Kinza [War Doctor/Ailla]

[Ailla]

They were turning away. Little by little, Ailla could feel that aura of hate passing by, far more noxious, far more poisonous than the murky swill in which she lay. She held on as long as she could, conserving the stale air in her lungs, relying on her respiratory bypass system to avoid passing out from lack of oxygen. At last, confident that the Daleks were at least no longer right alongside their hiding place, she raised her head, just enough so that her nose and mouth were above the level of the sludge, and gulped down a much-needed lungful of air. The air in this place could never be described as fresh – it was far too dank and rancid – but to Ailla, that gasp was one of the sweetest she had ever taken.

She could hear the flat, metallic voices of the Daleks, still not far away, but gradually receding.

"We must subjugate them! SUBJUGATE!"

"SUBJUGATE!" the first Dalek seemed to agree contentedly, and the humming of their movement faded away around the corner at the other end of the passageway.

We'll see about that, Ailla thought grimly. If WE have any say in it, you won't be subjugating ANYTHING, you vile tin cans!

A slight movement to her left caught her eye, and she realised her father had also risen to the surface. Not far away, Sarracenia was also emerging. Ailla's eyes narrowed. She had no idea what species the Warpsmith's thrall was, but she suspected the physical body was being pushed to the absolute limit. It had been difficult enough for the two Time Lords to remain under for that long, and that was with the advantage of their respiratory bypass systems. For any other species, it must have been agony.

Ailla still didn't like the arrangement, one being using the body of another. To her, it smacked as much of subjugation as anything the Daleks might be planning. But just for now, she had to accept it, however much it galled her.

Seeking to catch Sarracenia's eye, she tilted her head almost imperceptibly back the way the Daleks had come from, silently seeking direction for their next move.

[Deleted]

It seemed the Daleks had expanded their vocabulary slightly, he thought, as he heard them cry for subjugation. And not for the better. But they had not changed their methodology. They never seemed to learn that capturing, torturing and experimenting didn't yield the results they wanted for the very reason that those they captured would resist wherever they could, if they could, and if they could not, then the very acts they employed to to acquire their 'data' very often ruined their own 'subjects.' Once surfaced, he gratefully drank in the fetid air and glanced at the others to see if they were unharmed. The Daleks had passed for the moment, but much like Ailla, it seemed they would be needing to follow them to see what they were up to with their prisoners. He too quirked an eyebrow at the Warpsmith. Though he did not like to rely on her so much, his instinct told him much and he wanted to see if she agreed.

[Vansell]

It was clear that the two Time Lords expected to follow the Daleks next - but Sarracenia had other ideas.  She knew all too well what they were up to with their prisoners.  What was needed now was to get to the prisoners that the Daleks weren't currently up to anything with.  She met their eyes and gave a brief shake of her head, before turning to head up the passageway, in the direction the Daleks had come from, keeping low and close to the stream.

The going was deceptively easy now, for how dangerous their situation had become.  Daleks couldn't cope with narrow ways, tight corners and rough terrain, and so the band of intruders could make the most of the wide, smooth, well-maintained passages to make quick progress through the complex.  Daleks were quiet in their movements, but fortunately, the glistening damp on the walls reflected the glow of their eyestalks in a bright, distinctive warning of their approach.  Twice more, they were forced to slip into the channel and wait submerged for one to pass them by, as they made their way in a wide semicircle around the tunnel, and then down a ramp off one side, deeper into the earth and into another tunnel.

Here, the danger mounted still higher, as they were now without the protective sewer stream in which to conceal themselves.  They would have to rely on the crags in the rock, and the hefty supporting beams, if a Dalek approached.  Sarracenia was confident in the ability of her mottled cloak to conceal her against the rock wall if she pressed herself flat and remained as still as stone herself, and she could possibly hide the smaller of the two Time Lords with her; the larger would just have to hope and pray to whatever deities their kind believed in besides themselves.

Cautiously, she crept forwards, one shoulder against the wall.  She could see the door that they were aiming for at the end of the tunnel, just before the next corner - she could make out the sickly greenish-blue light spilling from the room beyond.

There was just one problem: the Dalek voices echoing from within.

[Ailla]

Ailla passionately wished she had a stasar. To send her deep into the enemy territory without a single weapon seemed like a suicide mission. Sadly, since her confrontation with Sentris, she had become so disillusioned with the CIA that she felt not even the slightest ripple of surprise.

Her father also showed no sign of being armed. She thought back to her first meeting with him, so long ago now in terms of linear time, back when he still called himself the Doctor. Even then, she couldn't remember him ever playing the role of an aggressor. Inelegant and scruffy in appearance, he'd played the clown, tooting on his recorder and pretending to be a bumbling fool, to catch his enemies off guard. There was no hint of the clown about him now. He was full of self-doubt and self-loathing. The one who broke the promise of his name. The war had changed him, made him less than what he had been in his own eyes. She could sense the anger and rage pent up inside him, like pooling lava inside a volcano, even though none of it showed in his face or his brusque manner. It made her grieve for him, and for the things he must have seen and done, to make him riddled with so much guilt and sadness and regret.

They'd lost so many chances together. She couldn't help reflecting on it, even as she noiselessly followed Sarracenia away from the filthy channel and down into an even deeper tunnel. Firstly, when the CIA had stolen her from the loom, and again, when she had met him on Darkheart and hadn't understood who he was. She knew her mind should be fully on the mission at hand. Her life, and perhaps the lives of her companions, depended on her remaining focused. But it wasn't easy. She kept wondering what her life would have been like, if he had raised her, instead of the CIA. What would have been different, what would have remained the same. Perhaps they could have fought side by side, or travelled the universe together. Perhaps she could have done something to assuage the deep loneliness she could sense inside him, perhaps he could have filled the hole that had always gaped in her soul. The past was lost to them now... but the future, they could still have that. After this mission, after the War. They could make up for lost time, rebuild a relationship as father and daughter. All they had to do was to survive, and things would be better, she swore it, for both of them.

For the first time since she'd lost Koschei, she felt a kernel of hope, burning like a bright little ember in the ashes of her hearts. Hold on, she told herself, hold on and just get this thing done.  Gritting her teeth in determination, she followed the Warpsmith, her eyes on the door ahead, at the end of the corridor, which they were clearly aiming for. 

Was that where the Gyns'abu were being held? There were Dalek voices inside. Pausing briefly, Ailla sent her senses questing ahead, searching to uncover whatever information she could. If the Gyns'abu were inside that room with the Daleks, and they were capable of communicating in empathic thought forms, as the CIA believed, it was possible she could start some sort of dialogue before they ever had to go through that ominous-looking door.

At the very least, it was worth a try.

[Deleted]

She met their eyes and gave a brief shake of her head, before turning to head up the passageway, in the direction the Daleks had come from, keeping low and close to the stream...She could see the door that they were aiming for at the end of the tunnel, just before the next corner - she could make out the sickly greenish-blue light spilling from the room beyond.

There was just one problem: the Dalek voices echoing from within.

He turned and glanced to Ailla and then forged on after the Warpsmith. All around them, efficient Dalek 'architecture.' But that only meant higher chance to run into the Daleks. They were lucky enough twice they were able to evade them with a similar trick as previously. But eventually they headed away from the channel and there were even fewer protections to be had. The tinny, malignant voices ahead heralded trouble.  He automatically scowled as he heard them, but instead of giving up he glanced around for something to use as a distraction. There wasn't much. He glanced at Ailla and the Warpsmith, pointed at her cloak and at his daughter. At least they could hide, as for himself...well, he rather didn't want to set off the alarms so soon. But he could affect a retreat, leave them a trail to follow that was just enough to get them to follow him, but not enough to sound the general alarm. A hollow footstep for them to pursue, and he could hide while they explored the room. Doorbell dash with the Daleks. There had to be a better option...

[Vansell]

There were certainly empathic forms on the other side of that door. Close ones, too - and lots of them. Dozens, perhaps even a hundred or so.

But they were like nothing Ailla would ever have sensed before. They were muted, truncated - as though whole, vital parts of their own experiencing of the world were absent, rendering them incomplete in some unnatural way. Worse still, they felt that lack, too. They knew what they were missing, and their pained confusion permeated the air, along with a sense of being trapped.

A few of them seemed to sense Ailla's tentative empathic brushing past, and stirred, reaching back in desperation and hope. Not empathically - psychically - but it was impossible to tell what they were trying to communicate, or even the species.

Meanwhile, Sarracenia nodded brief affirmation to the Time Lord's gesture, and took a step towards the Time Lady. He wanted her to hide his accomplice under her cloak. Perhaps he had something in mind.

Whatever it was, Sarracenia felt no obligation to contribute to concocting a plan. She had done her part, guiding them this far. This wasn't her insane mission.

[Ailla]

Meanwhile, Sarracenia nodded brief affirmation to the Time Lord's gesture, and took a step towards the Time Lady. He wanted her to hide his accomplice under her cloak. Perhaps he had something in mind.

Ailla was so distracted by the suffering emanating from the room ahead, she completely missed the by-play between her two companions. Trembling, she raised her fingertips to her temples, wanting to reach out to the anguished souls within, wanting to soothe them, but not knowing how.

The next thing she realised, Sarracenia was enveloping her in the camouflage cloak. Since Ailla was so small, the garment was easily large enough to cover them both, effectively concealing them from view against the wall of the tunnel.

The Time Lady's first instinct was to struggle for freedom, to strike out against Sarracenia's grasp. The musky darkness beneath the cloak was claustrophobic, the lack of air stifling. She still didn't trust the Warpsmith, and being this close to the woman made her skin crawl.

But even as she poised herself to fight back, she sensed her father moving purposefully towards the door, and she realised this was all part of some plan of his. With a supreme effort of will, she held her breath and forced herself to be still, just as she had when they had lain in the foul drainage ditch. Her eyes were tightly closed, her small body rigid against the taller Warpsmith, as she strove to ignore the psychic cries of distress coming from beyond the wall they were pressed against.

[Deleted]

If it was one thing that he knew about Daleks, is that they hated. They hated with every fiber left in their mutated bodies. They hated him most especially but he didn't want them to alert the entire facility, which is what they would do if they were sure it was him. If he could lure one of them out as bait though...It wasn't a very safe prospect, but he had now a relatively good idea of the area they'd just covered. Once he was sure that his daughter was hidden with the Warpsmith, he slunk forward and put his ear close to the hatchway. There was again a staccato sound of Dalek voices, muffled, along with the hum of the walls. He thought there were at least two of them in there. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and made a few adjustments to set a sequence of presets: checking the alarms to see if he could good old setting 85 to override the door lock in the event they needed to out quickly and then to create a sonic field. He depressed the on button; the sonic's red light flared into life as it gave a brief whine and then deeper buzz as he pointed it at his boots. The Time Lord then proceeded to walk backwards down the hall, his footfalls sounding louder than they should, echoing oddly around the chamber. By the time he was well on his way towards the T-juncture again, he heard the doorhatch began to swish open - he hoped it would emit a curiously irritable Dalek.

[Vansell]

Mad. Completely mad. Insane.

Through a sliver of light between her cloak and the wall, Sarracenia watched as the Time Lord approached the door and activated a device, to...make his footsteps louder? Her empathic field, generally as flat and still as the surface of a calm lake, now rippled with incredulity. As if wanting to break into a Dalek base wasn't enough. These two were bold. Whatever they wanted here, it must be indescribably valuable to Gallifrey.

The Time Lord backed away down the corridor; Sarracenia and the Time Lady remained where they were, completely motionless. The Time Lady was huddled close, but Sarracenia wasn't uncomfortable. Her thrall was not her self - although consciously, she could feel that other form pressed against her own, on an emotional level it registered as little more than watching two other beings making physical contact.

From the sickly green light of the doorway, a bulky shape emerged, the pallor at its back gleaming off the metallic hemispheres on its body. The Dalek paused, swinging its eyestalk to one side and then the other, searching the apparently empty corridor.

"Why do you not exterminate the intruder?" came another Dalek voice, from behind it.

"No intruder in visual range!" the first replied. A shadow was cast across its back, and the second joined it, to also swivel its eyestalk, scanning the corridor.

"No intruder present," the second concluded, after a few tense seconds. "Suggest malfunction of your auditory circuits."

"My auditory circuits are functioning at 100% efficiency!" the first protested. "Seek and exterminate the intruder!"

This seemed to appeal to the second Dalek. "Seek and exterminate!" it agreed, and the two emerged fully from the doorway, to set off down the corridor, in the direction that the first had detected the Time Lord's receding footsteps.

Now there was fear in Sarracenia's empathic field - fear and cold memory, as the creatures passed less than an arm's reach away from her and Ailla where they huddled against the wall, but her breathing remained almost undetectable, she didn't move a muscle, and even her pulse maintained a steady rate.

Finally, they vanished around the corner, and Sarracenia turned her head, shifting the cloak a little to eye the doorway. She was in two minds about whether to go with the Time Lady. These two were treading perilous ground, walking straight into the mouth of mortal peril - for all she knew, they could be on a suicide mission, in which case by their side would be one of the most dangerous places to be. Which, considering their surroundings, was saying something.

[Ailla]

Ailla's empathic defences were already at maximum strength, a fact she was extremely grateful for, as the Daleks swept past without pause and glided further up the corridor. She'd come across many things while travelling with Koschei – things that had amazed, delighted and frightened her, in equal measure. He'd taken pleasure in revealing the universe to her in all its unending glory and terror, acting as her mentor, guide, teacher and lover. But in all that time, she had never once encountered anything quite so loathsome as a Dalek. In every creature, there was usually a balance of good and evil. Even the very worst being possessed some sort of redeeming feature, someone or something they loved, a cause they believed in, a skein of loyalty or honour, no matter how twisted or skewed. But not the Daleks. In them, there was nothing but everlasting hate. If she had not now experienced it for herself, Ailla would not have believed it, but it was so. Having them pass so very close to her was such a nauseating experience for her, even with her shields so high, that she had to summon every vestige of her self-control to keep from vomiting.

At last, however, they were gone, their harsh, metallic voices ebbing away as they pursued the Doctor up the corridor and around the corner, out of sight. Only then did Sarracenia move, turning her head and lowering the cloak. Only then did Ailla dare to breathe. Her father was in extreme danger now, but she could only pray that he was canny enough to get himself out of it. There was nothing she could do to help him.

Pulling herself together, the young Time Lady re-focused her mind on the mission. The mission was everything. The CIA mantra had been bred into her very bones and could not be ignored.

“Come on,” she said curtly to the Warpsmith, sensing the other woman's hesitation. “You can't stay out here, another patrol might come past. He's given us a chance and we can't waste it. We won't have long.”

With that, she hastened towards the door without a single backwards glance, and disappeared inside.

[Deleted]

Tinny, hatred-tinged voices echoed down the corridors. At least two Daleks arguing back and forth. It was more than he could hope for that they would escalate their bickering to the bitter end, not while they still had someone else to find and kill. He put the sonic away as he hurried away down the corridors. It was a risk; any moment there could be yet more Daleks on a patrol sweep or at some other task. He had to give the pair a chance to get inside without them turning back and losing interest. He needed another distraction, and soon. There had to be something he could use to grab their attention and fixate it in place for a few moments. As hoped, the Daleks followed his fake trail and forwent his backtracked one. Now, he ought to be able to lead them through here and back up again with the same trick. He had no idea how long he could keep such a merry chase up before being caught out, but if he was lucky enough some idea would cross his mind as he scanned the corridors for something he could use. He was wary of pulling the plug on the whole operation - who knew what they were connected to, life supports perhaps - but he was not above making use of his environment to his advantage.

[Vansell]

Through the door, the source of the sickly green light quickly became horribly obvious.

The laboratory was a long, rectangular room stretching out before them. With walls, floor and ceiling all in sheets of riveted steel, it had the appearance of the cleanest, most sterile part of the Dalek base that they had seen so far. Down the centre of the room, a row of cylinders stretched from floor to ceiling - glass cylinders, filled with green, cloudy, phosphorescent fluid.

And floating in the fluid, figures became visible as the two intruders drew closer. Eyes closed, faces slack, entirely motionless, a Time Lord in each cylinder, surrounded by little clouds of bubbles that rushed past as their chests rose and fell in slow, shallow breaths, apparently inhaling and exhaling the bubbly fluid.

There were perhaps a dozen of these cylinders, and steel workbenches down each side of the row. A gap wide enough to allow two Daleks to pass separated these benches from another row of benches on each side, and then there were the walls.

It was from there that the numerous empathic forms that Ailla had earlier detected came from - along with more of the pale green light, this time not from whole cylinders, but from jars on shelves, in glass cabinets. Jars containing each a single, disembodied brain, with wires running into the severed ends of the brainstem and cranial nerves, and electrodes dotted across the hemispheres.

And unlike the whole Time Lords in the cylinders, who slept, the brains were very much conscious.

At Ailla’s back, Sarracenia’s face was still mostly concealed by her cloth bandanna, but her eyes remained impassive as ever. She had been expecting something of this sort, and none of it was new to her. On silent feet, she followed the Time Lady through the door, still listening warily behind them.

[Ailla]

The Elite agents were taught to be inured to shock. Training exercise after training exercise, from the moment they were old enough to walk, and in some cases even earlier than that, as harsh and as ruthless as had been deemed necessary - all formulated to honing the developing childish minds to reject any reaction that was detrimental to achieving their mission goals.

But despite the severity of her conditioning, Ailla took one look at what was inside that room, and her face lost every vestige of colour it had ever possessed, leaving her cheeks ashen. Trembling, she took one uncertain step towards the row of transparent cylinders, and then another, until she could reach out and brush her fingers against the glass.

“Oh, sweet Rassilon,” she murmured, her eyes bright with appalled tears. “Luaris!”

Wrenching herself away, she dashed to the next cylinder and the next, peering in at the slack, empty faces. “Síochant! Brón!”

Then she saw the wall of bottled brains, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to contain her rising bile, before whirling back to Sarracenia, her body stiff with horror and revulsion. “These aren't Gyns'abu!” she gritted out. “They're Time Lords! And not just any Time Lords... they're CIA Elite! What the hell is going on here?”

[Deleted]

He quickly moved aside a sluice cap in the floor. It was sunken, but if he flipped it over, it protruded somewhat above the lip of the floor. He could hear below swishing, gurgling sounds. He was not sure if it were worse than what they'd climbed through, but likely it was part of the system that flushed water and other exreta into the water they'd  hid in not far from where they were now. It smelled fetid and foul and that was about what he expected and wanted. A quick reading on the components of the gas read several that were flammable and quite enough to make him wonder why it had not spontaneously combusted on its own accord. Enough to cause a distraction, at any rate which was what he was going for and not set the entire underground on fire or cause a huge explosion. That would be overkill. The others needed a bit more time and with a bit of ingenuity, he was going to get it for them. He moved back several paces, used the sonic to draw the sound of his footfalls again, and then changed the setting. Not one he used very often, the 'candle lighter' - essentially sonic friction. In a similar fashion, he was attempting to excite the gasses near the sluice cap and ignite them into luminescent gases - will of the wisps. A bit of ignis fatuus set by a foolish man...

[Vansell]

The names meant nothing to Sarracenia. Nor did the term "CIA Elite", although somehow she got the sense that it didn't simply mean the higher-ranked bureaucrats of the Time Lord CIA that she knew of.

However, there was no mistaking the reaction of the young Time Lady to this revelation. The way she paled, hands flying to her mouth, eyes wide with horror, that tremor in her voice.

"These aren't Gyns'abu!” she gritted out. “They're Time Lords! And not just any Time Lords... they're CIA Elite! What the hell is going on here?"

The Warpsmiths of Phaidon weren't naturally endowed with much in the way of empathy, as a general rule. An evolutionary necessity - it wouldn't do to start /feeling/ too much for their thralls. So it was with her usual detached, expressionless tone that she answered.

"No, they are not the Gyns'abu. This is a secondary laboratory. This way." And turning on the spot, she began to walk in a steady, straight line down the length of the laboratory, past the cylinders and with their grisly contents, towards the door at the back.

"I do not know of your 'CIA Elite'. Do they have a property in common with the Gyns'abu that would make them of interest to the research here? There will be a positive control and a negative control for the main experiments."

Through the door at the back of the laboratory, a wide corridor - just as pristine and steel-plated as the laboratory itself - sloped down, a gentle curve to its walls. It spiralled down, deeper into the planet, and impossible to tell the depth from where Ailla and Sarracenia stood - the Dalek equivalent of a staircase.

This, Sarracenia recognized, presented a new difficulty. The curvature meant that they could only see a very short distance ahead - there would be no way of knowing if a Dalek was approaching in the opposite direction. And in the featureless corridor, there would be no chance of hiding.