TW: First section contains mentions of miscarriage and abortion.
Chapter Forty
When Jackie Tyler was a little girl, she dreamt of the stars.
Two years before Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon, she was born at Chelmsford and Essex hospital on February 1st – a Wednesday – weighing in at 8lbs 3oz. Coming into the world at the tail end of the space race, her childhood was spent expecting a future where living in domes on the moon and travelling in between the planets of the solar system was normal. Hover cars, food replicators, holograms, and more filled her mind, making her dream of a life lived off Earth.
She was dreamer in a family filled with people whose thoughts tended to lean towards local events and whether the Tories were going to ever come back to power. Raised in a solidly middle-class household, the Prentices were conservative voters and continued to be until the day they died. Jackie, in a small act of rebellion brought about by living and working with people struggling to make ends meet, supported the Labour party from her first election until the day she died, even if she never discussed politics with anyone, least of all her husband who voted in line with his pocket rather than his conscience.
As a child though, politics was a distant and abstract thing that boring men with greying hair and large stomachs tended to bother themselves with. For her, space was the first and last thing on her mind, and becoming an astronaut was – for a long time – her only dream. Her thinking was that since everyone was going to live in space in the future, then being an astronaut wasn't something exceptional. After all, even janitors who worked in space would, technically, be astronauts. And so when people asked her what she was going to do when she grew up, she said astronaut, never understanding why they would chuckle and laugh and meet her parents eyes with a knowing look, aware that she would most likely never travel further than France let alone to the upper atmosphere.
None of that mattered to her.
She was a child and children had obsessions with all manner of things, hers merely happened to be space. It was a small thing her parents didn't mind encouraging, and Jackie spent days trawling through video shops with her dad to build up a full and complete collection of Star Trek. The VHS's turned worn and fuzzy over the years from watching them again and again, the video player flicking on and off from overuse, the show fuelling her belief that space was where she was going to live and work. Never particularly set on what she would do in space – aware that there were jobs she couldn't even imagine but liking the idea of emulating Uhura enough to practice saying hailing frequencies open, captain until she was saying it in her sleep – she was always flexible about her future job until one day, without any warning, she stopped dreaming of space.
Overnight she went from humming Star Trek's theme tune under her breath and peering out of her window up at the night's sky to packing away the VHS tapes, the plastic telescope her Uncle Tony had picked up for her sixth birthday from Toys R Us, and peeling the posters of constellations down from her bedroom wall, blue tack speckled across the lilac paint.
Her dreams became smaller, more Earth-bound and since she never had any children in this universe, there was no curly-haired daughter to pass her love of Star Trek on to. There was strange prickling of shame that washed over her when she remembered how starry-eyed her dreams had been, refusing to admit she enjoyed science fiction even when she smuggled copies of Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le. Guin, and Octavia Butler home from the library between dog-eared beauty magazines that were acceptable for her to read.
Even her idea of training to be a nurse – imagined after her science teacher said that she had an aptitude for biology and have you considered nursing? – proved to be too big for her life.
"No daughter of mine will wipe up other people's shit," her father ranted when she raised the idea over a dinner of steak and kidney pie. "And you haven't got the brains to be a doctor. Maybe if you put more effort into your looks, you might just find yourself a decent man to take care of you."
Jackie loved her father, aware that he was a product of his time and that he loved her deeply, but his words cut a scar into her that raised feelings of shame when she touched it.
Discouraged from going to college but unwilling to meet the men her parents paraded in front of her – sons of doctors or accountants, men with prospects according to her sister who was recently engaged to the most boring man in all of England and seemingly regretting it – she packed a single bag and moved into London. She said it was a better place to find someone; after all, in a city filled with bankers and doctors and foreign businessmen, there would have to be someone who was willing to take her on. In reality, she moved into a flat share with five other women, got a job at the local pub – though she was too young to even drink the alcohol sold let alone serve it – and signed herself onto a hairdressing course, using her tip money to pay for it.
Having grown up with the unspoken expectation that she would move out from her father's home and into her husband's without anything in between, hairdressing was a breath of fresh air. She earned her own money by doing something she was good at.
And she was good at her job.
People came from all over Peckham to get their hair done by her, and the pride she took in her work was clear. For the first time in her life, she had something to call her own and she relished it, soon earning enough money to move into a flat by herself that she decorated with care, putting more and more money aside to set up her own salon one day while carefully ignoring the pangs that hit her in the middle of the night when the quiet whisper in the back of her mind told her you can do more.
Occasionally, she went to the library to flick through university prospectuses, lingering over the English Literature courses, before setting it firmly to one side and walking out with a Thomas Hardy tucked under her arm or a John Steinbeck in her bag.
Meeting Pete forced her to pause and take stock of her life.
Only eighteen years old when he burst into her life in the middle of a rainstorm, she was happier than she had been since she was a child who still looked up at the stars. Melancholic, sometimes, for things that she had once wanted but generally happy and content. She was in the middle of a perm when the door opened and Pete tripped inside, splatting cold rainwater onto the floor, his pale cheeks flushed red and his headful of ginger hair windswept. Apologies fell from his mouth, a box of paper cranes that he had been trying to sell at the market sodden and wasted in his hands, and she took pity on him, letting him shelter inside with a hot cup of tea in his hands.
His invitation to dinner was flatly refused.
His offer of a drink was also denied.
His hopeful suggestion of a coffee was reluctantly accepted.
By then, Caroline had given birth to her son Joel and was glowing with the happiness of motherhood, confiding in her sister that even though her marriage wasn't what she hoped, Joel made everything worthwhile. As Jackie held her small nephew and let his chubby hand curl around her finger, she knew that she wanted to be a mother as much as she wanted everything else in her life.
It was the eighties and women were beginning to believe that they could have it all, and Jackie, ever the optimist, fell for the lie hook, line, and sinker, forgetting that to have it all, she needed a partner who was willing to work with her.
A woman's glass ceiling, she learned too late, is the person they marry.
Coffee turned into lunch which turned into dinner which turned into her inviting him back to her flat and feeling the warmth of his skin against her, half in love with him before he knelt over her and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Pete's love was something she never doubted and she started to fall in love with him with each passing day until she was too far in to remove herself even if she had wanted to. Against Caroline's advice – her sister telling her over the phone not to do it as she had worked too hard for her independence to give it up for a man – Jackie moved Pete into her flat and had his clothes mixed with her in the laundry and his beer next to her wine in the fridge.
It was only a matter of time before they married but she was still only eighteen when she sat on the toilet, knickers around her knees, a positive pregnancy test clasped in her fist. Pete was delighted, his obvious excitement chasing away the fear that it was too soon, letting her give herself over to the fact that she was going to have a baby. He proposed and she said yes, no never crossing her mind. It happened faster than she wanted but she loved him with everything in her, even if his eyes drifting to other women made her want to scream, and she loved the baby growing inside her even more. Not even him getting her name wrong at the registry office – Caroline sniffing disapprovingly – wasn't enough to dim her happiness.
Waking in the middle of the night three weeks later to her baby bleeding out of her was.
Pete held her as she cried in the bright white open ward of the hospital where the nurse that she had once wanted to be treated her with gentle hands, soft voice telling her that it hurt now but she would be okay. His tears wet the top of her head, chest tight with the pain of it all, but he loved her through the hurt and promised that he would make her happy.
She kept working, kept putting money away for her salon, and tried not to think about how far along she would have been or how old her baby would be if it had lived. Pete worked hard, deciding to throw everything they had into Vitex, draining Jackie's savings behind her back and excusing himself because what's mine is yours and yours is mine. She got halfway to Caroline's house, rage making her look up the number of a divorce lawyer in the phonebook, certain that it was over, only to get off the train halfway there and weep in the shadows of the train station.
Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had carried on and knocked on Caroline's door in the late evening, whether her sister would have turned her away or brought her inside and helped her rescue herself.
As it was, she got on a train heading back to London and went back to Pete, silent in her rage, letting him tiptoe around her, and even when Vitex was a success, she never forgot the lie and the betrayal his fortune was built on.
Only twenty-one then, though she felt as though she was ancient, she put on her favourite dress and unscrewed her best lipstick, and met someone who helped distract her for one night while Pete was in Edinburgh at a conference. Curling her hand around the back of this stranger's head – his name lost to the murk of time – she let him hitch her skirt up her thighs and peel her underwear away, the brief interlude serving only to heighten her feeling of being lost. The stranger kissed her, smearing her lipstick from her mouth, and whispered for her to run away with him, half teasing, half serious, and she was tempted, but she tugged her skirt down, thanked him for his company, and left him behind.
Six weeks later, Jackie booked a termination for what he had left behind, certain Pete would leave her should she give birth to a black baby, uncertain if she actually cared.
The years slipped by and as Pete became more successful, Vitex above and beyond anything they had expected, she became less so. Desperate to make up for that first, great betrayal, he showered her with gifts and told her to stop working, unable or unwilling to understand why she would want to work as a hairdresser when he was on his way to making his first million by the time he was thirty.. And so she did, quietly ignoring the letter Caroline sent telling her what a fool she was and wasn't she capable of learning from her mistakes. Instead of working, she volunteered at homeless shelters, at the library, every now and then taking in a client for the sheer joy of crinkling money in her hand that was her own.
Pete was in Canada meeting with investors when she learnt she was pregnant for the third time, and he was flying back across the Atlantic when she lost the baby in the middle of Debenhams, an old woman helping her mop up the blood in the bathroom. She never told him about it, worried that it was punishment for aborting her second pregnancy; a higher power telling her that she wasn't allowed what she wanted when she had done that. What she did tell him was that she wanted a baby and, eager to make her happy and to have a child of his own, he happily followed her lead and made time in his schedule when she was ovulating, not noticing that she preferred him not to touch her outside of those times, the £4570 he stole from her a heavy weight on her mind.
With each pregnancy, her hopes lifted and the future looked brighter and everything that had led to that point was worth it. And then as she lost each baby in turn, the world darkened around her and she was scrambling in the darkness for something to hold onto and to bring her joy.
By the time her sixth baby slicked the inside of her thighs with blood, she was thirty-three and living on the outskirts of London in a mansion that felt as ostentatious and fake as the people who came for parties there. Unable to bear the grief of losing more babies, she told Pete she wanted to stop and although he didn't want to, he agreed – anything you want, as long as you're happy, that's all that matters. She wanted to laugh at that, laugh until her throat bled, because she wasn't happy even though she was trying. She wanted to pick up the phone and call Caroline – whom she hadn't spoken to in years even though Joel and Sabrina came to visit monthly, dropped off by her brother-in-law who was always trying to curry favour with Pete – and ask her older sister to come and save her from a mess of her own making.
After giving up hopes of having children, Jackie threw herself into the life Pete had created for them.
Never having spent much of the money unless it was for food or clothes for various special events, she made use of the card that Pete had given her with hope that it made up for what he had done. The parties at the Tyler mansion quickly became the parties to attend. No one seemed to mind that she always managed to wrestle money from the rich, using it to support the causes that were important to her – educational programmes in the poorest areas of Britain, domestic violence shelters for men and women up and down the country, drug rehabilitation programmes and centres, free accommodation for the homeless – enjoying the music and food and company she ensured they had access to.
And as her fortieth birthday approached, she began to emerge from the fog of unhappiness and realise that she was capable of more. Since her money had been used to set up Vitex, she knew that she was entitled to the profits of the sale of it, and she decided to leave. The thought came to her one morning over breakfast when she was sat on the terrace, a cup of tea in hand, watching the sun rise over London. In that moment, everything was perfectly clear to her and the realisation that she could simply leave made her laugh for so long that Pete stumbled from the house, thinning hair dishevelled, a frown on his face as he watched her.
"It's about time," Caroline said when Jackie arrived at her home three hours later to have their first conversation in nearly twenty years. "Come on in, you daft cow."
It wasn't that she didn't love Pete. She did. He was her first, great love and even though he had hurt her and never fully understood her, he had loved her better than anyone else in her life, which was why she agreed to marriage counselling. If she could forgive him for the theft of her dreams when he took that money from her – such a small amount now that they spoke in billions but the one great obstacle to their happiness – and he could forgive her for the one-night stand that she told him about in their therapist's comfortable yet bland office, then maybe they had a chance.
The sight of him weeping when she admitted to the affair brought tears to her own eyes but those tears soon turned to rage when he refused to apologise for taking the money, not understanding why it was such a big deal when it had worked out so well for them.
In the end, with the help of their therapist, they negotiated a trial separation where he would move out of the house and give them both time to think and breathe without living on top of each other. As far as the papers and his investors were concerned, they were still a united front and Jackie was willing to do that, Vitex hers as much as Pete's. On the day he moved out, she watched him hesitate in the doorway and look back at her to where she stood on the stairs, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, more like herself than she had been in years, and she wondered what he was going to say when he opened his mouth only to shut it again.
The weeks apart had been healing for her.
She took Caroline on holiday with her to the Seychelles, renting out the entire island so they could have privacy, and she realised that, for all that she loved Pete, she couldn't do it any more. Twenty years she had spent loving that man, trying to make it work, only for him not to meet her halfway with a sincere apology that, while not fixing anything, would have made all the difference in the world.
She told Caroline her plans and her sister looked at her in the dying light of the sun that reflect its beams off the glittering ocean, hair greying and eyes creased at the corners.
"Good," Caroline said. "It's never too late to start again."
And when Pete turned up at the house for her fortieth birthday, a bouquet of flowers in his hands as he edged around the door of what was once their bedroom, a cautious, optimistic look on his face, she gave him the divorce papers.
The argument that followed was the worst of their marriage, and it seemed fitting that it should be so. He left her weeping in the bedroom, mascara running down her face, her dog yipping at her feet, as he went into the garden to sob where no one could see him. Yet the show had to go on and she stopped her tears, fixed her make up, and promised herself that it would be the last time she had to do something like this. The future stretched out before her like an undiscovered country and if she could stop other women making the same mistakes as her then she would.
It was, perhaps, appropriate that the last piece of advice she got to give was to the daughter she had aborted in this universe but kept in another.
When the Cybermen attacked, she hid in the dark cellar. Her last thought before the jewelled ear pod flashed, a long, thin needle piercing her brainstem to hijack her body, was of her dog, desperately praying she hadn't been hurt in the chaos.
Pulled from the room and loaded into a lorry, Jackie was unaware of what was happening around her, ignorant of the fact that Pete was racing across the lawn, heart pounding in his chest, trying to get to her, only to have his path blocked by Cybermen that marched towards him. Oblivious to the journey and the fear that was sweeping London as Lumic deployed his Cybermen across the city, she stared straight ahead, registering nothing when the truck rumbled to a stop and the doors opened, Battersea Power Station their destination.
She felt nothing – not fear nor the bitter wind that swept in from the sea, carried up the Thames on a current – and walked in line into the station, quiet and obedient. Had Pete been there, he would have joked that there was a first time for everything, nudging her side with his perpetually bony elbow, eyes crinkling in the corner as he laughed, but she was never going to hear him joke again.
She was never going to hear or do anything again.
The future she had carved out for herself by breaking Pete's heart and stepping into the unknown disappeared as she was lifted onto a metal table by the cold hands of the Cybermen. Her black dress damp as it soaked up the blood that hadn't run off it, her expensive jewellery lying against her skin, eyes staring blankly up at the whirring blades that had pieces of flesh and bone caught in them.
High above the machinery that came down on her body with a finality that was dull and cruel, the night sky poked through a hole in the ceiling and Jackie Tyler died with stars in her eyes.
A square shaft of light cut through the darkness and lit up the damp metal ladder that was their way into the cooling tunnel. Hand curled around Mrs Moore's elbow as he supported her until her foot found the first rung of the ladder, the Doctor listened carefully for the telltale sounds of Cyber boots against the ground, releasing his new friend only when he was certain that she wasn't going to fall, not entirely sure of how far the ladder descended.
At his side, Rose looked around, wind whipping her hair into her face, before he poked her upper arm and gestured for her to go first, her remonstrations about wearing a skirt on the Grifari ship at the forefront of his mind. Flashing him a grin that was tempered by the cold, she clambered down into the darkness, the top of her blonde head disappearing, and he peered over the edge, thinking of the last dark hole he had gone into: At least Krakov had been warm and boasted a population of zero Cybermen, which he considered was a significant point in its favour.
Flexing his cold fingers, he counted to three to make sure that Rose was out of the way – not wanting to tread on her fingers – before turning himself around and climbing down the ladder. The rungs sent the cold straight into the soles of his feet, the feeling in his little toes disappearing, and he began to regret not listening to Jackie about the need to wear socks.
In a burst of friendliness – or maternal instinct, he wasn't sure which though he hoped it was the former – she had gone out and bought him a very nice collection of socks that she dumped in his lap in a fit of exasperation that was accompanied by her reeling off a list of health problems – starting with foot fungus and ending with sores – that came from not wearing socks without shoes. Judging from the volume of playfully decorated socks specifically chosen to make him more inclined to wear them, Jackie had raided all the sock shops she had come across in Massachusetts for him. While he appreciated the sentiment, they were currently collecting dust somewhere in his bedroom. He wasn't sure where Zoe had put them but he might have her dig them out when they get back and keep a pair in his pocket for situations where emergency socks were required.
Stepping off the ladder, he breathed out and watched the white mist float up out of the tunnel.
"This is bloody freezin'," Rose complained, wrapping his coat even tighter around her, peering at him, eyes barely visible over the lifted collar of the coat. "You want this back?"
"And have a frozen Rose for my troubles? No, thank you." She grinned at him, her tongue curling against her teeth. He felt thrilled at the sight of it, confidence growing that things were truly going to be okay between them. "One of these days, I'd quite like to go looking for trouble in a nice open field where the sun can shine on us. It always seems like we're crawling through dark places."
"Evil loves an atmosphere," Mrs Moore said, rubbing her arms briskly. "But it's no wonder they call them cooling tunnels. It's like a bloody freezer unit down here."
The Doctor thought of a nice hot bath filled with bubbles and Zoe, attempting to trick his mind into keeping his body warm, succeeding in only making the situation worse and causing his worry for Zoe to skyrocket.
"Heat'd only attract unwanted attention," the Doctor explained. "Thermal scans would pick this place up like no one's business. If this is where Lumic's been keeping his Cybermen, they'd show up easy peasy."
"They give off a heat signature then?" She asked. "Even through the metal?"
"They're still organic beneath the armour," he said, Rose cautiously touching the walls as she looked for a light switch, shivering when the slick damp rubbed against her. "Still human. It's a lower temperature admittedly but it's noticeable to the discerning gaze. Given that you lot've been keeping an eye on Lumic, it was probably a good idea for him to keep things cool down here."
Rose wiped her fingers on the Doctor's coat. "There's no light switch. Whoever uses this tunnel must bring their own stuff."
"I've got some torches," Mrs Moore said, swinging her bag off her back and rummaging through it. She removed two sets of head torches from her bag and held them up, the light from the moon falling over them. "Only from Argos but they've got a decent whack to them. Just the two of them though."
"That's fine," Rose said, reaching out. "I'll do it. The Doctor hates messin' up his hair."
"It takes a long time to get it looking artfully dishevelled, thank you."
She snorted and pulled the torch on over her head, wincing as she pulled some hair from her scalp when adjusting the straps.
"I like your bag," the Doctor said to Mrs Moore. "It's got a little bit of everything in there. My pockets are much the same."
Mrs Moore laughed and pulled her head torch on. "A device for every occasion, that's my motto."
"I do appreciate a woman who comes prepared to a revolution," he said, gaze suddenly turning hopeful as his stomach gave a small rumble. "Don't suppose got a hot dog in there, have you? I'm starving."
"Me too," Rose confessed, acutely aware of her own hunger now that the Doctor had mentioned his. "I didn't have breakfast this mornin'."
"You know that's the most important meal of the day," he told her. "And there's an apple in one of the pockets, help yourself. Me? I'm waiting for a hot dog."
"Of all the things to wish for – a hot dog." Mrs Moore shook her head, jumping when Rose bit into the apple with a loud crunch, the sound loud and reverberating. Her eyes went wide and, juice dripping from the corner of her mouth, she dropped the apple back into his pocket, chewing her mouthful slowly to mitigate the noise. Mrs Moore turned her attention back to the Doctor. "They're mechanically recovered meat, you know. Nothing of any value in them whatsoever. You'd be best off with a sausage sandwich."
"Ooo, I wouldn't mind one of those too," he said thinking of soft white bread, pork sausages, and brown sauce mixing with the melting butter. His stomach gave another, louder rumble that made Rose grin. "But I'm in the mood for a hotdog right now. Fried onions, lots of mustard, and those chunky chips to dip in the leftover sauce. Sounds perfect to me right now."
"Please stop talkin' about food," Rose said. "You're really not helpin'."
"Sorry," he said. "Guess I'm hungrier than I thought. All I've had is a banana today."
"Probably why you're so skinny," Mrs Moore said as she held a large torch out to him. "Here, have a proper torch as well. It's got the added benefit of being able to whack things if you need to."
A grin flashed across his face.
"My, my, Mrs Moore, you really did come prepared."
Fingers clumsy from the cold, it took him a moment to find the on button, nearly blinding himself when he did. Angling the beam away from his eyes that danced with light, he flicked it around the cooling tunnel and froze, humour draining from him when the light reflected off the metal casing of the Cybermen that lined the walls. On either side of the tunnel, Cybermen stood inert and stretched down into the darkness, out of reach of the torch's light. Rose flicked on her own torch and pressed her lips together even as Mrs Moore took a startled step back, the heel of her boot scuffing against the ground. The Doctor held his arm out across her body, quietly signalling to stay where she was, and reached into his jacket to remove his sonic screwdriver. Torch in one hand, screwdriver in the other, he stepped closer to the nearest Cyberman and scanned it.
"We're okay," he said, finally, and Rose breathed out. Sharing a relieved smile with her, he glanced back at Mrs Moore, her face pale in the artificial light. "They're powered down, that's it. These must've been some of the first Lumic created before he worked the kinks out. Useful if he's running out of foot soldiers but not the sort you'd put into the field first. They're probably just waiting now."
Mrs Moore rubbed her chest and took a heavy step forward. "Waiting for what?"
"The rise of the Cybermen."
Rose exhaled, annoyance flaring. "Stop bein' dramatic. Rise of the Cybermen, the silent realm, it's not helpful in makin' a person calm an' collected."
"Sorry," the Doctor apologised. "But seriously, don't worry about them. As long as we don't touch them, we'll be fine. What we need to do is get a move on. We've been here too long and the longer we wait, the more difficult it'll be. Ready?"
"Yeah, let's go," Rose said, stepping past him and making her way into the darkness, recklessness running through the Tylers like a curse.
The Doctor took a step forward before remembering Mrs Moore who was unable to tear her eyes from the sight of the converted in their ghastly metal shells, wondering who they had been before their deaths.
"Hey," he said, softly, catching her attention. "It's okay. Really."
"Yeah." Clearing her throat, she nodded and pulled herself together, taking a step forward until she was moving naturally. "Sorry. It's just like something out of Star Trek."
"Oh, you have Star Trek here, do you?" The Doctor was pleased, filing the information away to tell Zoe later. "Is it any good?"
"I like it," she said.
"Popular?"
"I guess so." She frowned at the back of his head. "It's a cult classic, I think."
The Doctor hummed, one eye fixed on Rose as she walked ahead of them, not wanting her too far out of his reach in case something happened.
"Parallels," he mused. "Weird the things that change but sometimes it's stranger the things that stay the same."
"There's a president of Great Britain," Rose said over her shoulder. "Not a prime minister."
"Huh. Not Harriet?"
"No, some Black guy," she said. "He was at Mum's party – it's her birthday here – she was havin' a big blowout when everythin' happened." She paused, hesitated, and decided to tell him. "She has a dog called Rose."
The Doctor was grateful that she wasn't looking at him when that information landed. It was only the stress of the last few days when the tension on the TARDIS had been unbearable that stopped him from laughing as he might otherwise have done. By the time she looked back at him, suspicious of his silence, his face was more or less under control.
"That's interesting," he said, lightly.
Her eyes rolled. "Oh, shut up."
He grinned.
"Are you two really from another universe?" Mrs Moore asked, suddenly, startling them both. "Like another universe?"
The Doctor coughed, clearing the amusement from his throat, and nodded. "Yeah, we are."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh."
"You're sure you don't mean another planet?"
"Absolutely positive," he said.
Mrs Moore stared at him, mind refusing to fully accept it. "How's that even possible?"
"Accidentally," the Doctor said. "We were minding our own business travelling through the Time Vortex when we fell through a small crack between the universes that brought us here. The fall should've killed us but my ship used up all her energy to keep us safe. Thankfully, there was just enough energy leftover to charge up this tiny little power cell that's going to take us back home but I used it up back at the house. Once it's fully charged, we'll be out of here and back home quicker than you can say lickety-split, hopefully."
"I'm not sure any of that made sense," Mrs Moore said.
"Don't worry about it," Rose replied. "You get used to it. If you can understand the beginnin' an' the end, you're doin' all right."
They pressed deeper into the cooling tunnels and grew accustomed to the silent sentries that guarded the walls, though they took care not to walk too close to them just in case. While Mrs Moore occasionally jerked when something caught the corner of her eye, her breathing increasing and the sharp scuff of her shoes against the ground as she turned, searching for the danger that wasn't there, Rose and the Doctor moved as though comfortable with the danger they were in. The Doctor had to stop himself humming the latest piece of music that Zoe was working on at the piano – a rather depressing Beethoven piece that was slowly driving him mad – and he examined the back of Rose's head.
"How was it?"
Rose looked back. "How was what?"
"Meeting Pete."
A heavy sigh left her, and she slowed her steps, waiting for them to catch up.
"I don't know," she said, troubled. "Him an' Mum – Jackie, whatever – they're gettin' a divorce apparently. Things didn't work out for them here either by the looks of it. Maybe you were right an' I shouldn't have gone off to have a look at him. Guess I'm still that stupid ape you picked up ages ago."
"Hey," the Doctor said, softly. "You're not a stupid ape. You never have been. I was just...you lot, you got under my skin and made me start caring again and it scared me. I reacted to that by insulting you, and I'm sorry. You're not a stupid ape."
A watery smile appeared. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," he said. "And I'm sorry you didn't get what you wanted from meeting him."
She shrugged. "It's fine. I'm not sure what I actually wanted. Zoe asked an' I just...I don't know. I s'pose it doesn't matter. I met my dad an' that was the important thing. That was my real dad, not this bloke. He's like – you know when you look at a photo an' you recognise the person in it but there's somethin' off about it? It's like that. He's kind of like an imprint of my dad but not."
"I get that," the Doctor said. "And, for what it's worth, your father was a good man. He loved you very much."
"Yeah, he did," she agreed, voice thickening with emotion. "An' I don't think I ever thanked you for that. For takin' me to see him. I know I fucked up with everythin' else but gettin' to meet him an' actually talk to him? It meant a lot to me."
"Oh, Rose." He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her against him, kissing the top of her head as her fingers curled into his jacket. "I'm sorry we couldn't save him. For you, Zoe, and Jackie."
Rose turned into him properly, and he was forced to stop walking or bowl her over. Her arms went around his waist and her face pressed into his chest, hugging him tightly. Lowering the torch, he hugged her back, thoughts lingering on his own family who were lost to him: wife, children, brother, and parents. He had been so angry with Rose at the time, not simply because she had done something unbelievably stupid but because she had done what he had dreamt of doing every night since Gallifrey's destruction. He bowed his head until his lips rested against her scalp and felt her dry her eyes against him.
Mrs Moore coughed delicately to get their attention.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "Especially since this looks long overdue, but I'm not sure now's the right time to be dealing with this."
Rose pulled back, skin flushed with embarrassment. "God, yeah, you're right. Sorry. It's just – it's been a rough few days. C'mon. Let's keep movin'."
She hurried away from them and the Doctor watched her go, throat thick with emotion. He looked to Mrs Moore who raised her eyebrows, and he gave a small shrug in response.
"Shall we?" He said, pointing after Rose and she nodded. A little uncomfortable from the emotion on display in front of a stranger – albeit a friendly one who enjoyed a good taser – he focused on keeping the path ahead of them lit and searched for something that would break the emotionally charged atmosphere. "Go on then, tell me. How did you get involved in all of this? Rattling along with the Preachers and trying to save the world? Not your normal day job unless you're, well, us."
"You do seem to lead interesting lives," she agreed.
"Mrs Moore, you don't know the half of it."
"I bet," she said with a small laugh. "I'm not like you though. I used to be ordinary. I got a job at Cybus Industries about ten years back. Nothing special, just working in HR. It was a nice, easy nine to five with a decent salary and good benefits. Didn't think anything of it until, one day, I find something I'm not supposed to: A file on the mainframe. I don't know why I read it, don't know if I thought about what I was clicking on at all, but I did read it. Next thing I know, I've got men with guns knocking in the middle of the night. I ran. I just ran straight out the door and didn't look back. I found the Preachers about four months after that, and they needed a techie so I just sat down and taught myself everything."
"That sounds awful," he said even as he admired his spirit. "What about Mr Moore? If there is a Mr Moore that is. Could be mrs. Could be no one. Do you have anyone you left behind?"
"I have a family," she confessed, pain tightening in her chest at the thought of them. "A husband and two kids who all think I'm dead. He didn't know anything about what I found. I wanted to tell him but I was scared of what would happen to him if he knew. Turns out I was right. I found out they'd hauled him in for questioning, the kids too. They've moved now, back to Wales. I keep an eye on them when I can but I don't want to get too close. It's why I changed my name."
Sympathy flared through Rose's eyes when she looked back. "I'm so sorry."
"Thank you," she said. "Besides, it's safer not to use real names. At least that's what I think. Ricky and Jake don't seem to care who knows who they work for. I think they like the danger myself, but they're young. They don't have as much to lose."
"Yeah," the Doctor murmured. "Youth breeds it's own sort of recklessness."
Her eyebrows went up. "You're not that old yourself. What are you? Thirty-four, thirty-five?"
"You just had to ask," Rose complained.
"I'm 900 years old, give or take."
She stared at him. "You're not."
"I am."
"But you said you weren't aliens!"
"No, I said we were from another universe," he said. "And, I suppose, to you, Rose isn't an alien. She's a human from Earth in our universe. I'm definitely an alien though. Two hearts and everything."
"Two –?" Her eyes flicked to his chest. "Really?"
"Really really," the Doctor said, enjoying himself. "How you doing?"
"I'm honestly not sure," Mrs Moore said, and Rose coughed to hide her laugh, pausing briefly to peer around a bend in the tunnel before moving forward once she was sure it was clear. "Aliens, parallel universes, and Cybermen is a lot for one day. I think I'm okay though."
"That's the spirit," he said. "You're taking this much better than Rose did. You haven't yelled at me once."
"No," she agreed. "I did tase you though. Does that count?"
He thought about it. "I'm going to say no because it happened before you knew about everything else."
"I only yelled because you were bein' an ass," Rose said, looking to Mrs Moore. "I was datin' Mickey at the time an' this one here couldn't give less of a shit when his head started meltin' onto the console. Told me not to cry about it."
"I didn't say that," the Doctor protested. "I definitely did not say that."
"It was more your general tone," she shot back, leaning towards Mrs Moore. "He was an utter dick back when I first met him. First place he took me to? The end of the world. Took me to this place called Platform One just to watch the Earth burn up an' die in the year five billion. Who does that?"
Mrs Moore looked dazed. "That's a little –"
"Dickish," Rose said with a nod. "He made up for it with the second trip though. I got to meet Dickens. D'you have Dickens here?"
"Charles Dickens, the author?"
"That's the one," she continued. "It was in Cardiff on Christmas Eve. We met ghosts."
"Not ghosts," the Doctor said to Mrs Moore who only seemed to be taking in 2% of what they were telling her. "The Gelth. They were an alien species displaced by the Time War and were looking for a new home. Unfortunately for them, Earth was occupied and this serving girl – a lovely Welsh woman – called Gwen stopped them in the end. She was a brave one." He turned his eyes back to Rose. "And I am sorry about Platform One. If you must know, I've felt guilty about it since it happened. I was being an ass at the time."
"God," Rose said, surprised. "Today's the day for deep conversations, isn't it? You're in love my sister, you're sorry about my dad an' Platform One...anythin' else you want to get off your chest?"
"I don't think so," he said, scratching his jaw. "Guess we've been sitting on some stuff we probably should've talked about."
"Guess so," she replied, rubbing her chest, aware that they were leaving Mrs Moore out again. "Just between the three of us, what's your real name?"
Mrs Moore hesitated, weighing up the pros and cons before deciding that two people from a parallel universe were no risk to her identity. And, if she was lucky, she might get to go home and see her family sooner than she had thought.
"Angela Price," she said, a weight lifting from her chest. "Don't tell a soul."
The Doctor mimed zipping his mouth. "Our lips are – Rose!"
A red light broke through the dark and a hiss echoed around the tunnel as a Cyberman decoupled from the wall, stepping down to the ground an inch away from Rose. The Doctor lunged for her and hooked his arm around her waist, dragging her against his chest. Like a wave rolling down the tunnel, the Cybermen began to move, and the Doctor's hearts raced in his chest.
"They're waking up," he breathed, pushing Rose in front of him and grabbing Mrs Moore. "Run!"
"It's too high," Mickey said.
"Maybe, but we can do it."
"Jack –" he bit off the exasperation that filled his tone, teeth sinking into his cheek so as to avoid a fight. The silence emanating from Jack let Mickey know that he was aware of the difficulties that faced them. Instead of reiterating them, he pointed at the side of the building. "That's the most obvious way in: quick, easy, more or less undetectable."
"Agreed," Jack said, hating the fact that he wasn't able to move as he was used to, acutely aware of the liability he posed for Mickey and Rita. "There'll be guards on the roof but definitely less than we'd find in the building."
"An' no matter what way we look at it, we're still goin' to have to climb somethin'," Mickey said. "I doubt the Zeppelin is sittin' on top of the buildin' just waitin' for us. We could fight our way in? Although I don't much fancy our odds."
"I don't doubt Mrs Smith can hold her own but I'd prefer not to risk it," Jack agreed. "Our best bet is up the side of the wall. If you go first, you can take care of any guards up there and we'll come up behind you: Mrs Smith first so I can guide her, and then I'll make my way up."
A muscle in Mickey's jaw flickered.
"You'd be climbin' about five minutes on knees that you can't even stand on for five seconds," he said, Jack glancing away at the reminder. "I can carry the wheelchair up with me, use it as a weapon if I have to, but if you let go –"
"I won't let go." Jack reached out to curl his fingers around Mickey's wrist. "Hey. I might be the weakest wolf right now but I can do this. Before the Agency caught up with me, I was teaching Zoe how to climb a rope without using her feet to propel her – upper body strength only. If she can do it with her chicken arms, I can do it with my jelly legs."
Mickey snorted. "She doesn't have chicken arms."
"Scrawny little things," he continued. "Coat them in barbecue sauce and be done with it."
"Stop tryin' to make me laugh."
"Why? I like it when you laugh."
Mickey sighed, tip of his tongue wetting his dry lips, and he crouched. Lately, with Jack in the wheelchair, Mickey spent most of his time looming over him and he didn't enjoy it, preferring when their eyes were level.
"Don't look so serious," Jack said, touching the frown furrowed onto his brow. "You'll get wrinkles."
"Not with the skin care you make me slather on every night," he complained though he didn't mind the ten minutes they took together every night, side by side in Jack's bathroom that was rapidly becoming their bathroom. "I'll be lookin' like this in my eighties."
"I can't wait to see that," Jack replied, and Mickey's stomach swooped with pleasure at the thought of them still together in their eighties. "Stop worrying about me. Please. I'll be fine. This is hardly the most difficult thing I've ever had to do."
"It wasn't that long ago you were taken from right in front of me," Mickey reminded him. "You came back all broken an' bleedin' with your bloody ex-husband –"
"I'm not even sure it can be called a marriage," he said, stomach squirming with guilt. "That time loop didn't exactly have registry offices."
"An' now we're in a parallel universe with the bloody Cybermen, your knees are fucked, an' you're tellin' me not to worry?" Mickey finished, ignoring his interruption. "If somethin' happens to you again, I can't –" his throat closed up and he looked away, scowling at the edge of Rita's shoes, his not-Gran pretending she wasn't able to hear their conversation. "Please don't ask me to not worry about you. Not after everythin'."
Jack found himself unable to meet Mickey's eyes. The relief and concern over his kidnapped and torture had – in his eyes – mercifully been overshadowed by the revelation of Zoe and the Doctor's relationship. Everyone's attention on them meant that Jack was able to let the happy facade drop a little, allowing small grimaces of pain and minute flinches at loud noises to creep through. He wasn't doing as well as he persuaded the others to believe he was, startled by shadows and the gentle shaking of the TARDIS when it passed through a current in the Time Vortex, and Mickey was the one seeing him through it.
Having Mickey see him at his most vulnerable was difficult for Jack, used to tending his hurts and his trauma by himself, that he wanted to push him away at the same time as pulling him close.
Love was, he realised, painful and revealing.
"Okay," Jack murmured, fingers tightening around his wrist, thumb sliding to feel the thrum of his pulse. "I won't. I can do this though, and we need to take the risk anyway. We need to turn off the signal so these people have a fighting chance. And since I need to have another surgery anyway, it doesn't matter how bad I mess my knees up right now."
"It matters to me," he said. "You think I like seein' you in pain?"
"No, I don't," Jack said, turning his head and kissing the inside of Mickey's wrist, eyes fluttering against the warmth of his skin as Mickey sighed, leaning closer until their heads nearly touched. "I need you to trust me when I say I can do this. Right now I'm not at my best but I can do this."
Mickey swallowed and nodded, breath warm over Jack's knuckles.
"When this is over, let's go somewhere just the two of us." It was an idea Jack had been turning over while in Stormcage in between his interrogation sessions, promising himself that if he saw Mickey again then he would find the time for them to be together. "No Doctor, no Rose, no Zoe, just you, me, and my healing knees."
Mickey looked up. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Jack's eyes swept over the faint smudges beneath Mickey's eyes, speaking of sleepless nights, and he wanted to rub his thumb over the marks until they disappeared. "I'm thinking that resort in Jamaica again. Or maybe we can try somewhere new. Zoe still has Sarah Jane's resort list. I'll get her to find it and we can choose from there."
"I liked Jamaica," Mickey said, remembering all the things he had wanted to do the last time with Jack – explore the waterfalls, hike in the jungle, go windsurfing – but had been too shy to ask for. "Probably like it more without the Doctor throwin' up."
"That sun stroke was awful," Jack said, mouth twitching with a grin. "We'll pack extra sun cream."
"A bit of peace an' quiet does sound nice," he said. "It's been a lot lately."
"It has," Jack agreed. "But before we get the sunshine and the sex –" heat climbed into Mickey's skin, his clothes feeling too tight for him. "We need to do this."
"Okay," he said, painfully aware that Rita was right there, silently listening. He squeezed Jack's thigh before rising to his feet, turning to face Rita, eyes not quite meeting hers. "Gran, I – you okay with the plan?"
"I'm not about to stay behind now, am I?" Her no-nonsense tone helped to ground Mickey, reminding him of what was at stake. "And you shouldn't worry about your boyfriend so much. He's a grown man. It's not becoming to fuss over an adult like you are."
Mickey turned brick red. "Jesus."
She whacked him across the thigh with her cane.
"Don't blaspheme," she ordered. "You might not be my grandson but you're still a Smith and I know I didn't raise you like that no matter what universe you're from."
Jack ducked his head to smother his laugh as Mickey rubbed his thigh.
"Right," Mickey said. "Let's get goin' then."
Taking hold of Jack's wheelchair and placing Rita's hand in his elbow, Mickey hurried them across the open expanse, timing their movements carefully to slip in between passes of the security search light. At the base of the power station, the shadows plunged them into a bitter chill, the glass windows fogged with condensation that Mickey ducked beneath, bent over Jack's shoulder to avoid being seen as the sounds from within – the whirring, wet sounds – turned his stomach. The loose detritus crunched under the wheels of Jack's chair, and he grabbed hold of Rita by the back of her cardigan before she walked into the pass of the light, the rapid beating of his heart that only thing he was able to hear.
Up close, the building looked even higher than it had from across the road and uncertainty dripped its way through his veins. Jack was strong. He had seen ample evidence of that for months, and he knew the strength that the muscles in his arms housed as they were a source of fascination for him when they were alone in their room. It would have been embarrassing how much he fixated on Jack's arms had Jack himself not been thoroughly delighted by the attention.
"Here," he whispered, pausing at the base of a ladder that was attached to the side of a wall. "Can you –?"
"Take my shoulders," Rita suggested.
Her knees creaked as she crouched, ready to help, and Jack hesitantly put one arm around Rita's shoulders and rested most of his weight on Mickey's. Gritting his teeth, he breathed through the pain of transfer and didn't complain at the cold of the ground or the sharp piece of balustrade that dug into the meat of his right buttock.
"Do you work out, Mrs Smith?" Jack asked, attempting to act as though he wasn't in pain.
She snorted. "Why would I do that?"
"Endorphins," he said. "Some people say they're better than sex but I have to do disagree there."
Mickey groaned. "Please don't talk about sex with my gran."
"As though you young men invented sex," Rita scoffed. "Where d'you think you come from, eh?"
"I try not to think about it," Mickey told her, relieved when the wheelchair snapped together. "Finally."
Since the wheelchair had once belonged to Zoe and she was sometimes as bad as the Doctor when it came to tinkering with things, it folded neatly together in a manner that made it easier to carry. Lightweight but sturdy, it was the best wheelchair for the circumstances though Mickey wished it wasn't necessary.
"I'll call down when the coast is clear," he said, nervous. "Come up then. If anythin' happens, yell."
"Go," Jack said, looking small and diminished on the cold floor with Rita standing guard over him. "We'll be fine."
Mickey hoped that was true. Hesitating due to Rita's presence, he quickly crouched and touched Jack's jaw with his fingers, registering the surprise in his eyes before leaning in to kiss him.
Kisses with Jack tended to be long, languorous things that didn't always lead to sex for Jack was as focused at pleasure as he was at everything else in his life, his joy at taking his time slowing Mickey down and making him enjoy things he had considered only precursors to sex. Whenever he thought about it too much – the brush of Jack's fingers against the inside of his elbow, or how good it felt to have his strong fingers massage the knots from his shoulder – he felt guilty over how he had performed with Rose. At the time, he thought he was doing a good job but he now realised there was a lot lacking from his performance and part of him wanted to make that right with her even though their relationship was over.
"Stay safe," Jack murmured against his mouth. "No heroics."
"Not the heroic type," Mickey said, swallowing as his thumb tracked over Jack's cheekbone. "See you soon."
Mickey straightened and paused. Though Rita wasn't able to see what they were doing, her hearing was sharp and his mouth turned dry at the look on her face. Rather than dealing with that, he turned and hitched the wheelchair over his shoulder and began his ascent of the building, only the slightest bit guilty at leaving Jack behind to make conversation with her.
On the ground, Jack tipped his head back and watched him for as long as he could before he shifted his attention to Rita, keeping his senses on their surroundings: a blind woman and temporarily legless man weren't going to be much threat to the Cybermen even with the few tricks he had up his sleeve.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked, aware that he, Mickey, and the Doctor had upended her day in a rather spectacular manner. "Today's been a lot."
"Life is a lot," Rita said, tightening her cardigan around her. "Today's just different."
"Yeah," he said, mouth twitching. "I suppose it is."
Jack loved travelling in the TARDIS. It was wonderful and terrifying and the best thing he had ever done – meeting Rose, the Doctor, and a future version of Zoe that night in London had changed his life in ways he hadn't been able to predict – yet it was also without stability and structure. He didn't mind that as much as others might, though he knew that travelling with the Doctor was something he wasn't going to be able to do forever. At some point in the future, he wanted children. He wanted a home with a garden and a kitchen where he could bake with children who called him dad and do work that was satisfying and less dangerous than his life had been so far. As such, he was aware of what their lives looked like to people outside of the TARDIS, and he sympathised with Rita's position.
Being thrown in at the deep end into the chaos of Cybermen, world domination, and parallel grandsons was challenging at the best of times.
He let his eyes linger on Rita, watching her worry about Mickey and Ricky in equal measure, and he wasn't surprised when she turned back to him.
"You and my grandson..." she began. "You love him?"
"I do, yes," Jack said, folding his hands over his stomach. "Mickey at least. I don't know Ricky well enough."
"Mickey, Ricky." Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. "What's the difference? They're both my boys."
"I'm glad you think so," he said. "Because in my universe you died five years ago, and it's obvious Mickey's missed you."
The news of her death rolled off her back even as her forehead crinkled with concern.
"What about his parents?" She asked. "Odessa? Did she –? Did she kill herself in your universe?"
Jack looked down at his fingers. "Yes."
"My girl," Rita breathed, sadness hitching her voice. "Oh, my baby. Couldn't get it right in any universe."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I never met her but she must've been wonderful simply because she's Mickey's mum."
"She was such a beautiful little girl," she said, shaking her head slowly, hand rubbing the pain from her chest. "The most perfect baby you've ever seen but her mind – it was a storm. She fought against those dark thoughts of hers ever since she was a little girl. I tried everything but nothing helped her. I hoped when Ricky was born that it might give her something to hold onto." A tear slid down her wrinkled skin. "When a person is that sad, perhaps it's a kindness to let them go."
Jack carefully linked his fingers together as his thoughts drifted to the Boeshane Peninsula and the soft, dry touch of his mother's hair beneath his lips as he kissed her goodbye.
"My mother's a little like that," he admitted. "Sad. Lost in herself. Difference is she wasn't always like that."
"I'm sorry," Rita said, her hand reaching towards him and finding his head, arthritic fingers stroking back his hair. "You seem like a good man."
"I try to be," he said, quietly, leaning into her touch. "Not sure I always succeed."
"Trying is the most important thing." Her fingers eased a small tangle behind his ear, smoothing it flat against his scalp. "That's what my father said to me when I left Jamaica to make my way in Britain. He said to me, Rita, it doesn't matter if you fail, what matters is that you try. So you keep trying, and if you fail sometimes, you just try again, you hear me?"
Jack swallowed against the emotion in his throat, his response a rough whisper.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good." Her free hand wiped at her own face. "Because this other grandson of mine needs someone good and strong. I don't much understand the love between two men, but my God tells me to love as He has loved me and if it makes you both happy and fulfilled then so be it."
Jack realised that he was never going to get another blessing from Mickey's family. With his mother and grandmother dead in their universe and a father who didn't care enough to stay and raise his son, Rita Smith in this parallel world was the closest he was going to get for approval and acceptance. He seized on it, surprised by how hungry he was for her to like him and accept his place in Mickey's life.
He opened his mouth to thank her when a low, sharp whistle sounded.
"It's clear," Mickey hissed down to them. "You can come up."
"Right then," Jack said, bracing himself for the pain to come. "You go first, Mrs Smith. I'll be right behind you guiding you."
Rita let her hand linger on his head, a gentle caress that forced him to look up. "Call me gran, dear."
With a full heart, Jack helped place Rita's feet on the rungs, telling her the approximate distance between the steps. Rather like her driving, she was fearless and ascended the wall with a speed that made him panic until he saw she had it under control. Rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms, he cast one final glance around before dragging himself up until he had hold of the ladder and he lifted. The strain was nearly too much, his grip awkward, and he adjusted and heaved until he had his body positioned as best he could. It was a month or so since he had spent any considerable length of time in the gym, his session with Zoe that morning his attempt to ease back into things, and despite his words of confidence to Mickey, he wasn't positive he could make the climb.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself up.
It was easier than climbing a rope, the rungs less abrasive than rope, but he was exhausted by the time he was halfway up the side of the building with sweat rolling down his spine and turning his hands damp. At the top of the rope was Mickey and that helped him push through the pain in his arms and the screaming pain that ricocheted through his knees when they bumped against the ladder. Heaving himself over the side, twisting onto his back so as to avoid scraping his knees more than he had done, he fell back into Mickey's arms, panting.
The stars danced in the sky above him, and he wanted to throw up.
"I'm fine," he rasped. "Just out of shape."
"Jamaica," Mickey reminded him. "We'll be in Jamaica this time next week."
A low sound of longing left his throat before he was able to stop it, the sugary taste of the cocktails he favoured a welcome memory on his tongue.
Between Mickey and Rita, he managed to get himself back in his wheelchair where his eyes stopped dancing with lights and he was able to take note of the situation on the roof, pleased to note that there had only been two guards and both were unconscious. Above their limp bodies, Lumic's Zeppelin was tethered to the building with thick cables and a strong metal ladder stretching down the surface with – he was surprised to note – disabled access.
"Not lookin' a gift horse in the mouth," Mickey said. "Meet you up there."
The flat platform – large enough for two wheelchairs to sit comfortably side by side – moved slow enough for Jack to look out over the part of London that was visible to him.
It remained, in his eyes, a deeply unattractive city yet there was something about it that sent warmth through his heart. The familiarity of it was welcome, the source of good memories that filled him with joy, and the knowledge that the people he loved most in the universe called this city home. Yet his pleasure at the sight of it was tempered by the faint clang of Cybermen moving and the growling of engines as lorries transported more helpless people to Battersea.
"Unguarded," Mickey said when the lift reached the top. "Guess no one thought people'd be stupid enough to break into it on a night like tonight."
"Thankfully for us we're plenty stupid," Jack replied. "Any sign of the transmitter controls?"
"I've no idea what they look like."
"Neither do I," he confessed. "Should think they'd be fairly obvious though. Check the bridge, I'll go check the back. Mrs Smith –" he caught himself. "Sorry. Gran." Mickey did a double take. "You should go with Mickey. I'll seal the door here to stop anyone getting in."
Gran? Mickey mouthed at him, and Jack grinned in return.
Shaking his head, Mickey took hold of Rita's hand and hurried onto the bridge where there was a wheel that brought the mind the deck of a sailing ship. Recently polished, Mickey appreciated the touch of historical egotism that a man like Lumic would spend extra money in order to act as though he was a sailor of old. Ignoring the confirmation that rich people were weird, he searched the panels for anything that might look like transmitter controls while Jack wheeled himself into the back.
"Jesus – fuck!" He jerked back from a cupboard where an empty Cyber suit was hung on the wall as though a hunting trophy. "Sorry, Gran. I know I shouldn't swear."
"You shouldn't," she agreed, hand reaching out for a seat that she lowered herself into. Mickey's eyes dropped to her ankles that were swollen in her shoes and he hoped she had remembered to take her blood medication that morning. "I'll let it pass though."
"Thanks," he said, shutting the cupboard door. "You okay? You need something?"
"Don't you be fussing about me too," Rita chastised. "There's enough to be dealing with without worrying about an old woman."
"I'll always worry about you," Mickey said, crossing the room to pick up the keyboard, hoping the onboard computer system had a back door into the transmitter controls.
His fingers flew across the keys, the rapid clack-clack-clacking broke the silence that fell over them, and Mickey lulled himself into work, getting lost in the code.
"Do you work with computers in your universe?" Rita asked minutes later. "Is that your job?"
"No," he said, deactivating a security alert with three swift keystrokes. "I'm a mechanic. I picked up the computer stuff after meetin' the Doctor. I wanted to know more about him an' I got into hackin' an' all that. Not that I hack into places or anythin'. I'm not committin' crimes. I wouldn't. I just – I know my way around computers is all."
"Good, that's good," she said, the strain of the door catching up with her all at once leaving her exhausted and sore. "Your mother wanted you to have a good job. I tried my best and I know I was too hard on you sometimes but it's only because I wanted you to be better than your parents were, better than I was. I imagine I was the same in your world."
Old grief that had never healed properly opened a chasm in his chest.
"You were hard when I needed it," Mickey said, voice rough from emotion. "I never doubted you loved me though."
"Your Jack says I'm dead in your universe," she continued. "Is that why you came here?"
"No, I – it was an accident comin' here," he told her. "But then I thought that maybe you hadn't died here an' I could see you again, just once, just to tell you – to tell you –" tears filled his eyes and his speech warbled. "How much I loved you. How much I miss you. Every day, Gran, I miss you every day. An' it's my fault your gone. I didn't fix that stupid carpet on your stairs an' you fell an' it's my fault."
"Oh, my boy." Struggling to her sore feet, ankles twinging, she shuffled towards him and wrapped him in her arms, the edge of the keyboard pressing into her chest. Shuddering, Mickey hunched over her and and gripped her as tightly as he dared. "You're not to blame for me dying. God has a plan for me and if he planned for me to die that day then so be it. I don't want to hear any more about you blaming yourself, you hear me? I didn't raise a stupid boy in any universe, okay?"
"But –"
"Don't make me beat you," Rita warned him, and he laughed against his will. "It's not becoming for a woman my age to have to whoop her grown grandson, so do as you're told and stop blaming yourself."
"I –" unable to promise her exactly that, fearful that it was something he would break, he lifted his head from the top of hers and sniffed. "I'll try."
"That's all I ask," she said, reaching up with careful, fumbling hands to wipe his tears away with her thumbs. "It must be hard for you being alone. You need to find your people and hold onto them. Make yourself a family."
"I have," Mickey said, thinking of the others. "I've got them."
"Then don't let them go," Rita told him. "Family's not always blood, sometimes it's about kinship. Don't be afraid to tell them how you feel. Make sure they know you care."
From the back of the Zeppelin, there was a loud clatter as Jack made his way towards them, creating enough noise in order to make sure they heard him and give them time to wipe the tears from their faces. Mickey pulled back from Rita and turned back to his work so that by the time Jack returned, his wheels making soft noises across the carpet, he had bypassed various security layers and accessed the security feed inside the factory. Jack tucked the back of his leg in greeting, eyes fixed to the computer screen that showed grainy images of people waiting in line for their deaths.
"We should never have let Pete and Jake go into that," Jack said, concerned. "They're not going to make it out."
"They will," Mickey said, though his confidence waned as he looked over the conversion chambers and the vats of flesh and bone that were discarded. "They have to. Any luck with the transmitters?"
He shook his head. "No. I'm thinking that maybe they're remotely operated instead, which will be annoying if they are because it means I climbed the building for nothing, but have a look in the system and see if you can find something. I'll keep looking around here."
"Be careful of the Cyberman in the cupboard."
"The Cyberman in the what now?"
"It's empty but it gave me a bloody scare," he said. "Think it's just Lumic bein' a rich idiot."
"Money doesn't buy common sense then," Jack noted, wheeling away.
Rita huffed a laugh. "Oh, honey, we all know that."
Pete dropped to a crouch behind a parked lorry and peered around the side. Lines of people walked into the factories, their bodies moving as though strings were pulling them along, reminding him of his Aunt Patricia who used to make wooden puppets sitting at her kitchen table. Smoke curling up from where her cigarette rested in the ashtray on the scratched surface, her nicotine-stained fingers deftly threading silver wire through their joints, the marionettes jerked across the table. Having not thought of her in years, she filled his mind as he stared at the men and women making their way into the factory.
"There's too many of them," he whispered to Jake at his side who had a small frown on his forehead, ear pods rattling quietly as he turned them over in his palm, scanning the perimeter for a discreet way in. "Finding Jackie's going to be difficult."
"She's not the only reason we're here," Jake reminded him. "We're looking for Ricky too."
Unable to express how little he cared about Ricky, his heart and mind filled with worry only for Jackie, he kept his mouth shut. If saving Jackie meant leaving both Ricky and Jake behind then he would do it without question. Though things were objectively awful between them, their marriage in tatters, she was the love of his life. From the moment he had met her in the cluttered salon that reeked of hairspray and dye, he was mad for her and everything he had done in life was to make things better for her. The fact that she didn't understand that stung, her insistence on clinging to old wounds infuriating, but she was his wife and he would let all of London burn before letting anything happen to her.
"Here, put these in." Jake dropped two ear pods into his palm. "And don't show any emotion. We're fucked if you do."
Pete grunted, not enjoying being lectured by a man who looked to be half his age. Hooking the ear pods in, he grimaced at the weight of them.
Waiting for the perfect moment before rushing out from behind them lorry falling into line with the tail end of a group, lights blinking on their ear pods, Pete swiftly arranged the features of his face. Heart hammering and fear turning his hands clammy, he carefully positioned his arms at his side.
When he sold Vitex to Cybus Industries, he should have taken the money and Jackie and moved to an island where neither of them could be hurt by one man's avarice. Regret filling him, he focused on the factory that loomed high and foreboding in front of them. Set against the clear night's sky, halogen lights shining down on them and nearly blinding them them with their brightness, Pete swallowed.
From a tannoy placed on the outside of the building above the door, a Cyberman's voice spoke:
"Units upgraded now six thousand five hundred. Repeat. Six thousand five hundred and rising."
The last time Pete had felt so nervous he was waiting for Jackie to come home the night after he had taken her saved money and invested it in Vitex. She had been so angry, the fury rolling off her in waves, and he had braced himself for a smack only to hear the door open and close instead. Her silence and complete lack of reaction was worse than anything he had expected. He had known she wouldn't be happy about it though he had thought she would at least come around, not knowing she would hold onto that one incident for nearly two decades, letting it spread a rot through the foundations of their marriage.
When he saw Jackie again, he was going to apologise. Properly, this time, with no hedging or explanations. He knew that it wasn't the money she was upset about; it was the fact he had taken the choice from her and made her dreams second to his, and he wanted to make things right between them.
A large metallic hand appeared in front of his face, and his heart jack rabbited in his chest.
"You will wait," it ordered.
"Jesus," Pete muttered as it stepped away from them. In front of him, Jake's shoulders were lined with tension. "You okay?"
Jake's head twitched. "What do you think?"
"Chamber six now open for human upgrading. All reject stock will be incinerated."
Ten long minutes they spent standing in the sharp, biting cold, unable to show discomfort or fear as Cyber units marched past them. Pete kept his eyes open, focused on the back of Jake's blond head, and thought of the things he was going to say to Jackie, the promises he was going to make and actually keep. He sketched their future in his mind, one where she had what she wanted – what she actually wanted and not what he thought she did – and he held onto it as the Cybermen passed so close to him that he smelt their freshly soldered armour.
Other groups joined them, brought in from all over London though the absence of children sent a shiver running down his spine.
He thought of his family in Rochester that he hadn't spoken to in years, not since his father had published a tell-all book about his childhood and how his son was hoarding his wealth, conveniently leaving out the houses Pete had bought for him, the debts he had paid off, the savings account he had set up. Even after all that though, he hoped they were safe. As he hoped Jackie's family were, including Caroline who had never liked him and let that distaste tear asunder her relationship with her little sister. Yet, if it made Jackie happy, he would put aside the fact that he thought Caroline was a boring shrew and welcome her into their home and their family again if it meant Jackie stayed with him.
"Proceed," a Cyberman ordered.
Pete barely controlled the flinch that rolled through him and stepped forward.
Inside the power station, everything had been changed. Hollowed out and remade, huge cylindrical containers were spaced at equidistant intervals, echoing reverberations of whirring blades and the gush of blood onto the ground created a terrifying cacophony.
Pete's eyes slid to the side, risking a glance inside one as he passed, and bile rushed up his throat with a speed that made panic run through him. He snapped his eyes away from the sight of an elderly woman splayed open on the table, chest cracked open and Cybermen working at integrating technological upgrades into her cavity. The sight of blood and torn flesh forced him into an awareness of the smells around him: hot blood, burning metal, and excrement as bowels vacated themselves both in and out of the conversion chambers. It seared itself into his memory and the urge to run pulsed through him, only the thought of Jackie keeping him where he was.
"I can't see Ricky," Jake murmured from the side of his mouth. "Dammit, I'm too short and there's too many people here. Can you see him?"
"I can't see anyone," Pete complained, the collar of his shirt too tight. He wanted to slip his fingers beneath it and loosen it. "Do you see Jac –?"
"You are Peter Tyler."
Jake's entire body flinched at the suddenness of a Cyberman striding towards them, identifying Pete by name. Pete caught his yelp of surprise at the last moment – a small meep his sole concession to the fright that beat a violet tattoo against his ribcage. His eyes snapped forward, mouth drying out, and watched as it approached them, the heavy, hissing stomps not doing anything for his state of calm.
"Confirm you are Peter Tyler."
Uncertain what to do, he kept his eyes locked on the blank, metal face in front of him.
"Confirmed," he said once he had control of his wits again.
"I recognise you," it said, sending confusion through Pete that last for a split second before the blow that changed his world was dealt. "I went first. My name was Jacqueline Tyler."
"Oi, love, shut the door, yeah?"
Pete looked up from his box of paper cranes, trying to work out how much money he had lost on them because of the unexpected storm that had rolled in. The salon was busy, filled with the sort of women his mother was – loud, brash, and full of heart – and the copious amounts of hairspray in the air made him sneeze once, twice, and then a final, third time. Laughter rang out like bells, and he followed the sound to a young woman standing at one of the chairs, her bright blonde hair that he would later learn was fake was thick and curly about her face, pink lipstick neatly matching the bright colour of her leopard print leggings.
"Poor man," she laughed, her hands deftly working on the hair in front of her. "You look soaked through. Didn't think to bring an umbrella, did you?"
"I – er – the rain took me by surprise," he said, fumbling over his words. "Didn't know there was a storm."
White teeth flashed at him as she grinned. "Think you should've checked the weather this mornin', yeah?"
"Probably would've been a good idea," Pete agreed, dizzy from her smile. "Mind if I stay in here for a bit? Least until it dies down?"
Her slim shoulders lifted in a shrug, eyes flicking over him with an interest that sent blood rushing to his cheeks.
"Don't see why not," she said, taking pity on him. "Might even get you a cup of tea if you behave."
A smile spread across his face. "My kind of woman."
Pete stared at the Cyberman, mouth falling open as his lungs compressed in on themselves, cutting off his oxygen supply. Shock reverberated through him and chased out everything else on his mind. He gasped for breath as his face crumpled, blowing his flimsy cover.
"No!" The shout bounced off the Cyberman that claimed to be Jackie and drew the attention of other individual units. "No, you're lying!"
The Cyberman stared at him. "He is unprogrammed. Restrain him."
"Jesus," Jake hissed, ripping a gun out of his belt and pointing it at the Cyberman. "Ricky Smith, where the hell is he?"
"You're lying," Pete spat, heart shattering in his chest even as he knew it wasn't lying. There was no need for it too. The only explanation was that there was something left of Jackie inside of it, something that drew her to him. "You're not her, you're not my Jackie. What have you done to her? What have you done to her, you monster?"
"Pete," Jake called out a warning, firing off a bullet that went wide and buried itself in the calf of a man who walked straight into a conversion chamber without realising he was shot. "Behind you!"
Heavy hands filled with strength grabbed hold of him and twisted his arms behind his back, restraining him yet also keeping him upright, the strength leaving his knees.
"I am Cyber-form," the Cyberman said. Pete raised his agonised eyes to it, trying to imagine what Jackie looked like under the metal. "Once I was Jacqueline Tyler, now I am better."
"Jacks." The name twisted painfully on his tongue, grief clinging to it, his body lax in the hands of his captors. "I came to save you. I came to save you. Please...let me save you."
"This man worked with Cybus Industries to create our species," the Cyberman said, unmoved by his emotions. "He will be rewarded by force. Take him to Cyber Control."
"No, Jackie, no!"
"Pete!"
Jake fired another shot, straight into the eye socket of the Cyberman that was attempting to restrain him. There was a moment of pure shock when the creature dropped, hands rising to its face as it writhed in pain, a modulated scream hurting Pete's ears. Jake froze, taken aback at his success, and Pete wrenched himself free and lunged at him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him away.
"Come on, run!"
Pelting through the crowd of people and Cybermen, they threw themselves deeper into the power station as an alert blared over head. Pete kept one eye on Jake, trusting him to keep up and wound his way around the conversion chambers, barrelling through lines of people, knocking them flat. He knew the layout of Battersea intimately, hours spent pouring over the schematics as he wondered the best way to get to Lumic's offices to implant listening devices without being noticed, unable to go through with his plan when internal security proved too complicated. He twisted sharply to avoid outstretched Cyber arms, his foot slipping in a river of blood, and he hit the ground hard but Jake was there yanking him back up, tearing the sleeve of his jacket and pushing him forwards.
"We're fucking fucked," Jake yelled, pale cheeks flushed. "You got a way out of here?"
"No," he shouted back. "But I think –"
"RICKY!"
"Jake, no!"
Pete caught a glimpse of Jake as he disappeared into a conversion chamber, gun raised, and he had a moment to decide whether to follow him or to find a way out. Before his mind fully caught up to what he was doing, he had plunged into the crowd after Jake and slammed into the body of a Cyberman, knocking the air from his lungs and bruising the front of his body. From the corner of his eyes that were dancing with light, he saw Jake wrestling with another Cyberman, face set in a pained grimace as he struggled to keep the Cyber hands up and off his body, muscles straining as he held the wrists at bay. Pete grabbed the dropped gun and threw himself into the mix, jamming the barrel into the eye socket and letting loose a bullet.
That horrible scream sounded worse when it echoed around the conversion chamber.
"Thanks," Jake panted, stumbling back to where Ricky lay on the table, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling, somehow unharmed. "Jesus, Ricky. Mate, can you hear me?"
"Course he can't hear you," Pete said, hand at his side where a knotted stitch had formed. "His mind's fucking hijacked."
Jake's hands fluttered over his body uselessly. "What the hell do we do?"
"Can you carry him?" Pete demanded, twisting on his blood-slicked heels until his back was to the two men, eyeing the crowded entrance. The only advantage they had was that only two Cybermen were able to enter at one time, which meant bottlenecking the way in was an option though he wasn't entirely sure how yet. "Jake, for fuck's sake, can you carry him?"
"I..." Jake looked down at Ricky, aware of how heavy he was from late nights dragging him to bed after having spent the evening in the pub. His throat worked with a swallow, thinking of Mickey and how fierce he had been when he swore he would carry Jack if he had to. He nodded. "Yeah, yeah I can."
"Then get him up because we've got to move," Pete ordered. "On three. Three – two – one!"
"Mr Crane, kill her."
As the shadows moved, Zoe threw herself out of the way and vaulted over a bank of computers, dropping to the other side as a bullet glanced off the wall. She hit the ground on her hands and knees and swore violently under her breath as her phone skittered across the floor. Lunging for it, she made her way around the computers and moved through the heavy cables as Lumic's wet laugh sounded throughout the room. The urge to punch him sent an ache through her knuckles, believing no one deserved it more, and she sneezed as the dust got into her nose, a cobweb attaching itself to her face.
"Hiding?" Lumic taunted her. "Come out and face death with the courage you command of me, you hypocrite."
"I've no plans to die today," she shot back, realising that she had trapped herself behind the computers as the door remained blocked by a Cyberman. "I'm annoying like that."
"Would you prefer an upgrade?"
Humour, she thought sourly, just what I need.
"No, thank you," she called back, tapping her phone and wondering if the Doctor might come to her rescue in the TARDIS. The text messages she swiped past told her otherwise, and she winced, frustrated at herself for getting into the situation in the first place. Needing to keep her mouth shut should have gone on her resolutions list at the beginning of the year. "Actually, now that I think about it – ah!"
Mr Crane surprised her by leaning over the top of the computers and grabbing her by her hair. He yanked her up onto her feet, forcing her to scramble for her footing. Lashing out with her phone, she cracked him across the temple. Instead of releasing her as she hoped, his grip tightened and he dragged her over the top of the computers, far stronger than he looked, and if she died after being manhandled by Lumic's goon, she would be mortified. Bracing the soles of her feet against the consoles, she pushed back with all the strength she was able to muster and toppled them over to the floor, Thomas's blood smearing across her arms and legs, and she twisted.
"You little cunt!"
"You rude fuck!"
Zoe sank her teeth into the thick forearm that wrapped itself around her shoulders, pulling her over Thomas's body in an attempt to strangle her. He gritted his teeth and attempted to dislodge her. Curling her hand into a fist, she slammed it back and missed his groin, her knuckles pressing painfully into his inner thigh as she slammed her head back, succeeding in loosening his grip. She staggered to her feet and slipped in Thomas's blood, kicking her foot out only to miss Crane's head, giving him to opportunity to knock her legs out from beneath her.
"Do you know how much this coat cost?" Crane demanded, vein throbbing in his temple as his hand wrapped around her ankles and yanked her through the blood. "I'm going to have to get it dry cleaned!"
"Oh, boo-fucking-hoo!" Her arms came up to protect her chest and neck, a garrotte flashing in the light. "And it looks like bloody lamb's wool, you pretentious git. Don't dry clean it, just turn it inside out and soak it in warm water, for fuck's sake. It's not hard."
"It's got blood on it now," he snapped, kneeling over her, weight resting on her stomach and she felt herself becoming short of breath. "Going to have more when I'm finished with you."
"Fuck – you."
Pulling her arms back, she latched onto Crane's face and remembered her Krav Maga lessons that boiled down to go for the soft bits. Digging her thumbs into his eyes, she felt the sharp, choking edge of the garrotte pull back to wrap around her wrist instead, slicing into her skin. Pain lanced through her and hot blood trickled from the deepening cut as Crane roared in pain, fingers twitching on the wire before he dropped it completely to claw her hands from his face.
Eyeballs, it turned out, were harder than she had thought they were.
Unwilling to actually blind the man, Zoe shoved him off her and grabbed his head between her hands, slamming it into the ground until he fell unconscious, the violence of the act making her whole body shake as she collapsed back, dragging in rough gasps of air.
Lumic watched her from his seat above her like a Roman caesar watching a gladiator battle. She snarled at him and tried to right herself as his hands tightened on his chair, rheumy eyes darting to the Cyberman. "Kill her!"
With a pained groan, she swung herself around onto her knees and stretched her fractured up in front of her, bloodied hand splayed out.
"Wait!"
It kept moving.
"Wait!" Her brain hurt as she tried to think of a way out of the mess her big mouth had created. "You don't want to kill me. I'm good stock. You said it yourself once. Well, not you, but the original you, if you know what I mean. You're going to want to upgrade me. You think the humans here are good? Just you wait until you get a load of my brain. I'm from another bloody universe! Think about the things I can teach you. Things you can use to improve your existing design!"
The Cyberman stopped.
Zoe didn't dare breathe.
"What are you doing?" Lumic demanded. "Kill her!"
"I lived in the 32nd century for four years," she continued swiftly, pointing to her phone that was lying in the pool of Thomas's blood. "That phone right there? 32nd century tech. You won't find anything like it here. And there's more of that right up here." She tapped the side of her head. "If you kill me though, you'll never get it."
"Kill – her!"
Zoe slid her eyes towards Lumic. "Sorry, old man. Better tech beats your order any day of the week. I told you the Cybermen are always upgrading."
He hissed, spittle foaming in the corners of his mouth. "It doesn't matter. Upgraded or dead, I won't have to hear from you again."
"You're right," she said, hands held in the air as she looked up at the Cyberman. "One quick question though – when are you going to upgrade Lumic? He's your creator. He deserves the best, doesn't he?"
"The Lumic unit is not scheduled for an upgrade," the Cyberman informed her. "His upgrade will only commence when the Lumic unit is damaged."
Zoe clucked her tongue and used the last burst of energy in her body to dive through the Cyberman's legs and grab hold of Crane's fallen gun. Rolling onto her back, her stomach muscles aching as she sat up and aimed the gun at Lumic. Panic flared across his face and there was a small part of her that thought about twitching the gun a little higher and to the right, getting him into her sights properly, but she pressed the trigger and shot a hole through the oxygen tank. Plumes of pure oxygen streamed into the room before it exploded, Lumic thrown from his chair as wires ripped from his body as his life support system failed.
"Oh no," Zoe said, sarcasm dripping from her. "The Lumic unit is damaged. Whatever's going to happen next?"
Lumic scrambled against the ground, his body fragile and weak. She watched him and was reminded of Cassandra in her dying breaths, pity flaring through her for the pathetic creature responsible for the night's chaos and death, before she turned from it. The Cyberman's attention effectively diverted, Zoe got to her feet and staggered from the room with Lumic's cries echoing in her ears.
Not my universe, not my universe, not my universe she repeated to herself, hot tears of shame blurring her vision.
Sprinting out of the door, her shoes squelched as she fled into the corridor, not sure where she was heading but knowing that she needed to get as far away from Lumic as possible. Her options were either up or down and since the stairs were swiftly blocked by Cybermen marching down them, she kicked open a door that had a danger: electricity sign on it and plunged into the darkness.
Mouth slicked with bile and fear, she forced her way into an ice-cold tunnel with transport tracks on the ground, the silence blissful after the last few hours. Her fingers twitched for her phone that remained behind in Thomas's blood and the idiocy of not only leaving her 32nd century phone behind but also telling the Cyberman what it was hit her until she had to pause, hands braced against the side of the tunnel, tears spilling down her cheeks.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Zoe spat. "Why are you so fucking stupid?"
She wanted the Doctor.
She didn't know where he was or what he was doing but she wanted him at her side to help her fix the stupid mistakes she had made at every stage of the day since first deciding to go with Rose right up to telling the Cybermen all about her inter-universal travel.
"C'mon, stop it," she told herself, pushing away from the wall and wiping the tears from her face, spreading blood across her skin. Balling up the sleeve of Thomas's jacket, she scrubbed at her face. "You're not a baby so stop crying like one. Come on, you can do it. Get out of here, find the others, then fix all the problems. That's only three things. C'mon, Zo. Move."
Forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, she walked deeper into the tunnel, tugging her jacket tighter around her. Down, down, down into the darkness she went, finding her way along with the emergency strip lighting, the cold worsening the deeper she went.
She walked along the empty transport tunnel for twenty minutes before she turned off at section 4A-F, not sure where she was and needing to check the upper levels. The tunnel had to lead somewhere but she was afraid it would come out under a Cyberman storage room or something equally as sinister, and she was beginning to feel claustrophobic in the dark with only her thoughts to keep her company. Not even thinking of the safety of the TARDIS and how good it would feel to curl up with the Doctor when she got home, his hearts beating beneath her ear, his fingers tracing patterns on her skin, was enough to keep the panic from building under her skin.
Passing through the door and fumbling for the steps, squinting through the darkness, a sudden burst of noise froze her in place. Heart leaping into her throat at the sound of something heavy and metal clattering across the ground, she gripped the cold handrail to keep herself upright as –
"Get up, quick, they're coming!" Welsh tones bounced off the walls and the realisation that there were humans in the tunnel had Zoe shuddering with relief. "Come on! Take my hand, quickly!"
"Doctor, come on!"
Zoe's breath fled her. She recognised that voice.
"Rose," she breathed, racing up the stairs. "Rose!"
"Quick, shut it!"
That was the Doctor.
She took the last four steps two at a time and burst through the door where the sight of Rose, the Doctor, and a woman she didn't know sprawled over the ground, breathing heavily.
"Zoe!"
Her vision narrowed down to the Doctor. Though it had been less than half a day since she last saw him, her eyes drank in the sight of him. His hair looked as though it had been electrified and his trousers were caked in mud; she thought he had never looked more perfect and, as he sat up, she flung herself at him. His arms came up to catch her, a small oof pushed from his body on impact, and she wrapped herself around him, pressing her face into his neck. The spicy cologne he had carried over from his previous body due to how much she liked it greeted her, layered over the smell of his soap – a bland, somewhat medicinal brand that occasionally made her nose twitch when he lathered up too strongly.
Home, she thought.
"You're okay." His body shuddered beneath hers, arms coming around hers, one hand on the back of his head as he turned his face, nose digging into her cheek. "You're okay. Thank Rassilon, you're okay."
Zoe pulled back, giving herself enough space to lean in and kiss him. Her desperation made her clumsy, their teeth knocking together as her fingers tightened their grip on his back, bunching his jacket up, before he took hold of her and kissed her properly. His lips were dry and a little chapped from the wind, carrying a faint taste of tea on the tip of his tongue that she chased before her need for oxygen forced her to release him, forehead pressed against his.
"You're covered in mud," Zoe murmured.
"You're covered in blood," the Doctor said.
"Not mine." Relief eased the creases of concern around his eyes. "There are Cybermen."
"Yeah, I know," he said, running a hand down the length of her back before his eyes went wide and he shoved her from his lap.
Zoe skidded across the floor until the wall stopped her progress as someone screamed a warning and Rose threw herself into Mrs Moore, tackling her to the ground: A Cyberman lunged out of the dark, death missing Mrs Moore by an inch. Zoe raised her head, tired of being thrown around, and scrambled to her feet. Attached to the wall was a fire extinguisher and, as the Doctor ducked beneath outstretched arms and tripped over his feet, she wrenched it from the wall. Aiming the nozzle at the Cybermen, she unleashed the icy foam onto its body.
"It didn't work," she complained when the mist clear and it stepped forward, foam dripping from its handles. "That's not fair. It worked last time on Reinette's androids."
"Different mechanics," the Doctor yelped, pushing himself back like a crab scuttling across the ground. "This is half organic!"
Wielding the fire extinguisher, she hurled it at the Cyberman and succeeding in knocking it back a step and that was all Mrs Moore needed to reach into her bag and remove a hand-sized metal cylinder wrapped in bronze wire. Stepping around Rose who remained on the floor, she threw it at the Cyberman's back and they watched as electricity raced across its body before it dropped, face first, between the Doctor's legs.
His eyes went wide as he stared down at it.
"That could've been painful," he said.
Zoe hurried towards the Doctor and helped him up. "What the hell was that?"
"Electromagnetic bomb," Mrs Moore said. "My own creation. When we realised Lumic was creating something artificial, I thought it might help."
She swallowed, hand gripping the Doctor's tightly. "It did. A lot."
"Zo!" Rose picked herself up and slammed into Zoe, who rocked back into the Doctor, his chest a supportive wall. "Thank god you're okay! I've been worried sick about you! Why'd you have to go an' run your mouth off like that? Why couldn't you have just stayed quiet? What happened? Are you okay?"
Zoe flexed her arms around her sister and hugged her tighter. "I'm fine. The president's not, he's dead, but I'm fine-ish. Pretty sure I'm going to need to speak with Yatta when all this is done. What the hell are you doing here though? You were supposed to go back to the TARDIS not get in the middle of all this."
"When would I ever do that when you're in danger?" Rose demanded. "Don't be stupid, it doesn't suit you."
"Don't be mean to me," Zoe complained. "It's been a really difficult couple of hours. Lumic is fucking insane and not the fun crazy either. He's properly mad and so dangerous. We need to get out of here now. He's being upgraded and I don't want to think what Lumic as a Cyberman'll be like."
"He's upgrading?" Mrs Moore asked. "He chose to do that?"
"Kind of," she said, hedging around the truth in a manner that both the Doctor and Rose noticed and left uncommented upon. "He's dying anyway. He's going to be dead in a couple of days with whatever he's sick with. This is a man with nothing to lose. He doesn't care any more and he doesn't think anyone can stop him. He had the president executed right in front of me. That's who we're dealing with, so can we please go?"
"We can't," the Doctor said, apologetically, thumb rubbing a soothing circle on her hip beneath her jacket, pressing against her hipbone to let her know he was there. "I'm sorry, love, I am, but Jack and Mickey are working on shutting down the transmitter that controls the Cybermen, at least the London-based ones, and we need to buy them as much time as we can. We don't want Lumic shutting them out."
"Best thing to do would be to blow everything up," Zoe told him. "It'd be kinder."
"Maybe," he said, sliding his arm around her waist and resting his chin on the top of her head. "But I need to give him a chance first."
Her throat moved. "You'll wasting your time."
"Probably," he agreed. "But I need to do it anyway." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, eyes skimming over Rose who was actively not watching them – evidently not comfortable enough with displays of affection yet – and onto Mrs Moore. "Hello, I'm being rude. Zoe, this is Mrs Moore, she's with a group of people who've been working to take down Lumic for years. Came across each other when they kidnapped Mickey and she tasered me. Mrs Moore, Zoe Tyler."
Zoe frowned, hand half extended for a handshake. "You tasered him?"
"He was in the way," Mrs Moore said, pleasantly.
"And kidnapped Mickey?"
"Case of mistaken identity, it turned out," she replied with an easy grin that made Zoe reach out the rest of the way, shaking her her hand. "Lovely to meet you. I've heard a surprising amount about you in a short space of time from tall and skinny here."
"Nice to meet you too," Zoe said, remembering her manners. "But we should get out of this corridor. This place is crawling with Cybermen and I don't plan on being converted today."
"Good point," the Doctor said. "Rose, how you doing?"
"Just fine," Rose said. "Bit cold, but fine."
"That's the spirit." His stomach rumbled and he slapped a hand to it. Zoe looked back at him, eyebrows raised. "Sorry. Like I said, I'm hungry."
"I could go for a something to eat right now," Zoe admitted.
"I'm dying for a hot dog," he said
Her eyes lit up. "With extra jalapeños, yes."
"Is this normal for the you lot?" Mrs Moore asked. "Saving the world and discussing what's for dinner?"
They looked at each other.
"Kind of," Zoe said.
"Yes," the Doctor agreed.
"All the time," Rose said.
Mrs Moore rolled her eyes, reluctantly amused. "Well, if you can stop thinking about food for a moment, we still need to find a way to get to Lumic's main control centre."
"I can get us there," Zoe offered, reluctant to head back but unwilling to let the Doctor or Rose out of her sight. "I've just come from there. We can retrace my steps."
"What about that?" Rose asked, nodding at the felled Cyberman. "Is it dead?"
"Maybe, maybe not," the Doctor said, releasing Zoe with a small squeeze and slipping his glasses on. "Let's have a little look-see: Know your enemy and all that." He crouched down and touched the symbol on the front while Zoe drifted to Rose, their arms linked together. "Look at this, a logo. Honestly, as though things weren't awful enough, Lumic's turned them into a brand. Heart of steel, casing of capitalism."
He clucked his tongue disapprovingly and ran his fingers around the edge of the logo. Slipping his fingernails beneath the small indent, he removed the embossed Lumic mark and opened the casing beneath it. Among the electronics that connected the organic to the inorganic were wet strands of pale flesh and nerves. Gently, he dug his fingers into the mass of organic material and scooped some up to show them. Rose made a small sound of disgust while Mrs Moore looked down at the pale mass, her face torn between disgust, horror, and fascination.
"Don't you dare lick it," Zoe warned. "I'm not kissing you if you lick it."
"I'm not going to lick it," he said, defensively, even though that had been his first instinct. "Why would I lick it?"
"We've seen you lick stranger things," Rose pointed out.
"And please be careful," Zoe urged, hating the thought of him poking around inside the chest of a Cyberman. "Don't break anything."
"I won't break anything," the Doctor assured her though he proceeded with more care than he might otherwise have done, the pale, tight look on Zoe's face let him know she was terrified, a sight he didn't normally see on her. "Look at this though. It's the central nervous system. Artificially grown then threaded throughout the suit so that it responds like a living thing. Well, it's already a living thing but you know what I mean." He set the nerves back down and wiped his hand on his thigh, smearing mud further into his trousers. "But look at this here. I thought they'd have this." Gently scraping the nervous system away with his little finger, careful not to touch the inhibitor directly, he gestured at it. "An emotional inhibitor. It stops them from feeling anything."
Mrs Moore frowned, creeping forward until she was crouching next to the Doctor. "Why?"
"It's still got a human brain," the Doctor told her. "Just imagine its reaction if it could see itself and realise what it's become. They'd go insane from the truth."
"So they cut out the one thing that makes them human," she said, hard and disgusted. "That's horrific."
"They have to," he said, quietly. "The alternative is so much crueller than this."
"Is there nothin' we can do?" Rose asked.
"There's one thing," the Doctor said. He took his sonic screwdriver and placed it carefully inside the chest cavity, the tip glowing blue as he shut down the systems and flooded the organic matter with a large dose of epinephrin to ease the poor creature into death. "There. No more pain now. They're at rest."
Zoe stared at the fallen Cyberman.
"I have an idea," she said.
The Doctor looked up at her. "Yeah?"
"It's a bit awful though."
"Let's hear it anyway," he said.
"If Jack and Mickey can't turn the transmitter off, why don't we turn the emotional inhibitors off?" Zoe asked. "Lumic's only able to control the Cybermen because they're mindless drones at the moment. If we can return their humanity to them, we'll throw the proverbial spanner in the works."
He rubbed his mouth. "I was thinking the same thing. I don't like it but it'll give people here a fighting chance."
"But what'll happen then?" Rose asked. "Everyone realise what they are, what'll happen to them? They're just – I don't know – stuck in their armour?"
The Doctor shook his head. "No. I think it'd kill them. When they come to understand what's happened to them, their minds won't be able to handle it and it'll overload the biomechanical implants that fuse the technology and organics together."
"What choice do we have?" Mrs Moore asked, running her hand beneath her damp eyes. "If we leave them as they are, they'll kill everyone else, right?"
He nodded. "Right."
"If that was me, I wouldn't want this," she said. "I'd want it to be over. Even if it hurt, I wouldn't want this."
An echo of Cyber steps came towards them, distant at first though they soon grew louder, and Zoe slipped from Rose's loose arm around her waist to offer her bloodied hand to the Doctor. A frown rippled across his forehead as he took in the angry cut around her wrist, eyes turning to her questioningly.
"Later," she said. "Right now, we need to end this."
"I don't like this," the Doctor said, slipping his hand into hers and tugging her close to his side. "But let's go."
