He grabbed Commandant Fletcher. “What’s that noise?”

“The pipe’s breached!” Fletcher cried.

The noise got louder as they ran. Either they were getting closer to the source, or the source was getting closer to them, Cameron thought.

Suddenly Cameron and Fletcher found they were splashing through running water. It was just a little stream at first, but it was flowing from around the corner with as much momentum as if it was flowing downhill, and the flow was building. By the time they got to the corner, the water was up to their heels.

When they turned the corner, they both stopped. Water was gushing out of a room about twenty yards along the corridor. The torrent was hitting the wall opposite and then gushing in both directions. The churning deluge showed no sign of abating; soon the cold, stinking water was swelling over the tops of their boots.

Cameron hit Fletcher’s arm. “Come on!”

They waded against the current, using the wall for balance. By the time they reached the room twenty yards along, the water was around their shins.

“Oh my god,” Cameron said under his breath.

He recognised the hole the Cyberman had cut in the door; they had cut another one in the wall of the room. It was obscured by the water surging out of it.

“Is that the water pipe?” he shouted over the noise.

“No, that’s the service duct. They had to go through it to reach the pipe.”

Cameron stared at him. “But it must be flooded!”

“Well, you said flush the pipe!” Fletcher cried.

“And now I’m saying shut it down!”

Fletcher shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Get on that radio and make it happen!”

“Sergeant, once the flush-cycle’s begun, it can’t be stopped.”

The water roared past Rose. She turned her head away, as the water rushed up her nose and hammered her eardrums. It didn’t feel like she was submerged in running water. It felt like she was being battered against a wall. The water didn’t feel like liquid at all. It felt more like a bulldozer trying to shift her.

Rose didn’t know if it was succeeding. Just like the Doctor had told her to, she was wedging herself against the side of the pipe, the curve of her back flush against the curve of the pipe, using her feet to push against the other side and pin herself down. She clawed at the sides of the pipe for extra purchase, but the metal was slippery, and the force of the water was pushing her hands away.

It was pitch black in the pipe, not that Rose noticed. She was squeezing her eyes tightly shut. The last thing she had seen as the water swamped them was the leading Cyberman reach for her, in the light from the War Brain. When it didn’t grab her moments later, she could only assume it had been swept away by the flow.

Rose realised she was beginning to run out of air. She had taken a big breath, so big it hurt her lungs to breathe in so much. Her cheeks were puffed out with more air, but she couldn’t breathe that down into her lungs without breathing out first, and she didn’t dare do that. She didn’t know how long she had to last on it.

What she really wanted to do was reach out for the Doctor, find his hand and hold it. But she didn’t want to reach out for him and find he wasn’t there.

Rose didn’t realise she was slipping at first. She thought it was just an illusion, her mind telling her she was moving when really it was only the water. But then she realised if that was the case then it would feel like she was moving the other way.

She panicked. And that’s when her feet slipped sideways.

Suddenly she was moving as fast as the torrent. She screamed until her lungs were empty, but crying out for more air. The sound of the churning water drowned out her screams as she spun around and around and around in the pipe.

But it didn’t feel like she was being swept along.

She felt like she was falling, falling.

Sergeant Cameron was fighting his way across the flooded room when Rose suddenly popped out of the opening. He made a grab for her, but she was moving too fast. The water carried her past Fletcher, toward the hole in the door, where she stuck.

“Rose!” Cameron cried. He dropped his gun and splashed over to her.

The girl didn’t respond. She didn’t move. She was floating face down.

“Oh, god!” went Cameron. He turned her over.

Her long blond hair, darkened by being wet, clung to her face in entangled clumps. Her eyes were closed, and her expression was peaceful.

“Oh, god!” Cameron repeated as he supported her under her neck. He brushed the loose hair away from her face and felt inside her mouth.

Her jaw was slack. She wasn’t breathing.

Commandant Fletcher reached them and helped support her. Water flooded past and sprayed all over them and soon they were as wet as she was.

Cameron pinched her nose and went to lean in. But then he hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” Fletcher cried.

Cameron offered her to him. “You do it.”

“What? I don’t know how!”

“Pinch her nose, tilt her head back, then breathe out slowly.”

“I’ve never done this before! Why don’t you do it?”

Cameron’s throat was tight. “Because I’m a robot, and I... I don’t know if I have lungs, let alone the air in them to give her.”

Fletcher blinked. “All right. Show me what to do.”

Cameron nodded and did most of it for him. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose and kept her bobbing on the surface of the water.

Fletcher bent over her and breathed into her mouth.

There was no response.

“Again,” Cameron said.

Fletcher bent back over and repeated the action.

There was still no response.

Fletcher looked up at Cameron.

“Again,” Cameron said.

And then, as they stood thigh-high in the swirling water, Rose spluttered. The life flowed back into her body and she flailed her limbs.

“Help me turn her on her side.”

Together, Cameron and Fletcher almost lifted her out of the water. When she was on her side, she started choking up water she’d swallowed.

After another minute, she stopped coughing.

“Find your feet,” Cameron told her.

“Doctor!” she managed, her voice strained.

“Are you standing on your own?”

“Yes, yes, let me go!”

Cameron nodded at Fletcher and they both let go of her. She promptly swayed in the water and reached out to grab both of them.

“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks.”

Then she brushed the hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes. “The Doctor,” she cried. “Where’s the Doctor? Where is he?”

Cameron opened his mouth to speak, but never got the chance.

“Right here,” said a voice.

The Doctor climbed out of the duct and dropped the War Brain in the water.

At exactly the same moment, the torrent stopped gushing through the hole in the wall and the water level in the room started to drop. It was perfect timing for his triumphant entrance, and the Doctor was only miffed that it was coincidental.

“It’s the end of the flush-cycle,” said the one man in the room that the Doctor didn’t recognise. He and Sergeant Cameron were supporting Rose.

“Rose, you okay?” the Doctor asked.

“Never better,” she said. She sounded tired.

“Looking a bit wet, Doctor,” Cameron said with a smile.

The Doctor looked down at himself. His wet clothes felt heavy and tight.

“I always knew you were a bit of a drip,” said Rose.

He snorted. “Look who’s talking. Both of you.”

“Doctor, this is Commandant Fletcher,” Cameron explained, gesturing the man in the blue uniform. “He’s in charge of the space-station.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” The Doctor nodded.

“What happened to the rest of those things?” Fletcher asked.

The Doctor grinned. “They couldn’t swim.”

“You drowned them,” Rose said in a low voice.

“There was very little left that could be drowned, Rose. And it’s not as easy to give machinery mouth-to-mouth.” He gave her a knowing look.

“Are you sure?” Fletcher said, jittery. “I mean, where are they?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Check the bottom of the pipe.”

Fletcher adjusted the flexible microphone of the headset he was wearing, then waded out of the flooded room to talk with someone.

The water level was now low enough to reveal the War Brain. It had sunk like a stone and the force of the torrent hadn’t been able to move it far.

“Doctor, it’s not glowing anymore!” Rose cried.

The yellow light that had shone so brightly, so defiantly, was gone. Without it, the War Brain looked just like a rather dull mishmash of knitted wires and tubes.

“Nobody will be resuscitating that, either,” the Doctor replied.

Cameron set his jaw. A smug smirk teased at his lips. He waded across to it; half of it was poking above the surface now. He touched it. He got an electric shock.

Rose flinched and yelped. The Doctor chuckled.

Cameron fell backward into the water, fumbling for his sunken gun.

“I thought you said it was deactivated!” he cried.

“That was a residual static charge, Sergeant,” the Doctor explained. Then he reached down and touched the War Brain himself.

Nothing happened.

“Couldn’t somebody take it apart then build another one if they copied what it looked like exactly?” Rose asked.

“Yes, but I’ll see to that, Rose.”

Cameron frowned. “Hang on. Why didn’t it see this coming? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be able to predict the future, Doctor?”

The Doctor took a deep breath and sighed. “My suspicion is that it probably knew what was going to happen before it even left the planet, perhaps a thousand years before, maybe ten thousand. But it probably thought that, knowing what was going to happen, it could avoid it happening. Probably.”

“Not like it was going to tell us it knew how we defeat it,” Rose said.

“Exactly.” The Doctor smiled.

Sergeant Cameron saw Commandant Fletcher come back into the room.

“Find them, Commandant?” the Doctor asked.

Fletcher nodded. “There’s a filtration vent on level 40 and they’re clogging up the inlet pipe. The water’s falling, but they’re still not moving.”

“That could’ve been us, Rose.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” She shuddered.

Fletcher shifted awkwardly. “I don’t know what to say, Doctor. I could offer you my thanks, but that doesn’t seem enough, somehow.”

The Doctor held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not the one you should be thanking.”

Fletcher turned sharply to Cameron. “Yes, thank you too, Sergeant.”

Cameron nodded slowly, warily.

“Actually I was talking about Rose,” the Doctor went on. “Sergeant Cameron wanted to go out in a blaze of glory blowing up the Cyberman spaceship before it could take off and attack you. I scuppered his plan.”

Fletcher rubbed his mouth. He looked almost embarrassed. “You were going to do that for us, even though we were the ones who dumped you there?”

Cameron shrugged; words wouldn’t come to him.

“This station’s whole reason for being is to transport unwanted robots to the planet’s surface.” Fletcher was addressing the Doctor now. “And then to stop them from leaving again.” He turned back to Cameron. “Why would you help us?”

Cameron thought about it for a while. “Because I’m programmed to be like you, I suppose. And isn’t that the human thing to do?”

“It should be,” Fletcher murmured.

Then he offered Cameron his hand.

After a few moments, Cameron shook it.

The water had all but drained away now, though the walls were dripping, and there was still the sound of water trickling away in the distance.

The Doctor clapped his hands together. “Anyway,” he said, scooping up the War Brain. “Rose and I are going to go and get out of these wet clothes.”

“Another good plan from the D-man,” said Rose.

The Doctor gave her a double take. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She grinned broadly. “I’m fine, Doctor.”

“What level are your rooms on?” Fletcher asked.

The Doctor gestured with his eyes for Rose to head for the door. “Actually, Commandant, I’m afraid we’re kind of like stowaways. Sorry.”

Rose gave Cameron a little wave as she limped into the corridor.

Fletcher shot a look at Cameron. “Stowaways?”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” the sergeant said. “They weren’t on the Reliant.”

“So where do you come from, then, Doct...” He trailed off.

Cameron and Fletcher went out into the corridor.

But the Doctor and Rose were gone.

NOTES:
I'm rather satisfied with this chapter, which turned out precisely as I wanted. I was wary of writing too much of a cloying, cringe-worthy final scene between Sergeant Cameron and Commandant Fletcher. After all, Fletcher was effectively a jobsworth who does what he's told, despite his reservations, and condemned Cameron and the rest of Captain Hamilton's platoon to almost certain death. I always knew the ending would go something along these lines, even if I didn't work out the particulars until a few weeks before I wrote it. Bit of an unceremonious end for the Cybermen, though, who were really only monsters of the week. It could have been any semi-robotic cyborg race, but seeing as the "Doctor Who" mythos already had one of those, why bother trying to create a completely unique one and have to establish their backstory?

I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but the look of the War Brain (knitted wires and tubing) is basically meant to be a small Borg cube from "Star Trek", which I suppose is a coincidental homage, seeing as the Borg were essentially the "Star Trek" version of the Cybermen.