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Post by Jonah Caine on Mar 1, 2016 18:56:35 GMT -5
Dramatically, Malachi raised his hands for attention. Every eye was riveted upon him in breathless silence. There wasn't a single movement, along the countless rows of Ingenium. Not an eye blinked, not a hand twitched.
“Much has been said, in recent times,” he began in an impressive tone. “About how the Ingenium are inferior to humans. About how they have no place in Copernican society. About how their increasing numbers are a threat to humanity. But now, a real threat has arisen. An invasion from beyond our world, by creatures driven by hatred, which the humans cannot match or overcome. The future of Copernicus hangs by the slimmest of threads. This... this is your chance to prove the true worth of the Ingenium to your human brothers. This is your chance to save our world and to take your place in it with your heads held high. You are our last line of defence. Our last chance against the Dalek menace. My children... I call upon you to fight!”
As one, the Ingenium stood stiffly to attention, their arms coming up to their chests, right fist to left shoulder-blade, in a martial salute. Jonah followed suit, perfectly in synch with the cyborgs around him, not even missing a beat. Inwardly, he congratulated himself for not drawing attention to himself. It didn't occur to him to wonder how he had instinctively known what the Ingenium would do, before they even did it.
“Fight!” came the echo of the final part of Malachi's speech, an affirmation issuing simultaneously from thousands of throats. “The Ingenium will fight!" The hostile word seemed to pulsate through the air, spiralling up towards the ceiling in a passionate frenzy, repeated over and over again.
"FIGHT... FIGHT... FIGHT!!!!”
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2016 23:15:20 GMT -5
The Renegade stood with the ranks of Ingenium, hoping that he would be overlooked, at least for the moment. The rhetoric, when it began to flow, was thick as it was a expected. How many times had he heard such, from so many fools? Even well meaning fools...of course, -now- Malachai chose to believe him. And not only that, made it seem like his own idea in the first place. He could not keep his face completely resigned to the avidity of his robotic compatriots. He'd seen too much in the war and this speech was of a type that he had heard just before innumerable defeats.
These child-like defenders of the planet were going to march to their doom, like so many others in wars all across the universe. They had no idea what they were up against, that they were giving the Daleks just what they wanted, a testing ground. A battle. A chance to exterminate and then take the best, leave the rest. When the arms began to wave in the air in eerie unison, he stayed where he was, staring up at Malachai. Eventually the man would notice - or, perhaps he would not, so engrossed in his own mind, in his own ego and chance to make himself the hero-father of his planet. When he had his own boy here, overlooked...he could see why the boy would be envious, angry even that his father spent more time with their development than his. Standing there, in a sea of Ingenium and his father not seeming to see him at all. In fact, in perfect synch with the others. He cast a careful look at Jonah, eyes narrowing.
There was a crackle in the air followed by a droning alert sound. Echoing throughout the chamber came the thrumming voice of the Supreme Dalek again. "You will turn over the Ingenium Project to us. All of its in-formation and all of those res-ponsible for the project will surrender. Now. Or you will be Ex-TER-minated!" [/b] boomed the egotistical voice.
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Post by Jonah Caine on Mar 13, 2016 18:58:46 GMT -5
There was a crackle in the air followed by a droning alert sound. Echoing throughout the chamber came the thrumming voice of the Supreme Dalek again. "You will turn over the Ingenium Project to us. All of its in-formation and all of those res-ponsible for the project will surrender. Now. Or you will be Ex-TER-minated!" boomed the egotistical voice.
Malachi turned, as the image of the monstrous red and gold Dalek filled the view-screen. The man's face was savage and full of fury. There was no capitulation in his eyes. No sign of backing down or giving in. Nothing but cold, ruthless determination.
“We'll never surrender to you. You started this war, Dalek. And now you compel me to finish it.”
As he spoke, his hands were moving rapidly over one of the control terminals nearest him. There was a low hum from the instrument panels and, right around the room, the eyes of every single Ingenium turned blank and glassy. It was almost possible to see the humanity physically draining from them, leaving nothing but the automaton behind.
“No!” Jonah hissed, horrified. “He's triggered the manual override system. He's remote-deactivating their emotion chips!”
Forgetting the need to remain unnoticed, he surged forward, intent on pushing his way through the ranks towards the dais.
“NO!” he shouted, his voice ringing across the room. “Dad, you can't! You can't do this!”
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2016 21:11:08 GMT -5
"You refuse to sur-render?" The Dalek nearly sounded incredulous. "Then you and every-one on this pla-net will be EX-TER-MINATED!" The crackling sound system shut off just as suddenly as it had come on and with double the finality. The Renegade had no doubt that all around them, above them, people were dying.
"Jonah!" He tried to grab him, but it was too late. Far too late. Surrounding him there were slack faces, slack bodies, almost lifeless in their postures. Puppets with a madman holding the strings, waiting for the first pull to action. He turned to Malachai instead. "You have to stop this! This is giving them just what they want! Please, listen to me! If you don't care about all the people left on this planet that you're about to sentence to death, then care about your life's work, which you are about to destroy!"
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Post by Jonah Caine on Apr 7, 2016 17:38:00 GMT -5
Malachi whirled around instantly at Jonah's shout, but whether it was because he recognised his son's voice, or whether he was merely surprised at the defiance, remained unclear.
“Jonah!” he hissed, his face an iron mask, devoid of love or affection, showing no trace of paternal softening. “Stay back! Don't interfere in what you don't understand, boy!”
Then, as the War Doctor surged after Jonah's lanky form, Malachi's eyes narrowed dangerously.
“YOU! What betrayal is this?”
Jonah had reached the edge of the podium now, and Malachi took a few steps forward to the edge, until he towered over the boy. “What have you done, you young fool?”
Pulling his hand back, he struck Jonah hard across the face, snapping his neck back.
The boy recoiled, with a cry of pain and anguish, tears springing to his eyes. “DAD!”
"You have to stop this! This is giving them just what they want! Please, listen to me! If you don't care about all the people left on this planet that you're about to sentence to death, then care about your life's work, which you are about to destroy!"
The War Doctor was shouting, but Malachi wasn't listening.
“Restrain these two!” he snapped. “I'll deal with them once we've won the victory and chased these filthy Dalek scum off our planet!”
Obediently, four of the eerily half-formed Ingenium stepped forward, one of each side of Jonah and the War Doctor, their hands clamping down on the arms of their prisoners like iron vices.
Satisfied that he was again in control, Malachi gave his white-coated assistants his final orders. “Prepare to open the main bunker doors at my command.”
Turning, he moved to the edge of podium once more, his back ramrod straight. His voice rang out confidently across the room. “INGENIUM, MARCH!”
In perfect synchrony, the cyborg army began to stride towards the exit, heading for the heavily-reinforced doors that led to the surface. Malachi marched with them, at their head, leading them onwards and upwards, to meet their fate.
And at the back of the vast column of makeshift soldiers, the War Doctor and Jonah, frogmarched along by their implacable guards. Jonah's lip was bleeding, a slow trickle of scarlet, where his father had hit him, and his shoulders were slumped.
“What the hell are we going to do?” he muttered, his face full of despair. “There's no stopping him now!”
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2016 12:43:20 GMT -5
'Oh no! No, no no NO! You -fool-! You're giving them just what they want!" He backed away, he struggled of course but if one Ingenium was stronger than a human and a Time Lord then two were two too many to escape from directly without a little creativity.
He kept himself deliberately out of sync, attempting to throw them off but to no avail. "My bandolier. See it? It looks like a pen...if you can reach it," he said to him, gesturing as best he could towards his sonic screwdriver and trying to drive his guard closer to Jonah's so he could reach. It made for an odd dance of sorts, but the march kept moving inexorably onward. As the bunker doors parted and the army streamed through it with the pair of them dragged unwillingly behind the column of soldiers that marched towards the outside world to fight their battle, the air filled with the just one word: EXTERMINATE!
Flashes brighter than the sun lit up the place as if watching fireworks from the other side of a building. Dalek weaponry unleashed their frontal assault, blindingly bright. The air was filled with the smell of burning plastics, burning electricals and machinery, the bright tang of synthetic blood and ozone. The sounds drowned out all else and from their vantage point, the pair of would be prisoners saw Malachai still at the front, surrounded by his creations who in turn began their devastating return volley.
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Post by Jonah Caine on May 17, 2016 20:24:20 GMT -5
Jonah had never seen anything like the holocaust the Daleks had unleashed across the surface of Copernicus. There was literally nothing left that he recognised. The buildings that had been familiar to him all his life had been reduced to ruins. The sky was blanketed in a shroud of smoke, blocking out the sun, lit only by the glaring flashes of laser-fire. Screams of the dying echoed across the wasteland, drowned out by the constant explosions and the monotonous cry of “EXTERMINATE!”, repeated over and over again.
Malachi's army was soon absorbed into the confusion. With their emotion chips deactivated, the Ingenium were as ruthless as the Daleks. Malachi had equipped them with weapons – Jonah had no idea where from. How long had his father been stockpiling them? And what for? Had he had something like this in mind all along? The possibility sent a chill up the boy's spine.
With the Ingenium fighting, the ebb and flow of the battle had changed, the victory of the invaders now much less certain. Some of the child-cyborgs were adept at tearing open the top of the Dalek battle casing like a tin can, reaching in to crush the life out of the squid-like mutant inside. Others had weapons powerful enough simply to blow them out of the air. Nonetheless, despite their successes, they were taking heavy casualties. Small bodies lay everywhere, fractured and broken amongst the rubble, like discarded dolls.
“I have to do something,” Jonah muttered, struggling hopelessly against his guards. “I can't just stand here, I have to help.”
"My bandolier. See it? It looks like a pen...if you can reach it," the Warrior replied, his voice so low that it was barely audible.
Jonah could see it. The bandolier was slung over the shoulder of the Warrior's guard, dangling enticingly close as they marched through the malestrom, following Malachi. The small device was fitted into what looked like a custom-designed slot in the leather.
Patiently, Jonah waited his chance, his eyes as keen as a hawk. At last, the Warrior's guard swerved to avoid a burst of shrapnel, bringing him close enough almost to brush against Jonah. In a trice, the boy's fingers snaked out, palming the device before anyone could see him. Nearby, a heavy shell struck the earth, sending dirt and dust fountaining into the air, driving the four of them backwards. The grip of the Ingenium holding him didn't falter for a second. But in the scramble as he was pulled to safety, Jonah somehow managed to flip the screwdriver in his hand and thrust it backwards, hoping that the Warrior was watching, and would be close enough to grab it from him.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2016 11:22:08 GMT -5
He wished that he'd never seen anything like this before. But he had. Too many times, too often. Utter destruction. There was a difference though and that lay in the fact that the defending army seemed to be comprised of only children. He knew better, of course. That they were not children, they were now using their full android capabilities, whatever they might be. But just previously, they had been proxy children for a population that had already been assaulted by grief. He wondered what any of them might have thought of their children being used as instruments of war. If they'd been alive. Most likely they were not. The Renegade was not sure if that were a blessing, of a sort.
Still, they could not just let themselves be dragged along like detritus. Jonah was right, they had to do something. And to do that they needed to be freed of these vice-grips. They boy was quick on the uptake. With incredible precision, he felt him nab the sonic screwdriver. In a trice, he sent it turning end-over towards him. He took a sidestep, opened his mouth, and caught it. It was a bit ungainly trying to maneuver it that way, he was not sure if he got the setting he wanted. But he got it stuck between his chest and chin and pointed in the direction he needed it to go and the end lit up like a red beacon, accompanied by a furious high pitched whine. All he needed was to find the right setting to resonate with the delicate servos and circuitry beneath the faux skin of the Ingenium - either it would release them or lock them in place like a pair of handcuffs or it might overload their senses all together causing reboot. It rather depended on their make-up and though he'd tried to glean all he could while in the laboratory with them, there was always the risk that something unexpected would happen. Considering the situation they were currently in, he felt the risk was well worth it.
He turned the sonic on...
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Post by Jonah Caine on Jun 22, 2016 19:38:18 GMT -5
The whine of the sonic screwdriver had the same impact as an electro-magnetic pulse, dramatically affecting all the surrounding Ingenium - not just the ones restraining the Warrior and Jonah, but also those fighting nearby. Those affected stopped dead, frozen in place, their eyes suddenly blank and empty. Instead of human beings, they now looked more like shop front mannequins, inanimate and non-sentient.
For now, the Warrior and Jonah were free, the iron grips of their captors temporarily loosened. But they were already running out of time. Malachi Caine had designed his creations with infinite care. Already their CPUs were re-routing to auxiliary power. It would be only a matter of minutes before they were restored to full operating capacity.
Unfortunately, Jonah was in no position to run. He knew nothing of what had happened once the Warrior activated his device. He didn't see the disabling of the Ingenium, or feel the vice-like grip on his arm slacken. The idea of escaping while they still could never even entered his head.
Because as soon as the screwdriver had emitted its sonic scream, he too had inexplicably frozen in place... and the eyes that were turned towards the Warrior fizzed and crackled with meaningless static.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2016 12:33:22 GMT -5
The sonic grew painfully hot in his calloused hands, threatening to shiver its way apart but it did the trick. He was released and stumbled forward, catching his balance quickly and stowing his screwdriver for later. A glance around told him that either the Ingenium nearby were rebooting or he'd damaged them somehow. The same glance told him what he'd suspected but could not prove - that Jonah was indeed one of them. He -hoped- that it was temporary but there was hardly time to wait and see. The Warrior grabbed the lanky teenage form and hoisted him in a fireman's carry, his Time Lord strength betrayed. He had to get them away from the Daleks, who were now ravaging the poor listless forms within eyestalk-sight, enjoying their opportunity for mass murder.
They were not far from the plaza where he'd left the TARDIS but he couldn't afford to lead the Daleks to it, if they hadn't found it already. If they had...He'd originally intended to bring as many with him as he could and take them to the Star Whale, like an Ark for the colony. But for now, he'd have to content himself with repairing to the TARDIS, saving Jonah and then figuring out what to do from there. If there was any planet left by then. He dropped down into a pile of broken machinery, blasted concrete and bent rebar. He needed another distraction and he needed it quickly. Scanning around he found what he was looking for: a Dalek, still squirming half out of its casing, the glow of its eyestalk fading. The gunstick on it was half-detatched, the Ingenium that had been pulling it apart like a crab leg now stood listless, a ship with no commander.
The War Doctor grabbed the gun and planted his boot on the casing, pulling the gunstalk off. He ignored the feeble angered squeals from the mutant who was well on its way to dying, exposed to the elements. Aiming the device at the Tower, which he knew was at worst mostly vacated in the upper levels, those that weren't already destroyed, and ran across the battlefield at full pelt. A few of the Daleks caught the movement immediately and began shooting at them as he weaved in and out of the wreckage. Finally, he crested a chunk of concrete at the angle he wanted and aimed precisely at the weakest part of the base.
It did not so much as explode as condemn like a house of cards, toppling down on itself with whatever was left. and spread outward in a wave. This was not the part that would help them clear the area. That came next, but he could not watch it. He ducked down, tucking himself and Jonah into a cranny of destroyed monuments. Around them there was a whoosh, like a great sandstorm that swept over them, furiously spreading shrapnel and dust in a fan outward from the structure, mostly affecting those in the immediate vicinity of the Tower. As soon as it passed, the Warrior gained his feet and sputtered as the thick coating of concrete dust and glass sifted off of him. He took Jonah again and ran full tilt for the TARDIS, which now looked nothing more than another forgotten shape on the Square. The Ingenium that had not been toppled over in the implosion stood as eerie sentinels locked in with the Daleks. Both were covered in sand and debris, a pale coating of fine dust that crept into their systems. As he ran, he saw one of them twitch, then move, displacing a pile of sand as it reached again to grab the nearest Dalek and finish off its fight.
The Warrior ran faster. The Daleks too were shaking off the surprise of the moment, their glowing eyestalks peppering the dusty cloud that gave the Warrior cover, like animal eyes in the dark. Puffs of air displaced the dirt from their casings with an auditory huff but the dust stuck to their eyestalks still, clouding their vision. They'd see his heat signature if he did not hurry, if he came too close to one, and as soon as they could discern him he would be dead. The TARDIS was not far...not far now. In the sudden gloom, he found his ship without needing to see it. She was always waiting for him. He had the key in his hand and it struck home into the lock, the doors parted and they tumbled inside. He rolled off the floor to hit the emergency return switch as the blue-battered doors closed behind them, absorbing a stray shot from a savvy Dalek that had figured out what was going on but just a moment too late to do anything about it.
The time rotor sprung to action and took them directly back out to space, next to the Star Whale. Furiously, he worked the controls so that the ship appeared then to take a direction. He shot off a buoy that contained a signature not unlike his ship. Fingers crossed, he then hid the ship in the interior of the Whale that still swam in the sea of space, quietly suffering as war raged all around and below it.
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Post by Jonah Caine on Jul 20, 2016 19:44:20 GMT -5
The static in Jonah's eyes grew more concentrated, then faded out altogether, replaced by a deep scarlet glow, as his systems drew on his auxiliary power source to reboot. Within moments after the TARDIS taking off, his CPU was back online, and busy repairing the disruption to his machine code, caused by the sonic screwdriver.
And, as always, he remembered none of it. Malachi had carefully designed his programming to reject all knowledge that he was really an Ingenium. Already, his memory circuits were being modified, recreating what had happened inside his head, replacing the true version of events with an alternate one. By the time his eyes flickered open, he was convinced that he had experienced some sort of anxiety attack and had passed out. Physical symptoms of illness and exhaustion were being generated inside his positronic brain to support and reinforce this belief.
At first, he lay motionless on the floor, his gaze taking in the large, cathedral-like room, the walls indented with light-filled roundels, the vaulted ceiling festooned with black, serpentine cables. Then, turning his head, he saw the circular console, with the oscillating time rotor at its heart, and the War Doctor operating the controls.
With an effort, he sat up, supporting himself on one elbow.
“What happened?” he demanded in a hoarse voice. His head was pounding and he felt sick. “Where are we?”
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2016 19:56:49 GMT -5
It crossed his mind, as the boy reactivated, that he should have set him upright at least. But he could be forgiven for his lack of tact, they had been under attack. Better to find oneself sprawled on the floor then being blasted. That thinking had got him out of many a jam, and found many a companion face down on the floor of his TARDIS - alive. This was something of a special case...and it was going to be something of a hard and bitter pill to swallow. Especially coming at the heels of what had just happened.
"We're in my TARDIS. That's my ship." He looked over to him as he administered the controls. "And, to be more technical, my ship is inside a whale...a star whale to be precise. One that I saw floating your world, crying because it was injured, which is why I came here in the first place. Beautiful creatures...the Daleks took pot shots at her." He frowned. "As for what happened....that is somewhat more complicated." He sighed, leaving one hand administrating the controls as he spoke, not seeming as if he wished to tell him. "You rebooted...like all the other Ingenium around me when I used my sonic screwdriver. Though your protocols appear to be unlinked to theirs, you did not turn into a killing machine as your brethren...but the frequency still disrupted your pathways."
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Post by Jonah Caine on Sept 10, 2016 23:09:12 GMT -5
"We're in my TARDIS. That's my ship." [The Warrior] looked over to him as he administered the controls.
Jonah blinked and looked around, still somewhat dazed. “Your ship? As in... a real spaceship?”
It wasn't quite how he had expected it to look. Although, if anyone had asked him, he wasn't sure he could have described exactly what he had expected. The interior of this ship was as old and battered as its pilot. But the oscillating crystal column at the centre of the control console was still beautiful, and the air seemed to hum with energy and vitality.
“And, to be more technical,” the Warrior continued. “My ship is inside a whale...a star whale to be precise. One that I saw floating your world, crying because it was injured, which is why I came here in the first place. Beautiful creatures...the Daleks took pot shots at her."
Jonah badly wanted to ask what a star whale was. He was familiar with the concept of a marine whale, even though he'd never seen a real one. There were no whales on Copernicus, but he'd seen many old holovids from Earth in which they had featured prominently. A star whale, though? And they were inside it? How did that even work?
But before he could gather his scattered wits enough to frame the question, the Warrior was speaking again.
"As for what happened....that is somewhat more complicated." He sighed, leaving one hand administrating the controls as he spoke, not seeming as if he wished to tell him. "You rebooted...like all the other Ingenium around me when I used my sonic screwdriver. Though your protocols appear to be unlinked to theirs, you did not turn into a killing machine as your brethren...but the frequency still disrupted your pathways."
Jonah's jaw dropped in stomach-wrenching shock. “I rebooted? My brethren?” His blue eyes wide and angry, he scrabbled backwards, putting as much space between him and the old man as he could. “After everything that just happened, don't you realise who I am? I'm Jonah Caine! I'm human, not Ingenium. Are you completely insane?”
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2016 12:23:50 GMT -5
"Yes, space and timeship, actually...we've been together some while now," he said, giving the console a pat. He saw the way he glanced around at the TARDIS, speculatively. "I know she doesn't look like much, but she has hidden depths. I prefer the streamlined, no frills look this time," he said, inscrutably.
He supposed the boy took it as best that he could; his algorithms probably had safeguards against him finding out the truth. He gave a world-weary sigh and looked at Jonah. The android was glaring at him angrily, half frightened half livid, as if it were the Renegade that was the danger, and not the Daleks. This truth was as painful a one as the death of his father and he was not happy to have to be the one to tell him. But he saw no course for softening it.
"I've been called that many times but I'm afraid that what I've told you is the uncomfortable, unvarnished truth. You -are- an Ingenium, one named Jonah Caine. I suspect your father...your creator programmed you differently, perhaps in a more complex way. But you are not human, I'm sorry to tell you. At least not physically," he amended. "You probably won't believe me until I show you...very well then, I will show you." He turned to the screen and inputted a few commands into the console. On the viewer came a recording of what recently had transpired: the pair of them entering the ship, him putting Jonah down and piloting them away, and Jonah's reboot.
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Post by Jonah Caine on Sept 21, 2016 4:00:50 GMT -5
"I've been called that many times but I'm afraid that what I've told you is the uncomfortable, unvarnished truth. You -are- an Ingenium, one named Jonah Caine. I suspect your father...your creator programmed you differently, perhaps in a more complex way. But you are not human, I'm sorry to tell you. At least not physically," he amended.
“You are, you're crazy!” Jonah yelled. “My Dad was right all along. You're nothing but a liar and a nutter. And I seriously thought you could help us!”
He leapt to his feet and ran over to the TARDIS doors, hammering on them with both his fists. “Let me out! Let me the &^%$ out of here! I need to get back there. I need to do something!”
"You probably won't believe me until I show you...very well then, I will show you." [The Warrior] turned to the screen and inputted a few commands into the console. On the viewer came a recording of what recently had transpired: the pair of them entering the ship, him putting Jonah down and piloting them away, and Jonah's reboot.
The boy stared at the screen, his eyes wide with horror and disbelief.
“No,” He shook his head frantically. “No, it's some sort of trick. I passed out, that's all. That's all! Who are you, really? Why are you here? Is this some sort of kidnap plot? Some sort of ruse to blackmail the Caines? Because if so, I swear... you're going to be very, very sorry!”
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