CHAPTER 7

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The settlers on Charon Acheron V were running out of time. The plague that was spreading across that world was sickening almost everyone. There were some that had developed a natural immunity to the sickness but trying to find a cure from their blood was going nowhere fast.

Nyssa kept trying to find one though. She had never been beaten by a disease before, and she wasn't going to be this time either. She had cured Lazar's disease back on Terminus and several other diseases once she left that world. If she could do that, then she could cure whatever horrible disease had taken root here as well.

This disease was very unique though because it didn't just kill the infected person it did something much, much worse. Once the infected person died or at least seemed to die, they came back to life and started killing others. They were virtually unstoppable because they seemingly felt no pain and nothing short of blowing them apart or destroying their brain seemed to stop them for good. In other words, they were the equivalent of zombies!

Nyssa had seen something like this before in a city called Stockbridge a long time ago during her travels with the Doctor. That disease had come down in the form of acid rain from the sky. Whoever the rain touched was quickly turned into a zombie. It had turned out that the disease had been caused by the Daleks.

It made Nyssa wonder if maybe they were behind this latest version of the disease as well. She certainly hoped not. She had enough problems just handling the zombies and trying to stop the spread of the infection without adding Daleks into the mix as well. She knew for sure that the disease didn't have anything to do with acid rain this time although she still didn't know where it had originated from. Maybe that meant that she could cross the Daleks off of her list of causes for the disease.

Nyssa was taken by complete surprise when a brunette woman suddenly appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of her makeshift hospital. The patients all stared at her in shock and worry.

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" Nyssa demanded from her.

"My name's Oswin. Oswin Oswald. I probably shouldn't stay here too long. I've got some very dangerous enemies on my trail, and you don't want them to follow me here believe me. They're make things even worse here," Oswin said.

"I wouldn't go anywhere if I were you. Not unless you want to possibly spread the zombie plague to other worlds or other times if what I suspect about how you got here is true," Nyssa said.

"Zombie plague?! No, I don't want to spread it anywhere else if I've gotten it. Now I wish Marissa was here. She could probably cure it. She cured the disease that made everyone on Earth into vampires after all," Oswin said.

"Marissa?" Nyssa asked her.

"She's a Time Lord and a good friend of mine. She's also a genetic expert. She could probably cure whatever you have here in the blink of an eye. I should have stayed with her. At least I wouldn't be in danger of becoming a zombie now. I had to leave to protect her though. I have some terrible enemies chasing me through time and space, and I'm trying to give them the slip. Maybe I have already. I hope so because they're the last thing that you need to come here and bother you with zombies running around," Oswin explained.

"I was right then. You're traveling through time and space and using Dalek technology to do it. The Daleks are the only ones that I know that can travel through time like you just did. It's an emergency temporal shift I believe they call it," Nyssa said.

"You're very good. I bet you have a first class mind. Yes, I borrowed this technology from the Daleks along with a lot of other things when I hacked into the Dalek net," Oswin said.

"You remind me of a friend of mine who was also a Time Lord. He borrowed his TARDIS as he put it," Nyssa said with a smile.

"You mean the Doctor? I know him too," Oswin said.

Nyssa then gave a thumbs up signal to the patients about Oswin to calm them down. They began to settle down and go back to worrying about the disease itself. That was cause enough to worry in itself. Nyssa didn't believe that this new woman was anything to worry them any further about. She seemed to be harmless.

"Does that mean I'm okay now?" Oswin asked with a chuckle.

"I think so yes. I'm not so sure about your enemies though. It's the Daleks, isn't it? They're the only things that I can think of that would possibly make this situation any worse than it already is," Nyssa said with a grave look on her face.

"Yes. I didn't want to identify them by name because you already have enough to worry about here. Maybe they won't find me. I've given them a merry little chase through many times and places so it could be that they may never find me. I certainly hope not. Can you imagine Dalek zombies?" Oswin said as she shivered.

"I don't believe that it would affect them anyway. It only seems to affect humans so far. It doesn't affect me because I'm from Traken. I'm the last of the Trakenites actually. That's why I continue to stay here. I can't get sick so maybe I can find a cure and save these people before it's too late. I don't want another planet to be wiped out if I can help it," Nyssa said.

"I'll stay too and help you. At least I will until I know one way or another whether I'm infected or not. I never thought that I'd wish I was a Dalek again," Oswin said.

"What?" Nyssa stared at her with her mouth open. Nyssa didn't shock easily, but Oswin's last statement was a doozy.

"It's a long story. The Daleks turned me into one of them, but they never took my mind away from me even though they tried their best to do so. I stayed human on the inside until my friend Rose changed me back into a human for real. It's a long story," Oswin said.

"I'd like to hear it sometime," Nyssa said with her face filled with curiosity.

"Maybe I'll tell it to you. I'll probably be stuck here for a while anyway," Oswin said with a sigh.

Nyssa took some blood from Oswin and promised to test it to see whether she had caught the virus or was one of the few people who had an immunity to it. Oswin hoped that she was immune and that she didn't turn out to be a carrier. She desperately wanted to keep moving and not lead the Daleks here.

The first few hours that Oswin was there, she encountered no problems. There weren't any new outbreaks of the virus, and it actually seemed to be dying off. She certainly hoped so. Maybe that meant that she could go soon.

She had to keep moving, or the Daleks would find her soon. She couldn't stop thinking about them. She was so afraid that they would find her and make her into a Dalek again. It was her worst fear. She more afraid of that than becoming a zombie!

Then everything fell apart as one of Nyssa's patients died, and then suddenly came back to life within moments. The man quickly began trying to rip apart the other patients around him.

"It just happened in the blink of an eye!" Oswin said in shock.

Then she quickly moved into action as she blasted the zombie with her gauntlets' stun settings. The zombie continued to move to her horror, and she knew that it would kill someone unless she acted soon. She increased the settings on her gauntlets higher and higher, but nothing affected the zombie at all. She finally had to use the maximum setting and disintegrated the man into atoms. She began to break down instantly as soon as he vanished.

"I didn't want to do that. I had no choice," Oswin said through tears.

"I know. I could see that you were trying not to. No one blames you. He would have killed us all," Nyssa said as she put a hand of comfort on Oswin's shoulder.

"That doesn't make me feel any better. There should have been another way," Oswin said.

"Maybe there will be. That's what I'm trying to do here. Find another way," Nyssa said.

"I'll help you all that I can. I don't know much about medicine or genetics, but I do have all of the Daleks' knowledge of it. I downloaded all of their knowledge as a matter of fact, and I have a copy of it with me in this handy little device. It's all yours if you have anything that can read it," Oswin said as she handed her a Dalek version of an infostamp.

I believe that I do, yes. Thank you so much! This will help me to find a cure that much quicker," Nyssa said with a huge grin on her face.

Through a powerful set of binoculars, an angry pair of eyes observed this new development with rising outrage and fury in them.

"I had you leak the information that Oswin was behind an attempted Dalek insurrection to Davros to hide my own infiltration of his ranks as her work and in order to get rid of her as a threat to my master's future rule. Yet here she is, alive and well, and still thwarting my plans. Her knowledge from the Dalek net will surely aide the Doctor's little pet in coming up with a cure. This cannot be, my dear. My plague is meant to sweep the galaxy and cause untold chaos. This is to be its testing ground. So far it has resisted all attempts at a cure. I believe that it will wipe all life on this planet out in less than a week without any outside interference. I will not let that little pest interfere with my plans. She must die. You must get rid of her once and for all!" the Shadow ordered his unwitting servant who was standing beside him in a trance-like state.

"Yes, I will crush her as you command," said a female voice.

"She will never be able to stand against you, my dear. You can crush Daleks into pulp even in this condition," the Shadow said with pure joy in his voice.

"It will be as you command. I will exterminate her!" the woman said.

"Nothing and no one must stand in the way of my master's return or his spread of universal chaos throughout time and space," the Shadow said with a horrible laugh that made even his mentally enslaved servant shiver at the sound.

Everything in her was screaming against his orders, but there was nothing that she could do. He had complete and total control of her. She didn't want to hurt Oswin. She hoped that Oswin would run and not try to stay and fight. If she didn't, then she knew that Oswin would surely die.

Next: Oswin must fight for her life against the Shadow's mysterious servant while Nyssa struggles to come up with a cure for the zombie plague before all life on the planet is wiped out.