Rose had expected there to be Daleks everywhere, but there wasn’t. She knew that many thousands of them were down on the planet surface, assaulting the populace whilst searching for the Doctor and his daughter, which might go some way to explain the stillness onboard, but still - this seemed unnatural.

She almost rebuked herself for her gullibility, though, as the Doctor led her and Jack into the main chamber of the ship, the place where this blasted adventure had begun, and she beheld swarms of Daleks everywhere in sight, crowding round their almighty Emperor.

“Shit,” she gasped, summing up the moment for everyone as they peered over the ledge and stared down at the scene, finding themselves high up, on an upper level, which bordered the chamber.

Things only got worse when they all spied at the same moment the Doctor’s familiar blue box, stood alone amidst the sea of Dalek shells, its head peering just above the surface as if it were striving not to drown.

“There’s the TARDIS!” Rose exclaimed in a loud whisper, pointing at it from their vantage point.

The Doctor gently pushed her arm down and nodded. “Yes, I can see her,” he said, though his eyes continued to trace every nook and cranny of the room, as if he were still looking for something. And he was.

Jack heaved a deep sigh and turned back to the party, looking edgy. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he murmured.

The Doctor’s brow rose as he gave Jack the ‘no shit, Sherlock’ look. “Thanks for that expert analysis of the situation, Captain. Now, can we focus, please.”

“How did Hope do this?” Rose muttered, rubbing her hands together over and over again in what could only be a nervous gesture. “How did she fly the TARDIS up here? How did she know what she was doing? How did she even get in? How --?”

She silenced as the Doctor’s hand slid gently over her mouth and he stared deeply into her brown eyes, urging her to calm down with his serene, azure gaze. “It doesn’t matter,” he insisted quietly, his hand moving round to stroke her cheek, “not right now.”

Rose swallowed and nodded. He was right, of course.

They all turned back to look upon the scenario once again and now attempted to arrive at some possible conclusion as to what to do. There was a clear pathway down from their level onto the lower floor, but this still left quite a distance between them and the TARDIS, stood in the Emperor’s shadow. And this distance was filled every inch of the way with Dalek soldiers.

“Anyone got a grenade?” Jack asked.

The Doctor gave him a sideward glance. “I vote we throw you down there.”

Jack looked mildly offended. “Why, thanks, Doc’ - but I’ll only roll down if you roll with me.”

“Hands off,” Rose intervened, before they all reverted to a more serious state of mind; but all possibility of thinking coherently was cast aside as the TARDIS doors opened and a little girl stepped out of the door…

The Doctor, Rose and Jack all gaped down in horror as Hope stood there, outside of the TARDIS, in the shadow of the Dalek Emperor and surrounded by hundreds of attentive Daleks.

This wasn’t even the worst of it, though, for her entire person seemed to be glowing…

“What’s she done?” the Doctor blurted out in shock, his emotions straddling the line between anger and frenzy. “What the Hell’s she gone and done?”

Rose and Jack said nothing, though, for they were just utterly captivated by the form of this little goddess as she made a stand against a creature that claimed to be ‘the God of all Daleks’.

The Dalek Emperor, meanwhile, was studying Hope meticulously, absorbing the fact that, though this wasn’t the Doctor, the only man he ever expected to have the daring to fly straight into his grasps for a second time, this was something potentially greater.

“My brethren,” he announced at length, his voice booming through the chamber like a clout of thunder. “Our search is over. Victory has walked into our hands in the form of this child. And this child shall in turn beget our future generations - our master race!”

The crowd of Daleks made a noise which must have been akin to cheering, but it was such a terrible, grating sound, that the Doctor and his companions had to cover their ears.

It was as this cheer subsided, and the Emperor continued to waffle on about his glorious future, that a sudden look of horror fell over the Doctor’s features like a cloud passing over the sun; all the pieces of the jigsaw had suddenly fallen into place, and he now realised exactly what the Emperor had in mind.

“What is it?” Rose asked, reading his expression as if it had been words on a page.

He looked at her, his eyes wide and glassy. “The biomass of a Time Lord,” he murmured. “They’ve realised what they need now, what they should have thought of in the first place.” A terrible rage surged through his body and, with a growl at his own ineptitude, he flung a fist into the nearest wall. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” he cursed, “They don’t just want to kill us, they want to breed a race of Daleks from the genes of the Time Lords! Just imagine the consequences if they succeed…”

“But how will that make them stronger?” Jack challenged.

“Yes, Doctor,” Rose agreed. “How?”

The Doctor looked between them, then at Rose in particular. “Think back to Utah, beneath the desert. What brought that Dalek back to life, Rose?”

Rose involuntarily flexed her fingers and looked at her palm. “My touch…”

The ensuing silence hung heavily in the air as Rose slowly came into sync with the Doctor’s wavelength. “The biomass of a time traveller,” she finally whispered.

The Doctor nodded. “Yup. Now think of the biomass of a Time Lord. Think of the potential. Time has been in our blood since Omega left the pathways open to us centuries ago.”

“Look Doc’, I’ve been thinking,” Jack intervened. “You said these Daleks get time sick, and all that jazz, but didn’t you fight them in a Time War? Didn’t they travel through time before?”

“Yeah. They did. They were very good at it once, but they messed up, and then lost all their stock in the war. Don’t you remember what the Emperor said? That they’ve rebuilt their numbers by using human cells? And humans don’t travel through time, as a general rule.”

“But I’m fine,” Rose said. “I’ve always been fine.”

“You’re a full human. They’re nurtured their new generations of Daleks from a single one of your cells. There’s a difference. They haven’t had the time to refine their techniques. They’ve done the best they can with what resources they have, and in as little time as possible, but it hasn’t been enough. Think about your genetic experiments in the twentieth century, and how weak your clones were.”

Rose frowned. “What, like Dolly the Sheep?”

Jack stifled a laugh despite the moment. The Doctor glared at him. “Sorry,” he murmured.

The Doctor ignored him and continued. “So what if the Daleks incorporate the cells of their greatest enemies into their breeding programme? Maybe, just maybe they’ll return to their former glory - just maybe they’ll have the key to domination of the universe. Perhaps they’ll get time travel right.”

Rose shook her head. “From just two of you? How will they do it?”

The Doctor looked at her hard. “They’ll pulp, sift and mutilate our bodies until they have the material they need to breed another generation of efficient, time-travelling Daleks.”

Jack looked so wound up by this that he was likely to snap at any second. “That’s sick,” he snarled. “Why would they want to use you, anyway? You’re the enemy.”

“It’s as much about revenge as anything else,” the Doctor murmured.

“Then let’s save the poor kid and blow these jerks to kingdom come.”

“No,” the Doctor stated without question, looking down over the ledge toward the inert form of his child. “We can’t just barge in.”

“Well I hate to say it,” Jack countered, gun at the ready, “but we don’t have many cards left to play right now.”

The Doctor’s lips tightened and he glowered at the man. “When will you learn to trust me?”

Jack cocked an eyebrow. “How about when you learn to trust me?”

“Enough,” Rose hissed. “This isn’t helping! We’re wasting time!”

“Ironic, that,” Jack murmured.

“That’s my daughter out there,” the Doctor growled. “Do you really think I’m going to be any less eager than you to save her?”

Jack glared back, but opted not to respond. It was all too clear that the situation was getting to everyone, and he wasn’t interested in taking things any further, so he simply rolled back his shoulders and resigned himself to defeat.

The Doctor nodded at this. “Exactly,” he barked. “So shut up and listen.”

“Doctor!”

He turned at Rose’s cry, and his eyes transfixed themselves on Hope once again.

“What’s happening?” Rose asked.

The Doctor wasn’t entirely sure, and he leant forward to get a better look as Hope walked slowly across the floor, carrying herself with all the confidence and self-conviction of a queen, and made her way toward the Emperor. Her whole person seemed to smoulder with an unearthly fire, a fire which the Doctor knew only his TARDIS could have bestowed upon her.

“What’s wrong with her?” Rose asked desperately, grabbing his arm and giving it an urgent shake. “Doctor, please tell me!”

“She’s looked into the Time Vortex,” he explained, eyes refusing to leave the vision of his child, powerful and half-possessed. “No one’s meant to see that…”

“Well someone has now, Doc’,” Jack plainly stated, bringing everyone back down to earth in the same breath, “so how do we gonna deal with it?”

The three of them wheeled about in horror as they heard the terrible cry of a Dalek directly behind them, and then found themselves cornered by three of the golden monstrosities. They each shared a mortified glance with one another before they raised their hands above their heads, and faced the fact that their game was up. There was no TARDIS force field to save the this time…

“Shit,” Jack growled, needing to say it out loud.

“Quite,” the Doctor agreed.

And so it came down to this - back to the beginning. It felt like it had only been a mere five seconds since the Doctor had last stood before the Dalek Emperor and bargained for Rose and Jack’s lives the first time round; now he was stood beneath that imperious, Cyclopic glare once more, with the lives of his comrades again on his hands, but, to make matters worse, his daughter now counted amongst them, an innocent little girl who had somehow allowed herself to become part of this terrible dilemma, and who was currently half-possessed by the burning energy of the Time Vortex. And it was all because of him…

“So, Doctor, we meet again,” the Emperor chortled as the Doctor and his entourage were led through the crowd of dusky-gold brethren to stand before him. “And, this time, there will be no escape.”

The Doctor glared, eyebrows rising as if begging to differ. “You think?”

“We again have your TARDIS. It conveniently came right into our grasps, as did the small Time Lord within it.”

“She’s not a pure Time Lord.”

The Emperor seemed to consider this for a moment before he uttered, “It matters not. She has two hearts. The correct genetics are still present within her body, be she hybrid or no.”

“She’s just a child.”

“That makes no difference.”

The Doctor took a lunging step forward. “It makes all the difference!!” he yelled.

Several laser arms arced up, ready to strike him down, but the Emperor did not give the signal. He just studied him for several long, lingering moments before saying, “You know why we have continued to seek you, don’t you, Doctor? And seek her?”

The Doctor glanced briefly at Hope, seeing her just standing there like a lifeless statue. “Yeah,” he replied, “so we can be the foundation stock of your ‘new race’, right?”

The Emperor’s huge, pink eye blinked at him. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Daleks so efficient at travelling through time that they won’t give it a second thought? Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer you as you are - great, clumsy, space dustbins.”

The Emperor permitted himself a deep, dark laugh, barely taking heed of the Doctor’s words. “It seems ironic that this child has dropped herself, and your time machine, straight into our grasps, doesn‘t it? I was rather hoping for a long and bitter war like our last one. Do you remember the battles we had, Doctor? Do you recall our great triumphs and glories? And your losses?”

The Doctor swallowed hard, trying to push the memories away. “I don’t need reminding, your highness.”

“No, I imagine not,” the Emperor agreed. “Especially since the best of your race were wiped out in that conflict, and only the coward survived.” He chuckled another time, before continuing, “But there will be no war this time, just petty destruction. We will destroy the last TARDIS in the universe and the last Time Lords along with it.”

“No, you will not.”

For the first time, Hope had spoken, and the Doctor turned in amazement as he heard the profound and mystical voice of his child, wrapped up in the surging power of the vortex, emerge from her tiny mouth.

The Emperor laughed again, but far more enthusiastically, as if he found this all very amusing. “The child speaks! And what a voice she has!”

The Doctor turned back. “Leave her out of this. This isn’t her war.”

“It was her war from the moment she was born. She is a Time Lord.”

“Not wholly!”

The Emperor’s gaze tightened on the Doctor a fraction. “But Time Lord enough…”

He then studied the Doctor and the girl for a moment longer until it struck him as to their similarities. “Can it be?” he murmured. “It must be… She is your spawn.”

Rose cringed at the Emperor’s crude language, which seemed, in the same breath, to cast down Hope as if she were filth. The Doctor meanwhile pondered on whether or not it was worth keeping this Emperor talking, though he had no alternative measures to take right now, even if he wanted to. He looked across at Hope, who still had not moved a fraction, as if she were also considering her options, and he prayed that she might, at least, have a trick or two left up her sleeve… With the vortex thundering through her tiny frame, her opportunities were limitless.

“So how far will you go this time to save those you love, Time Lord?” the Emperor now quizzed, bringing the Doctor’s attention immediately back to the situation at hand.

He deep frown creased his brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he shot back.

“Kill the child.”

The Doctor felt the colour drain from his face as the Emperor uttered this command, caught totally unawares, and his hearts each made a cold pop. The Emperor wouldn’t order Hope killed - he needed her! Or did he? Did he now believe that a hybrid was of no use? Had he decided to use only him, the ‘real deal’? Would he really kill his child…?

None of it mattered… The Doctor just felt that deep-seated paternal instinct rise within him, the impulse to protect his child, and his legs shifted of their own accord, as did his arms, moving to drive him on and interfere with the threatened attack; but he was beaten to it…

He felt Rose surge past him and she was in front of him in a matter of moments. He heard himself cry out in vain, watching helplessly as she tore on ahead, but it all happened too fast, and he couldn’t stop her, nor could he, this time, overtake her. All he could do was fear the worst, and remember that day long ago when, miles beneath the desert, the question had been put to him, ‘What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?’