The tunnel was long, and the Doctor's patience was short. Why had this door opened? Why was he being permitted to stroll down this dark corridor, unmolested? He strongly sensed a trap, and as the moments ticked by, and each step proceeded without incident, his paranoia mounted. Mounted, to the point that when he could make out a sealed junction up ahead, he stopped, and began to feel relieved at the prospect of turning around and leaving.
Did it really matter who these aliens were, anyway? He should be back with the TARDIS, helping his other selves repair it and get in synch with the time corridor so they could go back to where they belonged. They needed him. Miranda needed him. The last thing he should be doing was sneaking around a dark tunnel, tempting the wrath of some unseen bogeyman. Miranda was right, he was vulnerable in this place. Curiosity was not an asset right now.
Yet, he could feel his feet itching to go on. The junction ahead was sealed--but was it a deadlocked seal? What was beyond it? Knowing who these beings were could prove an invaluable tool towards escaping. And why impersonate a Dalek? Why any of this?
The questions wriggled annoyingly in the back of his mind. The answers could be just a little further on. He had to know. How could live with himself if he didn't?
The Doctor toyed with his sonic screwdriver, stared at the sealed junction, and made his decision. He was going to go back. The time for curiosity was long passed. All that mattered was shutting this place down and getting everything back to normal. His questions would have to go unanswered; there was simply too much at stake.
He sighed, realizing that not only was he taking a rare course of action, but that he wasn't particularly dismayed by it. There was a time when almost nothing could have overruled his curiosity. "I really must be getting old," he muttered to himself. With a final, longing look at the sealed junction, he turned his back to it.
And was promptly swallowed by chaos.
It started as a sudden, blaring klaxon that made his whole head ring. He jumped and covered his ears. His legs sprang into action, and he was running for the exit almost before he realized it. Then the door disappeared, and he was swallowed in utter darkness. He skidded to a halt, losing track of how far ahead the door had been. The klaxon continued to sound as he turned on the torch and searched desperately for the seal. Then, all around him, lights began turning on, each with the loud crash of electricity snapping into cold circuits.
He fumbled madly for the vanished door, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and felt his hearts chill with horror. The lights were not just lights. They were incubation chambers. On both sides, lining each wall. Through large, round portholes he could see shifting shadows caused by limbs moving in front of the bluish light source. Chambers continued to light up sequentially all the way down the corridor.
The klaxon finally subsided, but the Doctor's own internal alarms were now screaming. He gave up on the door and turned his sonic screwdriver on the nearest porthole and took several readings. The screwdriver's capabilities were limited, and though he couldn't identify the species, one thing was abundantly clear: it was maturing, very quickly, and giving off traces of artron energy. The Doctor pressed a hand to the porthole, and felt his skin start to warm and tingle.
"Oh, clever Goran!" he moaned. The artron energy was his own. Goran had used it to revive Miranda, and now he'd used it to complete his objective, at last. The Doctor was not above pounding his forehead against the porthole in self-loathing. "And stupid me!" he wailed, realizing his effort to motivate Goran meant he was now partly responsible for this.
The porthole suddenly pounded back.
The Doctor jumped away from it in surprise, watching in growing horror as the fuzzy, indistinct shadows from within began to hurl themselves at the porthole. He could hear distant, smothered shrieks. His blood turned to ice at the sound. There was something familiar, and terrible, about it. All around him, more of the incubating creatures began to claw at the portholes, adding their shrieks to the terrifying chorus.
They were going to get out. They were nearly mature already, and if they didn't physically break out, the chambers would likely release them. The Doctor lunged at the disappeared door again, furiously trying setting after setting on his sonic screwdriver to get it to open again. But he couldn't even detect a seam where a door might have joined the wall. It was as if the wall had literally closed up. The shrieks were louder now. The Doctor experienced a moment of panic as he began to accept that the door was really, inexplicably gone.
Then the incubation chamber beside him emitted a series of loud clicks. It was opening.
The sealed junction! The Doctor spun around and raced back towards the junction. It was his only hope. A primal instinct in his gut told him unequivocally that these beings, whatever they were, were not the negotiating type. The other portholes began unlocking, in the same sequence they'd lit up. The Doctor was barely able to outrun it. Please, don't be deadlocked, please don't be deadlocked!
He charged the junction, screwdriver pointed, flicking settings like a man possessed. "Come on, come on!" he cried.
Reluctantly, the junction door began to creep open, the stressed metal adding its scream to the building cacophony around him.
"Yes! Little more! Little more!" he coaxed in a shrill panic, amplifying the screwdriver's signal.
The door shuddered, screamed again, and creaked apart. Just enough apart that when the Doctor heard the creatures begin to emerge behind him, he leapt for the opening and managed to squeeze himself through.