Reign of the World

Chapter 11

Mr. Kelly blinked, looking rather startled.  "Wait, what do you mean?  What are Daleks?" He furrowed his brows, concern and anxiety mounting in his voice.  "Are they going to kill all of us?"

Rose and the Doctor shushed Mr. Kelly simultaneously, and he clamped his mouth shut, looking ashamed.  Tiffany just stood with her mouth open, staring at the opened door. 

"Let's go," the Doctor nodded towards the door  "We'll go in and figure out what's going on.  Tiffany, Mr. Kelly, you'd be better off going back.  Honestly.  Leave this to the professionals." He took a step towards the door and turned back as an afterthought.  "That's me and Rose."

"No!" Tiffany stepped forward, and Rose could tell she was trying to look brave for the Doctor.  She and the Doctor both rolled their eyes. 

"Fine, whatever," the Doctor said, sounding exasperated.  "Just don't get in our way.  Understand?"

"Got it," Mr. Kelly nodded firmly.  "We want to help."

"I'll bet you do," the Doctor muttered, grabbing Rose's hand again and pulling her into the ship. 

Rose had never been in a Dalek ship, and she'd eliminated the race.  Or, at least, she thought she had.  There were parts of being the Bad Wolf that she didn't remember.   'Parts' being most of it.  She didn't remember the last bit, and though she knew she'd seen everything that time had to offer, she lost most of it.  There were flashes though, of what shouldn't have been memories.  But they felt like them.

"I-" Rose began, then clamped her mouth shut.

"What is it?" The Doctor asked quietly as they crept through the first tunnel, his eyes flicking over to her but not remaining, scanning every door and crevice as they passed it.

"I..." She lowered her voice to a whisper.  "I killed the Daleks.  All of them, this ship... It shouldn't exist.  I erased their existence."

The Doctor nodded.  "You did.   And that should've done it.  I don't know what happened, but it's something.  There's no way they could come back all by themselves."

"So everything I did was for nothing?" She asked, her voice sounding hopeless and small.  "I committed genocide.  For nothing."

"It wasn't for nothing," the Doctor responded, his grip tightening on her hand.  "You saved the both of us.  You saved so many people."

Rose fell silent, not being able to help the feeling of being useless, like everything she had done had been in vain.  But instead of saying so she gave the Doctor's hand a little squeeze as they headed onwards.

The hallway was seemingly endless, long, and sterile.  Everything seemed to be made of dark metal but the Doctor wasn't intent on trying any of the doors.  He wanted to get into the middle of the ship, to find what was in the center.  Rose knew from experience that he was going to dive right in a question the Daleks themselves.

They both knew that no matter what form the Doctor held, the Daleks would remember him, but quite frankly, Rose wished they would just realize the error of their ways already because it was all getting very old.  They kept coming back, never died, but the Doctor always lost people.  She found that she found it incredibly unfair.

Their footsteps were nearly silent, but Rose could hear the two behind them and cringed with every footfall that made a sound.  They didn't know how long they could sneak, how far they could go without something or someone picking them up on a radar or camera. 

The quiet was deafening, and the Doctor had the distinct feeling that the Daleks already knew they were there.  After all, this had clearly been a setup, and any pretending they'd done at avoiding that had been just that; pretending. 

His suspicions were proved correct when something fell from the ceiling, effectively knocking both Mr. Kelly and Rose out in one blow.  He had been standing right behind her and was therefore taken down with her. 

The Doctor ducked and caught Rose in his arms as she fell, and Tiffany uttered a very loud gasp.  The Doctor shushed her, not because he thought it would help, but just sort of because he wanted to. Then something fell on top of him and Tiffany and they were knocked out as well. 

***

When Rose woke up, she was in what was, very clearly, the floor of a prison cell, and her head ached.  It took her a moment to be able to open her eyes against the harsh white light, but once she could all she saw was Mr. Kelly on his back about six feet away from her, and nothing else in the room. 

She stood up and walked shakily to the bars at the front of the cell closing her and Mr. Kelly in.  The Doctor and Tiffany were nowhere to be found, which made gooseflesh prickle her skin.  "Hey!" she shouted, no longer concerned with being quiet, banging against the bars with her palms.  "Where are the people we came in with?!  I demand someone to answer me!"

The quiet whirring was the only notion she had that someone was coming, and once she heard it she quieted down, waiting for someone to approach her.  A Dalek rolled around the corner and in front of her cell and stood before it.  Rose pulled up to her full height, making herself taller than it, and heard a scream come from next to her in the cell.  So Mr. Kelly was awake. 

"Silence, prisoner," The Dalek screeched, and it was all Rose could do to keep herself from flinching at the sound. 

"No," Rose reported.  "Not until you tell me what happened to the people I came with.  Where are they?"

"They are imprisoned, just like you," the Dalek continued.  "You will not see them.  State your name."

Now here was the moment Rose had been waiting for.  She leaned forward, pressing her face between the bars and staring right into the Dalek's eyestalk.  "You must've heard of me," she said.  "Oh, don't you know just by looking?  Rose Tyler.  The Bad Wolf."

If Rose had thought the screeching had been bad before, it was worse now, the Dalek screaming "What?" over and over again.  It suddenly stated calling out "The Bad Wolf has returned!" and with that her ears were filled with the angered screams of other Daleks, sounding angry, but Rose refused to back down.  This was it.  She had to prove that she was strong enough to handle the assault on her ears.

She turned to look at Mr. Kelly and saw him sitting on the floor, a grimace on his face and covering his ears. 

"Where are they?!" Rose shouted over the mayhem.  "Let us go!"

But she wasn't heard over the Dalek's screams of anger.