Earlier…

Clara was walking with the Doctor through Roswell, they were searching for the Tardis. Clara thought that maybe the Tardis's telepathic network could help restore his memories, or that it may have some other clue how to help them. The Doctor didn't even seem to remember the Tardis, and Clara didn't bother to explain, she figured that he would get his memories back soon enough. All she said was that the Tardis was his ship and that there may be something onboard that could help him.

That's when the alien craft appeared overhead. Clara recognized the technology: it was the same species taht had captured them before. She ducked into a nearby alley and dragged the Doctor along with her, or at least, she tried to, he wouldn't budge.

"Doctor, it's the aliens that I was telling you about," she said. "Come on, we have to hide. They're probably here for us, we can't be captured again."

"Oh, they're most certainly here for us," the Doctor said. "Or me, anyway. We've decided that you aren't useful anymore. You know too much, and none of it helps us."

Clara took an involuntary step back, horrified by the realization. This man wasn't the Doctor, he was one of the aliens impersonating him. He fooled her, and it was all because she had so desperately wanted the Doctor to be alive.

The 'Doctor' sprayed a substance in her face, catching her off guard; immediately she started feeling weak. Then the ship overhead spewed a thick purple cloud onto the city, accompanied by the rhythmic pulsations of an electromagnetic wave. Glass shattered, people screamed and ran, devices went dead, and then the people started dropping like flies.

Clara felt it in her lungs first, this tickling sensation that made her cough, and then the feeling spread to the rest of her body, settling in her skull. She pulled her sleeve over her mouth, but the poison had already entered her system. The world spun around her, her body felt heavy, and she dropped to her knees.

"I guess this Doctor of yours truly is dead. I have to admit, we weren't certain, not until we talked with you," the fake Doctor said. "And it looks like I won't be able to see this 'Tardis' machine of yours, but don't worry, we'll find it, and take it, along with anything else we want."

Clara dropped to the ground, her cheek resting on the hot ground below her, her hands by her sides.

"Nighty-night, Clara," he said.

"Cover you mouths, don't breathe it in!" the girl ordered.

They immediately did as she told, using their sleeves or insides of their shirts to shield the lower halves of their faces from the dangerous particles. After some time, when the particles had sufficiently dispersed, the girl uncovered her face, and the boys followed suit.

"What was that?" Peter asked.

"A combination of memory gas and an electromagnetic tech. wave," she explained.

"What does that even mean?" Will asked.

"Well, the memory gas erases recent memories (the length of which depends on the concentration of the gas), it also prevents the creation of new memories for a time, and makes people generally forgetful," she explained. "And the electromagnetic tech. wave is a specially designed electromagnetic wave that also hacks into all electronic devices after they've been knocked out, and can be programmed to do anything from erase files to granting the aliens remote access to the devices."

"Why? What's their endgame?" Gage asked.

"I don't know," the girl replied. "But I think we should find out."

"Isn't it a little suspicious that you just happen to know about all of their technology and tricks?" Peter said, more in a statement than a question. "It's obvious that they're aliens, but it seems equally obvious that you aren't what you seem. How do we know that you aren't one of these aliens too?"

"I don't know," the girl said. "I guess you'll just have to trust me for now, like I'm trusting you."

When they arrived in the city, they were surrounded by peaceful chaos, a kind of quiet, subdued confusion. All the streetlights (and electronics in general) were off. People milled about the streets, wandering aimlessly with glassy looks in their eyes. Somehow there wasn't mass rioting, possibly because one of the after affects of the memory gas was short term memory loss; so even if someone was thinking of doing something illegal, they forgot about it moments later before they could act on it.

Then there was the alien ship, still hovering overhead, occasionally picking up a random person.

"What do they want?" Will asked.

"Moreover, what are we doing here?" Gage asked.

"Yeah, it's not like we can stop an alien invasion," Peter said. "We should just go somewhere, barricade ourselves in, and hide."

Jin didn't say anything, he just made an annoyed tsk-ing sound, and looked back out at the city, away from the people in the buggies next to him.

"Maybe we can," the girl said, then explained. "Sure, they can kidnap people openly now, and will have more test subjects for whatever experiments they're doing, but it also looks like they're searching for something. Otherwise they would have just grabbed however many people they wanted and left."

"Then we just have to find whatever they're looking for before they do," Gage said. "And it might even hold the key to defeating them."

"But what could it be?" Peter asked. "If it was easy to find then they would have gotten it already, and we don't have a clue what they're after."

"Maybe…" the girl began. "Have you guys heard of anything appearing in the city? It would be something strange or unusual, not ordinary or commonplace; it wouldn't have been overtly alien or threatening. And it wouldn't cause panic, but it may arouse people's curiosity."

The four boys were thinking about this, trying to remember if they had seen or heard of anything that matched the description. For the most part they came up empty.

"What about that blue police box?" Gage said. "It just appeared out of nowhere in an alley, no one could open it, and they just decided to leave it there. People thought it was a prank."

They all looked at one another, thinking the same thing: could this really be what the aliens are after? A police box would seem innocuous enough, but maybe too innocuous. The idea bordered on the ridiculous.

"Do you remember where it was?" the girl asked.

Gage pursed his lips, trying to remember that tiny detail he had read earlier in the day, and had thought was inconsequential. Finally it came to him.

"Yeah, the alley it was found in is this way," he motioned, and then steered the buggy in that direction, the second buggy followed close behind.

As they drove further into town, the streets became more and more crowded with stalled cars and wandering people, making it increasingly difficult to maneuver around them, and eventually they just drove on the sidewalk, where there was less clutter. Then, after several minutes, they turned into an alley. A large, blue police box sat deep in the shadows, and a woman was lying in front of it, unconscious. From the state of her clothes, she must have dragged herself to the box, but finally succumbed to the gas before she could enter it.

The five of them got out of the buggies and went to the box and girl. Will checked the girl's pulse, confirming that she was still alive. Jin went to open the blue box, but found that the door was firmly shut. Gage stood a few feet away, looking ponderously at the box, trying to think of a way to open it. Peter stood just behind him, looking a little terrified, nervous at the idea that this was some alien device and they were trying to open it.

"Whoever she is, she dragged herself some distance to get to this box," the girl said, pointing to her clothes. "She wouldn't have done that if it wasn't important and she didn't have a way to get in."

Will checked the unconscious woman's pockets and pulled out everything he found: three toys and a few hair pins.

"Well, it was a good theory, but it looks like a bust," Will said. "All she had was this toy gun, some metal hair things, and these other two toy wands."

"Toys?" the girl said. "That doesn't make any sense."

Then the girl stepped forward and took the toy gun, aimed it at the police box, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, Will looked at her with an 'I told you so' kind of look. The girl felt around the gun until she found something that moved, and clicked into place. She aimed and fired again, this time a laser beam shot out of the gun and exploded against the blue box, which was completely unaffected by the blast.

"Safety," the girl said. "Even alien guns have them."

The four boys looked incredulously at the tiny, toy-like gun.

"That is definitely not earth technology," Jin noted.

"Does this mean that the woman's an alien?" Peter said, looking down at the unconscious woman on the floor.

"She doesn't look like one," Gage added, skeptical.

"She seems human enough to me," the girl said. "But maybe she's just a type of alien that looks human. Or she could actually be a human, and somehow got her hands on alien technology."

"So how do we open the box? And what's inside it?" Will asked.

"Maybe one of those wand-things is the key," the girl said.

The boys started walking around the box, trying to find a place where the key would fit. They even tried prying open the space where the phone went, but anticlimactically they just found a corded phone. The girl picked up one of the two wands and studied it, turning it over in her hand. She pointed the green crystal end at the blue box, and then she pressed a small button on the metal wand. The wand came to life, buzzing and humming like an electronic chorus, and the box's door opened, just a crack. The four boys stopped what they were doing, looking up in surprise.

"Remote control," she said with a shrug.