Fandomweekly Challenge 49 - For Queen and Country

[m_findlow]

Title: For Queen and Country
Fandom: Torchwood / Doctor Who
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG. Spoilers for episodes 2.12 - Ghost Machine & 2.13 - Doomsday
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 49 - Loyalty at fandomweekly
Summary: Yvonne has not forgotten entirely what it means to be human.

'Let go of me,' Yvonne demanded as the metal hand gripped her arm painfully, dragging her from her office. 'We may not have a central world authority but you don't understand who you're dealing with.' She may have said out loud that they'd surrendered to the cyberman force that had invaded Torchwood Tower but that didn't mean she truly had. If there was any way at all to negotiate, now that she had a moment alone with them, she had to try. She wasn't prepared to throw her lot in with the Doctor and pray that he might find a way out of this just yet. 'I'm Yvonne Hartman, and I-'

'We have accessed your database records,' the cyberman replied, cutting her off. 'We know who you are.'

'Then you know that I am head of the Torchwood Institute.'

'Fat lot of good that's done us so far,' Jackie Tyler grumbled, clenched tightly next to her in the fists of a second cyberman.

'Shut up,' Yvonne barked quietly. 'I'm prepared to negotiate a mutually beneficial solution.'

'Cybermen do not negotiate. You will find our solution mutually beneficial.'

'I doubt it,' Yvonne replied, wincing at the grip around her arm became tighter still, forcing her down the corridor.

If someone had said to her this morning, as she waited for her soy latte at the local café, that she would achieve what no other Torchwood leader had ever done - the capture of Torchwood's Enemy Number One - even if it was by serendipitous luck, and that not an hour later she would find her organisation at the mercy of not one, but two invasionary forces, she might have laughed out loud and not even noticed that the barrista had substituted skim milk for soy.

Instead she was now being marched past platoons of metal soldiers, their brushed silver armor glinting in the fluorescent office lighting. They had guns and she didn't. Her armed forces, military personnel she'd personally pilfered from UNIT's best and brightest were seemingly defeated. They passed a patrol of four men, all crumpled on the ground like rag dolls without a trace of blood or injury, yet she knew they were dead. She'd seen many things in her tenure as Torchwood leader, but nothing that could dispense with a crack team of soldiers so efficiently.

In another corridor she found several dozen of her staff, huddled against the wall as more cybermen guarded them, all lined up before a room covered in plastic sheeting. The cyberman dragged her past all of them, as it rightly should given she was their leader. She was about to speak up and tell her people that she was going in there to sort out this whole sorry nonsense and then thought better of it. She didn't want to come across as sounding too twee, or God forbid, desperate.

'Wait here,' the cyberman commanded. 'You will be the first to be upgraded. Your memory bank will be a suitable addition to our army.'

Jackie leaned closer to Yvonne than was strictly within Yvonne's own personal distancing policy. 'What happens in there? What's upgrading mean? What do they do?'

Yvonne grimaced. 'I think they remove the brain.' She pulled a face at how cold she sounded, explaining it to the simple woman. 'Sorry. I think they remove the brain and they put it in a suit of armour. That's what these things are. They're us.'

'Next,' the cyberman commanded.

'This is your fault,' Jackie hissed. 'You and your Torchwood. You've killed us all!'

Yvonne struggled as they pulled her forward toward the unknown. No, that wasn't what she'd done. She loved this job and what it stood for. 'I did my duty for Queen and Country.' She repeated it over and over again as she was lead behind the plastic sheets and into the room. A large metallic frame stood in the middle of it and the cyberman pushed her forward until she was pressed against it. Clamps snapped into place around her wrists, ankles and torso, strapping her to the cold medal. She screamed as metal arms with sharp knives came hurtling towards her piercing skin and bone alike.

And then there was nothing - a beautiful absence of everything. All her fear and pain and worry was gone in an instant. It was glorious. She felt completely unburdened of everything that had been weighing her down. The magnificent clarity that came with not feeling anything was marvelous. She couldn't understand why she'd fought it. This was so much better. Everyone should be upgraded.

She was sent to join the others, helping to round up everyone else for upgrading but as she followed a platoon of cybermen up to the top level where her old office was, she came to a stop, left behind by her squad. There was a strange sense that she should feel something as she stared blankly at the plush leather chair and smoked glass desk.

Something about it was wrong. She had once been powerful, a leader of people. Now she was no one. That wasn't right. This wasn't right. The cyberman had taken her essence away. She was Torchwood. That's what she was, and the cybermen meant to take it all away.

She found an abandoned gun and picked it up. Before her upgrade this is what she'd wanted so she could stop them from taking over her world. Several cybermen came marching up the stairs, retreating back towards the breach. She shared their joint intelligence and knew that the battle was being lost. She would not let them escape. She moved into the stairwell where cybermen were flooding upwards.

'You will not pass,' she announced.

'What is the meaning of this?'

'You will not pass.' She shot one cyberman, and kept shooting as more appeared. A tear of blood slipped down her new metallic face as she realised what she'd lost, but also what they'd never take away from her. 'I did my duty for Queen and Country.'