*Hello everyone! And welcome to the latest instalment of the Doctor and Clara chronicles, affectionately known as Transitions. Four chapters left after this, including the epilogue, so we're very nearly there. So, we've got a Cybermen chapter for you (but you'd already guessed that) so I'll stop rambling and let you get to it. Thanks for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting. Your support made this possible. TPD*
The Doctor breathed deeply, trying desperately hard not to react. But his blood was boiling. He heard a shriek like a wounded animal, an inhuman sound that filled the night air and penetrated his very soul. And it broke his heart. Clara. He stared at the Cyberman, hatred bubbling over.
"You see, I tried to warn you," the Doctor snarled. "You could have made this easy on yourselves, but instead, you angered me. And angering me is the worst mistake you could have possibly made. I will destroy you. Every last one of you."
Then, the Cyberman shot him too.
Clara watched as they shot the Doctor. What little remained of her heart shattered and she collapsed to the ground, screaming and pounding the floor. They would pay for this. The Cybermen. She wasn't going to let them take London. Angie, Artie, Jenna, Tom, the Doctor, they were all relying on her. The Doctor was being taken to the command centre. They must've stunned him. Maybe they only stunned Dad, she told herself but the Cyberman's final words chilled her to her core. The other is dispensable. She wanted to curl into a ball and cry but instead she summoned her reserve energy. The Doctor had told her not to come after him. He could forget that. It was personal now. Clara picked herself up off the ground, still trembling slightly. She delved into her pocket and pulled out a bobble. She tied her hair up and skirted along the car park, keeping up against the wall as far as possible. She knew the Cybermen would be looking for her but she hoped that they would far too preoccupied with their Time Lord captive to focus on one stupid Earth girl. She kept low, the Cyber factory still in her sights.
Approaching the building wasn't easy, but Clara found a way onto the nearby rooftop using the fire escape system and found herself overlooking the factory. Cybermen covered every entrance, including three on the roof. But that wasn't what she was interested in. About halfway down the left side of the building was a vent cover. She could probably reach it from the fire escape down the side of the building. And the building she was on was overhanging the factory. Clara judged the distance between the two buildings. It couldn't have been more than ten feet. She could jump ten feet, easily. The fire escape was about two floors down. She could make that jump, definitely. Almost definitely. Clara took a deep breath and jumped.
She landed with a clatter, rolling forward to absorb most of the impact. She crumpled into a heap, everything stinging and aching in pain. But she had made the jump and she didn't think anything was broken. She gingerly picked herself up, despite the pain. She'd been in far more pain than this and she had been far less determined back then. Now they had the Doctor and, if he was still alive, her father and she would do whatever was required to save them. Clara hobbled over to the edge of the fire escape, and reached. She'd have to jump again to reach the vent, but first she'd have to get the cover off. That was the easy bit, she supposed, brandishing the sonic. She swung herself out onto the outside of the rail and jumped again, grabbing hold of the metal and hauling herself into the space where the cover had been. She just hoped that the Cybermen weren't investigating the racket she'd made jumping and then letting the vent cover fall to the floor.
Clara crawled on through the vent, with absolutely no idea where it was taking her but grateful that at least she was inside the building. She reached another grate, which she dismantled with the sonic and pulled inside the vent rather than letting it fall. She cursed under her breath. There were machines, hundreds of them and she was directly above them. She looked down and saw the corpses being…there was no word for what the Cybermen were doing to them. She desperately managed to avoid vomiting as she pulled herself back into the shaft and breathed deeply. This wasn't going to be pretty. Aching, Clara moved herself onwards.
The Doctor stirred and the first thought he had was: tied up. Obviously his reputation preceded him. He tried to move his hands or legs but the chair he was strapped to did a sufficient job of protecting him. Dave was in the chair next to him, still passed out, or so the Doctor hoped. He was in a large room, obviously the command centre. Kate was stood nearby, unmoving with two U.N.I.T soldiers on each door. There were three Cybermen in the room, two of them evidently damaged and old, the other was sat down, strapped into the command module itself. The Cyber-Controller or Cyber-Leader. Cyber-Something. Kate smiled warmly at him and he fixed her with a glare.
"So are you the mouthpiece?" he asked snidely. "The Cybermen's communication device? The Cyber-Controller there tells you what to say and you just say it? That seems like an awfully efficient system, though personally if I had somebody as powerful as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart under my control, I'd do more than use her as a glorified walkie-talkie but hey-ho. What's with these two? Little bit old-fashioned aren't they? In need of an upgrade?" he spat, the last sentence full of hatred.
"They are a reminder of where we come from," Kate replied. "Heroes, the only remnants of the last Cyber war. A war that you destroyed us in. They remember, they keep us going. They are symbolic. But they are useless. Damaged. There is nothing left to upgrade."
"Oh so they're just there as statues, nothing more," the Doctor acknowledged. "Okay, at least that's two less Cybermen to worry about. So, you're in control of the entire city, presumably from this spot. Have you got any other factories?"
"Two more are in development. Within the week, the entire city will be ours," Kate replied with a snarl. "But, if you surrender your brain to us Doctor, we shall have the planet in a day. If you do not, then we will kill the male."
"Ah, so Dave is still alive," the Doctor smiled at this and glanced worriedly at Dave. He had to find a way to escape, or at the very least stall until Clara arrived. And of course Clara was going to arrive, she wasn't going to leave him here, despite the fact that that was exactly what he'd asked her to do. That was before they shot her dad, in any case. "That saves time. At least your brainless army heeded my warning. Okay, but I have another condition."
"No conditions," Kate snapped. "You will give us your brain or we will kill him."
"No, you won't!" the Doctor retorted. "You can't take my brain by force, you know you can't. I have to let you take it. And if you kill Dave, you have no bargaining chip. Your entire strategy hinges on my compliance, so you'll do this one little thing for me or I will burn any Cybermite that tries to get into my head into oblivion, are we clear?" There was no response. "Good. Ellie Oswald," the Doctor took a deep breath. "She has a very specific genetic code, luckily I have it encoded into my screwdriver. You will release her corpse. One corpse. You will return it to its grave and I will give you my brain. Think about it, you take me, you can have the entire universe. What's that for one dead human?"
"Emotions," Kate snarled. "They make you so weak Doctor, that you would forgo all strategic advantages for sentimental reasons. This is why Cybermen are superior. We will always be superior, we are upgraded beyond your petty desires. You can have this human corpse. We have run the name and DNA strands from the screwdriver through our data banks and isolated the girl. She will go back to sleep."
"I want proof," the Doctor riposted. "Show me. When I see Ellie Oswald back in her grave and her husband Dave," he pointed. "Is released, then and only then will I surrender."
"Enough!" Kate interrupted. "The male will be released when I say he will be released. Now, we have been good enough to let you have the female, you will obey the Cyber-Controller. You will give us your brain."
The Doctor struggled against his bonds. He was utterly powerless. But at least he'd bought Clara some time. He just prayed that, wherever she was, she had some sort of plan. It wouldn't take Ellie long to go back to her grave and when she did, the Doctor was out of time.
Clara had decided that the stench was the worst thing. The smell of rotting, burning flesh, combined with the cold, clinical tang of metal, like some sort of deranged hospital. She could almost blot out the mechanical grindings and screaming, place it down to machinery, but the smell of dead humanity and Cybermen filled her nostrils, making her gag. It was the most horrific thing she'd ever smelt and this after crawling through a sewer with the Doctor after he got them lost in England in the 1700s. She'd had to burn her clothes. She kept crawling, but it was just machine after machine, more Cybermen, always Cybermen. She'd doubled back on herself to try a different route at least half a dozen times, clambered up and down but there was no sign of the Doctor or the commanders. She was almost ready to give up, when she spotted a small off-shooting tunnel from the main one, sprawling off to the left. She scampered down it, paranoid that any moment she would have a Cyber fist shooting up through the vent or that she would be shot down or the vent would collapse and she would fall into one of those machines. She would become the living nightmare that was haunting her every moment as she crawled. She felt a shiver run down her spine.
She heard a voice and stopped as she reached the end of the vent. It was him. The Doctor. She was directly behind and above him and he was strapped to a chair, she could see through the bars of the vent. She didn't dare remove the bars, there were three Cybermen and four U.N.I.T guards in the room, plus Kate and someone else strapped to a chair. She couldn't quite make them but they looked like…her heart skipped a beat.
"Dad," she whispered, so only she could hear. She bit her lip and strained to hear the conversation. Kate was obviously talking on behalf of the Cybermen, threatening Dave unless the Doctor gave them access to his brain. She needed to signal him somehow. His screwdriver was on one of the side panels, so she couldn't use that and he would never be able to reach his psychic paper in his current position. Clara thought hard. Then she took a deep breath.
'Undo the Doctor's hand ties,' Clara thought, pointed her sonic at the Doctor, whose hands were tied behind his back. She couldn't see his face, but as the bonds slipped down, he gave her a thumbs up. He kept his hands in position. She needed his help. She needed him to guide her. She needed…Clara mentally hit herself. She didn't need him. He hadn't been there when her mum had died. He hadn't been there, because he hadn't found her yet. She had lived for 24 years without the Doctor. She had handled Artie and Angie and losing her mum. She had got a teaching degree. All of that, real life. That was so much more difficult than staring down a few tin cans. Clara took a deep breath. She could do this. She was going to save her father, the Doctor and humanity. She pressed the sonic against the vent shaft and activated it. The shaft collapsed to the floor and Clara dropped out, pointing her sonic directly at the Cyber-Leader. At least, she assumed it was the leader, it was plugged into all the computers. The soldiers aimed their guns but Clara took control.
"Stop!" she yelled. "The Doctor has my DNA encoded onto his screwdriver. Which means I have his DNA on mine. I can use this sonic pulse to knock out all his brain activity. And you need his brain right? So if I take out his brain activity, what are you going to do eh? No Cyber-Controller that can give you the universe. So, make one move towards either of them, and I fry the Doctor's brain."
Her lie was very convincing, as the soldiers lowered their guns. The Doctor was smiling, she could tell, even though she wasn't looking at his face. She walked over to her father and soniced the bonds holding him. It made no difference as he was still slumped against the chair but at least he was freed. Kate stared at Clara in loathing.
"We appear to have hit a stalemate," she snarled. "So we'll let you take the old man and leave us the Doctor."
"No chance," Clara snapped. "In fact, I think the fairest way of this is you accept defeat. Release all the people you've captured. Because, unless I'm mistaken, the only people in this room with functioning guns are in fact people, yes? You have two broken Cybermen and one controller without a weapon." Kate's eyes narrowed. She seemed to be running the situation over in her mind. "And the only thing controlling the people is the Cybermites. Am I right Doctor? Because, although I don't understand it, there's a program in here," she indicated to the sonic. "Called the anti-Cybermite program."
"I didn't want to interrupt," the Doctor replied. "You were on fire Clara Oswald, and you know how much it turns me on to hear you talk science. Presumably you've been interacting with the sonic telepathically?" She nodded. "Well yes, I hacked the Cybermite signal and with a powerful enough pulse, Clara can knock out every Cybermite in the room. Of course, her screwdriver isn't powerful enough to do it on its own," he paused at this point, as Kate tried to catch up. "So it's a good thing I have my arms free, isn't it?"
Kate yelled for the men to raise their guns but the Doctor was already diving forwards as Clara ducked. He grabbed his sonic and wheeled, activating it, Clara following his lead as the room was filled by the overwhelming pulse. Kate screamed and the men yelled, all collapsing and grabbing their heads in pain. Clara winced and the two Cybermen's heads seemed to overload and explode. They were obviously crawling with Cybermites too. The Doctor pulled Clara into a quick hug and then they turned to the Cyber-Leader, which was frantically calling for reinforcements.
"Nope," the Doctor shook his head, diving forward and sonicing. "Clara, if you could, be a dear and help me disconnect this one from the main network. We need to seize control before it's too late." She rounded the chair and they yanked and pulled at all the wires as the Cyber-Leader wheezed and groaned. As it felt itself pulling away, it stood, but it wheezed in pain as Clara snatched up one of the soldier's guns and fired. This earned her a raised eyebrow from the Doctor.
"Someone had to shoot it," she apologized. The Doctor bit his lip and kissed her forehead. "So now what?" she asked.
"Now," the Doctor fumbled. "We send out the disconnect signal. Plug the sonics into the mainframe, disconnect all the Cybermites, any lingering Cybermen and general Cyber technology. Shut it down, all of it. We let this lot," he pointed at U.N.I.T. "Deal with the mess and when they ask where we were tomorrow morning at school, we point at the news and say that we got caught at a graveyard where dead people were coming alive. Another alien invasion saved. And we find the TARDIS. Because she can't be far away. Your dad's fine, by the way," he grinned at this and she beamed. "But I guess you knew that already?" She nodded. The Doctor turned to her properly now, putting his hand on her cheek tenderly and staring into her eyes. "Clara, you saved me. And him. And everyone. You did it."
"What can I say Chin-Boy?" she teased. "I couldn't have done it without you," she informed him. "You kept yourself alive, you kept my dad alive, your screwdriver, still," she giggled. "I may look like I know what I'm talking about but mostly I just point this at things and think something vague like: disable Cyberman or rescue Doctor."
"But," the Doctor insisted, as he turned back to the console, finishing up and admiring his handiwork. "You came back. And you crawled through those vents, which can't have been easy and you're limping so you clearly fell at some point and lest we forget you jumped out of that vent and told the Cybermen you would melt my brain. That took unimaginable courage, not to mention bare-faced cheek."
"Well, I thought, what would the Doctor do?" Clara giggled.
"Your mother would be so proud of you today," he said tenderly, pulling her in closer to him. They kissed, tenderly and just for a moment and then he pulled back, smiling warmly at her. "Now let's get your dad home."