A/N: Grr. Won't let me review reply, now. I swear, there's always something wrong with this site :o But thanks Isilarma, I am acknowledging you :D You're the only reason I'm posting right now to be honest, heh :P Hope I don't disappoint.

Chapter 13 - 998

Time slowed to a crawl as the darkness advanced but the Doctor's voice broke through the cloud of indecision, jogging them into action.

"Move!" the Doctor yelled, and began to crawl as fast as he could towards the direction of the singing voice.

"Zagreus comes when time's a maze... And all of history's weeping..."

"Here!" the Doctor suddenly shouted, stopping in front of a square piece of grating that afforded a view into another hospital room below... Don was alone, lying in a bed linked to a dozen machines, his eyes vacantly staring across the room, singing quietly to himself.

With the Doctor and Jack's combined efforts the hatch opened and the Doctor beckoned for Jack to drop down first, spotting that the shaft seemed to be a whole lot darker where they had come from than it had been ten seconds ago...

"Zagreus waits at the end of the world... For Zagreus is the end of the world..."

Jack hit the floor, and held up his arms to receive Rose. The Doctor quickly manoeuvred the unconscious woman to ease her down through the hole where Jack received her and moved out of the Doctor's way. The Time Lord glanced up at the end of the tunnel... and now he could see the Darkness quite clearly moving towards him, metres away...

"His time is the end of time... And his moment Time's undoing..."

He dropped down into the room, almost falling over sideways as he landed. Within seconds he ran to Don in the bed and rested his fingers on the metacrisis' temples, closing his eyes.

"Doctor?" Don whispered.

"Yeah, it's me," the Doctor replied.

"My head hurts."

"I know," the Doctor said gently. "I'm gonna fix you. I promise."

There was an ominous creak from the ventilation shaft above... and the walls themselves were beginning to groan. Within a matter of seconds the Darkness began to seep through the walls, as if the walls themselves were bleeding...

The Doctor quickly disconnected the metacrisis from the machines and pulled him onto his feet, coaxing the confused man to follow him. Together the three ran over to the door and much to their relief it was indeed open, and they dived through to meet a very surprised-looking security guard.

"You're...!" the guard began in alarm, but the Doctor was not in the mood for this.

"Look!" he yelled, pointing into the room... and the security guard froze on the spot.

"That's..." he began in a garble, but the Doctor simply began to run with Don, and Jack – still carrying Rose – hot on his heels. The security guard took one look at the Darkness, then at the running company, and decided very quickly to join them as the Darkness washed out of the room and began to chase them down the corridor...

They made it to a stairwell and they finally paused for air, constantly looking back over their shoulders to see if the Darkness was coming... but all there was was a perfectly lit and completely empty corridor.

"We keep heading downwards," the Doctor was saying, leaning against the wall with his hand on his chest, his brow furrowed in pain. "Get out of the building, get to Canary Wharf..."

The security guard suddenly looked up, his brow furrowed. "Canary Wharf?" he repeated in a question.

The Doctor nodded furiously. "My ship's there."

"... But that's been completely consumed by the Darkness," the guard said, a little apprehensively.

"What?"

"Most of London has... We're on the outskirts, but it's never moved this fast before..."

"It's gaining power," the Doctor said by way of explanation. "Before in Canary Wharf it was doing exactly what it's doing now, except it was so weak it was doing it very, very slowly and had a minor effect on me and Sarah..."

"But what about the TARDIS?" Jack asked anxiously.

"She's still alive," the Doctor assured him. "I would know if she'd died."

Suddenly there was a moaning sound from the floor... Rose was beginning to come around. The Doctor bolted over to her within seconds, cupping her cheek and gazing straight into her eyes. They flickered open, and a huge smile appeared on her face at the sight of him.

"Don!" she whispered and instantly reached up, grabbed him around the neck and planted a kiss on his lips. The Doctor quickly made a humming protest and held up his hands, trying to pull away, but Rose forced his lips to her's. After a moment she stopped... and then caught his expression.

"Wrong one," the Doctor informed her politely with an apologetic shrug.

Rose blushed as bright a colour as her name suggested. "Sorry," she muttered and made to sit up... and then caught sight of her husband currently standing next to the stairs staring at the far wall without even blinking. "What's wrong with him?"

"The shock ripped his brain back open," the Doctor informed her solemnly. "I need to get him to the TARDIS..." He paused for a moment, and glanced between Jack and Rose as he lowered his voice. "... And possibly perform brain surgery."

"Anything," Rose pleaded as Jack gazed at the Doctor silently. "Anything, just please save him."

The Doctor nodded. "I'll try."

He offered her a hand up, which she took and hauled herself onto two feet, grabbing him in a tight hug of gratitude and just plain relief. When they parted, for the first time she noticed Jack – and her gaze instantly dropped to his feet. He grinned and waggled all fleshy ten toes at her. She hugged him as well before moving over to get Don.

"Do you know where they took our possessions?" the Doctor asked the security guard. He nodded.

"Sixth floor, Doctor's Lounge," he replied, and readily produced a key. "Got the key."

They found the Doctor's Lounge with surprising ease, and the Darkness was taking its time trying to get through to them from the upper floor. Not that this made them any more complacent.

All the same, they took the opportunity to try and calm themselves down as they got dressed back into their proper clothes, and the Doctor was truly elated to have his sonic screwdriver back. He really didn't have the stature to kick down doors as swiftly as Jack did.

Hardly anyone spoke, the atmosphere tense between them like it had never been before. Even the guard, who had never met them before, could tell it wasn't normally this way. The situation was out of control, and didn't they know it.

By the time they were ready, the Darkness was beginning to seep through the cracks in the ceiling, dripping down from the corners of the room. With haste they quickly left the lounge and made a beeline to the stairwell, commencing the hunt for an exit...

Only to realise the Darkness had not started at the top of the building.

As they stood on the stairwell of the sixth floor looking down towards the fifth floor, all they could see was a mass of black goo flooding the stairwell, the stairs themselves lost to the Darkness' hunger...

It was coming down from the seventh floor, and coming up from the fifth floor. They were completely stranded...

No one dared to speak, just looking at the Doctor who was still staring down at the sight without any hint of emotion on his face. In truth, they were waiting for his killer plan. He always had one. Didn't he?

"Of course!" the Doctor suddenly yelled, spinning around to meet them with a finger in the air, a bright grin on his face. "I completely forgot!"

"What?" Jack asked.

The Doctor was far too overexcited to bother to reply with any kind of sense, so instead he was off in a shot, pushing past them back into the hall of the sixth floor. The others looked at each other for a moment, before they spontaneously burst into massive grins and ran after the Doctor. They followed him to the end room, where he was already busy sonicking the end window to make the glass crack.

"What is it?" Rose asked, hand-in-hand with Don.

"998, 998, 998!" the Doctor shouted happily, suddenly spinning around on the spot and pointing at each of them in turn. "Remember that number, very important number! 998! Don't forget it!"

He turned back to the window, and prodded the glass. It shattered outwards on his touch, leaving a hole as tall as the Doctor was open to the ground far, far below. The Doctor gave a happy giggle and threw his arms in the air, turning back to them.

"Doctor!" Jack yelled, unable to stop himself laughing. "What're you planning?"

"Right, so," the Doctor began, climbing up into the empty frame of the window, checking the edges. "This Darkness, it's from the void. It's basically unstoppable, we know it wants an eye, but it won't tell us what eye this is. And because it isn't telling us what this eye is, we can't help it. And it's going to look all over the universe for this eye, growing more and more powerful as it gets bigger and bigger... It's spreading over this Universe, consuming everything – matter, time, the lot. Soon the whole of history will be eaten, and the future too. It's going to destroy everything that ever existed or will exist in this universe... And then it'll spread out across the rest of the parallel universes and eat all of them too. Everything... and I mean literally everything, every universe, the whole of time, the entire cosmos and the whole of creationwill cease to exist..."

"I'm not seeing the happy factor, here," the guard suddenly piped up from the side, frowning slightly.

The Doctor suddenly stopped examining the window frame and looked at him. "What's your name?"

The guard blinked in surprise at being asked. "Nigel."

The Doctor beamed. "Nigel! I can always trust a Nigel. Nigel, 998. You got that?"

Nigel nodded, staring at the Doctor as though he were insane.

"Good," the Doctor said, and began checking the frame again. "As I was saying, taking over existence bla bla bla... but, the TARDIS has an emergency program..." He stopped again, and looked at them. "Actually, you'd better stand back. Right back. Back against the wall."

The others obliged, increasingly becoming more and more confused with every passing second. But that was a reassuring normality with the Doctor, so they went with it.

"Good, now don't move under any circumstance, okay?" the Doctor said, and they all nodded back at him – well all except Don, who was just gazing at his lookalike blankly. But the Doctor didn't seem to notice him as he continued his rant. "The emergency program is activated by that number, 998. The TARDIS is programmed to make one trip for each of the passengers to any time and any place in the Universe they want..." He stopped examining the window for the third time, but he was no longer smiling. "For the time when there's nowhere else you'd rather be when you know the end is coming."

Rose was frowning, letting go of Don's hand to step forward, but the Doctor quickly held up a hand.

"Don't move," he said seriously. Why did he look so sad? "Stay right there. Remember, 998." He paused, looking at them all for a moment. "See ya."

And he dropped backwards out the window.

"No!" Rose gasped as Jack and Nigel ran forwards to the window, throwing out their hands redundantly...

But it was too late. The Doctor was falling, arms and legs splayed, eyes closed, the wind rushing through his hair as he plummeted from the sixth floor window and headed the only way gravity knew... down, towards a messy death.

A/N: Chapter 14 – Even More Problems

"Wake up!" Don screamed, slamming his fists into the grating, suddenly angry. "Wake up!"

The entire world was spinning around Don, the colours insanely bright and merging into shape of recognisable elements – demonic faces, laughing at him. Laughing at how pathetic he was. There was a voice in his head giving him the biggest headache he'd ever felt in his life, screaming at him how useless he had become, that he was just sitting here watching his wife die... He couldn't do anything right... He was nothing but a crazy person that nobody wanted around... He was a nuisance, he was pathetic, he didn't even deserve Rose...

Something suddenly grabbed his shoulders. He screamed and tried desperately to throw it off but it was holding him fast... Yelling in his ear, but it was drowned out by the voice in his head. Rose? Where was Rose? She'd always stopped the voices... Was she dead?