"Doctor, what's that noise?" Rose questioned.
"It's activation, a call to arms. The Cybermen are moving!" He rushed out of the stable to see what was going on, Rose on his heels.
Outside, they ran through the side streets to the main streets in an attempt to find out more about what was going on. As they turned their third corner, Rose realized that the part human Doctor wasn't with them.
"Where are you?" she asked him.
"Still at the stable, I've got an idea," he told her. "What's going on out there?"
"We still don't know yet, haven't seen anything," she sent back.
"Be careful," he pleaded.
"You too."
As the Doctor and Rose followed the two Cybermen, they noticed something really odd. There was a procession of young children, orphans, by the look of them, on the move slowly down the road.
XxXx
Rosita stayed behind to comfort her friend and savior, who had turned out to not be a Time Lord, but just an ordinary man who had suffered a tragic loss. He was crying like a baby, but she couldn't blame him, he had just found out that his wife was dead. She knew something horrible had to have happened to him, from his nightmares that he could never remember when he woke up.
The man in the blue suit, he said he was the Doctor, but he had introduced himself before as James, so she'd think of him that way, had stuffed a couple of the info-stamps into his pockets and used a couple of pieces of belt to make wrist holders for two of them. He had figured out a way to pop them open with one hand. He had asked for her help with the straps and she immediately came over to help him. Whatever he was about to do, it was important.
While she fastened the strap, James seemed to be listening to something that she couldn't hear. Come to think of it, his twin that wasn't quite a twin, the woman with them with the name that was similar to hers, and himself had all occasionally done that the entire time she had known them. They'd share a look or a smile or even body language that one usually had during a discussion, but would say nothing. Could they talk to each other in their minds? She knew they weren't quite human, the man in front of her had even said that he was part human. She had seen demonstrations of mental abilities in town, but they had all been tricks.
"Rosita, do you know anything about the children?" he suddenly asked her quickly. "Oh, better explain. There's a procession of them out there right now. Probably orphans, judging from the looks of them and the fact that there are dozens of them out after midnight without any parents." If he knew something going on elsewhere, what other abilities did they have?
"The children from the workhouses. There's no reason for them to be out this late at night," she told him. "I used to live in one."
"Rosita, I'm sorry to hear that," James said sincerely. "Right now, you can help. Go to my twin and see what's going on, he needs any information you may have. The Cybermen are taking the children somewhere." He told her where his other self and Rose were.
Rosita ran to the place where James had told her that Rose and John, or the Doctor, she'd stick with John for now, were.
They walked along the road away from the children, in an attempt to keep an eye on them and blend in with the various people who were just going about their usual business that night.
"What is it? What's happening?" she breathlessly asked the pair when she met them. She took in the children, walking together as if they had been ordered to do so, then noticed Mr Cole. Okay, maybe it wasn't as bad as they had thought. If he was walking them somewhere, the Cybermen weren't taking them.
"That's Mr Cole," she informed them. "He's master of the Hazel Street Workhouse. Maybe he's taking them to prayers? It is Christmas."
"Nothing quite as holy as that," John replied.
Rose went up to Mr. Cole and looked closely at his ear. Rosita thought it was a bit rude to just walk up to someone like that, but she had to admit to curiosity as to what the thing in his ear was. It flashed with a blue light and beeped softly. She had never seen anything like that before.
"Hello Mr. Cole?" Rose asked, "Hello? Can you hear me?" She turned to John. "I didn't think so, bleedin' earpods 'r' controllin' 'im."
John reached into his inside jacket pocket for something, but after a quick look around, he stopped and pulled his hand out of his pocket. "No, can't risk a fight," he muttered to himself, "not with the children around."
"Where are they going?" Rosita asked them.
Both of them looked around, looking a little lost for the moment until Jed came up to them.
"All need a good whipping, if you ask me. There's tons of 'em. I've just seen another lot coming from the Ingleby Workhouse down Broadback Lane," he commented.
Rose turned to him. "Why'd you say tha'?" she barked at him. She dropped a lot of strong sounds from her words when she was angry, and Rosita guessed that she had a very low status at birth. "Why woul' you say tha'? Do they LOOK like they wanna be 'erded like sheep afta mi'nigh' on Chris'mas Day?"
John just asked Rosita, "where's that?"
"The workhouse? It's this way."
She led John and Rose through side streets until they came to another group of children being led by Mr. Milligan in the same general direction as the other group they had seen were headed to.
The whole way, she heard Rose muttering in a very low voice. She caught a few words and phrases. "Jus' kids." "whip 'em for followin' orders?" "Kids probably thin' they're gonna ge' presen's." Was Rose like her? An orphan who had been in one of the workhouses? She seemed awfully passionate about the kids that most people just ignored.
"There's dozens of 'em!" she exclaimed when she saw how many kids there were.
"But what for?" John asked, clearly not expecting anyone to answer. He seemed like a man to talk a problem out.
"Only one way to find out," Rose replied grimly.
They followed the children.
XxXx
Jackson only cried for a moment after Rosita left. He suddenly had an idea of how he could find out what else had been taken from him. He just needed to know where. He rummaged through his suitcases, looking for it. "Where is it?" he asked himself.
"Where is what?" James, er, the Doctor, asked. The man was just about to leave when Jackson had his epiphany.
"Aha!" he cried out, waving a piece of paper at the other man. He then folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. The other man's question reminded him that there was something more important than his past at that moment, and he could figure that out later, before more people lost their loved ones.
He picked up the belt of info-stamps that were left behind, strapped it on himself like a bandolier, and pulled one out.
"Need a spare hand?" he asked the man in the blue suit.
He grinned and winked. "Could always use a spare hand. Love spare hands, I used to be a spare hand. Allonsy!"
With that odd comment, the Doctor darted out the door and Jackson followed him.
Almost immediately, they ran into a Cyberman, which was quickly dispatched by a flick of the Doctor's wrist. The two man went through London, keeping mostly to alleyways and side streets, almost to the Thames, dispatching random Cybermen and CyberBeasts, or whatever they were called.
"Who are you all, really?" he asked James, out of curiosity.
"Your friendly neighborhood Spider Man," he joked.
"What does a man-spider have to do with this?" Jackson asked, confused.
"Oh, um, right, that's way in the future, it's just a story," he replied. "We'll, I'm a Time Lord, well, this me is really more Gallifreyan/human hybrid, the other me is an actual, proper Time Lord. Well I say proper, but I've never been 'proper' according to-" He stopped gabbling for a moment and cleared his throat, a sad look on his face. "Anyway, we're from another planet, but have sort of adopted Earth as a second home." The way he said all of that made Jackson think that there was a really big, sad story there. "As for Rose, well, Rose is Rose, She's actually from London, this London, she'll be born in, oh, 136 years? I met her the same way you met Rosita, saved her life."
Another beast showed up, and that was the end of their conversation.
XxXx
Rose, the Doctor with two hearts, and Rosita followed the kids until they went through some doors.
"That's the door to the sluice. All the sewage runs through there, straight into the Thames," Rosita informed the time travelers.
"Ah, sewage, ya take me to the nicest places," Rose joked in an effort to break the tension.
"When we leave here, I'll take you to a ball in a palace that's entirely crystal if you want," he told her. "This is too well guarded. We'll have to find another way in."
They turned around to find another way, but there were two Cybermen blocking their path. They jumped when they saw them and Rose wondered how they managed to get there without them noticing.
"Whoa! That's cheating, sneaking up! Did you have your legs on silent?" he asked them indignantly.
A woman in a red gown that Rose would have dubbed "Fuck Me Red" if it were a shade of lipstick walked up and stood right in front of the Cybermen.
"So, what do we have here?" she asked. The woman seemed to be unaware of the danger she was in.
"Just walk toward me, slowly," the Doctor ordered her, his hand held out to the woman in an attempt to get her to come. "Don't let them touch you."
"Oh, but they wouldn't hurt me, my fine boys. They are my knights in shining armour. Quite literally," she said smugly. She was working with them.
"Ya, know, I've never understood why someone would want a 'knight in shinin' armour.'" Rose seethed, her teeth clenched. "Jus' means they've stayed outta trouble, maybe even ran from it. Gimme a man who's proven 'imself capable of 'andlin' 'imself anyday."
"Why, so he can protect you, little girl?" She sneered.
"Who said I need protectin'?" she shot back.
She felt a bit of amusement from the Doctor, but only a tiny bit before he turned his whole focus back to the woman in front of him.
"Even if they've converted you, that's not a Cyber speech pattern. You've still got free will. Step away," he beseeched her.
Rose hoped that they could get this woman to understand just how much danger she was in. But it was her experience that the people who worked against their own kind rarely got out before they themselves were destroyed. There were three types of people who worked for the invaders, the ones in it for power, the ones who were afraid, and the ones who fought from the inside. This woman seemed to be of the power hungry variety, though fighters from the inside often disguised themselves as such.
"There's been no conversion, sir. No one's ever been able to change my mind. The Cybermen offered me the one thing I wanted. Liberation."
"Who are you?" Rosita asked the woman in red.
"You both can be quiet. I doubt he paid either of you to talk," the woman dismissed Rosita and Rose in the same breath as she called them whores. Rose growled at her, but said nothing, not yet. "More importantly, who are you, sir, With such intimate knowledge of my companions?"
"I'm the Doctor," he announced with a bit of anger.
"Incorrect. You do not correspond to our image of the Doctor," one of the Cybermen cut in.
"Yeah," the Doctor replied, "that's 'cause your database got corrupted. Look! Check this!" He pulled out the info-stamp that he had been carrying. "The Doctor's info-stamp." He tossed the metal cylinder to the Cyberman who had spoken and the metal man caught it deftly, which surprised Rose, as the Cybermen had always seemed somewhat clumsy.
"Plug it in." he told the Cyberman. "Go on, download," he goaded.
"The Cyberman popped open the end of the info stamp and looked down into it. "The core has been damaged. This info stamp would damage Cyberunits." it declared.
Rose could feel the his disappointment that the plan to have one of the Cybermen take out itself failed.
"Well, so much for that," she thought. The Doctor glanced over to her and she knew that the stray thought had gotten through.
"Oh well, nice try," he said, a bit embarrassed.
The info-stamp beeped a second later, and the Cyberman that held it proclaimed that the core was repaired. The 'C' logo on the front opened up, and it pushed the info-stamp inside.
"You are the Doctor," it declared a moment later, then took out the metal tube.
"Yep, that's me! Hello!" he replied back jovially, giving his little hand wave with wiggling fingers that Rose loved.
The silver man then turned towards Rose. "You are the abomination."
"Oi!" Rose cried out offended. "Not you too?" she whined. "Look at yourself an' tell me which o' us is the abomination! You're a brain, encased inna robot!"
"The Doctor and the Bad Wolf will be deleted." The Cyberman ordered, and both it and it's companion lifted their arms in preparation to kill them.
"H-h-hold on!" the Doctor stuttered. "Just a tick!" he tried to buy them any amount of time he could to get them out of there. The only other way out was through the doors the children had just gone through, and that wasn't an option yet.
"One last request?" Rose queried quickly, in the hope that it would buy more time, maybe get information out of them while they were at it. At the same time, she made sure that her links with both Doctors were fully opened, so that none of them would miss out on each others plans and could react faster.
"Yes, last request, before we die, let us die happy, huh?" the Doctor caught on to Rose's train of thought immediately, because he had just had the same exact idea himself. "Tell us, what are you taking the children for, What d'you need them for?"
"What are children ever needed for? They're a workforce," the woman said, as if it was obvious.
"Workforce!" Rose screeched, unaware of how just like her mother she sounded right then. "They're jus' kids! An' ya pull 'em outta bed, afta mi'night! On Chris'mas Day! Ta work like slaves!"
"They are mine to do as I please, until they are old enough to fend for themselves and can get work on their own," the woman said smugly."
"But what do you need them for?" The Doctor asked.
"Very soon now, the entire Empire will see what for, and they will bow down in worship." The woman talked as if this were a religious event. Did she not know that the remaining people would no longer be human in any respect once this was over?
"And it's all been timed for Christmas Day. Was that your idea, Miss...?" he asked the woman in the lurid red dress her name.
"Hartigan," she replied, "And yes, it's the perfect day for a birth, with a new message for the people. Only this time, it won't be the words of a man."
"The birth of what?" the Doctor interrogated in the attempt to keep her talking and the Cybermen from deleting them as long as he could.
"A birth and a death, Namely, yours. Thank you Doctor. I'm glad to have been part of your very last conversation." She was smug, so confident in her position. "Now-"
"What happened to you?" Rose interrupted what was obviously going to be the order to kill them. "What happened to make you like this? I mean it's obvious that you, or someone close to you suffered at the hands of a man, or several men, but you're being derogatory to women as well." Anything, anything at all to keep her talking for a few more moments, and they'd be out of there. If they had the info-stamp, they'd have been out of there already, but Rose hadn't thought to bring one, and the Doctor gave them the other in his first idea.
"You wouldn't understand, girl," she sneered.
Rose saw a flash of blue behind the woman. "Oh, you'd be surprised at what I understand that you wouldn't," she informed the woman, sincerely.
"I've had enough of this child's prattle, Delete them."
The Cybermen both raised their weapons up to the Doctor and Rose, The Doctor tried to stand in her way, but suddenly, a bright, electric light lit up the space they were in. Both Cybermen grabbed their heads and dropped to the ground.
When the light disappeared, they saw the Doctor in the blue suit and Jackson Lake. The Doctor had a leather strap on each of his wrists, an info-stamp strapped into each one. Jackson had the belt that the brown-suited Doctor found earlier strapped to his torso and an info-stamp in his hand.
"At your service, Doctor," Jackson greeted.
"Savin' your arse again," the other man joked.
Miss Hartigan suddenly yelled. "Shades! Shades!"
"Okay, time to run!" The Time Lord called out to everyone.
"Shades!
"So that's what they're called!" Rose exclaimed. As one of the woolly CyberShades came at Miss Hartigan's call.
"One last thing!" Rosita called out, then rushed over to the red dressed woman and punched her in the face.
"Can I say, I completely disapprove!" The part human chided Rosita as he pulled her away.
The Time Lord took Rose's hand and yanked her along as Rose called out, "oh, Rosita, I like you!"
XxXx
They ran a good way before they had to stop for a breather. Rosita looked like she was about to hyperventilate, Jackson wasn't faring much better, The part human Doctor and Rose were breathing pretty hard, but okay, as they were pretty used to running by now.
"You strapped those on like Spiderman?" Rose asked the blue suited Doctor incredulously.
"Why not? Can't drop them this way, and they're a little harder to take from me."
Rose just leaned her head back against the wall that the rest of her body leaned on and giggled. "If you say so, Pete Parker."
"I thought your name was James, or the Doctor?" Rosita gasped out.
"No, no, it's a joke," Rose explained. "There's a...fairy tale where I'm from. A man, Peter Parker, is bit by a spider and turns into a superhero called Spiderman."
"Oh, that explains it," Jackson gasped out. "Oh, I'm way too old for this."
"That stronghold down by the river," the Time Lord turned their attention back to the problem at hand after a few seconds. "We need to find a way inside."
"I'm ahead of you!" Jackson said. He took a deep breath, straightened up, and reached into his pocket. "My Wife and I were moving to London so I could take up a post at the university." He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "My memory still is not intact, but this was in my luggage. The deeds to 15 Latimer Street. My new home. And if I discovered the Cybermen there, in the cellar, then..."
"That might be a way in! Brilliant!" the Doctor in brown exclaimed.
"There's still more, though," Jackson told him. "Still something missing. I remember the cellar, and my wife. But I swear there was something else in that room." He shook his head in memory. "If we can find that, perhaps that's the key to defeating these invaders!" He then took off, and Rosita followed close by. The Doctors and Rose took off after them.
When they caught up to the pair, the Doctor in blue looked at Rosita and told her, "maybe you should go back, we're headed in-"
"Don't even try!" she hissed.
"No, no, of course not," the Doctor sheepishly said as he scratched the back of his neck. "Someone's been a bad influence," he thought with amusement.
"Or maybe someone's tired of people telling her to run away from danger," Rose thought back. Right, the links were still wide open.
"So, what's with the kids?" Rose asked aloud. "Why does no one seem surprised about them being used as a workforce? They're just kids!"
"They're from the workhouses," Rosita said, as if that explained it all.
"So?"
"The workhouses are harsh, they're meant to be, to deter able bodied poor and ensure that only the truly destitute would apply," the Doctor in brown started his lecture. "In areas such as medical care and education for children, though, they're privileged. Neither of those were available to the poor of England of this time, except to those who lived in the workhouses."
The Doctor in blue took up the rest of the lecture. "In some ways, those kids are advantaged over the general population and it'll stay that way until the early 20th century. These kids have opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty that most kids of the time don't have."
With that, they found the house that Jackson Lake and his wife purchased.
XxXxXxXx
When they entered the cellar, Rose saw a Cyberman. Before it could attack any of them, Jackson, who was in the lead, shot it down with one of the info-stamps still strung across his chest. Before they had all entered the house, they had agreed to each have at least one info-stamp on them just in case.
The Doctor in brown, who had been right behind Jackson, ran to the center of the cellar when they got to the room. In the center of the cellar, a device stood. Rose had never seen anything like it before, and she didn't know what it did, but she knew at a glance who built it.
"Now that's definitely Dalek technology," she commented when the Doctor touched it.
"It must have been guarding this. A Dimension Vault!" the Doctor in brown exclaimed. He looked it over.
"As Rose said, it's Dalek in origin. The Cybermen must have stolen it from them again." the part human Doctor gestured to the device. "This would be how they traveled through time, and got out of the Void. Is this the thing you couldn't remember, Jackson?"
"I don't think so, I can't remember. It's like it's hidden from me," Jackson replied.
"There's not enough power," The Time Lord muttered. He then stood up. "Come on! Avanti!" he yelled impatiently as he ran to the tunnel. The others followed behind him.
"What do they want, though?" Rosita asked.
"Us," Rose and the part human Doctor replied at the same time.
"That is what the Cybermen are," Rose explained, "they're human beings, or were, until their brains were put into metal casings. They want every other human to be like them. This lot were created in another universe, and when they lost there, almost all of them found their way to this universe, where they were defeated again and that's when they were sent to the Void."
They finally saw the room where the children were being worked.
"Upon my soul!" Jackson whispered.
"It's like one of those slave movies," Rose said, horrified at what she saw. Several children were turning a wheel in the middle of the room, others were carrying buckets of water and coal. Some were shoveling coal. All were breathing in the coal dust and hot steam, sweat cleared rivulats of the dust off of their faces. Cybermen watched over them.
"What is it?" Rosita asked.
"It's an engine, they're generating electricity. But what for?" one of the Doctors wondered behind her.
"We can set them free!" Jackson exclaimed as he made his way to do just that.
"No, no, no, no," the Doctor in blue stopped him. "Not yet." He turned away from the view and pulled Jackson along with him. Everyone else followed.
The next room the five of them came to was out of the way. There was a small readout that the Doctor in brown went straight to. He pulled out his glasses again and slipped them on.
"Power at 90% ! But if we stop the engine, the power dies down, the Cybermen will come running!" He ran his hands through his hair, trying to figure out a way to break the impasse.
The Doctor in blue watched the readout as if it were going to give him answers while his twin paced.
Rose turned around in a slow circle. Something about this room was familiar. She studied as much as she could of things that the Cybermen had built when she was in the alternate universe. This setup was familiar, but she couldn't place it.
Suddenly, the Doctor who was watching the readout tapped it. "Hold on, there's a power fluctuation." He looked closer at it. Well, that's not meant to happen."
"Is it going wrong?" Jackson asked.
"No. That's weird, the software's changing itself," he replied.
"It's being rewritten!" The one in brown pinstriped added.
Suddenly, there was a power surge.
"What the hell!" Both Doctors exclaimed and jumped back at the same time.
"It's accelerating. 96 percent, 97..."
"When it reaches 100, what about the children?" Rosita questioned them, fearfully.
"They're disposable," The brown suited Doctor replied.
"They'll be deleted," The Doctor in blue said.
"How did they build this in this time?" Rose wondered out loud, still trying to figure out what exactly it was, and why it seemed so familiar.
"Come on! The Doctor in brown shouted from around the corner. She felt a twinge of his annoyance at being held up, and sent him back her own annoyance at his interruption.
XxXxXxXx