The Doctor's scream of 'NOOOO' was never uttered, because Davros and Donna blinked into existence exactly where they had been. Had they even gone? They must have, they'd turned round; Donna had her back to him now. And there was something different about her. Her clothes had changed, or maybe it was-?
Then she turned round to face him, and he saw how she had changed.
Her face was smooth, barely lined, but her hair was different: two long white locks hung down along the sides of her face. Her expression was clear and untroubled and totally concentrated on him. And her eyes - they were not the eyes of an Eternal, but they were considerably more focused than a human's eyes ought to be.
Davros chuckled at the Doctor's silent shock, and the great glowing flames of his wrath started to cool.
"How-" the Doctor asked.
"Davros estimated it would take me ten years to learn to control my new mind. It took more like seventeen. But I did it." She stood there in front of him, strong and balanced and whole, and smiled a smile of utter and merciless delight; her smile was the brightest thing in the room as the flames faded away to nothing. "And I wouldn't trade one second of it for anything."
The Doctor's eyes ran up and down her - her clothes were worn, that was it. Frayed at the seams, repaired here and there with neat hand stitching. Her arms looked thicker, her shoulders rounder, and her fingers bore strange calluses that were not the result of any Earthly tool.
She was beautiful. She always had been, but the raw beauty of the human in her had been transmuted into something brilliant as ruby glass, and just as sharp if it cut you.
"Right then." Davros waved his hand, and they fell.
"Stop!" he shouted, and the Doctor and Donna stopped falling, and looked down.
Under their feet was a tiny fragment of metal deck, and under that was nothing. Hundreds of metres of nothing, of emptiness: the Crucible had been gutted by Davros' wrath. The Doctor immediately looked at the TARDIS, and saw her hovering serene on her own bit of deck.
"Grow," Davros ordered, and metal tendrils started to sprout out of the remains of the decks below them, meshing and clicking together like a silverware orgy. The metal vines wove themselves between the remaining fragments of floor, forming a barrier between them and space.
"Well come on then!" Davros said; the Doctor turned and saw the extremely startling sight of his companions, alive and surrounded by what looked like a fishbowl. In the centre of the fishbowl were Esselle, Nyder and Ravon, staring.
The fishbowl expanded, its clear wall rippling over them all and outwards.
Davros started giving orders. "Ravon. Find what you can of the computers, I want a data strip."
Ravon gave a short bow, and vanished.
"Nyder. I'm looking for equipment we can salvage-"
"What gives you the right to loot my ship?" Dav spat; his chair was rocking unevenly over the ropy surface of the new floor.
"Because you can't stop me, and your pathetic imitation Daleks are helpless before me and mine."
Nyder faded away after Ravon. The companions were working their way towards the TARDIS; Jack stopped and looked at the hole where the console had been with a wistful expression. To be able to control that sort of power - no. Esselle came pacing among them, heading towards Davros, and was stopped by Donna, who took her by the shoulder, turned her about, and kissed her with deep enthusiasm.
Everyone paused and watched for a startled moment. Esselle's hands hung limp behind Donna's back, then performed an index-finger-up gesture that seemed indicative of victory. Any further hand signals were cut off when Donna broke off the kiss and stood there, smiling down at the Eternal women.
"Ah. Well, that was very nice. Was it for anything in particular?" Esselle asked.
"It's because you'll always be there for me, when I need you."
"I will? Oh. I will. Thank you."
Nyder materialised at Davros' elbow. "This vessel is breaking up, and-"
A shuddering moved through the Vault; it was not a thing of moving air or groaning metal, but a quivering across the vision, a twitching in the muscles.
"- and the readjustment of the stellar formation is beginning," Nyder finished. "All equipment is too damaged to be salvaged, and the Daleks that remain are either mad or dead."
Dalek Caan whistled feebly from the remains of its casing.
"One interesting item, however. The core of this ship is z-neutronium."
"Oooo." Davros' mouth formed a perfect O for a moment. "I do like z-neutronium."
"I know you do, sir," Nyder said, and they looked at each other with a little smile.
Jackie had been watching this entire exchange, and she butted in with, "Are you - flirting with each other?"
Davros looked at Nyder.
Nyder looked at Davros.
They both looked at Jackie, and wiggled their eyebrows in unison.
"Oh," she said. "Well, I'll just give you some privacy then."
She moved away, not at all casually, and Nyder sank down through the repaired deck of the Vault, going to examine the ship's core and determine how to move it.
"You have destroyed me," Dav growled, rolling his chair to confront Davros. "My ship, my Daleks, my empire - gone!"
"Nonsense, nonsense," Davros purred. "I've given you a spectacular chance to start over, with a fresh clean experimental field as it were. You could spend years just reflecting on today's events; years well spent I might add. Of course," Davros tapped his chin with one slim finger, "it might be amusing to give you a little more information, and see what you make of it."
The humans were gathering at the door of the TARDIS, ready to leap inside at the Doctor's word.
"Excuse me for asking," Jack said in the Doctor's ear, with considerable urgency, "but shouldn't we be going now?"
"The TARDIS is badly damaged, Jack. The longer we can stay here and let her circuits recharge, the better. And I'm not all that keen on Davros giving Dav any assistance, for that matter."
"No reason why Dav has to survive that assistance," the second Doctor jibed. "Flick of a switch, and-?" He beamed at the prospect, miming Dav collapsing in his chair by waving his forearm in the air in an arrhythmic shudder.
The Doctor looked at his copy with eyes both furious and sad.
"I could just-" but Davros was interrupted.
"NO!" boomed a voice from above, and a red shape moved overhead, drifting downwards through the crackling remains of the Vault's ceiling. "No, you shall not have him!"
It was the Supreme Dalek. Its eyestalk quivered, but its gun was rock-steady aimed at the glowing figure of the Eternal. Behind it were four other Daleks, twitching. They were the last survivors of the Dalek Fleet, the ones who had monitored the revelations and the wrath of Davros, seen inside the walls of Eternity and come out the other side still sane (or at least as sane as any Dalek could ever be).
"Variant Daleks," Davros said, shaking his head sadly. "I never approved of such things."
"He is ours!" the Supreme Dalek croaked, rolling to place itself between Davros and Dav. "He must rebuild us! He must transform us! We who have seen the perfection of the Dalek race shall remake ourselves in their image!"
Davros looked intrigued. "Well, that should certainly be interesting."
The Daleks crowded close around Dav, surrounding his chair. All that could be seen of him was one metal-clad hand that beat mutely against his captors.
"We go!" the Supreme Dalek ordered, and the Daleks' suction arms lashed out. They ripped great slabs of metal from the floor, wrenching them forward and upwards like a flower closing.
The Supreme Dalek's voice was muffled. "Form the shell! Distribute the shift!" The metal slabs crunched together, forming a flattened sphere that reminded Sarah Jane of a giant clamshell for a single, hilarious, appropriate instant. Then it vanished.
"Damn!" the second Doctor snapped, staring at the empty space. "He-"
The Crucible shuddered again, and there was the crackling sound of loose electrical charges dancing among the shattered machinery. Fragments of machinery rained down on the TARDIS, fortunately too small to cause any damage.
"Time to go." Davros stated, and Ravon appeared beside him. As one, the four Eternals stared into the portal to Eternity, which seemed to glow brighter, bleeding light out into the Vault in a glorious liquid flood. "We'll bring the z-neutronium in after us, and use the power conversion to repair the breach."
"Wait, wait," Rose objected. "What about Caan?"
It was true; the stumpy form of Dalek Caan was still there. The Daleks who had abducted Dav had not included it in their circle. Its single blue eye stared blindly out at them, its tendrils barely wiggling.
"Leave it," the second Doctor snapped. "Let it die in space."
"But-"
"Forget it, Rose! There is no way that a Dalek, even one in that shape, can ever be allowed on the TARDIS. Ever!" The second Doctor leaned closer to her, and was suddenly cut off by the Doctor stepping between them. They glared at each other, identical faces equally hot with emotion.
"I," Dalek Caan groaned. Then it seemed to strain against the clamps and tubes that held it into its casing. "Davros, my creator. Take me with you."
"No," Davros replied, not taking his eyes from the light of Eternity. "Out of the question. That's not a reality you could survive in there. I'd need to translate you into normal space, and-"
"You did it for me," Donna said, raising her voice over the groaning of the time waves starting to shake the entire ship.
"That was very different," Davros snapped. He looked at Donna, and they shared a smile that spoke volumes.
(Esselle, currently standing behind Davros, took the occasion to mime exactly which female attributes Donna had and Caan did not, and both Jack and Mickey caught the joke and smirked.)
Caan was trying to move its casing, but the motors shuddered and faltered. Then it heaved itself upwards, and Rose could actually see a tube pop out of its side, letting loose a little stream of greenish-yellow blood or bile.
The Dalek spoke, its every word thick with sincerity. "Better to die...at the feet...of the true Davros...than to live...and serve the false one." It seemed to gather itself for one last supreme effort, every tentacle wild with motion. "Take me with you! Have pity!"
The four Eternals froze.
"Now he's done it," Ravon murmured. "He's said the P word."
"Nyder," Davros finally said, his gaze intent on the writhing mutant, "concentrate on the z-neutronium. Ravon, you will make a shield for Caan as it crosses over, and transport it to a Dalek crèche in normal space. Esselle, if you could do the honour of uplifting this little wretch?"
"Little wretch?" she said, raising one hand to her mouth. She bit one of her fingers, white teeth sinking through her glove, and then flicked her hand and sent a single drop of her blood soaring across the room, towards Caan.
The drop of Eternal blood had a magnetic pull like a planet. Every person present could feel the power held in that tiny red sphere; the answer to any question, the strength to move worlds. It was enough to draw their attention from the dissolving Crucible around them, and from the burning light rising up under their feet, as the z-neutronium boiled and geysered in its confinement.
The blood struck Caan, and it opened its eyes wide and screamed.
Its eyes! It had sprouted a second eye, somewhat asymmetrically placed near the first, and its spindly tentacles abruptly swelled with muscle. It was transforming, mutating before their eyes from a pitiful lump into something else.
"Oh now that's too precious," Esselle smiled. "It's growing a spine."
"Doctor!" Davros shouted, waving to the frightened figures gathered around the TARDIS. "Until we meet again, then?"
"What? What do you mean, until we meet again? You're just going to leave? Just vanish away? No last minute backstabbing or sinister plots or anything?" the Doctor spluttered.
"What for?" Davros smiled. "You are not my enemy, Doctor. Not really. And if there was revenge to be had, I would already have it."
Davros spread his hands out, glowing like the figure of a saint; beside him Nyder and Ravon flamed into coloured auras as well, red and black. Esselle was a multicoloured ripple behind them. He raised his voice to be heard over the sound of liquefying metal, and the wet popping of Caan tearing itself free from its casing.
"I have my revenge, Doctor. Because you turned your companions into weapons, just as Dav said. And I? I turned mine into gods."
He smiled, and the flaming light of the z-neutronium rose out of the myriad rents in the floor, making everything glow.
"I am free!" Caan whistled, and leapt from its casing, scuttling over the swiftly heating floor on new knobby legs. Esselle was suddenly there, standing in the gateway to Eternity, and she reached down and scooped it up in her hands.
"What a cutie!" she exclaimed, smiling at the palpating mass of tentacles and membranes as though it was an adorable puppy. "Give us a kiss."
The last thing the Doctor saw before he slammed the TARDIS door shut and shouted "Go, NOW!" was Davros' face, laughing.
Then there were more important things to think about.
The Doctor turned and fairly flew along the TARDIS walkway to the controls, where Jack and the others were already waiting. "No time to dematerialise," he panted. "Fly her out!"
The TARDIS rose, spinning, and hurled herself through one of the rifts in the Crucible's walls, and away. Behind her, the great remains of the starship started to bulge and burn, as the z-neutronium at its heart somehow poured itself into a fine filament feeding itself into the gateway between worlds. It sizzled and snapped, and then it was gone, leaving the flagship of the Dalek fleet behind, like a broken skull stripped of flesh. It hung in space, hollow and abandoned.
The TARDIS was howling like a scalded child around them as the Doctor fought to get her to dematerialise. Jack and the second Doctor were on the controls now, and Donna as well, but the damage was too great, the time for repairs too short. The TARDIS had been wounded enough, moving into the Medusa Cluster and plunging into the core of the Crucible; now she struggled to break free, the waves of time buffeting her like a blue-glass bottle floating in an ocean of lava.
"Sarah Jane, hold that down! Martha, this, twist it, hard as you can, keep the tension up!" The Doctor's hands flickered over the controls, balancing, adjusting, but there was too much, no time, not enough power. He felt his hearts skip a beat in sudden horror: had he brought them all this far only to see them die before his eyes?
Donna's hands were flying over the console faster than a human's hands should, her face contorted with effort, sweat rolling down her forehead. She looked up, judged the shuddering rhythm of the TARDIS time rotor, and knew that it was not enough. They needed more power, and there was nowhere to get it.
Think, she told herself, think! You've just spent years doing nothing but train your mind, think!
"Mickey!" she shouted, as the entire ship pitched and nearly knocked her loose from the controls. She dug in with both hands, feeling nails crack. "Mickey, you have to get to the console!"
"What?" he shouted, from where he was splayed across the TARDIS roundels, flung there by the ship's movements.
"You have to get to the controls, Mickey, please! Sarah Jane, don't let go!"
It might be their only chance. Donna put the ship into a reverse spin, sending Mickey flying loose from the wall and quick-step-stumbling towards her.
"Donna, what are you doing?" the two Doctors shrieked as one.
"I don't know-" Mickey said, as his hands fell on the console and he exploded with white light.