Chapter 1: Azalea
"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Lindsay shouted eagerly as she dragged Azalea along the sidewalks of New York City. The hyperactive 13 year old was even more excited and squealy than usual, as they finally got to the TreeTops Hotel. Azalea saw that there was already a crowd of screaming and giggling teens at the entrance to the building, and she rolled her eyes. They held signs that read things such as "I 3 THE FIFTH LINK" and "PLZ STAY IN NYC 4EVER 5L!" Lindsay ran over to join them in their shrieks, wearing her homemade "I LOVE YOU 5L" shirt.
"The Fifth Link" was Lindsay's new favorite boy band, and apparently the rest of the teenage girl population's. Their mom had made Azalea take Lindsay to the heart of New York City just for the mere chance that she would catch a glimpse of the band. Azalea did not understand why everyone seemed to love this band - in fact, they didn't even write their own songs or play their own instruments. Azalea chose to lean against the next door building until 7 o'clock when she could finally go back home. She glanced at her watch, which read 12:54, and sighed.
Looking around for something interesting to do, (beneath all the bright lights and lipstick advertisements) Azalea noticed something that seemed rather out of place. At the very back of an alley across the street, next to a dumpster, stood a tall, blue box. It looked a bit like a telephone booth. Figuring that Lindsay would be fine with all the other teens for protection, Azalea crossed the street and walked towards the alley.
It was quite gruesome between those two, towering buildings. There were puddles of what she would've assumed was water, but after noticing the strange tints to them, she kept her eyes averted. Reaching the box, she read the sign that was above the doors: "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX". It had a sign below on the door, something about free public use, so Azalea figured she'd have a look inside. After all, she'd never been in an actual telephone booth, only seen the red ones in super hero movies.
She pulled the handle, but it would not budge. She pulled it harder, but there was nothing at all, not even a lock jiggling. She pushed it, which seemed to work a bit better, but it still did not open. That was strange. Why would a box so small have a door that opens in?
Ignoring that thought, she knocked on the door. Maybe someone was using the phone? No one answered. She knocked again, more insistently this time. Still nothing. Once more, even harder. She waited. Nothing.
But Azalea was not one to walk away without an answer. She kept knocking on the door until she heard a sound from inside the box. It was barely audible, and sounded quite distant, but it had definitely come from the box. It almost sounded like a voice saying "What?", as if something utterly strange and uncalled for was happening.
The door slowly opened just a crack and a man's head looked out from behind it cautiously. He had really ruffled, stand-uppy hair, and the widest gaze Azalea had ever seen. His brow was furrowed in suspicion.
"...Yes?" he asked, glaring at Azalea.
"Sorry, you on the phone?" she asked politely, but couldn't help noticing how strangely bright it was in the box, although she couldn't tell why because the man kept the door open barely a sliver.
"Um...no, I was just - who are you?" he asked inquiringly. Azalea noticed his accent at that point.
"Are you from the UK? Wow, that's so cool!" she said, but the man was not amused. "Sorry, I'm Azalea. Azalea Greene. I was just wondering what this box is doing in this dank alley."
The man's expression did not vary as he stared suspiciously at Azalea. Eventually, he stepped out of the box and closed the door behind him. Well, he sort of...shimmied out of the box, seemingly careful not to open the door too much.
"So you just came over here because you were...curious?" he asked, tilting his head.
"Yeah, I guess you could put it like that," she replied.
Suddenly, the man's skeptical expression vanished and in its place came a friendly, polite face. "Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Greene." He held out his hand. "I'm the Doctor."
Azalea, a bit warily, shook his hand. "Just 'the Doctor'?" she asked.
"Just the Doctor."
Azalea thought for a moment. "Mysterious," she said. "I like it."
The Doctor smiled. "Well, this," he said turning and gesturing toward the box, "is a Police Box. Old-fashioned telephone booth for policemen."
"So what's it doing here?" she asked.
"Good question." The Doctor took out a brown pad from his pocket and flipped open to a square paper, which he proceeded to shove in front of her face. "The Doctor: Investigator of Things That Shouldn't Be In Certain Places But Are." Azalea saw that the paper showed a photograph of the Doctor, with some identification things that Azalea had no time to read, before he put it back in the pocket of his long, brown trench coat. Azalea noticed now that he sported a blue pinstripe suit with a red tie and red Converse to match.
"It's not that interesting, to be honest," he told her. "Just a box. But I'm still not allowed to let you in there while it's being investigated. Rules."
"Rules are meant to be broken," she said, but immediately regretted it. "Actually, I never really liked that saying. I mean, if they're rules, then they are meant to be obeyed. That's why they're rules. If they were meant to be broken, there wouldn't be a need for them in the first place. It would be like building a tower for the sole purpose of knocking it down. Who would do that?"
Th Doctor looked at her for a moment, and then said, "You talk a lot."
"No, I don't," she said defensively. "I mean, I usually don't. Actually, I don't usually talk at all. This is weird."
"Funny," said the Doctor. "Usually I'm the one being told I talk a lot."
Just then, a colossal wave of girlish screams came from the other side of the street. Azalea looked back at saw the crowd at the TreeTops Hotel rushing even closer to the entrance.
"I better go," Azalea said to the Doctor. "My sister might be getting trampled by other exploding teenagers. It was nice meeting you," she said.
"You too," he said, and smiled crookedly. Azalea smiled genuinely back and walked back towards the Hotel.
Her watch now read 2:30 pm. Azalea was scanning the crowd from afar, searching for that head of straight red hair that was her sister. Finally, she spotted Lindsay close to the steps of the hotel.
"Lindsay!" she shouted. No response. "Lindsay! LINDSAY!" Finally her little sister turned her 17 year old sister's way. "Let's get lunch! I'm starving!"
Lindsay was appalled. "They could come out any second! Plus I am almost to the front. No way am I moving now!"
Azalea rolled her eyes and decided she would be eating a late lunch by herself. She looked around in hope of finding a cheap but nice place to eat (with no such luck), when she practically had a heart attack. The Doctor was standing directly behind her, looking at her.
"What the hell?" she said to him, catching her breath.
The Doctor ignored her surprise. "What's all this?" he said, nodding towards the crowd of girls.
Azalea, still in shock, took a moment to reply. "They're all waiting to see if The Fifth Link comes out of the hotel."
The Doctor looked at her quizzically. "The Fifth Link?"
"New pop boy band that everyone loves," she clarified. "They're huge - and British, I'm pretty sure. Aren't you from the UK? You've really never heard of them?"
"No," he said, uncertainly, "I don't really, uh...get out much."
"Only to investigate old blue boxes."
The Doctor smiled slightly. "Yeah." His smile faded and looked at Azalea. "Do you want to go for lunch? Since your sister doesn't?"
Azalea paused. Going to lunch with this strange man would go against everything her parents ever warned her about. But he seemed okay, right? Not normal, but still...okay.
"Sure."
They ended up eating at a quaint, semi-hidden little place that sold mostly coffee and muffins. They sat by the window and Azalea watched the people go by, dressed in their wool coats, sweatshirts, and thick sweaters, autumn clothes all about. Azalea herself was dressed in a dark blue pea coat, black jeans, and red, lace-up boots. Her curly, dirty blond hair was messy and unkempt as usual, a mane that was seldom tamed.
It was then she noticed that the Doctor was staring at her. "What?" she asked. Most people, at that point, would've looked away. But he kept on staring, as if he was trying to read her like a book.
"You just happened to...notice that blue box today?" he asked, out of the blue.
"Yeah...?" she replied, raising an eyebrow. "I was just leaning on a wall after all. Nothing much to do but notice things."
The Doctor kept on staring. Azalea's browed furrowed. "Why do you keep staring at me? Stop it. It's creepy."
The Doctor finally seemed to snap back to reality...sort of. "Sorry," he said straightening up. "It's just...most people don't really notice. And if they do, they don't really care."
Azalea shrugged. "Guess I'm different, then," she said, taking a sip of her coffee.
"I guess you are..." The Doctor glanced at his coffee but did not drink it. "So! Azalea Greene. New Yorker, or tourist?"
Azalea, relieved he was acting a bit normal now, gladly answered the question. "New Yorker. Well, sort of. I live just outside the city."
The Doctor nodded. "What do you do?"
Azalea thought. "You mean like a job? Well, I'm in high school, so I don't really have a career, really. But I do want to travel the world some day. Can you imagine it? Just visiting every place you could think of, learning all sorts of new things, and the stories you could tell. Wouldn't it be wonderful? To travel the world, then beyond the world, and then beyond that!"
Azalea had been caught in her own daydream again, she realized. "Why am I telling you all this?" She laughed at herself. "What about you?"
"What do you mean?" the Doctor asked.
"Oh, c'mon, I know you don't really inspect blue boxes for a living."
The Doctor smirked slightly. "I do all sorts of things." After a moment's pause, he continued to question Azalea. "So, you're not infatuated by this boy band, then?"
"No. I mean, seriously, all they do is sing and look pretty! Literally no instruments, no song-writing...people have the nerve call them the next Beatles."
"I see you feel very strongly about musical justice. You like the Beatles?" he asked on.
"Love the Beatles," Azalea corrected. Just as she started to smile, there was an ear-splitting crash somewhere outside that shook the entire building. Mugs shattered on the floor, people yelped as their steaming hot coffee spilled on their laps, and the overhead lights swung cautiously.
"What was that?" Azalea said looking out the window, but the Doctor was already getting up and running out the door towards the source. Azalea leaped out of her chair and caught up to him.
In the middle of the street was a crater the size of a truck. Azalea followed the Doctor to the front of the knots of people that were already beginning to form around it to find that at the bottom of that crater was a circular, mechanical thing the size of a table.
"Doctor," Azalea said. "Do you know what that is?" But once again, the Doctor had run off, preparing to investigate the...thing.
Azalea followed him into the crater, curious again. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Doing just what I told you I did," he said, continuing to scan the thing in front of them. "Investigating Things That Shouldn't Be In Certain Places But Are."
As he inspected the thing, Azalea saw him pull something out of the pockets of his trench coat. It was a long, tool-like sort of thing. He held it over the crash-lander, and the end glowed blue while it made some indescribable sound.
He looked at the tool as if reading it for a moment, then Azalea saw his eyes widen. He looked up at the surrounding people, and yelled at them, "Get back! Run! Get as far away from here as you can!"
And of course, Azalea could've predicted, being New Yorkers, the crowd did not listen.
Suddenly, something shot up out of the thing. It was a pinky flesh color, the size of a human baby, but with an oversized, triangular head, along with large, pointy ears on either side. Its back was facing Azalea and the Doctor, who were both taking a few steps back. The Doctor seemed to be observing the creature.
For a few moments, it hovered there, apparently taking in its surroundings. The humans it was facing were looking at it with some sort of mixture of fear, curiosity, and disgust. Then, out of nowhere, it darted to a businessman standing in front of it, and, as far as Azalea could tell, sunk its teeth into the man's head. The man shouted for one second, before collapsing, unmistakably dead. There were two large, bloody holes in his head.
The creature turned around, still in the air, to face the other side of the crowd. They all gasped. Azalea saw it's face then, and it was grinning, with two bloody fangs the size of its head sticking out of either side of its mouth. Its eyes, however, were like two black marbles. It smirked sinisterly once more before vanishing into thin air with a "POOF".
Azalea looked again over at the dead man, horrified. She heard a woman scream, and then more, until everyone was frantically running about. Azalea looked over at the Doctor. He seemed concerned, but remained completely calm.
"Who are you?" she demanded. He looked over at her for a moment, but before he could answer, dozens more of the creatures rocketed out of the thing one after the other. They started to shoot themselves at random people all over the place, and every time, they'd vanish right after they killed someone.
Azalea realized the Doctor had gone back over to the source of the creatures. She too started to go over to it, but was halted when one of the creatures shot over from beside her, fangs at the ready. Azalea held up her arm at the last moment in an attempt at protection, and miraculously, it missed her head, which seemed to be the only spot at which they could kill. Still, its fangs sank into her arm before vanishing like the others.
Her arm screamed in pain, but she did not. She grasped the two identical wounds, as if she could heal them with her own touch.
"Azalea!" said the Doctor, still turned away from her and inspecting the thing. "Wanna help?" he asked, not rudely, but invitingly.
Azalea ignored the pain in her arm, although it burned like fire. She raced over the Doctor and tried to hide her wound so that he would not worry.
They knelt over the thing at the bottom of the crater. He was using his strange tool again and had a look of deep concentration on his face.
"What is that thing?" she asked.
"Sonic screwdriver," he replied not looking up.
"Okay...more importantly, what are those things that are killing people up there?"
"Dentimites," the Doctor said.
"That clears things up."
"They're aliens. One bite in the head, and you're dead. But so are they. They're like your...bees, right? Yes they're like those. They can only bite one time, then the venom that keeps them alive but is fatal to almost every other being is gone from their body. And this thing," he gestured to the crash-lander, "doubles as their ship and their cloning device. They can send one Dentimite to anywhere, and this thing will just keep spitting out new copies."
Azalea inhaled as she took all of this strange news in. "Okay...but why aren't new ones coming right now?" she asked.
"The ship can only produce so many at a time. But it can produce them without fail. Unless we can stop them."
Azalea paused a moment to think things over. "Alright...what can I do to help?"
The Doctor pointed to a small area of the ship. There was a square of blinking lights, black cords, and tiny buttons. "Do you think you can figure out which of those cords leads to the heart of the ship?"
Azalea looked over the task at hand. The cords were all identical and tangled up, but it couldn't be that hard. "If I can't do that, I don't know what I can."
She saw the Doctor smile in the corner of her eye as she set to work following the cords. The first was simple enough; it led to the same square, so she knew that was one less she thought she had to follow. The second was a bit harder; it weaved through many knots and by this point her arm was going numb with pain from the bite. She didn't want to let the Doctor know, and she wasn't sure why. She told herself at first it was because he was already busy. But for some reason, she wanted to impress him, to seem strong instead of weak for once.
She carried on with the cord following until she reached one that had squirmed its way to what looked to be the very middle of the ship.
"Doctor! I found it!" she called to him.
He scurried over from the other side of the ship and looked at what Azalea meant. "Good, good, good. Now let's cut it, and then, no more Dentimites for NYC."
Azalea saw a pink, bulbous thing beginning to emerge from the small hole at the top of the ship. "Doctor!" she shouted, pointing to it. The Doctor saw it, and furiously took his sonic screwdriver to the cord and...well..."sonicked" it apart? The clone faded back into the ship and the ship proceeded to "POOF", just like the Dentimites themselves.
"Well," he said, brushing off his hands. "That takes care of that."
Azalea looked at her wound tentatively and saw that blood was soaking through every layer of clothing. She could barely feel her arm now. "Doctor, one of the Dentimites bit - oh my god! Lindsay!"
Azalea could not believe herself as she sprinted to the TreeTops Hotel. She was hating herself more and more for forgetting about her little sister. She assumed the Doctor was following her, but most of the world blurred out due to her urgency. Finally, she saw the crowd of screaming girls again - but this time, they were screaming for an entirely different reason.
Azalea shoved through the sobbing teens to where her sister was standing when she last saw her. She wasn't there. In her place was the body of a 13 year old girl wearing a shirt that read "I LOVE YOU 5L", and a head full of bright red hair stained with dark red blood.
Then, Azalea collapsed unconscious on the pavement, but whether it was because of the poison from the Dentimite seeping through her blood, or the horrifying sight of her sister's lifeless body, she did not know.