A line of humanity shuffled, eyes blank and jaws slack, into the Battlesea factory. It didn't take much for Pete and Rose to slip in amongst them. None of the looming Cybermen seemed to notice their arrival, and fewer still paid attention to them as they tried to glance, discreetly amongst the stony faces, looking for Jackie. So far, in this sea of humanity, no luck.
"Don't see her," Rose murmured stiffly, eyes flickering back and forth. "You?"
"No," Pete whispered, straining to make out a hint of platinum blonde somewhere. "There's too many of them."
"We'll find her," Rose replied firmly. He stared at the back of her own, blonde hair, wondering how it wass a girl like this ended up here, doing this for him.
"What's she mean to you?" He knew they shouldn't be talking, it would draw attention. But he couldn't help himself. He had seen how the girl had been watching Jackie at the party, knew the way she had warmed up to him in the van. What was she playing at?
Rose was silent for long moments, and he wondered if she had even heard, but she finally sighed. "She reminds me of my mum, that's why."
"Oh," Pete replied, not sure what to say about that. "Your mum loud, rude, and obnoxious too?"
An indelicate snort sounded, quickly smothered as they both glanced nervously around. Rose turned just enough he could see the smirk and sparkle in her brown eyes.
"Yeah, something like that." Her shoulders rose and fell as she turned forward again, shuffling in the long line. "Your wife is a bit like her. Not as nice as my mum, but still."
He should leap to Jackie's defense, but sadly he knew the girl's assessment was more true than he liked to admit. "Yeah, Jacks didn't used to always be that way. Life just...changed."
"It does that, yeah?" Rose's head shook. "Maybe, if things had been different."
"Yeah," he agreed as they both lapsed into silence. Ahead of them, the looming figures of the Cybermen brought them both to stillness. He could see the girl stiffen, her head jerk up straight and tall. Pete did the same, trying hard not to even blink his eyes too much, so as not to draw their attention. They filled through the large, double doors, into the warehouse, where the sounds of whirling machinery and hissing steam sounded, rumbling loudly in the enclosed, confined space of concrete and metal.
Their line moved towards a series of circular, metal chambers in the middle. Cybermen stood by, watching the procession as one-by-one, humans walked into the chambers, automatic doors closing in on them. The whirring sped up after that, to a high pitch, like the sound of a buzz saw, and then stopped. All was silent, and the doors opened to an empty, spotless room. Pete watched it, swallowing against the bile in his throat. He wasn't sure what was more horrifying, the clean, disinfected starkness of it, or the imagery his mind created of just what was going on in there.
Somewhere, above the machine noises, a disembodied, electronic voice sounded. "Units upgraded now six thousand five hundred. Repeat. Six thousand five hundred and rising."
Six thousand units? Did it mean people? Six thousand, five hundred people? In just, what, two hours, maybe three? Six thousand people, their lives snuffed out, just like that. Turned into metal monstrosities. Did they even know what happened to them? Were they even aware?
The line moved steadily forward. Just in front of him, Rose marched dutifully. A Cyberman held out a hand right in front of her, stopping her progress, nearly causing Pete to step right into her.
"You will wait," it ordered, before turning away. He could see Rose's shoulders tense.
"You okay," he whispered.
"No," she replied softly and honestly. He could hear the fear. If he could have, he'd have reached up and squeezed her arm reassuringly, but any sign of any such emotion would be a dead giveaway about them. Above them, the disembodied voice sounded again.
"Chamber six now open for human upgrading. All reject stock will be incinerated."
Pete scanned the lines feeding into the chambers, hoping against hope. "Any sign of Jackie?"
Before Rose could so much as shake her head, one of the Cybermen clomped up, staring at him. He swallowed, trying hard not to meet the blank face curiously.
"You are Pete Tyler. Confirm you are Pete Tyler."
He tried to keep his face as blank as possible. "Confirmed."
"I recognize you," the Cyberman replied in a manner that seemed both familiar and utterly disturbing coming out of the creature. "I went first. My name is Jacqueline Tyler."
"No," screamed Rose, even as Pete's brain tried to twist itself around the very idea of what the creature was saying.
"What," he gasped, staring up into the glowing, electric eyes. Jackie had just been laughing at her party, joking with the President, insisting she was thirty-nine and not forty. She had just been yelling at him and telling him that everything was his fault. This...thing, that couldn't be his Jacks. This thing couldn't be his wife.
"You are unprogrammed," the thing claiming to be Jackie stated dispassionately. "Retrain."
"You're lying," he found himself yelling, unable to believe for a second that this creature was anything like Jackie. "You're not her. You're not my Jackie!"
"No, I am Cyberform," it corrected. "Once I was Jackie Tyler."
"But you can't be," Rose cried, tears in her eyes. "Not her."
"Her brain is inside this body," the Cyberman insisted, as if it was talking about the weather and not the woman he had loved. Pete's heart broke, his eyes burning as he stared at all that remained of his wife.
"Jacks, I came to save you," he sobbed. But no tears or regret seemed to affect what she had become.
"This man man worked with Cybus Industries to create our species," the Jackie Cyberman called to the others nearby. Pete's heart clenched at the very idea. "He will be rewarded by force! Take them to Cyber Control."
With rough, uncaring hands, the metal monsters descended, grabbing Pete and Rose and dragging them out of the line. Rose turned to him, tearful and horrified as she glanced backwards at what had been Jackie. "They killed her. They just took her and killed her."
Pete almost felt too numb to respond. Just hours ago she'd been vibrant. He too glanced back at the Cyberman who watched as they were shuffled off. "Maybe there's a chance. I don't know, maybe we can reverse it."
"There's nothing we can do," Rose replied, despondent.
"But if...if she remembers," he insisted, grasping at hope, any hope. He glanced back again, but now other Cybermen had come in, other nameless, faceless beings, and Jackie was lost in the crowd. "Where is she? Which one was she?"
"They all look the same," Rose said. Indeed, the entire floor was covered with non-descript, silver faces, and more and more were added to their number. How many hundred had died just in the few minutes they had been standing there.
One of the Cybermen escorted them towards an elevator, herding them both inside as they stumbled inside the metal enclosure. It did not follow, but it pressed a button that closed the doors, jerking them upwards from the floor, up towards the top of the building. Beside him, Rose sniffed, rubbing absently at her nose, mascara leaking down the side of her cheek. He wanted to join her, to break into tears as well, but his body felt too numb, too raw for that.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Two more Cybermen waited, still as statues as they shuffled out. They found themselves in a large control room, filled with computers, monitors, and screens showing them the activity of what was going on below. Pete watched on one of the monitors as arms with giant blades on them flashed and spun inside a chamber, an unknown body being massacred as a moment later a shining, silver Cyberman stepped out.
Behind him, Rose whimpered, but said nothing.
"What is this place," he asked, turning to stare at her white, stoic face.
"I'm guessing this is where Lumic is watching his new empire," she retorted, glaring at everything, including the silent Cybermen. "Wonder where he is?"
"Don't know," Pete answered, wondering that himself. Last he'd seen of Lumic was on his zeppelin that afternoon, before the party. "Maybe he's too coward to see his own handiwork, then?"
"Maybe," Rose sniffed in disgust. "One thing to be an evil genius, another to have to be responsible for it, eh?"
Perhaps. But it wasn't like Lumic, not the John Lumic he knew. Sure, he was willing to leave the onerous task of glad handing and people dealing to Pete, but his pet projects were usually micromanaged by Lumic himself. He should, by all rights, be there gloating over his own creation. It was surprising that he wasn't.
The elevator whirled and sounded again, the doors opening. They turned to see the tall, lanky figure of the Doctor wander in, seemingly in the middle of a conversation. "I've been captured, but don't worry, Rose and Pete are still out there. They can rescue me." He stopped, taking the pair of them in, dark eyes flickering between them before a look of mild disgust had him rolling them. "Oh well, never mind. You okay?"
The last question was directed to Rose, and Pete got the distinct impression that he might as well not exist for the Doctor if Rose was in the room. The girl nodded, her face strained. "Yeah, but they got Jackie."
"We were too late," Pete added, voice breaking slightly. "Lumic killed her."
Sympathy and anger flashed, hot and bright, as the Doctor turned to glance around the room. "Then where is he, the famous Mr. Lumic? Don't we get a chance to meet our Lord and Master?"
One of the Cybermen, who'd all been silent up to that point, replied to the Doctor's taunting. "He has been upgraded."
The Doctor stopped right in front of the creature, studying the blank face. "So he's just like you?"
"He is superior," the Cyberman replied. "The Lumic unit was designated Cyber Controller."
To the side a door opened, gears grinding, and revealing a giant metal wheelchair and a large Cyberman enthroned in it. Out of the creature, a deep, powerful voice sounded. "This is the age of steel! And I am its Creator!"
"Oh my God," Rose breathed, eyes impossibly large in a face as shocked as Pete felt in that horrible moment. "He's mad!"
"You just now noticed," Pete muttered, eyes wide as he stared at what John Lumic had become. Gone was the wasted, dying body, its breath rattling in his chest, unable to stand on its own. In its place was a cold, uniform mass of steel, strong enough to easily crush the likes of him. It sat majestically over them, as it oversaw all that it had created, and clearly thought of it as good.
"I will bring peace to the world, everlasting peace," it proclaimed. "And unity and uniformity."
"And imagination," the Doctor challenged, interrupting the Controller in its pontificating. "What about that? The one thing that led you here, imagination. You're killing it dead."
The Controller stopped, as if regarding the Doctor and thinking him nothing more than a pesky fly in its ointment. "What is your name?"
"I'm the Doctor," he replied, as if it were a challenge.
"A redundant title," the Controller brushed it off. "Doctors need not exist. Cybermen never get sick."
"Yeah, but that's it," the Doctor cut in conversationally. "That's exactly the point! Oh, Lumic, you're a clever man. I'd call you a genius, except I'm in the room."
It was such a non-sequitur Pete turned to stare at Rose who only smiled, tightly, as the Doctor began to wander, clearly lost in whatever rambling thoughts had caught his fancy at the moment.
"But everything you've invented, you did to fight your sickness. And that's brilliant. That is so human." The Doctor said "human" like one might refer to their pet terrier or the particularly cute toddler. "But once you get rid of sickness and mortality, than what's there to strive for, eh? The Cybermen won't advance. You'll just stop. You'll stay like this forever. A metal Earth with metal men and metal thoughts, lacking the one thing that makes this planet so alive. People. Ordinary, stupid, brilliant people."
The Controller regarded the Doctor. "You are proud of your emotions?"
"Oh, yes," he replied fervently.
"And they hurt?"
"Oh, yes." He nodded, something so painful, so aching and excruciating coming to the surface that even Pete hurt seeing it. He knew that whatever was left of Lumic could as well.
"I could set you free," the Controller offered. "Would you want that? A life without pain?"
Whatever the Doctor was feeling, whatever was going through his mind, he still shook his head. "You might as well kill me."
The Controller only considered for half a moment. "Then I take that option."
"It's not yours to take," The Doctor snapped. "You're a Cyber Controller. You don't control me or anything with blood in its heart."
"You have no means of stopping me," the Controller countered proudly. "I have an army, a species of my own."
"You just don't get it, do you," the Doctor sneered as if Lumic, with all of his brilliance, was a particularly thick dunce sitting on his throne. Pete stared at the Doctor, wondering if he knew what game he was playing at. "An army of nothing, because those ordinary people, they're key. The most ordinary person could change the world."
He began to wander the room, then, rambling, like he was making light conversation. "Some ordinary man or woman, some idiot! All it takes is for him to find, say, the right numbers. Say the right codes. Say, for example, the code behind the emotional inhibitor. The code right in front of him."
Emotional inhibitor? What was this the Doctor was going on about? Pete glanced at Rose, who caught his eye and then nodded discreetly towards a camera in the upper corner. A red light blinked on it. They were being watched. And the Doctor knew who it was. He was sending a message to them.
"Because even he knows how to use a computer these days," the Doctor continued to wander. "Knows how to get past firewalls and passwords. Knows how to find something encrypted in the Lumic Family Database, under...er...what was it Pete? Binary?"
Pete blinked when he realized the Doctor was speaking to him. "Binary nine."
"An idiot could find that code, cancellation code, and he'd keep on typing. Keep on fighting, anything to save his friends."
"Your words are irrelevant," the Controller replied, clearly lost as to what the Doctor was really up to. No imagination indeed! Clearly Lumic couldn't even see that anyone could possibly be smarter than he was or outwit him. And there this strange man with his manic eyes and wild hair was doing just that, blithe as could be. And he hardly seemed put out that the Controller thought his words irrelevant.
"Yeah, talk too much," he shrugged, waving it off. "That's my problem. Lucky I get the cheap tariff, Rose, for all our long chats on your phone."
Rose reached for the pocket of her dress, pulling out the old fashioned sort of phones that went out of style the minute Lumic had introduced the earpods. It hadn't occurred to him she hadn't been wearing any. Something clicked then, something he heard she and the Doctor talking about earlier, something about different universes. He stared at her as she palmed the device.
"You will be deleted," the Controller threatened.
"Yes, deleted!" The Doctor spun around, as if his very life wasn't in danger. "Control, hash, all those lovely buttons! Then, of course, my particular favorite, send! And lets not forget how you seduced those ordinary people in the first place."
All the talk of buttons made it click for Pete. Lumic had marketed the earpods as being completely hands free...no need for buttons. One could simply download it all, have it all talk to each other.
Beside him, Rose's phone beeped.
"By making every bit of technology compatible with everything else," the Doctor pointed out.
Rose held up her phone. "It's for you."
The Doctor grabbed it and turned to the Controller. "Like this!"
In one fluid movement, he jammed the phone into a docking station by one of the monitors. Instantly, numbers flashed up on all of the screens as suddenly each and every one of the Cybermen began to shriek in agony. They clutched their metal heads, bending over, as Pete and Rose spun around, staring at them."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor murmured with infinite sadness as he stared at one in particular, that had caught its own reflection in a mirror. It screamed and howled.
"What have you done," the Controller bellowed in disbelief at the writhing, agonized forms around it.
"I gave them back their souls," the Doctor replied calmly, removing Rose's phone. "They can see what you've done, Lumic, and its killing them."
With that, he nodded towards Pete, turning to run for the elevator, his long legs speeding him out of the door, Rose not far behind him. Pete didn't take an extra thought to do the same. The doors opened and they jammed inside, even as the Controller screamed "delete, delete" over and over again in their wake.
When the elevator opened on the floor below, the scene was filled with agonized Cybermen, writhing across the warehouse floor, the people now all completely gone. Whether they were freed or had been turned, Pete didn't know, but they blocked the paths as the Doctor whirled frantically.
"There's no way out."
He whipped around, running back up the metal staircase. Behind them, a small explosion sounded, heat flashing in a blaze of orange. They sped up from it, as the Doctor passed the phone back to Rose. "Call your boyfriend, see if he's got a way for us to get out of here."
Rose only nodded, flicking a button and holding the device up to her ear. Pete could hear someone on the other end yelling as Rose nodded.
"Head for the roof," she called, and the Doctor grinned, climbing the stairs, dragging Rose along behind. Pete gasped, trying to keep up with the pair, regretting for the briefest of moments the fatty lunches and pints of lager Jackie was always on him about. He kept his legs moving, the rumbling sound of distant explosions vibrating the building.
They came up to the roof of the building, as hovering over it was Lumic's own zeppelin. Even the Doctor stopped to stare at it, as Rose laughed in delight watching it above them. She still held her phone up to her ear.
"Mickey," she cried, amazed. "Where'd you learn to fly that thing?"
Whatever his response was, Pete noticed one thing right off the bat. However well he might pilot it, he couldn't get it any lower to where they were at.
"He can't get down here to us. Zeppelins aren't designed to do that," the Doctor said, spinning around, perhaps looking for a higher point. The warehouse had none.
From underneath the zeppelins carriage, a panel opened and a rope ladder tumbled towards them. At its top the dark, smiling face of Mickey grinned at them. Pete stared at the fiber conveyance, his stomach lurching. Should now be a good time to point out he didn't do so well with heights?
"You've got to be kidding," he breathed as the Doctor grabbed it tight.
"Rose, get up," he ordered, as the girl did as she was told. She nimbly climbed up, scaling it quickly. The Doctor followed suit, glancing down to make sure that Pete followed.
"Hold on tight," Mickey yelled out from the depths of the air ship. "We're going up! Welcome to Mickey Smith's airline. Please enjoy your flight! Woo!"
They pulled away from the top of the Battersea warehouse just as Pete began to feel the full on vibrations of the explosions below.
"We did it, we did it!" Rose cheered from above him. But perhaps too soon, as the ladder jerked, causing them all to grasp it tightly, terror twisting in Pete's stomach. He looked down, afraid to see what had caused it.
Below him, the Controller clung on, and Pete thought he could see utter madness in those electronic eyes.
"Pete," the Doctor yelled. He turned up to the other man who held out his strange torch to him. "Take this! Use it! Hold the button down and press it against the rope!"
Pete took the device, staring at the Doctor in wild dubiousness.
"Just do it," the other man ordered roughly. Pete nodded, finding the button with his thumb and flicking it just as he pressed it to the thick, nylon fibers. He could hear it whining and whizzing even despite the growing explosions below, its tip glowing blue. Slowly, he could see the fibers begin to fray and break, much like the last shreds of his own will. He'd lost everything tonight, his career, his home, many of his friends...and he'd lost the love of his life. Even if she had survived whatever the Doctor had done, the fires rumbling below them in their deep orange and yellow would be consuming her right now. His Jackie was truly gone.
"Jackie Tyler," he cried, glaring down at what was left of Lumic below. "This if for her!"
The rope gave way, and the Controller slipped and fell, a totally human scream sounding from his electronic speaker. The figure plunged, down, down, and was swallowed in a plume of flame as it finally gave way and exploded fully. Pete watched him go, a growing coldness spreading across his middle.
"Pete," the Doctor called, and he turned to stare up at him. The Doctor regarded him with haunted sympathy. "Give me your hand, I'll lift you up."
For half a moment, Pete thought about it. He could just let go there. He too could fall into the abyss, let the flames consume him as he fell. But he glanced at Rose, who watched him with pleading eyes, and found he couldn't. Instead, he nodded, and reached up to the Doctor with the strange device in his hand. Carefully, the other man pulled him upwards, as Rose began to scale the ladder up to the top.
When they all three made it inside, they found Mickey behind the wheel, Jake watching the events below gleefully. Mickey looked so proud of himself he might bust, and Rose rushed to him, throwing her arms around him. Pete watched the display curiously. He'd have thought, given what he had seen of Rose and the Doctor, that she'd be throwing herself at him, not the boy. He glanced sideways at the man, who was busying himself pointedly with whatever Jake was doing, ignoring the other two as he neatly tucked his glowing device into his pocket.
"The power station is gone," the Doctor observed, turning to stare hard at Pete. "Even if she survived…"
"Jackie's dead," Pete cut him off harshly, more than he intended to. Rose and Mickey turned, and he could see the sadness on both of their faces. "She was gone before I could even get there to save her."
"I'm so sorry," the Doctor murmured. And somehow, Pete knew that he was. The aching hurt he had witnessed earlier rang in the Doctor's words, and he wondered again who in the hell this man was who carried around that pain with him and still managed to do what he did that night.
"Yeah," Pete replied, feeling too tired and empty to say anything else. "Yeah."