Author's Note: I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I had quite a bit of fun writing it. Yes, things are getting more confusing before they get better. For those of you clever enough to figure it out on your own, congratulations. For the rest of you like me that don't make leaps like this without more clues, hang tight: I promise explanations will come your way eventually. As always, reading and reviewing are much appreciated. The faster I get reviews, the faster I write and the sooner you get your update.

Previously on Paradox...

"Hold on... I've been here before."

"Yeah, so have I." Rose stepped up next to him, her brow furrowed. "But how is this possible? Doctor..?"

"I've been here, too." Other Ten's voice was grim. He looked back at Other Rose and Nine. "Satellite Five. But last I checked, it wasn't on the other side of a church door."

"Satellite Five is where you regenerated, right?" Other Rose walked over, wrapping her arms around Other Ten's waist.

"Yeah, but... Which Satellite Five are we on? When?"

Ten listened to the silence. He couldn't hear a sound from anywhere. "No one's here. It's empty. Wouldn't that put us right after the Dalek attack? No one was left alive, except for Jack, and he's rather impossible to kill now."

The others looked around them. They were on floor 500. The ice had melted from the first time they'd been here. This was definitely when he had sent Rose away to protect her and somehow, impossibly, she had come back. She'd nearly burned alive. And then he had terrified her by changing before he got the chance to tell her what was happening. The memory still burned vividly in his mind. He busied himself with his Master detector to keep the thoughts away and avoid looking at Rose.

The door between them and the church banged shut, making them all jump. Nine, the closest to the door, hurried back over to it, digging his heels into the grating as he tried to force it open. "No! My TARDIS is still back there!"

He jerked on it until he was out of breath, leaning against the steel door huffing. They all stared at him sadly.

"How did we get here?" Other Rose asked, still holding on to her Ten.

Ten looked between Other Ten and his Rose. "I have a theory that the Master has somehow created a spatio-temporal hyperlink, much like the clockwork robots who were after Madame du Pompadour. I'd wired this place up to have quite a bit of power. He could've punched a hole from there to here. Dunno what he's planning, but it can't be good."

Nine wheeled on him. "You want me to just leave her here? He's your enemy, not mine."

"The only way we can go is forward," Ten said softly. "Once we take care of the Master, we can go back and get your TARDIS."

He turned back, stepping over the coils he'd left sprawled out from the last time they were here. He could feel Nine's anger radiating towards him, but he ignored it completely. They wouldn't solve anything arguing up here, even if he usually was the first to argue.

"Seems like the Master is a few floors down. Well... Five."

"Think the lifts are still working? Jack was supposed to jam them so no one could get up after they'd set the traps." Other Ten walked towards the shaft, putting his hand against the censor. It chirped at him in a way that sounded like it wasn't going to let him in.

"The Daleks had to get up through the ventilation shafts," Rose volunteered, and he found himself smiling at the worry in her tone. "Are we gonna have to shimmy down them? I don't exactly have the ability to hover."

Other Ten pulled out his sonic screwdriver, sweeping the corners of the doors. The doors slid open and he stuck his head out into the shaft. Ten moved over next to him, doing the same. The lift was fifteen floors down. He stuck his screwdriver out, sonicking the cables. A clunking noise responded. "Jack did a good job jamming the lift. It isn't moving. Ah! Here we go!" He reached out along the side of the shaft, his fingers closing around metal bars for a ladder. He jumped onto the wall, grinning back at the three heads that poked through the shaft doors to look at him. "Not stuck after all. We can climb down five stories, I should think. Allons-y!"

He moved farther down the ladder to give them room. Other Ten stayed at the top, helping the two Roses across and down. Once they were out of his way, he called back to Nine and hopped onto the ladder. The five of them made slow progress down the ladder, the Doctors keeping an eye on the Roses.

"It's a lot easier goin' without embodiment of the plague followin' us on the ladder, yeah?" his Rose teased.

He looked up, catching her eyes over the curve of her bum and her shoulder, and grinned back at her. "We also don't have to argue with Cassandra now, do we?" They both burst out laughing, ignoring the slight smile of Other Ten and the confused looks of Other Rose and Nine. But slowly, the memories of what Cassandra had done in each of their bodies bubbled to the surface. Their laughter trailed off awkwardly. He hurried down the shaft quicker.

They reached the floor they needed not long after that. He hooked his arm through the rung, extending his sonic to open the lift doors. They slid open with little noise, and he hopped over, hanging onto the side as he helped Rose over.

Holding her up as she caught her breath, he looked around them. They were on level 495. Everything was still around them. The sounds of footsteps behind them as the others hopped down from the shaft echoed around the wide, empty room. But fear tingled in the back of his mind. This was where the Ann-Droid had been. This was where he had thought he had lost Rose, really lost her, for the first time.

"Doctor? Where do we go from here?" Other Rose's voice behind him stirred him from his thoughts. He pulled out his Time Lord detector once more. Fiddling with buttons and knobs, he looked from the screen to the space around them.

"He should be... right around the corner." He took a step forward towards the hallway.

And froze in his tracks at the creature coming around to greet him.

"Identify yourself."

All the blood drained out of his face. "No."

"It is the Doctor." The lone Dalek's voice was as full of hatred and fear as it ever was. "Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"NO!" He and Other Ten leapt in front of the Roses, shielding them with their own bodies. A high-pitched squeal sounded. Every cell in his body felt on fire as he was struck with the Dalek's ray.

"DOCTOR!" He heard the echo of Roses' voice in his ears as he collapsed to the ground, everything going white.

He sat up, gasping for air.

Shuddering gasps sounded next to him.

"Hold on... What?" He jumped to his feet, patting himself down and looking around him.

They were back on floor 500.

Nine was still leaning against the door that had just slammed closed.

The two Roses and his other self were all pale, looking between one another. "What?"

"How did we... end up back where we started?" Other Ten ran a shaky hand through his hair, looking around him.

"Something's not right here." Nine's grim voice made them turn around. "The Master has altered more than the spatio-temporal relativity of Satellite Five and the church."