CULT OF THE CYBER MESSIAH

Chapter Three

The elevator doors opened and to their relief there was no one in the corridor. The hallway they were in was long with closed doors evenly spaced on either side. At the end of it was a huge glass window, a table and two chairs and a couple of potted plants.

Be on your guard, the Doctor thought to them.

He and his family held their screwdrivers at the ready while they walked along the corridor. The Doctor noticed Jack doing something out of the corner of his eye and he sighed when he saw him pulling out his gun.

Jack, don't you dare kill anyone, he thought angrily.

I won't, alright? He thought back. I'm gonna use it to defend us but I promise I won't kill anyone.

He nodded and glanced at Dex who didn't have anything.

Stay behind me, Son, the Doctor thought. When we get done finding Nelak and leave, I'll have to make you a screwdriver. But for now, just let us protect you.

He nodded and moved behind him. Rose and Donna closed in on either side of him while they looked around. So far, nothing had shown up to threaten them. The Doctor noticed some CCTV cameras above them and he disabled them in case the hostage takers were watching.

They nearly made it to the end of the hallway when they suddenly heard faint scared voices behind a door on their right. It was followed by a man screaming at them to shut up or he'd blow their brains out. The Doctor glanced at his family.

Ready? He thought to them.

They nodded. He quietly turned the knob, found the door was locked and used his screwdriver on it. He turned the knob slowly, glanced at everyone and mentally counted to three. Once he reached three, he quickly flung the door open, startling the two gunmen. Both of them were dressed as punks. One had a purple Mohawk with numerous piercings. The other had jet black spiked hair with piercings and was wearing black eye shadow and lipstick.

"Who the fuck are you?" Purple Mohawk demanded.

He aimed his gun at the Doctor but he and his family quickly disabled it and the other gun with their screwdrivers. Alan and Jack ran up to the confused punkers and decked them in the face, sending them to the floor. The Doctor made a quick head count of the captives and determined there were 25 men and women, all dressed in business suits, skirts, blouses and dresses.

"Is everyone all right?" he said to them.

They nodded. The Doctor looked at the two punkers who were being hoisted to their feet by Jack and Alan.

"What's going on here? How many of you are there and how many hostages?" he demanded.

Purple Mohawk snorted.

"Like we'd tell you, Baby Face," he said.

He gasped when Alan jerked on his hair.

"I think you better tell him or you'll have to deal with the angry brother of Baby Face," he snarled at him, "and trust me, that'd be an unwise move on your part. Now answer his question."

He jerked on the Mohawk again and the man grunted in pain.

"Don't tell em anything, Zac," Spiked Hair said to him. "Tig will slit you from neck to navel if you spill any information."

"Yeah, well, I'll put a bullet in your brain if you don't." Jack growled at him.

He noticed the Doctor's angry look when he said that.

I'm not going to, Doc, it's a bluff, he thought to him.

The Doctor relaxed at that. He walked over to Spiked Hair.

"You heard my friend, what's going on here?" he said to him.

He held up his sonic device.

"See this? Sonic disrupter. It can turn your brain to goo in less than two seconds, so out with it because I gather if you talk or don't talk, either way you'll be dead."

"I won't say a word," Spiked Hair spat out.

"Fine then, have it your way."

He punched him hard in the face rendering him unconscious. Jack let go and turned his attention to Zac. While he was doing that, he noticed the others were getting the shaken hostages out of the room and escorting them back to the elevator. He grabbed hold of the man's leather jacket.

"See your friend? I can do much worse to you," he said, taking advantage of his fear. "So talk! How many of your mates are here and how many hostages?"

The man gulped when he saw the fury in the Doctor's piercing brown eyes.

"There are several hostages locked behind doors on this floor. Seven are up on the roof with our leader.

"I take it that's Tig?"

He nodded.

"And what do you want?"

"Credits and a safe way out. We busted out of prison and the cops were following us but we managed to elude them and we took hostages to ensure they didn't shoot us on sight. They've probably surrounded the building by now and we want credits and a safe passage out of the city."

"Sorry, mate, that's not gonna happen. Thanks for the info. Now you go to sleep and when you wake you'll be going back to prison. Nighty night."

He pinched a nerve in his neck and the man gasped and passed out. Alan dropped him to the floor and they ran out the door. The Doctor shut and locked it with the screwdriver. He glanced at his family who were coming back down the hallway.

Did you get the other captives out? He thought to them.

They nodded.

Good. There are others locked behind some of these doors. Set them free and we'll deal with the nutter on the roof. But be careful, we got information from one of them and he claims it's just the three of them in here, but he could be lying so keep an eye out for other gunmen.

They nodded. Rain and Rose gave their husbands kisses for good luck and the Doctor, Alan and Jack headed towards the stairs while the others went to free the hostages.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Tig stood at the edge of the roof holding the female captive in one arm with his gun pointed at her temple. A few feet away, the five men and woman sat on the concrete whimpering with fear. He glanced down and saw the police cars below surrounding the building. He cursed when he saw the hostages Zac and Gib were supposed to be guarding hurry out the door to the safety of the squad cars. He cursed again. He had met the two when they were in prison together and they had come up with the escape plan but they had been nearly caught by the guards on the way out and the police had been tailing them ever since. They had managed to steal and hotwire a car but when it looked like they might catch up, they got away from them long enough to ditch the car a few blocks from the office building, ran as fast as they could and ran inside the building. While Zac and Gib rounded up the hostages, he locked the door. Then he managed to convince the manager to get everyone to cooperate with them and after separating them and putting them in different rooms, he picked seven of them and brought them up to the roof, locking the door behind them. Unfortunately, in the chaos he failed to see one stupid worker activating a silent alarm and he shot him dead. He had "borrowed" an ear mobile from one of the male hostages and after forcing the owner of it to scream the phone number down to the cop, he got in contact with one of them and was currently giving him their demands. They were going along with it until the hostages walked out the door and then he noticed the officer started hesitating. Tig cursed.

"I mean it, Pig! I'll kill the seven up here and then I'll go through and kill the rest like I did to the one idiot," he said to the officer. "And don't think I won't do it because I will. I was already doin' time for murder in the clink, so it doesn't matter to me if I murder everybody in his building!"

"Just calm down," the officer said to him. "Just tell us what you want. There's no need to hurt or kill any more innocent people. Just talk to me."

Tig smirked.

"I told you I want one million credits transferred into my credit account and I want a guarantee that we'll be able to leave the city and that means none of your fellow piggies trying to follow us and finding out where we've gone to. Do all that and I'll let the remaining hostages go."

"Here's a better idea. Surrender and go back to jail with your friends."

Tig spun around and saw three men standing behind him. Two twin brothers who were pointing little weird pen-like devices and another man who had a gun aimed at his head.

"How'd you get up here? I had the door locked!" he said, aiming his gun at them.

"Yeah, well, my brother and I are extremely good at opening locked doors. Now…surrender and come with us or face the consequences."

"Fuck that! I told you and your pig buddies not to come up here. Now all of you are gonna die!" he said.

He noticed the twins turning on their devices. He stared at the small blue light at the tip and snorted.

"What's that? Your little flashlights? You signaling a rooftop sniper or something?" he said. "Well, sniper or no sniper, you're all dead meat!"

He tried the gun and frowned when it didn't fire. The Doctor glanced at his brothers and smiled.

"What the hell?" the man said.

He grunted when Jack suddenly lunged at him, wrenched the gun out of his hand and put his arms behind his back. While the woman got away from him, Alan plucked the ear mobile off his ear and put it on his own.

"Is this one of the police?" he said while the Doctor reassured the hostages and helped them to their feet.

"Yes," the police office said to Alan, "who are you?"

"I'm one of the rescuers. My family and I took it upon ourselves to come up here and capture the felons and free the hostages. Everyone is safe now and the criminals are all contained if you want to come inside. I have some family members on the fourth floor. The rest of the hostages are there and they're letting them go now. So you can go ahead and move in, officer."

"Are you and your family fucking nuts? Why would you do something so stupid?" the officer said.

"Because we have this bad habit of saving people. My family and I can't stand by and let innocent people suffer. Now are you coming up? Because we'll bring them all down if you don't."

"No, we're coming in. But how do we know this isn't a trap?"

"It's not, trust me."

"Alright but be aware that we're all armed and if you try something we'll kill you without a second thought."

"I'll keep that in mind," Alan said, rolling his eyes.

He turned off the mobile and held it out to the hostages. A man in his early twenties in a brown business suit stepped forward and took it from him.

"Thank you, whoever you are," he said.

Alan smiled.

"Happy to help," he said.

After a couple of the officers reached the roof, Jack let them have Tig and they all headed down to the fourth floor to be reunited with their family.

"We found all the hostages," Rain said. "Is the other guy…"

"Yeah, we got em," the Doctor said, nodding. "He's in police custody now."

"Good," Rose said.

They looked over when the elevator doors opened and two cops walked towards them. One of them had a comm device over his ear.

"We found em," he said into it.

"Ah officer, yes," the Doctor said, "we've managed to free everyone and…"

He trailed off when the cops pulled out their guns.

"We're not on their side," he said angrily.

"Identify yourselves," the officer without the comm device said while he reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out something resembling a Blackberry.

They told them their names. The officer with the Blackberry waited till they finished.

"Okay, now give me your ident numbers so I can check your files," he said.

The Doctor frowned.

"Pardon?"

"Ident numbers, buddy. You know, your personal identification code you've had since birth. What is it?"

"Um, we don't have any."

The officers glared at them.

"Oh, so you're a blank, is that it?" he said.

"No, I'm not a blank. We're travelers, we're not from here," the Doctor said.

"That doesn't matter; everyone on Earth has an ident number…everyone that is, except for blanks. And if you are blanks, then you're all under arrest for deleting your personal files from the central database."

The Doctor held up his hands in front of him.

"Look, I know it might be hard for you to grasp this but we're not from Earth."

The cops snorted.

"Yeah right, blank, that's cute. Now all of you come with us peacefully…unless your family has ident numbers we can check."

The Doctor sighed and shook his head.

"Then all of you come with us to the station for questioning," he said.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I told you, the Doctor is my real name!"

The Doctor was sitting in the interrogation room at a large wooden table with two officers across from him. He had volunteered to go first while his family sat in separate cells. One officer was in his mid fifties with salt and pepper hair and the other in his mid forties was a bald black man. After searching him and his family and confiscating all their personal effects, he had been taken into the small cramped room where they'd been trying to question him for the past half hour, getting him to tell them his real name and getting more and more frustrated when the Doctor was the only name he would tell them.

"Doctor is not a real name," the older officer said. "Now Doctor does sound like an assumed name a blank would use and if you're trying to protect your identity for some reason or another then you're wasting your time because we'll find it out sooner or later."

"Look, I am telling you the truth. I demand to take a lie detector test to prove mine and my family's innocence!"

"You're not in a position to demand anything from anybody. If you and your family are blanks, you'll be going to the Liberty Island Penitentiary for a very long time. So if I were you, I'd tell us the truth and cut some time off your prison sentence!"

"I am trying to tell you the truth, but you won't believe me which is why I want to be hooked up to a polygraph! I don't want to go to prison when I'm innocent and I don't want my family in there either. You keep insisting I'm a blank and I'm not. I don't have a file because I'm not from Earth, d'ya get that?"

The two men looked at each other and shook their heads.

"I think we need to order a psych eval," the black man said. "Man's obviously nuts."

The Doctor gritted his teeth. He was nearly ready to fight his way back to the cell block, get his family out and fight their way to freedom. He knew the officers were already convinced he was a blank and a crazy blank at that. He was either going to end up in prison or a mental institution if he didn't think fast.

Just then a female cop opened the door to the interrogation room and whispered for the officers to come with her. They nodded, glared at the Doctor and walked out, locking the door behind them. The Doctor instantly looked around trying to figure a way out of the room. A few minutes later, the door opened but a different man stepped inside and closed the door. He was long and lean and in his early thirties. He had sandy blonde hair, blue eyes and was wearing black trousers, a black shirt, white trainers and a long battered trench coat. He smiled at the Doctor while he watched him warily.

"I heard on the news that you and your family had been incarcerated," he said, sitting down in the seat the black man had occupied earlier. "My name is Edison Carter, but you probably already know that."

"No, actually, I don't," the Doctor replied.

He noticed the shocked look on his face.

"Really? Wow, you must have really been out of the loop. I know a lot of the blanks spend their free time watching Big Time Television, but still…"

"Look, I'm not a…"

Edison held up his hand.

"My friend Reg is a fellow blank and he asked me to come and secure your release for you and your family."

The Doctor quickly stopped protesting that he was not a blank.

"You can get us out of here?"

"Of course I can," he said, smugly. "I'm Edison Carter, after all."

The Doctor had no idea how that was so significant but if it meant he could get him and his family out of prison, he was willing to sit back and let him do all the work.

"But, we're under arrest," the Doctor felt obligated to add. "We're blanks. They say we're going to prison and…"

"And as I told you, I have a bit of influence here. I have made a lot of close friends in the police department and I can get them to pull a few strings and let you go."

"Thank you for that."

Edison nodded.

"I got one question for you though," he said.

The Doctor gave him a wary look.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you help out the hostages when you and your family are blanks? Didn't you realize that the police would find out and arrest you?"

"My family and I are dedicated to fighting injustice wherever we find it. We consider it our sworn duty."

Edison was intrigued.

"Really? And how have you managed to live as blanks if you're out constantly saving people."

"We usually keep a very low profile and leave before the officers arrive."

"Well, I commend you for that. Not every blank would do that. In fact, the only other blanks I know of who would help out anyone are my friends Reg and Dominique and they've come close to being nabbed on several occasions. But don't worry, I'll help you and your family get out of here so you can be on your way."

"Thank you; I appreciate that from the very bottom of my…heart. But…"

"Yeah?"

"I have a favor to ask of you."

"Yes?"

"Can we borrow your computer after we get out of here?" he said.

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