(MAIN RANGE): Roswell

 

(MAIN RANGE): Roswell 

Starring Indira Varma as Suzie Costello

2003

Susie Costello was often considered the kind of agent that served as a Lone Wolf. Tosh was best at the computer stuff back at the base, she was good at teamwork. It wasn’t like you could call Owen a team player, and to be honest, Ianto was just some kind of tea boy. 

Nonetheless, more often than not, Suzie was left to her own devices when she was assigned a mission. 

Some kind of respect that Jack had for her or something. However minuscule it was.  

To be honest, Suzie didn’t think much of the others. Jack wasn’t much of a leader, just a horny bastard who was always eyeing his team rather than supporting them. 

Owen was good in bed and that was about it, and Tosh and Ianto usually felt beneath her attention. 

So Suzie was glad she was left to her own devices. Still, that afternoon, she was invited into Jack’s office.

“Orders from Yvonne. Torchwood LA has gone silent.” Jack said, looking all heroic and American, and rubbish. “Mm hm,” Suzie said, sitting down in the office chair, curling up her legs in mid air and placing her hands on her neck like she was on the beach. 

“We’ve been ordered to send an agent to America. You’re going to Roswell. New Mexico.” 

Suzie suddenly turned alertly towards Jack. “Roswell. I’m going to Roswell?!” 

“Pack your bags.” Jack said, grinning in that stupid way of his. Flirt.

Great. She was going to goddamn Roswell. Suzie sighed. This better be good.

The flight attendant was rotten, Suzie thought. All smiley and chipper, and with an accent that Suzie couldn’t make out if it sounded American Southern or Drugged Out. “Hello, I am Cheryl, I will be serving you this evening.” She said, and Suzie spit up a little inside her mouth. Please. She thought, Torchwood never goes well with Americans. It’s an unwritten rule. 

Suzie opened her magazine, the kind people only ever look at on Airplanes, with generic articles like Professional Gardening or Top 10 Hottest Celebrity Actors. Suzie struggled not to scream. 

"Hello. This is Your Captain Speaking. In the Unlikely Event Of An Emergency..."

Suzie tuned the voice out. It never said anything important. 

The voice continued in the same clipped tone, completing devoid of emotion. 

"We ask that you stow your luggage underneath your seats or in the aboveboard compartments.  We also ask that your seats and table trays are in the upright position for take-off. Please turn off all personal electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones. Smoking is prohibited for the duration of the flight. If you work for Torchwood, we are going to kill you."

Suzie went rigid. What was that?

"Thank you for choosing Cardiff airlines. Please enjoy your flight."

* * *

Cheryl White began to shake slightly in the corner. 

Suzie eyed the nearby passengers, all who seemed absolutely unaware that any death threats had been issued. Perhaps it was psychic communication. 

If so, Roswell was certainly an issue if whatever force was behind this weren't even letting her take a flight to sort of near it. 

And Silly Suzie, she had stowed her gun with her luggage. She definitely couldn't get it out without causing undue attention. 

Cheryl walked up to her. "Hello, do you want anything? Some Peanuts?"

"Sure." Suzie said, taking a packet. She took her phone out of the pocket and scanned them. They contained Cyanide. 

"Cheryl, you do know what these contain?" Suzie said dangerously. 

"We apologize if you have any allergy-" Cheryl whimpered before Suzie got up and grabbed her by the throat. 

Suzie unclipped her hairpin and raised it to her. "Look at this, Cheryl. It's sharp, and it's very nasty. I tend to like having jewelry like that. I do wonder the damage I could cause to your larynx with a flick of my wrist. How much blood do you think there would be?" She said loudly.

None of the other passengers moved from their seats. 

"Thought so. All the passengers on this plane are shams. Who are you working for? What do you have against Torchwood-" Suzie spat, as Cheryl yelped.

"Torchwood, I'm, I'm working for Torchwood!" Cheryl gasped, and Suzie dropped her to the ground, still waving the hairpin. 

"As if! I know everyone on the payroll, from Gabby Martinez to Agnes Havisham!!" Suzie snapped. 

Cheryl stepped back and changed her skin. She was now...a completely different looking blonde woman. "I'm Zkarrlae. Final Survivor of the Tenth Zygon Battle Fleet. And the closest you'll get to finding me on any records is under Hugo Sinclair. I was male in the Eighties." 

Suzie narrowed her eyes. Wonderful. A shapeshifter that tried to give her Cyanide peanuts. 

"What about the Peanuts?"

"I got them from the food dispenser. I take it no one else but us on this plane is exactly alive."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, This is your Captain Speaking. We are crusing at an altitude of 33,000 feet with a speed of 400,000 Miles Per Hour. We'll be above Roswell shortly. Unfortunately, there has been a cut-off. 

Your faces. Our staff are coming in three minutes to cut them off. 

And to offer a light snack and beverage. I'll talk to you again before we reach our destination. Until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight."

* * *

"What do you have for weapons?" Suzie asked, taking out her baggage from the top shelf. She opened it to find her change of clothes, a cigarette case, a pen and a banana. She deactivated the cloaking devices on the pen, case and banana and screwed them together into a gun.

"What are you doing?!" Cheryl- or Zkarrlae asked. "You don't fire guns on planes! Haven't you seen Goldfinger?!" 

"Oh, wonderful. And you know pop culture." Suzie spat. "Relax. I don't miss." 

Cheryl shifted into a new shape, now with blades for arms. 

"Honestly, I thought things would only start going down once we got to Roswell." 

"Why are you following me? Who assigned you? Torchwood doesn't exactly employ aliens." 

"I met the Doctor in the Nineties. Short, angry, Scottish guy with an umbrella. When the Torchwood team surveyed the aftermath of the scene later, I was discovered. I had accidentally shifted myself into some Celebrity I saw on a sitcom or something. They gave me a choice. Work for them, or die. And so I work for them." 

"What's that necklace?" Suzie asked. "The rest of your body has shifted completely, but you've kept it the same in all of your forms." 

Cheryl looked morose. "It's a bomb. They fused it to my neck to ensure cooperation." 

Suzie swore. It's not like she hadn't done worse, it was that the plane that they were on also now had a bomb on it.

* * *

They came out of the Airplane cockpit. They were angry. Like angry apes or Weevils. Prim and Proper people in uniform, with the slight issue that they were rabid. 

Suzie almost wasn't able to tell at first until they came at her. They looked like humans. 

One of them tried to bite off her hand. 

Suzie kicked another into the wall and Cheryl snapped one of them in two. Suzie began to notice that this carnage was absolutely bloodless.

That was the only thing. They looked absolutely human, they were human, but they had been co-opted. And for some reason, all the blood had been removed beforehand.

However disconcerted Suzie was, there was an edging little voice in her mind that adored this. She could use however as much force as she liked and she wouldn't get any dribbling on her skirt.

It was the little things. 

Suzie however soon realized that they were too many for her and Cheryl to keep up. 

"Get to the back of the plane!" She yelled. 

They rushed backwards, and as the... dozens or more of them began to flow out of the cockpit, Suzie and Cheryl began to forge defenses by the stewardess's area. Suzie limited her shots. If she didn't hit precisely, everything would go wrong a lot faster. She bashed another over the head with a coffee cup. 

The coffee melted the attacker's skin. Evidently all the food here was rather vicious. 

They were pushed back further. They were now beside the Airplane Bathroom. The not-humans kept coming. It was dire. 

Suzie had one last chance and aimed her gun precisely. She fired and shot through three of the not-humans. Through one, then another, and then landing in the third. They all fell down. 

The last of them Cheryl tore into. 

They eventually finished. Suzie chuckled. Cheryl winced. "That...That was horrible." She said. 

Horrible? Suzie thought. She didn't say anything. She couldn't risk upsetting her. And Suzie did know that she had a predilection for the sociopathic. 

"Congratulations on Surviving! We have arrived above Roswell. We are coming in to land..." 

* * *

Roswell was a commerical wreck. As Suzie and Cheryl got out of the Plane (which had landed on a strip of flat land, not a runway, not anything,) and they walked into town, they were instantly bombarded by the local decoration. Alien obsessed items everywhere. Plushies. T-Shirts. A Few Statues. Peddlers begging nearby Tourists to please buy their totally unique and limited edition generic crap with little green men on it. 

Suzie crossed her arms. Cheryl looked embarrassed. 

"Great." Suzie mumbled. "This is the last place in the world an alien would show up."

Cheryl placed her hands on her hips. 

Suzie laughed hard. So did Cheryl. They took a moment to recover. 

"Seriously though. If one did show up supposedly in the 30s, there's no way another would show up. It's not a temporal hot spot like Cardiff." Suzie said. "At least according to scans."

"Yeah..." Cheryl trailed off. "Too X-Files."

They moved across the town, looking. "I doubt there's anything here, really. It's too normal. There's the Airforce base, but I bet there isn't a single thing there alien at all." 

They could see the base in the distance. It was as alien adorned as the town. 

"You are Torchwood, are you not?" Asked a Man behind them. He was bald, wearing a black suit and sunglasses. 

He reached out his hand, speaking in a clipped tone. "Congratulations on arriving. I trust it was not too difficult for you?" He said everything in the same inflection, be it a question or a statement. Suzie took a guess he never exclaimed, so she couldn't test if that was the same inflection too. 

Suzie didn't take his hand. It wasn't her style. 

Cheryl reached out, and happily shook it. 

The Man stepped back, and stated matter of factly. "I am sorry for what is about to occur. You should not have come here. We tried to stop you on the Plane."

"Yeah. Let me guess. Your alien shapeshifters. They nearly fooled us until we sliced one in two." Suzie growled. "Look, whoever you are. You've hurt Torchwood. Nobody does that without causing too much attention. If you take me down, you're only going to cause more people to come after you."

"This may be true. But we are many." The Man said.

The crowd of people suddenly stopped what they were doing and every single one of them raised a gun towards them. 

"We only need one of you to report back." The Man said, in his monotone. 

Cheryl shifts into a creature, and rushes the Man to attack him, but she is shot to death. 

The Man stands their quietly, and lights a cigarette as Suzie narrows her eyes. She is beaten unconcious by the alien shapeshifters that move closer, and The Man takes a device out of his pocket. A strange light...

* * *

Imagine if you will, the 1930s, and an Alien ship crashes into Roswell New Mexico. 

Imagine if you will, the alien race inhabiting this ship are shapeshifters and they are capable of duplication or fission, or rapid reproduction. Imagine they in fact didn't crash at all. Imagine if they are colonizers. They must hide. People have seen their ship. How can they hide? The Government is in fact their ally. The people do not trust the government. They believe that they would keep it a secret. 

So what the aliens do, is they perform an Invasion of The Body Snatchers. They replace the government agents in the nearby base and hide their ship, making as much noise about it as possible. 

Suddenly Roswell is a tourist attraction. 

Imagine if you will, the influx of new town's people, every day. All thinking, Aliens, Aliens, Aliens!

The best place to hide is in plain sight. Suddenly the alien shapeshifters disappear into the crowd of Tourists. Imagine if you will, how little a dent it would make if a few go missing. 

At first, this is what Roswell's new inhabitants do. And then, these people are replaced. 

One by one, every single inhabitant of the original town is removed. 

One by one, Tourists go missing, but no one notices, because people with their faces return to their families homes and act like nothing has happened.

If that doesn't happen, the Tourists go home, having noticed nothing but a town designed around alien paraphernalia. 

And if they aren't worth being replaced, if it's too much of an effort, their memories are modified. They go home, and they notice nothing but the Tourist attraction.

A member of Torchwood LA visits Roswell. A member of Torchwood LA is replaced. 

When they return home, Torchwood LA suddenly goes off the map. They got too close.

The aliens of Roswell play the long game. They have been since the 1930s. And they will for a few more hundred years. 

It will be a long time before they are ready. 

A long time yet.

* * *

Suzie Costello returns home to Torchwood on an uneventful flight. 

Suzie Costello returns home to Torchwood utterly unscathed. 

Suzie Costello insists to Torchwood that nothing eventful occurred on her trip to Roswell.

Suzie Costello insists it is a normal town.

Jack Harkness questions this. Is there really nothing to report? But he has to attend to other things. 

Suzie Costello remembers nothing. 

Suzie Costello is lucky. Suzie Costello is alive. Suzie Costello hasn't been replaced. Only her memory has. 

Jack Harkness returns to work. Suzie Costello returns to work. 

So does Roswell. 

In Roswell, the tourists go missing. In Roswell, no one notices. In Roswell, the inhabitants all sell their alien merchandise happily. In Roswell, the best place to hide is in plain sight.

And outside of Roswell, the tourists return home to their loving families. They insist nothing is wrong. They smile more than usual.

                                     

The End

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Indira Varma as Suzie Costello

A Constantly Shapeshifting Blonde Woman as Cheryl

Edward Bosco as The Airplane Pilot

Joel Stoffer as Man in Suit

And Featuring

John Barrowman as Jack Harkness