First Contact

Chapter 3

Her phone was ringing for the third time that morning. She glanced at the display: Nick's Pizza. She sighed and silenced the call yet again.

"You know, you are gonna have to take that sooner or later, right?" said her husband from across the kitchen as he made the final preparations for their breakfast. "Done," he said as he took the plates and placed them on the dining table. "Where's Agnes?"

"She's almost ready. I think, she's finally getting used to school, after all the running around."

The phone rang again. This time, before she could silence it, her husband snatched it out of her hand and took the call. "This is Keen."

"Tom," came the barely audible voice over the phone. "Put Lizzy on. Now."

"We're busy."

"This can't wait." Tom sighed and handed the phone to her which she begrudging took.

"Can't this wait until after I drop off Agnes?"

"We have a new case."

"Yeah. I got that the first time."

"Liz, this is urgent."

"It always is."

"Have you been watching the news?"

Liz glanced at the screen which was muted and was showing live coverage of the alien ship that had landed only two days ago, in Arizona. "Yeah..." said Liz, a bit unsure why that would have anything to do with the case.

"It's that urgent."

Liz looked up at Tom, wanting his opinion on the matter. She wanted to put her family first, but her job always- always- got her involved with things that made her shift her priorities. Go, mouthed Tom, understanding her plight more than anyone. "Okay," she said into the phone.

An hour later, Elizabeth Keen walked into the Post Office, the government black site where she had been working ever since Raymond Reddington- one of FBI's most wanted fugitives- named her as the only person he would talk to regarding The Blacklist- a list of names of criminals that no one was looking for, because no one knew they existed- on her very first day on the job as an FBI profiler. In the eight years since, she had changed so much that she wasn't sure her old self would've recognized her.

Now, she stood before her colleagues to name the next person on The Blacklist after the urgent call from this morning and the meeting shortly after with Reddington.

"Meet The Ghost," said Liz, pulling up a vague image of a person in a hoodie exiting a building. "This is one of the very few images of this guy, ever. And that's saying something in the 23rd century. According to Reddington, he's planning an attack in Arizona."

"Arizona?" asked Assistant Director Harold Cooper. "You mean, the landing site?"

"Yes."

"Why? Does Reddington have any clue?"

"It's complicated."

"Explain."

"Reddington says that this guy was directly responsible for-" she paused, unsure of the craziness.

"What?"

"For World War 3."

"That's impossible. The war ended more than a hundred years ago."

"Yeah."

"That would make him more than a hundred years old, a lot more," said Aram Mojtabai, the technical genius among them, trying to think of any possibility of how it could be true. "Did- did he have some sort of genetic engineering or something that slowed down his aging?"