Episode 2 – Chapter 2: The Steel Hearts
Kirito would admit that he almost had a habit of finding trouble, one that Asuna had regularly told him off for back in the real world.
First, he found himself in Aincrad, and all that had entailed; from the days of the Beater, to the Black Swordsman and the crusade against Laughing Coffin, to all of Project Alicization, and now to the discovery that, not only were they not alone in the universe, but they weren't even alone on the planet!
Even he hadn't expected that he would ever discover that latter part though, and much less did he imagine that said alien life would look like a European man in his early thirties, with a strange fashion sense and no name to speak of, just a title…
Still though, Kirito reckoned that the man's youthful demeanour; the slicked back hair, the red and white Converse sneakers, the sheer energy the man exuded whenever he spoke, all hid his true age. An age that Kirito imagined was far greater than the early thirties he looked, especially given there was a look of fire and ice to the Doctor, almost as if he'd seen the worst that the universe could offer too…
Whilst Kirito sized up the Doctor as best as he could, Eugeo attempted to understand the revelation that the Cybermen were in fact, human, despite their appearances… "So, these Cybermen, they're… what, the evolution of humanity?" His partner asked with a sense of confusion.
"Sort of." The Doctor answered. "Somewhere out there, a long time into the future, Earth's twin planet is dying, and humanity is dying with it. So, to save the population, they start replacing their dying bits with cybernetics. Then more parts died, so more cybernetics replaced them, and that repeats until…"
"You get Cybermen." He finished, figuring out where that story was going, having read more than enough sci-fi in his life to understand how humans became cyborgs, and eventually, cyborgs became more machine than man, and that only ever ended one way…
A way that greatly resembled the seven-foot tall, cloth covered cyborgs in front of them.
"Top of the class!" The Doctor exclaimed, as if he were a schoolteacher now. "Thing is, with Cybermen, they evolve. One day, you've got that, the next it's a suit of armour with bits of nervous system wired into it. A living suit of armour linked to a hive mind, any emotions they might have heavily suppressed to keep them from going insane…"
"One thing I don't get Doctor… actually, there's quite a few things I don't get about this, but if they're still human under there, even if it's coated in metal and wires… shouldn't they be in constant agony?" Eugeo asked, though it was clear he wished he'd never thought of it.
"They are. That humming noise you can faintly hear?" The Doctor paused to allow the two to listen out for the humming, and at such a low register that he almost had to strain to hear it, there it was… barely louder than the ambient noise of the town.
"Yes, I hear it, just about?" Eugeo answered.
"That's them screaming. Or trying to, anyway. You see that box on their front? That's where their vocal cords are now, stuffed inside a box with the other non-essential parts. That voice they've got, that's just a synthesiser though, takes what's coming from the cords and translates it from screaming…"
"Wh-why do that though? If they were supposed to save humanity, then surely… why?" Eugeo asked, his partner struggling to focus his thoughts after hearing that description.
"Earlier model Cybermen like Bill and Ben there don't have an emotional inhibitor, so they feel everything." Hearing that, Kirito felt sick to his core just looking at the two Cybermen, knowing that, not only were they in complete agony, but even their screams for help would go unanswered, unheard by the world at large… the volume of their misery turned down with a dial.
If that wasn't a horrifying indictment of the person behind the Cybermen, then he couldn't think of a better one.
"But why? Why subject people to that! Weren't they trying to save them?" Eugeo asked again, though with considerably more anger behind his question.
For once, the swirling vortex of contradictions around the Doctor faded, replaced by a much darker feeling surrounding him, one that more closely fit the "much older than he looked" feel he got from the man… "Honestly? I never understood that myself. Humanity, you're brilliant, resourceful, resilient… and sometimes, horrifying. You're ingenious, but sometimes, that ingenuity ends up with things like the Cybermen. The ultimate evolution of humanity, you cut out the bits that make you human and pretend that you don't hear the screaming in the process…" The Doctor answered, a strange feeling around him as if he were an outside observer watching humanity. For a brief moment, Kirito assumed he was a member of Rath, but that was quickly dismissed – Rath were, as far as he was aware, still human. No, the way the Doctor spoke, he was something much more than human…
Just what the hell was the Doctor though?
His thoughts on that were soon interrupted as they came to a fork in the road, only to be stopped by a single woman in the distance. The woman was clearly young, around their age, wearing gleaming gold armour that must have been polished recently, with long, blonde hair tied back into a ponytail that ran down to her knees. As they got closer, he was able to get a better look at the woman, now quite obviously identifiable as an Integrity Knight, but also with a face that reminded him of…
He looked towards Eugeo; his partner almost frozen in shock as he came to the same realisation as he'd just had…
"Halt, Cyber units!" The Integrity Knight ordered, and the Cybermen stopped in their tracks. "The Pontifex has sent me to escort these units to her eminence. Return to your duties forthwith!"
"AFFIRMATIVE, ALICE, INTEGRITY KNIGHT SYNTHESIS THIRTY."
"Alice! We came to rescue you!" In what was probably a very ill-advised idea, Eugeo advanced on the Integrity Knight as if she was Alice, and predictably received an unpleasant reminder of that difference as she slapped Eugeo hard enough to throw him a few metres back.
"Do not advance on me again. By the Pontifex's grace, I have the right to remove up to seventy percent of your life I so wish it, and I shall take your hand with it, knave." The Integrity Knight commanded, as both he and the Doctor rushed over to Eugeo.
Despite the hit, he was mostly uninjured, but slightly dazed from being thrown back. "That… isn't Alice, is it?"
"No idea, but if she is…"
Spotting Alice advancing on them again, the Doctor threw up his arms in surrender… "Now hold on a minute!"
A gesture of de-escalation that, rather than being seen as that, was seen as obstructive behaviour by the Integrity Knight. "You may have been requested by the Pontifex, Doctor, but I am in charge here. Move out of my way." She ordered, and the Doctor stood back up in defiance.
"One slight problem with that… I'm the Doctor, and if there's one thing I'm really bad at, it's recognising authority. Oh, two things, that and following orders, really bad at that too." He told her.
"Do not test me, Doctor." She snapped back in anger, her voice raised as a challenge.
A challenge that the Doctor rose to and beyond. "Don't test me, Alice Synthesis Thirty." He said, an anger peering through the gritted teeth of the strange man, and a chill ran down his spine at the barely contained rage. "Because I warn you, it is a small universe when I'm angry at you… and you can ask your boss about that, I bet she'll tell you the same thing."
"Who are you to make such threats at me, man of medicine…"
Not for the first time, Kirito felt a chill in the air as the Doctor spoke, almost as if the man's mood could change nature itself, almost as if it was bringing about a thunderstorm, despite the blue skies above them… "I'm the Doctor, I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. I'm nine-hundred and seven years old, and right now, you are staring down a deep, dark pit if you don't back down. You got that, Alice Synthesis Thirty?"
Even without the Doctor facing her down, Kirito admitted that would've stopped most living things in their tracks, and left both himself and Eugeo with a sense of complete awe at just how easily the man- no, the Time Lord – had just disarmed an Integrity Knight, one of the most feared things in this world, almost as if it were a minor hassle, rather than the insurmountable obstacle that it would've been for anyone else.
Alice nodded; the Integrity Knight being left speechless by this display before the Doctor snapped back to his almost happy-go-lucky act from before, a cheeky grin on his face. "Right then, should we be off? Wouldn't want to keep her eminence waiting, would we?" He took the lead, walking off ahead of them, and in that moment, a moment where all three of them; Kirito, Eugeo and Alice, looked at each other as if to ask… just what had they gotten themselves into?
"It is not that way, Doctor." Alice pointed out as the Doctor reversed the way he was walking without saying a word, leading Alice to take the lead…
/-/
As the unlikely group of a Time Lord and two students of the local Swordcraft Academy followed behind the Integrity Knight, the Doctor found himself intently watching the sonic as it scanned the surroundings and the people surrounding him.
Unsurprisingly, the readings were all over the place – exposure to the Matrix did that to a being, after all, but not in this way. Kirito and Eugeo were both, by any metrics, normal human beings, the only difference being that Eugeo was made in the Matrix, but it was the Integrity Knight that piqued his interest. Alice Synthesis Thirty, the Integrity Knight escorting them to the cathedral, was… unusual, even by this world's standards.
Physically, she was no different to Eugeo – a human born inside the Matrix, around eighteen years ago somewhere north of their current location. Reasonably intelligent, if apparently very stubborn, but she was no genius; no doomsday weapon… just a human being.
Except that was why he was confused by the sonic's readings – it was almost as if her body and her mind were two very different people, so different were the readings he was getting as the sonic scanned her...
"Cease that incessant beeping now!" She ordered, and much like earlier, he took absolutely no notice of her order.
"Hmm, what are you? I mean, you're human clearly, but… there's something off about you."
"I was summoned from the heavens above by the Pontifex, as are all Integrity Knights." Alice answered matter-of-factly. "For a man so intelligent, you seem to lack an awful lot of common knowledge, Doctor."
"I'm a wanderer, me. Can't sit still for two minutes."
"Perhaps, though it is my duty as a Knight of the Human Realm to inform you that her Eminence does not look too fondly on wanderers. In her view, they bring unwanted trouble…" He went to think of a rebuttal but couldn't. Trouble did tend to follow him everywhere… "You would be wise not to bring that information up." Despite the blunt way she had explained it, the hostility from earlier had seemed to fade somewhat. "If I did not know better, I would say you are not of this realm…"
"Oh, you have no idea how true that is, Alice…" He answered off-handedly, before the Sonic began to flash again. "Oh? Now that's interesting! Vortex energy, and a lot of it…"
The group stopped almost dead in their tracks. "Vor-tecks energy?" Asked both Alice and Eugeo, almost in sync with each other.
"Yup, either something's here that really shouldn't be here, or they've just left." He explained to them. "Though I'd love to know what gives off that much vortex energy that isn't a TARDIS, it's massive, it's the size of… oh. It's the size of Birmingham." If he was honest, he felt like that was a rather massive anticlimax – it was rather less immense than he imagined.
"What is a Birmingham?" Alice asked, looking to Kirito for an answer.
"What's a TARDIS?" Eugeo turned to his partner and asked a question that he knew the boy wouldn't be able to answer…
"Why are you looking like I know what he's on about?" Kirito asked them both, completely bewildered. "Doctor?"
"Looks like it came from our old Cyberpals back there too, almost like someone flung them through the Vortex, and they wound up here." He thought aloud, and his mind wandered back to his last encounter with the Cybermen, back in London in 1851. He really hoped they hadn't come from there again – he didn't have a hot air balloon to deal with them this time.
"Stop, just… stop." Alice asked, clutching the bridge of her nose. "I have several questions. The first, what is this "vortex". The second, what are these "Cyberpals". The third, just who are you, Doctor. You speak as if you aren't human, yet you are no soul from the Dark Territory, I sense that much…"
"I told you, I'm a Time Lord."
"You look human though."
"And you all look Time Lord." He pointed out. "As for the other questions though. The Time Vortex is the fabric that connects all of time and space. It's like a sheet of- no, it's not really a sheet, it's like a-look, think of time like a ball of elastic bands. Everything's interconnected in a ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…"
The group gave him a look that was completely blank, as if they were more confused by why they were following him above all else.
"Anyway, second question – the Cybermen. Those things you were giving orders to, they're Cybermen."
"The Guardians?" Alice asked. "They are nothing more than mindless drones."
"Those mindless drones were people once!" Eugeo snapped back. "People turned into those things…"
"That-they are… No, they are just mindless drones." The look on Alice's face seemed to be one of doubt, and he noticed as her right eye flashed red briefly before her attitude snapped back to its previous state, as her eye had re-adjusted her attitude involuntarily, and with a fair amount of pain clearly, as she held her hand over it.
Some kind of mental barrier, no doubt, but why? Something to stop the Integrity Knights going on a rampage, or was it more insidious than that?
"Alice, your eye…" Kirito asked.
"It… is fine." She groaned out through gritted teeth. "If these… drones were indeed people once, then why would her Eminence keep them around? They are old and battered, the least efficient machines possible…"
"What about the people going missing, what did you know about that?"
"I… I had investigated it. I found nothing more than people disappearing into thin air, never to be seen again." Alice asked, now slightly more unsure of herself. "You think those drones, err, those Cybermen, had something to do with it?"
"Maybe, but I doubt we'll get answers out here. Only answers are probably at the Central Cathedral, I'd say…"
/-/
In the nearly two years that they had been in the city of Centoria, Kirito had never really taken much time to look at the Central Cathedral, beyond knowing that it was where their mission would end, regardless of the outcome.
The cathedral itself was a behemoth of a building, towering into the thin wisps of the clouds above the city, and would have been regarded as a marvel of engineering even in the real world. In here though, it was nothing short of astonishing…
A thought shared by Eugeo evidently, who looked as if he was about to have to pick his jaw up from the ground, whilst even Alice, who he imagined essentially lived here, seemed impressed at its scale.
"It is rare that I see the cathedral from this angle. It is even more formidable from down here, almost like a watchful eye over the Human Empire…"
"Or a testament to someone's ego." The Doctor answered, evidently unimpressed by the building, and Kirito did not miss the glare that Alice shot the Time Lord for that comment. Not that he paid it any attention though, and the group headed in through the door on the ground level.
"I should warn you, the Integrity Knights are very formal, and you should not address them as you have me. They will not stand for it…" Alice warned, and Kirito wondered at what point she had softened in her attitude towards them… because he had clearly missed it!
He didn't voice that opinion though, as another Integrity Knight approached them. Unlike Alice, who wore a very distinctive set of armour – it was hard to miss glistening gold armour, and the blue cloth around it, after all – this Integrity Knight seemed to have a darker colour palette, formed of grey armour and black cloth underneath, which went well with her light brown hair and black bow.
"Alice!" The Integrity Knight almost immediately dispelled any impression of professionalism by tackling Alice into a hug, and evidently a hug she was not comfortable with – though based on the fact he could hear her armour creaking, he wasn't sure anyone would've been comfortable with that!
"Eydis, I am rather busy with a task. Please behave as is expected whilst I am on duty!" Alice chided the other Integrity Knight – Eydis, apparently – though she seemed completely unfazed by it.
"Soo, you three must be the ones that Pontifex asked for."
"Wait, you know about that?!" Alice asked, a look of genuine shock on her face. "I thought that was my assignment…"
"Yeah, but ya know. It's boring in here, any new faces are welcome!" Eydis turned towards them and bowed towards them in respect. "Eydis Synthesis Ten, Integrity Knight of the Eastern Gate, at your service!"
"Elite Disciple Eugeo, ma'am!"
"Elite Disciple Kirito."
"And you must be the fabled Doctor… I've got to admit, you aren't what I pictured." He and Eugeo shot each other a look; a look that conveyed only one thing… what the hell was going on?
"Yup, that's me. New word to describe me though, fabled. Fa-bled. Eh, I like "prophesised" more." The Doctor answered, smiling. "So, when can we see her Eminence?"
"Direct, aren't you? Should be glad I like direct people, heh. I'll take you up to the Ninetieth Floor, the Commander will look after you from there." Eydis explained, and off to one side, Kirito could hear Alice mumbling about "why her". He wondered whether it was bad that he couldn't tell whether she was grumbling about why it was her that had to deal with this, or why it had to be Eydis who looked after them…
Based off her expression, it could honestly have been either.
The walk to the stairs was pretty much silent apart from the Doctor and Eydis talking along at a pace that no normal human could keep up with.
"So, I take it you two have history?" Kirito asked, breaking the silence at the back.
"She is… Eydis." Alice tried to explain, but evidently drew a blank. "She is an excellent knight, but she is rather the exception than the rule when it comes to formalities. What I said earlier still stands, if not for her though."
"Yes, ma'am…"
"Come on slowpokes, there's only eighty-eight floors left to go!" Eydis shouted back to them, whilst Kirito, Eugeo and Alice all shot each other a sympathetic glance at that statement.
"Would it kill the Church to install an elevator?" Kirito asked, only to receive an elbow to the ribs from Eugeo for his comment.
"We often ask the same question…" Alice sighed.
"Only eighty-eight- no, eighty-seven floors to go", he thought in mild annoyance as they continued up the stairs to the Pontifex, on the Hundredth Floor…
{Author's Comments}
I have no idea why this chapter proved so much easier to write than the last one, but it did... so, here's the next update, and by absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, I'm releasing this on the same day that Series 14/Season 1 (delete as appropriate for whichever one you want to call it).
I haven't seen it yet, because I am one of these old folks who likes watching stuff on a Saturday night, so I shall be spending this evening watching both that, and Eurovision...