The sleek craft cruised at low altitude, the twin engines silently screaming into the wind. Minutes later, the craft was being tended to in its subterranean hangar, as its precious cargo was unloaded. The stunned alien was quickly placed into a containment cell. It was several hours later that the creature returned to the world of the waking, and three hours still before it realised the situation it was in. It knew that it was as good as dead. Only the humans' interest in the extraterrestrial being kept it from death. If the humans had learned more from the dying investigator, perhaps they could have been more prepared than they were...
I woke to find myself lying on a cold metal floor. The room I was in had the bare essentials: a chair and a metal cot bolted to the walls. The walls themselves were blue steel, and the door had a strange symbol on it. I tried the door, knowing that it was locked. I felt a sharp pain as I touched it, and pulled my fingers back. I was trapped. I decided to see if the humans had covered all the bases. My transceiver sprung from my Pak, and I tried to hail the Crescent. A loud wash of static was my only responce. I unfolded my spider legs, and tried to blast the door apart. The door absorbed the laser energy. The humans had indeed figured all the angles. I was impressed.
Sitting in the chair, I had noticed that I wasn't the first guest here. The chair had many scratches on it, and the walls had a gouge or two in them. The cloying stench of death and misery was evident in the air, mixed with the penetrating smell of disinfectant. Despite the humans' attempts to keep the cell clean, the old stains of green and purple blood could still be seen on the blue steel walls. I noticed that somebody, or something, had scrawled a message in some alien script. I read it, realising that it was the written language of the ancient Nanex. The archaic script had faded almost to the point of illegibility, but I could still make it out:
Varia Tanso Empria.
The Imperiuum Forever.
It seemed that the Nanex had found Earth before the Irkens had. I stared at the symbol inscribed on the door, a yellow circle with an orange X painted through it. Suddenly it clicked. The X-COM Project! The humans had fought the Nanex twice, and won both times. I had stumbled across records from the X-COM Project during my search for the Swollen Eyeball Net's central servers. Was Dib a descendant of an X-COM operative? Maybe Membrane had a parent who worked in the labs. Maybe Dib or Gaz were Mutates, creatures produced by splicing human DNA with alien samples. I looked at my room further, and noticed a small speaker near the doorway. Hoping that it was a two-way design, I decided to release my pent-up frustrations by using my preferred method: ranting.
"Release me! Release me or suffer the-" A human's voice began to echo about in the cell. I recognised the voice as that of a female. Judging from the accent, I guessed that she was British. Her accent reminded me of Tak's accent...
"You speak English, alien?" The human seemed surprised. I know I certainly was...