Chapter One

My mind had just been utterly blown.

I stood, staring at my uncle, in a numb state of shock.

He was lying.

He had to be.

"This is my life's work, Anastasia." Tony continued, growing visibly impatient with me. "He is real."

How was I supposed to just believe that? What he had told me- it was not just ridiculous, it was insane.

But, then again, Tony probably insane so it should have not been anything so shocking to me. Too many years isolated in his lab had left his credibility about as reliable as shoes with no soles.

He sighed, rising to his feet and moving towards the door. "In due time you will come to accept what I have told you. Perhaps you may even meet him for yourself."

With that disturbing statement hanging heavily in the air, Tony left me to my thoughts and walked out of my room.

The final sound came from the soft click of my door being closed.

I blinked several times, hoping maybe I would just wake up, and lay back on my bed.

What a mess my life was turning out to be. Thoughts whirled and crashed in my head like the waves on a stormy sea.

This was one nightmare I would not be waking up from. This was my life now. This was the new reality.

One Month Later

"Now, I just want you to prepare yourself, Anastasia." Tony, my estranged uncle, cautioned, turning to face me. We stood outside a pad locked door, what was just on the other side of it god only knew. "As you already know, we here at Ground Zero, IETF focus on the tracking and study of extraterrestrial life."

I tried to peer past him into the small window, only half listening as he spoke. Somewhere on the other side of that door was alien... and I was going to meet him.

Really, I had no idea what to expect. Tony had given nothing away about the alien sense telling me he was here in the Facility more than two weeks ago. But he had been adamant on convincing me to see it for myself.

"The alien you are about to meet is one of the most gifted individuals of our time. His intelligence and the rapid rate of his learning skills alone far surpasses anything we have ever seen." Tony paused then, glancing through the window for a moment. When he turned back to me his expression was unreadable, "Also, he naturally possesses hand to hand combat skills so precise you could stand him up against a hundred men and he still could not a matched. He is incredible, Anna."

My focus snapped from the door back to my uncle. "And you are only telling me this now?"

Leave it to Tony to leave out all of the important details until it is likely too late to turn back. From what little I knew of the man he had always had a strange way about him.

From the time I was old enough to remember I had seen my uncle a total of five times; once for my fifth and seventh birthdays, once for Christmas, he was there for my grandfather's funeral, and he was also there for the funeral of my parents.
But he had not been there through any of their deaths, and he had not been there for me after their deaths.
In fact, I did not see my uncle for an entire year after the deaths of my parents.

After a month in foster care the courts placed me in the custody of my second cousin and I was moved to south west Georgia. It was not until two months ago that he had finally emerged from the wood work and served Nancy the papers on his rights to my custody.

The court overruled my open objection to the transfer, thanks to Tony's relations to me, him working for the government, and my cousin practically throwing me into my uncle's arms, there was zero cause to deny him. Within a matter of days I had been packed up and moved from my home in Georgia back to California, to this alien compound in the middle of the desert.

Only after I had come here had Tony briefed me on what it was they studied here at this facility. After learning that shocking news I spent an entire month on lockdown. I went nowhere besides the mess hall and the gym. I saw no-one besides my uncle, the cooks, and the occasional scientist, or trainer, but they rarely spoke a word to me.

"Anna?"

I blinked back to the present, finding Tony had already entered the room, standing just on the other side of the threshold. He looked annoyed.

Nervously, I entered the average sized room and looked around. Not surprisingly, it resembled a hospital room. Sanitary white from top to bottom with nothing more to break it up than a grey door stood slightly ajar but nothing could be seen past the shadows cast from the lack of lighting in there.

In the opposite corner across the room stood a treadmill, monitors clustered alongside a small wooden...