The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – Some Time Alone 3/4
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: It’s time for a visit to Chiswick! So – who’s coming…?
Characters: Both Doctors and Donna and a few other familiar faces

Part III

The group creeps quietly through the streets in the direction of Jackson’s house. After their confrontation with Miss Hartigan, they don’t want to have a run-in with any Cybermen or cybershades. Finally, though, they arrive and Jackson lets them in, leading the way to the basement, where, they quickly discover, a Cyberman is standing guard. Jackson destroys it with an infostamp he has ready and then the Doctor leaps down the stairs past him to lean over a large object that is pulsing with energy.

“Must have been guarding this. A dimension vault. Stolen from the Daleks again. That's how the Cybermen travelled through time.” He looks up at his host. “Jackson, is this it? The thing you couldn't remember?”

“I don't think so,” the other man says feebly. “But I just can't see. It's like it's hidden.”

Listening to Jackson’s response with half an ear, the Doctor is also trying to work out how to make use of the dimension vault to end the threat that the Cybermen represent. He taps it to get a measure of its strength and is disappointed by the result.

“Ah, not enough power.” He looks up at the others. “Come on! Avanti!”

They venture into the tunnels that head downwards towards the river, where the Doctor now knows the Cybermen are based.

“What do you think the Cybermen want with the children, Doctor?” Jackson asks after they’ve walked in silence for some time.

“I don’t know,” he’s forced to admit, unable to help wondering if the Time Lord might have worked it out sooner. “I don’t know what sort of a ‘workforce’ that woman, Miss Hartigan, has in mind. Who is she anyway?”

“Matron of the St Joseph’s workhouse,” Rosetta answers somewhat breathlessly as she stumbles on the uneven flooring. Jackson grabs her arm to steady her. “She’s got this thing with men – hates them generally. I’ve heard people say she had a tough time when she was little and that’s why she’s like that.”

“By the sound of things, I doubt she’s taken control of the owners of the other workhouses out of the goodness of her heart,” the Doctor muses aloud. “So it must be for a more sinister purpose.”

“What do the Cybermen want?” Rosita asks.

“They want us,” the Doctor admits somewhat reluctantly. “That's what Cybermen are. Humans without brains put into metal shells. They want every living thing to be like them.”

He glances back to see the horrified expression on her face in the dim light before forging ahead through the tunnels. A faint vibration begins to move the air around them and, as they get closer, the bricks also begin to shake, even as a sound finally becomes audible.

It increases in volume as they approach a large opening, from which a dim light is also gleaming. Finally they find a position from which they can look into a massive space on the other side of the tunnel wall.

“Upon my soul,” Jackson gets out.

“What is it?” Rosita wants to know.

“It's an engine,” the Doctor tells her. He looks up at the huge tower of cogs that seem to go up forever. “Generating electricity,” he adds, “but what for?”

It’s the not-knowing that’s driving him mad. Well, that and being unable to help thinking that the Time Lord would have had it figured out by now.

Suddenly Jackson gets up and begins to move out of their hiding place. “We could set them free,” he says in a tone of determination.

The Doctor puts a hand on the other man’s chest to stop him. “No,” he orders, before a light on a nearby wall catches his eye and he goes over to look at the object that is being illuminated.

It turns out to be a dial, which is rapidly counting up numbers. “Power at 90%,” he explains. “But if we stop the engine, the power dies down, the Cybermen will come running. Ooh!” he adds suddenly as the image on the dial goes blurry. He raps on it with his finger. “Hang on. Power fluctuation, that's not meant to happen.”

“It's - going wrong,” Jackson asks in a hopeful tone.

“No,” he says ruefully. “No, it's weird. The software's rewriting itself. It's changing.”

“Why?” Rosita asks.

“Outside influence,” he guesses. “Something’s happened somewhere else to cause it. A huge boost of power perhaps, although I would have expected technology from this era to struggle to survive something like that happening without exploding or…”

He’s temporarily silenced when the dial spits out a shower of sparks and he has to duck way to avoid being burned. “Whoa!” And then his eyes fall on the numbers, which are flying upwards. “What's happening? It's out of control!”

“It's accelerating!” Jackson exclaims. “96 per cent, 97...”

“When it reaches 100,” Rosita asks anxiously, “what about the children?”

The Doctor stares at her for a moment before the last pieces of the puzzle fit into place and he knows why Miss Hartigan needed those particular children, ones from the workforce, with no parents to miss them.

“They're disposable!” He hauls off his glasses and runs back as fast as he can in the direction of the opening in the wall where they had been standing before. “Come on!”

All thoughts of the Time Lord or superiority vanish as he arrives at the vent and dives through it into the massive space beyond. It is clear that the Cybermen are preparing to eliminate the children.

“Delete!” he hears from behind him as he launches himself towards the centre of the room.

“Right, now, all of you,” he bellows, “out!”

Blue flickering lights show that Jackson and Rosita are using the infostamps to destroy the Cybermen who are standing guard around the room, even as the horde of children begin running for the exits.

“That's an order!” he yells to encourage them. “Every single one of you, run!”

“All of you, come on,” Jackson urges from nearby. “As fast as you can, come on!”

“There's a hot pie for everyone if you leg it!” he promises wildly.

Rosita rushes past and the Doctor grabs her, intent of getting her out of danger. “You need to get them as far as the sluice gate. Once you're out, keep running. Far as you can!”

She nods and runs past him. He turns away, waving a child past him. “Go on, quick, quick!”

Then his eyes fall on a machine that is fixed to a nearby wall and it occurs to him that he still doesn’t know what this entire set-up is for. “It's some sort of starter motor,” he muses as he peers at it through his glasses. “But starting what?”

And then he hears a voice calling to him from the other side of the room. “Doctor, my son!”

“What?” he demands as he reaches the man’s side.

“They took my son.” Jackson suddenly grabs the Doctor’s shoulders and shakes him with the force of his emotion. “No wonder my mind escaped. Those damned Cybermen - they took my child!”

He can only stare at the other man, taking this in, stunned at the unexpectedness of it.

“But he's alive, Doctor!” Jackson goes on, pointing up. “Frederick!”

Turning, he can make out the little boy perched high above them and stretches his arms, waving him down. “Come on!”

“Oh, he's too scared,” Jackson exclaims with a sob. “Stay there! Don't move! I'm coming!”

He dives for the stairs, only to be thrown back as an explosion shakes the room and threatens to send them all off their feet. The Doctor grabs a chair to hold himself up and uses it to swing over to Jackson, helping up back upright again.

“I can't get up there!” the boy’s father says desperately.

The Doctor, meanwhile, looks around and realises what’s going on. “They've finished with the motor,” he exclaims in horror. “It's going to blow up!”

“What're we going to do, Doctor?” Jackson asks desperately. “What are we going to do?”

His hand is already in his bigger-on-the-inside pocket, his fingers curled around the hilt of the cutlass he used against the Cybermen earlier. He pulls it out, wrapping a rope around his arm. “You know me, Jackson,” he tells the other man, determination filling him. “You know me!”

Swinging the cutlass, he slices through the rope and feels himself pulled off his feet, just as he was by the cybershade earlier. This time, however, he has some control over his movements and drops lightly onto the platform beside the terrified boy.

“Oh, that's it,” he says in delight as he lands before bending down in front of Frederick. “Hello! Now,” as the child scrambles onto his back, “hold on tight, don't let go.”

The boy clings tightly around his neck as smoke begins to fill the space around them. Without the Time Lord’s respiratory bypass, the Doctor knows he can’t afford to waste time, so he snatches the rope, gets a firm grip, and leaps off the platform. The counterweight slows their descent and he’s relieved to feet solid ground beneath his feet.

Jackson is only a few feet away and he all but launches the child into his father’s arms, unable to help the huge grin that crosses his face.

“Merry Christmas!” he exclaims cheerfully, swallowing an inconvenient lump in his throat – definitely the Donna side of him! – as the two embrace.

This is what the Doctor does!

With one more thing handled, brilliantly, he has to admit, he follows Jackson out of the room, explosions rocking the ground around them. They duck pieces of shrapnel before finding themselves in the relative safety of the tunnel that leads back to Jackson’s house.

His mind is busy, working out the next best step, and once they arrive in Jackson’s cellar, he skids to a halt.

“Head for the street!” he orders, running his eyes over the dimension vault.

“Come on, Doctor, hurry up!” Jackson calls back as he takes the stairs two at a time, Frederick still clutched in his arms.

The Doctor’s long fingers finally locate the release button and the dimension vault is launched out of the charger into his waiting hands. “Gotcha!” he exclaims gleefully before following the others out of the cellar, through the house and into the street.

They still aren’t safe though. The Doctor can hear the massive thud that makes the ground shake and looks up, glimpsing the huge shape in the darkness.

“It's the CyberKing!” he exclaims in horror.

“And the CyberKing means what?” Jackson demands.

“It's a ship, dreadnought class,” he explains hurried. “Frontline of an invasion. And inside the chest a cyber factory ready to convert millions.”

Instantly he changes his plan to include this new threat, taking to his heels and running in the direction of the table where Jackson’s luggage – and the TARDIS belonging to the one-time Doctor – are waiting.

A moment later, he realises that Jackson is behind him and stops to face him.

“It's heading south,” he tells the other man. “Take your son, go to the parkland.”

“But where are you going?” comes the instant question.

“To stop that thing.” It’s the Doctor in him that allows him to speak so calmly.

“But I should be with you!” Jackson shoots back.

His desperation creeps through. He’s urgent to get away, to make a start, to see if his plan will work.

To see if he can come up with ideas that are as good as the Time Lord.

“Jackson, you've got your son!” he reminds the other man. “You've got a reason to live.”

“What, and you haven't?” Jackson blurts out, horror in his voice and on his face.

“Not now,” he replies, waiting to make sure that there are no more arguments, before taking to his heels once more.

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