As soon as the Secretary of Defense, who's name I learned was Nimsiki, spilled the beans on Area 51 and where it was, we were all told to return to our seats as the plane changed course to head to the supposed alien bunker.
As soon as I was seated, David turned to me. "Are you sure you're alright?" He asked, still looking concerned.
I nodded my head. "Yeah, I'll be fine," I replied, biting my lip. I knew, though, that if I didn't hear from my family very soon, I would be anything but fine.
"Do you wanna talk about it? Was it a nightmare?"
"Well technically its not night right now sooooooo I'm not sure if nightmare is the right word," I joked, trying to ease the tension of the situation.
David didn't seem very amused, however.
I sighed. "Yes it was, but I don't really want to share. I'll be fine," I reassured him for what seemed like the tenth time.
David stared at me for a long while, seemingly debating whether or not to press the issue further. He gave a sigh of resignation finally, and nodded. "Okay. But if you need anything, I'm here, okay?" His eyebrows raised again and he looked at me caringly.
It was almost enough to make me want to tell him about it, but I couldn't. I had to be strong, and I had to be okay. I could deal with my feelings later; right now we had much more pressing matter to deal with.
So I just nodded in response, and smiled lightly. "I know," I replied softly, then looked away from David and out the window. I didn't want to think right now; I knew that if I did, I would fall prey to the fears and horrors of my mind, and I couldn't afford that right now, not when the world was at stake.

The plane ride continued for another hour before we began our descent. Personally, the descent and lift off were worst for me while riding in a plane. I hated looking out the window and seeing the ground rushing away from or towards me, leaving my stomach behind as well. Once we actually steadied out for the majority of the flight, it wasn't near as awful, but for now I found myself once again clinging to both the armrests and my breakfast.
Out of my peripheral vision, I could see David doing the same, once again looking rather green to the face. If I wasn't so terrified in the moment myself, I probably would have been laughing at him, but right now I had no doubt that I looked just as ridiculous as the plane rushed towards the ground.
It was a relief when finally, 5 minutes later, I stepped out of the confines of the plane and into the warm air outside. I didn't actually know what state we were in, I hadn't been paying attention when Nimsiki actually gave the location and coordinates to the President and his staff, but where ever we were, it was dry and hot, and I was not a fan.
Thankfully, we were ushered inside quickly by some military staff, and I was immediately grateful for the cool air inside of the unknown base.

As soon as my eyes adjusted enough to the darker lighting of the underground room, my jaw dropped. There were people all over the place, rushing around doing all assortments of jobs. I was in shock that somehow such a large place had been so easily hidden, and that no one had ever known about it.
David was next to me looking just as shocked as I was feeling. The technology they had down here was astounding, and I just wanted to mess with all of it.
That probably wasn't the best idea, I knew that, but man, I wanted to look at all of their computers.
"My god..." the President was just as in awe as the rest of us. He turned on Nimsiki, evidently upset. "Why the hell wasn't I told about this place?" he demanded.
Nimsiki didn't even bat an eyelid. "Two words Mr. President: plausible deniability."
I scoffed. Asshole.
Nimsiki glared at me, and I just rolled my eyes, focusing again on the people walking around in their white suits.
I heard the President and Julius continue to talk about this place, but I ignored them.
A man that could only really be described as looking as a mad scientist, ran up to us, looking like a child on Christmas morning.
I immediately backed away a little bit when he got right up in all of our spaces, he really looked insane, and I wasn't gonna take any chances honestly. I bumped into someone's chest as I backed up. I look up to see that it was David. My cheeks flushed. "Sorry," I muttered, looking down.
"It's fine," David said, smirking a little bit.
"Mr President, this is Dr Okun. He's been heading up the research department on this project for the last 15 years," introduced the major that had escorted us inside of the building.
The President extended his hand for the Doctor to shake, and the Doctor shook it with much more enthusiasm than a handshake normally entailed.
I had to keep myself from laughing at just how comical this guy was. His hair was stark white, and hung just past his shoulders, making him fit perfectly into the mad scientist category, or in this case, the awkwardly socially deprived scientist.
"Mr. President. Wow. Ah, this...what a pleasure. As you can imagine, they...they don't let us out much."
I couldn't stop a snort from escaping my lips. I immediately covered my mouth and looked away, cuz I was so close to bursting out with laughter.
David elbowed me, glaring. Normally, I would either stick my tongue out at him, or make a sarcastic remark aimed at him, but at this moment, I honestly didn't trust myself to even open my mouth. So I just settled for biting my lip even harder behind my hand and looking away.
The President and Crazy Guy -that's what I'm gonna call him now, cuz that's all I think of when I see him- had continued to speak while I struggled to hold my composure, and before I knew it, we were moving forward again into a different room.
This room was much bigger than the last, and as soon as we entered into it, I knew exactly why. There were a row of computers with complicated algorithms across their faces, but what grabbed the attention of me and the group was the large spaceship taking up the majority of the room.
My hand fell slowly from my mouth as my jaw dropped. This was obviously one of their smaller ships, one presumably meant for fighting, like the ones that had taken down almost all of our counter attack that I had apparently slept through. Oops.
We all moved closer to the alien ship, still in shock.
I reached my hand out and touched it. It was smooth, and felt cold, like metal. I put my other hand on it and just stood there, trying to take in the whole thing, still in awe.
"She's a beaut, ain't she?" I heard from behind me. Crazy guy speaking again. "As you can see from the repairs, we've been trying to put her back together since the late 1960s."
I looked over at David, who had come to stand next to me, also resting his hand gently on the spaceship. His eyes met mine, and he smirked at my still slack jaw.
I blushed and finally closed my mouth, which by this point was actually quite dry. "This is incredible," I breathed, looking back at the spaceship and then back to David.
He just nodded in agreement, and then backed up and began walking around the spaceship to see more of it.
"-the last 24 hours have been really exciting," I heard the crazy scientist finish off whatever he had been saying before.
My jaw dropped back open, this time in anger, and my hands fell back to my sides, clenching into indignant fists.
"Are you kidding me???" I exclaimed at the same time as the President.
"Exciting? People are dying out there! I don't think "exciting" is a word I'd choose to describe it," Whitmore shot back at the man, who was now fumbling for words.
I turned away, disgusted. I couldn't believe that some people think this whole situation is interesting, like it's some kind of lab test that's finally yielding results. The President hit it right on the nose; millions of people are dead because of this, and I didn't care what kind of knowledge comes out of this whole damn thing, I'd trade it all back in a heartbeat for those lives back.
I backed away from the alien craft. Suddenly the hunk of metal didn't hold as much awe for me as before, now that I was reminded that its kind is what destroyed so much of our world, and murdered so many of our people.
The awe was replaced by anger for the spaceship, until I reminded myself that this could be our only chance at preventing the rest of the world from being similarly destroyed.
I swallowed down what emotions I felt. Whatever it is that we had to do to stop these aliens, I'd do it.
"You guys are hoping to fly this thing, huh?" David asked, coming back around the corner of the space craft. He looked at me questioningly, and I suddenly realized that my fingers were still balled up into fists.
I breathed out slowly, releasing my own hands, and trying to calm myself down still. I looked away from David, ignoring the now concerned look on his face.
"You said you can repair their technology. Can you tell us anything useful about them?" the President questioned crazy scientist guy.
I looked back over, waiting for his answer.
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, uh, I mean, they're not all that dissimilar from us. Breathes oxygen, comparable tolerances to heat, cold. Probably why they're interested in our planet." His face suddenly split into a huge grin, and he began to bounce on his toes excitedly. "Hey. Hey. You guys wanna see 'em? Huh?"
I just rolled my eyes again as he began to lead our group into yet another room. I was beginning to get very annoyed at what seemed to be like a class field trip with an over-excited tour guide. What was happening now was serious, and I was sick of this guy not taking it seriously.
David fell into step next to me. "Hey, are you alright?" he asked, placing his hand on my shoulder.
I forced myself to ignore the tingles that his hand was leaving on my shoulder. "Yeah, I'm fine," I replied, lying of course. In reality, I'm so very far from fine. I didn't know where my family was, and my gut told me I never would, I was scared that we wouldn't be fast enough to keep other people from dying, I was scared that we would die, and this stupid scientist being so ridiculously flamboyant and ignorant of the weight of the whole situation was about to push me over the edge. I was close to breaking, but I wouldn't let myself break. I couldn't, not at a time like this. So I just half-heartedly smiled at David.
He narrowed his eyes, obviously not believing me. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure, I'm fine."
"Elaina-"
"I'm fine!" I snapped sharply, pulling my shoulder out of his grasp, and walked away from him towards the front of the group.
I knew it was uncalled for for me to take out my frustration on David, but I was so overwhelmed, and him pestering at me like that just made me snap. I felt bad immediately, and part of me just wanted to turn around, and apologize to him, but I brushed that part of me to the back of my mind. I just had to shut off my emotions and get through all of this.
We arrived at a door, and the scientist guy had to punch in a code. Before he did, he decided to give another tour explanation first. "Uh, this is, this is the vault. Or as some of us have come to call it, the "Freak Show"."
I glared at him as he giggled at his stupid little joke. His laughter faded away as he realized that none of us were laughing with him, and he finally just punched the code in.
I gasped as the aliens were revealed. They were in tubes of liquid, just like every sci-fi movie and TV show has. I was amazed at how large they were, they would probably be twice my height if they were standing on the ground. I was mainly astonished at how different they looked from us; I mean I knew they'd look different but I didn't think they'd look so...alien, I guess.
"When we found 'em, they were wearing, uh, some sort of biomechanical suits. But once we got 'em off, we learned a great deal about their anatomy. Eyes, ears, no vocal cords. We're assuming they communicate with each other through some other means," Crazy guy explained while we all stared at the tubes, David and I circling around them for a better view.
"You're obviously thinking about, uh, hand signals and body language," David suggested, looking to the scientist for confirmation.
"Or telepathy," I mused quietly. I could feel David's eyes on me as I countered his idea, but I refused to look at him, and just continued to look at the alien's corpse.
"Uh, yes, yes we think it's some kind of extrasensory perception, yes, telepathy."
I smirked as the scientist agreed with my idea, and looked at David, catching eye contact with him. He rolled his eyes at me, and I stifled a giggle.
...I don't giggle, what the heck?
I looked away, annoyed at myself.
"Can they be killed?"
Way to go Mr. President, finally asking the important questions!
" Oh, their bodies are just as frail as ours. These two died in the crash. Uh, this one a few weeks later. You just... you have to get through their technology, which is, I'm sorry to say, far more advanced," the scientist explained, pointing to each alien in turn.
Well that's not very helpful at all. How the hell are we supposed to beat these things then?
Nothing seemed to be looking right for us at all, and I was beginning to get pretty pessimistic about the whole situation.
"David, you and Elaina unlocked part of that technology. You cracked the code," the President directed towards us.
I started shaking my head at the same time as David answered.
"Oh, no, no, no. All I did was stumble onto their, um, signal. I don't know how, uh, helpful I can be," David insisted, shaking his head as well.
"Yeah, we didn't crack the code, we just, uh, we just found it," I added on.
The President just raised his eyebrow at us. "Why don't you show 'em what you've discovered so far. Figure out what they haven't thought of yet. And we'll see if you're as smart as we all hope you are."
Are you kidding me? Is he seriously making fun of David?? After we literally just saved their dumb ass lives?
I clenched my fists and glared at the Presidents back as he left the room.
"Asshole," I muttered under my breath.
David smacked my arm and glared at me.
I just shrugged and looked away. It's true.
Suddenly, we were the only two in the room except the crazy scientist guy.
He walked up to us with wide eyes.
"What code?"