spoiled due to age. However, I will see if 4531855 can locate something suitable."

Oddly enough, our new home, this Dalek place, had showers, an eating area, and beds. Leftovers from the Khaled and Dal scientists who used to live there a long time ago, Eve said. They looked the part. Everything had a thick layer of dust, which we had to clear off with vacuums before anything became livable. The water came from filtered reservoirs, our meals basically the same oatmeal glop that we had before. "Something suitable" turned out to be old cans of unidentifiable freeze dried meat substance, and something that looked and tasted like Clif bars. The glop tasted better.

In a few hours, we recovered our strength, and I resigned myself to my new life as sort of a servant/housewife to my queen, busying myself with tidying the place up to avoid going mad while my wife commanded the robots to repair the base, dismantle weapons, and, oddly enough, garden.

I had once thought of the Daleks as mindless killing machines, but they didn't fight us removing their laser cannons. Eve spoke to them like people, and the robots seemed to love it.

I followed her around as she supervised repair operations, settled disputes with the parties that fought us, then, of all things, taught them arts and crafts, like using their lasers to carve murals on the wall, or etching patterns on their shells. She even made plans for miniature beds so the blob things inside the shell could crawl out and sleep in comfort. Eve taught them to be independent, how to be free. I don't know how much of it sunk in, but she tried.

Becoming weary, we all retired to the bedrooms, I and Eve in one room, Riversong in a room by herself.

While Eve tucked the girl in and read her a story, I took a shower. The place seemed to have serviced a wide range of people, so after bathing I quickly found fresh clothing, some silky chrome colored briefs that really weren't my style, a cream colored jumpsuit like Eve wore, and a pair of boots that actually fit.

As I lay clothed in my old military style bed under a fine layer of silky silver sheets, my wife peeled off her jumpsuit, proudly displaying her own shiny chrome underwear.

She smiled at me, but I didn't smile back. While her clean, muscular body looked stunning in those gleaming undergarments, my eyes kept returning to the Dalek's butcher job.

Eve frowned. "What's the matter?"

"I could have saved you. I wish I had that TARDIS thing so I could go back and make things right."

She laid down on the covers. "It's okay. I knew you were weak when I first found you."

"But I'm a man!" I stammered. "I should have done something."

She chuckled. "You sound just like Heglock the Strong." She flexed her muscles mockingly. "Strong man! Woman weak! Man save woman! Woman stay in cave and cook!" She giggled. "Come to think about it, he had a lot of similarities to Cookie Monster!"

"So, what, you like sensitive guys?"

She nodded. 'You reminded me of Lugunk the Weaver, who died from poisonous snake venom, and Keglump, the man of flowers, who fell off the edge of Bone Chasm while running from Demon Tooth. I knew you were weak. I knew I had to grab you immediately, to protect you, so you could be mine." As she spoke, tentacles came wiggling out the sides of her panties. I cringed.

"You were about to die. I saved you." She made it sound like she bought me. I'd be okay with that, under other circumstances, but she had been weirding me out all day. Just looking at that cyclops eye and hair tentacles put me in a deep depressed funk.

"So you just dragged me by the hair and had your way with me."

Eve seated herself on my legs, sliding her hand up the sheets. "You didn't seem to mind."

I gawked at her. "You've...saved other men?"

"Let's just say I never let a man drag me by the hair." She tugged the zipper of my jumpsuit. "Better?"

I swallowed, unable to put together the right words.

"C'mon, I want to see that sexy ivory white skin again."

"Was that really why you married me?"

"Maybe part of the reason! And your face! Oh, I had never seen a man of your age with such a clean shaven face before. Like a baby! As you can probably tell, the people of the Zedwa don't have anything remotely close to razors."

Eve pulled my zipper down further, squeezing me between her knees.

The scary alien atmosphere really didn't put me in the mood. I shook my head, patting the spot next to me. Eve sighed, settling into my arms. "What else is wrong?"

"I dunno. It's this whole place. How can I relax when I'm surrounded by robots with death ray arms?"

"We removed those, remember?"

"Most of them. Some of them still have laser cannons."

She smiled. "I can take care of that for you."

"It's still damn creepy. It reminds me of Maximilian and those corpse cyborgs in the Black Hole movie."

"I'm sorry, I missed that one. What's your point?"

I gave her a general synopsis of the film.

Eve sighed. "We can make this place our home, Robert. You'll get used to it. You'll see."

I wasn't so sure about that.

Ever determined to ease my tension, Eve straddled my covers, wiggling seductively above my stomach. "Oh Robert..." she called in a sing-song voice. "Look what I can do!"

Tentacles tugged down the waistband of her panties. "Look! No hands!"

The panties had slipped down around her thighs when a little girl's voice said, "Excuse me."

All three of my wife's eyes widened in shock. Her drawers came back up in a split second, without the use of a single finger.

I, needless to say, felt relieved at the interruption. Well, mostly relieved.

"I'm scared, Eve," Riversong said. "Can I sleep with you?"

For once in the entire history of this type of thing happening, it was the female who got annoyed at the intrusion.

The moment I saw Riversong in that cell, I had decided she had nobody, so whenever I got the girl free, someone would have to be her guardian. Since she had no one else present to do the job, I felt obligated.

For awhile I kept thinking she might actually be the product of my loins, but when I asked at dinner, she said it had been some people named Roary and Amy. Long story, she said. I assumed the Daleks had gotten them. The adoption papers were going to be fun.

At any rate, I declared her my daughter for all intents and purposes, so when she told me she was scared, replied, "Me too, honey. Come here." The three of us cuddled together under the sheets and went to sleep.

Near the early hours of dawn, or the time in which my unconscious brain reached its deepest phase of REM sleep, Riversong wiggled out of the covers, muttering something about a drink of water. Thinking it an ordinary and safe enough activity, I rolled over and tried to sleep.

I had only closed my eyes a minute when I heard screaming.

I sat bolt upright, but my woman tried to pull me back down.

"Go back to sleep honey," she purred. "They're just taking her to processing."

Then I knew things had gone horribly wrong.

I knew it had been a bad idea to sleep in a giant warehouse full of killer robots, but my wife the Dalek Queen had deceived me into being complacent with her gardening and shiny silver underwear.

In the unstable world that had become my memory, I suddenly remembered speaking to an adult version of my adopted daughter, telling me I failed her, with a giant eye in her forehead, tentacles poking out of her curly locks. The line about ER still didn't make any sense.

"DQ" tried to keep me in bed with her, but I squirmed out of her iron grip, bolting out the door.

I found Riversong several feet down the outside hallway, weeping with fright as a gang of robots with laser guns, miniature circular saws and pointy drills forced her on a death march.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Stop!"

Eyestalks turned to me for a moment, paused, then turned indifferently back to their victim.

I had to do something.

Riversong couldn't help herself.

Eve wouldn't be any help at all.

It would have to be me or nobody.

The corridor didn't present me with any useful weapons. Some wires I could possibly get electrocuted with if I yanked them, little chunks of debris that would only bounce off, a couple soft pieces of scrap aluminum that would get me killed before I could make use of them...

So I got the bright idea of pulling one of their guns off.

Harder than it looks.

After failing at it, I twisted and I pulled and fiddled with a black spheroid built into a robot's shell, but nothing worked. Yeah, I know. Brilliant. At least I tried.

A second later, something flashed, my heart stopped, and I collapsed on the floor.