The Closing of Doors

Part Two

"Do you know who this is, Camille?" Cai looked at the girl briefly, his voice a quiet yet intimidating electronic purr, and then his eyestalk swiveled to glare at the prisoner as though intently.

"N-no, I don't think I do, Cai," Camille responded, shifting her weight to one of her legs, Cai's intensity regrettably making her nervous. She took a moment to brush her fingers through the frontmost spike of her short, gelled copper hair.

"This," the lights atop of Cai's bronze dome sparked to life, his voice lowered, "is the Command Dalek of the Grand One Hundred Sixteenth Dual-Force Brigade." He paused as Camille clucked her tongue in understanding. Then, he continued, "This Dalek was only a single rank above me, until the brief period when I was designated the Strategist of the Dalek Empire. Regardless of rank, however, I was still somehow under his direction."

Camille stared at the silent Command Dalek, her brows furrowed with new concern.

"Unit ZX4984... How goes the Brigade?" Cai asked, eerily human-like, shifting forwards to face the Dalek. The black Dalek followed him with his eyestalk but remained silent. "You need a name," Cai decided, turning around and gliding in the opposite direction.

"No," the Commander finally protested, its voice a high-pitched grating screech, "Daleks do not have names!"

"Silence!" Cai shouted angrily, cycling to the left. Camille flinched at his polar change in tone; sometimes, it was easy to forget Cai was originally, despite everything, a Dalek. "I am giving you a name," his voice returned to his normal tone, somewhere lost between human and Dalek, "Unit numbers are tedious and redundant." It only took him a second to decide. "You were a bitter ally to me," he spoke, his voice dropping low again, "Therefore, I will signify that the tables have turned and switch up the order of the letters. I will refer to you as Ayl. Is this understood?"

"Aren't you poetic," Camille muttered to her partner as she fiddled with her gun, "How long did you spend on that one?"

Cai was quite relieved to hear his companion's playful banter, and his gratitude was portrayed to Camille through their empathic bond, but he didn't feel it necessary to respond. "Ayl," he continued, "I know Brigade 116 has failed nearly every task since my departure."

"How...!" the prisoner squawked. His eyestalk twitched awkwardly, breaking his eye contact with Cai; Camille interpreted this as the Dalek immediately regretting breaking his silence.

"I have been watching the pass of the Path Web, silently observing the trail of the Daleks," Cai stared in a cold manner at the black-plated commander, "I have maintained a contained time corridor so as to receive information from this time period."

"You will be exterminated for that," the Command Dalek grated in strife.

"I would be exterminated anyway, but I am not."

"You will be!"

"Negative."

"Explain!"

"I always outsmart you."

Nothing but silence came from the Command Dalek after this.