Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Rise of the Cybermen / Age Of Steel

Chapter 18 – Double Act

Mickey cast another sidelong glance at the man who was walking beside him. To look at him, most would have assumed that he was someone's barmy uncle or maybe a children's entertainer of some description, but under that bizarrely patterned knit jumper and the Panama hat, there was no questioning there was something dangerous and probably not human.

This 'Professor' – Zeke was too familiar for someone he'd just met and knew next to nothing about and the odd way the man had pronounced 'Ezekiel' had made Mickey almost entirely certain the actual name was something very different from the human name and thus unsuited for the human tongue – had something to do with either the Doctor or Delaine. It couldn't be both of them, because while Mickey was fairly sure that Delaine wasn't human, the Doctor definitely thought she was. That might have been a cue for the council estates boy to revise his opinion, but Delaine had never pretended to be human. At least… she'd never pretended around Mickey.

Maybe that was a mark of respect. The girl did seem to like his company more than Rose's or the Doctor's. Rose, he supposed he could understand – his former girlfriend had never really been one to play well with other women, especially when they were anywhere around someone or something she considered 'hers' –, but with the Doctor, the dislike seemed different and not in a good way.

There was no way to miss the flinches, the way the brunette avoided physical contact with the Time Lord. Something had happened there, maybe even before that 'Zero Room' thing. Something that the Doctor hadn't realized was a problem, seeing as he kept getting up in her personal space despite all the times the words 'don't touch me' popped up.

"You're thinking very loudly, Mickey Smith," the Professor said, derailing Mickey's train of thought entirely. There was a look in his eye that seemed to imply that was the whole point of the comment. "Care to share with the rest of the class?"

"Just trying to figure some things out."

The man looked to the side, twirling his brolly around as he studied the shops they were passing. "Hmm, so long as you don't overcomplicate the matter. Twist your theories to fit the facts, rather than the other way around."

That was fair enough, even if the Professor's way of expressing the idea was probably a line that was lifted directly from a Sherlock Holmes story.

"So why did you come after me?" Mickey asked, stepping over a bit of poster that had gotten stuck to the pavement at some point in the last week, if the fact it was only slightly faded from water damage was any indication.

The man shrugged. "A friend sent me. I'm sure you have theories about that as well."

"Sure. Course, the part I can't figure out is how Delaine would know someone from another universe."

The Professor let a mysterious smile ghost across his face. "Oh, you'd be surprised what sort of connections people can collect. Though I'm surprised myself; why didn't you suspect the Doctor?"

"Dunno. You just… feel more like her than him." Namely, like a person who'd crossed over into their universe from a dream reality, bringing a bit of that atmosphere with them; eerie, airy, alien, and mutable without any strict rhyme or reason. Despite having seen Delaine bleed red just like any other human, Mickey wouldn't be surprised if the next cut someone managed to land on her drew glowing blue ooze or sulfur smoke.

The Doctor on the other hand… he felt real. Almost too real, like rolling out of a warm soft bed and touching a freezing cold floor or coming upon the realization that once something happened, it could never be experienced for the first time ever again. While the true extent of his abilities and nature was beyond Mickey, there was no sense of the mercurial about those facts after they'd been established. He had two hearts, travelled in time and space using the TARDIS, and if he died, he regenerated into a new person bound by those same rules. Sure, the Time Lord was alien, but there was only the wonder of reality behind that alienness.

To compare the two would be like comparing the stars in a science text book to the ones in a fairytale; superficially similar and too massive to fully comprehend, but ultimately too different to truly be mistaken for one another.

Ezekiel – pronounced as if the 'k' wasn't sure if it was a 'k' or actually a 'q'– Sterling seemed to ride the line between those two extremes, but even Delaine did that at times, hanging onto the illusion of being an ordinary person whenever the idea suited her. It was just that the man in the question mark jumper seemed less invested in the 'human' part.

"Intuition's a funny thing, isn't it?" the man said, tracing strange and alien figures in the air with the tip of that strange question mark umbrella. Had to be a custom piece, Mickey reasoned; it was too weird to be store bought and too quality to be some sort of cheap costume accessory. It was unquestionably the mark of a man who took pleasure in confusing people. "The unconscious mind is good at sussing certain things out, but analyzing what led to that conclusion is a bit more complicated. Is something that comes across as unnatural something dangerous or something simply different?"

"Oh, you something of an expert in psychology?"

One of the Professor's eyes flickered and Mickey Smith swore that he was back staring into that stretch of space outside of the S.S. Madame de Pompadour again – that deep, deep darkness where stars shone like diamonds on black velvet and a hundred million things or more lingered a hundred thousand miles beyond the boundaries his understanding. Then, the moment was gone, leaving nothing but a deep brilliant blue that was just within the range of human possibility.

"You could say that," the Professor finally replied as he turned that piercing gaze ahead of them again. "But you are correct, for a certain value of 'expert' and a generous interpretation of 'psychology'."

That statement wasn't ominous at all, but before Mickey could comment on it something more immediately disturbing happened; about a quarter of the people walking in the street stopped dead in their tracks. The rest failed to respond to this with the same shock that Mickey was feeling, instead moving around them while picking their own cellphones out of their pockets and scrolling through their screens.

"Ugh, I'm so glad they passed that legislation 'gainst wearing those things while driving," a man on a cellphone muttered from behind a newspaper stand, apparently unconcerned by what was happening in front of him. "Havin' someone brake in front of you on account of some stupid download would make traffic more shit than it already is, don't matter if they have enough money to pay for damages."

"Yeah," Mickey said, resisting the urge to wave a hand in front of one of the frozen people's faces. Every one of them was wearing those EarPods. "Money wouldn't do much good if someone got hurt or killed."

The man behind the newspaper stand nodded, apparently content now in the knowledge that another person in the world shared his opinion. "Exactly. The advancement of technology's all well and good, but the lack of respect for human life that's come wiv it… It ain't worth it. All this cloning and gene-customization business… What's wrong wiv normal people?"

Before Mickey could come up with a response for that, the entire street burst out in laughter before resuming movement again as if they'd never stopped in the first place.

Before he could figure out what that was all about, the Professor had pulled his phone out of his hand and started going through the menu. "Ah, automatic download," he muttered as he flicked through the options before settling on a file labeled 'Joke'. "Two frogs sitting in a… this joke's not even any good," he said as he handed the phone back. "Probably carries a package that stimulates the parts of the brain responsible for laughter and amusement through the neurocomputer interface. Saves whoever puts these 'downloads' together the trouble of cultivating an actual sense of humor."

The fact that what pretty much amount to low-level mind control was so easily glossed over bothered Mickey a bit, but he slipped his phone back into his pocket without complaint.

"Oi, you!"

The man at the newspaper stand was talking again… or more accurately speaking, was yelling at someone. A homeless person by the looks of their worn and stained clothes.

"Shove off!" the salesman snapped, waving one of his rolled up wares at the unfortunate. "I don't need mites getting in these papers. Get back in the trash wiv the rest of your lot!"

Mickey watched the homeless man scramble off into an alleyway and tried to swallow down the discomfort that had lodged in his throat as they resumed walking again.

"Alternate world were everything's better… and it's got people like that in it," he finally got out after a block of walking. "I just can't –"

"Just because something is different, doesn't make it better or worse. It just means it's different," the Professor said, tucking a newspaper neatly under his arm. Mickey couldn't remember seeing the man pay for it or even pick it up, but it was unquestionably there. "And as to your second point… I can. If you care to direct your attention to those signs that say 'Working, Not Begging' plastered all over the city…"

Mickey looked. There were a lot of posters, mostly in sharp red, black, and white. "What's wrong with that?"

"Classic anti-homeless sentiment, though it's just as easily turned against the disabled and others supported by state welfare. People have the idea that words are harmless things, but even words have their teeth if you care to pay attention… just like these." The Professor tapped some spikes embedded in the cement beneath a window with the tip of his umbrella as they passed. If not for the man pointing them out, Mickey might not have noticed them in the first place. "Hostile architecture. Old concept, constantly revitalized by those who wish to keep their property free from poor people and pigeons. It's a bit early for you, but come 2012, your London will be the first to see Camden Benches; deliberately designed slabs of concrete a person physically cannot sleep, skateboard, or even sit on for long periods of time."

That's… "That's horrible."

"It is."

There was an abrupt and extremely loud crack from behind them that sent Mickey and a number of other people spinning to see what had made the noise. The cement slab beneath the window had been broken all the way through as if by some irresistible force, the spider's web of cracks too deep and wide to possess even a prayer of repair.

The Professor's smile took on a razor sharp edge that spoke of both deep satisfaction and an utter unrepentance in having done the act. "That's why I make a point to break them when I happen to come across the things."

Once he wasn't running in a pattern deliberately constructed to confuse, it was easy for Mickey to trace the way back to his grandmother's home.

It wasn't the best neighborhood, but it hadn't been in the council estate either. The sheer amount of stairs would have killed her within a week, even if she'd managed to get up them the first time. Number 1 Waterton Street had been her residence for most of her life and she'd had it memorized to the point where if he put a single piece of furniture out of place by so much as an inch, she'd know and smack him up the head for it.

Hard to think that he missed that but he did, Mickey thought as he stared at the door.

If someone opened it, would it look the same on the inside as it did in his memory? Would his grandmother – no, this universe's version of his grandmother even be alive? After all, it wasn't like she'd been young when she died in 2002 and there were a dozen or more things that could happen to an old blind woman living in London, alone or not.

What if it turned out that, like Rose, there was never a Mickey Smith in this universe? Taking the thought further, what if his grandmother never existed either? Just a total nonexistence of an entire Smith family; an absence that nobody would ever realize, appreciate, or mourn.

For one, it would make the conversation that followed his knocking on the door a lot more awkward.

"Who's that there?" someone snapped, the finer details of their voice muffled by the door. Mickey barely had enough time to school his expression before his grandmother pulled the door open and repeated herself.

"My eyes might not work, but my ears still function perfectly," she snarled, managing to pin Mickey with a glare despite not being having sight to aim it. "You should be ashamed, picking on an old woman. I've got nothing worth stealing, but rest assured, I can give you a boxing you won't be forgetting any time soon –"

"Hi," Mickey finally got out.

The threats immediately stopped. "Is that you, Ricky?"

"It's Mickey," he corrected as some small part of him had a time machine so that he could go back and scream – wordlessly or not – at the version of the Doctor who started that whole 'Ricky' business in the first place.

"You think I don't know the name of my own grandson?" his grandmother scoffed before shuffling forward. "Now come here."

Mickey accepted the hug reverently, trying to fight back the tears that were prickling at his eyes. It wouldn't be right to cry here, not in public and not with the Professor standing just a few feet behind him. Still, it was his grandmother, someone he'd never expected to see again.

As soon as the hug ended, Rita-Anne Smith immediately reared back and slapped him upside the head.

Definitely his grandmother, Mickey thought as he clutched his ear. Nobody else he knew had that exact technique for introducing the palm of their hand to someone else's face.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"That's for running off without a word, you stupid boy!" she hissed. "Disappear for days, especially when people have been vanishing off the streets? Should hit you again for making me worry so much."

"People have been disappearing?" the Professor asked, reminding Mickey that there was a witness to this particular family reunion. He didn't seem annoyed or… well, there was a tinge of amusement hiding there.

"And who's this? Another one of your delinquent friends?" His grandmother's unseeing stare turned to pin itself on the highly-probable alien. "Hmm?"

"I've been called worse."

"No, no. It's… he's a professor," Mickey answered quickly, escaping a bold-faced lie by technicality alone. "I've been taking a couple lessons on the side."

That defused the tension immediately. "My grandson is finally applying himself. Good." Her head turned back to the Professor. "He a good student?"

The Professor buffed his fingernails on the lapel of his jacket. "He might not be the brightest knife in the shed, but I'd hardly call him the dullest either, and Mr. Smith has enough determination to make up the difference on his own."

That was unquestionably a compliment, even if the first part had started out rather backhanded and the metaphor had almost been mangled beyond recognition. As Mickey looked away in embarrassment, something caught his eye.

"That carpet on the stairs," he muttered as he saw the long tear where the old material had come loose. "I told you to get it fixed, Gran. You're going to fall and break your neck one of these days."

"Well, you get it fixed for me," she replied.

"I should have done way back," Mickey said, letting his shoulders fall under the weight of the reminder. He could have done it just as easily for his grandmother, back in his own universe. It would have just taken a call… no, not even that. A little bit of glue would have done the job and his grandmother – his real grandmother – wouldn't have… "I guess I'm just kind of useless."

"Now, I never said that," she said, reaching out to where Mickey stood to put her hand on his shoulder. "And I don't want to hear you repeating that sort of thing either. I don't care who told you that, but if you can get a professor of all people to call you smart, you are the furthest thing from useless. Now, it sounds like what you need now is a nice sit down and a cup of tea. You got time?"

Mickey smiled. "For you, Gran? All the time in the world."

"Oh, you sweet talker. The talk is just that, but it's nice to hear you so much more… energetic. Much better than the doom and gloom that you've been since you've started hanging out with those new friends of yours."

"What friends are these?" the Professor asked.

"Oh, a lot of punks running around in some dingy old van. Missus Chan told me all about them. Accumulating parking tickets and running wild through the streets; it's a wonder they can afford petrol for the thing, the way they're going about all helter skelter. My grandson is well rid of them."

There was a shriek of brakes and tires as an engine – poorly maintained and paired with a slowly, but surely failing muffler – was gunned. There was only enough time for Mickey Smith to think 'oh bollocks' before the sound of doors being thrown open confirmed what he'd been thinking.

Namely, that they were about to be snatched off of the street by someone who probably had guns.

They had guns and they had a hideout; an absolute mansion, which Mickey assumed they were squatting in because otherwise they'd have the money to take care of their van. Though that in turn raised questions on how they got the guns and other assorted murder goods.

They also had the idea that he was Ricky Smith, criminal mastermind and anti-government master of… something, who was very admirable and absolutely flawless in all ways pertinent to their favored conspiracy theory. Of course, this all fell apart by the time they returned to the secret base and found the actual Ricky Smith waiting for them, but the fact that neither of the 'spies' had been shot yet seemed like a fairly good sign.

On the other hand, Mickey could have very much done without the strip down and the ensuing poking and prodding, even without involving the 'tied to a chair' bit of the act.

The one who had pulled Mickey into the van, a blond bloke by the name of Jake, finally stopped poking him. "He's clean, no bugs."

"So he's flesh and blood, but he looks just like me. That's not natural," Ricky muttered, crouching down to look Mickey straight in the face. They were practically identical, but Mickey imagined he could pick out a difference or two. Like the fact that his counterpart had ever so slightly more stubble and a long scratch under his left eye that, had it been an inch or so higher, would have left his counterpart wearing an eyepatch along with his natural scowl. "So it's not Cybus's work?"

"Lumic has his fingers in biotech, yes, but nothing on this level unless they've made some big changes since I left," the one woman – one Mrs. Moore – in the group responded. She was an older sort with a no nonsense hairstyle and the manner of someone well used to handling teenagers. "Alternative hypothesis; your father had a bike."

"Doesn't make sense that he'd have the same tattoo if that was the case though," Mickey's double said, prodding Mickey's upper arm. "Looks the same age as mine, too."

"In that case, you both have excellent taste in ink," the Professor said from the chair behind him. Mickey was certain that the man wasn't in a position to actually see his tattoo, but who knew. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head or a neck that could twist all the way around like an owl's. Regardless of the man's visual acuity, their captors hadn't seen fit to strip him down to his skivvies, instead settling for taking his umbrella, hat, and jacket.

Ignoring him, Ricky looked up into Mickey's eyes. "And your name is Mickey, not Ricky."

"Mickey Smith. Dad was Jackson Smith," Mickey replied. The information he had of his father was old and scant, but so was any feeling he really had for the man who abandoned his mother and son. "Used to work at the key cutters in Clifton's Parade. Went to Spain, never came back."

"So, what? We're brothers?"

"Not like there's a better answer for it," Jake said with a hint of annoyance. Mickey couldn't say why the blond man seemed to hate him on principle, but he was hardly going to ask the question out loud.

"If he looked a little like me, maybe that'd be the answer," Mickey's counterpart said, finally breaking the stare. "But nobody is perfectly identical. Not like this."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," the Professor noted with all the sort of tone people reserved for general statements about the weather. "I know a doctor who once got shot by a man who looked perfectly identical to his successor."

"And you! I've got no idea who you're supposed to be."

"Ah… nobody of great importance," he said, an obvious lie to Mickey's ear. "I think a more interesting question is who are you?"

"We?" Ricky said in a tone of voice that was the warning sign of an oncoming dramatic speech. "We are the Preachers. The ones that know the Gospel Truth. We don't wear earplugs or carry cellphones, which means our minds are our own. You are talking to London's Most Wanted, but for us, Target Number One is Lumic and our aim is to bring him down."

"From your kitchen?" Mickey asked, casting a look around.

Jake moved forward threateningly. "You got a problem with that?"

"No, it's a good kitchen." Probably was bigger than every room in his entire flat back home put together and at least three times older than the entire council estate building.

"Anyway, Jake," Ricky said, interrupting the minor standoff. "You get the thing that I asked you for earlier?"

"The recon? Oh yeah," the blond said, pulling a camcorder out of an inner pocket of his jacket. "They went 'round Blackfriars gathering up the homeless like the bloody Child Catcher. Took four dozen or so. Maybe more that I didn't see, depending on how many of those trucks they have running about."

Mickey was lost, but not so lost that he failed to be disturbed at the connections. "What?"

His question was only partially answered. "They were rounded up by a corporation called International Electromatics, which is a subsidiary slash front for –"

"Cybus Industries," the Professor finished.

That brought everyone's attention properly to bear on the short man.

"How do you know that?" Mrs. Moore asked.

"I'm particularly well informed and even better at making educated guesses," he replied dryly. There was the implication of eyes rolling in his voice, even if Mickey couldn't see his face at the moment. "The Cybermen just happen to be one of the things that I know fairly well."

"Gemini?"

"I'm more of a Leo, actually."

There was a lot more going on in that exchange than Mickey actually wanted to know, but it ended as abruptly as it began as the computer that Mrs. Moore had been typing on beeped. But there was one concern that seemed particularly important to voice aloud. "What's a Cyberman?"

"Killer robots." "Conversion-obsessed cyborgs."

Jake shot a glare at the back of the Professor's head, but the older man's tone was undaunted. "Organic being reinforced with mechanical parts makes for a cyborg," he said with a shrug that Mickey felt against his shoulders. "I don't make the rules."

That was probably quoting off of someone else, because Mickey definitely saw the Professor as the sort of person who made rules, if mostly of the irrelevant and irreverent nature because he got distracted by his own thought process somewhere around numbers three and four.

Mickey was also sure that the Professor was one of those people who could use poorly worded rules to destroy entire institutions.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the room. "Gemini's put out the word; Lumic's on the move!" Mrs. Moore said, grabbing a tote bag as she scrambled to her feet. "Got trucks on the move."

"So we follow one and see what those robots are made of," Jake said as he started collecting weapons.

"Arnickleton, traditionally," the Professor muttered almost too quietly to hear.

"So what happens now?" Mickey asked the Preachers. "You going to leave us tied to these chairs?"

Ricky broke away from the bustle of activity and gave the pair an appraising look before pulling out a knife. "Ever see the Terminator movies?" he asked as he sawed through the ropes.

"Of course." He'd snuck into a viewing of the second one when he was ten and ended up having nightmares about liquid metal men for weeks. Least his adventures with the Doctor hadn't seen them running into any of those, even if the clockwork sort and the unseen Cybermen weren't exactly far off the mark.

"Then you'll know what I mean when I say 'Judgement Day'," Ricky replied.

"We're all gonna to get killed by robots?"

"What?"

"Judgement Day is when Skynet nukes everyone."

"No– I meant– Terminator 2!" Ricky snapped. "They stop it! That's what we're doing!"

"Ah. Yeah, that sounds a lot better," Mickey replied lamely as he rubbed some feeling back into his arms and legs. He looked off to the side where the Professor was slipping back into his confiscated clothing. "…can I have my clothes back?"

"Nah, we'll kit you out with some of Ricky's things, seeing as you're the same size and we're carting you along on the mission now. Probably end up being dead weight, but it's always good to have a pair of extra hands," Jake said, picking up a couple extra rifles. "You know how to use one of these things?"

"No, but I've played Doom. Does that count?"

From the pained expression that took over the blonde's face, it didn't.

"What about you?" Jake asked, looking over to Mickey's companion.

"Oh, I'm not one for guns," the Professor replied, eyeing the weapon with more than a little disdain. "I find the right bit of pressure in the right place infinitely more useful. Though I won't decry or deny the usefulness of a properly placed explosive device either."

"Then what good are you?"

The man who'd paralyzed Mickey with nothing more than a thought examined his fingernails with a false casualness that should have sent every hair on the back of every neck standing straight on end. "Oh, I imagine I have my uses."

The smile that followed that was easily recognized as the veiled threat it was.

The Doctor was watching Delaine carefully as they followed the other servers through the backrooms and kitchen of the Tyler mansion. Whatever 'good' mood she'd managed to put herself into earlier was gone; its remains splintering under the parade of what he was quickly realizing were rather potent indignities where she was concerned.

He'd personally thought the maid outfit was quite tasteful, especially when compared to some versions he'd seen over the years, but something about it had turned Delaine's manner brittle and spiky, which only made her annoyance with the other points all the more obvious.

"You weren't nearly as bothered by the prospect of this infiltration earlier –" he started to say before Delaine cut him off.

"Because that was before someone saw fit to put me in a fucking maid dress," she growled. Despite the outfit being a near perfect fit for her measurements, she still managed to make it look ill-fitting, probably because every fiber of her being seemed one solid second away from taking the 'coyote solution' to wearing it. Whether that would have been achieved through tearing the uniform off or attempting to chew through her own neck was left to the imagination. "I could have pulled off a tux."

That was unlikely, given this era's accepted standards of hairstyle and Delaine's shoulder length mane, but pointing out that fact felt somewhat counterproductive to his goal of keeping her emotional state level. Whatever it was that had possessed her earlier, be it a metaphysical parasite or wholly human fury, the Doctor didn't need it setting anything on fire.

As to the irritation of the other female in their party, Rose seemed more irritated with the situation rather than the outfit that accompanied it.

"Can't say I'm best pleased about this either," she said as they got ready to collect the platters that they'd be serving to the guests, all laden with glasses of champagne and fancy finger foods arranged in specific patterns that would be entirely ignored by those partaking of those edibles. "We could have come as Sir Doctor and Dame Rose. Instead, we're the hired help."

"Well, it's sort of hard to invent a knightship in a country that's been a monarch-less republic for over a century," the Doctor muttered. He might have had an amount of leeway with the laws of physics that most would consider the territory of gods – at least in his home universe, where his TARDIS actually worked – but even the Last of the Time Lords had limits. "Besides, if you want to know what's going on, ask the wait staff. Or better, be the wait staff."

"What's that?"

"Lucy over there," the Doctor said, nodding over to a maid who had a black bob haircut and politely ignoring the look Rose shot at her, "told me that she heard the President was coming to this party on our way over. Thought I might do a little research while I had the time and that free internet access, found out that after Queen Victoria was killed during an assassination attempt in… 1879."

"The werewolf at the Torchwood estate?"

"Yep," he said, popping the 'P'. "That's one of the points of separation between this universe and our own."

"So, what?" Rose asked. "Zeppelins everywhere, Delaine's been murdered, I never existed, and you –"

"Oh, I probably never existed either. No Time Vortex, no Time Lords or TARDISes."

"All because Queen Victoria died before she was supposed to?"

"No. Though it's hard to predict the way the ripples one event will change a timeline, I'm fairly certain that the premature death of a human empress wouldn't rewrite the laws of physics on a universal level. Probably was different from the beginning," the Doctor said before reaching up to scratch the back of his neck with his free hand. "That makes the fact that there's so much symmetry between this universe and the one we're from despite the many differences very unusual. First time I managed to slip through the Void, there was a completely different planet where Gallifrey was supposed to be. Another time, I got trapped in a featureless plain without sound or any other living creature than my current companion and… well, something less friendly. Earth's existence is fairly reliable for some reason though. Never understood that."

Delaine coughed. "Yeah, that's weird."

"Anyway. Shouldn't have to explain this, but you do not draw attention to yourself. You're here to watch, not manipulate the Tylers," the Doctor said, giving Rose a pointed look. "They don't know you or owe you anything. Remember that."

"Why would I forget?" the blonde replied.

"Personal convenience, emotional torque, jealous pique," the other girl listed, dropping her voice to a whisper before adding, "Chronic stupidity."

"And you," the Time Lord said as he rounded on Delaine. "You're a maid. Service with a smile."

Delaine gave him a flat stare, her face a blank and unsmiling mask.

The Doctor gestured at his own face as he plastered a wide and pleasant smile on as demonstration. "Smile."

She still wasn't smiling. Actually, if looks could kill, Delaine's could have rendered an entire species extinct.

"Actually, go with the thing from before," he decided quickly as it became clear that the requested smile wasn't in the cards. "Least nobody will think you're planning on committing murder the first time someone makes a pass at you."

"Maybe I am."

"Yeah, don't do that either. Please." The Doctor straightened his shoulders as they approached the door that would take them into the main foyer. "Alright, let's see how the better half lives."

They emerged into the main house and were met by a crowd of finely dressed people. None of them spared so much as a second glance to maids and waiters wandering amongst them unless it was to take something off of the platters the servers were carrying.

Which meant it was very easy to overhear things.

"Business is doing well, despite the steel shortage –"

"– storage facility in Antarctica, of all places–"

"Yes and no. July and I had a scheduling conflict, but December's issue just happened to be twins…"

"New Germany, yes. Lovely place, really. Not at all as awful as the Americans make it out to be–"

"I'm only here for access to Tyler's other guests really…"

"Never can go wrong investing in zeppelin stock. Even if the market doesn't go up, they still offer–"

"– irritating woman. Only goes to show that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," one person said as they grabbed a flute of champagne off of the Doctor's platter.

"Bit rude to say that about Pete's wife in his own house isn't it?" their conversation partner noted with a brief glance towards the ceiling.

"Bah. They're barely together as it is. Tyler might have been a diamond in the rough, but Jackie's proof that no matter how you dress them up, a chav will always be a–" the Doctor heard as he walked away, taking care to step over the yappy little dog that had just materialized in his path.

While it was annoying losing the threads of interesting conversations, there was no loss in losing that one. Besides, something more interesting had entered the room.

'Oh dear…'

It was an older man, hair oiled back and face stern, but that wasn't what drew the Doctor's eye. It was what it was wearing.

The man was not conspicuous by his way of dress, unless one counted the scaffold of burnished steel holding his body upright and together as 'clothing'. From his head to his feet, there was some metal object wrapping around him, from the dark lensed Lennon specs and crutches that were the most harmless looking of the prostheses to the steel box breathing apparatus hanging in front of his chest like a dead albatross.

All in all, the resultant image called to mind the first Cybermen the Doctor had ever encountered, though he doubted that the Mondasians had ever had the thought to give their cyborgs a 'formal wear' option.

"Ah!" Pete Tyler exclaimed, pulling out of the crowd to greet his latest arrival. "Mr. Lumic! I'm so glad you could make it!"

"I would not miss this night for the world, Peter Tyler," Lumic replied, his voice a toneless drone that still managed to sound like yelling.

Cognitively, it was easy enough to parse out that the breathing apparatus didn't allow for subtler modulation. In practice, the effect only served to make the hairs standing up on the back of the Doctor's neck rise further.

"Ah, yes," a deeper voice cut in. The President of this Earth's Britain stepped forward. "John Lumic. Father of the modern era of technology, the greatest inventive mind on the planet."

"High praise," Lumic replied, sidestepping the sarcastic undertone like an unwanted acquaintance. "A great pity that you refused my latest gift, Mr. President. I imagine it would have been the one that would most change the world."

The President's face went hard. "We both know why you were refused."

"Alas," Lumic replied, taking his own turn at sarcasm before he turned away, his crutches clacking across the marble floor while his leg and arm braces creaked.

As the encounter ended, the Doctor moved on, though his brain was more focused on the details of that conversation than listening in on anything new.

Now that had been interesting. A scientific mind that recalled both Davros and the Cybermen, who's mysterious project had been denied for just as mysterious reasons – likely none of them good –, and a more than obvious grudge between the two parties involved.

'I wouldn't be surprised if a platoon of proto-Cybermen showed up in the next hour,' his Fourth agreed, 'given that sort of theatric set-up.'

'Unfortunately for your genre-savviness, we do not exist in a novel or television program and are thus not bound by the laws of literary convention,' Six replied, folding a set of imaginary arms.

'Are you entirely sure about that?' Eight asked.

'Yes,' several incarnations said simultaneously.

'Regardless of that,' the Doctor said in an attempt to rerail the mental conversation. 'How likely do you all think it is that something to do with Mister John Lumic will happen in the next few hours?'

They didn't need to agree for the Time Lord to know that the answer was 'very, very likely.'

Author's Notes

Alright, finally got more writing done. Since I've stopped working with my beta reader (they didn't have the free time, is no big deal), I slipped into my old habit of posting each chapter as I finished rather than sticking with finishing each 'arc/episode' as a whole and chopping it up from there. I'm trying to get back into the latter because it means more internal consistency and more control over update times, but that's… not going super smoothly.

Well, I try.

I am also editing/rewriting earlier chapters as a simultaneous polishing practice and writing block breaker (among doing writing prompt fueled one-shots, which are being posted to my AO3). This might happen more than once, because I'm always improving my writing, but I'm trying not to get so tangled up in that that I fail to actually move the story forward.

Thank you for all your kind words following my breakdown. I'm in a much better spot at the moment and so have returned to writing. Hopefully I'll continue to impress you all.

This was a mostly Mickey based chapter, with some Zeke exploration, in which Zeke is a troll and Mickey hits closer to the truth than most people do without fully realizing it. Seriously, if you haven't looked at the Profiles I've been posting on the AO3 version, you're missing a bit.

Also, the Doctor unintentionally gets meta in his little section.

A lot of the anti-homeless stuff I put in here is real, actual fuckery that people do. I did a whole bunch of research on the subject and a lot of the earlier ideas for this chapter were a lot more heavy handed with it, but I realized it was taking up valuable plot time. Still, I think I sufficiently established the heavy classism in Pete's World (which is only like… ten to fifteen points worse than ours on a scale of one to one hundred).

I wrote Ricky as being a bit more like Mickey than how they were written in the actual episode, mostly so they can come across as people who would be mistaken for each other but still stand out as different; ex – Ricky using a lot of the same references and tangent styles as Mickey but being a lot more irritable and rough thanks to running with the Preachers. Ricky also almost got an eyepatch ;).

Arnickleton is one of the materials that goes into making a Cyberman, though the Pete's Universe ones start out with something very different.