When Dawn, Raykins, and Hrequor finally arrived at the dark pod at the bottom of the elevator shaft, where the Tectonic Defense Systems were housed, the heat around them permeated even through Dawn's suit. It was like being inside an oven… or getting boiled alive...
Or something.
"Airlock's up," Hrequor noted, disengaging himself from the harness that had gotten him down the elevator shaft. "That means the temperature in there is astronomical."
"Hope the safety shut down protocols aren't all melted," Raykins muttered, ushering Dawn and Hrequor inside the airlock. Then sealing the door shut behind her, and securing it to make sure it was air-tight. "Lucky for us, the oxygen controls in this suit work without power. But the comms systems do require power, so once the suits become air-tight, we won't be able to talk."
"There's… no oxygen in there?!" Dawn cried. "But… why?"
"Standard procedure, when the temperature gets too hot," said Hrequor, double-checking his oxygen supply. "Don't want to chance the facility turning into a giant fireball, in case the power goes out. So when it gets hot enough, the bulkhead door to the elevator shaft closes, and the air is taken out of the room."
"No oxygen means no fires," Raykins confirmed. Gestured around herself. "All the people evacuate through the airlock, which is also supposed to be cooling us down to safe temperatures… if it weren't broken. Perfect system."
Dawn wasn't sure how she felt about it.
But she guessed there were worse things to do than walking into a room completely deprived of air.
Raykins tripped something mechanical-looking, and then shouted out, "Hold on to something!"
Dawn grabbed at a nearby support strut, just as a sucking sound started up around her, accompanied this strong feeling like Dawn was being sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner!
Damn! This was an airlock!
Then it stopped. And Raykins stepped forwards, yanking the handle down on the inner door, and swinging it open.
They all stepped forwards.
The whole room and all the controls and metallic equipment inside was all glowing red hot. It was enough that Raykins, Dawn, and Hrequor could actually manage to see down here, which… was kind of weird.
And disturbing, because Dawn could see a whole bunch of Dalek-exterminated people, down here, too. Now lying, dead on the floor. Some with Dalek control devices sticking out of their heads.
Raykins raced forward to look at the controls to the tectonic plate instruments. Then threw up her hands in irritation.
Dawn could see why.
About half of them were melted.
Hrequor mouthed something, racing over to help her. Squatted down, squinting at the machinery. Began pointing emphatically, which only made Raykins more irritated.
She smacked his hand away, then turned to another one of the machines.
Winced, shaking out her fingers, as the heat from the metal sizzled at her hands — even through her heat suit.
Dawn could feel her insides twisting more than ever, down here.
And not from the heat.
She took a step, and the overhead lights flickered on for a few seconds.
The cooling systems roaring into life around them.
Then… it all cut out, again.
Raykins turned. Delight on her face. She made a gesture that seemed to shout, "More! More! Keep doing that!"
Dawn cringed. "It's unstable!" she insisted. "You don't know what you're…!"
Except no one could hear her past her heat suit.
Damn vacuum.
The planet gave a sudden, violent tremor. Things clattering down to the ground, from the ceiling and the walls, making Dawn have to leap out of the way. She lost her footing, reached out to catch herself, and a sudden red hot flash tore through the cooling systems.
"No!" shouted Hrequor, silently.
Dawn stared, horrified. The system was just a lump of metal, now. Like she'd suddenly moved all the heat to that area… without knowing it. Worse, still, she was feeling the heat even more than before, burning across her…
Raykins yanked her away, and Dawn instantly felt better.
Okay. Dawn was feeling a little freaked by this whole unstable-Key thing, now.
Raykins looked around herself. Then stopped, as her eyes fell on something that had been nearly lost in the almost-darkness of the pod. Something that made Raykins mouth something, her eyes twinkling.
Hrequor looked at her.
Raykins beamed, pointing and shouting something that neither of them could hear. Then, dropping Dawn, raced over to it, gesturing with her hand for the others to follow.
The moment Hrequor spotted it, he surged forwards. Also shouting in silent relief.
Dawn had no idea what they were so happy about.
It looked like a metallic version of an upside down ice cream cone. Raykins was scrabbling around it, gesturing frantically at Hrequor, who likewise gestured back at her.
They were analyzing the machine in detail.
And Dawn was starting to feel hot enough that she might spontaneously combust, herself, any second, now. Worse still, that heavy-weight feeling inside of her was back in full-swing, now. Along with this kind of dread Dawn could feel in her teeth, like the universe was holding its breath, just waiting for her to sound its death knoll.
Then Dawn realized… both Raykins and Hrequor were gesturing at her.
Okay then…
Judging by how they were so intent on that cone thing, Dawn guessed they wanted her to touch it. So… yeah. She could do that.
Reached out her hand.
Before she could even get manage to touch it, a spark ran from her fingers into the device. The intense heat Dawn was feeling even through her heat suit seemed to ebb, just a bit, and the cone-thing rumbled.
Then the metal shell around it unfolded in a series of metallic panels, all raising up.
The metallic plates shuddered… then stopped. Not raised fully… but it looked, from Hrequor and Raykins' happy reactions, like it had been enough.
"What is this thing?" Dawn asked Hrequor and Raykins.
They couldn't hear her. But Dawn soon got them to understand the general idea by hitting them on the arm and making exaggerated miming signals.
Raykins gave a small grin.
Then, tracing her finger on one of the metal panels, spelled out two letters.
"E-M."
"The EM generator thing that's knocking out all the power to stuff!" Dawn realized.
Raykins nodded. Then grinned at Dawn.
"So… you've got a plan-type thing, huh?" Dawn guessed.
Raykins then gave a very complicated-looking hand gesture, which Dawn figured was some future-style galactic hand signal for… something.
But she didn't know what.
Hrequor raced in, with a power cable. It seemed to be connected to the machinery Raykins had complained, earlier, was partly melted. The machinery, Dawn guessed, that had the safety reset controls in it.
And it was as Raykins began hooking it up to the EM field generator, through those panel thingies… that Dawn figured out what they must be doing!
The EM generator was a machine, and it was clearly working — at least to some extent. They were trying to make its power instead go into the safety stuff!
Oh, major coolness!
Then Dawn shivered. For no reason, inside her heat suit, it had suddenly gotten ice-cold. And at the same time, also for no apparent reason, Dawn felt her whole body suddenly buzzing with energy. Like she'd just… soaked it up… from the air around her…
Oh, that wasn't good.
This must be what the Doctor meant by 'unstable'.
"And this is just small-scale stuff," Dawn said, with a grimace. "If Seo dies… I'm guessing I'll be sucking the heat out of whole galaxies or whatever."
Raykins spun around. Gestured at Dawn, again.
But the moment Dawn took a step forwards, a violent burst of green energy shot out of her, hurtling through the air faster than she could register!
Knocked Raykins to the ground, and flooded the cone-thing, surging through the power cable and right into Hrequor.
Hrequor gave a silent scream, as the energy arched through him!
Dropped the cable to the ground, and then….
The heat suit fell down.
And Hrequor was just… gone. Disappeared, as if he'd never been there at all.
Raykins peeled herself up from the floor, staring in horror at Hrequor. Dawn raced over to check if there was anything she could do, but before she made it…
The cone started acting funny.
And so did the controls around them.
The planet shook even more than it had before, the instruments of the safety protocol equipment suddenly flicking on and reporting a whole bunch of angry-looking red lights. Raykins raced towards them, looking pretty frantic and pretty desperate.
A warning light flashed, which counted down to complete planetary destruction.
Okay, so… looked like the EM generator idea had just made things worse.
Or else Dawn had screwed it up even more.
But now that the overwhelming swelter in Dawn's heat suit had been taken care of, and the temperature had evened out, Dawn found she could think again. She looked around herself, and suddenly realized… the answer was obvious. Totally obvious.
She grabbed up Raykins, and hauled her back towards the bulkhead that had sealed off the elevator shaft. Could feel energy building up in her body, again. Ready for another go.
But Dawn was ready, this time.
Raykins, bewildered, only had time to mouth a confused, "What…?"
Before Dawn ripped off Raykins' heat glove, slamming her hand down on the control to release the bulkhead door to the elevator shaft and the teleport device on Raykins' wrist — at the same time.
Raykins and Dawn only just caught sight of the fireball racing into the room along with the oxygen from the elevator shaft, towards the cone's exposed wiring — before they found themselves teleported away. Back to Raykins' ship.
The ground lurched beneath them.
Then went still.
And Raykins looked around them, amazed. As the planet Jarodin went back to normal.
"You did it," Raykins said, taking off her helmet. She then examined the hand that Dawn had exposed, down in the room with the tectonic plate controller equipment. "Not even burned. I… can't… believe it."
Dawn took off her own helmet. "Yeah, well, it was a pretty obvious solution," she said. Shaking out her hair. "Blow it up, and get out. I don't know why we didn't do that the moment we arrived down there."
"Korjensky wants the Dalek tech," Raykins replied. "I was trying to save the planet and keep it in tact. According to Korjensky directives." She kept staring down at her unburned hand. Bending and flexing her fingers. "Just one touch of your hand on my teleporter got it working, again. Brilliant. Just…" She paused. Then, spinning on Dawn, said, "Wait a sec. How'd you know where my teleporter was?!"
Dawn raised up her hands in surrender. "Hey, number one thing a kleptomaniac like me remembers," she pointed out, "is where the flashy cool-stuff-to-steal is."
Raykins stared at her, a second longer.
Then dropped her head, and laughed.
"Come on," Raykins said. "Let's gather up this 'Oliver' of yours, and head off. Time to work out what to do about your niece."
Seo wound up inside a cell with absolutely no light. The air smelled stale and rotten. The only other indications, when Seo first entered, that there were other people nearby… was the sounds of breathing, and rustling clothing.
She'd tried to take a step forwards, to greet the others, but her legs crumpled under the pain of her earlier assault, and she crashed to the ground, again.
She stayed there for a long time.
Listening to the others murmuring in the shadows. Some asleep. Most terrified. All weary of her.
It took a while before any of them came up to Seo.
By that point her eyes had adjusted, but even her eyes could never adjust completely to this level of darkness. Still, when someone came up to her, Seo could make out the shape. Make out some features.
"Which squad did they take you from?" the someone asked.
Seo's mind was still too overloaded by the pain of the earlier Dalek assault to be able to properly process this. "Squad?"
"They must have started in on her early," said a deeper voice, nearby.
Footsteps, as Seo saw the deeper-voice someone else coming over to her.
"Harriet Pomsale," the deeper voice introduced. "VQ 28."
"And I'm Teriza Terrice," said the first voice. "VQ 40."
A few other voices chimed in. Introducing themselves. Mostly women's voices, but a few men, and a number of alien-sounding creatures thrown into the mix. Many were quiet, reluctant to offer anything at all.
"I… I don't… know what you're talking about," Seo confessed. "What's a… VQ? And why…?" She squinted through the darkness, better making out the shape of Harriet Pomsale. "Why are you missing body parts?"
For a few seconds there was absolute silence.
Then came the sound of feet scuffling away, rapidly, as the two people nearby her darted away, at high speed.
"She's not one of us," came Teriza's voice.
"It's the nano-genes," said Pomsale. "We've triggered them. Any minute now, she'll sprout an eyestalk in the middle of her forehead and mow us down."
Seo put her hand to her forehead, a little bewildered. It felt exactly the way it always had.
"No, it's worse than that," said another woman, from further away. Karlyn, she'd called herself. "She's their latest prototype. Their latest attempt at creating a Slayer Replicant who actually triggers as a code 5 on our scanners!"
This seemed to trigger a wave of anger from everyone in the room.
"We all know that's why they've been looking for vampires!" said one of the other girls. "We're Vampire Slayers! Find out how vampires work, and they'll find out how we work! They can create a Slayer who registers as a code 5!"
"They have a vampire!" shouted another.
"And now they've made the duplicate!" screamed a third.
In a moment, they were all lunging at Seo, trying to tear her apart.
Seo, recalling every trick she'd ever picked up from Mom, managed to dodge and roll out of their way, gritting her teeth against the pain of the Dalek ray, then she tip-toed to the other end of the cell. Scarcely breathing, as the others frantically tried to find her, despite the near blackness.
"In the name of Bunfy Sompters, and all that IPSA stands for," shouted Pomsale, "we'll strike you down where you stand!"
Seo blinked. "You know Mom?"
Then realized.
"You know Mom!" Seo cried. "Because this is the 39th century, and Mom came here! She fought against Daleks and… and… IPSA. The Slayers! There's a war going on!"
Seo's thoughts were becoming clearer and clearer, now, as the pain was finally beginning to wear off. Yes. Yes, that's right! Mom had gone to the 39th century and fought Daleks. With Father. And… that's right — when Seo had been facing off against the Celestial Toymaker, Father had mentioned this very Experimentation Ship!
Oh, now everything was finally beginning to make sense!
Too late, Seo realized she'd just given away her position in the room. She tried to dart out of the way, but Pomsale was too fast, and had her slammed up against the wall before Seo could do anything about it.
"You're making a mistake!" Seo protested. "I might not be IPSA, but I'm still a friend! I can help you get out of here."
Pomsale gave a bitter laugh. "No one gets off this ship alive," she spat. "Wendon, over there, was on the last IPSA mission to liberate the Experiment Ship, and he's the only survivor. Much as you can call that surviving."
A rasped breathing and a strangled cry came from the corner. A cry that used to be a man's voice… but something had happened to him. Something horrible.
This was all he could manage, now.
"You Dalek agents never get it," said Pomsale. "What makes us Slayers unique isn't our biological make-up. It's not our DNA or our Sineyic Essence. It's Bunfy Sompters who made us this way. If you don't know her, then there's no hope in hell that you'll ever—"
"If I don't know her!" Seo protested. "You're the ones who can't even get her name right!"
Pomsale hesitated, and Seo used that moment of hesitation to wriggle out of her grasp, and race to the other side of the cell.
Her limbs were still aching from the Dalek beam.
"She's my mom," said Seo. "I know her better than any of you." She sucked in a sharp breath. "And if you don't want her storming out here to the future and beating you all to a bloody pulp, you'll stop trying to kill me!"
This made them hesitate.
Just for a few seconds.
"She can't really be…?" Teriza started.
That was when the door slid open. The dim light from the corridor enough to blind them, as they all winced away from it.
"THE FEMALE SEOSYRAE AND SLAYER 215 WILL FOLLOW!" the Daleks demanded.
Seo could feel the pressure of all those eyes boring into her. Because for some reason — a reason Seo didn't quite understand — the Daleks knew her by name.
Seo had kept her name and identity.
The rest of them… were just numbers.
"MOVE!" shouted the Dalek. "MOVE! OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
Seo moved.
Obeyed every command they gave.
She needed to escape, needed to save Drusilla, but somehow… her brain had run out of ideas. Like everything had drained from her.
Replaced by nothing but dread.
Seo followed the Daleks. Just waiting to see… what they in store for her.