"I don't like this, Doctor," Rose murmured nervously as she watched the two Maitland children dashing about the steps and balconies of the new TARDIS console room. "We don't even really know who these kids are! What if something happens to them?"
"Nothing's going to happen to them," the Doctor assured her with a small wave of his hands. "We're going to an amusement park in space! What could possibly go wrong?"
Rose turned and raised her eyebrow at him in a pointed look and the smile quickly dissipated from the Doctor's features as he rolled his eyes at her. "Yes, alright, I know I've said that before. But this time will be different!" he insisted eagerly.
"And what happened to finding answers about Clara?" Rose asked, making sure to keep her voice down to a whisper as the children continued to dart around them in wide-eyed wonder. "I thought we came back to Earth to do some research and investigation."
"We've got two key subjects, right here in the TARDIS!" the Doctor explained, gesturing grandly in Angie and Artie's direction. "We'll just take them out for a fun day at the park, let them ride a few rides, and subtly find out what they know."
"Yeah, you know I've actually seen your interrogations before, Doctor," Rose reminded him pointedly. "I don't think 'subtle' is the word that I would use ..."
"Hey, is this the Spacey Zoomer ride you were talking about?" Artie called over to them, instantly interrupting their conversation as he raced down a set of stairs and peered curiously into one of the TARDIS hallways.
"Nah, this just the shuttle to get us there!" the Doctor called back eagerly, pointedly ignoring Rose's lack of faith in his plan as he darted forward and began pulling dials and levers on the center console.
"This is a shuttle?" Angie asked dubiously, eyeing the glowing time rotor with suspicion.
"Well, no, not really," the Doctor agreed with a shrug as he continued entering in their destination and preparing the ship for dematerialization. "But just for today, yes! Let's call it a shuttle!"
"It's a time machine, isn't it?" Angie asked, flashing Rose that knowing smirk once more. "That's how you ended up in all of those pictures. You've been traveling around in time with your ... professor."
"'Professor'?" the Doctor repeated, throwing Rose a look of disgust from across the center console. "I thought I was your boyfriend?"
"Are you?" Rose shot back teasingly, deciding not to be too concerned about Angie's keen perceptiveness since the Doctor didn't seem to be paying it any mind for the time being.
"It's better than professor," the Doctor grumbled under his breath as he finished setting the final coordinates. "Now," he added loudly, addressing the children, "hold on tight." He grinned broadly at Rose before he flipped the dematerialization lever. "Geronimo," he muttered gleefully.
Both of the children shouted in terrified delight as the TARDIS whirled and whirred around them, spinning them off towards whatever destination the Doctor had chosen for their adventure that day.
Unfortunately, the Doctor's attempt at a child-friendly, simply space adventure quickly ended in disaster as a full-scale cyberman attack suddenly closed in around them on all sides. The imposing metal army took Angie and Artie first, leaving Rose feeling helplessly and dangerously out of her depth.
What would happen if the cybermen did something to them? What would happen if she were never able to get them back? What would she tell George, waiting patiently back at home for them to return from their fun, friendly outing with the landscaper/nanny? Rose realized with a sinking sense that - whether she liked it or not - she was responsible for these children, and she felt horribly guilty for allowing them out of her sight for even a moment.
When she finally found the Doctor again, she was elated to see that he had Angie and Artie with him, but terrified to notice that they all now had strange, silver wiring covering the left sides of their faces. The Doctor seemed to be the only one in his right mind (for now) - and Rose suspected that it had something to do with the small strip of gold paper that was hanging loosely off of his cheek.
"I'll explain later, in a bit of a hurry," the Doctor assured her breezily. "Get me to a table, and somebody tie me up! Need hands free for chess." He smiled confidently in her direction and Rose recognized the expression as his go-to-Doctor-look for whenever he was attempting to stay positive in the wake of crushing disaster. "And immobilize me. Quickly," he added ominously.
Rose and the few soldiers who had taken to following her command after the Doctor had named her acting captain of the planet's punishment platoon did as he instructed and set up his chess board in the throne room that they had found in the fake castle that they had taken up residence in.
"Right, that's good. I won't be able to move, but hands free. Good," the Doctor exclaimed as he squirmed against the ropes that Rose had wrapped tight around his middle and then flexed his arms experimentally.
"Are you going to tell me the plan, now, Doctor?" Rose muttered as she clapped her hands on his shoulders and leaned her head in close to the non-cyber side of his face. "What's with the chess board?" she whispered conspiratorially.
"Playing the Cyberplanner," the Doctor replied cryptically, tapping a knowing finger to the silver wiring against his left temple, "and winning!" Without warning, he ripped the strip of gold off of his cheek and his whole body jolted as he leaned heavily against the table before him.
"Doctor?" Rose asked nervously as she watched the tense set of his shoulders.
"Actually ... he has no better than a twenty-five-percent chance of winning at this stage of the game," he muttered, his tone low and dangerous as he took on a strangely (yet oddly familiar) Northern accent. "Some very dodgy moves at the beginning. Hello, flesh girl. Fantastic! I'm the Cyberplanner."
His eerie words immediately sent a chill up her spine and Rose stepped forward slowly to get a better look at his expression. The Doctor sneered up at her with a look that she had never seen on any face of his in all the time that she had ever known him and it instantly sent a stab of fear deep into her heart.
"What did you do to the Doctor?" she asked breathlessly as she leveled her gaze on the man before her.
"Ha!" he chuckled darkly. "Clever one, isn't she? 'Course that's probably why you picked her. Ooh, but there's something of the Wolf about you, my dear. Allons-y!"
The familiar words spoken in the right tone of voice but paired with the wrong face was disorientating enough without adding the Cyberplanner's acidic, dangerous glare into the mix. Rose blinked at him in open-mouthed shock as her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. Her hands curled into tight fists at her side and she fought to keep herself as steady as possible as she forced herself to meet the man's poisonous gaze.
"Stop it," she murmured quietly, unable to manage much else as her old hurt for the previous incarnations of the Doctor who she had loved and lost resurfaced within her mind.
"Oh, come now, that was me attempting to be considerate," the Cyberplanner sneered up at her, his feral grin making her shiver. "I was trying to give you a taste of something familiar. Or have you decided to trade in the old models for the new? Frankly, I don't see the appeal."
"Stop it!" Rose repeated, her voice rising and becoming hard as steel as she leveled her own glare on the Cyberplanner's familiar green eyes.
"Oh, but you know all about new models, don't you, girl?" he continued as though she hadn't spoken. "Ah, but that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ..."
"Stop!" Rose shouted, her voice ringing through the room around them as another powerful bolt of fear and adrenaline shot through her. She could feel the confused stares from the soldiers standing at her back as the Cyberplanner began hinting none-too-subtly at her true identity. How could he possibly know all of this?
"Oh, but he's had some cowboys in here!" the Cyberplanner went on eagerly, his own voice rising as his eyes glinted up at her in a look of pure, manic glee. "My, my, Miss. Clara, for shame," he paused to make a disappointed clicking sound with his tongue as he shook his head at her, "carrying on with a married man like that. What would your late husband say?"
Ice immediately flooded Rose's veins at the mention of marriage. The Cyberplanner somehow knew her name, knew about the Bad Wolf, knew about her husband, knew about the Doctor's past selves - but how could she possibly accept that this was true? Surely one-hundred years wasn't enough to change the Doctor that much. There was no ring on his finger (thought for him, that didn't mean much), but more than that, Rose knew for certain that he hadn't telepathically bonded with anyone. Her own mind's desperate attempt to reach out to him and complete her severed link was proof enough of that. She would have known if he had been married ...
"You don't know what you're talking about," Rose insisted stubbornly, staring down her nose at the creature wearing the Doctor's face in wary disbelief.
"No? Let's ask him ourselves, shall we?" the Cyberplanner muttered darkly. "Oh, Mr. Tyler ..." His tone took on a lilting, sing-son quality as he pretended to call out to her husband (who had not gone by the name Tyler, but they both knew that the Cyberplanner was using the name now simply for effect).
However, Rose had heard quite enough, and with this last hateful barb sitting heavy in her heart, she drew back her hand and slapped the Doctor hard across the face, the skin of her palm stinging where it scraped against the metal implants on his cheek.
"Argh! Ow!" the Doctor cried, tentatively raising his hand to the left side of his face in shocked defense. "Oh, that hurt! No, stop! Enough! Bit of pain, neural surge, just what I needed, thank you."
"Doctor ..." Rose muttered quietly, her eyes staring down at him with intensity as she fought to remind herself that it was really him this time and not the hateful Cyberplanner, "what are the stakes? What are you playing for?"
The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes, explaining quickly as though he knew that time was running out for all of them. "If he wins, I give up my mind and he gets access to all my memories - along with knowledge of time travel. But, if I win, he'll break his promises to get out of my head and then ... kill us all anyway."
"Doctor, the children," Rose reminded him pointedly, closing her eyes briefly in frustration as she gritted her teeth together. She knew that it had been a mistake to bring them along - now she held two innocent lives in her hands and the Doctor had a malicious entity trying to take over his mind. "Please tell me you can fix whatever's happened to them."
"Children," the Doctor repeated distractedly as he blinked up at her and tried to focus. "Yeah. They're fine. I mean, right now their brains are just in stand-by mode."
"I think we have varying definitions of 'fine'," Rose growled as she flashed him her best no-nonsense look.
"Listen!" the Doctor snapped, leaning forward and grabbing her nearest hand roughly with one of his. His touch immediately sent a nauseating feeling rolling through her stomach and Rose gasped at the strange sensation. It just felt ... wrong in a way that she couldn't quite describe. No touch from the Doctor had ever made her feel like this before.
"Right now, they have a much better chance of getting out of this situation alive than you do," the Cyberplanner threatened her ominously.
Rose blinked at him twice and then forced herself to lean closer so that she could level her gaze directly with his. "You're in the Doctor's head," she reminded him slowly. "You can see everything in there. You know as well as I do that he's never going to let anything happen to us."
The Cyberplanner chuckled low under his breath as he clapped his hands loudly and leaned away from her once more. "Oh dear, Doctor," he muttered as he slowly looked Rose up and down with a considering look. "I think you married the wrong blonde."
Before Rose could open her mouth to snap at him again, the Cyberplanner continued loudly, "Now, if you don't mind, I have a chess game to finish, and you have to die - pointlessly, and very far from home."
Rose simply glared down at him, refusing to reveal the fearful, panicked sensation that was currently making her heart beat out of control. The Doctor would fix this - he had to. She had seen him get out of worse scrapes than this, and she knew that if anyone could outsmart a supercomputer, it was the daft alien sitting before her now.
"Finish the game," she demanded coolly, not entirely sure who she was addressing at that moment. "Quickly."
"Toodle-oo," the Cyberplanner spat ominously as he reached for the black knight piece and the game continued.