**Notes: I hope I can get a few more of you back to reading this now that I'm posting again. Please review! **

Chapter Nine – Making Progress

Rose sat crumpled on the floor as she cried. The hopelessness of how impossible this task seemed threatened to suffocate her. She just wanted to run with her Doctors and help people. Saving the universe was what they always did and what they would always do. This unpleasant puzzle wasn't saving people or overthrowing an evil dictator. This was just trying to escape from some unknown adversary that apparently wanted to make her torturously watch as her husbands were chased and tossed about through a possibly unsolvable labyrinth. What was the point?

As her hearts sank further into despair, she felt both of her Doctors trying to calm her telepathically. Love and reassurance were the strongest and she basked in it as she tried to stop her tears. There was a tinge of confidence coming from Alex for a few minutes before she suddenly heard a beeping noise coming from her sonic screwdriver.

Rose pulled out the device and not knowing exactly what setting was required, she simply pressed the button in the hopes of it activating whatever was beeping at her. Before her eyes, she suddenly saw a video image of Alex with his usual manic grin. Rose couldn't help but smile in response before he began speaking.

"Hello!" Alex said with a reassuring smile. "I've sent both of your sonics a new program that I wrote. It should allow us all to send messages like this to each other while the telepathic dampening field is in place. I dislocated my shoulder when I fell, but it'll be alright. I don't know exactly what's got you so upset, Rose, but don't you worry. We are going to find you and get out of here, love. So, I've enabled communication and seem to be in yet another maze of hallways, what have you two got for information? The new setting to record and send is 647b."

The video stopped and Rose took a deep shuddering breath. Reassuring herself that everything would work out, she tried to organize her thoughts on what she knew about here so that she could tell them and maybe work out this puzzle. She found the setting that would allow her to record her own message and activated it.

Rose gave a watery smile as she began, "Hello. Umm, ok, I'm in a room and there aren't any doors that I can see. There is this thing though." She tried to point her sonic towards the game board in the hopes that they would be able to see it. "At first, I only saw the top layer of it, but I figured out how to open it after you fell, Alex. I think that the little brown and black pieces are the two of you. I can't move them at all, but they move on their own. I also can't move the red cube. When I tried to see if I could move the walls, the first time one of them just came off the board completely and I hoped that I could just take all of the walls out of your way, but it came back. And when it did, the little orange piece showed up with it. I can slide the walls around, but when I do, a bunch of the other walls change too and the last time I tried it, a hole opened up in the board. The bottom layer has a picture of a rose instead of a red cube, but who knows if this whole thing isn't just to trick you into trying to go somewhere other than finding me. I'm afraid to touch it again, in case I make things worse. I'm sorry that I put the orange thing on there and made you fall, my love. Maybe the two of you will have better ideas about what to do with this than I've had. I love you both."

Rose pressed the button on her screwdriver again and it flashed a little green light to say that it had sent its message successfully. Her message had rambled a bit, but she was still upset and had a lot of facts to convey. Afraid to cause any more damage, she sat back down on the carpet and waited for a reply.

Evander pondered the small amount of information that Alex had provided in his message. It was brilliant of him to think about setting up that communication link between their screwdrivers. Why hadn't he thought of that? Well, probably because he was so used to being the only person in the universe that had one. This was a good setting to have, even if they shouldn't usually need it because of their unbreakable telepathic link. He still had a headache from this stifling of their bond and it was distracting. He didn't have any new information that Alex didn't already know, so he decided not to send a message until he had some insight to provide.

What information had Alex provided? He had dislocated his shoulder when he landed in another labyrinth. Was it below where he was now? Or did he get teleported to an entirely different place? Tentatively reaching for the other Doctor, Evander felt like he might be below him. He would have reset and immobilized his shoulder right away. He was a doctor after all. It would take a day or two to heal completely though, especially without putting himself into a healing coma.

Finally, his screwdriver beeped again to indicate a new message. His hearts ached when he saw Rose's tearstained face and watery smile. The information she gave him though made him stop working though the maze to think about what to do. Whoever had put them in this game, had put her in the position of being partly responsible for what happened to them. They wanted her to think it was her fault if they were harmed. That might help narrow down who could be behind this, but that wasn't the most important thing right now.

Rose could move the walls, but it had unknown side effects when she did. The direction he was sensing Rose's presence seemed to be where that red cube was on the board, but not below him. Changing the settings on his sonic, he scanned to find where she was in relation to himself more accurately. She wasn't below him, she was on this level. And Alex seemed to be below him. So what was the image of the rose on the bottom level? Focusing his mind on the memory of the image she had sent of the levels, he looked over the maze itself. Ah! There was something important!

Evander flicked to the correct setting and began his message, "Ok, first things first, I love you, Rose. Please don't cry. Next, as well as feeling it, I also scanned and Rose is on this level, in the direction of the red cube. Alex, you are below me, so I presume you fell through to another floor of wherever we are. Rose, I noticed something about those levels though, darling. Take a close look at them and you'll see that the walls on every level match the others. When you change one of them, you change them all. Don't worry about moving any walls right now, because I saw the maze and I can get to the red cube as long as it stays that way. I will find both of you and we will get out of here."

He thought about where he had gone between the time that Rose had recorded her image of the labyrinth and where he was now. He only had to back track a little bit to follow the path that he saw would get him through. He still heard the creature growling, but it seemed to be in the opposite direction from where he was heading, so he tried not to worry about it too much. At the rate he was going, he should be able to reach her in about ten minutes. Feeling confident for the first time since their arrival, Evander began moving again, hope warming his hearts that this would be over soon.

Alex had stopped moving when he got Rose's message. Was he going the right way? The red cube on his level was in a different direction from where he was before. Should he be heading away from her now and call her location 'North?' This stupid puzzle was giving him a headache. No, that was the telepathic dampening field. Well, maybe both. That was when Evander's video came through.

Now though, he was well and truly confused. Evander said that Rose was on his level and Alex was below him, but Alex's scan showed Evander above him and Rose several levels below him. And the walls matched from level to level. And Rose could control the walls, but whenever she did, something else would happen. Someone had put her in a position of control and yet she had no control at all. They wanted her to feel guilty and afraid. The thought of that kind of manipulation of his wife just angered him more. Whoever was trying to make her feel like that, was not going to have a good day once he found them.

He concentrated on the image of the labyrinth that Rose had sent and compared it to where he had gone so far. He landed directly below Evander when he fell and had been following his sense of where Rose was. As he thought about that and assessed the turns he had made, he realized that he was still heading towards the red cube. The walls matched vertically on the board, but in reality, the red cubes were all in the same corner. He needed to map out a path for himself to the red cube on this level in the hopes that it would somehow get him where he needed to go.

As he worked on that with one part of his magnificent brain, he started to record another message. "I've worked out a bit of this, but there is still something that doesn't make sense. First, what I've worked out. Looking at the maze you sent, love, and following my sense of where you are seems to have me heading towards the red cube on my level. That tells me that they are actually all aligned vertically. While the walls match based on the orientation of the boards, they are flipped around on the actual levels in relation to the cubes. For that reason, I'm going to keep heading towards the red cube on my level and I've worked out a path as well, so don't worry about moving any walls for me. What I haven't worked out is this, my scans do show that Evander is above me, however they show that Rose is below me. We'll have to chew on that one for a while I think. In the meantime, Rose, sit tight and we will come to you. Don't worry about the game board, but check the room for any sign of doors or clues as to who might be behind all of this. I'll see you soon."

As he finished his message and got the little green light that told him it had been sent, he started down the path that he had worked out to get him through this maze. It would take him a while, since they had been working on going in a different direction on the level above. But now that he had a map in his head, it wouldn't be too difficult...he hoped.

Rose finally felt like she could relax a little after listening to her Doctors working through the problem. As long as the walls didn't start moving on their own again, they should be able to get to her relatively easily now. Alex had given her a job to do though, she needed to search this room more thoroughly. She had looked around a bit before, but stopped when she came across the most prominent thing in the room (namely the game board).

Starting at the section of panelling just to the right of the game board, Rose began checking the walls for hidden doors, buttons or writing; anything that might be important. She worked her way through each panelled section, clockwise around the room. When she got to the fourth panel, she found a small, square button approximately half way up the wall. Despite her worry of once again making things worse, she knew what her husbands would do and pressed the button.

The wood panel above turned into a display screen of some kind and a dark figure appeared. The features were so blurred that she couldn't even tell if it was a man or woman addressing her. Rose wasn't sure if the Doctors would see this, so she activated the recording setting on her screwdriver again. In an obviously distorted voice, the unrecognizable person spoke, "Hello, Rose. So nice of you to drop in. It has been amusing watching your boys make their way through my little playground. While I realize that you were never told the rules, that bit of communicating was cheating, so now there will be consequences. Just like when you tried to remove the walls from my labyrinth." There was an ominous pause as the figure seemed to consider what kind of punishment would be appropriate.

"Well, the Scottish Doctor is being hunted and the pinstriped one has a boo-boo, so I think we'll give you something to keep you busy, my dear, wilting Rose. After all, you aren't playing with the game board anymore. How about a time limit, for you to find the door?" With an ominous and distorted laugh, the display went blank and was once again just a wooden panel.

Rose looked around worriedly. There was a door to find, but he or she had said something about a time limit. She didn't see a clock or anything, so what was...? Her thoughts were cut off by suddenly seeing the floor flooding with slowly rising water. Cursing loudly, she made sure that her sonic screwdriver picked that up on the video, and pressed the button to send this message to her Doctors. She doubted that this particular communication would be considered 'against the rules' since most of their adversaries wanted the Doctor to see the threats being made.

Rose steeled herself and immediately got to work continuing her search of every wall panel around the room. She wasn't sure exactly how long it would take for the water level to become dangerous, but it likely wouldn't be what most sane people would consider enough time.

As the ice cold water began to soak through her shoes, Rose pushed aside the panic that threatened to surface and made herself work faster.