Burnished steel stood in front of them, seven foot of the stuff, formed into an Art Deco style figure. It was clearly modeled upon human form, but was so far removed from a real human that it would have sent shivers down Rose's spine even had she not known what it was. The trouble was, she did, she knew all too well what this creature in front of her was, with handles on its head and crude tear-drop shapes at the corners of its empty eye-sockets. It took her a moment to realize that the scream had come from her.
The Doctor flung her behind him, putting himself in between her and the Cyberman, sonic screwdriver at the ready, though Rose couldn't help a slightly snide thought passing through her mind: What are you going to do, undo all its screws?
Rose remembered the Cybermen like they had only happened yesterday. Well, of course she did, that whole adventure in a parallel universe had remained printed upon her memory for so long. The main reason was Pete, obviously. Her daddy. There was barely a day that went by that she didn't think about him and what could have been, especially seeing Tala with the Doctor. There were other reasons, though, that meeting the Cybermen stayed in her mind whilst other trips she'd taken and creature she'd faced faded ever so slightly from her memory. She'd lost Mickey, her boyfriend, her best friend. From then on, it had been her and the Doctor, just them, alone, hand in hand. It had been what she'd wanted at the time, but afterwards, when he'd left her behind, left her with Tala not once, but twice… then she'd missed Mickey. She'd missed having a friend to support her and make her laugh. Even now, now she had everything she'd ever wanted, the Doctor and Tala and her mum all together and in one place… well, she still wondered what if? She supposed it was only human.
But remembering the Cybermen so well, what she didn't remember was them being so still for so long. Since the lights had flickered on, the creature in front of them hadn't taken a step forwards, hadn't so much as moved one of its heavy arms. Even when she'd screamed, it hadn't acknowledged their presence. She didn't know why, but that freaked her out even more.
In a whisper she asked, "Why isn't it moving?"
The Doctor frowned. She could feel it in his back muscles as his forehead creased. She wondered if that was a normal thing for a person to know about someone else, the way their back tensed when they scowled.
"I don't know," he admitted. He took a step towards the Cyberman, his weight firmly on his back foot incase he needed to turn and run quickly. Run where he had no idea, the room was barely ten foot square. As he got closer and closer, the creature still made no move, but he didn't take that for granted. He lifted the sonic screwdriver slowly and carefully up and scanned for any signs of life.
"Doctor?" Rose asked, her back against the far wall, eyes wide.
"No life signs," he said softly. "It's not alive."
"Is that… good?" Rose asked tentatively, when the Cyberman suddenly sprang into life, sending the Doctor skittering backwards.
"You must answer the following three questions." The cold mechanical voice rang out in the stark room. "You will have only one chance at the correct answer. If you fail, you must leave through the door you came in by." It stopped abruptly.
Rose looked across at the Doctor. "I thought you said it wasn't alive!"
"It's not!" the Doctor insisted, looking at it again. "No life signs, it's not… Hold on." He walked towards it, his body and face set in their almost default "curious" position. He reached out to the Cyberman, and Rose could feel her insides clench and her toes curl up in her trainers. He hesitantly lifted his hands up and placed them on the helmet.
"Be careful!" Rose advised.
"I'm fine, I know what I'm doing." The Doctor poked his tongue out as, gingerly, he lifted the helmet off. What lay underneath brought a sudden sparkle to his eyes. "Oh, look! Oh, that's beautiful!"
Rose looked. "What is it?"
"It's a robot, just a basic space-age clockwork robot!" The Doctor bounced on the spot excitedly, then, seeing, Rose didn't entirely comprehend it, he elaborated. "It's nothing to worry about, it's not a real Cyberman, just a clockwork robot. Like the ones we met in Versailles!" he added
"Oh, yeah, that's a comfort!" Rose rolled her eyes, remembering what those clockwork droids had been doing in pre-Revolutionary France.
"God, they don't make them like that anymore!" The Doctor beamed gleefully as he gazed at the workings of the droid. "Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!"
It began talking again, and without the helmet, the voice wasn't half so terrifying. "Say 'proceed' when you are ready to begin."
"Whoever designed this place has a sick mind," Rose pointed out. "Memory-changing drugs, Daleks in a cage and now this!" She shook her head. "No child of mine would ever come here."
The Doctor frowned again now, having been brought back from his elation quickly by Rose's summary of things so far. "Even stranger, where did this idea come from? I mean, Daleks, easy, just have a hunt through time, one will pop up sooner or later. But Cybermen… no, they're not of this universe."
"You said you'd met them before though, before I did," Rose reminded him. "And there was a head in Van Statten's museum."
"A different design." The Doctor shook his head. "Similar, but not the same. It's like… like whoever owns this place, this pleasure dome-" he spat out the words "-it's like they can travel wherever they want to, whenever they want to. Like they…" He tailed off.
"Say 'proceed' when you are ready to begin."
Rose took a step towards the droid. Even though she knew it wasn't a Cyberman now, something about the droid seemed familiar. She knew what it was. That awful time up on Satellite Five, playing the Weakest Link game from hell. She didn't why it reminded her of that, it had all been so long ago, and this droid looked nothing like that one. But the same fear was deep within her now, making her feel sick and wobbly all at the same time.
"Hadn't we better… you know… play along?" she asked now, wishing the Doctor would take his eyes off of the helmet in his hand for a minute and look at her. She was trembling almost visibly, she was sure, and she needed a hand to hold now.
The Doctor answered in a vague fashion. "I guess. This is all bizarre though."
"So shall I…?" Rose gestured towards the droid.
"What? Oh, yeah, go on."
Rose threw her shoulders back and tossed her hair. She fixed the droid with a stern eye, though whether it could see her or not was a very debatable idea. "Proceed."
The droid erupted into life again. "Question One. The human population of Earth currently stands at how many million?"
Rose glanced across at the Doctor. "Uh…" She pulled a face.
He sighed. "Ninety-six billion."
They both looked at the droid. There was a long pause.
"Correct."
"Honestly, I take you to these places and do you pay attention? The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire?" the Doctor complained.
"Unless you've forgotten, I was a bit tied up that day," Rose replied. "I wasn't paying much attention to space-age dates."
"No, just pretty boys," the Doctor shot back.
Rose let it go. He was in one of his strops, the kind that could only be brought about by his failure to understand what was going on. It didn't happen often that the Doctor didn't understand things; he wasn't really used to it.
"Question Two. I am thinking of two integers. If multiplied together, their product is worth one more than their sum, which is equal to the number of players in a Khanatavia team. What are the two numbers?"
The Doctor looked at Rose, who looked bewildered. "Two and three," he answered.
"Correct."
"Khanatavia?" Rose raised her eyebrows.
"It's like the new football." The Doctor shrugged. "Only played in space. And the losers get exiled. It's not a very nice game actually," he admitted as he thought about it.
"You think?" Rose rolled her eyes. "Only one question left, you ready?"
"Always."
"Question Three. In old Earth children's stories-"
"You might even get this, Rose." The Doctor nudged her excitedly.
"Alright, no need to sound quite so patronizing," Rose muttered.
"- which character, whose name consists of two alliterative adjectives and a noun, completes the following phrase: 'Who's afraid of the…?'"
Rose froze. Her mind scrabbled furiously for another answer, running over the one which had sprung into her mind automatically without hesitation, not willing to believe that she was right. It couldn't be…
"Rose?" The Doctor looked at her, frowning. "Do you know?"
"Don't you?" Rose asked in a slightly hoarse voice.
The Doctor shrugged. "Nine hundred years, I must have managed to miss that one."
Rose took a deep breath. "Big Bad Wolf." She looked at the Doctor again, grateful to see that, finally, he was taking this whole thing seriously.
"Correct answer. You have answer all three questions correctly. Go through the door on the left."
The Doctor led the way, leaving the Cyberman helmet on the floor. Rose followed as they headed down a corridor.
"Doctor, did you hear that?" she asked, walking alongside him as he strode quickly down the corridor, looking straight ahead. "Did you hear what the answer was?"
"Forget it," he said firmly. "Don't even think about it."
"But the Big Bad Wolf!" Rose protested. "Doctor-"
"Everyone gets the same questions, Rose, it was just a coincidence, just a simple coincidence." He swiped his ticket and read the message on the screen. "'Welcome Sir Doctor. Please feel free to use this area to rest in for as long as you want before progressing to Realm Three.' Can't say they're not hospitable."
They both walked through the door. The wall in front of them was made up of a long window, gazing out into space. It could have been anywhere, anytime. But it wasn't. It was…
As the Doctor walked towards the window in awe, Rose couldn't help a comment escaping her lips. "You still think it's just a coincidence?"
The Doctor looked out into the dark space in disbelief. He turned to look at Rose again. "Satellite Five. It's Satellite Five." It all made sense now, the familiarity and the things he couldn't quite put his finger on. Though the last time he'd stood here, he'd looked down upon an Earth encased in fog and smog, and now that same Earth was cleaner, he knew without a doubt it was the same place.
Rose suddenly wished that it was just a coincidence. "Are you sure? I mean, it could be anywhere, it could…" She looked up at him as she stood alongside him. "It's us. Of course it's Satellite Five." She gazed out at the stars around them. "It must be old by now though."
"Ancient. One of the oldest satellites in the universe," the Doctor agreed. "Practically a stately home in the space-age." He stepped away from the window. "But how? How does it keep picking itself back up?" Rose saw a look of horror pass across his face. "This is my fault."
"No, it's not!" Rose protested. "How could it be? We haven't been here for years."
"I should have destroyed it when I had the chance, blown it to bits." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Every time, every time I step in here, I just make things worse."
"No. They're not being turned into Daleks now, are they?" Rose pointed out, stepping towards him. "The world isn't in any danger, things aren't that bad."
The Doctor smiled at her weakly. "I should have stayed though, afterwards… I should have stayed and sorted things out. Instead, I just… left it."
Rose put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down so that their foreheads were pressed together. "You did what you could," she said softly. "You thought it would be all right, so did I. This isn't your fault." She looked around. "You'd think they'd have learnt to leave this place alone by now though."
The Doctor smiled again. "Third time lucky."
Rose turned back to him and pulled him in for a hug. "Exactly. What's happened isn't your fault." She rested her head on his shoulder, and despite her positive words, couldn't help a small sigh escaping.
"I'm sorry." Rose lifted her head to look at the Doctor. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have got you involved in this."
Rose shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I know I didn't have a choice, but… I'd have wanted to come anyway."
"Even though T-"
"Even though," Rose interrupted him nodding, and then hugged the Doctor again. "Make her proud of her daddy," she whispered in his ear. They broke apart again and she fixed him with a steady look, looking deep into those brown eyes she knew so well and yet could never tire of looking at. "I know you can do this, I know you can fix whatever's gone wrong. I believe in you."
The Doctor smiled once again, but this time it reached his eyes and Rose could feel a familiar excitement pass throughout her body. "And maybe that's all I need." He kissed Rose quickly, only a brief peck, but it seemed to revive him. "Come on. Realm Three here we come!"
Next time: Offers and Rejections
"But that's…" Gwen tailed off, pointing with the end of her pen. She frowned. "No, don't be stupid, that's Cardiff. That's here!"
"Right, and Cardiff couldn't possibly have anything unusual happening in it could it?" Owen's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Get with the programme, Gwen!"
Gwen looked between them all, still seemingly oblivious to the glare Jack had been treating her to ever since she sat down. "So, what? This heat-wave is… something alien?"
"Are you going to let her finish?" Jack snapped suddenly, making them all jump.
Gwen blinked several times after he'd spoken, as the room suddenly seemed more silent than before. "Sorry, I..." she stumbled over the words in a state of bewilderment Owen regretted his earlier feeling of elation at seeing her in trouble for once; she didn't deserve this. "Sorry, Tosh, go on."