Area 51, Nevada

It was just after noon on the Third of July, twelve hours after the destruction of thirty-six cities around the world, that Air Force One finally arrived at its destination, Area Fifty-One of the Nevada Test Range, affectionately known to locals as Dreamland, and one of the widest known secret bases of the United States Armed Forces. The above ground facilities were sparse, a handful of large hangers and a scattering of smaller ones, as well as various outbuildings for support.

Dreamland had two purposes, with the above ground facilities used to test top secret military hardware, and had seen the development of the famous U-2, A-12, SR-71, and F-117. Over time the operations of the above ground portion of Dreamland became known by, if not acknowledged to, the general public.

The second purpose of Dreamland was why Air Force One was being taxied to just outside of one of the smaller hangers, sized perfectly for the U-2, but being used as a "random storage" facility.

Leading the gaggle of passengers were three men, escorted by Secret Service and Air Force personnel. In the lead was President Thomas Whitmore, forty-third President of the United States. Behind the Presdient, General Grey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Secretary of Defense Nimzicki, walked side by side.

"Mr. President, General," said Air Force Major Mitchell, saluting his Commander-in-Chief and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "Welcome to Area Fifty-One." He dropped the salute, and then turned to escort the group further, "Please follow me."

Major Mitchell then lead the group, to which were added the First Daughter Patricia Whitmore, White House Communications Director Constance Spano, her ex-husband David Levinson, his father Julius Levinson, the time traveler James Shepard, and various members of the White House staff, to the back of the hangar, where after passing through a secure door, they were lead down a hall, which included two jogs to slow the advance of any unauthorized parties, to an elevator, which was surprisingly, but understandably, large.

The trip down was long, and emptied into a lobby that wouldn't be out of place in any military base across the country, if it wasn't nearly three hundred feet below ground.

"I understand you're here to visit the NBTR," said Major Mitchell, acting as guide. He pointed to a placard on the wall, which listed the NBTR initials with an arrow, as well as listing the infirmary and the barracks. "While we have access to the surface, most of the airmen stay in the facility on six month rotations, and are nominally assigned to South Korea during their tours here."

After going through another elevator, this one just as big, Mitchell led them into a red room with lockers in the walls, "We're now twenty-four floors beneath the surface, and … here's our main research facility."

"Let's see it," demanded President Whitmore, walking up to the plexiglass doors just seeing a handful of technicians in coveralls due to the sloped airlock.

"I'm sorry Sir, it's a Clean Room," Major Mitchell tried to explain. "We have to keep it static free, if you'll all go to decontamination…"

"Open the door," demanded Whitmore pointedly, brokering no disagreement.

"Yes Sir," said Mitchell, receiving a direct order from his Commander in Chief. He walked over to a control, and after inserting a smart card from his pocket and inserting a code, the plexiglass doors opened.

"Major," asked Shepard, speaking for the first time since their arrival, "What does NBTR stand for?"

As the group, lead by the President, walked down the ramp towards the soon to be no longer Clean Room, Major Mitchell responded, "Non-terrestiral Biological and Technological Research."

"I'll have to remember that," said Shepard.

"What exactly do you do, Mr. …?" asked Major Mitchell.

Shepard stuck out his hand to the disgruntled officer, "James Shepard, CEO of Cerberus. We're a research think tank based out of Scotland. We did some work with Northrop on the F-23, and in my humble opinion it's what allowed it to win against the YF-22."

"It's a good bird," said Major Mitchell, "Though I'm a Spirit driver myself."

"I'm a helicopter man personally, my sister's the one that pushed us into working with Northrup, though we've done other work with Boeing, such as with the Osprey," admitted Shepard, just before the group passed through the lower sliding doors and into the main research lab.

"My God," commented Whitmore upon seeing the dozens of technicians in white coveralls at tens of workstations that lined the two sides of the long chamber.

Shepard noticed that every workstation had at least one laptop or desktop computer for use by the technicians, and all of them were Macs.

"Why the hell wasn't I told about this?" asked Whitmore.

Nimzicki walked alongside the President, "Two words, Mr. Presdient, 'Plausible Deniability'."

As he reached the middle of the chamber, after a fairly silent walk past the distracted, but still diligent, technicians, Whitemore asked a question, "I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?"

"Well, you don't actually think they spend twenty-thousand dollars on a hammer, thirty-thousand dollars on a toilet seat, do you?" asked Julius. The others looked at Julius as if he either said the most profound or the most insane thing.

Major Mitchel, though, introduced the person who had walked down from the opposite end of the chamber, a ragged looking scientist with a loose tie, wild grey hair, and a day and a half of stubble, "Mr. President, this is Doctor Okun. He's been heading up the research project here for the last fifteen years."

"How do you do?" asked Whitmore, shaking Dr. Okun's hand.

Okun gasped, "Mr. President." He then got excited, "Wow … this … what a pleasure." He looked around, "As you can imagine, they … they don't let us out much."

"I can understand that," said Whtimore.

General Grey cleared his throat.

"I guess you'd like to see the Big Tamale, huh?" asked Okun excitedly. He then nodded, and turned, "Follow me."

As expected, Okun lead them across the chamber, up the airlock ramp on the other side, and to a slanted diamond plate hatch. Okun's assistant entered a code, and rotating yellow lights turned on as the hatch rotated down, revealing a large hangar-like chamber with an alien spaceship located in place of pride on a raised dais, technicians scurrying over and around it.

From the base of the ramp, Shepard could see the various plates that had been used over the last fifty years, almost fifty years exactly now that he thought about it, to repair either damaged or removed pieces of the ship. It looked similar to the Attackers the aliens used, though it was likely specialized as a scout ship due to its previous mission.

"She's a beaut, ain't she?" asked Okun. He then pointed out the plates Shepard had already noticed, "As you can see from the repairs, we've been trying to put her back together since the late sixties."

"Don't tell me you've had this for nearly fifty years and don't know anything about it," said Whitmore, walking closer to the Scout Ship.

"Ah hell no," said Okun, which surprised Shepard, having expected a line similar to that from Captain Hiller once he showed up, rather than Okun. Shepard did noticed a distinct similarity to Brent Spiner in Doctor Okun, just as he had in all of the others to the actors that had played them in the movie from his time, including his brother-in-law who looked a bit like Gary Oldman, but only in the way any actor was cast to look a bit like the character they portrayed. Only one person he'd met had looked exactly like their actor, and she was set to be a rising sixth year at Hogwarts.

"No, no, no, no, we know tons about 'em," continued Okun. He then stepped down to follow the Presdient, "But the neatest stuff, the neatest stuff had only happened in the last few days."

"See, we can't duplicate their type of power, so we'd never been able to experiment. But, since these guys started showing up, all the little … gizmos inside started to turn on," explained Okun. "The last twenty-four hours have been really exciting."

"Exciting?" asked Whitmore harshly. "People are dying out there, I don't think 'exciting' is a word I'd choose to describe it."

"Mr. President?" asked Shepard, still with the bulk of the group at the base of the ramp into the hangar, raising his hand as if a student in school

"What do you want, Mr. Shepard?" snapped the President.

"Remember, they don't get out much, I'm not even sure he knows that the aliens have destroyed seventy-two cities so far," explained Shepard. "I work with scientists, engineers, and other eggheads like Doctor Okun here quite regularly. It's pretty common for them to not realize what's going on around them. He's been running this place for fifteen years, and before yesterday he's only been able to look at things in a non-working state. Then, suddenly, after fifty years of inactivity following the crash, the technology, not just the passive stuff they could, quite literally, scrape off the hull, starts working. He probably hasn't slept since he started his shift yesterday, likely flitting from one project to the next, hoping to see what minor miracle they could discover now that they can finally examine the ship in a fully powered state."

"Oh," said Whitmore.

"Based on what I'm seeing," said David, standing next to one of the engine nacelles of the Scout Ship, or at least, what appeared to be one, "You're hoping to fly this thing, huh?"

Whitmore looked from David to Shepard, and finally back to Okun, "You said you can repair their technology, can you tell us anything useful about them?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Okun, bounding up the steps to the dias, "I mean, they're not all that dissimilar from us."

As Okun explained about the biology of the aliens, Shepard noticed that Whitmore was examining the Scout Ship much like he'd seen hundred and thousands of other pilots examine aircraft, whether on the flight line, in a hangar not unlike this one, or even in a museum. You could ground a pilot, but you couldn't take their head out of the clouds. It was the same with him, something he'd discovered after his absorption of a pilot over a decade before in preparation for the disposal of Snape's body and the alignment of the UK with the EU. He saw it in Harry too, after Winona had taken the then eight-year old up in a Cessna before being given his own broom. While as Shepard he preferred helicopters, he understood the urge to examine a new and interesting aircraft, or in this case, spacecraft.

The only way Okun could get Whitmore away from the Scout Ship was by offering to show him, and by extension the rest of the group, the bodies of the aliens from the Roswell crash. Okun took the group to a side passage off the main research chamber, and to a large round door.

"Give this thing a giant 'X' logo, and it wouldn't look out of place under Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters," joked Shepard, receiving a glare from Whitmore, though Julius gave him a chuckle.

"This is …" began Okun, leading the way into the darkened chamber, "This is the Vault." Shepard noticed the medical, or rather xenobiological, experimentation room behind the slanted windows opposite where Okun was headed. "Or, as some of us have come to call it, the Freak Show."

Not even Julius gave Okun a token chuckle, though Okun laughed at his own joke.

A glare from Whitmore got Okun to open the door, which ascended into the ceiling, revealing three cylindrical tanks with preserved aliens floating within.

"Ugh," commented Shepard, "and I thought mermen were ugly."

"Mermen?" asked Julius, "Don't you mean mermaids?"

"No, they're not that bad looking. Merpeople have some of the worst sexual dimorphism of all the sophants native to earth. Nearly as bad as, say, peacocks and peahens, only the mermaids are beautify to lure men to their death, like bait."

"Mermaids?" asked Okun. "I'm showing you aliens, and you're talking of mythological creatures?"

"Not myth, Doctor Okun, merely legend. It's been hundreds of years since the Merpeople secluded themselves from the Mundane World, like Goblins, Centaurs, and Elves alike. While it was at about the same time as the seclusion of the Magical World, wizards and witches, it's merely correlation, not causation."

"Magic?" asked Okun.

"Seems Jimmy here is a wizard," said David. "He's got a magic wand and everything."

"Well, I had a magic wand, until the Secret Service took it away," grumbled Shepard.

"I can only deal with the revelation of one secret at a time, gentleman," said Whitmore. "Right now, I'd like to learn about the aliens that have killed millions of Americans, rather than magic."

"Right, aliens," said Okun, his mind no longer totally on topic, the possibility of magic being real warring with the excitement of showing off the awesome things he knew that the others didn't. In the end, vanity won a temporary victory over inquiry, and he continued. He explained how they were found in a biomechanical suit, explaining upon Shepard's inquisition that they worked something like a combination space suit and strength enhancer. After the suits were removed, though, they seemed not unlike humans or other creatures of earth, though they had no vocal cords, and thus could not speak.

David quipped about sign language but Okun extrapolated to telepathy.

"So, they're possibly magical," said Shepard.

"Magical?" asked Okun.

"There's a form of magic that deals with the mind, two actually, one used to communicate, the other to stop it," summarized Shepard. "While I suppose it might be purely biological, it might also be a natural magical trait."

"Interesting," said Okun. "But, as I was saying, it's likely some sort of telepathy, whether biological or magical in nature."

"So, they're alive, like us," said Whitmore, stepping up to the middle tank. He then looked to Okun, "They're dead, obviously, but how hard are they to kill?"

"Their bodies are just as frail as ours," said Okun. He gestured to the middle tube and the one to his right, "These two died in the crash." He then gestured to the third tube, "This one a few weeks later."

"You just … have to get through their technology," said Okun. "Which is, I'm sorry to say, far more advanced."

Whitmore, though, didn't look as disappointed as Okun had expected him to be. "David," he began, "You unlocked part of their technology. You cracked the code."

"All I did was stumble onto their … signal," said David demurely. "I don't know how … helpful I can be."

"Why don't you show them what you've discovered so far," said Whitmore confidently. "Figure out what they haven't thought of yet. We'll figure out if you're as smart as we all … hope … you are."

As Whitmore stepped down from the tanks, Okun stepped up to David, "What code?"