Author's Note: hey, sorry it's taken me so long to update. but i am incredibly grateful to anyone who has taken the time to read this and to review the story so far! Chapter Four is currently the longest chapter and STILL i don't seem to be getting anywhere! but i hope you enjoy it, i've almost finished the background of the characters and how they've come to be where they are. and yes, there is a cliff hanger mid memory, but i decided that that was the best way to keep you reading :) please enjoy!

Chapter Four

How Things Have Come To Pass

"That was the understatement of the millennium," stated the Doctor, perhaps a little too bitterly for his own liking; Metis flinched slightly but Kura, who was now watching the Time Lord intently, seemed to agree. It appeared as though reliving the story had brought back feelings of resentment in the teenage girl; remembering all over again that she had been the only one to protest against the opening of the Void, had had plenty of evidence to back up her claims that it was dangerous, and yet had been ignored regardless even by her own father, had made her suddenly angry. She was shaking with what was either grief or fury but she remained beside Zak, waiting patiently for what else was to come.

The Doctor took her expression as encouragement to continue asking the questions that had been pestering him since he'd crash landed; it was a relief to finally begin understanding what was actually going on. But then there was a question all in itself...

"Why did I crash?"

For a moment, everyone in the room looked blank, as though this had not crossed their minds either.

"The same reason we can't leave." Seth's reply had been unexpected, partly because it wasn't a very clear answer and secondly because he had been the one to say it. But apparently that was all that the Doctor was going to get out of him, he caught the eye of Kura and raised an eyebrow, clearly asking if she'd care to elaborate.

"There were hundreds of us on this planet," her voice was barely a whisper, "one thousand, one hundred and eighty three to be exact... eighty two after the death of Aegle. After the initial panic, during which we lost seventy six people, we managed to seal the Cybermen off in one of six of the lunar base areas; we're in the area called Clotho at the moment, the Cybermen were originally trapped in Lachesis – obviously that isn't the case now but at the time it saved all our lives. We appealed to Carmentis for help and they sent us an emergency shuttle to allow one thousand of us to get off this moon..."

That didn't add up.

"But you said..."

"I know, Doctor, I know. One hundred and six were not chosen to return to the planet, they were considered as unimportant, not worth the extra effort, or deserving of their fate..."

"What do you mean!?" The Doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Why didn't they save everyone?"

Metis cleared his throat, "Carmentis and Athena have been at odds ever since I opened this lunar base. I refused from the first moment to use this base to produce weaponry for wars and that made me rather unpopular with the Carmentian governors; our race is particularly interested in mythology, the Carmentians believe that strength is born in battle so my refusal to fall in line with the governors' plans upset them greatly. The relationship was never the same after that. And when they learnt that our peaceful experiments had led to the return of the feared Cybermen, they feared for their own planets safety. I made a deal with them; one thousand would be allowed to flee, leaving the remaining one hundred and six to fend for themselves until the Cybermen were no longer considered as a threat..."

The history of Athena seemed to be getting worse and worse the more the Time Lord heard, and his expression darkened as he began to understand just how ruthless the Carmentian governors must be to do such a thing to such a peaceful group of people. "Metis, why weren't you chosen to return to the planet? Surely not allowing you to be rescued would cause outrage amongst the galaxy?"

"He was chosen to go home." Kura was looking at her father as though she was disappointed in him.

"Then why, Metis, are you still here?"

Metis looked up from his daughter to the Doctor and then back to his daughter again, his bright blue eyes shining with determination, "because Kura was not on the list of the saved… how could I abandon her here when she was the one who warned us about the Void? I begged the governors to let her take my place but they refused, I believe it was out of spite; they chose another scientist when it became clear that I would not change my mind. I had to adhere to the rules, the chosen left for Carmentis and then the governor's initiated a planetary quarantine…"

"What's a planetary quarantine?"

Kura picked up the story again, "the reason you crash-landed. Metis created it, it's like a huge force field that surrounds the entire moon; it allows ships to get in, but they can't get out – nothing can get out. Dad built it before I was even born, on Carmentis, so they had the technology to initiate it; there is a secondary controller on Athena in the Lachesis base that will allow us to shut it down..."

"...but doing that before the Cybermen are completely destroyed will mean that other innocent people may suffer." Finished Metis, the Doctor admired his willingness to sacrifice himself, and Kura's expression told him that she felt the same; Seth and Calita however, looked less than impressed.

"How many of you are left?"

Another awkward silence.

"… there are eleven of us. Ten if you don't include Zak."

Only ten people are still alive!? The Doctor had not prepared himself for such a shocking and staggering statistic. "And how many Cybermen?"

"Eighteen came through the Void, but they brought with them another fifty empty shells… shells which they managed to reanimate with fifty of us."

"That makes sixty-eight." The odds appeared to be against them, it was a miracle they'd survived so long.

"We've terminated thirty three, thirty four if you count Zak." Calita concluded, her face hard and unfeeling; but the Doctor didn't judge her for that, you had to be harsh when fighting Cybermen, just because they had the brains of those you once knew and perhaps even loved didn't mean they felt the same in return. Cybermen were cold, callous, unfeeling; anything with a beating heart was automatically the enemy; anything that experienced emotions was either purged or upgraded…

One Cyberman was now the exception.

Zak.

It was becoming quickly apparent to the Doctor, though he couldn't quite explain why, that a great deal rested on the shoulders of Kura and Zak, his origins and the connection between them defied the laws of the universe, defied the Time Lord's own perspective of the world around him… their relationship was important, and so was their history.

"Tell me about Zak."

Metis cleared his throat again but the Doctor shook his head and gestured to the man's daughter, "No, Kura needs to tell me…"

The warrior with the jet black hair and the metal companion hesitated for a minute but with an encouraging look from the traveller, summoned the courage to begin speaking about the topic that may well be the key to saving everyone's lives.

"What you must first understand, Doctor, is how the Cybermen work. And I don't mean what you think I mean… The moon was working on more than one project when the Cybermen came through, the gate into the Void was one and another was the exploration and development of telepathy. As I've mentioned, the lunar base is divided into six sections, each section has an antenna like the one you see before you," Kura gestured to the large contraption built into the mother computer in the centre of the room, "they create a telepathic field, allowing thoughts to be transmitted from one section of the base to another; but the experiment was not complete when the Cybermen arrived, we had not yet managed to create a field suitable for our own thoughts to be transmitted. To make matters worse, the central computer and antenna, the one that powers the field, is situated in the base named Lachesis…"

"…and that's where you sealed the Cybermen," finished the Doctor. "Brilliant…"

"Yes, it would appear that the Cybermen understood the nature of the device; they managed to programme themselves into the computer mainframe – they –" Kura struggled momentarily, trying to find the appropriate word, " – they uploaded themselves, making it possible for them to transmit their thoughts to one another. That's why, when one Cyberman finds you, you can't hang around… more will no doubt be on their way. We'd turn off the field, but it's too dangerous, the Cybermen know what danger it would put them in so they guard it with their life…"

"Yeah," interrupted Seth, his tones bitter once again, "but we still tried to switch it off four times!"

Everyone ignored him, they all waited for Kura to continue; even though it was only the Doctor who did not known the entire truth about how Zak came to be, it appeared as though the others wanted to hear the story once more, as though they too had come to see how important this one Cyberman had come to be…

The teen took a deep breath.

"I was on a recon mission, trying to find some tools for maintenance work; there'd been a pretty violent clash against some Cybermen and our defences were down in one of our other bases… We may not have been able to use the telepathy device, but once we connected it to our mother computer, we could use it to pick up the locations of the Cybermen from their brain waves and the messages they were transmitting…"

***

The corridor was dark and dusty, no one and nothing had been down here in weeks; having been closed even before the metal army had arrived, Kura was certain that the Cybermen didn't even know the tunnel existed. Still, she shuffled the brown sack of tools further onto her shoulder out of the way and clasped the gun in her sweating hands a little tighter, just in case.

If there was one thing she'd learnt, it was always to be prepared.

Before the Cybermen had arrived, the girl had never thought that she would one day touch a weapon, let alone use one; and yet here she was, seventeen years old and responsible for at least ten deaths. The others didn't count the Cybermen as fatalities, but to Kura they were still alive; it didn't matter if they couldn't feel, it didn't matter that those who had been converted could no longer recognise her, there was something human still in them…

But she tried not to think about that.

Seeing them as empty, as hollow… it made them all the easier to kill – no – terminate.

"Kura, come in Kura. Do you copy?"

The communicator in her ear buzzed and screeched as a connection was made making the teen wince in annoyance and shock, "Kura here, Aether, that you?"

"The one and only. You alright? Your father's getting worried, you've been gone longer than the allocated time you were given; do you want to give the guy a heart attack?"

"Like a heart attack would finish my father off… I'm fine. Stop getting your knickers in a twist, do I sound like I'm in any trouble?"

"No, but then even if you were you'd still be talking as though life were a breeze; you're too calm and collected for your own good. It's not that I don't believe you capable enough of coping with the situations that you are so good at getting into…" Kura smiled involuntarily, Aether had always been kind to her, he was a tough young soldier with a warm and tender heart; he always made her smile when she most needed it, "…it's just… we can't seem to be able to track you, your registering device isn't being picked up on the scanner."

The smile on Kura's face was replaced with an expression of curiosity and surprise, "You can't? Is it working properly?"

"As far as we know, yes; we're picking up all forty one Cybermen, and we're all present and correct – apart from you, you've fallen off our radar. Where are you?"

"I'm in the maintenance tunnel in Thalia, it was built to be robust, clearly it's too deep into the moon's crust for it to pick up the signal… hang on, how am I picking you up on my communicator?"

"You wouldn't believe how much is powering our communication device this end; we've had to divert power from the mother computer in order to make the transmission strong enough for you to be able to pick it up!"

"Holy Athena, that means you could cover up anything down here… we could hide our existence from the Cybermen! If all of them are still on the radar than that means they're not using the back-up maintenance tunnels, Aether, these babies circle the entire base! We'd be able to get into Lachesis to switch off the telepathic field and the quarantine net!"

Kura's heart was racing with excitement, what an idea! There weren't many of them remaining now, it was something like eighteen; it was a small enough group to go undetected in these tunnels, the Cybermen would never know what they were planning until they'd actually done it. Nothing was particularly clear regarding how the Cybermen worked, but the teen was ready to believe that without the telepathic field connecting all of them, they wouldn't be quite as efficient when it came to hunting them down.

She was still making her way through the corridor but her excitement resulted in her paying less attention to her environment, her grip on her gun had gone slack and she was no longer being quiet, the metal tools in her rucksack clanged together noisily; the young soldier was pretty certain that the only two people who knew about her location were herself and Aether. The tunnels hadn't been used in ages, and Aether had told her himself that all forty one Cybermen were present in known areas…

…wait a minute…

"Aether, you still there?"

The more worried tone of Kura alerted the soldier on the other end, it wasn't exactly panic, but it still caused him alarm; "Yes, what's wrong?"

"We've only killed – terminated – we've only terminated twenty six Cybermen…"

"Yeah, so?"

"You said forty one were registering on your scanners… that means one Cyberman hasn't been accounted for…"

There was silence on the other end of the communicator, Kura made her way to a door dividing the tunnel and hesitantly held her hand out to the control pad preparing to open it; she didn't know if the technology in this abandoned section would still work, what's more, she didn't know if continuing on her adventure was such a good idea now one Cyberman had disappeared. Her communications device crackled as Aether gave her his opinion on the matter.

"Shit."

Rolling her eyes, the teen punched in a combination on the small pad upon the wall and held her breath as the mechanisms holding the door shut grinded and struggled to fulfil the command issued. What would be better? For the door to fail to open so that she couldn't go any further into what might be a death trap? Or to know that the hope of using the connection of tunnels to sneak into the enemy territory would break apart seeing as the technology in the old corridors was too dilapidated and run down? What if it was just a glitch? What if the rogue Cyberman had simply malfunctioned? This was the team's last chance of survival, these tunnels may be their ticket out of here, alive and still made of flesh!

She couldn't stop, not now.

"Kura… you're not going any further are you?" Aether's voice was filled with panic, voices beneath his told the girl that she had not been the only to notice his worried tone; someone was asking the boy questions, but he had only ears for her. "Kura?!"

The door began to open, like a great set of teeth waiting to devour its prey; the teen swallowed, her body paralysed with anticipation, expectation…

… and then complete and unadulterated fear….

"Kura!" Aether was desperate, "Kura, what's going on down there?!"

"Aether…" the girl's voice was hoarse with fear, she hadn't moved, she was still frozen on the spot, her eyes wide with terror. "Aether, the forty second Cyberman… I've found him…"

"Shit… Kura, run, just RUN!"

The last thing Kura needed was to be told twice.