In the time it had taken for the hybrid to pull itself from the now obsolete Dalek casing and rise to stand on stolen feen, the Doctor had let his horrified gaze roe across the new breed and begin to catalogue all the changes he could see.
While the body was the familiar humanoid form of Mr Diagoras, the addition of Dalek DNA had warped the surface skin and had turned the dexterous fingers into a parody of the tentacles that Daleks utilised to connect to their shell.
The brain had become engorged and exposed, framed by whirls of bone where the humans' skull had split apart to make room for the larger mass, and there were more of the familiar tentacle-like appendages hanging down on either side of its face.
The singular eye twitched and spun around the room as the Dalek acclimatised to organic sight, but there was no visible nose beneath it. A small part of the Doctor wondered if they had a sense of smell now or if no nose indicated a lack of that particular sense.
The newly formed Dalek was slow to speak. Either a relic of their mechanical speech patterns or difficulty adjusting to the lips, teeth and tongue of its new humanoid form and the Doctor took the opportunity to move back from Frank and Martha.
He moved slowly trying not to draw attention to himself while the creature struggled to learn its new form, and the Doctor ducked behind some of the pillars to circle around the Daleks, digging through his pockets for something he could use to get Frank and Martha out alive.
When the new Dalek finally managed to speak, its words were clear and articulate and absolutely something that the Doctor couldn't allow to happen.
"These humans will become like me. Prepare them for hybridisation."
The pig-men advanced on the group he'd been standing with and he heard them start to shout denials and try to struggle. He heard Martha scream and the Doctor swallowed back his fury.
It was a perfectly reasonable level of panic, he conceded, considering the situation, but he forced himself to ignore her. He found the radio Solomon had given him, missing its transistors but he could fix that.
A quick burst from the sonic had the small device begin to play a music station, and the Doctor cranked the volume up to full, the notes filling the air and halting the removal of the humans as everything, pig-men, humans and Daleks came to a standstill.
In the momentary silence, the Doctor let himself take a deep, bracing breath. Facing the Daleks was never easy for him, and these were the Cult of Skaro. These Daleks were the reason he had lost Rose, but staying in control of himself, of the Oncoming Storm, was the only way he'd get Martha out alive.
"What is that sound?!" Dalek Sec demanded, and the Doctor released the breath he'd been holding and stepped into view.
"Ah, well now, that would be me," he admitted. Turning the volume dial down until the music fell silent and placing the radio carefully on the nearest surface, before focussing on Dalek Sec.
His hands slid into his pockets to hide the fact that they were shaking, and he turned to the Daleks, "Hello, surprise, boo... etcetera..."
He couldn't quite summon the same level of manic cheerfulness into his voice that he wanted to, his wounds were still too close to the surface and his fury too close to breaking free, but he placed himself between the humans and the monsters, just like always.
"Doctor," Sec named him and the Doctor lifted his chin, braced from the confrontation as best as he could be.
"The enemy of the Daleks!"
"Exterminate!"
"Wait!" Sec commanded, and the Doctor stepped forward. It was what he'd been banking on. That tiny little shred of humanity fighting its way through, just like Rose had managed in Van Stattens basement, and he wasn't about to waste the opportunity.
"Well then," he said simply, taking a few steps and crossing the small distance between Sec and himself until he was close enough to touch the hybrid before him.
"A new form of Dalek. Fascinating... And very clever," he admitted reluctantly.
"The Cult of Skaro escaped your slaughter," Dalek Sec announced, and the Doctor felt his jaw clench, but there was no use arguing semantics with the creature.
"How did you end up in 1930?" he asked, eyes narrowing in barely controlled anger and frustration, and to his great shame just a hint of morbid curiosity that he couldn't quite stifle.
"Emergency temporal shift," Sec answered him, and the Doctor couldn't have smothered his surprised laughter if he'd wanted to. Eyebrows shot into his hairline as dry chuckles escaped him and he stared around at the other three Daleks.
"Oh ho ho! That must have roasted up your power cells, yeah?" he asked, grinning as he turned his back on Sec and moved closer to the two Daleks that had been standing behind their leader, taunting them.
An emergency temporal shift would explain the vortex readings that the Tardis had picked up on.
"Time was four Daleks? Could have conquered this world," his dark delight in their predicament was rolling off him in waves. He knew it, but there was little the Doctor could do to contain himself. It was hard enough to hold back his fury as it was and he couldn't restrain his gob from pointing out how, what was left of the most arrogant race in the cosmos, were living like sewer rats.
"But instead, you're skulking away. Hidden in the dark... Experimenting," he reeled off, spinning around and making a show of studying the room intently, and letting his disdain smear itself across his face.
"All of which results in you," he finished, turning back to the new hybrid and looking it up and down, studying it once more now that he was closer and had them distracted and giving the impression of being distinctly unimpressed.
He wished he was but what the Daleks had accomplished was brilliant, no matter how terrifying, and didn't he hate himself just a little for thinking it.
"I am Dalek in human form!" Sec told him, and the Doctor suspected he was supposed to react to the announcement.
His love of humans was well known amongst his enemies, so the Doctor kept his features carefully still. Standing side on to Dalek Sec, he pressed his lips together tightly for a long moment, frowning in consideration.
It was a risk. It was a gamble. But Sec had stopped the order to have him killed, so the Doctor took a chance on humanity.
"But what does it feel like?" he asked, his voice soft and quiet, tempting and dangerous. He wanted so desperately to kill every last one of them, but if there was a chance he knew he couldn't.
The Dalek seemed confused by the question and said nothing, but its head tentacles were twitching and shifting in response, so the Doctor moved towards him again.
He came to a stop directly before him, and studied his features, gazing into the eye of his enemy and hoping for some sign of humanity.
"You can talk to me, Dalek Sec. It is Dalek Sec, isn't it? That's your name?" he asked, promptly, taunted. "You've got a name and a mind of your own."
It was like poking a snake with a stick, and he didn't know which response he wanted. A repeat of the Dalek in Van Stattens basement, that Rose had changed, an evolution that could give him hope, or the one that would prove him right. Prove that the Daleks were beyond saving and giving him the smallest reason to obliterate them.
"Tell me what you're thinking right now."
"I feel... humanity," Sec answered slowly, and the Doctor nodded in response, even as the Dalek turned his back.
"Good. That's good," he prompted slowly, and against his better judgment, the Doctor could feel the familiar flicker of hope igniting in his hearts and desperately tried to stamp it out.
The universe wasn't that kind to him.
"I feel... everything we wanted from mankind," Sec continued, and the hope died without the Doctor's help.
When Sec turned back around, his features were twisted into a rage that felt far too familiar.
"Ambition. Hatred. Aggression and war. Such genius for war!" Dalek Sec announced, hands tightening into fists and the Doctor shook his head.
"No, that's not what humanity means—" he argued, but Sec cut him off, his decision made.
"I think it does! At heart this species is so very Dalek!"
"Oh, right, so what have you achieved then? With this 'Final Experiment', eh?" the Doctor snapped, angry and disappointed, sad and resigned all at once. His emotions were a tornado to accompany the storm.
"'Cause I can show you what you're missing with this thing," he continued, pointing at each Dalek in turn as he spoke, watching them reel back from him as he backed up to stand beside the radio he'd set down earlier, "a simple little radio."
"What is the purpose of that device!" One of the Daleks demanded, and he barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes. He didn't dare stop watching the monsters, but what he couldn't hold back was the dark sarcasm that erupted from his unstoppable hob.
"Well, exactly. It plays music. What's the point of that!" he growled, pausing before he continued in a pointless attempt to explain music to a species with no emotion, but he needed them distracted.
"But with music... you can dance to it," he told them, and he remembered spinning Rose around the console room while Jack watched, laughing. "Sing with it," he continued, and the sound of Rose humming songs in the kitchen as she cooked breakfast drifted through his thoughts and the Doctor had to pause to swallow down the burning hate for the Daleks that was still sitting in his chest.
"You can fall in love to it," he added, voice softening as images of Rose in that pink dress swam before his eyes, her arms around his waist as they swayed gently to the music playing at the Queen's coronation street-part in 1953.
While everyone around them had celebrated the coronation, they had celebrated being alive, together, hands entwined.
Thirteen years and about three-and-a-half thousand miles away.
The feel of her hand sliding into his gave him strength. It always had, for the first time she'd taken it, and the Doctor let his suddenly warm fingers slip into his pocket, turning his now determined gaze back on Sec as he grasped hold of the sonic screwdriver.
"Unless you're a Dalek, of course, then it's all just noise !"
In an instant he'd created a feedback loop of the radio, the volume dial spinning up to full forcing the pig-men and Dalek Sec to reel back in pain as the high pitched sound ricocheted around the room.
He thought for one terrifying moment that the other three Daleks might be a problem, but they began reversing away from him, placing themselves between him and the incapacitated Sec.
"Protect the hybrid!" they called to each other, and the Doctor made the most of the confusion, turning to the terrified humans.
"Run!" he ordered, following his own instructions and pushing Frank and Martha ahead of him, forcing the humans to run faster as they moved into the maze of tunnels.
They ran through the tunnels, the Doctor directing them from the rear and encouraging them to keep up their speed, not that most of them needed the encouragement.
They stumbled over Tallulah, still lost and stumbling through the tunnels, and the showgirl got swept along with them, the Doctor not willing to let the pig-men catch up with them, and the group of rescued humans not willing to be recaptured.
They found an access ladder and returned to the surface, but even then the Doctor wouldn't let them stop running. Some of the humans scattered into the city, heading out into the night, but many of the people taken had come from Hooverville.
The Doctor led the way, Frank and Martha right behind him, and Talulah right on their heels as they quickly made their way back to central park, only slowing to a stop once they were inside the makeshift town's limits.
Some of them were recognised, welcomed back, but the Doctor didn't stop or slow, heading straight for Solomon's tent to warn him, the urgency to save as many people in the park as he could driving him forward because the Daleks knew they'd been discovered now. They wouldn't let their farm of humans simply run away.
"Lord bless you, you found them!" Solomon cried when he laid eyes on Frank, stepping forward and pulling the teenager into a hug, but the Doctor grimaced.
"You have to shut down Hooverville, Solomon. Get everyone out of Central Park. Tonight."
"What you talkin' about, Doctor?" Solomon asked, but Frank pushed him away.
"He's right," the teen backed him up, and the Doctor tried to explain as much about the Daleks living beneath the city as he could without wasting time, the others chiming in where they could.
"These Daleks, they sound like the stuff of nightmares," Solomon said, frowning as he tried to wrap his mind around the information that Doctor, Frank, Martha, and even Tallulah had tried to impart. "And they want to breed?"
The Doctor crossed his arms and tried to ignore the gun Solomon had picked up, braced against his shoulder. He'd been issuing instructions to the citizens of Hooverville as the Doctor had spoken, handing out weapons and ordering guard watches, but none of it would matter against the Daleks.
"They're splicing themselves onto human bodies and, if I'm right, they've got a farm of breeding stock right here in Hooverville," the Doctor warned, keeping his voice low and quiet to avoid panic or an all-out riot. Most of the camp was well-armed now, and the last thing he needed on top of the Daleks were humans with guns panicking. "You've got to get everyone out of here."
"Hoovervilles the lowest place a man can fall. There's nowhere else to go," Solomon argued, and the Doctor sighed. He knew that, but they couldn't stay either.
"I'm sorry, Solomon, but you've got to scatter. Go anywhere. Down to the railroads, travel across state. Just get out of New York," he pleaded, still trying to keep his voice down while impressing upon the man the urgency, but Solomon didn't know how to think like a Dalek and simply shook his head in disbelief.
"There's got to be a way to reason with these things," he continued to protest, "everything wants something."
The Doctor resisted the urge to growl in pure frustration. If it had been anything other than the Daleks, he might have agreed.
"There's not a chance," Martha chimed in, her voice dark as she sat beside Tallulah at the campfire, arms wrapped around herself from either cold of dread, fear still staining her eyes and Frank rose to his feet to face Solomon, a determined set to the young man's jaw.
"You ain't seen 'em, boss," he added, shaking his head in denial of Solomon's hope.
"Dalek's are bad enough at any time," the Doctor whispered, "but right now they're vulnerable. And that makes them more dangerous than ever." His eyes bore into Solomons, and he could see the hesitation there. He had to drive his point home if he had any hope of getting Solomon's cooperation and saving any of the people in Hooverville.
"Think— think of an animal, right? A bear or a... a wolf. They're dangerous, but won't attack a man with a gun because there's easier prey... but if you corner that animal, make it vulnerable, give it no choice but to fight? It'll fight that much more fiercely than before. If you make it vulnerable, you make it a thousand times more dangerou."
Before Solomon could respond, the sharp, shrill sound of a whistle cut through the air, followed by voices shouting indistinct warnings and the Doctor felt his skin begin to crawl.
"A sentry. He must have seen something," Solomon muttered, but the Doctor could taste the panic in the air as people began running through the camp, shouting, and his features hardened.
They were too late.
"It's started," the Doctor said, and he saw Solomon look at him, fear on his face now as the man began issuing orders.
"We're under attack! Everyone to arms!"
The panic that the Doctor had been trying so hard not to spark erupted at Solomon's shout, and while Frank straightened his shoulders and snatched up a weapon, his face a mask of determination and fear, many of the humans ran.
"Come back!" Solomon ordered, "We've got to stick together! It's not safe out there! Come back!"
The Doctor couldn't help but think that running was the smart move, or it would have been if they'd started earlier. There was a small part of him that wished he could join them, and as Martha moved to stand by his elbow he glanced down at her, struggling to keep his own fear under control.
"We need to get out of this park," she begged, but he shook his head, raising his voice over the sounds of screams now echoing around them in the dark.
"We can't! They're on allsides, driving everyone back to us!" he told her, pointing out some of the humans running back, pig-men on their heels.
He could hear her quickened breathing, see the pulse in her neck flicker as her heart sped up and gently placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, not that it did any good when Tallulah suddenly started wailing as well.
"We're trapped!"
"Then we stand together!" Solomon told her, voice firm. "Gather 'round, everybody! Come to me! You there! Jethro, Harry, Seamus! Stay together!"
The men formed a circle, Martha, Tallulah and the Doctor in the centre along with anyone else who either hadn't had time to grab a weapon or were too scared to.
"They can't take all of us," Solomon ground out, and the Doctor smothered the urge to correct his assumption, waiting and watching instead as he tried to come up with some way out that wouldn't result in Martha or himself dead or regenerating.
"If we can just hold them off 'till daylight," Martha gasped, desperately looking for any ray of hope to cling to, and the Doctor felt a wave of sadness crash over him as he obliterated that small hope.
"Oh Martha," he breathed, "these are just the foot soldiers," he told her, eyes fixed on the skyline as she turned with a small whimper of fear in her throat.
"Oh my God..."
Hovering in the sky above them was one of the Daleks, and all the Doctor could think about was where the others might be.
"What in this world is that?" Solomon demanded.
"It's the devil! A devil in the sky! God save us all, it's damnation!" someone started yelling, and the adrenaline jumped through the Time Lord's systems when he saw Frank raise his gun.
"Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" the teen growled, getting off one shot from his rifle before the Doctor could reach him and push the weapon to the ground.
"That's not going to work," he snapped, even as Frank stared at the way the bullet had bounced off the Dalek's casing.
"There's more than one of them," Martha whispered, her hands clinging to the sleeve of his coat, and the Doctor swallowed a sharp 'I know' as a second Dalek flew up to the first and began firing its weapon around the Hooverville camp.
As the humans ducked flying debris and cowered down in fear, the Doctor stayed still, standing tall, his head whipped around to study the destruction, wide eyes following the two Daleks as he processed their attack pattern.
"They're not shooting us," he muttered to himself and shook his head. He'd been right, the residents of Hooverville were the second batch of hybrids. The more the Daleks could keep alive, the better their plan went.
"The humans will surrender!" the first Dalek called out, and the Doctor felt his control snap.
"Leave them alone! They've done nothing to you!" he shouted, even though he knew his words would be meaningless to the monsters above them. He was pinning all his hope on the Human-Dalek hybrid he was certain was observing from back in the lab.
The weapons fire stopped at his words, but he didn't have time to wonder because movement at his side caught his eye, and when he turned it was to see Solomon slowly lowering his gun, fingers flexing around it nervously, before he stepped forward.
"No! Solomon!" The Doctor launched at him, and grabbed him by the arm, attempting to pull him away, "Stay back!"
"I'm told that I'm addressing the Daleks, is that right?" The man shouted up to the aliens hovering above him, ignoring the Doctor still grasping hold of his arm as the second Dalek returned to the first one's side. "From what I hear, you're outcasts' too!"
The Doctor's anger was bubbling away just under his skin as he stood in awe at the compassion of humanity.
"Solomon, don't," he pleaded softly, Rose's voice in his ears.
"Look at it."
"What's it doing?"
"It's the sunlight. That's all it wants..."
Oh, he'd had such hopes for Dalek Sec once the humanity had been introduced to its biology, but all it had done was prove that Rose's DNA had been superior in changing the Dalek instincts.
"Doctor, this is my township," Solomon told him, the man's words breaking through the memory. "You will respect my authority."
He met Solomon's gaze, and slowly released him. Part of it was shock, but the human was also right, and he let Solomon push him back a step with a first hand against his chest.
"Just let me try," Solomon asked, and when the Doctor nodded Solomon turned back to the Daleks.
"Daleks, ain't we the same? Underneath, ain't we all kin?" Solomon called as he slowly lowered his gun to the ground. He kept his face turned up though, keeping the enemy in sight and the Doctor held his breath.
If he saw the lack of trust behind the words, the wariness, then so could the Daleks.
"Right, see, I've discovered this past day that God's universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was. And that scares me, oh yeah! It terrifies me right down to the bone!"
The Doctor glanced up at the Daleks and wondered why Solomon wasn't dead yet. Was it possible that Sec might be changing? The Dalek in Van Statten's basement hadn't changed instantly, and once more he could feel the faint flutter of hope in his chest, even as his fear tried to smother it.
"But surely it's got to give me hope," Solomon continued, "hope that, maybe together, we can make a better tomorrow. So, I— I beg you now, if you have any compassion in your hearts, then you'll meet with us and stop this fight."
There was a pause, a moment of silence as everyone held their breath and waited for the Daleks to speak, but when people began to shift in building fear and anxiety, the man they'd all elected as their leader prompted the creatures above him for an answer.
"Well? What do you say?"
The Doctor turned his gaze from Solomon back up to the sky, only to hear the word that ran through his nightmares.
"Ex-ter-min-ate!"
The ringing sound of the Daleks weapon. Solomon's scream of agony. Franks shout of denial. Martha's shock. It all washed over the Doctor, and he wondered what the point of it all was.
He was the last Time Lord, the very last, and the Daleks just kept on going. Kept resurfacing. Unending. Rose had absorbed the Time Vortex to end the war and they just kept on coming. She'd burned. Been sucked into the void. Trapped in a parallel world. All to obliterate the Daleks, but still, these four had survived. Four against his one. Still, they outnumbered him, so what had he done to make a difference?
He'd destroyed his whole planet. Committed genocide. Still, the Daleks survived, and he could feel genuine madness stroking at the edges of his mind.
"Daleks," the Doctor breathed, a curse upon his tongue as he turned his eyes, blackened with fury, on the monsters above him before striding forward.
"Alright! So it's my turn!" he shouted, the sounds of the terrified humans behind him urging him ever onward. "Then kill me! Kill me if it'll stop you attacking these people!"
He knew his death wouldn't put a stop to the Daleks, but he didn't think he could stand to watch them destroy another world that he loved.
Oblivion would be better than that.
"I will be the destroyer of our greatest enemy!" the Dalek that had murdered Solomon cried, and the Doctor's lips peeled back into a snarl of fury and pain.
He flung his arms out to his sides, presenting his body as a target and mentally begging Rose to forgive him.
"Then do it! Do it! Just do it! Do it!" he screamed at the Dalek, tired of fighting. Tired of struggling to escape their guns. Tired of losing everything to the monsters that haunted him. Just... tired and angry, hurt and broken.
"Exterminate!" came the sound of his ending, but there was no bolt of energy. No sound of the Daleks firing, and the Doctor stood before it, panting with unrestrained despair and anger, waiting for death and beginning to suspect that simply because he'd finally succumbed to that desire meant that the universe was going to steal that from him too.
But no, because that was all a Dalek was made for. Killing. And he'd just offered them the greatest prize in the universe, unresisting on a silver platter.
"I do not understand. It is the Doctor," the Dalek said, and the Doctor frowned. Was its database malfunctioning?
"The urge to kill is too strong!"
Slowly, the Doctor lowered his arms, confusion taking the place of anger and fear. Another pause, another moment of silence where time seemed to stand still, and the Dalek reluctantly lowered its weapon.
"I... obey."
"What's going on?" The Doctor demanded, terrified to hope, terrified not to. Shame began to well up in his mind as he realised exactly what he'd been about to let them do.
"You will follow," the Dalek ordered.
Shock was replacing the madness in his thoughts, but before he could react Martha's shout drew his attention back to the humans, and there was the guilt roiling around in his stomach. He'd been about to abandon her in a time not her own to the mercy of the Daleks.
He'd given up.
She moved closer to him, as close as she dared with her eyes still darting fearfully up at the Daleks.
"No, you can't go," she hissed, begging him, and he pressed his lips together as his mind spun.
"I've gotta go," he whispered to her frantically, trying to ignore the terror on her face, "the Daleks just changed their minds. Daleks never change their minds." He wanted to explain further but knew there simply wasn't enough time.
"But what about us?" she asked, and he let his eyes skip over the Hooverville citizens. He knew that wasn't entirely what she meant. If he died she'd never get home, never see her family again, but the Dalek's pending invasion was bigger than her, and now that sanity had returned to his mind he knew he had to find a way to stop them, so he turned back to the Dalek who had issued the order, face a mask of forced calm.
"One condition!" He called up, "If I come with you you spare the lives of everyone here, do you hear me?" he warned, waiting to see just how far the Daleks were willing to bend for an audience with him.
"The humans will be spared. Doctor, follow," the Dalek ordered again, and he could feel his eyes widen in genuine surprise.
"Then I'm coming with you," Martha insisted, finally taking the last few steps to stand beside him. Brave Martha, he praised silently, because he could see in her eyes and in the shaking of her hands that she was still terrified.
She couldn't come with him, but if she wanted to help... one of the many plans in his head sparked to life.
"Martha, stay here. Do what you do best. People are hurt, and you can help them. Let me go," he asked, before stepping away to follow the Dalek, only to spin back to her a second later as though it had been an afterthought.
The Daleks might be willing to talk, but that didn't mean he trusted them.
"Oh, and, can I just say," he said quietly, scooping up her hand to shake it and pressing the psychic paper into the palm of her hand firmly, "Thank you very much."
His mind was too much of a storm to leave her instructions, but she was smart and brave and he had to hope that was enough for her to figure out what he needed her to do.