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'Me, I'm just the caretaker here. This place is supposed to be closed down. Decommissioned. There was only me left here. They just turned up one night the Cybermen and the one they call Wall. Locked the place up tight with me inside.

They know I'm here, but they don't seem too bothered.'

'They'll be bothered now You tried to chuck a dirty great oil drum on their heads.' The man nodded, slowly, fatally.

'What is this place, anyway?'

'It's a sewage pumping station.'

Of course. 0level history again. London's Victorian sewerage system. They'd done it in painful detail. They might even have studied this place. If only she'd paid more attention she might have some idea how to get out.

'Like I said, it's out of commission. Too much bomb damage to the sewers round here. They're Victorian, you know.'

'Yes, I know,' said Ace, flatly. The last thing she wanted was a chat about London's sanitation problems. Joseph what was his name? Bazalgette and all that rubbish.

'They'll be sending a team out in a week or two to assess the damage. See what can be done. Although, between you and me, the main conduits have had it. I think they'll have to just demolish the lot and start again.'

'Sending a team?' Maybe London's sanitation problems weren't so irrelevant after all. 'Where?'

'Here, for starters. They'll

'So the Cybermen will be discovered, and '

'And it will be too late for us.' The caretaker spat., 'We'll have starved to death by then. If the Cybermen don't get us first. I haven't eaten in three days.'

Ace fished deep into one of the pockets of her jacket.

'Here. It's not much, and it's a bit old, but...'

The man was holding the thing up to the light, eyeing it warily. 'What do I do with it?' he asked.'

'Eat it, of course. Haven't you ever seen a Creme Egg before?'

As the caretaker wolfed down the sweet, Ace stared out of the huge, barred windows.

'What are they doing here?'

'Mmmff...' He swallowed the last of the gooey chocolate.

'That's another thing I don't understand: they've started the pumping machinery.'

'Why?'

'God knows. There are too many breaks in the system for it to do much good. And I can't imagine public health being one of the Cybermen's big concerns. I've been down a couple of times, looking for food mostly. Heard them talking.

Didn't understand most of it...'

'What?' asked Ace, impatiently.

'Well, I know things aren't going well for them. They're on the run, and desperate that no one should know where they are.'

'On the run?' Ace was incredulous. 'Who would the Cybermen need to run from?'

'Search me...' the caretaker replied. 'All I know is they're hiding here. They keep going on about some ... escape pod, I think. They came here in it.'

'Wall as well?'

The caretaker nodded. Wall and the two giants. And now they've lost the pod.'

Ace shook her head. 'They've got it back. I was there.'

She thought for a moment. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe they just want to get out of here. I mean it's not exactly a great place to escape to at the moment, is it? London, I mean. Where did they come from anyway?'

'I don't know,' the caretaker replied, 'but I don't think they're planning to go anywhere in a hurry. You see, there's something else they're looking for. They keep on talking about some... command unit... Yes, command unit.'

'Command unit?' Ace wished she'd pumped the Doctor for more information on the Cybermen. There had never seemed to be time there was always so much to assimilate in the Doctor's mad world.

'And I'll tell you something else ' the caretaker's voice dropped they can't find it anywhere.'

Ace paced impatiently about the vast brick loft. Darkness wouldn't last for ever. They had to make their move soon.

Finally, her companion had relented and they had begun their silent descent.

On the ground floor, off down one of the darkened stone passageways, she could hear the grating voices of the two Cybermen, and Wall's chilling, childlike wheedle. It sounded as if they were arguing. Ace strained to hear what they were saying, but the throb of machinery was loud here, and drowned