The Mind of The Daleks

Chapter 25: Escape

Isabel gasped in a choked breath and blinked her eyes open to a real, physical world. She was hunched up against the cold metal of a computer with a low lever pressed hard into her back as if it had been forced there. She still tightly grasped the two wires that the Doctor had handed her, and he had just removed the tape and the third wire from her forehead. He straightened up and went over to a switchboard to rapidly manipulate a few controls.

"What – what happened?" Isabel said weakly, struggling to rise.

"How do you feel?" the Doctor asked over his shoulder.

"Like I've been through hell," Isabel groaned, looking around. It was almost completely silent, the machinery functioned at its normal pitch and there was no sign of the Daleks or their workers. "How long - how long...?"

"Almost forty-five seconds," he answered, glancing at a watch which he pulled out of his shirt pocket. "We haven't any time. Quick – we must leave now!"

Isabel, still woozy in the real world after the fake world of cold, hard insubstantialities, was finding it hard enough to stand up straight let alone contemplate running. The Doctor put a gentle supporting hand under her elbow and quickly led the way around several corners, looking over his shoulder all the time. There seemed to be nothing to warrant his anxiety – everything was perfectly calm and normal.

"Wait – that couldn't have been just forty-five seconds," objected Isabel suddenly. The pieces were starting to fall together.

"Oh, but it was, though," the Doctor said, pulling her along impatiently.

Isabel stumbled around a computer and then looked at it hard with the bizarre sensation of knowing exactly what its function was. "Doctor..."

A Roboman came around the corner just behind them at that moment at a steady pace as if nothing out of the ordinary had been happening. He looked at them in surprise and then shouted, "Halt!"

"Oh dear!" the Doctor exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder. "When I say run-!"

A Daleks hovered upward into view on an elevator platform three yards away from where they stood.

"Run!" cried the Doctor.

They turned around and ran at top speed toward the front of the building, pursued closely. And then suddenly they reached the edge of the complex structure of the Daleks' headquarters. There was nothing ahead but a two story drop to the ground below.

"There it is!" said the Doctor, pointing to the right where the office door hovered in the middle of the warehouse wall.

He ran, almost dragging Isabel, along the plastic floor until they stood opposite the door and the little platform in front of it, a few feet higher than they were. Between them and it were two yards of nothingness.

"Well, there's nothing for it," the Doctor said after a second. He let go of Isabel's arm and stepped back, then took a flying leap across the distance.

Isabel yelped in shock.

But he made it, grabbed the edge of the platform with a hand and most of one arm. In a moment, he had scrambled up, and then turned expectantly to Isabel.

"I can't-" she began, but then looked back. The Roboman was almost on her.

Isabel took a deep breath and stepped backward for a good running start. She wished that she had taken high-jumping in high school, and then began.

A short spurt of running and then push off! For a millisecond she was in the air, calculating the exact trajectory and distance. Then she felt the cold metal of the platform with one hand while the Doctor clutched at the other.

With a distracted word of congratulation, he quickly hauled her up and turned to throw open the door. They jumped together through into the dark dormitory and slammed the door shut behind them.

It was still empty and silent. The Doctor took the hallway at a run and Isabel, her brain and body starting to kick in with the added impetus of adrenalin, was right behind him. The front office was deserted, too, except for the growing cache of corpses behind the receptionist's desk. They made it to the glass door and slipped outside.

The Doctor paused momentarily to nod approvingly at Isabel's arrangements with the dalekanium. But Isabel was more concerned with just getting away. She headed straight for the steps, scanning the parking lot for danger that might not be all behind them.

"Come on!" shouted the Doctor as if he hadn't been the one dawdling, and clattered down the steps. "And if you don't object, I think I should drive!"

Isabel tossed him the keys.

He exclaimed and glanced at his pocket watch. The remaining distance to the car he crossed at a sprint and ducked down behind the trunk, pressing his hands to his head and shouting to Isabel, "You had better cover your ears!"

Isabel crouched down beside him and plugged her ears, just in time. With a deep rumble that shook the ground and rattled the dry leaves in the branches of the tree overhead, all the dalekanium set against the doorposts simultaneously exploded, shooting flames into the night sky. But then the blast collapsed in on itself and into the building and, with a brief flash and a prolonged shake that rattled the teeth, it vanished.

With a pleased smile, the Doctor slowly took his hands off his ears and clasped them together.

"Oh!" Isabel said with slow realization. "You detonated it with a timed radio signal, sent from the Dalek apparatus itself!"

"Yes," he grinned, jubilant. "Rather clever, I thought."

"'Frequency 59.2 / .00031,'" repeated Isabel, and then looked hard at the Doctor. "Couldn't you have set it up without me?"

"Not after the controller died." The Doctor returned her gaze steadily. "Come on, it's time to leave."

They got into the car and the Doctor maneuvered it out of the parking lot without another word. Isabel turned to give the building one last look before they drove around the semi that would finally block it from view. It was as deceptively still as ever, the last gray curls of smoke drifting away into the purple and gold city night sky. 

And then it was gone from sight.