Prologue
48 BC
“It was the night Ptolomy fell.”
She stood on the balcony, overlooking her great city. Alexandria. The claustrophobic, muggy weather that constricted her, day in, day out, had been vanquished by the night winds, blowing over the Mediterranean, and turning the perpetual daytime heat into a cold and bitter night. The sea had turned from its shimmering, translucent green, and had morphed into a great pool of inky, unearthly black. As she stood there, watching over her city during the aftermath of the battle, during the aftermath of the day, she imagined what secrets would could hide there, in the shadowed depths of the oceans.
Now the sun had gone in and the chill had arrived, her bare arms were spattered with goosepimples, and the temperatures crept through to the skin. The men from Rome underestimated the conditions of the night, making them angrier than they already were. She had overheard whisperings from some of the men that Caesar was not impressed with the actions of her brother.
They would meet tomorrow, she decided. She would capitalise on their mutual distaste.
Except, there was an eerie quality to the night. The evening winds had calmed now, no longer gusting and throwing her flowing, hair, wild into oblivion. Instead it was perfectly still. The atmosphere was even stranger by the silence in the streets below. It was too quiet.
Then she turned, and there was someone stood in her bedchamber.
She could see the figure through the door into the room. It was waiting, right on the far side. Motionless, it stood, just out from the shadows, so it remained cloaked in a hood of darkness, while the wall torches illuminated its hideous face in an orange glow.
When she realised what it was, she realised that the figure was not possible.
It was a dead man.
No, it was a dead boy.
He was bandaged up, as the dead always were. His legs and his body were wrapped tight in bandages – they were freshly applied. Except, they were not bound fully – some gaps between the material were left open, with… contraptions of sorts… twine, perhaps, running from different parts of the body.
When her eyes met the boy’s eyes, she gulped, and stepped into her bedchamber.
Half of its head was roughly bandaged, the other half left open to the world. The half that had been tended to was similar to the body, with… devices, running from it, to other parts of the torso. The other distinguishable feature was the eye – it was not covered by the fabric. But it was not a human eye either. A great, empty, black socket remained, deeper and darker than the sea. When she stared into it, she saw no element of humanity.
The open half was well and truly human, though a deep gash ran from the top of the face to the bottom. She examined it, to try and make some sense of who it was.
“Who are you?” she asked, when she could not work it out.
There was no response, so she tried again.
“Answer me. I am Cleopatra. Queen of Egypt.”
All it could do was stand and watch her.
“Who are you!”
The mummy said nothing, but still it watched her.
She blinked.
And it vanished into the night.
“It was the night Ptolomy fell.”
She stood on the balcony, overlooking her great city. Alexandria. The claustrophobic, muggy weather that constricted her, day in, day out, had been vanquished by the night winds, blowing over the Mediterranean, and turning the perpetual daytime heat into a cold and bitter night. The sea had turned from its shimmering, translucent green, and had morphed into a great pool of inky, unearthly black. As she stood there, watching over her city during the aftermath of the battle, during the aftermath of the day, she imagined what secrets would could hide there, in the shadowed depths of the oceans.
Now the sun had gone in and the chill had arrived, her bare arms were spattered with goosepimples, and the temperatures crept through to the skin. The men from Rome underestimated the conditions of the night, making them angrier than they already were. She had overheard whisperings from some of the men that Caesar was not impressed with the actions of her brother.
They would meet tomorrow, she decided. She would capitalise on their mutual distaste.
Except, there was an eerie quality to the night. The evening winds had calmed now, no longer gusting and throwing her flowing, hair, wild into oblivion. Instead it was perfectly still. The atmosphere was even stranger by the silence in the streets below. It was too quiet.
Then she turned, and there was someone stood in her bedchamber.
She could see the figure through the door into the room. It was waiting, right on the far side. Motionless, it stood, just out from the shadows, so it remained cloaked in a hood of darkness, while the wall torches illuminated its hideous face in an orange glow.
When she realised what it was, she realised that the figure was not possible.
It was a dead man.
No, it was a dead boy.
He was bandaged up, as the dead always were. His legs and his body were wrapped tight in bandages – they were freshly applied. Except, they were not bound fully – some gaps between the material were left open, with… contraptions of sorts… twine, perhaps, running from different parts of the body.
When her eyes met the boy’s eyes, she gulped, and stepped into her bedchamber.
Half of its head was roughly bandaged, the other half left open to the world. The half that had been tended to was similar to the body, with… devices, running from it, to other parts of the torso. The other distinguishable feature was the eye – it was not covered by the fabric. But it was not a human eye either. A great, empty, black socket remained, deeper and darker than the sea. When she stared into it, she saw no element of humanity.
The open half was well and truly human, though a deep gash ran from the top of the face to the bottom. She examined it, to try and make some sense of who it was.
“Who are you?” she asked, when she could not work it out.
There was no response, so she tried again.
“Answer me. I am Cleopatra. Queen of Egypt.”
All it could do was stand and watch her.
“Who are you!”
The mummy said nothing, but still it watched her.
She blinked.
And it vanished into the night.
THE EIGHTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES
SERIES 5 - EPISODE 2
CLEO AND THE MUMMY
written by Peter Darwin
based on an idea by sam baker
“Ever heard of spontaneity?”
The Doctor watched Lizzie as she scanned the tall shelf, looming above her. Usually when people stepped into a box that could travel anywhere in time and space, they did not ask to be taken to a library. On Earth.
The History section of the place was huge, with shelves taller than houses bursting with a million tales and a million lifetimes. Lizzie loved libraries, and she loved getting lost in them – this one especially, with its historical section being so rich and in depth.
“You know, I’ve got one of these on the TARDIS.”
Lizzie still didn’t say anything, she just kept tracing a finger along the dusty spines of the books. There were so many histories and encyclopaedias, and so many of them hadn’t been taken out in years – but still they remained, as crucial documents, the only available links to the past.
At least, that’s what Lizzie had thought.
“I know this library,” she replied to the Doctor’s previous remark, and he looked around confused, having completely forgotten what he’d said about the TARDIS library.
He stepped back, leaving her to it, and leaned against a table.
“You know,” a voice behind him said. “Libraries are amazing. They take people to brand new places. You should let her explore.”
The Doctor turned, to see a woman, sat over a MacBook, with circular glasses perched on her nose.
“Sorry?” he asked, slightly taken aback.
“Sorry, forgive me,” she stood up, offering a hand to shake. “Ameera Iqbal.”
He returned the handshake. “The Doctor.”
“Of what?” she enquired.
“Of everything.”
“Cool. I’m a professor. Egyptology,” she said, gesturing to the thick tome beside her laptop.
“Fascinating subject,” the Doctor leaned in closer, if slightly confused she hadn’t bothered to ask about his doctorate.
“Very much so. I’m writing a paper at the moment on Cleopatra and her life. Interesting woman.”
“I can imagine,” the Doctor took a seat. He could see Lizzie drifting over to them. “Go on then. Most interesting thing about Cleopatra.”
Ameera thought for a few seconds – although it was not as if she had to think. Merely organise her thoughts.
“The fact nobody knows anything about her.”
The Doctor looked intrigued. Lizzie looked especially intrigued. A historian herself, this was her idea of a brilliant day out.
“I mean, this,” she pointed to her laptop. “Is basically just conjecture. We know a bit, from some of the Roman records left behind, and maybe the odd hieroglyphic here and there. But other than that… nothing.”
“Isn’t history just conjecture?” the Doctor challenged her.
“That’s a whole new can of worms,” Ameera sighed. “But Cleopatra especially. A complete enigma to everyone. And so misinterpreted by people, I believe. But hey. History is interesting like that. So many different interpretations. Who knows what really happened?”
When she looked up, the strange Doctor and his friend had vanished.
***
Lizzie stepped into the TARDIS, shutting the doors behind her as the Doctor started fiddling with the controls. They were both thinking exactly the same thing.
The central column slowly rose, up and down, and the TARDIS roared into a great, rasping life.
“Cleopatra! Don’t know why I haven’t thought of her before. Actually, I probably have…”
Lizzie didn’t have a clue what he was talking about half the time. All she could think about now was that somehow, she was travelling in time. The science defied her, but she didn’t care.
“Time travel, Lizzie. We can go back, we can go forward. And sideways. Remember that. Especially sideways.”
“… what other people have you met?” she asked, as the question suddenly came to her. If one had a time machine, it would make sense that they’d met a good many interesting people.
“I met Da Vinci. Anne Boleyn as well. I had a picnic with William the Conqueror – actually, it was more of a pre-conquest feast, and I did life-drawing with Joseph Stalin.”
Lizzie wondered who the model was. But she listened to the Doctor as she rattled off the list, with a life she hadn’t heard in him before, an excitement, an enjoyment – he was happy, then and there.
The bigger-on-the-inside box stopped.
They had arrived.
Her previous TARDIS trips had been within the realms of normality – only a few streets away, nothing too unusual. But ahead of her was a world that nobody else from her world had walked on. Something that shouldn’t ever happen, but something that was about to happen.
There was a strange feeling inside her, a fusion between excitement and fear, stomach-churning but in a good way. It was as if butterflies were fluttering about inside her, but they were happy, their wings beating in euphoria. Her hand connected with the door and gave it a gentle push, as she wanted to savour this feeling of being somewhere brand new and somewhere impossible, so she wouldn’t forget it again for as long as she lived.
The door gently swung open, revealing a whole world in front of her. They were only parked in an alley-way, a fairly unassuming sight, but little did anyone else wondering around know, that this would be the alley-way to have broadened Lizzie’s experience of the universe more than anyone could have realised.
It was excitement beyond anything she had imagined previously.
***
As soon as Lizzie stepped out of the TARDIS, she had to take off her jumper and throw it inside. It was as if someone had slapped her in the face with the heat, and she suddenly felt unexpectedly faint. She took a few steps more down the alley-way of dreams, admiring the two sun-bleached stone buildings on either side, in awe of how real they were..
The street ahead of them was congested with market stalls – wooden tables bordered the entire walkway, covered in a plethora of goods. There were spices, and had Lizzie not been so knocked back by the heat, she would be able to smell them. Hardened clay pots, recently dried in the heat of the sun, were being sold from another stall, and precisely entwined wicker baskets sold from a third. Sugar canes, cut down from the banks of the Nile, were being bartered away. There was a constant overlay of sound to the proceedings, of the townspeople going about their normal, humdrum lives.
“They all speak English,” Lizzie observed, as the Doctor stepped out behind her.
“The TARDIS translates them.”
She wondered if there was anything the TARDIS couldn’t do, as the two of them set off, making their way down the street, passing the people and the stalls and the buying and selling as they went. Lizzie watched as her feet made light footprints in the sand and dust beneath them, and she made an impossible mark on the world. Anxiety piqued within her as she worried whether that footprint would change the course of human history forever. It was irrational, of course, considering the Doctor had done life-drawing with Stalin, but even so. Lizzie made the executive decision that she was going to push everything aside. No worrying today.
She realised as they walked, that they must look so out of place, in modern fashions – but nobody seemed to care.
The Doctor looked at her, as if he were waiting for her to say it, his script on pause – and clearly he were enjoying the pause.
“It’s because they’re all so busy, doing what they do. We’re just passers-by,” she realised.
In a peculiar way, the world hadn’t changed much.
“So,” the Doctor grinned. Although he had done this so many times before, he always felt so much more alive when seeing it again, through the eyes of somebody brand new. “Antirhodos is over… there,” the Doctor pointed in a rough direction.
“… and… how do we… I don’t know, meet her?”
“I usually just walk in.”
“And… people let you do that?”
“No, not usually.”
That was reassuring. She watched as the Doctor strode confidently on, and she had to remind herself to just go with the flow. If she was hanged or beheaded for trespassing, so what? There was something unreal about the way the Doctor walked, as if he could be quite confident about swaggering around in the past. Lizzie tried to swagger after him with similar levels of confidence, and just looked a bit stupid, so she stopped.
***
“My Lord Caesar.”
The Roman Emperor, dressed in long, blood-red robes strode up to her, and knelt down. He kissed her hand, and then stood again.
“My Queen.”
Caesar gestured for her to sit, and she did so. Caesar sat opposite her.
“A great victory, my Lord,” Cleopatra took a sip from her wine. “And I am eternally thankful that my kingdom has been returned to its… rightful Queen.”
“For sure,” Caesar agreed. “I believe your tyrant brother died in the fighting.”
Cleopatra thought back to the events of the previous night. Death had always seemed so normal and so every day. Except this time, it was her brother – and her brother was her brother. However, he had become someone else, threatening their kingdom by becoming embroiled in conflicts he shouldn’t. She had lost her brother and she was sad, but she was devastated for the person he had come. She was determined to rule in the way he hadn’t.
Many other people had died too. Cleopatra held herself together over it. People died all the time. It was not a problem.
Although it had become a problem, ever since the dead began to walk.
“Queen?”
Realising she had practically left the room, Cleopatra realised who she was sat opposite.
“Yes, my Lord. And a good thing – my brother is not fit to live alongside us.”
“To Rome I shall return,” Caesar said. “Though I will leave men here, to protect your throne.”
Cleopatra hesitated, and her face turned.
“You are… spying on me?”
“I am protecting you.”
She was wary of them. Her kingdom had so easily gone to war over rulers before, and she did not want to allow it to happen again. Especially if Egypt was to be ruled from the backdoor of Rome.
“My Lord, you must understand. Seas of blood have been shed over my rule. Although I may let your men stay for the good of the protection of my throne, I will see to it that they do not dare rule for me.”
Caesar gave a coy smile. “They… shall not.”
“After all. This is an alliance that must work both ways. Endeavor to make sure it does not break down.”
Caesar sat back, impressed at the force of the woman sat opposite him. It did not seem as if he would be able to have his say for much longer.
Queen Cleopatra stood up, and her robes trailed behind her as she left.
As the Queen made her way out into the passageway beyond Caesar’s chambers, a handmaiden walked beside her.
“My Queen,” she began. “There is a doctor here to see you.”
Admittedly, Cleopatra was confused. She had not sent for a doctor.
And yet, she said nothing.
***
Set on an island, Cleopatra’s palace was magnificent. And yet, in a thousand years or so, a great tsunami would transform it into nothing but dust.
From the chamber that Lizzie and the Doctor stood, they could hear the Mediterranean gently buffeting the stone bricks outside, with salty, frothy foam bursting up the sides of the lighthouse. The sea was gentle, and Lizzie stood watching the emerald waters lap gently far beneath where she stood. It would be perfect weather to bathe in. Gentle though they seemed, however, as the waves crawled up, it was as if they were a nest of blackbird chicks, fighting each other for seeds and nuts and worms, clawing through the masses.
The Doctor was pacing the Queen’s chamber, admiring the illustrious artworks on the wall, so antique and exquisite. It was a whole room of fineries, and yet it was not extravagant. Silk curtains were drawn beside the window looking down onto the ocean below, and a simple, wooden throne was positioned at the head of the room. A rug paved the way from the small door at the far side of the room to the throne, patterned with detailed intricacies. They were, of course, breaking all protocol – it was the rug they were meant to walk down, and not the Queen.
His guise was of a Doctor – after all, people lied best when keeping it close to the truth. Lizzie still didn’t think they would last particularly long – they had just broken into the Queen’s palace, and made their way into the throne room.
Eventually, the far door opened, and Cleopatra waited for them.
Though the stories got many things wrong about Cleopatra, it was no secret that she was a figure of glorious beauty – her hair ran to just below the neck, and was blacker than the night. A simple, gold headdress adorned her, and it was almost a collar of cut jewels, of emeralds brighter than the sea outside, and of rubies darker than the blood-red curtains, that she wore perched across her neck. She wore simple, white robes beneath it, and she did not seem startled to find the Doctor and Lizzie waiting in her throne room.
Lizzie gulped, terrified of the woman who strode confidently in the room, a historical misconception living and breathing in front of her. Stories had been written about this woman, and yet nobody where she came from knew the truth. As time trawled on she had become buried under layers of manipulated history, until what remained was a mere caricature of the original. And now Lizzie was watching her, determined to see her for who she truly was, and not the fake version spun in the modern day.
“You are… a doctor, yes?”
“I am, my Queen,” the Doctor replied, stepping away from admiring one of the paintings. Lizzie stepped into the room, and the Doctor turned to her.
“Cleopatra,” he whispered to Lizzie, to try and make sure Cleopatra herself couldn’t hear.
“Comin’ atcha,” Lizzie murmured.
“I give you the last Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and you make 90s music puns?” the Doctor scowled.
Lizzie didn’t have him down as one for 90s R&B.
Cleopatra nodded, and turned to her guard. “You will leave us.”
“Yes, my Queen.”
The guard left, and Cleopatra entered the throne room, gently shutting the door behind her. She turned to Lizzie.
“This is my assistant,” the Doctor explained. “She is an expert in many matters that are beyond my understanding.”
Lizzie thought that he was probably right, but if he ever called her his assistant again she’d get very cross.
“Then she may stay,” Cleopatra did not make her way to the throne. “How did you know to come?”
“Some of your servants believed you were acting strangely, my Queen. They thought that perhaps, you had come down with something,” the Doctor lied, playing along in a bid to extract whatever mysterious horror had made Cleopatra call a doctor. Lizzie, meanwhile, felt something strangely liberating about lying to an ancient Egyptian Queen.
Cleopatra looked shocked, but she didn’t question him.
“You must not speak to anyone about our conversation,” Cleopatra explained. The Doctor approached her, a warm smile on his face. “If you did so, I would fear for my throne.”
“Of course, my Queen.”
There was a pause, and Cleopatra stood, deep in thought. The future of her kingdom depended on what she said now. She made her way to one of the benches, and sat down.
“I am being watched.”
The Doctor waited, though already his interest had been piqued.
“I am being watched,” she continued. “By the dead.”
Unlike most doctors, who would have backed away, the Doctor moved closer to the Queen, while Lizzie waited a fair distance away.
“You must think I am… ill,” Cleopatra muttered, suddenly realising what she had said outside. “But I swear to you,” she looked at the Doctor, and their eyes met, hers with an earnestness. “I’m not lying.”
“No,” the Doctor shook his head. “I don’t believe you are. Who are you being watched by, Cleo? What do they look like?”
Lizzie let out an audible gasp at the way the Doctor addressed her – not that she had a problem with it, she was just concerned he was going to be… beheaded or something.
But the Queen did not bat an eyelid, as whatever was watching her terrified her beyond words, and she would be willing to forgive such insolence if it meant the dead were dealt with.
“A mummy. It was last night, and I was in my bedchamber. And it stood there, and… it was dead. It did not move – it stayed, perfectly still, watching me.”
“Ohh… fascinating. Cleo, stay calm. We’re going to find them.”
“Wait,” Cleo looked at him in disbelief for the first time. “You believe me?”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor looked over to Lizzie, and she nodded. “So does Lizzie.”
She most certainly did. After everything that Lizzie Darwin had seen in the last few days (few days? Her entire perception of time had been completely warped. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d slept), she would believe anything. Lizzie gave Cleopatra a friendly smile – which wasn’t something she ever thought she’d do.
“Believe me, Cleo. We’ll find them.”
The Doctor left the throne room, leaving Lizzie stood looking at a bemused Cleopatra.
“He believed me?” she said again.
“I think he sees this stuff a lot,” Lizzie took a deep breath, trying to ignore the fact she was stood, alone, in a room with Cleopatra.
“What kind of doctor is he?”
“A strange one. Actually I don’t really know.”
Cleo looked at the doors the Doctor had left wide open. “One who is a complete irritation, it seems.”
Lizzie laughed – actually, properly laughed, and didn’t just laugh out of fear of execution. Cleopatra was actually a rather nice woman.
“You should stand up to your friend more,” Cleopatra declared.
“I’ve only just met him,” Lizzie admitted.
“Lizzie? That was your name, was it not?”
“Yes – yes, my… my Queen.”
“Even more reason to do it, then.”
***
It was the dead of night in the palace, and Lizzie was wondering who the Doctor truly was, as they crept down the sandstone corridors, trying to remain as quiet as possible. On one hand, the man with the magic box seemed like an impossible time traveller. On the other hand, it all felt a bit… Scooby Doo.
“Do the monsters follow you around?” she eventually asked, determined to break the awkward silence. It was the only sound, other than their footsteps tapping gently against the floor.
They’d been mummy-hunting for a good half an hour, and had seen nothing. The Doctor walked ahead, the sonic screwdriver gently pulsating with light with each step they took, and he was seemingly in his element. An element he had missed, by the looks of the way his eyes lit up at every new corner and door. There was no logic to the way they searched the palace – they just followed the light pulses. They turned corners, and took flights of stairs, and went through all sorts of rooms they probably shouldn’t have gone through.
“It’s just… coincidence, I think,” the Doctor admitted, as they turned onto a long, wide corridor with ornate tapestries draped along the walls. “Half the time I follow them.”
There were several doors stationed along the corridor. One of them had a tall, barrel-chested guard stood outside. Lizzie accidentally made eye contact and awkwardly waved at him. The guard remained motionless and Lizzie knew this horrendous social encounter would haunt her for a good few days. Lizzie caught up with the Doctor, trying to forget the incident had ever happened.
“So… this is how it works. You go somewhere… and you fight evil and stuff?”
“Basically, yes. And I must admit, Lizzie, you’ve hit the jackpot on your first go. Ancient Egypt, Cleopatra, and mummies. Mummies stalking Cleopatra. That’s lucky.”
I feel humbled. The weirdness was a bit too much for sarcasm. She was too internally excited, at having actually spoken to Cleopatra.
It got weirder, however.
The door at the far end of the corridor swung open with Indiana Jones style theatrics, and a shadow staggered through.
“Hello…,” the Doctor murmured, flicking the sonic screwdriver away back into his pocket. “Who are you…”
As the shadow stumbled its way down the corridor towards them, and into the light of the burning orange torches, they both realised exactly what it was.
The mummy.
Whether it was the one stalking the Queen, or whether there were more of them, they were unsure. What they were looking at was a mummy.
It walked upright, except it was as if it were only walking for the first time, and it hadn’t quite got to grips with how its legs functioned. Because of that, it took one step at a time, thinking between each as to what muscles had to move to move another. It walked in a constant, stop-start rhythm, one foot, then the other, one foot, then the other. Eventually it stopped, about ten metres away from where they stood. It was then that they could get a good look at it.
The mummy was tall. Tall-ish. Both legs were bandaged – except unlike the mummy Cleo had described, the bandages here were old and yellowed, and peeling off in several places. Wires and tubes poked through the fabric, running to other parts of the body, adding an air of artificiality to the creature. The body was similar, bound tight in antique, stained bandages, peeling off and torn and ripped. Again, wires and tubes ran from the torso to other parts of the body. Also connected to the part of the fabric was a panel – it looked like a partially severed iPhone, and buttons and switches and glowing little lights decorated the rest of it. The head was the most bizarre part – a hodgepodge of mummy and human and robot. Some of it was bandaged, binding the skin on the human bits tight. The visible skin was grey and dead – no blood had run through it in years. And then the robotics… the two eyes had been replaced with metal plates, and embedded in each of the plates was a cold, empty socket, staring out at them.
“Oh, Lizzie…,” the Doctor sounded almost in awe. “You really have hit the jackpot on your first go.”
His eyes were drawn to the top of the head. Two pieces of metal protruded from the side, and connected above the head – almost like handlebars.
“You recognise it?” she asked the Doctor.
He didn’t respond. When she looked at him, he was grimacing, his face a picture of shock, and disgust, and…
Recognition.
“The Cybermen.”
The word meant nothing to her, but the Doctor said it with a distinct force and distaste.
“You… you know what it is, though?”
“Oh yes,” the Doctor didn’t move from his spot, and told her to stop moving as well. The Cyberman-mummy remained perfectly still, staring at them. “The Cybermen are old friends of mine. I say friends. I mean…”
“Enemies?”
“Yes. But I say enemies, they’re not… they’re not malicious, far from it. They’re evolution. They’re humans. But they’re advanced humans. Humanity mark 2, perhaps – when we get sick of our flesh bodies, and we decided we’ve had enough of pain and sickness, then… that’s what we become.”
Lizzie shivered, swallowing back bile, and stared at the creature staring at them, unable to comprehend that the thing opposite her had once been… the same as her. Except, she also could not bring herself to despise it too much, for she understood that that was where humanity would naturally evolve to. Regardless of that, the future, stood in front of her now, was sickening. But somehow it had changed, so much so that it looked completely different… but still uncannily human.
“You,” the Doctor said. “Yes, I’m talking to you, Cyberman. What do you want here?”
“We………….”
It spoke in a voice that made Lizzie cringe – as if an autotuned voice had gone horribly wrong, and the equipment vastly misused – the wrong words and sounds were emphasised, and when they came out the pitch was distorted.
“We….. we….”
“Go on,” the Doctor encouraged mockingly, nothing but contempt in his voice. “Spit it out, now.”
“The – the – the Cybermeeeeeee –”
“It’s weak,” the Doctor dared to approach a little closer, suitably reassured that the Cyberman was on the harmless side. Though looking at the way the Doctor looked at the Cyberman… harmless probably still meant ‘pretty dangerous’.
“The Cybermen – crashed – upon this planet.”
“Oh… interesting. It’d explain why you’re so… patchwork…”
“Are they always like this, then?” Lizzie asked, looking at the almost makeshift man, and then looking away because of the unnerving familiarity.
“Depends on their timeline. Some of them are far more roboticised than others. This lot – well, it’s not only early in their timeline, but they’re running low on resources as well, I should think,” the Doctor turned back to the Cyberman. He didn’t need to worry – the Cyberman was waiting for him. It was as if it couldn’t be bothered to attack. Or as if it had something better to be concerned about. “What do you want with Cleopatra?”
“Your question is… irrelevant.”
The Doctor gave a confused look. “No, I don’t think so. Tell me.”
The Cyberman didn’t respond, and the Doctor looked almost fed up at his inability to embrace the Scooby-Doo chasing-aliens side of his travelling. He sighed, a kind of ‘what’s the point’ sigh – sick of the monsters being terrible at being interrogated.
“They’re so... depleted of everything,” the Doctor took out the sonic screwdriver, giving the still-mostly-human creature the once over. “They can barely talk.”
The Doctor already looked confused. Lizzie was pretty certain that wasn’t meant to happen. He ran a hand through his short locks of hair, and stroked the little facial hair he had, and looked to one of the tapestries on the wall. It portrayed eight figures – Lizzie didn’t recognise them, but they were the sort of Egyptian figures, that one often saw in art galleries.
“Heh,” the Doctor gave a small laugh. No, Lizzie realised. It wasn’t a small laugh. She gave him a confused glance, and the Doctor winked at her, and then turned to the Cyberman. “Hmm. Perhaps my Egyptian mythology is better than your databanks.”
Lizzie nudged him, and he turned to her. “Heh. Part of the Ogdoad, Egyptian God of eternity.”
Lizzie was coming to realise that no matter how much the Doctor explained things, sometimes they still didn’t make any sense. At all.
“Cybermen, or Cyberman, I don’t know yet whether there are any more of you. I will, though. Oh, I will. See you in about… four-ish years? Give or take.”
The Doctor turned on his heels, and Lizzie was stood awkwardly looking at the Cyberman. She shrugged her shoulders, and the Cyberman looked on at her emotionless. She turned to follow the Doctor.
***
The Doctor and Lizzie walked down the stone pier, back to the shore. It was well into the night now, and the hustle and bustle of the market was long gone now. Instead, the eerie city silence of the small hours had set in, and a thick, viscous darkness had settled over the city. Lizzie took her phone out of her pocket to switch the torch on, before putting it away again, still concerned it would screw up the entire space-time continuum or something.
“What was all that about?” Lizzie asked him, loitering behind slightly.
“That Cyberman, Lizzie. It was basically harmless. But it will be active, soon – believe me, it will be.”
The Doctor ran his plan through his head. They were going to go, come back in about four years, and wait for the Cybermen to... do more stuff. It was the only way, to avoid the Cybermen doing anything stupid in advance.
“So that's your plan," Lizzie observed.
“You don’t even know what I was thinking,” the Doctor exclaimed, while Lizzie found herself getting increasingly irritated by him.
“I do,” Lizzie said. “You’re thinking we're going to wait for the Cyberman to… do more stuff?”
“Okay, yes. I am.”
He was thinking exactly that.
“Because it’s stalking an ancient Egyptian Queen, and having met the Cybermen before… that’s unusual.”
Lizzie remembered the way the Cyberman had just watched her, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether it would try and make a move against Cleopatra. Try and do to her what it had done to itself, perhaps?
“How does time work?”
It sounded less obscure and random in her head. The Doctor probably thought the same.
“It’s like jenga.”
Okaaay. Even the word made her shiver at how awful she was at that game.
“You can play about with it,” the Doctor continued. “You can… take bits out. Except, unlike jenga, unless you cheat like Mrs Thatcher, when it falls, the entire universe collapses.”
“So…,” Lizzie sat down on the wall, dangling her legs down over the beach below, the vertigo becoming suddenly nauseating. “Time is basically… one massive jenga.”
“Exactly! This huge, complex tower, of so many different parts, all working together, all in harmony with each other. And you can move bits, and take bits out, and even add bits in…”
The Doctor’s voice trailed off, but he looked up at her, as if he were helping her learn, slowly encouraging her. She continued for him.
“But, of course, if you disturb it too much… then the whole thing topples.”
“Exactly,” the Doctor confirmed.
It had been bothering her for a while, and she was pleased that the Doctor had finally put her worries to rest. Though when she stepped out of the TARDIS, she was too concerned about doing something so small that could somehow result in her not being born. She didn’t tell him, though. He’d probably just laugh at her. Especially if he’d done life drawing with Stalin.
Walk like an Egyptian.
And a familiar tambourine beat began to drift through the night. Lizzie blushed, and scrambled around trying to find her phone, which she’d put into one of her pockets but couldn’t find it anywhere. Stupid ringtone…
“Sorry, sorry, sorry…”
The Doctor stood, watching her, trying not to laugh. “Didn’t have you down as a fan of The Bangles.”
“Me? Oh, erm, yeah. 80s music… kind of my thing. Didn’t have you down as a fan of Cleopatra,” Lizzie paused. “Comin’ atcha. The band, I mean. The 90s R&B.”
It was as if there was a moral obligation to do the “comin’ atcha” bit. Lizzie never felt properly satisfied unless she’d said it.
“I’m not. Intergalactic Spotify is amazing, puts together all sorts of playlists I don’t really care about.”
Lizzie couldn’t actually imagine him listening to music at all, when she thought about it. Most people, she could look at them, and tell exactly what they were into. The Doctor – she wasn’t so sure. But one thing was for certain. Spotify did not just put together random playlists.
“Come on, Lizzie. We’ve got to go and meet Cleopatra.”
Silence, as the Doctor began to walk, and Lizzie stood up to follow him. She had always felt her loyalties between academia and then the bright and vibrant world of fiction and music and dancing and art. She was well aware many found the same enjoyment in studying… but she’d never managed it. There had always been some niggling feeling in the back of her mind that as much as she studied, it couldn’t teach her anymore about what was truly important. Her true retreat had always been into the worlds that she could just enjoy. The worlds that she didn’t have to stress about.
“Comin’ atcha,” she whispered into the night.
***
44 BC
The journey to her throne felt as if it took forever. Perhaps it was the realm of eyes upon her, as slowly Queen Cleopatra walked down to the simple wooden seat at the far end of the room, with each step on the decorated rug taking twice as long. Servants and handmaidens and soldiers lined the pathway for her. All she knew was that the journey from Rome had been nothing in comparison to what she was enduring now.
Eventually she arrived, and turned to face her staff. They watched her in silence, and she couldn’t stand thinking about what they must be thinking.
“You will leave me.”
The audience wavered. A brief moment of hesitation passed for all of them, and then eventually, they all turned and filed out of the door, one by one.
Cleopatra was glad to have them gone. They were the last people she was ready to face. Although, in some way - after the events that had befallen in Rome, and the events that had occurred here, in Egypt, Cleopatra felt even more determined to rule than she had done before. To defend her kingdom. To protect it.
Then she looked up, and saw the lone man stood in line. He was in the same position as he had been before – except everyone surrounding him had gone.
“Did you not here me, sir?”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Leave me! Or I shall have you dead.”
If there was one thing that the Queen could not abide, it was insolence.
“My Queen,” the man began, stepping out in front of her.
She recognised him – but it took a few moments for who he really was to settle in her head. He was unforgettable.
“You…,” she was aghast, unsure what she should say. The man slipped from the shadows and into the torchlight.
He looked no different to how he had appeared four years ago. As in –completely identical, right down to his clothing, and his hair – close copped curls, with a spattering of a beard, and a long coat. Scuffed brown boots, and a bag dangling by his hip. It was now that she noticed his attire was most unusual. His face was emotionless, his piercing blue eyes staring right into hers.
“You need to stay hidden,” Cleo said immediately.
“Why?” the Doctor walked towards her.
“Because I put out an order to have you found and executed.”
“Oh?”
“You said you’d find my stalker, and you disappeared. I do not appreciate being treated like that.”
“And so you thought you’d behead me?” the Doctor leaned up close to her.
“I’ll still behead you,” she pushed him away. “Where is Lizzie?”
The Doctor was surprised that Cleopatra had remembered her. “Gone off exploring.”
“Did you find my stalker?” Cleo asked suddenly. She was concerned. After all – she still saw the mummy watching her sometimes. During fleeting moments of sleep, when she was drifting in and out of consciousness, it would be stood in the far corner of the chamber, watching her from the strange dimension of slipping in and out of slumber. Eventually she would wake herself up – and it would be real. But within seconds, it would vanish again. Whenever she saw it, Cleo’s mind always wandered… who was the Doctor who promised to find out who it was?
“Yes. I’ve got Lizzie working on it now,” the Doctor looked nervously over his shoulder – it was something more of a nervous twitch than anything else. He was concerned for her, and it was not the most sensible thing to send her to do when he’d only just offered to take her with him.
“Who is it?”
“It’s a Cyberman.”
Cleo looked surprisingly unsurprised.
“You believe me?” the Doctor hadn’t expected Cleopatra to be so easily swayed.
“Since meeting you, and since the absurdity of this… Cyberman, I think I’d believe anything. You must dine with me.”
The Doctor gleefully accepted – another historical encounter he could add to his repertoire. He had secretly been rather smug when he’d told Lizzie he did life drawing with Stalin, and with great joy had watched as she’d tried to work out which one of them had been the model.
***
As Lizzie slunk through the underbelly of the palace, she had to do a bit of a reality check. People often round themselves strangely accepting of things, however unlikely they may have once seemed. There’s never the ‘oh my god’ breakdown that most people expect. Lizzie wondered whether it was to do with the fact that the world in itself was such a strange place, that even weirder things didn’t seem that weird.
She was, admittedly, wary, that the Doctor had sent her off to go and have a look around and see if she could find some Cybermen. She was truly being thrown in at the deep end… though she didn’t mind. If anything, it was strangely liberating, being allowed to go and have a look around on her own.
Before meeting a man with a time machine, she’d always found it very difficult to visualise history. It was as if she could only see it in the monochrome of photographs, and not picture the colour or the vibrancy or the life. For example, one could not taste the musty air from the depths of the palace. One could not smell the peculiar lingering stench of rot. One could not feel the sandstone bricks that had been so sturdily constructed to form an almighty structure. It was a stupid thing to think about anyway, because nobody had any visual record of ancient Egypt, apart from paintings. Though it didn’t matter – because of all those limitations, picturing history was so difficult. Perhaps it explained why she felt so unnerved about walking there.
The freedom of walking alone wasn’t to last. She stepped around a corner, and suddenly a child ran into her.
She couldn’t have been much more than 10, 11 perhaps. Some servant to the Queen, perhaps. But when she looked at Lizzie, Lizzie saw nothing but terror in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to scream.
Lizzie put a finger to her lips and gave the girl a glare to shut her up. Then she felt guilty, and her face turned into a sympathetic smile. The girl instantly seemed at ease.
“What’s your name?” Lizzie asked her. Lizzie loved children… it was something to do with all that potential they held. The ability to do something truly special, and the fact that you could be part of that.
“Nephthys,” the girl whispered. Then she started to talk, about all sorts of things really quickly at a speed Lizzie could barely understand. “There’s a monster. A… a… it’s a dead man.”
“Okay,” Lizzie said, taking deep breaths, trying to get Nephthys to imitate her, in the hope it could calm her down. “I’m going to go and find out who it is. Stay here, okay?”
The girl seemed reluctant, and Lizzie realised that she’d feel too guilty leaving her behind.
“Stay close,” Lizzie said, and she stood up, slowly easing her way around the corner to see what was down the corridor. Nephthys’s hand curled into hers, and Lizzie squeezed it, trying to make her feel safe. They turned the corner together, and began to make their way together.
There was a painfully awkward silence.
“Do you like music?”
“Yes.”
Lizzie reached into her pocket, and took out her phone. So what if she caused the entirety of space and time to collapse? She went onto ‘music’, and selected The Bangles.
The Doctor watched Lizzie as she scanned the tall shelf, looming above her. Usually when people stepped into a box that could travel anywhere in time and space, they did not ask to be taken to a library. On Earth.
The History section of the place was huge, with shelves taller than houses bursting with a million tales and a million lifetimes. Lizzie loved libraries, and she loved getting lost in them – this one especially, with its historical section being so rich and in depth.
“You know, I’ve got one of these on the TARDIS.”
Lizzie still didn’t say anything, she just kept tracing a finger along the dusty spines of the books. There were so many histories and encyclopaedias, and so many of them hadn’t been taken out in years – but still they remained, as crucial documents, the only available links to the past.
At least, that’s what Lizzie had thought.
“I know this library,” she replied to the Doctor’s previous remark, and he looked around confused, having completely forgotten what he’d said about the TARDIS library.
He stepped back, leaving her to it, and leaned against a table.
“You know,” a voice behind him said. “Libraries are amazing. They take people to brand new places. You should let her explore.”
The Doctor turned, to see a woman, sat over a MacBook, with circular glasses perched on her nose.
“Sorry?” he asked, slightly taken aback.
“Sorry, forgive me,” she stood up, offering a hand to shake. “Ameera Iqbal.”
He returned the handshake. “The Doctor.”
“Of what?” she enquired.
“Of everything.”
“Cool. I’m a professor. Egyptology,” she said, gesturing to the thick tome beside her laptop.
“Fascinating subject,” the Doctor leaned in closer, if slightly confused she hadn’t bothered to ask about his doctorate.
“Very much so. I’m writing a paper at the moment on Cleopatra and her life. Interesting woman.”
“I can imagine,” the Doctor took a seat. He could see Lizzie drifting over to them. “Go on then. Most interesting thing about Cleopatra.”
Ameera thought for a few seconds – although it was not as if she had to think. Merely organise her thoughts.
“The fact nobody knows anything about her.”
The Doctor looked intrigued. Lizzie looked especially intrigued. A historian herself, this was her idea of a brilliant day out.
“I mean, this,” she pointed to her laptop. “Is basically just conjecture. We know a bit, from some of the Roman records left behind, and maybe the odd hieroglyphic here and there. But other than that… nothing.”
“Isn’t history just conjecture?” the Doctor challenged her.
“That’s a whole new can of worms,” Ameera sighed. “But Cleopatra especially. A complete enigma to everyone. And so misinterpreted by people, I believe. But hey. History is interesting like that. So many different interpretations. Who knows what really happened?”
When she looked up, the strange Doctor and his friend had vanished.
***
Lizzie stepped into the TARDIS, shutting the doors behind her as the Doctor started fiddling with the controls. They were both thinking exactly the same thing.
The central column slowly rose, up and down, and the TARDIS roared into a great, rasping life.
“Cleopatra! Don’t know why I haven’t thought of her before. Actually, I probably have…”
Lizzie didn’t have a clue what he was talking about half the time. All she could think about now was that somehow, she was travelling in time. The science defied her, but she didn’t care.
“Time travel, Lizzie. We can go back, we can go forward. And sideways. Remember that. Especially sideways.”
“… what other people have you met?” she asked, as the question suddenly came to her. If one had a time machine, it would make sense that they’d met a good many interesting people.
“I met Da Vinci. Anne Boleyn as well. I had a picnic with William the Conqueror – actually, it was more of a pre-conquest feast, and I did life-drawing with Joseph Stalin.”
Lizzie wondered who the model was. But she listened to the Doctor as she rattled off the list, with a life she hadn’t heard in him before, an excitement, an enjoyment – he was happy, then and there.
The bigger-on-the-inside box stopped.
They had arrived.
Her previous TARDIS trips had been within the realms of normality – only a few streets away, nothing too unusual. But ahead of her was a world that nobody else from her world had walked on. Something that shouldn’t ever happen, but something that was about to happen.
There was a strange feeling inside her, a fusion between excitement and fear, stomach-churning but in a good way. It was as if butterflies were fluttering about inside her, but they were happy, their wings beating in euphoria. Her hand connected with the door and gave it a gentle push, as she wanted to savour this feeling of being somewhere brand new and somewhere impossible, so she wouldn’t forget it again for as long as she lived.
The door gently swung open, revealing a whole world in front of her. They were only parked in an alley-way, a fairly unassuming sight, but little did anyone else wondering around know, that this would be the alley-way to have broadened Lizzie’s experience of the universe more than anyone could have realised.
It was excitement beyond anything she had imagined previously.
***
As soon as Lizzie stepped out of the TARDIS, she had to take off her jumper and throw it inside. It was as if someone had slapped her in the face with the heat, and she suddenly felt unexpectedly faint. She took a few steps more down the alley-way of dreams, admiring the two sun-bleached stone buildings on either side, in awe of how real they were..
The street ahead of them was congested with market stalls – wooden tables bordered the entire walkway, covered in a plethora of goods. There were spices, and had Lizzie not been so knocked back by the heat, she would be able to smell them. Hardened clay pots, recently dried in the heat of the sun, were being sold from another stall, and precisely entwined wicker baskets sold from a third. Sugar canes, cut down from the banks of the Nile, were being bartered away. There was a constant overlay of sound to the proceedings, of the townspeople going about their normal, humdrum lives.
“They all speak English,” Lizzie observed, as the Doctor stepped out behind her.
“The TARDIS translates them.”
She wondered if there was anything the TARDIS couldn’t do, as the two of them set off, making their way down the street, passing the people and the stalls and the buying and selling as they went. Lizzie watched as her feet made light footprints in the sand and dust beneath them, and she made an impossible mark on the world. Anxiety piqued within her as she worried whether that footprint would change the course of human history forever. It was irrational, of course, considering the Doctor had done life-drawing with Stalin, but even so. Lizzie made the executive decision that she was going to push everything aside. No worrying today.
She realised as they walked, that they must look so out of place, in modern fashions – but nobody seemed to care.
The Doctor looked at her, as if he were waiting for her to say it, his script on pause – and clearly he were enjoying the pause.
“It’s because they’re all so busy, doing what they do. We’re just passers-by,” she realised.
In a peculiar way, the world hadn’t changed much.
“So,” the Doctor grinned. Although he had done this so many times before, he always felt so much more alive when seeing it again, through the eyes of somebody brand new. “Antirhodos is over… there,” the Doctor pointed in a rough direction.
“… and… how do we… I don’t know, meet her?”
“I usually just walk in.”
“And… people let you do that?”
“No, not usually.”
That was reassuring. She watched as the Doctor strode confidently on, and she had to remind herself to just go with the flow. If she was hanged or beheaded for trespassing, so what? There was something unreal about the way the Doctor walked, as if he could be quite confident about swaggering around in the past. Lizzie tried to swagger after him with similar levels of confidence, and just looked a bit stupid, so she stopped.
***
“My Lord Caesar.”
The Roman Emperor, dressed in long, blood-red robes strode up to her, and knelt down. He kissed her hand, and then stood again.
“My Queen.”
Caesar gestured for her to sit, and she did so. Caesar sat opposite her.
“A great victory, my Lord,” Cleopatra took a sip from her wine. “And I am eternally thankful that my kingdom has been returned to its… rightful Queen.”
“For sure,” Caesar agreed. “I believe your tyrant brother died in the fighting.”
Cleopatra thought back to the events of the previous night. Death had always seemed so normal and so every day. Except this time, it was her brother – and her brother was her brother. However, he had become someone else, threatening their kingdom by becoming embroiled in conflicts he shouldn’t. She had lost her brother and she was sad, but she was devastated for the person he had come. She was determined to rule in the way he hadn’t.
Many other people had died too. Cleopatra held herself together over it. People died all the time. It was not a problem.
Although it had become a problem, ever since the dead began to walk.
“Queen?”
Realising she had practically left the room, Cleopatra realised who she was sat opposite.
“Yes, my Lord. And a good thing – my brother is not fit to live alongside us.”
“To Rome I shall return,” Caesar said. “Though I will leave men here, to protect your throne.”
Cleopatra hesitated, and her face turned.
“You are… spying on me?”
“I am protecting you.”
She was wary of them. Her kingdom had so easily gone to war over rulers before, and she did not want to allow it to happen again. Especially if Egypt was to be ruled from the backdoor of Rome.
“My Lord, you must understand. Seas of blood have been shed over my rule. Although I may let your men stay for the good of the protection of my throne, I will see to it that they do not dare rule for me.”
Caesar gave a coy smile. “They… shall not.”
“After all. This is an alliance that must work both ways. Endeavor to make sure it does not break down.”
Caesar sat back, impressed at the force of the woman sat opposite him. It did not seem as if he would be able to have his say for much longer.
Queen Cleopatra stood up, and her robes trailed behind her as she left.
As the Queen made her way out into the passageway beyond Caesar’s chambers, a handmaiden walked beside her.
“My Queen,” she began. “There is a doctor here to see you.”
Admittedly, Cleopatra was confused. She had not sent for a doctor.
And yet, she said nothing.
***
Set on an island, Cleopatra’s palace was magnificent. And yet, in a thousand years or so, a great tsunami would transform it into nothing but dust.
From the chamber that Lizzie and the Doctor stood, they could hear the Mediterranean gently buffeting the stone bricks outside, with salty, frothy foam bursting up the sides of the lighthouse. The sea was gentle, and Lizzie stood watching the emerald waters lap gently far beneath where she stood. It would be perfect weather to bathe in. Gentle though they seemed, however, as the waves crawled up, it was as if they were a nest of blackbird chicks, fighting each other for seeds and nuts and worms, clawing through the masses.
The Doctor was pacing the Queen’s chamber, admiring the illustrious artworks on the wall, so antique and exquisite. It was a whole room of fineries, and yet it was not extravagant. Silk curtains were drawn beside the window looking down onto the ocean below, and a simple, wooden throne was positioned at the head of the room. A rug paved the way from the small door at the far side of the room to the throne, patterned with detailed intricacies. They were, of course, breaking all protocol – it was the rug they were meant to walk down, and not the Queen.
His guise was of a Doctor – after all, people lied best when keeping it close to the truth. Lizzie still didn’t think they would last particularly long – they had just broken into the Queen’s palace, and made their way into the throne room.
Eventually, the far door opened, and Cleopatra waited for them.
Though the stories got many things wrong about Cleopatra, it was no secret that she was a figure of glorious beauty – her hair ran to just below the neck, and was blacker than the night. A simple, gold headdress adorned her, and it was almost a collar of cut jewels, of emeralds brighter than the sea outside, and of rubies darker than the blood-red curtains, that she wore perched across her neck. She wore simple, white robes beneath it, and she did not seem startled to find the Doctor and Lizzie waiting in her throne room.
Lizzie gulped, terrified of the woman who strode confidently in the room, a historical misconception living and breathing in front of her. Stories had been written about this woman, and yet nobody where she came from knew the truth. As time trawled on she had become buried under layers of manipulated history, until what remained was a mere caricature of the original. And now Lizzie was watching her, determined to see her for who she truly was, and not the fake version spun in the modern day.
“You are… a doctor, yes?”
“I am, my Queen,” the Doctor replied, stepping away from admiring one of the paintings. Lizzie stepped into the room, and the Doctor turned to her.
“Cleopatra,” he whispered to Lizzie, to try and make sure Cleopatra herself couldn’t hear.
“Comin’ atcha,” Lizzie murmured.
“I give you the last Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and you make 90s music puns?” the Doctor scowled.
Lizzie didn’t have him down as one for 90s R&B.
Cleopatra nodded, and turned to her guard. “You will leave us.”
“Yes, my Queen.”
The guard left, and Cleopatra entered the throne room, gently shutting the door behind her. She turned to Lizzie.
“This is my assistant,” the Doctor explained. “She is an expert in many matters that are beyond my understanding.”
Lizzie thought that he was probably right, but if he ever called her his assistant again she’d get very cross.
“Then she may stay,” Cleopatra did not make her way to the throne. “How did you know to come?”
“Some of your servants believed you were acting strangely, my Queen. They thought that perhaps, you had come down with something,” the Doctor lied, playing along in a bid to extract whatever mysterious horror had made Cleopatra call a doctor. Lizzie, meanwhile, felt something strangely liberating about lying to an ancient Egyptian Queen.
Cleopatra looked shocked, but she didn’t question him.
“You must not speak to anyone about our conversation,” Cleopatra explained. The Doctor approached her, a warm smile on his face. “If you did so, I would fear for my throne.”
“Of course, my Queen.”
There was a pause, and Cleopatra stood, deep in thought. The future of her kingdom depended on what she said now. She made her way to one of the benches, and sat down.
“I am being watched.”
The Doctor waited, though already his interest had been piqued.
“I am being watched,” she continued. “By the dead.”
Unlike most doctors, who would have backed away, the Doctor moved closer to the Queen, while Lizzie waited a fair distance away.
“You must think I am… ill,” Cleopatra muttered, suddenly realising what she had said outside. “But I swear to you,” she looked at the Doctor, and their eyes met, hers with an earnestness. “I’m not lying.”
“No,” the Doctor shook his head. “I don’t believe you are. Who are you being watched by, Cleo? What do they look like?”
Lizzie let out an audible gasp at the way the Doctor addressed her – not that she had a problem with it, she was just concerned he was going to be… beheaded or something.
But the Queen did not bat an eyelid, as whatever was watching her terrified her beyond words, and she would be willing to forgive such insolence if it meant the dead were dealt with.
“A mummy. It was last night, and I was in my bedchamber. And it stood there, and… it was dead. It did not move – it stayed, perfectly still, watching me.”
“Ohh… fascinating. Cleo, stay calm. We’re going to find them.”
“Wait,” Cleo looked at him in disbelief for the first time. “You believe me?”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor looked over to Lizzie, and she nodded. “So does Lizzie.”
She most certainly did. After everything that Lizzie Darwin had seen in the last few days (few days? Her entire perception of time had been completely warped. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d slept), she would believe anything. Lizzie gave Cleopatra a friendly smile – which wasn’t something she ever thought she’d do.
“Believe me, Cleo. We’ll find them.”
The Doctor left the throne room, leaving Lizzie stood looking at a bemused Cleopatra.
“He believed me?” she said again.
“I think he sees this stuff a lot,” Lizzie took a deep breath, trying to ignore the fact she was stood, alone, in a room with Cleopatra.
“What kind of doctor is he?”
“A strange one. Actually I don’t really know.”
Cleo looked at the doors the Doctor had left wide open. “One who is a complete irritation, it seems.”
Lizzie laughed – actually, properly laughed, and didn’t just laugh out of fear of execution. Cleopatra was actually a rather nice woman.
“You should stand up to your friend more,” Cleopatra declared.
“I’ve only just met him,” Lizzie admitted.
“Lizzie? That was your name, was it not?”
“Yes – yes, my… my Queen.”
“Even more reason to do it, then.”
***
It was the dead of night in the palace, and Lizzie was wondering who the Doctor truly was, as they crept down the sandstone corridors, trying to remain as quiet as possible. On one hand, the man with the magic box seemed like an impossible time traveller. On the other hand, it all felt a bit… Scooby Doo.
“Do the monsters follow you around?” she eventually asked, determined to break the awkward silence. It was the only sound, other than their footsteps tapping gently against the floor.
They’d been mummy-hunting for a good half an hour, and had seen nothing. The Doctor walked ahead, the sonic screwdriver gently pulsating with light with each step they took, and he was seemingly in his element. An element he had missed, by the looks of the way his eyes lit up at every new corner and door. There was no logic to the way they searched the palace – they just followed the light pulses. They turned corners, and took flights of stairs, and went through all sorts of rooms they probably shouldn’t have gone through.
“It’s just… coincidence, I think,” the Doctor admitted, as they turned onto a long, wide corridor with ornate tapestries draped along the walls. “Half the time I follow them.”
There were several doors stationed along the corridor. One of them had a tall, barrel-chested guard stood outside. Lizzie accidentally made eye contact and awkwardly waved at him. The guard remained motionless and Lizzie knew this horrendous social encounter would haunt her for a good few days. Lizzie caught up with the Doctor, trying to forget the incident had ever happened.
“So… this is how it works. You go somewhere… and you fight evil and stuff?”
“Basically, yes. And I must admit, Lizzie, you’ve hit the jackpot on your first go. Ancient Egypt, Cleopatra, and mummies. Mummies stalking Cleopatra. That’s lucky.”
I feel humbled. The weirdness was a bit too much for sarcasm. She was too internally excited, at having actually spoken to Cleopatra.
It got weirder, however.
The door at the far end of the corridor swung open with Indiana Jones style theatrics, and a shadow staggered through.
“Hello…,” the Doctor murmured, flicking the sonic screwdriver away back into his pocket. “Who are you…”
As the shadow stumbled its way down the corridor towards them, and into the light of the burning orange torches, they both realised exactly what it was.
The mummy.
Whether it was the one stalking the Queen, or whether there were more of them, they were unsure. What they were looking at was a mummy.
It walked upright, except it was as if it were only walking for the first time, and it hadn’t quite got to grips with how its legs functioned. Because of that, it took one step at a time, thinking between each as to what muscles had to move to move another. It walked in a constant, stop-start rhythm, one foot, then the other, one foot, then the other. Eventually it stopped, about ten metres away from where they stood. It was then that they could get a good look at it.
The mummy was tall. Tall-ish. Both legs were bandaged – except unlike the mummy Cleo had described, the bandages here were old and yellowed, and peeling off in several places. Wires and tubes poked through the fabric, running to other parts of the body, adding an air of artificiality to the creature. The body was similar, bound tight in antique, stained bandages, peeling off and torn and ripped. Again, wires and tubes ran from the torso to other parts of the body. Also connected to the part of the fabric was a panel – it looked like a partially severed iPhone, and buttons and switches and glowing little lights decorated the rest of it. The head was the most bizarre part – a hodgepodge of mummy and human and robot. Some of it was bandaged, binding the skin on the human bits tight. The visible skin was grey and dead – no blood had run through it in years. And then the robotics… the two eyes had been replaced with metal plates, and embedded in each of the plates was a cold, empty socket, staring out at them.
“Oh, Lizzie…,” the Doctor sounded almost in awe. “You really have hit the jackpot on your first go.”
His eyes were drawn to the top of the head. Two pieces of metal protruded from the side, and connected above the head – almost like handlebars.
“You recognise it?” she asked the Doctor.
He didn’t respond. When she looked at him, he was grimacing, his face a picture of shock, and disgust, and…
Recognition.
“The Cybermen.”
The word meant nothing to her, but the Doctor said it with a distinct force and distaste.
“You… you know what it is, though?”
“Oh yes,” the Doctor didn’t move from his spot, and told her to stop moving as well. The Cyberman-mummy remained perfectly still, staring at them. “The Cybermen are old friends of mine. I say friends. I mean…”
“Enemies?”
“Yes. But I say enemies, they’re not… they’re not malicious, far from it. They’re evolution. They’re humans. But they’re advanced humans. Humanity mark 2, perhaps – when we get sick of our flesh bodies, and we decided we’ve had enough of pain and sickness, then… that’s what we become.”
Lizzie shivered, swallowing back bile, and stared at the creature staring at them, unable to comprehend that the thing opposite her had once been… the same as her. Except, she also could not bring herself to despise it too much, for she understood that that was where humanity would naturally evolve to. Regardless of that, the future, stood in front of her now, was sickening. But somehow it had changed, so much so that it looked completely different… but still uncannily human.
“You,” the Doctor said. “Yes, I’m talking to you, Cyberman. What do you want here?”
“We………….”
It spoke in a voice that made Lizzie cringe – as if an autotuned voice had gone horribly wrong, and the equipment vastly misused – the wrong words and sounds were emphasised, and when they came out the pitch was distorted.
“We….. we….”
“Go on,” the Doctor encouraged mockingly, nothing but contempt in his voice. “Spit it out, now.”
“The – the – the Cybermeeeeeee –”
“It’s weak,” the Doctor dared to approach a little closer, suitably reassured that the Cyberman was on the harmless side. Though looking at the way the Doctor looked at the Cyberman… harmless probably still meant ‘pretty dangerous’.
“The Cybermen – crashed – upon this planet.”
“Oh… interesting. It’d explain why you’re so… patchwork…”
“Are they always like this, then?” Lizzie asked, looking at the almost makeshift man, and then looking away because of the unnerving familiarity.
“Depends on their timeline. Some of them are far more roboticised than others. This lot – well, it’s not only early in their timeline, but they’re running low on resources as well, I should think,” the Doctor turned back to the Cyberman. He didn’t need to worry – the Cyberman was waiting for him. It was as if it couldn’t be bothered to attack. Or as if it had something better to be concerned about. “What do you want with Cleopatra?”
“Your question is… irrelevant.”
The Doctor gave a confused look. “No, I don’t think so. Tell me.”
The Cyberman didn’t respond, and the Doctor looked almost fed up at his inability to embrace the Scooby-Doo chasing-aliens side of his travelling. He sighed, a kind of ‘what’s the point’ sigh – sick of the monsters being terrible at being interrogated.
“They’re so... depleted of everything,” the Doctor took out the sonic screwdriver, giving the still-mostly-human creature the once over. “They can barely talk.”
The Doctor already looked confused. Lizzie was pretty certain that wasn’t meant to happen. He ran a hand through his short locks of hair, and stroked the little facial hair he had, and looked to one of the tapestries on the wall. It portrayed eight figures – Lizzie didn’t recognise them, but they were the sort of Egyptian figures, that one often saw in art galleries.
“Heh,” the Doctor gave a small laugh. No, Lizzie realised. It wasn’t a small laugh. She gave him a confused glance, and the Doctor winked at her, and then turned to the Cyberman. “Hmm. Perhaps my Egyptian mythology is better than your databanks.”
Lizzie nudged him, and he turned to her. “Heh. Part of the Ogdoad, Egyptian God of eternity.”
Lizzie was coming to realise that no matter how much the Doctor explained things, sometimes they still didn’t make any sense. At all.
“Cybermen, or Cyberman, I don’t know yet whether there are any more of you. I will, though. Oh, I will. See you in about… four-ish years? Give or take.”
The Doctor turned on his heels, and Lizzie was stood awkwardly looking at the Cyberman. She shrugged her shoulders, and the Cyberman looked on at her emotionless. She turned to follow the Doctor.
***
The Doctor and Lizzie walked down the stone pier, back to the shore. It was well into the night now, and the hustle and bustle of the market was long gone now. Instead, the eerie city silence of the small hours had set in, and a thick, viscous darkness had settled over the city. Lizzie took her phone out of her pocket to switch the torch on, before putting it away again, still concerned it would screw up the entire space-time continuum or something.
“What was all that about?” Lizzie asked him, loitering behind slightly.
“That Cyberman, Lizzie. It was basically harmless. But it will be active, soon – believe me, it will be.”
The Doctor ran his plan through his head. They were going to go, come back in about four years, and wait for the Cybermen to... do more stuff. It was the only way, to avoid the Cybermen doing anything stupid in advance.
“So that's your plan," Lizzie observed.
“You don’t even know what I was thinking,” the Doctor exclaimed, while Lizzie found herself getting increasingly irritated by him.
“I do,” Lizzie said. “You’re thinking we're going to wait for the Cyberman to… do more stuff?”
“Okay, yes. I am.”
He was thinking exactly that.
“Because it’s stalking an ancient Egyptian Queen, and having met the Cybermen before… that’s unusual.”
Lizzie remembered the way the Cyberman had just watched her, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether it would try and make a move against Cleopatra. Try and do to her what it had done to itself, perhaps?
“How does time work?”
It sounded less obscure and random in her head. The Doctor probably thought the same.
“It’s like jenga.”
Okaaay. Even the word made her shiver at how awful she was at that game.
“You can play about with it,” the Doctor continued. “You can… take bits out. Except, unlike jenga, unless you cheat like Mrs Thatcher, when it falls, the entire universe collapses.”
“So…,” Lizzie sat down on the wall, dangling her legs down over the beach below, the vertigo becoming suddenly nauseating. “Time is basically… one massive jenga.”
“Exactly! This huge, complex tower, of so many different parts, all working together, all in harmony with each other. And you can move bits, and take bits out, and even add bits in…”
The Doctor’s voice trailed off, but he looked up at her, as if he were helping her learn, slowly encouraging her. She continued for him.
“But, of course, if you disturb it too much… then the whole thing topples.”
“Exactly,” the Doctor confirmed.
It had been bothering her for a while, and she was pleased that the Doctor had finally put her worries to rest. Though when she stepped out of the TARDIS, she was too concerned about doing something so small that could somehow result in her not being born. She didn’t tell him, though. He’d probably just laugh at her. Especially if he’d done life drawing with Stalin.
Walk like an Egyptian.
And a familiar tambourine beat began to drift through the night. Lizzie blushed, and scrambled around trying to find her phone, which she’d put into one of her pockets but couldn’t find it anywhere. Stupid ringtone…
“Sorry, sorry, sorry…”
The Doctor stood, watching her, trying not to laugh. “Didn’t have you down as a fan of The Bangles.”
“Me? Oh, erm, yeah. 80s music… kind of my thing. Didn’t have you down as a fan of Cleopatra,” Lizzie paused. “Comin’ atcha. The band, I mean. The 90s R&B.”
It was as if there was a moral obligation to do the “comin’ atcha” bit. Lizzie never felt properly satisfied unless she’d said it.
“I’m not. Intergalactic Spotify is amazing, puts together all sorts of playlists I don’t really care about.”
Lizzie couldn’t actually imagine him listening to music at all, when she thought about it. Most people, she could look at them, and tell exactly what they were into. The Doctor – she wasn’t so sure. But one thing was for certain. Spotify did not just put together random playlists.
“Come on, Lizzie. We’ve got to go and meet Cleopatra.”
Silence, as the Doctor began to walk, and Lizzie stood up to follow him. She had always felt her loyalties between academia and then the bright and vibrant world of fiction and music and dancing and art. She was well aware many found the same enjoyment in studying… but she’d never managed it. There had always been some niggling feeling in the back of her mind that as much as she studied, it couldn’t teach her anymore about what was truly important. Her true retreat had always been into the worlds that she could just enjoy. The worlds that she didn’t have to stress about.
“Comin’ atcha,” she whispered into the night.
***
44 BC
The journey to her throne felt as if it took forever. Perhaps it was the realm of eyes upon her, as slowly Queen Cleopatra walked down to the simple wooden seat at the far end of the room, with each step on the decorated rug taking twice as long. Servants and handmaidens and soldiers lined the pathway for her. All she knew was that the journey from Rome had been nothing in comparison to what she was enduring now.
Eventually she arrived, and turned to face her staff. They watched her in silence, and she couldn’t stand thinking about what they must be thinking.
“You will leave me.”
The audience wavered. A brief moment of hesitation passed for all of them, and then eventually, they all turned and filed out of the door, one by one.
Cleopatra was glad to have them gone. They were the last people she was ready to face. Although, in some way - after the events that had befallen in Rome, and the events that had occurred here, in Egypt, Cleopatra felt even more determined to rule than she had done before. To defend her kingdom. To protect it.
Then she looked up, and saw the lone man stood in line. He was in the same position as he had been before – except everyone surrounding him had gone.
“Did you not here me, sir?”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Leave me! Or I shall have you dead.”
If there was one thing that the Queen could not abide, it was insolence.
“My Queen,” the man began, stepping out in front of her.
She recognised him – but it took a few moments for who he really was to settle in her head. He was unforgettable.
“You…,” she was aghast, unsure what she should say. The man slipped from the shadows and into the torchlight.
He looked no different to how he had appeared four years ago. As in –completely identical, right down to his clothing, and his hair – close copped curls, with a spattering of a beard, and a long coat. Scuffed brown boots, and a bag dangling by his hip. It was now that she noticed his attire was most unusual. His face was emotionless, his piercing blue eyes staring right into hers.
“You need to stay hidden,” Cleo said immediately.
“Why?” the Doctor walked towards her.
“Because I put out an order to have you found and executed.”
“Oh?”
“You said you’d find my stalker, and you disappeared. I do not appreciate being treated like that.”
“And so you thought you’d behead me?” the Doctor leaned up close to her.
“I’ll still behead you,” she pushed him away. “Where is Lizzie?”
The Doctor was surprised that Cleopatra had remembered her. “Gone off exploring.”
“Did you find my stalker?” Cleo asked suddenly. She was concerned. After all – she still saw the mummy watching her sometimes. During fleeting moments of sleep, when she was drifting in and out of consciousness, it would be stood in the far corner of the chamber, watching her from the strange dimension of slipping in and out of slumber. Eventually she would wake herself up – and it would be real. But within seconds, it would vanish again. Whenever she saw it, Cleo’s mind always wandered… who was the Doctor who promised to find out who it was?
“Yes. I’ve got Lizzie working on it now,” the Doctor looked nervously over his shoulder – it was something more of a nervous twitch than anything else. He was concerned for her, and it was not the most sensible thing to send her to do when he’d only just offered to take her with him.
“Who is it?”
“It’s a Cyberman.”
Cleo looked surprisingly unsurprised.
“You believe me?” the Doctor hadn’t expected Cleopatra to be so easily swayed.
“Since meeting you, and since the absurdity of this… Cyberman, I think I’d believe anything. You must dine with me.”
The Doctor gleefully accepted – another historical encounter he could add to his repertoire. He had secretly been rather smug when he’d told Lizzie he did life drawing with Stalin, and with great joy had watched as she’d tried to work out which one of them had been the model.
***
As Lizzie slunk through the underbelly of the palace, she had to do a bit of a reality check. People often round themselves strangely accepting of things, however unlikely they may have once seemed. There’s never the ‘oh my god’ breakdown that most people expect. Lizzie wondered whether it was to do with the fact that the world in itself was such a strange place, that even weirder things didn’t seem that weird.
She was, admittedly, wary, that the Doctor had sent her off to go and have a look around and see if she could find some Cybermen. She was truly being thrown in at the deep end… though she didn’t mind. If anything, it was strangely liberating, being allowed to go and have a look around on her own.
Before meeting a man with a time machine, she’d always found it very difficult to visualise history. It was as if she could only see it in the monochrome of photographs, and not picture the colour or the vibrancy or the life. For example, one could not taste the musty air from the depths of the palace. One could not smell the peculiar lingering stench of rot. One could not feel the sandstone bricks that had been so sturdily constructed to form an almighty structure. It was a stupid thing to think about anyway, because nobody had any visual record of ancient Egypt, apart from paintings. Though it didn’t matter – because of all those limitations, picturing history was so difficult. Perhaps it explained why she felt so unnerved about walking there.
The freedom of walking alone wasn’t to last. She stepped around a corner, and suddenly a child ran into her.
She couldn’t have been much more than 10, 11 perhaps. Some servant to the Queen, perhaps. But when she looked at Lizzie, Lizzie saw nothing but terror in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to scream.
Lizzie put a finger to her lips and gave the girl a glare to shut her up. Then she felt guilty, and her face turned into a sympathetic smile. The girl instantly seemed at ease.
“What’s your name?” Lizzie asked her. Lizzie loved children… it was something to do with all that potential they held. The ability to do something truly special, and the fact that you could be part of that.
“Nephthys,” the girl whispered. Then she started to talk, about all sorts of things really quickly at a speed Lizzie could barely understand. “There’s a monster. A… a… it’s a dead man.”
“Okay,” Lizzie said, taking deep breaths, trying to get Nephthys to imitate her, in the hope it could calm her down. “I’m going to go and find out who it is. Stay here, okay?”
The girl seemed reluctant, and Lizzie realised that she’d feel too guilty leaving her behind.
“Stay close,” Lizzie said, and she stood up, slowly easing her way around the corner to see what was down the corridor. Nephthys’s hand curled into hers, and Lizzie squeezed it, trying to make her feel safe. They turned the corner together, and began to make their way together.
There was a painfully awkward silence.
“Do you like music?”
“Yes.”
Lizzie reached into her pocket, and took out her phone. So what if she caused the entirety of space and time to collapse? She went onto ‘music’, and selected The Bangles.
All the old paintings on the tombs.
They do the sand dance, don’t you know.
If they move too quick (oh way oh).
They’re falling down like a domino.
Nephthys looked up at her, bemused at the alien tambourines and the foreign buzz of electric guitars, and the unfamiliar voice of Susanna Hoffs.
“Your songs are strange.”
Lizzie spent most of her teenage years hearing exactly the same thing. Nephthys looked up at the ceiling in a moment of contemplation, as if this was the make-or-break moment.
What did an Egyptian truly think of The Bangles?
“I love it!” Nephthys sounded delighted, throwing her arms up in the air, proving once and for all that Egyptians don’t actually ‘walk like Egyptians’.
All the bazaar men by the Nile,
They got the money on a bet.
Gold crocodiles (oh way oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette.
“I don’t understand the words…,” Nephthys was trying to decipher the unfamiliar language – her face was one of someone completing a jigsaw puzzle, using trial and error to try and work out what meant what and what went where. Except with the jigsaw puzzle Nephthys was working on, the pieces were strange shapes and had abstract images showed nothing she had ever seen before. Then she glanced at Lizzie’s phone, suddenly realising that the music wasn’t being played from anyone – it was coming from the strange device in her hand.
“What’s that?” Nephthys asked.
“It’s…,” Lizzie fumbled around for some lie that would make sense, but before she could think of anything, Nephthys’ eyes widened.
“Are you a god?!” she exclaimed, her face the picture of surprised.
“No,” Lizzie laughed. “I’m… I’m a traveller.”
Technically it wasn’t a lie.
“Where are you from?” Nephthys continued the interrogation.
“Somewhere… far away from here,” Lizzie murmured, the thought of how impossibly distant Dunsworth felt making her woozy. It was so far away – in every way that could possibly be imagined.
“I’d like to go and see faraway places one day,” Nephthys mused aloud. Lizzie listened to the way she said it – it was dreamy, as if what she was saying could only ever be words, and wouldn’t take the form of anything more.
It reminded her of the way she used to dream of going places, but couldn’t, because she was too scared.
And look at me now.
“Then… go for it.”
Nephthys mumbled a series of uncertain sounds. “I don’t know…”
“Even if it feels impossible… all sorts of things happen.”
Nephthys tightened her grip on Lizzie’s hand, as if she were grabbing on for reassurance. Beside her, the little girl relaxed a little.
It didn’t last long – only seconds later a door, like those from some cliched ancient and forgotten tomb, slid upwards, scraping against the stone. A bandaged figure silently walked out – a Cyberman.
Before Lizzie could pull Nephthys into the nearby porch, Nephthys had pulled Lizzie, and they stood there, hoping that the shadows could conceal them for long enough.
Perhaps the Cyberman was just on routine patrol or something. It was not the one she’d seen four years ago – grey, dead hands were unbandaged, and the yellowing dressings that did stick to the body were peeling off in several places, revealing a patchwork of plastic and skin and bone and alloys, a disharmony of ancient and futuristic. The bandages on the face revealed a small slit for a mouth, and one eye remained human (ish – any light that once made the eye bright with living had long since been extinguished), while the other eye was a hellish, inky pit.
It walked right past them, and Lizzie held her breath in some desperate bid to make sure the Cyberman didn’t notice them. She noticed that Nephthys did the same. And they waited like that, for what felt like hours, but was probably only seconds, as the Cyberman walked past them in its rhythmic stumble.
The Cyber-mummy (a term Lizzie was growing quite affectionate towards) walked to the end of the corridor, and paused for a few seconds. Its head jolted in rotation from side to side – it seemed to be looking for someone. The terrible thought crossed her mind that it was probably, definitely her, but she tried to forget about it, out of fear that somehow it would be able to hear her thoughts, and find her.
When the Cyberman walked back, it did so quickly. And it turned, and went back the way it came.
Lizzie quickly ushered Nephthys out of their porchway, and through the sliding stone door the Cyberman had left through, before it shut, grinding to the floor with a prolonged shudder.
***
“Wine for my Queen?” the Doctor held out the flagon.
“You say that, but only as a matter of courtesy,” Cleopatra observed, sitting opposite the Doctor.
Cleopatra’s dining room was spacious – designed for large feasts with her generals or banquets with her Italian allies. The great length of oak, however, was only occupied by two people.
They sat at the centre, directly opposite each other, only a metre-and-a-half apart, perhaps. Closer than they had been so far. Cleopatra observed the man with a strange satisfaction – she liked him, and the way he spoke to her and the way he hadn’t tiptoed around her for the sake of trying to please ‘his Queen’. Instead, when they arrived in the dining room, the Doctor had spent a good deal of time running around the walls and admiring the artworks.
“No wine?” the Doctor seemed surprise.
“Oh yes, I’ll have the wine. But I am not your Queen. No – you come from far away.”
The Doctor poured the bitter red, looking up at Cleo as he did so. “How do you know?”
“Firstly, you stride around my palace with a strange, magic… wand –”
The Doctor couldn’t help but chuckle aloud at Cleo’s unknowingness as to the origins of the sonic screwdriver.
“– and you and Lizzie wear such… abnormal clothes.”
The Doctor sighed, pouring some wine for himself. It was an explanation that actually, he did not find himself giving too often. Most people didn’t care. “Cleo… it’s a very long explanation, one which I’m sure you don’t need to be –”
Fury washed over her – Cleopatra could not abide with the petulance of the little man sat opposite her. “Doctor, I will not mindlessly accept everything you do. This is my empire, I worked hard to build it up as it is, and I will not be judged upon the entertainment or pleasure that I bring you. You must improve the way you speak to me.”
The Doctor blushed, and spluttered a few words out, not quite sure what to say, before eventually he settled on something. “I don’t think you would believe me.”
“Have we not been over this several times?” Cleopatra was mocking, and scathing. Her tongue was almost as sharp as the sword of the executioner she’d made certain the Doctor had seen when they made their way to the dining room.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the Doctor backtracked – and not because he was scared of the executioner’s sword. Cleo was right – she did not deserve to be spoken to in such a way. “Lizzie and I… we’re time travellers.”
Cleo took a sip from her wine, and glanced at the ceramic mug to make sure she hadn’t already become intoxicated. No – the glass was full. Perhaps finally the Doctor had found something to tell her that would truly make her question her wellbeing.
“Look me in the eye,” Cleopatra leaned away from the Doctor. “Look me in the eye and tell me that this is real.”
“Don’t you believe me?” the Doctor retorted straight away, not sounding remotely surprised.
“You’re a liar at heart. The one thing reaffirming my faith in you is that Lizzie is genuine.”
The Doctor smiled, thinking of his new companion, and how he couldn’t imagine her being able to lie to anybody. “I suppose she is quite… believable.”
“You barely know her,” Cleo could read the Doctor like a book.
“You can’t read me like a book,” the Doctor could read Cleo like a book. “I could tell you all sorts of lies and you wouldn’t know what was fact and what was fiction.”
“I think I could. And I think you could with me,” Cleopatra smirked at the Doctor’s almost-arrogance. He was so used to being unfathomable, that for once, all it took was for someone to believe him, and instantly he became understandable. “Though you definitely cannot with your companion.”
“Oh? And why’s that?” The Doctor refused to believe that Cleo, who had only met Lizzie once, and had only had a short conversation with her, would be able to read her better than he could.
“She is one of the most observant women I have set eyes upon. She has already read you thrice over, Doctor, and believe me, if she wanted to lie to you, she could do it with ease. But I know she is being truthful here. I could see the awe in her eyes as she admired the city from the balcony. No – I am certain I am not going mad. I wanted to see how you would react.”
A silence descended upon them, as Cleopatra smugly drank her wine, the taste of having argued with the Doctor and won being sickly sweet.
“If you’re a time traveller, why are you here?”
Cleopatra assumed that the Doctor and Lizzie were from some kind of future. She had always wanted her legacy to be that of a good Queen – though she couldn’t bring herself to ask the Doctor what people truly thought of her.
“You’re… so interesting –,” the Doctor began, before Cleopatra quickly shut him up.
“I am not some kind of specimen,” she declared, determined to put the Doctor to rights, and sick of the way he spoke of her.
“No, I don’t mean like that –,” the Doctor paused, observing the Queen’s mischievous grin. “– are you just mucking around?”
“No, I am making sure you see your self-righteous, sanctimonious self for who you truly are.”
For the first time in their conversation, the Doctor bothered to stop and think about what he was saying, putting thought and effort into the words, in the knowledge that they were going to make an impact on somebody.
“You are one of the most fascinating historical figures in… ever. Fact or fiction, who knows – nobody knows about you.”
Cleo wished she hadn’t heard him say that, taking a quick, anxious swig of her wine, and hoping that it didn’t mean what she thought. She didn’t build her empire to be remembered as just someone – she built up her empire to be remembered for someone good.
“Nobody remembers me?” Cleo eventually questioned him. She still wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know, and her mind was constantly changing. She decided she had to.
“Oh, Cleo – they remember you –”
“Then,” the first sounds of concern crept into Cleo’s voice. “What do you mean? Do they remember me well? Oh, Doctor, please – tell me they remember me well.”
The Doctor paused – now it wasn’t as if he were thinking of generic words he was going to have to say for the first time. Now he was thinking of important words.
“You’re remembered as a story, Cleo. People know you for… so many things. And that’s why we’re here. Because we wanted to know who’s behind the story.”
Cleo wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. There was something strangely exciting about it – but what she wanted more than anything else was –
“You must tell people,” Cleo declared. A look of shock flew across the Doctor’s face, his features suggesting that he wanted to do everything he could to stop the last few minutes of conversation from happening. “Tell people the truth. Let me be a story, but let me be a true story. Teach people about me.”
The Doctor looked at her sorrowfully, and her face fell. She knew what he was going to say.
“I can’t.”
“You have a time machine, stupid man! Use it for good! Teach as many people as you can. You can’t let people live lies.”
The Doctor wanted to lie to her, he wanted to say that he would, just so that she wouldn’t be disappointed. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it after everything she’d said to him. There would be some way of explaining it, perhaps – though it didn’t seem as if what he would say, any scientific technobabble, would be able to make Queen Cleopatra understand.
“Time travel doesn’t work like that,” was all he could finally muster. Cleopatra glared at him, as if she were asking him what kind of terrible excuse it was.
“Then what’s the point?”
The Doctor shrugged. Even after all this time, he still didn’t really know.
***
Just as the Cybermen had patched up the natural with the artificial, they had done the same to the lower levels of Cleopatra’s palace, attaching electric lights to the ancient sandstone. Just as there was a disharmony between the technological advances strapped onto the Cybermen, it was strange looking at sleek, white bulbs attached to the ceilings, with neat cables carefully managed, attached to the walls. The Cybermen were clearly not a messy people.
Nephthys, meanwhile, looked around in awe at the electronics, as they slowly made their way downwards – it seemed as if the narrow corridor was leading somewhere below. It was always below, wasn’t it? The people up to no good always seemed to hide out in some basement or cellar. Lizzie and Nephthys always made sure they were far enough behind the Cyberman, so it couldn’t suddenly turn and spot them. The tight walkway twisted and turned, giving them plenty of space to duck out of sight.
They walked as silently as they could, trying to walk almost as quietly as the slapping of bandaged feet on the floor, and trying to stop themselves from breathing. In the bright, clinical white lights in the belly of the palace, there was nothing but quiet, and Lizzie could hear that the Cybermen did not breath.
It felt as if the intestinal corridor went on forever, worming and burrowing its way through the sand and the Earth. The clean, white lights were equally spaced along the ceiling, always exactly perfect – there was no distinction as to whether this was the start or the end of the catacomb, apart from the sounds of the night and the pyramid’s nightlife growing ever-distant.
Then the corridor opened out into a wider room. It looked as if it had been dug out by the Cybermen, with metallic beams propping up the ceiling and the walls. A circular table, like a gigantic, 3D CD, had been constructed in the centre of the chamber, with the white light of a screen bursting from the top, and placed along the metal beams were various screens, with keyboards set up beneath them. From this presumed base of operations, a series of tunnels led off – four in total, in several different directions. The most significant was a slightly larger doorway, with artificial plastic flaps dangling down, almost like something from an abattoir, a place of industrial slaughter.
They do the sand dance, don’t you know.
If they move too quick (oh way oh).
They’re falling down like a domino.
Nephthys looked up at her, bemused at the alien tambourines and the foreign buzz of electric guitars, and the unfamiliar voice of Susanna Hoffs.
“Your songs are strange.”
Lizzie spent most of her teenage years hearing exactly the same thing. Nephthys looked up at the ceiling in a moment of contemplation, as if this was the make-or-break moment.
What did an Egyptian truly think of The Bangles?
“I love it!” Nephthys sounded delighted, throwing her arms up in the air, proving once and for all that Egyptians don’t actually ‘walk like Egyptians’.
All the bazaar men by the Nile,
They got the money on a bet.
Gold crocodiles (oh way oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette.
“I don’t understand the words…,” Nephthys was trying to decipher the unfamiliar language – her face was one of someone completing a jigsaw puzzle, using trial and error to try and work out what meant what and what went where. Except with the jigsaw puzzle Nephthys was working on, the pieces were strange shapes and had abstract images showed nothing she had ever seen before. Then she glanced at Lizzie’s phone, suddenly realising that the music wasn’t being played from anyone – it was coming from the strange device in her hand.
“What’s that?” Nephthys asked.
“It’s…,” Lizzie fumbled around for some lie that would make sense, but before she could think of anything, Nephthys’ eyes widened.
“Are you a god?!” she exclaimed, her face the picture of surprised.
“No,” Lizzie laughed. “I’m… I’m a traveller.”
Technically it wasn’t a lie.
“Where are you from?” Nephthys continued the interrogation.
“Somewhere… far away from here,” Lizzie murmured, the thought of how impossibly distant Dunsworth felt making her woozy. It was so far away – in every way that could possibly be imagined.
“I’d like to go and see faraway places one day,” Nephthys mused aloud. Lizzie listened to the way she said it – it was dreamy, as if what she was saying could only ever be words, and wouldn’t take the form of anything more.
It reminded her of the way she used to dream of going places, but couldn’t, because she was too scared.
And look at me now.
“Then… go for it.”
Nephthys mumbled a series of uncertain sounds. “I don’t know…”
“Even if it feels impossible… all sorts of things happen.”
Nephthys tightened her grip on Lizzie’s hand, as if she were grabbing on for reassurance. Beside her, the little girl relaxed a little.
It didn’t last long – only seconds later a door, like those from some cliched ancient and forgotten tomb, slid upwards, scraping against the stone. A bandaged figure silently walked out – a Cyberman.
Before Lizzie could pull Nephthys into the nearby porch, Nephthys had pulled Lizzie, and they stood there, hoping that the shadows could conceal them for long enough.
Perhaps the Cyberman was just on routine patrol or something. It was not the one she’d seen four years ago – grey, dead hands were unbandaged, and the yellowing dressings that did stick to the body were peeling off in several places, revealing a patchwork of plastic and skin and bone and alloys, a disharmony of ancient and futuristic. The bandages on the face revealed a small slit for a mouth, and one eye remained human (ish – any light that once made the eye bright with living had long since been extinguished), while the other eye was a hellish, inky pit.
It walked right past them, and Lizzie held her breath in some desperate bid to make sure the Cyberman didn’t notice them. She noticed that Nephthys did the same. And they waited like that, for what felt like hours, but was probably only seconds, as the Cyberman walked past them in its rhythmic stumble.
The Cyber-mummy (a term Lizzie was growing quite affectionate towards) walked to the end of the corridor, and paused for a few seconds. Its head jolted in rotation from side to side – it seemed to be looking for someone. The terrible thought crossed her mind that it was probably, definitely her, but she tried to forget about it, out of fear that somehow it would be able to hear her thoughts, and find her.
When the Cyberman walked back, it did so quickly. And it turned, and went back the way it came.
Lizzie quickly ushered Nephthys out of their porchway, and through the sliding stone door the Cyberman had left through, before it shut, grinding to the floor with a prolonged shudder.
***
“Wine for my Queen?” the Doctor held out the flagon.
“You say that, but only as a matter of courtesy,” Cleopatra observed, sitting opposite the Doctor.
Cleopatra’s dining room was spacious – designed for large feasts with her generals or banquets with her Italian allies. The great length of oak, however, was only occupied by two people.
They sat at the centre, directly opposite each other, only a metre-and-a-half apart, perhaps. Closer than they had been so far. Cleopatra observed the man with a strange satisfaction – she liked him, and the way he spoke to her and the way he hadn’t tiptoed around her for the sake of trying to please ‘his Queen’. Instead, when they arrived in the dining room, the Doctor had spent a good deal of time running around the walls and admiring the artworks.
“No wine?” the Doctor seemed surprise.
“Oh yes, I’ll have the wine. But I am not your Queen. No – you come from far away.”
The Doctor poured the bitter red, looking up at Cleo as he did so. “How do you know?”
“Firstly, you stride around my palace with a strange, magic… wand –”
The Doctor couldn’t help but chuckle aloud at Cleo’s unknowingness as to the origins of the sonic screwdriver.
“– and you and Lizzie wear such… abnormal clothes.”
The Doctor sighed, pouring some wine for himself. It was an explanation that actually, he did not find himself giving too often. Most people didn’t care. “Cleo… it’s a very long explanation, one which I’m sure you don’t need to be –”
Fury washed over her – Cleopatra could not abide with the petulance of the little man sat opposite her. “Doctor, I will not mindlessly accept everything you do. This is my empire, I worked hard to build it up as it is, and I will not be judged upon the entertainment or pleasure that I bring you. You must improve the way you speak to me.”
The Doctor blushed, and spluttered a few words out, not quite sure what to say, before eventually he settled on something. “I don’t think you would believe me.”
“Have we not been over this several times?” Cleopatra was mocking, and scathing. Her tongue was almost as sharp as the sword of the executioner she’d made certain the Doctor had seen when they made their way to the dining room.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the Doctor backtracked – and not because he was scared of the executioner’s sword. Cleo was right – she did not deserve to be spoken to in such a way. “Lizzie and I… we’re time travellers.”
Cleo took a sip from her wine, and glanced at the ceramic mug to make sure she hadn’t already become intoxicated. No – the glass was full. Perhaps finally the Doctor had found something to tell her that would truly make her question her wellbeing.
“Look me in the eye,” Cleopatra leaned away from the Doctor. “Look me in the eye and tell me that this is real.”
“Don’t you believe me?” the Doctor retorted straight away, not sounding remotely surprised.
“You’re a liar at heart. The one thing reaffirming my faith in you is that Lizzie is genuine.”
The Doctor smiled, thinking of his new companion, and how he couldn’t imagine her being able to lie to anybody. “I suppose she is quite… believable.”
“You barely know her,” Cleo could read the Doctor like a book.
“You can’t read me like a book,” the Doctor could read Cleo like a book. “I could tell you all sorts of lies and you wouldn’t know what was fact and what was fiction.”
“I think I could. And I think you could with me,” Cleopatra smirked at the Doctor’s almost-arrogance. He was so used to being unfathomable, that for once, all it took was for someone to believe him, and instantly he became understandable. “Though you definitely cannot with your companion.”
“Oh? And why’s that?” The Doctor refused to believe that Cleo, who had only met Lizzie once, and had only had a short conversation with her, would be able to read her better than he could.
“She is one of the most observant women I have set eyes upon. She has already read you thrice over, Doctor, and believe me, if she wanted to lie to you, she could do it with ease. But I know she is being truthful here. I could see the awe in her eyes as she admired the city from the balcony. No – I am certain I am not going mad. I wanted to see how you would react.”
A silence descended upon them, as Cleopatra smugly drank her wine, the taste of having argued with the Doctor and won being sickly sweet.
“If you’re a time traveller, why are you here?”
Cleopatra assumed that the Doctor and Lizzie were from some kind of future. She had always wanted her legacy to be that of a good Queen – though she couldn’t bring herself to ask the Doctor what people truly thought of her.
“You’re… so interesting –,” the Doctor began, before Cleopatra quickly shut him up.
“I am not some kind of specimen,” she declared, determined to put the Doctor to rights, and sick of the way he spoke of her.
“No, I don’t mean like that –,” the Doctor paused, observing the Queen’s mischievous grin. “– are you just mucking around?”
“No, I am making sure you see your self-righteous, sanctimonious self for who you truly are.”
For the first time in their conversation, the Doctor bothered to stop and think about what he was saying, putting thought and effort into the words, in the knowledge that they were going to make an impact on somebody.
“You are one of the most fascinating historical figures in… ever. Fact or fiction, who knows – nobody knows about you.”
Cleo wished she hadn’t heard him say that, taking a quick, anxious swig of her wine, and hoping that it didn’t mean what she thought. She didn’t build her empire to be remembered as just someone – she built up her empire to be remembered for someone good.
“Nobody remembers me?” Cleo eventually questioned him. She still wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know, and her mind was constantly changing. She decided she had to.
“Oh, Cleo – they remember you –”
“Then,” the first sounds of concern crept into Cleo’s voice. “What do you mean? Do they remember me well? Oh, Doctor, please – tell me they remember me well.”
The Doctor paused – now it wasn’t as if he were thinking of generic words he was going to have to say for the first time. Now he was thinking of important words.
“You’re remembered as a story, Cleo. People know you for… so many things. And that’s why we’re here. Because we wanted to know who’s behind the story.”
Cleo wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. There was something strangely exciting about it – but what she wanted more than anything else was –
“You must tell people,” Cleo declared. A look of shock flew across the Doctor’s face, his features suggesting that he wanted to do everything he could to stop the last few minutes of conversation from happening. “Tell people the truth. Let me be a story, but let me be a true story. Teach people about me.”
The Doctor looked at her sorrowfully, and her face fell. She knew what he was going to say.
“I can’t.”
“You have a time machine, stupid man! Use it for good! Teach as many people as you can. You can’t let people live lies.”
The Doctor wanted to lie to her, he wanted to say that he would, just so that she wouldn’t be disappointed. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it after everything she’d said to him. There would be some way of explaining it, perhaps – though it didn’t seem as if what he would say, any scientific technobabble, would be able to make Queen Cleopatra understand.
“Time travel doesn’t work like that,” was all he could finally muster. Cleopatra glared at him, as if she were asking him what kind of terrible excuse it was.
“Then what’s the point?”
The Doctor shrugged. Even after all this time, he still didn’t really know.
***
Just as the Cybermen had patched up the natural with the artificial, they had done the same to the lower levels of Cleopatra’s palace, attaching electric lights to the ancient sandstone. Just as there was a disharmony between the technological advances strapped onto the Cybermen, it was strange looking at sleek, white bulbs attached to the ceilings, with neat cables carefully managed, attached to the walls. The Cybermen were clearly not a messy people.
Nephthys, meanwhile, looked around in awe at the electronics, as they slowly made their way downwards – it seemed as if the narrow corridor was leading somewhere below. It was always below, wasn’t it? The people up to no good always seemed to hide out in some basement or cellar. Lizzie and Nephthys always made sure they were far enough behind the Cyberman, so it couldn’t suddenly turn and spot them. The tight walkway twisted and turned, giving them plenty of space to duck out of sight.
They walked as silently as they could, trying to walk almost as quietly as the slapping of bandaged feet on the floor, and trying to stop themselves from breathing. In the bright, clinical white lights in the belly of the palace, there was nothing but quiet, and Lizzie could hear that the Cybermen did not breath.
It felt as if the intestinal corridor went on forever, worming and burrowing its way through the sand and the Earth. The clean, white lights were equally spaced along the ceiling, always exactly perfect – there was no distinction as to whether this was the start or the end of the catacomb, apart from the sounds of the night and the pyramid’s nightlife growing ever-distant.
Then the corridor opened out into a wider room. It looked as if it had been dug out by the Cybermen, with metallic beams propping up the ceiling and the walls. A circular table, like a gigantic, 3D CD, had been constructed in the centre of the chamber, with the white light of a screen bursting from the top, and placed along the metal beams were various screens, with keyboards set up beneath them. From this presumed base of operations, a series of tunnels led off – four in total, in several different directions. The most significant was a slightly larger doorway, with artificial plastic flaps dangling down, almost like something from an abattoir, a place of industrial slaughter.
Two Cybermen stood in front of the disc-shaped computer, crusty, bandaged fingers dragging through various different records and instruments. They were not identical, instead they were like crazy-paving, each built with a menagerie of human and artificial parts. When they spoke, their voices were of different pitches, like human voices – but both were recognisable with that chilling, broken-autotuned twang.
“Conversion of the deceased will begin. Prepare the body.”
“The body is in the chamber. Purification is in process.”
“I will operate.”
The two Cybermen left their computer, and strode through the plastic sheeting, giving no notice to it as it brushed over their handlebar heads.
Lizzie poked her head into the chamber, and surprised herself with her willingness to throw herself into danger.
“I think it’s okay,” she slipped around into the chamber, sticking close to the wall. Nephthys followed her out, but unlike Lizzie, she walked straight to the computer in the middle.
“Are these people travellers as well?” Nephthys gave the text on the table a funny glance, unable to decipher the unknown language it was written in.
“Yeah… I think so.”
Nephthys walked over to the plastic sheeting, and looked at it reluctantly. Lizzie examined it, if for no reason but to delay time and think of her next move.
She held it open for Nephthys and they crept quietly through, loitering in a convenient gap in the wall, a gap containing a generator. If they both craned their heads out, they could see a much larger room. Except, unlike the previous one, it was almost entirely original, constructed of solid blocks of sand, with beautiful paintings and etchings of Gods on the walls. The biggest artwork sat alone on one of the walls – it was a person, with a human body, and a jackal for a head. A crook was gripped tightly in its hands. In the centre, was a big slab – and on top of the slab, was a body.
The one difference was the medical trolley which waited beside the slab, a series of scalpels and forceps lined neatly on top. A second medical trolley was on the other side, on top of which stood several painted wood jars, decorated in ornate Egyptian artwork, and with animal shapes carved eloquently into the top. A flashback to her school days, and Lizzie remembered visiting the Ashmolean in Oxford, and seeing canopic jars as one of the exhibits.
A cold, naked body was splayed out on the slab, with only a towel protecting its modesty. A third Cyberman joined the other two, and all three of them peeled purple, latex gloves onto their already bandaged hands, and strapped surgical masks onto their faces. They looked so unusual – Egyptian corpses donning modern medical equipment.
“Beginning conversion.”
The Cyberman took a scalpel and set to work.
Again, another school flashback, and Lizzie remembered learning about mummification. Of course, it hadn’t seemed quite as graphic when she was ten.
Then she remembered Nephthys, and thought that she should probably stop her from watching – but they were both glued to the scenes, as if they were having a cosy night in watching a warped, sick medical drama.
The Cybermen worked logically, methodically, and practically. Nothing was said, apart from a few uttered commands here and there. The process went, as it presumably had several times before. The Cybermen did not flinch at the sight of blood, or at organs or muscles or tissue, of which there was lots. Soon the purple gloves were bathed in blood.
All that happened then was the worst thing that could have happened.
“My…………………………………………………………………………”
It was speaking. The body was alive.
Except, when it spoke, it no longer spoke as if it were human – the electronics in the voicebox had been implemented, and so it spoke as the others did – in a computerised buzz, still retaining a glimpse of its human history, but nothing more – everything was lost to the wrong intonation and emphasis on the words. And on top of the artificiality, when it spoke, the gurgle of blood and flehm in the throat was audible.
“My……… name………. is………….”
The Cybermen did not waver. They kept working.
“Where……………………… is…………………………… my………………………… daughter.”
Lizzie had to look away, turning to the dark depths of the generator behind her. Nephthys couldn’t look away.
“I……………………………… want……………………. my………………………… daughter.”
She wanted to be sick – she could feel the vomit and bile rising up to the top of her throat.
“I………………………… want……………………….”
All that could be heard then was the sound of a cold, metallic crying, and a hollow sniffling, as the last reaches of emotion in the man died. Lizzie looked left and right, to make sure nobody could see her, and then she left the little porch, making her way back into the original chamber.
“Are you alright?” Nephthys had followed her out. Lizzie suddenly realised she was crying, when she felt a salty tear merge with her saliva.
“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine,” then she looked at the little girl, who was trying her best not to seem disturbed or upset. Lizzie could see that inside, she was crumbling.
As soon as she held out her arms, Nephthys ran into them, and Lizzie held her tight, making sure that the girl felt safe and protected. She wanted to tell her that everything was going to be alright, but although she held Nephthys close to her, she hadn’t felt as alone as this while being on board the TARDIS. She had no idea what to do – no idea what to say that could make things any better – all while the stupid Doctor she’d just met was swanning around upstairs with Cleopatra. If he was here, she’d punch him. Actually, she’d just get a little bit irritable. She looked at Nephthys again. No, she’d punch him.
“You’re going to be safe,” Lizzie knelt down in front of Nephthys, hoping that it was true. As she felt lonelier than ever before, abandoned in some tomb beneath some palace in 44 BC, she had no idea if it was or not. “Trust me, okay. I… know someone. And he’s going to help.”
She really hoped he was going to, at least.
Lizzie reached for her phone, and called the Doctor.
***
“You are the most selfish man I have ever met. And believe me, I’ve met many selfish men.”
The Doctor found himself fumbling around for words to try and justify what he was trying to say, but there weren’t any. The idea of their being laws of time was a stupid one. Do not interfere, do not topple the great Jenga tower of time. And yet, he found himself having to abide by them.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say.
“You could use a time machine for so much good – and yet, you don’t.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
Again, a meaningless cliché – but it was all that he could find.
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try!”
Her voice was raised, and she slammed the wine cup down on the table, hard enough to make the plates and cutlery rattle against the wood. A silence fell, and the two of them looked awkwardly around the room, refusing to make eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” she said, curtly. “I’m sure that no matter how much I disagree, you are bound by laws. Though there is nothing wrong with me disagreeing with them. And I do.”
I can tell, thought the Doctor, even though he agreed with her.
“I have walked many places. I’ve seen… so many things, so many stories. And I can’t tell anybody. But sometimes I can – and maybe one person, or two people, will get to share it with me. That’s the best I can do… I just have to try and concentrate on the fact that at least somebody knows.”
After the Doctor opened his heart to her, another awkward silence followed. They could argue, but it seemed that when it came to talking, they weren’t very good at it. Another reason that the Doctor and Cleo were alike – their reluctance to divulge information.
Then, the Doctor’s satchel began to peculiarly vibrate. The Doctor looked around sheepishly, and pulled out his phone. Cleo eyed it uncertainly, and the Doctor explained to her what it was. Facebook had left her in an even greater state of confusion than time travel had.
“Lizzie?”
“Doctor… it’s me.”
“Lizzie, have you found anything?”
“Yes… yeah, we have.”
He detected a hint of reluctance in her voice – nothing much, but there was something there. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm, me? Yeah, fine," she lied. "The Cybermen are here and… they’re turning dead people into Cybermen.”
“Oh, clever,” the Doctor noted his excessive fascination. “Give me five minutes.”
The Doctor hung up the phone, slipping it into his satchel.
“Cleo! It seems you’ve got an army of vicious cyborgs living beneath your palace.”
***
As Lizzie flipped her phone shut, she saw Nephthys staring at the door with the plastic flaps, paralysed with fear. One of the Cybermen was there, staring at her. It slowly reached up an arm, and detached its surgical mask, and peeled off its purple, surgical gloves.
“You are intruders,” its voice whirred and buzzed and droned. “You will not move.”
Lizzie, aware that she was being interrogated, realised that she should probably think of some intelligent and witty retort. She didn’t, and floundered, until Nephthys stepped in.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice remarkably steely for a 10-year-old.
“The dead will be…… converted.”
“Cool,” Lizzie said, suddenly realising that she had one threat up her sleeve. She was really, really hoping it worked. And she was also… eerily intrigued. “I’m guessing you guys have databanks or something? Like, they usually do in the books and stuff.”
“We have databanks.”
“Then search up ‘The Doctor’.”
Lizzie found herself doing rather well at sounding threatening.
The Cyberman stood, as if it were searching in some prosthetic, implanted search engine.
“The Doctor is irrelevant.”
Then, a familiar voice came from the stairway into the tomb.
“And why’s that?”
A huge wave of relief washed over Lizzie, and she turned, to see the Doctor stood there, looking like the archetypal hero, with his satchel over his shoulders, and the sonic screwdriver clasped in his hand.
“Hello Cybermen. Guess who?”
“The Doctor is here,” three Cybermen emerged from the darkened tunnels leading to the central hub.
“Why so concerned, Cybermen? What can I do to hurt you?”
Five Cybermen had gathered, and they stood, watching the three of them blankly.
“Because you…,” the Doctor gestured at the dilapidated control room around them, and at the ruined state of the Cybermen. “You’re nothing.”#
“I wouldn’t call turning the recently deceased into cyborgs ‘nothing’…” Lizzie doubted that she’d ever be able to forget the synthesised pleas of the dying man on the operating slab.
“But Lizzie, don’t you see? In the grand scheme of things!” the Doctor didn’t take his eyes off the Cybermen.
“I still think that’s… that’s pretty grand.”
The Doctor turned to face her, his face ashamed. “Yes. Sorry.” He gave Cleopatra an apologetic look as well, as she joined them in the room behind the Doctor.
Cleopatra took in the Cybermen – the creatures that had been watching her, all of her life. “Who are you? Am I addressing the followers of Anubis? Who are you?”
At that moment, the Cybermen limply raised their palms to their chests, a sort of gesture to show… respect? Service? It was as if the Cybermen were worshipping their Queen, as if they were just her courtiers.
“You address me as your Queen?” Cleopatra asked, as if that had made her willing to hear what the Cybermen had to say.
“Our… Queen…,” the Cybermen spoke in a disharmonic unison. Cleopatra looked at the Doctor, as if she were looking for answers.
“Then, as your ruler, I command you to leave.”
At that moment, everyone in the chamber looked around to the Doctor, as he gasped aloud, “I’m stupid.”
“Doctor, be quiet,” Cleopatra ordered her.
“Cleo, please –”
She gave him a look as if that promise of the executioner’s sword were about to come to fruition. However, she let him speak.
“Walk away. Trust me, just do it, just walk away. The Cybermen don’t want you at the moment.”
Cleopatra opened her mouth to protest, but then glanced over at the Cybermen, and how they stood watching her. They were not planning on doing anything.
“Lizzie, would you mind going to do the door? And Nephthys.”
Lizzie and Nephthys did as they were told, and eventually Cleo followed.
“Cybermen!” the Doctor addressed them. “We’ll be back.”
***
The TARDIS was parked behind a curtain in Cleopatra’s throne room, and the four of them were gathered around it.
“It’s always the significant moments in your life,” the Doctor wittered on, as he shoved the TARDIS doors open and switched on the lights (rather quaintly operated by a crude 21st century light switch). “When you became Queen, when your first child was born, when Caesar was assassinated.”
Lizzie watched as Nephthys nervously stepped up to the doors. The inside of the TARDIS was obscured in shadows.
“What do they want with me?” Cleopatra asked, standing at a resolute distance away from the TARDIS.
“Not a clue yet.”
“And this is your… ship?” Nephthys asked, placing a hand on the wooden doorframe.
“Yes,” Lizzie confirmed calmly, while on the inside she was secretly desperate for Nephthys to step inside and see the truth.
Nephthys tentatively stepped inside.
Lizzie inelegantly stumbled past Nephthys, just to get a glimpse of her wide eyes as she took in the true magnificence of the TARDIS, as the bright irises danced all in one second, trying to understand about a million things that didn’t make any sense. The time rotor pumped up and down, and that soothing, wheezing and groaning sound echoed. She understood why the Doctor had so joyously watched when she’d first set foot inside the TARDIS.
“Cleo,” the Doctor walked up to the Queen. “You’ll see us again. Once more.”
“How can you know this?” Cleo’s voice shook, more so than it had ever done before. She could not stay here, not with these… creatures living beneath her palace.
“Because I think I know what’s happening. Roughly…”
“Then tell me!” Cleo protested.
“I can’t, the laws of time –”
“Your laws of time are wrong.”
“And they’ve hurt me enough.”
Cleopatra was quiet, but the Doctor had nothing else to offer. So she continued. “They will hurt you even more.”
The Doctor stepped up even closer to her, close to the Queen he had watched grow. “Stay strong, Cleo. Please – you must.”
“I – I cannot stay here –”
“The Cybermen won’t hurt you, don’t worry.”
Cleopatra glared at him, and then turned away. “I look forward to the day you meet your maker.”
The Doctor walked into the TARDIS, and shut the doors behind him.
“How does it work?” Nephthys gazed in wonder at the machinery. Lizzie had no idea, and she was fairly certain that the Doctor didn’t know much either.
Magic, Lizzie smiled to herself, as the TARDIS flew away. It always made her so happy, and so elated, as all the laws of logic were defied.
But then the Doctor turned and looked at them both, a solemn look on his face.
“Where we’re going next… it won’t be pleasant,” he admitted. Neither Lizzie or Nephthys said anything – but they looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
“What’s the second most significant event in your life after your birth?” the Doctor hinted, as if he didn’t want to say it out loud.
Nephthys still hadn’t realised, and she turned to Lizzie.
“Your death,” Lizzie said, her voice cracking as she said it.
***
From the balcony of Cleopatra’s bedchamber, there was chaos in the city below. Great wooden vessels, teeming with soldiers, had docked at the harbour, and their crew marched out into the great city of Alexandra.
“The night Octavian captures Alexandria,” the Doctor grimaced, looking at the scenes below. “The Queen has tried every last attempt she can to try and save herself. Even tried to seduce him. In about five minutes – she will be dead.”
Through the thin, netted curtains, they would see the Cyberman, stood in the corner. As expected, it was waiting at the final event of Cleopatra’s life. For what, they still didn’t know. Maybe they never would. Nobody inside the chamber, Cleopatra nor her attendants, seemed to have noticed it. Their attentions were occupied by other, more important problems.
“What do we do?” Lizzie asked. She hadn’t been here before – did they go in? Did they intervene?
“We wait,” the Doctor was blunt. “We know the Cyberman is here. We have all the pieces of the puzzle – we just need to put them together.”
Lizzie looked at the Queen, lying in her bed, breathing thin, rasping breaths. Sweat matted her brow, and her skin a sickly colour.
“We can’t just wait.”
“That’s all we can do. Cleopatra dies here, that’s what happens. It’s already happened – she’ll be dead soon.”
Lizzie ignored him, pushing the thin shutters separating the balcony and the bedchamber.
Cleopatra looked up, and there was a shadowed figure, standing in the torchlight. Behind the person was the light from the balcony, and all Cleo could see was her billowing clothes, and hair blustering in the forceful night gales. It was a woman, she’d realised – perhaps an angel of some kind. That’s what she looked like, her dark outline against the unearthly light.
When Lizzie stepped into the room, Cleo sat up. She dismissed her attendants.
“Just because she’s gonna die,” Lizzie turned to the Doctor, as he walked in quietly behind her. “Doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference.”
Lizzie took a seat beside Cleo’s bed, and took the Queen’s hand in hers, squeezing it tightly.
“Li – Lizzie,” Cleopatra wheezed. The poison had settled in. It wouldn’t be long now – she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.
“Hello, my Queen.”
“You… you don’t look… look any different.”
“Magic,” Lizzie whispered, and suddenly she realised she was crying.
“I don’t believe in magic…,” Cleo managed a smile, and Lizzie couldn’t help but grin. That was okay, though – Lizzie knew that you didn’t need magic in stories.
Perhaps stories were magic in themselves.
“Thank you for coming… I didn’t want to die alone.”
“It’s okay. You won’t be alone again.”
Lizzie felt Cleo take one, final breath. It waited inside her for a while, as if holding onto the way she lived, Cleo was trying to grab onto life, just for a little bit longer.
Her hand slipped away from Lizzie’s, and bounced lifelessly down by the side of the bed.
Lizzie sniffled, and wiped the tears away from her eyes. She didn’t want the Doctor to see her crying.
“She fought the establishment.”
Lizzie suddenly realised the Doctor was saying something.
“Every single day of her life, she fought for what she believed was right. Cleopatra showed everyone who she was, and she would not change for anyone. She was a good mother, and a good leader. She died for it all, as well.”
Lizzie was scared that nobody would ever know that. She knew the stories, she’d seen the films. More than anything, she wanted that to change.
“When I grow up,” Nephthys was stood in the doorway. Lizzie had noticed her there earlier. “When I grow up, I want to be like her.”
***
“I suppose that we’ll never know what the Cybermen were doing here,” the Doctor watched soldiers file into Cleopatra’s palace, staring intently as they moved with a confident swagger – they knew victory was theirs. Antony was dead. The Queen was dead.
Lizzie sat glumly beside Nephthys on the wall, looking at the ocean below them. It seemed blacker than it had done when Lizzie had watched it before, years ago now. Was it years ago, or days? It was going to take her a while to adjust to the whole concept of time being completely changed beneath her feet.
The soldiers weren’t taking any notice of them. They didn’t really seem to care for anything apart from their orders and the fact victory was theirs. A strange chill sat in the air – nothing unusual for the night, but for some reason it felt even more bitter and eerie than the night air usually did.
“It’s kind of… sad,” Lizzie mumbled, originally intending it to sound a little bit deeper than it came out. “Kind of spooky as well… being here as a Queen is toppled.”
Lizzie tried to make herself seem as if she were okay (because she wasn’t really). She’d just watched someone die. And she didn’t care what the Doctor went on about time or whatever – Lizzie had done something good.
Nephthys nodded, and Lizzie looked at her sadly – a girl who had perhaps seen more than she should ever had to have seen. The Doctor didn’t say anything – instead he watched the events at the palace, his eyes not moving from the scene.
“She was so powerful. So… strong,” Lizzie murmured, and then stopped, because nobody seemed to care.
The Doctor bristled, and then she definitely shut up.
But her murmuring was more because she was putting extra effort into forming an idea in her mind, putting the puzzle pieces together, and trying to formulate everything they’d learned.
Everything we’ve learned.
“What if the Cybermen were studying Cleo?”
The waves continued to buffet against the rocky walls, splashing gently against the molluscs and the seaweed and the algae. The muffled shouts of commands and orders echoed in the distance.
Clearly not.
It made sense, didn’t it? She was a powerful ruler. If Lizzie were a Queen, she’d certainly be taking notes.
“That’s it!” the Doctor yelled, vigorously waving his arms, and catching the attention of a few soldiers laughed deep, drunken laughs. Nephthys was beginning to realise as well, and a broad grin spread across her face. The Doctor ran over the paving slabs and pulled Lizzie into a hug. “You’re a genius!”
He broke off the hug, and began a strange sort of run towards the palace.
Lizzie hadn’t moved since the Doctor’s little outburst and stood trying to absorb what had actually happened. Nephthys poked her, and Lizzie looked down at the little girl.
“Your friend is a bit…”
“Yeah…”
Lizzie hesitated.
“I, erm, don’t know. I’ve been with him, what, two days? And I’ve been trapped beneath a pyramid… the dead were walking, and Cleopatra drank Earl Grey with him.”
As the Doctor darted through the palace gates, the soldiers didn’t even try and stop him – they just glanced around in sheer confusion, doing rubbish-soldiering, and let the Doctor pass, as he rushed through the palace.
Lizzie had worked it out – and he was so happy he had taken her with him, because he would be completely useless without her. Before the Doctor left, he only had one more thing to do.
He had to let the Cybermen know.
Well – and then there was another thing as well, but that could come later.
Gradually he zipped down to the lower levels, into the corridors that wormed their way around the basements and cellars and larders and dungeons of the palace that had once belonged to Cleopatra. He knew exactly where he was going – he was pretty certain he’d memorised it before.
“Who is he?” Nephthys eventually asked her, as they sat and looked out the busy port, over towards the setting sun, and the stars rising in its place. It looked almost like an astronomical filter over the sunset – over a harbour with wooden sailing boats and cargo ships and privateers and travellers from distant lands, carrying exotic spices and rare technologies and old furniture, and all that other stuff that’s often handled in miscellaneous harbours. It was life, captured in one moment, with all those people, men, women and children, and the dogs and cats, right down to the mice scuttling about between crates and ceramic jars and china tea sets, each being able to taste the salty aroma of the ocean on their tongue, an aroma so strong it crept to the back of the lungs.
Lizzie shrugged. She didn’t really know.
“He’s the Doctor.”
She knew some things, though. She knew a bit.
“I know, for sure, that the Doctor won’t let children cry.”
The Doctor quickened his pace – he didn’t have long. But he remembered Nephthys, the little girl from earlier, who had been so terrified of the Cybermen, and of what the Cybermen had done. He ran. Suddenly the ground violently shook, and then ricocheted from its shaking, sending the Doctor tumbling forwards. Plumes of dust exploded from the ceiling, giving him a dusting of sand and gravel. He took a breath as he threw himself forward onto his feet, letting the filth fill his throat.
It was happening now.
He saw the door ahead of him – the one that led deep down to the Cybermen’s lair.
“And... I think the Doctor will go to impossible lengths. Maybe even too much, sometimes.”
As the Doctor reached the sliding door, it had descended, slamming into the stone. He fumbled around in his satchel and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, thrashing the button over and over, desperate for the door to open.
“Deadlock seal,” he spat dust out of his mouth.
He knelt down, grabbing the stone of the door beneath his fingers, and pulled upwards, as hard as he could. It was a stone slab, he told himself – of course it wasn’t going to open. But he tried it again, feeling the nails tear away from his skin. It was agony within his fingertips, but he wouldn’t give up.
He couldn’t.
It shifted, just a little – it shifted enough for him to get more appendages under. The Doctor gripped, and pushed against the floor. The stone scraped against the ceiling, just a bit more, and moved enough for him to slip his fingers through the Earth and get underneath the door.
When he lifted with his arms, the agony from his fingertips burst up to his shoulders and upper arms. Tears filled his eyes, and he pushed up, one final time.
The door opened, leaving the passageway to the depths of the castle open.
“But one thing is for sure… he’ll always try, if it’s something he believes in.”
Lizzie searched for anything else she knew about the Doctor. But that was all. Other than the obvious stuff, of course.
“He’s got a wife. But he’s still sad – I can see it. I like to believe I can see right through him… but I don’t know,” she looked at the palace – she was on edge. Even though the Doctor seemed to know what was going on, he was pretty good at getting into all sorts of scrapes.
“Perhaps,” she continued. “Half the time he doesn’t know himself. A lot of the time, that’s what he’s trying to do.”
The labyrinthine passage spiralled on, and on, and on. As the Doctor ran, the clinical, white lights above him were flickering on and off, and twice he was showered in sparks from the burning electrics. Along with the fiery rain, a deluge of dust and sand and earth was thrashing down from the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long before the Cybermen were leaving, and so he was hurling himself downwards, feeling the warm ground scratch against his skin.
Eventually, he reached the bottom, to the chamber with the circular computer – six Cybermen stood around it, all hybrids of bandages and buttons, and wires and skin and metal, all probably with livers in canopic jars, and tissue that had been yanked out with crude, steel hooks. One of them turned to him.
“It is the Doctor,” it sang, in its tuneless, uncanny voice.
“I know what you were doing,” he said, his voice hoarse, as he gasped for air that had been absorbed by the falling ceiling of the palace’s corridors.
The Cybermen stared at him blankly. “It is irrelevant. We have completed our mission.”
“Li – Lizzie worked it out, she’s very clever – cleverer than you are, for sure. Cleverer than me, absolutely. You were studying her.”
Again, the Cybermen didn’t waver. Three of them turned back to the computer, as their spaceship began to launch. It wouldn’t be long before the ground above them collapsed in on itself, and a huge metal hulk erupted from the sand.
“You knew how she was such a powerful Queen, and you admired her, and the way she built such an effective empire. So you came here to learn from her!”
“Correct.”
The Doctor stared at them all, and the Cybermen stared back, awkwardly. “Erm, yes. That’s it, really. Bye for now.”
He turned and ran back up the way he came – in about a minute and a half, the Cybermen would leave Earth’s atmosphere, and would journey off into space, to whatever scheme they had concocted next.
And if they were going to hurt anyone? Well – he would be there.
The ceiling was falling down around him, the downpour of bricks and mortar turning into a tsunami. Eventually, he slogged through the sand, and came out onto the corridor beyond the sliding door. The corridor behind him exploded, throwing him forwards, as a fireball blew up behind him.
He smacked against the stone bricks, as a cloud of sparks burst and crackled above his head, singeing the top of his hair and his beard. He touched it mournfully.
“And I think,” Lizzie said, acknowledging the last thing that she knew about the Doctor. “That probably, a lot of the time, he needs more help than he admits. Just a minute – I’ll be back.”
As Lizzie ran through the gates of the palace, the guards looked around in confusion, as some kind of earthquake was violently shaking the palace back and forth, sending horses and camels wild, and sending bricks and slabs slipping down from the roofs and the turrets. She could roughly remember the way down to the Cybermen’s dungeon – she took a few sets of stairs downwards, knowing that wherever the Doctor was, he’d probably be there.
As she neared the basement, the tremors grew even more forceful – Lizzie was sure that she was on the right track.
Eventually, she arrived at the corridor with the porch she’d hidden in with Nephthys, and the sliding door leading to the Cybermen. The Doctor was ahead of her, trudging his way over some kind of huge, sandstone breezeblock.
When he looked up and saw her, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Come on!” she reached forward, and grabbed his hand, pulling him through the rubble. The dust and sand had formed a permanent cloud, omnipresent in the air, drawing tears from their eyes, and forcing them to cough dry, hacking coughs. The Doctor, mid-cough, reached towards her hand, and grabbed it, holding on as tight as he could. Lizzie tugged him forwards, and he stumbled into her.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she watched as he attempted to regain balance. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine! Come on, let’s get out of here…”
As the Doctor thought about what he’d been thinking before, he realised that he’d been wrong. If the Cybermen were going to hurt anyone again, it wouldn’t be him waiting for them.
It would be the Doctor and Lizzie Darwin.
He had to concentrate again, as he realised Lizzie was having to pull him up a narrow set of steps.
***
The Doctor tentatively poked at the burned patch of his beard, cremated in the launching of the Cybermen’s spaceship.
The Doctor and Lizzie had eventually managed to escape the palace, albeit blanketed in debris, and they had come face to face with a Nephthys who giggled at how messy they looked. Five seconds after they escaped, the sound of a million aircraft engines at once deafened the three of them, and all the soldiers stood in complete confusion and bemusement.
All of them watched as a huge, spinning lump of metal, almost as patchwork as the people who operated it, tore from the ground like someone uprooting a tree, and jetted off into the stars above.
The sun was nearly set, now.
Surprisingly, most of the palace was still standing – clearly when the Cybermen had crashed, they had made sure that they’d picked a sensible crash site, upon which nothing had been built since.
“A few thousand years from now,” the Doctor pointed at the sea. “A great tsunami will come and destroy the rest of this palace, and the lighthouse.”
Nephthys danced a funny little dance as she realised what the Doctor was saying. “The Cybermen! They’ll come back and destroy it.”
“Nephthys,” Lizzie turned to the little Egyptian girl suddenly. “You should write all this down. As a story.”
The Doctor looked at her hesitantly, as if he should say something. He decided not to.
“About the Cybermen?”
“Yeah.”
Nephthys nodded, and then hugged Lizzie. “Thank you,” she whispered, before breaking away, and giving the Doctor an awkward little wave. Then she scampered off into the night, with a whole wealth of adventures to write down.
Lizzie looked over at the chaotic palace, at the swathes of people dashing around, trying to make sense as to what had happened. The same was happening in the port – the humdrum conversations of goods transportation and the fall of a monarch had instead been replaced by why a great big thing just flew out of the ground and into the sky. She was sure that the Doctor had said that they shouldn’t topple the great Jenga tower of time or something. He was stood, looking out over the sea melancholically towards the horizon.
“This is what it’s like all the time,” he stood up, jumped off the wall, and walked over to the TARDIS. He pushed opened the doors.
“Do you still want to travel with me?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled awkwardly. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I… I don’t know. I suppose it’s been quite a day – you’ve seen the whole reign of Cleopatra in just a few hours and you’ve seen barbaric cyborgs from outer space converting the dead – it’s not usually as… heavy-going as that, first time around.”
“Of course I want to come. You make mistakes. You mucked around with Cleopatra, treated her life as if you were just… a robot. I can’t let you go around doing that.”
“Conversion of the deceased will begin. Prepare the body.”
“The body is in the chamber. Purification is in process.”
“I will operate.”
The two Cybermen left their computer, and strode through the plastic sheeting, giving no notice to it as it brushed over their handlebar heads.
Lizzie poked her head into the chamber, and surprised herself with her willingness to throw herself into danger.
“I think it’s okay,” she slipped around into the chamber, sticking close to the wall. Nephthys followed her out, but unlike Lizzie, she walked straight to the computer in the middle.
“Are these people travellers as well?” Nephthys gave the text on the table a funny glance, unable to decipher the unknown language it was written in.
“Yeah… I think so.”
Nephthys walked over to the plastic sheeting, and looked at it reluctantly. Lizzie examined it, if for no reason but to delay time and think of her next move.
She held it open for Nephthys and they crept quietly through, loitering in a convenient gap in the wall, a gap containing a generator. If they both craned their heads out, they could see a much larger room. Except, unlike the previous one, it was almost entirely original, constructed of solid blocks of sand, with beautiful paintings and etchings of Gods on the walls. The biggest artwork sat alone on one of the walls – it was a person, with a human body, and a jackal for a head. A crook was gripped tightly in its hands. In the centre, was a big slab – and on top of the slab, was a body.
The one difference was the medical trolley which waited beside the slab, a series of scalpels and forceps lined neatly on top. A second medical trolley was on the other side, on top of which stood several painted wood jars, decorated in ornate Egyptian artwork, and with animal shapes carved eloquently into the top. A flashback to her school days, and Lizzie remembered visiting the Ashmolean in Oxford, and seeing canopic jars as one of the exhibits.
A cold, naked body was splayed out on the slab, with only a towel protecting its modesty. A third Cyberman joined the other two, and all three of them peeled purple, latex gloves onto their already bandaged hands, and strapped surgical masks onto their faces. They looked so unusual – Egyptian corpses donning modern medical equipment.
“Beginning conversion.”
The Cyberman took a scalpel and set to work.
Again, another school flashback, and Lizzie remembered learning about mummification. Of course, it hadn’t seemed quite as graphic when she was ten.
Then she remembered Nephthys, and thought that she should probably stop her from watching – but they were both glued to the scenes, as if they were having a cosy night in watching a warped, sick medical drama.
The Cybermen worked logically, methodically, and practically. Nothing was said, apart from a few uttered commands here and there. The process went, as it presumably had several times before. The Cybermen did not flinch at the sight of blood, or at organs or muscles or tissue, of which there was lots. Soon the purple gloves were bathed in blood.
All that happened then was the worst thing that could have happened.
“My…………………………………………………………………………”
It was speaking. The body was alive.
Except, when it spoke, it no longer spoke as if it were human – the electronics in the voicebox had been implemented, and so it spoke as the others did – in a computerised buzz, still retaining a glimpse of its human history, but nothing more – everything was lost to the wrong intonation and emphasis on the words. And on top of the artificiality, when it spoke, the gurgle of blood and flehm in the throat was audible.
“My……… name………. is………….”
The Cybermen did not waver. They kept working.
“Where……………………… is…………………………… my………………………… daughter.”
Lizzie had to look away, turning to the dark depths of the generator behind her. Nephthys couldn’t look away.
“I……………………………… want……………………. my………………………… daughter.”
She wanted to be sick – she could feel the vomit and bile rising up to the top of her throat.
“I………………………… want……………………….”
All that could be heard then was the sound of a cold, metallic crying, and a hollow sniffling, as the last reaches of emotion in the man died. Lizzie looked left and right, to make sure nobody could see her, and then she left the little porch, making her way back into the original chamber.
“Are you alright?” Nephthys had followed her out. Lizzie suddenly realised she was crying, when she felt a salty tear merge with her saliva.
“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine,” then she looked at the little girl, who was trying her best not to seem disturbed or upset. Lizzie could see that inside, she was crumbling.
As soon as she held out her arms, Nephthys ran into them, and Lizzie held her tight, making sure that the girl felt safe and protected. She wanted to tell her that everything was going to be alright, but although she held Nephthys close to her, she hadn’t felt as alone as this while being on board the TARDIS. She had no idea what to do – no idea what to say that could make things any better – all while the stupid Doctor she’d just met was swanning around upstairs with Cleopatra. If he was here, she’d punch him. Actually, she’d just get a little bit irritable. She looked at Nephthys again. No, she’d punch him.
“You’re going to be safe,” Lizzie knelt down in front of Nephthys, hoping that it was true. As she felt lonelier than ever before, abandoned in some tomb beneath some palace in 44 BC, she had no idea if it was or not. “Trust me, okay. I… know someone. And he’s going to help.”
She really hoped he was going to, at least.
Lizzie reached for her phone, and called the Doctor.
***
“You are the most selfish man I have ever met. And believe me, I’ve met many selfish men.”
The Doctor found himself fumbling around for words to try and justify what he was trying to say, but there weren’t any. The idea of their being laws of time was a stupid one. Do not interfere, do not topple the great Jenga tower of time. And yet, he found himself having to abide by them.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say.
“You could use a time machine for so much good – and yet, you don’t.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
Again, a meaningless cliché – but it was all that he could find.
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try!”
Her voice was raised, and she slammed the wine cup down on the table, hard enough to make the plates and cutlery rattle against the wood. A silence fell, and the two of them looked awkwardly around the room, refusing to make eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” she said, curtly. “I’m sure that no matter how much I disagree, you are bound by laws. Though there is nothing wrong with me disagreeing with them. And I do.”
I can tell, thought the Doctor, even though he agreed with her.
“I have walked many places. I’ve seen… so many things, so many stories. And I can’t tell anybody. But sometimes I can – and maybe one person, or two people, will get to share it with me. That’s the best I can do… I just have to try and concentrate on the fact that at least somebody knows.”
After the Doctor opened his heart to her, another awkward silence followed. They could argue, but it seemed that when it came to talking, they weren’t very good at it. Another reason that the Doctor and Cleo were alike – their reluctance to divulge information.
Then, the Doctor’s satchel began to peculiarly vibrate. The Doctor looked around sheepishly, and pulled out his phone. Cleo eyed it uncertainly, and the Doctor explained to her what it was. Facebook had left her in an even greater state of confusion than time travel had.
“Lizzie?”
“Doctor… it’s me.”
“Lizzie, have you found anything?”
“Yes… yeah, we have.”
He detected a hint of reluctance in her voice – nothing much, but there was something there. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm, me? Yeah, fine," she lied. "The Cybermen are here and… they’re turning dead people into Cybermen.”
“Oh, clever,” the Doctor noted his excessive fascination. “Give me five minutes.”
The Doctor hung up the phone, slipping it into his satchel.
“Cleo! It seems you’ve got an army of vicious cyborgs living beneath your palace.”
***
As Lizzie flipped her phone shut, she saw Nephthys staring at the door with the plastic flaps, paralysed with fear. One of the Cybermen was there, staring at her. It slowly reached up an arm, and detached its surgical mask, and peeled off its purple, surgical gloves.
“You are intruders,” its voice whirred and buzzed and droned. “You will not move.”
Lizzie, aware that she was being interrogated, realised that she should probably think of some intelligent and witty retort. She didn’t, and floundered, until Nephthys stepped in.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice remarkably steely for a 10-year-old.
“The dead will be…… converted.”
“Cool,” Lizzie said, suddenly realising that she had one threat up her sleeve. She was really, really hoping it worked. And she was also… eerily intrigued. “I’m guessing you guys have databanks or something? Like, they usually do in the books and stuff.”
“We have databanks.”
“Then search up ‘The Doctor’.”
Lizzie found herself doing rather well at sounding threatening.
The Cyberman stood, as if it were searching in some prosthetic, implanted search engine.
“The Doctor is irrelevant.”
Then, a familiar voice came from the stairway into the tomb.
“And why’s that?”
A huge wave of relief washed over Lizzie, and she turned, to see the Doctor stood there, looking like the archetypal hero, with his satchel over his shoulders, and the sonic screwdriver clasped in his hand.
“Hello Cybermen. Guess who?”
“The Doctor is here,” three Cybermen emerged from the darkened tunnels leading to the central hub.
“Why so concerned, Cybermen? What can I do to hurt you?”
Five Cybermen had gathered, and they stood, watching the three of them blankly.
“Because you…,” the Doctor gestured at the dilapidated control room around them, and at the ruined state of the Cybermen. “You’re nothing.”#
“I wouldn’t call turning the recently deceased into cyborgs ‘nothing’…” Lizzie doubted that she’d ever be able to forget the synthesised pleas of the dying man on the operating slab.
“But Lizzie, don’t you see? In the grand scheme of things!” the Doctor didn’t take his eyes off the Cybermen.
“I still think that’s… that’s pretty grand.”
The Doctor turned to face her, his face ashamed. “Yes. Sorry.” He gave Cleopatra an apologetic look as well, as she joined them in the room behind the Doctor.
Cleopatra took in the Cybermen – the creatures that had been watching her, all of her life. “Who are you? Am I addressing the followers of Anubis? Who are you?”
At that moment, the Cybermen limply raised their palms to their chests, a sort of gesture to show… respect? Service? It was as if the Cybermen were worshipping their Queen, as if they were just her courtiers.
“You address me as your Queen?” Cleopatra asked, as if that had made her willing to hear what the Cybermen had to say.
“Our… Queen…,” the Cybermen spoke in a disharmonic unison. Cleopatra looked at the Doctor, as if she were looking for answers.
“Then, as your ruler, I command you to leave.”
At that moment, everyone in the chamber looked around to the Doctor, as he gasped aloud, “I’m stupid.”
“Doctor, be quiet,” Cleopatra ordered her.
“Cleo, please –”
She gave him a look as if that promise of the executioner’s sword were about to come to fruition. However, she let him speak.
“Walk away. Trust me, just do it, just walk away. The Cybermen don’t want you at the moment.”
Cleopatra opened her mouth to protest, but then glanced over at the Cybermen, and how they stood watching her. They were not planning on doing anything.
“Lizzie, would you mind going to do the door? And Nephthys.”
Lizzie and Nephthys did as they were told, and eventually Cleo followed.
“Cybermen!” the Doctor addressed them. “We’ll be back.”
***
The TARDIS was parked behind a curtain in Cleopatra’s throne room, and the four of them were gathered around it.
“It’s always the significant moments in your life,” the Doctor wittered on, as he shoved the TARDIS doors open and switched on the lights (rather quaintly operated by a crude 21st century light switch). “When you became Queen, when your first child was born, when Caesar was assassinated.”
Lizzie watched as Nephthys nervously stepped up to the doors. The inside of the TARDIS was obscured in shadows.
“What do they want with me?” Cleopatra asked, standing at a resolute distance away from the TARDIS.
“Not a clue yet.”
“And this is your… ship?” Nephthys asked, placing a hand on the wooden doorframe.
“Yes,” Lizzie confirmed calmly, while on the inside she was secretly desperate for Nephthys to step inside and see the truth.
Nephthys tentatively stepped inside.
Lizzie inelegantly stumbled past Nephthys, just to get a glimpse of her wide eyes as she took in the true magnificence of the TARDIS, as the bright irises danced all in one second, trying to understand about a million things that didn’t make any sense. The time rotor pumped up and down, and that soothing, wheezing and groaning sound echoed. She understood why the Doctor had so joyously watched when she’d first set foot inside the TARDIS.
“Cleo,” the Doctor walked up to the Queen. “You’ll see us again. Once more.”
“How can you know this?” Cleo’s voice shook, more so than it had ever done before. She could not stay here, not with these… creatures living beneath her palace.
“Because I think I know what’s happening. Roughly…”
“Then tell me!” Cleo protested.
“I can’t, the laws of time –”
“Your laws of time are wrong.”
“And they’ve hurt me enough.”
Cleopatra was quiet, but the Doctor had nothing else to offer. So she continued. “They will hurt you even more.”
The Doctor stepped up even closer to her, close to the Queen he had watched grow. “Stay strong, Cleo. Please – you must.”
“I – I cannot stay here –”
“The Cybermen won’t hurt you, don’t worry.”
Cleopatra glared at him, and then turned away. “I look forward to the day you meet your maker.”
The Doctor walked into the TARDIS, and shut the doors behind him.
“How does it work?” Nephthys gazed in wonder at the machinery. Lizzie had no idea, and she was fairly certain that the Doctor didn’t know much either.
Magic, Lizzie smiled to herself, as the TARDIS flew away. It always made her so happy, and so elated, as all the laws of logic were defied.
But then the Doctor turned and looked at them both, a solemn look on his face.
“Where we’re going next… it won’t be pleasant,” he admitted. Neither Lizzie or Nephthys said anything – but they looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
“What’s the second most significant event in your life after your birth?” the Doctor hinted, as if he didn’t want to say it out loud.
Nephthys still hadn’t realised, and she turned to Lizzie.
“Your death,” Lizzie said, her voice cracking as she said it.
***
From the balcony of Cleopatra’s bedchamber, there was chaos in the city below. Great wooden vessels, teeming with soldiers, had docked at the harbour, and their crew marched out into the great city of Alexandra.
“The night Octavian captures Alexandria,” the Doctor grimaced, looking at the scenes below. “The Queen has tried every last attempt she can to try and save herself. Even tried to seduce him. In about five minutes – she will be dead.”
Through the thin, netted curtains, they would see the Cyberman, stood in the corner. As expected, it was waiting at the final event of Cleopatra’s life. For what, they still didn’t know. Maybe they never would. Nobody inside the chamber, Cleopatra nor her attendants, seemed to have noticed it. Their attentions were occupied by other, more important problems.
“What do we do?” Lizzie asked. She hadn’t been here before – did they go in? Did they intervene?
“We wait,” the Doctor was blunt. “We know the Cyberman is here. We have all the pieces of the puzzle – we just need to put them together.”
Lizzie looked at the Queen, lying in her bed, breathing thin, rasping breaths. Sweat matted her brow, and her skin a sickly colour.
“We can’t just wait.”
“That’s all we can do. Cleopatra dies here, that’s what happens. It’s already happened – she’ll be dead soon.”
Lizzie ignored him, pushing the thin shutters separating the balcony and the bedchamber.
Cleopatra looked up, and there was a shadowed figure, standing in the torchlight. Behind the person was the light from the balcony, and all Cleo could see was her billowing clothes, and hair blustering in the forceful night gales. It was a woman, she’d realised – perhaps an angel of some kind. That’s what she looked like, her dark outline against the unearthly light.
When Lizzie stepped into the room, Cleo sat up. She dismissed her attendants.
“Just because she’s gonna die,” Lizzie turned to the Doctor, as he walked in quietly behind her. “Doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference.”
Lizzie took a seat beside Cleo’s bed, and took the Queen’s hand in hers, squeezing it tightly.
“Li – Lizzie,” Cleopatra wheezed. The poison had settled in. It wouldn’t be long now – she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.
“Hello, my Queen.”
“You… you don’t look… look any different.”
“Magic,” Lizzie whispered, and suddenly she realised she was crying.
“I don’t believe in magic…,” Cleo managed a smile, and Lizzie couldn’t help but grin. That was okay, though – Lizzie knew that you didn’t need magic in stories.
Perhaps stories were magic in themselves.
“Thank you for coming… I didn’t want to die alone.”
“It’s okay. You won’t be alone again.”
Lizzie felt Cleo take one, final breath. It waited inside her for a while, as if holding onto the way she lived, Cleo was trying to grab onto life, just for a little bit longer.
Her hand slipped away from Lizzie’s, and bounced lifelessly down by the side of the bed.
Lizzie sniffled, and wiped the tears away from her eyes. She didn’t want the Doctor to see her crying.
“She fought the establishment.”
Lizzie suddenly realised the Doctor was saying something.
“Every single day of her life, she fought for what she believed was right. Cleopatra showed everyone who she was, and she would not change for anyone. She was a good mother, and a good leader. She died for it all, as well.”
Lizzie was scared that nobody would ever know that. She knew the stories, she’d seen the films. More than anything, she wanted that to change.
“When I grow up,” Nephthys was stood in the doorway. Lizzie had noticed her there earlier. “When I grow up, I want to be like her.”
***
“I suppose that we’ll never know what the Cybermen were doing here,” the Doctor watched soldiers file into Cleopatra’s palace, staring intently as they moved with a confident swagger – they knew victory was theirs. Antony was dead. The Queen was dead.
Lizzie sat glumly beside Nephthys on the wall, looking at the ocean below them. It seemed blacker than it had done when Lizzie had watched it before, years ago now. Was it years ago, or days? It was going to take her a while to adjust to the whole concept of time being completely changed beneath her feet.
The soldiers weren’t taking any notice of them. They didn’t really seem to care for anything apart from their orders and the fact victory was theirs. A strange chill sat in the air – nothing unusual for the night, but for some reason it felt even more bitter and eerie than the night air usually did.
“It’s kind of… sad,” Lizzie mumbled, originally intending it to sound a little bit deeper than it came out. “Kind of spooky as well… being here as a Queen is toppled.”
Lizzie tried to make herself seem as if she were okay (because she wasn’t really). She’d just watched someone die. And she didn’t care what the Doctor went on about time or whatever – Lizzie had done something good.
Nephthys nodded, and Lizzie looked at her sadly – a girl who had perhaps seen more than she should ever had to have seen. The Doctor didn’t say anything – instead he watched the events at the palace, his eyes not moving from the scene.
“She was so powerful. So… strong,” Lizzie murmured, and then stopped, because nobody seemed to care.
The Doctor bristled, and then she definitely shut up.
But her murmuring was more because she was putting extra effort into forming an idea in her mind, putting the puzzle pieces together, and trying to formulate everything they’d learned.
Everything we’ve learned.
“What if the Cybermen were studying Cleo?”
The waves continued to buffet against the rocky walls, splashing gently against the molluscs and the seaweed and the algae. The muffled shouts of commands and orders echoed in the distance.
Clearly not.
It made sense, didn’t it? She was a powerful ruler. If Lizzie were a Queen, she’d certainly be taking notes.
“That’s it!” the Doctor yelled, vigorously waving his arms, and catching the attention of a few soldiers laughed deep, drunken laughs. Nephthys was beginning to realise as well, and a broad grin spread across her face. The Doctor ran over the paving slabs and pulled Lizzie into a hug. “You’re a genius!”
He broke off the hug, and began a strange sort of run towards the palace.
Lizzie hadn’t moved since the Doctor’s little outburst and stood trying to absorb what had actually happened. Nephthys poked her, and Lizzie looked down at the little girl.
“Your friend is a bit…”
“Yeah…”
Lizzie hesitated.
“I, erm, don’t know. I’ve been with him, what, two days? And I’ve been trapped beneath a pyramid… the dead were walking, and Cleopatra drank Earl Grey with him.”
As the Doctor darted through the palace gates, the soldiers didn’t even try and stop him – they just glanced around in sheer confusion, doing rubbish-soldiering, and let the Doctor pass, as he rushed through the palace.
Lizzie had worked it out – and he was so happy he had taken her with him, because he would be completely useless without her. Before the Doctor left, he only had one more thing to do.
He had to let the Cybermen know.
Well – and then there was another thing as well, but that could come later.
Gradually he zipped down to the lower levels, into the corridors that wormed their way around the basements and cellars and larders and dungeons of the palace that had once belonged to Cleopatra. He knew exactly where he was going – he was pretty certain he’d memorised it before.
“Who is he?” Nephthys eventually asked her, as they sat and looked out the busy port, over towards the setting sun, and the stars rising in its place. It looked almost like an astronomical filter over the sunset – over a harbour with wooden sailing boats and cargo ships and privateers and travellers from distant lands, carrying exotic spices and rare technologies and old furniture, and all that other stuff that’s often handled in miscellaneous harbours. It was life, captured in one moment, with all those people, men, women and children, and the dogs and cats, right down to the mice scuttling about between crates and ceramic jars and china tea sets, each being able to taste the salty aroma of the ocean on their tongue, an aroma so strong it crept to the back of the lungs.
Lizzie shrugged. She didn’t really know.
“He’s the Doctor.”
She knew some things, though. She knew a bit.
“I know, for sure, that the Doctor won’t let children cry.”
The Doctor quickened his pace – he didn’t have long. But he remembered Nephthys, the little girl from earlier, who had been so terrified of the Cybermen, and of what the Cybermen had done. He ran. Suddenly the ground violently shook, and then ricocheted from its shaking, sending the Doctor tumbling forwards. Plumes of dust exploded from the ceiling, giving him a dusting of sand and gravel. He took a breath as he threw himself forward onto his feet, letting the filth fill his throat.
It was happening now.
He saw the door ahead of him – the one that led deep down to the Cybermen’s lair.
“And... I think the Doctor will go to impossible lengths. Maybe even too much, sometimes.”
As the Doctor reached the sliding door, it had descended, slamming into the stone. He fumbled around in his satchel and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, thrashing the button over and over, desperate for the door to open.
“Deadlock seal,” he spat dust out of his mouth.
He knelt down, grabbing the stone of the door beneath his fingers, and pulled upwards, as hard as he could. It was a stone slab, he told himself – of course it wasn’t going to open. But he tried it again, feeling the nails tear away from his skin. It was agony within his fingertips, but he wouldn’t give up.
He couldn’t.
It shifted, just a little – it shifted enough for him to get more appendages under. The Doctor gripped, and pushed against the floor. The stone scraped against the ceiling, just a bit more, and moved enough for him to slip his fingers through the Earth and get underneath the door.
When he lifted with his arms, the agony from his fingertips burst up to his shoulders and upper arms. Tears filled his eyes, and he pushed up, one final time.
The door opened, leaving the passageway to the depths of the castle open.
“But one thing is for sure… he’ll always try, if it’s something he believes in.”
Lizzie searched for anything else she knew about the Doctor. But that was all. Other than the obvious stuff, of course.
“He’s got a wife. But he’s still sad – I can see it. I like to believe I can see right through him… but I don’t know,” she looked at the palace – she was on edge. Even though the Doctor seemed to know what was going on, he was pretty good at getting into all sorts of scrapes.
“Perhaps,” she continued. “Half the time he doesn’t know himself. A lot of the time, that’s what he’s trying to do.”
The labyrinthine passage spiralled on, and on, and on. As the Doctor ran, the clinical, white lights above him were flickering on and off, and twice he was showered in sparks from the burning electrics. Along with the fiery rain, a deluge of dust and sand and earth was thrashing down from the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long before the Cybermen were leaving, and so he was hurling himself downwards, feeling the warm ground scratch against his skin.
Eventually, he reached the bottom, to the chamber with the circular computer – six Cybermen stood around it, all hybrids of bandages and buttons, and wires and skin and metal, all probably with livers in canopic jars, and tissue that had been yanked out with crude, steel hooks. One of them turned to him.
“It is the Doctor,” it sang, in its tuneless, uncanny voice.
“I know what you were doing,” he said, his voice hoarse, as he gasped for air that had been absorbed by the falling ceiling of the palace’s corridors.
The Cybermen stared at him blankly. “It is irrelevant. We have completed our mission.”
“Li – Lizzie worked it out, she’s very clever – cleverer than you are, for sure. Cleverer than me, absolutely. You were studying her.”
Again, the Cybermen didn’t waver. Three of them turned back to the computer, as their spaceship began to launch. It wouldn’t be long before the ground above them collapsed in on itself, and a huge metal hulk erupted from the sand.
“You knew how she was such a powerful Queen, and you admired her, and the way she built such an effective empire. So you came here to learn from her!”
“Correct.”
The Doctor stared at them all, and the Cybermen stared back, awkwardly. “Erm, yes. That’s it, really. Bye for now.”
He turned and ran back up the way he came – in about a minute and a half, the Cybermen would leave Earth’s atmosphere, and would journey off into space, to whatever scheme they had concocted next.
And if they were going to hurt anyone? Well – he would be there.
The ceiling was falling down around him, the downpour of bricks and mortar turning into a tsunami. Eventually, he slogged through the sand, and came out onto the corridor beyond the sliding door. The corridor behind him exploded, throwing him forwards, as a fireball blew up behind him.
He smacked against the stone bricks, as a cloud of sparks burst and crackled above his head, singeing the top of his hair and his beard. He touched it mournfully.
“And I think,” Lizzie said, acknowledging the last thing that she knew about the Doctor. “That probably, a lot of the time, he needs more help than he admits. Just a minute – I’ll be back.”
As Lizzie ran through the gates of the palace, the guards looked around in confusion, as some kind of earthquake was violently shaking the palace back and forth, sending horses and camels wild, and sending bricks and slabs slipping down from the roofs and the turrets. She could roughly remember the way down to the Cybermen’s dungeon – she took a few sets of stairs downwards, knowing that wherever the Doctor was, he’d probably be there.
As she neared the basement, the tremors grew even more forceful – Lizzie was sure that she was on the right track.
Eventually, she arrived at the corridor with the porch she’d hidden in with Nephthys, and the sliding door leading to the Cybermen. The Doctor was ahead of her, trudging his way over some kind of huge, sandstone breezeblock.
When he looked up and saw her, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Come on!” she reached forward, and grabbed his hand, pulling him through the rubble. The dust and sand had formed a permanent cloud, omnipresent in the air, drawing tears from their eyes, and forcing them to cough dry, hacking coughs. The Doctor, mid-cough, reached towards her hand, and grabbed it, holding on as tight as he could. Lizzie tugged him forwards, and he stumbled into her.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she watched as he attempted to regain balance. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine! Come on, let’s get out of here…”
As the Doctor thought about what he’d been thinking before, he realised that he’d been wrong. If the Cybermen were going to hurt anyone again, it wouldn’t be him waiting for them.
It would be the Doctor and Lizzie Darwin.
He had to concentrate again, as he realised Lizzie was having to pull him up a narrow set of steps.
***
The Doctor tentatively poked at the burned patch of his beard, cremated in the launching of the Cybermen’s spaceship.
The Doctor and Lizzie had eventually managed to escape the palace, albeit blanketed in debris, and they had come face to face with a Nephthys who giggled at how messy they looked. Five seconds after they escaped, the sound of a million aircraft engines at once deafened the three of them, and all the soldiers stood in complete confusion and bemusement.
All of them watched as a huge, spinning lump of metal, almost as patchwork as the people who operated it, tore from the ground like someone uprooting a tree, and jetted off into the stars above.
The sun was nearly set, now.
Surprisingly, most of the palace was still standing – clearly when the Cybermen had crashed, they had made sure that they’d picked a sensible crash site, upon which nothing had been built since.
“A few thousand years from now,” the Doctor pointed at the sea. “A great tsunami will come and destroy the rest of this palace, and the lighthouse.”
Nephthys danced a funny little dance as she realised what the Doctor was saying. “The Cybermen! They’ll come back and destroy it.”
“Nephthys,” Lizzie turned to the little Egyptian girl suddenly. “You should write all this down. As a story.”
The Doctor looked at her hesitantly, as if he should say something. He decided not to.
“About the Cybermen?”
“Yeah.”
Nephthys nodded, and then hugged Lizzie. “Thank you,” she whispered, before breaking away, and giving the Doctor an awkward little wave. Then she scampered off into the night, with a whole wealth of adventures to write down.
Lizzie looked over at the chaotic palace, at the swathes of people dashing around, trying to make sense as to what had happened. The same was happening in the port – the humdrum conversations of goods transportation and the fall of a monarch had instead been replaced by why a great big thing just flew out of the ground and into the sky. She was sure that the Doctor had said that they shouldn’t topple the great Jenga tower of time or something. He was stood, looking out over the sea melancholically towards the horizon.
“This is what it’s like all the time,” he stood up, jumped off the wall, and walked over to the TARDIS. He pushed opened the doors.
“Do you still want to travel with me?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled awkwardly. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I… I don’t know. I suppose it’s been quite a day – you’ve seen the whole reign of Cleopatra in just a few hours and you’ve seen barbaric cyborgs from outer space converting the dead – it’s not usually as… heavy-going as that, first time around.”
“Of course I want to come. You make mistakes. You mucked around with Cleopatra, treated her life as if you were just… a robot. I can’t let you go around doing that.”
The Doctor looked up at her, a sheepish look on his face, and he was grateful. She was right, and he was definitely wrong. And he regretted everything he’d done. Mistakes he’d made before had come back to haunt him, and he needed Lizzie to prevent him from doing them again.
As Lizzie watched him, she knew who the Doctor was. Or at least, she knew enough.
So, she stepped through the doors into the bigger-on-the-inside box, when suddenly she turned as the Doctor shut the doors behind her.
“Does the TARDIS have a speaker?”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor walked over to a subwoofer speaker – he flicked a switch, and blew a layer of dust off the top. “The connector is just there,” he pointed to a wire on the console. Lizzie plugged in her phone, and the Doctor launched the TARDIS off into the stars.
Then he sat back on the leather seat in anticipation of the music.
A thousand thundering thrills await me
Facing insurmountable odds gratefully
The female of the species is more deadly than the male
Lizzie looked shyly towards him as the electronic drumbeat and xylophones rang throughout the halls of the TARDIS, as if she were opening up some part of her that had, so far, remained hidden. Music was a powerful thing, and Lizzie waited awkwardly, leaning against the console and humming quietly to herself. It was the sort of moment where one should probably sing, or dance, or something – but they were both absorbed in the melody, and the lyrics – and it was strangely comfortable anyway.
“Oh…,” Lizzie remembered something. “One more thing.”
“I think I know what you’re going to say.”
The Doctor had been thinking exactly the same thing.
“You remember the professor? Ameera?”
“I do,” the Doctor stood up from the seat, and pulled down a lever. He had already typed the coordinates into the machine.
“Oh? Are you… okay with it now?”
“Yes. I think three wise women made me realise. Time to use time travel for good.”
Seconds later, they arrived in the library again, in 2017. Ameera couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Fact or fiction… who knows,” the Doctor strode to the TARDIS doors, opening up a universe of adventure. “Cleopatra was the greatest enigma, a victim to her misconception, and it’s about time we did something about that. When we do things we previously thought of as impossible, we just accept them. Because… the world is strange enough. And perhaps with Cleopatra… nobody bothered to unwrap the impossible… and so she became impossible. Until now.”
As the TARDIS flew away, Lizzie was happy. She was more than happy. Cleopatra had wanted her story told.
Finally, it had happened.
As Lizzie watched him, she knew who the Doctor was. Or at least, she knew enough.
So, she stepped through the doors into the bigger-on-the-inside box, when suddenly she turned as the Doctor shut the doors behind her.
“Does the TARDIS have a speaker?”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor walked over to a subwoofer speaker – he flicked a switch, and blew a layer of dust off the top. “The connector is just there,” he pointed to a wire on the console. Lizzie plugged in her phone, and the Doctor launched the TARDIS off into the stars.
Then he sat back on the leather seat in anticipation of the music.
A thousand thundering thrills await me
Facing insurmountable odds gratefully
The female of the species is more deadly than the male
Lizzie looked shyly towards him as the electronic drumbeat and xylophones rang throughout the halls of the TARDIS, as if she were opening up some part of her that had, so far, remained hidden. Music was a powerful thing, and Lizzie waited awkwardly, leaning against the console and humming quietly to herself. It was the sort of moment where one should probably sing, or dance, or something – but they were both absorbed in the melody, and the lyrics – and it was strangely comfortable anyway.
“Oh…,” Lizzie remembered something. “One more thing.”
“I think I know what you’re going to say.”
The Doctor had been thinking exactly the same thing.
“You remember the professor? Ameera?”
“I do,” the Doctor stood up from the seat, and pulled down a lever. He had already typed the coordinates into the machine.
“Oh? Are you… okay with it now?”
“Yes. I think three wise women made me realise. Time to use time travel for good.”
Seconds later, they arrived in the library again, in 2017. Ameera couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Fact or fiction… who knows,” the Doctor strode to the TARDIS doors, opening up a universe of adventure. “Cleopatra was the greatest enigma, a victim to her misconception, and it’s about time we did something about that. When we do things we previously thought of as impossible, we just accept them. Because… the world is strange enough. And perhaps with Cleopatra… nobody bothered to unwrap the impossible… and so she became impossible. Until now.”
As the TARDIS flew away, Lizzie was happy. She was more than happy. Cleopatra had wanted her story told.
Finally, it had happened.
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NEXT TIME -
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