Owls in the Vortex

THE CYBER WITCHES: PART SIX

Eda felt her muscles freeze stiff and a lump formed in her throat, of all the times for the Cybermen to catch her, why now of all times, why when her bones feel brittle when her muscles ached? With all her effort, she swallowed the lump and rose to her making a pained groan in the process. "Well, you have us," she winced as she spoke, broken ribs were her best guess, the Cybermen must have read well into the Doctor. "So what are you pickled brains going to do, torture us, convert us, kill us?" of the three she would prefer the last one, it is better to be dead and gone than become one of them, just thinking about it made.

Eda noticed the Cyber leader balled their hands into tightly woven fists for a brief moment before relaxing their hands into a neutral form "while Killing you would bring a sense of catharsis to some, it is sadly a waste of energy and perfectly good resources, converting you would be preferable but he has better uses for you." they said, if it weren't for the fact that she knew Cybermen were emotionally null, she would have sworn that she heard a mix of smugness and disdain in that tin can's voice, actually, now that she thought about it this Cyber leader seemed very emotive compared to their underlings. It was quite weird, especially when they used words like 'afraid' or 'sadly': all Cybermen typically left out words like that. As she observed the Cyber leader more, she noticed familiar claw marks and other miscellaneous damage that resembled what the owl beast would cause, things began to click in.

Without thought or hesitation, she said her conclusion out loud "Your one of those Cybermen that had their emotional dampeners fried by Cami," there was a brief ping of sadness as she remembered the day that for a second time she had hurt someone she deeply cared for when she became the Owl Beast. "I thought you all self-destructed, in my experience you lot tend to death would be preferable compared to feeling emotion again."

The Cyber leader tilted their head "You are quite the perceptive one," they walked closer to Eda and looked her dead in the eyes "While your companion's use of a modified neural extractor had overloaded and destroyed most emotional inhibitors, mine was merely damaged." well that explained some questions she had. She considered asking about who this 'he' was, but she figured that will come to light in due time.

The Doctor's mind was swimming in a sea of revelations and questions, these Cybermen were what was left of the Terileptus occupation. He thought they were all destroyed along with their mothership, what a textbook example of improper atmosphere filtration that was: he remembered that the air onboard was so badly contaminated with Soliton gas that a thermal or electrical discharge of any sort could send the vessel ablaze. Which did happen, when he and Eda were rushing to the TARDIS to provide an injured Camila medical aid, a cyber scout discharged a cyber gun, igniting the air of the ship. Memories aside, it did beg the question as to how they managed to get to the Boiling Isles in the first place. From the time he's been imprisoned here, he saw not even a small container or feeding system of Titans blood throughout the facility meaning they couldn't have accessed it by creating a portal, in addition, given the fact that the demon realm is classed as a parallel dimension the Cybermen would need some powerful equipment to punch a hole into the fabric of reality just to get here: a feat that at the moment not many of the most powerful of spacecraft can accomplish. The calculations alone would require Gallifreyan levels of accuracy and precision unless...

So, the Cybermen are employing help from a Time Lord, the problem though is there a possibility of it being one of six suspects: The meddling Monk, the War Chief, the Master, Omega, the Rani, and the Valeyard. All had a particular axe to grind with him for one reason or another especially the Master and the Valeyard both were known to be hellbent on claiming his remaining regenerations on multiple occasions, the Master was the most desperate of them all. He couldn't keep track of how rapidly his childhood friend had burnt away all his lives, let alone all the desperate attempts to stave off the hands of death, whether that be through the taking over of bodies, using well-timed transmat beams, splicing his DNA, or even consuming creatures such as the Death worm morphant. Though he shouldn't count the Valeyard out, after all, no one would hate him more than his future self, or a supposed future self.