(MAIN RANGE): High Rise - Part Two
(MAIN RANGE): High Rise
Part Two
Starring Alison Brie as The Doctor, Gillian Jacobs as Paige and Paul Clayton as Colchester
Warning: Body Horror
Previously On Doctor Who...
The Doctor, trapped on earth without a TARDIS, went a bit nuts and bought an expensive apartment on sheer impulse. As her companion Paige tried to sort her out of her emotional depths, she discovered the Doctor wasn't the only one. With the help of Mr. Colchester, Torchwood agent, (and his hubby Colin) they uncovered a series of murders in the apartments...all serving as a cover for Cybermen experimentation on the tenants. And The Doctor, is first on the bill.
Chapter One
"Doctor." Paige said, breathlessly. "What are they doing to you?"
The Cybermen continued to drill into her neck. The Doctor continued to smile, but she didn't say anything for a while, until the Cybermen took something out of her neck and then put something back in. She then spoke out with her newly replaced vocal chords. "Paige. I'd like you to meet my new friends. These are the Cybermen."
These Cybermen that stood nearby the Doctor were positively horrible. Misshapen figures wrapped in white cloth with metal grafts sticking out from within. At certain points in the seams, you could see pieces of fleshy matter that had not yet been replaced. Half of their face was cloth and the other was a stylized metal mask and handlebars that people knew well, the teardrop like eye. They were all clearly designed for the conversion of other people. They had syringes of the same viscous liquid Paige found in Mrs. Lumsdale's room connected to their knuckles, almost like claws. They were all of similar design, but none were uniform. They all had different instruments, different sections of their arms, heads, chests and legs were replaced with metal that looked sharp and horrid. There were bits of blood on the cloth, but not much.
They definitely stretched what is okay to be included in a comedy series.
Colchester gritted his teeth. "Yvonne told me about you. Invaders that tore her dimension to shreds, all in the name of progress. There is every reason to be afraid, Paige, don't let them-"
One of the Cybermen moved over. It was almost a glide, with light metal clicking of it's wires and feet connecting to the floor creating a disconcerting noise. "Designation Paige Cameron." It practically sang the way it enunciated it's speech. A peaceful sounding voice lay behind it all, yet it really only made it seem worse. "You believe we are frightening. It is said that design we possess evokes primal fear in humanoids. We can take away that fear. Take away your insecurity and fallacy."
"Yeah, you're right. You look absolutely vile. It's good. It's sometimes nice to have a reminder that the guy you're fighting is a rotten bad guy." Paige yelled.
"Convert her." The Cyberman suddenly grated.
The Cybermen slithered forward, and Colchester took his gun out of his pocket. He fired into the Cyberman sliding towards them. He was a good shot. He hit the chinks in the Cyberman's armor, the clothed parts of the figures, but they continued to drag themselves towards them. It was as effective a bullet was on a human, but the Cybermen felt no pain, and it hardly slowed them down.
Colin gritted his teeth. "This does not appear to be going well!" He said, overwhelmed and stating the obvious.
Sean McGuire yelled as one of The Cybermen pulled him back inside.
With a bit of effort the rest of them were able to gradually get themselves out into the hallway, but the Cyberleader grabbed Colin and sliced at him with his needles before they moved off.
"The remaining Cyber-units will capture them shortly." A Cyberman said to the leader.
The Cyberman felt no emotion at this information, yet something deep in his computer banks compelled him to reply a bitter "Excellent."
The Cybermen moved back towards the Doctor and the now captured Sean McGuire.
"We have already begun conversion on this one."
"Excellent. Proceed to modify the eyes."
A voice opened up from the heavens.
WOAH, STOP RIGHT THERE. THESE GUYS ARE FAR TOO DARK AND HORRIBLE FOR THE GENERAL THEME OF THE NCJDDAS AND IT'S ASSOCIATED MAIN RANGE! I, THE MORAL GUARDIAN, LIKE THE BLACK OR WHITE GUARDIANS, BUT Y'KNOW, WITH MORALS, I DECLARE THAT THESE GUYS HAVE TO BE TONED DOWN.
"Hey! There's a reason we haven't appeared before in the NCJDDAS and it's associated Main Range!" A Cyberman proclaimed, because now the fourth wall had been shattered so they could say something. "Everything that makes the Cybermen cool as a monster as compared to like, the Daleks or other robotic like villains, is horror based. Look at the best Cybermen stories. Spare Parts, World Enough and Time, Haunting of Villa Diodati, Tomb of The Cybermen, all of these are horror based in some way, be it a classic hammer horror, or in the case of the mondasians, a grisly medical one. It is difficult to write the Cybermen in an effective way without making them more, as you say, horrid, because that is in fact their appeal, which makes them bad to use in any story that does not delve somewhat into the horror aspect, as then you just get a worse version of the Daleks!" The utter audacity of pointing this out impressed the Moral Guardian. As...much as you can impress a Moral Guardian.
OKAY, FINE. BUT I'M WATCHING YOU.
"Ugh." The Cyberman said as the Moral Guardian disappeared. "There goes the serious creepy mood we were setting up. We have to make up for lost time. You, activate the eye drills-"
NO EYE DRILLS.
"Awwwwwww...."
Chapter Two
Paige, Colchester and Colin ran through the hallway and Colin collpsed.
"Colin!" Paige exclaimed.
"01000001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101111 01100100 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01100011 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110000 01100101 01101111 01110000 01101100 01100101 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110" Said Colin in an exuberant tone.
"Damn!" Colchester snapped. "One of the Cybermen must have got him. Injected him with nanomachines."
"That's... God. Why do I get the messed up stories?" Paige exclaimed, wringing her forehead.
Colin was not otherwise affected in any way. "01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01101111 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00111111" He said in a jovial manner.
"Well, evidently the conversion process was incredibly minor. We don't have enough time to do a full examination. Let's just hope it doesn't progress."
"01100111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110011 01100101 01111000!"
Colchester, Colin and Paige continued to move, and quickly rushed into a nearby fancy apartment suite.
"What are you doing in here?" A brown, long haired woman asked.
"Running from aliens." Paige replied.
"Quiet." Colchester hissed.
"01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01110011 01100001 01101001 01100100 00100001!" Colin said, unhelpfully.
The Woman placed her head in her hands.
Paige looked out the door's glass peephole.
Outside, they saw the Cybermen walking past. They did that horror movie thing where they briefly looked directly at Paige, not knowing they were there, but adding a moment of pathetically inflated tension, and they walked by.
"I'm sorry madam, for the intrusion." Colchester said. "What's your name?"
"Rebecca White." She said. "What was that about aliens?"
"It was...look, I'm not very good at the social aspects, so just allow me to inform you you are in grave danger from Surgical Cyborgs."
"Oh, the Cybermen?" Rebecca asked. "Those aren't aliens. They're humans." She said sadly. "And my husband is responsible for them."
Chapter Three
It was three weeks ago. I lived poor, with my husband, and children. Destitute and dying on a forgotten street of London, it a decaying hut of a building by the River. One day, while my children played by the River, they found a metal hand sticking out of the water. It was a man. He was rusted and worn and bleeding, and they took him home. We did the best we could to assist him, but although he was strong, over the course of a week, he slowly died. He spoke to my husband about how he could make the world better. That human corruption and hatred of each other, the gap between the classes, is unjustifiable, and that there was one way to stop it. He taught my husband how to repair him, which was easy, for my husband was a mechanic, but even though my husband grew better at the task, he died.
The man that died in our hut wasn't anything more or less than a man. We trusted him, and he died. He felt so incredibly human. And my husband confided in me. He couldn't get the ideas that the man had told him out of his head. So he began working on a project to create a metal man like him.
My Husband grew moodier and more and more irritated as he began to practice grafting the machinery to himself. I was scared. He mottled his own arm to fuse the machinery to it. He was now hideous, but he promised the masks would soon fix that. Once he had finished with his arm, he began to practice on others.
I thought it was good, at first. But the skills he learned repairing that man...when he began to take his friends off the street to begin practicing on them...the results were horrific and disastrous. Inhuman monsters that suddenly knew things beyond our wildest dreams. And those were the ones that survived. They Spoke of being connected to the great Cyber pathweb, and how they would reform this world to their liking.
We, even my husband, had only wanted to help. But my husband was no longer that man I fell in love with. Cold, manipulative, and violent. His work, his surgeries on the innocent. I had to get my children away from him. When I went home that night, he had finished his first mask. A teardrop face, of metal and cloth moved towards me.
I ran.
He found me. He found the children. He said that he had to create a world without hate. His new creatures, his automotons built this tower within hours. They worked at superhuman speeds. Any who objected suddenly were gone, and the worker's ranks grew. They spoke of a psychic interface. None of them were anything like human anymore. They said that they would come. That everyone would want to come. And that the surgeries would commence.
I am as of yet, not fully converted, but I feel the dullness growing in me by the day. Every time I wake up, I am less human. And I am ever so tired.
Chapter Four
"We're here to stop it." Colchester said. "Everything will work out fine."
"Yes. We're going to help you." Paige said. "We have to. And as far as I'm aware, you're our best bet."
"What?" Rebecca asked, morosely.
"You're the only one that has seen the surgeries. You...I know it's a long shot, but you might know some kind of weakness."
"This really doesn't sound like we have much of a chance." Rebecca said.
"01001110 01101111 01101110 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110011 01100101 00100001 00100000!" Colin cheered.
"Right then. Well, Colchester, Colin, Rebecca, we're going to kidnap a Cyberman." Paige said determinedly.
* * *
The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Doctor thought this, over and over, attempting to imprint the words into her head itself, as if that would make it true. In a way, it even did.
The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord.
DO NOT RESIST. WE ARE IN CONTROL.
Oh, really? We'll see how long it'll take for me to break out. I just need to wear your mental control down. I bet on less than an hour.
The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord. The Cybermen cannot take over a time lord.
* * *
The Cybermen stalked through the hallways, opening doors. "Catalog all guests." It sang.
It eventually opened the door to Rebecca's apartment.
"Designation Rebecca White. Human. Former Mate of Designation Cyberleader."
"Yeah," said Rebecca, turning around. "Already chipped, mate. Already being converted."
"Surgical Conversion has now become mandatory. You will come with us."
"Now!" Rebecca yelled, rolling under her bed as Colchester, Paige and Colin stepped out from behind the apartment door and came at the Cyberman with a empty shotgun, a lamp, and a baseball bat. Eventually they beat it into collapse.
"Alright, guys." Paige said determinedly. "Let's see what we can do to reverse the effects."
Colchester put on plastic gloves and attempted to remove the cloth and metal mask to reveal a mottled and pale face, covered with intravenous tubing.
"Oh my god," Colchester muttered. "It's Sean."
Paige covered her mouth. She couldn't look.
"Let's see if we can remove the emotional inhibitor."
"Hopefully." Rebecca said. "It's an early conversion, they haven't cut off bits of the brain yet."
"What the fuck- what is with these guys?" Paige sighed. "You know, the adrenaline and all that is keeping me from having a nervous breakdown, but like, it is still very much a possibility here."
"Stay even keeled, Ms. Paige. Now, Rebecca. Anything else?"
"You need to seperate the pacemaker from the central chest unit so it doesn't automatically kill him when the inhibitor shuts off." Rebecca said. "And quickly. We don't have much time."
* * *
The Doctor tore off the piece of metal that had been melded to above her right eye. Her skin was irritated, but thankfully not torn. She breathed heavily. Now. She thought. My mind is free again. What can I...
The Cyberman that Colchester had shot, now bandaged like a mummy with silver plastic shielding walked into the room.
The Doctor struggled to tear off her Cyberized implements and run, but the Cyberman was already upon her, and now worked to strap her into a gurney-like bed.
"You'll never control me, you lot." The Doctor said. "I'll always have the spark needed to break out."
"We shall see." The Cyberman sang, and it moved over to the table. It took off one of it's gloved fingers and replaced it with a scalpel.
* * *
The wiring was a web of incomprehensibility, thought Colchester, as he parsed through it was the pliers Rebecca had given him. Over the years, he'd even kept the Torchwood hub running. If he could do that, why, he could do anything, really.
"Alright," Rebecca said. "Now carefully remove that disc from the chest unit at the same time as I remove the neck chip."
Colchester nodded.
"3...2....1...." They moved at the same time, and Sean's body pulsed as if it had been hit by a shock.
"Did it work?" Paige asked.
"01001001 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101!" Colin said, almost angry.
Sean's lips twitched. "Oh my god. What have they done to me." It was if he was trying to have an emotional reaction, but all that could come out was the robotic voice that switched between a strange song and robotic grating. "Oh my god."
Paige tried to stay calm and soothing, which she wasn't great at. "S-Sean. Everything is gonna be alright, you hear? We're trying to save you. We just need you to give us information... you're still plugged in to the Cyber-database. I need you to think hard, and tell me what they have planned for the Doctor."
Sean's eyes leaked oily fluid. "I can't. It hurts...Everything hurts..."
"Paige," Colchester said cautioningly. "I'm not sure how much longer we can keep him awake."
"We can help you, Sean. Just...just try."
"Th-The Doctor...The Doctor is in the penthouse."
Paige bit back tears. "Thank you. You can rest now, Sean. I'm- I'm sorry.."
"...Please... stop them from doing this...oh, god...o oh god.."
Sean's chest unit emitted a long cold flatline, and his limbs went limp.
They all stayed silent.
Chapter Five
The Cybermen surrounded the Doctor. Their leader, the man that was once Rebecca's husband stepped forward. Similar to the others but his robotic eyes with a deadly red glow. He spoke softly, and unlike the others. "Doctor, you represent untold opportunities for us. We will finish with your conversion shortly." He whispered.
The Doctor struggled. "I've told you once, I've told you twice. Beat you on Mondas. Beat you on parallel worlds. Beat you on the moon. Beat you when-"
"That was the past. This is now. Prep her for the cranial surgery."
The Cybermen strapped her to the table and one of them revved a small drill.
"You ever been to an Olive Garden? There's a really great Olive Garden down on Fifth Avenue-" The Doctor quipped, worriedly-
* * *
Colchester, Colin, Rebecca and Paige had snuck up to the Penthouse door. It was guarded with the Cybermen with the needles for hands. "We can't fight those guys-" Paige hissed. "Otherwise they'll convert us with their weird Cyber-drugs and we'll be speaking binary and/or having no emotions!"
"Yes, I'm definitely glad you fixed that." Said Colin. "Doing that was incredibly annoying."
"Well, we don't currently have any way to defeat them then. Guns don't work, they don't feel it, we can't beat them unconcious like last time without being needle stabbed, which I rather don't fancy-" Colchester grumbled.
"Well, we sneak in." Colin said. "Rebecca and I, we have the chips in the necks, right? We go up there, do a bit of acting chops, say we got some prisoners an' all that and they let us in."
"To convert us!" Paige hissed.
"I'm not sure how well I can do that. I'm dangerously close to the programming taking over. I haven't mentioned it, but it's a constant battle, reiterating Cyber-protocol might start something up." Rebecca said worriedly.
"Well, do any of you have a better idea?" Colin asked. "And please say yes."
* * *
"How Do You Do, Fellow Cyberman!" Colin said, walking up to them doing the robot. "We have come due to Cyber protocol-"
Rebecca gritted her teeth. "Cyber protocol 6616, for the conversion of all incomplete humans." Rebecca sounded serene, like the computer on Star Trek. The Cybermen were clearly not impressed by Colin, but Rebecca gained their attention."
"State designation."
"Designation Rebecca White, Conversion Donor 00248" Rebecca said, getting continually more robotic.
Paige crossed her fingers.
The Cyberman examined them intently. "Enter."
The Door opened, and as quietly as possible, the four of them entered the penthouse apartment.
* * *
"Your next job could be in Cyber-" One of the cybermen said conversationally, as Paige, the Colchesters and Rebecca entered.
They snuck closer, and they could begin to see the Doctor, and the various Cybermen readying for a final conversion.
Rebecca wasn't doing well. She was shaking.
"Rebecca, are you alright?" Paige whispered.
"Cyber- Cyber Protocol- Cyber- Yes, Sorry, Paige, I'm alright." She whispered back.
"This. This Unit is experiencing an emotional malfunction." The Cyberleader said. "I..I sense a mind entering the Cyber Network."
" Rebecca." The Cyberleader whispered, awed, turning around towards them.
The Doctor yelled. "Paige! ....Three People I don't know! No longer converted, but, well, unpopular decision with these guys. They are incredibly nasty folk, you know that, right?"
The Cyberleader silently walked towards Rebecca, flexing it's needle-claws.
Rebecca stood rigidly. Colchester aimed his gun at the Cybermen, swerving between them.
The Cyberleader moved directly next to Rebecca, and stared her in the eyes.
Rebecca's eyes watered. "Ted, it's me."
The Cyberleader stabbed her.
Chapter Six
"NO!" Paige yelled, rushing forward, but Colin stopped her. Rebecca crumpled to the floor.
"The Emotional Malfunction has been remedied."
No. Paige thought. She had liked Rebecca. There was no way that she could die- no way she could be gone in an instant like that.
The Cyberleader walked over to a tank of strange liquid tied into devices. He no longer spoke softly and intimately, his cold monotone was near deafening.
"At times conversion is inconvenient. The effort extolled to convert is greater than the reward gained by a new Cyber-unit. Of course, you know this. You saw what we did to Sarah Lumsdale. An investigative reporter, one of the few who saw through the perception filter and the distractions we had organized. Deletion was necessary. As it now is for you."
Colchester saw his chance. He fired into the tank, which poured out blasting the leader into the wall, and filling the room in a thick mist.
Colchester rushed the gurney, using it to shove two Cybermen into the wall.
One of the Cybermen rushed Colin, and lifted him to the wall. Just as it reached Colin's neck, the Cyberman coughed and collapsed. It had accidentally touched Colin's cheap gold flake credit card. He had got it for Colchester as a joke because he knew he would hate how tacky it was.
Now it had saved his life.
Another Cyberman hurled itself at Paige. Colin threw the credit card and struck it right between the metal eyes.
"This is over." The Doctor said, getting up. "You had a good innings, weird distracting hotel with psychic filters. I bet half the distracting stuff you threw at the guests is just your psychic filter machine. The thing Colchester just smashed. We're walking about in psychic mist right now. Either way. Impressive stuff, but you were on your last legs to begin with. There's a reason you guys don't usually use as much plastic and cloth. But I do have to say, you did outdo yourself. You were impressively awful today. You really made me mad. And every spot of blood that you've spilled today, I swear, I'm going to take to you tenfold. I will free every single person I can from your monstrous designs. You aren't going to convert one more person. I'm the Doctor, and what you've done today is the opposite of that means. And so, every single Cyberman is gonna hear about this when I take them out. And they're going to know that the reason I did it was because of you."
"We will survive! We will survive!" Yelled the Cyber-leader before Colchester hit him hard with one of the oxygen tanks from the medical closets.
"Quickly!" The Doctor said. "Get to Rebecca. We need to perform surgery, now. This penthouse has all the makings of a hospital. We still have enough time."
Paige breathed heavily, exhausted. It was over.
Oh, god, it was over.
Epilogue:
Rebecca lived. Just barely, but she did. The surgery was a little messy. By the end of it, she had a different colored patch of skin where the stab wound had been on her chest, and a square hole on the back of her neck that used to have a chip in it. It still stung from time to time.
But she was fine.
The Doctor had left her the apartment complex, and a buttload of cash. She couldn't live in it, anymore. She had to have it redone, of course, but it soon did become a decent affordable place to live again, and soon, she could almost forget what it once had been. Almost. And it did stay open to the people of Cardiff, for them to no longer live in small shacks by the river where you could find
Her children had survived. One of them had needed a new arm, but that was more than any other person in the apartment building.
Including the Cybermen. The Doctor had rigged up a device that broadcast emotion to all of the Cyberman's emotion receptors. She angrily stomped out of the penthouse when she finished patching Rebecca up. That was the first day the Cybermen knew fear.
Rebecca knew she would remember the Doctor. A dangerous and immediately tactile woman. You stood too close to her, you'd get burnt.
Rebecca knew she would remember Paige more though. A girl that was terrified, overwhelmed, but still pushed forward. At the end of the day, Paige came out of the Point apartment complex a different woman. Still emotional, still vulnerable, but now she knew she was stronger than she had thought. And that was wonderful.
Colchester and Colin swooped off to make their reports to Yvonne Hartman.
The Doctor had smiled, said something about how they must be off, and how she had detected some signal above the Pyramids of Giza, and that they had to go. The Doctor and Paige had rambled into the oldest yellow car Rebecca had ever seen, and she had watched them go far into the horizon.
And Rebecca watched as they all passed by. Cardiff seemed brighter than usual that afternoon.
Probably because it wasn't raining. Maybe that.
Or maybe it just felt that way to Rebecca. After all of that...Cardiff was bright again.
The End
Nicholas Briggs as The Cybermen
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