Unnerved, Paul followed the Dalek to the phone in Cassius's office, understandably Cassius was careful about leaving anything out for someone to see, everything in his office locked up tightly, and thanking the Dalek was one of the most unusual things Paul ever did.
It felt foreign coming out of his own lips thanking it and not in a sarcastic or aggressive tone he usually has when encountering Daleks.
Watching it silently depart, Paul exhaled sharply before dialing the number to the TARDIS.
Raising the receiver to his ear, Paul heard the call going through, but before he was going to speak into the receiver, it he noticed there's hidden cameras everywhere in Cassius's office.
Paranoid, indeed!
Unable to speak freely, Paul turned to his greatest weapon, his mind, as he reached out to the TARDIS while "talking" to the committee.
While giving the impression he's talking to the committee, Paul expressed to the TARDIS, "It's a madhouse here! Subservient Daleks? If my grandfather was here…"
The sight of the Daleks unflinchingly serving Cassius without a shred of desire to kill is so foreign to Paul, he wasn't sure if he was dreaming, or he finally snapped!
He wasn't even sure how to proceed with this adventure, much less know where to start, and during his inner-monologue, he's describing everything he experienced outwardly over the phone as ecstatically one can while being in an office filled with cameras.
Hard not to make it obvious he's acutely aware about the cameras, but Paul forced himself to look preoccupied on the phone as he covertly spoke with the TARDIS.
It wasn't happy with the revelation either, but it insisted that Paul stop Cassius any means necessary.
Easier said than done!
The process of how he's turning Daleks into subservient mindless beings involved something out of a serial killer's handbook.
Whoever he spoke with has been intimately aware of the inner workings of the Daleks enough to know how to force open the chassis without triggering the hidden bomb, stun the squirming creature within, and by using a well-placed temperature-adjusted laser no wider than a 2B pencil, drill a hole into the creature's head.
The timing was peculiar but exact, no room for error, but if done right, there's enough brain damage that the creature becomes a moldable servant with no memories of their inception or their cause.
Those Daleks mindlessly shuffling around won't ever know Paul's the Doctor even if he did a song and a dance in front of them, that he's their nemesis since their inception because the brain damage was that precise and extreme.
Maddening to think Cassius thought it was a brilliant idea compared to just destroying them outright, instead he's turning them into slaves.
While it's ironic, Paul didn't think this absolved Cassius of any sort of guilt.
Worse, the TARDIS believed that Cassius had some invasive thoughts about using his technique elsewhere, and it won't just be Cybermen on the receiving end.
Daleks weren't the only things that this universe had been having troubles with, that Cassius might think this would pivot him into untold riches.
The worse yet to come, as the TARDIS fears.
"The o' Ludovico," Paul summed what the technique would further devolve into once the bloods in the water.
Anyone with an inclination will dress it however they wanted for their own benefit and Paul didn't need to think too hard to know what they'd use it for.
Hence.
"Stop him," the TARDIS insisted.
Easier said than done!
"I don't suppose you have any idea where I should start?" Paul inquired where he ought to begin.
He heard the nondescript voice in his mind, "The committee doesn't know."
Despite Cassius's lofty goals, he had a roadblock that won't abide by his radical technique.
The committee.
While it has its own issues with corruption, bribery, the usual sort, there were still things they won't touch, even under extreme duress by the Daleks.
This was one of them.
And Cassius knows it.
In his alcohol-addled mind, he probably thought using Daleks would sway the committee into approving his technique, since Daleks were a constant threat and the committee had been looking at ways trying to stem the incursions for years.
Even if Cassius tried throwing that in their faces, the committee knows the ramifications of approving the technique would bring, and reject it on grounds of ethics.
Once they find out what Cassius had been doing in his lab, what he had been doing to the Daleks, they won't want anything to do with him, but Cassius wasn't going to let them stop him from achieving his goals.
Neither the TARDIS or Paul wants to know how Cassius planned on doing just that, but Paul had to find a way to stop Cassius from causing a ripple effect.
First it was Daleks because they were a threat and countless lives were lost to them that militaries needed mindless drones to pick up the slack caused by the fatalities, prevent more of their soldiers being killed.
Then it was Cybermen, because they became a threat after the Daleks were finally beaten back enough that it roused their curiosity, and the argument that they were more advanced than the Daleks.
It'll keep going until this world will be at a constant state of fear of the next potential threat and their overuse of Cassius's technique.
By that point, no one would be safe, they'll be back where they were when the Daleks were on everyone's lips.
"Doctor… there's more Daleks… they're screaming," the TARDIS warns Paul that Cassius kept more Daleks hidden elsewhere, some which he hadn't gotten the chance of performing his technique on, and they know what's coming to them.
There are others that he performed the technique but was botched in some fashion, that death was mercy for them, if they even knew what mercy is, and the TARDIS growing mortified as it listened to the screaming Daleks.
Screaming Daleks.
"They want to die, Doctor," the TARDIS grimly tells him.
TO BE CONTINUED… "Silence of the Daleks"
