What now? She was dazed by the mayhem of the night, and by the endless succession of Dalek commands and threats. Monotonously she shuffled forward a step as another man was ordered through the door in front of which they were queuing. She was aware that it was the door to the largest of the many lab buildings in the settlement, and that the Daleks had brought down some bulky equipment from the cave on some kind of hovering vehicle, but what was actually going on in there she didn't like to contemplate. All she knew was that none of the men she had seen go through that door had yet reappeared, and there were now only eight in front of her in the line.
She watched three Daleks glide by in triangular formation and realised one was slightly different from those behind it. Silver studs instead of black. The leader, surely? Perhaps...
"Ceros!"
"Remain silent!" came the command instantly from one of the Dalek guards, its guttural electronic voice buzzing painfully in her ears.
But the Dalek commander had halted and turned, its eyestalk focussing directly on Jasmine's face.
"Remember me?" she persevered. "I spoke to you yesterday, back in the cave. I... I tried to help you."
She fell quiet, staring into the empty black hole of the creature's eye. Seconds crawled by.
"This human is to be separated from the others," the commander stated. "Place it in confinement in the communications centre. Guard it."
"I obey."
Jasmine sagged with relief as she was ushered from the queue by the commander's escort, but couldn't look in the eyes of the man who was forced to step forward and take her place in line. She hurried forward, following in the wake of the first Dalek, the rim of the second's base clipping her heels, and allowed herself to be shepherded along through a separate door into the building she had been queuing in front of. They brought her into an office, its drawers and cupboards hanging open, papers scattered about the floor in evidence of the occupant's hasty departure.
"Stand in the far corner," commanded one of her guards, and she wearily obeyed, ending up hemmed in by two heavy filing cabinets. The Daleks advanced on her.
"Er..." Jasmine looked nervously from one to the other of the identical creatures, her eyes flickering down to the weapons trained unwaveringly upon her. "Could I sit on that chair over there? I've been standing up for hours."
"Remain silent."
She did so, for several minutes, while the Daleks stood motionless just three feet away, keeping her firmly cornered. Eventually she could stand the lifeless gaze of their eyestalks no longer.
"Will you kill me if I just sit down on the floor here?"
"Remain silent."
"Yes. Um. But, is that a no?"
"If you speak again, you will be exterminated."
Jasmine leaned back against the wall in despair. She had no idea what they would do if she failed to keep standing, but she had had no sleep, and nothing to eat since the previous day, and her legs felt as if they were wasting away by the second. Before long, she felt, she would have no choice but to risk it.
There was a clink, in the far corner of the room. Through the narrow gap between her captors, Jasmine could see what looked like a small bronze coin bouncing along the floor.
The Daleks reacted like rattlesnakes. It took them a fraction of a second to wheel and unleash a stream of fire which annihilated both the coin and that entire corner of the room. Pressing herself as far back into the corner as physically possible from the wave of blistering heat that washed back at her, Jasmine was startled to find a human hand appear in front of her face.
She grabbed it. What else could she do? A second hand seized her wrist and she was plucked up from the floor through a square hole in the low ceiling. She drew her legs up after her and found herself deposited on a narrow metal girder while one of the hands disengaged and, even as the roar of Dalek gunfire faded, slipped a square metal plate neatly across the hole through which she had just been pulled.
In the half light of this cramped space, the Doctor's face was just about visible, his finger pressed to his lips.
"Shh."
Jasmine needed no encouragement. She crouched motionless, holding her breath, and watched through the pinholes in the ceiling below as the Daleks turned to face the empty corner where she had been seconds before. Their eyestalks twitched urgently from side to side.
"The prisoner has escaped!"
"It must be recaptured! It must be exterminated!"
They circled the room in a fruitless hunt for her, and then hurtled out through the door, splitting up to search each way down the main corridor.
"Ha!" The Doctor looked smug. "They're going to have some explaining to do."
Jasmine felt a warm pulse in her chest as she threw her arms round his neck, dizzy with gratitude. He briefly pressed his palm against her back in return before taking her wrists and disentangling her.
"All right, settle down. We still have an excellent chance of dying here."
She drew a deep breath and took in her surroundings. This gloomy space in the roof looked as if it spread across the entire area of the building, and was densely packed with a tangle of pipes and cables, the flimsy network of metal plates which made up the ceiling of the rooms below criss-crossed with steel girders like the one on which she was now balancing.
"For obvious reasons," the Doctor was saying, "The last place the Daleks would look. Sorry about last night. I really tried to find you again, but it got to the point where standing in the middle of the road shouting your name wasn't a sensible option."
"I know." Jasmine shook her head as if she could dislodge the memory. "I got lost."
"Well, then. Let's see how it comes out. This way. Keep your feet on the girders."
They crawled along a little way, but froze, and flattened themselves to the floor when a metallic clunk echoed out of the shadows. A square column of light struck upwards from one of the rooms below as one of the ceiling plates was removed.
"Must be a human," whispered Jasmine. "A Dalek could never get up here. Perhaps someone else has escaped."
The Doctor's violent fanning gesture could equally have meant either stay down, or be quiet. Jasmine did both, and watched an unmistakeably human figure, silhouetted against the light still pouring up from the room below, balance its way forward across the girders, bending at the waist to fit into the confined space. She had been right, she saw as he drew closer. She recognised the standard trooper's grey jumpsuit. He was even still carrying his gun. But this one was wearing a close fitting black helmet, his eyes obscured by a reflective visor, and he was coming straight at them.