Chapter Four: Marie Devine is Missing
Holmes was basking in the aura of his nicotine patches while Watson scanned the front page. He looked up and addressed Holmes wryly. "Four patches, Sherlock? There is such thing as a four patch problem?"
"There is now," Holmes intoned, looking over at the Doctor, who had whipped out the sonic screwdriver and was scanning over the Cyberman with Amy and Rory at his side. "It's an older model," he said, "More advanced than the ones you two saw before. Just the brain, rather than the whole skull. And—"
He cut through the metal of the Cyberman's arm with a whirr and a flash. Holding it aloft, he examined it further. "It doesn't have limbs capable of self-operating once detached from the body and brain. Which means that either someone has been at this for quite awhile and is lacking the technology—"
"Or someone came from the past with this design and began working. A criminal from the past. What fun." Holmes finished his sentence.
"Couldn't it just the Cybermen working on their own?" Amy asked. "No, they'd need some sort of cover individual, or corporation, a benefactor of some kind. A bunch of robots stealing brains in London? Someone would have noticed by now," dismissed the Doctor.
"If it's a criminal from the past, with enough power and money to begin assembling Cybermen in London, could it be someone you've met before, Doctor?" Rory ventured. Sherlock sat up straight. "Excellent point, Robert!" "Rory," he embarrassedly corrected him. "Rory!" the Doctor echoed after them both, patting the young man affectionately on the head. "But who? And what could they possibly be trying to achieve?"
"Oh, I don't know, world domination, dominion over all human beings, the usual?" Amy offered. Just then Watson tore a page from the newspaper and thrust it under Holmes' nose. Holmes snatched it out of his hands. Watson took the opportunity to tear a nicotine patch off of his arm. Holmes didn't even notice, so engrossed he was in the news at hand.
"Marie Devine. Executive assistant at Carfax Industries. Called her husband to say she was working late and never came home. Carfax Industries is a computer software company."
"Oh, that seems too easy!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Agreed," Sherlock noted, before continuing. "Except they aren't based in London, they're based in Manchester."
"Oh God, Please don't make me go to Manchester! All the dirt and whiny music makes me feel ill." Amy groaned. "You've never even been to Manchester…have you?" Rory pointed out. "No, but I've heard enough Smiths songs to know I wouldn't like it." "Fair enough," Rory concurred, before asking, "Then why's this missing woman being featured in the London papers?"
"Because the CEO is in town to be the opening speaker and featured guest at a huge technology expo." Watson said, throwing down another section of the paper. The grinning face of the Carfax Industries CEO, Jackson Carfax, loomed out at them. He was rather young for a CEO and had crystal-clear blue eyes and the kind of cheekbones that could cut and a ruthless smile that said they probably would if it meant he would get further ahead in business. Even in the newspaper photo, his suit was obviously expensive and of a flattering cut. "Ooh, he's cute," Amy cooed. "I don't like him," Rory sniffed in response.
"He's the guest of honor at this big computer and information technology event down at Hyde Park," Watson continued. "It's supposed to be the biggest exhibition of new technology in Britain since Victoria and Albert's Great Exhibition. Carfax is here promoting some kind of new Bluetooth device that can download information straight to your head or something."
The Doctor jumped up. "Oh no oh no oh no…Bluetooth devices? That fit into your ear?"
"That's the standard function of a Bluetooth device, yes," Holmes said.
"Cybermen can convert humans into their minions by rewiring their brains through nondescript little earpieces. They look like Bluetooth devices, but they essentially turn the wearing into a zombie of sorts. Comatose walkers with no personality, no memory, no thoughts or actions of their own…only the will of the Cybermen driving them on."
"Ingenious," Holmes gasped. "We MUST go to that expo."
"Fortunately for us, we have two tickets," Watson said, holding up an envelope. The Doctor snatched it out of his hands and pulled them out. Holmes raised his eyebrows. "Where did you get those, John?" "They wanted us to attend as guests, to raise profile…because your site and my blog seem to have captured the public's imagination."
"Too true," Holmes mused, a slight shiver going down his spine remembering how dangerous his last encounter with someone fascinated by his online exploits had been. He turned back to Watson, disguising his discomfort with energy and accusations. "Why didn't you inform me of this?" "I did, but you were too busy trying to detangle your reputation from that Irene Adler nonsense," Watson said with a snigger.
"Well, now I'm not. What time does it start?"
"Opening ceremonies are underway in approximately…oh, nine minutes."
"Nine minutes! We have no time to waste then!"
"You're forgetting one thing," the Doctor said with a smile. "I have a TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, to be precise. I can get us there in under a minute, with time to get coffee beforehand." "Yes, coffee please," Rory mumbled, his head drooping onto Amy's shoulder. The excitement of meeting a minor hero and internet celebrity had worn off with the detective's inability to remember his name; now the fact that he hadn't slept all night was beginning to take it's toll. Amy shrugged her shoulder in annoyance, forcing his head reluctantly upwards.
"But we only have two tickets," Watson pointed out. "No," said the Doctor, pulling out the psychic paper and flashing it before his eyes. "We have a VIP pass for the Doctor and his two guests, who all happen to be experts on…"
"Does that say advanced nuclear-cyber-kinetic fusion technology…and cheese?" said Holmes. The Doctor snapped the paper shut. "It might…if that's what you want it to say. Psychic paper. Convinces you that it is whatever you'd most want it to be, and we are whoever it says we are."
Holmes was more intrigued by the visitor from space than ever. Something like psychic paper would be endlessly beneficial in his line of work. "How does that work? Is it electronic? Does it download stuff from an online profile? Do you have any extra?"
"Um…it's a lot of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…anyways, to the TARDIS!"
About a half an hour later Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door of the flat and heard no response. "Sherlock? John? I brought you some milk and eggs from the store, despite the fact that I am in fact not your housekeeper, just a landlady who worries you don't eat healthy enough," she called. Upon still not hearing a sound, she pulled out her key and let herself in.
The site before her was a messy, masculine cave of a room with newspapers, teacups, and nicotine patch wrappers scattered everywhere. While she sighed and rolled her eyes at the discord, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. What was strange, even for her two remarkable tenants, was the silver man-sized-and-shaped construct lying across the table.
Mrs. Hudson walked over to investigate Holmes and Watson's latest discovery, figuring it could do no harm. However, what she saw caused her to scream and drop the groceries to the floor, eggs and milk splattering everywhere. She knew Watson was a Doctor, but that was no reason for them to keep brains in the flat. Brains! She ran out and slammed the door behind her, pressing her back against it and breathing heavily as though that would keep the robot man at bay. When she had recovered enough to walk down the stairs without getting vertigo, she quickly left, reminding herself to have a word with the boys later about the difference between home and workplace. If they didn't learn how to make certain distinctions between the two, their sanity was going to dissipate even more quickly than it already was.
As Mrs. Hudson was buying those ill-fated groceries, and the TARDIS was whizzing off into the vortex of time and space with the quintet of adventurers inside, the Kensington Expo was getting ready to cut the ribbon on it's first annual convention honoring the latest in technological advances around the globe. It was being held in Hyde Park, in a beautiful new glass structure, designed particularly for the occasion to be a modern descendant of the Crystal Palace held for Victoria and Albert's Great Exhibition in 1851. That event was planned in order to exhibit some of the most extraordinary technological leaps of the Industrial Revolution; this one planned to do the same for the twenty-first century. It was a chic, modern building constructed entirely of glass panels and iron framing, lit with only the purest, most incandescent white light. This combined with the endless amounts of computer, electronic, and weapons technology inside made the entire complex seem like a futuristic, fairy-tale palace from space. And the guest of honor was Jackson Carfax of Carfax Industries, who was currently primping in a dressing room in a separate building—not made of glass—before he gave his keynote speech. He fluffed his shiny dark hair and pouted in the mirror. "Product!" he called out with a haughty sniff.
A Cyberman came up behind him with a bottle of hair gel and squirted some onto his hair. A little too much—a great big blob dripped into his eyes, which began to blink rapidly and burn! "Ah! You got it in my eye, you great hunk of junk! I ought to scrap you—"
The Cyberman held up a hand and blasted his mirror with a bolt of electricity. It cracked down the middle with a loud metallic snapping sound, sparks flying. Jackson Carfax gulped nervously. "I should never have let you convert Marie. She was best for this sort of thing. She knew exactly how much product stood between the slick business look and that of the greasy, untrustworthy salesman."
"She knew too much. She stood between the Cybermen and success. She had to go." The Cyberman intoned. "I know, I know…and once we introduce these earpieces of yours to the general public, there won't be anything else that stands in our way either," Jackson said with a swish of his hair and a spray of obscenely expensive cologne. For all the money he had spent it ought to have smelled better. He sniffed and turned to the Cyberman. "Too much?" he said. The silence and the overpowering smell of the cologne both lingered in the air as the Cyberman blankly stared at him. Finally it responded.
"Smell is not a sense necessary to the Cyberman. It has been deleted." Then it walked away and closed the door, legs creaking as it went. Jackson looked at his reflection, now doubled and eerily deformed in the cracked mirror. Equal parts scientific genius and flamboyant showman, with a mind that understood technology better than human people, he was the perfect tool for the Cybermen. Problem is, he wasn't yet aware that was what he was—merely a tool. He basked in the excitement of hearing voices grow louder and louder outside, before an event coordinator knocked on the door.
'Enter," he crowed. The coordinator, a brunette woman named Mary with horn-rimmed glasses and a messy, unraveling bun, threw open the door. One look at her face clearly broadcast the news that she was not in the mood to deal with any prima donna behavior.
"It's time," was all she said.
Jackson picked up his blazer from the chair and slipped it on. Perfectly tailored bottle green with black pinstripes, it was the ideal choice for a man who valued both fashion and function. Buttoning it up and taking one last indulgent glance at himself in the broken mirror, he followed her out into the flashbulbs and chaos.
