"Genesis of War" - Part Five

Part Five

            The resonance of TARDIS engines could not have come at a better time. The legion of Cybermen, known collectively as a “Cyber-Force,” infiltrated Cyberdyne Systems at the same moment Clarence Boddicker and his gang held the company’s staff employees hostage, in addition to Al-Lee and Leela. But, with Boddicker and his gang “deleted” by the Cybermen, all that remained was the Cyber-Force itself.

            Neas’s Type-Z TARDIS materialized within the setting. The Cybermen took aim upon it with their wrist blasters just as Neas himself stepped out with the Doctor, Officer Lewis, Major, and K-9. Accompanying them was another cyborg, unlike the Terminator, his face partially obscured by a visor. Al-Lee and Leela recognized it as the RoboCop that Neas and the Doctor spent weeks converting Officer Murphy into.

            “Cybermen,” the Doctor spoke of the legion standing before them. “We were just talking about you lot earlier. And here you are. What a coincidence!”

            “You do not sound surprised to see us, Doctor,” addressed one Cyberman, functioning as a mouthpiece for the Cyber-Force’s primary operator – the Cyber Controller.

            “Oh, please,” Neas scoffed. “It wasn’t rocket science to figure you were here when we first saw the Terminator.”

            “You refer to the automation of our enemies from Skynet,” the Cyber Controller said. “It has no relevance to our mission.” To emphasize this point, the Cyber Controller operated its Cyber-Force to open fire on the crate that contained the Terminator, destroying both in the process.

            “O.K.,” uttered the visibly baffled Neas. “Then why are you guys here?”

            “We’ve come for the one you organics designate as ‘RoboCop’.”

            Neas should’ve seen this coming, and he felt like a total idiot for not. Of course the Cybermen were interested in Murphy. Why wouldn’t they be? He was a valued ally of Neas’s in the Cyber War, which meant he could be valued by the Cybermen, if they acquired him before the war even started!

            “RoboCop, initiate Directive Four,” the Cyber Controller stated.

            Just then, Murphy groaned, his prosthetic body turning twitching as he fought against whatever control the Cyber Controller had on him. It was a battle of will that he unfortunately lost. Now, under the complete command of the Cyber Controller, the RoboCop stomped back inside Neas’s TARDIS. He activated his terminal strip – a sharp, spike-like device that protruded from his right fist – and inserted it into the corresponding data port on the TARDIS control console.

            “What’s he doing?” Major inquired.

            The apprehension on Neas’s face spoke volumes of how calamitous this situation had become. “They’ve overridden our programming with a single directive. Murphy’s now under their control, and he’s uploading all of the TARDIS’s information on interdimensional travel over to the Controller!” His anxiety deepened as he realized, “This is it. This is the genesis of the Cyber War.”

            Panicked, Lewis rushed over to the RoboCop. “Murphy, snap out of it! I know you’re still in there! You can fight back whatever it is they’re doing to you!”

            It was no use. The human half of Murphy’s consciousness was gone entirely.

            More and more TARDIS data was uploaded to the Cyber Controller, leaving Neas with a decision that he didn’t want to make but was compelled to, as he was haunted by events of his past. Taking out his trans-temporal sonic screwdriver out of his back pocket, he pointed it towards the RoboCop.

            “Surrender,” he told the Cyber Controller. “Or I will shut him down!”

            His threat unsettled all those around him, especially the Doctor.

            “You will kill him,” the Cyber Controller warned.

            “I built him, and I can destroy him,” Neas unsympathetically refuted.

            “I built him, too, and I choose not to destroy him,” the Doctor said. “Neas, think about what you’re doing.”

            “Listen to the Doctor, Time Lord,” the Cyber Controller advised. “Or else this organic’s life will be deleted!” The Cyberman nearest Al-Lee forced her down on her knees and aimed its wrist blaster at the back of her head.

            It seemed like Al-Lee’s day to have guns pointed at her. And yet she remained undaunted by the one currently exhibited by the Cyberman. In fact, she encouraged Neas, “Do what you have to do, my friend. If it means preventing the Cyber War, then I’m ready to die.” Showing how prepared she was, she shut her eyes.

            Neas’s grip on his sonic screwdriver tightened. This was a whole lot easier before the Cyber Controller used Al-Lee as its own bargaining chip. After a moment of intense hesitation, he lowered his arm and the sonic altogether. “No,” he said, looking directly at Al-Lee. “You may be ready, but I’m not.”

            Al-Lee reopened her crystal blue eyes, tears streaming down from them. There was more gratitude than disappointment in her. Not until that second had she known how much she mattered to him.

            “Emotions – the greatest weakness of organics,” the Cyber Controller panned.

            “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” Neas rebutted. “Well, let me tell you something: emotions are the greatest strength of organics. And you wanna know why? They help us to see our true selves. And I’ve been keeping my true self hidden for the longest time. But not anymore.”

            He suddenly reached beneath his collar and began tugging away at his skin.

            Right in the view of the Cybermen, the Doctor, Leela, Major, Officer Lewis, K-9, and even Al-Lee (who was the most shocked one of them all), Neas removed his face, which in actuality was a mask the entire time. His true face was not too dissimilar to the masked one. The only actual difference was in eyes and hair. Rather than a dark shade of brown, his eyes were as bright and blue as Al-Lee’s. And his black hair, instead of short and curly, was shoulder-length and straight.

            Casting aside his false face – a mesh of rubbery, lifelike flesh on the floor of the console room, Neas pointed to his true visage and told the Cyber Controller, “Remember this face! It’s the one who will one day end the Cyber War at whatever cost!”

            Following this declaration, he turned back on Murphy. To everyone’s shock, he carried out his earlier threat. With the press of a button, he overloaded the RoboCop’s system, therefore completely shutting him down. His prosthetic body fell to the floor with a loud clang, while his data spike retracted back into his hand.

            Officer Lewis knelt beside him in tears. “Murphy…no!” She looked to Neas, swelling with rage. “You killed him!”

            Another loud clang reverberated across the room.

            Then another.

            And another.

            Before they knew it, each and every Cyberman within the Cyberdyne headquarters had either collapsed to the floor just as RoboCop did, or they were entirely immobile.

            Befuddled, the Doctor questioned Neas, “What did you do?”

            “Murphy was still connected to the Controller, so not only did I overload Murphy’s system, I also overloaded the Controller’s, too,” Neas explained. “By now, the Controller – wherever he was – is nothing more than fried bits. And, without a controller, there’s no Cyber-Force to control.”

            The Doctor was only half impressed. “I see. Good plan. Except it costed us a life.”

            He nodded to the fallen Murphy, who still lied inert on the floor with Officer Lewis mourning over him.

            “Oh, that can easily be fixed,” Neas declared, pointing his sonic screwdriver once again to the RoboCop. With another press of a button, he revived the cyborg law enforcer.

            Regaining functionality, Murphy sat up to the astonishment of Officer Lewis.

            “You’re alive,” she exclaimed. “But I thought Neas…”

            “I only rebooted him,” Neas told her. “The Cyber Controller implanted a virus in Murphy that had to be purged. I gave him back his freewill – all one hundred percent of it. He’ll no longer be controlled by anyone now, not even me or the Doctor.”

            Lewis was beyond relieved. She turned to Murphy and asked, “How’re you feeling, partner?”

            “Better than ever,” the RoboCop responded.

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            RoboCop contacted the rest of the Detroit police to inform them of the illicit activities that took place within the OCP headquarters. Sure enough, the charred remains of the Cyber Controller were discovered in the building’s sublevels, as well as the corpses of Dick Jones and Bob Morton – half-converted into Cybermen.

            As far as Cyberdyne was concerned, Miles Dyson and his research team were stuck with a multitude of remnants left from the attack, from the static Cybermen bodies to the pieces leftover in the Terminator’s destruction.

            “The breakthroughs we’ll make with these things will be incredible,” Dyson jubilantly expressed. “It’ll set Cyberdyne ahead by centuries! And the best part is that Omni Consumer Products can’t claim them, since they’re on our property! We’ll make a fortune better than any they could imagine!”

            “No, you won’t,” Neas sternly said.

            Dyson scowled at him. “Why not?”

            “You saw what these machines can do…the lives that were costed because of them,” Neas told him. “If you tamper with any of their technology, you will restart the nightmare that we helped you to avert today. You need to destroy all of it immediately. Do you understand?”

            The austerity in Neas’s icy blue eyes was enough to intimidate the D.S.P. into complying. “S-Sure…no problem,” he acknowledged.

---------------

            There was no other place for Neas, the Doctor, Leela, Al-Lee, K-9, and Major to return than the rooftop of the OCP headquarters. The Doctor brought his TARDIS back there, ready to depart from the infinite dimensional corridor, using a bit of nuage energy from Neas’s TARDIS to give it the boost it needed.

            “If I ever were to find myself in another universe, it wouldn’t be a moment too soon,” the Doctor griped. “All things considered, I did have a rather good time here in the infinite dimensional corridor. Didn’t you, Leela?”

            Leela smiled. “It was a worthy experience, Doctor.”

            The Doctor took Neas’s hand and shook it. “I don’t know who you are, Neas. Even your name sounds vaguely familiar to me. I’m certain it will mean something more in the future. In the meantime, here’s something to remember me by.” After the Doctor removed his hand from Neas’s, Neas found a handful of Jelly Babies – the Doctor’s favorite treats – left in it. A nostalgic smile swept across the Gladiator’s face, having remembered the times in which this Doctor shared Jelly Babies with a certain teenaged farm girl from Georgia.

            “Goodbye, Al-Lee,” Leela bid to her fellow human in the escapade. “I do hope our paths will cross again one day soon.”

            It was another golden opportunity for Al-Lee to tell her who she was.

            Alas, Al-Lee only replied with, “So do I.”

            And, like that, the Doctor, Leela, and K-9 were away, dematerializing out of the infinite dimensional corridor and back into the time vortex in the Type-40 model TARDIS disguised as a dusty, old blue police box.

            Neas rested a hand on Al-Lee’s firm shoulder. “You did the right thing by not telling her,” he said.

            Al-Lee nodded understandingly, boldly holding back her tears.

            “What about the war?” Major asked Neas. “Do you think our actions today might’ve prevented it from happening?”

            “Doubtful,” Neas pragmatically uttered. “That’s the curse of traveling between dimensions – alternate universes still exist. We may have prevented it in one reality, but there’ll always be the next.”

            “And what about this?” Al-Lee inquired of Neas’s real face. “Why have you kept it hidden beneath a synthetic copy of itself?”

            Neas smirked and said, “That’s a whole ‘nother story.”

NEXT WEEK!

FIRST CHAPTER SNEAK PEEK! :)