The TARDIS groaned into reality in a disused back alley. After a moment, the door opened, and the Doctor poked his head out.
"Clear," he whispered.
"The scanner said so," Fitz muttered irritably.
"You can never be too careful," the Doctor replied.
"Then how come you so rarely are?" came Sam's voice.
"Hush," he answered, distantly. He sidled out of the TARDIS. Sam followed and Fitz brought up the rear.
"What exactly are we doing here?" Fitz asked. "You haven't told us anything."
"Daleks."
Fitz immediately turned around and tried to go back into the TARDIS. Sam caught his arm. "Oh stop, you've met them before."
"I don't want to meet them again," Fitz whispered angrily. "I've had more than enough of them."
"Calm yourself," the Doctor said. "With a little luck we wont meet any."
"We don't have any luck," Fitz said, still trying to pull away from Sam.
"Sure we do," she answered, putting her other hand on his shoulder. "Otherwise we'd all be dead now. But Doctor, what is the situation?"
"When you and I got separated, and I went looking for you," the Doctor said, "I faced the Daleks on Earth, here, now. And the Master, too." He frowned. "That's the second time I've run into that combination in this life ... anyway, a Dalek nest was reawakened. Where there's one, there may be more."
Fitz stopped pulling away from Sam, and looked at the Doctor. There was still fear in his eyes, but it was under control. "So what makes you think there's some here, now?"
"We're two years after my last visit here, in terms of history. And there's been a spike in energy use, that isn't accounted for by the population growth."
"Is that what caught your attention in the TARDIS?"
"Well, yes -- and no. That was one thing. The other was just that ... well ..."
"Well, what?" Fitz prompted.
"One of the things my last self did well was tie up the loose ends. I'm not half the planner he was, nor do I wish to be. But I don't want anything coming back to haunt me, either."
Sam nodded. "So, let's go then."
"Where?" Fitz asked.
The Doctor grinned, and began rummaging in his pockets. "I know I had it on me ... now where ..."
Sam and Fitz looked at each other, and rolled their eyes. This was an old routine; the Doctor would spend ten to twenty minutes searching for something they both knew he already had. "Come on Doctor," Sam said.
With a magician's flourish, the Doctor pulled a tracker from his pocket. He grinned triumphantly. "Come, come now, both of you. Sam, you've traveled with me more than long enough, and Fitz, you're an actor. Appreciate the theatrics!"
Fitz snorted. "I do, Doctor, when my life isn't at stake."
The Doctor sighed sadly, then led the way, sneaking around the near corner. They followed, Fitz creeping along, Sam much more casual.
It was a disused area, dingy buildings, broken windows, low grey clouds. Dismal, despairing. There wasn't any graffito; not even the rebellious kids came here.
The Doctor continued being cautious for about two more blocks, then halted abruptly. Sam crashed into him. "Watch it, Doctor!"
He ignored her, frowning at the tracer. "The power reading is fluctuating. It's very faint, but keeps rising and falling, from medium level power to almost nothing."
"A malfuction?" Fitz whispered.
"Possibly." He waved the tracer around, then pointed. "That way."
"Um, Doctor," said Sam, "that's the corner of a building."
"Quite," the Doctor agreed, and then he set off along one side of it, peeking in the broken, dusty windows.
Fitz and Sam exchanged weary glances again, then followed him.
The Doctor got to the fourth window down and abruptly froze. His companions did likewise, Fitz darting nervous glances every which way. After a moment, the Doctor motioned them forward. They joined him at the window, and saw -- a Dalek.
Fitz immediately ducked out of sight. When no harsh electronic cries or energy bolts happened, he slowly came back up again. The Dalek hadn't moved. Now he saw that there were cobwebs attached to it in several places. "Dead?" he asked the Doctor.
The Doctor shook his head, examining the tracer's readings. "Powered down, more like. The Kaled mutant inside is in some sort of hibernation."
Without warning he threw a leg over the window sill, avoiding the shards of jagged glass. Sam followed immediately. Fitz came along more slowly, and carefully.
The Dalek remained inert as they approached it. The rest of the building looked disused; there was no technology, Dalek or otherwise. Just an empty warehouse. It made the Dalek's presence all the more ominous.
Fitz hadn't had time to examine a Dalek before; the last time, he'd been too busy preventing them from being used by a Paradox cultist. So now he studied this one closely. It reminded him of a miniature tank; and that, in turn, reminded him of why his father had fled Germany, as the Nazi war machines plowed their paths of destruction ... he shook himself.
"Look," Sam whispered. She was crouched just beyond the Dalek, over a trapdoor in the floor.
The Doctor pointed his tracer at it, and nodded. "The source is down there."
Slowly, Sam opened the trapdoor. It slid back into the floor by way of a touch control, rather than opening up or down. It wasn't the usual Dalek sucker-receptacle, which implied humans or robomen or other slaves.
There was a silver ramp leading down, to a basement floor about ten feet below. There was a dim, flickering light, giving away few details. But they could see there was Dalek technology down there -- banks and banks of it.
"The power source, I presume," Fitz muttered.
There was no response to the door opening; no movement, no challenge, no alarm (at least that they could hear). So, after a minute of tense waiting, the Doctor slid down the ramp into the basement. Sam and Fitz followed; Fitz sprawled on top of Sam as he landed poorly.
"Sorry," he muttered. Sam only giggled.
The Doctor led them on, past rows of Dalek computers. Most were inactive, only a few dim lights glowed. Ahead of them, the corridor-like room ended, with a tarpaulin thrown over something very large. There were no exits to the basement, save the one they had come in.
"Very compact operation," the Doctor noted. "I wonder how they access the reactor, though."
"Might they be drawing it from the Human energy grids nearby?" Fitz asked.
"Wouldn't be a power spike then, would there?" Sam pointed out.
The Doctor nodded. "Probably their own generator, run by computer." He eyed the tarpaulin. "I wonder ..."
Fitz eyed the nearest bank of instruments. "Hey Doctor, there's a human computer terminal here."
The Doctor turned, almost reluctantly, away from the tarpaulin, and walked over. "Hmmm, yes -- further evidence of outside involvement."
None of them noticed a hidden door open behind the tarpaulin. It opened silently, and the figure revealed merely watched for a moment.
It was a man, unremarkable, in drab grey rags. His hair was grey, with thin threads of white shot through. But the erect posture, and the bright green eyes belied the signs of age.
If he was surprised at his visitors, he gave no sign, merely continuing to watch them.
After fiddling with the computer for a moment, the Doctor straightened. "Now it's beyond doubt. Someone else already found this nest, and is modifying it to its own purposes."
"Not just the nest," the man said, coming out from behind the tarpaulin, "But also its products."
As one, the Doctor, Sam, and Fitz whirled to face the newcomer. Sam looked ready to fight, Fitz cringed back. The Doctor merely narrowed his eyes. He tried a telepathic contact; and got nothing. So it was not a Time Lord they were facing. That was something, at least. "In what way? And who are you?"
"I'll ask the questions," the man snapped. "How did you find my little operation?"
"Spike in local power use, not explained by population growth," the Doctor explained.
"Didn't think anyone was monitoring," the man said.
"Few do," the Doctor agreed. "Surely, this is the part where you explain your evil plan, before trying to kill us?"
The man snorted. "No, I think we'll just go straight for the kill." He lunged for the keyboard. Fitz tripped him up, and the man crashed into the wall. Sam tackled him before he could do anything else. Fitz helped her pin him down.
"Now then," said the Doctor, "Perhaps we can skip the killing, and discuss the evil plan instead."
The man squirmed, but Sam was strong, and Fitz was agile. He couldn't escape. "It's not evil. I was a geneticist, before the invasion. And we have to protect ourselves from it ever happening again. So I've been tinkering with the genetic brood hatcheries back there," he nodded to the open doorway behind the tarp, "to create loyal guardians, that will protect us."
"If your goal is so noble, why not let it be known?" asked Sam.
"Most people wouldn't understand," the man sneered.
"And they'd be right," said the Doctor, "Because you can't control Dalek technology. It would turn on you eventually, and then who knows what hybrid monstrosity would be unleashed on Earth?"
"I can control it, given enough time," the man insisted.
The Doctor shook his head. "Even their inventor couldn't control them, in the end."
"You mean Davros?" said the man.
The Doctor's eyes widened. "How do you ..."
"I've accessed their computer files, haven't I? His original experiment notes were quite useful."
"Sounds to me you're more than a geneticist," Fitz said.
The man smiled thinly. "I pay people who can keep their mouths shut."
"More loose ends," Sam said.
The Doctor straightened. "You can't use this. Even if you could control it, I wouldn't allow it. You'd be a dictator, no one could resist you."
"Not allow it? Who are you to say?" the man demanded.
The Doctor knelt down and faced him, eye-to-eye. "If you've accessed their files, then you know of me. I'm the Ka Faraq Gatri."
The man paled for a moment, then chuckled. "The bringer of darkness, the Doctor, you? A man in a period costume?"
The Doctor remained focused on him. "If you'd read the files, you would know that I always dress well. And as a Time Lord, to me, everything's period costume."
The man paled again, more notably this time. "You really are ... No! We must be allowed to defend ourselves!"
The Doctor nodded. "But not with this technology."
The man kicked out, catching Fitz in the solar plexus. Fitz went down, gasping. The man then shoved Sam into the Doctor; they went down in a heap. He lunged for the keyboard again, and stabbed several buttons.
The tarpaulin shifted as something began to move beneath it. At the same time, the hibernating Dalek from the floor above started coming down the ramp.
The man dived back towards his hidden door, but the thing below the tarpaulin finally shrugged it off, and it landed on him. It was a Dalek ... sort of. Instead of the normal straight pepper-shaker shape, it gradually widened from the neck to a large circular base, more than three times the normal Dalek width. Instead of the normal lump of a head, a huge clear globe crowned the hybrid monstrosity. The Kaled mutant, even more perverted than usual by the unknown scientists's tampering, clearly visible. To say it was hideous would be putting it mildly. It looked like a bizarre cross between a jellyfish and a spider, with two eyes pressed against the glass globe. The Doctor was vaguely reminded of Morbius.
As it had eyes, there was no need for an eye-stalk. Gone too were the normal bumps of the Dalek's armor-casing; instead, the wide base was smooth, dark green in color. Three gun-turrets had replaced the normal gun-and-sucker combination.
Sam had never been a screamer. She had seen all sorts of horrors. She had been bitten by a vampire, possesed by an alien werewolf virus, and countless other things. But she screamed now. Loudly. Piercingly. Fitz howled in horror, and all the blood drained out of his face. The Doctor narrowed his eyes and sucked in his breath.
The man shrugged off the tarpaulin, and tried to give a command to his Frankenstinian horror: "Protocol four b ..."
The hybrid Dalek turned almost casually towards him, and fired its leftmost weapon. A ball of green plasma burst from the turret, and turned the man into a smoking skeletal ruin. The hybrid made no battle cry, no harsh exterminating prattle. It just killed.
The true Dalek, on the other hand, remained true to character. "Exterminate all humans!" It brayed, and opened fire on the Doctor. He lunged to the side, and the blast struck the hybrid. But apparently it had some kind of shielding; the blast dissipated harmlessly. The hybrid replied with its middle weapon; a bolt of electricity arced toward the original Dalek and blew out its voice lights and eye lens.
"Vision impaired!" the classic Dalek cried, and fired blindly into the circuitry lining the walls. A bank of equipment burst into flame.
"With me!" The Doctor cried, and lunged through the doorway. Sam and Fitz dashed after.
"Let them fight it out," said the Doctor. "We've got to shut the reactor down, or that fire will cause this whole place to blow!"
"Great, what do we do?" Sam said. "Neither of us are gadget-bashers."
The Doctor fished out his sonic screwdriver. "Fitz, watch our tin friends, warn us if they're coming this way. Sam, you help me."
Fitz got to the door, hiding behind its frame and peeking out now and again. Sam and the Doctor ran to the far end of this smaller room. It was dark; only the one computer terminal provided any light. There were three more doors to each side of it. The one on the left was metal, and barred -- presumably this led to the reactor. The one on the right was normal, and probably led to living quarters or a bathroom. A door in the far left wall had a round glass window three quarters of the way up -- the Doctor recognized this as the brood labs. They didn't have time to investigate any of these; the Doctor threw himself at the console and began stabbing buttons frantically. After a few frantic typed commands, he handed his sonic screwdriver to Sam. "When I give the word, use that on the console," he said. Then he resumed typing.
"The monster Dalek has won and is leaving!" Fitz shouted.
The Doctor nodded absently, finished his typing, and stepped back. "Now, Sam!"
She activated the screwdriver. There was a high pitched whine, and the computer glowed a bright blue. Then the lights went out.
"Great," she muttered into the darkness. "I could've shut off the computer myself, thanks."
"We had to shut everything down," the Doctor explained. "Shutting down the computer by itself would have caused the reactor to go critical."
"Um, guys?" Fitz shouted again, "It's gone!"
"After it then!" Declared the Doctor. He charged out of the back room, knocking over Fitz. Sam helped him up, and they ran after the Doctor.
They got up the ramp with some difficulty, and saw where the Dalek had blasted through the wall. The Doctor dashed after.
The hybrid was about half a block away. It was still quiet, moving silently. The Doctor took his screwdriver back from Sam, and twiggled it. Then he dashed after the creature.
He got up to it and plunked the sonic screwdriver against the shell of the hybrid. A normal Dalek would've been incapacitated; instead, the same shielding it had used against the other, normal Dalek, kicked in. There was a nasty ZAP, and the Doctor was thrown backwards. The screwdriver dropped to the ground.
The Dalek turned, and fired its third weapon; a grey mist billowed from the turret towards the Doctor. He stumbled backwards, recognizing this as a poison cloud. His respiratory bypass system almost kicked in, but he got out of range in time.
The Dalek fired its plasma bolt again. Sam and Fitz dove in opposite directions; the bolt charred the ground where they had been standing.
The Doctor looked around, and saw that one of the surrounding buildings was an old-fashioned skyscraper. Despite the invasion and normal wreckage of time, there was still some mirror-glass left. He raced towards it, dodging plasma bolts and lightning arcs. He skidded to a halt in front of one large piece of mirror, and ducked as the Dalek fired another lightning bolt at him. The bolt reflected back ...
And with a thunderous CRACK, the glass dome shattered, and the mutant fell to the asphalt. Shards of glass were embedded in it, and it was bleeding to death.
"Not the first time I've gotten a Dalek to fall for that particular trick," the Doctor mused. "Apparently, it wasn't evolved enough."
Some time later, they returned to the TARDIS. The Doctor had gone back to the brood lab and wrecked the equipment, but he had brought the mutant Dalek's shell into the TARDIS. He was poking around in there now, investigating the memory banks.
Fitz and Sam both looked at the thing uneasily. Even rendered inert, it was still a monstrosity.
The Doctor popped out from the innards. He said nothing, but began tinkering with the TARDIS console.
"Well?" Fitz said.
"The man was named Schalon Merrst," said the Doctor. "A brilliant geneticist, as he claimed. Kicked out of the newly formed science council for his unethical behavior. He was obsessed with Daleks, and researched them exclusively."
"What about the help he mentioned?" Sam asked.
"A few engineer types desperate for cash," said the Doctor. Without him to pay them, they'll scatter."
"You left the brood labs intact, though," said Sam.
"But I shut down the power to them. Nothing can grow there now."
"An altogether unpleasant experience," said Fitz.
The Doctor nodded grimly. "Dalek situations always are."
The TARDIS was quiet for a very long while afterwards. When they finally took off, and his companions had retired to their beds (for some very nightmare-filled sleep), the Doctor stared into the rotor, wondering when he would meet his old enemies again.