Chapter 3
Lily couldn't sleep that night; she was just so confused and scared. She tried to calm down by rereading the third Harry Potter and she tried to study and listening to music, but nothing could sway her mind. She tried to convince herself that Mrs. Muller had screamed because she was only upset, and not because she was dying. Miss Gail was just a librarian, why would she kill anyone? Lily just wanted to forget that it had ever happened and that tomorrow Miss Gail would go back to hating technology and stop caring about British slang. Lily was thinking to other ways to explain Miss Gail's weird behavior when someone knocked at her door and interrupted her thoughts.
"Come in." Lily called out to the knocker, her voice sounding hoarse and dry.
"Lily," It was her mom, "are you okay?" she was carrying a glass of water and a bowl of orange chicken layered over some white rice.
"Yes mom, I am fine. Just a hard day at the library." Lily said rubbing away the tears from her tired eyes and cheeks.
"You want to talk about it?" Lily's mom asked her.
"Not really," Lily responded smiling weakly, "but mom, what do you do when you have a problem or you are scared to do something about the problem?" Lily's mom looked closely at her daughter and as she sat down next to her on the bed she smiled.
"I confront it," Lily's mom started as she handed Lily the glass of water, "I say 'I am not afraid and I can take care of this problem', and it never hurts to have a cheering squad with you. Even just having a small voice in the back of your head saying you can do it." Lily's mom continued to smile at Lily. "Now, how about you go to bed, you have school tomorrow."
"Thanks mom. Night" Lily said as she fell backward onto her covers.
"Good Night, Lily."
Lily headed over to the library early the next morning before school. Tanja wouldn't come with because it was too early in the morning, even if it meant getting a ride to school instead of taking the bus. Lily was tired, confused, scared and wanted answers, and she had figured that she was out of her mind crazy. Lily was going to go and confront a nice librarian and accuse her of murdering a coworker. Lily sat in her car waiting for Miss Gail's car to get to the parking lot, and when it did arrive Lily got up and out of her car and walked right up to Miss Gail who was opening the library doors.
"Hello Lily, if you are here to tell me that Mrs. Olsen is not coming in today because she is sick you don't need to." Miss Gail said holding her hand up in a way to keep Lily quiet. "I know she thinks I am some plonker, but what she doesn't know is that I know she is just skiving off today." Seeing Lily's confused expression Miss Gail translated, "I know she is lying to me, and I told her that I knew. But she claims her son got her sick," Lily's face showed deep concern. "'What can I do?' she said. So I told her she could just sod off. She will have to be deleted of course." She unlocked the door and motioned Lily in, she looked her up and down as she walked past. Lily was feeling overwhelmed and angry toward Miss Gail and she had noticed. "But what about you Lily?"
"What are you doing?" Lily looked at Miss Gail locking the door behind them.
"What about you Lily?" Miss Gail asked again placing the keys in her pocket.
"What do you mean?" Lily longed to throw her hand into that pocket with the key and run away, but she held her ground trying not to show fear.
"What about you, Lily, will you have to be deleted too Lily?" Miss Gail continued, and Lily looked away from the door Miss Gail had just locked and forced herself to look at the old woman.
"I don't understand what you are talking about." Lily lied as she slowly backed up into the front desk trying to stay as far away from the tech room as she could without looking suspicious.
"I know you saw something yesterday." Miss Gail said in a steady voice looking at the tech room as Lily continued to move away from the tech room and Miss Gail. Miss Gail turned to face her, "I want to show you something." Miss Gail went into her purse, and pulled out a flashy book that had lights on its cover. Lily didn't recognize it, in fact Lily had never seen anything like it before. "My fit chap gave this to me, and do you know what it tells me?" She smiled at Lily waiting for her to answer, but she didn't. "It tells me everything about the world, time, space, the entire history of the universe." Miss Gail smiled like she had been holding a great secret that she was finally going to get to share. "This chap of mine is part of a group," Miss Gail continued smiling slyly, "a very special group that is searching for the one that will bring the lost history." She turned on her heels holding the book close to her chest, "The lost history is spoken of in our book, we don't know whom yet but we are looking and gathering more humans for the cause." Miss Gail turned back to Lily who was still backing away from her, "I know you know that I deleted Mrs. Follmer last night, Lily. I saw you crying in your car so now you have a choice, you could either be upgraded from your tiny human American mind or you can be deleted." Miss Gail smiled like the Devil and Lily was going to make the deal to sell her soul.
"What is your problem with America?" Lily blurted out. "For the past day or two you have been saying that us Americans are stupid. You are American you have lived here all your life!" Lily wanted to avoid the possibility that she would not get to go home that night.
"Are you wonky?" Miss Gail asked exasperated. "I am talking about killing you, and you want to ask about my views on nationalism?" Miss Gail asked very confused.
"How would you say it? Bob's your Uncle." Lily had heard it, the noise that had startled her last night. She didn't know what it meant, or whether or not to be happy or scared out of her mind.
"Why are you asking such a pointless question?" Miss Gail asked obviously annoyed.
"Well you know," Lily started babbling on as she went, "I am just full of questions that have never been answered, so since I am probably going to die I might as well not leave with unanswered questions. Like, why do you smell like metal? Why are you wearing that earpiece? Why do you want to kill me?" Lily asked trying to stall Miss Gail and her own impending doom.
"None of those questions matter dearie, it only matters what this scanner has to say about you." She held the book out at Lily. "This will decide weather you receive an upgrade." The lights on the book flashed like it was taking a picture.
"What do you mean it will decide?" Lily was now up against the front desk with nowhere else to go. "What will the upgrade do?" Lily asked praying that her stalling might save her life.
"You will become a Cyberman!" Miss Gail said, no longer sounding like herself but the computerized voice from the night before. "Our goal is to find The Drive, The Drive will bring us knowledge, power and the secret. Us Cybermen collect humans, and they become us and they help us search. The greatest weapon in the universe is The Drive and it is somewhere in Britain."
"Then why the hell are you in the U.S.?" Lily asked confused, "Do I need to show you a map?" Lily wanted to know why the hell this had to be happening to her if they did not even need to be here.
"We have been wrong before, and when we do wrong we upgrade ourselves to become better. And our upgrades tell us to check every where no matter how wanker the people in that country are." Lily in her fear and knowledge of oncoming death could not help but feel a little offended.
"You know America is not that bad, you really underestimate us." Lily was actually becoming more annoyed than scared for her life at that moment. "Do not underestimate people, do not underestimate one man because he is not like you, because even one man can make a big difference." Lily was close to death; she could feel it and she had unintentionally decided that she should end her life with something of an inspirational speech. "Let me name a few shinning examples. Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Junior, Schindler, that lady who refused to give up her seat on the bus. Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, the gay football player, and what about Newton." Lily was really just trying to make the best of the rest of her life, and what the best of her public schooling had had to offer her up to that point.
"You continue to rabbit on even though you know you are about to die." Miss Gail looked board with Lily. "You are so chuffed about America, you fancy it, why?" Miss Gail asked, confused by Lily's monologue.
"What do you mean why?" Lily felt some more American insults coming on, but that was okay. Lily needed to keep Miss Gail talking if she had even a slim chance of getting out of this situation alive.
"Well I am just Gobsmacked at how crazy you are about your country, Britain is obviously better made, and yet you choose to support America." Miss Gail said insulting America just as Lily had predicted and agreed with Lily agreed with her. Everything Lily had preached were things only a fictional character would even think to say. "You are really all just a bunch of stupid apes. You are crazy stupid apes."
"We're the crazy ones? What about you?" Lily asked astounded by the insult, forgetting for a moment that the entire conversation was just a way to stall for time. "You are not exactly sane."
"What do you mean?" Miss Gail asked. "I am the perfect human. I am the future of this planet." Lily calmed down and she had also grown a strange curiosity to know what exactly was going to kill her.
"You are talking as if you were a robot, so you are not suppose to have any emotions?"Lily said loudly, thinking back to the sound she had heard earlier hoping someone had accompanied the beautiful noise.
"The upgrade of this woman is incomplete, as soon as the upgrade is complete the woman will be dead and I will be all Cyberman." She pointed a finger at Lily, "You might be too if the scanner marks you favorably." Miss Gail spoke in her computerized voice.
"Well what are you then, when you are in between human and Cyberman? I don't know whether to call you a Cyberman or Miss Gail." Lily said truthfully.
"Miss what?" Miss Gail asked.
"Miss Gail," Lily felt a fresh wave of anger toward the thing standing before her, "the woman you are taking over! The lips you are using belonged to Miss Gail!" Lily was mad that the thing didn't even know whose life it had taken.
"The woman's hard drive is being wiped now to make room for The Drive. When the woman is wiped the Cyberman will only know of the mission and nothing else." The scanner beeped in her hands. "Ah, the scanner has made up its mind." She reached for the book. Lily could think of nothing else to do, she could think of no way to stop her. Then somewhere up stairs she heard the voice of a man. And the word was yelled out into the air telling Lily to get the hell out, they sounded like the word of a person risking it all right there.
"GERONIMO!" Lily pushed Miss Gail to the ground and ran to the EXIT door and kept running and not looking back as she heard the bang. She did not look back as she jumped into her car and drove out of the parking lot and to the school. Lily's blood was racing hot, she felt that she had never really lived before that moment. Lily was even afraid to admit that she had felt almost a rush of happiness, and that the experience could be classified as fun. Lily had officially lost her mind, and she did not care.
The man who had yelled "Geronimo" had just made the front desk computers explode. When the man got down stairs
there was no one in the room. He knew there had been two people or at least one human and one living thing. He took a short wand out of his pocket, it glowed green at the tip and made a funny noise. He flicked it up and looked at it closely, he seemed to have gained some kind of information from it because the next second he found the scanner on the ground. He took the wand again waved it over the scanner and it came to life flashing words on the screen that said, 'The Drive' it sent out a loud high pitch screech and then the screen went black.
The man took it and walked back up the stairs, where there was a tall blue box and two other men leaning up against it talking. When they noticed the man coming they straightened up in interest.
"You get them." The taller one of them asked in his smooth American accent, he wore a long coat and he had jet-black hair.
"No. The human got away safely and the Cyberman escaped." The man answered in a British accent, he was shaking his head, "But we have bigger problems." He dropped the scanner into the hands of the guy wearing a pair of glasses he had green eyes and brown hair.
"What kind of problem?" Asked the guy with the black hair to the man but the guy in glasses answered in his British accent.
"They found what they were looking for." He said
inspecting the scanner's cover closely.
"How do you know?" the taller guy asked looking over the shorter guy's shoulder at the scanner.
"Because the scanner sent out a signal and every Cyberman in the world is on their way to the U.S.A." The man spoke watching the men study the book scanner. "Specifically to Illinois, specifically here." The taller guy blinked.
"What exactly are they looking for?" the shorter guy asked the 'Geronimo' man at glass's response and looked to the man who had blown up the computers.
"I am not sure but this entire thing is centered around libraries. So we are going hunting." The Geronimo man said walking to the doors of the box.
"For what?" the green eyed guy asked. The man stopped in front of the doors at the sound of his question.
"I have absolutely no idea." And the man walked into the blue box with a giant smile spread out over his face.