Chapter Eight: In the Hall of the Cyberking
The door to the now-deceased Carfax's room fell to the floor. As the dust cleared, Amy opened her mouth to scream. However, she quickly stopped when she noticed that it was not a barrage of Cybermen breaking down the door, but a group of event coordinators, led by the incorrigible Mary Morstan, armed with a walkie-talkie and a broom.
"Where are those ridiculous Doctors? I have a bone to pick with them!"
Sherlock Holmes lowered his stun gun, but only slightly—this woman appeared quite agitated. Mary took a moment and recognized the trio.
"Oh, you people again. Who are you, really? Because if you've come here to get rid of those—those things—you're doing a rubbish job!"
Mary's voice rose to fever pitch. Her subordinates stood behind her in the weirdest, geekiest looking battle formation ever seen in London. Amy had to suppress a smile at such a motley crew, even in these extremely dire circumstances.
"We're doing our best. Where did you last see John and the Doctor?"
"Let's see, I was looking in the door of the VIP room, saw some lasers being fired from Victor Hatherley's hands, fainted—and then woke up in the corner where they left me."
Amy bit her lip to stop herself laughing more. If there were Cybermen afoot, the Doctor was really not going to bother with one fainting woman. He was not one for chivalry.
"Well, we'd like to find our friends. And we'd like to solve this. If you're willing to help, I have a few favors to ask of you," Holmes said.
"What might those be?" asked Mary.
He brandished his gun and fired at one of her cohorts. He fell to the ground with a thump.
Mary leapt towards him with the broom but was restrained by Rory, who felt the need to step up and protect his hero, whether he actually needed it or not.
"You killed him!" she yelled.
"No. I merely stunned him. It's a useful weapon that could stop the humans-turned-Cybermen in their tracks, and fry the circuits of the…less fleshy ones. We need to make more. And for that, we need you."
Mary narrowed her eyes. "Explain, please. Starting with the obvious—what the hell is a Cyberman?"
The Doctor was pacing back and forth through the halls, Watson watching with his arms crossed. Just as he opened his mouth to ask the Doctor, yet again, what the next plan was, he heard that all too ominous creaking sound.
"Doctor!" Watson yelled. Yet it was too late. The Cyberman grabbed Watson by the shoulder and jolted him with electricity. He gave a shudder and fell limp to the ground.
"John!" The Doctor screamed, right before the Cyberman gripped his shoulders and dragged him away.
A few moments later, the Cyberman threw the Doctor on the floor in the shadowy security room. The Doctor felt the pain shoot through his ancient limbs and for the first time, didn't feel nearly as young as he looked. He craned his neck upwards and squinted through the gloom.
"Aw, come on, couldn't you treat a guest with a little more respect? Give me one of your VIP bags even…one of those earpieces?"
"Oh, shut up," snapped the man in the dark. He spun around in his chair and made what he imagined was a menacing face…though the Doctor couldn't see it in the dark. However, his expression quickly melted into one of dismay.
"Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the Doctor. Who the hell are you?"
"You're not the Doctor," the man sneered.
"Yes, I am. The one and only. Well, technically the eleventh. Eleventh face, that is. Same man."
"Shut up. Where's Doctor Watson?"
The Doctor peered at him quizzically. "Doctor Watson? John Watson? He's wherever your Cyberman left him when they dragged me away."
The man in the chair leaned forward, his face finally entering the narrow shaft of light from the tiny security window. The face was human…well, mostly human. One half had been replaced with interlocking metallic plates and a golden eye even more penetrating than his remaining human one. The metal plating extended down his body, under the collar of his neat suit, and ended in a beautifully designed Cyberarm, which clenched the arm of the chair so tightly that it nearly crumbled into dust.
"Do you know who I am, Doctor?" He hissed.
"Well, no. I already asked you who you were and you didn't answer. Bit rude, for an interrogator not to even establish his identity before the interrogation had begun—"
"Shut up! I asked you one question, not five. You're just as much of a showoff as Sherlock Holmes. Which explains why you were running around with his little medical minion. Which also means that you can probably tell me where Sherlock Holmes is…can't you?"
"I don't know where Sherlock Holmes is. Why do you need to know? And why have you given yourself a Cyberface? Why are there Cybermen everywhere? What is going on?"
The Cyberking laughed wickedly. "I am James Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson narrowly escaped my clutches via a terrible explosion that nearly killed me. Fortunately, the Cybermen offered me a solution to my dilemma."
"They made you a Cyberking? An actual king, not just a giant dreadnought-class ship?"
'Well, yes. Why would I be a…a ship?"
"Nevermind. How did you meet the Cybermen? Where did they come from?"
Moriarty laughed. "Do you really think I'm going to outline my entire plan to you before I've even finished carrying it out? I have almost as big of an ego as Sherlock, but he has me beat there. He'd have already posted his dumb plan online and given me plenty of time to thwart it. No, I think you'll be answering my questions. Why do you know so much about my friends here?"
"Oh, me and the Cybermen have a similar relationship that you and old Sherlock do."
"Mortal enemies. Quite right. But I was under the impression that I was the only human aware of the powers of the Cybermen."
"Well, that's not strictly true. I have a few friends."
Those friends were currently camped out in the VIP bathroom, since they had a feeling that none of the Cyber-CEOs would need it anytime soon. Here, they sat on the ground and under Holmes' expert supervision, began to assemble stun guns. Mary's events crew was there too. They had managed to obtain all of the materials that Holmes needed and provided extra firepower. Together, the group numbered about a dozen, which made their numbers about equal with the Cybermen—and that wasn't counting the group of converted humans. It was an uneven fight, to be sure, but Amy and Rory had been in such fights before, and the Doctor had always pulled through somehow. Yet where was he?
"Where do you think the Doctor's gone to?" Rory asked Amy.
"He's probably off confusing some bad guys and sonic-ing some robots. The usual."
"Do you think he's alright?"
Amy turned to Rory in dismay. "He's the Doctor. What do you think?"
Rory thought about this for a moment. "Yeah, I'm sure he's managing."
Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes was helping Mary put together her gun. She looked at him, confused.
"So you're Sherlock Holmes? The famous consulting detective? With the blog and everything?"
"The very same," Holmes said with nary a glance in her direction, so focused he was on the work at hand.
"And one of those doctors from earlier is Doctor John Watson? But which one?"
"The short one," Holmes said bluntly as he squinted at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and fired a neat jolt into his own reflection's forehead. The mirror cracked and several pieces fell into the sink.
"I thought you lot were just a detective and a physician. Not mercenaries."
"John is a former soldier, who put himself in the line of fire numerous times in Afghanistan, and my line of work requires me to acquire various…skills," Holmes said. "We wouldn't be alive today if we didn't take drastic measures now and then."
Amy took that moment to interrupt. "The Doctor would say you were wrong. He has defeated whole armies armed with nothing but his screwdriver and his mind."
Holmes looked at her. "Yes, well, some of us are merely human."
"Indeed," snorted Amy.
Rory tapped her on the shoulder. "We are human as well, in case you've forgotten." Amy swatted his hand away, before giving him a hug out of both affection and guilt.
Holmes handed the weapon to Mary. She examined it, not used to having anything heavier than a clipboard in her hands. "So, this John Watson…is he single?"
During all of this excitement poor John Watson was passed out on the floor. When he finally recovered from the electric shock and came to, he had a splitting headache from his fall to the ground. He lurched for the nearest trashcan and threw up.
"Concussed. How wonderful," he sighed as he wiped his mouth. After regaining steadiness by gripping the sides of the can for a few moments, and being grateful that the rather cranky and attractive woman—was her name Mary?—hadn't witnessed this humiliation. However, He knew the exact way to redeem himself. He had to find the Doctor and save him from the Cybermen. He didn't know where they had taken him, or how to put up a good enough fight, but he would save the Doctor if it was the last thing he ever did.
The Doctor was very good at a lot of things. One of these was talking. So he kept rambling on, both to annoy and get information out of Moriarty. One thing was for certain: this man was not Cyberking. He bore more of a resemblance to Cyberslaves, with his part-human and part-metal physique. The Doctor also recalled that when the Cybermen were done with Cyberslaves, they simply deleted them. While Moriarty was clearly the worst kind of human—and his animosity with Sherlock Holmes seemed to confirm this—the Doctor didn't want to simply leave him to such a ghastly fate. For one, that would still leave a ton of Cyber-CEOs running all over London, and soon, the world. For another, he was still a human life, and…"It just wouldn't be very nice of me would it?" the Doctor mused to himself.
"What did you say?" Moriarty snapped.
"Nothing, Jim—can I call you Jim?" The Doctor flashed a strained smile at him and struggled to pull himself into a more comfortable sitting position against the table leg he was handcuffed to. After a search, Moriarty had confiscated his psychic paper and the sonic screwdriver, and was currently analyzing them in an effort to discover their secrets. The Doctor was confident that he wouldn't succeed.
"So, Jim, how did the Cybermen find you again? You told me, but I forgot."
"I didn't tell you anything of the kind!" Moriarty growled and brandished his Cyberarm. The Doctor eyed it but didn't show any visible fear. After all, he had faced down entire empires. One half-Cyberman criminal was nothing to him. However, this irked Moriarty. Just as he was about to give the Doctor a taste of some sweet electricity,to show him why he should be more scared of the machine-man, a Cyberman lurched into the room.
"Sherlock Holmes is here," the Cyberman said.
"I know that. Where is he?" Moriarty asked, tension rising in his voice.
"He has an army. He is deleting Cybermen," the Cyberman intoned, before falling face-first to the ground with a sizzling metal hole in the back of its shiny skull.
