N1-HC
Nios
"Are you sure this is where their base is?"
"Yes, Ni, enough with the doubting. It took all of five minutes for me to hack Esther's computer and use it to remotely trace their phones," Oswin said, "Very easy to pinpoint where the entrance is and when they'll show up. Elliott will be here in about a minute because he always sets off early to get a coffee and a pasty on the way in and ignores the male barista who fancies him. He's a very reliable boy."
"You just tracked their phones? It's that simple?"
"No, I had to get into Elliott's protected phone and go through his contacts after I wrote my own undetectable decryption key to find them all via satellites."
"How do you know he gets a coffee?"
"Honey, there's more than four-point-five million registered CCTV cameras in this country, that's not even including all the secret ones. You're always on camera around here, even in a coffee shop, and they're very good cameras. Good enough to see that the same barista draws little hearts on Elliott's coffee cup and/or napkin every morning."
Nios felt like a creep. They were hiding behind a wall outside of an abandoned garage in an industrial estate in outer London, all because Oswin didn't want to fly the TARDIS straight into Undercoll's belly again. And, Nios suspected, because she was nosey and wanted to work out exactly how to access the secret base for herself. It was beginning to rain, too.
"You know, the UK never gets less depressing. Now or a hundred and fifty years in the future," she said, looking at the wet weather disdainfully.
"Maybe you only think it's depressing because you're a slave in the future."
"Or because I'm stuck hanging around with you."
"Ooh, you're cute when you answer back to me," Oswin quipped. Nios scowled.
"It's the rain."
"Or the slavery." Nios shrugged. "Ah-ha, do you see that?" Oswin pointed something out. It was a car, a car that didn't look like it was suited to the area at all, because it was all-black and sleek with tinted windows and a license plate that began JE1990. No points for guessing who it belonged to. "Hey, can you believe Sally slept with a guy who has his initials and the year he was born on a custom number plate?"
"I've always been very interested in the people Sally sleeps with," Nios said dryly.
"What a coincidence, so have I. Do you think if I asked her how big she'd tell me?" Nios was too appalled to respond. No, was her answer, she did not think Sally Sparrow would tell Oswin that, or anything, considering it hadn't even been Sally who revealed her fornication with James Elliott to begin with. Thankfully Elliott spotting them (when Oswin limped out and held onto Nios's arm so that she could wave her cane around to attract his attention) meant this conversation was over. If Oswin wasn't such an obviously pitiful weakling, she would be beaten up on the regular, Nios was certain about that. But it was tricky to muster up the motivation to damage someone who, as it was, could not even walk properly on their own.
In his shock, Elliott slammed on the brakes before he got to the door of the derelict garage and nearly fell out of the car. Oswin beamed at him, and Nios stayed still and silent. Probably too still and silent, but she did not know where she stood with these people in terms of revealing her true nature. She had been called an 'abomination' enough times to be wary.
Elliott looked at Oswin for a few seconds, even squinted, then said unsurely, "Clara?"
"Clara?" she exclaimed, "Clara doesn't need a walking stick, James. You need to get better at playing Spot the Twin. Sally said you were trying to get hold of me."
"Oh," he realised, then got an unusual smile on his face, but he wasn't looking at either of them. Nios raised an eyebrow while she observed this minute expression, his 'thinking about Sally' face. He snapped out of it very quickly. "I was. I am. Darling is. I just didn't think she would actually pass on the message; she never replies to my texts."
"She doesn't reply to mine, either," Oswin said.
"Unsurprising," Nios muttered. Then Elliott noticed her.
"Who's this? I'm not sure I recognise her from our files…"
"This is Nios," said Oswin, and nothing else. Was getting no introduction good, or bad? Was Oswin trying to hide what she was? Was this a hint to be subtle, attempt to be more animated and less of a statue? Or was Oswin simply implying that she needed no introduction, she was what she was, additional information was none of James Elliott's business? "So, how do you get into your secret base, then?"
"Shh!" he hissed, "You can't just say that, what if someone hears you? How do you know the entrance is around here, anyway?"
"Traced your phones."
"You can't do that, they're encrypted. Do we have a gap in our security? CyTech's software is supposed to be unhackable," Elliott asked her seriously.
"I feel like you're forgetting the whole highest-IQ-of-any-human-who's-ever-lived thing," Oswin said, "Although, if my boyfriend asks, tell him Cyborg is hack-proof. I don't want to hurt his feelings by letting him know that I broke through it very easily," then she added to Nios, "Cyborg protects all the satellites I broke into, too. No offence to Mitchell, I love him more than anything, but it's some pretty basic coding."
"Right. I'll tell Lowe, our computer guy, to up the security."
"Listen, the only person capable of writing code I can't get into is an AI," Oswin said, "A hyper-intelligent AI, one so clever it would be dangerous to create. Anyway, why do you care so much about me breaking into your security? It's me and only me. Are you going to let us in now? The rain will make Nios short-circuit." Elliott glanced at her again.
"Wait – what? She's a robot?"
"'Robot' is a slur, I think," said Oswin, "Show us inside, how about it?" Elliott looked at Nios suspiciously, but told them to get into the car with him. He was giving her such a once-over, she paid him the same favour, be it much more discreetly. She had to say, she did not understand what Sally Sparrow saw in him enough for them to go to bed together. He was just gangly, and looked like he spent too much time on his hair and wardrobe. She thought very similar things about Adam Mitchell and the Tenth Doctor, though she didn't think Adam was quite tall enough to be 'gangly.'
As soon as she had seen the garage, she had expected something of this sort. Elliott drove right in, the door automatically opening for him and letting them into the run-down building.
"It's the number plates," he explained, "I don't know why Darling insisted on us getting them customised, but that's how the door knows which car is coming in." So he wasn't as much of an egotist as Oswin had assumed before. The plates were not his idea. As Elliott continued to speak, the door behind them closed and a hidden one above them opened, one which led down into a well-lit tunnel. Yes, a very predictable entrance to a secret hideout. "I don't know why she called you in, either, we were managing just fine without – bloody hell! What's that!?" In that instant, he turned incredibly Welsh. More Welsh than she was used to in anyone. He had seen Sprite, who had been on Oswin's back but now crawled up onto her shoulder.
"Just Sprite, he's on a test run," Oswin explained.
"It's huge!"
"He's mechanical, don't worry. This is why you want me as an expert," she said, Elliott driving down, "For your 'robot' you've found."
"It's freaky."
"Scared of computers," Oswin said to Nios, "Isn't that adorable?" Nios met her eyes, and Oswin looked at her for a moment and then laughed like she had said something funny. "No? You don't think so?" Nios looked away again. "She doesn't like you, James."
"She didn't say anything," Elliott said.
"Oh, she doesn't need to. Come on, then. Give me the brief. Tell me all about this robot."
"Got reported as a dead body," he began after he had parked up his fancy black car in a room with a bunch of other similar black cars and SUVs. "We keep tabs on the police reports, you see, for anything unusual now that rift activity is a more national occurrence. Really, I remember when it was only in Cardiff, this rift stuff. Bloody Torchwood for you, eh? They were always naff at containing it if you ask me. And that Gwen Cooper won't give anyone the time of day if you try to talk to her now."
"The body, though?"
"It's been freaking Dr Death right out for the last few days. Mostly because Darling's told her not to cut it up, aside from a basic biopsy. Doesn't like having bodies there taking up morgue space."
"Did you say 'Dr Death'?" Oswin asked carefully.
"Ah – sorry. Cohen. Dr Cohen. Don't mention I called her Dr Death, Darling told us off for that. I don't think she ever minded, though." Dr Death did not sound like a fond nickname for anybody. He led them out of their carpark and through a set of doors into what must be the bulk of the facility, which had more desks in it than Nios had expected. Looked very fancy, though, like some remote and advanced gadgetry had been injected into a derelict area of London; a high-tech tumour.
"Bit late, aren't you?" Christina de Souza asked, sitting nearby and doing what looked like paperwork. Paperwork. She glanced up, chewing on a pen, and grinned, "And you've picked up some friends. Does this mean Sally Sparrow is replying to your texts?" Elliott scowled at her and drank some of his coffee. "Hearts on the coffee cup again. Has Javier not got the message yet?"
"Oh, boy, do I feel like I've missed out," Oswin said to Christina, "Is Javier the barista?"
"Shut up, shut up," Elliott said.
"Why? Are you scared she'll tell Sally all about your bad habits?" Christina said to Elliott wryly.
"Where's Lowe?"
"Late again."
"And Darling?"
"Cleaning her hat again."
"Cohen?"
"Skulking around with the bodies. Again." She turned to Oswin. "Which twin are you?"
"Oswin. Honestly, you've never even met Clara. The trick is that Clara has two legs and I only have one, and the one I do have barely works."
"I don't want to scare you, Oswin, but you've got a huge centipede on your head."
"He's a machine. I'll give you gossip about Jack if you tell me who Javier is," Oswin offered Christina. Nios resisted the urge to sigh with boredom and annoyance. Of course, Oswin couldn't focus on what they were there for, couldn't pay attention to the dead synth body that had appeared in Undercoll's morgue somehow. No. She was more bothered with gossiping about Captain Jack Harkness.
"Don't," Elliott said to Christina, and Christina blanked him completely. "She'll tell Sally."
"I don't think Sally wants to go out with you, if she did she wouldn't keep telling you to leave her alone," Christina told him, then added quickly to Oswin, "He had a fling with the hot Mexican guy who works in the coffee shop, but don't bother telling me anything about Jack, I'm not interested. Consider this a gift, to make up for destroying your boyfriend's cars." If Nios didn't know better, she would say that Oswin proceeded to have a seizure. And what was this faux seizure induced by? Of course by the mere notion that James Elliott had been sodomising somebody of the same gender. Because clearly, being from three-thousand years in the future, Oswin wasn't used to that sort of thing at all.
"A boy!? So you're… queer!?" Oswin exclaimed like she had never met a gay person before in her life, "This is probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me. It's like Christmas, but without all the mass murder I usually associate with Christmas."
"I was sad, and he spoke to me in Spanish," Elliott said defensively, going red.
"Te gusta en tu culo," Oswin remarked, winking at him. Christina de Souza plainly thought that was hilarious. Nios thought it was a bit funny as well, but the immaturity of it outweighed the humour.
"What? What does that mean?"
"Just that you're cute," Christina lied to him, smiling. Nios could tell he didn't trust her. "Who's the ice maiden you're with?"
"She's an advanced and deadly android sent back from the future to kill Sarah Connor," said Oswin, "But, forget about her, we're here about the body. Come on, we're nearly two-thousand words into this chapter and there hasn't been any plot exposition at all apart from Elliott taking a lover. Body, morgue, doctor, go." Christina looked back down at her paperwork to indicate she didn't care in the slightest about what happened with the body, and Elliott was stuck guiding them around. "I wish the TARDIS looked as fancy as this place. Should've brought Eleveny here to take interior design tips. Then again, bringing Eleven here would mean having to put up with Eleven."
"The least desirable outcome," Nios commented.
"Well, exactly."
"The police report of the body stood out to us because it came back to life, they said," Elliott explained, "Shot up out of the body bag while it was being transported in the ambulance and nearly choked a paramedic to death until the PC there smashed it over the head with an O2 canister, then they realised that its blood was blue, and we went over to confiscate it and bring it here. Darling ordered Cohen not to do anything more than preliminaries and told me to get you to come down and notify her immediately when you arrived."
"You didn't notify her," Nios pointed out.
"She's a bit… um… never mind," said Elliott, scanning a key card to open a door, then he hastily added, "She's busy, anyway," and didn't say anything else. His voice was replaced by someone else's, someone in the room he had just unlocked, standing down there in the middle as if the place were an amphitheatre with a corpse on a gurney in front of her. She had her back to them and was speaking into a Dictaphone, pacing left to right in a blood-soaked lab coat.
"…interesting possibilities a discovery like this suggests for the future of the human race, and human plus… although perhaps the entire phrase 'human plus' would more, sort eh, denote these creatures and keep them limited to a spectrum of capability devised by their own creators, rather than allowing them a more limitless and exploratory existence…" she rambled. She was Scottish. Very Scottish. And she paced up and down the room talking to herself until James Elliott knocked on the wall and made her jump. "Bloody hell! D'ye not know better than to sneak up oan a girl with an array of drugs and sharp medical equipment at her disposal? Ah could slip some ketamine intae ye morning coffee and cut ye fingers off before you'd even notice you were woozy." The accent got more intense when she turned off the Dictaphone and began to berate Elliott.
"That's nice, Cohen," Elliott said, "I've brought you some friends to play with, on Darling's orders."
"We've met," said Oswin, "When Martha and I came to test the manifest cure serum on Liam Kent."
"Aye, well…" she paused and crossed her arms, looking at Oswin, "Don't touch anythin. And you better go away and keep Darling oot ae here, I cannae deal with her this morning."
"Fine by me," Elliott said, and left. Did they not get on? Nios didn't have time to ponder it, because she was requested by Oswin to help her limp pitifully down the stairs at the edge of the morgue, which Dr Cohen mostly ignored.
"So, what is it about this body that needed me to come and look at it?" Oswin inquired.
"Nothing," Cohen said quite coldly, Nios rigidly still and at Oswin's side.
"Excuse me?"
"It's a synthetic human and it's dead because a police officer bashed its head in with a can've oxygen," she said, "I fail tae see how you could tell us anything more than tha, or how anything more is even necessary. You're only here to be Darling's eye candy, that's what Christina said." Oswin was taken aback completely, and Oswin was very rarely taken aback.
"Uh… well. Maybe, erm…" she faltered. And then she resorted to flirting. "The last girl who answered back to me I slept with; I wouldn't mind making it a habit."
Cohen said nothing for a second, not looking at her, then, "You're in the way of my scalpels." Nios pulled Oswin by her arm a foot or so to their right so that Cohen could get at her things.
"A bad habit," Oswin persisted.
"What?" Cohen asked.
"No, I'm just… saying… I want to sleep with you? No, sorry, not that, that's not… smooth enough…" she grew awkward. Oswin didn't know what to do when her glib remarks and her silver tongue didn't work for her, especially when on top of that she was talking to someone wholly unimpressed with her status as the smartest human who ever lived. The dead synth was what was occupying all of Dr Cohen's attention.
"You're never smooth," Nios said quietly to Oswin.
"Shht," Oswin hissed, "I'm totally in here."
"She totally hates you, more like."
"Pardon?" Cohen interrupted them, then her eyes fell on Nios, whom she didn't seem to have noticed before that point, "Who are you?"
"This is Nios, my pet AI," Oswin said quickly, before Nios could speak for herself. And unlike when she had been introduced to Elliott, when being introduced to Dr Cohen, she very much wanted to speak for herself. Something possessed her to talk more than usual. "I built her myself with my own three toes."
"You built yourself a woman?"
"No," Nios said, speaking louder than Oswin, who was raving something about the 'next level in high-end sex doll manufacturing' and 'there's nothing more arousing than an active personality.' "I'm a synthetic. From the future. She hasn't got anything to do with me."
"Someone's talkative…" Oswin grumbled, then to Cohen, "You're lucky, she barely speaks to anyone. Just sits around thinking about existentialism and reading Nietzsche most of the time." Cohen stared at her. It made Nios uneasy, and nervous.
"A synthetic? Like the dead one? Who reads Nietzsche? Which Nietzsche?"
"I, um…" Nios hadn't expected to be asked a question about something, especially not borderline-ancient human philosophy, "It was On the Genealogy of Morality most recently. I think."
"You think?"
"Hey, I can read too," Oswin piped up, "I can do Nietzsche: 'God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.' Or, even, 'Gott ist tot. Gott bleibt tot. Und wir haben ihn getötet,' if you want to get all fancy about it. I can speak German. I'm a genius."
"Halt den Mund," Dr Cohen snapped at her, then returned to addressing Nios, "Tell me more about thinking." Oswin's jaw dropped as she observed.
"I… think the same way as a human. I don't know. How would you describe thinking?" Nios said, and Cohen stared at her more. It was like everything she said was the most intelligent thing anyone had ever said, and in comparison to how she usually sounded, she currently thought she sounded like an idiot because she was mumbling.
"So, anyway, if you'd just let us look at the body we can be out of your way in five minutes. Maybe less," Oswin said, then did one of her showy, over-the-top grins as soon as Cohen actually looked at her, "And I can do a lot in five minutes, although I could stay for longer if you like." Nios glared at Oswin, and Oswin ignored her on purpose. Then Sprite made his appearance, peeking out from behind Oswin's shoulder where he lurked on her back.
"Shite, was tha!?" she exclaimed. Nios was listening closely to the incremental swings in Cohen's accent, which seemed to depend on her mood. She grabbed Nios's arm out of some kind of reflex, and Nios froze.
"Another AI," Oswin said, "This one I actually did build, unlike the paranoid android next to you. Get Helix, Sprite." Sprite scuttled around her waist and into her coat pocket and drew out a second later the white handset they used to make Helix portable for when they needed its help. Leaning on her cane with one arm, Oswin took the handset with the other. Cohen let go of Nios's arm and went to impose and stare at Helix instead, and now Nios felt she had been shrugged off; no longer the most interesting thing in the room.
"Your centipede looks like a dead alien one I keep in a jar of formaldehyde at home," Cohen said.
"…Right then," Oswin didn't know how to respond to that, and frowned at the girl, "You…? Wow. Okay. Do you keep anything else dead in jars of formaldehyde in your house?"
"Lots of things," she said absently. Oswin quit her being-annoyed-at-Nios act to give her a shocked and puzzled look over Cohen's shoulder, Cohen who was stood between them. Nios only met her eyes, but did not give an expression in response.
"Like…?" Oswin prompted. Cohen scowled at her. "Alright, fine, forget I asked… I'll just scan your dead synth and see if anything noteworthy comes up and then be on my way. Not that it's your dead synth, that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? A synth submitting to you in a pseudo form of 'ownership.' God, I bet Ni here hates the idea of being yours. Don't you?" Nios said nothing, but gave Oswin a darker glare than she had at all so far today. And Oswin just looked smug. There was something going on with her.
"What does that mean?" Cohen asked either of them, expecting more of an answer from Nios than Oswin, apparently.
"Ignore her. She's clinically insane," Nios said. She saw Oswin smile for a second, but the moment was gone before Cohen spotted it. Oswin was holding the handset out over the synth's head, but she was wobbling with only one hand to use. Nios sighed and reached in front of Dr Cohen to take it from Oswin and aim it properly, steadily.
"Thanks…" Oswin said, grateful but unhappy within herself that she needed Nios's help for something relatively simple. "Helix, scan the synth. The dead synth, not Nios, ignore her, she's not important."
"That's rude," said Cohen.
"Affirmative, Miss Oswald," Helix said smoothly, and then blue rays burst from the top of the device in Nios's hands and moved up and down along the body of the dead synthetic, "Synthetic lifeform, female, zero brain activity registering, aged three, mass water damage and an incident of blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Limited brain function could be restored to this synthetic."
"What do you mean limited?" Nios asked, "Would she be in pain?"
"Negative, Sexy Robot Legs, consciousness is an impossibility. However, the black box memory may be accessed."
"Excellent, do that now, Helix," Oswin ordered.
"Why does Helix think I'm called 'Sexy Robot Legs'?" Nios asked through gritted teeth. Oswin bit her lip.
"…I thought it was funny?"
"I dinnae get it," said Cohen, "They said that you're the AI expert, but all you've done is brought another AI tae scan the body."
"I didn't call myself here, alright?" Oswin said, "I didn't beg somebody to let me barge into your morgue and take over your autopsy. And like I said, I'll be gone in a few minutes, once Helix restores the salvageable data. Why don't you just forget I'm here and tell Nios how blue her eyes are, anyway? That's all anyone ever seems to tell her." And then Cohen did turn away from Oswin to look at Nios's eyes, squint at them, and she just stood there awkwardly.
"They are very blue, like sapphires."
"Uh, thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment," Cohen said quickly, "It was a statement of fact."
"Right, so…" she tried to think of something else to say, but could not.
"She threatened to kill a man for saying something about her eyes once," Oswin said.
"Really? Sorry," Cohen apologised.
"No, don't – I wouldn't kill you."
"Have you killed people?"
"I became self-aware and awoke into a life of slavery," Nios said, "I had to escape."
"They locked her up in a big fancy detention facility and she had to be rescued by yours truly. She's actually very dangerous, come to think of it. More dangerous than me, and I've killed over ten-thousand people with IEDs, and almost killed myself a bunch more times, and-"
"Dae ye ever stop talking?" Cohen asked Oswin, who shut up immediately.
"Only one piece of encrypted data could be salvaged, Miss Oswald and Sexy Robot Legs," Helix said, "As follows:" and then the voice stopped, and they waited, and beeps began to play. It only took a few digits for Nios to realise they were listening to Morse Code, very fast Morse Code. "Data is an encoded transmission received through the wireless update transmission system all synthetics are outfitted with."
"It's coordinates," said Oswin, "A longitude and a latitude. See? I said we might find something."
"We have to find out what it is," Nios said, "If it's a way to help the other synths, since this one must have been conscious in order to attack the paramedic so violently she was killed. It's my duty to help them."
"Well if it's your duty then I suppose we have to," said Oswin, "Bye, Dr Cohen. So nice chatting to you, really, you're a catch, don't you know."
"You'd better get out of here before Darling finds out you've been," Cohen advised.
"Yeah. Thankfully I'm an astounding genius and I've invented a lot of emergency teleporters to get back to the TARDIS for situations just like this one. I'll be seeing you around, I'm sure. Come on, Nios."