"I - am - Bill - Potts... I - am - Bill - Pots..."
She wasn't speaking to anyone else. Only herself now. And it wasn't a promise, more of a suggestion.
0507 was in flames. All the trees burned to nothing, the ground torn up and in some places revealing wires. No human could survive this. But her quarry was, if merely technically, not human. Her parameters for identifying him would be the same.
"Doc-torrrrr..."
She needed to find the Doctor. She'd waited for him. And now she could only hope that he was waiting on her.
Hope is illogical; illogic will fail you; failing parts will be replaced.
She was in pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain.
Pain is no longer necessary; pain will be disregarded.
No! She had to fight it. She could see her hands as gloves now, her shoes as silver moon boots. She told herself she could hear her own heartbeat, and prayed she could believe it. No; it was, in fact, her chest module rattling, pumping blood-substitute through the filtration unit in her chest, flowing in and back out of the fused skin and metal where her heart used to be.
And her breathing? It was fake. It had to be. That little clicking coming from her lungs had to be fake. She didn't even have lungs, not since being blown apart all those years ago! No.
"Am - I - breathing - I - must - find - Doc-torrrrr..."
She had to engage her scanners. With every little bit she gave the Cyberman, it took twice as much.
Correction: it is accelerating the conversion process at a gentle logarithmic rate. Soon it will become sufficiently steep that the human persona will drop, like gravity.
Shut up. Shut up. Hold onto pain. Keep moving. Find the Doctor. Bill couldn't think about anything else, not anymore. She had two options: think of the Doctor, or think of nothing at all. A Cyberman holds no thoughts that do not constitute action. She used that to keep her going, each great booming step after the last, guiding her toward a goal. Find the Doctor. Find the Doctor. Find the Doctor.
The landscape looked so homogenous. So black and grey. Last she checked, the Doctor was wearing black, and his hair was grey. And she couldn't scan for heat signs because of the fire everywhere. Great. Sacrificed a good chunk of herself for nothing. She needed to keep walking.
She needed to assess her own damage, too.
"NO..."
She would not self-scan. She would not let Cyberman reflexes become habitual. She would fight them every step of the way.
Bill recalled what she had told the Doctor: if she couldn't live as herself, she wouldn't live. She needed to take that back now, she needed Cyberman strength.
No. She needed human strength. Humans had kept going of their own free will, long before there were Cybermen. She remembered one of the Doctor's tangents about the human spirit, how indomitable it was, and how "likely" it was that other species had adopted humanity too. And then she'd gone and seen it firsthand.
She thought of Heather. How much she wished Heather would come and rescue her. Had she forgotten about Heather? That girl with the stars in her eyes?
Impossible. Stars are, at minimum, millions of times larger than humans.
Please, Heather. Save me.
Please, Heather. Help me find the Doctor.
She didn't need Heather to do that. She'd found him. Sprawled out like a dead man.
This was not the first time he'd died. She still remembered when she shot him, when the Monks had taken over Earth. He'd done something strange, tendrils like flames had shot from his hands and face.
She put the pieces together. The Doctor's race could change faces. Was that what they did? Did they expel vast amounts of radiation to mutate their DNA? Did it break and reform into new sets of genes, and reset their own aging and degradation process in that instant?
Okay, she was getting scary specific with that one. But she'd seen him do it again, here. Something had happened. He was fighting it. She could feel something radiating off him, see how weak he was, but he would choke it down every few minutes. It must have been like walking with a -
Metaphors, similes and analogies are frivolous. Concise description is the only valid means to depict an entity.
"SHUT - UP..."
But now he was silent. His body lay motionless.
I can't save him.
He is not Cyberman. His anatomical nature dictates that he must die.
Well, here's a correction for you: his nature dictates that he's gonna live. And my nature dictates I'm gonna make it happen!
How? He shows no vital signs. His body has ceased all functions.
It must have been the Cyberman logic meeting human grief, because that truth hit her like a - !
She sank to her knees. And with the last of her tears before her ducts were paralysed, Bill wept over his body. She couldn't even sob. Even in her own head, her vocal chords were fixed in place.
Another memory:
"Where there's tears, there's hope."
She had to be sure. Logic dictates that no outcome can be concluded upon until it is proven.
Besides, Bill Potts was now full of electricity.
Leaning over his body, the Cyberman once known as Bill Potts placed its hands on the lifeless Doctor's chest, induced a high-current shock. Every muscle in his body seized at the voltage. It measured the body's response, adjusted its next surge accordingly.
There was a heartbeat. One heartbeat. As the Doctor had gloated to Bill, Time Lords had two hearts out of redundancy, not necessity. The Cyberman just needed to get one heart working, and the Doctor would live.
The silver being shocked again. The Time Lord's body jerked, it could hear a breath.
A little of Bill Potts came back at the sound of the Doctor's wheezing. But it was lost again when the body fell lifeless. Neither heart could keep beating.
This is the way of all things not Cybermen. They are not like us because they think it is not natural. To live and die as separate events is their way. We will convert them. We will salvage them. But probability states that not all can be salvaged.
This unit must strive to solve the problem at hand.
And that's when Bill remembered one of the Doctor's tangents. The memory echoed in her head, a stand-in for the acoustics of the lecture hall.
"All of time and space is not linear. All the proof we need is in black holes: ...monsters, really.They are a natural part of spacetime, yet, they follow none of its rules. They override every fundamental force in the universe, bend time to mark their territory, and they don't even eat most of what they consume! It just orbits infinitely, smashing into every other bit of debris until they become a grand ring of nothing!"
Some poor idiot raised his hand.
"Professor, is this a metaphor for your teaching style?"
The eyebrows! The scowl! Bill laughed grimly, knowing that dumb bloke would get called out, put in his place.
But even the Doctor surprised her.
"Perhaps. But that's another thing about black holes: they never stop. Only a black hole decides when it is done. They're really quite stubborn. A black hole can keep going endlessly, the same cycle of destruction for billions of years. It asserts itself, and even substances two-hundred times harder than diamond are nothing next to that."
To make his point, the Doctor pulled up his blackboard. He drew a molecule, a complex one involving elements with names written in fonts Bill could feel the TARDIS trying to compensate for within her head. They oscillated between a jagged alien script and neat human handwriting.
"See this thing?" He tapped at it with his little crumb of chalk, all he had left after a day of furious scribbling. "It's not a real substance, not on Earth. No need to memorise it. But know that, for the purpose of this lecture, it is real! And it's very stable. One of the hardest substances in existence. And what does a black hole say when it sees this thing... erm, what was your name?"
"Er, Connor, sir."
"Good! Connor. What does a black hole think, what does it feel, when it comes across this... super-diamond?"
"Erm... nothing. It just breaks it up." The Doctor got bold, intense, and a little scary at that, his gaze laser-focused on poor Connor.
"Exactly! Consider me the black hole... and consider yourself the Azbantium. I will break you, make no mistake of that, and I will do it in my own time."
Awkward silence. How did he get away wirh saying stuff like that in class, to students at university?
No matter. Cybermen could not do metaphors. Bill Potts could. She held onto the memory and the meaning it contained. She thought of Connor, seeing him again in class, wanting to talk to him and apologise on the Doctor's behalf. She couldn't remember now if she chickened out... or never got the chance.
But the Doctor was a black hole. He could break anything, any law in the universe. But nothing could break him.
She turned up the voltage and prayed she wouldn't break him.
- ZZZZZZT -
Thump.
A second thump.
Nothing.
Keep trying!
Power up. Zap. Assess. Two beats from one heart, three from another.
Power up. Zap. Assess. Two and two. With each surge a new aspect of her HUD read system damage. But a Cyberman has no need of self-preservation instincts. A Cyberman is, after all, the ultimate fulfillment of those very instincts. A Cyberman is a machine, and machines are built to carry out tasks.
Power up. Zap. Assess. Two and zero. The left-side heart was the stronger one. She would focus on bringing it back. She had to keep going. She needed the drive of both human and machine. Together. She needed to save the Doctor.
"I - need - to - save - us..."
Come on. Hit him again. Power up. Zap the left heart. Assess.
Thump-punk.
Thump-punk.
Thump-punk.
Gone again.
One more. Please, Mum, help me save him.
Power up. Zap. Assess.
[Danger: risk of respirator shutdown.]
One more. Come on, Mum, I'll go gladly to you if you just help me save him.
Power up. Zap. Assess.
Thump-punk.
Silence.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Right as her internal clock hit four seconds...!
Thump-punk.
Thump-punk.
Thump-punk.
Thump-punk.
The process was kickstarted. Heartbeat steadying now, yes, it was really happening!
Bill had saved the Doctor.
But how would he get out of here?
The Cyberman nearly swallowed her whole, but for that one question. And, funnily enough, it was the Cyberman who answered.
"I - will - take - him..."
That clicking in her chest didn't bother her anymore. Nothing bothered her anymore.
Bill Potts was gone. The Cyberman had won this fight. But it had been hard-won. And, with no other Cybermen left and no remaining directives, it craved a goal. A Cyberman can desire only one thing: result...