Sen opens her eyes, blinks, touches hand to face to check they are indeed open and intact. They are. It remains stubbornly dark, nonetheless.

"Kas?" she rasps. Her mouth is dry as dust.

"I'm here." Her brother, sounding scared, somewhere to her left.

"Are you hurt?" She realises she has yet to ask that question of herself.

"I don't this so," he says, as she conducts a quick inventory. Arms, two; legs, two; torso, seemingly all in one piece, although her ribs are aching like she's taken a punch badly. "What happened?"

"I think it was an earthquake," she replies. "We need light."

She can hear him, crawling towards the sound of her voice across the floor. Something brushes her foot. Clumsily they reach for one another, finding hands, faces; reassuring themselves that yes, they are still here, still whole. One hand remains in her brother's as the other gropes hopefully for a torch. Her fingers close instead on a thin wire, a spongy ear piece.

"I think I've found your headset." Something slithers along the floor as she pulls gently on the cable; the radio is still attached. She finds buttons in the dark; questing, pressing. A click. The sound of static. And miraculously, the tiniest amount of light, cast from the power indicator on the unit. Enough to find a torch proper and illuminate the shelter.

"What now?" asks Kastral, blinking owlishly in the yellowish light.

She shrugs. "Nothing on the radio?"

He shakes his head. "Static."

They've been here before, when the Daleks broke through the lines at the Canonflood. It might take a while for the authorities to get communications working again. And then she remembers: lifeboat protocols. All citizens to evacuate to the shielded cities and their miles of sky trenches; an impossible journey with Dalek bombs raining down outside.

They are alone.

Fear and frustration take hold of her hearts, turning her stomach, taking her breath. She concentrates on the sound of her pulse; the fluttering patter. Wills herself to be calm. It is quiet, she realises after a moment of meditation. The explosions have stopped.

"I'm going to open the capsule," she says.

"But what if there are Daleks outside?"

"Then their sensors will show we're hiding here anyway," she admits. "If we're going to get shot, I'd rather die with the sun on my face, not hiding in the dirt."

"Okay," he agrees after a moment. "You take the bolt guns then. You're the better shot. If we're going to get shot, I'd rather we die taking one of them out with us." He gives her a shaky smile.

"You're the boss." She picks up the guns, checking their ammunition stocks. There a four bolts loaded in each. Enough to take out a single Dalek perhaps, if she is steady-handed enough to land all eight shots directly on the eye stalk. Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

He unscrews the capsule lid carefully, wincing at the squeaking grind of metal on metal, loud as thunder in the quiet. She lifts it less than an inch, trying to see if there are Daleks moving across the fields. There is only blowing dust.

She stands, throwing open the lid, inviting them to attack. Nothing happens. Scrubby stands of saw grass, only survivors of the new and brutal climate, wave in the breeze.

"I think we're alone," she says, reaching down to help Kastral into the daylight. "But they took the farm."

The farmhouse, their childhood home, should stand a few hundred metres south of the shelter. In its place is a shell; only two walls remain standing framing a tumbledown pile of stone. Instinctively they edge towards the ruin. There may be salvageable supplies remaining, after all.

"Sen, this isn't right," says Kastral as they come close. She nods agreement, reaching out with a shaking hand to touch the warm stones. The house is half-buried in blown dust on the south side; the rocks of its former walls scored and etched by harsh sands. It looks as if it has lain broken for a hundred years, not a few hours.

"Let's make for the Avalons' farm. See if things are a bit better there."

The road is gone. She doesn't need it to find her way to the next farm, the shape of the low hills is enough, so familiar is the route. But how can the road be gone, she doesn't say. What Dalek weapon can possibly cause this kind of destruction?

Half a mile from the farm there used to be a grove of woodland. The trunks of the trees are still standing, bleached fingers that admonish the sky. Out of the corner of her eyes she thinks she sees something flit between them. She spins, training her bolt guns on the tree she thinks the shadow has slipped behind. It can't be a Dalek: they'd already be exterminated. But right now she isn't prepared to take any chances.

"Who's there?" she shouts. "Come out. Show yourself!"

"Put the guns down first!" the stranger yells back.

She lowers her weapons slowly. A man emerges from the dead wood, hands held high. He is dressed in rags and tatters, a makeshift pack on his back. A beggar, she would have thought in the days before the war. Now perhaps a refugee.

He limps closer and she can make out more detail on his weather beaten face. He must be a relative of the Avalon family; fled here from somewhere else the Daleks have ruined. She recognises those flinty blue eyes and aquiline nose…

"Sen?" gasps the man. He looks as if he has seen a ghost.

"I'm sorry," she says automatically. "Do I know you?"

He falls to his knees in the sand, quaking with shock. "You-you're dead. Both of you. Long dead."

She drops to his side, compassion battling dread fear. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"I'm Roben," he says, "Don't you remember me?"

"No," breathes Kastral behind her. "No, that's not possible. Roben's not even twenty. You're not-you can't be-"

Something in her brother has snapped. He cries out; an incoherent noise of pain and confusion, and bolts. He is running full pelt before she can react, before she can stop him. She does not hesitate to follow, leaving the terrible stranger in the dust. He can't be Roben, handsome son of the Avalon family. It's a trick; a lie.

She rounds the hill at full speed. The Valley of Plenitude, breadbasket of Gallifrey, should stretch out before her. The crops were dead before they went into the earth but she isn't prepared for the dune sea that has taken its place. Here and there she can see the half-buried farmhouses in the sand; roofless and ruinous as their own home. Kastral has collapsed now, sobbing on the ground, hysterical.

"No," she says quietly, falling to her knees at his side. Something buried in the sand makes a hollow noise as her right shin strikes it painfully. Yelping, she turns to see what has hurt her, brushing away sand.

She recoils. The empty skull of a Dalek carapace. Eye stalk bent, metal rusted. Long, long dead.

Roben has caught up with them, gasping for breath. "You see?" he says, taking in her horrified study of the rotten Dalek. "It's been decades. You've been dead for decades. Since Lifeboat Day."

"It is Lifeboat Day!"

"No," he shakes his head. "No, it's not. Not here." His own eyes are watering now, though he's smiling through the tears. "Rasslion's mercy, Sen. You've been dead for a hundred years. I can't tell you how good it is to see you again."