Chris walks in the front door, sighing loudly at the sight of the General waiting for him.

  “I thought I'd do the honors of showing you around myself.” The scumbag quips, and Chris does a quick run through of things he might have done to deserve his current situation. He comes up blank.

  “What more could anyone possibly ask for on their first day?” Chris laces the sentence with every ounce of sarcasm in him. He might not be as imposing as the man before him, but he still had his tongue.

  With a smile too wide to be real, the General ushers him through a pristine white walkway, clinical and bland. The sort of decor you imagine would be present at an organ harvesting hospital.

  “I'm sure you have questions.” The General starts, shoulders angled resolutely in his march forward. Not even turning to look back at him when he stumbles. Prick.

  “Lots.” He replies, leaning on the wall to investigate the sole of his shoe. “The most important being, why the inside of a Plastic Manufacturing Plant looks like where you'd go to get a cocaine fix.” He finishes, following after the General once he’s satisfied with the state of his shoes.

  “Former Plastic Manufacturing Plant.” The General corrects amusedly. “It's been repurposed for military use now. Biochemical enhancements, Endurance room, Gym--”

  Chris holds up a hand to the General's face, cutting him abruptly short. “Please tell me you did not drag me all the way out here, to watch some hot youngsters bench press themselves?”

  The General cracks a sliver of a smile at this, before quickly recollecting himself. “No. We brought you in for this.”

  He opens a side door camouflaged neatly to look like part of the wall, and they step into a room painted blue. A closer scrutiny of the room reveals the blue isn’t paint, but actually the reflection from a light so bright, it was near impossible to see. A Lab Coat hands them a pair of dark glasses as soon as they fully step into the room.

  With the glasses on, Chris could actually see better. He could see the glass wall, the glowing watermelon–Jesus H Christ–on the other side of said wall, and he could make out the technicians in full body suits, poking and prodding at the ethereal thing. Some idiot was even armed with a laser, unsuccessfully trying to cut into the watermelon.

  “We've tried everything.” The annoying boom of the General's voice echoes from beside him. “From High powered lasers, to your run-of-the-mill chainsaw, thing doesn't budge. That's when we decided to seek your expert opinion.”

  Chris turns slowly to size the General. 6 ft 5, suitably muscular and well-fitted in his imperiously starched army regalia. There was the issue of his Ape-like face though, but that was some other woman’s problem–or man, he didn’t judge.

  However for someone this impressive looking. The man was rather dumb. And it would be a shame on Chris’ own head if he didn't inform him of it as rudely as was humanly possible.

  “You're all fucking idiots.” God he was starting to sound like Alex. However warranted in this situation.

  His sentence has the intended effect, as the General sputters for a couple of seconds before finding his words. “I--Excuse-- What?”

  This reaction alone brings some much needed warmth to Chris' heart. “Well you asked for my expert opinion which is, everyone of you that thinks it would be a good idea to pry that thing open, is a brain-dead, uneducated, stupid--”

  “We get the point.”

  “Overpaid idiot.“ Chris exhales as he finishes his tirade. Prompting the General’s scowl to deepen.

  “Get everyone out of there now, at least while we still have the skin on our bones.” Chris spits, before leaving the room, the perplexed General still in it.

  The hall is filled to capacity by Labcoats and Military Personnel–the largest gathering of vapidness in this lifetime, Chris had said–all stood in military line.

  Chris sizes the staff up tepidly, face sporting the most acute morale-killing glare on this side of the hemisphere. He paces the length of the gathering slowly, mirroring the gait of the warden of a correctional facility. Stopping once in a while to angle the dangerous glare at whatever unlucky soul he found himself in front of at the time.

  “Whose absolute brilliant idea was it to dissect an unknown piece of Extraterrestrial technology?” he finally says after the latest round of his cursory glare.

  At the word 'Extraterrestrial' people start mumbling amongst themselves. Some trying and failing to shift away stealthily.

  “Oh, you didn't know it was Alien?” Chris turns to him. ”Personally, I thought the viscous glowing thing in the translucent watermelon-looking thing was red Flag enough.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Chris was enjoying the hell out of this moment, the General thinks, and had every intention of milking it to the max. Hopefully he wouldn't tear into them too terribly. A protesting staff was much more difficult to direct.

  “Now what's even worse is,” Chris continues, “none of you knew what the hell it was, yet the smartest person amongst yourselves, still went along with cutting it open.”

  He turns to the General once more. “You know Glenn, I am learning a lot about the kind of people the military recruits.” Who the fuck was Glenn?

  “These guys wouldn't even make Desk Clerk at my company. Yet here they are working on a super secret, confidential, doesn't exist, hush-hush military project.” Chris finishes, confusingly affronted.

  The General frowns, thankfully catching his hand midway from stupidly scratching his head in uncertainty. He notices Chris preen at the aborted reaction and seethes.

  “Someone get me the test results from whatever scans you were smart enough to run on the thing first. The rest of you take 5, and crack open a Physics textbook while you're at it. Who knows, your career may depend on it.” Chris struts out the room, leaving him following closely behind.

  The man growls low in wounded pride, not used to following after someone else. Chris was intelligent and this was his field of study, he assured himself. There was nothing he could do but make sure everything the man needed was readily available, only then could he return to his rightful spot as antagonist. This however, didn't mean he had to like his present situation.

  “Those were some of the best Professors and Physicists in the state, you just mouthed off to.” he says.

  He sees Chris roll his eyes, and has to stuff down another immature growl.

  “Really? Now I'm absolutely certain you didn't look hard enough.” Chris replies–sentence blissfully devoid of sarcasm–before stopping.

  ”The crystal, you obviously knew it was extraterrestrial. Where did it come from?” he asks.

  “At first we suspected Alex.” The General says.

  “Alex was here long before you found this thing.” Chris defends.

  “Agreed.” He says. He had inherited the project from someone who inherited it from his father, who in turn inherited it from his grandfather. It was basically a family project.

  According to test results, Alex had been around much much longer than the discovery of the pod that had housed the giant crystal.

  Speaking of the pod.

  “In 1914, something was transported over from an excavated site in Albania. Some poor guy was digging a well in his backyard when he found it. A spaceship.” he informs Chris, whose eyes widen in disbelief.

  “A spaceship? What is this Comic Con?” Chris scoffs.

  He leads Chris into a small room in the narrow hallway. A room filled with discarded jeeps, high-end aircraft remains, countless other automobiles and jets, and–propped on something of a pedestal–a futuristic double seater pod, barely big enough to house two grown men. The people who would have landed with it would have to have been children at the time.

  “We brought it down here, tried to utilize it. As you can see, we weren't all too successful.” The General finishes, gesturing to the detritus around them.

  Chris walks into the room, stopping in front of the pod. His hand grips his jaw in awe. “Holy fucking shit.”

  He ushers Chris out the room and closes the door. Locks audibly sliding into place. It would take 10 tankers to tear the door down, should he lose his eyes, or fingerprints.

  “I believe in your ability to fix this.” He grabs Chris' shoulder. “Everything you need, you'll get. A sign of goodwill from us to you. I simply hope you in turn have enough motivation to deliver positive results.” he says, his voice taking on a threatening edge.

  To his displeasure, the sentence makes Chris laugh, shrugging the General's hand off his shoulder. “Are you threatening me, Glenn?” He asks, wiping an invisible tear from his eye. “Because I'm not making any promises. I'll do what I can, especially given the people I have to work with.”

  There was that name again. “Who is Glenn?”

  “I'll be in my office.” The pompous man announces nonchalantly, walks down the hallway. He stops to open a random door, eyes lighting up in excitement.

  “An office.” He corrects, before stepping into the room to gawk. “Ooh! I like this room.” his muffled voice echoes through the hallway.

  The General frowns in thought. Chris was fun and unpredictable. Two qualities that had no business being in this operation. He'd have to find a steeper incentive if he was going to keep Chris in line.

  Macedonia, 355BC …

  A space pod crashes, landing just two yards away from a group of mounted soldiers. As the dust clears, the door to the pod slides open with a woosh, compressed air visibly escaping.

  A child, looking no more than five years old emerges from the pod, their back facing the soldiers. The child turns around to face the group, revealing herself to be the strangest little girl they ever saw. A tiny diamond embedded above her right eyebrow, blood dripping from where its counterpart should rest on the left.

  The men have never seen clothes like hers before, a point proven by their slacked jaws and stares of disbelief. Frozen in fear, the child in turn stares back at them wordlessly.

  The leader of the troop recovers before his comrades, gesturing to them to wake them from their disbelief. "Bring her to me." he commands. And if he is scared, his voice doesn't give it away.

  The soldiers hesitate for a moment, two of them reluctantly dismounting their horses to start towards the child. As soon as the soldiers' feet hit the ground, the girl flinches. Every soldier's spear and sword suddenly hurled toward both men, impaling them. The other soldiers murmur amongst themselves even more terrified, and back away on their horses.

  Interesting, the leader thinks. He had court wizards that attended to his every whim. And even they had never displayed such raw and untamed power. If he had stumbled across a young god, he was going to make the most of it. There were wars to be won after all, and with the right tutelage, the skilled child before him could be a force to be reckoned with.

  He raises his hand in a gesture of calm, dismounting slowly and taking a few tentative steps toward the child, stopping a few feet away. He peers at her curiously. "How ... interesting." he murmurs, eyes trained on the gem on her brow.

  He stretches his hand out to touch the child, stopping when two swords hover warily out of his dead comrades, vibrating with a low humming buzz.

  The Leader quickly retracts his hand. "I'm not going to hurt you, child. See?" He raises his hands in surrender, assuring her he is unarmed. "May I come closer?"

  The Child nods gently and the swords clatter to the ground. The leader moves closer, squatting right in front of the child.

  "My name is Alexander. Alexander the third of Macedonia, what is yours?”