Serial 1 – Evolvement to Extinction
Episode 1 – The Laboratory of Death
New story, new luck. I've had this story for quite a while but could only now decide to actually put it online. It features mainly the 10th and the 8th Doctor, as well as the 12th Doctor. Whether you are a New Who fan or a Classic fan, I invite you to read my story and if it helps, project whatever Doctor you like most. It is also featuring the Master in the form of Roger Delgado. Please leave a review.
If you are interested in further science fiction fanfictions of mine (besides those I have published her already), I could be persuaded to upload to lengthy Star Trek stories (one DS9 and one with a new set of characters, but partly DS9) which I have completed (and whose sequels I am currently working at).
Now, sit back and enjoy :)
Rose. He saw her smiling, waving her hand, opening her mouth to say something, something of great importance, she was beginning to laugh about something, her eyes were sparkling with emotion and she began fading away.
"Doctor?"
The 10th Doctor was torn out of his day dream. "Yes, yes, I'm here," he stated and looked into the confused eyes of Martha. How could his thoughts drift away? He had to focus on the here and now.
"Where're we going this time, Doctor?" Martha asked, noticing that he had been thinking about something else – someone else.
"Somewhere we haven't gone before!" The Doctor exclaimed and started pushing buttons on the TARDIS.
"So you have absolutely no idea where we could travel to?" Martha said and folded her arms. She was a bit angry with The Doctor for not paying attention to her – again. But somehow she had gotten used to being looked through. Who was this other woman that must have been so special to The Doctor? What did she do that I don't? What did she have what I don't have?
If she wanted to draw attention to herself she had to take the initiative. "Can you teach me how to fly the TARDIS?" she proposed and stepped forward.
The Doctor looked up with a strange expression on his face. She couldn't tell if he was annoyed, surprised or sorry. "The TARDIS controls are a highly sensitive system and very damageable. In addition to that, the TARDIS is sometimes a bit touchy..."
"Doctor!" she urged him again. Didn't he trust her? She's been travelling with him for much longer now than she should have. She's got studies to finish! She's got a life to start!
"Alright, alright," he said, now smiling again. "Come over here. This is the starting lever. With that, you initialise the dematerialisation. Once within the time vortex, you need to constantly control the internal integrity and the availability to the power source. If the power is suddenly drained – for whatever reason – the TARDIS needs to emergency land on whatever planet and in whatever time that is nearby."
"But how can someone be nearby if we're in this time-vortex-thing?"
"Time is not a straight line. It's more like a big ball of-"
"I did take Physics at school, Doctor!"
"Imagine a straight plane to be our space-time universe," The Doctor and showed her his flat hand. "When we enter the time vortex, we enter a tunnel that shortens the way between two events in time, A and B." He took a pencil that was lying on the top of his consol and held it in between his folded hand, in order to show a tunnel, reaching from his palm of hand to his fingertips."
"Got it," Martha nodded.
"Now...space-time does absolutely not behave like this! At least not the way we are using it right now. Imagine bits of time and space leaving the palm of my hand and randomly walking through the space engulfed by my hand. If we have to leave the time vortex, the pencil, we end up on whatever space-time-piece just happens to be nearby."
"So if we travel from London, 1954 to Edinburgh, 2134, and have to make a force landing, we might end up on Vulcan in the year 3000?" Martha asked, already regretting her wish to fly The Doctor's second best friend – after Rose.
"Exactly!"
"And what does it have to do with me pulling this lever in order to get somewhere else?"
"Why are you listening to safety instructions each time you're taking a trip by plane?" The Doctor answered and pointed at the buttons left to Martha. "These help you to tell the TARDIS where you want to go."
"Are they broken? I mean, when have we ever ended up where we wanted to go...?"
"I think they just need calibration."
"Why don't you do it then?"
"It's described in the instruction manual how to do it..."
"And you can't find it?"
"I threw it into a supernova – I disagreed with it," The Doctor said and while walking over to a few funnily blinking buttons Martha realised why they had never managed to end up where they wanted. Great, she thought. He's indeed a mad man with a box. A mad man with a box and without an instruction manual for his mad box.
"On the screen over there you can see place and time that the TARDIS is targeting."
"It's in Gallifreyan."
"Look here. It says, "Humanian Time", meaning we consider your way of time measuring."
"How do you measure time?"
"Differently... Push that button over there and enter a date that you want to go to."
Martha did as told but hesitated when choosing a year. The date was her birthday, but her birthday didn't matter when randomly wandering through time. She then chose her brother's birthyear, she had always wanted to see the 80's…on another planet.
"Done."
"Now space. Space and time are actually the same, you can express time in meters and such but right now – in the easy flying mode – you can either choose coordinates or a city that has been programmed in the TARDIS' memory."
"It's still in Gallifreyan," she reminded him. Didn't he notice or were his thoughts somewhere else?
"Oh right. I'm choosing Morlock now. Nice planet."
"Morlock? I've read a novel by HG Wells in which-"
"Yeah, Wells – he was nice. Always seemed a bit out of this world though," The Doctor interrupted and pulled the initialising lever. Martha wanted to say something but couldn't as her priority was to grab hold somewhere when the TARDIS dematerialised and entered the Time Vortex. When this shaking became stronger, she glanced at the Doctor.
"Is this normal?"
"No, can you check the internal integrity?" he asked her and she looked at the blinking lights, feeling totally unable to cope. The Doctor was meanwhile joggling the levers and pressing some random buttons himself.
"You shouldn't have thrown the manual into the supernova, you know?" Martha stated, slowly panicking. What was she thinking, running away with this mad man?
"The TARDIS has picked up some strange signals and is trying to alter the course by herself," the Doctor finally answered. "I'm putting on autopilot."
"And letting 'her' altering the course?"
"She's got her own mind, you know!"
"Totally," Martha said sceptically and sighed. She continued watching The Doctor who seemingly tried to interpret the buttons and signal lamps on the console.
"I've adjusted the TARDIS to constantly scan its environment and raise an alarm if it picks up some strange signals...which she did. She's found Theta radiation."
"Theta radiation?" Martha asked unbelieving. Why was he always having fun like a little child when something surprising or unforeseeable has happened that would probably put them in mortal danger and within less than an hour they'd be running for their lives.
"Theta radiation is being produced during some cyber-implanting techniques. It is unavoidable when connecting metal implants with organic organs," The Doctor explained. "It's complicated...bioengineering and stuff," he added when seeing Martha's confused face.
"Alright," she answered. "Let's go investigate."
The Doctor smiled about her agreement and only half a minute later, the TARDIS has landed.
"The display doesn't work. I don't know where we are."
"Do you know 'when' we are?"
"Er, 1984 – the display is still set for humanoid time counting."
He grabbed his coat and was the first to step out of the TARDIS. "It's a bit cold, don't you think?"
Martha closed the door behind her and took a look around. They had materialised in some sort of laboratory, although she directly noticed that it was indeed a 'cyber-lab'. There were huge computers at each working place, huge because they reminded her of computers used in the 1970's, combined with some scifi-gadgets. Some of the devices she could only identify on the second glance: an HPLC, a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrograph… The lab seemed indeed to combine chemistry with engineering and reminded her on the bioengineering laboratory where she had had physics classes at university.
"Doctor, is that a body?" she asked and ran over to a body-like shadow lying on the floor. "Thank God. It's only a dummy." She looked up again. The Doctor hadn't even reacted. He was simply wandering around, taking a look at the equipment on the lab tables. Only then did Martha notice that the room had no windows.
She walked over to one of the computers whose lights were blinking. She pressed space on the keyboard and a prompt appeared. "I hated Computing Science classes in the first semester," she muttered and typed in '/date'. "It's the 5th December 1984... The computer software is in English?"
"No, it's probably just the TARDIS translating," the Doctor answered.
"But why would it translate a date?"
"Good point," the Doctor admitted and walked over to her.
"And it looks like Earth computers from the 70's. Just...upgraded."
He gave her a worried look which she couldn't interpret. "Yes...it seems so. Come on, let's see if there're more labs of this kind," he proposed and she followed him into the hallway. It looked sterile and reminded her on the hospital in which she had first met the Doctor. There were doors to her left and right, but she kept following The Doctor.
"Where are you actually heading to?" she wondered as he kept walking straight forwards.
"No idea," he gave back, smiling as arrogantly as he always did.
She rolled her eyes and demonstratively stopped at one of the doors. "Aren't you at all interested what there is behind this door?" she asked and pointed at the door knob.
"Go on and open it," he prompted.
She did so. The first thing she noticed was the unwelcomed odour of decay. "What on Earth has happened here?" she wondered loudly and noticed in the same moment up to ten stasis units upright at the walls. She made her way past the many computers towards the chambers. She wiped away the fog on the window and what she saw made her blood curdle. "Cybermen!" she exclaimed in the same moment as a shrilling alarm sounded through the building.
"Let's get…out of here," The Doctor proposed as the lab door was already banged open.
"Who are you? How did you get in here? This is the maximum-security department!" one of the three men who were stumbling into the laboratory shouted.
"It's alright, it's alright. We're unarmed and coming with good intentions," The Doctor assured.
"You'd better hope so," the leader of the small security troop said and signalled his friends to put down their guns.
"How did you get in here? It's five o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, it might be. Could you please define the 'where' a bit more?" The Doctor asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Where exactly are we?"
"You're in the maximum-security bioengineering department of Keel Miller Industries."
"Which year, which planet?"
"We have the year 1984, December 5. The planet is Mondas… Who are you? Where have you come from?"
The Doctor breathed deeply. Martha thought she had seen a glimpse of recognition in his eyes. Had he been here before? Did he know the people, or the situation? Did he know how to get them out of here?
"You've drifted away from Earth decades ago. Now your population has grown weaker, especially in contrast to the other life forms on this planet and you retreated to perform cyber-genetic experiments. This is the secret facility where you have – or will create cyber-enhanced humans, also known as Cybermen. Am I correct?"
The three men blinked several times before the leader said: "This will be the last time I ask: Who are you and where are you from?"
"My name is Martha Jones and this is The Doctor," Martha decided to take the initiative. "We're from Earth – at least I am. We have arrived in The Doctor's spaceship, called a TARDIS. We have coincidentally landed in one of your laboratories with our ship, disguised as a big blue box. We did not mean to intrude but we found you were emitting some strange…" she looked to The Doctor for help.
"…strange Theta radiation. A by-product of your experiments, I assume?"
"You are a physicist?"
"Kind of. She's a Doctor," he answered and pointed to his companion.
"It was an accident, really. We did not mean to intrude. We had no idea about your facility," Martha added. Of all the planets in this universe, how did The Doctor always manage to get them into trouble?
"Can you show me your box?" he asked.
"Mantro," one of the other man warned his boss.
"It's alright. You can go back to the monitoring room. I'll accompany The Doctor and his friend to their 'blue box'."
The two guards nodded and left the three of them alone. "My name is Dr. Mantro Sigas, by the way. I'm supervising the final step of the cyber-genetic upgrading process, and sometimes I'm also on nightshift. We've got many break-ins from protestors from all over the continent. And the Sea Devils aren't too happy with our progress either."
"But why?" Martha asked while they were walking to the lab where The Doctor and she had landed.
"The climate becomes unbearable. We need to change to adapt. And many here on this planet fear change. The Sea Devils and Silurians see our Cyber-conversions as a threat, because it would make us more powerful. But this is not our goal. Our goal is it to stay alive."
"For now," The Doctor muttered under his breath.
They had arrived in the main lab. "This is you spaceship?" Dr. Sigas asked and pointed at the TARDIS. "It's a thirty year old police box!"
"It is just disguised as one. But it's bigger on the inside, don't worry," The Doctor explained. He then turned around to face the bioengineer again. "So… how's your work going?"
"You just broke into a high-security laboratory and want me to tell how my work is going?"
"It doesn't work, does it? You're doomed, even without the terroristic attacks of the other species. And you don't want to tell the people so that they don't lose their hope."
Dr. Sigas nodded. "Partly right. The problem is the air of this planet. It's becoming thinner on the surface. It's no problem for The Sea Devils as they live under water, and neither is it dangerous for the Silurians, as they prefer their caves under the earth."
"What if I offered you my help?" The Doctor proposed.
Despite the engineer's happy expression, Martha's face displayed a mixture of fear and surprise. Did The Doctor just propose to create Cybermen? One of the deadliest races in this universe? When Dr. Sigas nodded speechlessly and in relief, she hoped the Doctor had a plan – if not, she would have to stop him before he could do something that would endanger the entire universe!
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