Jacqueline listened intently to the woman's story. This was not the worst thing that could have happened. There had been other incidents. This was why she was head of the FBI's Unexplained Phenomenon Investigation Team, in the county that included the main landing site for the South West United States. She was in the unique position to head off, intercept and squash any and all UFO sighting rumours. Since the Roswell incident, there had been a paranoia in the USA about invaders from outer space. Jacqueline was not concerned with Roswell. The  little grey interfering do-gooders would not be a problem. The last one of their ships to come out of jump in this star system had come up against one of her people's warships. That was well over fifty Earth years ago, and the slanty-eyed creatures hadn't been seen since.<br/><br/>Ancient history. The FBI agent kept her attention on the present. "So, let me get this straight. You got lost, fell asleep in you car in some deserted spot, were woken up by a helicopter, which landed next to an alien flying saucer. Aliens and people get out of the various vehicles,  the aliens have Miss Fastnet, one of them ... assaults her? Did you mean it<i>sexually</i>assaulted her? Did I understand that correctly? Because that was what your tone seemed to imply... Then it crumbles to dust and the humans take Miss Fastnet with them in the helicopter and the aliens get back on their flying saucer and everyone just flies away?" Her voice is clearly disbelieving. She is very careful not to say anything that the woman has not said or implied. Except to include exaggerations she knew were not true but were obvious extrapolations, like describing the alien ship as a flying saucer. Everyone knew alien space craft were flying saucers.<br/><br/>"You're telling me that it was aliens who kidnapped Miss Fastnet, and returned her to persons unknown this morning?"<br/><br/>The woman's description was too accurate, as far as it went. Some details were clearly muddled, but it was obvious that the woman had been there. And the bitch was a reporter according to her ID. And then there was the sudden flash of recognition and fear on Silverbottom's face when the sunlight from the window behind her shut off. It was fleeting and was followed by a long blink as the woman composed herself. Blinking was something Jacqueline had to force herself to do. She was used to most of the weird aspects of the human body now, but the random way it kept foreign substances out of the eyes, that was something few of her people ever truly mastered. She realised that she had not, in fact, done so once while listening to Silverbottom tell her story. She did so now, three times.<br/><br/>"Miss Silver Ass, do you have any proof of this? Your ID says you're a reporter. Did you have a camera? Take photographs? You surely have a cellphone, everyone has a cellphone. Are you telling me that you didn't use your phone to record such a peculiar event? Come on...!"<br/><br/>Again the flicker of emotion. A lie. "Can you at least provide some sort of location? That way we can send one of our incident teams to sweep the area for residual radiation, crop circles, mutant ants..." The Agent was being deliberately sarcastic. She stood and walked around to the other side of the desk. "Here's what I think happened. I think you got lost like you said, fell asleep and had a very vivid dream. Then when you woke up you heard about Miss Fastnet's rescue on your car radio. It's the top news item on all the major networks after all. And so you decided to spin a little yarn, to see if you could sell it to the tabloids, about alien abduction and rescue. You see, Miss Silverpants, we know all about you. Maybe not as much as the NSA, but we know enough. We are the FBI after all. We know that your career is stalled, that your paper has you covering school sporting events, we also know that the paper is planning to lay off about half the staff... Oh, you didn't know that? Well, that's the internet for you. No-one buys papers any more. Be that as it may, you need this one big story to break into the big time. And what better way to do so than a hack-tabloid sensationalist piece about extra terrestrials demanding a billion dollar ransom!"<br/><br/>She gestured to her assistant, who was standing by the door looking uncomfortable. "Special Agent Dortmund will take a written version of your story and escort you out. We'll be in touch if we need anything further. Good day, Miss Silverbottom." Finally, she said the woman's name correctly.<br/><br/>Dortmund turned on her smile and nodded. "This way, miss. If you would like to take a seat in here?" She led the woman out into the outer office, closing the door behind her and indicated a chair by a desk that was unoccupied but clearly in use. She sat behind the desk herself and pulled a notepad and pen from a drawer, handed them both to January. "Write down everything you remember, no matter how trivial. Oh and don't mind old grumpy-guts in there. She's always like that. It's actually part of the job. The FBI pay her to be cynical, to not believe in aliens and space ships and zombies and what have you. It helps keep the nut-jobs out, means the people who really have experienced something strange, like you, don't get lost in the mass of fakes, hoaxes, drunkards, LSD users, and the like. And yes I do believe you saw something strange. I don't think it was aliens, more likely some sort of mirage, or maybe we'll find that a film studio was shooting something. Or maybe you did just have a weird dream. Anyway. Write it all down. What we do is, I type it up and it gets put into our database and correlated with all the other incidents we have on file. The computer checks for similarities and uses those to find some sort of logical explanation based on the previous explanations. We'll write to you with the results..."<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​</div>Inside her office, Special Agent Riley was on the phone. But instead of talking, all that could be heard was a weirdly random clicking and crackling sound. ++There's been a major screw up. A reporter was at this morning's transfer. ... Yes a fucking reporter, that's what I said.++ Riley took a deep breath. The air was somehow thicker and more satisfying that the air on their home world. ++The guards did a cursory sweep. They didn't check the other side of the building. The woman's car was parked there the whole time. She claims she has no video evidence, but she's lying. ... Because I know. Riley was a trained investigator, she knew when someone was lying and so do I. Anyway, she was definitely there. She recognised me.++ The crackling on the other end became a static hiss. Riley flinched. ++Hardly my fault!++ She hissed back, equally annoyed. ++We've become sloppy. The guards should have checked the entire area. The helicopter pilot should have done a proper sweep. It's too late now. We can tighten things up for the future, but for now, this woman,++ "January Silverbottom" ++Yes, I know, some humans have the strangest names. Anyway, we need to keep tabs on her. Find out exactly how clear her video is, see if we can scramble it some if it's too clear... Put a tail on her, make sure it's obvious, give them FBI credentials, tell her it's for her own protection if she catches on. There are a lot of wackos out there, after all!++