"You're Amelia," he stated.
"I could've told you that, Captain Obvious," Alex retorted, calmly walking alongside him. Despite everything that was happening, she was having fun. This was the craziest thing to happen to her since she arrived in Leadworth. Normally, she didn't go for crazy but with the Doctor, she somehow forgot about it and just went with the flow. It exhilarated her and slightly scared her, but it didn't mean she wanted to stop.
Ignoring Alex's comment, Amy grabbed her by the arm and pulled her as far away from the Doctor as possible. "You're late," she told him coldly before storming down the road.
The Doctor raced to keep up with them. "Amelia Pond, you're the little girl."
Amy glared at him. "I'm Amelia, that's Alexandria, and you're late!" she snapped. Alex waved at the mention of her name and then grimaced as Amy pulled her along even faster.
"What happened?" the Doctor asked, still racing alongside them.
"It's an interesting process, Doctor," Alex said. "You see, it's called growing and sometimes, people change during it."
The two ignored her. "Twelve years," Amy spat.
"You hit me with a cricket bat!" the Doctor accused.
"Well, you did break into our house," Alex said. She was now jogging to keep up with Amy. Who knew she could walk so fast?
"Twelve years," Amy repeated.
"A cricket bat!" the Doctor copied.
"Twelve years and four psychiatrists!"
"Ow! Amy, Christ, that's my shoulder blade you're popping!" Alex cried, wrenching away from Amy's death grip. She returned to the Doctor's side, liking the jolt in adrenaline she got when she stood close to him.
"Four?" he questioned.
"This is freaking hilarious," Alex smiled.
"Alex, shut up," Amy told her.
"Well, it is!" Alex argued.
The Doctor kept staring at Amy and Amy bit her lip. "I kept biting them," she admitted, pointedly ignoring Alex's cackling.
The Doctor looked amused. "Why?" he asked, smiling.
Amy shrugged. "They said you weren't real."
"Told you it was hilarious," Alex chirped, prancing around them.
"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated." That weird voice rang out again, this time from the direction of an ice-cream van across the road. Alex stopped her prancing and raced over to it, followed closely by the Doctor and Amy.
"No, no, no, come on. . . What? We're being staked out by an ice-cream van?" Amy cried rhetorically as she stopped beside them.
Alex stared at the radio and then looked over at the vendor. "Hi, Michael!" she greeted. "Why's it playing that? It's supposed to be Claire de Lune, right?"
Michael was cut off from replying by the Doctor. "What's that? Why are you playing that?" Alex was slightly alarmed to hear the fear and franticness in the Doctor's voice. The reason behind the metallic voice playing on the radio was probably not very good.
"Like I just said," Alex said, aggravated, "it's supposed to be playing Claire de Lune. From Debussy, I think."
The Doctor nodded and picked up the radio, holding it to his ear. "Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated. Repeat, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."
The message repeated several more times and tired of listening to it, Alex looked around. She quickly noticed a jogger and a woman staring at their iPod and phone respectively in confusion. Alex tapped the Doctor on the shoulder and gestured over to them. "I think that message is playing on their devices as well."
"Good job Alex," he complimented. He dropped the radio back onto the cart and grabbed Alex's hand. He noticed that he felt a lot more complete touching her, but dismissed it. It reminded him of how it had been with Rose and he did not want to repeat past mistakes. He leapt over a fence, something Alex surprisingly copied, while Amy ran around. The two entered a small house together to see an elderly woman in the living room, flipping through the channels on the TV. Each channel showed a giant eye repeating the same message over and over again.
"Hi, Mrs. Delia!" Alex greeted, skidding to a stop.
The Doctor skidded to a stop next to her a few seconds later. "Hello! Sorry to burst in, we're doing a special on television faults in this area." He looked over at Alex and Amy's costumes, the latter having just entered. "Also crimes. Let's have a look." He went over and gently took the remote out of Mrs. Delia's hand.
"I was just about to phone. It's on every channel." Once she was through explaining, Mrs. Delia looked over at the two girls, addressing Alex first. "Hello, Alex dear. How are the college applications going?"
Alex winced and the Doctor looked over at her. "Um . . . not so well. They won't offer full scholarships or anything I can afford." Over the last few weeks, Alex had decided to try and apply for a scholarship at one of the English colleges but she had quickly learned English colleges were a lot tougher than their American counterparts.
"Well, they are making an absolute mistake. You should be working as a CEO somewhere, not stuck working in a library all day." Mrs. Delia turned to Amy. "Hello, Amy, are you a policewoman now?"
Amy shifted slightly. "Well, sometimes."
"I thought you were a nurse," Mrs. Delia said. Alex saw the Doctor raise his eyebrows.
"I can be a nurse," Amy said evasively. Alex pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Served Amy right for choosing such a ridiculous profession!
"Or, actually, a nun," Mrs. Delia accused.
Amy laughed nervously. "I dabble!" she said, throwing her hands up in the air.
Mrs. Delia shrugged, dismissing the matter. "Well, Amy, Alex, who's your friend?"
"Who's Amy? You were Amelia." The Doctor looked up from the TV to stare at Amy.
"Yeah, and now I'm Amy." The Doctor looked over at Alex, remembering how Amy had once called her Alexandria.
"And my full name is Alexandria Nicole Locke, but everyone calls me Alex," she supplied.
"Amelia Pond - that was a great name," the Doctor objected. "Alexandria Locke is a great one too."
"Bit fairy tale," Amy said, staring at the Doctor, eyes narrowed. Alex remembered the conversation about fairytales on the first day she and Amy met. No wonder Amy had changed her name. It reminded her too much of how the Doctor had left her.
"Personally, I just feel my first name is too long," Alex jumped in, trying to break the awkward moment.
Mrs. Delia didn't seem to hear the conversation, instead focusing all her attention on the Doctor. "I know you, don't I?" she asked. "I've seen you somewhere before." Alex instantly thought about all those drawings Amy had on her desk back in her room.
"Not me," the Doctor said happily. "Brand new face." Alex walked over to him and studied him. As he was saying "First time on," Alex studied his lips and flicked a lock of his hair. She smirked at him. "New face, huh?" she said. Then, before she could stop herself, she added, "Looks really good. I approve. But the clothes are just another thing entirely."
The Doctor glared at her playfully and Alex simply giggled a little in reply. He surprisingly liked that he had her approval. He didn't know why it mattered so much for a girl he had only met twenty minutes prior to like his new body, but for some reason, it just did.
Amy gawked at them. What the heck? She had never seen Alex act around anyone the way she acted around the Doctor. It was almost freaky.
The Doctor reluctantly tore his eyes away from Alex to look at Amy. "And what sort of job's a kiss-o-gram?"
Amy cleared her throat nervously, not liking the direction this conversation was heading. "I . . . uh, go to parties and I kiss people."
"With outfits," Alex added.
"It's a laugh," Amy defended, shooting her a shut up or die look.
The Doctor seemed to have the same type of attitude for Amy's job as Alex did. "You were a little girl five minutes ago," he stated.
"Twelve years actually," Alex corrected. "Time flies when you can't fly a time machine properly."
The two ignored her again, offending Alex somewhat, who went over to sit on the couch and pout. "You're worse than my aunt," Amy accused.
Alex shook her head. "I've met Sharon, Amy, and he cannot be worse than that old bat." Alex had had the unfortunate luck to meet Sharon one day shortly after she moved in. Sharon was drunk and had nearly thrown her down the stairs until Rory quickly arrived, having been alerted by someone who saw Sharon's car, and throwing Amy's wretched aunt out. Since then, Sharon had moved out of the house and both Amy and Alex were quite happy about having the place to themselves.
Amy tilted her head slightly, allowing this, as the Doctor said, "I'm the Doctor. I'm worse than everybody's aunt." He then turned to Mrs. Delia. "And that is not how I'm introducing myself." The Doctor quickly got up and started to fiddle with a radio sitting on the fireplace mantel. Using the sonic on it, the group heard the same message about Prisoner Zero, this time in French and German, before the Doctor switched it off.
"Okay, so it's everywhere in every language," he deduced.
The dots started connecting in Alex's head. "They're broadcasting to the whole world," she said. Simultaneously, she and the Doctor raced over to look out a nearby window.
"What's up there? What are you looking for?" Amy asked. Neither of them answered, for all they could see was blue sky, green grass, and a bunch of people staring at their technological devices in confusion, wondering why a message about a prisoner was playing on it.
The Doctor pulled himself out of the window and started talking. "Okay, planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core . . . they're going to need a 40% fission blast." Alex frowned and pulled herself out as well. That did not sound good.
As Mrs. Delia's grandson Jeff stepped through the door, the Doctor walked up to him, still talking. "But they'll have to power up first, won't they? So, assuming a medium-size starship, that would give us twenty minutes at most." He leaned in and got close in Jeff's face, amusing Alex. "What do you think, twenty minutes?" Then, still talking, he said to himself, "Yeah . . . twenty minutes. We've got twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes to what?" Amy demanded.
The dots quickly connected to form a full picture in Alex's mind and she shivered nervously. Just as she was about to call out her thoughts, Jeff beat her. "Are you the Doctor?" he asked, awe on his face.
"He is, isn't he? He's the Doctor!" Mrs. Delia said triumphantly. "The Raggedy Doctor. All those cartoons you did when you were little. The Raggedy Doctor, it's him!" Alex started shaking with silent laughter from the embarrassed look on Amy's face and the stunned and amused expression on the Doctor's face.
"Cartoons?" the Doctor asked, bemused. He went and sat down on the couch, followed by Alex, who was starting to fall over from laughing so hard.
"Gran, it's him, isn't it? It's really him!" Jeff cried, moving to the side of the couch. This only served to fuel Alex who promptly burst into a bunch of mad cackling, the Doctor chuckling slightly along with her.
"Jeff, shut up!" Amy snapped. She pointed her finger at Alex. "You too, missy!" Alex only laughed harder and clutched her side, leaning into the Doctor slightly. The Doctor didn't bother shifting away from her. "Twenty minutes to what?"
Alex suddenly stopped laughing upon hearing Amy ask this question. "The end of the world," she said in perfect sync with the Doctor. The Doctor looked in amazement at her, impressed with her for figuring this out so quickly, despite the fact that he had seen her do that many times already that day.
The Doctor quickly got up from the couch, pulling Alex up, and then, still holding her hand, walked out onto the streets of Leadworth, followed closely behind by Amy. "Where is this place? Where am I?" he asked Alex.
"Leadworth," she answered.
"Where's the rest of it?" he asked, swinging her hand.
"This is it," Amy called from behind them.
"Is there an airport?"
"No," the girls answered in union.
"A nuclear power station?"
Amy snorted and Alex said, "No."
The Doctor was getting desperate. "Even a little one?" he persisted.
"Nope," Alex said.
"Nearest city?"
Amy took this one. "Gloucester, half an hour by car."
"We don't have half an hour," the Doctor reminded her. "Do we have a car?"
"Back at the house, but the oil needs to be changed," Alex said, shuddering when she thought about the Doctor driving her beloved '56. If he drove a car like he did a time machine. . . Alex forced herself not to think about that.
Amy caught her shudder and smirked. "And like Alex would let you anywhere near her beloved car."
"It is a classic, Amy," Alex retorted.
"Well that's good!" the Doctor cried sarcastically. "Fantastic, that is. Twenty minutes to save the world and I've got a post office." He gestured to the building as the trio passed it. "And it's shut!" Alex was about to reassure him that he'd come up with something (she just had a feeling that he would) when his attention was distracted by something ahead of them. "WHAT is that?" he screeched, running towards a small pond.
"It's a duck pond," Amy said, slightly impatient.
"Why aren't there any ducks?" the Doctor demanded. Alex pondered on why he was asking this. Unless these aliens had a secret plot to make Earth ducks extinct, then this really didn't pertain to the matter at hand.
"I don't know!" Amy huffed. "There's never any ducks!"
"Then how do you know it's a duck pond?"
"Because it just is!" Alex jumped in, irritated that the Doctor was getting off-topic. "Is it important, a duck pond?"
"I don't know," the Doctor answered, trembling slightly. "Why would I know?" Still shaking, he sat down on the curb and clutched his chest. Alex crouched down to him and looked at him worriedly. She sat down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, letting him know she was there. The Doctor looked over at her and grinned weakly. Alex's presence seemed to make him forget about the pain running through his still-new body.
"I'm not ready, I'm not done yet," he groaned as another flash of pain went through him.
"Just rest for a minute," Alex urged. The Doctor seemed to be willing to take this advice when the sky suddenly darkened. All three looked up.
"What's happening? Why's it going dark?" Amy asked nervously.
Alex racked her brain. She watched as the sun reappeared, but it was now gray and flickering, like the screen to a black and white movie. "What's wrong with the sun?" Amy asked.
"Nothing," the Doctor said.
Alex finally came to a reasonable explanation. "We're looking at it through a force-field, correct?" she asked the Doctor, who nodded. He picked up from where Alex left off, knowing that she wouldn't know this information. "They've sealed off the upper atmosphere and now they're getting ready to boil the planet." The girls turned to stare at him in horror.
The Doctor stood up, supported slightly by Alex. He ignored the slight buzz he got when she was touching him, instead focusing his attention on several people standing around the small park where they were at. "Oh, and here they come, the human race. The end comes, as it was always going to, down a video phone!" He said this last part with total disgust and Alex couldn't help but agree with him.
Meanwhile, Amy was breathing heavily. This day had already been so long and she wasn't sure if she could handle anything else. "This isn't real, is it?" she questioned. "This is some kind of big wind-up."
The Doctor stared at her, confused. "Why would I wind you up?"
"You told me you had a time machine."
"And you believed me," the Doctor reminded her.
Of course she believed you! Alex thought. She was seven freaking years old!
"Then I grew up," Amy said, pressing her fingertips to her temple.
"Oh, you never want to do that," the Doctor said gravely. "No, hang on, shut up, wait! I missed it!" He slapped his forehead, startling Alex.
She stared at him. "Good grief, are you bipolar or something?"
"I saw it and I missed it!" the Doctor declared, smacking his forehead again. He looked at Alex. "And it's or something. Now, what did I see? I saw . . . what did I see?" His voice trailed off and he stared into space for a few moments, evidently doing his own version of connecting the dots. Suddenly, his face brightened and he looked at the two girls.
"Twenty minutes. I can do it," he declared. "Twenty minutes, the planet burns. Run to your loved ones and say goodbye or stay and help me."
"I'm in!" Alex said quickly. Of course she was in; she had been since she first saw the sixth door. She just hadn't known it until now. Meanwhile the Doctor grinned at her. He knew she was in, he could see it in her eyes when they first met. That just left Amy. . .
"No," Amy said bluntly, a split second after Alex had declared the opposite.
The Doctor and Alex blinked at her. "I'm sorry?" he said, surprised. He would have expected Amy to pitch in, as did Alex.
"No!" Amy cried, a bit louder. She grabbed his tie and started dragging him off towards a small parking lot next to the green. "No, no, no, no! Amy!" the Doctor protested along with Alex shouting, "Amy what the hell are you doing?!" She dragged him next to a just-parked car, opened the backseat door, slammed his tie into it, and closed it. She then grabbed the key from the startled owner and used it to lock the doors.
"Amy! Have you lost your mind?" the Doctor demanded.
Amy ignored this though. "Who are you?" she demanded, ignoring the shocked owner of the car and Alex, who went up to stand right beside the Doctor. She started fiddling with his tie, attempting to take it off so he could get out. It was harder than it appeared though.
"You know who I am. I'm the Doctor," he tried. He moved closer to Alex so that she could work on the tie a little better. He studied her eyes, now a pretty topaz color, and noticed the tiny flecks of brown and green in them, the reason why they were constantly changing colors.
"No, really," Amy argued. "Who are you?"
"Look at the sky!" Alex snapped. "End of the world in twenty minutes!" She slapped the roof of the car in frustration as the tie seemed to tangle itself around her fingers. "Damn tie!" she screeched.
"Well, better talk quickly then," the Doctor mused to himself. Alex nodded in agreement, not taking her eyes off the tie.
"Amy," the owner of the car cut in. "I am going to need my car back."
"Yes, in a bit," Amy snapped impatiently. "Now go and have coffee." The owner quickly scurried off, deciding it was better to agree than to argue with a clearly pissed off Amy Pond.
The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the apple that Amy had given him. "Catch," he said, tossing it to her.
Alex looked over and watched shock appear on Amy's face as she studied the apple. What the heck? What did an apple have to do with any of this?
"I'm the Doctor," he repeated gently. "I'm a time traveler. Everything I told you twelve years ago is true. I'm real. What's happening in the sky is real, and if you don't let me go now, everything you've ever known is over."
"I don't believe you," Amy insisted. The Doctor reached out and gripped her wrist.
"Just twenty minutes. Just believe me for twenty minutes. Look at it. Fresh as the day you gave it to me. And you know it's the same one." Now, Alex stopped fiddling with the tie and stood on tiptoe to get a better look at the apple. She could now see that it had a smiley face carved into it and she remembered Amy saying that her mom used to do that to get her to eat them.
Now, she jumped in. "Amy," she said softly, "believe for twenty minutes." Amy considered this and a second later, the door unlocked and Alex quickly freed the Doctor.
"What do we do?" she asked him.
He smiled at her. "Stop that nurse!" Then, grabbing her hand, they set off back across the green, Amy following alongside them. The trio approached Rory and the Doctor didn't hesitate in snatching his cell-phone. "The sun's going out and you're photographing a man and a dog, why?" he demanded, getting into Rory's face the same way he had Jeff just a little while ago.
"Hi, Rory!" Alex chirped, bouncing up next to him.
"Amy? Alex?" Rory cried.
"Hi!" Amy greeted. "Oh, this is Rory, he's a . . . friend."
"Boyfriend," Alex and Rory corrected simultaneously. The two looked at each-other. "I seem to be doing that a lot today," Alex reflected.
"Kind of boyfriend," Amy said, looking at the Doctor to see what he thought.
"Amy!" Rory and Alex cried and Alex shook her head. Christ, the Doctor was hot but really, Amy was already involved with Rory! Sweet Rory! Meanwhile, Rory looked at Alex since they had just done another round of synchronized words. Wanting to break some of the tension in the air surrounding Amy's obvious attraction to the Doctor, Alex cried out, "Jinx! You owe me a coke!"
"Is that an American thing?" Rory questioned.
The Doctor interrupted them though. "Man and dog, why?" he tried again.
Only then did Rory realize who he was talking to. "Oh my god, it's him!" he said, eyes totally wide.
Amy grimaced. "Just answer his question, please."
"It's him though!" Rory objected. "The Doctor. The Raggedy Doctor!"
"Yeah, he came back."
"But he was a story," Rory argued. "He was a game."
By this point, the Doctor was getting pretty impatient and quickly grabbed Rory by the collar, pulling him so their faces almost touched. "Man and dog-why? Tell me! NOW!"
"Sorry," Rory stuttered, surprised. "Because he can't be there. Because he's in a hospital, in a coma." This last part was said by the Doctor and Rory together and Alex couldn't help but think that this simultaneous repeating of words seemed to be a recurring theme today.
"Yeah," Rory said, rather unnerved.
"Knew it," the Doctor said triumphantly. "Multi-form, you see?" he continued, releasing Rory. "Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a live feed, a psychic link with a living but dormant mind."
Alex nodded, grasping this quickly. "And what better link than with coma patients?" she said. At that moment, the multi-form ahead of them snapped and snarled at the group. The Doctor walked a little closer, unconsciously putting himself right in front of Alex.
"Prisoner Zero," he greeted.
"What? There's a Prisoner Zero, too?" Rory asked, incredulous.
"Yes," Alex answered.
At that moment, there was a loud electrical buzzing and the group looked up to see a large spaceship flying over the green. The spaceship was really a large eye, like the one on the TV in Mrs. Delia's house, and was swiveling back and forth, obviously searching for Prisoner Zero. The Doctor slid out his sonic screwdriver. "See, that ship up there is scanning for non-terrestrial technology. And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver."
He held the sonic screwdriver above his head and pressed a button, causing absolute chaos. A few nearby streetlights shattered, car alarms and sirens were going off everywhere, and people began shouting, demanding to know what was happening. Much to Alex's amusement, a fire truck drove off on its own, forcing several firemen to chase after it.
"I think someone's going to notice, don't you?" the Doctor grinned and Alex giggled again, attracting his attention. He smirked and winked at her. Alex happily winked back. This was so crazy, but so fun at the same time. It was also an added bonus that the Doctor was part of it all.
Prisoner Zero barked, forcing the Doctor back to the task at hand. He lowered his hand and aimed the sonic screwdriver at a phone booth. The glass in the booth exploded and a split second later, the sonic screwdriver seemed to want to get in on the action as it promptly sparked and fizzed, causing the Doctor to drop it onto the ground.
"No, no, no, don't do that!" he cried as the ship went away.
"Look, it's going," Rory stated. Look who gets an A+ for observation! Alex thought wryly.
The Doctor whirled around. "No, come back, he's here! Come back! He's here, Prisoner Zero is here! Come back, he's here! Prisoner Zero is. . ." Unbeknownst to him, the three humans watched as Prisoner Zero melted and disappeared down a storm drain.
"Doctor!" Amy shouted, interrupting his pleas. "The drain! It just sort of melted and went down the drain."
"Well, of course it did," the Doctor huffed, now incredibly annoyed.
Alex sighed and ran a hand through her hair nervously. She watched as the Doctor just stared at the storm drain, defeat nearly visible in his eyes. She then looked over at Amy, who was still checking the Doctor out quite appreciatively. Alex made a mental note to talk about that with her later, and by talk, she meant lecture. Rory was still staring at the Doctor like he was a purple cow so Alex took it upon herself to take charge.
"Right!" she cried, forcing them to look over at her. "What do we do now? Because, frankly, I don't particularly want to get toasted to death! Especially not in this outfit," she added, taking a glance at her short skirt.
The Doctor eyed her legs for one brief moment, making Alex rethink her dislike of her outfit. "It's hiding in human form," he stated. "We need to drive it into the open. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, seventeen minutes. Come on, think. Think!"
A few minutes later, the group was staring at the storm drain. Amy shivered, creeped out. "So that thing, THAT lived in my house for twelve years?"
"He should've been paying rent," Alex observed.
"Multi-forms can live for millennia," the Doctor revealed. "Twelve years is a pit stop."
"So how come you show up again on the same day that lot do?" Amy quizzed. "The same minute?"
"They're looking for him but followed me. They saw me through the crack, got a fix," the Doctor explained. "They're only late 'cause I am."
"Aren't alien races supposed to be intelligent?" Alex muttered.
"What are you two on about?" Rory asked them. Alex was trying to figure out a way to answer, but the Doctor jumped in.
"Now, sport, give me your phone."
"How can he be real? He was never real." It seemed to Alex as though Rory was also freaking out like Amy had just a little while ago. She only hoped that Rory wouldn't try and pin the Doctor in a car door. Frankly, she sucked at undoing knots of any kind.
The Doctor ignored his questions. "Phone, now, give me!" he demanded sharply. Rory reluctantly passed him the phone and turned to Amy.
"He was just a game. We were kids. You made me dress up as him!"
Alex snickered. "I would pay a ton of money to see that!" she cackled, teetering slightly on her heels.
The Doctor scanned through Rory's pictures of Prisoner Zero's many disguises. "These are all the patients?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"No, they're all the multi-form," he corrected. "Eight comas, eight disguises for Prisoner Zero."
"He had a dog though," Amy pointed out. "There's a dog in a coma?"
Alex had already arrived to the answer though, so she took this one. "The coma patient dreams he's walking a dog, Prisoner Zero gets a dog." She looked to the Doctor, hoping for an approving statement, but he was thinking.
"Laptop!" he cried out suddenly. "Your friend, what was his name? Not him," he clarified, gesturing to Rory. "The good-looking one."
"Thanks," Rory said sarcastically, offended.
"Jeff," Alex supplied.
Rory's eyes widened. "Oh, thanks!" he groaned, a million times more insulted.
"He had a laptop in his bag, a laptop. Big bag, big laptop, I need Jeff's laptop. You two," he said, gesturing to Amy and Rory, "get to the hospital, get everyone out, clear the whole floor." He then turned to Alex. "Ally, you come with me." Just before he dragged Alex off, she called over her shoulder, "Phone us when you're done!"
As the two raced off in the direction of Mrs. Delia's house, Rory looked at Amy. "Did he just call her Ally?" he asked, wondering if he had imagined that part.
Amy nodded, just as shocked as he was. Rory had once called Alex Ally and had nearly gotten his head bitten off. Mels did on occasion too, just to annoy Alex, something that always worked and always ended in Alex being dragged away from Mels by either Amy or Rory.
"Wonder why she didn't snap at him," Rory mused. Amy shrugged and the two quickly focused on getting to the hospital.
At the same time, the Doctor and Alex ran into Mrs. Delia's house. Racing past the empty living room, the two burst into Jeff's bedroom. Jeff was lying on the bed with his laptop and looked startled to see the two there. Alex sat down at the foot of the bed, wrinkling her nose at a pile of dirty clothes, as the Doctor wrestled the computer away from Jeff.
"Hello. Laptop, give me!" The Doctor grabbed the laptop and tried to pull it away from Jeff but Jeff wasn't having any of it, if the iron-tight grip on it was any indication.
"No, no, no, no, wait, hang on!"
"It's fine, give it here." The Doctor succeeded in getting the laptop from a mortified-looking Jeff and sat down next to Alex. However, the two looked at the screen only to jump in horror.
"EW!" Alex screamed, covering her eyes. The Doctor shook his head and immediately set to work closing the interesting sites on Jeff's computer. "Blimey! Get a girlfriend Jeff!" he cried, typing rapidly.
The door opened again and Mrs. Delia walked in. "Gran," Jeff complained, staring up at the ceiling in exasperation.
"What are you doing?" Mrs. Delia asked politely.
"The sun's got wibbly, so right now, somewhere out there, there's going to be a big video conference call." He answered this as he was still typing, not even bothering to look up. Alex peeked over his shoulder to see a bright blue screen with computer symbols running down it. "All the experts in the world, panicking at once, and do you know what they need? Me." He looked up long enough to express a very smug look before turning back to the computer. "Ah, and here they all are. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Centre, Patrick Moore."
"Ooh, I like Patrick Moore," Mrs. Delia exclaimed.
Alex nodded in agreement. "An absolute genius!" she squealed. "I read one of his books over the summer a few years ago. Very fascinating."
"I'll get you his number, but watch him, he's a devil." The Doctor turned to Alex. "And I'll get that book signed for you, if you like."
"But you can't just hack in a call like that!" Jeff objected.
"Oh, can't he?" Alex teased. She was starting to realize that the Doctor was capable of many things. The Doctor smiled at her words and held up his psychic paper to the screen where it was now showing a bunch of people on webcam.
"Who are you? This is a secure call. What are you doing?" one of the people demanded.
"Hello. I know, you should switch me off. But before you do, watch this." Alex watched in curiosity as the experts started flipping out over something.
"It's here too, I'm getting it," one expert confirmed.
"Fermat's Theorem, the proof, and I mean the real one, never seen before. Poor old Fermat, got killed in a duel before he could write it down." Alex raised her eyebrows. The Doctor knew Fermat and he had proof of Fermat's Theorem? Now she was truly impressed.
". . .my fault, I slept in. Oh, and here's an oldie but a goodie - why electrons have mass. And a personal favorite of mine, faster-than-light travel with two diagrams and a joke. Look at your screens. Whoever I am, I'm a genius."
"That's putting it mildly," Alex said.
The Doctor gave her a slightly flirty look and Alex bit her lip, her eyes sparkling. Ever so reluctantly, the Doctor turned back to the screen. "Look at the sun. You need all the help you can get. Fellas, pay attention." The Doctor then started talking in what Alex could only describe as 'nerd-talk', stuff even she was unable to understand. He then started typing at Rory's phone.
"Sir, what are you doing?" a man asked.
"I'm writing a computer virus," the Doctor answered casually. "Very clever, super-fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. Why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind, you'll find out. Okay, I'm sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. Email, text, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, radar dish - whatever you've got."
"You can skip MySpace though," Alex added. The Doctor gave her a look. "What? No one uses that anymore!"
Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, the Doctor turned back to the screen. "Any questions?"
"Who was your lady friend?" Patrick Moore asked, looking at Mrs. Delia over Alex's shoulder. Alex wasn't sure whether to laugh or hurl.
"Patrick, behave," the Doctor lightly scolded.
"What does the virus do?" somebody else asked.
"It's a reset command, that's all. It resets counters; it gets in the Wi-Fi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars, anything with a chip will default at zero at exactly the same time." The experts looked a little doubtful so he added, "But, yeah, I could be lying, why should you trust me? I'll let my best man explain."
There was a long silence and Alex turned around to look at Jeff. "Jeff, I think you're his best man."
"His what?" Jeff cried. The Doctor closed the laptop partway.
"Listen to me," he instructed. "In ten minutes, you're going to be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is going to be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff. Right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today's the day you save the world."
"Why me?" Jeff asked.
Alex and the Doctor shrugged. "It's your bedroom," they said together. The Doctor shouted, "Now, go, go, go!" before quickly grabbing Alex's hand and pulling her out of the room. Just as quickly though, he poked his head back into the room. "Oh, and delete your internet history." He darted out and pulled Alex back outside.
Glancing around, the Doctor's eyes settled on the empty fire truck and he looked down at Alex, who spotted it just seconds after he did. She stared at him. "You're not serious," she deadpanned.
He grinned at her. "Wanna bet?" He didn't give her time to answer, instead dragging her to the fire truck. Noticing how small she was, he picked her up by the waist and settled her into the passenger side. Both of their ears were ringing from this contact but they continued to ignore it, the Doctor quickly settling into the driver's seat and driving off.
