As the Doctor left the TARDIS, she looked around 1930s Los Angeles; she had very rarely visited America when she had been travelling freely in her previous lives, and she had never visited this city before. Los Angeles was not too different from many other cities, and if she thought she had the time later, she would gladly explore the city before making her way around the world, but right now she had something more important on her mind.

Something was coming through the Rift. The universe was full of rifts in space and time, and while there were small rifts that were more like dents or holes the size of a pinhead, there were quite large ones that acted like wormholes linking different places in the universe together.

Cardiff had the largest rift on Earth, but there were two others; one of them was in the Bermuda Triangle, and the third was in Los Angeles.

Something was coming through.

The Doctor left the TARDIS once she was sure she was in the right place, once she consulted the rift scanner she had in her pocket. The layers of programming the Time Lords had shoved onto the old girl had made precision teleportation across Earth easier than it had before, but because the TARDIS wasn't moving to other worlds through the Time Vortex, the hops were made much easier since the TARDIS only had to focus on one single planet and time zone.

The reading on the rift scanner was far from reassuring. There was something here, and it was getting worse. The rift in Los Angeles wasn't as big as the one in Cardiff, indeed it only covered half of the city, but it was still big enough for things to come and go. And that included people.

As she stood there, studying the rift scanner, the Doctor considered the possibilities; if she could look into the rifts on Earth, and find a way of using them to move the TARDIS through them, then she could restore her freedom. But she quickly remembered why she was there. The rift scanner quickly picked something up, and she walked in that direction.

The Doctor found the epicentre. It was in a large bus station that had been closed for the night, but that wasn't a problem for the Doctor, who took out her sonic screwdriver and after a moment of picking the lock, she got inside following the reading on the scanner. As she walked deeper and deeper, she heard a familiar voice in a large shed where presumably the buses were maintained.

A robotic, emotionless voice.

Quickly the Doctor raced closer and peered around. It was dark inside but not quite dark enough for the Doctor to not pick out the tall, silver forms of the two Cybermen inside.

"What is our location?" One of the Cybermen asked in its emotionless voice.

"Unknown," the second Cyberman said, casting a look around the shed while using its infrared scanner built into its helmet and was where the emotional inhibitor ring met at the top of the helmet-like head. The Doctor quickly stepped back, unsure of how thick the walls were, but she knew she didn't want to be seen as she considered what was happening; she had the means to send the Cybermen back to where they came from, but she wanted to get a bit more information before she did anything.

"We appear to be in some kind of work building," the Cyberman said. "Technology level, unknown."

"There do not appear to be Daleks or humans in the area," the first Cyberman added.

What?

Why would the Cybermen be anywhere near Daleks or even humans? The Doctor quickly checked her memory and she came up blank; the Time Lords had done quite a lot of damage to her brain after they'd forced her regeneration, and she wasn't quite sure what else was taken.

"Affirmative."

"We shall explore this place and discover the resources. We shall find the best way to convert the people of this world, and build a new army."

The Doctor realised the two Cybermen had just come from a war zone; they were clearly in war mode, which meant they were looking to expand their numbers. What made it worse was the Cybermen weren't in any particular hurry; their virtual immortal status as their organic body parts were constantly and continually rejuvenated with the nanotechnology in their suits meant they wouldn't be rotting, and those suits would last forever as the Cybermen looked into the planet, looked for the best people to serve as proxies, brainwash them and make them their unwitting slaves who would be responsible for the factories which would see a new form of Cyberman appear.

Cybermen…

The Doctor had hoped after her last encounters with them in her second incarnation, particularly on Planet 14 when the Cybermen performed the same trick when Mondas was drawing closer to Earth by brainwashing a small number of victims into converting the entire population and then spreading the Cybermen across the galaxy like a disease promising immortality at a price, that it would be centuries before she saw one of them ever again.

Peering back at the Cybermen, she saw they were both studying the technology around the garage. Taking the device she had prepared to send whatever was coming through back before she worked on the rift from the TARDIS, the Doctor emotionally prepared herself for a moment and then stepped slowly inside before she aimed the device at the Cybermen, and triggered it without giving them the chance to know she was even there.

The two Cybermen froze as they were caught in a blue haze before they both vanished as the haze seemed to open up like an invisible door. Once they were gone, the Doctor quickly searched the rest of the garage for any further sign of alien activity; she kept alert for any sign that the Cybermen hadn't brought something with them, like a conversion unit, or a Cyber bomb, or even a Cybermat, using the scanner to see if there was anything unusual but she quickly realised that was a mistake since she had sent the Cybermen back through the rift, so it would spike.

But she didn't find anything. By the time the Doctor was finished, she was relieved that she found nothing around. As she got out of the bus yard, she decided she would stay in Los Angeles for another few weeks after she was finished working on the rift; even if she was on the alert for any signs of alien and rift activity, that didn't mean she couldn't take advantage and stay here for a bit.