Author's note: I know that I've already got an Invasion fic in progress, but I can't control my ideas. If I have a million of them running rampant at the same time, I have to give them all equal attention. Their rules, not mine.

So, this is an AU fic - a what if Russell had interacted more with Tom after the plane crash?

Day 1

What was the sense of having public holidays if you were still obligated to work on them? Russell Varon, one of many Everglades National Park Rangers who had been summoned to work in the middle of the evening, was left wondering if he would be sufficiently compensated for the inconvenience. He had been in the middle of eating his dinner, which had been left out on the table for him to microwave, when he'd gotten the call. Some sort of emergency down by the cove. Whatever the emergency, couldn't it have waited until tomorrow?

When Russell reached the Glades, he found that a very large area had been cordoned off with yellow tape. He could barely get past the media circus that was milling about the outskirts of the restricted area. There were local news vans, reporters, cameramen, and several busybodies who had probably picked up the news on their CB radios. Well, they were one step ahead of Russell, because he didn't know what the hell the emergency was in the first place.

As Russell drove his pickup truck over to a break in the yellow tape that was being manned by one of his coworkers, he caught sight of an ambulance parked up ahead, right on the edge of the cove. Its sirens were off but the back doors were open. Faster than Russell could blink, a group of medics pushed through the tall grass growing in and around the water, carrying a stretcher hastily back to the ambulance. Russell couldn't see much for the number of bodies blocking his view. The only thing he could make out was that the person they had pulled out of the water was a male, bundled up in blankets and fitted with an oxygen mask. Before he could get a closer look, one of the medics secured the ambulance doors, knocked on the side of the vehicle, and it was off.

"You hear what happened?" Ernie Thompson, the ranger in charge of holding back the press asked Russell as he rolled down his window.

"No. What happened?" Russell peered out the windshield, curious about all the unmarked black vans in the area.

"Commercial plane went down. Over a hundred passengers were killed instantly on impact."

"Shit," Russell said softly, now knowing why the air smelled like someone had been barbecuing toxic materials. Suddenly, working late on a holiday didn't seem like such an inconvenience to him. "But, didn't they just pull someone out of the water?"

"That's the thing. The plane went down yesterday. They were dredging for bodies for the past twenty-four hours. No survivors. But then they find this guy… intact… trapped inside an air pocket or something. Freaking weird shit."

"Why didn't I get a call yesterday? I could've come in."

"Some government officials were the first on the scene. They wouldn't let anyone but the rescue workers in here until this afternoon."

That was peculiar. "Why not?"

"Not sure. Maybe they were checking to make sure it wasn't an act of terrorism."

Russell watched the ambulance disappear in his rearview mirror before focusing on the task at hand. "Okay, so what am I here for?"

"You're not going to like it. We're going to help them clear the wreckage. And let me tell you, there's a hell of a lot of it!"

Please review and let me know what you think of Day 1! :)