Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Rise of the Cybermen / Age Of Steel

Chapter 22 – Rust And Ruin

Trigger warnings for body horror, mutilation, and torture. Cyberconversion isn't pretty and is pretty rough even when blood isn't shown. It isn't a primary focus and I've given it fairly limited description, but still. Some parts can be a bit gnarly. You've been warned.

The long steel halls might have been monotonous despite the inherent danger that they presented by dint of their location alone, but the monotony gave me plenty of time to stew over the latest bit of information thrown my way.

So Lumic had this universe's version of me cyberconverted and shoved into a closet when she failed to be a perfect obedient slave.

I wasn't surprised.

Angry – that was a child, a child whose life has been nothing but hell from beginning to end if my first was any good as a meter stick and I'd gotten no indications to say it wasn't –, yes, but surprised? No. Lumic had already established what he was willing to sink to, I knew exactly how good I was at following orders as a child, and there wasn't any shortage of opportunities for a choice 'exit' between the abusive home situation, middle school bullshit, and my own grapples with running away and suicide during that period of time. If the man had any interest in stealing that child away, there would have been little to nothing standing in his way and even less reason to keep her in circulation when she inevitably failed to meet expectations.

'And to think that everyone's first suspect was your father.'

'Probably because in any other universe, he's the one who would have done it.' It wasn't like he hadn't come close enough during some of his experiments in neglect and physical punishment. 'Also the fact that his entire personality is like if Anne Wilkes raised a fusion of Norman Bates and Dexter Morgan.'

I eyed a likely looking Cyberman as I escorted Pete and Rose past another series of doors. For the belly of the beast, this place had a certain lack of guards. Likely because most of the ones not dedicated to a specific task were on the hunt for the Doctor and Tsela.

"Any sign of Jackie?" Pete asked, a hair too loud to be a convincing zombie. Almost immediately, a Cyberman's head swiveled around, the rest of it quickly taking on the same orientation as it marched over to us.

"You are Peter Tyler, confirm?" it asked with a strange insistence.

'Ten to one, that's our target.'

"…er, confirm," the main replied awkwardly, apparently clueless as to the implications of the cyborg focusing on him of all possible people.

"I recognized you," the Cyberman explained. "My designation was formerly Jacqueline Tyler."

"No," Rose gasped.

"What?" Pete asked before quickly falling into denial. "No, you're lying."

That emotional display was exactly the wrong thing for him to do. "They are unprogrammed!" the Cyberman exclaimed before raising its voice. "Restrain–"

Lunging past Pete, I grabbed the Cyberized Jackie by the throat and initiated psychic contact.

'Kill me.'

It took Jackie a fraction of a second to say that after my intrusion, skipping past the panic of someone's first dalliance with a psychic power. Instead, it was me who was shocked by what I found, despite knowing that this was the most likely end for the woman.

The woman's psychic image of herself was a fluctuating ruin, the rare flashes of her whole and healthy quickly interrupted by much gorier images of a body flayed and then cut to ribbons. The one part that was stable were her eyes – hazel-grey with a unique gold ring around the outside and flecks of that same color within that –, and they were locked in a desperate stare full of obvious agony. Clearly, whatever Lumic had done to the woman hadn't involved anesthesia or any form of painkillers.

I'd seen worse. I'd felt worse. But I'd never been able to look at another person's injury without feeling it myself. 'I can help you,' I said, reaching out to her. 'I can fix–'

'They're still cutting me,' Jackie interrupted, eyes wide as she clawed at me with hands that were peeled down to the bone. It was disturbing, how much those eyes were and weren't like Rose's. 'I can feel still the knives. It's like burning and freezing all at once and it never ends. I can't live like this. It's too much. Just make it stop.'

I closed my eyes and counted down, trying to get my emotions under control. It was bad enough that my mother had been a convert beyond salvage, but I was hoping that I'd be able to help Jackie. 'Alright. I'll end it. I'll make it so it doesn't hurt anymore.'

I reached out to Jackie's head and let a touch of power cross over. She'd be dead as soon as I stepped back into the real world, but for now, the sight of her flickering body finally settling into the picture of woman untouched by knives – and wearing regular street clothes, which looked strange after seeing her in full finery earlier that night – was enough.

'Tell Pete I'm sorry,' she said as I stepped back into myself.

I lowered my hands, letting the disabled Cyberman sag forward before I lowered it gently to the floor. To those observing, the interaction must have taken less than a minute. "She's gone."

"She was just –"

"She asked me to do it. I offered to try and fix it, but she…" Words failed just when I needed them most. Finally, I managed to grab hold of what I needed. "She was in pain and wanted it to be over." I looked directly at Pete. "She told me to tell you that she was sorry."

"For wanting to die?" Rose asked in a disbelieving tone.

She was young. Too young and too inexperienced to realize that sometimes dead was better, though I might have assumed that travelling with the Doctor might have shown her that fact.

Pet, on the other hand, seemed to know what my answer meant. "…was it painless?"

"As painless as I could make it."

I'd known Jackie was going to be one of the first to be converted. Not in hard facts, no, the episode had never said anything overtly, but she'd been at the site of the first attack, the only one that had been specifically planned out, and had been given Earbuds to ensure that she could be controlled like a puppet on a string before that point. There had been nothing saving her then and there was nothing to salvage now after… well, I could just look at the 'conversion chambers' and make several educated guesses as to why that was.

My mother's condition wasn't a surprise either, well, once I'd gotten past the initial shock of 'she's been what?'. I'd seen firsthand what she'd done and what was left over, even if it had taken a few centuries to pull the truth out of the distorted nightmare. A point-blank bullet to the brain wouldn't leave much to work with, even with the minimal needs of the Cybermen setup.

It was too late to do anything about that. It was not, however, too late to help the people being hurt right now.

The sound of an alarm going off ended any chance of private time for grief.

Right. "We need to get you two somewhere safe," I said, picking the two humans up as I opened up the telepathic channels and a new dimension of mobility. 'Guys, I need some options.'

Flying had always been easy for Zeke. The discovery of the fact had been baffling at first – he'd had no experience with flying under his own power before that, never been anything other than a standard humanoid subject to gravity like most of the universe –, but the moment he'd actually taken wing, he'd fallen into it as naturally as frogs took to water. After that, it was only a matter of fine-tuning his technique and enjoying the sensation of being in direct contact with the sky. Beneath him, the world sprawled. To a human eye, it would be hard to make out any details beyond the dark outlines of buildings and the blaze of lights shining from streetlamps and windows, but to him, every detail was visible. But the details of Lumic's factory were the most important at the moment – specifically, the mooring dock for the titanic zeppelin that Lumic used as transport.

It was easily one of the largest he'd ever seen of the type, though it would have to be large if it was meant to serve as a lab and living space for a disabled inventor who routinely travelled long distance. It also followed that it would have the same tech that the man would put into his terrestrial command centers.

Two guards stood at the bottom of the boarding ladder. Fully human too, though the vague surprise was cut down by his observations of the Cyberman design. Until the leg design was refined and the overall weight of the armor was cut down, any task involving ladders or stairs would be difficult for the cyborgs to manage at any reasonable speed without risk of destroying or destabilizing the structure they were meant to be climbing. A zeppelin like this… yes, it would be more practical to use flesh and bone instead of high-content metal, at least until the details of the design were hammered out. The Earpods blinking in their ears would provide more than enough control for Lumic's needs.

Landing on the side of a building, Zeke gently sank his talons just far enough into the brick and mortar to maintain a steady perch. While it was unlikely – not impossible, but unlikely – that the human guards below would be able to perceive this form beyond a faint shiver of primordial dread crawling up their spines, the element of stealth was still a benefit at this point, given that he had no certainties on if either was capable of seeing him or not.

Right. A quick flash of the senses confirmed Mickey, Ricky, and the forgettable blonde boy – irritating, not being able to remember a name, but he wasn't particularly regretful about this one – finally clearing the ledge just enough to see the situation themselves.

The forgettable blonde was, naturally, advocating the use of guns.

"There's just two of them. At this range, wouldn't be any trouble at all," he said, barely quiet enough to avoid drawing the guards' attention.

"Except we're not here to kill people," Mickey hissed back.

"Who died and put you in charge? Because I'm pretty sure it wasn't me," his doppelganger snapped, reaching for one of the machine guns. "We're going to deal with it like Jake suggested."

Zeke stifled an irritated ruffle before it could properly begin, instead launching himself downwards from his vertical perch. Clawed hands reached out and grabbed at the guards' heads – unarmored, unguarded – and shoved them down halfway to meeting the roof. Before they could react further than vague cries of surprise, he'd jumped off of them, flipping backwards just enough to have the space to flare his wings and launch himself at them again, taking them the rest of the way to the ground and unconsciousness. A quick pulse of psychic pressure merely offered a guarantee of the last point.

"What the hell was that?" Jake asked with what Zeke was coming to assume was his standard state of confused indignation.

"What do you mean, what is that?" Ricky snapped back, gesturing in Zeke's direction. "It's a bloody great bird monster, that's what it is."

"There's nothing fucking there, you mirror universe moron."

"What the – I'm Ricky, you tit! How the hell can you mix me up with him? I've touched your fucking tonsils!"

That statement and Mickey's much quieter stare was more than enough to confirm yet another talent in the young Smith's warehouse – a certain ability to see ghosts.

Standing up on two legs, Zeke shed his Hollow guise in favor of his humanoid form, letting the expressions of awe and surprise – odd to think that it was the latter that got those reactions when the first had a double set of wings and talons that could shred steel in plain view – settle over all three of the humans. He dusted some imaginary particles off of his shoulder before focusing back on Mickey.

"Like I said earlier – you're a lot sharper than you let on, Mr. Smith." He gestured to the boarding ramp. "Shall we?"

"What are you?" Ricky demanded.

Zeke was tempted to roll his eyes or bristle feathers that are no longer present, but a smart comment would have to suffice. "Ridiculously overcomplicated," he said before gesturing to the airship with his umbrella. "Now, I believe we have other business to attend to?"

The silence of the airship interior, interrupted only by the occasional slow chop of distant propeller blades and the hum of electrical lights, was oppressive in a way that made even the barest sound of a footstep sound like the greatest kind of intrusion, especially in the absence of any security measures.

Perhaps Lumic had assumed that the guards he'd posted outside would have been enough. Or maybe he assumed that only a fool would try to take the airship. Regardless of which answer was the truth, it was a clear mistake on his part.

"Bastard didn't even put locks on the doors," Ricky muttered as they entered the bridge. Screens and readouts of different navigational equipment and controls filled the space, though there was still more than enough room for people to walk around. Likely the last was a design choice necessitated by Lumic's physical disabilities because otherwise the space was arranged with an eye for efficiency.

A Cyberman was fixed into a wall docket seemingly designed for that specific use, the blinking lights around it giving away details such as its current energy level – fully charged – and its current state of 'sleep mode'.

The blond boy lifted his gun. "Let's deal with it."

Zeke hooked the weapon with the crook of his umbrella and pushed it down. "I wouldn't. I doubt your bullets have become any more effective than they were at Tyler's mansion. So long as it is inactive, you have nothing to be concerned about."

The Cyberman was, for all intents and purposes save the most important one, dead. The presence of the spirit of who it had once been floating just up and to the side of it, going through the motions of despair and then surprise at the presence of non-Cybus people, was more than enough to confirm that. That didn't necessarily prevent the Cyberman itself from being a physical threat, but it would make it much easier to 'pull the trigger' if that threat presented itself.

"No, no, no, you need to get out of here," the ghost was screeching, its voice stumbling over the words as it darted around the group as much as its tether would allow. Just as Zeke expected, the Smith 'twins' seemed to be able to hear it, though Mickey was the only one to visually react to the spirit, ducking out of the way of its grasping hands. "They'll kill you if they find you. They'll cut you and burn you and–"

A flick of Zeke's hand saw the errant ghost scattered to loose particles. If it had the will to pull itself back together, there would be little damage to be shown for the action. If not… well, it was one way to encourage a transition to the next stage of its afterlife.

Mickey twisted around to give him a questioning look, but Zeke waved him off before making his way to the controls.

Right. Didn't need the controls for the airship – not yet anyway – but the rest of it held possibilities. Especially the control panels that came with large screens attached. He immediately set to attacking the keys, testing the technology before tearing into the code proper.

'Guys, I need some options,' Delaine yelled across their telepathic switchboard, urgency lending her usual tones volume.

'How are things on the floor?' he asked. The abstract of bad was already clear but the details…

'Lost Jackie, trying to relocate Tylers somewhere safe. Soon as I get that done, I'm going to attempt to salvage what I can. Lumic… he wasn't gentle with his converts. No anesthetic.'

Zeke winced at the unspoken parts of the communication. Cyberconversion had never been particularly pretty or pleasant in his experiences with it and shoving an emotionally crippled empath into a factory full of it would have hardly been his first choice of action. Still, it gave Delaine motivation to do something other than set things on fire... 'You can relocate the ones you can save up here, provided they're non-violent. It's not like there's a lack of room on this zeppelin.'

'Oh thank shit.'

'That solves my problem as well,' Tsela chimed in. 'Talk to you later.'

Something large and metallic moved behind him – that Cyberman back there apparently served as security, as he'd expected –, but before it could do much more than step forward and say, "You will surrend–", it crashed back into the wall mounting it had come from, a new hole running straight through its chest piece, the bolt of energy that had caused it destroying all the delicate equipment that kept the cyborg functional on its way through.

Zeke shook the lingering recoil from his finger as he returned his attention to the computers, ignoring the stares from the humans around him.

"Oh, look, full access to Lumic's security system and broadcast array," he said instead after a few more keystrokes. "Now what would we do with something like that…?"

The Doctor studied Delora's sparse files, finding himself more and more dissatisfied as he hit that same brick wall known as 'the last page'. There was almost nothing here. A glowing picture of the woman painted by her resume and Mrs. Moore's recollection further filled in by the set of hard facts laid out by the medical files, but beyond that, nothing. Nothing real, nothing that tied her to his missing companion beyond genetics and a thread of shared backstory that was long unraveled by time, space, and the failings of human memory.

'Well, perhaps you would have more luck if you actually had an actual answerable question about her instead of just aimlessly scrolling through the same files again and again in hopes of new information magically appearing in the system the moment you look away,' his Third snapped, the word 'magic' made a near expletive by his past self's scornful tone. 'Of course, there are better things you could be doing with your time, such as pinning down Lumic's location or, I don't know, seeing if the companion you're so concerned about has been processed or not.'

The Doctor was forced to agree. Much as he loathed to let go of this information, it wasn't actually worth anything in this situation and his current fixation on it was wasting valuable time which the Time Lord couldn't afford to lose.

Tsela took his hand away from his ear, drawing the Doctor's attention back to the cyborg soldier. "Zeke's group has taken over the zeppelin. We'll start relocating the salvageable units and non-converted rescues there." At the Time Lord's sharp look, he clarified. "I don't know how many we'll be able to save. Lumic did a number on them, between the control equipment and the conversion, but I think that we'll be able to save a few."

"I take it you'll be taking some of these up?" Mrs. Moore asked, looking over at the Cyberconverted child. They hadn't managed to get much more conversation out of it, but the way that it was muttering and tracing shapes on the floor while making an effort to avoid the other Cybermen at least spoke of mental activity.

"Along with you. Me and the Rider will be handling demolition down here and that job will be easier without having to watch out for any soft bodies in the way." With that, Tsela leaned forward. "This probably isn't going to be too heavy on the dignity, but piggyback is probably the safest and most comfortable way I have of carrying you out."

Mrs. Moore looked unsure for a moment, but complied anyway, carefully situating herself on the cyborg's back. Tsela then reached out a hand to the Doctor, who stepped back.

"I need to find Lumic."

"That isn't –"

"Someone needs to attack the Cybertechnology at the source and that's not something you can do with a sword, ridiculously sharp as yours may be. Kill the signal, skip having to hunt down every Cyberman that this factory ever produced," the Doctor pointed out. "Besides, I'd like to think that I'm distinct enough that you won't chop me in half by accident."

The cyborg soldier hummed to himself for a moment. "Fine. Be careful, though."

"Doctor!" Mrs. Moore yelled, stopping the Time Lord at the door.

The woman reached into her bag, producing a copper cylinder that she tossed to him.

"It's an electromagnetic bomb," she explained as the Doctor turned the object over in his hand. "Rather useful for killing computers, though I wouldn't object if you saw fit to bung it at Lumic's head when you find him."

Six hummed. 'The idea has some merit.'

'And appeal,' Nine added.

Mrs. Moore continued speaking. "Also, my name is Angela. Angela Price. Thought you should know, considering the fact that we're saving the world together."

The Doctor grinned. "Pleasure to meet you, Angela. Now, which way is Lumic's office from here?"

Shoving the Tylers aboard the zeppelin – Rose still freaking out over the wings that I'd pulled out of nowhere –, I launched myself backwards and down towards the factory again, opening up my wings and my senses to any trace of life below.

This part of the mission was going to be hard. Triage had never been one of my strengths, between my responsiveness to pain and tendencies towards over-focus and attachment, but I could manage. It would just be the Jackie thing again, but faster. Contact, assess, then remove as necessary. The fact that I was still wearing my Cyberman disguise would make the task a little harder, but I didn't have time to take it off.

Instead, I let the Rider out properly, the metal correspondingly taking on a hellish black patina as my wings partially caught fire. The aesthetic might not be one that a person would associate with 'rescue' but it certainly would mark me as a very different creature than the Cybermen below. Whether that was going to work in my favor – after all, hellfire and clawed wings had never exactly held positive connotations in human culture, even if those wings usually were of the leathery variety – remained to be seen, but I'd worked well with less.

I flared my wings just before reaching the roof and, dropping the last foot to the solid roof, immediately started running, grabbing at every metallic face in range as I tried to discern who I could save out of the converts and cutting down those that I couldn't.

Already, I knew that this would not be a good day for saving lives. That there would likely be more corpses by the time we were through.

Punching through a Cyberconversion chamber, I pulled two-thirds of a woman clear of the blades, the Rider's healing ability closing up her wounds even as I shifted her to a more comfortable carry. Immediately, I reversed course back to the top of the building and the zeppelin waiting there.

But that didn't mean I couldn't save a few.

The Doctor ducked out of the way of a small squad of Cybermen who, thankfully, seemed rather more interested in getting down the hallway rather than checking any side rooms for intruders as another crash rang out from that general direction.

Mrs. Moore's – no, Angela's directions weren't terribly helpful, seeing that she'd never worked in this specific facility and had been out of Lumic's employ for well over a year but there was a bit there he could use.

Unfortunately, that bit was the fact that the way to Lumic's office was on the far side of the factory floor from where he was starting, meaning that dodging Cybermen and the Cyberconversion chambers was a time-consuming necessity.

The Doctor glanced at a Cyberconversion chamber that had been partially ripped open, leaving its partially mauled victim in a cause of clear shock. The man likely wouldn't survive without immediate medical attention, but any medical equipment the Time Lord could have had on hand had been shoved into the pockets of his usual suit, not his current tuxedo.

The image of a dark figure with smoldering wings registered to the Doctor's senses for a moment before disappearing again, leaving the absence of a body and destruction of machinery in its wake. The Time Lord could only hope that the Rider had the means to rescue the human it had rescued from the wreckage, because there was enough of them left behind that blood loss seemed like a legitimate risk.

'Just when you think you know what's going on…' one of his previous selves muttered as the Doctor took another sharp turn towards a set of stairs.

Masterminds liked being able to look over their works in every sense of the term. Lumic was likely no different, which meant the man was somewhere above the factory floor. The fact that there was helpful signage pointing the way to the CEO's office just made the Time Lord's search so much easier and he was soon standing in front of a reinforced door.

Before he could reach for the sonic screwdriver, the door opened itself, pneumatic seals hissing as the metal sheets slid back.

Unexpected, but the Doctor could use that opportunity to keep his best weapon a secret.

"John Lumic, I presume," he said, stepping into the room.

The Cyberman, sitting in what couldn't be described as anything less than a 'throne', responded immediately, fixing luminous eyes on the Doctor. "John Lumic is no more. I am the Cybercontroller."
The Doctor made a face. "Oh, really? That's kind of sad. I was interested in meeting the man who made all of this, not his replacement–"

"My designation was formerly John Lumic, before the conversion," the cyborg said, its tone almost tetchy. "You may consider your 'interest' fulfilled."

"Oh, well, why didn't you say that in the first place? Now we've started off on the wrong foot entirely," the Doctor said, walking around the room, mindful of the Cyberman guards stationed in the room. There were only the two, but that was more than enough to make him watch his step. All it would take was one touch to end his life… or put him in a position where it would be lost regardless of how well he was able to take the voltage. And he only had the one electromagnetic bomb on hand. "I must say, you move quickly when you decide to do something."

"The bleeding edge is always rising and I must ever rise to match it," the Cybercontroller declared. "One cannot make progress if one is held back by hesitation."

"Or things like free will and ethics, I see," the Doctor said, motioning at the Cybermen standing at the Cyberconverted Lumic's side. "Did you take resumes from your bodyguards there or was it more of a kicking and screaming conscription? Oh, wait. I forgot. The Earpods. That would cut down on the 'resistance' part, wouldn't it? Assuming direct control."

He stepped to the side, approaching a bank of computers. Likely the security system for the factory if the many screens and camera feeds were anything to go by. Good. He could use that.

"It's almost brilliant. I'd call you a genius, but then again I'm in the room," the Doctor said, tracing his finger along the line of the control panel with a carefully constructed carelessness. In his other hand, hidden just by the particular turn of his wrist, was the sonic screwdriver, doing its best to find some access into Lumic's systems. "But we're a creative pair; should be easy to think of names we can call each other. Innovative. Inspired. Determined."

"Irreverent. A rogue element," the Cybercontroller added.

"That's me to a T, certainly," the Doctor agreed as he got past the first and second firewalls to begin sneaking his way through the third. "But 'monster', now that's all yours, because it takes a special kind of person to look at people and think 'I'm going to cut out and sterilize everything that makes them that makes them themselves because being an independent-thinking person with thoughts and feelings is just misery waiting to happen'. And, no, that is not a compliment."

The Time Lord spun around on his heel, throwing away his calm to let loose the storm that had been boiling since he'd seen that first Cyberman back at Pete's mansion. "You took people – even children! – and cut them up for no reason other than because you could. You didn't bother to ask for permission, didn't bother to let them keep their own minds… you didn't even bother to use anesthesia. There's no justifying that as anything 'good'. No calling it anything but what it is – a monstrous act by a man who couldn't see anything beyond himself and his own pain and desire."

Another firewall collapsed. "I don't know what 'inspired' you to do it. Could have been anything–"

"My brother."

That almost threw the Doctor off. "What?"

"Jacob Lumic was John Lumic's inspiration," the Cybercontroller corrected, the unconvincing illusion of emotional distance broken by its next words. "We were out on the ice. Skating. Childish foolishness, any logical mind would have known it wasn't thick enough to take a person's weight. The ice breaking was only the natural course of events."

"Jacob pushed me out to safety but couldn't climb out himself. The shock, perhaps, or lack of leverage. The same condition prevented John Lumic from rescuing his brother and other rescue came too late to do any good. Jacob Lumic succumbed to hypothermia and died within the hour. He was not resuscitated." The Cyberman went quiet for a moment. "If the Cybermen were available, he would not have been lost. That error has been corrected."

"And do you think that your brother would have wanted this?" The Doctor wasn't moved, not enough not to step back from antagonizing what little remained of Lumic. The longer he could keep the Cybercontroller focused on his words, the further he could get with his hands. "Is that why you picked those people for your first run of conversions? Because you didn't want to lose them? Even though there was no way you didn't know that what you were doing was hurting them – I mean, was there any other reason to take away their emotions? – and that what you were doing to them was the worst kind of torture, you just couldn't let them go, even if it was their time?"

"You lose one person and decide that you don't want to ever lose anything again. That you didn't want to feel despair or helplessness ever again," the Doctor surmised. "That's now how the world works, Lumic, no matter how much you might like it to."

"That is how it will work now. Just as I have designed."

"A metal world full of metal people full of metal thoughts… and not a flower bed among them, I wager." The Doctor fixed his stare on the Cyberman. "You do realize that I am going to have do something about that."

Now it was the Cybercontroller's turn to scoff. "You have no means of stopping me. I have an army. You are alone. Abandoned. Helpless. The odds of a single human achieving victory in such a situation are astronomical."

"You've got some very interesting ideas of what I am," the Doctor said. "Unfortunate for you that they're all wrong." He stepped forward. "First of all, I'm not human. Second, I'm not helpless. And thirdly…"

A pair of strong hands forced their way through the sealed door, forcing the pieces apart with an appalling screech until there was enough room for the blackened and battered casing of the Rider's Cyberman disguise and the singed wings that had forced their way out of the back of it to pass through.

Of course, one of his past selves would be distracted by the last bit. 'An interesting design. A hybridization of bat and bird-wing anatomy. I wonder how they actually work in practice…'

"I am not alone."

"John. Lumic," it hissed, smoke spilling from its mouth piece with each syllable as more of that same black haze leaked out of the rest of the casing, the glow of some internal fire just barely passing through it to give away the fiery nature of the being producing it. A few feathers dropped to the floor before burning themselves out of existence. "I've been looking for you."

"John Lumic is no more. I am the Cybercontroll–"

The Rider's gold eyes sparked at that as the creature seemed to pull itself to a height it hadn't possessed a moment ago. "No. You're still there, Lumic. I can see you. And there's no force in Heaven, Earth, or Hell that can hide you from the likes of me."

Whatever the Cyberconverted Lumic had been about to say to that was cut off by one of the Cybermen guards crashing into the wall and the Rider's hand closing around his throat – the Doctor hadn't even seen it cross the room, which meant that it had backhanded the guard and crossed the distance in a matter of milliseconds – and pulling up, dragging his body up and out of his 'throne' like the metal chassis weighed nothing at all as the connections between the Cyberman and the machinery around it snapped like old twine.

The Doctor twisted, pulling the electromagnetic bomb from his pocket and lobbing it at the remaining guard, which immediately fell screaming to the floor before going largely silent, save for a faint gurgling that the Time Lord was making an effort to ignore.

Right, that was it. All that left was dealing with the computers –

"John Lumic. You have committed dire crimes against your fellow man. The torture and murder of several thousand humans and the attempted genocide of the human race are merely the first that come to mind," the Rider declared, drawing the Doctor's attention and itself up to full height while lifting Lumic even higher. Even if its voice was calm, the crunch of steel as it closed its hand around the Cybercontroller's neck spoke of a very different emotion. "Thousands of lives cut short by your selfish desires, thousands of minds shattered by your cruelty, thousands of hearts broken by your choices. Your soul is stained with the blood of the innocent and the measure of pain you have visited on others is almost beyond comprehension."

Even though it was clear that the Rider's grip was inescapable, Lumic kept struggling.

"Now that pain will be yours, to be received as it was given, payment in full. Look into my eyes, John Lumic," the Rider said, dropping Lumic back down to its level. "And. See. What. You've. Done."

The Doctor had more than a few occasions to hear a Cyberman scream before. As much as they prided themselves on not being subject to human emotions, it wasn't impossible for that little chip responsible for that false tranquility to break. It could be overloaded, circumvented, damaged through mundane means… and usually, what followed was some form of agony, filtered through mechanical lungs and further warped by an electronic voice box until the result was barely recognizable as human.

This time was different.

The beginning of Lumic's scream was very much that which the Time Lord had been expecting; a droning, unmistakably artificial structure trying to translate a very visceral sound. But soon the electronics began to short out, warping the scream further until it sputtered out with a finally tinny shriek.

All textbook – 'Terribly tragic to think that we define that as textbook, isn't it?' Three remarked as soon as the thought crossed the Doctor's mind – as far as the Time Lord was concerned. But that wasn't the end of it, because when there was no more logical reason for there to still be any noise coming from the Cybercontroller, Lumic kept screaming.

At first, it'd been a gasping, sputtering thing like the scream that had preceded it, but this new one had been a naturally 'wet' noise, like the man's throat and vocal cords were being regrown around the broken electronics expressly for the purpose of continuing that awful noise. Then, it had turned into a very human scream of pain and terror that climbed and fell in ways a Cyberman's voice simply couldn't.

"How much blood is on your hands, Lumic? How many wrongs are on your head? How many souls did you put through the same hell that you did Jacqueline Tyler?" the Rider asked as Lumic howled in its hand, the steel casing that held the Cyberman together falling to pieces as the cyborg thrashed, rust flaking off of the metal almost as quickly as it formed. "I can number them all and can tell you this – you're not even halfway through with your penance."

It wasn't often that the Doctor found himself playing the voice of reason to a force of nature, especially when it felt like the Time Lord was sliding into a different part of the long familiar script of a companion begging for him to show mercy, to not do something that couldn't be taken back, but there was a tugging coming from someplace between his hearts that insisted that he do something.

Unfortunately, sometimes 'something' only amounted to saying a handful of words.

"Stop it."
The Rider froze and the Doctor took the opening.

"You've punished him enough– and once you stop keeping him alive, he's won't be hurting anyone else. There's nothing more Lumic can do to anyone else," the Doctor continued, keeping a level stare on the armored engine of vengeance despite every instinct screaming at the Time Lord to run. "You've drawn it out long enough. He's a sick, misguided man who hurt a lot of people but… this… this is just pointless torture now. Just let him die already–"

He cut off as the charred remains of the Cybercontroller fell to the ground, shattering into flakes of rust and charred material the Time Lord didn't really want to attempt identifying. There was no more screaming, which left a deafening silence in its wake.

"Thank you."

The Rider huffed as it shed the flaking remains of its armored disguise, revealing the leather ensemble from earlier along with a distinct absence of helmet.

'Well, I suppose that makes them a regular Ghost Rider, doesn't it?' Eight noted as the Doctor stared at the burning skull and the black ashy residue of something that wasn't bone stuck to its surface. The skeletal being seemed irritated by the Time Lord's stare, quickly pulling the black helmet from earlier out of the ether to conceal its non-existent face.

Finally, he tore his eyes away from the Rider and back to the computers. Right, without the need for subterfuge, accessing and destroying all the information contained therein should be easy.

Five minutes later, he was still working.

"Aren't you done yet?" the Rider asked.

"Just about. I just need to find the self-destruct…" he scrolled through a few screens of options. "Come on! What sort of self-respecting evil factory doesn't have a self-destruct?!"

"One that the maker doesn't want destroyed with the press of a single button?" the Rider offered in a distinctly sarcastic tone.

A moment's shock at that sort of comment coming from that sort of being gave way to an annoyed glare. "Thank you for pointing out the obvious. But this does make destroying any possible remaining equipment harder…"

The Rider put a fist through the computer, causing a screen on the far end of the machine to explode and fire to spark from the keyboards. "Problem solved," it said as the Doctor tried to find words to express the level of flabbergast he'd just reached at what had to have been record speed.

Finally, as some screens on the other end of the room started exploding, he found them. "Are you really a spirit of vengeance or simply the humanoid personification of excessive force?" he asked. "Because I could go either way based on the evidence."

The Rider didn't reply, instead looking up at the ceiling. "Time to go."

Before the Doctor could ask any questions about 'where', 'why', or even possibly 'what', the leather-clad creature had picked him up in a clumsy carry and launched itself upwards. The Time Lord braced for impact, only for the steel and stone above them to shred apart before the Rider's wings could even touch the material, leaving a tunnel of warped steel leading out into the open night air.

The Rider twisted around in the air as it corrected their course to meet that of the slowly moving zeppelin. Unlike the white winged creature Seven's doppelganger had turned into, the Rider seemed ill-designed for natural flight, even if the wings it had were clearly designed for it.

Maybe that was thanks to it carrying around a fully-grown Time Lord, but still, the situation was faintly ridiculous.

After a moment of searching, the Rider found an access hatch into the zeppelin. Darting inside, it abruptly dropped the Doctor onto the floor before stalking off to some unknown room, wings disappearing as if they'd never existed in the first place.

The airship was surprisingly full. They must have been able to save more people than he'd expected, the Doctor realized. Most of the people seemed to be intact, if slightly rattled, but there were exceptions to that rule. One man that the Doctor recognized from the factory floor seemed particularly distressed by the fact that his legs abruptly ended mid-thigh, even though the smooth skin covering the end seemed to imply that it was an old injury.

"We put up the salvageable Cybermen in another room," Seven's doppelganger said, answering the Doctor's unspoken question. "A way of minimizing damage in the event of malfunction or miscommunication of the identity of allies and such sundry, you know."

"And the Rider?"

"Oh, they're likely going to go attend to the deconversion of our salvaged Cybermen."

The Doctor thought back to the Rider's actions in Lumic's 'throne room'. "Really? That's your best option?"

"The Rider's host is one the best roboticists I know and the Rider itself has a very literal touch for healing." The Professor then tilted his head to the side owlishly. "Do you find it surprising that someone with such destructive potential can also be a healer?" he asked.

The Doctor pushed his concerns about the word 'host' to the side for the moment. "Considering that the only interaction between your Rider and technology was it putting its fist through a computer because I wasn't typing fast enough, yes, I am somewhat surprised."

"Hm. To be fair, patience isn't one of her better qualities," the Professor admitted with a slight look of amusement. "But I've rarely known her to err in her art."

That one word saw the Time Lord arching his eyebrows. "'Her'?"

"Ah, I believe I've said too much." The man stepped back, doffing his hat before he disappeared into the crowd. The last lingering addition of, "Do try not to overthink things, won't you?" hung in the air for a moment.

Naturally, the Doctor and his past incarnations would do exactly that.

'If we can use Seven as a measure of what to expect from that one, he didn't say anything that he didn't mean to come out,' his Fifth said.

True, though the Doctor had the strangest sense that the Professor was an ever so slightly different beast than Seven was. Different universe, different history, different rules, different result. However, that didn't help the Time Lord answer the question of if could he trust the man or the creature he put such stock in.

Once the door was shut behind me, I pulled off my helmet, the Rider's flames long gone in favor of human flesh. There was a touch of risk in doing this, when the Doctor could walk in at any time to throw in his opinion and expertise on the subject of robotics, but I needed to be able look like something these people could trust. If I needed Raguel's healing touch, I would call on the angel then.

For now, all I needed was their attention and my own abilities. And all eyes were already on me.

I exhaled.

"Right. My name is–" Delaine. Dellingr. Angrir. Orthrus. Any other number of things that were as much mine as they were not. "– not terribly important at the moment, but you can call me Rider. Just Rider – I don't need any fancy modifiers like 'Miss' or 'Doctor'. I'm a mechanic and roboticist."

A Cyberman that wasn't quite of Lumic's current make gave a humorless laugh. "So, what? Does that mean you're here to give us our tune-ups?"

That one was definitely an adult. Children usually don't have that kind of humor, nor that knowledge of connections between concepts.

"Sort of. I'm going to be building human-form cyborg bodies and prosthetics, depending on how much of your original bodies can be salvaged."

If I had a week and all the different tools from my Warehouse, I could skip the robotics entirely, but they didn't need to be taunted with that knowledge. Still, I had the tools.

"I'm a quick worker and familiar with this sort of work, so you don't have to worry about having a novice poking around your delicate internals, but I'm not going to lie – it's not going to be the funnest experience of your life," I said as I walked over to a locked door. Likely, it lead to something relatively uninspiring, like a storage closet or hidden computer server, but the Warehouse key didn't care about details like that. All it needed was a lock and a working set of hinges. "On the other hand, I'll be using anesthetic for the major works, the whole process should take just a few minutes per person, and if you want me to art up your prosthetics, all you gotta do is ask. Chrome on the joints, lattice work… anything short of weapons, you can have."

I twisted the key in the lock and – once I felt my personal pocket universe fall into place on the other side of it – opened the door, giving the group their first look at my personal Cosmic Warehouse.

Turning around to face my audience, I clapped my hands together. "Now, if there aren't any other questions, who would like to go first?"

There was a moment of silence that I expected from people who's last experience with being under the knife had been without a doubt the worst in their life, but eventually one stepped forward oh-so-carefully. Then, the rest queued up.

I smiled. "Good. Now, if you all would follow me… and try not to wander off. It's a big facility and there's only one of me to go around. Wouldn't want anyone to get lost or piss off the statuary. Seriously, look out for those – they're twelve feet tall and a bit particular about people touching things they aren't supposed to. Just think of them as very tall, very shiny museum security guards…"

The Warehouse might have been big, but it was easy enough to move around the various doors to bring the workshop around closer. Motioning for my patients to enter, I did a quick headcount and then shut the door behind them.

I flicked a few switches, turning the lights and other equipment on before silently directing the AI to keep their commentary to the minimum.

I turned back to my captive audience. "Now, if the ones waiting for their turn will sit here and whoever's going first follows me, we can get this show on the road."

Author's Notes

Finally, finally, the main drama of this arc is brought to a close, though we've got one more chapter to get through before leaving Namek– I mean, Pete's World.

God, this chapter took a long time to hammer out. Not just on its own merits (though it gave me enough trouble on that front), but with other things getting in the way. Health problems (my own and other people's), tech issues (got a new computer, getting a new drawing tablet), trying to plot out other parts of the series (I'll complain more about that in about two paragraphs or so)… it's been slow going.

Hopefully the next one won't take overly long, because I managed to hammer out about one-half to one-third of it while working on this one (debating on whether or not to wait longer to post a monster of an update or a double event before realizing that I wanted instant gratification) and most of what remains is pretty mundane and uncomplicated… of course, I say that before actually getting to it, so who knows.

I don't know if it was obvious, but my version of John Lumic was influenced by 'It's a Wonderful Life'. I mean, alternate reality that seems to divert from the 'original' based on the death/not-dying of a specific person… okay, it's not that good a comparison, but that idea just hit me when I started writing the Rise Of The Cyberman/Age Of Steel chapters and I decided that it was interesting to consider what would kick off that sort of obsession with making people not feel pain or weakness instead of just having Lumic have a sort of generic, unexplained motive for making the Cybermen beyond his own poor health (reason enough to convert himself, sure, but why bother with everyone else?). I mean, the man is still the bad guy, but I like to think I gave him a bit more depth than 'generic megalomaniac who wants to live forever' between his backstory and emotional reactions to the few people he cares about (much as he tries to shut the feelings up). I'm not super sure what condition Lumic had in canon (I mean, he was only put in a wheelchair because the actor busted his leg shortly before filming), but I was leaning on my version having something that was muscular dystrophy or something with similar symptoms, which would lead to the full body brace and respirator in order to survive and function.

The Doctor's speech to Lumic is somewhat parallel to one that the Fifth Doctor made to the Cybermen during Earthshock, though, to be fair, that resemblance is really only in passing and as a way to sort of fill out Ten's canon speech.

Zeke's alternate form is from the German Hollow Quest/Bleach Jump. It's a sort of griffin-type creature with a double set of wings. Hopefully I'll be able to hammer out some sketches for the Bonus Material supplement on AO3, but I'm better at drawing humanoids than animals. Still, I've got a lot of crappy drawings that I can hopefully turn into a better set fairly soon.

Delaine's own wings are courtesy of the Card Captor Sakura Jump, where I picked the Guardian background for her (and since all the canon guardians have wings and solar/lunar themes… though I made the design of Delaine's a touch different) It's kind of funny, because when I first started writing this fic (or the original version of it), Delaine was meant to be one of the more 'mundane' personalities without too many powers to her own name, but then I just kept finding new stylistic themes to weave in through certain characters… If the in text description wasn't clear enough, they're supposed to be fairly similar to what Maleficent has in her live action movie.

Long view for this series –

Lots of brainstorming and plotting, along with more number crunching and timeline arrangement. In particular, the DCAU and Buffy Jumps are kicking my ass on that front, though the Buffy one is a lot more fun because it's researching music and fashion and other harmless junk from my childhood instead of trying to construct a timeline out of vague and mishmash-y information concerning internal references and production order. Also, trying to get my ADHD ass to sit still long enough to get through an episode of anything is impossible (like getting me to sit through 30% Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and 80% of Thor Ragnarok is already an achievement even though I like those movies) without multiple sessions and lots of breaks to get up and run around in circles.

Why do I need to sit through watching Buffy? Because for some reason I never was exposed to it as a kid and only have vague internet exposure (fanfiction and tertiary fandom complaining) as an adult, which, as many of you know, only can take you 20 to 30% of the way. Like for some reason the WB was verboten in my dad's house until I was like eight and even then watching Saturday morning cartoons – Jackie Chan Adventures! Pokémon! Shaolin Showdown! Static Shock! The Batman! – was about the limit. Didn't stop my dad from letting me watch X-Files when I was four and five though. I guess the fact that it was on Fox made it different. Somehow.

Thankfully, the ignorance can be played for drama and comedy so yaaay.

Other Jumps in planning/plotting/number crunchy process –

Card Captor Sakura (again, something I never watched as a kid, but I love tarot, symbology, and mysticism and what I have seen is cute as shit)

Marvel Cinematic Universe (creator updated with different numbers and I'd failed to take certain stipends into account, but another chance to delve into my childhood favorite thing – mythology)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (another research/timeline nightmare, though fun because theology, mysticism, and music again)

Star Wars (another timeline nightmare, because there's so many jumps in that verse – if you do all of them and pick the right drawbacks, you can literally spend a thousand years in that 'verse – also what the fuck is canon, I'm cry)

Fallout (similar issues as above)

And many others that I won't be teasing you about at this time, though others have been mentioned previously. Yes, writing this stuff out of order while changing my mind about what goes in and what doesn't is a nightmare.

Anyway, thanks for reading and leaving reviews. Hopefully the next update is up before too long, but know that I strive for quality above punctuality (though I do generally feel bad about taking too long on updates).