Harry Sullivan, dressed in a fresh set of surgeon's clothes, was looking for some help.
"Look," he said urgently to one of the Daughters as they walked down the corridor, "he refuses to let go. But if we don't get that boy into surgery now, he'll die."
"And all our staff are busy. I have a solution, I think." They went into the triage area, full of filthy, wounded soldiers. Many of the ones who were awake were smiling, some were weeping. They knew they would not be returning to the battlefield. But the man Harry approached was deathly grim, all of his attention focussed on the too-young man who lay unconscious on the table. Both of his hands were locked urgently around his friend's arm.
"I'm not letting go," he growled. "I said I'd look after him, and I'm not letting go." His eyes were bright with tears and not a little madness.
The Daughter stepped forward, hands out to her sides and clearly visible. Harry had learned that habit too; these soldiers were beyond paranoid. She said, "Do you know what a stasis field is?"
The grim man shook his head.
"It stops time. If I put your friend into a stasis field-"
"I'm not letting go!" he shouted.
She went on doggedly. "If I put him and you, together, into a stasis field, you will both be frozen in time, and he won't get any worse. There will be no time for him to get worse, you understand? You don't have to let go. And when we have the doctors ready, we will unfreeze you both at once, and we will get to work. It is not dangerous, but it will be very startling. Everything will change in a flash. Can you remember that?"
The grim man blinked, and she asked again slowly, "Lieutenant, can you remember that?"
"Yes," he replied, and she stepped forward and started swabbing the unconscious man's bare arm with disinfectant. After it was clean, she quickly scrubbed the Lieutenant's hands and placed them on the clean spot.
"We'll be throwing sterile robes over on top of your gear too, don't fight them! Remember that! You have to take care of him, and you can do that by going into the stasis field with him. All right?"
"All right. And th-thank you." He nodded, and she wheeled a metal frame until it surrounded them on all sides, and hit a button. The two men abruptly froze, and she quickly drew curtains around them, hiding them. Then she leaned one shoulder on the curtains in a moment of exhaustion. Harry expected her to fall, but the curtain acted as though there was a solid wall behind it. He reached out and touched the curtain; it might have been hanging against a steel wall, rather than thin air.
"I'm glad we got those extra power wells in place," she said, scribbling on a clipboard and then hanging it on the corner of the frame. "We're putting more people into stasis than we had anticipated. And we're going to have a massive power drain starting soon."
"Why?" asked Harry.
"We're decanting," she said, and dashed back to work. Harry frowned, muttered "Decanting?" to himself, and then went to look at the three new wounded who had just been carried in. Two went in the queue for surgery; the third was fine after the application of a brace around his sprained ankle. Harry took several minutes reassuring him that he did not need to go back, that he could stay. That everyone was getting a discharge form, a place to sleep, and all the food they wanted. In his medical capacity, Harry obligingly scribbled his signature at the bottom of one of these forms (not that he could read the form, he just knew to sign in the purple box). The ex-soldier rose, testing his ankle, and Harry said, "Ah."
"Ah, what?"
"Ah, perhaps you could leave all that here?" All that was the mixed assortment of rifle, handguns, rusty knives, and grenades that were still slung around the ex-soldier's body on various straps.
"Oh. Right," and the soldier obligingly stripped them all off and piled them on the cot, where one of the Daughters promptly spirited them away. The soldier watched his weapons go, and flexed his shoulders experimentally.
"I feel so light … and I really don't need a meal ticket book?"
"Really. Just show up and you're served," said Harry. With a smile and a clap on the arm, the ex-soldier limped out into the hallway. He excitedly grabbed the first passer-by he found, another soldier in a rain cloak, and said, "It's really true! The war's over!" In a burst of enthusiasm he hugged the man and limped on.
The other soldier tilted his head down under his hood. Cold eyes behind rimless glasses watched the man leave, taking note of his slovenly appearance, obvious fitness to serve, and the name on the man's uniform. Then Commander Nyder went on, to try and find another one of his contacts. Any of his contacts, really. But it was nearly impossible.
The party of the millennium was just beginning. Soldiers, civil servants, doctors, all united in one purpose: to celebrate the end of a thousand years of war. The noise was a constant background cheering, rising and falling over and over again. The words 'victory', 'survive', 'war', and 'Davros' were repeated over and over. Nobody he was looking for was at their assigned post: presumably they were taking part in the festivities.
There were even women wandering around - had they actually opened the Womens' Quarters? It was unheard of! But then he spotted a familiar face - a Red Hexagon woman, talking to a Kaled woman who was carrying a rifle. The armed woman looked at Nyder with a chill expression, and he pulled down his hood a bit and moved on.
He stopped at a message board, covered with completely illegal posted messages. Most of them were the scrawls of barely literate soldiers, looking for de-enlisted men from their squads, friends from training, or just advertising that they were back, that they had survived. But among them was a typed notice, saying that the Kaled Council was in indefinite session at an undisclosed location. Nyder sniffed: who were they fooling? The listed attendees were not even close to being a quorum. Multiple names had been struck out, and there were no replacements - no wait, at the bottom was a new name, Dynna. Dynna? Nyder frowned, wondering why someone with a woman's name was listed. It never even occurred to him that Dynna might be a woman.
Written under Dynna's name was Mah. But Mah couldn't be attending this Council meeting. Or any meeting, for that matter. Davros had ordered him assassinated, by-
Oh.
Security Liaison had carried out that particular order for Davros. She had assassinated Mah. And failed? But there had been an official announcement that Mah was dead. His replacement, Troc, presumably was meeting with the Council somewhere, which is why Nyder could not find and question him.
He bit at his own lip in frustration, then realised he had another appointment to keep.
# # #
General Ravon was alone in his headquarters.
Alone!
There should be soldiers to carry orders. This should be the brain from which the actions of the war streamed out. Instead there was just himself, and his map of the battlefield. The handful of units scattered there seemed like a mockery of proper war.
He'd completely given up on putting markers for the Thals now; there had been no reports that he could trust for too long. Under the heel of one of his boots, he ground the crumpled copy of the Armistice that had been delivered to him. He had discarded it there seconds after reading it.
There was a scuffling noise, and he turned and pointed his handgun at - a woman. One of those mysterious women who called themselves the Daughters of Davros, and were getting underfoot, in his hair, and making a mockery of the military chain of command. She smiled at him, tentatively, and said, "General Ravon, there is celebration. Don't you want to join in?"
"I'd rather wait here, and die on my feet," he said, turning back to the map. "The Thals will come sweeping in here any hour, any minute now! They have no respect for cease-fires, no concept of peace. I can at least give my life to stop a few of them from making it into the Dome for their butchery and looting."
The Daughter looked unhappy at this attitude. "General, don't you think the Thals are celebrating as well? They have pulled back their troops." She put down a small covered tray that she had been carrying. Food, these damn women were always proffering food. She went to the map, reached for a marker, and paused.
General Ravon locked gazes with the Daughter. Slowly, she said, "I know the true positions of the troops for both sides, General. May I show you? Please?"
He nodded once, abruptly, and then stared down at her hands as they started deftly rearranging the markers. He had put his gun back in its holster, but his hand was still in a white-knuckled grip on it.
# # #
Nenno was terrified.
He was a fat man (obviously connected enough to get extra rations), his plump fingers endlessly walking up and down the edge of his official tunic, stroking it, busy little white hands. His tunic marked him as a high level functionary; the secrets locked in his bald head made him untouchable.
That sound … that sound had been following him for hours. He had heard it faintly now and then, but it had grown louder as he left his quarters, and now here in Section Four it was very noticeable. Loud enough even to be heard over the sounds of revelry that echoed inside the Dome.
EYIyiyiyiyi …
Why didn't anyone else notice it? But the corridor was deserted. He must have gotten turned around somewhere: had the signs been changed? Nobody was around him, nobody to ask if they heard the noise too.
Nobody to see if he started walking, no trotting, to get away from the noise.
Eyiyiyiyi. eyiyiyi …. eyiyi …
He was panting now, but the noise seemed to be fading away. He looked around at the corridor colour coding striped along the wall, and realised that somehow he'd gotten himself into Corridor Ki. Damn it, one end of it had beenimpassable for years, he was going to have to turn around and go back.
But the noise was back there. Nenno swallowed, and wiped the sweat from his hands on his tunic. Some of the soldiers coming back had told stories about – things. Outside in the Wastelands. Mutos or worse. Could some of those things gotten in?
He turned the next corner and saw a soldier standing in the corridor, as though waiting. Oh, excellent! He could just order this fellow to see him to his quarters, and the illegal arms he kept there. Nobody could get him in there.
"You there! Take meAAAAA!"
Nenno screamed, because the soldier had turned and shot him! He saw the bright spit of flame from the pistol and felt the shock of the impact. The pain that spiked through his leg as he collapsed and fell on it was worse than the bullet's hit, and the terrible noise came alive around them both, as though the sound of the shot had woken something awful.
Eyiyiyiyi … EYIYIYIYIIIII …
The soldier was coming closer, and Nenno screamed, "No, stop! I'll do anything …" and then the soldier pushed back the hood of his rain cloak, and Nenno's voice died in his throat. He sat there on the floor, a little scared fat man clutching at his torn leg with both hands, staring.
"Anything?" whispered Security Commander Nyder. "You made me say that, once. Did you think that I would forget?" His gun was held ready to fire again.
EYIYIYIYIYI ….
Nyder's face looked like something carved out of white stone, cold and merciless. Nenno started to crawl backwards, babbling. "You can't kill me, I know people, even you can't …"
Nyder still advanced, and Nenno started screaming in defiance.
EYIYIYIYIIIII …
"It would have been someone else, if it wasn't me! It was the way things are! Why shouldn't I do it, everyone else was! Why –"
But Nenno had crawled backwards past the corner of the corridor, and hands reached around the corner and seized him, seized his hair and his limbs, fingers sinking into his fat face, he screamed as the EYIYIYIYIYI reached a hideous peak – and he was yanked around the corner.
Nyder walked around the corner and just stood there, watching and enjoying. Bathing in the screams. Watching as his tormentor was tormented in his turn; the noises he made were horrible, and the wet noises his silent attackers drew from his flesh were worse. He writhed on the floor as they knelt around him, hands and mysterious tools working. Nenno's face turned red, then white, then red again, and his screams echoed down the length of the deserted corridor. He begged and pleaded; sometimes his pleas were cut short as they shoved some implement down his throat. Nyder watched with professional approval as the knives, the hot needles, the corrosives were brought out and employed.
"Excuse me, Commander." He whirled, to face a Red Hexagon woman carrying a box with needle-tipped tubes dangling from it.
"What's that?" he asked, the gun still reflexively at the ready.
"Oh, an oxygen pump, infusion supplies, stimulants, another bone scraper, extra gougers - the usual." The woman looked into the bloody muddle before her and touched her tongue to her lower lip in a disturbingly voluptuous manner. "He will not be escaping us into unconsciousness."
She stepped around the Commander and into the fray; one of Nenno's hands came groping out of the pile towards her, open palm pleading, and she pinned it to the floor with her knee, and then drew a spike and a mallet from her pocket. With two deft blows, Nenno's arm was permanently affixed to the floor, and she set to work with her needles.
His screams reached a higher pitch as the drugs seared into his veins. His twisting body was almost completely obscured by the labouring women around him, and Nyder stepped closer so that he could stare down into Nenno's sweat-dripping, screaming, and supremely anguished face.
And he stared.
# # #
Ravon was staring at the map.
Almost all of the markers were off of it now; the Kaled and Thal main battle units were neatly placed in stacks atop the models of the Domes. There were little red markers in a grid array over the battlefield - the entire battlefield, both sides of the mountain range.
Both sides. They were on both sides!
His hands were hidden below the edge of the table; his arms were locked straight, shoulders quivering with tension. A white hand clawed upwards and flailed at the edge of the map, scrabbled for purchase weakly, and then fell back.
"I do not accept this." Ravon stared at the map, tendons thrumming in his neck, paying almost no attention to the woman he was strangling. "You have destroyed us!"
He looked down, and then opened his hands; the woman sprawled at his feet, dead or unconscious. Either way, she couldn't stop him. He grabbed a heavy jacket, a submachine gun, ration packets. Stuffing them into his pockets, he fled the room at the sound of approaching voices.
The woman who entered was also a Daughter, but had a more assured look on her face. She spotted her limp sister at once, and went to her; a squeeze to the throat, the wet pop of cartilage, and the strangled girl was breathing again. Very poorly, but she was breathing.
"Ravon's gone," said one of the guards who had accompanied the assured woman. "Should we send people after him?"
A sad shaking of her head. "No. Seal the doors. The patrols will pick him up in the morning. Bring Seventh Military Negotiator with you back to the dome, after she catches her breath."
The woman swept out.
# # #
Harry was surrounded by people delirious with happiness, and it was making him feel a bit light-headed as well. He'd pinched five minutes out of his schedule to get something to eat, and everywhere he went were smiling faces, people celebrating, offering embraces and handshakes and kind words for one of those wonderful, wonderful Medical men who was fixing up their homecoming soldiers.
He could get used to this, he thought, as he headed back to the triage unit. When he got there, there was a Daughter waiting for him, with a slightly anxious expression on her face.
"Doctor Sullivan, I think it's time we let you rejoin your friends in the Bunker."
"Why, can't I stay here for the party?" Harry asked.
"Well, I'm afraid this party is going to become a bit dark and scary in parts tonight. Not that there won't be a lot of rejoicing! But the returning soldiers; well, they are having extreme emotional reactions to the end of the war. Positive and negative reactions. They need healers more than surgeons. And I'm rather afraid that some may be unbalanced enough to strike out at anyone who look foreign to them."
"Who, me?"
"Well, you can pass as Kaled in a pinch. But," she said, sidling from foot to foot.
Harry blinked, feeling the grit of exhaustion in his eyes. How long had he been working? Maybe it was time to get back with his companions, and see if they couldn't get this business over with. As a matter of fact, the Doctor had probably settled for those Daleks all by himself, with Sarah to back him up. With the war over, nobody would need vicious or domineering war machines, so the Daleks could just be recycled or dismantled or whatever. That was the ticket. Confirm that the Daleks were done for, and they could all get back to Earth. He hoped.
"No, you're right. Lead the way!" he said, and was interrupted by an embarrassing grumble from his stomach. "Ah, but could we stop for a bite to eat first?"
"I thought? Oh, never mind," the Daughter said. "You've certainly earned it."
# # #
Nyder was tempted to linger at the Dome. Not so that he could join in the celebration, but because he had discovered that the Red Hexagon passkey currently clipped to his glove really would open any door. It was almost irresistible, the temptation to go see what and who he could uncover, what dirty secrets he could root out.
Almost irresistible. But Nyder kept a tight hold on his emotions, and was not going to let them lead him astray. Davros was waiting for his report. So he headed for the tunnel that connected the Dome directly to the Bunker.
On the way, Nyder started to notice stranger and stranger things. Like three soldiers standing in a tiny circle, all humming something that was not a song. Or a man in a laughing fit, comforted by two women wearing gas masks. More troops of women, too many women and most of them masked, were dashing through the corridors, carrying medical equipment and weapons. The roar of revelry in the background seemed to come and go in a rhythm he couldn't quite keep track of. It was getting on his nerves, profoundly. His nerves were not helped when he came to the entrance and found a Red Hexagon waiting for him, with a strange man beside her. The woman was holding a bundle of blue cloth, probably a surgeon's gown.
The Red Hexagon woman frowned at Nyder, and said, "You were warned not to stay in the Bunker after nightfall?"
"Who is that?" said Nyder, ignoring the question and pointing to the strange man, who was dressed in something that was neither civilian wear nor a uniform.
"Hello," said the stranger, with a bright flashing smile.
"This is Doctor Harry Sullivan, the companion to the Doctor and Sarah Jane."
"Another alien?"
"Precisely. He has been working in the medical facilities here, but now I think he should leave with you for the Bunker."
"Leave with me." Nyder paused a long moment. "And if I choose to stay?"
"That would be," a pause, "ill advised."
Nyder just waited.
"Very ill advised," she emphasised.
"Because?" Nyder scowled. Who was this woman to give him orders?
"Because we want to be alone," said voices behind him; he turned and saw three Red Hexagon women silhouetted against the Dome corridor's lights. Two were carrying rifles, and the third was carrying something that looked too much like the matter disintegrator that Nyder had seen in the Bunker surveillance footage.
The women spoke again, in eerie unison. "The presence of your authority is not desired here. We are closing the blast doors, Commander. We cannot guarantee your safety if you stay in the Dome."
Without looking, Nyder reached out and took Harry's arm. Stepping backwards, pulling Harry between him and the strange women, he stepped into the tunnel. The blast doors slammed shut, clapping like thunder. A shriek of overstressed metal and the smell of melting insulation suggested that the door's motors had been deliberately stressed to the breaking point. Burned out, so that they could not be opened again. He turned and looked behind him, and saw the other doors down the tunnel starting to slide shut in series.
"Run?" suggested the alien.
"Run!" ordered Nyder.
They ran side by side at first. Both men were in good physical condition, and they cleared the first two doorways handily. But every door they came to was closing, threatening to crush anyone who was in its way. And at any moment, Nyder expected to hear the shriek of stripped atoms as a disintegrator beam came slicing in after them from the Dome, parting metal and flesh with the same ease.
At the last door, Nyder slipped through first and Harry had to turn sideways and exhale sharply to fit. Finally they were both in the Bunker, with all limbs intact, and a grinding of stripped gears signalled that last door's self-destruction.
They stopped, exhausted. Nyder sucked in breath through his nose, his chest heaving; Harry bent over, hands on knees, wheezing. At last he stood and found himself facing something grey that looked like a streamlined robot. Or perhaps a very avant-garde cheese grater. It seemed almost to be watching them with a stalk-like eye.
"Report!" ordered Nyder, and the Dalek rasped in reply. "The tunnel between the Dome and the Bunker has been sealed. The main Bunker tunnel has also been sealed. Davros orders that you are to bring Security Liaison to the main laboratory."
Nyder considered, and decided to bring both his prisoners to the laboratory. He would be able to show Davros the third alien, and ask when he could start properly interrogating him. "Come along!" he snapped, and Harry followed him, blinking amiably at the straight black-clad back before him.
When the door to her cell opened, Security Liaison looked at Nyder with a quizzical expression. "Have you been gone all this time, Commander?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied. He said nothing more, but he didn't need to. Despite the stress of his recent dash down the tunnel, there was an expression of deep satisfaction in his eyes, and his posture was more relaxed than usual. It would have taken someone who knew Commander Nyder very well to notice these minor changes, but nobody knew him better than his Liaison.
Security Liaison gave a little bow and murmured, "A pleasure to be of service, sir." A pleasure to give you a helpless enemy to be savaged in front of your eyes, she meant, and he knew it.
"You are to report to the main laboratory with me, now," Nyder ordered, and she stepped out of her cell and nodded to Harry.
"Hello," he said. "Have we met?"
"Yes and no," she said, and Nyder looked at both of them with narrowed eyes. "Security Liaison," she introduced herself.
Harry enthusiastically shook her proffered hand as they headed for the lift. "Doctor Harry Sullivan. So, this is the fabulous Bunker, eh?"
"Fabulous in every sense of the word," she said dryly as she walked to the lift, Harry at her side and Nyder behind.
# # #
In the main laboratory, Davros was holding court. His icy authority was reinforced by the two Daleks that flanked him. But the scientists were not standing in starched array as was proper procedure; they were disordered, even daring to argue.
"We are going to perform the tests," Davros grated. "The Daleks-"
"The Daleks may not be necessary. The Kaled mutations might not be inevitable!" implored Gharman. "Put the programme on hold, let us run the baseline Skaro environmental studies again! We need to examine all the old data, compare it to the new projections for contamination."
"That would take months. The Daleks are ready now; they need only to be tested. Blooded."
Gharman winced at the word 'blooded', then looked at Davros. "You can't-"
"The aliens will stand at the end of the laboratory," Davros rumbled, and the Doctor and Sarah Jane did so, watching the Daleks as they jerkily followed their movements.
Davros continued with his lecture. "We have created the supreme creature in the Daleks. The manifestation of our species which will survive long after we ourselves are extinct. They are the pinnacle of our achievements as a race. They must survive beyond us, beyond whatever Thal treachery is hidden in this false Armistice-"
"But how do you know it's false?" asked one of the scientists, with a voice bordering on despair.
"If the war is over, Davros, then the programme must be ended, the Daleks-" Gharman's words were cut off when one of the Daleks rotated its dome to look at him. Gharman stood very still, and after a long moment the Dalek returned its attention to the Doctor and Sarah Jane.
"Dalek units. Your sensory organs have been perfected; your conditioning has reached its finest level. I order you to observe the organisms in this room: the Kaleds and the aliens. I want you to compare them, to study them. And then," Davros' voice dripped with venom, "I order you to take the action which your training has shown you is necessary!"
"But this isn't necessary, Davros," said the Doctor, realizing that he was arguing for both his and Sarah's life. "The war is over. What is necessary is that you discover what is really going on here, with the Red Hexagon."
"The Red Hexagon are no longer necessary. Only Security Liaison remains, under my care." Davros' attention was riveted to his creations. "Daleks, you are to obey me, you are to protect Security Liaison from any harm, and as for the aliens, you will-" Davros waited for the Daleks to finish the sentence.
"Let them have their say?" suggested Sarah Jane.
The Dalek rolled closer, then unexpectedly barked, "What is your say?"
"Well," said the Doctor, "I say-"
"He says," said Sarah, pointing at the man beside her; the Dalek turned its attention to the Doctor.
"I say," the Doctor repeated, "that the Red Hexagon show every sign of being considerably more than they say. Their neural transmission implants, their high-end technology. Matter disintegrators, personality wheels, the particle fountain - do you seriously believe that they came up with them in their spare time? And the forgeries in your own computer system, test results and recommendations that the Elite never made, but that are recorded as having actually happened. It's all connected, it's all of a pattern-"
"You are suggesting that the Red Hexagon are a conspiracy," said Davros. "Yet I find it hard to believe that a conspiracy has been underway for the last twenty years or more, undetected by myself."
"Why would it take twenty years?" asked the Doctor.
"It is obvious! The Red Hexagon women must be raised, educated, conditioned!"
"Ah, but you see, they might be a lot younger than you think. Neural transmission implants are generally done in vivo, in an artificial womb. If their growth cycles have been accelerated-"
"They're more than twenty days old, though," said Ronson, vaguely.
Davros heard him, and snapped, "What?"
"Twenty days. The Tritten cycle of cellular growth dictates that for higher life forms, twenty days is the point where cellular development becomes self-organising." Ronson leaned over, both hands on his desk. "Hif was investigating the Tritten cycle. It was one of the key points of his research, Davros."
"Hif's research was unauthorised and a complete failure!" snarled Davros.
"Not if it's the Red Hexagon," said Ronson forcefully. The other Elite murmured amongst themselves, discussing this idea.
The door to the main Laboratory opened, and Security Liaison waltzed in. Literally waltzed in; she was dancing, moving in long elegant swoops and turns to some unheard music. And her partner was-
"Harry!" said the Doctor, with a blazing smile.
"Found another alien," Security Liaison said, over Harry's shoulder. The Kaled scientists looked on in shock. A distinctly scandalised-looking Nyder came through the door after the dancers; he went straight to Davros' side, bending to whisper in the elder scientist's ear.
"Women can dance?" asked Kavell, with a raised eyebrow.
"Harry can dance?" whispered Sarah to the Doctor.
"All great societal changes should be accompanied by dancing," said Security Liaison, with half a smile. She spun with Harry for another moment, and then stopped, Harry at her side. He blinked and swayed, looking distinctly dazed.
Sarah tried to catch his attention. "Psst, Harry! Are you all right?"
"All right, yes, perfectly all right. Everything's fine. Don't you think so?" said Harry. He gave his dancing partner a completely unprovoked embrace, and she leaned back against his arm and stared at him.
"You didn't have anything to eat before you left the Dome, did you?" Security Liaison asked.
"If you say so," he answered nonsensically.
"Did you eat at the Dome?" she asked again, more slowly, spacing out the words. "Tonight? And how much?"
"Well, you know, those portions are awfully small …"
"Well," she sighed. "You are going to be having a good time tonight, aren't you?"
"Am I?" he said, raising his eyebrows and staring a bit too warmly into Security Liaison's cool gaze.
"Dalek units! You will identify and destroy the aliens!" Davros shouted.
"You've got to stop this!" shouted Gharman in return. "It is immoral, it is unnecessary. You aren't accomplishing anything by ordering your creatures to destroy people at random!"
"We obey," rasped one of the Daleks, and both of them turned and menaced the travellers. In this position, of course, they were also menacing Security Liaison, who was still standing beside Harry.
"Stop!" shouted Davros. "The Kaled female is not to be harmed! Move away, at once!"
Security Liaison ignored Davros, waiting to hear what the Daleks would say first. Their reply was quick.
"We must destroy the aliens. Security Liaison is an alien. Aliens are to be destroyed. All aliens are to be destroyed!"
"What!" shouted Gharman, and the other scientists backed away from the Daleks and their victims. The Elite were in shock at this revelation; Ronson was literally biting his knuckles.
"Stop! You must stop. You must obey me!" shouted Davros again.
Security Liaison stepped in front of the Doctor, hands behind her back and chin up. "I do not die," she stated calmly. "This dies." And inside she smiled, to see Nyder's avid eyes turn uncertain at her words.
"Exterminate!" The Daleks shrilled in unison. "Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"
