Chapter Five:
"All right, Prof! The PM's been filling me in. Amazing things, these Ironsides of yours. Amazing. You must be very proud of them," said the Doctor to Bracewell. He wasn't giving up anytime soon.
"Just doing my bit," shrugged Bracewell.
"Not bad for a Paisley boy," commented Amy as Scarlett took a seat and the Doctor searched through files that were littered over the desk.
"Yes, I thought I detected a familiar cadence, my dear," Bracewell smiled.
"How did you do it?" Scarlett asked from her seat. "Come up with the idea?"
"How does the muse of invention come to anyone?" he replied vaguely.
"But you get a lot of these clever notions, do you?" asked the Doctor, throwing the files back onto the desk.
"Well, ideas just seem to teem from my head! Wonderful things! Some musings on the potential of hypersonic flight. Gravity bubbles that could sustain life outside of the terrestrial atmosphere! Came to me in the bath!"
"And are these your ideas or theirs?" pressed the Doctor. There was no way a man as ordinary as he could come up with ideas like that.
"No, no, no, no. These robots are entirely under my control, Doctor. They are –" he paused to take a cup of tea from a passing Dalek. "Thank you… the perfect servant, and the perfect warrior."
"I don't know what you're up to, Professor, but whatever they've promised, you cannot trust them! Call them what you like, the Daleks are death!"
Scarlett span on her chair as the argument continued. "Yes, Doctor. Death to our enemies! Death to the forces of darkness, and death to the Third Reich!"
"Yes, and death to everyone else too!" frowned the Doctor.
Scarlett stopped her movements when a Dalek slid up to the Doctor. Very bad move.
"Would you care for some tea?" it asked.
The Doctor turned, hit the tray and cup, and caused them to fall to the floor with a loud clatter. "Stop this! What are you doing here? What do you want?"
"We seek only to help you," it replied.
"To do what?"
"To win the war."
"Really? Which war?" asked the Doctor.
"I do not understand."
"This war against the Nazis? Or your war; the war against the rest of the Universe? The war against all life-forms that are not Dalek?"
"I do not understand," started the Dalek. "I am your soldier."
"Oh, yeah? Okay." The Doctor turned around and picked up a giant spanner, causing Scarlett to raise her eyebrows and think; what the bloody hell is he going to do with that? "Okay, soldier, defend yourself!" Scarlett jumped out of her seat as the Doctor started hitting the Dalek repeatedly with the spanner.
"Doctor, stop!" Amy yelled.
"You do not require tea?" said the Dalek.
The Doctor ignored everything and kept striking the machine in front of him. "Come on! Fight back! You want to, don't you? You know you do!"
"Doctor!" Scarlett tried, taking a step closer to him hesitantly.
"I must protest!" said Bracewell. He hated to see his creation treated in such a way.
"What are you waiting for? You hate me. You want to kill me. Well, go on! Kill me. Kill me!" The Doctor exclaimed, his voice getting louder with every word.
"Doctor, be careful!" Scarlett shouted, pushing him back gently.
"Please desist from striking me. I am your soldier," said the Dalek in its stupid voice.
"You are my enemy!" The Doctor yelled, punctuating his sentence with hits. "And I am yours! You are everything I despise! The worst thing in all creation. I've defeated you time and time again, I've defeated you. I sent you back into the void! I saved the whole of reality from you! I am the Doctor! And you are the Daleks!" He ended his rant with a kick, sending the Dalek backwards.
Scarlett eyes were wide, as were Amy's. Neither of them had ever seen the Doctor that angry and quite frankly, it scared them.
It was silent until the Dalek spoke again, "Correct. Review testimony."
Then they heard the Doctor's voice again, coming out of the Dalek. "'I am the Doctor. And you are the Daleks!'"
"What do they mean; testimony?" Scarlett asked.
"Transmitting testimony now," bleated the Dalek.
"Transmit what, where?" asked the Doctor.
"Testimony accepted!" it yelled.
The Doctor threw his arm out, giving Scarlett a small push back. She then bumped into Amy, who grabbed her arm in return. "Get back! All of you!"
"Marines! Marines! Get in here!" yelled Churchill, who had entered the room and seen it all.
Two Marines entered on command and one of the Daleks killed them without hesitation.
"Stop it! Stop it, please! What are you doing?" Bracewell turned to the Daleks, "You are my Ironsides!"
"We are the Daleks!"
This was one of the times when Scarlett actually wanted the Doctor to be wrong but as always, that just wasn't the case.
"But I created you!" urged Bracewell.
"No," the Dalek started, shooting off Bracewell's hand to reveal a stump of wires and circuits. "We created you!"
"Victory! Victory! Victory!" yelled another Dalek, before the two of them disappeared completely.
During the whole ordeal, Amy's grip on Scarlett's arm had been tightening and by now, she was starting to wince at the impact.
"What just happened, Doctor?" asked Amy with a shake in her voice.
"I wanted to know what they wanted, what their plan was… I was their plan!" The Doctor then ran out of the room, saying nothing more.
They followed the Doctor into the storage room where the TARDIS was left as he continued to talk. "Testimony accepted!' That's what they said! My testimony."
"Don't beat yourself up. You were right, the pair of you," said Amy. "What do we do? Is this what we do now? Chase after them?"
"This is what I do. It's dangerous, so wait here," he told her.
"What, so you mean we've got to stay safe down here in the middle of the London Blitz?" she retorted.
"Safe as it gets around me," he replied honestly. They may not know it yet but travelling with him could get dangerous. Very dangerous. And he made a promise to himself after the Atraxi incident that he would do everything he could to make sure they remain safe while in his company.
Scarlett watched as Amy left the room, having absolutely no intentions of following her.
"Let me come with you," she said to the Doctor.
"Not a chance."
"Why?"
"I want you to stay safe so you're staying here."
"I'd rather come with you than stay down here. I can't stand it…" she started as another siren went off, sending shivers down her spine. "Especially the noises."
The Doctor paused for a moment as he watched the brunette before pushing open the TARDIS door with a sigh, "Fine. In you get."
She flashed him a small, grateful smile before entering the TARDIS and taking a seat next to the console.
The Doctor started to work the controls before checking the monitor.
"Bingo!"
The pair waited until the TARDIS had landed before making their way towards the door. The Doctor stopped his strides so abruptly that Scarlett walked straight into his back. "Oh for the love of…" she groaned, rubbing her nose with a frown. The Doctor turned round slightly and mumbled a quick "Just stay behind me," before opening the doors and stepping outside.
"How about that cuppa now, then?" said the Doctor, making their presence known.
"It is the Doctor! Exterminate!" yelled the Dalek that the Doctor had hit previously.
"Wait, wait, wait, I wouldn't if I were you!" said the Doctor, pulling out a small round object and holding it out in front of him, all while making sure he stayed in front of Scarlett. "TARDIS self-destruct. And you know what that means. My ship goes, you all go with it." When Scarlett took a second glance she realised that what he was holding was most definitely not the TARDIS self-destruct button… It was a bloody Jammie Dodger.
"You would not use such a device," said the Dalek.
"Try me. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. No scans! No nothing!" The Doctor frowned as another Dalek started to move forward. "One move and I'll destroy us all, you got that? TARDIS bang-bang, Daleks boom!" The Dalek moved back. "Good boy. This ship's pretty beaten up – running on empty, I'd say, like you. When we last met, you were at the end of your rope. Finished."
"One ship survived," said the second Dalek.
"And you fell back through time, yes? Crippled? Dying?"
"We picked up a trace. One of the Progenitor devices," it replied.
"What's that when it's at home?" Scarlett asked, causing the Doctor to widen his eyes at her.
Yep, probably should've stayed quiet, she scolded herself.
"It is our past. And our future," said the Dalek simply.
"Ohhh, that's deep. That is deep for a Dalek," nodded the Doctor. "What does it mean, though?"
Another Dalek slid up. "It contains pure Dalek DNA, thousands were created, all were lost, save one."
"OK, but there's still one thing I don't get, though – if you've got the Progenitor, why build Bracewell?"
"It was... necessary," the second Dalek said.
"I get it. Oh, I get it! I get it. Oh, ho, this is rich! The Progenitor wouldn't recognise you, would it? It saw you as impure; the DNA is unrecognisable as Dalek."
"A solution was devised," spoke the Dalek.
"Yes, yes, yes. Me. My testimony," said the Doctor, sounding bored. "So you set a trap, you knew that the Progenitor would recognise me. The Dalek's greatest enemy! It would accept my word. My recognition of you." The second Dalek turns to the instrument panel behind it. "No, no, no. What are you doing?"
"Withdraw now, Doctor, or the city dies in flames."
The Doctor held out his left hand – the other still holding that damned Jammie Dodger –and Scarlett took it carefully, giving it a small squeeze to let him know she was still there.
"Who are you kidding? This ship is a wreck; you don't have the power to destroy London," scoffed the Doctor.
"Watch as the humans destroy themselves."
A screen flickered to life behind the Daleks to show London in darkness as they did their best to avoid the Germans. But then lights everywhere started to come to life, practically egging the Germans on.
"Turn those lights off now. Turn London off or I swear I will use the TARDIS self-destruct!" the Doctor yelled.
"Stalemate, Doctor," croaked a Dalek. "Leave us, and return to Earth."
"Oh, that's it? That's your great victory? You leave?"
"Extinction is not an option. We shall return to our own time and begin again."
"No, no, no! I won't let you get away this time! I won't!"
The Doctor took a small step forward, bringing Scarlett along with him.
"We have succeeded – DNA reconstruction is complete," said another Dalek.
The Daleks slid back from the cubicle and the doors split open amidst sparks.
"Observe, Doctor, a new Dalek paradigm!"
The Doctor and Scarlett watched as new, larger Daleks emerged from the smoke and steam, each one a different colour: white, blue, yellow, orange and red. Scarlett stepped up to stand next to the Doctor and his hand tightened around hers.
"The Progenitor has fulfilled our new destiny," said a Dalek. "Behold the restoration of the Daleks! The resurrection of the master race!"