Chapter 24 – Uranium-235

Tiff's POV

"Just drag them in here." The Doctor said dismissively. I could tell he was slightly annoyed with everything but just because he had the emotional range of a teaspoon, didn't mean we all had. I helped Philip drag Michael and Kirsty onto the TARDIS floor and took a seat to watch what the Doctor was doing. Flicking switches randomly; nobody could really make sense of what he was doing. Slowly, my eyes kept drifting to the other girl across the room. Too many questions were running through my mind. Who was she? Why was she here? What did she know?

"I owe you all an apology." The Doctor whispered after a good few minutes of silence.

"Why?" Philip asked.

"It's over."

"It can't be!" I yelled. Panic had overcome me. It wasn't over, it couldn't be.

"It is. There is no way to get them to leave this time."

"YES. THERE. IS." I yelled louder.

"There isn't. Me and Philip have been working tirelessly for days trying to find away to save YOUR people. YOUR people who don't help by getting themselves eaten. YOUR people who I always have to save. And the only way to save YOUR people is to set off a nuclear bomb in England. That's why Olivia's here." He yelled as he beckoned to the girl. Michael stirred but I didn't notify anybody on this. Instead, I yelled back.

"MY people now? So what are you saying..."

"I'm saying Olivia's here to decide what to do because I simply don't know anymore." He said, his hair dropping to look at the floor. Clearly, this was affecting him greatly, but I wasn't going to give in.

"Why couldn't I make the decision? Why does it have to be somebody who...how do you know her?" I asked.

"She's a physicist who's going to explain to me how your nuclear weapons work. All I know is that the gamma rays will pass straight through the Daleks and kill their brains immediately. The ones that survive will develop a Cancer and be killed off eventually. From that, I think more Daleks will have more sense to come back here again. Any that do are just stupid."

"Fine." I finished as I dragged myself down the TARDIS corridors. I'd always had a room here, The Doctor had made one for me when he promised he'd come back for me. 'Watch the stars' he had told me, and I did. I watched those stupid stars for 2 whole years. It drove me insane.

I opened the door using my telepathic password, my favourite memory. It was the best one because not even the Doctor knew what it was. Not that he would need it, he could just open it using the console room. Even so, I liked the fact he would never know. I flicked a switch on the monitor in my room and watched them talk about the plans in the console room. Another thing the Doctor had forgotten, I could see everything from in here.

"Well the last nuclear bomb that went off was the one in Hiroshima, it had devastating effects with just 60kg of Uranium-235 and the area is still a dead zone. If we use the same chemical but use the domino effect, we can release the same amount of energy but spread it across the whole of Britain." Olivia was saying as she sketched out a drawing of Britain.

"So one explosion will set off the next and so on?" The Doctor asked. It wasn't like him now to know something.

"Yes. The neutrons released from the last explosion should reach the next. Unfortunately, it will take about a minute between each explosion. We need at least 60 explosions to wipe out all the Daleks close to the dead zones but some may have time to escape if they realise they're being blown up."

"What about the humans?"

"We can evacuate the survivors but it will take a week. Luckily for us, it will take about that long to get the stations set up but Uranium in other countries will have to be locked in lead volts. Oh, and I don't think the military will let us do this."

"What if we told them that they should because the Daleks were going to set it off?"

"It could work but would raise suspicion." Was the last thing I heard Olivia say before I gave up and flicked through all the other feeds I was receiving. From this set I could get images from the survivor's hideout, the Co-Operative, NASA and, what interested me most, the swimming pool. I nearly passed this feed without a second thought but something stopped me.

Kirsty.