Wexxon the Great Alien Warrior - Juno Wells

Chapter One

Rachel

“Rachel Waters?” I said my name like a question, waiting for the older woman behind the secretary’s desk to find it in the computer system. “If you need me to, I can show you my ID—”

“I don’t need to see your ID.” Her voice was harsh, like she was already annoyed with my existence. “I’ve got you right here. Rachel Waters. Day one.”

“Day one.” I nervously smiled at the thought. It was the first day of my internship at NASA, the branch in Huntsville, Alabama. I’d been both surprised and terrified when I’d gotten the call that I landed the internship. Although it wasn’t the educational aspect that’d freaked me out so much. I had a perfect GPA in college.

It was the social part. I’d always been an introvert, but now, as an intern, I was going to be expected to rub shoulders with some of the greatest minds of my generation. I was also going to be expected to handle face time with actual, literal astronauts, bringing them their coffee, putting away whatever files they needed put away. And while I was confident when it came to matters of logic and reasoning, I was a lot less confident about my charming social skills.

Even now, I was convinced the woman behind the desk had decided that she hated me, based on the way she was staring over at me like I was the least interesting person on the planet.

“You’re going to start off in conference room B for the day,” she said as she slipped me a blank, white access card. “There should be someone waiting for you already. If there’s not, just look up the company directory and ask for Marsha.”

“Right. The company directory.” I nodded, like I had any idea what she was talking about. “And how would I be able to access that?”

“Just swipe your card at any of the contact areas.” The woman’s annoyance remained in her tone. She then pointed toward a huge black box on one of the walls before she went on. “You swipe your card and everyone’s information will come up on the touchscreen.”

“Oh. Wow.” I let out a laugh laced with anxiety. “That’s…that’s pretty futuristic. But I guess that’s what I get for working at NASA—”

“I have to go. I’m late for an admin meeting.” The woman behind the desk suddenly moved away from it, grabbing her coffee off the counter before she headed down the nearest hall.

“Okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later? Maybe?” I called out after her as I gripped the access card in my hand.

Fuck.

Had I seriously already burned a bridge somehow? I’d just gotten here, for fuck’s sake.

No.

There was no way I’d burned any bridge. And there was no way the secretary already hated me, either. She was probably just like that with everyone. In fact, she was probably just as nervous as I’d been about our short interaction, putting on an extrovert’s face despite her introvert’s tendencies.

Conference Room B.

I headed down one of the myriad of hallways, my heels clicking across the floor as I went. There were maps of the building painted all along its walls, but those seemed to be more about artistic interpretation than actual guidance. Eventually, though, I was able to figure out where I was going, locating the conference room, seemingly nearly a mile away from where I first entered the building.

And when I was finally standing outside the right door, I reached a hand out toward it, gently knocking on its frame. “Hello? Marsha? I’m supposed to start out in conference room B today—”

“Rachel Waters!” A woman with wild, blonde hair and kind eyes pulled open the conference room door. “My name’s Marsha Perriot. I’m your internship supervisor. And I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Really?” My face fell. “I’m sorry. I thought I was running on time—”

“You are on time,” she interrupted with a wide grin. “I think we might be having our first misunderstanding. I’ve been waiting to meet you, Rachel Waters. I saw your scores on our aptitude test, and I did a little digging into all your time at UCLA so far. You’ve had quite the incredible track record in all of your STEM classes.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I murmured, immediately uncomfortable with her attempt at high praise. “I’m just…a lot of the people who go to UCLA aren’t really interested in getting the best grades, especially if they already come from cash. They’re using it more like a steppingstone than anything else—”

“Why do