Rose awoke just as the sun was rising. She quickly freshened up and made her way downstairs to the dining area.

'Morning,' she said to Mickey, Martha and Kate who were all already sitting at the table.

'Morning,' they all replied in-between bites of toast.

'Where's the Doctor?' She couldn't help but ask. Part of her chastised herself for letting him be her first thought of the morning but his lack of presence disturbed her. She had half expected him to wake her up hours ago by barging into her room excitedly and jumping on her bed, hurriedly telling her of his magnificent plan to fix everything. But that was her last Doctor. Somehow she didn't think that this new Doctor was the type.

'Thought he was with you,' answered Mickey, bringing her out of her thoughts.

'I was asleep.'

Mickey shrugged. 'We didn't know that and I wasn't going to risk checking.'

Rose stared at him in shock for a moment before her anger started to take over. 'Do you really think that I would just-'

Kate interrupted her by standing between the two and holding up her hands. 'It's really too early in the morning to deal with this and we have bigger problems. If the Doctor is not with Rose…'

'Which he isn't!'

Kate glared at her before continuing. 'Then he is no longer in the hotel.' She turned her head back to Rose. 'We checked everywhere else earlier.'

'He's probably gone after the Valeyard by himself,' said Rose. 'Bastard! He said he wouldn't. I should've known.'

'Maybe,' said Kate. 'He was still here at two in the morning just before I went to bed. I think if he was going to leave he would have done it before then.'

The door opened making all of them jump. A young girl whom Rose didn't recognise stepped through the door.

'Morning, Anna,' greeted Martha. This must be the girl who was brought in with the Doctor.

'Morning,' Anna returned brightly. 'So what is the plan for today? Undercover investigation? Code cracking? Rescue mission?'

Rose smiled at the young girl. She had spirit and she wanted to help… and she had obviously seen a few too many spy movies.

'Mystery solving,' she said walking up to the girl and holding out her hand. 'Anna, wasn't it? I'm Rose Tyler. I'm the head of the resistance.'

Anna took her hand and shook it. 'N-nice to meet you. You're the head of the Resistance?' she asked. Rose nodded and Anna broke into a grin. 'Can I join?'

'I thought you already were one of us?'

'My Dad is part of the Resistance in Chiswick but there's not much we can do apart from house people and them send them on their way. I want to be part of the real fight.'

'But you already are,' said Rose. 'Helping people is the real fight. Not all this James Bond stuff.'

'Anna, have you seen the Doctor,' asked Martha.

'No. Why? Is he missing?'

'It would seem so,' said Kate. 'I'm going to go check the meeting room. He was looking through our information when I saw him earlier.'

'You mean the mess of useless paperwork?' said Mickey.

'It's even worse now,' said Kate as they walked towards the door.

Kate wasn't joking. Rose kicked her way through the pieces of crumpled paper that littered the floor of the meeting room. She reached the table and saw one small pile of paperwork that was neatly stacked to the side of where the Doctor was sitting.

She looked at the rest of the paperwork on the table, there wasn't much left. Not surprising considering the state of the floor.

Her eyes rested on her drawing of the Valeyard's strange machine: the RCA. She picked it up and turned it over. The Doctor had circled the word "Arch" and there was a new word under the "C" list. Chameleon.

'I think the Doctor figured something out,' she said, holding the piece of paper up to the others.

'Chameleon Arch,' read Kate. 'What's that?'

'No clue,' said Rose.

'It rewrites a Time Lord's DNA,' said Martha and all heads turned to face her. 'The Doctor had to use it once. We were running from this family and they needed a Time Lord so the Doctor turned himself human.'

'He can do that?' asked Mickey.

Martha nodded.

'So the Valeyard must want it for the opposite reason, yeah?' said Rose. 'He wants to be a Time Lord again.'

'What's a Time Lord?' asked Anna. 'And what do you mean he made himself human? You're talking like he's… an alien or something.'

'That's exactly what he is,' said Kate as she bent down and picked some paper up off the floor. 'Rose…'

Rose turned away from the confused teenager and faced Kate. 'What is it?'

Kate held up the piece of paper. There was no mistaking the streak of dried blood on it. 'I don't think he left voluntarily,' she said.

oOoOo

Tony Monohan was screaming. It felt like he had been screaming for days. He wasn't sure if he remembered a time before the pain but, of course, there was one. He had been picked up for breaking curfew in Chiswick about 8 hours ago. He had only popped out to his front lawn to get his cat when a Rolls Royce had come hurtling around his street corner. The car had stopped suddenly in front of his house and the Minster of War had stepped out. The Minister had walked over to Tony, placed a hand on his shoulder, and the rest of Tony's memory was all sort of hazy. That was until the pain came.

Just when Tony thought that it would consume him, the pain stopped. He opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. It was like all his senses were heightened. He could see the dust particles in the air; feel the blood pumping through his veins; hear his two hearts beating. Wait… two? He had two hearts! And he could hear them! They were beating… fast. Really fast. Too fast. Suddenly the pain returned tenfold but this time he did not scream, there wasn't enough time.

The last thing Tony Monohan saw was The Valeyard's disappointed face.

oOoOo

'Everybody accounted for?' asked Rose as Kate walked back into the room. She had gone to do a headcount of all the members of Resistance currently staying at the hotel.

'Everyone except Simmons,' replied Kate. 'He was on guard duty last night.'

'Do you think he's our traitor?' asked Mickey.

'We're going to have to hope so because we're going to need everyone in this hotel if we are going to pull this off,' said Martha.

'Almost everyone,' said Rose. 'We still need the TARDIS. It's our only chance of getting help from the rest of the world.'

'But how are we going to find it?', asked Mickey.

'The Doctor mentioned seeing my graffiti,' said Anna. 'He must have seen it before he got arrested. We could go from there.'

'Right,' said Rose, clapping her hands together. 'Martha, you take Anna and try and find the TARDIS,'

'No way,' protested Martha. 'I'm not staying out of this one.'

'We need a member of UNIT to make the phone call, otherwise they may not believe us.'

'Why not Kate?'

'Because Kate's not pregnant!'

Martha looked like she still wanted to argue but she conceded to Rose's reasoning and nodded. Martha was only two months gone and she could still run and fight with the best of them but Rose was right. It wasn't worth the risk. 'We'll need Lee, Michael, and their truck to move the the TARDIS,' she said.

'Not a problem. Have you still got your key?'

'Of course.'

'Good. Well I guess we had better tell the rest of the team.'

'Do you really think you can get into the palace?' asked Anna.

Rose smiled. 'There is always one sure way to get into any high security building.'

oOoOo

The first thing the Doctor registered was that his head hurt. The second thing was that he was on lying on a cold metal floor. He slowly sat up and took in his surroundings. He was in a small chamber made of glass. There were holes in each pane near where they met the ceiling and there didn't appear to be a door. The Doctor guessed that one on the walls pushed out somehow to create an opening. He stood up and tried pushing on one but it didn't budge.

'I wouldn't bother, if I were you,' said a voice from behind him.

The Doctor spun around to face the owner of the voice.

The Valeyard was standing near the entrance of the room; a smug smile on his face. 'Three inches of bulletproof glass and deadlock sealed,' he explained. 'So even if you had this,' he pulled out the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, 'it wouldn't do you any good.' He threw the screwdriver in the air with one hand and caught it with the other. ' I see you redesigned the sonic… I don't like it.'

'I really don't care,' said the Doctor.

'You're no fun.'

'Why don't you let me out and you can find out how fun I am.'

The Valeyard laughed and walked over to a desk with a computer panel attached. He placed the screwdriver in a drawer beneath the desk. 'You've still got spirit; I'll give you that. Although, the physiology is a bit of a surprise. Never thought I'd go grey again.'

'You are not me,' growled the Doctor. 'You are nothing like me.'

'That's not what you said on that beach,' said the Valeyard. 'Did you honestly think that I would be able to settle in one place? That I would enjoy being human: a primitive ape?'

'You had Rose. She's worth it.'

'Is she?'

'Yes.'

The two men stared at each other before the Valeyard's face broke into a grin. He strode over to the Doctor's cell. 'Well it did make human life more tolerable,' he said, 'knowing that you were out there… alone and jealous. And boy did you miss out. There's this little thing she does with her tongue-'

'Shut up!' It was taking the entirety of the Doctor's self control to not start pounding hist fist on the glass. Instead he settled for trying to burn a hole through the Valeyard's skull with his glare.

'Oh, just look at those eyebrows,' said the Valeyard. 'No, really, those are some cross looking eyebrows. They would come in handy on Delphon.'

The Doctor made a few movements with his right eyebrow.

'Language,' chastened the Valeyard. 'Anyway, I didn't actually come in here for a chat. I came here on business.'

He clicked his fingers and a young woman in a white lab coat entered the room. She was holding a small medical kit.

'Ah you still need my DNA for your little machine,' said the Doctor. 'Did you seriously wait until I was awake to take it?'

The Valeyard scoffed. 'I'm not that stupid. I already took some but there were some… complications with the test subjects.'

'You can't get it to work, can you?' taunted the Doctor.

'Oi! Making a Chameleon Arch without a TARDIS isn't exactly easy, you know. I tried using Rose's DNA. I thought maybe her exposure to the time vortex might be enough but it wasn't. I need a Time Lord. Now be a good boy and let Lidia here take some blood samples.'

'You do realize that in order to do that you have to open the door?'

'Yes, obviously. But you won't try and escape.'

'You seem overly confident about that.'

'Oh I am confident,' said the Valeyard, walking back over to the computer desk, 'because if I press this little button here,' he pointed to a small purple button, 'the floor of that cell gets hit with 600 volts.'

'That's not enough to kill me and you know it.'

'No but it will kill her,' said the Valeyard, pointing to Lidia.

The Doctor glared at the Valeyard for a moment before stepping to the back of his cell and rolling up his sleeve. His jacket already lay discarded on the floor. 'Go on then,' he said.

The Valeyard smiled and nodded at Lidia. Once she was in position in front of the cell with syringe in hand, he pushed a button and with a click, the door swung outwards and Lidia entered his cell.

The Doctor held out his arm and winced slightly as the needle pierced his skin.

Lidia filled three test tubes with the Doctor's blood and quickly exited the cell. With another click, the door swung shut.

'There we are,' said the Valeyard. 'That wasn't too hard, was it?'

'You won't make it work,' said the Doctor. 'Not without a TARDIS.'

'Oh don't worry, I've sent out people to look for the old girl. This is just Plan B in case she decides to hide herself from me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more tests to run. Bye for now.'

The Valeyard and Lidia left the room, leaving the Doctor on his own once more.

oOoOo

'I don't like this plan,' said Mickey for the tenth time that morning. Rose was getting a bit tired of it. They stood in an alley opposite a police station, waiting for their contact to meet them.

'I know you don't but it's the only way and you know it,' said Rose.

'What if he-'

'Micks, I'll be fine. I can do this.'

Mickey looked doubtful for a second but then smiled. 'Yeah. Of course you can.'

oOoOo

It had been a couple of hours since the Valeyard's visit and the Doctor was bored. He had spent the first half an hour of his solitude checking every square inch of his cell for weaknesses. He didn't find any.

He spent the next hour imagining all the different ways to bring about the Valeyard's demise (he still favoured the supernova idea) but even that had become boring. He had his escape route all planned out for when he did finally get out of his cell (he had been to Buckingham Palace enough to know his way around) and now he had nothing to do. They had taken away his yo-yo.

The Doctor was counting the chips in the wall's paintwork for the seventeenth time (there were 42) when the Valeyard entered the room.

'So, did it work?' asked the Doctor.

'Not yet but we still have a couple of test tubes full of your DNA left.'

'Then why are you here? Oh God, you're not going to start monologuing are you? I can't stand monologuing, it's almost as bad as bantering.'

'No monologue, just a simple question… Where is the TARDIS?'

The Doctor laughed. 'Do you really think I'm just going to tell you?'

'Let me rephrase that,' said the Valeyard. He clicked his fingers and the sergeant the Doctor recognised from the night before walked in, pushing a blonde woman to the floor at the Valeyard's feet and pointing his gun at her. Rose. The Doctor's smile disappeared instantly.

'Where is the TARDIS?' repeated the Valeyard.

'Don't tell him, Doctor,' said Rose, standing up and taking a step away from the Valeyard. 'If you do then he could terrorise the universe for a thousand years and I won't forgive you for that.'

'Well, Doctor?' asked the Valeyard.

The Doctor locked eyes with Rose. She winked at him and he had made his decision. He believed in her.

He turned to the Valeyard. 'You heard her,' he said.

'So, that's a no then? Well, I must say I'm surprised. If a threat to her life won't convince you what will?' A small smile crept on to his face. 'Maybe I should threaten something else.'

Rose still had her eyes on the Doctor and didn't move when the Valeyard stepped towards her and put his fingers on her temple. The Doctor watched as her eyes glazed over.

'Leave her alone,' he growled.

'There's the reaction I was looking for,' said the Valeyard gleefully. 'Tell me where the TARDIS is.'

'No.'

The Valeyard put a finger beneath Rose's chin and turned her head to face him. 'Smile,' he said and Rose complied. He faced the Doctor once more. 'I can make her do anything I want now tell me where the TARDIS is.'

'No,' repeated the Doctor.

The Valeyard turned back to Rose and put his hand on her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. The Doctor got an overwhelming sense of déjà vu… he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, as soon as the Valeyard pulled away, Rose grabbed his suit and pulled his lips to hers. The Valeyard walked Rose backwards until her legs hit the desk and he lifted her up so she was sitting on it, his lips never left hers.

The Doctor willed his eyes to look away but they wouldn't. His vision turned red (or maybe it was green) as Rose deepend the kiss, one hand buried in the Valeyard's hair, the other on the desk behind her, pressing buttons…

There was a small click from the Doctor's cell's door. He tentatively pushed against it but it still didn't move. It was only the deadlock seal that had been deactivated. Thankfully the Valeyard hadn't realized. He pulled away from Rose, breathing heavily. After a moment he turned back towards the Doctor. 'Changed your answer yet?' he asked.

'No,' replied the Doctor.

'Plan B it is then,' he grabbed Rose's hand and dragged her towards the door. 'Come one, Rose. There's a little test I want you to take.'

'NO!' shouted the Doctor.

'Then tell me where the TARDIS is!'

Once again he Doctor's eyes found Rose's and once again she winked at him. He sighed.

'No,' he answered.

The Valeyard glared at him and dragged Rose out of the room, pushing past the sergeant.

'Well, that didn't go to plan,' said the sergeant once the Valeyard was out of earshot. 'She was supposed to unlock the door.'

'She deactivated the deadlock seal, that will be enough,' said the Doctor, not quite believing that the man who had arrested him now seemed to be part of a plot to free him. 'The Valeyard put my sonic screwdriver in that drawer under the desk.'

'Your what?'

The Doctor sighed angrily. 'The thing you took off of me last night. I said it was a torch.'

'Oh. That,' said the sergeant and he hurried over to the drawer and pulled out the screwdriver. 'How does it work, then?'

'Flick the switch down and point it at the door.'

The sergeant did as he was told and the door to the Doctor's cell swung open.

'Good man,' said the Doctor, running out of his cell and taking the screwdriver off of the sergeant. 'Now let's go get Rose.'

'Hold on just a minute,' said the sergeant. 'That wasn't part of the deal.'

'Deal?'

'I only did this because Rose said you were the only one who could stop the Valeyard. I'm not part of no resistance. I just want to keep my little brother, Reggie, safe. So let's get out of here.'

The Doctor glared at the man, they were wasting precious time. 'Listen to me…'

'Nick,' said the sergeant, finally giving the Doctor a name.

'Listen to me, Nick. I'm guessing that you have helped Rose before, am I right?'

'Yeah.'

'And I'm guessing that it was you who told the Resistance where I was being held so that they could get to me before the Valeyard did.'

'Yeah. What's your point?'

'My point is that why did you do those things? Would your brother have been any safer if you hadn't?'

Nick paused. 'I guess not,' he said.

'But you still helped because, deep down, you wanted to make a difference. So why stop now? Where did he take Rose?'

The sergeant paused to take in his words and the Doctor tapped his foot impatiently. 'I don't know exactly,' answered Nick, finally. 'But I reckon I know where to try first.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Let's go.'

oOoOo

The pair had managed to get to the next floor down and were heading down a hallway when they heard the sound of running feet coming towards them.

'I think they're on to us,' said the Doctor.

The sounds were getting closer; the Valeyard's guards were almost upon them.

Nick pulled out his gun. 'Turn left at the end of the hall,' he said. 'Keeping heading towards the back of the palace, Rose should be there somewhere.'

'What about you?'

'You were right, Doctor. I do want to make a difference. So I'm going to slow them down for ya.'

'But-'

'Just promise me you will keep Reggie safe.'

The Doctor regarded the man in front of him with a newfound respect. He nodded his agreement and turned to continue his way down the hall. He had just turned the corner when he heard the gunfire start.

After a couple more turns, he reached the back wall of the palace but he didn't know which way to go. Left or right? Making a snap decision, he turned right and started to run towards the nearest door.

The sound of an agonizing scream coming from the other direction caused him to skid to a halt and turn on the spot, a look of terror on his face.

He was too late.

A/N: I'm sorry about the wait for this chapter but I made it a long one to make up for it. Forgive me?