Killing Ground Part 9

He glared at her. If this was true, he had failed the Cybermen. He couldn't accept it. 'We have scoured this colony and you and the boy were the only aliens present. Do you expect me to believe that's a coincidence?'

'Did your masters tell you nothing, man? Do you have no idea who you are searching for?' Hegelia sighed, pursed her lips and looked into the distance as she searched her memory. 'You have the sixth incarnation of the Doctor in custody. When he appears in Cyber records, he is accompanied by a young woman named Perpugilliam Brown.' She looked at Madrox, who shook his head. What was she hoping to gain from this?

'There were others, too. I learned of them whilst cross-referencing the Cybermen's timestream with the Doctor's other activities in his section of the Hive. There was a computer programmer from Earth - Melanie, I believe her name was. Before that, a human colonist. Grant.

Grant Markham.'

This time, the widening of Madrox's eyes was enough to staunch Hegelia's recital. The name immediately registered as familiar, but it took him a few seconds to remember why. As soon as that happened, the Chief Overseer knew where he had seen Grant Markham recently.

All this time, he had been searching for aliens. All this time, the Doctor's friend had been beneath his nose; An Agoran native. He felt his shoulders tremble with the familiar onset of impotent rage and he buried his face as purple spots rushed in to crowd his vision.

Taggart! He had been present during questioning. He had taken the boy away later. Of all people, he must have known who he was. He had won the contest. He had kept his secrets hidden, after all.

Madrox released a scream and attacked the desk with his gun barrel.

When that failed to relieve his frustration, he struck the wall hard enough to make the room shake. Then he stood and controlled his breathing, listening to the ringing reverberations.

'Have you quite finished?' asked Hegelia sarcastically.

Madrox scowled at her and raised his blaster, perturbed to notice that it had been bent out of shape. It now pointed downwards. 'As far as the Cybermen are concerned,' he growled regardless, 'you and your friend arrived with the Doctor. Should you tell them differently, they will not believe you - and I will ensure that you are painfully executed!'

'Perhaps if you were to release my a.s.sistant, I might be more minded to co-operate.'

Madrox yanked the door open so fiercely that it almost came off its hinges. Its Overseer guard jumped back in surprise. 'Get her out of here!' he ordered.

'You will gain nothing from this, Chief Overseer!' Hegelia shouted, striding from the office in preference to being dragged. Madrox slammed the door. He was in no doubt now that she had been telling the truth. But he had no time to detail a patrol to look for Markham, who would certainly have vanished. He had no choice but to lie to the Cybermen. They had no reason to disbelieve him, after all. If he could fool them - if he could keep calm and not panic - he could do this. He could survive.

Then, as soon as his masters had left, he would hunt down Markham and Taggart and kill them.

In contrast to the Doctor's special cell, Jolarr's was opened by a simple master card. Taggart swiped his through the appropriate slot and checked both ways as the door clicked open. No patrols were scheduled, but he couldn't shake the fear that Madrox might march into view.

Jolarr was slumped in a corner of the tiny room. He didn't look up.

Taggart switched his tech-unit to bio-scan mode and checked that the radioactive trace had worn off. It had, of course. He felt cheated. He had lost his final chance to back out of this with grace. 'Come on,' he forced himself to say. 'We're getting out.'

Jolarr raised his white face from between his arms. He looked at his would-be rescuer blankly. Taggart checked the corridor again, apprehension making him fret at the minor delay. 'I said come on. Do you want to escape or don't you?'

Jolarr stood but didn't make a move. He stared at the Overseer's uniform, surprise, distrust and hope alternately moulding his expression. Taggart grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the corridor. He closed and locked the door, hyper-conscious of his heart's heavy pounding. He had gone too far to back out now. He was committed. His life was at stake.

He had spent an hour studying the rosters and he had worked out the optimum escape route through the complex. He dragged the compliant alien along it now, their footsteps echoing like jackhammers against the metal floor. Speed was more important than stealth, but there was always a chance that an Overseer might detect the sound of running, even through the storm. Taggart was relieved when they reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs and ducked into the relative safety of an automated, rarely visited food refinery. He bustled Jolarr behind a rumbling machine and thrust the purloined tech-unit into his sweating hands.

'We wait here for five minutes,' he said, 'until the next patrol goes past. Then we've got a clear run at an exit. The only problem will be a security camera, but I can fix that. Here, I'll show you how to use this thing to get across the grounds safely.'

'No!' said Jolarr.

Taggart felt his stomach cartwheeling. Whatever the problem was, he didn't want to hear it. Why couldn't things ever be simple?

'I came here with a colleague. We have to go back for her,' Jolarr explained.

Taggart shook his head. 'We can't. There isn't time. This is risky enough as it is.' He reached to operate the tech-unit, to begin his demonstration. Jolarr pulled away.

'I can't leave her. She's my only way off this planet. And you don't want to know what will happen if she changes history by being here.'

He was right; Taggart didn't want to know. But Jolarr had already turned and was heading back towards the door. Taggart entertained the fleeting notion of abandoning him, but it was swiftly replaced by an image of Jolarr being interrogated and telling Madrox exactly how he came to be wandering about the complex. He hurried after him, too late to prevent the alien from leaving the room. He followed him into the corridor, where Jolarr had faltered and was weighing up the possibilities offered by each direction.

'Where is she being held?' he demanded as Taggart appeared. As a matter of fact, Taggart realized, Hegelia wasn't far. She was with the Doctor, in the special cell, on the ground floor. This level. Too close to the control centre. Before he had decided whether to answer, Jolarr had picked a direction - the wrong one - and hurried off. Taggart felt a cold flash of panic as he remembered the imminent patrol. He hurled himself after his charge and gripped the back of his tunic. Jolarr struggled and Taggart, using strength he hadn't known he possessed, clamped a silencing hand over his mouth and hauled him bodily around a corner. They both shrank into the shadows as, seconds later, two Overseers marched past the intersection.

Taggart waited another full minute before relaxing his hold. He half expected the boy to run away again, but thankfully Jolarr had been subdued by their close call. 'Do you see now why we have to get out of here?' he whispered. 'If anyone finds us, I'll be dead and you'll be back on your way to the conversion chamber.'

To Taggart's dismay, Jolarr shook his head. 'I know it's dangerous, but I can't leave the ArcHivist.' The alien's determination had been tempered by caution, but determined he still was. Taggart looked into the dark pits of his eyes and began to accept, with a weary resignation, that he was not going to be given a choice.

He considered his options. As he had observed, Hegelia's cell wasn't too far - and, with his carefully laid plan already in shreds, one route through Population Control would only be as dangerous as any other.

'Are you sure she wants to be rescued?' he checked, before committing himself. Jolarr's expression made him feel idiotic for asking.

Taggart said no more. With a reluctant grunt of a.s.sent, he led Jolarr back into the main corridor and followed in the path of the patrol. At least, he tried to convince himself, he might come out of this a hero. By freeing both aliens, he would exceed even Henneker's expectations. If he succeeded, that was.

He had no such luck. They reached the special cell and Taggart yanked open the viewing hatch, to find that Hegelia was not present.

'Where is she?' Jolarr asked, too loud for comfort.

The Doctor looked up from his shackles. 'If you mean my cellmate, she was taken for interrogation. Do you want to wait?'

'That's it,' said Taggart. 'We've got to go!'

'But what about the ArcHivist?' asked Jolarr.

'And what about me?' the Doctor called. 'A laser probe would be useful right now, if either of you have one.'

Jolarr reached for the hatch before Taggart could. 'I can't help you,'

he said apologetically. 'I can't change history.'

The Doctor groaned. 'Not you as well. Was it Winston Churchill who talked about evil flouris.h.i.+ng when good men choose to do nothing?'

'No, it wasn't,' Jolarr responded.

'Oh.' The Doctor looked crestfallen. 'Well, perhaps he should have done. It would have been inspirational.'

Jolarr closed the hatch and turned to Taggart. 'We'd better go,' he said reluctantly. Taggart nodded. He tried to look sympathetic, but couldn't quite disguise the relief which washed over him.

A small explosion rocked the bunker. Max jumped to her feet, pulled back the curtain and launched into a tirade against Henneker, reminding him how delicate her process was. 'We have to carry out tests,' he defended himself, indicating the smoking remains of a chair. Lakesmith stood before it, the blaster on his right arm still aimed at the debris.

'That was the lowest setting,' boasted Henneker.

Max tutted, let the curtain fall and slumped back into her seat. Grant watched sympathetically, knowing how tired she must be. The onus to complete the Project was on her, and she had toiled almost non-stop since the early hours. He had helped where he could, but the remaining work was essentially surgical and Max was the only one with the relevant skills. Grant had to admit that half his reason for being in her work area at all was to avoid the disconcerting proximity of Lakesmith.

Soon, there would be no such place to hide.

The fourth and fifth volunteers were waiting in the main part of the bunker. The second and third were already here on the tables, encased by plastic moulds. A thin tube snaked from each to a large vat in which a rust-coloured liquid spat and bubbled. The formula for this synthesis of plastic and metal had been partly extrapolated from a dead Cyberman, long before even Max had begun her work. Henneker had once explained how his people had spent a year attempting to duplicate the substance with which their enemies were sheathed. They had failed to do so accurately, but by introducing malleable copper into the process, they had been able to facilitate the fusion of the other disparate elements into a compound which, whilst not as hard or as flexible as that used by the Cybermen, would suit their purposes.

Another crash resounded as Henneker determined the (narrow) limits of Lakesmith's manoeuvrability. Max groaned.

'How long before they're ready?' asked Grant, nodding towards the two subjects.

'The moulds come off in a couple of minutes. After that, it's just a case of welding the weapons on. You can do that, can't you?' Max asked. 'The nerve connections are in place.'

Grant nodded, although he didn't relish the idea of getting so close to the creatures. Max rubbed her eyes and suppressed a yawn. 'I need to clear this pair out and get the next two in for brain ops.'

'What do you actually do to them?' asked Grant.

'I thought I'd explained.'

'You did. Well, sort of - I just didn't expect Mr Lakesmith to turn out as he has.' Max looked at him questioningly and Grant tried to elaborate. 'He doesn't act the way he used to. I mean, I know you've wired parts of his brain to the armour and I know you've messed with some of the chemicals it produces, to stimulate aggression and block fear, that sort of thing. But it's more than that. He's acting like... well, like a robot. Like he isn't the same person.'

'Perhaps he isn't. You never can tell with brain operations. I can describe what I've done to Lakesmith physically, but there's no objective way to measure what I might have done to his mind. Even he couldn't tell you that.'

'He couldn't?'

Max shrugged. 'It's one of the problems of this whole idea. I've had to make it clear to everyone who's thought of volunteering. By operating on Lakesmith, I've made him act, maybe even think, differently. Does that mean he's a different person? What does he feel inside? Have I left his ident.i.ty intact?'

Grant turned the problem over, but came up with no easy solutions.

Max was warming to her theme; she didn't often get the chance to talk about her work. 'Let me give you an example. I've separated the hemispheres of Lakesmith's brain. They can't communicate directly.

Now, you put something in his left hand and keep it out of his sight, and he won't be able to tell you what the object is. The data is being collected as usual in the right hemisphere, but it's the left which controls speech. Part of Lakesmith will know what he's holding, but not the part which could relate the information to us.'

Grant was struggling to cope with this. 'So what you're saying is, he's become a split personality?'

'No, the halves of his brain are still working in conjunction, even though they aren't joined any more. You can only really see the difference in artificial test conditions.'

'So is this what the Cybermen do to themselves?'

Max shook her head. 'All the information we have about the human brain was downloaded from their medical computer in Population Control - but they learned this procedure from Old Earth back in the 1970s. It was used to treat disorders like epilepsy. What I've done is to incorporate some of the Cybermen's own theories into the operation.

You know how much of our brains we normally use?'

'It's only about half, isn't it?'

'More like a quarter. So, as well as separating the hemispheres of the brains, I've augmented and stimulated each one to perform with heightened efficiency, encouraging them to act independently in certain tasks and increasing that figure to almost double. Our Bronze Knights have a vastly improved reaction time and greater awareness. You'd be hard pressed to sneak up on one.'

Max left Grant thinking about that whilst she crossed to the two subjects and began to peel their plastic moulds away, revealing two fully functioning Bronze Knights. Grant was so absorbed by the thought of what had been done to them - and how they might feel about it - that it was almost a full minute before he remembered to be scared.

An Overseer marched the protesting Hegelia back to her cell and pushed her roughly inside. As the door clanged shut behind her, she felt like punching the wall in frustration. She could not act so, however, in company.

'Madrox wasn't too friendly, I take it?' Even as he spoke, the Doctor was working autonomically with the hairpin, taking his chances of freedom no matter how slim they might be.

Hegelia seethed, 'He is a stubborn, irrational simpleton!'

'No. He is a frightened human being, with a human's greed and a human's ego. Both somewhat overdeveloped, maybe.'

'The eradication of such destructive emotions could only be a blessing.'

'Well, if you say so. By the way, a friend called whilst you were out.'

Hegelia looked at him with a frown of disapproval. What was he prattling on about now? 'Young man, pale skin, untidy hair. One of the Overseers was taking him out to play and he wondered if you could come too.'

'Jolarr is free?'

'Isn't that what I just said? He was on his way there, anyhow.'

The ArcHivist felt a grin forming as joy suffused her body.

Everything was perfect now.

'Well, I'm glad you're happy,' said the Doctor, reacting to her expression. 'Myself, I could do with hitting the right combination and getting out of here.'

'Time is running out,' Hegelia warned. She was almost beginning to feel sorry for him. The other prisoners would only be converted, but the Doctor was a bitter foe of the Cyber race. What they might do to him almost didn't bear thinking about. 'I was given the impression by Madrox that the Cybermen will be here within minutes.'

'Thank you for that cheering thought,' the Doctor muttered. He set to work with renewed determination. She watched him for a while, then let her vision turn inwards, to memories of past achievements and dreams of future glorious discoveries.