Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [77]
Cybermats squirmed over the bodies like metallic leeches, their teeth snipping at flesh with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. McBride could hear them chittering to each other a tinny noise, like laughter. He could hear people entering the lab behind him. A whispered prayer from Mullen.
The sound of one of the policemen being sick.
Lazonby pushed past him, his gun hanging limply at his side, staring at the tableau before him. He wandered, dazed, into the centre of the laboratory, transfixed by the figures clamped into the Cybermen's machines. Old men. Women.
Being taken apart, piece by bloody piece. The cold, hard technology of the Cybermen replacing flesh and blood.
Lazonby could hear the Doctor's voice, clipped, without emotion, echoing throughout the lab.
'Do you see now, Major Lazonby? The truth? What the Cybermen really are? What it is that they really do? There is no perfection, no ideal, no brave new world. You know what the Nazis are doing across the Channel; how can you possibly condemn them and condone this? This is everything that you are fighting against.'
Lazonby said nothing, his jaw hanging slack. Where were his perfect, glittering soldiers? Where was his symmetry, his order? The disembodied head of the Cyberleader sat on a silver pedestal, wires and cables snaking off into the workings of the sphere. Lazonby moved closer to one of the elegantly curved segments. He stared.
The figure inside had once been a man. Boxlike machinery sprang directly from his chest, wheezing and clicking. The arms and legs were shining metal and plastic, but the head...The face was peeled back, metal plates were bolted directly to the skull. Thin grey hair wisped from under the steel skull cap. Through those terrible blank eye sockets Lazonby could see human eyes.
The eyes suddenly snapped open. Lazonby choked back sobs as the figure staggered out of its alcove, arms outstretched. He could see what had once been an elderly man through the terrible tangle of machinery. The monstrosity pulled itself clear of the sphere segment, trailing wires and weeping cables.
The creature that had once been Colonel T.P. Potter (retired) lurched towards Lazonby and somehow, falteringly, forced its larynx to work.
'Help... me... Help... us...'
He suddenly straightened, his arms swinging back down to his side. His eyes glazed over, and a deep hum started in the controls strapped to his chest. As Lazonby watched, Colonel Potter died, and a new Cyberman grated its first words.
'INTRUDERS>'
Lazonby raised his service revolver and shot Potter clean through the head. The halfCyberman collapsed backward in a spray of hydraulic fluids.
Suddenly, the machinery all around the lab changed in pitch, the Cybermats hissed, agitatedly. The Doctor caught Lazonby by the arm. 'I think we'd better get out of here, Major.'
Lazonby shook him free and turned towards Wall. The little man cowered as Lazonby strode towards him.
Suddenly, there was a high, metallic screech from the centre of the lab. Something exploded from the hole in the floor. Not Cyberman, not Cybermat. Powerful arms pulled it across the floor, a metal tail thrashing at the air. Lazonby spun and emptied the remaining chambers of his revolver into the thing. It spun across the lab, crashing into a corner. It mewed pitifully as sparks flew from its casing a tragic, wailing sound, somehow familiar. All colour drained from Lazonby's face, and the heavy revolver clattered to the floor, as he realised the nature of the Cybercreature. A baby. Fullsized Cyber arms grafted directly on to its tiny torso; the tail of a Cybermat where the legs should have been.
He rounded on Wall, clamping his hands on either side of the little man's face and hauling him off the floor. Wall squealed and wriggled, but Lazonby held him firm.
'What have you done? What have you turned me into?'
His voice was a strangled whisper.
With a sudden jerk, Lazonby snatched the glasses from Wall's face, letting him fall to the floor. Wall gave out