Daylight Savings

Braxien hugged the brick wall, his back aching. That was going to wait a while before he even considered time traveling again, that was just too harsh a journey. He should have gotten use to it, but the device seemed to have its own mind about what it liked to do with the user.

"Alright," Braxien said, pulling out a machine. "What do you do…?"

It bleeped quietly, getting louder with each progressive bleep. Braxien shook the machine, hoping it would turn off, but it didn't. He stuffed it back into his pocket before adjusting his collar and walking into the sunlight. A sea of blank faces approached him, whacking into him without a single 'sorry' or 'excuse me.' He tracked one of them around the block, waving his hand frantically in front of their face.

No reaction, whatsoever.

"This ain't funny…nor a coincidence. They are going around in a loop, over and over again…"

A loud metallic sound echoed from within the city's center. Something not from this Earth, suddenly everyone froze and the sky turned a dark, dark blue.

"What the hell! Don't just stand there!" Braxien exclaimed, hoping to get a reaction from all these emotionless people.

Braxien leant against the wall, what more was to come? Frozen people…metallic clanking sounds…and then he found out.

All the people's head shot up, looking at the sky, their mouths opened and beams of light blue light shot out. Braxien looked onward unsure what was going on. He pulled out the device, it was bleeping frantically, an arrow pointing him to the city central.

Without a moments of thought, he began running, tracking the signal and as usual, forgot to look all four ways and bumped into someone.

Nicole was more than content to sit in her house and avoid trouble, and trouble was certainly here. She had spent the last ten minutes peering out of her second story window watching her neighbors walk down the streets. Which wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the fact that they said not a word to each other.

Mind control, said the voice in her head. Not like she needed the obvious piece of information. “I got that. Do you know who though?”

The voice took its sweet time answering. Perhaps, came its reply. She could feel the sneer it was giving her. She scowled at the window, standing and letting the curtain fall back over the view. She should just stay here, let things sort it out themselves. She wanted so badly to ignore the danger lingering just outside her doorstep. But her consciousness wouldn’t let her allow innocent people to die. She muttered a curse under her breath about her debatably good mortal stance before whirling around to head down the stairs. The door was wide open.

“Mom? Mom,” she called out into the house but got no reply. She rushed to the door, just catching her mother walking around the corner. “Oh, no. Not her too!”

Just because she shares a familial bond does not mean she is immune to the effects of mind control. The Cyber Planner said it without emotion, but she knew it well enough to know when it was egging her on. “Shut up, you don’t think I know that?”

She grabbed a coat off the rack and closed the door behind her. She ran after her mother calling out her name the entire time. She finally caught up with the blank faced woman. “Mom? Mom?” She waved a hand in front of her mother’s face. Not a single twitch in response.

In her concern she ended up running into someone, or he ended up running into her. “Oof,” she grunted, staggering backwards. Her hand immediately went to the watch on her wrist, making sure it wasn’t damaged. Good. Perception filter was still working. “Y-you’re not uhm… blank,” she said to him, looking him over. The Cyber Planner strangely did not comment on him. It hummed in the background, a warning sign of a potential shut down as the machine tried to make sense of him. Probably not good, for either of them.

"Blank? Me, nah. Too livewire for whoever is controlling them." Braxien said, jerking a figure in the people's direction. The beams still were coming out of their mouths, unnerving to watch.

Braxien extended his arm in a greeting. "Braxien Lythis, nice to meet you."

He stumbled a few steps forward before stopping at the large object in front of them, the machine now bleeping frantically, the arrow pointing in every direction possible. "I'm such a scavenger to pick you up..."

He looked at the machine when he said that and then looked at the woman. "What do you think happened? You don't seem that surprised with all of this happening..."

His hand went straight to the necklace around his neck, he could make a quick escape now but this was too good to be missed, besides, he didn't want to get a back back from travelling. The large object resembled a crashed space ship, he found the door and began to open it.

CREAK! CLUNK!

The door opened, locking it self in a horizontal position. The interior was dark with small flames licking the walls but seemingly not spreading. He inched himself further in, avoiding bits of metal that fell in front and some that hung from the ceiling.

"You coming in?" Braxien turned to call out to the woman.

A few bodies of disfigured and burnt aliens lay on the floor, gas leaking from their already decomposing bodies. He looked a bit closer and was surprised to find that they were actually Skravs, a natural hunter and enemy of the human race but what were they doing here?

His hand come up to his forehead as he suddenly remembered. "Peace treaty! So...it wasn't them who caused this blackout...then who is it...?"

“Nicole. Nicole Baxter.” She took his hand and shook it, the Cyber Planner buzzing in quick warning. While it couldn’t care much about her, having her dead would mean it would die as well. That would ruin its own plans, though with the current situation, her dying would only be a monkey wrench in the gears. It did need humans. Speaking of which, perhaps this human would suffice?

Nicole was unaware of the Cyber Planner’s interest, offering him a smile. “Yes, well, its not the first time something strange happened here.” A weak excuse, but she couldn’t just tell him she had a Cyberman in her head. He’d either think she was a lunatic, or would shoot her on the spot. Both she’d unfortunately experienced. “There was those ghost things that one time…”

That had almost caused her to short out completely. Cybermen and a Cyber Planner were not a good combination for her. They had helped it repair just enough to eat away at a quarter of her control. That was more terrifying than the metal robots walking around. “And, uhm, you’re actually looking for trouble.”

Lovely comeback Nicole! Burn him to his core with words. She looked back to her mother, who was still wandering off and shooting beams out of her mouth. Then there was this hunk of metal, which looked vaguely like a spaceship. The Cyber Planner whirred to life. “Oh,” was all she managed before it shut her down. To anyone not in her mind, she had fainted. To her, her outer functions had ceased to be to allow the Planner more room, more brain power to think. She angrily glared at the Cyber Planner, the darker clone of hers staring blankly at tidbits of corrupted data.

”Stop that! The last time you did that I nearly got ran over by a bus!

Unintentional side effect of gathering information. Corrupted databanks leads to a decrease of 67% to efficiency. It paused. Skravs, was all it said and was all she got from it. Her senses were suddenly bombarded again as the Planner released its hold.

"Looking for trouble? Yeah, usually comes to me or...I look for it." Braxien said.

He was in the control panel, trying to get some data out of the ship before it crashed and it's original intention. Besides what was the point in crashing when nobody was watching. The circuit fumed, Braxien wiped the smoke away before attempting to figure out something else.

The Skravs...unusual race, which he hadn't seen for quite some time. The last time he encountered them was when they were fighting against the humans, in which he had recieved many bullets in order to convince them to settle the peace treaty.

A soft thump was heard from behind him, he pushed his way out of the control area and quickly made it to Nicole's side. He looked at her, touched her forehead to check for any signs of a temperature, she was still breathing...

Dehydrated?

He asked himself, he rolled his eyes and responded with a mumbled 'no.' He was getting anxious, well, there was really no need to be, he wouldn't be arrested as most of the policemen were in the same mindstate as everyone else. He pulled off his jacket and placed it under her head, so the position she was in wouldn't be too uncomfortable.

System reactivating...ship logs online...

Braxien wheeled himself around and strode over to the computer system, it was holographic and badly damaged but at least he would find something, hopefully.

"Show ship log for the last ten minutes, put up a visual."

Cannot recognise voice, please voice activate.

Braxien groaned, he hated when ships did this. "I'm the Drifter, search through you history logs and you might find me."

Cannot recognise voice, please voice activate.

A long drawn out sigh was all he did until the system flashed green and brought up his records. He was initally disappointed at the lack of information surrounding him but he had more pressing matters, such as why Nicole had fainted.

“I could’ve asked,” she muttered angrily, rubbing her shoulder where it had cushioned her fall. How long had she been out this time? Judging by the fact the guy named Braxien hadn’t wandered off or was looming over her with concern, she assumed it only had been minutes. The Cyber Planner merely laughed, if it could be called that, at her irritation. Simply trade control of the frontal lobes for motor and sensatory functions.

“No. Stop asking.” She glanced at the ship, the word Skravs bouncing around in her head like a broken record. There was another whir in the back of her mind, a simple, but empty threat. The Planner didn’t want to be discovered, the chance of its host getting killed would increase tenfold.
She stood up and swayed on the spot and her brain tried to recover from the sudden shut down. She staggered into the ship to spy the stranger playing with the ships controls. Time traveler , said the Cyber Planner. Or maybe a disguised non-humaniod.

“Uhm, sorry. I forgot to eat breakfast this morning,” she lied, giving him a shy, embarrassed smile that was half-truth. “Are you some sort of… uh… government official?”

She wanted to ask him straight out if he was an alien or a time traveler, if only to silence the Planner for a few precious moments. But then he’d ask questions in return, ones she didn’t want to answer. Neither she nor the Planner wanted to be trapped in a proverbial corner. “Like you know… those secret ones?”

British Secret Service. Torchwood. CIA. UNIT, whispered the Cyber Planner irritably. “I can’t ask him about those,” she hissed under her breath, turning her head as she talked to herself. “Most people don’t know about those.”

"Government official..." Braxien said, almost if he was tasting the word. He made a face which suggested disagreement with the word. "Nope. Just a traveller passing worlds."

He turned back to the computer and watched the video loop over and over, it was the same, engine failure then CRASH...engine failure the CRASH...and on it went.

"Computer wind the video logs back twenty minutes."

And it did, revealing nothing but an orbit from around the Earth, the beams were already shining from space...suddenly, the ship was hit by one of the beams and that why it crashed.

Braxien frowned slightly, they were observing Earth under peaceful measures. "Oh, I don't work for Torchwood...Unit or the CIA, just if your curious."

He had heard the mutterings but ignored it due to many people he encountered had voices within their head.

The ship was getting hot, the flames still flickering but nothing major had changed as he stepped outside to observed. The people had changed the pattern they were walking in, more sporadic and less organised. The sky was getting darker and the stars hadn't come out yet.

He pulled out the machine and cocked his head, it had calmed down a bit whilst he had worked but started up once exposed to fresh air. For him, he just shook his head and started to follow the arrow, around the ship.

"Look, if you are playing some kind of game with me, I don't like it. I need to know what is going on. Over a long period of time travelling, I haven't seen something this odd for thirteen years." Braxien huffed at the machine.

He turned and headed back inside, winding the computer logs up on the three dead bodies. They were all top-class military pilots, but there wasn't going to be an invasion, the ship was smart enough to send out a message which most likely said that it was an accident.

"Nicole, these aliens are called Skravs, enemies to the humans but they crashed here purely because of those beams everyone is--"

Screams were now being emitted from outside, he rushed outside and saw that many of the people were on the ground, wiggling with agony. He rushed up to one of them and his eyes flickered everywhere, there was nothing to suggest why they were acting like this but a small pinprick within the neck. It was the same for everyone.

"Nope. Just a traveler passing worlds."

Oh, well wasn’t that a helpful answer? At least he wasn’t from some vague government service. His dislike of the words ‘government official’ hinted at that. “I doubt your, uhm, ‘just a traveler’. You’re playing with a computer in an, uh, alien spaceship as if you’ve done it before. Are-are you an alien?”

Finally around to asking the question? It would’ve been easier to simply allow me to do some calculations. “So definitely an alien then,” she said, replying to his next bit of words and ignoring the Planner’s remarks. Of course she sounded a bit sarcastic about it, mainly to do with her growing impatience with him and the Cyber Planner. She really didn’t want to deal with the whole ‘end of the world’ thing right now.

So after he answered her questions, she was out the door to get away from the corpses and strange smells. At least the fresh air outside was mildly pleasant. Night was falling, and the prospect of curling into her warm bed was tempting. But then she had her mother to worry about. Oh. OH! Her mother!

“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!” She angrily grumbled to herself as she began looking over the blank faces to find her mother. “Mom? Mom!”

She managed to find the woman a few blocks down, far out of earshot of Braxien’s explanations. Just as everyone began screaming. “Mom? Mom,” she cried, shaking the woman and trying to get her to respond. Her hands found a small hole in her mother’s neck and she looked at it closely. “C’mon mom, snap out of it…”

She managed to tear herself away from her suffering mother to find the only other human who was unaffected. You don’t count as human anymore.

“Braxien, I-“ Don’t you dare, hissed the Cyber Planner. “-I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me. But I really don’t have a choice considering the current situation. And I really can’t stand to see my mother suffering.”

I will shut down. I will shut down. Her fingers brushed against the watch, shutting off the perception filter. The left side of her face shuddered like a glitched screen, revealing the features hidden by the filter; silver digging into her skin like some fusion of flesh and machine. “Is there anything I can do?”

Idiot!

Braxien turned around at the sudden questioning of whether he was an alien, shook his head and stuck out his lower lip.

"Aliens...spaceships...I see them all the time. I'm not an alien, 100% human flesh. Now I say that, it sounds weird."

Braxien rushed over to Nicole's mother, a tinge of pain shot through his body. They were attempting to establish a connection between him and being like everyone else. The machine was now pointing at him, only to be expected of a time traveller.

He then noticed a swift movement of her hand on the watch, which struck a question, quickly to be answered when she had done some sort of fusion...His eyebrows raised in shock at this and his hands were on autopilot, he held them up. Although, he looked stupid, it was really odd at what had just happened.

"Anything...do?" Braxien shook his head, shaking any prejudice that may come to mind. "Ah...well, the only way is to extract that thing inside everyone's neck but it's risky, touch an important nerve and well, kaput."

He glanced up to the sky and sighed, it was at least 4 in the morning by now, the sun should have risen but it did not. "Just be careful..." Braxien left and tended to others to extract whatever was in their necks, possibly some alien tech which the Skravs must have been after.

"I really cannot apologize enough." He said to a man, writhing in pure agony. He couldn't do anything, the man was soon dying. They could still feel pain, it was time to put him out of his misery.

"Sorry."

Crack!

Her face crinkled slightly at his arm raising, a hidden sliver of hurt sliding across her eyes before vanishing a second later. “I’m not going to… upgrade you if that’s what you’re worried about.” There was something sad about the way she said it, as if the words brought some bad memories to the surface. She remained squatting by her mother’s side, looking at the woman writhing beneath her.

“Ex- tract it,” she asked, mainly to herself. Her fingers made small circles around the hole in her mother’s neck, mind racing with a few ideas. She stood up suddenly, whirling around to see where Braxien had run off to. He was tending to a different man, whispering things that would never be heard.

“What are you-?” Crack. She gasped, covering her mouth with both hands as her eyebrows rocketed skyward. “You- You just killed someone,” she exclaimed at him in disbelief. And people called her a monster! “Killed someone-!”

He merely stopped him from suffering. Isn’t that what you do to your pets? Euthanasia? “That’s different,” she hissed to the Cyber Planner. “That man could’ve been saved…!”

“I-I’ll be back,” she spluttered at the time traveler, unsure of him even more. She ran off, heading back towards her house with some sort of plan in mind. She returned a few minutes later, eyes on the sky, with worry on her features. “No sun…?”

In her hands was a jumble of disembodied limbs, mainly hands, similar to the dreaded metal men that sometimes plagued Earth. She found her mother, dumping the pile of hands and various fingers on the ground next to her. A bit of quick work with her hands, and the lazily, occasionally blinking of the lights on her face, and she managed to create someone of a surgical device. Two, one for him and one for her. “Just take this. Okay?” She handed the second on to him.

It looked like one of those terrifying surgical instruments seen in horror movies; a disembodied hands with a very sharp and thin pincer on the end. She stuck it on her mother’s neck, and muttered some sort of prayer under her breath. A few seconds later, a strange object was removed and her mother stopped crying out. Nicole slammed her hand on her watch. The marks on her face were hidden again, underneath the perception filter. Afraid your mother will reject you, the Cyber Planner chuckled.

“…Nicole,” her mother whispered. She offered her mother a smile. “Sweetheart… what… Where are we…?”

"The man couldn't be saved, he was too far into whatever is happening to the people to be stopped. And if we don't stop it, there is a high chance of many more to die." Braxien said, putting both hands to the back of his head.

He looked at where Nicole was running off to, her house, he supposed. "I don't…I don't kill often."

Nicole had come back with loads of hands or bits of disembodied limbs, where had she got them from? He ran after her to see her besides her mother. She had assembled some kind of device…he watched as she performed probably the most riskiest task that he had ever seen, why couldn't see have done it on someone else first?

Nicole had returned back to 'normal' within seconds of touching the watch. The mother's eyes blinked open. He cocked his head, smiling slightly.

"Hi, Braxien Lythis and I say, your daughter had…uh…saved you, let's not go into more details." Braxien introduced himself, then whispered to Nicole. "Get her into the house, we don't want her seeing this…I need to find out who is behind this."

Braxien straightened himself back up and headed for the spaceship, he could repair it or start saving more lives. The ship would have to be top priority, he actually didn't know whether the ship had sent out a 'accident' message and it could have started a premature war with the Skravs.

"Right, let's get this ship fixed." Braxien muttered under his breath, rolling up his sleeves. He would do it manually as most of the emergency repairs were down and he didn't have any tools to help him any quicker.

“S-saved me,” her mother stuttered, confused and bewildered. Nicole shot him an angry glare and mouthed, ‘Couldn’t you have taken the credit?’ She didn’t need her mother asking her where she suddenly learned how to perform surgery, considering that her knowledge of autonomy came from the Cyber Planner’s data banks. The images of people being cut to pieces still haunted her.

“Uhm, no, uh… C’mon mom. We gotta go somewhere safe.” She grabbed her mother’s hand, helping the woman to her feet. Emma Baxter stared at her daughter, unsure of this less shy, more confidence person standing in front of her. “Mom, c’mon. We should, uh, leave him to his work.”

She began dragging Emma away, while her mother stared at Braxien as he reentered the ship. “Who is he?”

“A, uh, government agent. Some project or something gone wrong. I dunno! He did something to you. Made whatever it was wear off.”

“But he said you saved me.”

“Yeah something about calling your name could bring you, uh, back from the dead.” Nicole gave her mother a sheepish smile before continuing to lead her along.

They finally got back to their house and both of them went inside. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere, alright?” She looked over Emma with concern, that fact that her mother had been drawn up in this mess frightening her more than anything else.

“Sweetheart, where are you going?”

Nicole paused on the steps, giving her mother one last glance. Her mother gaped at the stranger in front of her, a different person looking through those big, brown eyes. “To help.”

___

“Right,” said Nicole, returning to Braxien. “Can I help you with the ship? I know how to repair a few things, nothing special, but certainly better than just working alone.”

Braxien got up, stretched and looked at Nicole. He nodded, allowing her to past and check it. He walked to the back of the ship, extinguishing the flames before opening another door.

"Ooo, look, a secret door."

Braxien stepped around the broken metal pieces, this room was in worse state and there were more bodies over the floor. Whoever was doing this to the humans--

"Gah!"

He sunk to his knees, grasping his head. Flashes became clearer and clearer until childhood memories started resurfacing. His forehead started to bead with sweat.

"N…Nicole, save others…gah! Don't worry about me." Braxien gasped, throwing himself at another set of control panels, his hands shaking violently.

"I need this ship to get up as high above Earth's atmosphere as pos…possible. These aliens are trying to control me, luckily, I time travel. Ano…another barrier."

He began fiddling with wires, stopping occasionally to pick it up as it slipped out of his hands. The sweat was excruiating. They were really trying everything but the barrier was failing…he would soon join all the human population in screaming and shooting beams out of his mouth.

"Got it…now…could you get it up and going?" Braxien said, turning to Nicole, his vision turning funny.

“Braxien? Braxien!” She crouched beside him the moment he went down, one hand placed on his back. “You alright?

She checked him over, looking at him with concern. “Saving the others, ha. I don’t think I’m capable of that much.” She was one of the worst people to ask, with the constant, if small chance of switching sides on a moment’s notice. “I’ll try though.”

Flying a spaceship. She could do that right? It’s was like driving a car, though admittedly she was a terrible driver. “So, space? Aliens? You’re literally killing me here,” she said, making a face. The Cyber Planner was processing things in the background, and she was worried she’d pass out again. “Really, pushing it buddy.”

“S-sure. I’ll get right on it…” She returned to the front of the spaceship, looking over the blinking lights and multiple, flashing buttons with some nervousness. “So,” she slid into the captain’s chair feeling ridiculous, “let’s see.”

She closed her eyes, letting her mind travel inwards. The Cyber Planner looked at her as her darker side, smiling and folding its arms with contempt. Piloting a spaceship? What are you willing to trade?

”Thirty minutes.” Her clone raised an eyebrow before smirking.

Fair enough.

Nicole’s eyes snapped open, her fingers dancing across the console as if she’d flown before and the ship shuddered and groaned. Though hidden, the lights on the side of her face flickered on and off like a sleep cycle on a computer. A few seconds later the ship lifted off the ground, pausing long enough for her to enter in coordinates before it zoomed into the air. Some rather turbulent flying caused the ship to toss and turn as she tried to correct its flight path. Moments later it evened out and the ship creaked as it proceeded to orbit the Earth. She took a daring look out one of the windows and gaped at the sight.

“I, woah. It’s… It’s beautiful!” Then she remembered what they were doing. “Braxien!? Braxien. You still holding up!?”

Braxien let out a groan as he tried to steady himself. Glancing out the window, he hoped that he could spot the cause of the beams, sure enough, through his foggy vision, he saw a large ship or ships. An amarda of spaceships. The beams were headed to the 'belly' and being used as…fuel?

Now that was an odd one. Using life as fuel, technically classified a genocide. This meant that the ship that they were in and it's crew was trying to save the humans.

"Fuel! Their using human energy as fuel!" Braxien coughed, the effect had lessened as most of the power was being diverted over to Earth and no one noticed their ship crying up on them.

"Ship, cloaking device, activate." Braxien said, turning to face the control panel.

The ship cloaked itself, Braxien smiled. He was enjoying having some control within this chaos. "Now the ship is cloaked, we can try to get on board?"

He pulled up the data from the scans the Skrav's had done before their crash. The ships, inside were massive as well as the outside. The interior was lined with laser beams, a thousand of those aliens waited patiently in order to invade Earth, once the population decreased.

"We need to stop them. They are probably going to try and take out Earth after everyone is drained and dry." Braxien said, glancing at Nicole. "They are just lonely scavengers, looking for a new planet. I know them, years back when they were a giant civilization, peaceful and then a civil war happened…this must be their last few from the East."

It was strangely useful to Braxien to know all of this and his experience with the agency proved in this one case to be useful.

“Uh yeah, human energy. Fuel,” said Nicole, distractedly, slightly slumped over in her chair. Her fingers tapped the watch, causing the filter too turn. “So, uh, lights on my face. Tells you when the Cyber Planner is active and-“

She stopped, staring at him blankly for a few moments. Then a slow, sinister grin formed on her face and her eyes narrowed just slightly. She crossed one leg over the other, sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. The lights on her face flashed eagerly to life, blinking to an unheard beat.

”God dammit, what the hell!?”

You never specified when. Nicole’s smile broadened, the rather reluctant, shy personality all but gone from her eyes. “Braxien Lythis. So nice to meet you. And thank you for getting the ship working.

A little adjustment, and Earth will be far behind us. It will be so nice to find a Cybership.” Her voice was still the same, but it was still twisted. “It would’ve been wiser to kill her, than let us live. That policy helped the human race last for such a long time.”

“These… aliens… do tell me more about them. Some of my files are corrupted, I’m lacking information on this particular race.”

”No, don’t say anything.” The Cyber Planner smiled at him. “Or should I hand you over to them? I’m sure they’d appreciate the gesture.”

Braxien watched in curiosity as Nicole had turned to him. A small, sinister grin had now formed on her face.

"Cyber-planner? I guess that's whom I am addressing, is that right?"

Okay, lights flashing…a person controlling Nicole, I have to admit to myself that right now, I am scared. I haven't come across this alien or race. Must be…man made due to the 'cyber' bit.

"A cybership? Is that what you planned? Wait for little, old gullible me to take off and then…get back with your mates? Nice to meet you too." Braxien's voice had an edge of harshness to it, it meant he was intimidated, he always sounded harsh when things like this seemed to happen. "Look, why would I kill the person you are currently inhabiting, it would mean your death as well, wouldn't it?"

Braxien took a step forwards, as much as he waned to go backwards but he couldn't show the piece of metal that he was scared. Would it even notice, the cyber-planner? It seemed to be lacking in the sense of human emotions, which could be played to his advantage, if he was playing tennis.

"You can calculate all the files you want but it's got absolutely nothing to do with me. You see, I am lacking in the degree of mathematics as I am dsycalculate."

Braxien flashed Nicole a smile.

"I would be pleased to meet them…new alien race? Sure, hand me over. Just get out of her, first. Second? I want my daily dose of water."

The Cyber Planner slowly clapped her hands together, expression changing to mock awe. “You are a quick one, aren’t you?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Perhaps a prize is needed? A choice?”

“Oh, no, not my initial plan but humans have a sort of sentimentality when it comes to other humans. Well, some humans. I fly the ship into orbit, she goes and saves the human race or you do. She hadn’t thought that much out. Traded thirty minutes for it. Rather foolish.” She leaned forward. “It would. I’m just surprised you didn’t shoot on sight. We’ve had that problem before. Or have you never seen a Cyberman before?”

She cocked her head to the side. “It that how it is in the future? Our constant threat and attacks on humanity forgotten? Seems like an excellent time to attack. I will be sure to pass that on.”

Was this human afraid of it? The Cyber Planner couldn’t help but feel some sick satisfaction from that. “I could fix that,” she said. “Make you smarter, better than yourself.” At the cost of your humanity.

“Get out of her?” She cackled, the voice broken and wrong in so many ways. “I have spent the last ten years shoved inside this human’s head. Getting out would kill her, or me, and not in a very pleasant manner.”

The chair was spun around and the Cyber Planner worked the controls. The ship moaned as it rocked back and forth, turning towards the ships. “I almost forgot your prize. Cybermen or these things.” She gestured towards the scavengers. “I haven’t got all day.”

Braxien pulled out a gun shooting the controls, narrowly avoiding Nicole's hands. He was still mulling over the offer that the Cyber-planner had just recently offered him, smarter doesn't necessarily mean better…

"In all honesty, why?"

Braxien then dashed into the engine and located the wire which shuts off the whole ship, sending it plummeting back to Earth in a great ball of fire.

"Metal…fire…not a pretty mix. Get. Out. Of. Her." Braxien stared at the cyber-planner, straight into the holes, which were the eyes. "Did I mention that I have not met any of your race, presuming most were human anyway, judging by you and Nicole."

Nicole wouldn't die, he wouldn't allow for that to happen. He was juggling more than he could really handle, a invasion imminent, a crazy robot wanting to kill him and he was trying to save all the lives down below and on this ship.

You've gone bonkers, mate.

Braxien nodded in agreement with the voice. "I don't really care that you spent ten years in her, guess who's fault that was? Yours. Now if you don't mind, I have to save someone on board this ship and the people shooting beams out of their mouths. Excuse me." Braxien said, shrugging as he pulled out the mainframe of the ship. He wrecked it even further, so the cyber-planner couldn't repair it.

He gestured at it proudly. "What do you think?"