Note: Hello my darlings, once again I must apologise for my rubbish attempts to update more frequently. My only excuse is that I have a new job and for the past few days I've either been too busy or too exhausted to really get into writing this new chapter. I will try not to take so long in future (I know I keep promising that but I do really mean it). Also, I just want to point out that writing all of this taking over the planet / conflict stuff really isn't my forte so I have tried my best but I'm sorry if it's not up to people's standards. I do try to avoid stuff like this because I know I'm not so great at it but this one is necessary to the plot (eventually) so I kind of had no choice. Even so, I hope you enjoy and as always I look forward to your lovely reviews which never fail to make me smile.
Love always
Shadow of a Black Rose xxx
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"Where the 'ell 'ave you been?!" Jenny was not happy. It had been another two weeks since Vastra had attempted to contact the Doctor using his psychic paper and he had only just decided to show his face.
"Oh, here and there, as always. I came as soon as I got Vastra's message."
"She sent that two weeks ago!" The girl slammed her hands down on the table as she stood up and she glared into the eyes of the man sat opposite her. Jenny was furious. More than furious. Vastra's hopes of stopping the Cybermen had been gradually dwindling as the first week waiting for the Doctor had passed and by the second week the woman had all but spiralled back into the original state of fear that she had found herself in on first discovering the identity of the creatures intent on causing problems around London. She had barely let Jenny leave her side for fear of anything bad happening and it had almost killed Jenny to witness it. She had been so relieved when Vastra had got her vigour back after finding a way to contact the Doctor, but of course he had just had to ruin it. He just had to be late and leave them to deal with the Cybermen alone. Honestly Jenny sometimes wondered why they even bothered asking for his help if he didn't show up when he was supposed to. She clenched her teeth in annoyance but just as she was about to begin yelling again she felt Vastra's hand slide over her own from her left side. The woman looked up to her from the seat by her side and shook her head.
"Jenny, it is not his fault, you know that. Please love, sit down and breathe, you should not be getting yourself worked up like this." The Silurian squeezed her darling girl's hand gently and Jenny forced herself to sit back down. She was still angry, and a large part of her still wanted to rip the Doctor limb from limb for leaving them for so long, but Vastra was right, she was risking the baby by getting herself worked up.
The Doctor looked between the two women a little sheepishly. He really did need to figure out a way to make his timings more accurate. He didn't mean to be late but he kept missing the points in time that he was aiming for and it kept getting him into trouble. If he carried on letting people down someone was going to lose it with him big time and somehow he had a feeling that it might be Jenny who would take the first swing.
"Look, I know I'm late and I'm sorry, but I'm here now so are you going to tell me what's going on?" The Doctor focused his attention on Vastra. It felt safer for him to avoid Jenny's eye - he knew that she hadn't forgiven him even if she had given up on her fierce tirade. The Silurian's eye line dropped and she took a few deep breaths. She was still terrified of what was going to happen; even with the Doctor there there was no guarantee that they could stop whatever it was that the Cybermen were doing. Still, they had more hope than she had initially thought.
In the time that they had been waiting for the Doctor to show up Vastra and Jenny had not just sat around killing time. They had been investigating. While Jenny had stayed at home and gone through endless notes and case files concerning the Cybermen and the twenty odd disappearances that had begun just after the night that Vastra had visited the East end house that seemed to have become a sort of headquarters for the creatures, Vastra had been back to that house. The Silurian had been watching out for the Cybermen almost all day every day and not once had she seen a single one outside of its walls; she had, however, seen the man that Caroline had told her about. The woman had been right, he was a rather sinister looking ape. The man's shoulders were hunched, he always kept his face hidden and there was a lopsidedness in his step but there was more to it than that. Whenever Vastra had seen him there had been a feeling of foreboding in the air, something that screamed that this man was more than influential in the presence of the Cybermen in London - she just had to figure out how.
"There are Cybermen in the city." The Doctor frowned as he watched the Silurian's worried expression and, forgetting that Jenny was still upset with him he turned to look at her for confirmation of what Vastra had said. The girl's expression, while still angry, seemed to be less cold as he examined it. At the mention of the Cybermen she had moved her other hand so that she was holding onto Vastra's with both of her own and she seemed to have become far more protective of the other woman than the Doctor had ever seen.
"How? How can they be here? Technology isn't advanced enough to..."
"We 'aven't managed to figure out exactly 'ow just yet, but we think it's got somethin' to do with the man who's 'elpin' 'em." The Doctor raised an eyebrow in surprise. From the way Jenny had been speaking to him before he had been expecting that she would object to his helping them at all but to his great surprise she seemed to be cooperating fairly well, if a little sharply. "Vastra's seen 'im a few times. 'e don't seem to speak to anyone 'uman an' 'e only comes out at night, the same sort of time people 'ave started disappearin'. My guess is that 'e's 'opin' to get somethin' from 'elpin' 'em."
"Why?"
"What?"
"Why would you think that?" Jenny frowned but the Doctor seemed to be serious. He kept watching her pointedly, waiting for a response until eventually she shrugged. "Oh, come on Jenny, think! A withdrawn human male who refuses to be seen in daylight and is helping a group of robot men, all the same, all without emotion. Why would you think he expects to get something from them?" Jenny looked at Vastra momentarily but the Silurian seemed to be deep in thought herself. Looking back to the Doctor again she sighed and shook her head.
"I don't know. I just sort of assumed, there's no other reason why a man would 'elp creatures like that. If 'e were any other man 'e'd be afraid of 'em, but 'e's not."
"And why's that?"
"Because 'e's an outcast anyway an'..." Her voice trailed off and a sparkle glinted in her eyes. She understood what the Doctor was trying to get at. Of course, all of the times that Vastra had talked about the strange man to her they had been missing the point entirely. He wasn't just helping out aliens for no apparent reason - in fact the reason was entirely clear. "Robots are all the same." Vastra's eyes flicked up to Jenny curiously as she began to understand the matter herself.
"Of course. Why did we not see it before? When Caroline first described him to me she said that he was deformed, but what better way to get past the issue that makes society see him as an outcast than by forming a race of beings who are all entirely identical." The Silurian had begun to smile ever so slightly and she lifted her gaze to catch the Doctor's.
"Exactly!" The grin on the Doctor's face was unnervingly bright. Vastra almost seemed impressed by the reasoning behind the human man's assistance of the Cybermen but Jenny still wasn't happy. So the Doctor had helped them figure out one thing, it still didn't get them any closer to stopping whatever it was that was going on.
"You make it sound like 'e's a bleedin' genius. Are you both forgettin' that if 'e's plannin to turn the entire planet into robots, it aint a good thing?! We need to figure out 'ow to stop 'im, not sit 'ere actin' like 'e's some 'ighly commendable scientist who's figured out the key to global peace."
"No, Jenny listen, I know it doesn't sound like much but if we know why he's helping the Cybermen then we can figure out what they're actually doing and how to stop them." The Doctor jumped up from his seat and span around once as he talked, throwing his arms about as though he had entirely lost control of them. For the first time it struck Jenny how awkward he looked and she wondered how anyone who seemed to have so little control over himself could possibly be known for saving the human race over and over again. All she could think was that maybe it had just been something he had told Vastra to make her trust him when they had first met. Even so, whether she wanted to trust him or not she still knew she had to, he was their only hope. "So, Vastra, how many are there?" The Silurian shook her head slowly.
"We do not know. I have never seen one outside of the house. There could be hundreds all over the city or there could just be one or two."
"Well then, let's hope for just one of two." The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and started playing with the settings. Both Vastra and Jenny were wondering what he was doing. As though he had read their minds he looked up from his fiddling with buttons on the object for a moment. "I'm changing the settings to scan for electrical activity. You're lucky that they chose here of all places, not much electrical development. Well, not advanced enough to be picked up on the scans anyway. I really should look into changing that, might need it someday. Vastra, what was that you said about a house?"
"There is a house which they are using. I found the machine there, the one they use to..." The Silurian cringed at the thought of it. Before she had found that machine there had been no one reported missing but then things changed. She was sure that the machine would have been used already. Those twenty people who had gone missing would be dead and their brains would be powering the bodies of Cybermen. Gathering herself again she forced the words out of her mouth, "the one they use to create the new Cybermen."
"Is that where you think they all are?"
"There were none there when I first found my way into the house, but that may have changed. The disappearances that we mentioned have happened since then, twenty or so of them. I believe there may not be more than thirty Cybermen in total if there were only few to begin with but still it would be foolish to assume that a battle against their sort would be a simple victory." The Doctor shook his head as he continued to fiddle with his sonic screwdriver and he began to mutter about his aversion to any form of battle. Vastra pretended not to hear him. She knew that he didn't like to call what he did fighting but it was more than clear to anyone who knew him that, despite his tendency to attempt a peaceful end to conflict, someone always had to die before peace could resume.
"So, this house, can you two take me there? I want to have a little chat with our metal friends to find out exactly what it is that's going on." Jenny opened her mouth to speak but Vastra got there first. The maid knew what she was going to say before she said it and she was already trying to think of any way she could to get Vastra to allow her to accompany them.
"I will take you, Jenny must stay here."
"Why?" The Doctor genuinely didn't seem to understand. He grinned a little to himself as he added, "have you been a naughty girl Jenny? Is she punishing you?" Neither of the women played up to it. They both knew he was attempting to be funny but the conflict over Jenny's involvement in the case had been a tense topic between them since Vastra had found the Cybermen and it was something that they avoided discussing when at all possible.
"Vastra's 'ad me 'idden away in 'ere for weeks, ever since she went to that 'ouse for the first time. She won't let me come with you no matter 'ow many times I try to tell 'er that I would be absolutely fine." The girl 's voice was bitter and she scowled with her arms folded over her chest. Jenny hated being in the house all of the time. She was like a caged animal and despite the fair size of their home she felt as though she was suffocating from Vastra's constant need to keep her in the home that she considered their safe place. Jenny knew that the Silurian only did it because she cared, of course, but still she couldn't suppress her longing to get away and just walk through the streets of London to clear her head. The confinement was all getting a bit much.
"I am only trying to protect you my love." Vastra's voice was laced with fear as she regarded Jenny but still she pretended as though she was not as afraid as she was. "If anything were to happen to you or the baby..."
"But it won't! Why can't you just believe me when I tell you that?"
"You cannot know that Jenny."
"Yes, I can. I know you wouldn't let anythin' 'appen to us."
"Precisely the reason that you will be staying here." The Silurian's words were so firm that Jenny knew there was no point in arguing. Tears had sprung up in the girl's eyes and she slowly lifted herself from her seat. She couldn't just sit there and continue to argue about the matter. She didn't want to argue at all. All Jenny wanted was a bit of time outside of the house, but she knew Vastra would never willingly let her go until the Cybermen were gone or destroyed. Gently she pulled her hands from Vastra's grip and walked out of the room, refusing to turn back no matter how many times her love called her name.
For a short while the Doctor and Vastra sat in complete silence. Neither knew what to say or when would be the appropriate time to speak. It seemed that an age passed before the Doctor finally decided that the lack of conversation had gone on for long enough.
"Well, that went well." Vastra ignored him. She had no desire to discuss the intricacies of her relationship with Jenny with him and so she merely wrinkled her nose at his statement. As far as she was concerned Jenny was safe. She would have gone up to their room and locked herself in, nothing could get to her there. With that thought in mind Vastra turned to the Doctor in the hope of changing the subject of conversation.
"Shall we go?"
"Don't you think you should...?" The Doctor jerked his head towards the door that Jenny had just left through but Vastra simply sighed.
"I can grovel for forgiveness later old friend, for now we must focus on the issue at hand. I want those Cybermen gone. I will be able to give her the freedom that I know she wants once they are no longer a threat to this world."
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The sonic screwdriver buzzed in the Doctor's hand as he held it up to the house before them and he nodded his head resignedly. A part of him had hoped that the machine that Vastra had seen had not been used. Somewhere deep in his mind he had even been hoping that some insane Victorian had simply built a machine of sorts that Vastra had mistaken for a convertor, but he had known that it was wishful thinking. For starters, there was no way that Vastra would be so easily fooled, she was far too intelligent for that; and besides, he was never so lucky for suspicious activity to turn out as something entirely innocent.
"They're in there alright," he muttered, fiddling with the settings once more and again pressing the button so that the screwdriver began to buzz once more, "only about three of them I'd say, and the machine of course."
"How do you propose we should act?" Vastra had decided to don her old battle suit for their investigations that night. She had learned from her first visit that Victorian attire was not suited to scaling the wall of a house and, as she had had no knowledge of what the Doctor had planned she thought it best that she dressed for battle. She had even brought her swords, although she was almost certain that they would be of little or no use to her.
"Well, from what you've told me, there's only one way in from out here and I can't see myself scaling that wall, can you?" Of course she couldn't. The Doctor would have been foolish to even try without first learning the proper technique and growing a set of claws. However, Vastra kept quiet, not feeling that it was the appropriate time to throw around sarcastic comments such as the ones forming in her mind. "We'll have to take the TARDIS in there."
As they stepped out of the TARDIS Vastra immediately sensed that there was something different about the house. It had not felt as it did the last time she had entered inside its walls and yet the feeling was somewhat familiar. Carefully she slid along the wall and passed the room which she had entered through the last time with the Doctor following close behind her. Nothing seemed to have changed physically and yet the Silurian could still sense a great difference in the air. It wasn't until they had reached the top of the stairs and Vastra had crouched down in the place she had hidden the last time that the feeling really made sense to her. Through the bars of the stairs they could see the figure of a deformed man balanced on a rickety stool by the side of the converter. The same sickening foreboding that Vastra always felt when he was near was coursing through her and she wanted nothing more than to get away from him, but still she stayed put.
At the bottom of the stairs stood a Cyberman, tall and solid, with its back facing the stairs and its eyes fixed on the boarded up front door. The other two that the Doctor had picked up on his scan didn't seem to be anywhere in sight. Their absence unnerved Vastra a bit, it made her wonder what they were doing if they were not standing guard over the machine and their human helper.
"What do we do now?" Her words were so soft that the slight hissing that came as a natural indication of her heritage slurred them slightly and the Doctor had to listen carefully to understand what the Silurian was saying.
"Well, that depends" he replied, pointing his sonic screwdriver back at the TARDIS and triggering the shielding mechanism to hide it from view. He didn't want to risk it being found too easily. In a perfect world he would have avoided putting his TARDIS in this situation at all (too much chance of it falling into the wrong hands) but as he had had no other choice he could only hope that the shields would conceal it well enough. "Do you think big fellow down there would mind letting us slip past?"
"Somehow, I believe he would mind." The Doctor chuckled and Vastra hissed to silence him. Honestly, she would have thought he would know from experience that making too much noise in hostile territory was a dangerous thing to do. "Do you have any other brilliant plans?" The Silurian wished she had never asked. The words had only just left her lips when the Doctor stood from his crouching position behind her and began strolling down the staircase as though it were his home and he was merely on his way down to the kitchen to get a snack. She hissed at him to return at once but before she could grab him and pull him back the Doctor had reached the bottom of the stairs and stood directly behind the Cyberman guarding the building's most obvious entrance.
"Not very smart you lot, are you? Guarding a boarded up door when there's a smashed window upstairs that anyone can climb through." At the sound of his voice the Cyberman turned as swiftly as it could, its large metallic feet crashing against the old floor boards and letting off the most horrendous noises.
"You will identify."
"Don't you give me orders you big old Cyberman, who do you think you are?!" For a moment it simply stared at him. Vastra rolled her eyes, only the Doctor would have the nerve to start an argument with a robot that could kill him in a fraction of a second. Still, she had to admire his bravery. The Cyberman, however, did not appear to understand the concept of an argument and so it simply lifted its arm which concealed its gun out towards the Doctor in a threatening manner.
"You will identify or you will be deleted."
"Oh, alright if you insist. My name's the Doctor and we want to have a little word with you." Vastra's heart stopped for a fraction of a second. He had said 'we'. Something told her that the Doctor didn't understand the concept of her remaining undercover as a form of backup. Sighing she resigned herself to her fate and began to descend the stairs to the Doctor's side. On seeing her the Cyberman redirected the positioning of the gun on his arm to point directly at her but before she could protest the Doctor had already begun speaking. "Oi, put that down. Vastra here needs to stay alive for a long while yet and I won't have you pointing your guns at her. Understand?" The Cyberman did not lower its gun but continued to stare at the pair on the stairs.
"You are intruders. You will be deleted."
"Ah, but we won't will we. If you were going to kill us you would have done it by now. So, I have a few questions I want to ask your boss. Where is he anyway."
"The Cyber leader is not yet converted." It didn't take a genius to understand what was meant by that. Vastra's eyes flicked over to the man perched by the machine and, to her surprise, she found him staring back at her. His face was horribly swollen on one side and, by the light of the candles placed at intervals around the room, the hump on his back seemed more defined than she had ever seen it when watching him before. Quickly, she looked away. The sick feeling in her stomach seemed to grow as she looked at him and she just couldn't take it. Why was it that he made her so uncomfortable?
"Right then big fellow," the Doctor started again, his voice giving Vastra something to focus on aside from the eyes of the man still staring at her from the room at the bottom of the stairs, "you can answer my questions then. How did you get here?" Again the Cyberman remained silent for a short while. Vastra couldn't help but wonder what was causing the delays in speech. Was it damaged? Was there something wrong with it?
"The Cyber leader found us. He brought us here."
"No, I mean how did you get to this planet? What brought you here."
"Unknown." A frown creased the Doctor's forehead and he turned to Vastra for a moment. What did it mean 'unknown'? How could it not know how it reached the planet it was on.
Something was bothering Vastra. Why was it answering all of these questions as though it owed the Doctor some sort of explanation? Surely any creature preparing to take over a planet wouldn't waste its time being interrogated by a man who it could essentially kill with one blow. But this Cyberman was answering every question put to it as though it had no other choice. Why?
"There are two more of you in here, where are they?"
"Guarding the recruits." The recruits? Did it mean the missing people? In that moment Vastra noticed something else.
"Doctor, the machine... the last time I was here it was making a terrible amount of noise." She stopped to listen for a moment and then shook her head. "Why isn't it working now?" It had been more of a rhetorical question but the Cyberman turned to her slowly.
"The converter is damaged." Suddenly everything made sense: the lack of noise, the small amount of Cybermen present, the man who was sat by the machine seemingly with no other function. "The Cyber leader will fix the converter. Then we will convert the planet." The Cyberman's speech was still disjointed and a thought occurred to Vastra. What if the machine had been used to revive the three living Cybermen? It would explain the lack of fluency in the speech pattern and the lacking attempts at overpowering the 'intruders' as it had referred to them. It would explain why the Cyberman wasn't fighting back but merely allowing itself to be interrogated.
She didn't know why she did it. She didn't even know what made her consider the action, but somehow she couldn't stop herself. In a matter of seconds Vastra had stepped forward and, taking hold of the Cyberman's right arm, she pulled down on it with all of the strength she had. It could have been the end of her but as sparks began to erupt from the shoulder the Cyber arm fell away and the creature gave off something between a howl of pain and a high pitched bleeping sound. It staggered back for a few heavy and clumsy paces and the Doctor slid through the gap it had opened up. Instinctively Vastra pulled out her katana but there was no need. The Cyberman didn't budge or even attempt to fight back. It swayed slightly for a moment or so as though in a trance then, much to Vastra's surprise, it toppled backwards and its head hit the wall behind it, dislodging it from the body and leaving it to roll away to the other side of the room.
Meanwhile the Doctor had gone over to the man by the machine and was bent down in front of him, speaking in a low voice. At first sight it would have been easy to mistake them for acquaintances at the least but Vastra could see in the Doctor's eyes that he was far from being at ease. Every time he spoke the man would cut him off, repeating a phrase that was so distorted by the swelling in his face that neither the time lord nor the Silurian could make out what it was. Vastra thought it sounded a little like 'all must be equal' but she couldn't be sure. In any case he would be of no use to them. So, quickly dismissing him, the Doctor sent Vastra off to find the 'recruits'.
"I think it might have meant the people who disappeared" he explained, jumping over to the convertor machine where he started playing with the controls as he had with his sonic screwdriver earlier in the day. "When it said that the other Cybermen were guarding them, I got the feeling that it meant that they hadn't been converted yet. The machine must have been too badly damaged. You need to find them Vastra. You need to get them out of here."
"What about you?"
"Me? I'm going to do what I always do. Press buttons and hope that it disarms the bad guys" The Doctor grinned goofily and then shooed her away.
It didn't take long for Vastra to find what she was looking for. From the back of the room she went through a doorway into a dark and shadowed corridor. As she crept along it the Silurian pulled the hood of her cloak over her head to conceal her appearance. If the apes that had disappeared were still alive they would need to see her as one of them in order to trust her. They would never believe that she was on their side if any one of them caught so much as a glimpse of her skin. At the end of the corridor there was another door, hanging open just enough for Vastra to peek inside the room. As she had expected the other two Cybermen were stationed just inside the doorway and at first she could see no one else. She squinted into the crudely lit room but the only other thing present seemed to be a pile of clothing on the floor. Looking closer, however, she realised that it was not a pile of clothing at all but a huddle of people. There must have been at least twenty of them, all curled together and shaking furiously. Most of them looked half starved and they all appeared to be too afraid to even make eye contact with the Cybermen placed there to guard them.
After that everything happened so fast. Just as Vastra was about to burst through the door the screeching of the machine seemed to restart in the room behind her. Both of the Cybermen turned towards the door but before they could head for the room at the foot of the stairs a buzzing sound started up inside of their helmets, a buzzing sound very similar to that made by the sonic screwdriver.
"What is happening? What is happening?" Both Cybermen repeated the question over and over but they received no answer. They seemed to be making attempts at movement. Their arms convulsed at their sides and their sturdy metal frames began to shake. The frequency of the buzzing noise was rising, higher and higher until it seemed it must be nearing a crescendo. Vastra could almost feel what was about to happen. She burst through the door and twenty pairs of eyes started in her direction.
"Out. Now. Everybody out!" They didn't have to be told twice. One by one the humans seemed to fly past her all heading for the front of the house and as the last one disappeared the Silurian lowered her hood and carefully observed the Cybermen. Both of the creatures had stopped speaking but they were shaking more and more violently by the second. They would implode before too long, Vastra was sure of it. She didn't know what the Doctor had done but whatever it was it had worked. The Cybermen hadn't won.
The next thing the Silurian knew the Doctor had appeared, taken her by the hand and pulled her with him back up the corridor to the main room. The machine seemed to be alive as they passed it. It buzzed and creaked and flashes of blue electricity were flying from it into the very walls of the house. The Deformed man was nowhere to be seen and as the Doctor half dragged Vastra back up the stairs she noticed that the front door was no longer boarded up (the Doctor must have opened it so that the humans could escape). It wasn't until they were back in the TARDIS that everything started to slow down once more.
"The house, will it not destroy the surrounding area when..."
"No. I've contained it. We'll have to hover over it for a minute until the implosion is done but it will be the only property affected." The Doctor seemed slightly distracted and he turned to the control panel. Everything was silent for a short while but the Doctor couldn't stay quiet for long. "I lost him," he was clearly annoyed with himself, "the one that helped them, I lost him." The Doctor didn't like to let those who risked the human race get away until he understood their reasoning. He didn't like not knowing. "One minute he was on that stool and the next he was gone. We have to find him Vastra!"
"No." He stopped trying to lock the TARDIS onto any trace of the man he could find and turned to stare at her. He didn't understand why she was disagreeing. Hadn't Vastra been the one who had wanted to stop them? Hadn't she been the one who wouldn't even allow Jenny to leave the house for fear of anything happening to her? The Doctor just couldn't see how she could let the one person who had caused it all go without so much as an attempt to find him and get an explanation.
"No? What do you mean no?"
"I mean no, Doctor. The Cybermen are gone and that man is about as much of a threat on his own as any one of those humans who we saved. He may have been on their side Doctor but he could never have done any harm if it hadn't been for those Cybermen."
"But Vastra..."
"No. Take me home." Vastra refused to say any more. The Doctor attempted to reason with her but the Silurian merely sat, staring into thin air. The unease she had felt around the deformed man was still bothering her. She still couldn't understand what had caused it and that was exactly why she didn't want to go chasing after him. It wasn't because she wasn't curious about what he had attempted to achieve or because she didn't want to see him punished for his actions, she was just too afraid that she may find out what it was that was unsettling her in the man's presence.