AN: So as I've said in past chapters, some of this story will consist of canon episodes and some of it will be original. I feel ready to get on with the original stories now, so I'm preparing to do so!

"Oh my God," Rose said dumbly. She stared at the thing before her and as comprehension set in, her brain went into tailspin.

Sec's eyes narrowed. "The Doctor's companion. You - you are the Abomination!" he hissed, tentacles writhing.

She wrinkled her nose. "If anyone else called me that, I might be offended, but as it is…"

"Ex-term-inate!" crowed one of the Daleks, gun twitching.

"Wait!" Sec ordered, throwing up a hand. "Where is the Doctor?"

"Not here," she said. He would have been - fascinated? Was that the right word? A brand new Dalek race. Yes. It would have gripped him, for better or for worse.

"The Cult of Skaro escaped the Doctor's slaughter," Sec said.

"Escaped to… here?" She couldn't hide her confusion as she asked, "How'd you manage that then?"

"Emergency temporal shift." As if she was supposed to know what that meant. At her side though, Jack pulled a face so she assumed at least one of them had an idea.

"So you ended up in New York," she said. "And then you, what? It's like…"

"Like what?"

"Like you're hiding."

At the insinuation Sec's face twisted into an expression of deeper distaste. "We have been doing much more than just hiding. Look at me; I am Dalek in human form."

"How's that working out for you?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows.

Sec hesitated. "I feel…human."

Rose swallowed. "Yeah? And how's that?"

"I feel everything we want from mankind, which is… ambition, hatred, aggression, and war." He released a reverent breath, so filled with emotion it made her skin crawl. "Such genius for war."

"That's not what humanity is," she said.

"Oh, but I think it is," Sec said, meeting her eyes with his cyclops eye. "At heart, this species is so very, very Dalek."

"Like hell it is!" she exclaimed. Beside her, Martha looked almost sick, but anyone would at hearing such a comparison.

Sec's stare turned somewhat antagonistic. "Denial won't help you here."

"Alright," Jack said, crossing his arms. "So tell us what you want, because this isn't getting us anywhere."

They were running for the slums of Hooverville before the Daleks could screech for order, after Jack, in a moment of ingenuity, shot one of the pipes above Dalek Sec's head and as steam spewed from it, chaos erupted. They fled while they had the chance and didn't look back.

Out in the freezing New York air, they made for Central Park with haste, none too keen to spend much time in the vicinity when Daleks or their cronies could appear at any moment.

Martha's look was still harrowed, and she thought her friend was lingering on their talk with the Daleks, so in a low tone Rose said, "Just think about this; when the flat three floors below mine burned down five years ago and the people there were left with nothing, everyone in the building queued up to help them, and they didn't spend a single night homeless or hungry." Martha's expression was still far from happy, but she was clearly listening. "Humans are far from perfect. We have our issues, and aggression is one of them, but just look at what happens when disaster strikes and you'll see what humanity is really made of."

She nodded slowly. "You know, when 9/11 happened so many people volunteered to donate blood that the hospitals had to start turning people away, their services were so overwhelmed."

"See? You let me know the day a Dalek does that, and Sec and I can talk."

Within the boundaries of Central Park, Rose and her companions gathered together with Solomon and hurriedly threw about plans. So far, they hadn't had any luck.

"There's got to be a way to reason with these things," Solomon said.

"Well there isn't, buddy," Jack said, crossing his arms. "I'm intimately familiar with the Daleks, and trust me, nothing in the world could stop them. Like serial killers; they don't stop until they are stopped."

"Well can't we do that then?" Frank asked. "If you're familiar with them then you've seen them before and lived. Can't you stop them?"

"It's not that simple," she muttered, thinking of gold light and shuddering.

A loud whistle broke the spell and Solomon turned towards the sound. "They're coming!" a voice called. "They're coming!"

"A sentry." Solomon stood up straight, clearly prepared to fight. "He must have seen something."

A man was sprinting in their direction, frantically shouting, "They're here! I've seen them! Monsters! They're monsters."

"Oh, great," Rose said, straightening up. She exchanged a look with Jack then glanced at Martha, who looked tense but ready.

"We're under attack!" Solomon declared. "Everyone to arms!"

"Be prepared to run," Jack said, turning a glare on Solomon. "These things can't be stopped."

Solomon glared at him in turn. "Their pig servants can." He cocked the shotgun and turned away.

Rose pushed down her frustration and turned to Frank. "People are gonna get hurt," she said. "Go back there and try to get them to safety. Get as many people out of the park as you can. We'll be caged in here."

"We can't. They're on all sides. They're driving everyone back toward us."

"We're trapped," Tallulah moaned.

"Then we stand together," Solomon said. "Gather round. Everybody come to me. You there, Jethro, Harry, Seamus, stay together. They can't take all of us." And as the pigmen came closer, the people of Hooverville opened fire.

Solomon tried to make peace with the Daleks. Of course he did. A man with a heart like his would always try for peace. But it would always get him killed.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he said at her protests, "but this is my township." He turned back to the Daleks. "You will respect my authority. Just let me try. Daleks, ain't we all the same? Underneath, ain't we all kin?"He set down his rifle, and Rose knew he was lost. "Right. See, I've just discovered this past day, God's universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was." Dread built in her chest and made her feel sick. "And that scares me. Oh yeah, terrifies me right down to the bone. But surely it's got to give me hope." She closed her eyes tight, and held her breath. "Hope that maybe together we can make a better tomorrow. So, I beg you now, if you have any compassion in your hearts, then you'll meet with us and stop this fight. Well? What do you say?"

The response was expected, but still horrifying. "Ex-term-in-ate!"

Screams rent the air and when a strange, primal tugging went for her heartstrings, she forced her eyes open… Solomon was still standing. Alive. Shell shocked, but alive. Dead in his place was Jack.

"He threw himself in front of it's shot!" Martha exclaimed, staring wide-eyed between their friend on the ground and the Dalek hovering above them all. Despite the stories about his apparent immortality, she knew that had he been a second late, or an inch off, Solomon would have lost his life.

"My God," the man himself gasped, stumbling away from the body and looking up at the Dalek with anger on his face. "How could you -"

But before he could get himself shot for good, Rose made herself known. "Right then! You wanna kill someone, kill me! You've enough reason to!"

"Rose!

" Martha hissed furiously. She, stood before the body of one of her best friends, steadfastly ignored her.

"I will be the one to avenge the Emperor."

If a Dalek could sound wondrous, this one did.

"Then go on! Do it!"

"Ex-term-in-ate!

" And though its gun was aimed her way, nothing happened.

But then the Dalek froze. "I do not un-der-stand. It is the A-bom-in-ation." A significant pause. "I ob-ey."

"What the hell?" she hissed, eyes narrowing.

The Dalek refocused on her as if it had sensed her confusion. "You will fol-low." And though she didn't want to leave Jack or Martha behind, she hardly had a choice.

"The deaths were wrong."

It was the first thing Dalek Sec had to say in the face of her fury. He was in comparison utterly calm, tranquil, even, and he faced her with a certainty that almost made her angrier.

"I… sorry?"

"That man," he said quietly, "your friend. He sacrificed himself for the leader of that community. They were both willing to die."

"Yeah, and one of them did!" she roared.

"I am… sorry."

The air left her. "I - what?"

"I am sorry, for what happened to your friend."

Jack would, if he was telling the truth, be fine, but Sec didn't know that. "I - I don't know how to tell you this, but you're almost sounding human."

"I am the first of my kind." He met her eyes again, completely stoic. "I believe we have that in common."

"I'm human," Rose said on impulse. Despite her recent worries she was in no doubt about that.

"A human who can control the time vortex, absorb it and survive?" He shook his head and said, "You are unique."

"Whatever you say, mate. I'm not interested." A question struck her then, and she asked. "What did you have that Dalek spare my life for? Why?"

Sec's tentacles twitched. "We tried everything to survive when we found ourselves stranded in this ignorant age. First we tried growing new Dalek embryos, but their flesh was too weak."

"That's what I found in the sewers."

"It forced us to conclude what is the greatest resource of this planet," Sec continued as if there'd been no interruption. "Its people."

He threw a breaker switch, lighting up the whole place. Rose looked up to see hundreds of bodies floating above them, resting on stretchers. As she watched, Sec brought one of the stretchers down for her to examine.

"We stole them," Sec explained. "Look inside."

Rose pulled back the cover to see the face of the man laying on the stretcher. "This is the true extent of the Final Experiment."

Rose pressed her lips thin for a moment. "Is he dead?"

"Near death, with his mind wiped, ready to be filled with new ideas."

"Dalek ideas."

"The human-Dalek race," Sec corrected. Rose shook her head.

"How many of them are there?"

"We have caverns beyond this storing more than a thousand."

"Is there any way to restore them? Make them human again?"

"Everything they were has been lost."

"And you think that's okay. You've taken these people and ripped their minds out of their heads. You want to conduct this grand master plan from Earth, but at this point in time science is still just getting started! How're you gonna do it?"

"Open the conductor plan," Sec called.

"The Empire State Building," Rose said, looking up at the big screen.

"We needed an energy conductor."

"For what?"

"I am the genetic template. My altered DNA was to be administered to each human body. A strong enough blast of gamma radiation can splice the Dalek and human genetic codes, and awaken each body from its sleep."

Most of that went over Rose's head. "Gamma radiation? I don't - but isn't that the sun?" she asked, reaching for what she could remember out of the many textbooks she had read in the last few months.

"Yes. Soon, the greatest solar flare for a thousand years will hit the Earth. Gamma radiation will be drawn to the energy conductor and when it strikes…"

He left the sentence hanging, but Rose was at least smart enough to finish for him. "When it strikes, the army wakes." She turned back to him, a glare on her face. "Well transformation's sent you more barmy than you were before if you think you'll get any help from me! I don't understand any of this, so even if I wanted to help you, which I don't, I couldn't."

Sec glared. "We have already begun the preparations. You are our only hope."

"And I'll be glad to disappoint," she snarled. Right then, an alarm blared through the room and she stepped towards the exit on instinct. "What the hell is that?"

"What's happening?" Sec turned to his fellow Daleks. "Is there a malfunction? Answer me!"

One of the Daleks turned its gun on Rose. "The Abomination will be ex-term-in-ated."

"Stop! You will not fire.

"She is an en-e-my of the Da-leks."

"And so are you," another added, turning on Sec."I am your commander," Sec insisted. "I am Dalek Sec."

"You have lost your auth-o-rity."

"You are no lon-ger a Da-lek."

With that, the Dalek on the left aimed its gun, screeched, "Ex-term-in-ate!"

Before Sec could do more than appear to be shocked, his body was alight with radiation, his warped skeleton shining white, and he fell to the ground.

"Their own leader," she gasped under her breath, eyes going wide.

But Rose wasn't keen on being exterminated herself that day, so when the Daleks had the pig slaves restrain her, she turned to see the slave holding her was Laszlo and tried not to smile.

"There's a lift just down the hall," he whispered.

"Ready to run when you are."

Needless to say, neither of them waited very long.

The Daleks had their slaves searching the building for her. She had heard them slamming down doors and communicating back and forth between each other from the lift as she and Laszlo rode up to safety.

"There's only got minutes before the gamma radiation reaches Earth," Rose said "If I can avoid them until then, we're okay, but I think they want my help, and they'd probably find a way to force my hand. Best avoid them until then. " It was only then that she noticed Laszlo was panting. "Laszlo? What's wrong?"

"Out of breath," he gasped. "It's nothing. We've escaped. That's all that matters."

Before she could argue, the doors opened and Rose could have cried with relief when she saw Martha, Jack not far behind her.

"Rose!" "Rosie!"

The two girls met halfway, and threw their arms around each other. The tight coil in her chest loosened slightly. Over Martha's shoulder, she sized Jack up. He really seemed fine.

Smiling weakly, she released Martha and said, "Definitely immortal then."

"Yup. Definitely."

Swallowing, she said in a low tone, "Jack, I really am sorry -"

"For what?" he asked. "Would hate to have been dead by Dalek again. Now, what's happened on your end?"

Before she could answer, Martha exclaimed, "We've worked it out! We know what they've done. There's Dalekanium on the mast."

"Dalekanium?"

The sound of the elevator doors closing caught her attention, however, and she whirled back around as it began to descend. "No, no!" She hurried back and tried to force the doors open. "Damn it!"

"Where's it going?" Martha asked.

"Back to the Daleks. They want my help, and they're not going to leave us alone up here when I haven't given it. What's the time?"

"Er, eleven fifteen," Frank said.

"Six minutes." Pushing down the swell of panic, she looked to Jack and Martha, awaiting instruction. "We've got to remove that Dalekanium before the gamma radiation hits."

"Gammon radiation?" Tallulah repeated. "What the heck is that?"

She hurried out to the scaffolding, Jack and Martha hot on her heels, and looked up. If her stomach dropped to her feet at the height, she didn't show it.

"Quite the climb," Jack said. "Perhaps best suited to a guy who can't die."

"Yeah, and what the heck is that?" Tallulah asked from behind them. "I've seen a lot of weird stuff tonight but I ain't ever seen a guy come back to life before. Just who are you people?"

She turned at that, and saw the native New Yorkers watching the trio with intense apprehension. Noticing a conspicuous absence, she asked, "Where's Solomon?"

"Stayed at Hooverville," Frank said warily. "People we're scared to high heaven. If he'd left too they would have rioted." She nodded; that was one person out of harm's way - she hoped. "You didn't answer our question…"

"I don't need to right now," she said. "Just know that we know what we're doing - generally. We've seen this sort of stuff before, and hopefully we can fix it."

"That's the mast up there, look," Martha said, pointing. She followed her finger and spotted it for herself. "There's three pieces of Dalekanium on the base. We've got to get them all off."

Rose saw a wooden ladder off to the side and nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Me and Jack'll take care of it. You stay down here and make sure the slaves don't get in here."

"Hang on!" Martha protested. "I'm not staying behind!"

"Look, the Daleks have the pig slaves searching the building for me," she said, trying desperately to impress upon her the importance of what she was saying. "If they make it in here, I trust you to keep Frank, Tallulah and Laszlo safe from them. Somehow. You're smart, Martha. So much smarter than me. You can do it."

She looked even unhappier at that, but nodded. "Fine. You two go. I'll take care of things down here."

She and Jack struggled against the freezing temperature and high winds to the top of the mast.

"You cut the Dalekanium down," she called to him over the roaring winds, "and pass it to me!" Her plan was to place it down on the wooden scaffolding, or anywhere that didn't conduct electricity.

"Got it!" he hollered. "Ready when you are."

And so with a time limit on their minds and the elements against them, they started in on the Dalek panels. Jack had with him some alien laser cutter, and they were making quick work of the first sheet of metal. It was a relief when it came free and he passed it carefully down to her. They did the same for the second sheet, but it was taking too long, she could feel it in her bones.

In the distance, thunder roared. Soon, it would be upon them.

"Keep going!" she cried over the howling wind. It was futile; lost amongst the cacophony. Even without her encouragement though, he was making swift progress on the third and final panel, though it did seem to be more stubborn than the previous two.

Thunder boomed again and this time, her bones themselves rattled at the magnitude. They didn't have long left. The winds stung her eyes and the rain blinded her and it was all she could do to keep her balance in her precarious position on the scaffolding. Jack had his collar turned up around his face for protection.

He was still hacking away at the final panel as lightning lit the night sky, electric and intense and oh so close now.

She could see his lips moving as he muttered to himself, and reached out her arms to receive the final panel just as it came loose -

When a terribly strong gust almost lifted her from the platform and the air left her lungs.

"Rosie!"

Grasping blindly for the ledge, she held on tightly enough to draw blood and steadied herself.

"I'm - I'm okay!" she called, unaware of whether he could hear her or not. She held out her hands again. "Pass it down!"

With great caution, and great relief, he did, and when the lightning struck the mast seconds later, it did nothing at all.

"That was close," Jack said when they were back on stable ground. He paused and their eyes met, and he laughed. "Damn, was that close."

"Didn't fancy biting it twice in one day?" she asked, grinning weakly.

"It wasn't on my to-do list, no."

When they stepped back into the room where Martha and co had been, it was to the right of dead pig slaves, piled up in the entrance to the lift. Despite knowing what they would have done if not stopped, the sight made her want to cry. They too were just victims of the Daleks tyranny.

Martha met her eyes, expression grim but resolute; she was waiting for Rose to fight her on her solution. There was no fight reserved for her friend at the moment though. All of their hands were being forced.

"Right," she said as Jack surveyed the bodies. "Crisis averted."

"So now what?"

Tallulah was shuddering, but her expression turned alarmed when she saw Laszlo collapse against the wall, gripping his knees with his hands and wheezing.

"Laszlo, honey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said, breathing heavily. "It's just so hot."

"But it's freezing in here! Rose, what's happening to him?"

"I have an idea or two," Jack said grimly. He was eyeing Lazslo with something akin to grief and the expression made Rose's stomach clench, but she didn't have the time to think about that. Instead,

"What are you doing?" Martha asked, watching her.

"It's me the Daleks want. I've ruined their plans… again. The obvious thing to do is call them to me. You lot should all get to safety. Jack, have you got anything that might help against rampaging Daleks?"

"Are you joking?" Martha asked, jaw dropping in disbelief.

"No, I'm not," Rose snapped. "Frank can take you back to Hooverville. Jack? Anything?"

"Let me think here, Rosie!" he said tersely. He was patting at his overcoat pockets and frowning.

Martha still wasn't happy. "I'm not going!"

She was stopped from replying when the doors were broken down and a herd of the pig slaves flooded in. Tallulah shrieked and Frank cried out, all of them backing up further as rain water sloshed around their feet. They weren't far from the door if they could only reach it -

"I'll try to hold them off," Laszlo said. "I look like one of them; I might be able to trick them."

"Be careful!" Tallulah called after him as he moved off.

From the same door the slaves had emerged from, the remaining Daleks were fast approaching.

"You will sur-ren-der!"

"Not likely," Rose snorted. "Laszlo, come on!" He was trying to return to them but struggling against the slaves, who had latched onto him and were trying to force their way past, and she didn't want him to be left behind.

"The Ab-om-in-ation will sur-ren-der! Ex-term-in-ate! Ex-term-in-ate!"

"Ex-term-in-ate!" echoed it's partner, who pointed their guns to the water pooled in from the rain. It changed the word that always preceded disaster, and the rain water was electrified.

Tallulah shrieked and howled and wrestled against Frank's straining grip, and a sort of detached calm overtook Rose's mind. All of the pig slaves lay dead before them. All of them.

It was then that Jack found what he was looking for - another clearly alien device that he shot two Daleks straight through with, but the third destroyed it before he could use it again.

"What happened?" Martha asked, looking frantically between she and Jack, and then to the body of Laszlo, slumped on the ground and to her horror, steaming. "What was that?"

"They killed them," she said. "Rather than let them live. Daleks to the end."

"But only two of the Daleks were destroyed," Frank said. "Means one of the Dalek masters must still be alive, right?"

"Oh yeah," she said, turning away. "There's always one. That's all it takes."

She left the group behind and headed straight back to the lab. There, waiting for her, was the lone survivor. The one thing that stood in the way of Dalek extinction. But Rose could see to that.

Anger roiled in her chest, potent enough to make her want to fight. She wasn't sure she would get very far trying to fight a giant pepper pot, though.

When she came upon the Dalek, she asked it, "After all this, the people you kidnapped, killed, experimented on… Laszlo's dead because of you. Now what?"

"You will be ex-term-in-ated," it replied.

"I've heard that before," she said, a bitter smile coming to her face. "Just stop and think about this, Dalek… what was your name?"

"Dal-ek Caan."

"Caan," Rose repeated. "Think about it. Your entire species has been wiped out. The Cult of Skaro's gone, and you're all that's left. Haven't you got anything to say about that?"

There was a beat of silence. "E-mer-gen-cy temp-oral shift!" Caan cried, and he disappeared in a flash of light, leaving his carnage behind in Twentieth Century New York.

The sound of Tallulah's sobs echoed through the building, and Rose felt a part of herself break away. The Pig and the Showgirl. The end was predictable.