CODE: S2/S10
Episode Ten
Sally Wiget & Adam Perks
Into the Vortex
"Target acquired," Roger replied expressionlessly, "preparing to initiate conversion process." He raised an arm so that Nick could see the veins on his palm, black and criss-crossing each other. The flesh was puckering up, bizarrely like lips getting ready to make a fish face, and then it opened into five tiny suckers, as if Roger had turned into an octopus.
So that's how he'll give me the nanites, Nick thought numbly. He didn't bother trying to run. There was nowhere to go; he didn't know his way around this ship, and who knew what had happened to the Doctor?
Roger approached closer, and Nick found his survival instincts taking over again as he flung up his hands to protect his face. Roger easily pushed the hands out of his way before grabbing Nick's neck and locking it into place.
He moved his suckered hand toward the nape of Nick's neck. Nick squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.
Nick could feel the iron grip tighten on the back of his neck, and he could feel Roger’s hands through the softness of his skin, tightening on lumps of bone and gristle. It felt like the skin on his neck was a separate bit from the bones beneath as it slid over them. The grip was far too tight to break.
The suckers on Roger’s hand began to get moist and he could feel a warm sticky liquid running slowly down the side of his head. They were forming little vacuums against the flesh and making disgusting sucking sounds.
He could feel things like maggots writhing beneath the flesh of Roger’s hand, ready to burst out. He felt the slime continue to run down his neck and the sickening movement of Roger’s skin, and he threw up again.
He sprung his back legs forwards, his mind, a confused mess, unable to tell him not to. His head slipped through Roger’s hand, lubricated by slime, and butted Roger in the groin. There was something terrible in his mind, a primal instinct that had taken over, a hideous sensation of fear and loathing and disgust. Nick noticed he was crying and growling at the same time.
He coughed, trying to clear the bitter taste of bile from the back of his throat. Instead he collapsed onto his knees puking onto trousers again. His head felt like a massive lump of concrete and he couldn’t seem to feel anything else through any of his senses. Everything was a dense mess in his head.
Nick tried to remember how to see. An image resolved itself through the blackness. Roger had fallen over, and now he was getting up again. Nick ran his hands over the ground as his vision faded to black again. His fingers felt like sausages, hugely swollen and useless. They still managed to feel bark though.
Nick picked up the log in his hand, managing to drag himself to his feet. He nearly fell down again with the pain in his head. He tried to focus, clumsily fumbling at his eyes in order to wipe away the tears. He managed to see Roger again, hand outstretched, advancing in attack.
Nick pulled back his arms with the branch in them, holding it like a baseball bat. He couldn’t see again. The images were there; his brain was just too confused to actually understand them. He guessed where Roger was and swung with all his might.
The branch sailed through the air. It must have hit Roger with great force because, although he couldn’t see, Nick could hear, almost amplified by the pain, the heavy snap of Roger’s neck as the branch broke it.
He could just about see Roger’s face on the wrong side of his head and the rupturing of skin on his neck where the spine had punctured the flesh. Blood pumped out of the wound, bubbling up in a fountain of gore and raw plasma.
Bloody hell. Nick felt his empty stomach trying to be sick again. He hadn’t expected to kill him. He could see the intelligent fabric trying to suck the stain up. Too late mate, he thought, he ain’t gonna worry about being clean anymore.
He suddenly realized the ridiculous inappropriateness of his joke. Before he could begin to feel guilty he saw the flesh on Roger’s neck starting to knit itself back together. Oh sweet Jesus...
He collapsed.
* * *
A fully formed Cyberman, the Doctor reflected, was truly disgusting. He looked at the tall, lean figure with liquid metal skin rippling across its body like satin. There was the bulging mass of muscles beneath the surface, moving in time with the skin. The blank metal sheet of the face was an even more emotionless design than ever; just two circular eyes.
Those eyes scanned the room. The mad Omnisci’s remains were sprayed over the room. His body had exploded in a mess of blood and flesh. It had been quite disgusting. The Cyberman had pulled his arm back again.
The liquid metal had peeled away from his forearm and the components beneath, a substitute skeleton with augmented cartilage and muscle, had folded in on themselves, reforming into a gun. The pulsing of a fleshy, grey-tinted organ at the back of the weapon marked the timing of the multiple shots being fired at him.
The shots exploded, like the last one had, inches from the Doctor's face. The personal force field of the escape engine protected him from every one. He had been lucky to be standing close enough to it to reach the controls in time. And in the sparks from that last shot, he thought he glimpsed something shining on the floor. Some odd sort of silver sphere...
The Doctor dragged his attention back to the matter at hand and scanned the body of the Cyberman for weak points; the shields couldn’t last forever. Perhaps he could improvise some kind of attack. The muscled structure, coated with the liquid metal, looked like a partially dissected body. All the right structures were there, just with nothing to hold them all together. There were no fixed locations for machinery; just the covering for its head. He decided now was not a good time.
Instead he began to power up the escape engine.
* * *
Nick dreamed of silver monsters with guns for hands turning into giant leather-clad cats while a disembodied voice that sounded suspiciously like his own said, "Nick, mate, you've gotta stop using your head for a battering ram..."
"Nick," a different voice cut in insistently. "Nick, wake up!"
Nick groaned and cracked his eyes open, wincing in preparation for the bright light he fully expected to see glaring down at him. It wasn't as bad as he expected, as Roger was blocking a lot of his vision--
Roger!
The Omnisci's eyes were covered with and surrounded by tiny metallic ridges. It looked like minute, intricate machinery, flowing in swirling patterns through and around his eyes. The effects of the nanites.
"Bloody hell!" Nick yelled and scrambled away, a sense of deja vu surreally overtaking him, making his headache even more disagreeably. "Get off me!"
Roger grabbed his arm, holding him in place. I've definitely been here before, Nick thought to himself. "Quiet, Nick! Calm down; it's all right. I'm all right! The nanites aren't working anymore; they must have a limited power supply. My body's healing itself this very moment."
Nick sighed, eyeing Roger warily but allowing himself to relax. "Well, you sound like yourself, so I'll believe you."
Roger grinned. Nick looked away, unable to bear the sight of the Omnisci's eyes. "Come on, time to get up," Roger went on, helping Nick stand. "How are you? If you like, I could use my abilities with bio-data to heal you..."
"Uh, no, that's okay," Nick replied hastily. He preferred to keep Roger at a distance. Just in case. He blinked. It seemed to help clear up his vision. He'd have to find some other way to deal with his aching head. "So, Roger, now what do we do?"
Roger looked around the Sphere at the plants and animals; his attention apparently caught for a moment by what looked like an overgrown daisy. He looked at Nick again. "I don't know."
Nick snorted. "Helpful, mate." He looked around as well. "What about the Doctor?"
"We could look for him," Roger replied, "but the Spheres are awfully big, and I don't know where he is at the moment." He paused. "I'm sure the Doctor's all right," he added gently.
Nick forced a laugh. "'Course he is!"
"He always gets out of these things with his skin intact," Roger said. Bits of the shiny machinery were dissolving from around his eyes, Nick was both disgusted and fascinated to note, as the Omnisci's body healed itself.
"Yeah," Nick said, dragging his attention away from what was happening to Roger to answer, "but that doesn't mean we will. Have you lot got any escape pods or something in these Spheres of yours? We should have an escape route ready. Just in case."
Roger sighed. "I don't know ... all the circuitry in the liquid that makes up the Spheres outer shell has been destroyed by the Cybermen. That circuitry was used to form the ships from the Spheres’ skin. The Spheres may have grown new circuitry by now, but we can't rely on it..."
"We've got nothing better to do," Nick replied practically. "We can at least check it out."
"All right, this way."
Nick followed the Omnisci.
* * *
The Doctor left the engine running on its own after selecting a destination, trusting it to complete its programming. He turned to the shields again, focusing and extending them to create a sort of lance, which stabbed the Cyberman in its chest, piercing through the other side of it a good metre.
He used the shield as his chance to escape, stumbling over the converting bodies to grab the metal sphere he'd glimpsed earlier. Its weight surprised the Doctor, considering its relatively small size and what he'd thought it was.
No time to worry about that now, never any time; he could hear the engine finishing its build-up, and he had to find the life-signs he'd detected earlier while working with the engine. He ran out of the room.
Unseen behind him, the Cyberman he'd stabbed remotely deactivated the specially formed shield. Its wound immediately began healing itself.
* * *
Nick was having difficulty keeping up with Roger's run, but he was determined he wouldn't complain, since he was the one who had suggested they jog rather than walk. Why he'd suggested that he couldn't remember now, considering how much it aggravated the pounding already in his head...
"Wait a sec," he called, panting, to Roger. The Omnisci turned back inquiringly, slowing his run down. "Do you hear that?" Nick asked.
Rustlings and crashes through the jungle forest around them, it sounded like a very large body approaching. Nick and Roger exchanged glances, and then mutually turned around to face whatever was coming toward them.
Nick took a deep breath, hoping that perhaps the noise was just coming from one of the Sphere's animals, though he didn't recall seeing anything large enough to cause so much racket. A rhino or elephant or something equivalent? When the form appeared, Nick couldn't help laughing.
"Doctor!" he called happily.
"Come on, Nick, no time to waste!" the Doctor replied, grabbing Nick with one arm and Roger with his other - not stopping his own sprint. Nick stumbled but managed to keep up.
So much for a reunion, he thought. Hey Doctor, how's it going, you wouldn't believe what me and your mate Roger have been doing...
"What is this?" the Doctor was asking Roger between gasps of air. He let go of Roger's arm, trusting the Omnisci to keep up, so he could dig through his coat pockets.
Roger paused to alter his form, becoming something vaguely like a leopard (how Nick knew what a leopard was, he couldn't really say, but at the moment it didn't seem important enough for him to worry about). The Omnisci leaped smoothly through the air to catch between his teeth the object the Doctor had taken out of his pocket and tossed over his shoulder.
Roger grew a pair of humanoid arms below the base of his neck to take the object out of his mouth. He gave it a single look before starting in surprise and coughing in embarrassment. "It's a brain," he said. "An artificial brain."
"And?" the Doctor prompted.
"And it's the central control computer of our network of genetic manipulators."
Nick frowned, somehow managing to pay attention to the conversation despite his concentration on running. "Why not use a stellar computer?" he asked. He figured the things must be insanely powerful after all.
"We do. The computer is barely macroscopic, surrounded by layers of shields, and it is inside this." Roger easily kept up with the Doctor and Nick even as he stared at the small metal sphere he gripped in the almost-human hands. "It contains its owner's brain patterns and the power of life and death over the entire galaxy."
"Oh," Nick said. Intelligently.
"And that power has just been abused," Roger added heavily, dragging his attention away from the thing he held to watch where he was going. He just avoided running head first into a thick, oily purple trunk of some tree.
"What?" Nick said.
Roger sighed. "Since my people and the Doctor last met a handful of weeks ago, we've come to the attention of a variety of ... unpleasant races. The rest of my people had voted to use the genetic manipulators to kill them, get rid of the threat. I didn't agree, but why would they listen to only me? The process has been started; it's only a matter of time now."
"What?" Nick veered around the Doctor to leap at the Omnisci, rugby tackling him to the ground.
"I'm sorry, Nick," Roger said calmly, changing back to his usual humanoid form. "I didn't want this to happen, I told you that. And you know, I did take that nanite-filled bullet for you. Not to mention you snapped my neck earlier. Without my synthetic nervous system, I would have died."
Nick sat back. "I guess..." he started. The Doctor hauled him to his feet with one hand, pulling Roger unceremoniously up by the other and taking the brain back from the Omnisci, shoving it again into his pocket.
"No time!" the Doctor roared at them, even as the Spheres around them started rumbling uneasily.
"What's happening?" Roger yelled back, staring around his home worriedly.
"I activated the escape engine!" the Doctor said. "It should..."
The Spheres lurched and blinked out of their former area of space.
* * *
The hundreds of defence satellites that silently patrolled the planet were totally unaware of the approaching threat. The blue lights of their propulsion engines blinked softly in the vacuum. Suddenly a strange rippling effect in space heralded the arrival of a collection of huge black spheres. The satellites quickly changed focus, pointing their blue ends at the Spheres and activating their weapons. Searing white beams of heat and energy cascaded from them, shining through space with a light more powerful than a star. The Spheres were quickly destroyed.
* * *
Nick was busy emptying his stomach again. He’d thought it’d been empty earlier, so by now he must be throwing up food from a few days ago. Probably some of the toast he hadn’t eaten this morning. There was a hot burning feeling in his throat as the bile bubbled to the surface and spilled out between his teeth. It hit the ground and steamed.
Nick looked up at the Doctor and Roger. They stood and looked down at him with concerned expressions on their faces. Nick wiped his mouth, cleaning off some of the acidic stomach juices with his sleeve. The others seemed perfectly fine. Probably some evolutionary thing.
The Doctor patted Nick on the shoulder, and Nick forced himself to look up, a weak and blurry vision of the landscape meeting his eyes. It looked like a frosty hell. They were inside some massive dome, and he could see the outside seemed like they were in space instead of on a planet. The ground itself was bumpy and rocky in texture but it seemed to be made out of metal. There were stalagmites sprouting out of it, with no stalactites to match.
The main thing Nick noticed, though, was the frozen glint of the entire surface. Everything was covered in little crystals of ice. Tiny fronds reached out across everything like scar tissue. This majestic icy kingdom, Nick suddenly noticed, was not where he’d expected to be.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Nova Mondas.” The Doctor replied.
Nick merely felt a weary sense of resignation. Bollocks! “How did we get here?”
“The space-folding engine was what dragged us here. It’s connected to remote units, and it drags those along rather than itself, like a chess-player rather than a chess-piece. I just happened to have a remote unit, inside our friend’s brain here.” The Doctor took out the metal ball from his pocket and tossed it casually from hand to hand. “It was easy enough to reprogram this one not to retain the same co-ordinates in relation to the rest of the remote units, but to put us … elsewhere.”
“But how did you know how to do that?” Nick asked.
“I used the nanites in my body to grow new brain structures in order to understand the technology quicker. I don’t know from whom the Omnisci … acquired ... this engine, but it’s incredibly advanced.” He threw a pointed glance at Roger, who just coughed embarrassedly.
“What exactly are we doing here then?” Roger sounded vaguely peeved. “It’s not much good escaping about twenty Cybermen on the Spheres only to go to their home planet."
The Doctor shot him a dark look, and glanced around. "Their home planet indeed! This planet belongs to one of the most important species in the Universe! Or rather it did until the Cybermen came along and..."
“He’s got a point, Doctor,” Nick said, forcefully interrupting the Doctor (after all, no point in getting sidetracked right now, Nick reasoned), “frying pans and fires and all that.”
“We’re here,” the Doctor said, “to save the space/time vortex.”
“Oh.” Nick felt sheepish all of a sudden.
“Besides,” said the Doctor, “the Spheres have probably been destroyed by the defence satellites by now.”
The Doctor stroked the surface of the nearest metal mound, completely missing the expression on Roger's face at that news, and it opened. The skin rippled like water, which looked very odd considering the rest of it looked like a rock. A spherical cavity formed and the Doctor stepped in.
“Err, Doctor,” Nick asked, “how did you do that?”
“Sorry, Nick, I thought I told you. The nanites gave me new brain structures and bodily control systems. I can interface with the liquid metal.”
Nick looked across at Roger; the Omnisci seemed to share none of his anxiety. It wasn’t as if Nick didn’t trust the Doctor to keep them safe. It was just that… actually he didn’t trust the Doctor to keep them safe. Roger on the other hand seemed to have completely forgotten the danger, the look Nick thought he'd glimpsed on the Omnisci's face already gone.
Actually, thought Nick, he's taking the Doctor’s genocide of his entire people rather well. Nick closed his eyes as the metal reformed into a bubble over their heads.
***
Spiders.
Spiders are cunning things; they build their webs and sit in the centre, waiting for something to fall into their trap. They do not hunt; that is too much effort. They prefer to wait, and to slowly pick off whatever they can get their appendages on.
They tug at the strings of their web, pulling them tighter and shaking them, trying to attract prey. They manipulate their web as though it is an extension of their limbs. They can feel everything on it, because it is part of them.
There is something on Nova Mondas that behaves like a spider. Something that uses reality as its web, connecting itself into it, becoming part of its surroundings to the extent that it knows and controls everything that happens.
It is a heavy and bloated thing, a malignant cancer in the structure of reality. It’s a growing tumour, which corrupts and consumes the surrounding tissue. It is the malicious brain behind the scenes. And it has noticed something. One of its lesser organs, the equivalent of one eye among millions, has confirmed its suspicions. The artefacts just destroyed in space were Omnisci habitats.
The illusion is safe; they may be reconstructed now for further use. The other artefacts, the stellar computational units, are too well shielded to be of further use. They may be retained for further investigation. Soon enough, everything will be a part of it.
* * *
The Doctor emerged from the bubble, walking out boldly into the tunnel-like corridor. At least he hoped it looked bold. Nick and Roger were stepping out behind him. The new brain structures had extended his consciousness into the area around him. It was very odd.
Perhaps it was just paranoia, or perhaps it was always like that, but he felt as though something was in there with him. As though something else much… bigger than he was inside the space around him too. Perhaps … perhaps it was the presence of the vortex on this level. Yes, yes, that must be it.
He could feel the two Cybermen approaching before he could see them. They emerged from beneath the liquid metal in the corridor, as if their inside bits were being coated with the floor as they came out rather than carrying their skin with them. It was impressive and disturbing at the same time.
One of the Cybermen raised an arm and the liquid peeled back as the internal structure once again formed a weapon. It fired a shot and Roger, who had grown a fur coat because of the cold, was hit square in the chest. However, he’d grown armour plating just in time and was even now forming new structures.
It hurt Nick’s eyes too look at him now. The Omnisci was still vaguely humanoid, but iridescent, glowing too brightly to look at properly. However, there were definitely things moving beneath the surface. He hovered towards one of the Cybermen, their fire passing harmlessly through him, and reached out his arm. It merely passed through the Cyberman’s chest, but as soon as it did the Cyberman stopped moving and began to rot on the spot. A burning effect spread out from where the arm had passed in, consuming layer after layer.
Roger approached the other one as Nick and the Doctor tried to run past. The glowing, vaguely humanoid outline that was Roger didn't seem to notice them, this time spreading his arms wide before closing them on the Cyberman, as though trying to hug it. Once again the Cyberman was destroyed.
The Doctor knew that Cyber Control would notice this, and that perhaps now was the time to try a distraction tactic or two, to keep the Cybermen off their backs. He reached his hand into his pocket, grabbed the metal brain and concentrated fiercely. The whole planet shook.
* * *
The satellites above Nova Mondas continued to scan the apparently dormant stellar computers. However, the computers unexpectedly received a transmission from the planet’s surface.
The shields, which prevented the stellar computers from destroying the Spheres through proximity, were deactivated, and a huge wave of heat and energy swept from the miniature stars.
The wave soared through space towards Nova Mondas, scorching the planet’s surface. The planet’s shields and defences were torn through easily, and the liquid metal, which covered the surface, was boiled. The oceans were nearly fully evaporated.
The shields reactivated.
* * *
“How did you do that?” Roger asked between deep breaths, his voice full of surprise.
“I used the ‘control brain’, Roger, to shut down the shields around the stellar computers. I then used the nanites to channel my thoughts into its control matrix.”
Nick’s body was so numb from running he couldn’t even feel his stitch anymore. He’d been listening to their conversation but now he was confused. “But I thought the brain had another person’s mind in it.”
“Ah,” said the Doctor. Helpfully. “There was a slight glitch in that program when I first met the man whose mind used to occupy this chunk of metal and fire. He couldn’t stop laughing. So I presume the Cybermen’s virus was affecting him. The shock of bodily death was probably enough to wipe his personality matrix.”
“Oh.” Sometimes Nick was sure half the stuff the Doctor said was just made up.
“Come on, Nick,” said the Doctor, “we don’t want to keep the entirety of space/time waiting.”
* * *
In space a big silver cylinder, one of millions, approaches the stellar computers. It seems to be entirely featureless, a huge prismatic mass with a mirror-like surface. The only defining feature is the big glowing ball of blue light at the bottom.
The light from the stellar computers is reflected perfectly off the contoured skin of the ship. It extends force fields around the stellar computers, and then activates its propulsion engine, dragging the stars away from Nova Mondas.
* * *
"Ah," the Doctor said, coming to a halt. Roger and Nick ploughed into him, unable to stop running so abruptly. "I think we're here."
The tunnel they'd been rushing through had ended in a huge, circular chamber. A glowing yellow-white light, that should have been blinding and yet wasn't, took up the middle of the room. It was so obviously the space/time vortex Nick didn't even bother making a comment.
"Hmm." The Doctor walked around the glowing light, studying it from what he presumably considered a safe distance. "As I said earlier, Nick, I was wrong; the vortex wasn't actually destroyed, it was just condensed into our reality. The Cybermen must now have the technology to reprogram it..." The Doctor turned away from the vortex itself to look at some of the instruments scattered around the chamber, surrounding the bright light. He muttered to himself for a couple minutes, then barked out, "Roger! Come help me. Please," he added as an afterthought.
Roger obediently strode over to help the Doctor read through the readings on various computers and control banks. Nick stayed where he was, trying to feel overawed at the sight of the space/time vortex existing so innocuously in the middle of this room. He couldn't be bothered though. After seeing a star indoors, this just didn't cut it. And he was tired.
He sat down, propping himself up against the burnished metal of the wall, and waited.
* * *
In another circular chamber in another part of Nova Mondas, the Cyber Controller sits on a throne made of liquid metal. The metal rises from what could be considered the floor, flowing and swirling like waves and eddies in a lake, forming itself into the semblance of the throne where the Controller sits.
Its enlarged head is supported by the interface, held up by the moving metal as the metal writhes and swirls around it, encasing the Controller in the constantly moving thick liquid. Its consciousness is absorbed into the metal, inhabiting every part of Nova Mondas, every part of the solar system, every Cyberman and Cyber-ship. It is the Cyber race; everything imbued with its very essence, and only surviving because of the validium circulating through its body.
Of course the Controller knows of the Doctor's plan. It has known of the Doctor's plans for a long time now. But its own plan is working perfectly to schedule.
* * *
“There was a very good reason for the Cybermen attacking the Omnisci. The space/time vortex, as I mentioned, has been condensed into our existential plane, a blob of six dimensions existing within five. They snagged a bit with a…” the Doctor paused his lecture, searching for the right word.
“Thingamybob?” Nick suggested helpfully.
“Exactly!” The Doctor beamed in triumph. “And to reprogram it you need some… imagination. It will mould itself to your thought processes. It’s very suggestible…”
“Stuff?” Roger suggested, grinning himself.
“Precisely!” The Doctor exclaimed in success. Nick and Roger exchanged smirks.
“However, the Cybermen’s brains are dead. No imagination. Their minds have been killed and replaced by computer systems. They couldn’t influence the space/time. They couldn’t trust anyone else to do it either, because whoever did it would be omnipotent for about half an hour, and he, she or it, could try to get rid of the Cybermen.”
“Why only half an hour?” Nick enquired.
“Because,” replied the Doctor, “after that their mind would be dissipated into the rest of space/time. Now, the only way to make a new vortex is to have a sentient being do it. Or, you could kill something else in there and the space/time would dissipate with his thought patterns. Make sense?”
“No.”
“Good. So the only way the Cybermen could make sure of the vortex being how they wanted it would be to gain control of someone’s mind. However, they couldn’t remotely control him because it would have the same ‘no imagination’ effect as the Cybermen’s brains. They needed to be able to influence the brain design in order to create thought channels to control their ideas. They didn’t have the bio-data knowledge for that, and they knew of only one species that did.”
“The Omnisci,” said Roger gravely, “my people.” He held himself very stiffly, his skin rippling oddly.
“Yes,” said the Doctor quietly, watching Roger in concern. Nick became aware for the first time of exactly how pissed Roger was about that. And Nick had questioned how much the Omnisci had cared.
“So what are we going to do?” Nick asked.
“I’m going to enter the space/time vortex, undo the damage the Omnisci have done, and then create a new vortex.”
“What?” Nick was furious. "Why do you have to do it?"
“Better that than having the Cybermen gain control of all time and space, Nick. But, more importantly, because I am the last Time Lord alive and my species has a unique understanding of space/time.”
Neither one noticed Roger step into the condensed vortex.
* * *
Roger suddenly seemed an inappropriate name. Being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent was an odd experience, but the over-riding sensation was one of … power, Roger supposed.
He chuckled. His people had renamed themselves the Omnisci because of their link to every life form in the galaxy. Now he’d gone one better than any of them. He was linked to everything in existence.
He was Omnisci.
He spotted a couple of temporal anomalies threatening to destroy the Universe out of the corner of his … eye? No, that wasn’t it. The closest word he could think of was potato. That wasn't quite right either.
He remembered, suddenly, something he was supposed to do. Oh yes, save the galaxy. Of course.
* * *
"Roger!" the Doctor shouted, but then he gave up on speaking to his friend as he and Nick finally noticed Roger merging with the vortex.
Or perhaps, the vortex was merging with Roger, as the white light seemed to flow into the Omnisci and set him glowing. He was hovering in mid-air, having nothing to stand on now that the vortex had, in a way, entered him. He didn't need anything to stand on, either.
Nick remembered to blink at last, his eyes watering painfully. He quickly reopened them to stare again at Roger. He could hear the Omnisci mumbling, he realized. As if the Universe itself were speaking to the man.
* * *
Omnisci extended himself throughout the entire galaxy, repairing every single individual's genes one at a time, saving them without their even realizing anything was wrong. It didn't take him long.
After he finished Omnisci realized he could have just gone back in time and made sure the weapon never worked in the first place. Not so omnipotent perhaps, not to have thought of that before going to all that trouble, but it didn't matter. He could feel time altering around him, fitting neatly into itself the changes he'd made. It felt like little pricks of ice, each little change, the same feeling he sometimes got from watching stars in the distance.
That had been the problem with the old vortex; it couldn't do anything itself. If it had been just a bit intelligent, with enough sentience to work things out for itself and with some imagination and ingenuity, it could easily have repaired itself after any changes to the timeline. The past could have been altered with no impact on causality, without blowing up the entire Universe from paradox.
Hell, he could do it himself right now.
* * *
For a while, the Doctor didn't notice anything wrong. He was too caught up in staring at his friend, at wondering what was happening to Roger, what Roger was feeling. But gradually he noticed tiny patches of black moving, sneaking beneath the light that surrounded and consumed the Omnisci. Snakes writhing beneath the skin of god.
"Oh no," the Doctor said, realization flaring in his eyes.
* * *
Omnisci was getting used to being omnipotent by now. He was quite liking it too, except that everything was so damned white and shiny, practically blinding him. Well, if he let it do that.
It could easily be changed.
He concentrated a little, and suddenly the universe around him became multi-coloured, swirls and flares of turquoise and deep purple and lemon yellow and crimson. He grinned to himself. Much better. And while he was thinking of it, he should install some security systems in the vortex, access codes perhaps, and weapons probes.
After all, he didn't want just anyone gaining access to the vortex.
* * *
"Nick," the Doctor shouted - the chamber was filled with light so overpowering it had its own noise, and Roger's thoughts were awfully loud - "was Roger ever infected by the nanites?"
Nick frowned. "Er, yeah!" he yelled back. "But it's okay, Doctor!" He jogged closer to the Doctor so he wouldn't have to shout so loudly. "Roger fought 'em off with his synthetic nervous system." He managed to make himself heard using a slightly lower pitch and volume, for which his throat was grateful. "They must have had a limited power source 'cause they shut down pretty quickly after that."
The Doctor scowled ferociously and swung back to look at the Omnisci hovering in the centre of the room. "I'm a fool!" the Doctor shouted, apparently to no one in particular.
Nick frowned in uneasy confusion, his own attention turning automatically back to Roger. He finally noticed what the Doctor had been seeing for a while, the infection taking Roger over, and his face paled as his stomach clenched. "Oh fuck," Nick whispered.
The Cybermen knew they were here; no wonder they had never tried to stop the Doctor, Nick and Roger. No wonder Roger had entered the vortex so easily. The Cybermen had wanted him to.
The Doctor desperately ran around the chamber, disconnecting control panels and the like. How could he have been such a fool? He knew the Cybermen could change their technology from a distance.
They must have stopped trying to convert Roger and converted the nanites in his body to instead reprogram his brain. Ingenious. Worst of all was the fact he’d actually been foolish enough to help them.
They’d gained access to all the Time information in his brain. He’d actually put the nanites in his brain after reprogramming them. If he hadn’t been so foolish they never would have been able to do this. They probably didn’t know much about what to do with the vortex and the Doctor had let it all go. If only he’d skived off history classes at school.
He had to hurry, while Roger’s body was still real enough to die. He pulled some wires out of the control panel and lobbed them at Roger’s body. They curled out like snakes and connected with his flesh.
The glowing white body convulsed and then exploded in a spray of dust. There was only a faint white mist in the middle of the room now.
The Doctor collapsed onto his knees, physically and emotionally exhausted. He was so angry. He reached his hand into his pocket, grabbing hold of the brain. He could still get back at the Cybermen. He linked his mind to the control matrix and thought angry thoughts.
* * *
Not only did the stellar computer’s shields deactivate, as a result of the Doctor’s angered thoughts, they went supernova. They expanded to consume nearly half the solar system with a wall of solid fire, and boiled the rest.
The shockwaves alone destroyed a factory planet not actually caught in the blast. It was an impressive sight in which many of the Cybermen’s forces were destroyed, and the entire solar system was left damaged.
Space was warped by the explosions, making the effects move faster than light and reaching the peak of the explosion in an hour rather than a few months. The Cybermen’s forces were severely reduced and damaged!
* * *
The Doctor raced up a flight of stairs onto another gantry and grabbed Nick’s arm. He explained his plan. He’d just detonated the stellar computers, and he couldn’t tell if the explosion was going to destroy Nova Mondas or not. They had to get out.
“If,” he continued, “we jumped into the remains of the vortex,” he indicated the fast disappearing white mist, “then we might be able to control our path to get out.”
“Really?” said Nick hopefully.
“No,” said the Doctor, “but it’s worth a try over anything else that might happen.”
“Okay.” For Nick, it was good enough. Considering what they’d been through today, coming out of it alive hardly seemed a challenge.
They both stood on the gantry and looked at the mist beneath them.
“Ready?” asked the Doctor.
“No,” Nick replied honestly.
“Good.” They both jumped. The fall to the mist was short but after that …well.
Nick could’ve sworn they’d spent years actually falling from the edge of the mist into the vortex.
After what seemed like the first century he realized the noise at his side was the Doctor, shouting.
“Geronimo!"
* * *
The Doctor looked around in surprised awe. He hadn't expected it to be so ... colourful. A shimmering rainbow of blues and greens and reds and yellows ... beautiful. The vortex was alive with the colours, vibrant, excited and exciting.
"Doctor," somebody said.
The Doctor glanced down, seeing his arm extending miles into the distance. Nick, looking like a figure from one of those distorting mirrors at a circus, and comatose from the shock of entering the vortex, was still there, firmly held in the Doctor's hand. So it couldn't have been the young man speaking. But there couldn't be anyone else here...
"Doctor, it's me," the voice insisted.
The Doctor swallowed. "It can't be," he retorted. His voice sounded very small in the vastness of the vortex around him.
"Why did you kill me, Doctor?"
"I didn't want to," the Time Lord replied steadily. He had quickly regained his composure. "I had to save us. Save everyone."
"From what?"
"From you," the Doctor said. He sighed heavily. "You were programmed by the Cybermen to kill us all; it was my fault that I-"
"No," Roger interrupted. The Doctor turned around, but he couldn't tell how far he'd turned in this blank if colourful space, and he still couldn't see his old friend anywhere. "It's all right, Doctor. I was meant to die now."
"You were?" the Doctor was surprised by Roger's easy acceptance of his supposed fate.
"Yes. There are two timelines here, Doctor; one where I live and have a successful career, a prosperous life, happiness. And one where I die. We can't have both. I can't. I accept that."
The Doctor nodded, his face set. "Of course," he said. "A very ... mature attitude to take, Roger. I thank you, for everyone."
"You're welcome," Roger replied softly.
"We still need your help," the Doctor added after a short, awkward pause. "I need to undo the damage you've done to the vortex."
"Not to save your life? To help you survive?"
The Doctor looked down at Nick again, apparently sleeping peacefully. "No," he said firmly. "I can take care of that."
"All right," Roger said. "You and Nick should go. Don't worry; I'll take care of it. Everything will be as it should be."
"Thank you," the Doctor repeated quietly. He and Nick dissolved out of the colourful space.
"Now," said the disembodied voice quietly to itself, "to work."
* * *
The Doctor woke up first. Nick took a few more minutes, but when he opened his eyes he was grateful to find himself back in the shop. Even if he and the Doctor were both tangled up in the legs of that damned giant spider.
"Oh, hello," EnalcKarnip bustled into the room, carrying a few objects in his arms. He dropped them on the circular central body of the spider. "I was wondering if you'd come back soon." He surveyed the two newcomers as they struggled to stand up, only becoming more entangled in black, hairy legs. "I really must do something with this thing," EnalcKarnip sighed. He left the room again.
Falex came running in almost at the same time, bumping into EnalcKarnip, leaping over various spider legs, and landing on top of Nick. "Nick! Doctor! You're back! Where'd you go? What'd you have to do to stop the Cybermen? You did stop them, didn't you? Did you meet anybody interesting?"
"Oomph," Nick replied. He looked up at the Doctor over Falex's shoulder. The Doctor had been staring distractedly into the distance, but when he felt Nick's attention on him, he turned inquiringly to his friend, offering Falex a reassuring smile.
Nick couldn't help grinning himself. "It's good to be home," he said.
* * *
It was a few hours later that day, after night had fallen. Nick had managed to extricate himself from the spider's legs and Falex's questions, getting a shower, a nap, and at last something to eat. He was polishing off his last piece of toast, using the spider once again as a table, when the Doctor wandered into the room.
"Hello," Nick said. The shop was silent and peaceful, with EnalcKarnip and Falex already holed up in their beds. The room was also in shadow, as Nick's head seemed to find the general lack of light much more soothing. He'd settled on toast as something his stomach wouldn't protest.
"Hello," the Doctor replied. He sat down next to Nick without his usual energy and let out a deep, expansive breath. "Ah. You're right, Nick; it is indeed good to be home."
Nick nodded thoughtfully and swallowed his last mouthful of bread. "So what happened back there?" he said. "I kinda blacked out after we entered the vortex."
"Roger saved us," the Doctor answered. "He saved everyone. He was still under Cyber control, but he managed to save the galaxy, the Universe, and us. In that order."
"He did good," Nick said. He could pick up that the Doctor wasn't very happy, and he wasn't sure how to address that. He didn't want to pry.
"Yes," the Doctor managed to find one of his ferociously wide grins, "he did. How are you, Nick?"
"Fantastic," Nick replied in mild surprise, accepting the change in subject without argument. "Bloody refreshed. It's weird."
"Oh no, it's not," the Doctor assured him. "The vortex helped your cells partially regenerate."
"It can do that?" Nick answered doubtfully.
"Of course!" the Doctor nodded vigorously. "Did the same thing for me, in fact, clearing the nanites out of my body and erasing all the changes they'd made. I feel about two centuries younger."
Nick studied his friend more closely and had to admit that the Doctor's hair did look less grey. Well, a little bit at least. Unlike his beard, which had pretty much turned white. "So space and time will be all right, I take it?" he asked. "How much did Roger have to do?"
"Well, he couldn't fix everything. I doubt he could prevent the Cybermen gaining control over the vortex, but they shouldn't be able to go back and alter the past wily Nelly without the usual drastic consequences." The Doctor met Nick's eyes. "The Federation is safe." He looked away again before adding, "For now."
Nick nodded in understanding, a tendril of fear shivering up his spine. Neither wanted to add anymore to the conversation after that. The silence stretched between them unbroken.
Nick sighed, breaking the silence. “I need to get out of here. I’m going to go and see Alf and Vlaash. Catch you later.” The Doctor did not seem to hear, he was obviously caught up in his own thoughts. Nick sighed, and left the shop. He, too, had a lot to think about.
Once the door had closed, the Doctor blinked. He had a lot to do. And very little time in which to do it. But the outcome was quite clear in his mind. The Cybermen had to be destroyed once and for all.
Next Episode:
Reflections
CAST
Brian Blessed as The Doctor
Nick Pereira as Nick
Jonny Depp as Roger
Christoph Lopez as Cyber Controller
Ian Richardson as EnalcKarnip
and
Haley Joel Osment as Rahlena Falex
|
|
