Next chapter's on the 11th of October. Sorry this was late!
"One of the figures' hand moves, jerky, from the pole they are holding. A single finger slowly presses into a square patch of buttons.
"Stand. Aside. She. Must. Be. Repaired." Grates a metallic voice. The wheels of the IV drip it drags squeal slightly with the motion.
"There's no repairs to do- nobody here is broken." The Doctor almost shouts as he gestures to his companion and to Florence, "Look. Completely whole. Nothing wrong with them at all." He leans forwards like some kind of attack dog as Bill turns.
"Yeah- look- completely whole, nothing wrong with me." She agrees. Her eyes are focussed on the three figures, heads covered in fabric bags and skin covered by plastic and fabric, held shut by metal.
"She. Must. Be. Repaired." The voice groans again, finger jabbing the buttons.
"Nobody is getting repaired today." The Doctor tells them, backing away slightly, hand fishing in his pocket
"Tardis?" Florence whispers to Missy, still sitting on the struggling person.
The Time Lady nods, helping her companion up and then pulling the other person up.
"Come on- you've been enough of an inconvenience to us." She gripes in a whisper as Florence ducks underneath one arm and pulls it over her shoulders.
They try to say something but don't manage to make it heard as they are carried into the tardis. The noise outside is quickly shut out as Bill follows and the Doctor closes the doors behind her.
He leans back against them for a few moments as they shake and then it stops.
The tardis hums in complaint.
"So. This isn't quite what I thought you had in mind." Florence and Missy say over each other as the Doctor scrambles forwards to the console.
"I'm with them for once." Nardole agrees, jerking a thumb at them as Bill climbs some stairs on the opposite side of the room from the wall.
"Oh shut up- I'm trying to think." The Time Lord says, grumpily, sonic pressed between the console and his left hand as he watches the footage of outside.
The Mistress rolls her eyes and sighs, turning instead to the person between her and Florence.
"So." She says, "Are you going to be good if we let you go?" The Time Lady asks, one eyebrow raised as if they have a choice in their answer.
They shake their head and the two women release them.
The Doctor turns around for a moment, away from watching the cybermen attempt to rattle the doors which the tardis is resolutely keeping shut.
"So." He says, fingers steepled in front of his face as his eyes settle in some middle-distance, "These aren't running on the usual frequencies I find them on. They're early models still so there's going to be some kind of weakness I haven't thought of- something that can stop them." He begins to pace across the room, frown etched onto his face.
"Or we could just leave?" Nardole suggests, raising a hand as if he's in class. He's met with silence and quickly retracts his hand.
"You can't be suggesting that we just leave the rest of my crew?" The last crew member complains.
The android sighs heavily.
"Or we could not do that, I suppose, and risk our lives. That sounds just as good." He mumbles, trailing off and retrieving the open bag of crisps on the console.
"Yeah. we can't just leave them behind." The tall person says limply, clearly expecting more of an argument.
The Mistress is cycling through places and people and thoughts and Florence leaves her to it, knowing that there is little point in trying to help given how slow her brain is in comparison to the Mistress'.
Bill has her hands clamped tightly around the guard rail and doesn't seem to be moving for a while so Florence turns to the next best opportunity for entertainment.
"What's your name then?" She asks the blue person who is sticking close to both her and Missy, keeping them between the door and themself.
They flinch back a little.
"Jorj." They say, word cut short.
"Florence." Florence says, "You should thank us- we're about to save your life and ship if we don't die."
The person snorts, crossing their arms.
"You think that I should thank you?" They huff, "I wouldn't even be in danger if your crew hadn't decided to bring humans on board. You knocked my gun out of my hand and then sat on me when I was just trying to protect my post." They point at her emphatically.
"Well. Next time you should shoot faster." The human says with a grin, unable to stop the pride and thrill of getting to fight again from colouring her face.
Jorj splutters for a moment.
"It's not like you're going to live fighting against those things, let alone reach the source, get rid of them and pull us out of the black hole!" They scoff.
Florence smiles, turning to Missy who is pulling together a very rudimentary plan to do just that.
"Us, fixing all your certain death problems? It's more likely than you might think." She says, watching the Mistress fiddle with something in the handle of her parasol.
The Time Lady strides over to the doors and pushes them open.
Except they don't budge.
She raises an eyebrow, staring irrately at the ceiling.
"Oh- come on! I've got a plan and we can't just stay locked inside here." The Mistress tells the ship.
There's a fussy sounding thrum and the TIme Lady rolls her eyes.
"Look. I know that you don't like me but I didn't wreck you the last time I was here and your pilot doesn't have any ideas now, does he?" She asks, hands on her hips as Jorj looks to Florence.
"Is she talking to your ship?" He asks, as if it wasn't normal and expected behaviour.
"Yes- the tardis is sentient." The human says back easily.
Jorj doesn't reply but he looks a lot more anxious about the fact his feet are touching the floor and tries to take up as little space as possible.
The Mistress finally gets the tardis to unlock the doors and she points her umbrella through the gap, grabbing onto one of the doors as cover and holding it back.
There's a warm electrical hum and then a heavy clang, more of a thud.
Gloved fingers pry around the other door and force it open and the tardis shudders, ringing the bell in distress.
The Doctor snaps to attention and hurries over to try and shove the cyberman bodily out of the doors.
"What are you doing? If they get in we're done for!" He shouts, flapping about like a panicked hen.
The cyberman gives a whole body shiver and collapses in a heap.
Before the Doctor can says anything else the Mistress lets go of the door and it is flung open by the final cyberman.
She backs away, pointing her umbrella between its eyes.
There's another electric thrum and the last figure goes down, IV line clattering to the ground with it.
That's when Florence hears the horrible groans. Human groans. She can tell that much despite the mechanical distortion.
"What did you do?" Asks the Doctor, horrified by the pained sounds made by the cybermen at his feet.
"I generated a magnetic field which disrupted the cybernetic communications between the mechanical parts of them. It probably upset whatever was stopping them from telling us they're in pain or was keeping them from being in pain. These are very early models to have not had that weakness blocked yet." The Time Lady says, nuding one with her foot and grimacing.
The Doctor stares at her, aghast, then schools his expression just a little as her gaze turns bitter.
"You didn't have a plan and we needed to get out. They were already in pain and you wouldn't want me to kill them. What was I supposed to do? Throw them a tea party and hope they'd stop?" She asks, sarcasm coming to the forefront, "I'm trying to be good but sometimes there's no good option so you have to go with what is least bad." The Mistress emphasises.
The Doctor looks down at the cybermen and shuts off his mind so suddenly that both Missy and Florence jump from it before nodding.
"Yes. I suppose that is true." He mumbles.
Bill comes closer, descending to the bottom of the stairs.
"So these things are still alive- they're people?" She asks, voice trembling.
Florence turns back and nods grimly.
"But there was no one on the ship except the skeleton crew- fifty of us! We were going to pick up the colonists- there shouldn't be anyone else on the ship." Jorj says, "How could these creatures have happened? It's only been days since people went to reverse the thrusters and there were only twenty of them- they wouldn't have done this to themselves- there was no reason to!" He stares at the silver coated figures, barely seeming human.
The Doctor frowns and Missy steps easily over the bodies, frowning too as she thinks.
"Well." She says, "This is a very big ship."