I was heartbroken.
What happened to Mum? Where did she go? Who took her? WHAT took her? What does this strange weather have in connection to the missing persons all over the country?
I went out the front door where Doctor was fiddling with his little contraption, and told him that Mum went missing, and he looked at me with utter disbelief.
"They took her!?" he exclaimed, wrapping his hooves around me in a hug.
I eagerly returned the much welcomed hug, but then it dawned on me.
"Doctor..." I said apprehensively. "Who are they?"
His reply was even more disconcerting. "I don't know Derpy, I don't know."
Why did he just call me Derpy? That's the name I got mocked with in school, I thought I told him that? I eased my way out of the hug and gave him a look mixed with anger, confusion, amongst other things.
"Doctor, you sound like you know more behind what's going on. Besides, nobody calls me Derpy, you know that. So why did you? You've got some explaining to do."
He only let out a sigh, and looked down. "Mel, I haven't been completely honest with you. But please, I promise I will explain everything when we find your mother. You have my word, okay?"
I really wanted to do something I'd regret to make myself feel better, but I wouldn't know what, or what with. All I could do is sit on the concrete in shock and let Doctor talk. I know he's just trying to help, but it's like unless I'm doing everything in my power to find Mum then I feel useless. But it sounds like Doctor knows what he's talking about so it would be best if I listen to him.
"Fine. I sit and wait like a useless retard like always." My choice of words made Doctor figuratively trip over himself. He looked in my direction when I finished my sentence and accidentally fell into his device, knocking it over. Doctor just looked between it and me, trying to decide what to do.
Not for the last time today, he calmly walked over to me and gave me another hug.
"Don't worry, your mother will be fine. My machine will help find her. Please don't get sad, that makes me sad also."
I returned the hug with gusto, for what seemed an eternity until the clouds overhead rumbled some more. We both turned and looked up to them with a sense of foreboding in mind. Something was going on and neither of us knew what it is, or what it wants.
Doctor went back over to his machine and stood it up on its end. The shape could be described as cylindrical, but very loosely. There was tubes and wires coming from and going to all sorts of places. Blinking lights and switches adorned the mysterious gadget, idly blinking away like a cars indicator.
"Hm. You clever girl." Doctor mused, under his breath. I barely caught what he said.
"Pardon? I'm not clever."
"Oh, not you, Mel, the TARDIS." Then it dawned on him what he just said. "Not to say you're not clever, you are! I was just talking about the TARDIS, I swear!"
Seeing him flustered like that made me smile, if not only for a second. It was cute coming from him.
"Anyway, the machine here was supposed to tell me where the TARDIS is. But in this case, it's where it isn't that matters."
That went right over the top of my head. "Uuhhh... What?"
"When astronomers on earth scan deep space, they sometimes make astonishing discoveries. Dark Matter makes up 95% of the universe, it's the matter that you can't see but is the black stuff against the night sky. You can see it, but don't know it's there."
"How can you see something if you don't know it's there, Doctor?" More of his nonsensical babbling. I just gawk at him with a look that screamed WHAT.
"A perception filter in this case." He remarked.
"Explain." Doctor went to open his mouth before I added something else. "In English, not science-y mumbo jumbo." I said with a motion of my hands on the mumbo jumbo part.
"It'll sound upside down, but I'll try my best. If I had a perception filter on me, it would let you shift your field of view. You know I'm there, but the device makes you look elsewhere as if your brain doesn't want to acknowledge I'm standing in front of you."
"So... a device that makes you see what it wants you to?" I queried.
Without saying a word, Doctor pushed a couple buttons and threw a switch, and that sent out some sort of pulse. I don't know what it was, but it made me feel dizzy and nauseous. Nothing that I couldn't shake off.
"Now, would you follow me?" Doctor casually started trotting around to the back of the house. I followed purely out of morbid curiosity. I shut my eyes shaking my head to clear the leftover nausea and try to realign my eyes, and when I opened them there was an object sitting in the middle of the grove of trees out the back of the house.
When I first found Doctor, this is the same area he came out of but I didn't notice this thing there before. several feet tall and half as wide with double doors and a bulb sitting atop the roof. It had a black plaque with white lettering on it.
Police call box. Doors open outward.
One feature struck me as it's most prominent feature. The colour. The shade was hard to discern. Too dark to be described as sky blue or ocean blue, too light to be described as navy blue. It was almost a shade of it's own. TARDIS Blue. A great big, blue, police call box. Why did I never notice this before?
Oh, right. The perception filter.
Doctor hopped the fence and ran right up to it. I followed closely behind and when I met him just a few feet from the box, he was stroking it with a hoof. Weirdo.
He put his hooves on the handles, and pushed inwards. But the sign says they open outwards! None the less, he goes in and immediately closes the door behind. Not two seconds later, Doctor reopens the door and pokes his head out.
"Coming in?" he asks.
Utterly dumbfounded by the situation at hand, I grip one of the handles and push the door in with a click, swinging it open and stepping inside the door frame. I immediately stepped back out in fear with erratic breathing. Doctor poked his head out yet again.
"Yes I know, it does that to people sometimes."
"H- how!?" was all that managed to escape from my lips.
Doctor walked out and took my hand, pulling me back inside and closing the doors behind us. I stared in awe at my surroundings. For something that is barely two and a half metres tall and just over a metre wide, there is no way to describe the insides. All that comes to my mind is, "It's smaller on the outside..."
"Funny. People say it's usually bigger on the inside."
Doctor went over to the console and started flipping switches and pressing more buttons, finally throwing a big lever. All of a sudden, the entire thing started shaking and humming. Being off balance doesn't do me any good especially with my eyes the way they are, and the next thing I knew after I try to make a grab for the railing around the console, my hand misses and I fall flat on my back and pass out.
I don't know how much time passed, but I wake up with the Doctor standing over me looking me in the eyes with our noses practically touching. He helped me up, but something seemed different about him. After a minute of clarity and dealing with my eyes, I can see he's wearing a white collar that look like shirt lapels with a green tie hanging from it. His rear has the image of an hourglass on it, and it seems he's substantially more grown up now, three or four times the size he was while I had him.
"Wake up!" he exclaims. "We still have to rescue Julianne, Mel!"
I had completely forgotten about Mum. Immediately my mind reels back to thoughts of her. "Where is she!?" I scream.
"Calm down. I managed to find her, but..." he trailed off, looking to the floor with flattened ears. "You best see for yourself."
He nodded in the direction of the door, and I went over to them. Looking back over to Doctor with confusion, he gave an assertive nod to assure me it'll be alright, and I cracked the door open. The sound assaulted my ears and I just listened for a moment.
It sounded like a metalworking factory. Periodic hissing from pistons and whatever was producing copious amounts of steam, the sound of rhythmic clonking of metal on metal; almost like a military parade, grinding, the sounds of saws in the distance, and one other thing struck me deep.
Screaming.
I could hear screaming now and then. I shot an incredulous look back to Doctor and I opened the door. What I saw shook me to the core from sheer and utter disbelief.
Rows upon rows upon rows of robots marching in a far too organized manner, like everything they did was choreographed well in advanced and drilled into their heads like the army. The robots themselves were unlike anything I had ever seen, both from TV or in games. What could be describes as their armor was plated; covering the arms, fore-arms, chest, legs, and the helmet appeared not to have a seam. The helmet had eye holes, a narrow mouth slit, and it looked like it was wearing a paid of headphones. The big chest-plate itself had a raised circular area emblazoned with a giant "C"
My breathing rapidly quickened when I managed to see in the distance rows of normal people dressed in every day clothing being marched into round rooms without a roof or ceiling of any description. Above the room itself looked like an operating area that lowered when someone entered the room, which was causing the screaming.
When I heard my last scream, I shut the door and plastered my back against it. "WHAT THE HELL IS OUT THERE!?" I screamed at the Doctor, with what I just saw taking it's time to fully register in my brain. Those screams...
"Cybermen." was the only answer he gave me.
"Cybermen?" I said flatly with a dead tone in my voice.
"A robotic exoskeleton covering segmented soft tissue."
Maintaining a firm gaze on Doctors eyes while slowly walking in his direction, I say "What does that even mean and what has that got to do with my mother?"
"I'm sorry. So, so sorry, Mel."
My gut sank like the weight of the Titanic.
"My, my mu- my mum, is sh- she..."
"I don't know yet. If she isn't, we need to find her and put a stop to what they're doing."
"Pray tell, what are they doing Doctor?" the last word rolls off my tongue, dripping of venom.
"They're marching people into those chambers, and pumping out Cybermen. It's a metal exoskeleton, but they cut out the brain and any other useful parts, and put them into one of these suits."
Those words fell on deaf ears. I didn't want to believe how horrible this whole situation was, let alone accept that the brain of my mother was inside one of those things. At least it explains all the disappearances lately. The Mothership must have been parked above the clouds as a guise so they can kidnap people and turn them into Cybermen. It doesn't make any sense, who would want to do this?
"H- how do we stop them and save my mum?" As much as I hated to think it, but Doctor was right. There was no way to know if Julianne had already been converted, and it tore my heart into a million pieces just thinking what would I do if she had?
"I can get us to the main control room easily enough, and there we can hopefully shut down the whole operation with any luck."
My voice raised significantly this time. "And with all this technology at your fingertips you can't so much as scan for her? How useless is this thing!?"
Ignoring my poor choice of words in my last sentence, Doctor rubbed a hoof under his chin as if to think, and spoke with a less-than-hopeful tone.
"I might be able to, but if she's already been converted then it won't show up anything. If she's still in line, waiting, then we'll be able to get her." He then proceeded to go over to the console and pull a monitor around to his level that is on a swivel, push a few buttons and stare intently at the screen. "And it should just... AH HA! She's still alive!"
My heart leapt and a huge smile spread on my lips from ear to ear. "She's still alive!?"
"Yes, and she's in line for the chambers. We need to get to her soon."
"Ain't no metal sons-a-bitches gonna take my mother!"
Doctor couldn't help but snicker at me saying that, he never took me for the type who would swear like that. Next stop was the control room of the ship, but this time I made sure to hang onto something before Doctor threw the lever making the TARDIS shake and rumble around. I couldn't tell if we has landed or not, but everything seemed still.
"Did it stop?"
"Yes, we've teleported to the control room now. The Cyber Leader will be out there, so we need to be careful. He controls the rest of the army and can make them do stuff at the drop of a hat if he so desires. Let me go first." With that, Doctor gingerly opens the doors and stepped out. Not two seconds later he calls back for me. "You... might want to come see this."
I step out the door after him, and am greeted by an unholy sight. Surrounded by four cybermen on both his left and right stood the Cyber Leader. His metal armor, exoskeleton or whatever you want to call it is significantly different. Notably is the helmet, it's completely see through. I can see his brain, or rather the brain of the unlucky soul that it once belonged to. The rest of his armor was a mixture of night black plates overlapping one another like plate mail on a knight.
One extremely futuristic knight.
"DOCTOR?" the leader began. "WHEN DID YOU GAIN THIS EQUINE FORM?!"
"Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff... Anyway, you've got to stop what you're doing here, you're killing innocent people!"
The leader stared blankly at him for several moments. Well, I don't know about staring since I can't exactly see its face. On that thought, I doubt I would want to.
"YOU AND YOUR COMPANION WILL BE ASSIMILATED. TAKE THEM TO THE CONVERSION CHAMBERS."
My gut dropped at the thought of becoming one of those monstrosities. Two cybermen promptly started walking forward and Doctor braced himself. For what, I don't know, but that will be revealed in the next two seconds. He turned on the spot, raised his hind legs and kicked one cyberman square in the middle of its chest, caving it in and sending it flying back a few feet. During that, the second cyberman managed to grab a hold of my arm and start pulling me toward the door at the rear of the room.
"DOCTOR!" I cry out.
By this stage two more cybermen had gone after him, but Doctor is faster. He ripped out a piece of the robot, the big "C" from the middle of its chest and rushed over to buck at the cyberman pulling me in an unwanted direction with ungodly strength that Hulk would be envious of. Doctor managed to kick out its leg, crippling the robot.
"STOP THEM!" commanded the leader.
The remaining six cybermen began their practiced march toward us.
"Quick, to the TARDIS!" he called, running back towards the blue box. We barely managed to get inside and shut the door before they start pounding on the doors
"Won't they get through!?" I exclaim, scared utterly shitless.
"Not if their lives depended on it." Doctor had to do a double take on his words. "Poor choice of words but you understand."
I slump against the railing, sinking down to the floor to catch my breath. "What's that thing you got there, Doctor?" I said, motioning to the amalgam of metal and wires he's holding in his mouth.
He put it on the console, got out his screwdriver and pointed it at the piece of the Cyberman he ripped from its chest.
"This is an emotional inhibitor. When they put you in the suit, this little device wipes all emotions and memories, essentially turning you into a mindless robot." Those words were a little more fitting. "Excuse me, I need to go and get a connector for this to the console from another room, I won't be a minute."
He got down off the main platform around the console and disappeared from my field of view into an adjacent room. Curiosity got the better of me and I went to take a look at the inhibitor. I pick it up off the console and turn it over a few times. Nothing special about it, really. Just a few circuit boards, wires, tubes, and a few vials of some kind of fluid. The thing is heavy though, about a kilo at least. I hear trotting coming from around the corner, signalling to me Doctor had found what he's looking for and is returning.
When he came into view in the door frame not two metres from me, the device in my hands decided it was going to have a mind of its own and leapt out of my hands and wrapped the various wires and tubes around my face. I instantly drop to the floor on my knees, screaming loudly. It didn't hurt, but boy am I scared as hell having this thing clamp itself around my face.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes by your eyes. I didn't recognize any of these memories. Brief flashes of a technicolour world I had never been to flooded my vision. I saw clouds whipping my with legs stretched out in front. Are they even my legs? I don't remember any of this! The next thing to cloud my mind was of a tiny little lavender coloured, blonde hairy thing wrapping herself around my leg saying "I love you mummy." Mummy?! I'm 17! After that came more clouds, only this time something multi-coloured knocked me off course and I could feel myself plummeting, then everything faded to black.
All I heard in those last moments was a voice, and some buzzing. This feeling is weird. I'm totally unconcious but it's almost like I can tell what's going on. I can feel the thing being peeled away from my face, then I heard a voice saying "Let's get you home."