The Other Tyler - rewrite

The Cage

"Van Statten has agents all over the world looking for geniuses to recruit," Adam bragged

"Oh so you're supposed to be a genius?" Mei spoke up, finally joining the pair.

Her blue eyes scrutinised Adam, looking for a hint that he was a supposed Genius. As far as she was concerned, she saw a slightly smart boy trying to ruffle up his feathers to impress her little sister.

Completely un-offended, Adam replied, "Sorry, but yeah. I can't help it. I was born clever. When I was eight, I logged onto the US Defence System. Nearly caused World War Three."

Rose and Mei shared unimpressed looks, their minds immediately going back to the previous alien encounter, and the brunette asked, "How stupid are you? You think that's funny? People could have died!"

"Well, you should've been there just to see them running about. Fantastic!"

Mei cringed, hearing the Doctor's catchphrase come out of the idiot boy's mouth. Rose didn't like it much either.

"You sound like the Doctor," she muttered.

Suddenly becoming nervous, Adam asked, "Are you and him?"

"What's it matter to you?" Mei interrupted with narrowed eyes and the boy shuffled on his feet.

Despite him having a slight fear of Van Statten, he'd never wanted to cower away from him like he did under her gaze. He'd felt intimidated as soon as she introduced herself, but he thought she was just protective of her sister. Maybe she just didn't like him?

Smiling a little at her sister, Rose turned to Adam, "The Doctor is my big brother, not that it's any of your business. But i don't want anyone getting the wrong idea."

"Good," Adam beamed.

"Why is it good?" the blonde asked, digging her elbow into Mei's side when she saw the older Tyler roll her eyes and pretend to throw up.

Blushing as he looked toward the ground, Adam murmured, "It just is."

Getting a sickly feeling from watching her sister and the idiot make eyes at each other, Mei gave a very deliberate cough to interrupt the moment. She DEFINITELY did not like this boy.

"What's the living one downstairs?" she asked, and Rose seemed to perk up as well, "If you're trying to impress my little sister, you need to do better than lumps of metal."

Adam's face turned downward in disappointment, "Yeah, Yeah, well, I did ask, but he keeps it to himself." There was a pause and then a sly grin appeared on his face, "Although, if you're a genius, it doesn't take long to patch through on the comm. system."

Rose beamed at him, "Let's have a look, then."

The three of them moved over to a work space where he had a computer system set up and Adam quickly got to work. Mei almost scoffed at the patterns he was using, how basic, how slow.

"It doesn't do much, the alien," he told them, "It's weird. It's kind of useless. It's just like this great big pepper pot."

A corner-camera view of a dark room popped up on screen showing a man in a radioactive suit standing over the "pepper pot" and from what the girls could tell, the alien was screaming.

"Hold on, is he torturing it?!" Mei demanded, turning an angry pair of eyes on Adam who backed up quickly, "Where is the Doctor, he was supposed to be down there?!"

"I-I don't know," Adam stuttered.

"Take us down there, now!" Rose said, just as angry.

As they reached the monitoring station outside the creature's cage, a man in uniform with a gun stepped in front of Adam and the two girls, holding up a hand.