A/N:Eesh. This chapter's a tad insane with action. Hopefully it's not too manic for your reading delight. Things should calm down by next chappie. As much as they can for a Doctah in danger!
"O-kay," said The Doctor-10 within the momentarily afforded pause, "I think if we all just remain very calm we can work things out."
"Calm, yes. Good thinking, Mr Ferret."
The Doctor-10 glared at The Doctor-11. "You, stop talking. There's nothing useful you can add to this situation while you're hallucinating."
"Hallucinating?" Simulated Ten parroted. "Brilliant! He must be having a whale of a time!"
"As am I," the man with the white-blonde hair sneered. "Three Doctors of my own. Is it my birthday already?"
"You," The Doctor-10 pointed his own blue sonic at him, "are impossible. No, sorry, that's too flattering. You're broken. Simulation corruption. Might want to cross-reference the data for the hair and the overly casual clothing."
Rory kept his gaze switching around the room, lingering least upon Jack after his initial gasp of horror – less from the Captain's state of undress than the red, welted word 'Mine' that had been scrawled all over his exposed skin. "Doctor, who is he?"
"A dead man."
"Certain he's not real?"
The Doctor-10 nodded. "Must be. Extracted from memories and rebuilt with a distorted image, most likely on account of the treatment of the dreamer. Ohhh Jack, why him?"
The Master grinned. "Where's your renowned compassion, Doctor? He's only human. As for your claims of flawed projection, I reject them. I am not mapped solely from that mutation of TARDIS energy."
"Don't talk rubbish. Where else could you get the information for -?" The Doctor-10 trailed off, following The Master's stare to the man in the wheelchair. "No. You died. I held you in my arms and you let yourself die!"
"He came back," said Jack. "Older you said he came back."
"You already suspected," The Master snorted. "All those little glimpses you got when you crashed skulls with your future self. You saw me."
Once more The Doctor-10 found himself turning vehement eyes upon The Doctor-11. "How? When?"
The Master put a finger to his lips. "Spoilers."
As The Doctor-11 flinched at the word, there came a loud, exaggerated yawn from across the hall.
"Sorry," Simulated Ten blurted. "Not that I don't love a bit of a chat, bit of a ramble, bit of a circumlocutory, loquacious spew of continuous nonsense because, let's face it, that's all part of being The Doctor – but all this…timey…wimey boring exposition isn't exactly getting us anywhere, is it? We're not here to solve all your problems in the universe out there. We're here strictly at your pleasure. You want information, try a library. Ooh, I know. There's this planet I highly recommend -."
The Doctor-11 snarled suddenly, "If you're here at our pleasure then it's my strongest desire right now that you get out. I don't know who the hell thinks they're playing with me but it stops here. You've had your fun, but now I'm getting angry and if you know anything at all about me then you'll know here is where you should be very, very careful. Back off and let us go."
Simulated Ten giggled. "Struck a nerve there, didn't I? Good work on the threat, though I have to say, might be a little more intimidating if you weren't shouting at the wall."
"Shut up," The Doctor-10 snapped. He stepped further into the room, keeping the two sonic screwdrivers aimed at the simulations. "Rory, go get other me and wheel him back here. Any movement from those two and they'll find themselves rapidly dispersed."
Rory obeyed, creeping over to The Doctor-11, making sure to keep as much distance from the artificial stranger as possible. He reached out and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair then cast a glance over his shoulder at the sealed doorway behind them. In his forethought to check for an ambush, he caught sight of the painting The Doctor-11 had not seen.
"Oh, guhh – um, Doctor, have you seen the picture behind us? Don't look, just, if you haven't, best if you don't."
The Doctor-11 sighed. "Rory, it's just a painting, and not even a real one. Ignore it."
"Right," Rory replied, beginning to drag the chair. "I'll just… spend the next week trying to unsee it."
Curiosity and The Master's curling lip forced The Doctor-11 to relent and turn his head. "What -?" A small gasp escaped his throat, followed by a constrained utterance. "Gosh, that's inventive."
Unable to resist, The Doctor-10 looked up. His face contorted with disgust. "Ohh, Jack!"
It was all the distraction the simulations needed. The Master roared, blue energy crackling at his fingertips. Before The Doctor-10 could zap him, a glowing aura rippled around his simulated copy. An invisible force yanked both sonics out of his hands. With horror, he observed Simulated Ten rise from the floor in a blaze of light. The Doctor-11 snapped to attention, and saw The Master.
"Rory, duck! Now!"
Electricity burst from The Master's palms, his eyes burning anime white. When Rory dropped behind the wheelchair for cover, the simulated timelord snarled and drew his hands downward, aiming instead for the chair's occupant. The Doctor-11 yelled in silence as the stream of energy coursed into him. His attacker was not allowed the satisfaction for long, however. Having borrowed time to tear free of his restraints, Jack leapt upon The Master and broke the energy flow.
"Doctor!" Rory scrambled up and set about removing The Doctor-11's bonds. The nurse in him had made to check the timelord's vital signs but it seemed The Doctor-11 was well enough to bat his hands aside. Not that Rory would have had a clue how to determine irregularities in a binary vascular system. He stepped back to allow The Doctor-11 to get out of the chair and turned toward the exit. Rory's jaw dropped at the sight of the deadly, angelic form of Simulated Ten. "Doctor, by any chance are your hallucinations somehow contagious?"
The Doctor-11 steadied himself, pushing past the earlier belief that his feet were jammed within garden vegetables. "No. Why?"
Rory pointed. "I don't think he should be flying."
"Ah," said The Doctor-11.
Sure enough, The Doctor-10 was being chased back and forth across the width of the room by his simulated self, who was soaring in pursuit as though he wore an invisible jet-pack. The Doctor-11 wrung his hands with anxiety, his gaze darting from his younger self to Jack, who, to his credit, was doing a sterling job of pressing The Master's face into the floor whilst in the buff.
"That's really not very good at all, erm," he ran a hand through his hair, "Rory, would you just go and distract 'flying me' for a moment? Won't be a tick, something needs sorting out."
"What? But… how?"
"I'm sure you'll think of something. I have every faith in you." Not waiting for any further remark, The Doctor-11 rushed off toward the Valiant's flight deck.
"Right…" Rory winced. "Something. Do… something." He hurried over to the end of the room where the two tenth incarnations of The Doctor were in confrontation and shifted around behind the airborne figure. "Erm, excuse me…" he began, a little too quietly. He tried again. "Oi! Mr Floaty Doctor… man!"
The Doctor-10 shouted urgently past Simulated Ten. "Rory, what are you doing? Get away, he's dangerous! You don't know what he's capable of!"
Simulated Ten grinned. "Oh, what? You mean something like this?" He waved a hand and The Doctor-10 was flung through the air, back smacking into the wall. The Doctor-10 gave a guttural cry and slid back down to floor level, bashing his elbow on a fire extinguisher as he fell.
"Gahhh… of all the me's to fantasize into existence," he groaned, then curled his lip in consideration. "Well, all-powerful… god-like … the power to move anything with the merest thought. Makes sense, I suppose."
Chuckling, Simulated Ten hooked his fingertips in the air and twisted his wrist, pulling The Doctor-10 toward the middle of the room with invisible strings. He smirked at Rory and clawed his other hand, claiming another puppet. With a sharp clap, he brought the human and the timelord crashing together.
"Sorry!" The Doctor-10 cried, moments before they were thrown apart, slammed onto the floor and made to spin in circles.
Meanwhile, The Doctor-11 frantically jabbed at buttons on a control panel he had located at the top of the stairs. Beyond the windows of the flight deck, he could see clouds and sky miles above the Skagerrak strait. The illusion was perfect. Seeking to create one himself, the currently bowtie-less timelord's fingers danced across the touch-screen. Managing to isolate Jack with a remote holographic beam, he downloaded an exact replica of the Captain's clothes.
"Ahh, that's more like it," Jack exclaimed, hauling The Master to his feet by his hood. "Come on, trouble."
The Master growled. "Oh, I'm really going to enjoy getting back at you. What a team we'll make. The timelord with the insatiable hunger and the freak that can never die. I could live off you forever."
"Yeah, yeah. Sorry to disappoint, but I wasn't impressed by our first date let alone our second. You're just not my type."
"I think… I'm going… to be sick!" Rory bellowed from the floor, the room still whizzing past his eyes.
"Just… hold on!" The Doctor-10 barked in response, his fingers screeching on the slippery floor in his efforts to stop his forced rotation. "I'm sure… if my other self's … not too BUSY… he might… actually make himself… useful!"
"What ever can you mean?" Simulated Ten pouted, his white shoes touching down upon the long table that was the room's main centrepiece. "I'm wonderfully useful. I can make people do whatever I want and I fear absolutely nothing! I bet I could make you explode from the inside out. We could give it a trial run. What do you say?"
"No… thanks!" The Doctor-10 shouted back. "And I wasn't… talking… argh… to you!"
Having taken the hint, The Doctor-11 was already creeping up behind the glimmering, nigh omnipotent creature. He was a little amazed that he had managed not to betray his presence, especially after tripping over a cat that wasn't there halfway across the room. Now he stood, raising the sonic screwdriver he had picked up and aimed it directly at Simulated Ten's back.
"And, take that!" he cried bombastically, pressing the button to disperse the projectrons.
Simulated Ten paused in manipulating his whirling victims to turn and stare at The Doctor-11. His eyebrows arched; incredulous.
"Er… hello…" The Doctor-11 said in a very small voice. "Apparently my sonic isn't working at full capacity."
The Doctor-10 grumbled, staggering upright, a feat that took several tries to remain vertical. Riddled with annoyance, he snapped at The Doctor-11. "It's because you're holding a banana!"
Forcing clearer vision, The Doctor-11's face fell as he saw it to be true. Simulated Ten burst out laughing.
"Where the hell did he get a banana?" Rory burbled, see-sawing his arms as he wobbled to his feet.
"I think it rolled out of my pocket," said The Doctor-10. "Never mind that. Run!"
"I can't even stand up!"
Fortunately, the simulated tenth incarnation was now intent on giving his attention to the real eleventh. He gave an awful grin, raised his arm and scrunched his hand into a fist. The banana exploded.
The Doctor-11 yelped and skittered back, only to feel a sudden restriction about his throat. Gasping, he tried to prise off the unseen hand choking him. His eyes locked with the insane simulation's. Still grinning, the image of his younger self gestured and made him rise from the floor, forced him higher and dragged him across to hover ten feet above the table-top.
"Stop it!" The Doctor-10 demanded.
Jack roared, "Let him go!"
"Oooh," Simulated Ten winced mockingly. "That's an unfortunate choice of words. Let him go? Are you really sure about that?"
"Doctor!" Rory called, helplessly.
"I'm… fine … Rory," The Doctor-11 coughed.
Jack shoved The Master roughly in front of him and locked his arm around his throat. "Put him down unharmed or I'll snap his neck," he challenged.
The simulated Doctor's expression turned sour. He lowered The Doctor-11 to five feet, and then everything seemed to happen at once –
Rory bolted across to the fire extinguisher, tearing it out of its bent bracket. The Doctor-10 leapt to retrieve his sonic screwdriver from the floor. Jack was preparing to loosen his grip upon the copy of a man who had tortured him for a year but felt him yanked out of his arms and cast aside like a rag-doll. The Doctor-10 looked up in panic as Simulated Ten stretched out his arm toward Jack.
"No…" The Doctor-11 croaked.
"NO!" The Doctor-10 screamed as his older self was dropped in the same instant that a force slammed into Jack. It swept him clean up the stairs and smashed him out of the Valiant's window. The Doctor-11 smacked down upon the table-top, cracking a spider-web of glass beneath him.
Wasting no more time, Rory rushed at Simulated Ten and blasted him with the extinguisher. The latter consequently gave a harrowing wail and his image began to flicker. His frozen projectrons rattled, suspended in mid-air, before they fell and bounced off the table, cancelling their signal entirely.
The Doctor-10 scrambled for the flight deck, teeth clenched with anxiety. He searched the false skies in vain. "He's gone."
Rory helped The Doctor-11 up and made for the stairs. The Master attempted to intercept them but was promptly met with the nozzle of a fire hose and forced to dissipate. Threat removed, Rory discarded the weapon and drew level with The Doctor-10. "He can't be gone," he disputed. "We're not actually in the air! It's just a room."
"Not to Jack," The Doctor-10 said, bitterly. "He's been made to believe he's fallen thousands of feet into the Skagen Channel." As he spoke, the scene of the Valiant faded around them into plain white walls. "The room is registering its guest as deceased, reverting to basic setting." As they watched, the prone form of Captain Jack Harkness revealed itself a few yards ahead. Never having truly lost it, he still wore his military ensemble.
The Doctor-11, whose bowtie had reappeared, looked at the still figure sadly. "Come on. Prove me wrong, like you always do," he urged.
But Jack did not move.
Rory hurried forward, preparing to resuscitate him but The Doctor-10 held him back.
"Leave him. The impact with the water would have broken every bone in his body. He would have been killed instantly. The only way he's coming back is the way only Jack does, or not at all."
"It's not real," Rory snapped. He broke free and came face to face with The Doctor-11, his Doctor.
"Rory," he said gently.
"Get out of my way. I have to see," Rory insisted. "He's your friend and you both just talk like he isn't lying there. Like he isn't -." He broke off. "Doctor…" He stared past the eleventh Doctor's shoulder at the body of Jack Harkness. What looked like pixels seemed to shimmer all over him.
The Doctor-11 spun on his heel to observe. He gasped and ran toward the Captain. Too late – Jack gleamed with light and vanished. "Teleport!" The Doctor-11 announced. "Medical emergency, the system extracted him from his room." As though spurred into excitement by this discovery, he began scurrying about the character-less room, inspecting every lack of detail. Under the baffled and disapproving watch of Rory and his younger self, he bounded off to where the long table had once been, kicked aside the box-shaped trolley that had once been a wheelchair, and crouched down to poke at the silver spheres littering the ground. "Good thinking, Rory. Froze their circuits up a treat."
"I don't understand how. None of it was real."
"Wasn't it?" The Doctor-10 sauntered over and pointed out the forgotten red cylinder that had rolled into a corner of the room. "Room full of fake things and you, Rory, picked out the one thing that couldn't possibly be allowed not to exist. A fire extinguisher. Company policy; got to be a real one. Who knows? There might be a fire!"
The Doctor-11 scooped up some of the projectrons and tipped them carefully into his pocket. That done, he stood and began to move for the exit. "Right, we need to get ourselves to another console. This one's shut itself down. Come on, we'll stop off in the other rooms and grab ourselves another extinguisher or two. Rory, you nab that one."
"What about Jack?"
The Doctor-11 stopped; walked back to Rory. He bore the brunt of the young nurse's sour glare and smiled fondly. "Rory, I promise you I'm going to fix this. Trust me." He clasped Rory's shoulder reassuringly and set off once again, collecting his sonic as he went.
Hands deep in his pockets, The Doctor-10 drew alongside Rory. He watched his other self go and offered the fire extinguisher he had retrieved. "Well, I sound very sure of myself."
Rory shrugged. "The longer I know The Doctor, the greater lengths he goes to save people. I've seen him restore the universe, challenge a thousand armies in the sky with only words… blow up a whole Cybership fleet to help me save my wife. He nearly died trying to save my daughter from a time-travelling robot who was, to be fair, punishing her for trying to assassinate him… and then he ended up marrying her…" He shook his head. "You're brilliant. The Doctor is amazing, but you're also one very scary alien. Between you and me, Doctor, you're the kindest, cleverest person I have ever known but I'm worried the weight of your past is dragging you slowly into darkness. If he can't save Jack, or if someone closer to him is lost and he can't save them… I don't know what will happen, what he might do. Even he can't save everyone." Rory took the fire extinguisher and followed after The Doctor-11.
The Doctor-10 stared solemnly at the doorway. "You're not wrong," he murmured. He stooped to pick up the unharmed banana that had reappeared on the white floor and carried on walking. There was a moment in which he hesitated and blinked. "Hang on. He married your daughter?" Rory was too far ahead to hear the outburst but he made it anyway. "But that means -." He ran to catch up and skidded out into the central hallway.
"Get back inside!" The Doctor-11 yelled urgently. He was waving frantically from the curve of the corridor. Rory was still within the suite, having withdrawn under The Doctor-11's command.
"What? What is it?" The Doctor-10 hissed.
"Dalek! It's right 'round the corner." The Doctor-11 flattened against the wall, appearing to calculate which way he wanted to run.
The Doctor-10 took a breath, poked his head out and drew it back in as swiftly as possible. Almost immediately his face reappeared through the doorway, mouth puckered in an unimpressed manner. He walked casually out into the hallway.
"What are you doing?" The Doctor-11 yelped.
"Rory," said The Doctor-10 in an airy voice. "Come out here a second, would you?"
Rory obeyed, leaned out and blinked.
"I think it might be best if I lead for a bit. Your Doctor's not entirely recovered from being brain-muddled."
"What?" The Doctor-11 asked, exasperated. "Why?"
"Your Dalek…" The Doctor-10 began.
Rory finished for him. "It's a pot plant."