AN: This is a special chapter to celebrate three favorites and a new set of readers. Thank you so much for reading! This has been one of my favorite projects throughout high school, and I'm excited to share this edited version with you. This chapter did not appear in the original story, so please review, follow, and enjoy!
Time had faded the memory of New York and washed out the habits of Gallifrey by the time that a course was to be decided upon once more. By that time, it was almost forgotten that the ship was a ship at all, and that her heading was something that could be of importance.
There had been lazy days and challenging assignments, mixed with many things that fell in between the two. There had been forgetting, remembering, and some times in which something new had happened. Those days were considered to be good days, days worth remembering.
Those were the days when Angelo fell into the pool and resurfaced looking like a wet cat, dripping and dangerously annoyed.
Those were the days of agonizingly long games of Seek/Locate, the kind that grew tenser around mealtimes as the seeker waited for the hiders to enter the kitchen in search for lunch, dinner, and sometimes breakfast. Eventually, truces needed to be called.
Those were the good things, the unpredictable things, and the things that were somehow good to remember.
It seemed new but felt familiar, having pleasant recollections.
The group was putting distance between themselves and their point of origin, slowly but steadily.
The children took turns learning how to manage the ship. Angelo loved the lessons. It made him feel like he could do something, like he was useful, and most of all, like he was free. When he was at the helm, he no longer felt restless, which Bernadette saw as a mercy. When the boy paced, it wore at her nerves to no end. He reminded her of a caged animal, waiting to strike the moment the doors cracked open, an accident waiting to happen.
But for now, somehow, he seemed happy.
-o-
Angelo kept the TARDIS steady as Bernadette checked that everything was in order. Air, gravity, Talitha, and so on. Talitha was supposed to be navigating, but she was not particularly good at navigation in the same way that an elephant is not particularly good at flying, so the TARDIS did that part herself.
The navigation controls shifted slowly on their own accord, showing the girl how they should be moved. They stopped suddenly, stiff in their slots.
"What's wrong?" Talitha asked.
"There's a distress signal." Bernadette replied. "We kind of have to stop for those."
Angelo sighed. "Sorry this is happening, miss."
The TARDIS' engines whirred, hummed, and soon they came in for a landing, although they did not yet know where or when.
The children were sent to their rooms where they sat speculating what time and what place could warrant such a restriction.
"Maybe we're at the end of time itself, and she'll have to rescue an early time traveller." Talitha suggested.
"Or perhaps we stumbled across a band of pirates from a distant planet." Bernadette said.
"Or she just wants to be sure it's safe before we run into oncoming traffic." Angelo shot back.
Talitha shrugged. "That's actually a pretty fair point."
"Thank you."
They gathered around the console screen, boredom overcoming their caution.
"Where's she going?"
Angelo shrugged. "I can't tell. She turned off the visuals."
Talitha walked away from the console and put an ear to the wall. "It doesn't sound very nice." She pulled away. "And now it doesn't sound like anything."
Angelo covered his face with his hands, too tired to tell the girl why.
"So, what's the plan?" Bernadette asked. "Sit tight and be prepared in case something goes wrong?"
Talitha shrugged. "Sounds good to me. You know what they say, keep your shoes by the bed and you'll keep your head."
Bernadette went to the TARDIS' wardrobe to see if the plan she had in mind had received any approval. It seemed like it had. It had been filled with a pleasantly new variety of clothing, ones that seemed to match the new sense of fashion of a new place and a new time. It was mostly in muted colors, simple, functional, but pleasant due to its clean lines.
"Hey look, weird pants!" Talitha yelled, holding up a pair of shorts.
Bernadette stared. "Tally, please put those down."
"Aw, come on. Why?"
"Because, because…"
Angelo laughed. "Because you'd look like a shobogan in those."
Bernadette turned to look at him, judging his new attire. He wore a grey dress shirt, a black jacket, and…
"Angelo, did you take the only skirt?"
"Maybe." he said with a smirk. "Come on, I just want something decent to wear."
"You piece of trash. You knew I wanted that."
"Certainly, and with pleasure."
-o-
Talitha rested her head in her arms and her arms on the kitchen table. She stared at a wall as if it could provide some answer as to what would be for lunch. The TARDIS was too preoccupied to cook for them, and all Talitha could remember how to make was toast, which was as convenient as knowing how to pilot a TARDIS or do a cartwheel at that moment, because only Angelo actually liked toast.
Luckily, that was enough to keep the younger boy from complaining.
Talitha threw two pieces of bread on the cutting board. They landed with an unsatisfactory thump. She opened the cupboard in search of something that would make a better noise when placed on the counter with a dearth of caution, then settled with a jar of jam. It made a pleasant clink of glass against the wood. Not bothering to find anything else anytime soon, she dumped some jam onto a slice of bread, then shut it with another piece of bread on top. When she bit into it, she told herself that she was a genius and would never cease to amaze herself.
Bernadette stopped eating the pasta she made in order to assure Talitha that she was just as foolish as she was yesterday.
-o-
Angelo was anxiously searching his room for his bag when the lights went out. It had been a bright room with warm lights and starry blue bedsheets, full of things he liked and things that gave him comfort, but now it was pitch black. He lay on the floor, one arm still searching beneath a dresser, not daring to move, not daring to breathe.
Holding his breath was the easy part, but the hardest part was waiting to hear a familiar sound cut through the dark. The steady hum of the TARDIS' engines had been replaced by suffocating silence. It only lasted a microspan, but it felt like lifetimes.
The hum returned, deep and soft, and Angelo let out his breath.
The hum grew, becoming louder and higher into a siren shriek, piercing and warning.
Then it was gone.
_-o-_
Talitha stood, staring at the place where the TARDIS console had been moments before. She had heard the ship's message, and relayed it to Bernadette's silently.
"We need to get out of here."
Talitha was about to explain further when a thought reached her mind, sharp and panicked.
Where is Angelo?
Neither of them knew where the boy was.
-o-
Angelo was lost. He looked down the hall, but it looked just like every other hallway he had passed. The only thing he could discern in the darkness was a hall lined with glass cases, each one with its own unique label. When his eyes adjusted, he read each one.
"Rectangular storage device, circa 20th century. Once a staple in every home, these blocks contained information, most likely records of notable events."
"Unknown square glyphs, circa 21st century. Similar black and white squares of varying complexity have been found in a number of places, from streetlamps to tombstones, mostly in urban areas. These artifacts may have been used as a ward against the plague."
He looked at the neat arrangement of QR codes, and upon deciding that they held no sway over disease, left the inaccurate exhibit. Somewhere in the museum was the TARDIS. Angelo was sure of it. She had to be there, as opposed to anywhere and anywhen in the universe, because the museum was dark, silent, and scary. Angelo had never been anywhere dark and scary on his own before. But who said that he was alone?
He peered down another dim hall, wondering if he called out, who would answer.
He didn't try to find out. Instead, he did what he was best at: He ran and hid.
-o-
Somewhere in the maze of halls and galleries, Talitha and Bernadette weighed what they knew.
"The message was short and a bit vague." Talitha admitted. "I could barely make out any specifics, just… warning."
"Imprecise thoughts are harder to track. She's probably being watched. "
"Or she's been caught."
"But by who? Whatever it was, she surely thought she could handle it relatively quickly." Bernadette assured her. "She wouldn't have left us alone for very long, would she?"
"She wouldn't, she'd never, she..." Talitha sighed. "She's not like him. Something is certainly wrong."
"Isn't something always?" She clapped Talitha on the back. "We've been through a lot of scary things before, Tally. We've seen the end of the world, and worse, my mother angry, but we always made it out okay. Just trust me on this."
Talitha laughed. "Why should I trust you, Oakdown?"
"For the same reason I trust you, Lungbarrowmas: No one sensible ever would."
-o-
The gift shop was not near the exit, and the realization made Angelo's hearts sink. Its doors were open wide in spite of the darkness, so he ducked inside, taking refuge among the shelves of knick knacks and books. The narrow aisles calmed him, reminding him of the library in the Academy, piled high with books. But the shelves stopped not far above him, and a nearby rack only held cheap jewelry with illegible symbols on their gilded charms. He spun the flimsy metal rack as he passed, then stopped, stepping back to face it once more.
His intuition screamed of something amiss, but he could not place it. He listened as bracelets and bangles chimed against one another, then tried to hear past the silence. No warning sound came.
Instead, the dim electric light from overhead reflected off of cheap jewelry with illegible symbols on their gilded charms, symbols he should have been able to read. Were they gibberish or were they not translating? Were they wrong or was he alone?
He pulled a stationery set from a shelf, ripping the thin plastic off it. He needed something to write with. If he wrote in his own hand, it would be something he'd expect. It surely wouldn't be English, something half-learned and uncertain, but Gallifreyan. Then he'd be sure.
He picked a language at random and wrote.
"Patrino" he printed.
"Pythia", the paper said in linear Gallifreyan.
He wrote the same word, "Mother", in English script.
"Pythia", the paper read in circular Gallifreyan.
He sighed in relief. He wasn't alone. He was safe, he had the TARDIS, or at least he a scrap of paper covered in scribbles that proved the that he probably did.
He capped the pen with a "click", and something in the hall replied with a "clank". Angelo froze, listening. The sound came again, metal on metal. Angelo searched the little gift shop for somewhere to hide. The shadows of the shelves were short in the dying light, forcing him into the corner of the room. The footsteps of a metal goliath sounded, closer and closer, as the boy buried himself in a pile of plush toys. He tried to stay still, to slow his breathing and his racing pulse, but in spite of his efforts he received an annoyed "Shh!".
In the dark, surrounded by faux fur on all sides, Angelo and an unknown someone played a game of hide-and-seek that they both desperately did not want to lose, and the seeker was drawing closer by the second.
They waited, motionless, as the steps passed in front of their hiding place and stopped. Angelo could have sworn he could feel its stare, but it marched away, its stomping feet giving way to silence once more.
The pile of toys shifted and a boy climbed out. "Thank the stars you're still alive. I thought I was the only one left for a time." He held out a hand. "My name is Kendi." the boy said. "And yours?"
Angelowryredred took his hand and stumbled to his feet. "You can call me Angelo." he said. "And I have no idea what's going on here."
"That's simple." Kendi said. "Everyone vanished and some sort of metal monster is stalking me in the dark. Totally normal." He laughed, giddy with relief.
"So how are you still here?"
"That's simple." he said. "I hid."
Angelo turned toward the door, waiting for the reappearance of the thing that Kendi so seemed to fear. It never came.
"We should have an hour or so before it comes back." Kendi said.
"So it's doing rounds."
"It seems like it."
Angelo touched his fingers to his lips as if to bite his nails, then thought better of it. "But is it searching for something, or is it guarding something, or is it simply patrolling without purpose? Does it know that you're here, or that I'm here, or that other completely hypothetical people may be outside? And if so…" Angelo lost his restraint and began to bite his nails with an alarming ferocity.
Kendi put a hand on his shoulder. "We're going to be fine, Angelo. We'll get out of this together."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
The boys stood behind the checkout counter, looking over a drawing that Kendi had made of the museum to the best of his memory. There were five floors and they were on the third. The large staircases in the galleries would afford them no cover, but there were two small stairwells that could hide them, or whatever lurked in the shadows. It was a calculated risk, in that finding an exit seemed more favorable in the long run than simply waiting to be caught by whatever was roaming the halls.
"Do you know what it looks like?" Angelo asked. "It might help if we knew what to look out for."
"Wouldn't we hear it first?"
"It could hide." Angelo pointed out. "Then we'd have no warning."
The boy nodded understandingly. "I never saw the big one," Kendi admitted, "But once I caught sight of some sort of scout. It was small and skittering, like a rodent, but shaped more like a bug, I guess." He made a vague motion with his hands, indicating a size between a foot and something larger. "I didn't get very close, of course."
"But can you draw it?"
"I can try."
He picked up the pen and began to draw. He sketched lightly at first, making a long rounded body, then filled in the details with a heavier hand. It had a shell of plated armour, big dark eyes, and two thin antennae. When he pushed the paper over for Angelo to see. It was an unmistakable depiction of a cybermat.
Kendi looked over at him, waiting for the concern on the boy's face to form into words. "Do you know what it is?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"We're already in danger and scared out of our wits, so there's no point in trying to keep it a secret."
"It's a cybermat." Angelo said.
Kendi raised his eyebrows, his dark eyes glinting in the dim light. "Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Gosh darn it." He tossed down the pen, letting it skitter across the counter. "Just when I thought things were bad, they managed to get worse."
"You know what they are?"
Kendi smirked. "I'm not a Cyber Studies major, but I'm pretty sure I know something about the cybermen. Everyone does."
Angelo nodded, in his mind placing the possible year somewhere around 2500. "Do you know how this may have happened?" Angelo asked. "Was there anything out of place as of late, anything alien, or suspicious, or-"
Kendi stopped him. "The audio tours." he said, a sudden sadness in his voice. "They were downloadable. That could have done it easily enough."
Angelo looked at the boy incredulously. He seemed to be the logical kind, with his carefully drawn maps, suit, and tie, but there was something that could not be ignored. "Then how are you still here?"
"I never downloaded it." Kendi said plainly. "I'm the curator's son, and this is opening night. There was no need. Besides, I tend to find direct-to-brain downloads more trouble than they're worth."
"Sounds a bit conceited, but okay." Angelo smiled and picked up Kendi's rough map. "Let's get down to business, shall we?"
Kendi peered down the hall, his heart pounding. "All clear." he said, his voice hardly a whisper.
Angelo walked to his side, scanning the dim hall with a second pair of eyes. After a moment, he nodded. "Let's go."
_-o-_
The boys kept close to the wall, their steps light and their breaths shallow. Not a word was spoken as they crept down the corridor, feeling the eyes of paintings watching from inside caskets of glass. They reached a gallery where the lights flickered weakly. Angelo approached the doorway, looked around, then motioned for Kendi to follow. They stepped warily around a large statue that stood with an arm outstretched, then ducked into the dark once more. As his eyes adjusted, Angelo could make out the shapes of ships in the gilded frames, sailing on seas of oil. The white crests of waves seemed to strain against the canvas, struggling to force their way out and flood the museum's polished floors.
A glint of light appeared beside Kendi's careful feet, drawing his eyes upwards. He recognized this place now, and so he took the lead. The light grew closer, but not much brighter as he entered an archway. He stopped there, holding up a hand, then two fingers. Angelo was by his side in moments, ready to assess the situation.
Ahead of them was an atrium, a room filled with marble benches and delicate glass sculptures, flanked by tall white pillars that held up an elegant skylight. Tall, round tables were scattered throughout, their white tablecloths showing off arrangements of brightly-colored pastries, some of which appeared to have been already eaten, or were tucked into crumb-covered napkins. The atrium was empty now, filled only with the pale blue light of dawn. It spilled over the grand staircase and glinted off the polished faces of the two cybermen that stood guard there.
_-o-_
Ten hours prior, a party was in full swing. It was a suit and tie event, filled to the brim with notables that its youngest attendee had never cared for. Kendi sat alone, munching on a small pile of macaroons that he had stolen away in a napkin.
"It's remarkable, isn't it?" a woman said, admiring the graceful arcs of a nearby sculpture. "All the wonders of old Terra, here for the pleasure of the people of Mars."
"Or the Martian elite," the boy muttered.
The woman laughed and pinched his cheek. "Oh, you sound just like your father! The curator always has a tendency toward tragedy."
Kendi tried not to wince.
The woman saw her mistake. "I was referring to his choices of artifacts," she blurted, more to her own defense than to compliment Kendi's father. She never meant to glance upon the subject of the curator's recent loss of his wife, but she would be lying if she didn't say she was curious. It was the greatest subject of gossip that night, and the reason behind the exhibit's creation.
Kendi forced a smile. "Yes, of course. It's a welcome change to the previous arrangement. The main focus this time is not Earth, but our distance from it."
She raised an eyebrow, taking a sip of her drink to buy time to think her choice of words through more thoroughly. "I can't help but think that's not quite in the spirit of the empire."
He looked at her in earnest for the first time. Fastened on the lapel of her blazer was a golden pin featuring a triangle inscribed into a sun, the symbol of an imperial official.
Kendi reacted accordingly, in the sense that he did not. "The distance between us and Terra is important in the sense that the wonders of that world still inspire us. We are still connected in that our hearts still dream of it. "
She looked pleased, but Kendi felt like a liar.
_-o-_
Angelo searched for an alternate route, running through the layout of the building in his mind. He found nothing.
He tried to stifle his sigh of resignation, but Kendi still left his reverie to shoot him a look of concern.
"I can fix this," Angelo said hurriedly. "Don't worry. Just wait here and I'll take care of it."
"Don't be stupid."
"I'm not, trust me. You trust me, right?"
To his surprise, the boy laughed. "I just met you," Kendi replied. "But I'll let you run out there if it makes you feel better."
"Thank you."
"Wait, I didn't mean-"
But Angelo was already gone.
The sound that followed was one that took Kendi by surprise. It was a sharp clang, followed by another, and the quick patter of Angelo's feet.
"All clear."
Kendi stared, unsure of what to say or do. It was Angelo who made the decision for him, taking him by the hand and running.
_-o-_
Bernadette gently lifted an ancient knife off its place on the wall, praying that no alarm would sound. None did.
Talitha, however, was giving her a look that was nothing short of alarm.
"Fine," she said, "I'm not saying I'm paranoid, but I'm a tad paranoid, Tals. Let me be."
Talitha rolled her eyes. "You always are, I know."
Bernadette tested the balance of the blade, satisfied with the results. She handed her second weapon, a kitchen knife she had been washing, to Talitha.
It was still wet and slightly slippery.
"Stay behind me." Bernadette said. "I'll handle whatever gets in our way."
Talitha stood back, but she couldn't hide her mistrust. "You have that look again," she said. "That can't be good."
"What look?"
"The one that say's you're about to kill a man."
"Kill a man?" Bernadette asked incredulously. "I'd never."
"Of course, Oakdown, of course."
_-o-_
The two boys slowed to a walk as they returned to the familiar darkness of the halls. In the silence, Kendi could hear Angelo's skirt swish beside him. For a moment, he felt it brush the side of his suit, and for a moment he thought of reaching over and holding the boy's hand.
For just a moment.
That moment ended when a resounding clang shook the building, sending a jolt of fear running down his spine, as swift as lightning and as cold as steel.
It was the sound of marching, rising, intensifying, and coming from somewhere below their feet. An army was gathering. From the outside, they were shiny and new as freshly minted coins. But inside every soldier was a heart that had once been human.
Angelo stood ramrod straight, every muscle tensing. He too had heard the sound, the sound of being too late. Too late to save, too late to run, and too late to help. He clasped his hands behind his back and paced, a steady back and forth, not noticing the way that Kendi stood staring, his hand grasping thin air where Angelo's once had been.
Angelo took hold of it, but not in the way Kendi had once hoped. "We need to reposition," he said. "We may gain some time if we go to the next gallery, find something to barricade the doors with, and use what we have to determine which way the cybermen will have to go next. From there we can decide which path will be least guarded."
By the time he had finished explaining his plan, it had already been half-executed, the gallery fortified with a barricade of busts and toppled statues.
In the silence that followed, Kendi sat on a wooden bench in the center of the room, wondering how he got into this mess and with what manner of a man.
Angelo worked his way through everything that could possibly go wrong. He did not say what was on his mind, as doing so would alarm Kendi and complicate things further. Little did he know, his every thought was written plainly on his face.
It was something in the way he stared down at his feet that seemed familiar to Kendi, something that brought back memories of his father looking down at the rust red earth outside the warmth of the city, into the merciless cold.
"We're all going to die," he had said. He spoke to no one but himself. He spoke of the dark and the cold and the fragile futility of everything, its eventual decay. But most of all, he spoke of the graveyard, full of red sand and thin air, and how his wife had begged not to be buried there. Her soul had always longed for Terran soil and sunlight. Yet Earth was and always would be nothing but a pale blue dot in the distance.
Angelo lifted his eyes and smiled at Kendi from across the room. "We can make it."
Angelo removed the barricade from the door. It was slow work, but he was certain of his every move.
Bernadette took the lead, marching on relentlessly. The door ahead would not budge, but she was determined to change that. She put her weight into it, her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Kendi felt a twinge of anxiety as a sound reached his ears, the sound of straining wood.
Talitha was listening.
Then all at once it came together, colliding as the door opened wide, Angelo was pushed to the floor, and Talitha stood back, stifling a scream that was not her own.
Kendi's eyes were wide with shock, but he was speechless. He shot a glance at Angelo, then at Bernadette, then back at Angelo, then returned to marvelling at the sheer size, sharpness, and historical value of Bernadette's blade. What was left of his cry came out as a small squeak.
When Bernadette pushed Kendi aside, he did not protest.
"Are you alright?" she asked Angelo, giving him a cursory look.
The boy nodded.
The lone human stood awkwardly aside, trying to make sense of the situation. Finally, the pieces clicked together as common sense finally triumphed over shock and infatuation. "You weren't invited," he said plainly.
Bernadette gave him a quizzical look, noticing him for the first time. "Invited?" she asked. "To what?"
"The grand opening of the new exhibit," Angelo offered, waiting for the girls to take the hint.
Talitha took it in stride. "Why would we be here if we weren't?"
Kendi realized that he had no rebuttal to that, although he was almost certain that there had been more to his train of thought. So he simply shrugged and continued to play along, as if there had ever been anything else for him to do.
-o-
No one knew where the TARDIS was, and one of them didn't know what the TARDIS was. No one bothered to explain.
The TARDIS however, knew where she was, and she wasn't quite fond of it.
She was in the inopportune position of being late. Her brakes would need to be fixed, but that was the least of her worries. Her lateness had allowed the event she had been sent to prevent to come to pass, leaving herself inconvenienced and everyone else dead.
That was not something she wanted to think about.
Instead, she ran through the repercussions of her last-minute decisions, taking in all the information she could before matters became worse, because she knew they would be worse. She was in the calm before the storm, that awful place in which one waits for everything to go horribly wrong. Her weapons were functional, but not precise enough to deal with the matter at hand. She was made for temporal warfare on a massive scale, not skirmishes in the more delicate parts of spacetime. The solar system was like a worn piece of cloth on an embroidery hoop, stretched and torn by clumsy hands, littered with the discarded threads of travellers who had interfered. Too many timelines depended on its survival, almost to the point that its third planet was nothing but a frame for the universe to lean upon, a means to an end, a setting in a story. It was at her mercy, and she lacked the steady hand needed to save it.
She cursed herself for that. She was trapped, torn between the need to avoid interference and the desire to tear time to pieces, to show it that it was not a part of the tapestry that the Time Lords had worked so hard to create. But between that was balance, between that was patience, and so she was patient. She would reconfigure, sacrificing some of her strength for the slightest bit of precision, just enough to get by. She would only need one weapon in her repertoire to win this battle, and that was a gun of gold.
To be exact, her systems defined it as follows:
Glittergun [Weapon] - Fires gold dust particles into the chest unit of the Cyberman, obstructing the respiratory system and suffocating the hostile.
But of course, everyone knows that.
Her scans revealed that the Cybermen had arrived long before she had, in small numbers that had increased quite sharply as of late. Part of her thought of dead men, but she calmed herself with another: They weren't hers.
She readied her gun.
She waited patiently for one to approach. She had all the time in the world. In the underbelly of the museum, the floor had been cleared to make way for something that should not had been. It would inspire fear in some, the patient silence and the stench of flesh and steel, but she was the true horror in the room. She was formless, infinite, a flagrant violation of the laws of the universe. A metal creature rounded the corner. It was simple inside, just made, a single purpose placed into a hollow shell. She was bigger, a predator poised to attack. Finally, after her chorus of engines and fire rose to a crescendo, she made her move. Her weapon clicked uselessly in her hands. She could not interfere. The tide had changed, and the cybermen had found a way to fit into Gallifrey's plan. Or to be more exact, Gallifrey had found a use for the cybermen.
She didn't like the thought. It did not matter what her opinion was, but she still cared. She still would rather not have blood on her negligent hands. So, she decided to do something stupid, but made sure to do her best to keep her pilots out of it. Gallifrey had given her many gifts, but she would not use them. They had too many restrictions, needed to follow too many laws. She had other tools at her disposal. She had Earth. And she would manipulate it to raise whatever hell was necessary to end the nightmare she had been forced into.
Her first course of action was to call in reinforcements. But by the time they arrived, they should only have to clean up the mess. And by her stars, there would be a mess.
_-o-_
The children had decided to find their way out then deal with Kendi afterwards. This, of course, was decided without the boy's input. Working their way down to the first floor was their main priority, and as long as that was true Kendi could do his best to forget all the latest causes of death he dreamt up.
Bernadette took the lead, her sure strides forcing the rest to hurry to keep pace. They reached the stairwell within the minute, but it took them far longer to force the door open. It was metal, painted white to match the rest of the room. Its electronic lock, like the elevator across from it, lacked power.
Angelo frowned. "If it had power we could just take it apart, but now we'd need to get it running again before we break it."
Kendi removed a pin from his lapel. "That's still a start."
The children took turns trying to tease the screws from their casings. Eventually the lock's outer shell gave way under their insistence, falling soundlessly into Kendi's outstretched hand.
Talitha and Angelo stepped up to examine the mechanism. It was somewhat simple, and they surmised that by switching two wires they could easily override it. First, however, they needed power. Talitha twirled her hair, lost in thought. It was somewhat fortunate that the power had failed, as they would have had to shut it off for a moment anyway. With no better ideas coming to mind, she settled with the first thing that entered her mind. She exchanged one wire for another, then, with as much grace as she could muster, used her hands and her hair to build up a charge strong enough to make the lock give a faint and feeble click. She knew it shouldn't have worked, but she kept the thought to herself.
Bernadette led them down the stairs, her blade held at the ready. She was cautious, slow, and the drawn out moment of anxiety and adrenaline made Kendi feel sick. The narrow, compact column of stairs seemed to twist endlessly in both directions, a labyrinth of dull red concrete with intermittent signage. Between the third and second floors, Bernadette stopped. Angelo cocked his head to the side, listening. He could make out, however faintly, a low and steady whir coming from around the next turn in the stairway. Carefully, they backed up the stairs. They went slowly, softly, until the moment eyes locked on them.
They were rimmed with steel.
There were a total of six Cybermen, two approaching from each direction, with the third being the door to the third floor. For some reason, that pair had chest units that had seen better days. They had sizable dents in them.
The children froze, unsure of what to do, realizing that they were trapped.
Bernadette turned to face the two which were already injured, ready to kill, or more likely than not, blunt her blade.
Seeing her performative bloodlust, Angelo gave her a nonchalant smile. "Interesting idea, but I really don't want to die, so-"
And that was when he jumped.
It was crazy, it was foolish, but it bought some time. The moment he pushed off the stair and let his momentum carry him on a collision course with the hulking, armoured creature. He had estimated that he could knock it off balance just enough to make it fall from its narrow stair. Knowing this, he grabbed Kendi's hand on his way down, shouting a single parting word: Run.
They scattered, with Talitha sliding between the legs of two Cybermen and running out the door, Kendi falling down the stairs, Bernadette feeling the crushing grip of a hand on her arm, and Angelo fleeing the scene without direction.
_-o-_
Bernadette did not like her chances. She had lost her only weapon, her means of escape, and her backup. In other words, she was trapped. She had made the mistake of looking up at her captors once and only once. She had wanted to gauge how far along in the cybermen's timeline they were, to gain some idea of their abilities. When she caught one's gaze, she froze. Behind the metal faceplate was a pair of hazel eyes, vacant and staring. They were, as always, both too human and too mechanical. That was always the case with the cybermen, but this time even more so. They were an early kind, mostly metal, but with some vestiges of cloth and some complex parts that weren't worth the trouble of replacing, in this case, eyes. They were simple and to the point. That was their modus operandi. Taking prisoners, however, was not. They hadn't even tried to convert her, not a single check. Any attempt, of course, would be unsuccessful, as her biology was incompatible with the process. Still, to say the least, that would be uncomfortable.
The thought of it made her hate herself all the more for failing to follow the others, despite the fact that everything had happened too fast to make wise choices, if any at all.
Guardian was counting the hours when Bernadette entered the room.
They looked at one another, recognition bringing disappointment. No one would be saved.
The timeship seemed to see things fall into a place she didn't care for as she let out a sigh so deep it made her form flicker and her engines rumble.
The cyber-leader who stood before her spoke the exact words she had foreseen. "Our records indicate that TARDIS models of your caliber are capable of pilotless flight. This theory can be tested."
It took a step toward Bernadette.
Guardian did not flinch.
Bernadette's hearts raced, awaiting an answer at least and a miracle at most.
Then finally, finally, betraying her youth, the warship, not quite a woman, said "Try me."
Suddenly, Bernadette understood why the ship got along with Talitha so well.
They were both idiots.
_-o-_
In a bathroom on the second floor, Kendi held bloody wads of paper to his nose. "I hate you," he said, though he wasn't quite sure to whom that insult was truly directed. For the moment, Angelo would do.
Angelo only shrugged as if he had nothing to do with the whole affair, then handed Kendi another carefully folded stack of toilet paper.
He pressed it angrily to his nose until the pressure made the bleeding slow to a stop. Kendi tossed the bloodied scraps into the bin as if tidiness would matter at the end of days, or perhaps to remove any distractions from the question that he could no longer keep to himself. "How did they even know where we were? All six of them?"
"I suppose that means we were being watched. Perhaps we still are."
"But if they knew where we were all along, why did they wait to attack?"
"Because it was convenient, of course." Angelo replied. "They led us to the stairwell, no, let us into the stairwell, because that would be easier to get to everyone at once that way."
"How many did they get?" Kendi asked. "I didn't see, since I was too busy being pushed down a flight of stairs."
"Pulled," Angelo corrected, "And I have no idea. I'd hope none and expect one."
Kendi stared at him for a moment, taking in his calm disposition and the complete lack of emotion in his face. "You wouldn't even care if I died in some horrible way, would you? You knew those girls, and you don't look the slightest bit concerned."
Angelo looked away from him, fiddling with the folds of his skirt. "I- I'm quite certain that it will sink in later. But for now, let's stay on task, okay?" He stood to his full height, something just under four and a half feet, and continued his aimless march toward anything and anywhere that he prayed wouldn't mean certain death.
They avoided the stairwell they had just exited, opting to move towards the one on the opposite side. Kendi held onto a few wads of paper to make sure that he didn't track any blood along the way. It was a pointless precaution, as they both knew they were as good as gone.
As they went, Kendi began to see that Angelo wasn't indifferent: He was shaken. In fact, he was shaking. He gave Kendi the slightest smile as he stopped in a quiet gallery, listening to the sound of footsteps coming from all sides, stacking whatever objects he could find against the door, regardless of their worth. He didn't say a word as a vase slipped from his trembling hands and shattered on the hardwood floor.
Kendi stared down at the lines in the wood, thinking of the rust red valleys of Mars, things he accepted would never see again.
Angelo was vying for time. Time for what, he didn't know. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that he was afraid to lose what little humanity he had in himself.
What mattered was that he was human.
_-o-_
Guardian knew that it would be five minutes until the Earth's reinforcements arrived, but that was ten minutes later than she had predicted, ten minutes that she didn't have to waste. That, of course, was because she had not structured her plans around that turn of events. She hadn't planned for any of this, and that infuriated her to no end. In all honesty, she had grown too accustomed to a quiet life on the run. She had planned everything. In all honesty, she had grown too accustomed to working for Gallifrey, no matter how long ago that had been. In those days, everything was pre-approved, every point carefully fixed.
Now, everything had spiraled out of her control in the matter of one hour.
With a clank and the hiss of pistons, another cyberman entered the room that had been designated as a temporary headquarters. It stood at attention and saluted the cyber-leader. "Two humanoids have been appre-hended." it reported. Its voice was caught somewhere between synthetic and sing-song.
"Irrelevant." the cyber-leader declared. "You are capable of taking them to the conversion chambers."
"Those were not my or-ders. You had reque-sted this parti-cular human."
Two cybermen dutifully brought Kendi before their leader, who looked at the struggling boy with something resembling interest for a long moment, until the first of the cybermen interrupted the cyber-leader once more.
"What is the func-tion of the boy?" it asked. "Your actions must have logic."
"Correct." the cyber-leader said, and said no more on the subject. "Our plans are in place. We will rejoin the primary Mondasian forces."
Guardian was short on time and at every disadvantage. She had three children in close proximity, all of which she aimed to protect. There was Bernadette the bargaining chip, a complete stranger, and Angelo, who stood just outside the doorway with one arm held behind his back and the other hanging limp at his side. There were far more cybermen between them than she would have liked, so she chose to draw attention to herself. "Earth's armies will stop you." she said defiantly.
"They will add to our own." the cyber-leader replied. "Our troops are ready to receive them."
"Oh, what a victory." she taunted. "You don't even know what you're doing it all for."
"You are afraid." the cyber-leader said, his voice a monotone. "We will remove fear. We will remove weakness. We will eliminate death, pain, and suffering. The people of this world belong to us. They will be like us."
Two minutes remained. "Why? Why now? You've been on this planet for ages, asleep in your tombs. Why have you waited so long to bring about your glorious conquest?"
"Our tombs were flawed, we could wait no longer for the war to return to us. We must survive." the cyber-leader said. "We must survive." Somehow, it seemed as if he was trying to convince himself of this more than anything.
Tears were welling up in Kendi's eyes, but he forced himself not to cry.
Angelo called to the boy, keeping his voice low. "The cyber-leader seemed to have a peculiar interest in you."
Kendi let out a sigh of resignation. "I know. I really, really know, Angelo."
He smiled, trying to fill himself with as much infuriating vainglory and conceit as he could. "So, who wants to do the honors of stating the obvious?"
Kendi shook his head. "I'd rather not admit it. Please."
"Still," Angelo mused, a smirk spreading across his bloodied lips, "I'd say it's better than nothing."
Kendi sighed. "I don't expect you to understand, but I'd really rather have nothing left of my father at all than whatever that is."
"Sucks to be you."
"Sucks to be me." He sniffled.
"At least he still seems to like you." Angelo offered.
"It seems like he has no idea why, no idea what he's feeling, and possibly no idea that he is feeling anything at all."
"We could use that."
"Yes," Kendi agreed, albeit reluctantly. "We could use that." Tears began to fall, but he was unable to conceal them. "To, you know, kill him."
Gunfire rang out on the floor precisely two minutes after the Unified Galactic Intelligence Taskforce had surrounded the building. The cybermen had yet to receive their orders to attack. The curator had been too busy staring at his crying son, trying to make sense of the vestiges of emotion that remained in him and the subtle ache they brought. It was a weakness that no amount of selfish betrayal could erase, and he was paying for it dearly.
The previously foreseen event had lost the favor of chance, and with it the support of the Time Lords. The cybermen of Mondas would gain no reinforcements in their future, and the small force on Sol 4 would be no more. How it happened would be of no consequence, so there was no point in preventing it.
Nothing was left to stop her.
Guardian went for the closest pair, doing her best to keep her weaponry precise. The creatures fell and Kendi fell with them, bruised, but uninjured. She blew through like a hurricane, tearing through the guilty and sweeping up the innocents in her arms. She would be lying if she said she didn't find joy in the carnage. It was what she was built to do. She could rip conversion chambers out by their bolts, run through chest units with bare hands, and burn the evidence in the depths of her stellar core engines.
When she had her fill, she donned a blue barrette and slipped up the stairs, reporting to a captain who was not her own and getting an update in return. She added that information to her calculations and found that the issue would be resolved in good time, within twenty minutes. The first order of business was to finish off the cyber-leader, who had escaped her in the fray.
Then the question arose: Was that her first order of business, or someone else's? It was true that she was formless, infinite, a predator poised to attack, and it was true that she was made to be that. But did she want to? Besides, Angelo had a broken arm in need of setting, she was still missing Talitha, and the Unified Galactic Intelligence Taskforce had the situation under control anyway. And in the case that they did not, the imperial army would come to its aid. Earth had always prided itself in its armies.
So, with some resignation, time travel capsule number three hundred forty-seven, sub-battle class, sat down on a bench in the atrium and wound a cast around a young boy's arm, ignoring the sounds of battle for the first time.
_-o-_
There was still work to do. Inside the TARDIS, a plan was laid.
"We have to find a way to lure the cyber-leader into the open. If he falls, the rest will follow."
"He doesn't seem to have the loyalty of his troops," reasoned the warship. "But it is likely that he will be the last one standing."
This was a conversation between the boy and his ship, one that Bernadette found troublingly natural.
Kendi sat on the floor near the door, a blanket draped across his shoulders. Bernadette sat beside him, silently debating whether she should wipe his memory or tend to him first. He seemed to be horribly shaken. Still, she asked him anyway.
"Are you alright?"
"No."
"I thought as much."
Angelo showed even less concern, something that the human boy seemed puzzled by, as if he expected more from the Gallifreyan.
"Is there anywhere you think he'd go, Kendi?" Angelo asked. He seemed unapologetic and uncaring.
Kendi was unresponsive until he received further prompting.
"Your father, I mean."
"H-His office, probably," the boy replied. "But I don't think he'd still know where it is. There's not much left of him. Dear stars..."
Bernadette took Kendi by the shoulders, locking eyes with him. "It's going to be okay," she told him.
He nodded, leaning on her every word.
"Trust me," she said. There was something commanding, not comforting, in her tone. "You trust me, right?"
"Of course."
"Good."
Angelo found the entire affair disturbing, but necessary. He told himself it was necessary.
_-o-_
The curator's office was a small room, just big enough for a desk, a bookshelf, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. On one wall was a large photograph of the museum, a grand building with soaring columns of stone and steel and bright banners arching over its neat row of glass doors. The cyber-leader stood beside it, but was not looking at it. Instead, he held a small picture frame gingerly in his metal grip.
A boy entered and walked to his side, identical to one of three figures in the portrait the monster held. "Hello father," he said. He held back his tears. He kept his composure.
It turned towards him, its eyes unblinking. "My. Son?"
"Yes." He sat in the chair across from the cyber-leader and waited as slowly, painstakingly, the thing recalled how to pull out a seat just as he once had every afternoon. They had once done this every afternoon, exchanging stories about the day, but this time they only exchanged stares.
"Why did you do it?" the boy finally asked.
After some whirs and clicks of contemplation, the lilting mechanical voice of the cyber-leader replied. "The cybermen will eliminate pain. Our kind will destroy death, fear, suffering, and sadness. The cybermen are the future, the salvation of the human race."
"We don't want it," Kendi said quietly. "We don't want you."
"For you," the cyber-leader said. "I did this for you."
"I don't want it."
"I do not understand," it said. For a moment, Kendi thought it sounded almost childish, with its sing-song voice and big, staring eyes. Yet at the same time, he felt certain he was going to be sick.
"It won't bring mother back," Kendi explained. "You know that. You knew that. But you sided with them anyway, didn't you? You did it anyway."
"For you," it said again, giving the reason behind his actions, no matter how unwanted, no matter how horrible. "I did it for you."
"Stop," Kendi begged. "I loved you, but now you need to stop." He turned to the door. "Make it stop."
Kendi had been running on borrowed strength, but it had run out. He lent it from the figure hidden behind the open door, who on his command, closed it. Angelowryredred reached into his bag and removed his staser, levelling it at the cyber-leader's chest. His aim was steady and careful. Its death would be instantaneous.
"Are you sure?" Angelo asked Kendi. "Are you certain you've said your goodbyes?"
"Yes."
The staser bolt slowed when it hit the back of the chair, then stopped when it touched the wall behind it. A crisp, clean hole went through the cyber-leader's corpse, no wider than the end of a pencil. This alone was enough to dispatch what was left of Kendi's father.
Angelo did not stop to admire his handiwork. He put away the staser, now warm to the touch, and held Kendi as he cried. He cried for a very long time.
"He was a good man, Angelo! He'd never hurt anyone!"
Angelo took Kendi by the hand. "I know. He was just too good of a man."
"I don't understand," the boy sobbed. "I just- He just-"
"He just didn't want anyone to get hurt. But he went too far, he trusted the wrong people, and now he's gone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
_-o-_
A Unified Galactic Intelligence Taskforce private found a survivor of the attack alone in a room, on the floor, covered in blood, or so it was assumed. It was always hard to tell with these things. The young girl was still clinging to a knife and driving it into the head and chest of a long-dead foe. It leaked blue fluid like an alien in a television show, it's viscosity caught somewhere between that of blood and oil. Her clothes were splattered with it, if not drenched.
For a moment, the UGIT officer wasn't quite sure which posed a greater threat, the child or what was left of the cyberman, but a decision was quickly made.
-o-
Talitha sat in a chair at what was left of the museum's information desk, swinging her legs back and forth beneath her.
"Your turn!" she chimed.
A highly uncomfortable young adult in a blue UGIT-issue baret scanned the crowd. "I- I spy with my little eye, something... Something... Um..."
"Come on Mx. Flegle, you're so bad at this!"
"I'm just trying to find something that's not, that's not too morbid." they said plainly.
"Be daring." Talitha teased. "I spy with my little eye, something red and silver."
The officer winced. "It it that?" They pointed to a remnant of the conflict.
Talitha laughed. "Got you! Guess again."
They looked up. "Oh, the fire alarm."
"Yup!" she said with a grin. "This just makes everything more fun."
"That was a person!" they said, unable to hide the disgust in their voice.
She shrugged. "It's funny what shock does to you, so I might as well make it into a joke."
The glass doors of the museum opened and both turned to see who had arrived. It was a woman, someone Private Flegle found they could not describe in any way, but someone Talitha recognized immediately as Guardian.
She pulled the girl into her embrace. "I was so worried about you!"
"I'm fine, I promise."
The timeship wiped the leftover blood off the girl's face, content to know that it was not her own. She had little to worry about now. She had her pilots, her children, and one left over. She would hold onto to that one if she felt certain that the future had nothing to hide, but as of late she couldn't be sure. Whether or not she would like to admit it, her world had become difficult even for her to predict, so she felt it would be better to leave any strangers out of it.
It was better that way.
-o-
Kendi left the TARDIS, but Angelo followed.
On the steps of the museum, as the first light of the sun glinted off the domed sky, Angelo said he was sorry. For what exactly, he didn't yet know, but his sorrow was undeniable.
"It's alright," Kendi told him. "It had to be done."
"I just don't want to leave you like this," he confessed.
Kendi took him by the the hand. "It's okay. Go home. You have one, no matter how strange it is." For a moment, he looked like he was going to laugh again. Kendi always laughed when he was afraid. "I'll be fine."
Angelo knew what he wanted to apologize for. He wanted to apologize for not trying harder to keep Kendi safe, for accepting his offers of help and using him, and most of all, for destroying what was left of Kendi's father with his own hands. He wanted to apologize for the nature of time, for the consequence of his appearance in that unfortunate moment. He wanted to apologize for ever being there. The world between fixed points was indecisive, in constant flux until the moment it was observed. If he had stayed inside, he would have set fewer details into stone. Instead, he had pinned in place the worst part of Kendi's life, forcing time to take his family from him no matter what changed, unless another force tugged harder on the timeline.
He could do nothing to change what he had done, but he could ease his friend's pain if he took it away. He could take Kendi's memories. But what saddened Angelo the most about that one drastic option was that after that day, Kendi would have no memory of Angelo tending to his bloodied nose, or wiping away his tears when finally, finally, his father died. Instead, he would remember being alone, just as Angelo had been.
_-o-_
Castellan Andred of the House of RedLooms had been pronounced dead two times, both in secret. Angelo had been about six spans old when not a single message, not one in twenty pings, was answered. Eventually, a secretary replied. "I'm sorry, the castellan is away on business." then after a long silence, "Who is this?"
Angelo had not answered. In he brash manner he once had, Angelo had walked directly to his office, armed only with the face his mother said could charm him into anywhere. He had made it all the way there without disruption, but it was at the quiet arguing in the adjacent hall that stopped him.
"It's his son, Narvin. What do I-"
"Say anything, just get it out of here."
The voices stopped. Spying him, Narvinectralonum approached, knelt down to his level, and said slowly, with a patience he did not have, "If you're looking for Andred, I can't tell you where he is. It's classified. CIA business. Now go home."
Angelo did not believe him, so Angelo began to cry, infuriating the head of the Celestial Intervention Agency.
"Where is the savage when you need her? Leela!" he called, "Your son is here!"
Lady Leela had held him and told him that his father would come home soon.
His father never came home.
-o-
If Angelo did not spare Kendi the cruelty of memory, the boy would remember uncovering the atrocities committed in his name. He would recall the blood he had begged for pooling on the floor of his father's office and the staser bolt that scarred the wall. But if Kendi forgot, he would simply wait for his father to return, day after day, year after year. It was hope, but it was empty, it was cruel. Perhaps it was true that it was best not to interfere.
Angelowryredred smiled, turned, and walked away. He never looked back. He swore he would never, ever look back again, because that would only hurt.