The four boys had been driving for over thirty minutes and were starting to get anxious. Their old, used, dune buggies puttered along, going well below the top speed of an average buggy. But still, how far could one girl walk? Sure, she had a head start of a few hours, but still, they felt that they should have at least seen her by then.
More time passed and they wondered how far into the desert they would have to go, or if their path would ever end.
Then they saw the end of the tracks. Far up ahead the tracks simply stopped, right in the middle of the desert, with nothing around for miles, they just ended.
"They could be under construction" Will offered, his voice barely audible over the puttering of the buggies and the whistling of the wind.
"That would explain why no one remembers trains in Roswell," Jin added.
"But it doesn't explain why that girl would be out here, following the tracks," Will said.
"Why don't we ask her" Peter said, pointing up ahead. "Look, she's right up ahead."
"We found her," Gage said, looking at the small figure sitting at the edge of the tracks.
The girl was starting to remember something, a vague hint of memory lapping at her consciousness, until it became like the ocean and swallowed her whole. The single, fuzzy memory came down on her like a tsunami and she couldn't pull herself to safety.
There was a man, an older man with steel hair and piercing eyes; and he was lying on the floor, in pain. He was reaching out to the girl, his hand stretching upward in a gesture that was somewhere between reaching for help and pushing away. Hands reached back and took his; it was the girl, she was trying to comfort the man.
"No, no!" the man exclaimed. "Don't touch me…"
But then there was a bright, bright light, and the memory went dark. And that's when she heard the puttering sound of two vehicles approaching. The girl half turned to get a look at the newcomers, then, when she had seen them, she turned back towards the desert, disinterested.
The two buggies stopped a safe distance back from the girl, and the four men exited.
"Uhmm, excuse me," Gage called to the girl from his spot beside the buggy, careful not to frighten her, even though she didn't appear even mildly afraid.
"Yes?" the girl called back.
"We're here because you witnessed a kidnapping," Gage explained. "And we need to know what you saw."
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"Please, it would be a big help," Gage pressed. "It happened last night. We saw you on the security camera. You were standing in an alley, you saw the three men abducting a woman and putting her into a car…?"
"The girl who was playing the strange game with the men who weren't men," the girl replied, cryptically.
"It wasn't a game," Jin said, barely controlling his frustration, he took a deep breath and continued. "That woman is missing. Those were bad men that took her, against her will."
"I thought it seemed like a strange game," she admitted.
The four boys just looked at one another, at a loss for words. Who was this girl? They wondered. She was strange beyond anything they'd ever encountered before, and growing up in Roswell, that was saying something.
This strangeness about her wasn't just in her personality either, her looks lent quite a bit to the impression: she looked about 20, but with an immature physique and young features that made her look more like a young teenager, but her dark, perceptive eyes missed nothing, and almost made her look like she was well into her thirties. Then there was her hair, it was a stark, shocking white, naturally falling into a tangled, unruly mess around her head. There was no evidence that her hair was dyed that color, it looked like it was just naturally that albino white, even though she had no trace of freckles or sunburn that would accompany such a condition (it being the desert and all, sunburn was nearly guaranteed).
And besides her personality and physical features, there was also the matter of her clothes: she was barefoot and wearing a white, painfully simple nightgown, like she'd escaped from a hospital. The hot ground must have been burning her feet, but she didn't seem to mind, or even notice.
"Who are you, may I ask?" Peter questioned the girl.
"I don't know," she replied with a shrug.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Will asked, though it sounded more like an accusation.
"I mean I don't know," she said, standing in front of them, her feet tapping out an imaginary tune, her hands held together behind her back.
"Well, can you at least tell us your name?" Peter asked, gently.
"I don't know that either," she replied again, but this time she elaborated. "It's not like I'm doing this on purpose, you know. I just honestly don't know who I am. I woke up last night in an alleyway, dressed like this, no memory who I was. And I still don't know."
Gage held up a hand; anyone who didn't know him would think that he was motioning everyone to be quiet, but in reality that was just the gesture he made when a thought suddenly occurred to him and he was in the middle of thinking.
"The amnesia cases!" he exclaimed.
"What?" Jin asked.
"They've been in the news," Peter added. "Buried, but still in the news."
"I'm surprised you read them," Will said to Gage. "They were under the 'Humor' column."
"Ha, ha, funny. Are you trying to say I don't have a sense of humor?" Gage asked, then shook his head, saying. "Never mind", and started explaining. "Lately there have been reports of people being 'abducted by aliens', or just going missing, and when they return they have pieces, or sometimes their entire memory, missing. I didn't really pay attention to it, because I thought it was just the usual Roswell tourist advertisement. Idiot," he said, tapping himself on the forehead. "I should have made the connection."
"What connection?" Will asked. "What's going on?"
"People have been going missing," Jin explained. "It's been in the news, though buried because no one seems to know if they just left on their own or if they were taken, and there's no evidence of the latter. And there have also been cases of people returning after periods of time, but with memory loss."
"Exactly," Gage said. "Until this week the perpetrators have never made a mistake and their victims were ones that wouldn't be missed. I should have connected the amnesia cases to the missing people."
"There's still nothing to connect them," Will pointed out.
"Yes, there is," Gage said.
"No one took it seriously. The people they targeted wouldn't be believed, just like the people that went missing wouldn't be missed," Jin said, realizing the connection Gage had made.
"So there are aliens at work here, I knew it!" Peter exclaimed, a bit too happily, considering the subject.
"We don't know that," Gage said.
"But who else could it be?" Peter asked.
"I'm with the strawberry blond on this one," the girl joined in. "It's definitely aliens."
"Uhmm, excuse me?" Gage said, perplexed.
The girl looked at him blankly, then, recognizing his incomprehension, she explained, "Who else could have done this?" she said, pointing at the ground where the tracks ended.
"The tracks aren't finished, so what?" Will asked.
"Tracks leading into the middle of nowhere?" Peter said, unconvinced. "And there are no signs of construction. It does look like they just end here for no good reason."
"But that's where you're wrong," the girl said. "They weren't built for no good reason, they don't end here, and they are finished."
The girl picked up a fist sized rock and threw it just past the point where the tracks ended, it landed on the ground with a hollow thud; the sound of a rock hitting an empty, metal container. The four boys just stared at the patch of ground with a dumfounded expression.
"It's… hollow…?" Gage said, walking to the end of the tracks, trying to get a closer look at the mysterious ground.
"It's like a… hatch… or something," Peter said, speculating.
"Underground facility" the girl elaborated. "It has to have been built by aliens. Who else could build something like this? And it explains the disappearances. And the strange men."
"Well, depending on who you talk to, that could all be explained by the government," Peter said.
"Nope, not even close" the girl said, then she walked over to the end of the tracks, and continued walking past that. She walked forward, with one foot directly in front of the other and her arms held out like a tightrope walker's. Then she started jumping up and down. The ground clanked beneath her, decidedly metallic, and as she continued jumping the boys could make out the soft humming sound of electricity. Then they noticed that her feet were disappearing just slightly below the level of the ground.
"What is that?" Jin asked.
"Hologram covered hatch," the girl explained. "I can feel the metal under my feet, so the dirt and stuff isn't a cover or anything. Nope, straight up hologram. And as far as I know, no government has this kind of tech."
"So… aliens?" Will said, confronted with the actual, possibly substantiated reality, it was a bit daunting.
"Is that why you called the kidnappers 'men that weren't men'?" Gage asked the girl.
She nodded in response.
"How could you tell?" Gage asked.
The girl shrugged. "Don't know. They just didn't look like men to me."
Then the ground began to tremble, a sudden, violent quake that nearly knocked them over. The epicenter of this quake was a large circle in front of the tracks, at least thirty feet in diameter, all the dirt and rocks that had collected on the space were sent bouncing away from it. Jin was the first to realize what was happening.
"Get over here, quickly!" he called to the girl. "The hatch is opening."
The girl, who stood nearly in the middle of this circle, quickly started skipping backward, and as the hatch started to open she jumped to safety. Peter caught her, and then quickly the five of them retreated to the buggies and drove away as fast as the carts would allow. Somewhat hidden in the shade of a nearby hill, they watched as the hatch opened and a large machine flew out, hovering a couple meters above the train tracks, and heading towards Roswell.
"Were we seen?" the girl asked.
"I don't think so" Gage answered. "If we were then they probably would have come for us."
"Either that, or did they did see us, but didn't care," Jin added.
"So if they have machines that can fly, why did they waste time with railroad tracks?" Will asked.
"Didn't you notice how it was flying over the rails?" the girl asked, but continued without waiting for a reply. "The craft uses some kind of magnetic propulsion device. It would save them energy and fuel, and since they're only going between their ship and Roswell they don't have to worry about needing to change directions. It's practical."
"Their ship?" Jin asked, pointing at the hatch. "That's their ship down there?"
"Probably," she replied.
"We have to go back," Jin said. "That must be where they took Natsuko, she could still be there."
The girl was already shaking her head though. "No, it's impossible to enter through that hatch without one of their ships. They probably have another entrance, but we have no clue where it is, and it's likely well hidden."
"You know a lot about these aliens," Will said. "Especially for a normal, teenage girl."
"Well, I don't think I'm normal," the girl said. "I did wake up in an alley dressed like this, after all. And besides, I'm probably not a teenager either; the age just doesn't feel right."
"Before, didn't the aliens go into the city with a car?" Jin asked, thinking out loud.
"Yes, it was on the video. Unless that thing can turn into a car…?" Gage replied.
"No, it's too big," the girl said. "And it didn't have transformable pieces. The car must have been a smaller, more flexible model of the hovercraft we saw."
"So then, what are they going to do?" Will asked.
"They've abandoned even the pretense of blending in and not arousing suspicion," Gage said. "I don't like this."
"We should follow them," Jin said, and everyone agreed, climbing back into the buggies and following the distant craft at top speed.
Going as fast as they were, it would take the aliens less than ten minutes to get to the city. It had taken the boys forty minutes to get to the end of the tracks.
Sure enough, a few minutes later they saw the ship stop, by then it had become nothing more than a speck hovering in the sky. And then they saw something strange happen, something they couldn't explain. A purple cloud seemed to come down out of the ship, broken up by blue, pulsing waves reminiscent of electricity. Both of which came down on the city and then spread out in a far reaching wave; even Gage and the others were affected by it. A slight dusting of purple particles washed over them with slightly more force than the wind.