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
June 2014: in P.R.O.B.E. HQ, Giles is concentrating on Box, trying to make progress on repairing her but gives up due to the intense summer heat. He goes to take a nap, but an alarm clock goes off, reminding him that he needs to go the P.R.O.B.E. Archive. Taking the lift to the archive, Giles sees that the contents of has been moved to accomdate a table and two chairs, and he sits in the furthermost, as his interviewer is already in the other. She tells Giles that a new P.R.O.B.E. director must be appointed prior to her retirement, and preferably not someone chosen by the Defence Secretary, who'd be "hell bent" on shutting P.R.O.B.E. down. So, the interviewer wants to make the case to appoint Giles as the new director, though he thinks that Archie would be a better choice. The interviewer tells him that while Archie is a good field agent, he isn't a good leader. To make her case to the Defence Secretary airtight, she tells Giles to recount the Cyberon incident at the Vault a few years prior.

March 2011: Giles drives a car through the Northumbrian countryside in the rain, Archie as his passenger, towards the Cheviot Hills, the location of the Vault. They've been sent by Patsy Haggard to inspect the site, as two scientists have died, but nothing has been officially reported despite every person in the site being heavily monitored. Giles speeds along, driving into the secret entrance tunnel.

In the foyer of the Vault, the security guard, Donovan, asks them for identification; the duo show them their ID cards, stating that they're from P.R.O.B.E., and he quickly relaxes. Donovan radios in the director, Director Vanessa Hardcastle, who is frustrated at being disturbed. Soon, Vanessa arrives, and Giles tells her that they're here to do an inspection, altough Vanessa was unaware of this. She offers to have them wait a while so a guided tour can be set up, but having had this trick pulled on them before, Giles and Archie tell her they'd like to do the inspection immediately. Vanessa hesitantly accedes.

June 2014: the interviewer asks Giles if he knew what he was getting into at the time, and he replies no, although he does say that his research into what is stored in the Vault beforehand, with memories connecting to the "Philadelphia incident" that stuck with him. The interivewer asks him what "tipped him off", and Giles tells her that is was something he only glanced out at first.

March 2011: after the long journey underground in the lift, Giles and Archie enter a large warehouse filled with shelves containing unearthly artifacts. Vanessa tells them it's only one of many, whilst showing them some of the items within, although Giles isn't interested, wanting to prioritise solving the murders. She tells Giles that the deaths were accidental — Patricia and Zufran were disintegrated by a Helicron matter gun, and because of their lack of families, and that the necessary procedures were taken afterwards, Vanessa didn't feel it worth documenting, although Giles is uncertain. She decides to continue showing certain objects to Giles and Archie. While Archie focuses on the items, Giles's attention is elsewhere, as he sees a pair of guards go through a door numbered "AA23".

Vanessa leads them to the cold storage, flashing Hernandez her badge before placing it on a sensor to gain access. Inside, they put on parkas as they walk through a hallway, then enter the large, circular morgue, complete with numbered doors. Vanessa stops at one, and begins to recite a story, much to Giles and Archie's confusion. She tells them of a little girl, isolated in her room, who would transform into a wolf once a month, and that one day, the girl escaped, but was shot shortly after. As Vanessa finishes, she pulls out the gurney containing the girl's body, and Giles is revolted. Vanessa then brings them to head scientist Miles Werbiansky.

Outside Miles's office, Archie asks if Miles is new due to the new nameplate on the door, and Vanessa clarifies that he isn't, rather he's recently transistioned. Inside the messy office, Giles introduces himself, while Miles is trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to disassemble an Gendar device. Miles hands Giles a thick binder, the inventory of the Vault, upon Giles's request; going throguh the binder, Giles notices that Cyberon is among the contents, and Miles tells him that it's collected from the London and Philly incidents. Vanessa and Miles lead them to the low-risk storage, where the Cyberon drug is contained. They soon find one of the crates is on its side, having been used as a chair, and the Cyberon fluid is leaking, flowing into a grate. Giles gets Vanessa to activate protocol Code 23, which will lock down the building, and Miles calls in the order to Donovan.

However, Donovan has been taken over by Cyberon, and the Cyberon tells him not to go through with the lockdown, so Donovan lies to Miles. The Cybreon then gets Donovan to access the camera to the cold storage room via a monitor, and the Cyberon chooses a suitable body inside.

Simultaneously, inside the cold storage, the Cyberon fluid goes past various bodies, evaluating them for suitability. It decides on the body of a small human girl, in part as it knew humans would be hesitant to fight a child, which the Cyberon considers a weakness. It flows into the body through the gunshot hole in the girl's head, connecting to the girl's nervous system. But too late, the Cyberon finds that there is something wrong with the girl's genetic makeup.

Abigail awakens in her room in a dream-like state, seeing the Cyberon standing in front of her. It tells her that she is their host, and that she will help propagate the Cyberon. The room fades in and out of existence, with only darkness beyond, and she begins to transform into a wolf, but instead of fur sprouting after her other changes, silver fluid flows out of her pores instead, becoming part-Cyberon. She escapes from the freezer, and a guard opens fire, but the bullets do nothing to her as the Cyberon repairs itself instantaneously. She goes to kill the guard, but can't due to the Cyberon conflicting with her biology. She sees herself back in her room, the Cyberon stating that there's an error, and she takes control. She pounces on the guard, her mouth spewing metal tubes that attatch to the guard, pumping in a combination of lycanthropy and Cyberon. She lets out a distorted howl.

The Cyberon is a passenger inside Abigail, and it thinks about how it underestimated her.

Giles leads as they return to the main warehouse, Vanessa bringing along four guards. They find the corpses of many individuals that had been indiscriminately massacred by the cyberwolf. They inspect some of the bodies, seeing them shift from states of lycanthropy to Cyberon. Hernandez radios Vanessa, telling her that Donovan is compromised and that he and others are cornered. Suddenly, the cyberwolf drops down in front of Giles and the group, and he tries to communicate to the girl, who replies by trying to scream her own name before attacking herself to rid the Cyberon. Kimball, one of the soldiers, is attacked by the cyberwolf when her attention diverts to the group. The group runs on Vanessa's command, but Archie stays behind the distract the cyberwolf to give the group a chance; as he is faster than the cyberwolf, he gets the cyberwolf to chase him, and she runs along the tops of aisles. He reaches a barricade erected by another group of soldiers, but the cyberwolf jumps on top of him. Instead of attacking, she asks for Archie to let her out of her room, but the Cyberon takes control and the infected, around the site, rise and gather behind the Cyberon, while Archie reunites with Giles.

June 2014: the interviewer asks Giles to continue after he drinks his now-cold tea.

March 2011: Hernandez tells the others to attack, one of the soldiers firing a missile launcher. The cyberwolf catches the missile, and redirects it at the barricade, sending the group run away in different directions. The missile hits the wall behind the barricade, but doesn't explode, and Giles realises that the cyberwolf didn't want to kill them, but get them out of cover so it could infect them. Around him, soldiers are attacked by the infected, becoming infected too. Giles finds a solution, calling out the name that the cyberwolf howled earlier, and it stops when it hears Giles, and begins fighting itself again. Giles then speaks to the Cyberon, who tells him that "Cyberon must survive" and that the girl is infected. Giles reasons that, given the infections of the girl, that the Cyberon can no longer do its purpose properly, and that the werewolf DNA is mutating it, then the best course of action would to be to shut itself down to ensure the mutations don't damage the rest of the Cyberon. Giles 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.

Abigail tries to make the Cyberon stop talking, but finds herself back in her room, thrashing about. She tells the Cyberon that it isn't fair, which it agrees to, and she asks why she can't survive. It has no answer. Then she and the room disappear.

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

Referenced only

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

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)


 * Five years later, Giles mentions that Haggard put him in charge of P.R.O.B.E.. (WC: Shadows of Doubt)


 * Haggard refers 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 PROBE team. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)