The Last Dose (short story)

was the third story in Cyberon. It was a short story written by James Hornby. The story starts by adapting the post-credits scene of the Cyberon home video, and then introduces a new storyline. It was later given an audiobook reading by Nigel Peever as part of BBV's Cyberon: Enhanced Spoken Word of the Novelisation.
== Plot ==
The government has caught wind of the Cyberon drug and seized the PKD facility to cut it off. Tom Mordley remains at large, spreading Cyberon by dealing it as a party drug in nightclubs. With his supply running low, he heads to PKD to raid it.
Geneva and Canary Wharf both have teams at PKD, and PROBE ask former member Louise Bayliss to oversee matters so nothing falls into the wrong hands. Bayliss discovers Mordley at large and tracks him to the drug's source: a badly damaged Cyberon. The Cyberon orders Mordley to kill Bayliss but contact with her golden necklace disrupts his Cybertron infection, and with his mind briefly cleared he kills the machine. Rather than allow the Cyberon within himself to survive, Mordley kills himself.
The drug is covered up as a hoax by a conman, and Bayliss visits Lauren Anderson to give her closure.
== Characters ==
* Tom Mordley
* Simon
* Louise Bayliss
* Patricia Haggard
* Driver 1
* Soldier 1
* Soldier 2
* Colonel Tudor
* Sergeant
* Albert
* Cyberon
* Driver 2
* Lauren Anderson
* Ray Lambert
== Worldbuilding ==
* Tom deals Cyberon in the toilets of Brainstorm.
* Louise was transferred to work for Sir Andrew Williams in the Home Office.
* Tom's only living family are a sister-in-law and a niece. His brother died from an aneurysm and is buried in Pennsylvania.
* Lauren Anderson and Ray Lambert's flat is located on Brooks Crescent.
== Notes ==
* The scene in Brainstorm is the end of the video Cyberon. The rest of the story is original to the book.
* P.R.O.B.E. is looked down on by other counter-alien groups like UNIT due to its lack of funding. At the same time, both UNIT and P.R.O.B.E. look down on Torchwood One as "reckless egotists".
* The boffins in the Vault suggest that gold creates interference between the Cyberon and the human nervous system. Gold as a weakness for Cybermen was established in TV: Revenge of the Cybermen.
* Patsy is busy arranging the transfer of old LONGBOW files from Edinburgh. LONGBOW having a base there references the Lethbridge-Stewart books.
== Continuity ==
* Louise recalls her time at Ashley House. (HOMEVID: The Zero Imperative)
* P.R.O.B.E. is badly funded. (HOMEVID: ''The Zero Imperative, etc.)
* Anderson has resigned at the hospital and plans to "retrain"; when next seen, she'll be a psychiatrist. (HOMEVID: Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough)
* Rutherford arranged that Louise was transferred from P.R.O.B.E.. (HOMEVID: The Devil of Winterborne)
* Patsy and Liz are in a relationship. (HOMEVID: When to Die)
* Patsy Haggard says one of the groups investigating PKD is Geneva (whose soldiers wear red berets and black fatigues) and the other are "the Royalists at Canary Wharf": implicitly UNIT and Torchwood, without naming them to legal reasons. (TV: The Christmas Invasion et al, TV: Army of Ghosts / Doomsday)
* P.R.O.B.E. assisted eradicating the computer virus that removed all vowels from electronic devices. (PROSE: Vrs)
* The Cyberon reminds Louise of an alien race Louise read about in the P.R.O.B.E. Archive that had tried to invade Earth several times before. (TV: The Tenth Planet, et al.)
* Doses of the Cyberon drug are shipped to the Vault, a long-running archive of alien equipment created for PROSE: The Scales of Injustice.
== External links ==
Category:Cyberon (anthology) short stories
Category:Stories set in London
Category:Stories set in 2000
Category:Preternatural Research Bureau short stories