The Man Who Would Be Nyder

Supreme Commander Davros, leader of the Kaled people and greatest scientist on the planet, did not get up in the morning. Nor did he strictly speaking wake up in the morning. It would be most accurate to say that he started up in the morning.

Horribly maimed by a Thal shell attack many years before, Davros' body was kept alive by a mechanical bio-support chair that also replaced the function of his legs. The chair was shaped like a waist-high pillar studded with metal half-spheres, and the scientist's torso was melded to the top of it, where his sole remaining arm and palsied hand could reach the bank of controls in front of him. The attack had destroyed his vision and his hearing: artificial tympanums now nestled in his ears, and a vision implant stared from the centre of his forehead, above his permanently shut eyes.

He did not sleep, or dream. His life, every moment of his existence, was devoted to one purpose: to the survival of his race, to their triumph over the Thals, and over Skaro. He had plans, plans dazzling and terrifying in their implications: plans that had taken years to test, decades to nurture along. His plans were growing closer to completion now, close enough that some aspects of them had to be hidden from those who would not understand them.

This morning, after he had tested his support chair and himself and found both to be functional, he rolled into the main laboratory, and saw Security Commander Slai waiting for him, as he did every morning. But there was something odd. Slai looked the same, black hair slicked back, square chin perfectly shaved, his muscular body dressed in a spotless Security Elite uniform, but - Davros sent a restart signal to his vision implant, and it flickered for an instant. It was as though there was something behind Slai, something his shape but smaller. Some sort of lag in the image processing?

"Davros," said Slai, saluting. Then he cleared his throat, and a strange man stepped out from behind him and saluted as well. He was short, and slim enough that Slai had totally eclipsed him. And when he raised his hand to salute, he showed it to be heavily bandaged, with external fixator pins sticking out here and there.

Davros moved a bit closer, and the strange man shivered, but held his ground. He was young and he wore a Security Elite uniform; but there was tan and chapping on his face, standing out in sharp contrast to his shaved scalp. Clear signs of his being stationed outside the Dome…which the Elite never were.

"This is Security Trainee Nyder," said Slai.

If Davros' heart was not an electrically-driven device, it might have stopped right there from the shock of that title and that name, combined. None of this showed on his face: his facial muscles were long-paralysed by injury and age. He managed to keep the stress out of his words as he rasped in his electronically augmented voice, "This is an unexpected addition to our personnel roster, Slai."

"But not an unwelcome one?" Slai challenged, and Davros detected the challenge.

"Perhaps…we could discuss this in my office. Now."

"As you wish. Trainee, this is my desk. Sit here, read all the papers in that pile and that pile, but not that pile," Slai said, pointing. "Wait for me to return."

"Yes, Commander," Nyder said, and saluted again. When he went to sit down, he had to pull the chair away from the desk with his foot, but once it was out he seated himself promptly enough, and started reading, eyes locked on the papers in front of him. He couldn't turn the pages, so he carefully pushed each one aside with the flat of his bandaged hand as he was done with it.

The Elite scientists and guards in the main laboratory went back to their work, curiously darting glances at the man reading Slai's reports. Only one man dared approach and talk to him.

"I'm Scientist Frenton," he said, self-consciously keeping his hands at his sides. The Security Trainee obviously could not shake hands.

Nyder looked up, and then looked Frenton up and down with a bland expression. "So you are," he finally said, and went back to the papers.

"What happened to your hands?" Frenton asked.

This time Nyder's eyes rose and stayed on the other man's face as he said, in a tone just a little bit too quiet and controlled, "I'm not at liberty to say."

Frenton decided to go back to work.

* * *

In Davros' office, Slai stood at parade rest, his feet spread and chin up. Davros was planted in front of him, his feebly shivering hand the only thing that moved about him.

Davros spoke first. "Why is there a Standard man in a Security Elite uniform in my Bunker, and why are you training him?"

"Because he isn't Standard, and we both know it." Slai grinned, showing square white teeth spaced a bit unevenly in his mouth. "He's Spire Project; I switched his paperwork from Elite to Standard myself, on your orders. And per your orders, I was to interview any member of the Spire Project who returned to the Dome, to evaluate if their Elite genetic heritage had given them any advantages. Unfortunately, most of the time they were in and out before I could talk to them in secret. In this case, Nyder returned and I went to find him."

Slai's eyes grew distant for a moment. "I nearly tripped over him, in fact; he was in the culling ward. He'd been in there four days."

"The ward usually cycles faster than that," Davros objected.

Slai grinned even wider. "That it does. According to Nyder, he found a pen and used it to open the admissions form cabinet. He wrote a new form for himself, and another one for a man just admitted, and switched the admission dates. Then he moved the other man's bed to his slot, and his own to the foot of the line. And then he did it again, and again. Gaining him another day each time.

"And any man who can do that - who can sentence his fellow soldiers to death, who can club them unconscious with his elbows if they protest, just so that he can live one more day in agony - his hands were crushed, by the way - a man like that is a man I want on my side. Because I sure don't want him waiting for me in the afterlife."

Davros was so agitated that he ignored the chance to jape at Slai's superstitions. "His hands were crushed? Then he's useless-"

"No. The Dome doctors might not be interested in fixing him, but our doctor says he'll get at least eighty percent functionality back. His sense of touch will be so-so," Slai sawed his own hand back and forth in the air, "and he'll have to wear gloves. But for my role, he should-"

"For your role?" Davros wheeled closer: first he had thought his vision implant was not working, now his hearing seemed to be defective. "You intend this - this unknown quantity, this experimental subject, to take on your role?"

"But think of it, Davros!" Slai's eyes were bright. "I can spend years, decades even, training him and getting him up to speed! All the Security Elite I've tested have been too hidebound, too afraid to break the rules, too used to dealing with the Elite to see their deceptions. Nyder won't be like that! And when it does come time to replace me," Slai's voice paused for a moment; both he and Davros know that Security Commanders tended to die on the job, without warning and quite violently, "he'll be ready."

"But does he have command experience? He wasn't chosen for Command Track, none of the Spire Project were."

"Command?" Slai chuckled deep in his throat, and leaned towards Davros as though sharing a delightful secret. "When I caught him changing the charts, he begged me not to expose him. He confessed to everything, he pleaded, he cried, he offered me anything he had - as though he had anything. And then he stood up, and looked me in the eye, and he ordered me not to tell. And I obeyed."

Davros took a moment to process this. "You…obeyed."

"I did. For a heartbeat, for an instant, that wretch who barely came up to my shoulder, stinking and broken, completely helpless and marked for death, held my will with nothing but his eyes and his voice. As though he had me in the palm of his hand…such as it was."

"I will have to think," said Davros, and froze, his chair audibly clamping itself to the floor of his office. Slai knew that sound; it meant that Davros was going to ignore all external distractions while he pondered this new development. Slai waited, at attention as always.

He did not mention to Davros what had most deeply impressed him about Nyder's bid for survival. The part of his confession that had frightened even Slai.

The dying were not given food or water - why waste precious supplies on someone about to be recycled? But Nyder, although hungry, was certainly not dying of thirst when Slai found him. And there was only one source of liquid in the culling ward, and that was the wounded.

Slai pictured Nyder moving from bed to bed, pulling at stitches with his teeth, opening wounds with lips and tongue and drinking the blood of his fellow Kaleds. The mortally wounded would be too weak to resist, and if they did Nyder would use his elbows. And when his thirst was sated, he would clean himself and go lie down in his hospital bed, now the one closest to the door. And sleep. The thought awoke something that was both admiration and horror in Slai.

Davros twitched, returning to reality. "I will allow this new phase of the Spire Project," he finally rasped. "It will be interesting to chart the subject's learning curve, and see where he fails." Without further words, Davros rolled past Slai, heading out of the office and back to the main laboratory. Slai followed, his broad face just a little bit smug. He was certain already, right to the core of him, that Nyder would not fail.

* * *

Security Trainee Nyder sat in his new quarters, on his new bunk, and literally quivered with excitement. He'd been quivering all day, inside: only now, in private where nobody could see, did he let the shaking take him, take him and set him trembling until the tears were ready to start from his eyes with happiness.

He was alive!

He had been certain when the huge Security man caught him in the culling ward that it was the end. But instead of killing him, the huge man said "Follow me," and took Nyder out of the ward, through the vast strange hallways of the Dome, and further. They had gone down a concrete-lined tunnel, slanting down into the earth, and it had taken Nyder a long time to realise where he was going.

The Bunker. The Scientific Elite and their laboratories. His throat had choked at the thought: there were stories about hideous experiments done here. Is that what they wanted him for? Had he stepped out of the firefight and into the mine field? But instead of taking him to some cell or laboratory, the man had gone to a small hospital, full of all sorts of advanced-looking medical equipment. He went to a doctor in a medical tunic, had Nyder lay his hands out on a table like two horrible trophies, and said, "What can you make of these?"

The doctor had frowned, cut away the bandages and frowned some more (Nyder didn't dare to look at what must be under those bandages; at least there was no smell of infection from them). Finally the doctor had come out with a long string of words that Nyder didn't understand.

"Please repeat that in Kaled," the Security man had said.

"Well, the length of time the wounds have been left untreated will complicate things: but if his circulation can be repaired and muscle regeneration proceeds appropriately, we won't need to transplant. They can be brought back to acceptable functional levels."

Nyder had sagged, and the Security man had caught him under the armpits. Then there was a breathing mask over his face: he breathed in and the world went away.

When he woke up he was lying in a real hospital bed. He wore a proper patient robe, and he'd been shaved, all over. A relief: the lice had been one of the many torments of the culling ward. His hands still hurt, and now his arms did too. When he stiffly raised one arm a little, he saw it was bandaged from armpits to fingertips. His hands were two flat fuzzy paddles of bandage, with metal screws sticking out of them.

The man in the medical tunic came in and introduced himself as Doctor Cennell. He explained that the screws were to hold Nyder's hands flat on two armatures, while they healed. He talked a lot about tendon splicing and skin grafts, and pointed where they had taken bits from his arms, skin and under his skin, to fix his hands. There would be more surgeries to come, he warned Nyder direly.

Nyder just turned his hand back and forth a little bit, staring at it, a great white puffy thing at the end of his arm. But it was going to be fixed, and why would they do that if -

"I'm not just an experiment, am I?" he asked Cennell. "You don't do all this for someone you're going to experiment on, yes?"

"No, most of our biological experiments deal with genes, heredity. We don't do surgical testing," Cennell said. "You're not just an experiment."

And after a night of sleep, wonderful sleep, after three full meals and all the water he wanted the next day, and a real doctor to examine his wounds, and more sleep, the Security man came back with a bundle of black cloth.

"My name is Security Commander Slai," he said, with a grin as huge as he was. "You will call me Commander. Let's see how this fits on you." Nyder needed help to get on the black puffy-legged trousers, and the long boots. The black undershirt could be stretched and pulled over his bandages. And the black jacket that went over that had zippers up both sleeves, which was the only way Slai could get it on over Nyder's immobilised hands.

"Why does this have zippers like this - Commander?" Nyder said. Slai's uniform didn't have zippers.

Slai looked almost abashed for a moment. "It's for executions, actually. So you can cuff a man's hands behind his back and strip it off anyway."

"Oh." Nyder had to adjust the hang of the jacket by digging his arms into his sides and wriggling, and he was still doing this when it hit home.

Black boots, black trousers and jacket, lightning-struck eye embroidered on the collar that he could just see out of the corner of his eye. This was a Security Elite uniform.

He said that to Slai, so shocked that his voice squeaked, and Slai just roared with laughter. "Trainee first. Security Trainees wear the same uniform, just with a white armband." He fixed the armband to Nyder's sleeve with straight pins, so that the zipper still worked. Then he put one finger under Nyder's chin and raised his face - even Slai's fingers were huge - and looked him straight in the eye.

"Security Trainee first," Slai said in a soft voice. "Security Elite, after. And if you're as good as I think you are - there are no limits."

No limits.

No limits at all. The Bunker, he'd never dreamed of being assigned to the Bunker. Being here was like magic, real magic. He had no more believed that he could ever be one of the Elite than he had thought that he could become an avatar of the Horned God. Now he had his own room! They were going to fix his hands! And food; there were no ration tickets here, he could get all the food he wanted, eat until he was full every day. Eat until he was more than full, eat until he was bursting-

Until he got fat, a voice suddenly whispered in the back of his head - an unfamiliar voice. Like Nenno.

Nyder cringed, his hands going over his chest. His stomach shuddered as though he was going to be sick, but grimly he clenched his teeth and held his meal down.

Maybe eating to bursting wasn't such a good idea after all.

Slai had left a magnetic hook on a hinged metal arm fastened to one wall; Nyder used it to undo the zippers on his shoulders. He painstakingly manoeuvred to open his jodhpurs, which was what the puffy trousers were called. The fork-shaped metal prong on one of the bunk legs helped him get off the boots. When he was finally naked, as hairless and bare as the day he was born except for the bandages, he simply stood in the middle of the room and spun, his wounded arms stretched wide, smiling and smiling as though he could take in the whole world in one embrace.

Alive!