No Control
Chapter Two: Tempting Fate
The sloping tunnel abruptly ended in a wall of different manufacture, with a door in the centre of the partition. It was open a crack and bright yellow light shone through. Switching off her torch, Antola stepped forward and shoved at the door, which slid sideways to reveal a small, cramped room built across the tunnel. There was a bed, a dispensing machine and what looked like a communications panel. There were three doors leading off – the one they used to enter, one directly opposite leading out to the other side of the tunnel, and a heavy hatchway with lots of reinforced edges and panels around it.
The group moved into the room which was noticeably warmer than the tunnel outside. Julreth switched off her own torch and looked around the room, blinking her eyes in the different light. "What's this place?"
"It looks like some kind of living quarters," the Doctor mused. "Which is odd, as that's the one thing Cybermen always do without."
Antola's eyes narrowed in annoyance at the Doctor using the name again, and focussed her attention to the door leading deeper into the tombs. "The theocracy installed it a few centuries ago," Antola revealed, sounding bored for the first time. "It's a monitoring station. In case the tombs open to disgorge their contents and the Cyberons awake from the endless sleep, the guardian caretaker can send a warning to civilization. Allow us to prepare a defense before the Cyberons can mobilize their forces off this world."
The Doctor picked up the discarded blanket from a bed clearly slept in. "Which begs the question – where has the caretaker gotten to?"
"Probably some mental asylum," Antola shrugged. "That's where most of them end up after a tour of duty here. The relief ship arrives and finds them like that. Insane."
"What caused that?" asked Phen, alarmed despite himself.
"Normally they're just found sitting there, babbling. One of them got quite violent I understand," continued Antola, wandering away from the living quarters. Automatically, the others found themselves following her into the gloom. "Murdered the entire relief crew with his bare hands. The second relief crew were able to overpower him before he killed them all as well."
"And what happens to the ones that don't end up in asylums?" the Doctor asked, staring intently at the back of Antola's head.
He didn't need to see her face to know she was smirking to herself. "They tend to kill themselves before the relief ship arrives," she replied, amusement clear in her voice.
"You had to ask," Phen sighed.
"Come along, children. Single file. Oh," Antola added as an afterthought. "And hold hands. There are... things in the dark. Waiting for children who stray out of the light." She grinned at the thought as if it delighted her to the core.
"So melodramatic," the Doctor sighed, casting a glance over his shoulder. His eyes were better than a human's, but even he could barely make out much in the gloom. He still had the sense something was following them. But who? It couldn't be a Cyberman. Even if one of them had somehow revived, it would be busy trying to reactivate the others, not playing cat and mouse with some random tourists.
That, of course, depended on the Cyberman still functioning logically rather than wandering around, deranged from a malfunction. And for it to have revived early, there must have been a malfunction...
The Time Lord fought off a shudder. He was letting Antola's tales get to him.
The sentinel paused at the threshold to the living quarters, its outer shell gleaming dully in the light from the open doorway. A long moment passed and then it stepped silently into the empty quarters. Stalking silently to the next door, the creature watched from hiding as the figures moved deeper down the tunnels.
The group had been walking for long time through the frosty corridors that seemed to go on in every direction for as far as the eye could see, the neat and ordered resting place for countless hibernating Cybermen. The silver shapes were barely visible behind the thin white plastic membrane that covered the hexagonal tomb units. Each membrane was stamped with a logo, a drawing of the face of a Cyberman in a minimalist, logical design that stared out at the watchers with no hint of emotion. It would be easy to be disconcerted by all these drawn, empty eyes, but somehow the metal of the walls and floors seem to hold the light from the torches, so the reflections stopped them moving through total darkness.
The Doctor had cast a few glances behind them during the journey – as much to take his mind off the annoyingly secular conversation of his current companions as much to check if they were being followed. Occasionally a shadow seemed to linger too long in the light, but there was no proof that their stalker existed outside his imagination. Indeed, by now, the Doctor was beginning to suspect a very different reason for someone to be following them.
Finally the corridor started to open apart, growing wider and wider and wider, the ceiling rising up until finally they were inside a huge, cathedral-like cavern. The walls were honeycombed with tomb cells, split into at least ten levels lined with catwalks and linked to each other and the ground by ladders whose rungs were set so far apart only the giant Cybermen could climb them with any ease.
Antola strode into the centre of the cavern, which was now so large their footsteps didn't even echo. She slowly turned around to face the others, her hands open and indicating the tombs around them. "Well?" she asked grandly, clearly expecting their applause. "Here it is. The realm of Cyb. A masterpiece, wouldn't you say?" she asked them sweetly.
No one bothered to reply. Phen and Julreth were looking around in awe, and the Doctor had been in such places several times already. Antola was not daunted by the lack of reaction, and continued with relish, "Feast your eyes on one of the last vestiges of the Cyberon culture, one of the last warnings where our own civilization could so easily have lead us. Unadulterated technology!"
"It's a graveyard for machines," Phen snorted, finding some amusement in undercutting Antola's grand pronouncements.
"A graveyard?" snarled Antola with such disgust that her two companions took an involuntary step back. "You see nothing, understand less and reduce the sublime to the mundane. But then, of course, a truly ordinary mind wouldn't be able to appreciate the beauty here."
"Your levity does not amuse me, Antola," replied Phen with the icy diction he used when called upon to make species at funerals and memorials.
"Nor should it," Antola retorted. "We are on sacred ground. Despite the cold and clinical shell, the designs of logic, this was a font of evil. Look around you," she challenged, waving at the frost-covered membranes to the tombs. "A more ruthless and warlike race of cyborgs you will never meet! For the Cyberons lost whatever benevolence they had aeons ago. The more were cybotized and converted, the more the purity of the Cyberons was corrupted. So many that were chosen – murderers, bezerkers, sadists, rapist... their evil survived cybotization, forging them into slash and burn marauders, waging a war across space. And now, with time frozen, that darkness can only rage impotently."
Antola took a step closer to them, closing her eyes. "Listen," she commanded in a whisper.
The sentinel was at the entrance of the tomb when the group stopped talking. It paused, standing in the shadows, as still as a statue. The only noise was its respirator wheezing as it stared out into the cavern where the four intruders were listening as bidden.
The sentinel watched through empty eye sockets in its rigid, mask-like face.
After about ten seconds of silence, the Doctor yawned. Loudly. "Obviously they rage silently in these parts," he said, unimpressed. He looked at Phen and Julreth, feeling rather pleased he'd broken Antola's spell over them. He wasn't sure if it was that the duo were impressionable or Antola particularly compelling. It certainly wasn't charisma.
Ignoring the glare Antola gave him, the Doctor idly began to move away from the others. On the wall above the entrance was a series of murals the Cybermen had carved – hieroglyphics to intrigue archaeologists of the distant future and trick them into reviving the frozen army. One of many contingency plans the Cybermen had used before in the past to cheat extinction.
In the same stylized drawings he could see a kind of story. Two planets (one with a moon) on either side of a star. Then the two planets side by side. Then a jagged cartoony explosion, leaving just one planet. The tale of Mondas in three easy steps, from left to right. And above it, following the progression were humanoid silhouettes, like a chart of evolution. But not from ape to man, but rather man to Cyberman. The first one was a caricatured ape with long arms, stumpy legs and fur. Then a primitive Cyberman, with one arm normal, one drawn blocky and artificial, with the legs also that style. The lungs were highlighted to show the respiration systems implanted. The third figure was another early type of Cyberman, lacking the typical handlebars. It seemed to be a normal human, albeit with all bar his head and hands transformed, wearing a metal skull cap with a strange device on the chest. The fourth figure was a representation of the Cybermen he'd first met at the South Pole, the fifth the more advanced model he'd seen on Telos, and so on... A sanitized pictorial history, designed to make you want to know more. Clever.
The Doctor snapped out of his reverie as he realized Julreth was talking. "I hope these things are going to stay frozen," she was saying, not entirely keeping the anxiety from her voice.
Antola was smirking again. "Not if I have anything to do with it, children."
The Doctor's expression hardened. He had indulged the trio more than enough. Them parading around the dead heart of the Cyber Empire without caution or respect was one thing, but this...
The Time Lord rounded on the aristocrat. "Wait a minute, please, why exactly have you come here? What are you intending to do here?" he demanded.
Antola beamed at him, and the Doctor cursed his mistake. She had finally gotten to him, admitting that he was not in control and she was – he'd lost the psychological game he'd been playing, and playing half-heartedly at that. This teenager had the upper hand now.
"This isn't a democracy, my darling, it's a feudal state," she told him, a tone of steel entering her silky voice. "The only link to the civilized galaxy is my ship. I own that ship and I rule it. So, in a way, I rule... you," she added, as if the thought had only just occurred to her. Whether it had or hadn't, the concept of her power seemed to excite he even further.
"But not me," the Doctor replied sweetly. "I can find my own salvation."
"Then feel free to leave," Antola retorted. "Go off into the darkness. We won't be seeing you again whatever happens. If you want to remain, bow unto your ruler!" She laughed in his face, turned and almost skipped through the frost. "And as befits a benevolent and loving ruler, I might just tell you what will happen here tonight."
The Doctor was strongly tempted to head back to the TARDIS and leave these young idiots to get themselves killed. But he was loathe to leave not knowing exactly what Antola was up to, and part of him was far from eager to wander off into the darkness when there was mounting evidence someone or something else was out there. Swallowing his pride, he followed Antola. At his own pace.
"So what is it?" Phen grunted impatiently. "Why are we here?"
With a flourish that even the Doctor could appreciate, Antola suddenly had a plastic card in her hand – a rectangle of transparent crystal full of circuitry and tiny slugs of light. It was technology the Doctor was unfamiliar with, but the others clearly understood.
"For this," Antola murmured. "The treasure of treasures!"
"It's an interface bubble," Julreth shrugged, for once not remotely impressed.
"But it is what it contains that matters," Antola pointed out.
"Which is?" the Doctor cut in remorselessly.
Antola snorted in amusement and started to turn on the spot again, as if declaiming to an audience enraptured in her performance. "The Cyberons..."
"Cybermen," the Doctor snapped, no longer in the mood for games.
"Cyberons," continued Antola icily, "are all in suspended animation. Their circuitry on standby, their bodies preserved in the cold. The controlling computer is waiting for the moment of optimum advantage to send the pulse of data that will revive every Cyberon present."
"So why hasn't it?" Julreth asked, casting another fearful look at the dormant tombs.
"Because when the theocracy overcame the Cyberons..."
"Cybermen."
"...they released a deadly weapon of war. A computer virus that ravaged the data systems, and prevent the controller from accessing the outside universe. It has no idea what has happened since the virus was released, or even how long it has been since it was infected. And thus, it plays it safe, and the Cybermen are kept on ice."
"Hah!" the Doctor laughed.
A moment later, everyone realized what he was referring to: Antola had slipped up.
With a look colder than the tombs around them, Antola waved the card at the Doctor. "This contains the anti-virus. Once in the system it will restore all the computer functions, repair the damage and the rewrite the basic programs. When the Cyberons awake, they will have a new outlook on life."
"An outlook with you in it?" the Doctor guessed.
Antola took a deep breath, and all present could almost see the adrenaline surging through her excited body. "It will allow me to bend the will of the Cyberons to my own," she added with a palpable satisfaction. "For now and for always, they shall do my bidding."
"You have your servants for that, don't you?" Julreth pointed out.
"But they do so always demand payment," Antola complained, grimacing at thought. "And they're so disobedient. They never fight to the death when I ask, or go against their own morals. The Cyberons will do all that I desire, with no need for food or rest. I can't think of better servants, can you?"
"You could always learn to do things for yourself," the Doctor dryly noted.
"And where would the fun be in that?" Antola pouted. "Shall we start?"
"No," the Doctor said bluntly. "Revive the Cybermen and you put the entire galaxy in peril!"
"Your objections are noted and ignored in equal measure," sneered Antola, and walked straight past him. "It's not as if you have any say in what we are doing here, is it? Come along children," she called over her shoulder, "this won't take long."
She came to stop at a cell at floor level directly opposite the entrance. The only real distinction was the membrane seemed thicker and darker than the others. After a long pause, staring into the murky plastic, she finally spoke. "This is the one. Open it up," she ordered Phen.
As there finally seemed a point to the whole exercise, Phen was in a far more cheerful mood. "Let's hope he doesn't mind us dropping by unexpectedly," he said.
"Please," the Doctor said earnestly. "Whatever you're about to do, it cannot be worth endangering civilization as you know it! You're not just risking your own deaths, but something worse..."
"You bore me, Doctor," said Phen as if this was the worst crime imaginable, and took a thermal lance from his pocket, slashing the membrane open in a single stroke. The membrane hung in tatters revealing the Cyberman inside.
The Doctor frowned. This Cyberman didn't seem like all the others they'd half-glimpsed through the tomb doors at all. It was smaller than expected, the helmet was completely black. The chest unit was outlined in vivid red, and the shiny carapace seemed more like armor with gaps around the joints under which cables could be seen. The respirator was wheezing gently.
"It looks dead," whispered Julreth after a long silence.
"Not dead, merely asleep," said Antola with her infuriating half-smile. "Just... dreaming."
"Do Cybermen dream?" the Doctor wondered out aloud. "What thoughts would be hidden behind that silent visage, a man in the iron mask of his own making? Do you dream of the time before that mask was forced upon you?"
The sentinel moved out of the shadows and into the cavern proper. It knew what to do now.
"Enough," Antola cut in on the Doctor's musings. She addressed Phen once more. "Lift him out."
A look of revulsion crossed his fleshy face. "You want me to touch that thing?" he asked in a mixture of amazement and disgust at the very idea.
"It won't bite," Antola told him patiently. "Apart from anything else, it has no teeth. Now, lift him out."
Taking a deep breath, the young aristocrat stepped in front of the inert Cyberman and reached into the tombs, intending to grab the creature by the shoulders and haul it out of the unit. But as his fingers were about to touch the shiny body, its steel-coloured hands shot out and gripped Phen by the arms in an agonizing grasp that drove the air from the man's body.
Julreth screamed as, eyes wide in pain, the white-faced Phen was forced to his knees as the Cyberman lurched out of the unit.
Before either the Doctor or Antola could do anything, the screaming socialite turned and sprinted off for the exit to the chamber – animal instinct driving her to get as far away from the danger as quick as she could and with no thought to those she left behind.
She didn't make it that far.
By the time Phen had been forced into a kneeling position, Julreth was skidding to a halt as an identical Cyberman strode out of the shadows and across the chamber with slow, deliberate steps. She didn't have time to scream again as the newcomer seized her arms in an unfeeling, vicelike grip. As she whimpered in pain, all Julreth could see was the expressionless eye-holes and the smell oily breath blowing in her face.
The Doctor whirled between the Cyberman wrestling Phen into submission and the one that engulfed Julreth in a bear-hug. There was no way out of the chamber, and they were trapped with the prematurely-awoken inhuman killers Antola wanted so much to find.
As the screams and cries from her companions grew louder and more frantic, all Antola could do was throw her head back and laugh...