Authors: Nicholas Briggs
‘I need a wee,’ whispered Ollus.
‘Well … can you just hold on for a little while?’ asked the Doctor, rather desperately.
‘He probably can’t,’ said Sabel, in a very sensible, grown-up sort of voice. Ollus nodded in agreement.
‘Well, hello!’ the Doctor said aloud to the approaching figures. They were all dressed similarly to the first resistance man. There were four of them, three of them women. ‘I know this rather punctures the drama of the moment, but I have a toilet emergency with my youngest friend here.’
The four figures stepped up onto the platform and joined the first resistance man.
‘Just … just go and sort Ollus out back there,’ whispered the Doctor, pointing back to a corridor leading off the stairs whilst lowering Ollus down and
putting the boy’s hand in Sabel’s.
Sabel obediently took Ollus away with her, heading in the direction of something that looked like an old, broken storm drain.
‘Sorry about this,’ said the Doctor, with a slightly guilty, apologetic grin. ‘Anyway, I’m the Doctor – you probably know that – who are you?’
‘No names,’ said one of the women in a rather flat voice.
‘Oh. All right, then,’ said the Doctor, making sure he fully displayed his disappointment. ‘So, what do we do now? Devise a secret plan to topple the Daleks? Plan a raid on a flying saucer? Who’s going to wear the Roboman disguise? Do the Daleks even have Robomen here? So many questions, aren’t there?’
He ran out of steam. The assembled resistance people merely stood and looked at him.
‘What do you know of the Dalek plan?’ one of the other women asked blankly.
‘You go first,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ve been here longer than me.’
‘
We’re
asking the questions,’ said the first man, somewhat aggressively. He stepped forward, as if to threaten.
‘Oh, there’s not going to be violence, is there?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Because I hate violence. That’s the sort of thing the Daleks like.’ The Doctor took a step or two towards the man, hoping to get a better look at the oddness of his face. ‘And we’re here to defeat them, aren’t we?’ he added, pointedly.
At that moment, Sabel made a ‘Psssst!’ noise from
behind the Doctor. Slightly irritated, the Doctor smiled politely at the resistance man, then called back as quietly as he could to Sabel and Ollus.
‘Look, just get on with whatever it is you’re doing and hurry back.’
‘No, it’s serious,’ whispered Sabel harshly.
‘What?’
said the Doctor, getting properly irritated now. Then he huffed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry, hang on a minute.’
The Doctor walked back to where Sabel and Ollus were, just to the left of the steps. To his relief, it seemed that Ollus had already taken care of his lavatorial needs. But the little boy seemed very agitated. He was pointing past the stairs, down a pale, flickering corridor.
The Doctor knew something was genuinely the matter, so he whispered, ‘What is it, Ollus?’
Ollus almost silently mouthed the words, ‘I heard Daleks moving, I did. Down there.’
The Doctor paused, listening.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded the resistance man, approaching.
‘Ssssh!’ ssshed the Doctor. But the man kept walking. Then, sure enough, even over the echoing click of the approaching footsteps, the Doctor could hear a faint whine of Dalek traction and the distant purr of a rotating dome section.
‘We’ve been followed,’ said the Doctor, urgently to the man.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Daleks!’ the Doctor said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘Look!’ shouted Sabel. She was pointing into the darkness beyond the tracks, where the other four resistance people had come from.
Everyone turned to look into the darkness. Except that it wasn’t dark. Now there were twenty or more hovering blue lights flitting around, getting bigger and bigger.
‘Dalek eyes!’ shouted the Doctor. And at that moment, the dim light of the station partially revealed that these blue lights were glowing lenses atop the forms of twenty emerging Daleks, hovering over the train tracks.
As he shouted, ‘Run!’ he noticed, too, that Daleks were starting to glide down the corridor where Ollus had heard them. ‘It’s a raid!’
The Doctor grabbed Ollus and Sabel and dragged them up the steps. ‘Thank goodness for your tiny bladder,’ whispered the Doctor hoarsely – then he tripped and lost his grip on Ollus. As the little boy tumbled, his toy spaceship bounced out of his pocket and clattered down the steps.
‘Leave it, Ollus!’ shouted Sabel. But it was too late. Recovering, her brother was already running down after his precious toy.
Meanwhile, the resistance people were fleeing for their lives. Two of them tried to hide in the derelict train carriages, but it was no use. The Daleks spotted them. Three units peeled off from the main formation and aimed their weapons squarely at the carriages.
‘Exterminate!’ one of them screeched triumphantly.
Pure energy leapt from their metal gun attachments,
crashing into the carriages, which immediately burst into an inferno of blue, writhing light. The roaring sound of impact was deafening in this confined, underground space.
Just as Ollus’s little hands grasped his skittering toy, the Doctor managed to grab Ollus and start to haul him back up the stairs.
‘Keep going, Sabel!’ cried the Doctor, heaving Ollus onto his back. Sabel, who had been hesitating near the top of the steps, turned and ran up as fast as she could. The Doctor glanced back, just in time to catch sight of the three other resistance fighters being cut down by Dalek fire. In the dim light, he could not see the blasted, photo-negative image of their demise – they simply seemed to burst into flames like figures on a strangely bluish bonfire.
Emerging quickly into the daylight above, the Doctor and Ollus shielded their eyes from the sudden change in light temperature. Sabel, already acclimatising, grabbed the Doctor’s hand, dragging him along the street. But the Doctor turned and secured the door to the stairs behind them. It crashed shut with an enormous clang.
‘Will that stop them?’ asked Sabel, panting a little.
‘No … But I think this will,’ he said, pointing all around. They all looked at the pastel-shaded suburban idyll that was Sunlight 349. Calm-looking buildings, large holographic screens at regular intervals featuring quizzes and reality shows … ‘They’ve got people here believing they’re living the good life. Chasing fugitives down the street, all guns blazing doesn’t quite fit.’
The Doctor lowered Ollus gently down to the
pavement. This had been a quiet area when they had first been led here by the now deceased resistance man, and it was indeed still fairly empty, but there were the odd skimmers still passing by. Further up the street, a group of children were being led along by some adults. Some kind of school outing, perhaps.
‘They … the Daleks … killed all those …’ stammered Sabel, clearly in shock.
‘I know, I know,’ said the Doctor, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘Seems that the Daleks are still prepared to revert to their old ways beyond the public gaze.’ He smoothed down his jacket and straightened his hair. ‘Come on. We’ve got to find Lillian.’
‘She’s at work, journalisting,’ said Ollus.
‘I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on.’
‘The frequency of skimmer bus services on the orbital route in City Zone 004 has come under criticism again, during the latest local council meeting. Those living on the outer ring of the zone have made representations to the council, making the case that with the population rising—’
Lillian Belle was in mid-flow, recording a piece to holo-vid camera when the door of her personal studio burst open and the Doctor entered with Sabel and Ollus.
‘Sorry!’ announced the Doctor cheerily, shutting the door behind them. ‘Not interrupting anything important, are we? No, I thought not.’
He leant over and switched off the camera.
Lillian was furious that he had intruded upon her work. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ she asked.
‘Ooh, I have my methods,’ said the Doctor, waving a strange wallet, snapping it shut and popping it in his inside jacket pocket. She hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant.
‘What I’m more concerned with,’ continued the Doctor, ‘is how to let the population of the Sunlight Worlds know that they’re being governed for some nefarious purpose by the most evil creatures in the known universe. Any ideas spring to mind? Hmm? Given that you work in a
news TV station
?’
‘What exactly are you suggesting?’ asked Lillian, taken aback, fearing the worst.
‘I’m suggesting you put me on the telly,’ said the Doctor. He switched on her camera again and angled it towards himself, swivelling so that he could also see himself in the holo-display pad she had next to her. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you think I’m holo-genic?’ He wiggled his chin and stroked it.
Lillian had found the Doctor exasperating almost from the moment she had met him. But now he was surpassing himself.
‘Doctor,’ she said in hushed tones, trying to indicate to him to keep his voice down. ‘The resistance—’
‘The Daleks shot them,’ said little Ollus.
‘Shot?’ Lillian felt a coldness inside her. ‘But …’
‘But nothing,’ said the Doctor. ‘We were there. We saw it.’
‘We met them underground, down some steps,’ explained Sabel. ‘There were five of them—’
‘Only five?’ asked Lillian.
‘All dressed the same, with funny faces and dark glasses,’ said Sabel.
‘Then the Daleks shot them,’ added Ollus.
‘Yes, I think she got that bit,’ said the Doctor. ‘
Shot
, as in,
just like those poor train drivers
. You remember
them? You remember, the reason you got involved with the resistance in the first place? Well, it’s time to step up to the plate, Lillian. I’m sure there are more than five resistance people out there, but clearly the Daleks are aware of them and willing to cut them down the moment they get too bold. Perhaps the moment
you
get too bold. So, before the Daleks come for you … What do you say? Wanna start a revolution?’
‘I …’ she started to say, but then her words froze inside her. Her thoughts were tumbling. She felt like her stomach was in free fall. All those paranoid feelings were being dragged into the cold light of day. Everything her parents had loved and been grateful for was going to be exposed as a terrible, cruel and ruthless lie.
‘I do,’ she said, realising in those words how true they were. ‘I do want to start a revolution. But how …?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor.
Lillian couldn’t think of one reason why she shouldn’t worry.
‘I’ve got a plan,’ the Doctor told her.
Two hours later, and the Doctor, Sabel and Ollus were in the central shopping mall of City Zone 004. This was the place where Lillian had first spotted the Doctor, where the Doctor had first come to fathom out what the Daleks were up to. He had taken Sabel and Ollus on a whistlestop tour of the Sunlight Worlds. They had seen on the scanner in the TARDIS that there were four hundred planets, all surrounded by artificial satellites. Some maintained gravity, some gave artificial sunlight. All of them, the Doctor pointed out, sustained life on a group
of planets that would otherwise have been lifeless and uninhabitable. But, for some reason, the Daleks were expending vast amounts of energy on sustaining these planets. The Doctor had asked why then, and he was still no closer to getting an answer.
What he
was
closer to, however, was fixing the channel setting of a holographic TV screen in this shopping mall. Sabel was once again indulging Ollus by playing spaceships with him. The Doctor paused for a moment, not for the first time admiring the resilience of these children, but worrying about the deep trauma that lay beneath the surface. That was the tragedy of the Daleks. They not only caused horrific catastrophes on a planetary scale, their actions burned right down into the personal lives of their victims.
He resumed his work on the screen. No one had seemed too bothered that he was waving his sonic screwdriver around it, although he did, at one point, have to present his psychic paper to a lone security patrol officer in order to prove that he was an ‘official maintenance operative’.
‘That’s it,’ said the Doctor, clicking the sonic screwdriver off and relaxing on a bench in front of the screen.
‘What’s it?’ asked Sabel, looking up from her game with Ollus, who was now clambering onto her back, yelling, ‘Stand by for landing!’ with holograms fizzing wildly from his toy.
‘I’ve managed to route all holographic screens throughout Sunlight 349 through this screen’s channel controls,’ said the Doctor proudly.
‘What about the other planets?’ asked Ollus, sliding off Sabel’s back and coming in to land on the pavement. ‘Ow,’ he added, as he bumped his nose.
‘Once this world is in uproar about the truth,’ said the Doctor, ‘I imagine it won’t take long for the news to spread.’
He wondered for a moment whether he had the right to destroy the peace and calm here. As far as he could tell, this whole generation of people who had lived under the benevolence of the Daleks was not really suffering in any way. There were no slave camps, no executions, no oppressive rules. Occasionally, it seemed, the Daleks would let their true natures show and someone would be killed, and that would be hushed up. But were the numbers of those killed really any higher than the murder rates in so-called civilised worlds? He doubted it.
Here he was again, though … Interfering. Making judgements about people’s lives. Doing the very thing he had vowed never to do again. Maybe he should just let this generation of humans sort out their problems for themselves …
But then, he thought about the Cradle of the Gods. The awesome power to create or destroy planets. How that part of the Dalek plan fitted in with these worlds, he had no idea. But he was certain the Cradle could only be a force for destruction. It must be, he thought. Why else would the Daleks want it so badly? And if the Daleks were intent on unleashing such a force, then he had no choice but to stop them.