The Doctor and I wake up, I look to my side and the doctor has a nasty head wound, then he looks at me with a worried look, I give him a reassuring smile.
"How many times have you both died?"
"How many different ways?" Missy asks.
"Have you burned?"
"I know you've fallen."
"Have you ever drowned?"
"Have you felt the blade?"
"I suppose what we're really asking, my dears, is, well"
"Any requests?"
---
Memories of the scene in the Conversion Theatre, with Cyber-Bill reaching out to us then the Master and Missy attacking the doctor and pushes me. I am knocked against a computer keyboard by Missy as Nardole flees.
---
A 1930s style waltz plays and the Master and Missy dance together. The Doctor and I are tied to a wheelchair and Cyber-Bill is standing nearby.
"So, I imagine you're the next one along, then?"
"Oh, I think so. I'm a bit hazy on the whole regeneration thing, I'm afraid."
"You mean, I'm going to turn into a woman and you don't even remember it happening?"
"Oh! Am I a woman now?"
"Well, kind of, yeah."
"Hold me."
"Kiss me." I make a disgusted face.
"Make me."
"Do you two want to be alone? Which, in your case, would mean more than it usually does." I say.
"Urgh, Grandad's and Sissies back."
The music and dancing stops.
"We've been debating the best way to kill you."
"Where's Bill?" I ask.
"Well, we thought we might chuck you off the roof, but I wasn't sure how many regenerations you had left."
"Yeah, we could have been up and down the stairs all night."
"We could shoot you, but that's a bit vanilla."
"But old school, nice for a change."
"For a change."
"I said, where is Bill?"
"Well, if we told you that, I'm afraid you'd be really, really upset."
"So"
"She's right behind you!" They both say.
The Doctor and I look round.
"Look, there's Bill. Dead, dismembered, fed through a grinder and squeezed into a Cyberman. Doomed to spend an eternal afterlife as a bio-mechanical psycho-zombie. It was hilarious."
"Ten years you spent up there, chatting. You missed her by two hours."
"Ripped out her heart, threw it in to a bin, and burned it all away. He's internalising. I love it when he's Mister Volcano."
The doctor looks at the Master. "The last time we saw you, you were on your way to Gallifrey."
"Well, I didn't stay. Why would I stay?"
'So they cured your little condition and kicked you out."
"Oh sissy, It was a mutual kicking me out." Bored Missy is repairing her lip gloss.
"Somehow you ended up in this dump. You never could drive."
"Meh. You wouldn't understand."
"Well, let's see how I do. Your Tardis got stuck. You killed a lot of people, took over the city, lived like a king until they rebelled against your cruelty. And ever since then you've been hiding out, probably in disguise, because everybody knows your stupid round face."
"Round?"
"It's a little bit."
"Shut up! Do you want to see my city, Doctor? Do you want to see what happens when you're too late to save your little friend and everybody else?"
He wheels the Doctor while Missy wheels me to the parapet to watch the columns of people being escorted by patients.
"See? This used to be just a hospital. Now it's mass production. The Cyber Foundries."
"The whole city is a machine to turn people into Cybermen. What do you think? Exciting, isn't it? Watching the Cybermen getting started."
"They always get started. They happen everywhere there's people. Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus. Like sewage and smartphones and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable." I say.
Missy notices an aerial is pulsing out a signal.
"Doctor. Doctor, Seer, have you done something? What's happening?" Missy asks.
"People get the Cybermen
wrong. There's no evil plan, no evil genius. Just parallel evolution."
"Doctor, Seer, what have you done?'
"People plus technology minus humanity. The internet, cyberspace, Cybermen. Always read the comments, because one day they'll be an army."
"Look, they're coming. They're coming for us!"
"This doesn't make any sense!" The master exclaimed.
"Doesn't it?"
"These Cybermen are primitive. They're programmed to track human beings and convert them. They home in on human life signs only."
"You two, you should know by now. When you're winning, and we're in the room, you're missing something." I say.
"What have we missed?"
"You shouldn't have hit the Seer, Missy. She was waiting for her chance. Computer, containing the algorithm defining human life signs. We only had time to change one detail. A single number. One to a two. One heart to two hearts. She expanded the definition of humanity. Took 'em a while to update the net, but here we go. Welcome to the menu." The doctor explained.
Cybermen are stomping up the stairs to the now floodlit roof.
"Now they think that we count as humans, and they're going to fix that in a hurry!" Missy sonicks the doors shut. The Master sonicks a Cyberman that has come up the fire escape and sets its chest unit on fire.
"There must be other ways up here. We can't cover them all." Master says.
"You can't fight a whole city. You know the stories. There's only ever been one way to stop that many Cybermen. Us!"
The Master sonicks another Cyberman then goes to the Doctor and me.
"Then do it. Stop them!"
"Begging for your life already? That's a new record."
"I'm not begging you. I'd rather die than beg you."
"Lucky day, then."
"I can do this. They're not difficult. They're Cybermen."
"Knock yourself out." I say. Missy pirouettes and KO's the Master with her parasol.
"Your wish is my command."
She unties the Doctor, then me.
"I was secretly on your side all along, you silly sausage." She then looked at me. "Did you really think I would abandon you sister"
"Is that true?"
"Don't spoil the moment."
"Seriously, I need to know. Is that true?"
I hold Missy's hand.
"It's hard to say. I, I'm in two minds. Fortunately, the other one's unconscious." The Doctor leaps onto the parapet and speaks into his sonic screwdriver.
"Nardole, have you been useful?"
"Yeah. Found this in the loading bay."
The little spaceship rises up to come level with the Doctor and me.
"Shuttlecraft." Then goes a bit higher and drops a rope ladder from a hatch in its underside.
"Get Junior up there." They pick up the Master and he wakes.
"Oh, you hit me really hard."
"You're telling me. I think, I think I've still got the bump."
The Master climbs the ladder.
"Right. First things first"
Electricity plays over the Doctor's and my body. A Cyberman has grabbed us from behind.
"Argh! Argh! Argh!" Missy picks up my sonic screwdriver, but before she can press the button, the Cyberman is zapped by a beam from another Cyberman's headpiece. It lets the Doctor and me go, and gets zapped again. It goes bang!
"Bill." We collapses.
"What was that, Doctor? Seer? You'll only slow us down? Yeah, I think you're right."
She puts her parasol between her teeth and climbs the ladder.
---
The Master sits next to Nardole.
"The Doctor and the Seers' dead. He told me he'd always hated you. Let's go."
"No."
"The Doctor and the Seers are dead. He told me he'd always hated you."
"Yeah, I heard you the first time."
"Oh, tedious." The Master makes a grab for the joystick.
"Oi!" Nardole exclaims.
"Look, we need to get away from here. Find a hole in the roof, or make one. Is there a great big gun on the front? That would be good." The shuttlecraft lurches.
"I don't think we're going anywhere. Bill's back."
*Hospital roof*
Cyber-Bill is holding onto the ladder as the Doctor's eyes open as well as mine.
"Bill, we will fix this. We will get you back again, we swear." I tell her.
*Time skip*
And back to what Alit is staring at. More figures emerge from the smoke.
"What level are we on?"
"Must be one of the solar farms. Hologram sky, bit of atmosphere."
"Who are you?" The little girl asks.
"That's the last floor we can bust through. Engine's blown. Hello, little girl. We're from downstairs, and, er, I think we're going to need your help."
*Barn*
Two weeks later. Hazran, the woman, comes out of the house in the evening with some blankets, goes into the barn and puts them down by a sleeping Bill, who then wakes. She looks completely human, and is wearing the last set of clothes before she was converted.
"Sorry you have to stay out here. You'd frighten the children."
"Where am I? How did I? Sorry, I can't remember."
"The Seer put you to sleep. You needed rest."
"What am I doing in a barn? What's wrong?" The women backs away scared.
"Sorry. It's just."
"Sorry, what?"
"The Doctor and the Seer explained that you're not dangerous, but it's difficult."
"What's difficult? Where, where is the Doctor? Where's the Seer? I need to"
"Their injuries are, are being tended to."
"Injuries?" Bill asks.
Every time Bill moves forward, Hazran retreats, then finally runs out.
"I want to see the Doctor and The Seer. I need to speak to them!"
Next morning, the barn door opens.
"Hello?" Bill calls out, the little girl walk out.
"Hello. Everyone's too scared to talk to you. But I'm not."
"Why are they scared?"
*Farm*
Piling up sandbags and reinforcing the barricade around the farmhouse.
"Come on you lot, put your backs into it. Remember the Alamo! Oh, maybe not."
"Nardole, you're working them too hard."
"This isn't work, it's war. Operation Exodus. They're looking for fresh meat, and you're it."
*Barn*
Alit enters.
"Is that it?" Bill asks.
Alit puts down something covered in a rough cloth.
"I really wouldn't harm you, you know."
"I know." But she still backs away as Bill steps forward and picks it up, then uncovers it and turns it over. It is a mirror, and her reflection reveals that she is really still Cyber-Bill.
"That is not me."
"I'm sorry."
"I am Bill Potts."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She runs away and into the Doctor and me.
"I am Bill Potts!"
"Hey, hey, hey, hey!" I say. Cyber-Bill puts down the mirror.
"Hello, Bill Potts."
"Doc-tor Se-er."
"I'm sorry. I gave her a mirror."
"Oh no, don't be sorry. You were being kind. Nothing wrong with kind. Jelly baby?" I hand her a jelly baby.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Bye."
"Toodle-oo." Alit leaves and closes the barn door behind her. The Doctor and I have a bit of a limp.
"What was that, in the mirror?"
"Er, a Cyberman." I reply.
"What's a Cyberman?"
"A technologically augmented human being, designed to survive in a hostile environment. Perfectly sound idea. Unfortunately all they want to do is to turn everyone else into Cybermen too. They go viral."
"Why?"
"They consider themselves to be an improvement, an upgrade."
"No. Why do I see a Cyberman in the mirror?" There is a long pause before the doctor continues.
"What do you remember?"
"There's quite a lot, you know? I was down there for ten years."
"And then one day, they took you to the Conversion Theatre. Do you remember that?"
"No. Bits of it. You turned up."
"Do you remember what they did to you?" I ask her.
"Nothing. Look at me, I'm fine. I'm fine!" She touches her forehead and pauses, then she puts her hand down.
"You are so strong. You're amazing. Your mind has rebelled against the programming. It's built a wall around itself. A castle made of you, and you are standing on the battlements, saying no. No, not me."
"What are you talking about?" Bill asks.
"All that time, living under the Monks, you learned to hang on to yourself."
"But I'm, I'm fine. Look at me!"
"Bill, what you see is not you. Your mind is acting like a perception filter. You still see yourself as you used to be."
"Used to be?"
"It won't last forever."
"What do you mean, used to be?"
She advances towards us, we retreat. Then she sees her shadow cast on the wall.
"Bill, I'm sorry, but you can't be angry any more. A temper is a luxury you can no longer" I tell her.
"Why can't I? Why can't I be angry?"
"Bill, please!"
"You two left me alone for ten"
"Years! Don't tell me I can't be angry!"
Her helmet weapon blasts the barn door to firewood and we back away. The children scream.
"Because of that. That's why. Because you're a Cyberman."
*Farm*
"Right. Everyone, back to work. Nothing to see here. Somebody broke the barn, no biggie. Come on, defences don't build themselves." Nardole says. Bill comes outside.
"It's okay. They're just frightened."
"People are always going to be afraid of me, aren't they? Aren't they?" She asks.
I wipe a tear from her Cyber-face.
"What is that, engine oil?"
"No. It's an actual tear. But it shouldn't be."
"Doctor, Seer. Right, while you've been here chatting up Robo-Mop, me and me have been busy. We've found it." He talk in his Razor voice. "Oh, hello, my dear. My God, you were so boring for all those years. But it was worth every day of it, for this."
"Bill, don't let him upset you."
"Though, didn't you used to be a woman? I'm going to be a woman, fairly soon. Any tips? Or, maybe, I dunno, old bras?"
"Shut up" I growl, he looks at me.
"Now, now sister, we wouldn't want to burn up now do we." I cross my arms and roll my eyes.
"I am not upset."
"Oh. Well, doesn't that take all the fun out of cruelty. Might as well rile a fridge. Come on, this way."