Crumbling buildings, burning piles, smoldering remains of vehicles, greeted Lila and Theodore as they're cautiously walking through the destroyed city. There's an early silence that deafened them and the only ambiance's the crackling fires that still burned. Only ones there, it reminded Lila of an episode on an old show she watched, but as she sees the destroyed library, obliterated to the very foundation, only on her mind that she's thankful she doesn't need glasses.
"How long do you think it took?" Lila asked as she glimpsed to the rubble of concrete adjacent to her.
Theodore shrugged his wide shoulders as he told her that it depended on how the Daleks wanted their invasions. Some wanted total annihilation and they'd just drop nukes and be done. Enslaving worlds, it'd take precision on their part in order to avoid killing everyone they wanted. It's known that they'll kill everything that disobeyed their orders, so it's up in the air, if there's any semblance of humanity left in this world.
Wouldn't past him at Zero Hour, the inhabitants ended up surrendering to the Daleks, unable to match their firepower.
Usually, his father cuts them down to size, seizes their opportunity of escaping and contacting others, destroy them at their core, and if there's anyone alive at the end of it, they're able to rebuild.
If they're not lucky and they're victims of the Daleks cruel experimentation, it's better them dead, then surviving as whatever monstrosity the Daleks left them as before Theodore's father intervened.
"They experiment, too?" Lila eyed him curiously.
Nodding, Theodore said, "Some of them do. Some of them can't even bother. The ones that do, usually just want to turn others into more Daleks."
Most Daleks wouldn't waste their time experimenting on other alien races. In their very core, they want to annihilate and destroy. Experimenting isn't an option to them. Meanwhile, there's some who sought experimenting as a means to an end, a way to gain an upper hand against enemies, such as Theodore's father. Ruthless, they'll kidnap anyone unlucky and turn them into grotesque monstrous things one hoped never aware what they're reduced into.
Surprisingly, for Daleks, they're divided over this. One half doesn't see the use in experiments while the other half did. Like Daleks before, they'll turn on each other for their respected ideologies and henceforth. That couldn't be said anywhere else.
A house divided, there's been numerous Supremes believing one or the other, never both, and if they did, they're coy when they speak of it around their subordinates.
Common having coups where the opposing Daleks seek the Supreme's removal, permanently, and unless they're quick, most don't survive it, and Daleks aren't above torturing their own when it comes to this sort of thing.
It's amazing they've survived this long having not destroyed themselves. Theodore's father's correct, they really are cockroaches. They'd kill each other over pettiness and there's still a colony evoking control over a planet.
Unlike cockroaches, they don't run when the light suddenly turns on in their presence, but they don't survive without their heads. Hard to say which smells worse, them or the cockroaches, but at least the Daleks already live in their own rubbish cans when a Doctor comes through and destroys them.
"So, what'll you think happen if someone finally does destroy them for good?" Lila inquired what sort of repercussions, if any, for the permanent destruction of Daleks.
Theodore told her plenty of times there's a balancing act with these things and if it goes one way, more often or not, it does become a problem down the line, and needed rebalancing.
Thinking on that as they're walking by a destroyed vehicle, Theodore replied that it's possible that destroying them possibly means that it'll cause the Cybermen to grow in numbers.
As they're both naturally at each other's throats, the Daleks and Cybermen keep their numbers high when dealing with one another, and while the thought of Daleks becoming extinct would've been nice, without Daleks, the Cybermen weren't constantly rebuilding areas.
They'll just keep growing unimpeded unless a Doctor messes up their schedules.
When Lila asked the possibility of destroying both at the same time, Theodore summed that while the thought crossed his father's mind multiple times, he felt that destroying both races only created even worse problems.
A power vacuum, if you will.
Without both, it'd only bring out the worst to replace them, with them, it's an undesirable balance.
Maybe he's wrong, but his father saw scenarios happen that shouldn't when someone attempted to rebalance things on their own terms, he couldn't risk it happening to the Daleks and Cybermen.
As much as he wanted to not deal with them, anymore.
"What could be worse than a shrilling trash can?" Lila wondered while Theodore helped her over a toppled building they're climbing over.
His father's strength shown as he effortlessly picked her up and sat her down next to him, without breaking a sweat or even a groan.
He helped her down after he jumped down the other side, debris crumbling under his feet.
They're looking around when Lila's chestnut eyes caught sight of someone laying in the middle of the road and went with Theodore towards them.
It's an old man, half-dead, but shockingly still alive as he's covered in bruises, cuts, and grime.
He groaned as the two helped turn him over gently while Theodore checked him for wounds.
Old wounds, but no fresh ones, and he's skinny for an old man in his sixties.
Lila talked to him, trying to keep him focused.
"Sir, what happened?" Lila looked him in the eyes as Theodore while tended.
His white beard coated in grim, his dilating chocolate eyes as they looked into Lila's chestnut eyes as he replied with gasps, "H-he said... he said... th... the Do... he'd... come!"
Lila held his hand, gently stroking it as she tells him not to panic, to take deep breaths, if possible, and watched as the old man do just that.
He tried to speak again, this time with more coherence, "He... said... he said the Doctor... would come!"
Lila looked at him stunned as he insisted that someone told them that the Doctor would've come and saved them from the tyranny of the Daleks.
Theodore raised a brow as he asked the man, "Who?"
Many people call upon the Doctor, but the way the old man said it, it sounded like someone told them.
The old man didn't answer him initially, only asked him, "Are you... perhaps... the Doctor?"
Recoiling, Theodore looked at him with astonishment, as he tried to think of an answer before telling the hopeful old man, "Yes... Yes I am... I am the Doctor."
He didn't sound sure to himself, but he wanted to give the old man hope, at least what his father taught him, and there's a faint smile on the old man's face.
"Doctor..." the old man called out to him as Theodore looked over him with confusion.
He responded with, "Yes?"
The old man pushed himself up to look at the confused Theodore with a strange look in his eyes as his breath became shaky and his words jumbled as he said ominously, "P... Pr... Prepare... Fo... un... for...con... cons..."
His body fell backwards, stiff, and his eyes empty of life, much to Theodore and Lila's shock as they looked at each other, confusion and sadness as the old man died before them.
Lila asked if there's anything they could've done, but Theodore replied that due to the internal bleeding he sustained from a recent injury, they couldn't do anything for him.
Looking down at him, Lila gently closed his eyes as she released his hand, and asked, "What was he saying?"
It came out completely garbled except for the one word.
Theodore tried piecing together the old man's last words, but nothing stuck out for him outside the one word.
Shaking his head, Theodore conceded that he didn't know what the old man wanted to tell him, but it was something important he held out for him to show up.
"You don't think it's a Dalek that did it, do you?" Lila wanted to expend all probabilities and the idea that a Dalek carefully kept the old man alive long enough to pass a message to the Doctor's something she wanted to know if possible or a farce.
Standing up with her, Theodore responded that Daleks wouldn't take that kind of effort, looking around, he pointed out they would've laid in wait for the Doctor to show up, but no one there but them.
"I don't know who gave him a message, but I don't like it one bit," Theodore frowned as he pulled on his sleeves.
Whatever the message the old man tried to tell him, Theodore didn't know, but something about it, he took it as a warning more than anything, and the tone in the old man's voice cemented it as such.
Lila asked, "Well, if it's not the Daleks, who?"
There's many people who wanted to have a word with the Doctor, in the sense that they're not civil words, but there's no one in particular Theodore's able to come up with that used an old man to pass along a message.
Sighing, Theodore shrugged his wide shoulders as he helped Lila leave the old man's body somewhere else, that wasn't out in the open, somewhere with some sort of dignity.
After they gave the old man an improvised funeral, the two continued with their search for any recent signs of the Daleks, that didn't take long as Theodore held Lila back, as he heard the sounds of the familiar shrilly of an angry Dalek, barking orders.
With Lila behind him, Theodore uneasily moved forward, poking his head around the corner as he sees a line of humans, pulling carts of rare minerals dug from the craters of the planet, a large Dalek overseeing the operation.
There's men in black, brainwashed, wielding weapons as they kept the others in line, their dead eyes glistening in the torches lining the area.
Stripping the world completely of the precious minerals before moving on to the next and creating slaves out of the remaining populace, it is.
Recoiling back behind the corner, Theodore told Lila what he'd seen, and said that they'll have to carefully find their way into the Daleks' base of operation.
It'll be heavily fortified and there's a good chance they're risking their very lives.
"Well, as a great man once said, "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, any cook would tell you," how'll we deal with these schmucks?" Lila gave her answer.
If there's something to be said, Daleks or not, Lila's getting home, and if she's able to beat a life lesson into a Dalek to get her point across, she'll do just that.
Can't argue with that and Theodore appreciated Lila putting on a brave face when she's never encountered a Dalek before.
Carefully turning around, the two moved away from the spot, and found an area where they're able to get around the Dalek overseer.
"Doc, be honest, am I crazy for thinking we're on Earth?" Lila asked him as it hit her.
The old man they buried was human.
The slaves the Dalek overseer shouted at were humans.
Glimpsing around, Theodore admitted, "I do believe we are, another version, one far away from this one."
He couldn't tell which Earth they're on, but he knew from the sight and the scraps in the rubbish, they're on it.
Alien invasions aren't a new concept with Lila, as she watched plenty of movies, but this time's different, as she's experiencing for real.
"This is just Britain, right, they couldn't have done much to the States, could they?" Lila inquired.
Everything aside, the States' larger than the UK proper, Lila thought they'd have a fighting chance against the Daleks, but Theodore broke the news that there's a chance the States as she knows, doesn't exist in this world.
Some Earths don't have the United States, history so different between universes, it's possible there's no United States at all, but something else in its place.
It's possible the United States in one world never won the Revolutionary War and remained with Britain.
Perhaps, the United States in another world remained as loyal subjects to the British Empire.
There's infinite possibilities on how the worlds differ and if Theodore's brain doesn't stress, he deduced there's at least one universe for each possible history.
If they even tried visiting them all, they'll never finish, even one adventure every hour of the day, for seven days straight, and no breaks.
"Halt!" Theodore's snapped back as he sees people adorned in tattered clothing, wielding weapons as they surrounded him and Lila.
Lila lowered the bar as the people in front of her pointed their mismatched weapons at her.
"We're not with the Daleks!" Theodore called to their attention as he fought for him and Lila's innocence. He stressed they're lost and confused, that they didn't know there were anyone left.
One of the people yanked the bar away from Lila and forced the two with their hands up, led away, weapons pointed in their backs.
Walked like penguins, the two found themselves under the crumbling roads in a hidden cavern where other humans looked at them with distrust and confusion.
"Who're you?" Lila heard the man in front of her ask, wearing a mix of a businessman suit and armor that reminded her of "Mad Max."
Lila told him with a stilted, "It's... Lila..."
Theodore introduced himself as the Doctor, to which the man looked at him with amazement.
"Doctor?" the man blinked as he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before putting them on again. "Then, they're after you, too!"
Well, not exactly when they want to kill anyone with the title on sight, but hey, Theodore's not going to look at a chance for peace in the mouth.
"Can you tell me anything about the invasion?" Theodore lowered his arms as he asked about the events leading up to the invasion of Earth.
The man, Clark, explained that it just happened. One minute, everyone's going to work and school, the next, they're fleeing for their lives.
The first ship came down and the police weren't effective against the Daleks, many died or gravely injured, more ships came after, and within hours the war's lost.
The "lucky" humans died in the war, the unlucky ones becoming slaves, and the unfortunate ones scavenging for their survival under the iron grip of the Daleks.
"It really is a miracle you came here, Doctor," Clark looked at him. "O'Malley kept saying that you'd come, but nobody believed him, he went as far as leaving the sanctuary to prove us wrong, and well, we haven't heard from him, since"
He caught the sight between Theodore and Lila before Theodore informed him, "I'm afraid O'Malley won't be joining us in this fight, Mr. Clark."