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The Magician's Apprentice – Part Three
After the Doctor had stopped ranting about how dangerous the situation was and how they shouldn't have followed him (Romana threatened to not speak to or kiss him for a month), he explained Davros' origins to Clara. "Davros is the child of war, a war that wouldn't end. A thousand years of fighting, till nobody could remember why. So Davros, he created a new kind of warrior, one that wouldn't bother with that question. A mutant in a tank that would never, ever stop -and they never did".
"The Daleks?"
"How scared must you be to seal every one of your own kind inside a tank?" the Doctor questioned. He paused and wondered, "Davros made the Daleks, but who made Davros?"
The Corsair looked at Flavia and telepathically inquired, Hey, are you alright?
I'm fine…
Oh, good. It's just that you're cutting off the blood flow to my fingers and they're going numb
She blinked and looked down at their joined hands, realising that she'd been squeezing his hand rather tightly. She relaxed her grip somewhat and apologised. I'm just a bit…on edge.
Yeah, me too…I mean, one Dalek, I can handle. More than one, things start to get tricky.
If you ask me, just one Dalek is too many. If I had my way, there'd be no Daleks, spiders or snakes anywhere in the universe.
I think one of them is worse than the others...look, don't worry about the snakes. They aren't here to hurt us. The Daleks will do that.
Oh, thank you, you always know just what to say Flavia replied sarcastically.
Okay, bad choice of words the Corsair admitted, before adding a bit sullenly, I was just trying to help. He withdrew from the connection and raised his mental barriers; he didn't notice the flicker of guilt in Flavia's expression.
There was a whooshing sound, and stars appeared again in the window. Missy opened her mouth to say something, but Romana beat her to it. "We're coming out of hyperspace – it's a dimension overlaying normal space, where spaceships can traverse phenomenal distances in a short amount of time" she explained for Clara's benefit. Missy shot her a glare, which went either unnoticed or ignored, and amused herself by humming 'Hey Mickey' just loud enough for it to be annoying.
Through the window, they could see a floating structure that vaguely resembled a chess pawn. "So that's where he ended up" the Doctor noted, with a sort of detached interest.
"What is that?" Clara wondered.
"I don't know, a hospital?" the Doctor suggested vaguely. The spaceship connected with this space-port, hospital, whatever it was, and Colony Sarff escorted them into an empty room. He also had the Corsair and Flavia's hands bound properly; but to the Corsair's relief, he didn't see past the perception filter on the Time Lord's blaster. Once Sarff had left, and they had nothing to do but wait, the eight captives made themselves as comfortable as they could and tried to pass the time. Missy tried to irritate the others; the Corsair tried to irritate Missy.
After what felt like hours, but what may have actually been five minutes, Clara impatiently asked "How long have we been waiting?"
Emily answered, "Well my time sense tells me that only fifteen minutes have passed; my boredom is telling me that it's been fifteen days. Ugh. At least real hospitals have the excuse of having lots of patients to tend to" she grumbled. Clara was reminded of Angie Maitland, her former charge, who also grumbled over being made to wait. Apparently human adolescents and Time Lord adolescents had certain similarities.
The monotony was broken by Sarff's return. He turned to the Doctor and instructed, "You will come. The rest will stay".
"Oh no, you don't" Romana warned, "My husband kept a secret from me and I'm not about to let him off that easily. If your master is summoning him, he can summon me as well" she declared in her best imperious-Time-Lady voice.
"And me" Emily volunteered, trying to sound imperious as well; it came out as more of a 'stubborn teenager' voice.
"Neither of you are"-
"No, Doctor. I am coming, and Emily is not. Don't argue, Emily" Romana insisted, when her daughter tried to protest, "I do not want you anywhere near Davros. Stay safe, and mind your godparents, understand?"
Emily scowled a bit, then sighed and agreed, "Yes, mother".
Colony Sarff led the Doctor and Romana out of the chamber, leaving the rest imprisoned. Missy, who had been sitting against the wall, pushed herself up and remarked, "Well, I thought they'd never leave". She stretched her arms out, and dropped the snake that had been binding her wrists to the floor. It was dead. In an impulse of morbid curiosity, Flavia looked at it and realised that Missy had broken its neck. She looked away quickly. "Pop quiz for you all" the mad Time Lady declared, before adding in an American accent, "Winner gets the snake cuffs off!"
"Some of us can manage that ourselves, thanks" the Corsair retorted, tossing his own snake bind aside and pulling off Flavia's. She rubbed her wrists and smiled at him gratefully.
Missy noticed, and smirked at them both. "Aww, don't you make a lovely couple?" she mocked; both Flavia and the Corsair went slightly pink, and stepped away from each other. "Alright, smart Alec, you tell the class – what's wrong with the gravity here?" Missy asked the Corsair, doing a little tap dance.
"What's wrong is that nothing's wrong" he replied, as he got rid of Clara and Emily's binds. Clara's snake wasn't quite dead, and tried to slither away; Missy stamped on it mercilessly, and declared, "Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!"
"Nothing's wrong with the gravity? That's a bad thing?" Clara asked, half-sceptical, and half-confused.
Flavia explained, "What he means is that if this is a space-station, the gravity should be artificial, with a slight scent of copper…but it feels normal…as if we're on a planet".
"But there wasn't a planet when we arrived" Emily pointed out. Missy clapped laconically and remarked, "My, what an astute observation. Here's another one for you – do you know what this airlock is?" she asked, patting it, "I'll tell you. It's pants".
"What's that supposed to mean?" Emily scoffed, her pride bruised a bit by Missy's constant dismissals and insults. Seriously, what had Emily ever done to her?
"I mean that today might be the day".
"What day?"
"The day I kill you all" Missy replied bluntly.
The Corsair stepped between her and Emily, and warned "I'd like to see you try".
"Killing me won't do anything, dearie, I was given new regenerations in the Time War".
"I'll be sure to keep count when I'm getting rid of them" the Corsair said darkly. If Missy felt threatened, she didn't show it. Instead she merely gave him a sloe-eyed glance over her shoulder and remarked, "Ooh, I'm getting chills. If I didn't know you had a thing for Flavia, I might try to snatch you up myself".
"Eww – and I do not have a 'thing' for Flavia" the Corsair insisted. It was absurd; they were nothing alike. I mean sure, she's attractive, and it's sort of sexy when she gets mad…but that doesn't mean I'm in love with her, or something!
Clara was a bit suspicious of the Corsair's immediate dismissal of any interest in Flavia; in all her time travelling with the Quintet, she'd noticed that the two of them had a certain…dynamic going on. Right now though, she was more concerned with what Missy was up to. "What are you doing to the airlock? Are you opening it?" she asked in alarm.
"Yeah, course" Missy nodded, as she finished unlocking it.
Flavia's eyes widened in alarm, and she demanded "Are you mad? – wait, don't answer that. Regardless, we could all be killed!"
"Oh, don't you trust the Corsair, your one true love?"
"Stop it, there's nothing between me and the Corsair".
"Well then, it won't matter if I do…this!" Missy declared, opening the airlock. Alarms blared loudly…but nothing else happened.
/
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana had been escorted by Colony Sarff to Davros. "Doctor?" the wizened war criminal rasped; the Time Lord and his wife stepped into view. "Doctor, and Romana" Davros greeted, "Welcome".
"Davros" the Doctor nodded. Romana refused to show the man even that much courtesy. Davros didn't seem to care. "I approve of your new face, Doctor" he commented, "So much more like mine. Colony Sarff, untie our guest's hands" he ordered. Sarff removed their binds, and at Davros' orders, left the room. "You came, then" Davros said to the Doctor.
"Clearly"
"Did you suspect a trap?"
"I still do".
"Then why are you here - with your family, no less?"
"I didn't intend for them to come; they insisted".
"And one of them is standing right here" Romana pointed out, not too happy with being ignored.
"My apologies" Davros croaked with surprising civility, "I remember you…my congratulations to you, Doctor, on finding others of your own kind. You must understand, Romana, your husband and I have…a history. Did you miss our conversations, Doctor?" he asked, taking considerable effort to press some switches on the control panel in his chair.
Old security camera footage began playing on a small screen; previous incarnations of the Doctor talking to or about Davros. The fourth Doctor asking him, "If you had created a virus in your laboratory…"
The fifth insisting, "I'm not here as your prisoner, Davros…"
The seventh mocking, "Unimaginable power! Unlimited rice pudding!"
The tenth lamenting, "Everything we saw, everything we lost…"
The sixth demanding, "But did you bother to tell anyone they might be eating their own relatives?"
"Yes, yes, yes, okay, you've made your point" the Doctor rolled his eyes.
"Have I?"
Another clip played, of the fourth asking his companions, "If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you, and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"
The Doctor switched off the recordings. "We get the point" he said firmly.
"Do you know why you came, Doctor? You have a sense of duty. Of guilt, perhaps; and certainly of shame".
"You flatter me".
"Pity, I intended to accuse. I believe that for the ultimate good of the universe, I was right to create the Daleks".
"There is nothing good about the Daleks" Romana glared at him. The Doctor agreed completely. "You were very wrong" he told Davros.
"This is the argument we've had since we met".
"It ended in the Time War".
"It survived the Time War…but it will end tonight. That is why you are here" Davros informed them. An alarm sounded from somewhere within the station, and Davros remarked, "It seems your friends have gone exploring".
/
Rather than getting sucked out into the vacuum of space, the remaining captives could stand and look out at the stars. "It's warm, isn't it?" Missy remarked conversationally, "For deep space, anyway".
"What are you doing?" Clara asked her when she leaned out of the airlock.
"Treading softly" Missy replied, before cautiously stepping out onto an invisible surface.
"Oh, cool" Emily grinned, stepping out as well, "An invisible floor".
"Ground, actually" Missy corrected, "This is the ground. We're on a planet. And that is not a space station" she declared, pointing at the building they had just escaped from, "That is a building. And the rest of the planet, the whole thing, is invisible".
Clara looked up, having been staring down at the stars below her, and said "That's ridiculous".
"Ridiculous, but true" the Corsair quipped.
"Oh, of course it's ridiculous" Missy agreed, "I mean, how would you ever find your glasses? Or the little girl's room? And what if you kissed an ugly?" she asked randomly, before realising, "Unless, when you're part of the atmosphere, you start syncing with the spectrum…"
"Why would someone hide a whole planet?"
"It probably depends on what planet it was" said Flavia. She was getting a really bad feeling about this…
Before their eyes, the ground, and sky, and buildings appeared. Horribly familiar buildings… "No" Missy exclaimed, staring at the buildings in dismay, and even fear.
"No, not here, anywhere but here" Flavia pleaded; Clara could hear the horror in their voices. "Flavia, what's wrong?" she asked, "What is this place?"
"They've built it again. They've brought it back" Missy despaired, "No, no, no!"
The Corsair cursed under his breath. "Emily, Clara, we are on the most dangerous planet in the universe – Skaro".
At the mere mention of the planet's name, Emily's eyes widened fearfully, but Clara still didn't understand. "What's Skaro?"
"Clara…it's the home planet of the Daleks" Emily told her.
Seconds later a grating, metallic voice cried, "Correct!"
They all spun around to see a Dalek levitating over a ridge, aiming its weapon at them. The Corsair eyed it warily and reached for his blaster; but then another one appeared, and he knew that he couldn't shoot one without being exterminated on the spot by the other. Reluctantly, they all raised their hands in surrender and hoped they wouldn't be killed straightaway. "You are prisoners of the Daleks! You will move!" the first Dalek cried, herding them back towards the group of buildings.
The two Daleks 'escorted' them into a white room; white except for the blue box. "How did they get the TARDIS here?" Flavia asked in alarm. She felt a sudden sting of pain in her hand and saw a small red dot of blood, shooting a suspicious look at Missy who'd been standing near her.
"It has been procured" boomed the crimson Supreme Dalek, raised on a dais. Other Daleks surrounded them on all sides, keeping them trapped between the genocidal pepper-pots and the TARDIS. In a fit of bravado, Clara tauntingly declared "Yeah? Yeah, well, if you're trying to get inside, you can't. Nothing can enter the TARDIS" she said confidently, before adding, "Ow!" as something pricked the back of her neck.
"The TARDIS will not be entered. The TARDIS will be destroyed" the Supreme Dalek revealed. If Daleks had more emotions than fear and hate, it might have sounded smug.
"I was afraid you'd say – ouch!" the Corsair winced, rounding on Missy, who was trying very hard to look innocent. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked, rubbing his stinging arm.
"Moi?" she asked, "I'm helping". Without looking, she jabbed her controller at Emily, pricking the skin of her shoulder.
"Ow! What was that for?"
/
The Doctor and Clara could see and hear everything via a view-screen in Davros' chamber. "What is she doing?" the Doctor wondered; Missy had pricked all four of them, including herself, and was now blithely ignoring the Supreme Dalek's orders to drop her weapon as she fiddled with it.
"Never mind that" Romana snapped, before rounding on Davros. "Get them away from my daughter, or else" she threatened, fixing him with a cool glare that nonetheless had the fury of a tiger behind it. However, it had been countless years since Davros witnessed a mother's wrath, so whilst he didn't doubt that she would risk anything to save her offspring, he believed her efforts would be in vain. "I created the Daleks, Romana, I do not control them. You know how children are".
"Don't you dare compare my little girl to those monstrosities" Romana spat scathingly – but before she could follow up on her threat, Missy began talking loudly, distracting her.
/
Back in the white room, Missy was looking inordinately pleased with herself. "Daleks!" she crowed, "Pay attention!"
The Corsair grabbed her arm and hissed, "How is this helping?"
"Hush" she said patronisingly, twisting out of his grip and skipping over to the TARDIS, patting the faux wooden surface. "You know what this is? This thing you're about to destroy? I'll tell you! It's the dog's unmentionables. And you know all about those, don't you?" she asked mock playfully, tickling a nearby Dalek's self-destruction spheres. The Daleks eyestalks followed her every move, but they made no move to attack, as if even they weren't sure what to make of her.
"This is a TARDIS" Missy declared, as if explaining something to a simple child, "With this, you can go anywhere, do anything, kill anyone. With this, the Daleks can be more powerful than ever before". She strode over and up onto a ledge opposite the TARDIS; the Daleks all turned to face her. "You just need one more thing" she told them.
"Don't you dare!" the Corsair glared angrily. Missy ignored him pointedly, and told the Daleks, "Me. You need me. A Time Lady, to show you how it works. With this and with me, everything can be yours. And you can burn it all, for ever and ever and ever". She waited quite a few moments, before asking, "Or would you rather just kill me?"
The Daleks spun towards the Supreme Dalek, expecting an order – and getting it. "Maximum extermination" the Supreme Dalek declared mercilessly – it was a Dalek, obviously.
"Exterminate!"
The Daleks fired; Missy's skeleton was lit up briefly before she was apparently vaporised. In the next instant, the Corsair had his blaster out and aimed at the Supreme Dalek. "One wrong move and your leader gets it!" he shouted, thanking every god he could think of that he'd thought to keep his favoured weapon charged up during their 'vacation'.
/
The Doctor and Romana were horrified; the latter stormed over to Davros' chair and forced his withered hand aside, putting her finger on the switch that controlled his life-support systems. She hadn't seen Davros face to face since her second incarnation, but she'd put together accounts from the Time War and her husband's explanations, and her own memories, and worked out which switch it was. "Call the Daleks off, or I'll exterminate you".
Her voice was filled with so much venom that even the Doctor was disturbed, but he was on her side one hundred percent. "She means it, Davros. We are begging you. Save them!"
Davros struggled to remove his hand from Romana's grasp; then he raised his other hand and flicked a different switch, briefly electrifying the outside of his chair. Romana pulled away with a cry of pain, and glared furiously at Davros. "Call the Daleks off, now! I will not lose another family to the likes of you!"
"Why aren't they attacking?" the Doctor demanded, staring at the view-screen. The Daleks had made no move to exterminate the Corsair, still locked in stalemate with the Supreme Dalek; or Flavia, Emily and Clara, huddled together with wide and frightened eyes…
"They want him to shoot" Davros rasped, "They want the others to run. They need them to run. Do you feel their need, Doctor? Their blood is screaming kill, kill, kill! Hunter and prey, held in the ecstasy of crisis. Is this not life at its purest?"
"You are sick" Romana spat, storming over to the sealed door, and attempting to break the deadlock with her sonic screwdriver. The Doctor joined her, the two of them trying desperately to escape, run to their daughter and save her…but their efforts were fruitless.
/
The Corsair wasn't afraid of dying. It was a good thing, he reflected, since he was about to find out what it was like. He did have some last words, however, and there was only one person here he trusted to tell… Flavia?
What?!
I'm doomed. I'll try to buy you some time to run for it – get out of the city, find somewhere to hide.
We can't hide from-
Just do it! For me…I just wanted to tell you, I'm sorry for all the times I got on your nerves…and to tell you that I…I always thought you were-
"Clara, no!" cried Emily, startling the Corsair; he looked round just in time to see Clara panic, and make a break for the doors; the cry on his lips went unheard as both he and Clara were exterminated, reduced to atoms. Flavia and Emily clung to one another, tears in their eyes, shaking with terror.
"Please, you can't, please, have mercy!" Flavia begged futilely. The Daleks aimed their weapons; the younger and older Time Ladies clenched their eyes shut. I'm so sorry Romana, Doctor!
Goodbye mum, goodbye dad, I love you!
/
The Doctor and Romana couldn't hear their telepathic cries, trapped helplessly inside a psychic proof room. All they could do was watch and listen, horrified, as the terrible cry of "Exterminate!" thundered through the air –
"NO!" Romana screamed, tears pouring down her face, as Emily was exterminated. She and the Doctor sank to their knees, clinging to one another, openly sobbing with grief…Emily! My little girl, my baby, she's gone, they killed her…
I'm sorry. Oh God, Romana, I'm sorry, this is all my fault, it's all my fault! The Doctor glared at Davros, who sat watching them impassively, and snarled, "Why did I ever let you live?"
"Compassion, Doctor" Davros replied, "It has always been your greatest indulgence. Let this be my final victory. Let me hear you say it, just once. Compassion is wrong".
"Destroy the TARDIS!" they heard the Supreme Dalek order; a chorus of "Destroy!" rose up, and the screen flashed blinding white…
/
"Help me!" Davros cried, the little boy desperately searching the mist for the stranger, "You can't leave me! You promised. You said I had a chance".
A sound behind him made him turn around, momentarily forgetting the hand-mines surrounding him; but they were facing the source of the noise as well. The strange man was back. "Who are you?" asked Davros, "I don't get it, how did you get over there?"
"From the future" the man replied.
"Are you going to save me?"
The man's eyes hardened. "I'm going to save my family" he declared, "the only way I can". He lifted some sort of laser weapon and aimed at the terrified child. "Exterminate!"