Chapter 16 The One with the Final Experiment
Enjoy part one of the second part (too many parts idk) of their adventure in 1920s New York!
I own nothing recognisable!
There was a stony silence as the human Dalek spoke, no one was quite sure what the next move was going to be, and Florence wasn't sure how exactly the Doctor was going to manage to get out of this predicament. Her worries were unfounded, it seemed, when Dalek Sec called for the humans to be brought forwards in preparation of 'hybridisation' and the Doctor slunk off into the shadows while Martha and Florence were grabbed by pigmen.
"Leave me alone!" Martha yelled, as Florence tried to wrench her arm out of the deceptively tight grip of the pigman holding her, and hoped to god that the Doctor was finding whatever he needed to to get them out.
An old fashioned gramophone style song came out seemingly from the equipment around them, and everyone stopped in their tracks, even Florence, who suspected who was behind it, was relatively confused.
"What is that sound?" The Dalek Sec hybrid demanded, and the messy brown hair of the Doctor poked out from behind a machine, holding a red radio in his hand and placed it down as he waltzed out,
"Ah, well, now… that would be me." He walked fearlessly up to the leader of his sworn enemies. "Hello. Surprise. Boo. Et cetera." Florence had never thought he had looked any cooler or even, dare she admit it to herself, more attractive than in that moment of pure collectiveness that he was exhibiting, hands in his suit trouser pockets and overcoat billowing around him. The Daleks, however, didn't seem to agree with her and began spinning around in his direction.
"Doctor." Dalek Sec greeted, while his companions whirled around,
"The enemy of the Daleks!"
"Exterminate!" Dalek Sec threw his arms out,
"Wait!" He commanded, the Daleks backed down and watched, along with their captives, the Doctor step forward and closer to Dalek Sec.
"Well, then. A new form of Dalek." He stated the obvious, almost making Florence roll her eyes if she didn't still fear a single movement could end in her looking like that thing.
"The Cult of Skaro escaped your slaughter. You and your female hidden behind you." The single eye of Dalek Sec landed on Florence, and she realised that the second the Doctor had revealed himself he had blown her cover too. "You think I would not notice the one who aided in your annihilation of us." Florence was confused about what the Dalek had meant for a brief second, and was about to open her mouth to question him before she understood where she had been mistaken. While this was her first encounter with the Daleks, it was clearly not their first encounter with her. The Doctor ignored Dalek Sec's attempt to anger him,
"How did you end up in 1930?"
"Emergency temporal shift." Dalek Sec explained, and the Doctor chuffed slightly, looking around at the others and tugging on his ear,
"Oh-ho! That must have roasted up your power cells, huh?" He giggled a little. "Time was, four Daleks could have conquered the world, but instead you're skulking away, hidden in the dark… experimenting." He slowly revolved to face Sec once again, looking him up and down. "All of which, results in you!"
"I am Dalek in human form." Dalek Sec told him, but the Doctor seemed unconvinced,
"But what does it feel like? You can talk to me, Dalek Sec. It is Dalek Sec, isn't it?" At this he was back in the face of the Dalek hybrid, and Florence wondered if he frequently had a death wish around the only enemies she had seen evoke this level of fear in him. "That's your name? You've got a name, and a mind of your own… tell me what you're thinking right now…"
"I… feel…" Dalek Sec hesitated, "Humanity." He bit out, turning away.
"Good. That's good." The Doctor told him, but Dalek Sec didn't turn back around,
"I feel everything we wanted from mankind… which is…" He finally faced the Doctor again. "Ambition, hatred, aggression. And war! Such a genius for war!"
"No," the Doctor shook his head, "that's not what humanity means."
"I think it does." Dalek Sec maintained, stepping closer. "At heart, this species is so very Dalek."
The Doctor stepped away from him, turning his back and looking around at the machinery in the room, "Alright, so what have you achieved then? With this Final Experiment, eh? Nothing!" He yelled out. "Because I can show you what you're missing with this thing…" He pointed at the radio he had set down, patting it fondly. "A simple little radio."
"What is the purpose of that device?" One of the Daleks demanded.
"Well, exactly." He shrugged. "It plays music! What's the point of that?! Oooh, with music, you can dance to it, sing with it, fall in love to it." He leant in closely to the Dalek he was next to and waggled his eyebrows, throwing a wink at Florence when she caught his eye and shook her head in exasperation. "Unless you're a Dalek, of course… then it's all just noise." He whipped his screwdriver out of his pocket and pointed it at the radio, causing a high pitched wailing to emit from it, sending Dalek Sec into a fit of pain and the other Daleks and pigmen reeling back. "Run!" The Doctor yelled to the captives, who didn't hesitate to leg it out of the room, Martha and Florence taking the lead. The girls slowed slightly and allowed the Doctor to overtake when they realised that they didn't have any recollection of which direction they should head in, while the Doctor confidently hurried past them,
"This way! Move, move, move!" He led them to a junction, taking the left tunnel and bumping into a rather lost and dishevelled Tallulah. "And you, Tallulah! Run!"
Martha and Florence each grabbed one of the blonde's hands, who still attempted to turn around and catch sight of her recently reunited love.
"What's happened to Laszlo?" Florence tightened her grip on her hand,
"He'll be fine! Come on!" The Doctor found the light shining down from the manhole cover that Tallulah had left half open when she had climbed down after he and Florence, he positioned himself to the side of the ladder and ushered everyone up ahead of him, and for the most part up into safety.
By the time the Doctor had led them all back to Hooverville, the sun had set and there was a chill in the air. Martha, Florence and Tallulah sat by the fire, wrapping their coats tightly around them while they listened to the Doctor explain the situation to Solomon, who had made it back safely Florence was relieved to see. He had just about managed to comprehend the Daleks as the Doctor had described them, leaving most of his questions to the end and barely flinching at the discussion of outer space.
"These Daleks," he shouldered his rifle higher on his shoulder, "they sound like the stuff of nightmares… and they want to breed?"
"They're splicing themselves into human bodies," the Doctors explained, "and if I'm right, they've got a farm of breeding stock right here in Hooverville." He looked around at the people who lingered by them, standing by their tents or warming themselves by their fires. "You've got to get everyone out." He advised, but Solomon shook his head.
"Hooverville's the lowest place a man can fall… there's nowhere else to go." The Doctor looked sadly at him, but was adamant.
"I'm sorry, Solomon. You've got to scatter. Go anywhere. down to the railroads, travel across state. Just get out of New York."
Unfortunately for the Doctor, it seemed as though Solomon was both just as stubborn and just as noble as the Time-Lord, "There's gotta be a way to reason with these things!"
"There's not a chance!" Martha told him, and Florence nodded her head in agreement, while Frank stood to try and convince Solomon to leave,
"You ain't seen them, boss."
"Dalek's are bad enough at any time, but right now they're vulnerable." He looked at Solomon fiercely, trying to convey the danger of the situation. "That makes them more dangerous than ever." Florence shivered, as if someone had walked over her grave, there was a stillness to the town that seemed foreboding.
"So what are we going to do?" She asked gently, but before the Doctor could even turn to answer her, a shrill whistle echoed through the camp.
"They're coming! They're coming!" Came a voice from the outskirts, and Solomon readied his rifle quickly,
"A sentry, he must have seen something."
"They're here!" A man in a flat cap ran through the camp towards them. "I've seen them! Monsters! They're monsters!" Florence grabbed Martha and they both stood near the Doctor, trying to stay out of the sudden wave of people grabbing weapons or fleeing to the safety of their tents.
"It's started." Solomon was crying out for everyone to stay in the camp and arm themselves, some listened, others ran, Florence watched in horror as they only made it so far until the pigmen snatched them up. She saw Tallulah trying to keep her footing amongst the crowd and grabbed onto the blonde, keeping her tucked up against herself.
"We need to get out of the park!" Martha suggested, looking for an escape route, but the Doctor was already refuting the idea, running back and forth.
"We can't. They're on all sides!" Florence looked at the hoards dragging people away or simply lumbering closer,
"They're herding us! We're trapped!"
"What are we gonna do?" Tallulah gasped, holding a thick stick up like a bat, Solomon managed to wrangle most of the survivors into a tight circle,
"We stand together. Gather round! Everyone come to me! Stay together!" The Doctor stood, inches above the tallest man in Hooverville, looking out of the circle of armed men hopelessly as they began to fire at the pigmen. "They can't take all of us."
"Maybe we can hold them off until daylight!" Martha suggested, and Florence looked to the Doctor but saw his eyes focused on something above and beyond them all.
"Oh, Martha." He breathed. "They're just the footsoldiers."
"Oh god!" Florence gasped, watching as a Dalek flew through the night sky and hovered above them all. All the men stopped firing and turned to the enemy.
"What in this world is…?" Solomon began to ask, before the sentry cut him off.
"It's the devil! A devil in the sky! God save us all! It's damnation!" Frank lifted his rifle to the sky,
"Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" He shot at the Dalek, and the bullet merely ricocheted, Florence didn't have to be close to the casing to know that it wouldn't have left even a scratch. The Doctor ran forward and pushed the gun down.
"That's not going to work." The Dalek hovered for a moment, and Florence watched with fear as another one joined it, before they both aimed the silver weapon on their bodys at the camp around them and shot laser beams, blowing up anything they hit, she heard the screams of those who had hidden in their tents to escape the attack as their tents set on fire. She screamed and ducked as a bolt got too close, blowing up a crate nearby and sending some of the men flying.
"The humans will surrender." Came the robotic voice of one of the Daleks.
"Leave them alone!" The Doctor cried back. "They're done nothing to you!" There was a pause, and Solomon stepped forward, lowering his weapon, the Doctor grabbed him swiftly. "No, Solomon, stay back!" He was ignored.
"I'm told that I'm addressing the Daleks. Is that right?" With no response he continued. "From what I hear, you're outcasts too." The two men muttered something to each other that Florence couldn't make out, but she had a feeling nothing would be able to convince these creatures. The Doctor was pushed back slightly by Solomon. "Daleks, ain't we all the same? Underneath, ain't we all kin?" He put down his rifle, with his hands up in surrender. "Right. See, I've just discovered this past day, God's universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was. And that scares me." He laughed slightly. "Oh yeah, terrifies me right down to the bone. But surely it's got to give me hope. Hope that maybe together we can make a better tomorrow. So, I beg you now, if you have any compassion in your hearts, then you'll meet with us and stop this fight. Well?" He paused, looking up pleadingly. "What do you say?"
A pause.
A robotic voice uttering one word.
"Exterminate."
There was a flash of blue light that hit Solomon's body, engulfing him in a flash of green and his skeleton glowed with the force, the electrical fizz drowned out by the sound of his screams. Florence staggered as the men of Hooverville screamed and shouted out for their leader, Martha held her up tightly as Frank ran to Solomon's body, crying over it.
"They killed him…" She whispered, in disbelief and disgust. "They just shot him on the spot."
"Daleks!" The Doctor spat out before turning his attention from their fallen friend to the monsters in question. "Alright, so it's my turn! Then KILL ME!" He cried up to his greatest enemy, arms outstretched. "Kill me if it'll stop you attacking these people!"
"I will be the destroyer of our greatest enemy." The Dalek decided, and the Doctor beat his fists against his chest,
"Then do it! Just do it! DO IT!" Florence hadn't seen anger in him like this since Rita's death in the hotel, pure fury emanated from him, he was like an uncontrollable fire begging to be put out.
"Extermina-" The Dalek was cut off, and Florence's heart almost stopped. There was a pause. "I do not understand. It is the Doctor…" It was clearly listening to someone else. "The urge to kill is too strong… I... obey."
"What's going on?" The Doctor called out, looking mildly breathless from his outburst.
"You will follow." The Dalek commanded.
"No!" Martha ran forward, but Florence was rooted to the spot, staring at the Doctor's back, still reeling from his near death. "You can't go!" The Doctor paused, before turning around,
"I've got to go." He explained, eyes moving past Martha's and briefly locking onto Florence's, looking away as quickly as he had caught them. "The Daleks just changed their mind. Daleks never change their minds."
"What about us?" Martha asked, gesturing to the camp survivors, and the Doctor ran his eyes over each of them. He turned back to the Dalek.
"One condition!" He demanded. "If I come with you, you spare the lives of everyone here! Do you hear me?"
"Humans will be spared." The Dalek agreed. "Doctor follow."
"Then I'm coming with you!" Martha told him, but he shook his head.
"Martha stay here. Do what you do best… people are hurt, you can help them…"
"Martha let him go." Florence called out when she saw Martha about to argue again, she saw the look in his eye, there were no companions joining him this time around. The Doctor looked at her, clenched his jaw and turned to Martha with a false look of farewell, reaching out to her,
"Can I just say, thank you very much." He shook her hand, before shooting a wink at Florence and turning on his heels to follow the Daleks out of the park. Florence ran up to her,
"What was that about?" Martha held up the black leather wallet in her hand, a look of confusion on her face,
"I don't know…"
Florence sat on the campbed in Solomon's tent, elbows on her knees and psychic paper held to her lips in concentration. She watched as Martha tied a bandage to a man's arm before sending him on his way, Tallulah coming to stand by her side. She kept opening and closing the leather wallet, wondering what was going through the Doctor's head, what plan he had or even what half percent of an idea had formed before he had been escorted from the park. She sighed and closed the wallet again, slapping it lightly against her head in impatience.
"So, what about us?" Tallulah asked as the man left. "What do we do now?" Martha sighed and shook her head lightly,
"I don't know… the Doctor, he… he gave me that." She gestured to the wallet in Florence's hands. "He must have had a reason…"
"We've just got to figure it out." Florence told Tallulah, before adding bitterly, "Before he tries to get himself killed again." She wasn't quite eager to hide how upset it was for her (and Martha) to stand there and watch the man they had both begun to care for so ready to accept death.
"What's it for?" Tallulah asked.
"It gets you into places." Martha explained. "Buildings and things… but where? He must want us to go somewhere… but, where?"
Florence sighed and rubbed at her head, "We have to think." She looked up at the other women. "We wouldn't need to use it to get into the sewers or even the theatre… and even if we did that's a death trap in itself…"
"What are we missing?" Martha crossed her arms, pacing as much as she could in the small room. "There must be something!" Tallulah sat next to Florence and began to rifle through the papers scattered on the small table, things about the missing people and job opportunities in New York, but nothing they believed valuable to their mission. "Wait!" Martha suddenly exclaimed. "Down in the sewers… the Daleks mentioned this energy conductor!"
"A conductor?" Florence asked, she couldn't remember much from the evening. "Okay, so a conductor for what?" Martha shrugged slightly,
"I dunno, maybe like… a lightning conductor or… or… Dalekanium!" She cried and Florence looked up at her in surprise,
"Dalekanium?"
"They said the Dalekanium was in place!" Martha explained, and Florence shot to her feet, grinning,
"Brilliant! That's it Martha!"
"In place where, though?" Tallulah asked, and Florence bit her lip,
"Someone must know something… surely there must be like, town gossip?" Martha lit up and clicked her fingers,
"Frank might know!" She rushed out of the tent followed by the two other women in search of the young man. They found him sitting quietly on his own, head bowed in mourning. Florence almost felt intrusive in the way they waltz up to him, but time was of the essence, and she gently placed a hand on his shoulder,
"Frank…" He wiped his face and nodded slightly,
"Hmmm?"
"Frank, we have to talk to you about Mr Diagoras…" Frank sniffed slightly, still not fulling looking up at them,
"What about him?" Martha placed her hands on her hips,
"Well, he was like some sort of fixer, yeah? Get you jobs all over town?" Frank nodded again.
"Yeah, could find profit anywhere." He told them quietly.
"But where?" Florence pushed. "Where were the best opportunities?" Frank shrugged slightly, gesturing around them.
"You name it. We're all so desperate for work, anywhere would do… you just hoped Diagoras would pick you for something good." He looked into their eyes for the first time since they had accosted him. "Building work, that pays the best." Jackpot.
"What sort of building work?" Martha asked urgently, and Frank stuck his finger out, pointing behind him,
"Mainly building that." The three women followed his finger to the brightly lit, conveniently still in construction Empire State Building that dominated the New York skyline even through the thick trees of Central Park.
Florence almost laughed at the obviousness of it all.
"Martha, I think we've found our conductor."
The service lift of the Empire State Building was a little bit more cramped, a little bit darker, and a little bit more rickety that Florence had hoped when Martha had suggested sneaking in. Her, Martha, Tallulah and Frank piled in after flashing the ever useful psychic paper at the site guard, preparing for the lengthy trip up to the top of the highest building in New York City (well, Florence thought, at least for this year).
"I've always wanted to go to the Empire State." Martha commented, unable to keep the smile off of her face despite the less than ideal conditions. "Never imagined it quite like this, though." Florence laughed lightly,
"Honestly, I hope this isn't indicative of the rest of our trips to historical moments…" The two girls looked at each other for a split second before bursting into giggles, neither able to imagine travelling anywhere without something going wrong if the Doctor's involved.
"Where are we headed anyway?" Frank asked them, sobering them up with the downtrodden look in his eyes.
"Right to the top." Florence responded. "Gotta see where they're still building."
"How come those guys just let us through?" Tallulah asked, peering curiously at the wallet now in Martha's hands. "How's that thing work?" Martha handed it to Frank to let him see,
"Psychic paper!" She told them excitedly. "Shows them whatever I want them to think. According to that, we're three engineers and an architect." Frank flipping through it, frowning,
"Huh, whaddaya know…" Florence smiled,
"Don't even ask the finer details, no idea why it does it, how or where it came from!" She took it back, running her fingers over the smooth leather. "Mad help though."
The lift came to a shuddering stop, letting the four of them know they had reached the top, where they pulled the doors open and stepped out onto the top floor of the building, two walls still waiting to be built and giving them a glorious view of the skyline. Tallulah headed towards the edge, looking out in wonder,
"Look at this place! Top of the world!"
"Be careful!" Florence called out to her, her… aversion (read: fear) of heights worrying about the young woman's proximity to the drop. She followed Frank and Martha to the drawing board, where a blueprint of the building was still out on display. "Alright team, what we looking at?" Frank tapped the bottom of the plans, where a stamp labelled 'revisions' showed the date November 1st.
"Hey, look at the date." He told the girls. "These designs were issued today! They must have changed something last minute!" Martha looked up at him,
"You think the Daleks changed something?"
"Could be." Frank shrugged, while Florence flipped the paper to the one below it,
"Right so, these are current plans but these," she motioned the plans underneath, "are the old ones, so we should be able to see the difference…" Martha nodded,
"We need to check them against each other."
"The height of this place!" Tallulah called out, distracting them from the plans. "This is amazing!" Martha looked over at the curious blonde and repeated Florence's warning,
"Careful! We're a hundred floors up, don't go wandering off!"
Tallulah smiled at them, "I just wanna see…" She stepped out of the room and onto the scaffolding to see the skyline. The others went back to searching the plans, Martha unclipped the sheets from the board,
"Let's spread them out, have a look from above." Florence laughed as they put the plans on the floor, hovering over them,
"It's like a really tense spot the difference…" She gestured to the bottom of the building. "I think focus on the top half, there's no chance they'd have changed all that last minute when they've got a whole floor left blank…" Martha nodded,
"Okay, good idea…" She ran her finger along the fine lines of the top half of the building while Frank looked around at the empty room, nervously,
"I'll go and keep an eye out… make sure we're safe up here." Florence nodded,
"Whistle if you spot anyone!" She called out to him as he left, raising a hand in acknowledgment. Florence kneeling on the corners of the sheets as a gust of wind blew in from the opening in the walls, followed by Tallulah wrapping her coat around her tightly.
"Hell of a storm moving in!" She stepped over to them, peering over their shoulders. "How's it going here?" Florence shrugged,
"Nothing yet." Martha sighed,
"I wish the Doctor was here. He'd know what we're looking for." Florence patted her friend's hand,
"Nah, you know he'd be as clueless as us right now." She earned a soft smile for trying.
"So tell me," Tallulah started, and Florence wasn't sure she liked the saucy tone of her voice, "Where'd you three hook up?" Florence laughed,
"Just out of the blue, honestly." She wasn't quite sure how to describe it to people, companions were easy - they knew all about time travel and the weird complex relationship she had with it, but the everyday people? She wasn't sure where to begin telling them that she jumped through time and space to meet him, and god forbid Tallulah find the romantic notion in that statement.
Martha's explanation was much simpler. "It was in a hospital, sort of." She explained stilling looking at the plans, and Tallulah nodded, settled herself on her knees between the two women,
"Of course, him being a doctor." Martha laughed,
"Actually, I'm a doctor." Florence tried to hide her surprise at this, being that Tallulah thought the two of them knew each other better than they clearly did, Martha being a doctor didn't quite surprise her however, with how easily she settled into the role back in Hooverville. "Kind of."
"You're a physician?" Tallulah asked, shock and awe in her voice. "Really?" Martha nodded, she was clearly so proud of her career path,
"I was training. Still am, if I ever get back home…"
"You could be doctors together!" Tallulah told her, turning to Florence. "How exciting would that be, Flo! What a partnership!" She clicked her tongue. "Oh, it's such a shame… If only he wasn't so different. You know?" Florence laughed,
"Oh you have no idea, Tallulah."
"How about you, hun, where do you fit into all this?" Tallulah asked her.
"Oh… I…" Florence hesitated. "I'm just a drifter. The Doctor just picks me up wherever I go."
"Ain't he like a regular Price Charming! And it's just the three of ya's? Don't that get boring?" Tallulah seemed confused by the whole thing, and Florence couldn't quite blame her, but shook her head fervently,
"Nah, never a dull moment."
"He had another companion, a while back, this friend." Martha mentioned, and Florence's fingers over the lines of the drawing plans falter slightly, unsure whether she should listen to this or not. Even Martha looked hesitant, telling Tallulah about the Doctor's private life. "She left, suddenly." Florence avoided Martha's eyes, she'd known that this Doctor came after his adventures with Rose, and she also knew that there would be companions after Martha, but it was still a sore subject to consider, for either of them. "And ever since then he's been on his own, kinda. But, you know, sometimes I say something or do something and he looks at me, and I just… I sort of think that he's not seeing me. He's just remembering." Florence looked down, she knew Martha had felt inadequate even on her first trip with the other woman, she remembered how the Doctor had lied to her to impress her, but she hadn't quite realised how hollow a lot of his actions had felt for the new traveller.
Tallulah put her hand gently on Martha's shoulder, "Oh, listen sweetheart. You wanna get all sad? You wanna have a contest with me and Laszlo?" She tried to smile off the pain, to comfort her new friend, and Florence loved Tallulah in that second.
"No." Martha agreed, before trying to comfort Tallulah in turn, and Florence nearly rolled her eyes at the girls' similarities. "But listen, if the Doctor's with Laszlo now, there's every chance that he could get him out!"
"And then what?" Tallulah asked, sadly. "Don't talk crazy. There's no future for me and him. Those Dalek things took that away. The one good thing I had and they destroyed it." She stood quickly and stepped away from the two others, covering her face to hide her tears. Martha looked like she was ready to get up and follow her but Florence covered her hand and directed it back to the papers in front of them,
"She just needs a moment." She told her softly. "We haven't got time, Martha." Her friend nodded, turning back to the plans and focusing on the differences once more. Florence too stared at them, racking her brains for something that could give them a hint, before their earlier conversation hit her like a tonne of bricks and she suddenly felt very foolish. "Hang on!" She cried out, dragging the paper so they were both looking at the masts of the plans. "A conductor! The Daleks are building a conductor, so wouldn't they need something for the current to, like, run through, something, something conductible." She felt as though her brain was working at one hundred miles an hour. "You said something about 'Dalekanium' earlier right?" Martha nodded. "Easier for the current to run through one straight line to the Dalekanium than go through the whole infrastructure…?" She tapped the tip of the masts on either sheet with her forefingers, running them down the straight line until she reached the base, where on the left hand sheet two thicker lines sat atop the original metal platings.
"Gotcha!" Martha yelled. "Yes! There on the mast!" Tallulah ran over to them to see. "They've added it there!"
"Added what?" Tallulah asked, and Martha and Florence both grinned up at her.
"Dalekanium!" They shouted in unison. The three of them laughed almost manically, in both relief and a little bit of excitement. Frank came running into the room at their yelling,
"What is it?" He asked, and Martha stood, showing him the two plans,
"Look! They added these thick lines to the new plans, we think the Daleks are using Dalekanium on the mast of the building as some sort of conductor!"
"Okay, alright, nice work!" Frank nodded, before asking the dreaded question: "So,now what do we do?" Florence bit her lip,
"Ah, yeah… well I'm, well I'm not too sure now." Martha huffed a bit and looked out at the dark night sky,
"Where the hell is the Doctor?"
Her question was answered by the ding of the lift as it reached their floor.
A special double chapter week! All my festive love and thoughts!
See you for chapter 17! xo