Tricia unlocked the door and let everyone in. It was late and no one else was around, so they went practically unnoticed the entire journey. Only a couple of young couples heading home passed them, and they didn't pay much attention to the strange crew being led by Tricia towards the shop.
Tricia ducked behind the front desk and pulled out a gun. It was a fairly old shotgun.
"Tricia!" Mickey said, "Why has your Dad got a shotgun?"
"His grandparents were farmers, living out in the countryside, it's been handed down from father to son, and yes he has a licence." Tricia passed the gun to Jack, who inspected it.
"This loaded?" he asked.
Tricia rooted around for a little while and produced a box of bullets.
"I don't know how to…" she began but Jack had already opened up the gun and began placing in the bullets. "You obviously do," Tricia said.
Jack pumped the barrel of the shotgun, loading it, then held it out straight, taking aim.
"That ought to do nicely," Amber said, "When do we start looking for trouble?"
"Now if you're up for it!" the Doctor replied cheerily.
"Where though, we don't want to endanger anyone else." Jack said.
"Maybe we should go to the rooftops," Rose suggested, "You could get up there from our block of flats. Shoot the thing when it comes for us; chase it back down the stairs and to its little hideout. That way we won't run the risk of shooting someone else."
"I'm not going to shoot someone else!" Jack said, still aiming the gun.
"Who said you were doing the shooting?" Amber said, and removed the gun from his hands.
"This is quiet time in London," Harriet said, "Everyone is either in the theatre or at home, preparing to come out. You probably have ten minutes until the theatres empty and the night clubs open."
"The roof it is then!" the Doctor said, "Lets spend those ten minutes getting up there unnoticed – don't want to be alarming any more citizens, done our fair share of that already!"
Together the company climbed to the rooftops, trying not to attract the attention of the increasing numbers of passers by, which was easier said than done when your company contained the Prime Minister, a girl with blue hair and a shotgun, and Jack, who was stopping to flirt with all the dressed up girls.
London, being a large city, was fairly well lit up, but Amber wasn't taking any chances. She took out a pair of what looked like ordinary sunglasses out of her pocket. They were actually a set of 'Vision' Goggles, which had a number of settings, including night vision and x-ray vision. For this particular adventure, Amber set them to Infrared. Cyborgs gave out almost as much heat as a normal lifeform. She would easily be able to spot one approaching.
She walked out to the centre of the roof, holding the shotgun under her arm.
"Everyone stay out of the way and really still, preferably behind me." She said, walking so she faced the stairway the Cyborg was likely to come from.
Once everyone was seated, she took out her locator and toyed with it for a moment.
"What are you doing?" Mickey asked.
"Reversing the tech principal," Amber said, "We can assume our enemy is using tech scans to find us. They probably picked up the gun or the Sonic Screwdriver. Any scanner out there will now have a large spike of activity on its screens that can only mean on thing…"
"So we're just going to sit here and wait while some robot thing comes looking for us with a gun?" Jackie asked.
Rose noticed the Doctor grit his teeth and quickly changed the subject.
"Won't they expect that though? Won't they predict a trap?"
"Cyborgs are artificial intelligence and ultimately expendable, they are programmed to try and deal with the problem in a certain way, while contacting their programmers to alert them to the situation." Jack said, "Essentially they are guard dogs, none of that resourceful, super-intelligent, voice changing, 'human' thing you get in the movies."
"What happened to super advanced, millions of years in the future?" Mickey asked.
"It is super advanced!" the Doctor said, "Running a computer on the energy a body can provide, transmitting electronic information through the nervous system, artificial intelligence enough to carry out orders which involve thinking for itself, decision making. What else do you want? A built in video recorder?"
"But, on Satellite Five, Cathica used her nervous system to transmit electronic information – she had all the news running through her head! That wasn't that far into the future either, relatively speaking, but that's seems more advanced to me." Rose said.
"The technology on Satellite Five was merely utilizing some of the enormous potential of the human mind. A computer that can come even remotely close to synthesising that potential, imitating it, is very advanced indeed." The Doctor said.
The group sat around for nearly twenty minutes before a Cyborg appeared. Amber saw it coming a mile off, the strange heat signature which was shaped like a human, but slightly cooler than average with white tendrils running all though, where the nerves where being heated from the exchange of information and data. Mickey also saw it, a strange shimmer in the air, like a heat wave but moving sideways rather than up. The first the rest of the group saw of it, was when Amber had shot it.
When the first bullets hit the Cyborg it dropped the active camouflage and just looked at Amber for a second. After a moment's contemplation it raised its gun to shoot at her. Amber didn't give it a chance. She reloaded the shotgun and fired again.
The Cyborg recoiled away, giving Amber a chance to reload and put another round into it. Its clothes were shredded and blood was dripping from several nasty wounds, several circuits and wires were exposed and sparking yet still the creature didn't stop. It dropped the gun it was holding and charged straight at Amber. She responded by firing again and again at it as it got ever closer to her.
"She handles that like a pro," Mickey said, standing up to get a better look.
"I think I'm in love!" Jack said, entirely seriously.
The Cyborg continued running then jumped over Amber and off the building. Amber dropped the gun, looking mildly irritated.
"Aah, didn't anticipate that!" the Doctor said.
"No worries," Amber said, and jumped off the building herself.
Jack looked rather awestruck and very impressed, then ran for the stairs, jumping down them as fast as he could.
Rose and those left on the roof ran to the edge in time to see Amber land on the floor unscathed, and chase after the Cyborg that was running incredibly fast towards wherever it was going.
Rose, who was used to people doing unpredictable things, asked the most pressing question currently in her brain.
"How can she run in those shoes?"
The Doctor took those remaining behind back to the TARDIS. Using the console he keyed into Amber and Jack's unique signatures, tracking Amber by her alien genetics and Jack using the watch he wore. After a moment's tinkering he brought them both up on screen.
Amber and Jack were both running full speed, though Jack was a good way behind the smaller, more agile (not to mention the fact she had a considerable head start) Amber.
"Jack?" he asked, "Jack? Can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear Doc," Jack said, talking into his watch.
"Good, where are you? Look for a landmark."
"Not a clue – it's just a residential area, nothing significant about. I can't even see any street names, too dark."
"But can you keep up with Amber? I can't talk to her, I can see her but not hear – I need you to tell me where you are."
"Sure," Jack said, a bit breathlessly, "Not letting her get away. Do you think she'd marry me?"
Rose laughed and the Doctor grinned.
"I think she's a bit out of your league," Rose said.
"Well, a guy can dream…" Jack said, then ran faster.
Amber chased the Cyborg all the way to a disused building in a run down part of London, where land prices were too high to promote redevelopment and buildings were just left to go stale.
She switched the glasses she was wearing to Night Vision. It was very dark around here. She followed the Cyborg into the building and watched as it placed itself on a conveyer belt and was taken away for repairs.
Amber removed her glasses and walked further into the building. The lights were all red, giving the place and unwelcoming atmosphere. She crept through lines of inactive Cyborgs, shuddering as she saw the number of people who had been killed for the sinister purpose of whoever was controlling them.
Amber walked among the production lines cautiously. As long as the Cyborgs stayed offline she was safe, but if she did something that caused them to turn on, she was dead. Cyborgs shared only a few traits with their Hollywood counterparts, and one of those traits was the fact that they never stopped until they achieved their goal.
"So what exactly is going on here?" Jack asked, making Amber jump.
She spun round, the blade attached to her right wrist shooting out of its sheath as she raised her hand to near Jack's neck.
"A little jumpy?" he asked, leaning backwards away from her, gulping slightly.
"Don't do that again!" Amber said, exhaling sharply and returning the blade to its place beneath her jacket sleeve.
"Don't intend to," Jack assured her, breathing out and relaxing finally, "You're gonna make me go grey, girl. You ought to watch where you're pointing those!"
"I could do a lot worse than that with one if these!" she said, holding up her wrist in a threatening manner.
Jack gulped again, and wiped a sheen of nervous sweat from his forehead.
"Not frightened are we Captain?" Amber asked.
"Terrified," Jack said, "It must be the lighting."
"Jack?" the Doctor spoke again, "Where are you then?"
"Still no clue, Amber?" Jack said.
"Some warehouse somewhere," she replied.
"That's so useful," the Doctor said.
"Can't the TARDIS track us?" Amber asked.
"Yes of course it can! It's tracking you now!" the Doctor said impatiently.
"Then why not use that to find where we are?"
The Doctor paused for a moment.
"Right, yes, I hadn't thought of that. Hold on! We'll be with you in a jiffy!"
He flicked a few switches, twirled a few dials, and the central column began moving.
"That's how this thing flies?" Jackie asked.
"Yes, and it can go anywhere in time and space! Incredible isn't it?" the Doctor said smugly.
"It's a pile of junk!" Jackie retorted.
"Mother!" Rose said warningly.
"What? I'm just saying…" Jackie began, but trailed off as the column stopped moving and the Doctor ran towards the door.
"It should have landed right on top of them, but as it happens, we're a few yards out, not bad though." The Doctor said.
"I think you need some practice," Rose said, stepping out beside him, looking up at the exterior of the building Jack and Amber were in.
"Lets go and take a look shall we?" the Doctor said.
"Or not," Mickey said, looking a little fearfully at the derelict building.
Amber walked round further corridors, trailed by Jack who was still scanning everywhere.
"What exactly does that do?" she asked.
"Reads all sorts of things in the area, energies, life forms, poisonous gasses and stuff."
"Found anything interesting?"
"Well, the air is breathable, something is kicking out a lot of heat, and the whole building is buzzing with electricity."
"I could have told you that just by looking."
"Yeah, but it doesn't hurt to check." Jack said defensively, looking down at his watch for a moment then snapping it shut.
"Whoever built this place was definitely after something, or someone." Amber said, walking round another corner into a large central room.
"Yeah, well, there are always people after the Doctor," Jack said, following her in.
"Only this time it's not the Doctor they're after, it's me…" Amber said.
The control room was lined with pictures of Amber, in her assassin form, and a few blurry pictures of her in her normal form, taken on Perth.
"They'd go to all that effort just to catch you?" Jack asked, ripping one of the pictures off the wall.
"Apparently so," Amber said.
"I didn't think you were that infamous."
"I'm not," Amber said, "I'm known, but only in a 'don't mess with her if you value your life' kind of way. No one wanted me dead before…"
"Before they found out you were the last of your kind," the Doctor said from the doorway.
"Nice of you to join us," Jack said with a grin.
"You can explain this?" Amber asked, waving her arm around the room.
"Well, your ship – it must have some kind of tracking device on it, but whoever is tracking you thinks you are a Quertiz, not iXionian. They don't know you can shape-shift. They arrive on Perth, stick in the background so as not to get noticed by the Perthians, look for you – after all, there are only so many places one can hide in an alien environment. They know you are there because of the signal, but they can't find you or your ship.
"Then we turn up and throw a spanner in the works, as per usual. We find you, take you back to your ship, at which point, someone must have spotted you in your true form, but they don't make the association yet. Then, during that little ruckus in the prison, you tell the Perthians you are the assassin they were looking for, and suddenly you're not just a minor inconvenience, but the last survivor of a dead race, worth a fortune to a bounty hunter.
"We leave Perth, and they track the signal through time and space to Earth, so they arrive a month or two early and set up, waiting for us to come. Quite clever really." He finished.
"Well, I'm not being tracked all through time and space!" Amber said, and took out her ship. "Where's this tracking device then?"
The Doctor took out his Sonic Screwdriver and scanned over the miniature ship.
"Here we go!" he said, and picked off a mark the size of a small drawing pin. As soon as it left the ship it grew to normal size in the Doctor's hand and started beeping. "They won't be able to follow you anymore, now, lets destroy this place and get out of here!"
"Er, Doctor…" Harriet said.
The Doctor looked up. The central control room had several doorways and from each several Cyborgs had entered, surrounding the company completely.
"Ah," the Doctor said.
Nice cliffhanger for you! please review! xx