AN: I'm posting this chapter early because I have a verrrry busy day tomorrow and I don't want to forget. So, enjoy!
"Hicks and Nina haven't gotten here yet, Kat," Bill told her. He was still holding the metal hand.
Dr. Rosen looked at his watch. "They're five minutes late. Let's report while we wait for them. Doctor, Clara, Kat, would you like to start us off?"
"Okay, so the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to get the grate off of the ventilation shaft and we hadn't been walking far when I tripped over something. It was a metal hand just like the one Harken- I mean Bill is holding." Kat accidentally used her nickname for Bill from the fight club. "So the Doctor scanned it with his sonic, 'cuz apparently it isn't just a screwdriver,"
"What fun would that be?!" The Doctor exclaimed. He couldn't fathom anything that wasn't multipurpose. A screwdriver that only unscrewed things? Useless!
Kat grinned. "Anyway, the Doctor scanned it, and he said that it was from-"
"A Cyberman!" Clara interrupted.
"What's a Cyberman?" Dr. Rosen asked.
"A Cyberman is a man-made creature. It's a robot with a human brain in it, but all of the emotions have been removed. It is programmed to convert humans into more Cybermen. They are killing machines, they kill first and ask questions later, if at all. Cybermen have no mercy and they are extremely hard to kill." The Doctor said darkly. Clara wanted to reach out and grab his hand, but she resisted the urge.
"So we walked away from the hand, but we started hearing these clanging footsteps behind us, and the Doctor kept shushing us because he was listening to the footsteps. He figured out that it was a Cyberman following us, but then he hit his head on a pipe and got all confused, so Clara and I had to carry him. We found another vent and crawled in there to escape the Cyberman, and then the Doctor felt better, so he got us out and then we came out here." Kat panted. She hadn't taken a breath the whole time she was talking.
Bill was still concentrating on the Cyberman explanation. "I think we saw those Cybermen too. They were working in the warehouse. They were taking wires out of these photostims and putting some back in," Rachel held up one of the small plastic boxes. The Doctor grabbed one and started poking around with his sonic screwdriver.
"But it was really weird! Bill and I had entered from opposite sides of the warehouse, but we ended up together in the hallway. I don't know if Nina and Hicks ended up together, but I bet they did. Nina and I had split up because the hallway branched off in two. There was definitely something off about the hallways though. It was way shorter than it should have been."
"Yeah. Something weird is definitely going on here. Since when does Stanton Parish use robots to do the grunt work?" Bill agreed. He held up the Cyberman hand. "Rach, Doctor, one of you wanna take a look at this?"
The Doctor thrust the photic stimulator into Rachel's hands. "The sonic didn't pick up anything." He grabbed the Cyberman hand. "Ooh, you are BEAUTIFUL! I've never had the chance to look at one of you up close! Oh, you gorgeous, gorgeous thing!"
I wish he would talk about me like that, Clara thought fleetingly.
"I grabbed three of the phostims. I know one of them had the wires exchanged." Rachel was explaining to Dr. Rosen. "I'll take a closer look when we get back to the office. Where are Hicks and Nina? It's not like them to miss a rendezvous."
"I'm staring to get worried too. Since the earpieces aren't working, we have no way to contact them. Let's see...it's a quarter 'til... We'll give them until five. If they aren't out by then, we go in and find them." Dr. Rosen decided.
Clara was more interested in what the Doctor was doing, as was Kat. "Have you found anything, Doctor?" Kat piped up.
The Doctor shook his head. "Only what I already knew. But there's a wire here," He pointed at a neon green wire embedded in the wrist. "I've never seen that wire before. It's a homing signal sort of thing, if the Cyberman gets away from this warehouse, then it's programmed to automatically walk back here, no matter where they are in the world."
"Even if they're on a different continent? Would they swim across the ocean?" Asked Kat, fascinated.
"I suppose so," the Doctor said, grinning. Clara scowled. She liked Kat all right, but she wasn't too keen on how she was obsessing over the Doctor and his gadgets. Then she thought of something.
"Doctor..." Clara paused. The Doctor looked at her, and Clara relished the feeling of his eyes on her. "How would that homing signal wire have gotten there? They obviously didn't put it in there themselves when they were 'upgrading' people."
The Doctor frowned. "Good point, Clara. Cybermen don't want to be forced to do anything. It's not in their nature. I'm not sure who would've been able to put a new wire into the Cybermen." The Doctor tugged at his bow tie.
"Could someone have pushed the Cybermen, like Nina can, to make them include the wire?" Kat asked.
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it. He looked confused. "I honestly don't know. It's certainly possible, since they have human brains, but they might have defenses against it."
Gary, who had been silent since Clara, Kat, and the Doctor had arrived, spoke up for the first time. "Doctor, Doctor, I've found the schematics for the Cybermen that Stanton Parish is using."
The Doctor looked at Gary, dumbfounded. "How on earth did you manage that?"
"I Googled it. I Googled 'Stanton Parish Cyberman Green Wire Alphas.' It was the only hit." Gary mumbled. "Kat, Kat, can I see your iPhone? Is it 4G?" Kat nodded and handed him her phone. Gary swiftly brought up the page he had been looking at. He then handed the phone to the Doctor.
"Oh, look at this! Gary, you are brilliant!" The Doctor cried.
Dr. Rosen walked over to the group. "Nina and Hicks haven't gotten here yet. We've given them all the time we could, but now we have to assume the worst, that they have been captured. We're all going to go in and find them."
"Wouldn't them being dead the worst?" Clara asked.
"Not in this situation." Dr. Rosen said gravely.
"What's the plan?" Rachel asked.
"We're going to go in through the front door. We're going to do what we have to in order to get Nina and Hicks back." Dr. Rosen announced.
The seven of them made their way to the very front of Central Warehouse 11. All but two of those people were prepared for a battle to ensue.
AN: So that Google thing was a bit cheesy but I didn't have a better explanation of how Gary found the schematics. Oh well! It's a fanfic, anything can happen.