The Doctor and Sherlock met with John and Clara as they were sitting around a table, overlooking papers scattered. "Found anything?" the Doctor asked them. John looked up, "Sofia Lamb—she ring any bell?"
"Sofia Lamb?" Sherlock looked at the Doctor. The Doctor gritted his teeth, thoughts came and went. Sofia Lamb wasn't someone he knew personally, good or bad, but he had heard of her through some conversations he had with people he met on his adventures. Sofia Lamb was a big-shot scientist that was compelled by one notion and only that notion: destroying the Cybermen. She had tried the conventional tactics, creating new weaponry, but the Cybermens' rapid upgrade cycle had made them redundant within a year. At one point, the Doctor recalled, the Cybermen were once highly allergic to gold, to the point of death if exposed to enough and it was a weapon that too was short lived when the Cybermen completed their umpteenth upgrade cycle.
Sofia Lamb had been trying hard to come up ways but all fell short once the Cybermen gotten wise. However, she mysterious disappeared one year after announcing she had started a new project that was sure to destroy the Cybermen once and for all, taking with her several teams of scientists. Since, no one has heard from her and no one had been lucky enough to find any of the scientists who had gone with her.
The Doctor shook his head, "Only what I heard."
"Well apparently she had been doing more than just good work," John showed him a page that was transcribed from a recording found. It was Sofia Lamb and it appeared she recorded the message two years after her disappearance.
"The Cybermen are able to eliminate opponents because they are not held back by human nature. They don't hold to the social norms we humans are bound to. They strive to better themselves and it matters not how far they go to do it, neither complain at all and what would be the point? The Cybermen take those weak and make them stronger. Those made stronger become one of them and the transformation is as though they were never human to begin with. As such, I believe I could transcribe their ideology into something we may be able to use. It won't be much, but I believe with some work we can make with what we have. Unfortunately I have to test some theories before we can even begin to fathom. I believe that if we put aside human notions, the desires that bind us to society, the ideas of humanity, we may be finally able to destroy the Cybermen once and for all."
"Sofia Lamb, is she someone I'm supposed to know?" Sherlock asked. John replied, "She was never in our universe."
"Doctor, we think Sofia Lamb's connected," Clara told the Doctor. The Doctor studied the paper and slowly nodded, "What else you found?"
"We haven't found an obituary or a death certificate so we think she's still alive," John told him. Clara nodded. She added, "She would be sixty now."
"So, Sofia Lamb, where does she fit in?" the Doctor pondered. Sherlock looked at the papers he picked up. Sofia Lamb was a brilliant student who had been kicked out of Oxford for reasons that were never stated and had gone into work for various companies. She would continue this trend until she had gotten money from illegal means, laundering seemed to be her usual fare but she had been known to blackmail. So far everything about this woman set off alarms in Sherlock's head, she was a mad woman who dreamed a little too much and was an extremist by trade. John looked at Sherlock, "She fits into this."
"Do you think you can find her, Doctor?" Sherlock asked. The Doctor pondered, the TARDIS would always take him where he needed to be and if Sofia Lamb is a threat as everyone is thinking, then it might take him to her or where she was last. He nodded, "I might be able to. However, first things first, how does any of this fit together?"
"Ask and ye shall receive, Doctor," he heard a voice behind him. He turned to see Grissom standing there. Grissom bowed his head lightly. "I believe the answers lie in places we haven't thought of, Doctor," he told him. "What have you found?" the Doctor asked him. Grissom smiled, "I'll show you."
He led them back to his office where he showed them the raven and Cree the bluebird. The Doctor tilted his head as he looked at the raven, it didn't have the amber eyes like the others did and he was miffed at the sight of Cree. John simply crossed his arms. Clara blinked. Sherlock merely stared. Grissom explained, "The beetles are producing a specific pheromone that can only attract ravens."
"Impossible," the Doctor shook his head. "Improbable," Sherlock mustered. John blinked. Clara tilted her head. Grissom nodded. "Watch," he instructed. He pushed on the slider, exposing the minute holes. Immediately, the raven began thrashing in its birdcage, attempting to bite the bars as it clasped them, squawking loudly. Cree did nothing and remained calm, only becoming flustered when the raven began to bash against the bars. Grissom quickly closed the minute holes and nodded. The Doctor looked at him, "So that was what you were doing."
"But, they're in the same genius, how could the bluebird not be affected?" John questioned. Sherlock tilted his head, "The beetles produce the pheromone, why?"
"I would think beetles would produce pheromones in order to not be attacked," Clara blinked. Grissom rubbed his weary eyes. "The beetles were altered, only producing a specific set of pheromones that trigger a response in ravens," he said. He watched the collective responses before explaining further. "The beetles were eating flesh; only the flesh they were eating was neither fresh nor rotted. It was preserved. However, it wasn't preserved with your standard embalming or its equivalent. The beetles were consuming their weight with the flesh and something in it caused them to change. They change, become different than normal carrion beetles, and in doing so they develop a sort of parasitic bond with ravens."
"You mean, the beetles are using the pheromones to get ravens to eat them?" John rubbed his brow. Sherlock shook his head, "Unheard of. However, I never seen parasitic behavior of this nature with beetles."
"Beetles attract ravens, the ravens eat the beetles, then what?" the Doctor questioned. Clara looked at the raven and answered, "The raven becomes affected too."
"Correct, my dear, the raven consumes how many beetles needed until it gains its infamous eyes and traits," Grissom nodded. John raised a hand, "Why all this to be eaten by a raven? What purpose does this entire ordeal serve?"
"He controls them, not by conventional means," Grissom explained. The Doctor winced, "You cannot be serious."
"I am serious, Doctor, he is controlling them," Grissom nodded. Sherlock ran a hand through his hair and tried to comprehend what was happening. This was all very new to him and he never would imagine this to happen to him and John of all things. The sheer thought that a machine controlling beetles was enough for his stomach to become knotted, a very rare event. John still clung to the hope this was all a dream and that he would be awakened by Mary and told that Sherlock needed him somewhere per usual. Instead, he was faced with the fact that it was never a dream to begin with.
"What's interesting is the amber substance that was found in the first beetle. The labs haven't been able to identify it but it has faint minute traces of blood. Again, the labs can't identify the blood either. And in the beetle I also found what remains of an incisor, while it can't be used to identify, I was able to run some tests on it. Whoever the beetles have been eating from is roughly forty-one years old. The gender and the like pinpoints it is a male," Grissom told them.
Sherlock glanced at the Doctor as the Doctor did the same. "The beetle came out of the…" the Doctor trailed. Sherlock nodded, "It did."
"You can't mean that, Dr. Grissom," John shook his head. Clara chewed on her lips, "I think he does… Martin."
"You said the first beetle came from the machine, didn't you?" Grissom pointed. The Doctor and Sherlock nodded. Grissom cringed, "Then you found your culprit. This thing isn't as machine and wires as everyone thinks it."
"My god," Clara covered her mouth, revolted. Sherlock cringed as well as John. The Doctor stared, "Are you telling me a person is inside that thing?"
"Not in it," Grissom shook his head. "He is that person. What remains of him, anyway."
"You're saying he's dead, right?" John gestured. Grissom shirked, "That I don't know. However, there are colonies of these beetles living inside him. They consume their weight in flesh and I believe they exit through the slits on his mask. Hence, why the first beetle flew out of the nostril and landed at your feet, Benedict."
"Why would carrion beetles be inside him in the first place?" Clara sheepishly asked. Grissom chewed on his lips, "Perhaps it was an accident. One got in through the slits and ended up somewhere in the chest cavity. Beetle consumes its weight in flesh, mutates, starts producing eggs, eggs hatch and so forth."
"You know, Clara, Walker did say there was an odd infestation in that audio log," John looked at Clara. Clara remembered and nodded. "What audio log?" they were looked at. "We were looking up things while you guys were out. We found these weird audio logs; some of them were corrupted beyond repair. Most of them were narrated by Alice Walker. And there was a page from a handbook totally in gibberish," Clara explained. The Doctor looked at her, "Walker?"
"Yes, the Patrolman was one of the guards for something called the Corporation. He apparently gotten a nifty promotion for his contributions," Clara said with disdain. The Doctor blinked, "What does it have to do with our friend?"
"You won't believe this, but when Walker was attacked, his radio that he was listening to music with had suddenly become erratic just before he was killed. Martin thought of something and had the Geeks work on the audio. It was talking, it was actually talking! It knew him, Doctor, that's why Walker was killed," Clara explained to him.
"That would explain why we weren't attacked," Sherlock looked at the Doctor who merely stared blankly. John nodded, "It'd account for the behavior too. This thing was stalking Alice, I'm guessing it did the way he had done to whoever it was."
"What about Sofia?" the Doctor looked.
John nodded, "Sofia Lamb came up in a lot of them. Sometimes referenced, sometimes even narrating some of those logs."
"Sofia Lamb," the Doctor looked down at his feet. He chewed on his lips, ran a hand through his graying hair before looking at them, "What else you found?"
"Sofia Lamb was part of the Corporation, too," John told him. Clara nodded. She said, "We couldn't find any details about it, it's all been redacted and deleted, the Geeks couldn't find anything."
"So Sofia Lamb was responsible for that thing?" Sherlock summed. The Doctor winced. John and Clara nodded in response. The Doctor looked at Grissom, "Have Moya and Bradley been notified?"
"Aye, they have," Grissom nodded. The Doctor looked at Sherlock and the other two, "We have been looking in the wrong places this whole time."
"Doctor, what do we do?" Clara looked at him worryingly. He cringed as he himself didn't have an exact answer. He however had a thought, if the thing could speak, abet differently as far as speaking goes, that with some ingenious design, he could have a proper conversation with tall, dark, and slender himself.