Regeneration - Smallville/Doctor Who crossover

[CLSmith]

Holy cow Cybermen!

And they may have a connection to Dark Thursday...

-cs™

[newbaggy]

Originally posted by CLSmith
Holy cow Cybermen!

And they may have a connection to Dark Thursday...

-cs™

Er, not the Cybermen themselves. However, the fact that their attempted invasion coincided with Dark Thursday has helped set a particular train of events in motion.

Look at it this way. Respected scientist in the field of cybernetics (and "charming Irish rogue") has mental breakdown after Dark Thursday. Apparently suffers severe personality change. Ends up working for a LuthorCorp subsidiary specialising in cybernetics (and secretly linked to Lex's 33.1 activities). Now turns out to have been collecting details about the "steel robots" that attacked Canary Wharf.

Why would that happen, and what is he up to now? That is what our heroes have to discover.

[newbaggy]

Chapter 15

The coffee shop was outside of Suicide Slums – but only just. This had caused a certain amount of argument between Lois, Clark and their passenger. However, the man had reluctantly accepted the compromise. He did not want to attract attention; something that would definitely have happened in the Metropolis Broadway branch of Starbucks. Here, he fitted in with the unwholesome décor. Lois had not spotted any cockroaches, but she guessed that they had long ago left for somewhere cleaner.

Clark brought over a tray of coffees. When asked about the absence of a waitress, the man behind the counter had launched into a long speech about the unreliability of his employees. At which point, Clark had decided that it would be better if
Lois found a table a long way from the counter. The last thing that was needed now, he thought, was a Lois Lane tirade on inadequate customer service (complete with references to her previous career as a barista).

Lois sipped her drink, and winced. “And I thought my first attempt at a cappuccino was bad. Is that actually milk, or did he just spit in it?”

“I really didn’t want to ask,” Clark replied as he sat down. “What about yours, Jeremiah?”

“It’s not spit. Probably rat rather than cow, though,” Jeremiah answered dryly. The one piece of information the vagrant had disclosed was his name.

“So, Jeremiah Clarkson, why did you pull a gun on me?” Lois decided that it was time to cross-examine the witness. “And an empty gun at that?”

“Well, the gun’s empty cos I can’t afford the shells. That’s on account of not actually having any money.”

“So why have a gun at all?” Clark could not see the logic.

“Not everyone on the street has my kindly demeanour,” Jeremiah clearly regarded Clark as naïve. “Sometimes, you need a deterrent.”

“And what was manhandling me and threatening to blow my head off meant to deter?” Lois smiled sweetly at Jeremiah, but Clark saw the glint in her eye. The wrong answer would probably have violent consequences.

“That was just to get your attention. Like I said, if certain people in the Slums got to hear that I was talking to outsiders…”

He left the words to hang in the air.

Clark filled the gap. “Why would people worry about you talking to outsiders?”

“There are certain things that I know about certain people,” Jeremiah seemed content to tease, seeing whether Lois or Clark would take the bait. “Father Rothman, for one.”

“What about him?” Lois held back, though her gut was telling her that Jeremiah might have information that they wanted.

“Why were you seeing him?”

Lois snorted derisively. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to answer a question with a question?”

Jeremiah leaned forward and gave Lois a patronising smile. “Think about it.”

“We wanted to talk to him about his brother,” Clark interjected. He saw no point to the games that the other two were playing.

“His brother?” Jeremiah sat up slightly. He looked keenly at Lois and Clark. “Maybe you two are the right people after all.”

“Right people?” echoed Clark.

“Before I wound up in these reduced circumstances, I was a private investigator,” Jeremiah explained quietly. “So I notice things. Like the guy who visited the soup kitchen at St Francis Regis three months ago. Six-two, late forties, expensive suit.”

Clark and Lois stiffened in their seats.

“Thought that would get your attention,” Jeremiah smiled. “He came around with Father Rothman. I noticed that he seemed to be paying attention to several of the junkies. So, I asked around, and I got told that this is Father Rothman’s brother. Apparently, this guy’s starting up a drug rehabilitation program, and he’s gonna work with his brother to get the junkies off the street. The program involves some radical new treatment with a guaranteed one-hundred percent success rate. Combine that with a resettlement process to put ex-patients into homes and jobs, and these people leave the slums for good.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Clark asked “Helping these people to put their lives back together.”

“Come on Clark, even you can’t be that dumb!” The man behind the counter looked up sharply at the sound of Lois’ raised voice. She lowered the volume as she continued. “No rehab program for junkies is one hundred percent successful!” She turned her attention back to Jeremiah. “What’s the catch?”

“I can’t tell you. Nobody’s ever come back to the Slums to tell us what happened. But they’ve taken a lot of people into the program already.”

“How many?” Clark had a strong sense of dread regarding the answer.

“At least two hundred,” Jeremiah saw the look on Lois and Clark’s faces. “That soup kitchen used to be full to bursting. Now it’s half-empty most days. I managed to speak to an old contact in the Metro P.D., someone I knew from my P.I. days. Officially, the homeless numbers are going down thanks to the Mayor’s five-year plan to clean up the Slums.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, the word from on high was ‘don’t ask questions’.” Jeremiah’s face was grim. “Whatever was going on was being sanctioned by someone with influence. Then there was the money that was paid to Father Rothman.”

“What was it? Thirty pieces of silver?” Lois knew that whatever Father Rothman had received, someone else had paid the price. In blood?

“It was a lot more than that,” Jeremiah replied. “I saw these two guys in a black SUV turn up at the church. Somebody’s private security detail. I managed to sneak inside and saw them give Father Rothman a large metal suitcase full of cash. High denomination notes for what I could see. I’d guess it must have been a six or seven figure sum.”

Lois and Clark’s jaws dropped.

“And it wasn’t for nothing either,” Jeremiah continued. “Father Rothman gave them something in return. A painting. You might have heard of it.”

“So what was it, the Mona Lisa?” Lois joked. Then she saw the look on Jeremiah’s face.

Clark’s phone rang. “Doctor? Yes, we are…O.K., gave me a sec…”

“Sorry, just need to take this,” he told them as he stood up and moved away.

As soon as she thought that Clark was out of earshot, Lois leaned forward and whispered to Jeremiah, “O.K., you’re telling me that a Catholic priest has been conspiring with his brother to make large numbers of homeless people “disappear”. And that same priest has been paid a large sum of money by unknown persons for the most famous painting in the world. Which, incidentally, everyone knows is safely in Paris as we speak.”

“So you don’t believe me…” Jeremiah began.

“You want me to believe you?” Lois snapped back “Get me into that soup kitchen when they take the next batch of junkies.”

“Then we should get down there now,” Jeremiah looked over at Clark. He was whispering urgently into his cellphone. “What about your friend?”

“Somehow, I don’t think Smallville would approve.”

Lois looked towards Clark, wondering what excuse she could use this time. He hung up, put his phone back into his jacket pocket and came over.

“Something’s come up. The Doctor needs to see me right now.”

Perfect! “Sure, Clark, no problem.” Lois handed him her car keys. “Take my car.”

Clark had been planning to superspeed. “It’s fine, Lois. I’ll get a cab.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Smallville. I can wait here and carry on talking to Jeremiah. After all, you wouldn’t want me running off and getting into trouble, would you?” Lois did her best to look innocent.

Clark was not exactly convinced. Still, taking away her transport ought to mean she had to stay put, even if driving would take longer than running.

He sighed and took the keys. “I won’t be long.”

“Missing you already,” Lois smiled back. As soon as Clark had left the coffee shop, she asked Jeremiah, “So how are we getting into that soup kitchen?”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Rothman was working in his office. Two large LCD monitors were arranged in front of him, providing him with windows for multiple applications. As he studied a report on the left-hand monitor, a video window opened on the right-hand screen. It showed a white-coated in his mid-thirties.

Rothman tapped a key. “Yes, what is it, Gilbert?”

“It’s your brother, sir. I told him you had given orders not to be disturbed, but he was most insistent.”

Rothman sighed. Why did the idiot son always go into the priesthood? It seemed to be as true for these people as…

He realised that Gilbert was waiting for an answer. “Which line?”

“Secure line two.”

Rothman tapped two keys, and pushed the button on his Bluetooth earpiece.

“Ted, what can I do for you…? Calm down…! Two reporters… from the Inquisitor… And their names... Are you sure…? No, it’s alright, Ted. They will be dealt with.”

He pressed the button on the earpiece to disconnect the call, and pressed another key to reconnect with Gilbert. Having done so, he began opening a search window on his left-hand screen.

“Gilbert, warn the collection team that there may be unwanted interference. If it takes place, the woman concerned should be taken to the secondary staging area.”

“Dead or alive?” Gilbert seemed unconcerned as to which.

“She must be taken alive.” Rothman was adamant. “Deploy one of the evaluation D84s to the secondary staging area, and prepare for a live combat test.”

“Yes sir,” Gilbert was unsure on one point. “You say “she”. Do you have a specific target in mind?”

Rothman’s left-hand monitor was now filled with a newspaper article. The headline read:

Fort Ryan Hangar 44
Testosterone Fight Cages

Rothman zoomed in on part of the page. “Oh yes, Gilbert. I have someone in mind.”

The screen was now centred on the line below the headline.

Reported by Lois Lane

----------------------------------

End of Chapter 15

So what to you think of it so far?

[CLSmith]

Hmm, whetted my appetite for chapter 16 that's for sure.

Oh when I mentioned Dark Thursday's connection to the Cybermen and Canary Wharf I knew it was not a direct connection.

Don't worry I'm on the ball.

-cs™

[Chlollie]

Lois is in trouble again. I just hope she is not taken. Hope to see more of Chloe soon.

[newbaggy]

Originally posted by CLSmith
Hmm, whetted my appetite for chapter 16 that's for sure.

Oh when I mentioned Dark Thursday's connection to the Cybermen and Canary Wharf I knew it was not a direct connection.

Don't worry I'm on the ball.

-cs™

No worries. Just didn't want the non-Whovian part of the readership to start thinking they needed to read up in Cybermen to understand the story.

Originally posted by Chlollie
Lois is in trouble again. I just hope she is not taken. Hope to see more of Chloe soon.

Actually, I'm backing off the girls for a bit and concentrating more on Clark for a couple of chapters. After all, he is supposed to be the "lead", and yet he ends up being pushed into the backround (I reckon it's his own fault: he wants to be the strong silent type whilst Chloe, Lois and The Doctor are all natural talkers). Now is the time to reveal how some of Clark's past actions have had consequences that he didn't know about, and to see how that affects him. Then we can see what sort of trouble Lois manages to get herself into (it's Lois - it'll be serious!). And don't worry about Chloe - the spotlight is merely swinging away from her for a bit, but there is much more of her story to tell.

[Chlollie]

Well good luck with the story. I don't think I will keep reading this story. This story is not really getting anywhere interesting for me. But good luck on it.

[newbaggy]

Originally posted by Chlollie
Well good luck with the story. I don't think I will keep reading this story. This story is not really getting anywhere interesting for me. But good luck on it.

Don't worry, Chlollie, I was glad to have you as a reader this far (logically, if you aren't going to reading any more of this story, you probable won't be reading this of course!). From the outset, I thought that I'd be extremely lucky to get two people reasing this story all the way to the end. Partly, this was because, although there are Doctor Who fans on Kryptonsite, a Doctor Who crossover was always going to a more limited appeal than a crossover with Buffy, Angel, Supernatural or other D.C. characters. Also, my approach is very much that I'm writing to please myself first, and if other people like it, that's great. The downside to this, apart from sounding incredibly arrogant (I don't mean to be, it's just that I find it hard enough to come up with stuff I like, so it's hard to factor in everyone elses likes and dislikes), is that it isn't necessarily going to be a crowd-pleasing. So, I am grateful for anyone prepared to stick it out to the bitter end, because I realise that my approach is very "take it or leave it", and I can only hope that by the end of the story, that approach comes up with something that is entertaining and satisfying.

[CLSmith]

You know I'm a fan.

But when it ends any possibilities for a sequel?

-cs™

[newbaggy]

Originally posted by CLSmith
You know I'm a fan.

But when it ends any possibilities for a sequel?

-cs™

At the moment, absolutely no chance! I went into writing this story feeling that I might have only one half-decent story in me, so I worked on the basis that this story would be completely self-contained. There will be a brief three-part epilogue (working titles: "Into The Night"/"Doesn't Time Fly...(When You're Having Fun)?"/"Elmer and Bugs") to cover the "what happens next" element after the story proper ends. However, I don't think that there is material there for a full scale sequel. Besides, in the long run, sequels already exist in the form of the Superman comics, movies, T.V. shows, etc., and I don't feel the urge to go beyond where this particular story will end.

Another problem would be all the elements that I would have to think about. Before starting on this story in earnest, I came up with a list of guidelines for the story, some based on comments on Kryptonsite, some from my own likes and dislikes regarding Smallville. These included:

1) Clark must not kill - though he can use violence where necessary.

2) The threat must be such that it justifies The Doctor's involvement in defeating it, and it must be defeated in a way that allows The Doctor to leave at the end of the story.

3) What happens has to have an emotional impact on the main characters, so that by the end of the story, they are not quite the same people as they were at the start.

4) Clark, Lois, Chloe and The Doctor must all have important roles in the finale, but Clark needs to be the one who ultimately defeats the threat.

5) Clark should use his powers in front of Lois - without her realising that he has powers - at least once. Mind-wipes are not allowed.

6) Clark should use his powers in a way that displays a degree of imagination and intelligence - as opposed to simple brute force - at least once.

7) The Doctor can help Clark develop towards his iconic self, but there should be no use of the bullying "you must accept your destiny/you can't wait for problems to come to you" approach adopted by Jor-El/Raya/Oliver Queen/just about anybody else who tries to get Clark to leave the farm and be a proper superhero.

8) The threat should somehow combine elements of the Smallville/Superman/Doctor Who universes, so that it feels right that it needs Clark and The Doctor to stop it.

And that's only part of the list! Any sequel would, in my mind anyway, have to conform to at least some of these rules - and maybe a few others. So, it is highly unlikely that I would attempt a sequel without a really strong idea that justified the effort.

[CLSmith]

Well stated, I like how you've not made Chloe Lois or any other character into a Mary Sue type.

No memory wipes, so no slipping them some of Torchwood's Retcon into their beverages.

-cs™

[newbaggy]

Originally posted by CLSmith
Well stated, I like how you've not made Chloe Lois or any other character into a Mary Sue type.

No memory wipes, so no slipping them some of Torchwood's Retcon into their beverages.

-cs™

Mind wipes are one of my pet hates - especially since that fateful evening when Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower, and we discovered that a whole season of "Dallas" had just been Pam's dream! I know that Smallville/Superman storytelling relies on characters looking the other way so that Clark can use his powers without revealing his secret (Allison Mack and Erica Durance joke about that very issue on the DVD commentary for "Spell"). However, for me, mind wiping is the ultimate cop-out, so I am extremely keen to avoid resorting to it.

I'm glad that you don't think that the characters come across as Mary Sues. Personally, I think that you could argue that Lois and Chloe are already close to being Mary Sues in some respects on Smallville, though the humour that they bring and the performances of Allison Mack and Erica Durance count greatly in their favour. If I haven't done so already, the fact that these are two of my favourite characters may well push them right up to (and perhaps over) the Mary Sue borderline occasionally.

The one character that is possibly closest to being a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu, if you prefer) is The Doctor. This is partly because he behaves like an Englishman (even if he is an alien), so it allows me, as a Brit, to inject more of a British sensibility into the story. Also, I find it easy to identify with The Doctor's humour and irreverence, and since I've long felt that there are aspects of Smallville that deserve to be treated with humour and irreverence, there is definitely an element of The Doctor being a surrogate for me at times. In my defence, if I write anything that doesn't sound right in The Doctor's voice, I automatically scrap it, because then I know that it's me talking and not The Doctor.

[CLSmith]

You're right about that. The Doctor in many ways is a Mary/Marty type.

But I'm not saying a thing about the sonic screwdriver.

I like the Screwdriver de Sonique but it is basically a magic wand...

-cs™

[newbaggy]

Chapter 16

It was Polestar 3’s fifth birthday. Not that the satellite was aware of this landmark. As a non-sentient piece of engineering, it did what it always did: orbited the Earth sixteen times a day, mapping and recording environmental changes to the Arctic and Antarctic. However, its human operators felt that the milestone needed celebrating. So as Polestar 3 crossed the North Pole, the duty mission controller popped the cork on a magnum of champagne. As the optical sensor specialist was having his glass topped up, the spacecraft was photographing an Arctic snowfield that had changed very little in the previous five years.

At least, that was what Polestar 3’s instruments indicated. In fact, the area was so unremarkable, no scientists had visited it for at least sixteen years. It was also off all transarctic airways, and even military reconnaissance flights ignored it. Which is why the human race were unaware of the most remarkable building on the planet.

It resembled a huge crystal palace, though utterly unlike Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Victorian glasshouse. Giant shards of ice, hundreds of feet long erupted at various angles from the snowfield, criss-crossing to create a giant lattice structure five hundred feet high, covering an area of about a square mile. Inside, the ice shards formed crazily-angled pillars, whilst the snowy ground had been replaced by sheets of ice. These had been broken and shaped by unnatural forces to form plateaux, chasms, cliffs, plinths. There was no sound inside, bar the distant howl of the Arctic wind.

That sound seemed to grow louder in one particular part of the structure. The noise grow louder and softer in a regular, rhythmic manner. A light appeared in mid-air, flashing about nine feet above the ground. Beneath it, a blue wooden box solidified out of nothing. The door opened.

“Hmmm, it’s a bit parky!” The Doctor remarked as he walked out of the TARDIS. He had taken the precaution of putting on a long brown overcoat.

“Parky?” Clark realised that The Doctor did not just sound English, he appeared to have picked up a lot of English colloquialisms.

“Yeah, you know? Parky, nippy, brass monkeys. Cold!”

“We’re in an ice palace in the middle of the Arctic!” Clark stated the obvious. “Although I call it ‘The Fortress of Solitude’.”

The Doctor looked around him. He sniffed. “Not surprised. You’re bound to be alone in a place like this.”

“Why?” Clark bristled slightly.

“Well, look at it!” He waved a hand at the surrounding space. “It’s not exactly homely. It’s so crystalline, so icy, so white!”

He looked Clark in the eye.

“Scatter cushions!”

Clark stared back, lost for words.

“That’s what this place needs, scatter cushions! Give it a bit of warmth, bit of colour!” The Doctor continued excitedly on the theme of interior design. “What about some coloured silk drapes – as room dividers. Get away from this dull open-plan look. Although…this place could be great for parties. Loads of room for a dance floor. You’d just need some disco lighting. A glitterball, maybe…”

A deep voice, more baritone than bass, came out of nowhere.

“Kal-El, who is this prattling jackanapes?”

“Well, I haven’t been called that in a while!” The Doctor addressed the empty air. “If you want to know my name, you can have the decency to show yourself! And who is ’Kal-El’ anyway?”

Clark struggled to stop himself smiling. He was so used to Jor-El intimidating “mere mortals”, it was a pleasant surprise to have his “father” deal with someone who was not so easily cowed.

“Kal-El is my Kryptonian name,” he explained. “And the voice you can hear is my biological father, Jor-El.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “But I thought that you said that your birth parents are dead?”

“They are.”

“I am a recreation of the mind of Jor-El, stored within the crystals of this structure,” the voice declared.

“So, basically, you’re a glorified computer?” The Doctor replied with more than a hint of mockery.

“I am Jor-El,” the voice responded. “His thought patterns are accurately reproduced within my processing matrix. As humans would say, his body is dead, but his spirit lives on.”

“Or he doesn’t know when to let go…” The Doctor muttered under his breath. Then, he added more loudly. “So, you’re the creator of the Kryptonian Phantom Zone, is that what you’re saying?”

“Kal-El, what have you told this stranger?” Jor-El ignored The Doctor to speak to his son.

“The Doctor is my friend,” Clark answered. “He is helping me to track a possible escaped prisoner from the Zone.”

“And who are you, Doctor, that you should help my son in this way?”

“I’m a Time Lord,” The Doctor replied with a definite edge in his voice. “I think that you may have heard of us.”

“Two of your kind visited Krypton. They tried to interfere with our scientific advancement. The Council told them that we would not permit such arrogant behaviour by outsiders.” Jor-El clearly regarded Time Lords with contempt.

“Arrogant!” The Doctor shook his head. “You lot were meddling with temporal reshaping! If you hadn’t blown yourselves up – and, by the way, I am so sorry about that – but if you hadn’t blown yourselves up, carrying on with those experiments could have done untold damage.”

Jor-El said nothing.

“Doctor,” Clark said mildly, “maybe we should stick to what happened on Dark Thursday?”

The Doctor smiled, and nodded.

“Jor-El,” Clark called to the surrounding structure, “we think that one of the prisoners who escaped on Dark Thursday was unusual in some way. Most of the others carried out killings or acts of destruction. This prisoner has not behaved like that. He may have taken possession of a human whilst pursuing a plan in secret.”

“My son, I wish that I could assist you,” Jor-El replied in his precisely enunciated, sing-song voice. “However, the Brain Interactive Construct interfered with my systems, and I do not have full access to data from that period.”

“Mind if I have a look?” The Doctor said brightly. “After all, I do know a bit about computers.”

Clark led The Doctor down to a lower level where an outcrop of crystals stood in the middle of the floor. The outcrop could have been an altar or a control console – either possibility seemed likely. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began examining the crystals.

“Oh you’ve had some cowboys in here,” he announced in the tone of an electrician who is about to tell you that the guy who put two new sockets in your kitchen did such a lousy job that your whole house needs rewiring. “Still, it’s amazing how resilient holo-matrices are.”

The sonic screwdriver buzzed as The Doctor made a series of adjustments. Satisfied, he put the device back into his inside jacket pocket. “There, how does that feel?”

Lights pulsed within the crystal outcrop. “Doctor, you appear to have removed the cause of the data corruption.”

“Oh, is that a ‘thank you’?” The Doctor asked. “Universal first, that – Kryptonian thanks Time Lord.”

“Jor-El, show us movements between Earth and the Phantom Zone on Dark Thursday.” Clark said, ignoring the implied slight.

There was a flash of light. As it died away, Clark found himself standing in nothingness. Or, to be more accurate, standing in space, apparently several hundred miles above the Earth. He looked to his right, and saw a rather surprised Doctor. Although they should have been floating, both men realised that they were standing on firm, if invisible, ground. Their surroundings appeared to be some form of virtual reality simulation. The artificial feel was increased when they noticed that the stars were not set against a black backround, but a dark translucent green. It resembled some form of energy field or light barrier, a boundary separating this place from its surroundings.

“This is the arrival of Zod,” Jor-El announced. A beam of light shot from a point on the light barrier, and touched the Earth somewhere in the Mid-Western United States.

I know exactly where that somewhere was, thought Clark.

The beam disappeared. Shortly afterwards, Clark became aware of something glinting in the light as it followed the line of the beam outward from the Earth. As it came closer, he realised that it was the diamond-shaped prism in which Zod had captured him. The prism flew threw the gap between The Doctor and himself, allowing Clark a brief glimpse of his anxious face in its facets. The prism continued out to the green barrier, and disappeared into it.

“Is that the boundary of the Phantom Zone?” Clark asked.

“The light barrier represents the boundary of our universe,” Jor-El declared.

“So the Phantom Zone is beyond our universe?”

“It exists in the Darkspace,” Jor-El replied ominously. “The realm between our universe and the next.”

“The Void!” The Doctor sounded shocked. He turned to see Clark staring at him.

“There are an infinite number of parallel universes, all side by side, going on for ever. There is space between them, but not space as we know it, just nothing. There isn’t even a vacuum because there is nothing in which a vacuum could technically exist. The Eternals called it “The Howling”, Time Lords called it “The Void”. Others call it Hell.”

“But the Phantom Zone is a place,” retorted Clark. “I know. I was there. Time might not exist there as we know it, but there was land.”

“Time doesn’t exist there?” The colour drained from The Doctor’s face. “And it’s outside our universe.”

He called out into space. “A Voidworld! The Kryptonians built a Voidworld! You found a way of making a hole in the fabric of reality and building a world in…nothing!”

“It was one of our greatest achievements,” Jor-El replied proudly. “To create a stable route into the Darkness – and to build the ultimate prison there. To be able to avoid the barbarity of execution by placing the most dangerous criminals in the known galaxies in a place where they could no longer threaten the innocent. And from which those that purged the evil from their souls could be rehabilitated and released.”

“On the edge of Hell, you built Purgatory,” The Doctor said quietly. He stood silently for a moment. Then his eyes widened. “But on the same day that this was happening, the Cybermen came out of The Void.”

He turned to look behind him. The green barrier bulged as if something was pushing through from the other side. The bulge extended into a cylinder that stretched out from the barrier to the Earth. The end of the cylinder covered half the globe.

“My records indicate that five million beings crossed from the Darkspace,” Jor-El intoned.

“Don’t tell me, they registered as part-organic, part-cybernetic,” The Doctor replied. He turned to Clark. “The Cybermen were what a lunatic genius on a parallel Earth wanted the human race to become. When they were defeated there, they found a route across the Void to attack this Earth.”

“And you sent them back?”

“Into the Void. Sealed the route between the Earths to stop them being pulled in.” The Doctor pointed towards the entrance to the Phantom Zone. “What I want to see is what came out of there.”

“This is the point at which Kal-El escaped,” Jor-El advised.

There was a small flash of light on the surface of the barrier, and half-a-dozen lights exploded towards The Doctor and Clark.

“The escapees. Kal-El, Raya and the prisoners who were adjacent to the portal when it was opened.”

As the lights swept past Clark, he could see that each was a spherical force-field containing the dim outline of a figure. He continued to watch them as they sped on towards the Earth.

“What’s that?”

Clark turned sharply at the sound of The Doctor’s voice. He saw another light emerge from the zone, but this time it was just a light. Rather than following a straight path, it seemed to dance around, apparently under some conscious control. Eventually, it suddenly steadied onto an Earthward path, and shot past Clark at high speed. Unlike before, he could see no sign of a figure within the light.

“Was that a Phantom?” he asked.

“I do not know,” Jor-El replied.

“Don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?” The Doctor demanded.

“There is no record of such a creature being imprisoned within the Phantom Zone.”

“So you’re telling me that you built the ultimate prison out in the Void, and somebody broke in?” The Doctor could not believe what he was hearing.

Jor-El did not reply.

“Do you have any record of such a creature?” Clark asked.

“The creature is unidentified,” Jor-El answered stiffly.

Clark thought about this. He had a feeling that he was not being told the whole truth. Lois always tells me to trust my gut, so...

“I asked if you had any record.”

“Similar readings were recorded once.”

“When?” asked The Doctor.

Jor-El said nothing.

“Oi, I asked you a question!” The Doctor shouted. “When were similar readings last recorded?”

It was an age before the reply came.

“It is not a matter for the Time Lords.”

“What?”

“It is not a matter for the Time Lords.”

“You think it’s none of my business, do you?” The Doctor addressed the empty space around him. “Well, I know that you’ve been trying to probe my mind ever since I arrived here. Maybe it’s time to let you look inside.”

He stared straight at Clark. “You might as well see this. Brace yourself.”

The Doctor closed his eyes.

Everything went white for a second, and then Clark found himself once again in darkness. He seemed to be floating in space, but could see few stars. Eventually, he realised that this was because of a series of huge shadows that surrounded him. He looked for The Doctor, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, he was conscious of movement. He turned to see sunlight striking one of the shadowy shapes. The edge of the shape glowed gold, then darkened to bronze as the sun moved across it. As more of the shape became illuminated, he saw it for what it was - a disc-shaped spaceship, several hundred feet across. Fully revealed, it could best be described as a flying saucer, with the centre of the upper side raised into a dome and several smaller domes spread in a circle around the underside. It rotated slowly.

Clark slowly moved his head as the sunlight caught more of the shapes. This was no small formation. To call it a fleet did not do it justice. There were hundreds of spaceships – no, thousands. They spread as far as the eye could see.

Suddenly, Clark heard voices – strange metallic voices. They seemed to be chanting, repeating a single word again and again. At first, it seemed to be a battle cry. Then, he realised that it was a statement of intent, an expression of collective will…

Exterminate!

-----------------------

End of Chapter 16

[CLSmith]

Okay Clark sped to Met U to meet up with The Doctor then they took the TARDIS to the FOS. Yes?

I want to make sure that's what happened, I don't want to think there was a missing scene.

-cs™.