Clara ran multiple tests on the girl, scanning her with the sonic screwdriver and even taking a sample of her blood, and when the tests were done, she concluded that the girl was not a clone, duplicate, replicate, imposter, or shape-shifter; she was the Doctor.

Clara sat on one of the benches in the control room, stunned. Sure, she had seen the doctor regenerate before. She had been prepared for a new face, a new body, a new personality, but the Doctor had always been the Doctor, and this girl did not seem like a Time Lord, much less the Doctor. And the worst part was that the Doctor didn't remember anything, even the most general information seemed beyond her, she hadn't even recognized the Tardis.

Clara felt helpless: she didn't know how to stop these aliens, what they wanted, or even what they were; and the girl didn't even seem interested, she just kept walking around the room, staring into space, and humming. This girl wasn't the Doctor, she couldn't be. The Doctor was a man of action and strategy, always concocting plans, and always saving the day. How could this girl be him?

"So, what do we do?" the girl finally asked.

"I… don't know," Clara confessed. "Uh, well… first, we should probably find a way onto their ship."

"Already done," the girl said, then elaborated. "The aliens found out what the box was and I heard them say they were bringing it aboard their ship. We should be on our way by now."

"Okay then, next we need to figure out what these aliens are, it might give us a clue what they want," Clara said.

"I know that one too," the girl said, cheerfully. "There are two alien races at work here. I think. The fish-faced ones are Svinge'vat, and the second race I'm not certain about, but I think they're shape shifters called Asudine."

Clara stared at the girl in surprise.

"The Asudine are really the only ones that are smart enough to pull something like this off, so the Svinge'vat are probably just working in tandem with them as their muscle," the girl explained.

"Do you know what they're after?" Clara asked, hopeful.

"Nope," the girl replied. "Not a clue."

"Okay then, at least that's a start," Clara said. "So, we just have to rescue their prisoners, figure out what they're doing, and stop them."

"Oh, that sounds hard."

"Nah, it'll be easy," Clara said, joking.

"Well then, our first step has gotta be looking outside," the girl said, going to the Tardis's door and gently opening it, just a crack.

Clara joined her and together they both looked outside. They were in a storage room, and they could feel the humming of the ship beneath them, it was moving.

"So we're still in transit," Clara said.

The girl nodded.

"But once we're boarded onto their main ship, this box is going to be kept under constant guard, and when those two guards don't open up, they'll quickly realize that something is wrong," Clara said.

"Why don't we hide in one of those crates?" the girl said, motioning towards boxes. "When they come for the Tardis we can sneak around them and get onboard their ship."

The both nodded and quietly left, searching for a suitable crate to hide in. They chose one of the large, metal boxes near the entrance and opened it with their sonics. It was half-filled with compressed water vapor canisters, and there was just enough room for them to fit inside.

Gage didn't know how long he'd been there, in a tiny cell of his own, chained to the wall. He heard the voices of people outside, and from their words he knew that there were more prisoners, and that they were split into two groups: those who did manual labor and those that were sent to the aliens as test subjects for their experiments. Gage knew that one of those fates awaited him, his brother, and their friends. He wondered which one he'd get.

He cursed his stupidity, thinking about how careless it had been to leave the door open. And then he realized that it hadn't been him. He had gone in right behind his brother, but he couldn't remember who had gone in after him. And a sudden, dreadful thought crept into his mind: what if the door had been left open intentionally, just a crack? One of them could be working with the aliens… He dismissed the thought; it was ridiculous, none of them would help these monsters.

But then again… he was alone in his cell, and had no idea where the others were. And Jin had been acting very uncharacteristic: showing up at his apartment, asking for his help; it had been him who had gotten them all involved, and then, he had been the most curious about that strange blue box, wanting to see what was deeper inside. Could it have been him? Could he have even been replaced by one of the aliens? Gage shook his head, thinking about how stupid and paranoid he sounded. Leaving the door open was a simple mistake, anyone could have made it. It was silly to suspect his friends.

His thoughts drifted to escape. He had looked around the room the moment he had been thrown in, and there was nothing to help him. He was firmly secured to the wall, a shock collar on his neck prevented him from misbehaving, and he knew he was in the middle of the desert, without food or water, so even if he got out of the ship it would be a long, hard walk back to Roswell. So, he wasn't going to be escaping, not on his own anyway. There was the girl they had met, she had wandered off deeper into the ship before the aliens had come for them, and so he didn't think she'd been captured. And there was also that unconscious woman they had picked up (possibly an alien and the owner of that box). But the girl was odd and possibly crazy, and the woman was unconscious, possibly dead, and likely captured.

Gage sighed, thinking how impossible it was that he'd escape. The door to his cell unlocked and a large, fish-faced guard walked in, undoing his shackles from the wall and holding the chain in his hands as he pushed Gage out.

Gage noticed other people being thrown out of their cells just like him, and Gage caught glimpses of Will and Jin. Where was Peter? He tried calling out to them, but the moment he opened his mouth, the guard hit him in the stomach with a baton; he shut up. Then they were all shuffled into a line, and Gage was at the very back. The room they entered was very large, and its walls and floor were rounded into the shape of a circle. In the middle of this room Gage saw the source of the voices he had heard earlier: dozens and dozens of people; all chained to the floor, generally unkempt and unwashed.

The line of people was led to the end of the room, where one guard pointed at prisoners and then motioned off in different directions. Gage guessed that he was sorting them, choosing who would go where. He strained to see Jin and Will ahead of him, but couldn't. And then finally it was his turn, and he too was herded off to an unknowable fate.

Clara and the girl's plan went well, and before long they were slinking around the ship's hallways. When they found a hidden, unused closet to hide in, they finally discussed their plans.

"We have to save the prisoners and find a way to stop the aliens, plus, I get the feeling that this ship is huge. There's no way we can cover it all, and do everything we need to," the girl said, whispering.

"Not if we stay together, but if we split up we could cover this ship twice as fast," Clara suggested.

"Just what I was thinking," the girl said enthusiastically. "So, how about I go look for the prisoners and you find a way to stop the aliens."

"Just what I was thinking," Clara said back to the girl, and she couldn't help but smile. They both exited the closet. The girl turned right, and Clara turned left.

The girl walked along, playful, humming softly to herself and swinging her arms and legs. She couldn't help but think of herself as a nameless girl, even though the woman named Clara had said that she was the Doctor, that that was her name, it didn't feel like it. It felt better to be a nameless anybody, than whatever it was she was supposed to be.

Up ahead of her, at the end of one hallway, the girl saw an interface. She went up to the panel and ran her sonic screwdriver's scanners over it. She found that it was surprisingly easy to hack the systems and download the ship's schematics to the screwdriver. Strictly speaking, she didn't really need to download the schematics; she remembered them just as easily, but it was nice having a backup.

Even without the schematics, she had an idea where they were keeping the prisoners; somewhere near the bottom of the ship, towards the back. Very few ships were fitted to hold that many prisoners and this ship wasn't one of them, its brig wouldn't be big enough, so they would have had to retrofit its cargo hold for the job. And that's where the cargo holds of a ship were, at its very bottom, usually at the back; it was a practical thing. But even so, having the full schematics may come in handy later.

The girl kept walking. Whenever she heard footsteps or voices she stopped and waited for them to pass. She was very good at standing still.

Once, while she was waiting, she heard something strange.

"Yeah, they just sorted the latest group of people," a fishy voice said.

"I heard that almost all of them were sent to the experiments," added a second voice.

"Yes, yes, very strange," said a third.

"One of the new experiments was wearing this strange object on their head," said the first voice, holding something up.

The girl strained to catch a glimpse of the object, and then she froze when she saw what it was: Gage's glasses.

"How primitive," the third voice replied.

"I wonder what it's for," the second voice said.

"Well, that's why we need them, to find out," the girl said, approaching the group of aliens. "But we can't very well do that if you Svinge'vat keep taking things from the experiments," she grabbed the glasses from the alien's hand.

"Who are you?" the first guard asked, indignant.

"Who do you think?" the girl asked, pointedly raising an eyebrow.

"…An Asudine," the third guard said, horrified.

"But what are you doing, looking like that?" the second guard asked, suspicious.

"What do you think? I just came back from that ridiculous population, and when I went to my experiment, what do I find? A bit missing," the girl said, continuously asking rhetorical questions and then answering them, shaking the glasses angrily in the guards' faces.

"S… sorry, Asudine scientist," the first guard stammered, trying to be formal.

The girl paused for a moment of dramatic effect, then said. "I'll let it slide this time, but don't let it happen again." When they looked at her dumbfounded she added. "Carry on," and walked in the direction the guards had come from.

The guards turned and hurried away, just glad that they weren't going to be punished. Even though the Asudine and Svinge'vat were technically in a partnership, it was clear who was in charge.

Clara had wondered why the ship didn't seem to have security cameras, or any other type of sensors. And in searching for the truth behind the Asudine and Svinge'vat actions, instead she had found the answer to an earlier question. She found an empty, darkened room filled with screens arranged around two chairs, unmistakably the security room. When she tried to turn on the devices, they were unresponsive, and so she opened the panels to the devices and looked inside. The wiring was fried, and likely beyond repair.

This was Clara's first hint at what had happened to the aliens, and she thought she was beginning to understand why they were doing what they were doing, whatever that was. Clara wasn't sure what they needed all those people for, and what kind of experiments they were running, but she was almost certain that something had severely damaged their ship. And she guessed that whatever they were using the prisoners for, it was likely to expedite the repairs to their ship, and possibly find ways to get them home. She was certain that all the pieces would fall into place once she found out exactly what they were doing to the people they captured.

"You have got to be kidding me," Gage said when he saw the alien.

First there were the fish-faced aliens, they were the muscle of the operation, and beyond being the first aliens Gage had ever seen, they didn't really surprise him too much. Then, as he was pushed into a large room filled with complicated equipment, he saw the other race of aliens. They were exactly like the aliens he had grown up hearing about: big, oval heads; large, pure black eyes; scrawny, twig-like bodies; long, delicate fingers; not a single hair; and a multitude of different skin colors (the most common being either dull grey or bright green). Fish-faced aliens were weird enough, but this was just jarring.

That's when Gage saw his friend, Peter, he was talking to one of the aliens, and he wasn't bound.

"Peter!" Gage called out, struggling against his chains, the guard hit him in the stomach but that didn't stop him from calling out again. "Peter!"

Finally, Peter noticed him. He stopped his conversation with the alien and then walked over to Gage.

"Hmm… do keep your prisoner under control," he said to alien guarding Gage, and then to Gage, he said. "You will want to see this," and he turned one of the strange, circular screens cluttering the room so that Gage could see it.

In the screen Gage saw Peter, he was huddled outside in an alley, getting drenched in the rain. The Peter with Gage pressed a control for the screen, and the image panned out. Gage could see the city: tall and grey, with impossibly high buildings and flying machines weaving in-between them.

"What?" Gage began.

"One of our experiments," Peter replied. "It was easier to assume a form I already knew than to try to create one from scratch."

Then something strange happened, like all his features had been blurred out, and Peter changed into one of the big headed aliens.

"I always get the chin wrong," the alien said, putting its incredibly long fingers to its almost nonexistent chin, and smiling from its tiny, lipless mouth. Then the alien motioned at the guard, and Gage was dragged away again.

"Svinge'vat," said one of the big headed alien scientists to the fish-faced guards. "The calculations are made, we are ready to begin."

And the fish-faced aliens, the Svinge'vat, moved in concert, escorting their prisoners to the front of the room, where a semicircle of large, glowing objects had been arranged. Each of the large, ten foot tall objects was shaped like a hollow hexagon, with a metal frame and filled with a glowing, white nothingness. When a prisoner was brought up to one of the gates, the big headed alien scientists would work furiously at the control panels, and the white nothingness would fill with a mosaic of colors. Then, the prisoner's chains would be removed and they would be thrown through the device. The prisoner would disappear, and one of the empty screens lining the room would turn on. It would show the person, and they would be somewhere entirely different. A couple times Gage saw glimpses of the person drifting in space, those would only last a moment, though, before the screen turned dark.

And Gage realized what was happening. The aliens were testing teleportation devices, getting new data from each experiment. But they hadn't gotten the technology to work correctly, and so they kept sending people to random places across the universe, often they would land on a planet, but sometimes something went horribly wrong and they were abandoned in the empty vacuum of space.

Up ahead of him, Gage saw Will and Jin being led to the devices. They were struggling, trying to fight back. But it was useless, just like it had been for all the people before them. The fish-faced Svinge'vat were just too big and strong, and resistance was futile. Jin was pushed through one of the gates (Gage thought they looked and worked enough like gates that he could call them that), and Gage looked around the room, desperately trying to find Jin's screen. There, to his left, Gage saw a new screen turn on, and Jin was standing in a large, gleaming metropolis, brighter and shinier than anything Gage had ever seen.

Next they threw in Will, and again Gage looked around the room, desperate to see Will's fate. With some effort he located the right screen, and there he saw Will, sitting down in an empty, green forest.

Ahead of Gage, more people were pushed into the teleportation gates, and slowly the line dwindled until only he was left. The guard firmly held Gage's arm as he undid the shackles around his wrists; the gate glowed a patchwork of different colors, always changing; and finally it was his turn. He stepped up to the device, held by both arms, and then, he was thrown through the gate.

As he fell, he held his breath and shut his eyes, his heart beat wildly in his chest. And then, he landed painfully on hard, cold metal. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a metal ceiling, the room was filled with awkward, bright light. He turned his head towards the source of the light, wondering where he'd been teleported to, and saw the gate sitting above him, still glowing furiously. He was still in the ship. What went wrong? And then he realized that the aliens would undoubtedly know he was still there, and would come for him again, and that this was his chance to escape. He sat up quickly, but a hand clamped over his mouth from behind, and another hand grabbed his arm, dragging him away.

Gage was led awkwardly from the spot, half dragged really, and completely unbalanced, so there was no way to fight back. The person dragged him past the scientists, along the shadowed walls of the lab, and through the doorway into the hall beyond. Then the person let him go, and Gage spun around to face them.

"Hi-ya Gage, long time no see," the girl said, and Gage just stared at her unbelievingly, it was the same girl from before. So she had escaped, and come back for them.

"You," Gage said, pointing at her. "But… how?"

The girl held up the wand device and said. "It's called a sonic screwdriver, or so I've been told, and it can do all sorts of things. All I had to do was cause the gate to malfunction in a very specific way, that is, momentarily have it go back to the state it was in before it was given commands. So it projected light like always, but didn't lead anywhere. And then I snuck up behind it and pull you away."

"But Will, and Jin, and Peter," Gage said, looking back at the room. "They've been teleported across space to god knows where, and they're trapped. We have to save them!"

"Well, actually they've teleported across time and space, but I get the general idea," the girl replied cheerfully. "At the moment I have no idea how to save them. But don't worry, that unconscious woman we helped, her name's Clara, she's awake now, and she has a time machine, the blue box that's called a Tardis, and they're both on this ship. So we have a way to save your friends, but first we should probably stop these aliens, save the prisoners, and then escape."

Gage opened his mouth to respond, but the girl just smiled, took him by the hand, and pulled him away.