"What do you mean, you can't find the TARDIS?!" Six exclaimed.
"She means that, unfortunately, you fixed the chameleon circuit," Peri translated. "Wherever it is, it just looks like another rock!"
"Well, we'd better find it quickly," Ten said. "Our carnivorous goat friends? They're still chasing us."
Fitz groaned. "Will nothing stop those things?"
"I don't know!" Ten was frustrated.
"Doctors! I think I found it!" Donna yelled. "Ow!" she bent down as her injured ankle sent waves of pain through her body. Eight ran over and helped her stand on one foot. Jo circled the rock that Donna had pointed to.
"But where's the door?" she asked. Fitz and Six started to examine the rock with her, prodding all over in search for anything that might look like a door.
Anji felt a rumble in the ground and saw their antagonists come into view.
"Hurry!"
"Found it!" Six yelled triumphantly. "In, in, in!"
The companions filed through the door, and Eight shifted Donna to Ten's care. Ten and Donna were just about to enter when Ten noticed that Eight hadn't moved.
"Come on, Eight! We've got to go!"
"Such beautiful creatures," Eight murmured. He then turned on his heel and quickly followed his future self and Donna into the TARDIS.
"Have you got the state of temporal grace circuit working, Six?" Three was asking.
"Erm…" Six took a moment to think. "I don't think so. That… might have been the circuit I disconnected in order to get the chameleon circuit working."
"Well then close the doors and let's get working on fixing that. I have a feeling that now, temporal grace is more important that outer camouflage."
"Could I just sit here for a moment?" Donna asked. By now she was limping heavily.
"But your leg will heal faster if you keep it in use," Six recommended.
"Please?" she implored. Six's face softened.
"Of course," he said. "Let me go get you a chair." He strode off down through the TARDIS corridors.
Eight and Three stood at the console, ready to dematerialise. As Ten walked over to them however, he could tell that something was wrong.
"We can't lift off," Eight responded to the unasked question. "There seems to be something-"
The TARDIS shuddered, and Anji thought that she could hear the Cloister Bell ring, deep in the heart of the ship. Fitz dashed forward and caught Donna as she lost balance. Six returned, with Donna's chair.
"What the blazes-" Six was cut off too as the TARDIS gave another almighty shudder. Then everything was still. After a few seconds of silence that was broken only by heavy breathing, Three took charge.
"Eight, you stay here with Donna and try to see if we've taken off, landed, or haven't gone anywhere. Fitz, Jo, Ten, you go make sure the Eye of Harmony isn't damaged. Six and Anji, you and I will go to the power room and make sure that we've still got incoming power."
The team split to do their separate duties. Eight and Donna watched as the last of the two other groups left the console room before starting their task. Donna gingerly sat down as Eight made his way to the console.
"How's your leg?" he asked. She was slightly taken aback by the unexpected question.
"Oh, it's fine," she answered, trying to sound nonchalant and mask the pain that was shooting up her leg that very second.
"That was a steep hill; are you sure?" he asked, turning to her. "I'm a Doctor, I can help."
"Yes, it… it hurts very much," Donna couldn't lie to him.
"Can you move it?"
She tried, but only managed a 30 degree turn before she decided that the pain was too much.
"Just a sprain, I think, Should heal within a week or two if you recover fast, and I think that you can." the Doctor diagnosed. Back to silence. Donna decided to ask a question that had been nagging at her.
"Are… you okay, Doctor?"
"Me? Of course I'm okay!" But Donna could see something behind his eyes that suggested something otherwise.
"But sometimes the way Fitz looks at you, like something isn't quite right… my Doctor does that too," she pushed. The Eighth self of the Doctor sighed.
"There's… full spaces of my life that I can't quite remember. It's a bit better now, now that all of my past selves are here, like Six and Three, but still…" he trailed off, realising that he was telling her more than he actually knew.
"You can trust me," Donna offered. "If anything like that happens again, you can trust me to help you. Also, I can get Matchstick Man to tell me."
Eight burst out laughing at "Matchstick Man."
"'Matchstick Man?'" he asked.
"Have you seen him?" Donna laughed too.
"Doctor," Jo asked. "What is the Eye of Harmony?"
"It's kind of the power source of the TARDIS," the Tenth Doctor explained.
"Then why is the Doctor- my Doctor- going to the power room?" Jo still had a hard time believing that all of these blokes were really the Doctor- even if she had seen it happen before. Still, even then there were only three total, and now there was twelve!
"He's checking to make sure that everything is still connected. If the Eye is fine but he's not getting anything, then we have a problem."
"And if the Eye is not fine and he's getting something?" Jo prompted. Ten looked at her gravely.
"Then we've got an even bigger problem," he said. "Come on."
"Hang on," Jo looked around. "Where's Fitz?"
Ten stopped and turned in a full circle, as if he had not noticed that he had lost someone.
"FITZ!"
Fitz ran around a corner, overcoat billowing around him. "Yep?"
Ten and Jo visibly relaxed.
"Something wrong?" Fitz looked perplexed. There was nothing in sight but himself, Jo, and the Doctor, but Ten's tone had suggested otherwise.
"Just… don't wander away again," Ten said, turning back to continue along to the Eye of Harmony.
Whatever it was that was shutting down the TARDIS struck again. In the chaos created by the shuddering timecraft, a nearby closet door opened, and small silver canisters rolled out. Ten recognized these. They had something to do with Ace McShane…
"Nitro!" Ten screamed. Fitz and Jo did not understand him, but they did understand the urgency in his voice. One of the lids popped off of its canister.
"Less than ten seconds!" Ten pulled Fitz and Jo away from the explosives, remembering how Ace never got the timing right. They took cover a couple dozen feet away, the Doctor hunched on one side of the hallway, Fitz and Jo on the other.
Ten seconds came and went, and still no explosion. Ten became a good example of "do what I say, not what I do" as he gestured to his companions to keep down while he himself slowly stood up.
"Maybe these are duds?" he said cautiously, taking a hesitant step forward.
BOOM!
Ten felt himself fly back a couple of feet and land at Fitz and Jo's feet. He pulled himself up, with their help.
"We've got to get back to the console room!" he struggled to go the opposite way, but Fitz was keeping him in place.
"What about the Eye?" Fitz asked.
"No time, we need to get to Eight and Donna. They're in trouble!" Fitz's eyes grew wide as Ten said this, and he released the Doctor. Jo was already running back.
At the exact moment Ten got blasted by the Nitro-Nine, there was something alien in the console room. Well, more alien than usual.
It was a blob, almost like Omega's antimatter blob, except it was not antimatter, and it was not Omega's. It was dark, and inky, and slithering towards Eight and Donna. Eight concentrated hard and sent out a telepathic message to his three other selves: help us!
He tried to reach Donna, still on her chair, but by now she was surrounded and the blob was making its way to him. He backed up against the console and tried to tiptoe around it to get to a thin patch so he could get Donna off of her chair. However, as Eight tried to execute this plan, the Thing grew something akin to a head and snapped at him, effectively keeping him in place.
He watched in horror as the goo rose up around Donna. She was shouting at it to stop, a real fear in her eyes. Eight could not move; he was stuck in place.
In seconds, the blob had completely encased Donna. Then it began to shrink. Donna was not under it anymore. The goo crept closer to Eight, getting ready to make him disappear too.
At that moment, the door to the rest of the TARDIS opened, and the other three Doctors were framed in it, companions at their backs. The presence of more than one Doctor seemed to confuse the blob, and it vanished into the nothingness it came out of.
Fitz and Anji dashed forwards to check that their Doctor was okay, but Ten was left staring at the empty chair that had been for Donna.
"Where is she?" he asked, not bothering to hide his anger. "Where did Donna go?"
Eight could only shrug.