A/N: Sorry guys for the absence. My university studies took precedence over my stories, but I'm back to upload as often as I can.
I do not own Doctor Who. All I own is this story and my OC. This chapter takes place during the episode 'Dalek' with some tweaking to include my OC.
Please review, and no flaming will be accepted or tolerated. Cheers, and enjoy :)
ENEMIES
"You've got the world on its knees.
You've taken all that you please.
You want more, you want more.
But you'll get nothing from me."
– Shinedown: 'Enemies' (Amaryllis [2012])
An unknown location
The TARDIS materialises in a dimly lit area with carpeting and display cases. It is not exactly the most welcoming of places, and when Katy stepped from the TARDIS, she could feel an ominous presence that was making her extremely uncomfortable. Her instincts were screaming at her to tell the Doctor her doubts and suggest that they go somewhere else on their adventures. But the TARDIS had brought them here for whatever reason, and the Doctor was not one to ignore something that lured them there.
"So, what is it? What's wrong?" Rose asks, also looking about the unknown place nervously. The Doctor steps from the TARDIS frowning, looking just as uncomfortable as Katy felt. Good, so she wasn't being a worrywart for no reason. That was a relief.
"Don't know. Some kind of signal is drawing the TARDIS off course." The Doctor replied, somewhat distractedly.
"Where are we?" Katy asked, still looking around curiously.
"Earth. Utah, North America." The Doctor answers. "About half a mile underground."
"And when are we?" Katy prodded.
"2012." The Doctor looks at a nearby display which contains a strange looking object. Rose's eyes widen in surprise.
"God, that's so close. We should be twenty-six." Rose tells Katy who nods, then blinks rapidly when the Doctor locates a light switch and flicks it on, making things a whole lot clearer for them.
"Woah. It's a great big museum." Katy marvels, looking somewhat excited, and admonishing herself for being so paranoid. But at the same time, the ominous presence still hadn't abated, and Katy couldn't help but frown, wondering what was so bad that it had been locked up in a museum.
"An alien museum." The Doctor corrects her, still frowning. "Someone's got a hobby. They must have spent a fortune on this." He inspects another display. "Chunks of meteorite, moon dust. That's the milometer from the Roswell spaceship." The Doctor points out a small black box to them. Rose spots something familiar and runs over to it, looking excited.
"That's a bit of Slitheen!" She announces, and Katy shudders at the memory of their last 'adventure'. She'd thought she'd seen the last of that repulsive alien race. "That's a Slitheen's arm. It's been stuffed."
"Oh, look at you." The Doctor sounded a bit surprised, and Katy goes over to see what it was that caught the Doctor's attention. It was a metal head of some sort, with a handle going through its head. The handle was connected via both its ears.
"What is it?" Katy asks, making a face.
"An old friend of mine." The Doctor replies, with a look of distaste. "Well, enemy. The stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit." He lets out a tired sigh. "I'm getting old."
"Is that where the signal's coming from?" Rose asks, looking over Katy's shoulder at the metal head.
"No, it's stone dead. The signal's alive. Something's reaching out, calling for help." The Doctor absent-mindedly goes to touch the display case, and Katy reacts too late to stop him, so when he touches the glass, an alarm suddenly goes off. Immediately, they are surrounded from all sides by armed guards, cutting off access to the TARDIS.
"You just had to touch the display case, Doctor." Katy grouses, as she puts her arms in the air in the universal signal for 'unarmed, please don't shoot'. The Doctor looks a bit sheepish, as he and Rose also raise their arms into the air.
"If someone's collecting aliens, that makes you Exhibit A." Rose points out, dryly.
An Office
The three of them were 'escorted' into an office, where a balding, sleazy looking guy with a moustache and goatee, and dressed in expensive designer clothes, sat on a plush, hi-backed leather office chair at his desk. A guy, roughly the sisters' age, was showing him strange alien-looking objects. Obviously out to impress.
"And this is the last." The guy was explaining to 'Mr. Sleaze', who was watching him with his hands steepled, looking bored. "Paid eight hundred thousand dollars for it."
"What does it do?" 'Mr. Sleaze' asks in an American accent, as The Doctor, Katy and Rose were forcibly led towards the desk.
"Well, you see the tubes on the side?" The Doctor looks at the object in his hands. "It must be to channel something. I think maybe fuel." He theorised.
"I really wouldn't hold it like that." The Doctor pipes up, drawing attention to himself.
"Shut it." Goddard, the blonde secretary, or personal assistant who 'escorted' them here, snaps.
"Really, though, that's wrong." The Doctor insists, ignoring her completely.
"Is it dangerous?" the kid asks the Doctor, who grins at him cheerfully.
"No, it just looks silly." He points out, and the Doctor reaches for the item, only to stop when firing bolts click all around them, aiming their guns at him and Katy and Rose. 'Mr. Sleaze' hands him the curved, palm sized object. "You just need to be … delicate." The Doctor demonstrates what he means by stroking the artifact with his fingers and it plays a beautiful note. He continues stroking the now revealed instrument, playing several different notes. Katy and Rose gaped in pleasant surprise at the object in the Doctor's hands.
"It's a musical instrument." 'Mr. Sleaze's' eyes light up.
"And it's a long way from home." The Doctor nods, agreeing with him.
"Here, let me." 'Mr. Sleaze' reaches for the item to snatch it from the Doctor, and starts stroking it roughly, making flat, off-key notes. Everyone winces at the sounds.
"I did say delicate." The Doctor reminds him. "It reacts to the smallest fingerprint. It needs precision." 'Mr. Sleaze' eventually gets the hang of it, and the Doctor nods in approval. "Very good. Quite the expert."
'Mr. Sleaze' eyes the Doctor slyly, "As are you." He then carelessly tosses the instrument aside, where it clatters to the floor. The Doctor is shocked by the lack of respect this man is showing, and glowers at him in displeasure. "Who exactly are you?"
"I'm the Doctor." The Doctor bites out. "And who are you?"
"Like you don't know." 'Mr. Sleaze' sneers in disbelief, like not knowing who he was was a crime against humanity. "We're hidden away with the most valuable collection of extra-terrestrial artefacts in the world, and you just stumbled in by mistake?"
"Pretty much sums him up." Katy mutters underneath her breath, sardonically, earning a warning look from the Doctor. 'Mr. Sleaze' eyes Katy up appreciatively, making her want to retreat back to the TARDIS and take several showers. The Doctor notices this and narrows his eyes, stepping in front of Katy protectively; an obvious gesture of back off.
"The question is, how did you get in?" 'Mr. Sleaze' demanded, curiously. "Fifty-three doors down, with your little cat burglar accomplices." He continues eying Katy like a piece of meat and checks out Rose also. The blonde glares at him. "You're quite a collector yourself, they're both rather pretty."
"Keep talking like that, and I'll give you something to talk about!" Katy snaps back, revolted.
"We're also gonna smack you, if you keep eying us like pieces of meat." Rose adds, acidly.
"They're English too!" 'Mr. Sleaze' grins in amusement. He nudges the kid in the ribs with his elbow, causing him to grunt painfully. "Hey, little Lord Fauntleroy. Got you a couple of girls to choose from, take ya pick!" The guy clears his throat uncomfortably and introduces 'Mr. Sleaze'.
"This is Mister Henry Van Statten."
"And who's he when he's at home?" Rose questions him, her temper not yet calmed.
"Mister Van Statten owns the internet."
"No one owns the internet." Katy points out. Van Statten leans forward and winks conspiratorially at Katy who glowers at him.
"And let's just keep the whole world thinking that way, right kids?" The Doctor reaches down and grabs Katy's hand, whom she had clenched into tight fists in her fury and loosens them enough to intertwine their fingers in an attempt to calm her down.
"So, you're just about an expert in everything except the things in your museum." The Doctor deduces. "Anything you don't understand, you lock up."
"And you claim greater knowledge?" Van Statten raised an eyebrow at the Doctor.
"I don't need to make claims, I know how good I am."
"And yet, I captured you." Van Statten points out, smugly. "Right next to the Cage. What were you doing down there?"
"You tell me." The Doctor responded, shrugging. Van Statten eyes the Doctor suspiciously, obviously trying to work out if the Doctor knew more than he really let on about what he had contained inside his 'Cage'.
"The Cage contains my one living specimen."
"And what's that?" Katy asks, curiously. Van Statten eyes her sceptically.
"Like your friend doesn't know." He sneers, arrogantly.
"Show me." The Doctor requests.
"You want to see it?" Van Statten is practically boastful, and both Katy and Rose are both unimpressed.
"Blimey, you can smell the testosterone." She mutters to Katy, who nods still scowling at Van Statten with distaste. Van Statten rises from his chair behind the desk and walks around it, grabbing the attention of Goddard.
"Goddard, inform the Cage we're heading down." He orders, and Goddard nods and walks away. Van Statten turns towards the British kid. "You, English." He addresses him rudely. "Look after the girls. Go and canoodle or spoon or whatever it is you British do." Then finally, he turns to the Doctor. "And you, Doctor with no name, come and see my pet."
The guards restraining the Doctor unceremoniously pull him away, dislodging his hand from Katy, who looks back at them, alarmed at the rough treatment, and eyes the Doctor with concern. Van Statten leaves the room with his staff, leaving behind Katy, Rose and the British kid, who steps forward looking a little sheepish.
"Uh, for the record. My name's Adam." He introduces himself to them.
Outside the Cage
Van Statten escorts the Doctor towards the Cage where he is keeping his 'pet'. On the way, Van Statten gives the Doctor a rundown of what he already knew about it, and the Doctor is only half-listening; he is simultaneously trying to think of a way to free this potentially innocent alien Van Statten has imprisoned down here in this alien museum.
"We've tried everything. The creature has shielded itself but there's definite signs of life inside." Van Statten was saying to the Doctor, who turns back in when he hears the last part of that explanation.
"Inside? Inside what?" He questions him, as a hazmat suited employee greets Van Statten.
"Welcome back, sir. I've had to take the power down. The Metaltron is resting." Simmons, the employee, explains.
"Metaltron?" The Doctor frowns at the unusual name.
"Thought of it myself," Van Statten declared proudly. "Good, isn't it?" The Doctor responds by giving him a look that translated to 'are you seriously seeking compliments?' "Although, I'd much prefer to find out its real name." Van Statten frowned, looking a bit put out at the slow progress. Simmons approaches the Doctor, offering him some gauntlets.
"Here, you'd better put these on." The Doctor merely stares down at them. "The last guy that touched it burst into flames." Simmons added as an explanation, thinking the Doctor was hesitating for a reason. The Doctor looked at him like he was an idiot.
"I won't touch it then."
"Go ahead, Doctor. Impress me." Van Statten orders, and the Cage is opened up for the Doctor who sighs and steps through the heavy door, which is closed behind him. "Don't open that door until we get a result." Van Statten orders his staff, before he and Goddard move towards a desk with monitors on it.
Inside the Cage
The inside of the Cage is dark, and the Doctor glances back at the door as it clangs shut and locks behind him. Deciding to get this 'inspection' over and done with, the Doctor approaches the creature sitting in the shadows.
"Look, I'm sorry about this." The Doctor adopts a soothing, understanding voice. "Mister Van Statten might think he's clever, but never mind him. I've come to help. I'm the Doctor." He introduces himself with a sunny grin. A white light blinks next to a sudden blue glow, reacting when the Doctor identifies himself.
"Doc-Tor?" A distorted robot voice speaks, and the Doctor's sunny grin fades, replaced with a look of absolute horror.
"Impossible…" He muttered underneath his breath in sheer disbelief.
"THE Doctor?" The voice strengthens, becoming harsher as the lights come up, revealing an alien that looked like a pepper pot with a whisk and plunger for arms, and an adjustable stork with a blue iris, being held in chains. The Doctor backs away as the pepper pot starts shrieking at him: "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" The Doctor rushes over and hammers on the door in terror with his fists.
"Let me out!"
"EXTERMINATE!"
Outside the Cage
Van Statten and Goddard look at the commotion going on inside the Cage with looks of amazement and glee (Van Statten) and concern (Goddard).
"Sir, it's going to kill him." Goddard points out to Van Statten, who barely pays attention to anything except for one thing:
"It's talking!"
Inside the Cage
The Doctor continues hammering on the Cage door, still demanding release, as the pepper pot alien strains against the chains holding it back, trying to get at the Doctor.
"YOU ARE AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS!" The now revealed Dalek declares. "YOU MUST BE DESTROYED!" Its gun arm – the one shaped like an egg whisk – twitches, but nothing happens. The Doctor freezes, realising that he hadn't been electrocuted to death by the Dalek's laser ray, and lets out a relieved bark of laughter.
"It's not working." He continues laughing as the Dalek looks at its drained weapon in confusion. "Fantastic! Oh, fantastic! Powerless! Look at you. The great space dustbin." The Doctor sneers hatefully at the Dalek. "How does it feel?" He mocks it, charging towards it threateningly. The Dalek immediately tries to move backwards but is stopped by the chains restraining it.
"KEEP BACK!" the Dalek shrieks and the Doctor stops inches away from it, staring into its eyepiece.
"What for? What are you going to do to me? If you can't kill, then what are you good for, Dalek? What's the point of you? You're nothing!" The Doctor snarls at it. "What the hell are you here for?"
"I AM WAITING FOR ORDERS." The Dalek responds.
"What does that mean?" The Doctor sneers.
"I AM A SOLDIER. I WAS BRED TO RECEIVE ORDERS." The Dalek answered his question, like it should've been obvious. The Doctor smirks triumphantly at it.
"Well, you're never going to get any. Not ever."
"I DEMAND ORDERS!" the Dalek demands indignantly, obviously not believing what the Doctor was saying. But the Doctor was on a roll, delighted by the fact that this Dalek was defenseless.
"They're never going to come! Your race is dead! You all burnt, all of you. Ten million ships on fire. The entire Dalek race wiped out in one second." The Doctor revealed with obvious glee.
"YOU LIE!"
"I watched it happen," the Doctor insisted. "I made it happen."
"YOU DESTROYED US?"
"I had no choice." The Doctor admitted darkly, obviously remembering something that he had been deeply regretting for a very long time.
"AND WHAT OF THE TIME LORDS?" The Dalek demanded. The Doctor paused for a moment, psyching himself up to reveal this heartbreaking news.
"Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the last great Time War. Everyone lost." The Doctor explained, reluctantly.
"AND THE COWARD SURVIVED." The Dalek couldn't resist getting one last barb into the Doctor, who noticeably bristled with cold fury.
"Oh, and I caught your little signal. Help me. Poor little thing." The Doctor sing-songed mockingly. "But there's no one else coming 'cause there's no one else left."
"I AM ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE." The Dalek realised.
"Yep."
"SO ARE YOU. WE ARE THE SAME." The Dalek pointed out, fueling the Doctor's ire.
"We are not the same! I'm not—" He cuts himself off, realising that the Dalek was in fact quite right, and an evil, malicious smirk spreads across the Doctor's face; making him look truly dangerous; a vengeful Time Lord with a vendetta to satisfy. The fact that the Dalek was chained up and restrained, made the Doctor's revenge plans way too easy. "No, wait. Maybe we are." The Doctor conceded. "You're right. Yeah, okay. You've got a point. 'Cause I know what to do. I know what should happen. I know what you deserve." The Doctor eyes a lever on a nearby console and walks over to it with a determination, grabbing on to it. "Exterminate!" He pulls it down, lighting up the Dalek with dangerous bolts of electricity.
The Dalek shrieks in agony.
"HAVE PITY!" It begs the Doctor.
"Why should I? You never did." The Doctor retorts coldly.
"HELP ME!" the Dalek pleads for help as the Cage door opens and guards charge at and restrain the Doctor just before he could ramp up the voltage again. Van Statten storms into the room, indicating for Simmons to shut off the electricity.
"I saved your life. Now talk to me." He demanded to the Dalek, who remains silent. "Goddamn it, talk to me!" Van Statten rages. But when the Dalek continues to refuse to speak, he gestures for the Doctor to be dragged out, much to his displeasure.
"You've got to destroy it!" the Doctor hollers desperately as he is led out. Van Statten grins triumphantly at the Dalek, who watches him silently and calculatingly.
"The last in the universe. And now I know your name. Dalek." Van Statten is positively gleeful. "Speak to me, Dalek. I am Henry Van Statten, now recognise me!" The Dalek remains silent, and angrily, Van Statten turns towards Simmons. "Make it talk again, Simmons. Whatever it takes."
Adam's Workshop
Katy perched lazily on top of Adam's workstation, wearing a sour expression on her face as she watched Adam talking off Rose's ear about his job. The very last thing she wanted to do was watch her sister flirting with Adam, who was trying hard to impress her with alien artifacts. What irritated her though, was that Rose certainly wasn't objecting that Adam was out of line and flirting with her in the first place.
So much for keeping the relationship with Mickey alive.
"Sorry about the mess," Adam apologised to Rose and Katy. "Mister Van Statten sort of lets me do my own thing, so long as I deliver the goods." He picks up an inch thick piece of metal and hands to Rose, who looks at it quizzically. "What do you think that is?" Adam asks, indicating to the piece of metal in Rose's hands.
"Er, a lump of metal?" Rose guessed, looking uncertain, as Katy rolls her eyes. Adam gives her a polite smile.
"Yeah. Yeah, but I think, well, I'm almost certain, it's from the hull of a spacecraft. The thing is, it's all true. Everything the United Nations tries to keep quiet, spacecraft, aliens, visitors to Earth. They really exist." Adam sounded extremely excited.
"Do they really?" Katy droned in faked amazement.
"That's amazing." Rose also lacked the appropriate amount of enthusiasm in her voice. Adam looks slightly sheepish and uncomfortable.
"I know it sounds incredible, but I honestly believe the whole universe is just teeming with life."
"I'm gobsmacked, yeah. And you do what, sit here and catalogue it?" Rose tried to muster up a little bit more enthusiasm for Adam's seemingly boring job.
"Best job in the world." Adam beamed.
"Imagine if you could get out there. Travel amongst the stars and see it for real." Rose suggested to Adam, whose smile fell a little, thinking about what he obviously saw as a pipe dream or an unreachable goal, unaware that Katy and Rose frequently travelled to such places with an actual alien with knowledge of the whole universe.
"Yeah, I'd give anything. I don't think it's ever going to happen." Adam stated, sadly. "At least not in our lifetimes."
Katy couldn't resist piping up.
"Oh, you never know." She hinted vaguely, earning a curious look from Adam and a warning look from Rose, which she ignored. "What about all those people who say they've been inside of spaceships and things and talked to aliens?" Adam made a skeptical face at the very idea.
"I think they're nutters." He said, as Rose's hopeful expression fell a little.
"Yeah, me too." Rose lied, a little disappointed that Adam had that opinion, especially because she and her sister were these so called 'nutters' that Adam had described.
"So, how'd you end up here?" Katy asked, brightly.
"Van Statten has agents all over the world looking for geniuses to recruit." Adam explained.
"So, you're a genius, then?" Katy stated, curiously.
"Sorry, but yeah." Adam shrugged, like it wasn't anything special. "I can't help it. I was born clever. When I was eight, I logged onto the US Defence System. Nearly caused World War Three." He laughed a little, causing both Katy and Rose to frown.
"What, and that's funny, is it?" Rose chided him, a little disapprovingly. Adam's laughter gradually faded when he noticed the girls weren't exactly laughing with him.
"Well, you should've been there just to see them running about. Fantastic!" Adam insisted, and both Katy and Rose couldn't help but grin, especially when Adam had used the Doctor's catchphrase.
"You sound just like the Doctor." Katy smiled warmly. Adam glanced curiously at them, an obvious question on the tip of his tongue that Katy knew was related to the Doctor.
"Are you and him…?" Adam asked Katy, whose eyes widened, and she blushed a little at the thought.
"No, we're just friends." Katy replied as Rose laughed at the very idea that she and the Doctor could be in a romantic relationship with each other. Although, to Katy it sounded slightly forced.
"I'm friends with the Doctor too." Rose reassures him, and Adam noticeably brightened, much to Katy's annoyance.
"Good." Adam said, with obvious relief in his voice. Rose raised an eyebrow at Adam's answer.
"Why is it good?" She questioned, and Katy just looked at her like she was an idiot. Adam shrugged, seemingly nonchalant.
"It just is."
"Uh-huh…" Katy didn't buy his answer for one second. Rose decided to change the subject to avoid anymore embarrassing questions, or sardonic comments from her sister. With one final glare, telling Katy to 'knock it off' and behave, Rose questioned Adam.
"So, wouldn't you rather be downstairs?" She asked, casually. "I mean, you've got these bits of metal and stuff, but Mister Van Statten's got a living creature down there."
"Yeah. Yeah, well, I did ask, but he keeps it to himself." Adam explains, looking a little put out. It was obvious that he was just as curious about what kind of alien lifeform Van Statten was keeping captive down in the Cage. "Although, if you're a genius, it doesn't take long to patch through on the comm. System." Adam hints, trying to sound helpful, and Rose beamed at the idea.
"Let's take a look, then." Rose suggests, and Adam instantly hops behind his computer and starts typing in some keys to patch into the comm. System. Katy and Rose come around and take a curious look at the monitor themselves.
"It doesn't do much, the alien." Adam admits. "It's weird. It's kind of useless. It's just like this great big pepper pot." He verbally describes the alien, and Katy freezes. Something about that description sounded disturbingly familiar to her. Suddenly, feelings of dread that had yet to go away since the moment the TARDIS had landed in this bizarre alien museum, reared its ugly head at full force.
Adam gets the right frequency, and instantly the three of them see the Dalek screaming as Simmons takes a big drill to its casing. Rose's eyes widen in horror, as does Katy's, except for a completely different reason.
"It's being tortured!" Rose exclaimed, aghast. "Where's the Doctor?"
"I don't know." Adam admitted, looking concerned with Rose's reaction to the torture session taking place.
However, Katy barely heard the conversation. For the very second her eyes locked onto the Dalek, everything started fading away as she stared blankly at the computer monitor. The only thing she could hear was her own thudding heart, as well as snippets of people yelling and screaming in her head. Then random flashback images of a place she had never seen before in her life, flash before her eyes like lightning bolts cracking across the sky and disappearing just as quickly. Images like the colours of burnt orange and blood red capped with pure snow white. A medieval-like city encased inside what looked like an enormous glass dome. Rubble, and destroyed ruins of once probably majestic buildings. Deadly blue and green laser beams scattering around like shrapnel fire in an active war zone—
"Katy?"
"Huh?" She is jolted back to reality to see Rose's slightly concerned face looking at her, and her hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her to grab her attention.
"Are you alright? You've gone pale, like you've seen a ghost." Rose questions her sister as Katy blinks in confusion.
"Oh yeah, I'm fine." Katy lied. "Are we going down to the Cage now?"
"Yeah…"
"Great! Let's go." Katy suggested, walking around the desk, and heading towards the door to Adam's workroom.
"Are you sure she's all right?" Katy hears Adam ask Rose, sounding doubtful.
"She can hear you; you know." Katy bites back in annoyance.
A Lift
Unaware of Katy's mysterious travel down a war-torn memory lane, the Doctor found himself being escorted by Van Statten and his thugs somewhere unknown inside a lift. He was still desperately trying to persuade the billionaire to destroy the Dalek, but all the man wanted to know was more information about the alien he was so curious about.
"The metal's just battle armour." The Doctor was explaining, anxiously. "The real Dalek creature's inside."
"What does it look like?" Van Statten asked, curiously.
"A nightmare. It's a mutation. The Dalek race was genetically engineered. Every single emotion was removed except for hate." The Doctor described the attributes of his most hated enemy with obvious loathing and reluctance.
"Genetically engineered. By whom?"
"By a genius, Van Statten." The Doctor spat with frustration. He wasn't getting anywhere fast with his explanation into why keeping a Dalek as a 'pet' was a batshit crazy, not to mention extremely dangerous idea. It was like talking to a brick wall. Or rather ramming his head straight into one. "By a man who was king of his own little world. You'd like him." He spat, icily.
Goddard looked at the Doctor skeptically.
"It's been on Earth for over fifty years. Sold at private auction, moving from one collection to another. Why would it be a threat now?" She questioned him.
"Because I'm here." The Doctor insisted. "How did it get to Earth? Does anyone know?" He demanded, urgently.
"The records say it came from the sky like a meteorite. It fell to the Earth on the Ascension Islands. Burnt in its crater for three days before anybody could get near it, and all that time it was screaming. It must have gone insane." She mused.
'It's already insane!' The Doctor thought bitterly. "It must have fallen through time. The only survivor." He realised, fretfully.
"You talked about a war?" Goddard questioned him.
"The Time War," the Doctor nodded. "The final battle between my people and the Dalek race." He confirmed.
"But you survived, too." Van Statten pointed out.
"Not by choice." The Doctor stated, not liking the grin that suddenly formed on Van Statten's face as the little cogs in his head started clicking away and immediately drawing a conclusion about the Doctor.
"This means that the Dalek isn't the only alien on Earth, Doctor, there's you. The only one of your kind in existence." Van Statten concluded, and the Doctor's face filled with dread. The lift arrived at its designated floor, and the Doctor is dragged from it towards an unoccupied cage.
The Doctor's Cage
The Doctor is stripped down to his waist and chained spread-eagled on an examination slap. He glares at Van Statten, who grins at him from where he was standing beside what looked like an X-Ray machine.
"Now, smile!" Van Statten chirps as a painful laser scan runs down the Doctor's body, causing him to yell out in pain. "Two hearts! Binary vascular system." Van Statten sounded positively gleeful at this discovery. "Oh, I am so going to patent this."
"So that's your secret?" The Doctor spat angrily. "You don't just collect this stuff, you scavenge it."
"This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries." Van Statten stated dismissively. "All it took was the right mind to use it properly. Oh, the advances I've made from alien junk. You have no idea, Doctor." The Doctor continued glaring at him, both in pain and also worrying about what was happening with Katy and Rose at this moment and hoped that they weren't in danger while he was stuck here being probed and examined.
Van Statten continued bragging.
"Broadband? Roswell. Just last year my scientists cultivated bacteria from the Russian crater, and do you know what we found?" He asked rhetorically. "The cure for the common cold. Kept it strictly within the laboratory of course. No need to get people excited. Why sell one cure when I can sell a thousand palliatives?"
"Do you know what a Dalek is, Van Statten?" The Doctor tried one more time to get through this man's obviously thick head. "A Dalek is honest. It does what it was born to do for the survival of its species. That creature in your dungeon is better than you." Van Statten's greedy smile drops, replaced by an ugly sneer.
"In that case, I will be true to myself and continue."
"Listen to me!" The Doctor snarls. "That thing downstairs is going to kill every last one of us!"
"Nothing can escape the Cage." Van Statten insists, dismissively. He blasts the Doctor again with the laser, and the Doctor flinches, using all his willpower not to scream out.
"But it's woken up. It knows I'm here. It's going to get out." The Doctor insists, desperately. "Van Statten, I swear, no one on this base is safe. No one on this planet!" But Van Statten is done talking, and merely runs the laser again, just to hear the Doctor scream.
Outside the Dalek's Cage
Adam, Rose and Katy approach the Dalek's Cage, and they are instantly stopped by the guard posted outside.
"Hold it right there." The guard orders, but Adam holds up his ID badge for the guard to see.
"Level three access." Adam informs, trying to sound important for Rose's benefit. "Special clearance from Mister Van Statten." The guard scans the ID briefly, before reluctantly allowing the three of them access inside the Cage.
Dalek Cage
Adam, Rose and Katy stepped past the threshold of the Cage. However, Katy decides not to get too close to the Dalek. The ominous feeling was practically stifling in this room, and she knew it had something to do with this seemingly harmless looking alien, who was chained up and now looking curiously at the three of them.
"Don't get too close." Adam warns Rose, as the door closes behind them. Rose cautiously approaches the Dalek.
"Hello. Are you in pain?" Rose greets the Dalek, calmly. "My name's Rose Tyler, and that's my sister Katy." She indicates to Katy who was eying the Dalek with mistrust. "I've got a friend, he can help. He's called the Doctor." The Dalek seemed to immediately focus upon Rose the very second she mentioned the Doctor, let alone the fact that she and her sister were friends with him. "What's your name?" Rose asked tentatively.
"Yes." The Dalek responded calmly, sounding almost weakened.
"What?" Rose frowned in confusion.
"I am in pain." The Dalek elaborated. "They torture me, but still they fear me. Do you fear me?" It asks Rose.
"No." Rose replies.
'Yes.' Katy silently replies to the Dalek's question, even though it wasn't directed at her. For some reason, something about this alien made her fear it … and that itself was what made it hard to feel any kind of sympathy or remorse for what was being done to it.
"I am dying." The Dalek tells Rose, whose eyes widened in alarm.
"No, we can help." Rose offers, indicating herself, Adam, and Katy.
"I welcome death," the Dalek said, sounding resigned to its own fate. "But I am glad that before I die I have met a human who was not afraid." It sounded grateful, and Rose's heart went out to the 'poor' creature.
"Isn't there anything I can do?" Rose asked, sounding helpless.
"My race is dead, and I shall die alone." The Dalek stated. Rose instinctively reaches out a hand to offer the Dalek some comfort, and places it on its head.
"Rose, no!" yells Adam, remembering a little too late that the Dalek reduced any person who touched it into ashes. But Rose's brief touch, which scalds her and causes Rose to pull her hand away quickly, leaves a golden handprint which quickly fades on the Dalek's metal casing. Almost instantly after Rose does this, the Dalek becomes more animated, and Katy's head begins to ache badly as more unwanted images come rushing back.
"GENETIC MATERIAL EXTRAPOLATED. INITIATE CELLULAR RECONSTRUCTION!" the Dalek shrieks, as Katy yells out in pain, nearly crumpling to her knees as a result.
"Make it stop! Please!" She begs, grabbing Rose's attention.
"Katy!? What's wrong?"
"I don't know, but my head really hurts!" Katy whimpers, as Rose tries to support her weight and hold her up. Rose, Adam and Katy react in horror when the Dalek manages to break its chains. The commotion in the Cage, summons Simmons, who looks horrified by what's happening.
"What the hell have you done?" He demands, going towards the Dalek, carrying his drill. The Dalek raises its sink plunger arm as Simmons approaches, causing Katy to cry out in horror.
"No, don't!" she warns Simmons, who merely sneers at both her and the Dalek.
"What are you going to do? Sucker me to death?" Simmons had no idea how right he really was. The plunger-like arm covers his nose and mouth and the Dalek creates a vacuum inside it, horrifying Katy, Rose and Adam, who had the misfortune of having to witness this gruesome death as they run to safety outside the Cage.
Outside the Cage
The three of them run over to the guard, and Rose immediately confronts him, looking desperate and guilty for being the cause of Simmon's death.
"It's killing him! Do something!" She urges frantically. The guard nods, and springs into action, getting straight on a microphone to alert the rest of the underground museum.
"Condition red! Condition red!"
The Doctor's Cage
The red alert was also heard inside the cage the Doctor was being held captive in. Everyone glances in the direction of the loudspeaker, nervously. Or in the Doctor's case, angrily.
"I repeat, this is not a drill!"
"Release me if you want to live." The Doctor suggests, icily. Van Statten nods and his thugs release the Doctor from the examination slab and throw the Doctor's T-shirt and black leather jacket back at him so he can get dressed.
Van Statten's Office
They all make their way quickly towards Van Statten's office, where a large wall TV was mounted opposite the billionaire's desk. Immediately, Van Statten gets behind his computer and pulls up the image of the Dalek's cage on the large TV screen.
"You've got to keep it in that cell!" the Doctor orders, and the image of Rose jerks in surprise when she hears the Doctor's voice, before looking directly at a security camera mounted on the wall and pointed directly at them. The Doctor's eyes narrow dangerously when he sees Katy being held up by her sister, and looking like she was in obvious pain.
"Doctor, it's all my fault." Rose explains, referring to the Dalek now terrorising everyone.
"What's wrong with Katy?" The Doctor demanded, immediately thinking the worst, especially when there was a Dalek involved. Rose shrugged helplessly, still struggling to hold Katy up. The girl may look slight, but she was a heavy deadweight.
"I don't know," Rose explained. "We were looking at the alien and she started screaming in pain when it started trying to escape. I don't know what to do." Rose sounded scared, and the Doctor swore underneath his breath, frustrated that he was unable to help at that moment.
"Don't worry, I'll get you out of there somehow." The Doctor promised.
"Doctor…" Katy's voice drew him back to the monitor and he looked at the very pale girl with concern. "I'm scared. It hurts…" She whimpered. The Doctor's hands clenched into fists.
"Just hang in there, Katy. You'll be alright, I promise." The Doctor attempted to reassure the frightened girl, clinging to her sister for support. The guard suddenly appears on screen to report in to Van Statten.
"I've sealed the compartment. It can't get out, that lock's got a billion combinations." He stated, confidently. But the Doctor shook his head, despairingly.
"A Dalek's a genius. It can calculate a thousand billion combinations in one second flat." He explains. The Cage Door suddenly starts to open, causing the guards outside the cage to open fire upon the Dalek, much to the ire of Van Statten who protests.
"Don't shoot it! I want it unharmed!"
"Rose, get yourself and Katy out of there!" the Doctor urges, just as the guard in charge turns towards one of the female guards standing nearby.
"DeMaggio, take the civilians and get them out alive. That is your job, you got that?" DeMaggio nods obediently.
"You three, with me." She begins ushering out Rose; supporting a very weakened Katy, and Adam, from the cage as fast as they could go. As it was escaping, the Dalek glides up to the wall monitor and smashes it, absorbing the electricity. Its battered armour, from when Simmons had been torturing it, starts to mend, turning from brown to golden. The lead guards sees this, pales drastically, and makes a decision.
"Abandoning the cage, sir." He reports into Van Statten, before he and his team finally leg it from the Cage.
Van Statten's Office
The Dalek's assimilation of the electricity to repair itself, is messing about the museum's power supply and Goddard turns to Van Statten to report in.
"We're losing power. It's draining the base." She tells him urgently, before her eyes widen in horror at what she sees next. "Oh, my God. It's draining entire power supplies for the whole of Utah."
"It's downloading." The Doctor corrects her.
"Downloading what?" Van Statten frowns at the Doctor with confusion, but Goddard answers the question for the Doctor almost immediately.
"Sir, the entire West Coast has gone down." Goddard pales, and looks at her boss for a solution, that the Doctor knew Van Statten wouldn't be able to provide. Only the Doctor could fix the situation.
"It's not just energy." The Doctor explains, grimly. "That Dalek just absorbed the entire internet. It knows everything."
Outside the Dalek Cage
The Dalek, now free from its confinement, glides out of the Cage. If it had a face visible, you'd be sure it would be smirking with triumph that it had managed to outwit some humans and tricked them into giving it the energy to break free from the chains restraining it and provide access to the internet.
"THE DALEKS SURVIVE IN ME!" It declares, before using its weapon on its surroundings, making any humans nearby to scatter for their lives.
Oh, vengeance would be its, and it would be sublime.
Van Statten's Office
A direct hit from the Dalek's weapon knocks out the cameras in the vault, much to the frustration of the Doctor who was desperate to know if Katy and Rose were alright and were as far away from the Dalek as possible.
"The cameras in the vault have gone down." Goddard confirms, as the lights and power in the room begin to flicker in and out, like they had been caught in the middle of an electrical storm and the lightning had taken a direct hit to the building.
"We've only got emergency power. It's eaten everything else." The Doctor states, urgently. "You've got to kill it now!" He begs frantically.
"All guards to converge in the Metaltron cage, immediately." Van Statten yells into a speaker on his desk.
Corridor
DeMaggio runs like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels, leading Adam and Rose; supporting Katy down the corridor as fast as they can run, for their lives. A whole platoon of guards come running at them, ready to help fend off the Dalek who was calmly gliding down the corridor after the three of them, knowing that they cannot escape.
"Civilians!" DeMaggio shouts at the incoming phalanx of guards. "Let them through!" Rose, Adam, Katy and DeMaggio run straight through the guards and continue running for their lives, not stopping to hear the leader shout his orders at his men.
"Cover the north wall. Red division, maintain suppressing fire along the perimeter." He turns his back to face his men, not paying attention to what was approaching behind him. "Blue division …. argh!"
The guard leader dies after being hit by the Dalek's weapon, turning black and white and exposing his skeleton, before crumpling into a lifeless heap on the concrete floor. The other guards open fire upon the Dalek, but it just absorbs the bullets. It kills another man. More guards come up from behind to replace the fallen, so the Dalek swivels its eyepiece around, then its middle section turns to open fire on them. Back and forward it alternates, killing each time.
Van Statten's Office
The Doctor, Van Statten and Goddard are watching all of this from the large TV screen mounted on the wall in Van Statten's office. With each kill the Dalek makes, Goddard becomes more and more terrified, and the Doctor's eyes get flintier, and flintier. He is nearly beside himself with worry and anger.
"Tell them to stop shooting at it." Van Statten shouts at Goddard, who looks at her employer incredulously.
"But it's killing them!" Goddard protests.
"They're dispensable." Van Statten states, dismissively. "That Dalek is unique. I don't want a scratch on its bodywork, do you hear me?" Goddard doesn't say anything, she is too busy focusing on the massacre unfolding on the screen in front of her. Something that Van Statten views as insubordination. "Do you hear me?" He barks at her rudely. The gunfire they were hearing finally stops, but only because there are no more 'targets' left to shoot down in cold blood. Goddard pulls up a schematic of the base.
"That's us, right below the surface." She points out to both Van Statten and the Doctor, who studies this with a stony expression on his face. "That's the cage, and that's the Dalek." Goddard points at a blinking red light that was representing the Dalek.
"This museum of yours. Have you got any alien weapons?" The Doctor questions with a low, very calm voice.
"Lots of them," Goddard confirms. "But the trouble is the Dalek's between us and them." She points out.
"We've got to keep that thing alive." Van Statten was adamant, and the Doctor just glared at him, questioning what his priorities were. "We could just seal the entire vault, trap it down there." He suggested, and the Doctor shook his head, instantly rejecting that idea completely.
"Leaving everyone trapped with it." He points out. "Katy and Rose are down there. I won't let that happen. Have you got that? It's got to go through this area." The Doctor spots one particular area on the schematic and singles it out. "What's that?"
"Weapons testing." Goddard replied helpfully.
"Give guns to the technicians, the lawyers, anyone. Everyone. Only then have you got a chance of killing it." The Doctor declares.
A/N: Thanks for reading. The next chapter will be out soon :) TTFN!