Bevin turned around to see the Doctor, his face strained with pain as the Cyberman relentlessly tightened its grip on his windpipe. Wil tried to interpose himself between the two, but the Cyberman flung him away one-handed and continued on its task relentlessly. Bevin reached for her gun, but realized it was empty.

 The Doctor flung something at her, just before he went limp. Bevin tried to grab hold of it, but another Cyberman reached out and took hold of her arm. Within seconds, the Cybermen had everyone under control. The mayor had just stood in place, quivering.

 "Resistance is useless." The Cyberman dropped the Doctor's unconscious body to the floor.

 ***

 Bevin looked out the window. She'd always wondered how she'd feel at the end, knowing that she was going to die. She'd felt calm, expectant, right up until the time she'd seen Wil return alive from the Sumaran ship.

 Until then, she'd had no reason to believe she'd ever get out alive. She'd spent her whole life, after certain events, knowing what was coming, especially once she'd been born.

 But now uncertainty had entered her life. With the prospect of possible survival had come, oddly, fear. Hope could be a terrible thing.

 She thought about all the things that she hadn't done through-out the years that she'd lived through, all the things that she had known that she couldn't do because they'd already happened. And all along she'd been wrong.

 Bevin had never been particularly religious, but now she felt as if someone had been laughing at her all along.

 ***

 The Cybermen had thrown the five captives into a small but exceedingly comfortable room, taking the Doctor's many pocketed coat with them. The mayor had collapsed into a corner and sat rocking in place and murmuring to himself, while Bevin, Wil and Jacob had spent some time looking for alternative exits. The Doctor had regained consciousness shortly afterwards.

 "Sam! Get me some garlic!"

 The rest of the cell stared at him.

 "Sorry. Keep forgetting who I'm dealing with." The Doctor scratched his head for a second, gave Wil a piercing gaze, and smiled. "Wil. Cybermen. Yes, that's about right."

 "Why would they put us in a room so - well, comfortable?" asked Bevin.

 "The Cybermen stole this ship from the Sumarans. They were a rather lavish group of people, liked making things look nice." He frowned. "And killing people. You know, the odd thing is that the Cybermen didn't kill me." He paced up and down the cell, thinking out loud. "I mean, supposedly the Cybermen are totally logical. If you'd just caught one of the people who's managed to muck up a lot of your plans, and incidentally destroyed a lot of your race, then the logical thing to do would be to bump them off before they had a chance to do it again."

 "Probably, but is that important right now?" asked Jacob. "I don't suppose you could help us look for escape routes, could you?"

 The Doctor looked at the young man blankly. "No point. The Cybermen may be bad at many things, but making cells that you can escape from isn't one of them."

 "Hey, look over here!" Wil was pointing to a small hatch he'd just uncovered behind a small painting.

 "Of course, I could be wrong," admitted the Doctor.

 ***

 The Cyberleader watched the Cybermen round up a few of the more dazed residents. Probably very few of them were at all useful in terms of Cybernisation, but the main goal here was to get control of the temporal shifts. The Doctor and his minions were probably escaping now, and would soon lead the assigned Cyberscout back to the TARDIS.

 Soon the Cybermen would have access to the entirety of time and space. With that access, they would rule the universe and they would survive - forever.

 ***

 "This is a trap," the Doctor whispered as they snuck away from the Sumaran ship. "The Cybermen are probably counting on me going back to the TARDIS. They'll follow me and try to take control of it."

 "So what are we going to do?" Hissed Bevin.

 "You're going back to your grandmother. Take Jacob and the mayor with you." So saying, the Doctor grabbed Wil's arm and they disappeared into the surrounding scrubland.

 Jacob and Bevin looked at each other. They looked at the mayor, who looked at them, his eyes still full of fear and shock.

 "Well," sighed Jacob, "Let's get going."

 ***

 "Where are we going?" Wil sputtered. "I thought you said going back to the TARDIS was a trap!"

 "It is," Said the Doctor. "But we don't have a choice. Soon a major temporal rift is going to open here and destroy a lot of very nice people."

 Wil gave up trying to speak and run at the same time. The Doctor was a much faster and nimbler runner than he was, and it took all his breath to be able to almost keep up with him.

 Eventually they reached the alley where the TARDIS had landed. The Doctor patted his pants pockets for a second, looked a bit worried, then smiled and pulled out a key. "Thought I'd left it in my jacket for a moment." He opened the doors and ushered Wil in ahead of him. He looked around anxiously for the Cyberscout, but relaxed when he noticed it. Good. He raced inside and slammed the doors shut.

 "So what are we going to do now?"

 "Hmm? Well, Bevin - 's grandmother gave me a few clues as to what might be about to happen here. The first thing we have to do is get everyone off that ship. It was fairly safe while the Cybermen were on it, but now with all those scared people on board, it could go at any minute."

 Wil shook his head slightly. "You're making less sense than a very bad forger, Doctor. What are you talking about? Go up? Why?"

 The Doctor clambered up the ladder that allowed him access to the boxes at the top of his library wall. He searched through them quickly and randomly. "The ship is controlled by Sumaran technology. They used a variety of artificial crystal to turn thought into energy. Unfortunately, they failed to take into account the fact that their emotions were also amplified into energy, and so created the Mara. Come on, where is it!"

 Wil shook his head again. "The wha'?"

 "The Mara. A creature created from negative mental energy, which preys on hatred. Fortunately, we won't have to worry about the Mara from now on." The Doctor finally found what he'd been looking for, and dropped lithely to the floor. In his hands he was holding a crystal.

 "I don't know, it still sounds a bit worrying to me."

 The Doctor brandished the crystal in the air. "This will stop it from bothering - oh dear."

 Wil looked at the display on the console that appeared to have caused the Doctor a fair bit of consternation.

 Critical Time Distortion Immanent

 *INSTIGATE EMERGENCY PROCEDURE 11A*

 "What's procedure 11A, and why don't I want to know?"

 The Doctor shrugged and opened the TARDIS doors. "Nothing we can do about it for now. Come on!"

 Wil looked uneasily at the monitor for a moment, then followed the Doctor outside.

 "Doctor," he hissed, flattening against the Police Box. "There's a Cyberman over there!"

 "Yes, I know." The Doctor waved cheerily at the scout, who gave up hiding and strode quickly towards them.

 "Resistance is useless," it said.

 "Don't you ever get bored of chasing people, pushing them around and shouting like that?" Said the Doctor.

 It ignored him and kept walking.

 "I guess not," he said, and they ran away.

 ***

 Bevin and Jacob were now in the city, and all around them were signs of panic. Some people were fighting each others in the streets, while others were just trying to get the hell out of the city.

 "We have to do something," said Jacob, determination in his voice. "Stop them from panicking, organise some sort of resistance."

 "Right now, we have to get to my Grandmother's house. She should know what to do."

 They had left the mayor sitting in a small park, from which he had refused to move. He had said he wanted to stay and look at all the pretty flowers.

 They pushed their way through the crowds, slowly making the way to Bevin's house. Most people ignored them, although they had been forced to fight a few of the more violent types. Eventually they made their way through and got to the house.

 Bevin's grandmother was standing at the door. "Come on, quickly now," she said when she saw them. "How did you get on?"

 "The Doctor and Wil went back to their... Tardis? We had to leave the mayor behind." Bevin looked anxiously at her grandmother. She'd never seen her so nervous before.

 "And this is Jacob." The old woman looked at Jacob, an odd glint to her eyes. "It's a long time since I've seen anyone like him."

 For a moment, Bevin was confused. Hadn't her grandmother said she was in love with him, or something? She didn't know why, Jacob was far too young for her. Jacob would certainly be far more interested in someone her age.

 "Hello, madame. I've heard a lot about you." Jacob bowed slightly towards her grandmother.

 She chuckled, again slightly oddly. "I imagine you have."

 Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door. Bevin's grandmother quickly opened the door before either of the others could shout a protest. Wil and the Doctor stumbled in, breathless.

 "We've got a bit of a problem," panted the Doctor. He pointed behind him, where the lumbering shape of a Cyberscout could be seen.

 ***

 On board the Sumaran vessel, the Cyberman who looked after the ship's engines encountered an unknown phenomenon. One of the crystals which powered the ship was glowing with an odd, pulsating light. The Cyberman reached out to touch the crystal, and found that its finger went straight through the surface.

 It pulled the finger out and examined it. The finger appeared to be slightly tarnished. In fact, as the Cyberman watched, the finger, then the arm, began to rot through with rust. This was unexplainable, as the alloy that Cybermen were created with was designed to withstand any type of oxidization for centuries.

 However, it was happening, so the Cyberman sent out a distress signal and a warning about the

 by the time another Cyberman
had reached the location of the distress signal, all that remained was a small pile of dust - some of it orange-red, some of it bone white.

 ***

 "Come on, we have to get out of here," yelled Jacob.

 "Don't bother," said Bevin's grandmother calmly. "Just throw this pouch at it." Jacob grabbed the pouch and looked inside it.

 "What's this supposed to be, fairy dust?" He asked in incredulity.

 The Doctor grabbed the pouch from Jacob's hands and threw it at the Cyberman. It split and showered dust all over the front of its chest panel. The Cyberscout began to wheeze, then dropped to the ground and writhed in seeming agony. After a few moments, it was still.

 "Gold dust," said the Doctor, his voice back to normal. "I'm glad you remembered that."

 Bevin's grandmother just shook a hand at him and started to pack some things up. "Come on, we have to get to my hacienda. I've stowed some other things up there as well."

 Jacob shook his head. "I'm not going to run away, we- "

 The old lady shook her head. "You do what you have to. Bevin will probably want to stay here, but the Doctor and I have some more things to take care of up outside the city."

 Bevin looked at her grandmother. "Is this the part where you die?" She asked quietly.

 The old lady stood still for a moment. "Maybe. Sometimes things don't turn out the way they're not supposed to. We'll see." She patted herself on the head, and then she and the Doctor started to leave.

 The Doctor turned to Wil. "You stay here and help these two. What Bevin- 's grandmother and I am about to do may be very dangerous for me, let alone you."

 Wil nodded soberly. The Doctor's expression was harder than he'd ever seen it before. Whatever was about to happen was likely to be pretty bad.

 "Come on," said the old lady to the Doctor. "The hacienda is this way."

 To be continued...