Deryn spun around, her heart suddenly racing. Despite the fact that this stranger was obviously insane, she still felt momentarily frightened by his warning.
Until she saw what was behind her. She almost laughed out loud. "Really?" she asked the odd man. "You're scared of a couple of scruffs?"
There was nothing but a pair of shuffling tramps, dressed in rags, ratty derby hats, and shoes full of holes. They were hunched and grimy, slowly rifling through a bin. Under any other circumstances, Deryn would have felt sorry for the poor sods, but here, they made her want to laugh.
"You're really scared of those tramps? What's next, the pigeons coming to attack?" She would have continued on, but the stranger interrupted her.
"Don't be fooled by their appearance! It's just their camouflage programming. They're designed to blend in with their environment when they aren't in combat." The man was quite intent on keeping up his ridiculous act.
Deryn snorted. "Well, I guess I was right. Alek, can you go and call a constable? I'll keep this bum-rag here. I don't know how he got that metal thingy of his, but we have to show it to someone who'll know what to do with it."
Alek began heading back down the alleyway, towards the tramps and the main road. But a shout from the man stopped him in his tracks. "No! You mustn't go near them! Don't get within arm's reach!" He was genuinely worried, Deryn saw.
The two tramps were slowly ambling down the alley towards them, looking through the bins. Alek was still standing there, apparently a bit confused.
The stranger ran toward Alek, putting himself between Alek and the scruffs in their ragged coats. "Stop! You don't want anything with these two! They don't know anything! You want me, right?" His voice dropped a bit, suddenly becoming very intimidating. "So why don't you come for me, then?"
The tramps suddenly took on a frightening transformation. They froze, stopping their search through the trash bins. Deliberately, almost mechanically, they turned to face the stranger. They stood as straight as a ramrod, no longer slouching. They cast aside their ragged coats and derby hats. Under them, they were most definitely not street scruffs.
The two… things… stood in a stiff military stance. From their face, two glowing blue lights winked in their eye sockets. They each looked like they'd had some of their limbs replaced with metal prosthetics, and their torsos were covered in a shiny shell of what might have been some kind of body armor.
Deryn had heard about the Clankers being able to replace lost limbs with clunky steam-powered replicas. Of course, Darwinists could just whip up a new limb and graft it on, good as new. But Deryn had never heard of replacing someone's barking eyes!
The stranger noticed their confusion. "You'll probably be wondering what those are. Well, I have to say, I'm not fully sure of that. They're definitely some new kind of Cyberman. Only a partial conversion, I'd reckon. The disguise programming and increased mobility makes me think an advanced model, maybe some kind of infiltrator or commando. But, you know, I could be wrong. I sometimes am, though I like to think not that often."
He probably would have continued his blathering had the metal men not shut him up. One of them stepped forward and began speaking in a voice that almost could have passed for a normal person.
"Primary target identified. Face match positive. Witnesses identified. Witness face match uploaded to server. Witnesses re-identified by server: Secondary targets."
The stranger suddenly looked a bit less confident. "No, no, you lot aren't after them. They don't know anything, do they? It's me you're after, isn't that right?"
"Negative. Current operating procedure allows for no witnesses. Witnesses must be apprehended and converted."
The strange man backed away, speaking to Alek and Deryn. "Ah. This appears to be one of those times after all. It looks like I was indeed wrong." He flashed them a grin, still backing towards them. "And now comes the best part of all this."
Deryn, still a bit flustered by these sudden events, managed to ask "And what would the bloody best part be?"
The strange man reached them and grabbed Alek and Deryn's hands. "We start running."
He began to run down the alley, but didn't make it far, given the fact neither Alek nor Deryn had started running with him. They both began to talk at the same moment.
Alek: "Excuse me, but while this all sounds very exciting and improbable, I would like to have a quick explanation before we go running off. Especially since I still don't trust you, and I have no idea where we are running to, and I was just dragged halfway across London for whatever reason Deryn has-
Deryn: "Hold on one bloody sodding minute, will you? You just led me on a merry chase round London for no reason at all, and I don't think you should just damn well expect me to follow you like a sheep follows a mucky shepherd-"
Alek: "-and yes, while those men over there do seem very frightening, despite their words to the contrary they've done us no harm. It just all sounds very fishy."
Deryn: "-and who in blazes do you even think you are? It's not like I've anything but your word to go on, and really, stuck-up and noble as he is, Alek's right, this whole affair just doesn't really-"
They might have continued on in unison, had the tramps(?) not made a move. In perfect synchronization, they began to charge them. They had a stiff, ungainly gait, like they weren't used to running, but they both managed to attain a fair speed, quickly closing the distance between them and the three people standing down the alleyway.
Deryn quickly decided that maybe she should go along with the stranger.
Apparently Alek was in agreement.
The three of them hurried down the alley, and made into the door the man had unlocked with his device. He slammed the door behind them and began to use his little buzzing stick on the door, apparently locking it.
As he worked, he talked. "Alrighty then. Standard introduction, I expect. I'm the Doctor. This is my sonic screwdriver. I'm a time traveler. I'm also 900 years old and have two hearts. That about sums it up, I think. Any questions?" He looked at the two of them pleasantly.
"Yes-" began Deryn, but he cut her off.
"Well, sorry, but there isn't any time for that. We can chat all you want when we get to the TARDIS. All right, that should hold them for a good ten minutes. Let's get going." And they were off.
Deryn and Alek followed, though Deryn was now even less sure of the strange man's mental state. Behind them, the door thudded with the impact of armored fists. The sound echoed in the room.
Deryn looked about, realizing she hadn't stopped to even glance at the building. It was an old warehouse, mostly empty but for a few rotted crates of fabrics. She called ahead to the stranger- no, the Doctor.
"Why are we here? I thought we were headed for that Tordis thing!"
Without looking back the Doctor answered her. "It's pronounced TARDIS, Deryn! And as for why we are here, I'm looking for a bit of hardware. If we crack it, it should give us some useful tidbits. Now, help me search for it!"
Alek asked what she was about to say herself. "Search for what exactly?"
"It'll be hidden by a perception filter. Look for things you can't look at!"
Alek just looked at Deryn with an expression that mirrored Deryn's exasperation. "Look for something we can't look at?"
Deryn just shook her head. This was quite quickly becoming one of the most barking strange times of her life. This… Doctor… well, she still wasn't sure whether he was telling the truth or just some mad rotter who couldn't tell his grandma from his hat stand.
"Never mind! Found it myself!" announced the Doctor. He looked very pleased with himself. "Now just head this way, Deryn-plus-one."
"I have a name." mumbled Alek.
"What's that? Don't mumble, it's not suitable for polite company."
As he spoke, he waved his magic wand over a perfectly normal-looking wall. The wall was so normal and dull, Deryn couldn't help but ignore it. But as he worked, there was a shimmering in the air and the wall simply melted away. In its place was a large metal door, which swung open with a hiss of escaping pressure. It looked like something from a Clanker vessel, all metal and rivets and wasteful excess.
The three of them moved forward, looking into the doorway. Beyond it, it was certainly not a London warehouse. The walls had been reinforced with sheets of shiny metal and small electric lights glowed on the ceiling.
Deryn frowned. This seemed like a Clanker installation. Cold and sterile, all lifeless metal. When people said Clankers were unnatural, they were speaking the truth. This place ignored the laws of the natural world.
Wordlessly, they all filed into the metal hidey-hole. For once, the newcomer was silent, just peering around with his metal wand at the ready.
The hallway wasn't very long, it soon opened out into a small room full of machinery. Deryn hugged herself. The air was barking cold in here!
The room's most notable features were the metal coffin-like pods standing upright against the walls. They were big enough to hold a full-grown man, and had a circular glass window at face height. Two were empty. The other two each had a man inside of them.
As the Doctor rifled through the room, Deryn had a closer look. The men inside had false eyes like the tramps from the alley. One had part of the skin on his face replaced with metal. Each of them had been partially rebuilt out of steel. Deryn shivered. This was just wrong. Not even the machine-minded Clankers would ever consider turning a living human into some kind of half-alive mockery of a person. She thought again of the tramps in the alley, just a few minutes ago, and how they had spoken with grating, emotionless voices. She shivered again. This place gave her a bad case of the willies.
The Doctor gave a cry of delight. "Ah, here it is! Knew it couldn't be hidden too well, those Cybermen don't have much creativity, beyond the whole planning-to-conquer-the-world thing." In his hand he held a greenish rectangle, patterned with lines of metal.
Alek's looked at it curiously. Deryn had never managed to make him get over his love of machines. "But what is it, Herr Doctor?"
Herr Doctor? Deryn thought. All this machinery really brings out the Clanker in him.
"That's a good question, Alex." said the Doctor. Before Alek could correct him he went on. "This is the black box for this little installation. Should something happen to this hidey-hole, all the information retrieved by the Cybermen here would be copied onto this little piece of hardware. Right now nothing's recorded on here because nothing's happened to this place. But the circuit is designed to be located and retrieved after an emergency, so the TARDIS should be able to trace the emergency locator signal to the main Cyberman base of operations."
Alek blinked.
The Doctor sighed. "This can lead us to the current Cyberman command center."
Deryn just nodded, pretending to follow along.
"But we should probably get going soon. Those thugs outside will be getting in soon. We can take a different exit and hurry back to the TARDIS." announced the Doctor.
Deryn and Alek were in agreement. Neither of them wanted to wait around for the Cybermen, or whatever they were called, to break down the door and 'convert' them.
"Alright then! Let's be off now, because, and don't panic when I say this, those Cybermen in the pods behind you appear to be waking up."
They were off without any further prompting.
