A/N: Hello FanFiction, well the time has come. Time to meet our hero for the evening. Someone I have been spending months on trying to make as badass on all levels as possible.
Enough chit chat from me though, let's get to the good stuff.
Enjoy.
Chapter 19
When things got complicated, he used to anticipate and enjoy it.
The Doctor found himself accidentally drifting into sleep while he was with Rose. Nothing sexual had quite happened between the two, as neither felt they even could safely. In fairness to the couple, one of them hadn't received a lot of action in the last few years while the other had gone centuries without the touch of one that he loved. What seemed to make the difference this time around; there wasn't a need for physically making love. Yet the two laid in her bed, simply enjoying each other's company with nothing but happiness in their hearts at the prospect of raising Jenny, however that would work out.
Speaking of, the two with Benjamin spent nearly five hours listening to Jenny's stories. Occasionally, Ben would join in and recount exactly how he managed to rescue her or talk about some place that Jenny had come across where he and the Doctor had some tall tales of their own. Laughter and tears were common in the conversation, especially when Jenny brought up places that meant something to the Doctor. Roughly twelve years after leaving, she had eventually found herself on Messaline again. The Time Lord almost cringed at the mere thought, but slowly let his defenses down when his daughter reported that the inhabitants seemed to actually put effort into trying to create a new world and were no longer relying on the progenation machines. Not to mention the fact that the terraforming seemed to work on a level of covering nearly a fifth of the entire planet. All this and more made him more proud than ever to be her parent, yet all the more guilty for not waiting for her to come back around.
As he continued to rest in his Bad Wolf's arms, he could feel himself drift off to his dreams from before again. This time, however, the dream almost threatened to consume him with the reality.
He opened his eyes to reveal Cybermen walking all around what was clearly an operating room of some kind. Across the length of his body, there were Cybermites that seemed to be in place for possibly taking measurements. These little bugs normally meant for assimilation appeared to be repurposed as a method of transmitting data since all they did was blink signals toward the main computing system. A large data pad near him showed his vital signs, perfectly matching his Gallifreyan anatomy to the last blood vessel. This brought nothing short of a dozen questions for the Doctor.
Since when do Cybermen have that level of access to Time Lord physiology? What is the purpose of this kind of hooking up if I'm stuck in a dream? Why am I feeling nothing when I'm clearly awake yet more than aware of what is going on in the dream? Slowly, the reality that maybe this wasn't a dream and he was seeing something in real time through someone else's eyes became more of a possibility.
Okay, who am I seeing in here? He began peering his eyes to any hints that could tip him off as far as who was the unfortunate soul stuck in this situation. The chance of it being someone he knew was likely, possibly being either Missy if she was trapped, but those weren't her hips. Maybe it was Brax, but if it was then he regenerated into a really young man, almost as young as this regeneration of himself. Possibly it was Susan, if she pulled a gender swap from a regeneration, but that seemed even more brought his attention to the hands and noticed the fingers looked very much like his own. Any hopes he had of not actually being in the dream/vision/whatever it was he was seeing were dashed as the feeling this was him began to sink in. He scoffed to himself.
Is that the reason for the restraints? In the off chance I can be- The Doctor cut off his train of thought to possibly consider what sounded like the impossible. At the mere idea of a revelation, he began to feel movement. He was fighting his restraints and beginning to make soft noises that progressively became more Cybermen began coming closer to his body as the noises ceased and the movement began to lessen. In the background, he could overhear that now sickening computerized voice.
"Consciousness at ninety eight percent. Memory download at fifty nine percent."
Inside the Doctor's mind, chaos began to erupt as everything he was afraid of began to come true. Somehow the Cybermen had to have cloned him, and he was connected psychically to the creation. There was no way to properly explain it yet, no matter how much he thought about it. The only thing he could feel was himself loosening the right arm restraint.
As one of the Cybermen approached closely carrying a syringe, he unknowingly snapped into reality, grasping his captor's arm almost statue-like, ripping a piece of armor off of the Cyberman's left arm, jabbing it into its neck multiple times. As the Cyberman collapsed shutting down, the "not Doctor" loosened his other bindings and fell onto the floor in an attempt to stand. Crawling to the downed clanker he had killed, he pulled its rifle out of its right arm, jury rigged a trigger system, and shot down another two attempting to stop him in twenty seconds. Making two more attempts to stand, the Doctor could observe this surrogate him was limping and in pain but couldn't actually feel said pain. As his other left the operating room, he pulled the trigger toward the computer that had haunted every dream with updates on his progress.
The Doctor was horrified by what was happening around him. This "him" was thinking only in terms of survival and destruction, not too unlike a Dalek or the Cybermen that he despised so much. He himself had been decently savage during the Last Great Time War, but even then he was not this brutal. Normally, he would have killed his opposition then and simply moved on. This other was seeming more like what the Doctor would be if he were to let all of his negative emotions completely dictate his life. Much like he imagined John would have been had he stuck around, or like...
Before he could truly put two and two together, he was busy watching the carnage as it occurred. Two full Cybermen squads fell to his other's raw anger and wit. Not only was his other full of power that needed to be satisfied, but he had the intelligence to kill his opponents delicately and quietly. He observed his other finding a control terminal and using a couple of antennas from dead Cybermen to hack open the controls. He clawed out several groups of wires, splitting them apart to the individual piece in record time. Hacking the controls to the warp speed he combined the accelerator with the navigation computer, then stood himself up and typed coordinates in.
When his other had finished his input of destination, he shot the terminal and proceeded towards finding a vehicle to fly out of the hangar. En route, more Cybermen spotted him and began open firing. The Doctor would have attempted to hide and maybe consider surrender, but this entity would have none of it. Shooting two of his opponents, he rolled over to one end of a hallway, taking cover behind a double pillar. Making every shot count unnecessarily, his aim proved impressive even by the Doctor's standards. Three clankers were left standing when he charged out from the pillar and completely wiped them with one shot per guard.
Without the slightest hesitation, the other form moved through a couple of hallways into a hangar environment. Inside of it were ships capable of space travel that could be released from the main ship, even inside of warp speed. The only complication reared its ugly head in the form of two dozen guards on patrol in the hangar a floor below. Nothing else seemed like it was in the way of escape. That was until one of the Cybermen turned its rifle towards his position and sent a wave of blasts. Several more joined, their barrages making it nearly impossible for the Doctor's other form to fire back. He bolted to an open door, spinning around and sniping the original to shoot it down before making a hesitant retreat.
Considering all of his options, the other form slipped into a lift shaft and cautiously proceeded downward to put himself on the same level as the main group in the hangar. Opening the doors with care took time, but time that gave him opportunity to create the element of surprise. One of the clankers was standing guard in front of the doorway to the hangar. To overcome this issue, the other form simply grabbed it and pulled it down, blasting its head to pieces mid-process.
More footsteps tipped him off that he needed to keep moving. Stealthily entering a large ship, it encountered a pair of Cybermen making an attempt at stopping him from escaping. The Doctor's other shot one dead instantly, then disarmed the other. The Cyberman froze.
"You are created from the Doctor. You will show mercy."
The voice that finally came out of his other form was very similar to his own, but much more intimidating.
"I am not him." And fired a blast that finished the other one off. Sitting in the cockpit and igniting the engines, the ship itself began to levitate until the warp speed pulled out to reveal a planet that the ship was going to crash into. He punched it to speed out of the hangar mere moments before fire would engulf the entirety of the main Cyber Hub. He looked back once to see that his plan had worked. The Cybership had destroyed the majority of the Syndicate base on Deltara Metraxis, sending thousands of innocent slave girls as well as their captives to their deaths, whether via explosion or sucked into space. This was all only to get out. He didn't need to kill innocent people who weren't even in the way. This man, however, was not the Doctor.
The whole time following, he thought of nothing. No hints of remorse, no attempt at justifying his actions. There wasn't even a conversation that the two could try and spark up using some weird connection that they both seemed to share. Only four words were spoken.
"I will find you."
The Doctor panicked back into reality. Startling Rose almost instantaneously, the TARDIS turned all of her bedroom lights on as she began trying to help the Time Lord to calm down from whatever was stressing him out. His breathing was erratic and stuttering, clearly showing him in a full blown anxiety attack. His eyes almost seemed to roll in the back of his head as he forced himself to sit up and face away from her. Maybe in another time, she would have known to leave well enough alone and let him figure this one out on his own. That was not the case with what she just witnessed. This was the proof that she needed to know confirm that he asked her to come back because he really needed someone like her who could stop him from going too far or just listen to when he was stressed out about something. Braving up the words, she caressed his cheek tenderly.
"What kind of dream was it this time?"
With only a turn of his head, his eyes spoke volumes about the travesty he had just witnessed. Not just for the thousands lost, or for the mere fact of his existence, but mostly for the level of danger that his companions were now in. Rose had seen danger in her time. Ben was no stranger to the frequent peril time traveling seemed to give. Jenny also seemed to know her way around most life-threatening situations. Any and all previous experience were nothing compared to the now might as well be death mark attached to all three of them. With a heavy heart and a frightened tone he coldly replied,
"Something far worse."