On the third level, the rooms were smaller. Though the Doctor regarded them all as empty if Rose wasn’t sitting in them, they were all being used for one purpose or another. In the larger chambers, the Doctor found racks and racks of salvaged robot parts, like a grand delicatessen of pneumatic limbs, chips and motors. In smaller chambers he glimpsed genuine Cyberman stasis pods, not jury-rigged stand-ins, but he was too busy thinking of Rose to register how out of place they were here.

The Doctor found that the curved passage that followed the inside hull of the buried spaceship ran in parallel on every level. With all this running about, often taking junctions on instinct, it would have been easy for the Doctor to lose his bearings, but as they invariably ended up on the curved passage eventually anyway, he would always know instantly where they were, and where they were going.

So they ran on, and Private Cooper didn’t complain once, and in under ten minutes they’d searched most of the third level as well. In fact, they didn’t stop for more than the five seconds it took to see a room was empty until they came across a door that wouldn’t budge. Then the Doctor’s face brightened considerably.

“This must be it,” he told Cooper breathlessly.

Cooper grunted and kept watch on the ends of the passage. One beam of light was not enough to cover them, especially when the approach of any Cybermen would be masked by the darkness as much as by the loud rumblings.

“Let’s try this,” the Doctor said, adjusting the end of the sonic screwdriver to a higher setting and waving it across the door again.

Something inside the door clunked, but it didn’t open.

“This must be a cell,” the Doctor told himself quite cheerfully as he turned the sonic screwdriver to the highest setting and tried again.

The sonic screwdriver quivered in the Doctor’s hand and let out a high-pitched whine, and then the door popped open like a snapped piece of elastic.

“Rose!” the Doctor called into the room.

This was followed a second later by a perfectly enunciated “Oh.”

Sitting in an angled metal chair with its back to them was a Cyberman. There were two more Cybermen, one on each side, working on the first with glowing, hissing metal tools attached by wires and tubes to an overhead beam.

The head of the Cyberman sitting in the chair swivelled a perfect one-eighty degrees. Behind the Doctor, Cooper balked from the sight. The Cyberman’s metal visor was flapped open, revealing the grey, rotten face behind.

“Sorry, wrong room,” the Doctor said.

He flourished the sonic screwdriver and the door began to close. In the second it took to slide home, the three Cybermen almost reached the doorway. Cooper was already running, but the Doctor gave the lock a quick blast to seal it.

“Cooper, wait!” the Doctor shouted, following the dancing beam of light as it disappeared around the next corner. “Cooper!”

Behind him, he heard the pulverising thumps of the Cybermen he’d trapped inside the room. He knew he’d only slowed them down.

The Doctor caught up with Cooper at the next junction, where he was kneeling in a defensive crouch, peering round the corner.

“Fear is just data,” he was repeating to himself. “Fear is just data.” Then when the Doctor reached him: “There are humans inside those things!”

As the private stood up, never looking so young, the Doctor steadied him by grabbing his armour-plated shoulders. “Cooper, despite what it looks like, there’s nothing truly human left inside those things. There’s no passion or care or concern; humanity’s a mindset, and compared to them, you’ve got it in abundance.”

Cooper swallowed, then nodded curtly.

“You okay now?” the Doctor asked.

“Yeah. Sorry I left you, Doctor.”

Before the Doctor could dismiss his apologies, Cooper suddenly grabbed him and pulled him around the corner with a “Watch out!”

Cooper’s strength betrayed his inhuman attributes and the Doctor landed on his hands. As he picked himself up, he saw two Cybermen coming down the passage toward them. Cooper was firing at them in short, three-round bursts.

“Don’t waste your ammo!” the Doctor shouted.

Cooper backed off around the corner. Then they started to run.

“Are they from the room?” he shouted.

“Does it matter?” the Doctor cried.

“Yeah; because there were three of them in that room.”

They ran full pelt to the next junction, took it at speed, and then skidded to a stop before they’d got so much as five or six yards into the next passage.

Having just turned into the passage at the next corner, the third Cyberman strode toward the Doctor and Cooper. It still hadn’t replaced its visor.

The Doctor and Cooper retreated to the corner. Cooper swung his light back and forth between the three encroaching Cybermen. There weren’t any doors or any other turnings between the metal giants and Cooper and the Doctor.

“This isn’t looking promising,” the Doctor said.

“One-on-one or one-on-two; no contest!” Cooper said to himself, then he turned his gun on the lone visor-less Cyberman and started firing.

The Doctor ducked at the corner, protecting his ears from the deafening sound of gunfire in tight quarters. He watched the two Cybermen coming up the other passage in the strobe-like flare from Cooper’s gunfire. If anything, they were speeding up. He turned, but the third Cyberman was proving impervious to Cooper’s attack.

“Aim for the eyes; point blank range!” the Doctor reminded him.

In another few seconds, Cooper would be firing at point blank range anyway, but he took a few defiant steps to meet the Cyberman head on, and kept firing. A round hit the Cyberman square in the forehead, unsteadying it for a second, but then it was back, and grabbed the end of Cooper’s gun in one swinging arm movement. But Cooper wouldn’t let go, and the Cyberman swung him straight into the wall.

“Cooper!” the Doctor cried, lurching toward him.

The Cyberman dropped Cooper’s gun, its metal barrel twisted and crushed like it was made of plastic, then turned to where the man himself had fallen.

Face contorted into a grimace, Cooper pushed himself up and began to duck and weave like a boxer. “Doctor, now’s your chance; I’ll distract it!”

Then the Cyberman grabbed him by the neck. Cooper responded in kind, but it had no effect. He began pounding the Cyberman’s shoulders with his fists. Then the Cyberman lifted him off his feet. Cooper kicked his flailing legs.

“Doctor, go!” Cooper managed to choke.

Just then the two other Cybermen arrived. One went for the Doctor. Nimbly, he slipped behind the visor-less Cyberman pinning Cooper to the wall.

“Find Rose!” he heard Cooper cry as he ran.

He didn’t stop running, even when Cooper stopped crying.

Rose could hear the Cybermen in pursuit over the sound of her pounding heart. In the brief snatches of quiet between floor-rattling rumblings, she heard their heavy metal feet stamping after her. She didn’t know how many of them there were; they could have been stepping in unison again. Though Rose ran until her lungs burned, the footsteps of the Cybermen remained constant. If a human had run that slow she would have escaped them ages ago, she thought. But in her mind’s eye there was stuck a vision of what she would have seen had she eyes in the back of her head: the metal giants marching after her, their gait twice as long as a human’s.

It didn’t help that she’d lost her shoe. She couldn’t remember losing it, but the sock on her left foot had been torn open by sharp bits on the floor and she’d stubbed her big toe more than once as she flailed through the darkness.

And she needed to pee now more than ever.

Suddenly, grey lights flickered overhead. Rose froze. For a moment, the strip lights located at regular intervals along the walls of the passage glowed brightly. Then they dimmed in sequence, one after the other, as if someone at the far end of the passage was coming toward her, turning them off one by one.

Before she was plunged back into darkness, Rose saw that there was a four-way junction ahead. Wheezing uncontrollably, Rose staggered toward it.

Just before she reached the corner, she heard voices around the right-hand turn and stopped, her back against the wall, listening.

“The human female identified as Rose has been allowed to escape,” the first voice said. “She will lead us to the Timelord identified as the Doctor.”

“He must not be allowed to intervene in our plans,” the second voice said, though it took Rose a moment to realise it wasn’t the same one speaking.

“He will be destroyed.”

Rose gulped silently. It was still a trap. The Cybermen chasing her didn’t want to catch her until she found the Doctor. She was still the worm on the end of the hook; they’d just let the line out a bit further.

Rose darted across the junction and into the passage straight on. She kept on running, and soon found herself in another passage that curved round.

After another couple of minutes, Rose hit that wall of exhaustion she’d heard marathon runners talk about. It felt like she was trying to run through mud with iron boots on. She just couldn’t bring her knees up to run very fast anymore. Her chest felt like someone was sitting on it, and she felt sick to her stomach.

She had to stop. She fell against the wall, catching herself on her arm. She told herself to breathe, to concentrate on her breathing, but all she could think about was the Cybermen gaining on her, and that just made her heart beat even faster.

“Move it, Rose,” she whispered. “Get moving.”

She forced herself to take small steps, but collapsed against the wall again.

“Come on,” she cried. “Get up; get up!”

When she heard the approaching footsteps coming toward her out of the darkness, she began to convince herself that perhaps being caught again wouldn’t be that bad anyway. The Cybermen didn’t want her, they wanted the Doctor, and they would keep her alive until they caught him, and then when they caught him, he and Rose would be together again, and then everything would be all right, then they would escape together, and he’d protect her and she wouldn’t need to run anymore.

“Rose?” said a breathless voice in the dark.

Those footsteps hadn’t belonged to a Cyberman after all.

“Doctor!” she cried. “Doctor, where are you?”

And then, about ten yards along the passage, a tiny blue glow lit up. The end of the sonic screwdriver waved in the air like a little blue firefly, then the Doctor brought it up to his face and grinned widely.

“’Ello,” he said.

“Doctor!”

Suddenly finding the strength that had deserted her moments before, Rose launched herself toward him and didn’t stop until his arms enveloped her.

“What took you so long?” she sobbed.

“Hey, you’re creasing the jumper,” he said soothingly.

“But I knew you’d come.”

“And so did the Cybermen, I bet. Let’s pick this up at a later date.”

She grabbed his arms in the darkness. “Yes! Doctor, this is a trap. They only let me escape so that I’d lead them to you.”

To which the Doctor laughed loudly and brazenly.

“D-Doctor?” she stuttered.

“That old trick. How unimaginative of them.”

“Doctor, let’s get out of here.”

She felt his cool, rough hand slip around hers. “Okay, this way.” And then he gave her a tug back the way she had already come. She resisted.

“No, Doctor; there are Cybermen down there!”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s the quickest way to the surface. We’ve got to get off this ship fast, Rose. Sergeant Cameron’s about to blow it six ways from Sunday!”

Rose still resisted. “Hang on, this is a ship?”

“Not for very much longer. Come on!” He tugged her by the wrist and this time she couldn’t not run, so she ran to keep up with him.

“Why are they blowing it up, then?”

“Because the Cybermen are going to use it to invade the space-station.”

This time, she yanked him to a stop. “Doctor, stop.”

“Ow,” he murmured, rubbing his elbow.

“Doctor,” Rose hissed. “Are you telling me we’re on a spaceship... that’s heading to the space-station... and you’re letting them blow it up?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said curtly.

Then the lights flickered on again overhead and the Doctor saw the expression on her face. His eyes slowly widened and he began to shake his head rapidly.

“Rose, no. No! One does not hitchhike with the Cybermen!”

NOTES:
I thought it was overdue that the Cybermen got to be properly violent again, even though there's two major battle scenes still to come, including one in the next chapter, which will also feature the last major plot turn, so I'd say this is the two thirds mark. I had been worrying that Rose managed to escape the Cybermen a bit too easily a couple of chapters ago. I referred to her as being too quick for them, even though I've described their lightning quick reflexes elsewhere. Quite without planning it, then, I had Rose overhear the Cyberleader reveal the only reason she managed to escape was because they let her, as to lead them to someone they want even more. Straight out of "Star Wars", that twist. Bit too much running around in corridors in this story - just like the old days, then!