Children of the Cybermen

This is Doctor Who fanfiction. The Cybermen and Mondas are owned by the BBC.

Lizzie was sure she used to have parents. Life couldn’t have always been like this. She had a vague and fuzzy memory of her parents peering down at her in a cot with smiling faces, poking her in the belly, grabbing her feet and giggling, but she was never sure if it was a dream or not. No one else in her class could remember being that small. No one else remembered their parents’ faces at all.

“No, I’m telling you, they looked just like we did back then,” Lizzie would say, but the other kids would just laugh and say she was mad.

“That’s why they take the emotions out. Conversion makes you mad. Looks like this one’s already mad.”

That was what Billy Tarllish said. Billy Tarllish was an awful bully. At least Lizzie didn’t have to put up with him for very long. She was smiling the day Billy turned eighteen and was marched out of the classroom and off to the conversion chambers. At least she’d never have to see him again.

Of course, it would happen to Lizzie eventually. She only had four years left, but she wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

There were about fifty children left in District Q-7. All of them were between the ages of 14 and 17. Lizzie was the youngest. She could have been the youngest child left on Mondas for all she knew. You had to be eighteen before they’d convert you. They said it was because subjects for conversion needed to be fully physically grown, so the eighteenth birthday made the most amount of sense. The exact day you legally became an adult was the day they made you into one of them.

Every day leading up to conversion, Lizzie and her classmates would wake up at 7am in their communal lodgings where they all slept in their bunkbeds, get dressed, and traipse off to the classroom.

Miss Brown, their holoteacher, would appear projected on the board at the start of lessons and greet them all by name.

“Morning Timothy. Morning Janet. Morning Lizzie.”

Miss Brown had a warm and soothing voice and the face of a woman culled from Mondas’ culture bank that was chosen to look as friendly as possible. She had a wide smile that showed her front teeth and a mop of frizzy brown hair, but there was something not quite right about her. Lizzie would look at the plastic shine to Miss Brown’s skin and compare it to her own in the reflection on the window by her desk looking out over the city. Miss Brown’s skin didn’t have the same texture as Lizzie’s. Lizzie’s face was filled with lines and grooves and bags under her eyes. Miss Brown’s skin was perfect and featureless. No blotches or acne; just a smooth pale pink.

Miss Brown’s eyes were jet black circles. They were smaller, but not unlike the circles on the Cybermen’s faces.

Lizzie’s eyes were green. Lizzie liked her green eyes. None of the other kids had green eyes. Her green eyes made her feel special. She knew they’d go black when she got converted, and she was sad about that, and sadness hurt her. Sadness made her feel a small stinging pain in her eyelids. She supposed the sadness would be taken out before she lost her eyes, but that didn’t make her feel better.

The kids never learned much in school. Lizzie remembered that school used to be for learning about all sorts of things. Her memory was much better than the other kids, and she faintly remembered that when she was very small, a teacher (a real one, with a face and everything), taught them about plants. The teacher told them that the surface of Mondas used be covered with lush forests filled with trees and flowers that provided the people and animals with oxygen. And they had a sun as well! A real sun! Not like the imitation lights all over the school building to mimic the day/night cycle of the surface world.

When the surface became uninhabitable and people had to live underground, great biodomes were erected with recycled air being circulated through dense jungles lit with sunlamps where Mondasians would raise cattle that made actual meat. Real meat! Not the sloppy nutrient paste they got fed these days.

Lizzie never got to go to a biodome while they still had loads of them. Most of them were torn down and got turned into conversion chambers just before she was born as part of the twenty-year plan. There was only one small biodome left per district to pump oxygen into children’s facilities. The Cybermen didn’t need oxygen. That was just one of the many ways the Cybermen were supposed to be better than normal humans.

Lizzie could see her district’s biodome from her bunk in the dormitories. It was a small glass bowl on the horizon. There was a small patch of green being lit by the sunlamps inside. It stood out against the backdrop of the shadowy town where there was not a single light to be seen. Cybermen’s eyes could see in the dark, so they didn’t need light, but the biodome needed it, so it shone brightly on the horizon. Lizzie thought the dome was beautiful, and she wanted to learn more about it, but Miss Brown never talked about it in class.

The main subject that Miss brown taught them about was conversion. She explained the scientific process, the capabilities of the Cybermen, how they improved on the old human model, and she gave them weekly test papers. Lizzie wasn’t very good at the test papers. She always got bad grades, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they’d kick her out and refuse to convert her. All the kids knew that this was just pointless busywork until they turned eighteen, but the classes still bothered Lizzie.

Miss Brown spoke as if it all made perfect sense to replace people’s skin with plastic. Lizzie understood that their resources were running low and the biodomes couldn’t be kept online indefinitely. The Mondasians would have to return to the surface world with their new protective skin, but it all felt so unfair.

Why didn’t Lizzie and her class get to go to the biodomes? Why didn’t they get to explore the surface while they could? Why did they have to be born now?

Why did they have to be born at all?

Occasionally, the day would end with a birthday announcement. Usually there was just one, but sometimes there were two. Lizzie never understood the averages. 575 days in a year and there just so happened to be two kids with the same birthday in the same district? It seemed impossible.

“Happy Birthday to Molly Happard and Gerald Lurwitz!” Miss Brown said with her lovely singsongy voice. Then a slice of what used to be called ‘cake’ appeared on the screen with a tiny flame burning behind it, and everyone would imagine what it would be like to eat it. The cake was supposed to be chocolate flavored, and everyone knew what that was supposed to taste like from their after-dinner nutrient paste. Lizzie had trouble imagining the texture. The cake itself looked spongy, but the icing looked a bit like the skin on the back of her hand. Imagine eating chocolate skin!

Lizzie ended up missing Molly Happard. Lizzie never usually cared enough to remember her classmates’ names and faces because she knew they would all leave eventually, but Molly’s bunk was next to Lizzie’s and they would talk at night just before they fell asleep. Molly was the only one who hadn’t thought Lizzie was crazy for saying she could remember her parents’ faces.

Molly wanted to become a Cyberman, and she calmed Lizzie down by talking to her softly and calmly about the wonders of conversion. Now her bunk had been taken by another girl who never spoke to Lizzie.

Molly turned around and waved at her as she and Gerald marched between the rows of chairs to the door where a Cyberman stood waiting to lead them off to the conversion chambers. Molly smiled at Lizzie, and Lizzie smiled back.

The next time there was a birthday (Nick Bradshaw this time), a Cyberman came to the door to lead him off for conversion, and it probably wasn’t Molly, but a part of Lizzie believed that it was Molly. She didn’t have hair anymore; just two handles sticking out of the sides of her head. Her skin was smooth. Her eyes weren’t hazel anymore. Her chest was flatter, and she had one of those strange whirring boxes attached to her stomach. Her mouth wouldn’t smile. Her smile was gone. Her mouth was just a hole etched into her silvery face that would only stay in the same position.

Miss Brown said that becoming a Cyberman was a glorious achievement. The committee would be proud of them for converting. It was something the children should all aspire to, but Lizzie compared Molly’s smile as she waved at her in her memory to the plastic face she saw now, and she just shuddered.

Classes would merge when they got too small. Sometimes Lizzie’s class would move districts, other times other districts would move and merge with hers. It happened once every few months. District Q-6 had got down to ten pupils, so the remaining kids were sent over to merge with Q-7, which was now down to thirty-two.

Lizzie was staring absent-mindedly out of the window when the new kids arrived. She usually spent classes counting cracks in the cave roof above the faceless streets below the buildings that all looked exactly alike. Sometimes she’d count the tiny specks of silver crawling through the streets like a thousand tiny bugs. They reminded her of that ant nest that Emily had found under their dorm room one time. How she hated the sight of them!

A girl sat at the desk next to Lizzie. The desk where Molly used to sit.

“Hi!” she said, and that surprised Lizzie. Usually, kids would just sit in silence, trying not to get too invested in the people around them, but this one actually said hi.

“Hi,” Lizzie said, trying to avoid her eye. The girl had red hair. She’d never seen anyone with red hair before. Most kids had black, blonde, sometimes grey. Lots of kids went grey these days.

“I’m Ronnie,” she said. “Ronnette,” she added.

“Quiet everybody!” Miss Brown cut off the start of what appeared to be a conversation, and class started.

Lizzie kept catching Ronnie looking at her. She couldn’t tell why. Lizzie was just another kid like her. She didn’t know why this strange red-headed girl found her so interesting.

Lizzie felt uncomfortable, but she did find herself smiling.

Lizzie usually sat alone at the tables in the cafeteria, but Ronnie came and joined her today.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked.

Lizzie looked up from her food and shrugged.

“Um, yeah, sure I guess,” she said.

Ronnie sat down, picked up her spoon, and started eating her nutrient paste.

“The other kids aren’t going to like you if they see you talking to me,” said Lizzie.

“Why not?”

“Well…” Lizzie shuffled awkwardly. She wasn’t sure whether she should say it. She might start crying, and no one else looked kindly on such strong emotions. Crying in front of Billy used to result in a beating. Billy didn’t even care if you were a girl, cry in front of him and he’d whup your arse.

“Well because I’m crazy. They all think I’m crazy.” Lizzie said, and she could feel the tears starting come, and that’s when she got scared and ready to abandon her plate of paste and run back to the dormitory, but Ronnie just smiled.

“What’s your name?”

“What?”

“You never told me your name.”

“…L-Lizzie. Lizzie Wilson.”

“You don’t seem crazy to me,” Ronnie said.

The tears didn’t come.

Lizzie stopped, and she found herself smiling.

Lizzie and Ronnie sat together with their trays of nutrient paste, and they talked for hours. It turned out Ronnie could remember her parents too! Lizzie wasn’t mad! They did used to have normal eyes! And their skin was pink, just like the kids. Lizzie knew it!

“Mum had hazel eyes, just like mine,” Ronnie said, and a tear caught in her eye. She glanced around for people looking, but no one noticed. Ronnie wiped the tear away on her sleeve.

“Does it hurt when you cry?” Lizzie asked.

“No. Why?”

“It hurts when I cry,” Lizzie said. “I get nervous because crying means you’re going to get beaten up.”

“No, I actually feel quite nice after I’ve cried,” said Ronnie. “It’s like I had something trapped inside of me and the tears make it come out.”

Lizzie smiled and nodded.

“I like my emotions,” Ronnie sighed sadly, and she wiped away another tear. “I’m going to be sad when they go…well, not sad, but y’know what I mean, yeah?”

Lizzie laughed as a tear came out of her own eye.

“Yeah, I know when you mean,” said Lizzie, and a tear came out of her own eye now, but strangely, it didn’t hurt. It almost felt good, and Lizzie felt happy. They were happy tears. She had finally found someone else who appeared to understand her.

Lizzie never usually remembered her dreams. Normally she just went to bed after dinner, blacked out, and woke up back in the dorm room again, ready for another day, but this time she remembered it, and it was a really good one.

She and Ronnie were running through the city streets towards the great glass dome, shining bright on the horizon. The surrounding houses and streets were all empty. Not a flash of silver in sight.

Lizzie and Ronnie both ran up to the biodome which towered above them. It couldn’t have been this big in real life, but in her dream, Lizzie saw the endless jungles inside stretching off as far as the eye could see. Plants were growing inside and they were a mishmash of colours that Lizzie had never even seen before.

The doors at the edge of the dome were unlocked, and Lizzie and Ronnie ran inside. They took off their shoes and ran barefoot through the grass beneath the sunlamps that shone so brightly, and they were laughing and skipping. There were even animals in there. Lizzie remembered learning about animals. She didn’t remember all their names, but a cute little blob of fur with a long puffy tail came up to her and stared at her with its massive round eyes.

She looked across at Ronnie, who was also staring around at the lush green environment of the biodome, wide-eyed. This was what life should have been like all along. Not sitting in a classroom waiting till your eighteenth birthday to be converted.

They started dancing beneath the spotlights to a tune that Lizzie remembered a teacher playing on a holoscreen sometime in the past. It was soft and soothing and slow.

Why life couldn’t it be like this all the time? Why couldn’t she and Ronnie stay in this sunlit paradise until their eighteenth birthdays?

Lizzie woke up smiling. The massive digital clock face on the wall of the dormitory said it was still 4:32am. It was a few hours before the lights would come up and the kids would be on day shift.

She looked out at the biodome on the horizon. She sighed as the details of her dream began to fade from her memory, but the warm feeling in her chest stayed.

There must have been a way to get there. There were Cybermen security details all over the place and inside the school, and she’d probably never be able to even get outside, but if she did, it would surely only be an hour’s run to the biodome.

Lizzie then looked across the dorm and saw Ronnie’s mop of red hair in a bunk by the door.

Lizzie bit her lip.

She lay back in bed and sighed to herself. Thinking.

Lizzie and Ronnie still sat together at lunch. They only really talked about their vague memories of the time when they were with their parents, back between the ages of 1 and 4, but Lizzie felt like she’d gotten to know Ronnie now. She felt like Ronnie understood. She was just like her.

About a week later, Lizzie woke up in the middle of the night.

She clambered out of her bunk, and she tiptoed across the room to Ronnie’s bunk by the door. She softly shook her awake.

“Hey, Ronnie.”

“Hmm…what?” Ronnie slurred as she was shaken awake.

“Ronnie. I’ve decided. I’m going to go and see the biodome.”

“Wh…wh-what are you talking about?”

“Come on!”

Lizzie grabbed her arm and pulled Ronnie to her feet and out of bed.

She pulled Ronnie out into the pitch-black corridor. The lights wouldn’t come out for a few hours. Hand still on Ronnie’s arm, she tiptoed them towards the lift at the end of the hall, where a blue light was blinking, showing it was online.

“What’s going on Lizzie?” Ronnie asked as they reached the lift door.

“I’m taking us for a walk!” Lizzie said excitedly, and she pressed the button for the lift. The doors trundled open.

Lizzie took them inside. She pressed the button labelled G for ground. Lizzie had never been to the ground floor as far as she could remember. She must have been there once when she arrived from her old district in U-11, but all she remembered was being stuffed into the back of a truck with about twenty other kids. She couldn’t have been older than 8 at the time.

As the lift descended, Ronnie rubbed her eyes and finally woke up.

“Lizzie, what do you think they’ll do to us if they find us at the biodome?”

“They won’t do anything,” Lizzie insisted. “What are they gonna do? Not convert us?”

Ronnie sighed. Lizzie didn’t look at her exasperated expression.

The doors opened. They were looking out at a corridor much like the one outside their dorm room, but this one had a set of clear glass doors at the front of the building. The doors led out to a street that was pitch black, save for that tiny speck of the biodome on the horizon.

“Come on!” Lizzie said excitedly, still dragging Ronnie, but Ronnie pulled her hand away from hers.

“It’s gonna be locked!” Ronnie said.

Lizzie approached the doors and found that she was right. She pulled at the handle and the door wouldn’t budge. There was a device attached to the door with a slot for a key fob.

“I’m sure we can find a key. There’s got to be an office around here!”

“Lizzie, what is this?” Ronnie stopped her at last.

“What’s what?” Lizzie asked.

“Why are you trying to get outside?”

“I want to see the biodome.”

“Yes, but why now?”

“Well, I…u-um…” Lizzie couldn’t quite say it. She couldn’t put into words how Ronnie had made her feel over the last week. Lizzie had always been pining to see a biodome, ever since she’d first learned about them all those years ago. Molly had never understood when Lizzie had talked to her about biodomes, but she had been so sure that Ronnie would understand.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing?” said Lizzie, wide-eyed. “Just think about it! Grass beneath your feet! Trees! Plants! The smells, the lights! Can’t you just picture it!”

“Hm, right,” Ronnie sighed and yawned. “So we go to a biodome. Then what?”

“Well…well I don’t know, anything!” said Lizzie. She realised she hadn’t really thought about this before. She’d been so subdued for so long that feeling a spark of life inside her at last was completely alien. How had Ronnie done that? It was like Lizzie was alive for the first time since her parents were smiling down at her and grabbing her little legs.

Lizzie became animated, and she started fully exploring this idea.

“Well if we get out of school, we could go anywhere. This can’t be the only city on Mondas. Maybe there are other cities that don’t do conversion. Maybe they have bigger biodomes, with animals in them! I’d love to see animals!”

“Maybe there are, but they’re probably being torn down as we speak,” Ronnie yawned again.

“Well, we’ll go somewhere else then!” Lizzie said. “Maybe Miss Brown’s wrong. Maybe not the whole of the surface is uninhabitable. Maybe there’s just a bit of it with some sun, some trees, and some animals. Maybe we could live there.”

“Okay, I was wrong, you are sounding crazy,” Ronnie shook her head and laughed.

“No, really. I’ve just been listening to them my whole life, accepting that it’s just going to be me, silver skin, chest unit, black eyes, but what if-what if it’s not?” Lizzie smiled excitedly. “I didn’t think I could make another friend after Molly left, but you-you make me feel like I can do anything!”

Lizzie looked to Ronnie, expecting her to see what she was saying and be just as excited, but she wasn’t. Lizzie’s eyes met Ronnie’s, but Ronnie wasn’t smiling. She just met a stony face, a stony face that didn’t suit Ronnie. Ronnie was supposed to be smiling back at her, excited and ready to go, but she shook her head.

“What’s the point, Liz?”

“I…wh-what do you mean?”

“You’ve been listening to the teachers for just as long as me. Our mums and dads are gone. The surface burns your skin. We can’t breathe up there without the chest units. The biodomes are being torn down. We can’t…” Ronnie started to cry as she looked into Lizzie’s falling face. “We can’t…go anywhere, Liz. There’s nowhere to go.”

Lizzie paused.

And everything she believed before she met Ronnie returned.

Lizzie’s heart sank.

She looked around to the clear doors and the bright speck on the horizon.

“But…but…” she softly protested, but she realised Ronnie was right.

She then realised why there were no Cybermen patrolling the school and stopping them from escaping now. It was useless. Everyone else was resigned to their fates. Even if she saw the biodome, it would just be one good day, and then all the happiness she gained from it would be gone on her eighteenth birthday.

“Please Lizzie, let’s just go back to bed,” Ronnie sighed.

Ronnie returned to the lift. She limply gestured to the button.

Lizzie joined Ronnie in the lift. They didn’t say anything on the ride back up to the fifth floor. The vision of the biodome in Lizzie’s head was slowly vanishing.

They went back into the dormitory. Ronnie got into her bunk and rolled over and faced the wall.

Embarrassed, Lizzie returned to her bunk.

For a brief few days, Ronnie had lit a fire Lizzie’s chest.

The fire was out now.

Lizzie and Ronnie never talked again after that. Ronnie just sat in class, back straight, face forward. She never even looked at Lizzie once.

Years passed, and more and more children passed their eighteenth birthdays and left for conversion. Lizzie was so desensitized to it that she thought it wouldn’t mean anything to her when Ronnie reached her eighteenth birthday, but it did.

Ronnie sat next to her at the start of class as ever, back straight, face forward, and then she got up when it was time for the birthday announcement. Ronnie shared her birthday another kid from a recent merger. His name was Marcus apparently. Lizzie couldn’t even remember him being there before yesterday, but he must have been there. After Molly, all the other kids’ faces blurred into one for Lizzie. All except Ronnie’s

Lizzie thought back to Molly’s last look back at her before taking the Cyberman’s hand and leaving for the conversion chambers. She thought Ronnie would look back too, and Lizzie would see her smile at her one last time, just like she had the day she arrived. That smile had made Lizzie feel truly alive for the first time.

Ronnie didn’t turn her head. She just left.

The door closed.

Lizzie never saw her again.

The halls of the school building were empty now. Lizzie woke up alone in her bunk every day for about a month. Maybe all the other districts were done. They must have been. Other classes would have merged if there were any kids left. She must have been the last child left on Mondas. School buildings up and down the city must have all been sitting in silence. She always suspected it, and it turned out she was right, she must have been the last child born on Mondas before the Committee introduced the conversion law.

The morning of her eighteenth birthday, she woke up. She’d been having a nice dream. She was living in a house that was a mishmash of all the places she’d ever lived. The faceless dormitories of districts Q-7 and U11 merged with a small two-bedroom cottage on a quiet street beneath a colourful patch of cave ceiling. Her mum and dad were there. They had a dark brown plastic cat that purred and rubbed itself around her legs. Ronnie was there. And Molly. And there were some kids she didn’t remember too well but had stayed floating around in her memories from previous classes. She couldn’t remember much of their faces, but their eyes stuck out. Their eyes were all different colours and they glowed brightly. Her mother’s eyes were green, just like Lizzie’s.

Lizzie felt peaceful as she got up and went to the classroom. She wouldn’t be able to feel happy for much longer, so she knew she should try and feel this warmth leftover from her dream for as long as she could.

The classroom was empty. Miss Brown was already on the screen. She was smiling.

“Good morning, Lizzie,” Miss Brown said.

“Good morning, Miss Brown,” Lizzie said back.

“It is your birthday,” she said. Very matter of fact. Apparently today’s lesson was cancelled. Lizzie was the last one left, so there was no reason to wait.

Lizzie smiled and nodded.

Lizzie’s slice of cake appeared on the screen. She imagined the taste of chocolate inside her mouth.

She had left the door open, and at that moment, she heard clattering thumps of metal boots, and she felt the presence of a Cyberman appear behind her.

“Happy birthday, Lizzie,” Miss Brown said.

Lizzie was about to say thank you, when her breath caught in her throat.

She was thinking back to her dream. She could still see her mother’s emerald green eyes.

“Th-thank you,” she said.

Lizzie felt a tear well up in her eye. Like usual when she cried, it hurt ever so slightly. That would soon be fixed.

Lizzie turned, and before she left with the Cyberman, she stopped and looked into those big round gaping black eyes they had.

Maybe this used to be Ronnie. Maybe it was just a part of her. Cybermen got recycled whenever they were killed in battle, so maybe that had already happened to Ronnie. Maybe Lizzie was staring into Ronnie’s recycled eyes.

Lizzie smiled.

She nodded.

The last child on Mondas left the classroom, and she shut the door for the final time.