"Escape From the Daleks of New York" - Part One

 

Part One

            It was supposed to be a simple flight to a peace summit in Hartford, Connecticut that suddenly turned into a hijacking. The aircraft under the official designation of “Air Force One” was tailed by a literal flying saucer through the night skies. But this wasn’t a typical flying saucer – it was one that belonged to the Daleks.

            Their target was John Harker, the President of the United States.

            “How close are they?” Harker asked the lead Secret Serviceman.

            “They’re close, sir,” the Serviceman responded. “And, with teleportation tech, they’re going to get a lot closer within any second.”

            Harker had no other choice. He knew of the Daleks’ reputation. And he was the President, which meant there was no chance of him making it off that plane alive. “Get me to the pod,” he ordered.

            He was strapped with a tracking bracelet and handcuffed to a silver briefcase before being placed in a red spherical pod that jettisoned shortly after the aircraft was overrun by Daleks. The Serviceman’s intuition of their ability to teleport was correct, as the Daleks appeared out of thin air and exterminated everyone on board. They left Air Force One to crash into one of many forsaken New York skyscrapers.

            The President’s pod was safely headed for a much lower vicinity of the city.

            At least it was…until it was knocked off-course by some sort of giant domino-shaped UFO that materialized right over the New York coastline. While the President’s pod crash-landed into one of the districts, the UFO made a splash into the ocean. It was submerged for just a few seconds before it rematerialized on the shore, albeit covered in seaweed.

            A door manifested on one side of its sleek, marbled black structure. A huge wave of water drained out, along with three children of separate anthropomorphic species: a blue cat (Gumball), a pink rabbit (Anais, Gumball’s sister), and an orange fish with legs (Darwin, Gumball and Anais’s brother).

            Gumball spouted water like a fountain statue before complaining, “What the what?! I thought the TARDIS was supposed to be waterproof!”

            “It is,” said the last occupant of the UFO, stepping out of an interior that was much bigger than its exterior. She was the pilot, a Time Lord that was born by the name of “Neas” but usually christened those of their different regenerations with their own. For this blonde in the damp denim overall shorts, she was named “Cara.”

            “Then why am I standing here with the worst water wedgie?!” Gumball griped.

            “The leak came from somewhere inside the TARDIS,” Cara noted. “Who left the water running in the bathroom?” She eyed each of the children judgmentally.

            Anais was quick to speak in her own defense. “Don’t look at me. I’m still trying to find the bathroom.”

            “Well, I was in the kitchen, fixin’ a snack,” Darwin said. “So I can’t be the one who did it.”

            That only left one possible suspect: Gumball.

            “Oh, sure,” he mocked. “Blame the guy who doesn’t actually take baths.”

            “Gumball, what’re you talking about?” Anais once again found herself questioning her brother’s stupid logic. “I’ve seen you take longer in the shower than Mom and Dad do.”

            “You only think that I do, but I could just be doing this…” He then started licking his right hand as if he were an actual cat.

            Unfortunately for him, neither his siblings nor Cara bought what he was selling.

            “We can all agree he left the water running, right?” Darwin asked the girls.

            “Definitely,” Anais agreed.

            “Oh, he totally did it,” Cara also acknowledged.

            With the mystery of the leak solved, the four travelers turned their attention to their current setting, noticing the fifty-foot wall that surrounded the island of Manhattan. “I know that I requested to see New York in another dimension, but this version feels a little…gloomy,” Anais lamented.

            “Why’s this big wall here?” Darwin inquired. “Is it to keep something in?”

            “Or to keep something out?” Gumball sinisterly countered.

            Anais wasn’t amused by his devilish imitation. “You’re not scaring anyone, Gumball.”

            While Gumball sunk in discouragement, Cara curiously led them back in the TARDIS to look into the specifics of the reality they had arrived in. In so doing, she intercepted a radio communication:

            “Inmates to police, this is a message broadcasted to you on behalf of the Duke of New York. We have your President now. If we see you come for him, he dies. If we see any of you in the sky, he dies. If we hear you on the radio, he dies. Consider this your one and only warning.”

            Gumball was admittedly chilled by the cold memo. “Well, that wasn’t at all terrifying,” he jested.

            “He said something about the ‘President’,” Darwin indicated. “Is that like the President?”

            “That was my first guess,” Cara said.

            “Why’re you guys talking about this like we’re going to be involved in it?” Anais asked. “That was a terrorist we just heard on the radio. We need to get away from here while we still can.”

            Cara could see that Anais was scared. Her first trip in the TARDIS, and it was already diving headfirst into danger. She was going to follow with the Watterson sister’s request, until she started to listen to the radio transmission more carefully, playing it back and enhancing the sound. There was a sound in the background that she paid extra attention to.

            Gumball and Darwin heard it as well. “Is that…?” the latter queried.

            “No, it can’t be,” Gumball quivered.

            Anais heard it, too, but she didn’t understand why her brothers or Cara were so mortified by it. “What is it?”

            “Daleks,” Cara hissed. “This dimension is infested with them.”

            “I thought we took out those overgrown salt-and-pepper shakers in the Multiverse War,” Gumball reflected. “I blew up like eighty of them with a cool laser rifle.”

            Hearing this for the first time, Anais leaned and whispered to Darwin, “Did he really blow up that many?”

            Darwin shook his head. “Nah. He kept missing, because he had his eyes closed the whole time, and he had to be saved by a Powerpuff Girl.”

            “If the Daleks are here, then we can’t leave…I’m sorry, Anais,” Cara said.

            “It’s O.K.,” Gumball spoke on his sister’s behalf. “She can just stay here in the TARDIS where it’s safe, while we go out and investigate.”

            “You boys are staying here, too,” Cara declared.

            “What?!” Gumball and Darwin exclaimed in protest.

            “You heard me,” Cara asserted. “It’s too dangerous for any of you to go out there. I’ve had more experience with the Daleks from my days in the Time War. I’ll know how to deal with them, if I happen to run into one or two…hopefully no more than two.”

            “And what happens if you do run into more than two?” Gumball challenged her.

            “Then I’ll come back with a new face and less of a personality, if I’m lucky.”

            And with that, she piloted the TARDIS to materialize on the other side of the fifty-foot wall, bringing it to a discarded street corner. She set off afterwards on her lone investigation, scouting the ruins of New York City. She found evidence of just how long the Daleks had been in the dimension, discovering a rusted Dalek chassis.

            “Looks to be at least nine years old,” she observed aloud.

            “That’s right on the money.” She jumped when she heard the friendly, enthusiastic voice of a man just behind her. She turned to see him, realizing that he was a simple old man who looked to be some sort of cab driver. He gestured to the Dalek chassis and said, “This is one of the earliest from the first invasion, just after they turned Manhattan to a prison.”

            “You were there?” Cara assumed from his recollection.

            “I sure was,” the cab driver told her. “One day, them Daleks appeared out of nowhere and took things over. We fought back, of course – managed to take out most of the Dalek army – but it costed us most of the whole Earth to do it. Only a few spots on American soil are still here, like good ol’ Manhattan ‘round us. The only downside is that we’re now a hotspot for Dalek activity, ever since the Duke bartered a pact with the Supreme Dalek.”

            This confirmed Cara’s suspicions. “So they do have the President.”

            “They do?!” The cab driver was visibly horrified to hear this. “Oh, wow. He’s like the last line in defense against ‘em. If somethin’ were to happen to ‘im, it’s the end for sure. Oh, boy.”

            “Sir, is there anyone who might know how to get close to the Duke?”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know just the guy. We call ‘im ‘Brain’. He’s the Duke’s advisor. But, uh, I should probably tell ya…you ain’t the first person askin’ to meet with Brain.”

            “Who else has?”

            “Me.” A mean, raspy voice spoke close near Cara, accompanied by the cock of a gun. She slowly turned to face the man who had her held at gunpoint. She was alarmed by how much he bore a strong resemblance to R.J. MacReady, albeit with an eyepatch.

            Right now, she was getting a flashback to when MacReady pointed a gun at her face – just like his one-eyed counterpart had at that moment.