A Worthy Successor (short story)

A Worthy Successor was the fifth story in Cyberon. It was a short story written by James Hornby and James Wylder. Being an explicit crossover with the P.R.O.B.E. series, it was later republished as such in the P.R.O.B.E. anthology True Origins.

The story depicted Giles becoming the leader of P.R.O.B.E., an important development in the chronology of the series, and also acted as a direct sequel to The Last Dose. It story also saw a plethora of licensed concepts cameo in the Vault, which in of itself was licensed from Gary Russell.

Summary

 * March 2011

Giles and Archie drive through to the Cheviot Hills, the location of the Vault. They've been sent there by Patsy Haggard, to investigate a duo of deaths. In the foyer of the Vault, the duo show the guard, Donovan, their P.R.O.B.E. ID cards, and he radios Director Vanessa Hardcastle, who arrives soon after. Giles tells her that they're here to do an inspection. She tries stalling, but Giles and Archie are aware of this and get her to agree to the inspection immediately. They arrive in the main warehouse, filled with shelves containing unearthly artefacts. Vanessa tries showing them some of the objects, but Giles wants to prioritise solving the murders. She tells Giles that the deaths were accidental and that they weren't worth documenting. Giles is uncertain that she's being truthful. She continues showing certain objects to the duo, but Giles's attention is elsewhere.

At the cold storage, Vanessa flashes Hernandez her badge and places it on sensor to gain access. Inside, donning parkas, they enter the large, circular morgue. Vanessa stops at one of the freezers, and tells them the story of a little girl who was a werewolf — despite the duo's confusion — who was shot after escaping from her room that acted as her prison for all her life. Vanessa pulls out a gurney containing the girl's body for effect, and Giles is revolted. Vanessa then brings them to head scientist Miles Werbiansky, and Inside hiss office, Giles requests to look at the inventory of the Vault. Going through it, Giles notices that the Cyberon drug is among the contents, so Vanessa and Miles lead them to the low-risk storage, where it's contained. They soon find one of the crates is on its side and the Cyberon fluid is leaking, flowing into a grate. Giles gets Vanessa to activate protocol Code 23, the lockdown procedure.

However, Donovan has been taken over by Cyberon, and doesn't activate the protocol. Simultaneously, inside the cold storage, the Cyberon fluid decides on the body of a small human girl after evalutating the other cadavers, using the child as it knows humans would be hesitant to fight a child. It flows into the her body, taking control, only to find that there is something wrong with the her genetic makeup. Abigail seems dream that she's in her room, and she sees the Cyberon. She awakens to darkness, transforming into a wolf, but due to the Cyberon in her, she becomes part-Cyberon. A guard tries to shoot her, but bullets are ineffective as the Cyberon repairs itself instantaneously. She converts the guard after taking control of the Cyberon in her, pumping in a combination of lycanthropy and Cyberon. The Cyberon muses to itself about how it underestimated her.

The group returns to the main warehouse, now accompanied by four guards, finding the corpses of many of the Vault's personnel who were killed by the Cyberwolf. The bodies shift from states of lycanthropy to Cyberon. Over the radio, Hernandez tells Vanessa that Donovan is compromised and that he and others are cornered. Suddenly the Cyberwolf drops down in front the group, Giles trying to communicate to the her, but she screams her name in response. She attacks herself to try to rid the Cyberon, then attacks one of the soldiers, sending the group running, although Archie stays behind the distract her. The Cyberwolf chases him, but as he's faster, it doesn't catch him. He reaches a barricade erected by another group of soldiers, and the Cyberwolf jumps on top of him, asking him to let her out of her room. The Cyberon takes control, making anybody infected rise and gather behind it while Archie reunites with Giles.

Upon seeing this, Hernandez commands the soldiers with him to attack, one of the soldiers firing a missile launcher, but the Cyberwolf catches the missile, redirecting it at the barricade, making everyone run out of cover. As the missile doesn't explode, Giles realises that the Cyberwolf created a ruse so it could infect them, which was indeed the case. Giles finds a solution, calling out the name that the Cyberwolf howled earlier, and the Cyberwolf stops. It tries to fight itself, and the Cyberon gains control, so Giles addresses it, reasoning that due to the werewolf DNA mutating it, the Cyberon cannot fulfil its purpose, and actually risks endangering the rest of the Cyberon, so the best course of action would to be to shut itself down. Giles also tells it that the rest of the Cyberon will be kept safe in the Vault, so the Cyberon, given the logic of Giles's solution, agrees. Unfortunately for Abigail, this ceases her existence. The Cyberon fluid retreats out of the Vault personnel and back into storage, and Giles tells Vanessa that he will be including everything in his report, so she ought to begin an overhaul of the site.


 * June 2014

In P.R.O.B.E. HQ, Giles arrives in the P.R.O.B.E. Archive after unsuccessful attempts at repairing Box and napping in the summer heat. He sees that the contents of the Archive has been moved to accomodate a table and two chairs, and he sits in the chair his interviewer hasn't taken. A new P.R.O.B.E. director must be found prior to her retirement, and she doesn't want someone chosen by the Defence Secretary, as they'd try to shut P.R.O.B.E. down. The interviewer wants to make the case to appoint Giles as the new director, as despite Giles thinking Archie would be better, she insists. To make her case airtight, she tells Giles to recount the Cyberon incident at the Vault a few years prior. The interviewer interrupts after a short while, asking him if he knew what he was getting into at the time, which he didn't. He tells her that he had done research into the Vault though, and that helped him. After resuming his story, he pauses to finish his tea, and the interviewer asks him to continue. Giles finishes his story, and after a moment, his interviewer tells him he's got the job. He resolves to tell Archie the news himself, but he voices his doubts; his interviewer assuages him. She tells Giles that Sir Andrew will be the new P.R.O.B.E. liaison, and Giles is left alone as his interviewer leaves. After a minute to himself, Giles leaves, a spring in his step.


 * March 2011

After Giles and Archie left, Vanessa is secretly glad about what happened, as her cockiness had let people suffer. In the cold storage, she sees Miles examining a Diashna corpse, and upon encountering Hernandez, orders him to be at ease. To their shock, inside Freezer 7, the werewolf Abigail cries for help...

Characters
(In order of appearance)
 * Giles
 * Interviewer
 * Archie MacTavish
 * Donovan
 * Director Vanessa Hardcastle
 * Guards
 * Hernandez
 * Abigail
 * Miles Werbiansky
 * A human soldier
 * A Gendar
 * A Draxi
 * A Menith
 * A Selachian
 * A Helicron
 * Guard
 * Woman
 * Kimball
 * A Diashna

Referenced only

 * Interviewer's partner
 * Defence Secretary
 * Martyn Townsend
 * Patricia
 * Zufran
 * Ellie
 * Solicitor

Continuity

 * The P.R.O.B.E. HQ is located in Parliament Square. (WC: When to Die)
 * It has been nearly a month since the Paul Reynish case. (HOMEVID: When to Die)
 * The Defence Secretary is looking to appoint a new P.R.O.B.E. director because the incumbent and her wife are retiring to Spain. (HOMEVID: When to Die)
 * In March 2011, Dr Haggard was unable to aid P.R.O.B.E. in their investigations because her "old friends at Geneva" had stationed her on their Moonbase. (TV: Death of the Doctor)
 * Giles believes the moonbase had been built in the 1970s. Planning of the base did start in the 70s, (AUDIO: The Cloisters of Terror) but it was actually built sometime in 2006. (PROSE: Guinevere One, Horror of the Space Snakes)
 * The Vault was built around the 1970s, (PROSE: One Cold Step, Beast of Fang Rock, Mind of Stone) and ran by Martyn Townsend, who tried to make a race of super soldiers to take over the world. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice)
 * The contents of the Vault were relocated to another facility nearby in the 1990s. (AUDIO: Tales from the Vault, The Screaming Skull)
 * The Vault contains four levels, with the fourth being a once-secret creation of James Gore. (PROSE: Night of the Intelligence)
 * Giles refers to the "Philadelphia incident" in 2014. (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars)
 * The Vaults contains objects concerning the Helicron, (PROSE: Crushing Reality) the Hytherians, (PROSE: Collective Unconscious) the Christmas Needle Agreement, (PROSE: A Bright White Crack) the Retconning Crocodiles, (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author, Auteur's Abecedarium) Kaetannan, (PROSE: The Eternal)
 * Miles is working on a device made by the Gendar of Gendar. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)
 * Miles mentions that the Cyberon in the Vault is from the London (PROSE: Cyberon, The Last Dose) and Philadelphia incidents. (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars)
 * Archie asks if the London incident involving the Cyberons was anything to do with Canary Wharf before being cut off. (TV: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars)
 * Miles believes the Cyberon share a common ancestor, (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons) but they're separate species. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)
 * The Vault contains the corpse of a human soldier that has been ravaged by the claws of a Yeti. (TV: The Web of Fear) They had been taken to the Vault so the "web" fungus could be studied. (PROSE: Beast of Fang Rock)
 * There is also a Gendar, (PROSE: The Door We Forgot, et al.) a Selachian, (PROSE: The Murder Game) and a Helicron. (PROSE: Crushing Reality)
 * The Gendar are physically weak. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)
 * Cyberon connects to nervous systems to take control of its host. (PROSE: The Last Dose)
 * Haggard mentions to "the infamous Dr. Smith". (TV: Spearhead from Space, et al.)
 * Giles wonders if he could persuade Sir Andrew Williams to recruit some additional members to the P.R.O.B.E. team. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)
 * Miles examines a Diashna corpse. (PROSE: In the Loop)
 * Five years later, Giles mentions that Haggard put him in charge of P.R.O.B.E.. (WC: Shadows of Doubt)