Egyptian Tahtib: The Other Side

Previously...

Jared felt Rose's hand get ripped out of his own as they seemed to hit a bump in their return jump, and whipped his head around to try to find her in the swirling madness, instinctively drawing a sharp breath to call her name – but he was tumbling sideways, completely out of control. The air was forced back out of his lungs as he was tossed back and forth like a marble in a god's hands, then abruptly...

WHAM!

He was hurled onto a hard, flat surface. He managed to grunt out a groan before the world reasserted itself and gravity took hold of him again, and he slid several feet down off the now vertical surface and tumbled into a heap on the adjacent horizontal one, the sword hanging at his side pressing painfully into one leg as it bent around the metal.

Sand. Heat. Noise. Brightness. Oily smoke. His senses seemed to come back online slowly, reporting only the most pressing signals one by one to his central brain. A moment or two later that brain seemed to click back on, and he immediately made a lightning assay of his body. No broken bones, but he was going to have some bruises – and a headache – from that impact.

Finally opening his eyes, he squinted at his surroundings in the harsh sunlight as he unfolded his long limbs and cautiously arose. He'd slammed into the side of the black pyramid, again, and landed in the Sinai desert once more.

But when?

And what was that noise? And the smoke?

Machinery. On the far side of the pyramid, a vast construction set had apparently taken root and grown, churning out sound and smoke in equal measures into the previously pristine desert. Pulling himself upright again, Jared slunk to the corner and peeked around it, cautiously spying. It was several seconds before he focused in on the beings working jerkily on and around the structure, and his bones turned to brittle icicles.

Cybermen.

The place was crawling with them. Hundreds, thousands... Only some of them were fully converted and metal-skinned. Many still appeared human, but he could see various borglike attachments – and their jerky movements and utterly blank expressions gave them away.

He jerked back behind the corner of the pyramid, turned so his back was to it, and then his knees gave out, and he sank down to sit hard on the sand again. "Oh my god..." he whispered. "Where did they come from? When?"

And then it hit him. "Rose? Rose?" He stared around wildly, but of course there was no sign of her. She hadn't "landed" with him. Had she been captured already?

When WAS he? Just then, the time jumper beeped on his wrist, having sampled the spacetime continuum and pinpointed itself. He whipped up his arm and opened it up, staring at the readout and calculating. He'd jumped – or been ripped – just over three weeks past the target date. "How – " he began, when suddenly the rest of the jumper's message managed to penetrate.

The backlight was glowing red. He was in Beta.

"Think, Jared! Think, think, THINK!" He leaned his head back on the black stone, trying to force his mental muscles to work. "They must have come through after I unlocked the freeze-frame chamber. But from where? Or when? – Never mind, it doesn't matter. They're here. Just figure out what they're doing and how to stop them." Because obviously, the Cybermen hadn't taken over the world in Beta's actual history. The time stream might have been split, but this wasn't his new world yet.

His and Rose's. "First thing is to find Rose." He raised his hands to rub his face, as the sensory memory of her hand being ripped from his left played again along his nerves. Just before that hand touched his face, he jerked it back and stared at his palm. "That's it!" Her DNA would still be on his palm, from the epithelial cells she'd left behind. He could use it to locate her – if he could get the right tools together! But how to collect them and keep them safe?

Miraculously, he still had one of the water skins slung over his shoulder. With the help of the sonic, trying to only use his fingertips of that left hand with its precious, miniscule cargo, he ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic, dampened it with the water, then sonicked it to get rid of any stray DNA. Finally, he carefully wiped his left palm with the end of the damp cloth, then rolled it up inside itself and tucked the package inside his trousers pocket.

Now he needed some components.

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he pushed back up to his feet and peeked around the corner again to get his bearings. Glimpsing the converted slaves again, he closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself, then began scanning them quickly for a familiar figure. No matter if she'd been taken over, he'd know the curve of her cheek, the form of her body, the way she moved... Five long minutes ticked slowly by as he frantically flicked from one to the next.

No Rose.

"OK," he finally breathed. He was sure he hadn't seen all of them, but she wasn't among the visible victims (those who hadn't been completely converted). He mentally winced away from the thought that she might be encased in metal already, not even allowing it to fully materialize in his consciousness. Time to move on.

He shifted mental gears to the structure, still trying to identify it, but gave up shortly after as not important. What was important was the small building a dozen feet to the right, closer to the pyramid itself. Heaps of scrap surrounded it, metal and cloth, but none of the slaves or Cybermen were now approaching it. Whatever it was, it wasn't in use at the moment, and might hold the components he needed to create his scanner.

How to reach it without attracting attention? In all previous interactions with Cybermen, they had always ignored him until they deemed him some sort of threat (unless having been prewarned about the Doctor and on the lookout for him), but he didn't want to take any chances. He needed as much time as he could get before tangling with the metal monsters.

So... time to pretend. Time to blend in. He straightened up, preparing to tromp stiffly over to the building in mimicry – and the sword Jack had given him thumped against his leg again. That wouldn't do. No Cyberman slaves were armed with so much as a toothpick. He unstrapped the belt, but just as he was about to bend over and bury it in the sand, he stopped. No. For no reason he could discern, something deep inside was telling him not to let go of it. Instead, he slipped it down the side of his leg inside his trousers, buckling the belt back up against his skin. It would force him to walk stiff-legged, but then, that would only add to the veritas of his acting.

Eyes straight ahead, locked on his target, he began tromping over the sand, heart in his throat. A tiny, dispassionate corner of his mind wondered at his reactions. Why was he so afraid now, after all the many times he'd tangled with Cybermen – and so many other deadly enemies – in his long past? He didn't bother articulating the answer: because this was the first real test of this new, half-human, half-Time Lord conglomeration. Was he still up to the task? Could he find a way to defeat them – that he could live with? Would it be the same sort of elegant, bloodless solution the Doctor had convinced himself he was enacting in his most recent battles, that he was so proud of? Or would he slip back into the mode he'd been born in – "full of blood and anger and revenge"?

And if he did, how would he react to that? How would Rose?

Who was he, this Jared Blue Wolfe?

Was he really ready to find out?