They dragged Rose all the way back along the main corridor past Bunker Three. They pushed her into a small room containing a simple metal desk and two chairs.  She was forced to sit and the guards took up positions on either side of the door. 

Rose didn't try to escape, there was no point, she would never be able to overpower her captors and she was too distraught to attempt it anyway.  She kept waiting and waiting for the blast.  She knew that Mickey wouldn't be able to hold on forever and as soon as he couldn't take any more, he would press the trigger. 

The woman in the blue suit came in.  She closed the door and took the seat opposite Rose.  For a few seconds nothing was said, she just sat there staring, like a poker player trying to read information from her opponent's face. 

Rose wiped the tears from her eyes, there had to be some way of getting out of here. If she could cut the power of something maybe Mickey would still have a chance to escape.  But first she had to get out of this room.

'What were you doing in Bunker Three?' her voice was as business like as her suit.  Rose looked away, there was no way she was going to cooperate.

'We would like to know how you got into the building in the first place'.  They could ask as many questions as they liked thought Rose, they would get no answers from her.

'Have you figured out a way of contacting the Doctor?'  Rose was flabbergasted, how on earth had they figured out that she was here for that reason.  Although it was against her best judgement she decided to play along and see what else they knew. 

'Maybe I have, does that worry you?' she watched the woman for her reactions.

'Not at all, we are very keen to meet him ourselves, please tell me if you have been successful in your attempts.  Did you find any of the items that you collected in  Bunker Three useful?'

Rose thought for a second before answering, she didn't want to give too much away. 'No, I was just hiding in there'.

The woman stood up and impatiently walked around Rose just as the man from Bunker Four had done when he was questioning her.  Rose wondered if there was something that made them impatient, maybe their so called improvements had left them with unexpected side effects. 

'Then why are you here at all?  If you did not come here to steal the technology that you need to contact the Doctor then what are you here for?' She had a good point.  Rose had a brainwave.  'Because we've been watching you.  We know what you are planning and you won't get away with it.'  It was an old line but sometimes the old ones are the best and this was one of those times.

The woman stopped pacing in circles around the table and leant forward. 'Oh you are very much mistaken about that.  We have already gotten away with it.  The war has already begun.'   

Rose thought fast, it seemed like the woman was quite willing to discuss the situation as long as it seemed she wasn't saying anything Rose had not already heard.

She came up blank, unable to think of a single thing that would allow her to gather more information from the woman.  'What good will it do?' she ventured. 

The woman almost physically puffed up her chest, 'You know very well what good it will do, the restoration of the British Empire is one of out primary tasks here at Torchwood.  These seemingly random Cyberman attacks all across Europe will result in political chaos, and who will come to the rescue of the people, who will find a way to defeat the Cybermen. Us of course.  The great bit about controlling both forces in a war is that you know before you start that you are going to win.  Torchwood and the British government will deliver the people of Europe from the dreaded Cybermen once more.  And naturally once they have been defeated we will need to set up permanent bases of operation throughout Europe.

Rose needed to know.  'So the Cybermen you are controlling are all new?'

'Most of them are old stock, but we've managed to almost completely reverse engineer their creation process to the point where we can create new ones whenever we need to.'

Rose was starting to feel ill. 'But that requires the conversion of humans'.

The woman looked annoyed at Rose's stupidity, 'Of course it does.  But the powers that be  thought that it would be a wonderful way of reducing our prison over crowding problem at the same time.  Killing two birds with one stone so to speak.'

Rose could barely control her revulsion at what the woman was saying and was about to unleash a tirade of abuse on her.

Suddenly the room shook, dust drifted down from the ceiling. A deep, thunderous, booming sound raced through the corridors outside and the lights failed.  In that instant, Rose knew that Mickey Smith was dead.

The first to be affected was the woman in the blue suit. Moments after the explosion, emergency lights kicked in just as the woman started to scream.  Clutching her hands to her head she fell to the floor, thrashing in agony.  A second later the two Cybermen guarding the door followed suit. Twisting and turning they clasping their metal hands to their metal heads, their synthetic wailing making it obvious that they were also in extreme distress. 

Something had happened to them as a result of Mickey's last actions.  The computers in Bunker Four had no doubt been destroyed or damaged in the blast and Rose guessed that they had all been linked together through them.  She didn't wait for an invitation, she jumped out of her seat and made for the exit.  She had to step over the woman who was still thrashing about on the floor.  Luckily the two Cybermen had fallen against the wall and seemed to be either dead or unconscious.  The woman reached out and tried to grab at Rose's ankle.  Rose looked down and the expression she saw on the poor woman's face disturbed her.  She was obviously in a great amount of pain, both physical and mental.  Rose realised that she had probably been forced into becoming what she was, just like every other Cyberman Rose had ever encountered.  It was unlikely that the woman was now a threat and so Rose bent down to try and help her.  But the woman seemed to be repeatedly overtaken by spasms of despair and rage, one moment clasping at Rose's hands for help the next slapping them away in anger.  Rose reluctantly left the room, the woman's insane screams echoed down the corridor until the door closed behind her shutting them out. 

Once outside Rose instinctively headed back towards Bunker Four. She knew that there was no way Mickey could have survived a blast of such force but she had to be sure.  As she got closer she could see the devastation caused by the explosion.  Bunker Three was intact but beyond that there was almost nothing but rubble and twisted wreckage.  Even the huge door, blasted from its hinges lay bent and battered against the wall in the corridor.

Rose remembered her backpack and quickly darted in through the still open doors of Bunker Three.  There were two disabled Cybermen laying unconscious just inside the door.  She carefully stepped over their bodies and made her way through the columns of packing crates, back to where she had been working on the Daleks.

Her bag was still where she had left it. Grabbing it she quickly moved over to where she had been working before.   Rose had to get out of here but the opportunity to finish what she had started was too great to ignore.  If there was any chance of contacting the Doctor she now knew that she had to take it.  What Torchwood were planning was monstrous, and they needed to be stopped.  Rose could think of no one more capable of stopping them than the Doctor.  It was beyond her own personal desire to see him again now.  She simply had to contact him.

She picked up where she had left off, reconnecting the communications device back into the Dalek.  She looked around nervously expecting more Cybermen or people in blue suits to appear at any moment.  She finally figured out where she had been going wrong and got the complicated alien device back in place where it should be.

She was sure that the Dalek was back to its original state.  Reaching around inside the Dalek's case she hunted for the small square object that had triggered the recording playback.  Once it was located, she inserted her finger into the slot just as before.  The Dalek began to speak again, but after only a few seconds the recording started to slow down.   Almost comically the robotic voice became slower and slower, until it ground to a halt and stopped altogether.  No this couldn't be happening.  She realised that there just wasn't enough power to send the entire signal.  What little energy that had put into it had been used up.  She placed her hand on the case in a desperate attempt to reenergize the machine.  But it remained silent.  Whatever it was going to do, had been done.  Hoping that it had been enough, she checked inside her bag for the various elements they had removed from the others, all there. Time to leave. 

A thought of Mickey came to her, holding out as long as he could in order to give her enough time to get away from the blast area.  Brave Mickey, she almost began to cry again but stopped herself short.  She was still in great danger, getting out of one of the most heavily defended buildings in England wasn't going to be easy.  There were an unknown number of Cybermen in the immediate area and she was still six floors underground. 

The wave of sorrow washed over her again.  She forced it back.  Nobody was coming to help her, if she was going to get out of this situation then Rose Tyler was the only person that could help her.  She zipped up the bag and slung it over her shoulder and left Bunker Three. 

The blast must have knocked out the central control computer as she had suspected. Around every corner and in every room that she looked into there were disabled Cybermen, some apparently unconscious others thrashing in agony.  It looked like they wouldn't be causing her any troubles, all that was left to do was to get past all of the human security guards, make her way up to the ground floor escape the building and get away… piece of cake, she thought.

Rounding a corner back into the corridor where the conference rooms were she hit a snag.  It seemed that the blast had taken out more than just the computer systems.  The corridor back towards the elevators was blocked by a gushing jet of super hot steam from a broken pipe.  There was no way past it. 

She was trapped.

Dave thought he'd have another Scotch egg.  He'd been sitting in the van now for hours and was very, very bored.  He'd actually anticipated this happening, sitting around for ages, waiting for the heroes to do their stuff. He'd been smart enough to bring a book to read and something to eat but he'd finished reading the book hours ago.  He'd found an old news paper stuffed under the drivers seat but he'd finished that as well now. He did the easy crossword (too easy), he did the cryptic crossword (also too easy). He'd had a little nap but he'd woken up again.  Bag of crisps, gone.  Chocolate bar, gone. Two cans of drink, gone.  Scotch egg (one of two)… gone.  Counting the number of red, blue, white and green cars in the car park he was overlooking, done… twice.  Bored, bored, bored. 

So the last Scotch egg it was then.  It was all there was left. He took a bite and looked out across the car park that separated him from Torchwood.  He wasn't parked in the Torchwood car park, that would have been too risky what with the guards seeing the van during the drop off. No he was in the car park behind that one. He had a clear view of the gate where he had dropped Rose and Mickey off.  He'd been very proud when he realised that his plan had worked and they'd made it inside.   He hoped Mickey would be proud of him too.  Even though he was often rude and obsessed about his work Mickey had become a bit of a hero in Dave's eyes. 

Dave took another bite of the Scotch egg and all the windows on the ground floor of the South side of Torchwood shattered and fell to the ground.   Dave looked at the Scotch egg.  Then he felt it, the low whump of an underground explosion.  It reverberated right through the ground all the way out to the van.  Dozens of car alarms went off all over the car park.  Mickey must have used the plastic explosives, they were supposed to get out of the building before they did that.  Something must have gone wrong. 

He popped the last of the Scotch egg into his mouth and started the engine.  They would be coming out faster than expected now, he had better get to the pick up point as quickly as possible.

Dave pulled the van out of its parking space and made his way back to Torchwood.

Rose made her way back the way she had come.  There had to be another way out of a building this size, there should be fire escapes or cargo elevators or something.  She came to the pile of wreckage that had once been the entrance to Bunker Four and had to climb over broken rubble to proceed.  There was a small opening leading through the devastation to the inside of the bunker.  She peered through the gap trying to see if there was any way that Mickey could have survived the blast.  What met her eyes turned her stomach.  Mixed in with the rubble and broken equipment were bodies. Some of them were Cybermen but others were clearly the burnt and broken remains of people.  She turned away quickly, before her emotions took over again.  There was nothing she could do here.  She climbed down from the wreckage and headed away from the remains of Bunker Four.

She finally found a ramp leading downwards.  It was the complete opposite way she wanted to go but it seemed to be her only alternative to waiting around to be rescued, the chances of which were exactly nil.

The ramp led to a gantry and as Rose approached the edge and looked below, her breath caught in her chest.  There were literally hundreds of Cybermen collapsed all over the floor of the large chamber that formed Sublevel Seven.

Then she realised that she would have to walk right through the middle of them to get out.   She'd done this sort of thing before of course but the prospect of basically picking your way through a field of dead people was never going to be appealing.  Additionally the thought that at any moment any one of the bodies at your feet might suddenly come back to life and try and kill you made the idea even less pleasant.

She started down the metal ladder that was attached to the gantry.  Half way down she thought she heard something from the ground below.  She stopped and turned as best she could without falling, but everything looked just as it did from the gantry above.  She continued climbing.  Then she thought she heard something from above. God this was getting creepy.  She picked up the pace.  The sooner she got out of here the better. 

She made it to the ground and started stepping through the litter of Cybermen that literally  covered the entire floor.  When the computers went down they must have been thrashing around all over the place, bumping into each other and falling in heaps. 

She was glad she wasn't around to have seen it.  She'd witnessed similar events before with the Doctor and even thinking about it made her feel a little guilty.  The Cybermen as a whole were a menace that was never in doubt, but underneath each and every one of those metallic silver bodies was the trapped mind and soul of an innocent human being, a person that didn't deserve an agonising death after all they'd already been through.

There was a noise again. She froze in mid stride.  There had definitely been a noise, not metallic though, not the sound of a Cyberman rising from the dead, no it was more of a quiet rustle, like the sound of material being caught in a breeze.  She looked around, peering into the darker corners of the massive room.  She saw nothing obvious that could have made the sound. 

She decided that she wanted to get out of here right now, she was getting seriously creeped out.  She turned and ran for the elevator doors which stood open. Jumping over and side stepping around the heaps of silvery corpses Rose belted flat out for the lift.  This time when the rustling sound came it was close behind her, much closer, much, much closer. 

The terrible nightmare of being chased by the werewolf came flooding back to her.  She was almost to the elevator, she daren't look around, she had to keep running, just keep running. 

She burst into the lift and turned to face her fear.  But there was nothing there.  She stared out over the sea of silver bodies and then she saw something.  Just a black shape against the darkness, the barely visible shape of a man. He was standing in the shadow of the gantry a couple of hundred feet away, motionless. Rose reached out and hit the button for the ground floor on the lift control panel.  Whoever it was he did not attempt to follow, he just stood there watching from the darkness. The grated doors closed and the lift started to rise.  She peered through the bars trying to make out anything more about the dark figure, but he was gone.

Continue to Part 10

Acknowledgements

_{The composition Divide features characters and extrapolates on past situations and events seen in the BBC television series Doctor Who. The author and braingunk.com would like to fully acknowledge all relevant BBC copyrights, trademarks and intellectual properties related to the Divide project. The work is provided episodically and free of charge to all visitors to the braingunk website and will be available as a free of charge single downloadable ebook for registered braingunk users only. The work is published on a completely free of charge, non profit basis and may not be redistributed either in part or complete form without express written permission form braingunk and the author. The work may not be compiled into any collection either physically or electronically stored and redistributed either for profit or for free without express written permission from braingunk and the author.  In addition to these stipulations, the use of Divide and all other braingunk publications are governed by the general braingunk terms and conditions.}