"Close the doors behind us!" the Doctor with the scarf called to his future self with the celery as he helped usher the companions quickly out of the room. The man in question did so, only for the door to slide right back open again. The celery Doctor's heart rates suddenly skyrocketed and he reached for the door controls once more, the flickering lights inside the room showing the angels drawing nearer and nearer. It closed once more then opened once again.
"Are you trying to tempt death?" the Doctor in the horrendous coat called out to him and the celery Doctor yelled back indignantly.
"I'm not making it open again! It's doing it on its own!" He pressed the button to close it once more and the Doctor with the scarf pointed his sonic screwdriver at it, making it spark and the Doctor with the celery jerked back covering his eyes. The door remained closed this time, however. He looked to his past self and then to the screwdriver that was being tucked back into his pocket and frowned, "I've been meaning to replace that," was mumbled mostly to himself before he made his way over to the group.
They all jumped suddenly when there was a series of loud, furious, bangs from the door that they'd just locked shut.
"Run now," Sarah looked to her version of the Doctor, then to the rest of the group, her eyes wide, "yes?"
"Never agreed with you more, Sarah." The Doctor in the horrendous jacket answered and the group took off in a run. He led the way, keeping an ear out for any big metal footsteps.
"We'll find a quiet place to look through this notebook." The Doctor with the celery told Ryan who'd lingered somewhat to wait for him, sitting a hand on the back of the younger man's shoulder to encourage him into a run with him, "first let's find that safe space."
A series of blaster shots were head firing against the now closed doorway as the group searched for a way out of the lab, they were standing in. Only the one way in that they'd come in through, that Cybermen were currently trying to come through.
"What do we do now?" Rose asked.
"Now we… well we come up with some way to escape. There must be something in here. If this lab belonged to Rassilon or the Omega, then there must be some other way out of here. They were both extremely paranoid men. No way they'd have a lab with only one way in and out. At least, they wouldn't leave themselves with no way out." The Doctor in the leather jacket told her.
"Aha!" there was a shout of triumph from Ace who suddenly appeared back up from where she'd been inspecting under the lab benches, a grin on her face as there was a click and a section of the wall to the right of the room slid open revealing a passageway.
"God job Ace." The Doctor after her own grinned at her proudly, sitting a hand on her shoulder before he looked to the rest of the room, "everyone through! Now!" The group made their way through down through the narrow corridor, River taking the lead, so they didn't run into anything else, Jack behind her and the rest of the companions followed up by the Doctors. The one in the leather jacket fished his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket to aim it towards the door to have it slide shut, right as the Cybermen got a blast through the door. "You made another one?" he asked his future self, pointing to the sonic in his hand. The other man shrugged as he tucked it back into his pocket.
"Thought it might come in handy, is all."
"I've done well without it so far," the other man sniffed.
"It's been infallible for me so far, believe me."
The group eventually found themselves in the large central control room with the other original three versions of the Doctor, and the large machine that stretched up towards the high ceiling and the four walkways with the bottomless pits in four corners.
"Ah, there you are!" the Doctor in the opera cape greeted them, "took you long enough."
"Had to deal with some Cybermen. It's a big place down here, can't all stumble through untouched." The Doctor in the leather jacket snarked back at him before peering up at the machine in front of them, "what is it?"
"That's the question, dear boy." The first Doctor shuffled forward with his cane, his other hand coming up to grip his own jacket's lapels as he stared up at the machine as well. "We know it's powering this network of tunnels, but we don't know the slightest about which button and lever does what."
"So, what have you been doing to figure it out?" The Doctor with the question marks asked.
"Well…" the Doctor who'd had the recorder trailed off with a glance up to the machine and Zoey finished for him with her arms folded, her tone stern.
"They've been pressing random buttons and hoping for it to do something."
"Why would you do that?" the eighth Doctor asked them with furrowed brows.
"Well, we don't know how it works. We're in a bit of a hands tied situation. We don't even know if we have time to sit down and work it out the less dramatic way. It's our future in danger!" the Doctor with the recorder protested back.
"Well, I guess you have a point." The other man conceded with a shrug and Zoey could only gape at him as she protested.
"Doctor! Surely one of you can figure out a safer way to get this done! One that won't involve possibly killing us all?"
Ryan's group stumbled into the room with the others last, all of them dishevelled looking and startled. The group around the machine all turned to look at them, the second and third versions of the Doctor stepping forward, exclaiming loudly in concern.
"What happened to you lot?"
"Weeping Angels." The Doctor in the celery explained.
"And Cybermen." The Doctor in the hideous coat continued.
"And doors that had a mind of their own. It was like someone was flicking and off and on switch on the lights as well." The Doctor in the scarf grumbled and the two Doctors who'd stepped forward in concern shared a look between one another, a dawning of understanding passing between them as they snuck guilty glances towards the machine that they'd been playing about with for the last little while.
"Well," the Doctor who'd had the recorder mumbled, "we wouldn't know anything about that."
"You're here now," the Doctor in the opera cape told them, sweeping a hand to usher them towards the machine, "come help us figure this out."
"Wait," Ryan said, looking to the Doctor with the celery, "the book we found, it might have something in there about this? It had things about that other machine." The Doctor with the celery's eyes lit up in a thankful realisation and he quickly reached into his pocket and pulled the now slightly folded notebook out to begin to flip through it.
"What've you got there?" the eighth Doctor was first to step forward to reach for it, a crowd of the men leaning around the notebook as it was flipped through. Sure enough, he eventually flipped to a page with a huge drawing of the machine before them, spanning across two pages, with small notes in Old High Gallifreyan explaining what different parts did.
"Here." The Doctor with the celery pointed to a section, "whoever's notebook this is, explains that there was a jamming frequency device added to this machine, it was added in order to aide with the punishment of… well whoever it is, their name's been redacted. But whatever they were doing required a mental block in order for it to work properly." He looked up at the machine and hurried forwards to it, looking back and forth from the book as he worked on following the sequence it laid out. Finally, he sat his hand on a lever, snapping the book shut and looking back to the group around him.
"Once I pull this level, be ready to reach out and try and find her, we don't know what kind of shape she'll be in." the Doctor in the opera cape instructed and the other men closed their eyes and prepared to reach out mentally towards the other woman as soon as they were able to. He pulled the lever. A repeated murmur of 'contact' came out from the crowd of Time Lords amongst them. Silence rang out in the real world, but the line of telepathic contact was loud with eleven different voice calling out to find her.
