Walking beside Lily and Zaphod, Donna's heart was in her throat. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Roger the lizard was fuming. "I told you." He hissed to Zaphod. He cast a baleful look at Donna. "I told you she would tip the scales."
Donna sneered back at him. "Is that supposed to be a fat joke?"
"Really? Now?" Lily rolled her eyes, looking unusually at ease. "There are more important things, children."
Roger glowered at her. "Yes, Mother."
"Silence." The Cyberman stopped in front of them. Slowly the doors slid up into the ceiling, and they found themselves in a chrome and glass hall. And at the end of the hall was that sector's Cyber Controller.
He sat on a throne-like control chair, wires everywhere. The Controller had a black faceplate and breastplate, and a human brain floated in a dome of viscous fluid, reminding Donna of pickled onions.
The Cyber Controller looked up, and Donna swore she saw an uncanny intelligence in those merciless black pits.
"You are dismissed." He said to their Cyber escort.
The Controller stood.
"You have all come a long way to die."
None of them said anything.
"The great veterans of the Time War." He continued. Those dead black pits where his eyes should have been never left Donna's face. She had a feeling that he was looking at more than her physical form. "Such a long way to die."
Doona frowned, more irritated than intimidated. She had dealt with her share of bullies before, and that was all the Cyber Controller was. An alien bully.
One hand on her hip, she stabbed a finger at the Controller.
"Look, pal, I've entirely had enough of megalomaniacs giving me the 'we're all doomed' talk lately. I know who you are, and I know what you do, but for some reason we're all still alive." She cocked her head to the side. "And instead of going down and zapping the captain, you're trying to bring him up here." Her brain was beginning to burn, telling her to stop picking.
There was silence. The next moment, there was the sound of whirring gears as the Controller stepped down off his throne.
She refused to step back. He stood nose to nose with Donna, and she realised with a start that this Cyberman was a foot or so shorter than the others. The irregularity among a people that were obsessed with uniformity seemed unusual.
"You provoke, Noble."
"So I'm told." Donna growled. "How do you know who I am?" After all, she had been blasted forwards-backwards-forwards in time, so often that even she could hardly keep up.
"The Cyber neural link is a wireless network that can be accessed by anyone that can trick the uplink." Roger said, like me wordlessly added to the end of his sentence.
"Can a Cyberman access the neural link through time?"
"Time is an unmeasurable variable."
"Bloody hell, why can't anyone just say yes or no in this galaxy?" She complained. "That doesn't answer my damn question!"
"You Earth girls are always so dramatic."
"Roger." Both Lily and Zaphod groaned.
Donna ignored him.
"You're scared of us."
If he could have, she thought to Cyberman would have chuckled. "You think yourself so perceptive, and yet you march happily to your doom."
"That's me. Don't stop dancing." Donna and the Cyberman were practically nose to nose now. The Time Lord part of her screamed at her to stop back, but she was damn well still Donna Noble. "You know what I can do."
Her brain felt like it was going to burst into flame.
"I do." Said the Controller.
"Donna." Zaphod hissed.
"You know not what I do."
"You bet I bloody do, Shakespeare – sphere – leer – queer –" Donna clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. No! Not now! I need my smarts, I need... to... stay...
With a near soundless gasp she sunk to her knees. Dimly she was aware of Lily's familiar hands on her shoulders.
"Donna!" Zaphod was talking, but it was like he was shouting down a wind tunnel. "Noble, hold on!"
The Cyber Controller was just looking at the unfolding scene, unmoved.
"As I suspected." The Cyberman said. At his word, the drones in the room moved to form a ring around them. "Your weak flesh shell is unsuitable to house the Time Lord Metacrisis."
Blinking through a wash of tears, Donna stared up at the Controller.
"The loss of the Jewel is irrelevant. Human weakness will be replaced. Upgraded to the next level of evolution." With a whirring of gears, it reached out a hand, white energy gathering at his fingertips. "You will be my greatest creation."
The electromagnetic pulse had knocked out the entirety of the complex. The cyber sentries were twitching, beginning to regain awareness.
Loki dragged the boy to the gravity lift. The comms still buzzed vacantly in his ear, his calls to his crew going unanswered.
Something was wrong.
Armed with only an EM pulse gun and a mouthy youth, he had to get off this planet and get back to his crew.
The youth pulled away from him. He had introduced himself as Demetri, son of Priam, Prince of Verdai and lord of the Seven Skies (whatever the hell those were). And the kid had a damn attitude to match his titles.
"You can't be seriously be thinking about going up there. They'll kill you." A right little ray of sunshine.
"My crew has gone dark, and I only have one support system. I can pass as Cyberman, but you can't."
"Surely you have a backup plan in case your crew is unreachable."
"Yes." Loki said. He pointed up at the fat supply ship connected to the gravity lift. "That's the backup plan."
The little prince goggled at him. "You are suicidal."
"It's been said." The captain said dryly. The Cyberman closest to him raised his head. "Come along, your princeliness. We're about to have some unpleasant company."
The two of them were whooshed up into the supply ship in a rush colour.
It sliced through her burning head like a knife.
"No!" She shouted.
The hand tightened on her shoulder. "You will be upgraded. Your shell is inefficient. You will be Cyberman. You will be flawless. You will lead."
"No!"
"You will lead."
"The lady said no."
The voice was smooth, with a dangerous edge. Donna felt impossibly relieved when she heard it.
Loki walked into the room in his black exoskeleton, which was a bit Iron Man, a bit Tron, and a whole lotta sexy.
I could kiss you, you bastard.
"About damn time." Lily snapped.
"Sorry." The captain smirked. "I had to tweak the model a bit."
Roger threw up his hands, exasperated. "I don't even know why I even bother trying to help you people."
"I told you, flying by the seat of your pants is not luck, it's a skill." Loki never took his eyes from the Controller and Donna. "How's it going, girl?"
The sea of pain seemed to part briefly. "Don't call me girl." She ground out.
"You have lost." The Cyber Controller intoned. "The DoctorDonna is prophesised. She will be mine. Your crew are prisoners. You have lost."
"Of course." Loki said. "That is of course not taking into account that perhaps that my crew expected to be captured and planned accordingly. Like, perhaps, while you were doing your villain monolog-ing, my crew planted electromagnetic wave amplifiers throughout the ship, where if they were hit by the correct pulse, would cripple this ship's engines long enough to send it spiralling into your processing farm."
"You lie."
His face was entirely calm. "I don't bluff."
The next moment there was a pop and fizz of burned electronics, and the supply ship listed to the side.
"And that would mean that's time's up." The captain said. "The timer was set the moment you brought in my ship."
"Impossible."
"I'm good at impossible." The captain assured him as the pulse reached the control room. The Cyber Controller reached out to him with both hands, determined to end the man before the pulse temporarily knocked him offline.
Loki snapped around to his crew, gesturing to Donna.
"Get her back to the ship!" The captain ordered. "This place is coming down!"
"No!" Donna lurched forward, breaking Lily's hold on her. Loki caught her and she held his arms in a death-grip. In an instant an arc of pure clarity had cut through her head, and she knew.
Knew.
"Head... more memory," she managed to get out. "Input, output, overload. Memory."
God, please understand.
It seemed to take forever before a spark of perception lit in his green eyes, and Donna could have wept with relief. The captain pushed her back toward Lily. "Go!"
"But-" Lily looked entirely uncomprehending and Loki shot her a sharp grin.
"I got this."
"Don't be late!" The doctor shouted.
And that was that. His rag-tag crew, who normally back-talked and needled him incessantly unlike the seasoned soldiers he lead during the Time War, immediately snapped to follow his order, leaving Loki with the Cyberman.
"You lose." He said coldly.
"There are more of us. There will always be more of us. She will lead."
"What, you?" Loki asked. "That's why you needed the oracle, wasn't it? To see who she will lead."
"She will lead." The Cyberman said again.
Loki frowned.
"The War is over."
"The War is never over." The Controller said. "It loops back and comes around again. This war will not end!"
The Cyberman dropped to his knees as the pulse arced through him, tearing apart electronics.
"This war will not end. She comes, she comes out of the darkness, returning." That same uncanny intelligence was back. "She comes, trailing blood and death, and we all must – must –" The Cyberman's head rose, looking Loki in the eye.
"The Nightmare Child is coming home."
An icy fist closed around the captain's heart.
The Controller was winding down, muttering to itself.
"She was to be my greatest creation."
Loki stared down at the decommissioned cyborg, not quite sure what he was feeling. He drew his blade, the one he had strapped to his thigh.
"She will be."
And he cut off the Cyber Controller's head.