Shannon's feet in her Converse pounded on the pavement as soon as the redheaded woman gave the signal, the only thought in her mind getting as far away from there as soon as she possibly could. What did those things want with her--and with that man, the Doctor? They were intelligent, that was obvious, and they were planning something. But what could something like that be planning in Middle-of-Nowhere Leadworth?

And they talked about me specifically. They didn't say that they had orders not to harm children or teens, they said they had orders not to harm me. How do they even know who I am? Why would I be important?

Shannon took every turn she could, trying her hardest to confuse those things if they were chasing her. She was too terrified to look. Every breath she took burned in her lungs, and finally she had to stop, leaning up against the wall in an alleyway and trying to catch her breath. She looked around.

She was alone.

Where had they gone? Amy and Rory, the Doctor's friends. They had been trying to keep her safe, and now they were nowhere to be seen. "Amy?" she whispered, hoping they were nearby. "Rory?"

No answer.

Slowly, she tiptoed towards the entrance to the alleyway, looking for any sign of movement and ready to run again should she come across any of those things. Exterminate, they had said. She wasn't 100% sure what that meant, but she could guess.

She let out a tiny gasp as she saw the Doctor run by. "Doctor!" she hissed, trying to get his attention. "Over here!"

-----------

Run. Ever since he had crash-landed into her garden, Amy and the Doctor had done nothing but run. And yet it never made it any easier, or any more fun. The wild untamed fear, the sheer adrenaline coursing through her veins was always the same. Exhilerating, but exhausting; thrilling, but terrifying. An awful lot of running that was destined to never stop, as long as the Doctor was around.

At some point, she grabbed Rory's hand as they wove their way around Leadworth, trying to make it as much of a maze for the Daleks as possible. They made U-turns, darted down alleyways, even ran through the chapel that they had been married in at one point. When they ran out the back door, they finally stopped, Amy leaning against the wall for support while Rory took a look around.

"Did we lose them?"

Rory hesitated. "You want the good news, or the bad news?"

Amy stared at him. Was he actually trying to joke at a time like this, or was he being serious? "The good news."

"Yes, we lost them."

"Then what's the bad news?"

Rory gave a sigh. "We lost them. The Doctor and that little girl. They didn't follow us, or we lost them along the way. We lost them too."

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The Doctor darted into the alleyway. "We need to find Amy and Rory. Those things we're running away from, they're called the Daleks. They have no emotions, and the only thing they want to do is kill you because they think you are inferior to them. They're my worst enemy, I killed a whole lot of them when I was younger. Now, any questions?"

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"Daleks," Shannon repeated in a whisper, the word sounding strange in her American accent. So they were pure evil--she had guessed as much. And they were coming after them, and the Doctor's other friends. And they were out for blood.

So much for this town being dull.

She swallowed hard, trying to find her voice. "What--what are they doing here?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. She looked over her shoulder and shuddered, half-expecting to see one of those things, those Daleks, rolling down the street towards her, the only thing on it's mind--if it even had one--killing her in cold blood.

Or maybe not. The leader had hesitated, saying that they were under orders to 'protect the child.' But why. "The Daleks...they were talking about me. At least, I'm pretty sure they were. But why? I'm not important. I just got here, how do they know who I even am? I'm nobody. What would they want with me?"

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"Nobody's a nobody, don't think like that. All of you, you're all important. But why would you be important to the Daleks? They had orders from the Master not to harm you, but why? And what's your name?"

The Doctor peeked out and around the wall leading into the alleyway, but all he saw was a throng of pedestrians making their way just about everywhere. No sign of a Dalek anywhere. He turned back to Shannon. "I'm here to find out what they want, and hope they don't kill me in the process. They're using the Earth as a trap, hoping that I'll try to save everyone and then that's when they'll unleash their big surprise. The Nightmare System. I wonder what that is. . ."

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Shannon gave a little sigh. "My name's Shannon. Shannon Casey. I just moved here from Chicago. Well, sort of moved. Not really. I'm staying here for a few months visiting my dad." She paused. "Well, more like meeting him. Fifteen years all I ever got from him was a birthday card every year and now suddenly he wants to play perfect father, so my mom shipped me off to England." She gave a shrug, feeling suddenly embarrassed. "But you just asked for my name, not my whole sob story. Sorry." She couldn't help it, really. Even though she was still confused and terrified, she trusted the Doctor. Something about him made her feel...not exactly protected, but safe nonetheless.

"The Nightmare System?" she repeated. That didn't sound any more pleasant than extermination did. "Do you think you'll be able to stop them?" A stupid question, she was sure. Hadn't he just said that he'd defeated them in the past? Maybe she ought to just shut up...

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"Of course I'll be able to stop them, it's really just a matter of how, and when." The Doctor looked back at her, smiling. "And it's all right, everyone needs a sob story once in a while. Your dad, Shannon, is he nice? From what you can tell? What does he have to do with the Daleks? They called you the Master's child. . .Shannon, did your dad ever mention Daleks? Or anything to do with them?" The Doctor looked back out, and then grabbed Shannon's hand, pulling her out onto the streets.

"Come on!" he called back at her, and started running.

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Shannon thought for a minute. "Nice enough, I guess. He doesn't seem the type to know how to handle children, though. Or teenagers. Probably why he abandoned us in the first place, he didn't know what he was doing. He's just sort of...distant. We don't actually talk much. But it's weird, he doesn't exactly like me leaving the house. He says he doesn't want me to get lost or something stupid like that, and that he wants to get to know me, but then he doesn't talk to me. Or he'll try to, but he'll get distracted or bored and we'll both end up sitting there in silence, staring at walls and drinking tea." She looked down. "I guess it might be my fault too, I haven't put in much of an effort either."

When the Doctor asked if her father had ever mentioned the Daleks, Shannon shook her head. "Not a word. And I've never seen one before today...I've never seen anyone like that before. But...he does seem to always be working, or thinking about work, and he mutters to himself about something he calls 'The Plan' and 'The Project.' I never asked him about it. And he has people over to talk about it a lot, too. They eat dinner--I have to eat in the kitchen--and they lock themselves up in the study and he sends me to my room all night, like I'm some little kid--"

The Doctor grabbed her hand and they were off again, leaving her scrambling to maintain her grip and keep up with him. "Where are we going?" she cried.

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"Somewhere!" he answered back. "We have to find Amy and Rory!" The Doctor's feet pattered on the sidewalk, dodging people this way and that. He ran around the corner of a building, and came face to face with a Dalek. He stopped up short, and then began easing away. The Dalek didn't seem to notice him, it was just sitting there. Inactive. How strange. The Doctor slowly walked up it and touched it. It didn't move, or react at all. Nothing at all.

He turned around at Shannon. "Shannon, I want you to find Amy and Rory. Please. Go on, now! I've got to do something."

When she was gone, the Doctor turned back to the Dalek. He drew out his sonic screwdriver and soniced the thing, its eyestalk fizzing with blue energy. The Doctor clicked his tongue, talking softly to the sinister creature.

"There, there, this isn't gonna hurt a bit. Well, it will, but better you than me, eh? Now be quiet, I just need to extract some information from your data core and. . ."

He heaved the Dalek's head cap off and threw it on the ground with a large clang. Luckily no one else was in sight. The Doctor held onto the eyestalk and kept working around the Dalek's insides of it's head with his screwdriver. That same blue energy kept coursing through it, and also through the eyestalk. At the last moment, the blue energy whizzed faster and faster around the eyestalk, and then coursed up the Doctor's hand and arm, and then finally arced down his body, sending him writhing to the ground. Some sort of defense mechanism, he thought dimly. Supposed to activate when something's attacking it. A warning system. But for whom?

The blue energy cut off with a sharp pop and the Doctor lay still.

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Shannon let out a little shriek of fright when she saw the Dalek, but this one appeared to be...not dead, exactly, but not exactly functioning either. A decoy? One who had perhaps rebelled and had been killed to make an example? Was it a trap, designed to lure them into a false sense of security? She wasn't sure, and apparently the Doctor wasn't going to let her stick around and find out, because he told her to go on ahead and find Amy and Rory. She looked at him a long moment, not wanting to go by herself when a Dalek could pop out from around any corner, but finally she nodded. "Okay. Just be careful," she said before running on ahead.

She wasn't sure where to go, so she headed towards what she thought was the center of town, hoping to spot Amy's red hair amongst the crowd. So far, there was nothing, and the fact that she didn't know where she was going certainly wasn't helping matters. She turned a corner and stopped cold.

She was back where she had been before. Somehow, she had managed to run in a complete circle without realizing it, returning to where they had seen the Dalek. How had this happened? She'd been running in the opposite direction...wait a moment. Shannon took a closer look and gasped.

The Doctor lay on the ground, his eyes closed, next to the Dalek. "Oh no," she whispered, horrified, before running to his side and falling to her knees next to him. "Oh no, Doctor, please don't be dead, please don't be dead..." Frantically, she grabbed his wrist and tried to feel for a pulse, but she couldn't quite make one out. Maybe she was doing it wrong. Not knowing what else to do, she rested her head on his chest, trying to figure out whether he was breathing or not. "Please don't be dead," she whispered, her voice becoming more frantic as tears filled her eyes. "We can't stop them without you...please don't be dead..."

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The Doctor's hand twitched, and he drew in a convulsive breath for air. He opened his green eyes and looked into Shannon's tear-streaked ones, and blinked, sitting up. Looking around, he took in his surroundings: the stationary Dalek, crying Shannon and the fact that no one was in sight besides the three of them. He stood up carefully, looking around even more. Nothing else. He turned back to Shannon with a faraway look in his eyes. "Shannon, did you find Amy and Rory?"

*

Rory turned to Amy. "Now what? Should we find the Doctor and that girl, or find the Daleks on our own?"

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Suddenly, Shannon felt the Doctor take in a sharp breath of air, and she sat up in alarm, staring at him as he came to. "Doctor!" she cried, tears still streaming down her cheeks. "But...how?! I tried to find your pulse, but I--I couldn't..."

He asked her if she had found them, getting to his feet. Shannon followed suit, shaking her head. "No, I'm sorry. I got all turned around...I don't know my way around yet. It's because he wouldn't let me outside," she said bitterly. She took a closer look at the Doctor. "Are you sure you're okay?"

----------

Amy was pacing back and forth along the sidewalk in frustration. She didn't answer Rory at first, thinking hard. Finally, she turned around. "Let's try to find them. The Doctor, not the Daleks. If they catch us, we're dead, but if we find him, we can at least try to think of a plan. Come on. Let's..." she thought for a second. "Let's go to my old house first. Maybe he's there waiting for us."

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"But don't you think that might be a trap?" Rory asked worriedly. "If the Daleks know all about us, don't you think they would know where you used to live? Um. . .residual traces of the TARDIS and all that?" He paused. "Is that even possible?"

*

The Doctor bent down to get to Shannon's level. "I'm fine, you don't need to worry. Trust me." He smiled, but that vanished for a moment. "Shannon, why are you so eager to trust me? You've never seen me before in your life." He straightened up, walked away and then stopped again. He whirled back to Shannon.

"Wait. Wait wait wait, you do know about the Daleks! They invaded Earth in 2009! Planets in the sky, big, huge explosions go boom! Remember?! You can't have forgotten that."

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Amy let out a sigh, realizing Rory could be right. "I know...but it's the only plan we've got. We can at least try. I can't think of anywhere else they would be, so unless you want to start searching through the entire village...it's worth a shot."

------

Shannon blushed a bit at the Doctor's question. "I don't know. I guess it's because this is the most I've talked to anyone since I got off the plane in London. My father said he wanted to get to know me, but he doesn't talk to me, just leaves me all by myself in that stupid house with rooms I'm not allowed to enter and people I'm not supposed to speak to. I'm...I'm lonely, I guess. I haven't heard from any of my friends back home. Even my mom has stopped answering my phone calls. I don't know why." She let out a little sigh and shook her head. "But it's not just that. I trust you because...because you're the only one who's trying to figure out what's going on here. I think if anyone has a chance at defeating these things, these Daleks, it's probably you."

The Doctor walked away from her then, and Shannon hurried to follow him, half-worried that he was going to abandon her to face the Daleks by herself. When he mentioned the events of 2009, however, she froze, her eyes widening and all the breath whooshing out of her lungs. Images started to race around her mind--looking out the window and seeing a planet, hiding from the noise of the explosions, calling for her mother in the darkness. "Oh my God," she whispered. "That was real? I was so young then, not even ten years old. I guess...I guess I must have convinced myself that I dreamed the whole thing. I never saw a Dalek, but I did see other things...but I told myself that none of it was real." She swayed a little on the spot, feeling a little faint. "And that means...all those recurring dreams I had about it, those weren't all made up. They were memories. How could I have forgotten about all that?"

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Rory nodded. "Okay."

They took off through the streets of their tiny town, and in a matter of minutes they arrived at the back door of Amy's house. Nothing was in sight except the trees and there was no other sound except for the wind.

*

He smiled reassuringly. "It's okay. It's fine now. There. . .there were cracks in the fabric of the universe, erasing things from people's memories from time to time. But I fixed all that. You don't have to worry about those cracks anymore, I patched them right up again." The Doctor grinned. "But now we have to stop the deadliest creatures in the universe. And. . .go to Amy's house to check if she and Rory are there."

He stuck out his hand.

"Are you with me?"

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The house looked harmless enough as they drew close to it, but Amy knew it well enough to know that the house with too many rooms, the house that didn't make sense, could be far more oppressive and terrifying than it looked. She reached out a hand and turned the doorknob, looking at Rory in surprise when it opened easily. "It's not locked. Why isn't it locked?" she asked, confused. "It looks like there's no one here. It should be locked. Why isn't it locked?"

------

Cracks in the universe, dreams that were really memories, having to defeat the deadliest creatures in the universe. Shannon was really beginning to regret taking that stupid bike and sneaking out of the house today. And at the same time, some part of her wanted to keep going on this crazy adventure. She was like Alice, falling down the Rabbit Hole into Wonderland--she'd come too far to back out now. She had to see this through to the end--she didn't have much of a choice. Her father was involved somehow, and she was determined to find out what was going on.

For the first time since the Daleks had rolled into view, Shannon smiled. She took the hand the Doctor offered. "Absolutely," she said. "Lead the way."

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Rory put his hand on hers. "It's all right. Don't panic." He pushed the door open with a creak, and a voice made them jump.

"Amy? Rory?" the Doctor's voice called out from inside. "Are you there?"

One of the lights flickered over their heads.

"Amy? Can you come help with this?"

*

The Doctor ran down the streets once again, Shannon at his side. Whatever the Daleks were planning, it had to stop. He just hoped he could find Amy and Rory in time. He sprinted onto the front lawn of Amy's house and crept to one of the windows. He ducked down as a Dalek swung it's eye over to him. Luckily, it didn't notice him. He stood back up again, peering in. Nothing seemed to be there, except for the Daleks and a flickering light.

And then a chill ran through him as he heard his own voice coming out of one of the Dalek's mics.

"Amy! Rory! Please. . .please. . ."

That was it. He barged in the front door just in time to see Rory. And then an unseeable force came up behind him and jabbed a gun into his back. He twisted around frantically to see Shannon standing there like a deer in headlights.

"Shannon! Get back!" he yelled at her. The person behind him forced him onto his knees, and he strained to look up.

All he saw was Amy, Rory, and five Daleks.

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