“My name is Captain Benjamin Horatio Forrester, DSMC Registration VZ0320890.”
“Why did you come into Dalek Space?”
“We are a deep space mining scout, we are here to survey this region for mineral deposits.”
“Why would the Terrans be interested in such inaccessible resources? You are on an covert mission to seek out the Daleks!”
“That is a lie! We are not a military vessel!”
The Section Leader for Dalek Intelligence was a red Dalek with black hemispheres on its casing. The interrogation of the human leader- Forrester had been underway for a full cycle now. Usually such interrogations would last only a few rels at best, but Forrester had proven surprisingly resistant to the mind-probe.
The Red Dalek turned to its colleague at the controls.
“Increase the power by 100 megs,” it ordered.
Inside the interrogation chamber Forrester winced as the quantum laser on the mind-probe intensified its search. The pain was like nothing he could describe, for it was like a kind of psychic enema. His subconscious was being purged into his waking mind: “What is your true purpose in Dalek Space?”
Later in his cell Forrester lay crunched up in a tight ball, his face and hands locked together. Restless, yet exhausted, the Captain struggled with his sanity as the cacophony in his head continued. The effect on his brain of the Dalek Mind Probe was analogous to the ringing in the ears that one would have if you sat next to a speaker all night. Only the din was stirred up in the mind and included all the dimensions of experience, emotional, physical and spiritual.
The door slid open and another prisoner was thrown into his cell. Unable to tell at first whether this was an hallucination or not Forrester at first ignored the new addition to his mental landscape. It made no sense for the Daleks to throw somebody else in here while he was being interrogated-normally they would seek to isolate him. There had to be a reason behind it, but what he could not say.
Aren’t you even going to look?
“Why should I?” he rasped. “It’s probably another trick!”
But you’ll never know unless you take a peek, will you?
“I think I can live without that!”
Are you sure about that?
Eventually curiosity got the better of him, and he rose from his protective crouch very slowly and looked over at his new cellmate. At first he could not recognise him, the shapeless orange prison fatigues obscuring his figure. Then as the man moved it became very clear who it was.
“Jack!” hissed Forrester. His former first mate looked up, a befuddled expression on his face. Forrester could see now that the implant had been removed. “Jack! It is you!”
Morrison looked at him blankly for a second before recognition crossed his face in the shape of a broad grin: “Captain! Am I glad to see you!”
The Captain nodded warily: “I’m glad to see you too old friend.”
“Ben, do you know where we are?”
“Can’t you remember?” asked Forrester suspiciously.
 “I can remember the Daleks bursting into the ship. I remember throwing a grenade at the first incursion. Then it all goes weird from there.”
Forrester looked grim: “They caught you Jack. They put a modulator on you! You piloted the ship for them into this stinking hole!” He stopped abruptly as he saw the look of horror on his friend’s face. “But, I guess that you didn’t have any choice in the matter…” he muttered to himself. Forrester took a moment to examine his first mate’s neck. There was no sign of any scarring around where he knew the implant to have been placed. Now he didn’t know what to believe. “So, you say you can’t remember a thing from when the Daleks took over the ship?”
“That’s right, I’ve only just come to just now, when I woke up to find you here.”
Forrester shook his head: “That just doesn’t make sense, why would the Daleks release you from their mind-control device? You seemed to be an adequate slave to them, perfectly serviceable in fact.”
“You can’t second guess those things, they’re monstrous, alien,” Morrison covered his eyes with his hands trying to shake out the evil that came before them. Forrester felt the urge to warm to his former First Mate, but didn’t yield to it, forced himself not to.
“How can I know you are who you say you are?”
Morrison shrugged: “How do I know you are who you say you are? If we’re going to be sceptics than why not ask that question?”
“Than prove me wrong, prove me wrong!” exclaimed Forrester. The cacophony in his head rose to a fever pitch again. “How can I trust you when I can’t trust my own mind?”
Morrison exhaled deeply: “At some point it all comes down to a simple choice, either I am who I appear to be or I’m not. Every time you left the space dock you were aware there’d be times when you’d have to act without always knowing. That comes from the heart, from the soul, whatever you’d like to call it. That bit of us that makes us different to those bastards out there!”
Forrester nodded. He sat down opposite Morrison, sweat dripping from his brow and down the ridge of his long nose. “You’re right of course. But there’s more to this than it appears. I mean, when the Daleks struck were you really surprised? For some reason I saw it coming, almost expected it. But why? Nothing makes any sense.”
“I don’t get you sir?”
“I knew the moment Horowitz came and told me about the EM source,” Forrester explained. “I can’t say how that is, just that it is. And there’s more, I know there is more.”
Morrison edged closer to the Captain so he could hear better; Forrester’s voice was barely audible.
“I’ve been talking to myself,” he said.
“Shit! We all do that Captain!”
“No, I mean literally talking to myself, as I’m talking to you right now.”
The First Mate blinked rapidly: “You mean, talking to yourself alone, and answering your own questions?”
“Talking to myself as if I were two people, another me, he looks like me, only better dressed and much calmer.”
Morrison looked puzzled: “I’m sorry Captain, but it’s starting to sound as if the Daleks have had you under their laser too long.”
“But I’m not crazy,” he said, his face changing colour in mid-sentence. “Wait a minute, how did you know about the Dalek’s laser? You told me you had only just came to!”
Morrison looked nonplussed: “Did I?” he asked. “Shit, it’s like I said, everything got mixed up after the grenade.”
Forrester backed away and paced the plain brightly illuminated cell.
“Now you come to mention it,” said Morrison. “I do remember them putting me under some kind of laser.”
Forrester snorted: “How convenient that you should remember that now,” he turned to study his companion’s face. “Strange that they should put a modulator on you and then take it off again and pop you under a mind probe!”
Morrison looked very uncomfortable. “Like I said, you can’t second guess these things, they’re alien, not like us.”
“But they never act without reason either!” exploded Forrester. “The only reason they would put you under a mind probe is so they could replicate you!”
“That’s a lie!” roared Morrison, rising to his feet. “I know that I am me!”
Forrester laughed, but not with any joy: “Well of course you would say that! For all I know you may even think it is true but that still wouldn’t mean you’re the Jack Morrison I’ve known all these years!”
“The Daleks could never do that!”
“How do you know?” said Forrester. “They were all supposed to be dead remember.”
Morrison smiled: “I remember what my mother used to tell me when I was child,” he said wryly. “Be good or the Daleks will get you!”
Forrester nodded: “Every summer my school would take us to the Chapel of Remembrance at St Martin’s in the Fields. That was where the first of the plague bombs dropped more than a thousand years ago. The Earth still hasn’t fully recovered, even now there are still areas that are uninhabitable and the population is barely half of what it was.”
“You wouldn’t have made it without the colonies,” Morrison reminded him.
Forrester smiled: “You always did used to say that Jack!”
Morrison’s shoulders relaxed as he realised he’d been accepted at last. “So, you were telling me about those conversations with yourself?”
“You think they could be more than just, insanity, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Morrison. “But you agree it can’t really be another you?”
“He knows stuff,” Forrester sighed. “He tells me that I’ll be alright. He helps sustain me while they’re probing my brain.”
“Sounds like a coping mechanism to me.”
“Yes, but I don’t think its an accident. Listen, I think that I am here to do something, something very important.”
“What? What could be so important?” demanded Morrison.
“That I will remember at the right time,” said Forrester. He turned an ashen grey. Suddenly a horrible thought chilled him to despair. “But if this is true, if what I think is true is correct, than it can only mean one thing.”
“One thing?” Morrison echoed.
“I’ve been here too long Jack, they’ve had me here under their laser beam, probing me, torturing me, watching and waiting for me to crack. It can only be a matter of time. Only a matter of time.”
 “I guess I do know what the means, old friend,” said Morrison, towering over his Captain he placed his hands gently on either side of his face.
“Please Jack,” said Forrester. “Get me out of here!”
Without answering Morrison rapidly twisted his former Captain’s head round so that he was looking backwards, crunching bone and severing arterial and nerve connections in the process.
The Section Leader burst into the cell. “Put down that human being!” it snapped. “Step away from the prisoner, now!”
The Red Dalek examined the body; Invidious appeared behind the Dalek, looking very shaken.
“He is dead!” roared the Section Leader. “Your cyborg has failed Invidious, we should exterminate him immediately!”
“No!” screamed Invidious. “Let’s hear what he has to say first.” Sweating profusely the scientist turned to his creation. “Morrison, explain yourself!”
Morrison stood at attention, his voice a clipped monotone: “The prisoner represented a threat to the Dalek Empire.”
“Explain further!” demanded the Section Leader.
“He was a deep cover agent,” said Morrison. “The Terran Security Services use an advanced form of neurosurgery and hypnotic conditioning to ‘train’ specially selected individuals. These amnesiac sleepers are designed to infiltrate the enemy where they wait until the right conditions trigger in them a series of behaviours. They are in essence machines programmed to be spies and saboteurs.”
“And what would that mean for the Daleks?” asked a shaky Invidious.
Morrison turned to his new master: “Death and destruction on a huge scale. These deeply conditioned agents operate on the edge of acceptable warfare; they are programmed for atrocity and insurrection. I did you all a favour breaking that S.O.B’s neck.”
The Red Dalek grated in anger: “Your experiment is obviously defective!” it hissed at Invidious angrily. The scientist looked like he could barely contain his anger and disappointment. “Return to the laboratory,” he instructed Morrison. “We will talk of this later.”
Morrison clicked his heels together: “I obey!”
The Section Leader turned to one of its staff: “Accompany the cyborg back to Invidious’ laboratory. See that it does not deviate on the way.”
The Dalek subordinate trilled a quick ‘I obey!’ before following Morrison out of the cell. Invidious looked after him thoughtfully: “He was still able to get more out of him in five minutes then you and your toys did in a full cycle!”
“You are a mistaken and arrogant replicant,” rumbled the Section Leader. “Do not think your patronage by the Emperor will last forever. You must still answer to the Dalek Law.”
The scientist bristled at this: “What if Morrison were right, what if this person was a deeply conditioned agent? Then surely we would have needed to destroy the prisoner sooner or later?”
“If it were true that human beings are technically capable of such a feat,” sneered the Red Dalek. “Then it would be even more imperative that we keep the prisoner alive for further study.”
“Then perhaps I could help there,” suggested Invidious. “If I took Forrester to the laboratory then I could replicate him. With luck I might just be able to reproduce a viable memory engram.”
“Then you must set to work immediately,” said the Section Leader. “I will arrange to have his body transported now.”
“You are most kind,” drooled Invidious.
The Section Leader growled in response: “This had better work Invidious, for your sake!”
“I understand; I will not fail.”
With one final glance at Forrester’s still and twisted form he exited the prison cell.