fractal_mirrors | At the Heart of the Maze [Doctor Who; English]

Title: At the Heart of the Maze
Rating: PG
Genre: Adventure / humour
Characters: Rose, Mickey, Jake
Pairings: Implied Mickey/Jake
Words: 1326
Summary: Rose, Mickey and Jake haven't stopped defending the Earth. (Post-Doomsday)
Notes: Written for the Rose Tyler: Girl Adventurer Ficathon at

rose_lives. Many thanks to

ellenscult for beta-reading!

At the Heart of the Maze

The building was like a maze. All the halls looked alike, long metal corridors with similar doors around them, most of them locked; once in a while, a new passage crossed their way, and they argued in low voices for a few seconds before they decided which way to take. Even with the plans, it was easy to get lost. As much as she hated the delays, Rose had to admit that those instants they spent whispering at every intersection were a lesser risk than the chance of making a wrong turn.

She led the way towards the heart of the building, with Mickey and Jake close behind her. The room they were looking for shouldn't be far away now. They had been walking for over thirty minutes. It wasn't just a feeling – she'd checked her wristwatch again and again, still in disbelief. It definitely hadn't looked this large from the outside, and it was built with human technology, so they hadn't been expecting any surprises of this kind. They must have been walking further down into the basement, even if the floor's almost imperceptible slope didn't make it obvious.

“I don't like this,” she muttered. “What if something goes wrong and we have to leave? We've got half an hour of uphill corridors to get outside.”

“There might be a short way out from the actual room,” Jake suggested, but Mickey raised his eyebrows at him.

“Yeah. Leading straight into our alien businessman's office, I'd bet. Not a good idea.”

Before his boyfriend could reply, Rose gestured for them to stop and pressed a finger to her lips. There it was – a cold, blueish light right around the corner. They couldn't risk speaking anymore, not even in whispers. She turned off her torch and stepped forward as silently as possible. It only took her a few seconds to reach the turn in the hall. With a very slow movement, she tried to look around it without being seen in turn.

“It's all right,” she said. “There's no one here.”

She stepped into the room, blinking as she got used to the light. It seemed to come from the walls themselves. They were probably alien, too – she run a quick check with her instruments, and discovered with relief that there wasn't any radiation. Whatever the source of the light was, it wasn't dangerous.

There was a panel full of buttons and displays in the middle of the room. It was a bit more complicated than what she was used to, but she wasn't too worried. Several years of experience in Torchwood came in handy on these occasions. Between all three of them, they were bound to make it work properly. As long as they didn't blow up anything first...

Jake walked around the place waving a small, silent gadget and then put it back into his pocket.

“No alarms,” he told them. “We're safe to work.”

“Great,” said Rose. “Now, how do we take down their net without being too obvious?”

“You mean you don't have a plan?” Mickey asked.

“I had a really good plan and it brought us here safely. Now it's time for a bit of improvisation.”

“You've definitely spent too much time travelling with the Doctor,” he muttered. “Here, let me look. I'm the computer genius after all.”

Rose raised her eyebrows at him and grinned, but bit back the comment she was about to make. Genius? That was a new one... But it was true that he was good at it, so she let him work in peace.

While Mickey tried to make sense of the instruments – it seemed that he didn't have much trouble, given he'd already found a keyboard and was typing quite fast – she and Jake walked around the room once again, looking closely at the walls. Although there weren't any cameras, Rose couldn't shake the feeling that there had to be something else, something that didn't make this so easy. Sure, it had been difficult to reach the place; but she didn't think a maze-like entrance was enough to let the aliens be sure that no one would enter. And why wasn't there any kind of surveillance, anyway? Were they so sure that the network was safe? It didn't seem plausible.

Suddenly she stopped in her tracks. There was an irregularity on one of the walls. At first she hadn't noticed it, so small was it; she could have mistaken it for a trick of the light. But she had learned long ago not to let any detail pass. She ran her fingers over the slightly darker line. Sure enough, the texture was different. It was an edge.

“I think we've got a secret door here,” she warned the others.

“Let me check,” said Mickey, still staring at the displays. “One moment... yeah, found it on the plan. There's only a small room on the other side. Dunno what they're keeping there.”

“Anything dangerous, d'you think?” she asked.

“Doesn't look like it, at least.”

“Then let's find out,” Rose said, grinning, and pressed her hand harder against the line.

A whole panel of the wall moved back and then slid aside, revealing a smaller room about the size of a regular closet on the other side, lit with the same kind of bluish light. And it was crowded. There were plenty of machines and alien artifacts tossed in almost like trash. Some of them Rose recognized from her travels or her job; some were new even to her. Judging from the careless way they were kept, they were probably old or malfunctioning. She couldn't resist her curiosity and went to give them a closer look.

“All broken,” she sighed, upon further inspection. “I think I'll take some of the weirdest ones to the office anyway. We might reverse-engineer something interesting.”

“But it doesn't make sense,” said Jake, who had followed her into the room and was now looking at what seemed to be a needlessly complicated lamp. “Why would they keep the trash right next to their main computer?”

Rose shrugged, picking up a small object in the shape of a robot. It didn't seem to do anything; it might have been a paperweight or something of the like.

“Alien minds. Don't try to understand,” she said. “You should've seen the mess that was the inside of the TARDIS –”

A low but clear noise interrupted her: the door had slid closed. The light went out a moment later.

“Sorry. I think I pushed something,” said Jake. Although she couldn't see his face – or anything, for that matter – she could easily imagine his grimace. It was probably the same that she was wearing.

“So. Trapped in a closet. What are the odds?” she muttered. “And more importantly, what do we do now?”

“You better not make out,” she heard Mickey's voice from the other side. He opened the door and rolled his eyes at them. “Seriously, guys, it's not like I wasn't right here to open this.”

“Well, you were busy. Maybe you'd make us wait,” Rose joked.

“Nah. I'm done. Let's get out of here before they notice, okay?”

“Sure. Just let me take a couple of things for Torchwood... Oh, and this one's for Mary,” she added, picking up the little robot.

Jake raised his eyebrows at her.

“You don't even know what that does,” he pointed out. “What if it's dangerous?”

“Jackie's dangerous enough,” said Mickey. “You know what she says about bringing alien toys to your little sister.”

“Yeah, yeah. 'I don't want another daughter learning to look for trouble!' Too late, Mum. She already wants to be me.”

“I think she's smarter than you.”

“Shut up,” she said good-naturedly. “Anyway, I'm done. We'd better hurry.”

“So which one's this time?” asked Jake. “Stealth or speed?”

As if on cue, the blue light turned red and the sound of alarms on the upper floors finally went off. Rose just grinned.

“I'd say run.”

At the Heart of the Maze [Doctor Who; English]

no subject

no subject

no subject