Disclaimer: I live in America. Doctor Who is British. So I can't own it. Any writing is done for personal amusement, for no monetary or physical compensation.
Note: Reviews aren't illegal, you know. I can see who reads this...I'm a ninja! No, but I can see everyone who puts this on the 'Follow' or 'Favorite' list, and, well, that's quite a few of you. Many thanks for that one reviewer! Now the rest of you, pretty please? Tell me if it's good or bad, what you want to happen, what you don't want to happen...
I had a wonderful idea a moment ago. Besides the fact that I finally figured out what actually is happening in this story (I have a bad guy! And a plot! And a creepy philosophical moment coming up! Be afraid or excited or both!), I decided that I'll include an epilogue-like chapter. Or two. The second of which will contain a reference to this new series, series 8...can anyone guess what I'll do?
Author's Note: And, once again, we're back to Rory. He has a wonderfully skeptical tone that I love to employ, but the action will start really picking up in the next few chapters.
"Hold on…so there is a room up there?" Rory asked, squinting. The ceiling had evaporated into a glass-like material; above, Rory could see a new set of lights and a white ceiling.
The Doctor grinned. "Yes, there is. Now, how about giving me a boost?" he asked, pointing at a hatch in the ceiling to the right…a hatch that hadn't been present in the actual lit room.
"Now we've got it! Now we're getting somewhere!" The Doctor exclaimed, rubbing his hands together as he looked down between two forks in the tunnels.
"You said five minutes ago. And ten minutes before that..." Rory muttered.
"You know, you should work on your snide comments, Roricus. I can hear you perfectly well from where I'm standing..."
"Crouching."
"Ah, excuse me, 'crouching,'" the Doctor responded, rolling his eyes and then choosing to go down the left ventilation pathway.
They had been walking. Up in the ventilation shaft. Which, Rory, would admit, was like another set of rooms, these ones without doors and with a bright, white light instead of a dying reddish glow. But the ceiling was about eight centimeters too short, and, thus, they had to bend down ever so slightly-just enough to annoy them-to walk along.
To be honest, Rory thought he'd rather have enjoyed staying on the bottom floor, rather than traversing this mysterious area. At least down there his back didn't hurt.
"How much farther?" he asked, as innocently as he could, when they came upon another crossroads, this one with four perpendicular paths. The top floor seemed to be filled with long, twisting hallways, not that he had any idea where they were leading toward.
"I told you, I can't get a distance reading on this thing."
"What is that thing, exactly?"
"You were there when I made it!"
"You were speaking too quickly! And throwing random rubber bands all over the place!"
The Time Lord seemed a little embarrassed. "Yes, well, I picked them all up in the end." He shook his head. "But you should have been paying attention. Amy would have been."
"And Amy would be hitting you right now," Rory reminded him.
The Doctor looked like he was about to argue, but quickly thought better of it. "I think I'll give her the benefit of the doubt just this once. This is a...a...a Melovian Cartascope!" He brandished a strange device, made, Rory was ninety percent positive, entirely out of rubberbands, one old battery, and the front frame of an empty watch.
"Really?"
"Erm...well, I do think I saw one like this in the central market in Meloviganz once, but...the point, Rory, is that it will work almost as well as if it were the real thing."
"And how would a Melodramatic Cartacopter thing work, if we had one?"
"I told you this already! Can't you listen?" Rory glared. "Fine, fine...but don't think I'm not going to have a talk with your wife about you. A Cartascope is like a magnet, but it's entirely attracted to energy."
With a flourish of his hand, the Doctor started walking down the middle path. "In easier terms, Rory, it's taking us to the power source of this place. However, I can't see how much further we have to go."
That sounded like what the Doctor had said earlier. Rory had remembered it-he wasn't as dim as the Doctor liked to make out-but he had noticed a common theme in their travels with the alien: he didn't always tell the truth. And, when he did, he barely ever told everything that they probably should have been told. Like the fact that there was a wormhole-like crack that stole one's existence if entered. Or the fact that he had kissed his wife.
But this time, the Doctor's explanation held. Rory breathed a sigh of relief; it was a lot easier to trust the Doctor than to try to condemn him for lying. "Can't you make something that would just lead to Amy? Through the Tardis key, or through body heat, or something?"
"Do you really think I could do that?"
Mr. Williams Pond answered truthfully. "Yes."
"...thanks. I think. But even if I did do that, what would be the fun?"
"...I'd have my wife back. You're not the least bit worried, are you?"
The Doctor didn't pause at the next intersection; instead, he plowed straight through the left-most path. White light stayed consistent. "I am, just a tad. But we're up here, which I'm sure whatever trapped us wasn't expecting. We have the upper hand. Literally."
At that moment, something appeared in front of them, in their path.
A door. A bright, metal door, complete with a pleasant handle. If handles could be pleasant. Rory had been starting to miss seeing common handles...
The two men exchanged a look; both faces were set in determination. Without another quip, the Doctor pocketed the Cartoscope, took a firm grasp of the door handle, and twisted.
The door opened silently, without a whisper of a squeak. Or maybe it did squeak, and that trite noise was lost in the ruckus that broke over them.
Screams. Cries. Laughter.
Noise. Noise, that had been in the woods, outside the Tardis, outside the building.
It had originated here.
Clutching their ears, the Doctor and Rory passed through the first real doorway they had seen in a long time. Inside, as if to contrast the chaos of the noise, was an eerily orderly sight. Metal cases, bright lights; on the far wall, a large, blank screen. The noise didn't seem to have an originating point. The ceiling, for some reason, was higher; they were able to walk without bending, they could stretch their arms upward and only barely touch the ceiling, if they so desired.
As they got further in, the noise grew louder, but clearer. Words could be heard among the screams and the cries. People calling out for someone lost, a girl crying as she comforted a friend, two children giggling in embarrassment. Every time one of these sounds became understandable, it would be replaced by the next.
This was chaos, but, in a strange way, it was ecstasy to listen. It was loud, but at the same time, Rory had a feeling that it could be much, much louder. He wasn't sure he wanted to be there when that happened.
"Can we leave?" he shouted at the Doctor, unsure if his friend could hear him over this cacophony. But the Doctor seemed to get the message; after a quick run around the room, and apparently not discovering anything, he left the way they had entered.
Back in the silence of the hall, both let out a sigh of relief. "What was that?" Rory gasped, pointing at the room. With the door closed, the sound was once again impossible to hear.
"I've...I've got an idea. But before I test it, I want to find Amy, and then figure out who's running this place."
"I like that plan."
"Oh, that's not a plan, Rory," the Doctor said, looking with unveiled distress at his sonic screwdriver. "It's a goal. I would have a really good plan, but the sonic screwdriver is so close to out of power...it has enough for one last flicker, but then we're on our own."
"So now it can't even screw in screws?"
"Hah hah, very funny for an ancient Roman."
"Doctor?" Rory was looking at the ground. "Does it have enough to make this floor see-through?" He remembered a little earlier, when they had first come up to this top floor, and the Doctor had made the floor transparent.
"Well, yes. Why this floor?"
"Because I thought I heard something. From below us."
"Nonsense. There's nothing..." The sound came again. A rough thumping came from directly below. "...below us..."
With a tilt of his head, the Doctor gingerly gripped the sonic screwdriver and pointed it determinedly at the ground. An electronic buzzing filled the air as its green light flashed; after a couple of seconds, it stopped completely, the last of its charge completely gone.
But it had managed to make most of the floor transparent. And, through the invisible floor beneath them, there came to view a darker room, illuminated with red light and grey walls. But that wasn't all that was visible.
Below were two people, one of which he was ninety-three percent positive was his wife.
