Chapter 21- Strategy Over Scones
Hearing the confirmation of our safety was music to my ears. After all, our plan had been to get in, get the Doctor and River, and get out—pretty reckless. But recklessness worked against Daleks, I supposed. Human instinct: the best weapon the universe ever produced.
I walked over to the Doctor and enveloped him in a happy hug, breathing a sigh of relief I'd held for quite a long time. His arms wrapped around me and he comfortingly rubbed his hands up and down my back, soothing me. This was our first proper reunion after I'd fallen out of the TARDIS, and boy, it felt good.
When we finally separated, I turned back to my rescue partner. "Doctor, this is Clara," I introduced, leading him closer to her. "She helped me come and get you."
"Hello, Clara," the Doctor greeted as they shook hands. "Nice to meet you. Thanks for everything." He narrowed his eyes curiously. "Have we met before?"
Clara peered up at him. "You do seem a bit familiar…"
River approached me humbly. "I don't think there's anything I can do to call us even, now," she said, her voice a strange melody of gratitude and exhaustion.
"You caught me when I fell out of the TARDIS by bending the rules of time and space," I said. "We're so even you could build a skyscraper on us."
She smiled. "The biggest and best skyscraper in the universe," she joked.
"Now what do we do?" Clara asked, she and the Doctor walking over to join us. "You're safe, but the Daleks are still planning something terrible. We have to stop them."
"Yeah, Doctor," I said. "Why did they need you?"
The Doctor held up his hands, wiggling the fingers. "I have opposable thumbs! The smartest opposable thumbs, I'd wager, in the universe. They needed me to fix something they couldn't."
"The Daleks' one weakness," River said. "No phalanges."
"What did they need you to fix?" Clara asked.
Traveling with the Doctor consisted of extremes: extreme danger, extreme bravery, extreme sacrifice, extreme reward. To use the age-old cliché, it was an emotional roller coaster. I'd acclimated to this lifestyle, adapting to survive the wild swings of circumstances the Doctor and I hopped in and out of. But even though I'd learned to ride the rapids, the Doctor sill caught me off guard with his answer for Clara.
"If you like, I'll explain everything over tea."
"…We don't have time for tea," I said, wondering if the Daleks had tampered with the Doctor's mind. "The Daleks…we need to stop them."
"We're in a time machine," the Doctor explained. "We have time for anything." Darting back to the console, he added, "Just have to take us to another pocket of space and time. When we're done, we can jump back a minute after we left. And besides, the Daleks can't carry out their plan, they don't have the fingers to do it."
After flicking and entire row of switches, he whisked away from the console. "Excellent," he said. "Now we're orbiting Medinar-89, a thousand years into the past." He eyed River and offered his elbow to her. "Care to join me?"
"Tea sounds lovely right now," River agreed, looping her arm through his.
"None for me," I said. "I'll find myself some good, strong brandy." The three of them turned toward me, looking at me like I'd just grown another head. Brits, I thought to myself wearily.
After ten minutes of hunting around for the kitchen, we finally found it after River asked the TARDIS politely to move it close. After seeing some of the wonders the TARDIS held, I expected a great big bistro kitchen, with decorated tiles on the walls, ovens and stoves that could cook enough food for a banquet, and giant walk-in freezers and pantries with shelves overflowing with every cooking ingredient in the universe. I expected a kitchen fit for Gordon Ramsay. Instead, the four of us walked into a kitchen fit for a suburban household. We could see a few things clearly not from Earth (around my time, anyway), but for the most part, the kitchen was homey and warm.
White cabinets and drawers extended across three walls, one on each side of the door and one straight ahead, barring our view into the room beyond, which we knew existed because of the doorway in the wall. The gray countertops held jars of things like flour and sugar (and other substances unknown to Earth—hopefully); a large, wooden breadbox; a block of knives fit for Norman Bates; a toaster with twelve slots; and a bouquet of plastic spoons, spatulas, and whisks, sitting in a huge Mason jar. A large wooden door resided in the corner, probably leading to the pantry. Copper pots and pans hung from a rack in the ceiling. The refrigerator, stove, and microwave looked like they could've come from my time, except for the multitude of buttons that decorated their fronts. The soft, diffused light gave the coffee-colored walls another dimension of warmth.
After Clara and I fixed the snacks (we let neither River nor the Doctor near the kitchen—they'd just been taken hostage, they were in no fit state to fix tea themselves), we brought them into the dining room, happy to sit after such a harrowing mission. The adjacent dining room was equally homey: its furniture consisted of a dark brown table without a cloth, surrounded by four wooden chairs with mismatched cushions on the seats. Short, squat candles sat on the tabletop, without any sort of holders or ways to catch the melting wax. Small, shallow dips in the surface of the candle near the wick signaled that they'd been lit before.
We must've looked odd, River, Clara and I: sitting in the TARDIS dining room, wearing party gowns and sipping tea and brandy.
Oh, there's probably been stranger.
The four of us took deep draughts of our drinks, eager for refreshment. The brandy- some of the best I'd ever tasted- revitalized me in a way no other drink ever had, making me wonder if it was some kind of magical space alcohol. I peered at the Doctor over my glass: what else was he hiding in the TARDIS kitchens?
The Doctor finished his tea and briefly left the table, rejoining us a moment later with a box of matches. He lit one and touched it to each candle wick; River, Clara, and I applauded when they all lit up. I was amazed he didn't burn himself. He sat back down, childishly proud of himself.
"Thank you, Doctor," I said. "Candles make anything better. Now, let's get down to business." I leaned forward. "Tell us about the Daleks."
"The Daleks," the Doctor repeated, sitting up straighter. He gazed into the depths of his tea mug and continued, "They found some technology and tried to alter it for their own purposes, but they needed humanoid hands to finish their work."
"What was their purpose?" River asked. "I couldn't see the machinery. You must have some idea what they wanted. What are they trying to do?"
The Doctor hesitated before revealing the terrible truth. "Convert the rest of the planet into Daleks."
River, Clara and I leaned back. My heart froze. The Doctor continued, "They're on the edge of extinction. They'll do anything to get their race up and running."
"But they're obsessed with purity," River rebutted. "To them, humans are impure."
"Didn't stop Dalek Sec," the Doctor muttered. "The Daleks will die out if they don't take desperate measures, and they're prepared to take them. Doesn't mean they like it, but they'll take it."
"How is that possible?" Clara said. "Converting an entire planet into those…things. And if they're as desperate as you say, that means that they're weak, and there's got to be enough people on Earth to overpower them."
"They're going to do it all at once," the Doctor replied, hanging his head. "They don't intend to give time for anyone to fight back."
I piped up, "But converting millions of people at once—"
"Is possible with a nanogene cloud," the Doctor interrupted.
River's shoulders relaxed with dread. "That's what they needed you to work on. A nanogene diffuser."
The Doctor nodded. "They're going to start with everyone at the university. Not full conversions, that's too messy to do all at once. They'll change them until they're humans with Dalek minds and biological technology, Dalek enough to go in willingly for a full conversion."
"But Doctor, nanogenes heal," I said. "On the Star Ariel, Whittaker used nanogenes on me. They fix us up."
"It depends on what they think is broken," the Doctor explained, picking his gaze up and pointing it at me. "The Daleks adapted the idea from the Chula when they died out and altered them for Dalek agendas. Nanogenes started out as battlefield doctors, but the Daleks turned them into a weapon of mass conversion. To Dalek nanogenes, anything not Dalek needs to be remedied."
"So they're turning everyone on Earth into…them," River said, disgusted.
The four of us shared silence for another moment, until Clara brought us back to our principal dilemma. "So how do we stop the Daleks?"
"We have to destroy the nanogene diffuser," River said. "We can't let them convert anyone."
"But to do that, we have to get back into their base," I replied. "It's literally crawling with the things."
"Unless we draw them out," Clara said.
"That won't work," the Doctor said. "The Daleks will leave a few behind to guard the diffuser. It's their only chance, and they know it."
"The TARDIS can materialize around the diffuser, and then we could take it away," River suggested.
"The Daleks shielded their base," I answered. "The TARDIS couldn't materialize anywhere near it."
"Is there any way to hack the diffuser?" Clara asked. "Just…shut it down remotely?"
The Doctor looked up at Clara, careful hope in his eyes. She continued, "I mean, anything's possible with this ship. The Voice Interface alone is extraordinary. I'd imagine a ship like this could do anything."
River and the Doctor looked at each other. "Well, if we took down the shields—"
"—and extended the Signal Follower's capacity—"
"—and bypassed the Daleks' No-Fly virus—"
They looked at each other like they'd just found the answers to the universe; well, they found the answer to saving it. River turned back to Clara and said, "Remind me to give you an A for the semester."