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
== Worldbuilding ==
* Giles is a technician and second in command of P.R.O.B.E..
* Giles's office has a window and a wheeled office chair.
* Giles uses a pair of pliers on Box.
* There is a narrow corridor connecting the lift to the P.R.O.B.E. Archive, which is lit by "dim fluorescent lighting".
* Giles wears a polo shirt.
* The archive contains case files and catalogued alien tech.
* The interviewer and her partner want to retire to Spain.
* The interviewer tells Giles she's put in too much effort into P.R.O.B.E. to have it shut down by "some bureaucrat who doesn't believe in the preternatural".
* Giles remembers the time he stopped the Carbonoids from eating the boats in the Thames Estuary.
* The Cheviot Hills are located in Northumberland. It's raining on their journey.
* Archie is "strong-jawed".
* Archie compares the Vault to a Bond villian lair.
* Haggard noticed that neither of the two scientists' bank accounts had made any transactions in the past five days.
* Archie thinks to himself about just how far the government will go to hide things from the public.
* The Ministry told Giles that there wasn't much left inside the Vault.
* Archie was hoping the visit to the Vault would be brief so they'd be back at P.R.O.B.E. HQ in time for tea.
* The car has a dashboard.
* Giles uses the accelerator pedal to make the car go faster.
* The entrance to the Vault is located in a secret tunnel, and it is surrounded by roadworks signs.
* The Vault has a car park, and is located underneath two hills with eight subterranean levels. It has an automatic door, which leads to a foyer, a desk for a guard, and a lift. The Vault is a MOD site.
* Donovan has a thick Geordie accent, and wears a uniform with a name badge.
* Vanessa offers guided tour to stall them, but Giles and Archie recognise this trick.
* Donovan has a desk, located near a lift. The lift goes down a warehouse, though it's one of many.
* Vanessa is a large-framed woman, who wears a white blouse, black blazer and skirt, and high heels.
* Patricia and Zufran were the two killed, or rather disintegrated.
* Patricia and Zufran don't have families.
* The Vault is filled with the "alien and the odd"; the items include:
** A Noth laser scythe,
** A Helicron matter gun,
** A Hytherian multi-tool, which resembles a welding gun,
** An early copy of the prophecy of the Hollow Childe, which is a short verse inscribed on a stone tablet,
** A copy of the Christmas Needle Agreement, a book which is nearly a foot thick and what Giles suspects is some sort of interuniversal treaty,
** A broken gauntlet that once belonged to Kaetannan, who has medieval manuscripts written about him,
** A pistol that belonged to a Retconning Crocodile,
** And a Helicron skull crusher.
* The guards that go through the door marked "AA23" carry bottles and bags of snacks.
* Vanessa chews gum.
* The morgue is accessible through a hallway.
* The little girl never saw the sunlight. The girl had watched the other children play outside, whilst she placed her hand on the windowpane dreaming of the day she'd be free.
* The girls clothes were "out of fashion".
* Giles is revolted that Vanessa uses the the girl's body to put on, what he calls, a private freakshow.
* Archie begins to say that Vanessa would probably want to strangle a kitten.
* Miles has a new nameplate on his office door as he recently transistioned.
* Miles is short and slender, with curly black hair and glasses, and a roundish face.
* The device Miles is trying to disassemble is held together with screws that reappear in place if they're removed. The device was created by the Gendar of Gendar.
* The inventory of the Vault is kept in a thick binder.
* Miles mentions that he used to eat lunch with Ellie, prior to her death.
* The low risk storage area smells of tobacco smoke, and there are hidden ashtrays, bottles, and snack wrappers.
* Along with the Cyberon drug, there are also pamphlets and research relating to it.
* Vanessa shows the group the drug like a prize on a gameshow.
* Giles refers to the leaking Cyberon as a "hazardous material leak".
* If the Vault is shut down, it includes the ventilation, making the Vault the "perfect prison".
* Donovan scratches his neck.
* The Cybreon makes Donovan access the camera to the cold storage room via a monitor.
* The Cyberon moves like a snake in its fluidic form.
* There are a number of cadavers in the cold storage:
** A human soldier who was ravaged by a yeti,
** A Gendar, whose body is weak and feeble,
** A Draxi
** A Menith
** A Selachian
** A Helicron, whose body was large and strong but had an imcompatible nervous system for the Cyberon's matrix,
** And a Diashna, who in life was gooey but was instead frozen.
* Abigail's room has red carpet, a vase of blue flowers, blocks and dolls on the floor, and the bed, bath, toilet, and the windows with the iron bars over them. There is also a cage in the room.
* The Cyberon splits like play-dough.
* instead of fur sprouting out of Abigail as part of her transformation, silver fluid flows out of her pores instead, which solidifies into fabric and metal plates.
* Abigail's senses have been overlayed by the Cyberon, augmenting her to be able to analyse, and receives data.
* Chemicals flow into Abigail's bloodstream, calming her.
* The metal tubes that come out of Abigail's mouth attach themselves to the guard's veins.
* The combination of lycanthropy and Cyberon is a like witch's brew.
* The cyberwolf catches the missile like a frisbee.
* Giles tells the cyberwolf that its meant to be a medical drug not a walking cyanide pill.
* The Cyberon fluid looks like something out of a horror film.
* The interviewer writes with a pen on paper, on a clipboard.
* His interviewer needs to visit a solicitor before the move to handle the last bits of paperwork.
* His interviewer tells Giles that even the "infamous Dr. Smith" would struggle to convince a Cyberon to kill itself.
* Sir Andrew's influence and career in Whitehall should be good for P.R.O.B.E..
* Sir Andrew wanted to transfer from the Home Office for a while.
== Notes ==
* This story was later released by BBV Productions as an audiobook, read by Bill Baggs.
* The Noth and Kaetannan were mentioned with permission from Sam Maleski and Evan Forman respectively. The Noth were mentioned in Registered Clawmarks™, a story in Lady Aesculapius: Series 1. The Retconning Crocodiles originated from The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series and were used with permission from Aristide Twain.Aristide Twain on Twitter via the Wayback Machine
* The scenes set in 2014 act as a framing narrative to the main plot.
== 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)
== External links ==
== Footnotes ==
Category:Cyberon (anthology) short stories
Category:True Origins short stories
Category:Preternatural Research Bureau short stories
Category:Stories set in London
Category:Stories set in 2014
Category:Stories set in Northumberland
Category:Stories set in 2011
Category:Selachian short stories