Asylum of the Daleks REVISED (p.2)
Harvey led Amy and the Doctor back to his hatch.
"We came down two days ago," he explained. "There's twelve of our escape pods." He clicked open the hatch. "I don't know what happened to them."
Amy felt metal under her feet and scraped away the snow. Underneath, the escape pod read, "Alaska."
"Alaska," she said. "That's the same ship as Souffle Girl."
"Yes," the Doctor said, studying it, uneasily. "Except, she's been here a year."
-
Harvey climbed down into the escape pod, the others followed him. He went over to an interior cabinet. "We should have some climbing rope, long enough to get down that ravine."
The Doctor jumped down off the ladder and noticed the other snowsuited figures in the pod. "Won't you introduce us to your crew?" he said, smiling.
"Ah, yes, sorry," Harvey said. "Guys, this is the Doctor and Amy."
The Doctor saluted.
No one responded.
Harvey stopped getting the rope and stared. "Guys?"
The Doctor reached over and tapped the closest figure on the shoulder. It slumped back, revealing a decayed face.
"Oh my god," Harvey said. Amy jumped.
The Doctor scanned the figures with the sonic. "They're dead, all of them."
"That's not possible," Harvey said. "I just spoke to them. Two hours ago we were doing engine repairs."
The Doctor lifted the hood off another figure. The head bobbled lifelessly backward. "Sure of that, are you?" he asked.
Amy crept forward, morbidly curious. The Doctor went around and pulled down all the hoods, revealing dead, deteriorating faces.
"Because I'd said they've been dead for a very long time," he said.
"But they can't be," Harvey protested softly.
"Well, they didn't get in this state in two hours," Amy said, looking at them from the front of the room.
"Oh, of course, stupid me," Harvey said.
"Stupid what?" Amy demanded.
"I was the first outside," he said.
"So?" Amy asked.
"They wouldn't let me back in," he turned innocent brown eyes up to them. His eyes changed to blue, Dalek blue. "But I got back in," he said ominously, in a Dalek voice, starting to stalk toward them.
The Doctor grabbed a fire extinguisher and fired it in the roboman's face. "Amy, the door!" the Doctor yelled.
Amy ran forward and opened a door behind the stairs, the Doctor herded the roboman inside and slammed the door shut, locking the override.
"Explain!" Amy demanded. "How did he get all Daleked?"
"The nanocloud," the Doctor said. "Oh, that's clever. Anyone unauthorized lands, and the nanites convert them into robomen, they become part of the security system."
"What's a nanocloud?" Amy asked.
"Microorganisms that restructure flesh. They turn any intruder into a Dalek puppet," he said, patting one of the corpses on the head.
"So why aren't we affected?" Amy said, running to the front beside him, away from the door which was beginning to buckle under the pounding.
He held up his wristband. "We're authorized." He quickly looked around the pod, picking up the rope Harvey had taken out earlier. "The Daleks wouldn't want us converted," he said, hoisting the rope over his shoulder. "We're no use to them without free will. Come on, we have to find Rory, and the source of that signal. We can lock Harvey up in here."
He started up the ladder, but the door burst open and Harvey raged out, eyes blue, he knocked the Doctor off the ladder. The Doctor and Amy scrambled back. The fire extinguisher was on the other side of the room.
The Doctor threw the rope at Harvey, and leapt up on the chairs, he hopped over to the other side, toward the fire extinguisher. His pantleg was caught. He looked down, into Dalek blue eyes.
"Amy!"
"I see it!" she yelled, backing up toward the front of the room, away from the onslaught of blue eyes in dead faces. The corpses stood up. Amy leapt forward and grabbed the Doctor's jacket, yanking him out of the roboman's grip and up beside her by the door.
"How can they be alive?!" she demanded, as the robomen lurched around the chairs, coming for them.
"Nanites work the nervous system. Even dead they can still pull the strings." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and tried sonicing the closest one. "No good." He turned and soniced the door behind them. They fell through as the zombies grabbed for them.
He turned and pulled Amy in, out of their hands, and kicked the door lock mechanism.
The door slammed shut. Locking the robomen outside. He hit the door override.
Amy leaned weakly back against the door, panting. Blows reverberating against her back. "Okay," she said. "Now we're fighting Dalek zombies." She turned and looked at him, he was leaning against the door beside her, keeping them out.
"Have I ever mentioned that life with you is never boring?" she asked.
He grinned at her. "I know."
An especially hard thud bounced them. They turned and pressed their hands on the door. "Okay, smart boy," Amy said. "How are we going to get out of this one?"
"Give me a minute," he said.
"Unauthorized personnel may not enter the cockpit," the mocking voice of Souffle Girl said over the intercom.
"Oh, Shut up!" the Doctor mocked back. He found the monitor.
"Aw! Mr. Grumpy!" she teased. "Bad combo, no sense of humor and that chin."
"Is that her again? Souffle Girl?" Amy asked, the sounds of banging still coming from behind her.
"Yeah, she, " the Doctor started to explain, then turned back, "Oi! What is wrong with my chin?"
"Careful dear," she said. "You'll put someone's eye out."
Amy snorted a laugh.
The Doctor rubbed his chin, looking put out. "Scanning you," Souffle Girl said. "You're on another of the escape pods from the Alaska. Same ship I was on."
The Doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. "How can you hack into everything? It should be impossible. You're on a crashed ship!"
"Long story," she said, checking her watch. "Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and just a tiny bit sexy?"
The Doctor grinned. "You're confident, I'll give you that."
An alarm went off in the girl's pod. "Check the floor, I'm picking up a breech at floor level, it could be a way out." She went back to her instruments. "See ya later!"
-
The Doctor and Amy started moving things off the floor. "Ah Hah! Hatch!" The Doctor said. He knelt down and studied the square door in the floor, a rope came out through the door handle. "It looks like it's been used already and they tried to block it off behind them."
Zombies banged on the door. Amy turned. "I can't imagine why. Wait a minute, if the pod is buried, won't that just lead to the ground?"
"Well, somebody got through. We need to get out," the Doctor said, prying at the stubborn hatch.
"And find Rory," Amy said.
The Doctor looked at her, still working on the hatch. "Speaking of Rory," he said, worried. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
Zombies thumped on the doorway. Amy stared at him in disbelief. "You want to do this now?"
"Well what happened?"
"Uh, stuff!" she flustered. "We split up, what can you do?"
"What can I do?" he asked with concern.
"Nothing," she said. "It's not one of those things that you can fix like you fix your bow tie." She straightened his tie fondly.
He stared at her sadly.
"Don't give me those big wet eyes, Raggedy Man." she said. "It's life! Just life. That thing that goes on when you're not there."
The hatch yielded to his prying and popped open, he laid the door back, revealing rock, fractured from the crack, and to one side, a gleam of Dalek metal. A rope ladder ran down into a fissure.
He craned his head. "Ventilation shaft. This must lead right down into the Asylum."
"So someone else got out this way then?" Amy asked.
"Yeah," the Doctor replied. "Let's go find them."
The banging on the door changed in rhythm, sounding more like knocking than attempted break in. "Hello," the Doctor said, "What's this?" He went to investigate. "Hello, hello, hello," he turned on the viewscreen. "What are they up to?"
The screen showed the robomen outside, eyes glowing, one was holding up a Dalek bracelet. Taunting.
"What's that?" Amy asked.
"One of these," the Doctor said, holding up his arm with his own bracelet. "But where did they get it."
"Rory," Amy said. "They've got Rory!" She scrabbled at the door, the Doctor pulled her away. They both looked down, at her wrist, her bare wrist.
"Oh, Amy."
"Doctor," she said with calm, paniced, intensity, "What's going to happen to me? Am I going to turn into one of them?"
The Doctor turned back to the monitor, the dead roboman waved the bracelet in his face. "We've got to get it back," he said. He looked around the room, he picked up the prybar he'd used to pry the hatch open with.
"Right," he took a pose, getting ready. "The one with the bracelet is right by the door. "You stand by the lock. I'll open the door, snag the bracelet, and you close it," he stared at her seriously. "Got it?"
She nodded, hand over the lock.
"Now!"
She pulled the lock, he soniced the door, he jumped forward and jabbed the prybar through the crack, on the monitor they could see the hook in the bar hit the bracelet, and knock it out of the roboman's hand.
"Close it! Close it!" The Doctor said frantically. He pulled back the prybar, it was bent in the middle. The door hydraulics whined. Zombie hands had hold of the jamb, prying it open with brute strength.
"No good!" He threw aside the prybar with a clang and pushed her toward the floor hatch, "Down the hole! Quick!"
The door behind them screeched open wider. The Doctor jumped down the hole, pulled it shut and sonic welded it to the frame.
"Down, down!"
Amy nodded below him, and started climbing down.
-
Rory walked breathlessly through the Dalek asylum, the sound of his own crunching footfalls and leaking water the only sounds. The Daleks were all apparently dead.
Taking his courage in his hands, he approached one of them, studying it, trying to find out what happened. He peered in through the grating, trying to see inside. The eyestalk was in his way, he carefully turned it to the side.
The eyestalk slowly slid back.
His eyes widened, his heartbeat picked up. He backed away. His foot hit one of the discarded Dalek balls and and slipped, he fell with a clang.
The Dalek's eyestalk started to glow, it looked down at him. He froze, hoping it wouldn't see him.
"E-e-e-e-e-eggs" the Dalek stuttered.
Rory blinked.
"Eggs..." the Dalek said again, staring down at him.
Rory looked down and picked up the bronze ball he'd slipped on. A horrified, disgusted look came over his face. "They're your eggs?" He held it up to the Dalek on the very tips of his fingers, as if it was slimy. Hoping it would take it and leave him alone.
"Eggs-stir-mi-nate..."
Rory's eyes popped wide, the other Daleks started to wake up. The first Dalek raised its gunstick.
"Oh, shit!" Rory threw the metal ball, it clanged against the Dalek's eyestalk, cracking the lens and throwing the eyestalk up. The Dalek fired. Rory scrambled and ran.
He ran behind the pillars as the rest of the Daleks woke up and started shooting, blue laser beams criss-crossed the room, blowing chunks out of the pillar he was hiding behind. He looked frantically for a way out.
"Hey!" Souffle Girl's voice yelled over the com. "The door at the end! Run for it! They're waking up, but they're slow. The door at the end, just run for it. Now. Now. Now!"
Behind Rory the Heavy Weapons Dalek powered up.
Rory turned to get his bearings, saw the gun turret swivel toward him and ran, flat out. All the other Daleks followed, shooting, beams crisscrossing, he dodged, his hands over his head.
The door at the far end slipped upwards, just to knee height.
The Heavy Weapons Dalek was powering up, engines screaming. He dove, sliding under head first. He rolled to the side. "Close it! Close it!" He huddled to the side of the door.
The energy scream reached a crescendo and the something slammed against the door in an explosion, hard enough to shake dirt from the roof. In the corner, Rory huddled into a ball and covered his head.
-
The door plinked, with heat, but held. Rory unwound from his crouched huddle, ceiling dust cascaded off his jacket. The sounds of Daleks were fainter, farther away.
He sat up, shaking. Panting.
"So! Anyway," said Souffle Girl's voice unexpectedly. He jumped.
"What's your name?"
"Uh..." he had to think, too shaken up. "I can't remember... Uhh... Rory."
"Lovely name, Rory. First boy I ever fancied was called Rory. Actually, the first person I ever fancied was called Nina. I'm Oswin. Come on, get up beaky boy. They aren't going to stay stunned forever."
He jumped to his feet. "Look, if it's a choice between beaky boy and Nina, I prefer Nina," he said. The Daleks started pounding on the door again. He looked into the Dalek camera. "Any idea how I get out of this place?"
"Down the corridor, first turn on your left. Trot along." The door behind him banged. He trotted.
-
Amy and the Doctor are climbing down the rope ladder.
"So tell me, what's going to happen to me," Amy says. "and don't lie because I know when you're lying to me and I will definitely fall on you."
He answered. "The air all around, is full of micro-machines. Robots the size of molecules. Nanogenes. Now that you're unprotected, you're being rewritten."
They reached the bottom.
"So what happens?" she asked. "I get funky eyes and one of those gunsticks coming out of my hand?"
"Physical changes come later." He looks around at all the entrances and picks one, he takes her hand and heads off.
"Well what comes first?" she persists. "How does it start?"
"With your mind. Your feelings, your memories." He stopped and looked at her. " And I'm sorry, but it's started already."
"How do you know?" she asked in a terrified voice as he started along again, drawing her by the hand.
"Because we've had this conversation four times."
She stared at him in horror. "Okay, scared now."
They'd come to a barred grill door that blocked off the corridor.
He turned. "Hold onto scared. Scared isn't Dalek." He hugged her.
-
Rory walked nervously down a Dalek corridor. The lights went off. His torch sputtered and died. "Oswin?"
"There's a door beside you," a door started opening. "Through here."
He dodged inside, the door closed. The room was disused, a cul-de-sac, no other way out. There was a large ornate technological circle on the floor. "Okay, you're safe for now. Pop your shirt off, quick as you like," Oswin instructed from the speakers.
He automatically started taking his jacket off. "Why?"
"Does there need to be a reason?" she asked flirtatiously.
He frowned at the ceiling and put his jacket back on.
-
The Doctor opened the grill door that blocked off the end of the corridor. There was a large empty room beyond. He sniffed, frowning at whatever the scent told him. There were no Daleks, only Dalek voices farther away.
"What's that?" Amy asked, hearing the voices.
The Doctor reshut the door. He gripped her shoulders. "Keep a lookout. Do not open this door." He walked off back down the corridor.
Behind him, Amy hissed in pain and pressed a hand over her eyes.
"Oswin!" the Doctor yelled to the ceiling. "Oswin, can you hear me?"
"Hello the Chin!" Oswin caroled back. "I have a visual on you."
"Why don't I have a visual on you?" the Doctor said from the monitor. "Why can't I ever see you?"
"Limited power. Bad hair. Take your pick," Oswin answered flippantly. "There's a closet to your left, open it." The Doctor looked around and opened a door to reveal a small closet with a control panel.
"Gonna send you a map to that screen," she said. "I put your little friend somewhere safe, I can get you to him."
"Rory, you found Rory?" the Doctor asked, excitedly.
"I call him Nina, it's a personal thing. Hush now!" she went back to programming her board.
Amy looked out through the grill to the room beyond. There was a man standing there. An inoffensive looking man in a bland suit. Her head felt wavery.
"Who are you?" she whispered. Dizzy.
She opened the door, and stepped into the room, unsteady on her feet, everything spun. There were other people in the room. More inoffensive men, a couple of women in old fashioned clothes, an evening dress, pearls, a girl in a ballet tutu spun and laughed in the distance.
Amy smiled and went to join them, they welcomed her. Her head buzzed. The girl twirled.
Everything was so nice. She smiled.
The Doctor heard the door, he turned then turned back to the monitor, urgent. "How many Daleks directly ahead of me right now?" he demanded of Oswin.
"Ten, twenty, hard to say. Some of them are catatonic, but they do have firepower."
The Doctor jumped and spun out of the closet, he ran down the corridor. "Amy!" She was already in the room.
He dashed into the room, frantic to grab her and haul her away. She turned and hushed him, obviously delusional. "Hush, it's okay, it's just people in here. It's just people." She turned back to them with a smile.
"Amy," the Doctor whispered urgently, not daring to grab her. "The nanogenes are altering your perceptions, integrating you into the Dalek matrix, the Crazy Daleks matrix. Look, look, those aren't people."
She smiled indulgently and looked again. Suddenly it was a room full of Daleks, less than six feet away. Her mouth opened in shock.
"Amy," the Doctor whispered frantically. "Come with me. Take my hand. Run. Run!" He grabbed her hand and hauled her down the corridor.
She panted in disbelief. He dragged her back to the rope ladder, but it was shaking. "No! Amy yelled, pulling him back. "They're coming down!"
The robomen above had managed to open the hatch, the Doctor could see one of them climbing down the ladder above him.
They turned back to the hallway, but a Dalek was advancing toward them, cutting off all retreat. "Here! In here!" The Doctor whirled Amy into the closet.
"Intruder! Intruder!" the Dalek screeched. They could hear a weird, wibbling electrostaticy noise. Like a burnt out toaster. The Doctor frowned, they stared at each other.
He pressed his ear to the door, then slowly opened it.
Outside, the Dalek's gunstick fizzled. Again and again as he tried to fire it. Unsuccessfully.
"It's damaged," the Doctor said.
"Okay, what do we do?" Amy said, darting a gaze back down the corridor where the ladder was still shaking.
"Identify me," the Doctor told the Dalek. "Access your files. Who am I?"
It did a face match. "You are the Doctor!" it screeched.
"And what are you standing orders concerning the Doctor?" the Doctor asked. He glanced back at the ladder.
"The Doctor must be exterminated!" the Dalek yelled.
"And how are you going to do that, Dalek?" the Doctor demanded. "Without a gun, you're a tricycle with a roof! How are you going to destroy me?" he prodded.
The Dalek started initiating self destruct. Its alarm went off. "Self destruct initiated!" it proclaimed.
The Doctor grinned and soniced its hood open.
"Self destruct cannot be countermanded!" the Dalek claimed in satisfaction, as the Doctor opened its hood and started poking around inside.
"I'm not looking for a countermand, dear. I'm looking for reverse!" He clanged the hood back down, and the Dalek started speeding backward down the corridor.
"Forwards! Forwards! Forwards!" the Dalek screamed as it tried to override what the Doctor had done.
It sped backwards into the room full of Daleks, self destruct alarm blaring. "Intruder!" the other Daleks yelled in panic. The Dalek slammed into one behind him, and exploded.
-
Rory and Oswin felt the explosion from where they were, the floor and roof shaking.
"Oswin?" Rory asked. "What was that? That was close!"
-
Amy and the Doctor stepped out of the closet, a blast of Dalek firepower slammed into the door by Amy's head. She jerked, and fell unconscious. The Doctor jumped out of the closet, grabbed up a Dalek ball that was bouncing by, from the destruction in the room, and threw it at the roboman who was firing at them from the bottom of the ladder.
The ball hit him right between the eyes, with a crack of lenses, he fell from the rungs.
The Doctor scooped up Amy and ran, as more legs appeared down the ladder.
-
Rory ran into the room. Shattered, half melted Daleks littered the floor. "Oswin! What happened?" he looked around. "Who killed all the Daleks?" he asked.
The Doctor ran in carrying Amy. "Who do you think?" he yelled. "Now run!"
Another blast of Dalek fire shot over his head, he ducked and they both ran.
( Read Part 3)