You are a young alien from a galaxy thousands of lightyears away from Earth.

Your species is a millennia’s time more advanced than humanity, with ships that can transverse slipspace at approximately a hundred times faster than the speed of sound and incredible feats of engineering in your planet’s irrigation and architecture. It’s like comparing the Romans to cavement.

You also have a huge hyperfixation on humans. It’s something of a political topic on your planet— should your race engage with the poor, ignorant little primates? Share true intelligence and technology with them?

Some want to annex Earth, glass it completely. Others want to protect humans, seeing them as a lesser species, like pets.

You decide to gather proof that humans should be allowed to live. Your father is an esteemed intergalactic pilot, with access to many crafts, so you steal a small dropship using his ID card and then repurpose the ship’s built-in AI to help you drive it.

Everything was going swimmingly… until you made a large miscalculation as to how much fuel the journey would require. Somewhere just past the moon, the engines cut out and you were sucked into Earth’s gravitational pull.

You crash-land, and the military swarm you almost immediately. They’re a bit rough with you, but you’re pretty sure it’s due to fear aggression and isn’t an indicator of species-wide hostility. Maybe the humans are territorial?

You’re arrested and placed under heavy surveillance in the nearest military base — which happens to be the one that Task Force 141 is currently stationed at — until the brass and government decide what to do with you.

You should be scared, but instead you’re ecstatic. You’re getting to study the humans! So much of what you had been taught about them was incorrect— they seem to have complex social structures and decent language skills. Their ( what was the word? ) hands are dexterous and able to create things that look like adorable mimicries of the advanced technology you’re used to being around.

Currently, you’re in a cell, jabbering away to one of the guards ( your neural implant translator made quick work of English, and now you’re disturbingly fluent ), who is quivering as they struggles to come to terms with the fact that there’s an actual alien separated from him only by a few steel bars.

You could escape if you wanted to. Your body allows you to soften and jellify your bones at will, which is a phenomena that humans certainly cannot comprehend, so you could simply squish yourself through the bars as if you were made of slime. But you’re having quite a good time chatting with the guard ( even if the conversation is a bit one-sided ) so you decide to stay as you are.

A broad figure walks into view. He’s barrel-chested and muscular, middle-aged, with neatly trimmed muttonchops and a boonie hat. His gaze is severe but not cruel, and he’s wearing an SAS Special Forces uniform, with the insignia of a captain.

He casts an eye over your unfamiliar biology. “My name is John Price. I’m here to debrief you. We need to know, first and foremost, what you are, and why you’re here.”