Jane was led along labyrinthine corridors accompanied by Morrison and a Dalek. She looked on the former First Mate with a mixture of pity and hatred: pity for the man he once was and hatred for the thing that he had become. The grisly looking black box fixed to the back of his skull had a light that winkled in very much the same way as the Dalek lights. He looked lobotomised- perhaps death would have been a mercy for him, she thought sadly.

They came to a large coffin shaped door set into the rock; it had a curious legend on it in the Dalek language. “Macrobiotics,” intoned the Dalek, using its plunger arm to operate the door mechanism. The door lifted up to reveal a noisy, vast laboratory full of alien equipment and instrumentation. Along one wall were cylinders full of murky liquid containing shadowy, floating specimens of god-knows-what. Jane didn’t care to think about that just now. She was more interested in the tall humanoid form that approached them over the shiny metal floor. As it came closer she could see it was a man, or an approximation of a man at least, dressed in a white lab-coat, gangly arms with long fingers stretched out in a welcome as a rictus grin spread on its face. Deep set, grey eyes flickered over them with an almost reptilian motion.
“You have brought me new subjects!” it said to the Dalek in a voice that was all treacle and strychnine.
“These are the prisoners for your researches, Invidious,” droned the Dalek.
“Yes, yes, I can see that,” said Invidious, stopping to inspect the device fixed into Morrison’s skull. “I see your butchers have been up to their usual tricks.”
“Do not mock the Daleks!” warned the creature. “You live to serve us!”
“Yes, yes, so you keep on reminding me, I exist because of your superior nature and so on,” said the scientist wearily. “But just remember it cuts both ways- you need me as much as I need you.”
“The Daleks need no one!” screeched their escort in anger. “Remember that Invidious!” it added, before disappearing through the door.
Once it had gone the scientist turned to his new charges. “Well then,” it said showing a row of yellowed teeth. “Let’s see about getting you settled in first before we begin!”  Jane’s stomach began to turn at the thought of being left with this nightmare. Weakly she started to follow, but Morrison refused to move. Invidious turned to address him impatiently. “Follow me!” he ordered. Morrison continued to look blankly ahead, Invidious waved his long bony fingers in front of the First Mate’s eyes. “Looks like they’ve programmed you to only respond to their vocal range,” he tutted as he stretched over and picked up an instrument from his workbench that looked like a tiny megaphone.
“Follow me!” he said once more, this time in the monotone drawl of the Daleks. This time Morrison responded and all three of them made their way down the corridor at the back of the lab.
“What is this place for?” asked Jane.
“Oh, you can speak,” said Invidious. “Well, this is where I keep my specimens.”
“Specimens?”
“Yes, the Daleks have always been more comfortable with microbes and bacteria. They’ve never really understood humanoid subjects. That is why they created me.”
“Created?”
“I am a product of their science. A replicant if you will, although unlike their other replicants I am unique. There was no original to copy me from.”
“I see,” said Jane. They had come to another coffin shaped door, Invidious tapped a code out on a panel set in the wall and it swished open smoothly.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to with your friend here,” with that he indicated she was to step through. Jane entered a darkened room stepping over the threshold caused strip lighting to come on, she soon realised she was not alone. She was inside some kind of dormitory; three other women shared the room with her. The nearest, a tall imposing woman with dark skin and masses of curly hair addressed her as she came in.
“Looks like Invidious has a new recruit,” she said.
“Hello, my name is Jane Horowitz from the DSMC Andromeda.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said the woman, who Jane could now see was carrying a huge bump. “My name is Marie, this is Oni and Karen,” she said indicating the two other women in the room. Jane nodded furiously, sure she would forget their names in five-minutes.
“Are you all expecting?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the blonde haired one whom Jane assumed to be Karen. “Worst luck.”
“Me too,” said the other girl, who seemed to be Eurasian in origin.
Marie laughed at Jane’s obvious expression of surprise. “No need for me to say anything I see,” she laughed. “Well how about that!”
Jane sat down on a bed, her mind racing with possibilities.
“Tell me, has anybody thought of escaping from here yet?” she asked.
Karen looked horrified and Marie just shook her head. “There’s no point, even if we could get past Invidious, where would we go? This rock is crawling with Daleks and to escape properly we’d have to steal a spaceship.”
“They’d kill us before we even got five metres away from the lab,” said Oni.
“And Invidious isn’t all that bad,” said Karen.
“Isn’t all that bad?” said Jane in astonishment. “He’s here to experiment on us and your saying that’s not so bad!”
“But, you don’t understand,” said Marie. “Sure, we are lab rats to him or it, whatever he is. But don’t lab rats have to be fed and watered and kept clear of diseases? We don’t have it so bad here, especially compared to the alternatives.”
“Yeah, I spent some time down in the mines before another slave knocked me up,” said Karen. “And if you think here is bad you should see that place.”
“Mines?”
“Yes, the Dark Matter mines,” said Marie. “The Daleks’ own version of hell.”
“You see my dear fellow, it all comes down to a matter of free will,” said Invidious as he dismantled the box on Morrison’s neck. “The Daleks have never been able to grasp that one since they live in a totally causal world. To them ‘free will’ is nothing but an illusion brought about by lack of knowledge about real causes. This is an illusion they seek to dispel in the rest of us.”
Morrison showed no sign of responding to his new master’s philosophical musings. He remained detached from the world, in a zombie like state. Invidious didn’t seem to mind.
“Which is why in the end they made me. They made me because they lack the subtlety, the wit to deal with human beings-with all their messy thoughts and emotions and desires. Sure, they can hoodwink the odd self-deluding megalomaniac, the sort who always thinks they can outwit the Daleks. But on the whole they’re a long way from winning anyone else’s hearts and minds.”
Satisfied that he had safely disconnected the mechanism, he carefully removed the box from its connection to Morrison. A violent, red weal was left on his neck where the machine had plugged in directly to the spinal nerve.
“Butchers!” he muttered under his breath. His nanobots would achieve the same level of control with hardly any damage.
“But you and me my friend, we can show them the error of their ways.”