"So, Doctor," Anna asked conversationally, "where are we going exactly?"
They had been walking for some time, almost exclusively at the bottom of canyons which the melting snow had turned into small creeks. This meant that the small group had been often walking in a red coloured mud. Anna's and Kristoff's boots had turned red, and Elsa's elegant heels were lost in a mass of squishing mud that rose halfway to her calves. Anna winced at the sight of her sister's beautiful green dress, which had now turned red from halfway down. The upside was that Elsa seemed to have taken this in good spirits, and had even joked on how she was lucky her dress had not melted under the heat, although Anna knew that her sister could still sometimes resort to concealing her feelings out of habit, and be very good at it.
Even though Elsa's magically woven dress had withstood the heat, their strenuous hike had disarrayed it enough that Elsa needed to keep wearing Anna's cape draped around her. Which was another problem, since it was warm even at the bottom of the canyons, and their march had not improved the matters. Even without her cape, Anna was sweating in her warm clothes, and Elsa, draped into the thick cape, was definitely glowing more than usual. Kristoff, who had been dressed for Arendelle summer, was the least incommoded, but even he had removed his vest and rolled up his sleeves. Only the Doctor did not seem bothered in the slightest by the conditions, although he had removed his waistcoat.
The grey-haired man had been particularly untalkative, addressing the group only to shush them when one of them would talk too loudly or let out a louder grunt while crossing an obstacle. He walked cautiously at the front, sometimes signalling them to stop while looking at something they could not see or waving his sonic screwdriver before resuming walking. On one occasion, after he had hastily directed them under a rocky overhang, Anna had thought she had seen something that was definitely not a bird flying above the canyon. Then Kristoff had remarked after a while that they seemed to be walking through the most tortuous canyons, and that they could well have been going in circles since the beginning. At this point Anna had decided to directly ask the Doctor, since loudly whispering about it had failed to elicit an answer apart from a shush.
"You know where we are going, Freckles," the Doctor said severely. "Toward one of the most dangerous places I know. A Dalek base of operations."
"Because, er, we seemed to have been going a bit in circles…"
"Yes, I heard Reindeer Man. Maybe he would prefer that we take the most direct route on open ground, so that the Daleks could see us coming from miles away?"
"So you know where they are?"
"Yes," the Doctor said curtly. "If I read these instruments right."
"Which instruments?"
"Those we found hidden in the Ice Warrior base, remember? They were only a relay, but I had the time to get a good bearing on where the main node must be, before you went to tap the Dalek on the shoulder to wake it up."
"I didn't tap it on the shoulder! And it didn't have shoulders anyway… So, we will arrive there eventually?"
"Are you that eager to reach this Dalek base?" the Doctor said.
"Well, it's a bit hot here, and we've been walking for some time."
"I hadn't noticed. You are not afraid of the Daleks?" he asked curiously.
"Well, yes, a little…"
"Good."
"But I'm with Elsa and Kristoff. They are the two people I love the most… it's too bad Olaf could not come. Whatever happens, we will do it together. And you're there too. You are always talking as if you do not like anyone, but in the end you help everyone. We'll get out of this just fine, I'm sure of it!"
"Don't put too much trust in me," the Doctor said between his teeth.
"Doctor, there is one thing I didn't quite understand…"
"Only one?"
"What is that thing with the Ice Warriors who helped the Daleks… What exactly are they?"
"Victims of the Daleks. Turned into a body obeying them."
"But… how does that work? Did the Daleks bribe them? Or did they cast a curse on them?"
"These Ice Warriors probably stumbled onto their little hiding place during a patrol and got caught by surprise since they did not disable the sensors like I did. Or they encountered a Dalek outside and the heat had made them too slow to react in time. They were captured or killed, then processed, and most of them were then sent back to the Ice Warriors. The perfect spies."
"Wait, did you just say that the Daleks killed them and sent them back as spies…. That's not possible, right? The dead can't do that! Or maybe the Ice Warriors don't die like us?"
"The Ice Warriors die just like you, Freckles. You saw them doing it when the Dalek attacked them in the base. But the Daleks can make them fight after they die."
"But… that's awful! How can they do that?"
"They're Daleks. I told you, Freckles. They hate everything that is not a Dalek. It's their reason for living. They are ready to…"
"No, I meant… how can you make a dead person fight?" Anna interrupted. "Do they… ugh! This is black magic!"
"More like black science, but I guess that's the same from your point of view." The Doctor sighed. "The Daleks have very advanced technology. They can... reprogram a body. Rewrite its components, so that it becomes part Dalek. Once they're done, there is a small Dalek-like creature inside the body, manoeuvring it like a puppet."
"Wait, what?"
"The eyestalk in the forehead was the puppeteer's. The Daleks use them as servants, and sometimes even to increase their numbers. It's not their favourite way, of course, since the creatures made that way are not pure Daleks, but they will resort to it if they are desperate enough or want to be sneaky."
"But that's… that's… that's… it's… I mean, I've never… it's horrible, it's awful, it's disgusting, it's… I mean… it's… I think I'm going to be sick…"
"That's Daleks for you," the Doctor said, not unkindly. "Please try to be silent if you're sick. We should be close to the Daleks base now, whatever it is, and it will be guarded."
"But who can get ideas like this?" Anna almost wailed. "Controlling dead people like puppets…"
"Oh, they can do it to live people too," the Doctor said, with some kind of sad glee.
"What, they turn them into puppets too?"
"Or robomen. Or pig hybrids. It depends on what kind of technology they have at their disposal, and what they need them to do. I guess these Daleks are using a variation of the old conversion nanogenes, since they work just as well for live people. They start by rewriting the personality and memories of the victim so that they behave like a Dalek. The physical transformation comes later. It is mostly needed for the dead, anyway, since a living being can begin acting right away once their conditioning is complete without needing the puppeteer."
"They… they change their memories?" Anna said, shivering despite the heat.
"They can even program them to think like Daleks. This will condemn them to a life of self loathing, since they will know they are not really Daleks."
"Why?" Anna asked weakly.
"Daleks hate what is not a Dalek. These servants of theirs are no exception. The Daleks are probably quite satisfied at the idea that these creatures are hating themselves."
Anna paused and steadied herself against the canyon wall. The Doctor unexpectedly stopped and looked at her.
"I told you they were more evil than anything you had encountered."
"Yes," Anna said in a small voice.
They were joined by Elsa who embraced her sister in a hug.
"That's what we are going up against," the Doctor went on. "It's too late to come back to the Ice Warrior base, but if you want to hide somewhere until this is over…"
"No, I'll come," Anna said, slowly breaking her sister's embrace but keeping hold of her hand. "These Daleks… they must be stopped. Er… did anyone ask them why they are so, so, so… mean?"
"They were created that way."
"But… who would want to create people like this?"
"Someone who thought this was the ultimate life form."
"Are you OK, Anna?" Elsa asked. "You are shaking."
"And you've gone very pale," Kristoff said.
"Did you hear what the Doctor was saying? About the Daleks and what they do to the… what they do?"
"I heard some of it," Elsa said quietly.
"Not sure I got everything, sorry. But whatever it is, I'm sure it's awful," Kristoff said faithfully.
Anna kept Elsa's hand in hers some time after they resumed walking, and they separated only when they encountered a narrow passage that allowed one person to go through at a time. Once they passed it, Anna found herself walking alongside Kristoff and began to explain to him what the Doctor had told her, while Elsa drifted near the Doctor. The ground was less muddy and walking was becoming easier for her, although she had by now sworn to herself that she would be wearing something closer to trousers than a dress the next time she would embark on something looking like an adventure.
"Uh, Doctor?" she ventured after a while.
"Hush, Platinum, we are really close now. Freckles and Reindeer Man are already making enough noise talking as it is."
"I… just wanted to know something."
"I don't know when or if your powers are coming back. And the Daleks are really dangerous."
"It is not about that. Er… you said the Daleks are actually alive? There really is a, a living creature inside the metal shell?"
"Yes. It looks a bit like a one-eyed octopus."
"So I really… killed… one of them?"
"What? Oh, yes, definitely. I have not yet seen the Daleks being able to come back from being turned into icicles."
"So I… I really killed something living... with my powers."
"Yes. Do you want a medal for that?"
"Doctor, you don't understand! I've never killed anyone with my powers! I have never wanted to hurt anyone!" Elsa said, trying to keep her voice low, as much for stealth as for avoiding being heard by her sister. "When I thought Anna was dead because of me… it was so horrible I didn't want to go on…"
"Your sister is alive now probably because you managed to kill that Dalek. I know you would have liked to find another way, and so do I, but…"
"But Doctor, that's… that's what frightens me the most," Elsa cut. She glanced at Anna and Kristoff who were a few paces behind and still engrossed in their discussion, before resuming in an even lower tone. "I think that… if I had to do this again… and if I could… if I had to kill a Dalek to protect Anna… I would not hesitate to do it."
"Well, you're protective of your sister. That's not the worst human trait. Nothing to be frightened about."
"But, Doctor, I'm ready to kill, and, if I still had my powers, I'd be ready to use them again for that! That's not me! What if this was the other me, from the other past, who is… becoming me again? The one who wanted to hurt Anna?"
"Let me get this straight. You think that because you feel ready to kill a Dalek to protect your sister you are turning into a version of you that wanted to hurt her?"
"Well… it does sound stupid when you put it like that, but… I never wanted to harm anyone in my life. Ever since I've been able to control my powers I've never used them to attack! I have used them a few times to protect Anna and me, but only to disable a threat, not hurt it! And I do not have any memory when I tried to hurt anyone with them, apart from that other me in the castle. And now I… I think I would be ready to kill a Dalek again if I still could." Elsa lowered her head and finished her sentence in a whisper. "I think I would still want to kill one even if Anna was not in danger."
"You had never met the Daleks before."
The sad tone in the Doctor's voice surprised Elsa.
"What do you mean?" she said, trying to look at his face. "Did you… did the Daleks… did they do something to you?"
The Time Lord busily inspected his sonic screwdriver for a moment before answering.
"I already told you, Platinum, the Daleks are the most evil creatures in the universe. They have destroyed countless worlds, broken billions of lives. They have betrayed, enslaved, slaughtered. But the worst they do is turning people into fighters. Ordinary, decent, normal people, who want to protect their home-world or their loved ones, will take arms and become soldiers because of the threat of the Daleks."
They walked in silence for a moment, the Doctor stopping more and more often and using his sonic screwdriver. Elsa could not hear Anna and Kristoff talking behind them and wondered if they were listening to the conversation.
"Doctor?" she asked eventually. "You said that you had been fighting the Daleks a lot…"
"I think we are almost on top of them now," the Doctor said. "We should soon find an entrance, or a guard, or both. I would prefer an entrance."
"Strange," Kristoff said as they crept even more cautiously at the bottom of the canyon.
"What is it?" Anna said.
"Well… for a second I thought I felt some kind of tremor through the ground. Like some distant avalanche."
"It must be the snow melting with that heat."
"Maybe… but it didn't really feel like that…"
They found their path suddenly blocked after a bend in the canyon. The walls seemed to have completely crumbled, filling it with rubble.
"Funny," Kristoff said. "These rocks look very different from the rest. As if they had… melted."
"You're right, Reindeer Man," the Doctor said, examining the rubble. "These rocks have been subjected to intense heat before being broken in pieces."
"Could they have been heated by the big volcano we saw when we arrived?" Kristoff asked.
"Olympus Mons has been extinct for millions of years. This looks more recent… what do you think you are doing, Freckles?"
Anna, who had begun cautiously scaling the rubble, stumbled and slid back to the bottom of the canyon.
"I was going up. Isn't that where we are going anyway? Or do you want to go back?"
"Just be more cautious. For all we know, we may be at the door of a Dalek base."
They began ascending the rubble, Kristoff and Anna helping Elsa, while the Doctor climbed with an agility unexpected in someone looking as old as him. They regrouped behind a large rock at the top of the rubble, where Anna took the opportunity to look behind them. She was unable to recognise any landmarks from her previous hike with the Doctor, and the fact that she had no idea of the path they had taken to come here did not help. The rocks signalling the position of the Ice Warrior base were nowhere to be seen. The only fixture she could recognise was the looming shape of the gigantic volcano in the distance, but its size made it useless as a landmark. Anna was used to seeing mountains around her, and Kristoff had been teaching her how to use the peaks to get her bearings, but there was little point in using a mountain that took half of the horizon wherever you were.
"Be careful," the Doctor said. "The Dalek base is probably right behind this rock. I'm taking one quick look. Stay put until I tell you to go."
He briefly popped his head above the rock, crouched back down, then rose up again.
"Doctor!" Anna hissed. "You said you would take only one look."
She stood up before Kristoff or Elsa could restrain her and glanced behind the rock, discovering a large hill and a total absence of Daleks or anything else apart from rocks and melted snow.
"Is that the Dalek base?" she asked the Doctor, who was looking at the hill and its surroundings, frowning. "It looks like a, a hill."
"Yes, it does, does it?" the Doctor said, slowly raising his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the innocuous mound. "By the way, Freckles, didn't I tell you to stay behind this rock until I said you could come out?"
"Yes, but you also said you would take only one quick look," Anna said. She rested her elbows on the rock. "Are the Daleks hidden under this hill?"
"Yes and no," the Doctor said. "There's a perception filter at work here, coupled with a holographic field. Clever."
"A… what? There's no field here, only a hill..."
"Think of it as a disguise, only for a whole landscape. The Dalek base is hidden below. Let's try this," the Doctor said, grabbing a rock and briefly waving his sonic wand over it. "Get ready to hide."
He threw the rock toward the hill. It flew in an extended arc that would have been impossibly long on Earth, and hit the slope. The air shimmered for a second, like a mirage in hot weather. For a second, Anna thought she saw a large metal construction standing half buried in the middle of a vast crater, then the air shimmered again and the hill was back there, its red flanks undisturbed. The Doctor quickly crouched back behind the rock, pulling her down.
"What was that, Doctor?" she asked. "I thought I saw… some kind of building there… Is that the Dalek base?"
"In fact, what you have seen is a small part of a Dalek saucer," the Doctor said with a sort of grim satisfaction. "It's a flying ship," he added quickly before Anna could speak, "not something you put under a cup. Well, I suppose you could also put a cup on top of it if you really wanted, but that's not what they are using it for. I don't think the Daleks use cups anyway. You'd have to bring your own."
"A flying ship?" Elsa asked, while Anna wondered if Daleks could drink, and if a cup of warm chocolate could improve their mood. "You mean, like the flying carriage Hamraak used?"
"Yes, but a much larger one, that also allows to move in space, across star systems. That one seems to have crashed here, which explains a lot."
"Oh? What does that explain?" Anna asked.
"These Daleks are marooned here. I guess this crash happened a long time ago, and they needed that time to burrow their way out. Hence the broken rocks that looked as if they had melted before," he said with a nod toward the pile of rubble they were standing on. "A crashing Dalek saucer must have generated enough heat to melt the rock and partly sink into it. It is likely a lot of them were destroyed in the crash. That's why they were being so uncharacteristically sneaky."
"And that's a good thing or a bad thing?"
"With Daleks, most things are bad. Right. Let's go in!"
"Wait, what? How are we going to do that?"
"By jumping. The ground is probably guarded, but if we land on top of the saucer we should be able to enter through one of the hatches."
"We'll jump all the way to this hill? Well, er, saucer-ship?"
"I think we can reach it, thanks to this lower gravity you had so much fun with. Are you ready for it?"
"Yes, I think I can try," Anna said, assessing the distance. "Elsa? Will it be OK for you?"
"I… think so," Elsa said, looking dubiously at the hill.
"I'll help you!" Anna said readily. "Kristoff, this should pose no problem to you, right?"
"Sure. But what are we going to do there, exactly? If these Daleks are as dangerous as you say, jumping on their house may not be the best thing to do."
"Well, we can't really know what the Daleks are planning if we stay outside, right? And we can't stop them either. If you have a better idea, Reindeer Man, I'm all ears."
"You really hate the Daleks, don't you, Doctor?" Anna said softly, while Kristoff shrugged. "Your voice is different when you talk about them. It's harsher than when you say some bad things to us, and you are not even saying bad things."
They took a running start. The Doctor jumped first, flailing wildly as he crossed the space to the hill. Anna grasped Elsa's hand and did not let it go as they jumped toward the red mound. She heard Kristoff's grunt of effort behind them as they were in the air. The sisters' fall toward the hill took an impossibly long time. As they were midway through it Anna saw the Doctor reach the hill, which flickered once again out of existence, revealing the strange metal thing planted inside its crater. Then the hill reappeared without any trace of the Doctor on it. A couple of seconds later she and Elsa were descending on the hill after their 60 feet long jump. The hill disappeared just as their feet were about to make contact with it, only to be replaced by smooth metal which came up quickly toward them.
Anna landed first and did her best to soften the landing of her sister. But she lost her footing on the smooth metal and they both began to slide downwards following the curve of the saucer-ship. Then Anna felt a hand closing on her arm and looked up into the Doctor's smirk.
"Don't go falling down, Freckles. I've seen some guards below, you would land right next to them."
"Thanks, Doctor," Anna said, as Kristoff landed a couple of yards from them and managed to steady himself by grabbing a seam in the metal surface. "Are you OK, Elsa?"
"Yes, thanks, Anna. I'm… not as good as you at jumping."
"When we're back in Arendelle, we're going to train together," Anna said in a half-joking tone. "You never know when you may need to jump. Or run. Or swim. Or climb. Or..."
"Yes, you're right. I won't be able to freeze my way around any more," Elsa said. Anna bit her lip.
"Anyway, we're not wearing the right clothes for this," Anna went on as cheerfully as she could manage. "We should have gone back to change in Madam TARDIS's wardrobe. Will she be all right, Doctor, by the way? With all these Daleks around…"
"Don't worry, the old girl is sturdier than she looks," the Doctor said, cautiously moving on the smooth surface. "And these Daleks are not at the top of their strength. I don't think they can do anything serious if they find her, apart from stopping us from going inside, which will become a problem later on, but we have other problems to deal with first."
They followed him. Anna was beginning to get a better view of what they were standing on. It looked like a small part of a gigantic metal wheel that became thicker in the middle, with most of it buried in the ground, and they were standing on its rim. As they walked, Anna noted that the wheel was blackened or caved in places.
"Doctor?" she asked. "Why don't we see this thing looking like a hill any more?"
"Because we are standing under the holographic field now."
"I think I get it," Elsa said. "It's like being behind a tapestry that hides a wall. You can see the wall, but not what is on the tapestry."
"Oh, I see," Anna said. "Er… but shouldn't we be able to see the back of the tapestry?"
"Here," the Doctor said, waving his sonic screwdriver. A trap opened slowly in the metal, revealing a circular hole behind it. "Be careful," he added, climbing down the hole. "The artificial gravity may still be on."
Anna glanced through the opening. It was dark, with some lights in the distance. She saw the Doctor clinging to one of the walls, and noticed a hand hold near him. With a smile to Elsa, she crouched and jumped in, aiming for the hand hold.
There was a very uncomfortable second where Anna felt as if she was falling in a circle, like on a swing, before slamming on the wall. Then she realised, with some dizziness, that she was actually lying on the floor, and the Doctor had not been clinging to a wall, but crouching on it.
"I told you the artificial gravity would still be on," he said, getting up.
Anna looked along the new floor at the hole she had jumped from and saw the faces of Elsa and Kristoff around the opening, apparently standing on the outer wall.
"What is an artificial gravity?" she said, slowly getting up while expecting at any moment to fall back.
"Think of it as a personalised down. The saucer is stuck into the ground sideways, but when we are inside it the down is where it would be if it was not. Do you understand?"
"No, but it's fun. Elsa, Kristoff, you can come, but be careful, the, uh, the wall becomes the floor when you are inside. The, uh, down changes to become a sideways."
Elsa lowered herself cautiously into the hole and slid a couple of feet on the floor as if something was pulling her before stopping. Anna helped her sister up while Kristoff tried to descend cautiously, lost his grip, and found himself sitting on the floor with a confused expression.
"Oh, so that's what you meant when you said the wall became the floor," he said vaguely.
"It's amazing," Elsa began. "The gravity direction has changed…"
Anna did a little jump in place, but failed to rise as high as she had done since they had arrived on Mars.
"And I don't jump as high as before," she noted. "Is it because the down has changed direction?"
"Yes. The gravity is closer to the one on Earth. Now listen to me," the Doctor said in a low voice. "We are inside the Daleks' ship. There will be some Daleks there, and probably some of their… puppets. We need to be silent. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Doctor," Anna said obediently.
"OK," Kristoff said, getting up, "but I can't guarantee I won't yell if the down keeps changing direction."
"It should not, unless someone switches the gravity off."
"Could we do that to annoy the Daleks?" Anna asked. "We would find something to grab on before, of course."
"Interesting idea, but they can fly, so it would annoy us more than them. I'd guess the only reason they went to the pain of keeping the artificial gravity switched on is that they brought some of their puppets here to help, and they can't fly."
They set off walking through the strange place, the Doctor leading the way, his sonic screwdriver giving just enough light for them to see where they were going.
Anna looked around her as they walked. Everything around them, walls, floors and ceilings, seemed to be made of a smooth metal. Here and there the walls were adorned with strange decorations, most of them broken, a few of them still shining with a strange internal light. There was no sound apart from their footsteps.
"What are those, Doctor?" she asked as the grey-haired man stopped to wave his sonic screwdriver at one of the decorations, which looked like a mirror adorned with various shapes sculpted into the metal. "Are they…"
"They're not decorations, Freckles," the Doctor said as if he was reading her mind. "The Daleks don't have a concept of art, unless it involves hatred and killing. These are just control panels, but they are all dead."
"And a control panel is…?"
"The system through which they control their ship. You have seen similar ones at the Ice Warrior base. These are the Dalek version."
As they moved deeper into the strange ship, Anna began to realise how huge it was. Unless the Daleks had also ships that were larger on the inside, it seemed that the part they had seen under the disguise of a hill was only a small fraction of it, and that most of the ship was still buried underground. She could only guess at the full size of the thing.
There were signs of destruction everywhere – smashed walls, collapsed ceilings, scorched floors. They followed the Doctor down a ramp that descended further into the ship and, Anna realised, toward distant lights she could see being reflected on the metal walls. She stopped as she heard her sister gasp. She turned to Elsa, and followed her gaze to a heap of debris. It took her a couple of seconds to identify a specific object under the debris, a task not made easy in the green glow of the sonic screwdriver.
"Doctor!" she hissed as loudly as she dared. "There is a Dalek over there."
"Ah, you finally noticed them," the Doctor said without stopping. "Don't worry, they have been crushed in the crash. You should see more of them if you pay attention."
He was right. As they kept moving, Anna glimpsed more and more Daleks around them, all motionless. Some were lying on the ground, others were still standing up with their sticks pointed downwards, others were split open, with some long dried-off liquid oozing near the opening, which made Anna glad she could not see clearly in the gloom.
"This was probably a battleship," the Doctor commented as he led the way through corridors and ramps. "It remained mostly intact after the crash, but the Daleks inside were not so lucky. Only a few must have survived."
"That's sad for them, but it means there will be less Daleks around, right?" Anna said, looking quickly behind her at the last disabled Dalek they had passed. In the low light, the moving shadows played strange tricks on the eye.
"One Dalek around is dangerous enough, Freckles. And some of those around us will probably be able to reactivate given enough time."
"Wait, what? They… they are not dead?"
"Most of them are," the Doctor said in a tone that was not reassuring enough in Anna's tastes. "And this crash occurred some time ago, so those that were able to restore by themselves should already have done so. But there may be a couple of late risers."
Anna found her sister's hand, and clasped it tightly. She looked around them, finding the moving shadows much more ominous than before.
"What are you going to do, Doctor?" Elsa asked.
"Find out what their plan is, and stop it," the Doctor said matter-of-factly.
"How will you do it?" Anna said.
"Not a clue. It will depend on what their plan is. I'll probably have to improvise. I'm good at improvising."
As they went deeper, Anna became aware of a distant, rhythmic sound, and it took her a few seconds to realise when she had last heard it.
"Doctor!" she hissed. "What is that noise? I heard it when we met the Dalek the first time in the Ice Warrior base…"
"We are not very far from the Daleks now. If they see us, run and try to hide. They are not very good at peripheral vision. And don't try to attack them!"
"I don't want to attack them! Well, I do want to stop them, but… I don't think I could do them a lot of harm if I punched them, right?"
"No, you wouldn't. On the other hand, they could kill you as soon as they looked at you."
"But, what if we can't hide in their ship? They should know it well, it's their ship!"
"You'd be surprised what I managed to do on some of their ships. But if you can't shake them off you can try to go back to the hatch through which we entered. It should be easier for you to hide outside if they decide to follow you. Now, be silent!"
They resumed their walk, although this time the Doctor was definitely advancing more slowly and cautiously. The Daleks seemed not to like doors, their ship being mainly a succession of vast spaces connected by large, circular corridors. This made progress easier, but now Anna had begun wondering where it would be possible to find a good hiding place in such large, empty spaces. Hiding behind the shell of one of the dead Daleks did not seem very enticing if they could come back to life suddenly, and not all the various debris scattered here and there were large enough to offer a good cover. The fact that the lighting was becoming better did not help. Anna could not see any light fixture, but there was some strange glow emitted from the walls that had made the small light of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver useless. She wondered how this light could be turned off to help them hide, then wondered if the Daleks could see in the dark. She knew wolves could hunt at night, and these Daleks seemed far more dangerous than wolves.
The Doctor signalled them to stop when the corridor where they had been walking ended into a large room. Anna realised as she came closer to the edge that they were not on the floor's level. Their corridor ended in the middle of the wall of the semi-circular room, and she could not even see the floor from where she was. There were other circular openings all over the walls of the room.
The Doctor crouched near the edge and cautiously poked his head to look down. Anna joined him, ignoring a whispered warning from her sister, and tried to get a look at the room floor as stealthily as he did. She managed to suppress a gasp when she finally got a view of the scene below.
There was a small group of Ice Warriors on the floor of the room. They were standing motionless, like guards at attention. Anna thought she could see a stick with a bulbous ending, similar to the one that was on top of the Daleks, emerging from their forehead through their helmets. As she watched, she saw two more Ice Warriors walk stiffly from another opening at floor level and take their place in the ranks.
Anna drew her head back, feeling sick. The Ice Warriors she had seen in the base were forbidding, businesslike creatures with a very alien appearance, but they were undoubtedly living, breathing – if a bit hissing - beings. After all, Anna was no stranger to interacting with creatures that were not quite human looking, with her best friend being a snowman and her in-laws being rock trolls, so relating to six feet tall green, scaly, hissing creatures was less of a problem for her that it could have been for someone else living in her century. But the Ice Warriors below felt wrong. Even though their only physical difference with those from the base was this stick in their forehead, there was something in the way they stood there, unmoving, that she found unnervingly creepy. Even those who had been moving had walked with some kind of mechanical gait, as if they were more automatons than living creatures.
"Doctor!" she hissed as silently as she could. "Are they the… puppets for the Daleks you talked about?"
"Yes," the Doctor whispered back curtly. "Can't you see the eyestalk in their head?"
"So they are… dead? Moving… corpses?"
"They have been fully converted. Well, not fully, because a full conversion would have turned them into Daleks, but I don't think they have the means nor the time to do that here, and that's not what they're aiming at. Anyway, you can think of them as… Ice Warrior-shaped Daleks now."
Anna edged forward to get another look at the immobile Ice Warriors.
"Can they be made… normal again?"
"Not at this stage."
"How were they made like this?"
"I told you, probably nanogenes. They are very tiny robots that can modify a body from the inside."
"You mean like… germs? Could we… could we catch them? Like when someone sneezes and..."
"No, I don't think they have enough to release them around. They probably use a conversion chamber where they submit their subjects to a concentrated stream."
"Er… Doctor?" Kristoff whispered tentatively. "There is a, er, a..."
Anna looked up and discovered a Dalek hovering leisurely in the middle of the room. It had apparently been flying out of another overhead tunnel like the one they were in. This time she was unable to repress a little gasp as she tried to scramble backward.
Her gasp or possibly her sudden movement seemed to catch the attention of the hovering Dalek. The thing stopped and its head slowly turned until its eye stick pointed in their direction. Anna froze in place, hoping the shadows would conceal her, but already the Doctor was up and moving, grabbing her as he did so.
"INTRUDER ALERT!" the Dalek shrieked in its mechanical voice.
"Run, now!" the Doctor shouted.
Anna sprang to her feet, helped by the Doctor, checked that Elsa was also moving, and set off running as soon as she saw her sister beginning to run too. Behind them came the high pitched whine of the Dalek weapon, and a metallic echo as its beam struck the wall a few feet from where they had been a second ago.
Anna ran through the darkening corridors, trying to follow the Doctor while keeping Elsa in sight. But she soon realised that the various debris and the strange architecture, which had not really been an issue when they had been slowly creeping around, were much more difficult to navigate around while running. She had just managed to run around a particularly large heap of debris when she realised that the others, who had run around the other side of the heap, had just turned into a branching corridor. She skid as she tried to slow down and managed to double back, only to discover the Dalek a dozen yards away, advancing toward her and shrieking. She only had the time to duck into another corridor before a beam of light hit the wall next to her. She called for Elsa and heard her sister's voice, echoing through the corridors, shouting back her name.
"Outside!" Anna yelled back at the top of her voice, hoping her sister would hear her and remember the Doctor's advice about leaving the ship, and that the Dalek would not guess too much from it.
As she dashed madly, tripping over debris, Anna remembered another of the Doctor's advice: try hiding. Maybe if she hid and let the Dalek overtake her, she would be able to go back and join Elsa.
Anna vaulted over a piece of debris, grabbed a fallen support beam to allow her to turn at an almost right angle, and dived behind some heavy piece of machinery that had fallen in the middle of the floor. She curled between it and the wall and tried to silence her frantic breathing, hoping her heart was not beating too loudly.
"SEARCH! LOCATE! EXTERMINATE!"
The shrieking of the Dalek became louder as it came closer. Anna tried to curl up further, and to guess how close the Dalek was. Then she saw it appear through the gaps in the debris hiding her, moving in the direction she had been running toward a couple of seconds ago. The thing was slowly turning its head from left to right, but thankfully not sharply enough to point to where Anna was hiding. The Dalek shrieked again about searching and exterminating, then disappeared from view as it moved behind another pile of debris, still advancing in Anna's original direction.
Anna counted to twenty under her breath, then tried to listen to the Dalek's shrieks over the sounds of her heart beating madly in her chest. When the shrieks had decreased enough in intensity to estimate the Dalek's location some distance ahead, she unfurled as silently as possible and glanced quickly from where she had come. Everything over there was dark and silent, while she could still hear the decreasing voice of the Dalek in the other direction. On the lookout for the two tell-tale lights that the Dalek sported on its head, she slowly began retracing her steps, hoping she could recognise the corridor that Elsa, Kristoff and the Doctor had taken.
She crossed the threshold into another room, and fell into the arms of an Ice Warrior. Before she had time to react, the strong, scaly arms had closed around her in a bear-like hold. Struggling fruitlessly, Anna looked up at her captor's face. The Ice Warrior slowly lowered his head, so that the stick emerging from his forehead faced her.
The bulb at the end of the stick glowed with a sickly blue colour. Anna realised it looked as if there was an eye there, staring at her, but it was not like the eye of any creature she had ever seen.
"Um… by the Moons, I honour thee?" she ventured.